Decide to Thrive! | Ever Met Somebody Who Has Been Talking About Starting for 3 Years? Putting In the Work Is “The Shortcut.” + Celebrating Success of 2 Clay Clark Clients + Join Eric Trump At Clay Clark’s Sept 25-26 Business Conf.

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 4)
People spend years looking for a shortcut, a faster route, a better angle. They’re searching for the trick that’ll help them skip the hard part. But here’s what they don’t realize. The hard part is the shortcut. You ever meet someone who’s been about to start for the last three years, still talking about the project, still researching the routine, still shopping for the right setup. And meanwhile, someone else, less talented, less prepared, is already moving, already building, already ahead.

(Speaker 4)
Not because they knew more, but because they stopped looking for shortcuts and started doing the work. That’s what we’re talking about here. The work, the representatives, the quiet, unglamorous, uncelebrated effort that actually builds something. The stuff that doesn’t look fast, but is. Because every time you skip the search for a shortcut and just do the thing, you’re taking the real shortcut, the only one that works. So that’s what this seminar is about.

(Speaker 4)
Not hacks, not tricks, just truth. The work is the shortcut. and the minute you stop trying to avoid it, you start gaining ground faster than you think. The search for a shortcut usually costs more than just time. It costs momentum. It costs clarity.

(Speaker 4)
It costs trust in the process. People think shortcuts save them effort, but what they don’t realize is that shortcuts often just send them in circles. They skip the hard part, hoping it’ll make things faster, then end up right back at the beginning. You’ve probably seen it. Someone jumps from one platform to another. one routine to the next.

(Speaker 4)
They try the fast fix, the guaranteed method, the secret strategy, but nothing sticks. Because every time it starts to get hard, they bail out and look for something easier.

(Speaker 3)
And over time, what could have taken six months ends up dragging out for years.

(Speaker 1)
Okay, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we’re joined by a very successful entrepreneur, a guy who had an idea, a guy who had the motivation, the drive, the self -starting nature needed to start his own company. The company’s called windowninjas . com. We’ve had the opportunity to work with and serve Gabe Salinas and his team and to watch firsthand his company grow from one location to 11 locations. It’s now a franchise offering franchises all across these United States. And on today’s show, We’re going to talk about why diligence is the difference maker, why diligence is the difference maker.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t care whether you’re cleaning windows, whether you’re buying an Oxyfresh carpet cleaning franchise, whether you’re in Oklahoma, one of my longtime clients, he has a janitorial service, whether you’re a teeth cleaning company, there’s kind of a cleaning theme on today’s show, whether you’re a teeth cleaning company called MLK Dentistry, no matter what kind of cleaning you’re doing or any other kind of business that you’re doing, you have to be a diligent person because when you go to windowninjas . com, if you decide to buy a window ninjas . com franchise. They’re going to give you an incredible marketing, a turnkey marketing system. They’re going to give you an incredible customer service slash a scheduling center program. They’re going to give you a great, unique value proposition.

(Speaker 1)
They’re going to offer you first class training, but diligence is the difference maker. And here to talk about it is Gabe Salinas, the founder of window ninjas .

(Speaker 3)
com.

(Speaker 51)
Gabe, welcome to the Thrived Time Show.

(Speaker 3)
How are you, sir?

(Speaker 1)
I’m great, Clay. Thanks for having me again today. I want to talk to you about diligence, and I want to share a little bit about that. Trump story. I met Eric Trump several years back. He and I have done, I think, 27 events together.

(Speaker 1)
Politically, regardless of where people fall on the Eric Trump or Trump family situation, When you go to their country clubs, the golf courses are maintained with an unbelievable amount of precision. And we’ve hosted multiple events at a Trump property. And I’m telling you, the bushes, the golf greens, the carpet, everything about the facility is cleaned with precision. And it starts at the top. Eric Trump is just obsessed with offering world -class service. I want to get your thoughts on that, Gabe.

(Speaker 3)
What drives you to be focused on doing things the right way, daily diligence, following the systems that you’ve built? What causes you to view the world that way? I don’t know, Clay, maybe it’s my upbringing. I was raised in a military household. So maybe it kind of stuck with me from day one. But man, you know what, when you follow the systems, the proven systems, it’s amazing how easy your life becomes.

(Speaker 3)
And that’s what’s really cool about what we do over here at Wynn Inages is the systems that we provide all of our franchisees, the teams that Follow that system 100 % creates success for themselves. It creates success for the franchisee. It creates success for the customer. It creates success for our call center employees. I mean, it’s just a win -win all the way around.

(Speaker 1)
And who likes to try to reinvent the wheel every single day, Clay? So, I mean, it’s just a no -brainer just to follow the system because it works. I think a lot of people self -sabotage. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know why. This isn’t a psychological show, but I see this. You know, I watched the way that Eric Trump treated our attendees when we came to our events, and it was a first -class approach.

(Speaker 1)
He wanted his venue to be spotless, to be perfect, to be world -class. I do see some people that, for whatever reason, they show up to the job interview. like they just slept in a dumpster overnight. So I want to get your thoughts on that. I mean what is it that causes some people to self -sabotage?

(Speaker 3)
I mean you manage now a large group of employees. What causes some people just to self -sabotage? I don’t know, man. It’s hard to say. I don’t understand why people want to reinvent the wheel every single day. You roll out of bed, and let’s reinvent the wheel again.

(Speaker 3)
I just don’t get that mentality, but I do see it a lot. I don’t know. Maybe it’s upbringing. Maybe it’s just a lack of education or just mentorship is another big thing. It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, you know, but yeah, we really don’t struggle with a whole lot of that over here.

(Speaker 3)
We always look for the best people. That’s why we do group interviews every single week. Today’s Wednesday. We’re going to do one this afternoon here in an hour. And, you know, but just basically. teaching people how to follow the system, teaching people how to through mentorship, how it creates success for themselves.

(Speaker 3)
It really gets through to certain people.

(Speaker 1)
And those are the people that we like having over here at Window Ninjas and the others that just can’t grasp that. And the ones that want to keep on reinventing the wheel every single day, we just kind of slowly just push them out the door. Now, when you reached out to us when I first met you, you knew the end result. And I want to brag on you for a second. You were wowing customers with your window cleaning service. And you just wanted to systemize it and scale it.

(Speaker 1)
But you’d already designed a system to wow the customers. You just wanted turnkey systems for everything. So that way, people that would want to buy a franchise from you in the future, you could tell them, hey, here’s a proven system. So again, you already had a system for a lot of things. But it was like, hey, how can I systemize it to the level where I can easily teach it to somebody else? And you’ve done that at Windows.

(Speaker 1)
ninjas .

(Speaker 50)
com what was the most difficult part of building some of these systems because again I know your inner dialogue the way you view the world makes you want to use a checklist it makes you want to follow systems but what was the most difficult part for you about building these wonderful

(Speaker 3)
systems that you now offer to franchisees at WindowNinjas .com? com? It’s like climbing a mountain. That’s what it felt like, Clay. You just started going through your head as to all of the different aspects of the business, how each section of the business was broken down into different groups from your sales to your marketing to your service side. I mean, developing a call center.

(Speaker 3)
And you start thinking about all the different tasks that go on with each and every one of those parts of the business. And then you start thinking about the employees in every single aspect of their job. And it just really becomes a big mountain. And a lot of people are scared to climb that mountain. And I was you know, looking at it like, okay, cool. I can do this.

(Speaker 3)
It’s going to take me a lot of time, but the time is going to be worth the effort. And I think the difference between what people like me and you do is that we understand that We’re going to put that effort in. It’s going to take that time, but the reward is going to be so much greater for us at the end of the journey that we’re going to be able to literally reap in the success that we have sown for ourselves. And I just think a lot of people get scared of that, man. They don’t want to put that time and energy into it. They don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

(Speaker 3)
They just want somebody to give it to them with the easy button. And that’s what we produced over here at Window Ninjas. I’m the one that climbed that mountain. With your help, we built this thing. to a scalable system. And it was a lot of work, man.

(Speaker 3)
We’ve worked on this stuff for years and we still are working on it. But you know, it’s the perfect system for somebody who wants an opportunity. They don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel. They just want to get up in the morning. They want to go wow some customers. They want to put revenue in their pocket and they want to have employees that are winning as well.

(Speaker 3)
And man, that’s what we got for them.

(Speaker 2)
And that’s been successful. years of hard work man.

(Speaker 49)
My name is Daniel Connell and my company is DC Pro LVA for lighting video and audio.

(Speaker 2)
Our website is real simple for our website it’s dcprolva . com. I’ve started with you guys actually looked it was two years ago this month gross revenue has grown two and a half times since then in our in our company. Beyond that We are standing at the door right now of another major push. I can see it. I can see it coming.

(Speaker 2)
The pieces are getting into place. So have this conversation with me again a year from now, and I bet I can say the same thing again, that we’ve grown two and a half times just between now and then. We kind of exist in two spaces. A huge client pool of ours is houses of worship, you know, mainly churches. We’ve worked a lot of big clients in that area. Bethel Church, Elevation Church, Life Church here in Oklahoma, Church of the Highlands out of Alabama.

(Speaker 2)
You kind of name it if you’re a large church in those areas, we work with them. But what I always like to stress when I say that is Those are fun to work with. Some of our favorite clients are the smaller churches around, you know, the ones that just want to have a good way to communicate with their congregations. So smaller churches shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to us. We also do a lot in the corporate space. We work with Turning Point USA.

(Speaker 2)
Charlie Kirk, I know a lot of your listeners are probably very familiar with Charlie, the awesome work he does. We do all the Turning Point events. We had the honor of providing lighting for 11 of President Trump’s stops that he did with Turning Point on the election cycle. Hopefully going to have some more here. You know, occasionally we get to work with with other more unique artists and clients. We’ve worked with Nitro Circus, which is the guys that do the crazy backflips on the motorcycles.

(Speaker 2)
We’ve worked with SpaceX, Tesla, a lot of big corporate events. So again, I know a lot of your listeners are people that own corporations, run companies. Having events that are presented with excellence, so it represents your company well, is huge. And that’s a lot of what we do is helping other companies with that. That’s audio video lighting, AVL. We made a little joke in our name.

(Speaker 2)
My personal background is as a lighting and production designer. so we decided to switch it up and call ourselves an LVA company. You know, we put lighting first where it belongs, instead of the tail end. But we do all that. Pretty much anything we’re going to have a live event, where you’re going to have an audience, a crowd, a church service, a concert, a corporate event, we specialize in all those types of things. And we’re also starting to branch out into TV studio spaces.

(Speaker 2)
corporate boardrooms. I can’t imagine a bigger failure than when you’re in a corporate boardroom and you’re trying to communicate with a client and you’re having AVL failures. You’re not linking up to your Zoom correctly. You don’t sound well. You don’t look well. Even right here in my little office, we make sure we have proper lighting, proper microphones.

(Speaker 2)
I want to sound good. I want to look good. So we’re also starting to help people with that. But I was the technician mindset. So I understood how to do the service work that we do very well. I didn’t know how to lead a team doing it.

(Speaker 2)
I didn’t know how to structure, you know, our sales team properly to take that load off. And, you know, I found myself just showing up at the office every day and going, what, what, what hill do I need to climb today? And what that usually meant is that other people got to take control of my time. You know, whether it would be my employees or our customers, they dictated what my days looked like. You know, when I reached out to you guys and started working with you, what I thought, you know, and what I thought I wanted from you guys was a bunch of belt systems that you would hand off to me and go, okay, here’s the way you need to do it. What you did and what has been the real secret for me is that you worked on me first.

(Speaker 2)
An example, right here in front of me, I’m looking at my desk. This is my daily clipboard I carry around. It’s got my calendar on one side, my to -do list on the other. Such a simple thing. literally life -changing. This is the first part of my day every day.

(Speaker 2)
And what I’ve found is this has been such an anxiety relief, such a stress relief that allows me to step away from the working in my business and work on my business. Because before I get to that point every day, I can look through and go, no, that’s not something I need to do. At the bottom of that to -do list, what you probably couldn’t see, because I showed it pretty fast, is I have a delegate section on my to -do list where I will start to write a note for me and go, no, someone else can do that. And I’ll put it in the delegate. That pre -planning of my time has made us millions of dollars. The major benefit for me is, you know, again, initially my pushback was that we have QuickBooks that we use.

(Speaker 2)
It shows me all this. No, it definitely does not. What we’ve been able to identify because of the uniqueness of the industry we’re in, we don’t have short term payoffs. You know, we don’t have clients giving us money every single day. We get money in big chunks spread out over a larger period of time. And what it’s helped me identify is a weird cash flow variable within our industry that we didn’t understand before.

(Speaker 2)
And we kind of do this over the week. So I will have three or four weeks in a row with a low cash flow season, and then I’ll have two or three with a high cash flow season.

(Speaker 1)
What that has allowed us to start doing now is adjusting our spending where we’re doing it at the peaks and not in the valleys of that cash flow. Seems like a minor thing, but has kept us from either number one, missing opportunities, because we were trying to time the cash flow at the wrong time, or just not spending that money in the proper place. Folks, on today’s show, I’m super excited to introduce you to an entrepreneur that’s having a lot of success. Why? Because I think when I interview someone like Wolfgang Puck, or John Maxwell, or the founder of FUBU, or an Eric Trump, I think it seems sometimes unapproachable. I think sometimes when you see somebody who’s having that level of success, it seems unapproachable.

(Speaker 1)
Then I think there’s somebody watching today’s show, and you’ve got an idea for a startup. You want to start something. Or maybe you have a company, and you’re just kind of stuck. And you say, I want to have massive success, but I need to hear a success story of somebody else that has done it, that is doing it, somebody who’s in the trenches with me. Because it’s going to build your confidence and your faith that you, too, can do it. And so on today’s show, I want to introduce you to a man who has built and is building a super successful company that’s adding a ton of value.

(Speaker 1)
It’s adding a ton of value in the audio -visual space. Daniel Kanell, welcome to the show.

(Speaker 2)
Time Show. How are you, sir? Thanks so much.

(Speaker 1)
I’m doing great. I think that may be one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten, definitely the best introduction I’ve ever gotten. Well, I appreciate you very much. I know there’s somebody watching this going, is this guy an AI model?

(Speaker 2)
Is he real? So can you share with us your first and last name and the name of your website? Absolutely. My name is Daniel Connell. My company is DCProLVA for lighting, video, and audio.

(Speaker 37)
Our website is real simple for a website.

(Speaker 1)
It’s DCProLVA . com. OK, I’m going to pull it up real quick on the screen so people can verify that it is a real website. And for anybody out there who is kind of watching today’s show and you want to add value to today’s guest, if you go to dcprolva . com and share that link on your social media, what that does is it helps Daniel’s website rank higher in the search results, too. So if you’re watching today’s show, go to dcprolva .

(Speaker 1)
com. Click there right now, and you can see the website, and you can verify he’s a real person.

(Speaker 2)
Daniel, you work on some of the biggest projects in America, some visually spectacular things. Tell us, over the years, who are some of the projects or what kinds of projects have you worked on over the years? Absolutely. We kind of exist in two spaces. A huge client pool of ours is houses of worship, you know, mainly churches. We’ve worked a lot of big clients in that area.

(Speaker 2)
Bethel Church, Elevation Church, Life Church here in Oklahoma, Church of the Highlands out of Alabama. You kind of name it. If you’re a large church in those areas, we work with them. But what I always like to stress when I say that is Those are fun to work with. Some of our favorite clients are the smaller churches around, you know, the ones that just want to have a good way to communicate with their congregations. So smaller churches shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to us.

(Speaker 2)
We also do a lot in the corporate space. We work with Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. I know a lot of your listeners are probably very familiar with Charlie, the awesome work he does. We do all the Turning Point events. We had the honor of providing lighting for 11 of President Trump’s stops that he did with Turning Point on the election cycle. Hopefully going to have some more here.

(Speaker 2)
And, you know, occasionally we get to work with other more unique artists and clients. We’ve worked with Nitro Circus, which is the guys that do the crazy backflips on the motorcycles. We’ve worked with SpaceX, Tesla, a lot of big corporate events.

(Speaker 1)
So again, I know a lot of your listeners are people that own corporations, run companies. Having events that are presented with excellence, so it represents your company well, is huge.

(Speaker 2)
And that’s a lot of what we do is helping other companies with that. If you had to describe the services that you provide, would you describe yourself as audio -visual lighting, or what do you call that? What’s kind of the industry terminology that would be best used to describe what you do? Absolutely, and you kind of hit the nail on the head there. It’s Audio Video Lighting, AVL. We made a little joke in our name.

(Speaker 2)
My personal background is as a lighting and production designer, so we decided to switch it up and call ourselves an LVA company. You know, we put lighting first where it belongs, instead of the tail end. But we do all that. Pretty much anything we’re going to have a live event, where you’re going to have an audience, a crowd, a church service, a concert, a corporate event, we specialize in all those types of things. And we’re also starting to branch out into TV studio spaces. Corporate boardrooms, you know, I can’t imagine a bigger failure than when you’re in a corporate boardroom and you’re trying to communicate with a client and you’re having AVL failures.

(Speaker 2)
You know, you’re not linking up to your Zoom correctly. You don’t sound well. You don’t look well. Even, you know, right here in my little office, we make sure we have proper lighting, proper microphones.

(Speaker 1)
I want to sound good. I want to look good. So we’re also starting to help people with that. So for anybody watching today’s show, if they want to hire you guys or learn more about your services before we get into your story, everybody go out there right now to DCProLVA . com. Who’s your ideal and likely buyer?

(Speaker 1)
Like who do you work with?

(Speaker 2)
Is it typically churches? Is it corporate America? What’s kind of your ideal and likely buyer? We are between 60 and 70 % of our clients being churches. And again, I mentioned some big names in the church world there. We work with all sizes.

(Speaker 2)
If you just, even if you just need some good speakers to make sure your pastor’s voice is clear with every seat.

(Speaker 1)
in the room, we can serve churches that size up to the biggest in the country. After that, we work with a lot of corporate companies.

(Speaker 43)
We do less and less of the musical concerts and things of that nature anymore, but if you’re a corporation that wants to host an event for employees, you want to host an event for clients to come to, we’d be a great company to reach out to just to make sure your message is presented with excellence.

(Speaker 1)
Now, how did you first start this company? Again, for anybody out there, if you’re listening right now and you’re taking notes, it’s dcprolva .

(Speaker 2)
com. How did you start dcprolva . com? What was the process like? Very bad. No, this is all I’ve done my whole career.

(Speaker 2)
I’ve been a lighting production designer, you know, until DC Pro started about six or seven years ago. I hired my first full -time employee in January of 2020. So I kind of consider that personally the start of the company when I started bringing more people into it here. And, you know, for anyone outside that’s read the book E -Myth, that’s how I started the company. I started the book as a technician and going, well, I know how to do lighting production very well, so I bet I can get people to buy it. And after a couple of years of doing that, I realized I needed help.

(Speaker 2)
And that’s where I reached out to people like you guys to help show me how to not just do the work of the business, but build a business out of it. So we started out by just using my network, people I already had relationships with and going, hey, Rather than just hiring me to provide the service for you, now we provide product.

(Speaker 1)
Now we provide rental solutions. Now we provide this. And just building off of my network. And then what you guys have helped me with so much over the past couple of years of working with you is figuring out how to start to reach outside of my network to new customers, new leads that we don’t have an existing relationship with. Now, on part two of today’s show, I kind of teed it up. So I’m going to put Michael Gerber.

(Speaker 1)
I did an interview with Michael Gerber. I’m going to add it to part two of today’s show.

(Speaker 18)
Michael Gerber is the author of the E -Myth.

(Speaker 1)
Because years ago, I met Michael. And Michael and I were comparing notes, and he was asking me, where do you see clients that are typically stuck? Where do you see them? business owners? Clay, where do you see? And I said, well, in your book, as you articulated, Michael Gerber wrote that most entrepreneurs are technicians that are working in their business rather than on their business.

(Speaker 1)
And I said, Michael, what I find, the challenge I find when I work with clients is that the theory or the idea, the belief of, hey, I should work on my business, that is absolutely something people believe in. But then there’s the urgency of needing to sell something at a profit. Another example is there are people out there that are watching today’s show and they say, man, I want to achieve physical fitness like Daniel has. I want to be physically fit like Daniel, and I want to do it. I want to take my fitness goals to the next level. However, they have a job that has them work in the night shift, and they’re kind of viewing it like, I can’t focus on fitness until I’m done with the night shift, or I can’t start working on my business until I actually get to a certain place financially, then I’ll work on the business.

(Speaker 1)
I can’t work out until I get to this point. spot in my life with my schedule. And what I find, and I told Michael Gerber this, I said, it’s the messy middle. That’s what I help clients through is that messy middle. So I want to get your thoughts about the messy middle because you have the biggest organizations in America and middle -sized companies reaching out to you every day. Meanwhile, you’re trying to work on the business.

(Speaker 1)
What was the biggest challenge or what is the biggest challenge of working through that together over these past couple of years? You know, I think personally for me, the biggest challenge was I went from being exactly like you said, a technician, which by the way, please tell Mr. Gerber, I’m reading his book for the third time right now. And it’s, it’s like, I’m reading it again for the first so valuable, but I was the technician mindset. So I understood how to do the service work that we do very well. I didn’t know how to lead a team doing it. I didn’t know how to structure, you know, our sales team properly to take that load off.

(Speaker 1)
And, you know, I found myself just showing up at the office every day and going, what, what do I do? do I need to climb today? And what that usually meant is that other people got to take control of my time. Whether it would be my employees or our customers, they dictated what my days looked like. When I reached out to you guys and started working with you, what I thought and what I thought I wanted from you guys was a bunch of pre -built systems that you would hand off to me and go, OK, here’s the way you need to do it. What you did and what has been the real secret for me is that you worked on me first.

(Speaker 1)
An example, right here in front of me, if I’m looking at my desk, This is my daily clipboard I carry around. It’s got my calendar on one side, my to -do list on the other.

(Speaker 2)
Such a simple thing, literally life -changing.

(Speaker 1)
This is the first part of my day every day, and what I have found is this has been such an anxiety relief, such a stress relief that allows me to step away from the working in my business and work on my business, because before I get to that point every day, I can look through and go, no, that’s not something I need to do. At the bottom of that to -do list, what you probably couldn’t see, because I showed it pretty fast, is I have a delegate section on my to -do list, where I will start to write a note for me and go, no, someone else can do that. And I’ll put it in the delegate. That pre -planning of my time has made us millions of dollars. This, what you just said, I literally just got goosebumps. This is exactly, I mean, again, I tell people who watch this show, they say, why do you do it?

(Speaker 1)
Folks, I’m 44 years old. When I grew up, my dad was delivering pizzas at Domino’s. He was working at Quick Trip the night shift. He was absolutely doing the very best he could to provide for my family. He had a college degree. So he was trying to provide for my mom and my brother and I, and he just didn’t know how to do it.

(Speaker 1)
And so every time I talk to somebody, whether it’s you, Daniel, or somebody online, or someone who comes to our workshop, I try to speak to, not in a new age kind of way, but I try to speak to Tom Clark, my father, may he rest in peace, because he had to exchange the night shift and virtually every holiday and every day to put food on our table. And he didn’t know how to do it. He didn’t know how to grow a company. And I think that’s a really valuable thing about coaching is it’s different to have somebody tell you, hey, go do this. But coaching is the follow -up to make sure we’re actually doing it. And I think that’s a powerful thing is the follow -up.

(Speaker 1)
But I want to get your thoughts on this. Because if you’re new to coaching, or new to having somebody helping you grow your company, it can seem tedious. It can even be frustrating having somebody follow up. when you’re working on yourself. But really, that’s why I see professional athletes have coaches. People that are in great shape tend to work out with a partner or a group.

(Speaker 1)
People that have strong financials tend to work with an accountant or a financial coach.

(Speaker 2)
Can you talk about just the nature of the coaching relationship? Because I do think it can be tedious. It can be redundant. It could be, but it needs to be. It can be and it definitely was. And I even went through a cycle with you guys where I wasn’t sure what we were doing.

(Speaker 2)
And I went and talked to my coach about it. And luckily, I got some clarity through that. But what the big mental shift for me was, was like I said a second ago, I thought you guys were going to work on my business for me. And that was just a misunderstanding on my part. It’s exactly what you said. It’s coaching.

(Speaker 2)
You’re working on me. so that I can work on my business. You know, some of the the tedious tracking, again, I didn’t understand in the beginning, you know, some of my pushback to my coach was we already have systems in place for this. You know, we have things that do this. But what he pointed out very clearly, we have those, but I couldn’t explain them to him at a granular level. And if I can’t, as the owner of the company, explain it to my coach of how this works in our company, you know, and what it’s tracking, it means that it’s not actually working. So the tracking sheets that you guys have us do, I have a much more of a granular understanding of the finances of our company now than I ever did before.

(Speaker 2)
Tracking our Google reviews. I’m gonna be real honest, my industry, I did not, in the beginning, think that was something that was valuable. I was so wrong. And it’s not just getting the Google reviews to improve our SEO. What it’s done is help build processes within my team to where I’m giving my guys ownership over that process. I’m getting buy -in from them.

(Speaker 1)
So the result of the Google reviews is, rather than just benefiting, like I said, our SEO, it’s taught my team to, at the end of the project, to go talk to the clients, to get the review from them, to find out what went well, to lean into it. So all of that stems from these little, like you said, somewhat tedious things. But what I’d say with anybody that starts coaching with you guys, it took me probably seven to 10 months before I really got it. And once I did, the value is off the charts. Now, I’m going to unpack. I was taking notes here as you were talking.

(Speaker 1)
There are six areas I’m going to have you unpack one by one with the limited time we have here. So first off, as I was taking notes, tracking. System number one, tracking. I find that most business owners don’t track. Let me give you an example. Charles Colom, I’m going to pull up his website real quick, longtime client of mine, unbelievable guy, probably the most physically fit specimen I’ve ever seen in my life.

(Speaker 1)
This guy, he is jacked. Charles is absolutely focused on fitness. And if you’re around him, he’s always taking notes on what he’s eating. He tracks every meal, what he eats, and what he does in the gym. And he looks like it. And so Charles is very intentional about tracking in the areas of fitness.

(Speaker 1)
And when I started showing him how to track in business, it resonated with him. It connected with him. Because he goes, OK, I do that in the gym.

(Speaker 2)
I don’t know why I’m not doing it with my company. And I think somebody out there watching today’s show, you’re maybe just new to tracking. How does it help you to see a tracking sheet where you can see each individual? what got done or what didn’t get done or what just just we can see all the results in one place. Yeah, the the major benefit for me is, you know, and again, initially, my pushback was that we have QuickBooks that we use. It shows me all this.

(Speaker 2)
No, it definitely does not. What we’ve been able to identify because of the uniqueness of the industry we’re in, we don’t have short term payoffs. You know, we don’t have clients giving us money every single day. We get money in big chunks spread out over a larger period of time. And what it’s helped me identify is a weird cash flow variable within our industry that we didn’t understand before.

(Speaker 1)
And we kind of do this over the week. So I will have three or four weeks in a row with a low cashflow season, and then I’ll have two or three with a high cashflow season.

(Speaker 48)
What that has allowed us to start doing now is adjusting our spending where we’re doing it at the peaks and not in the valleys of that cashflow.

(Speaker 1)
Seems like a minor thing, but has kept us from either number one, missing opportunities, because we were trying to time the cashflow at the wrong time, or, you know, just, you know, not spending that money in the proper place. Now, the next area I wanted to get more detailed into is online reputation management. You go to dcprolva . com. I was having this conversation with Eric Trump, actually. It’s very interesting.

(Speaker 1)
He came and spoke at, what, I think we’ve done 26 events together. But the first one he came to, one of our attendees said, what does he do? I remember they came up to me in line. This is Eric Trump. They come up to me. This is President Trump’s son.

(Speaker 1)
And one of the attendees says, what does he do? What’s his job? Does he help manage things? Or what does he do? And I remember thinking to myself, that is so commonly asked to me. People always say, what does Eric do?

(Speaker 1)
And I explained to him, well, Eric Trump, you know, he actually runs the Trump organization. Like you talk about the Trump organization, who runs it? That’s Eric Trump. Okay. So the guy who manages thousands of employees. And I said, Eric, I don’t think most people know what you do.

(Speaker 1)
And he’s like, really? And it was kind of, he, he didn’t know that people didn’t know what he does. And I think the same thing is true with your business. People go to your website, and you’re almost like the best -kept secret. People didn’t know that you had done projects for certain people unless it’s documented on the website, unless you have images to prove you’ve done what you’ve done, unless you have testimonials or reviews of some kind.

(Speaker 2)
People wouldn’t know that you’ve done the audiovisual for some of the Trump rallies and the Charlie Kirk events in Bethel unless you had documented it. Could you talk about that? But you’re a humble guy and I know you don’t like to spend your time talking about yourself, which is part of the problem from a branding perspective. Can you talk about that for a second? Like this, the importance of, or maybe how that’s helped you by documenting over the years, some of the events you’ve done in the past. Actually, it’s funny you bring that up.

(Speaker 2)
This is something we’re in the middle of right now. I’ll share the bad with the good. This is an area we’re really trying to work on still. That website you keep bringing up, that’s actually our old website. You guys are helping me, as we speak right now, get the new website launched. I’m very much in the middle of doing what you’re talking about.

(Speaker 2)
It’s that. I don’t have a marketing background. So anytime I focus on marketing, to me it feels like bragging. It feels like, you know, I’m trying to show off. No, I’m trying to tell people and communicate about my business. We’re very much still in the middle of this right now.

(Speaker 2)
A lot of what you guys are helping me with, we’re doing both printed marketing materials. I haven’t had a great way when my sales team, my business development team goes and meets with clients to have an easier visual of showing, hey, here’s what we do. And one of the things I’m noticing as the business continues to expand, When you’re the founder, it’s one thing to be able to stand there and go, yeah, I did this. I was there. And you can speak about it to a different degree than the founder. your team can.

(Speaker 2)
So we’re, as we speak, going through and giving our team a lot of those materials they need to show, here’s what we do as a team. Here’s what the history of the company did. Um, we’re both doing that on the website.

(Speaker 1)
You guys are personally working through with me on that. And then across the board, we were doing a whole marketing push of printed documentation, easy one flyer handouts. That’s one you guys have helped me understand a lot better. It’s just having something I can put into a customer’s hand that gives them a quick, simple, easy to explain.

(Speaker 2)
overview of what we do and who we are. That’s a big thing. I call it the curse of knowledge, but it’s where you’re really good at graphic design, so you hire somebody with a graphic design degree, and you assume they can do what you want them to do, but they can’t. It’s where you have an audiovisual background, so you hire somebody with an audiovisual degree, and you think they can do what you can do, but they can’t. And so building systems that other people can use, can you talk about that, how that’s impacted your business, building systems that other people who are not you can use? Absolutely.

(Speaker 2)
And that’s one too that we just, I didn’t, I didn’t see until you guys coached me through it because it’s not just doing audio, video, and lighting. It’s doing audio, video, and lighting my way because you know, the customer’s not coming to us for the commodity and they’re not coming to us for the fixtures and the speakers and the microphones. They’re coming to us for DC pro and the way that DC pro uses those tools for their event. So I, you know, I did not, I, in my head, having never built anything like this before, thought that that had to be some big, complex system. We’ve started using simple, just Google Docs. And anytime a topic comes up where a person has a question about how we do this, that now immediately triggers a discussion inside of, oh, we need a Google Doc spelling out that process.

(Speaker 2)
We have complicated ones that go through our entire sales process from the moment a client calls, to when we finalize their job, and it goes through every step. That particular one is almost a four -page document at this point. We’ve also broken down sections of that. but being able to step back and see that whole workflow and talk through it and have everyone on the team know what the expectations are, have been huge.

(Speaker 1)
And we just hired a new office assistant. She started last week. That was the first new hire we’ve had where we had all of our onboarding documents already detailed out down to call scripts. So she now sees when someone calls word for word, here’s what I say. And that has been huge for getting her up to speed and going. Final three questions, final five minutes, here we come.

(Speaker 1)
One is for anybody out there watching online that may be going, you know what, I have a church, or I go to a church, and maybe this company could help me. Maybe if I go to dcprolva . com, maybe they could help my church. Or somebody who’s a pastor, you’re saying it could help my church. Or again, you attend a church, you’re going, that could help. Or maybe you’re a praise and worship leader.

(Speaker 1)
Or maybe you attend a place where you’re going, man, our church really needs to go to the next level with the audio visual. What makes your company unique? Or why should everybody check out your business? Specifically for churches, one of the things we love is almost every person that works at DC Pro, definitely every person in management level and above, has worked in full -time ministry at some point. We understand the challenges of churches. It’s not just about putting equipment in there.

(Speaker 1)
How do we put equipment in there that’s going to honor your budget? Because that’s first and foremost. Some person tithes to pay for whatever you’re going to pay us. We take that very seriously. We want to honor that money. Secondary, you most likely have volunteers making sure your service works every weekend.

(Speaker 1)
if we put in complicated systems, if we put in systems that they can’t win at, that’s going to fall apart. And when you’re talking about something like church, that’s a very serious matter. If your microphone is feeding back, if your screen glitches out, if things aren’t working right, you know, that very could very well could distract someone who’s at your church for the first time and interfere with them getting a relationship with Christ. So yeah, we are very serious about the quality, the simplicity, the excellence of what we do across the board, but even more so with churches.

(Speaker 2)
Second question for you, a lot of people, you know, they come to our conferences and they say, Clay, that business conference was great. to, it really ignited something for me. Some people say the weekly coaching, it really holds me accountable and helps me grow. Some people say it’s all of it together. What do you say to somebody out there that hasn’t been to one of our workshops or hasn’t scheduled a free 13 -point assessment with our team yet? I have been to one of your guys conferences and that was absolutely the first thing that hooked me.

(Speaker 2)
And it was literally something you said in that conference that got me in. I thought that what you guys were going to coach me on was just work harder, work more hours, work all the time. And that was not something that was going to work for me personally. It wasn’t that. You made it very clear that every business leader is looking for one of two things, or maybe both.

(Speaker 1)
financial freedom or time freedom. And it’s important that you understand what you’re going for and then you build your business to get what you want out of that. That is what made me understand, okay, this is a team I want to talk to. You and I did that quick third minute onboarding, and that is what took me the rest of the way.

(Speaker 2)
Absolutely, I have found more value in the coaching, 100%, but I highly recommend someone attends at least one conference, because it really gives you a great overview of your guy’s approach. Final question for you. For anybody out there that maybe you’re stuck in an elevator with somebody and they say, OK, give me a 60 second or less overview of how the coaching has impacted your company. How would you describe it for somebody who’s going, all right, 60 seconds, you and I are in an elevator. Tell me how the coaching has impacted your company. I think for every company it’s going to be a little different.

(Speaker 2)
And in the beginning, Like I’ve said a couple times, I thought you guys were there to help work on my company. No, you’re there to help work on me. But what that’s done is it’s taken me from that technician we’ve talked about from the e -myth book and turned me into that entrepreneur. I have a background in the industry. I don’t need you guys to help me understand audio, video, and lighting everywhere anymore. But what you’ve done is optimized me. I now get more done in one day here at the office than I used to get done in a week or weeks at the office.

(Speaker 2)
But on top of that, I leave the office every day at 2 o ‘clock. because I have, you know, my family is uber important to me. Getting to the gym every day to make sure I’m mentally, physically feeling well so that I can do all the things I need to do is very important to me. So I get up every day at four a . m. , go straight to my office at home, and work for three hours before I ever get to the office.

(Speaker 2)
Now some people may be saying, that sounds horrible.

(Speaker 1)
But yeah, what if it meant you could get away at two o ‘clock? So it took months and months of Andrew from your team, really individually honing in on every little detail, but I’m now optimized to the point where You know, it’s not just that you guys helped me with DC Pro. There’s a few more things we’re trying to get lined out of DC Pro, so it’s at the point where I feel like I want it. But now I can’t wait to start for my next business and the next business after that and the next business after that. We have two in the cooker right now that I’m not quite ready to launch, but when I do, it’s going to be huge. The reason I can do that is not because you told me how to run DC Pro.

(Speaker 2)
You taught me how to run me.

(Speaker 18)
Our service, we do charge $1 ,700 a month for our service.

(Speaker 2)
We do that. We make a 20 % profit margin. So I make $340 a month for a client. From an ROI perspective or return on investment perspective, what kind of ROI have you seen? So I’ve started with you. I’ve actually looked.

(Speaker 2)
It was two years ago this month. Gross revenue has grown 2 and 1⁄2 times since then in our company.

(Speaker 1)
Beyond that, We are standing at the door right now of another major push. I can see it. I can see it coming. The pieces are getting into place. So have this conversation with me again a year from now. And I bet I can say the same thing again, that we’ve grown two and a half times just between now and then.

(Speaker 36)
Daniel, it’s an honor to serve you.

(Speaker 11)
Thank you so much for sharing your story, for encouraging everybody out there. And again, I just, I got goosebumps when you were explaining to me the transformation. So I couldn’t be more excited to serve you. Thanks for joining us today.

(Speaker 7)
Appreciate you guys.

(Speaker 1)
Take care. Bye -bye. 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 you let these pinheads get in your way, you’re in trouble.

(Speaker 1)
Robert, one of the things that you said on multiple interviews multiple times and every time you said it, I thought to myself, Have I not been paying attention? Because it felt like new information to me.

(Speaker 7)
The first time I heard it, which is probably the 50th time I’d heard it, you said, octa nonverba. And maybe the first time you said it, I was driving while I’m, you know, listening to the podcast while driving. And maybe I was half paying attention, but I octa nonverba. And then it was like a, almost like an angelic moment for me. And once I finally understood what it meant and what you were saying and how it could be used, I think it was life -changing for me and how I approach business. Could you explain Okta non -verba, what it means and how our listeners can apply it?

(Speaker 7)
Clay, you gave me goosebumps, man. I’m glad it hit you as hard as it did. Octononverba is the motto of the U .

(Speaker 11)
S.

(Speaker 6)
Merchant Marine Academy at Kingspoint, New York. I had appointments with Naval Academy and Kingspoint Merchant Marine Academy, and Merchant Marine Academy’s motto was Octononverba. In other words, don’t listen to what a person says, watch what they do.

(Speaker 10)
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. not what they say.

(Speaker 47)
learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all.

(Speaker 6)
Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs.

(Speaker 10)
Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. Very thrived. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%.

(Speaker 6)
Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, script for email, script for text message, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are… They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute.

(Speaker 10)
Things get done.

(Speaker 6)
We’ll ask for things like different flyers, and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game, and producing your own flyers, and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it, it’s bad. has a real sense of urgency and that actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do.

(Speaker 6)
You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one. And their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months.

(Speaker 6)
There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean really ride them to get stuff done, and stuff is done so fast here. There’s a real sense of urgency. sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpy. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here.

(Speaker 6)
I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards It’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome.

(Speaker 6)
I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super. It’s just very cool.

(Speaker 15)
The atmosphere is cool.

(Speaker 1)
The people are nice.

(Speaker 46)
It’s a pretty cool place to be.

(Speaker 1)
Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. Today’s a very special occasion because you never know, Josh Wilson, who you are going to meet at a Trump Hotel party.

(Speaker 1)
room. You never know when you go to the Trump Hotel in Chicago, you never know who you’re going to meet.

(Speaker 7)
there.

(Speaker 22)
And I met the man and the myth, the guy who is behind the E -Myth series of books that absolutely changed the way that I approach business.

(Speaker 1)
Michael Gerber, the author of the E -Myth. I met him there in the Chicago Hotel.

(Speaker 7)
And I asked him if he’d be on the show. He made a poor life choice, and he’s decided to be here with us. Michael Gerber, how are you, sir? Delighted to be here. Oh, wow. You are just absolutely a living legend, and your book helped so many people.

(Speaker 7)
But before we get into your book, and specifically chapter five of your book, could you share with the listeners where you grew up and kind of your background, just so they know that you weren’t born at the top of the mountain? Well, hear me, nobody is born at the top of the mountain. I certainly wasn’t.

(Speaker 1)
I was born in New Jersey, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, of a couple of beautiful Jewish parents, and part of a growing family. In 1936, in 1936, in the heart of the Depression, just as the horror was taking place in Europe, and just before the Holocaust was to take place in Europe, I grew up as a little boy in that season without any understanding of what was going on in the world around me. My parents decided to move from New Jersey to California in 1947.

(Speaker 7)
And we did move to Anaheim, California, and I was raised in Anaheim, California. And my journey started in Anaheim, California, and my journey continued for the rest of my life. to the point where you speak to me here today. And I could go into all of that, but it is such an uninteresting story about Michael Gerber, where he was, what he did, how he did it, why he didn’t do it, what he could have done. So, let me ask you this. When did you kind of start to figure out, when did you start to figure out what you wanted to do professionally?

(Speaker 7)
What age were you when you had that idea? I didn’t. I never focused on what I wanted to do. I was a jazz saxophone player.

(Speaker 45)
I was an encyclopedia salesman.

(Speaker 7)
I did this. I did that. I did that. I did this. All the time that I was doing that, I was reading and reading and studying and studying philosophy, spirituality, music, jazz, all the stuff anybody would ever be attracted to until I hit the age of 41.

(Speaker 1)
Now hear me, all of this started, Clay, then, at the age of 41.

(Speaker 44)
41.

(Speaker 7)
And at 41, a friend of mine who owned a small advertising agency in Silicon Valley, California, asked me if I’d meet with one of his clients, who was having difficulty converting leads that my brother -in -law’s ad agency was creating for him into sales. And I told my brother -in -law, Ace, that’s his name, that’s still his name, God bless him, I said, Ace, I don’t know anything about business, and I certainly don’t know anything about high -tech business. He said, Michael, you know more than you think you do. Just meet with the guy. Let’s see what happens. So Ace dropped me off to meet with the guy.

(Speaker 7)
We’ll call him Bob.

(Speaker 44)
Bob had a high -tech product.

(Speaker 7)
He had sales engineers having difficulty selling that product. And Ace dropped me off and said, Bob, Ace, Michael, guys, get to know each other. I’ll be back in an hour. So obviously, Bob said to me, Michael, what do you know about my business? And I said, nothing, Bob, because I didn’t. And he said, well, what do you know about our product?

(Speaker 7)
I said, less than that, Bob. And obviously, he’s looking at his watch and thinking, I’ve got an hour with this guy. He doesn’t know anything. What in the hell am I going to do with him? Instead, he said, so if you don’t know anything about my business, and you don’t know anything about my product, How can you help me? And I said, I haven’t a clue, Bob, but we’ve got an hour to kill.

(Speaker 5)
So let’s start so I can ask you some questions.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s how all this started. I began to ask Bob questions, and I realized, despite the fact that he owned a small business, despite the fact that he was the CEO of a small business, despite the fact that he thought of himself as an entrepreneur starting that small business, every answer Bob gave me was anecdotal. There was no facts underlying anything he said. So I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more. And I suddenly realized I did know something. about business.

(Speaker 1)
I knew that selling is a system and I knew that Bob didn’t have one. Thrive Nation that deserves a quick time out right there. That is absolutely huge. In order to create time freedom and financial freedom again in order to create both time and financial freedom you must create systems that are both repeatable and quickly learnable. You have to create sales systems that other people can implement who are not you and that way you can quickly train new members of your team how to create a repeatably, predictably successful system for sales. Otherwise again it always comes down to you doing the selling.

(Speaker 1)
You’ve got to create repeatable systems that wow the customers and and every time. So I would ask you today, specifically, when somebody calls your business phone, how is the phone answered? And if you don’t know the answer to that, make a call script for answering your phones.

(Speaker 7)
You need to have a call script for answering your phones. You need to have a pre -written email that you send to new potential clients. You need to have a frequently asked questions script so that way when anybody calls you and asks your new hire frequently asked questions, they’re going to have all the answers. You want to think about every aspect of your system and you want to make it scalable, and repeatable. You want to make sure that your on hold music is music that is going to wow the customer each and every time. You want to make sure that every interaction with your customer is in fact scalable.

(Speaker 14)
It is repeatable and that does wow the customers.

(Speaker 7)
Without a selling system you’re not going anywhere with this. He said what’s a selling system. I said just think of it as a script. First you say this, then you say that, then you say this, then you say that. First he does this, then he does that, then he does this, then he does that. And in the process of doing this and doing that and saying this and saying that, something happens and you can predict what that’s going to be after you’ve gotten it down, really gotten it down into a groove.

(Speaker 7)
Into a groove. Into a groove.

(Speaker 2)
And he said to me, well, can you create that for me?

(Speaker 7)
And I said, of course. So when Ace came to pick me up, he said, what happened? I said, I just got a job. He said, what do you mean a job? I said, I’m now a consultant. He said, what do you mean a consultant?

(Speaker 1)
I said, I’m now consulting Bob on creating a selling system. He said, what do you know about that? I said, I guess everything. And that was the beginning of it. And that was the beginning of this. That was the beginning of E -Myth.

(Speaker 1)
That was the beginning of everything I’ve done since that point in time. Remember keep this planted firmly in your mind that entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem for your ideal and likely buyers in exchange for compensation. Again entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem in exchange for the compensation that you seek for your ideal and likely buyers. Think about all of the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers.

(Speaker 7)
Make a list of all the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers and offer your customer, offer your ideal and likely buyers those solutions.

(Speaker 1)
in exchange for the money you seek, and you will create both time and financial freedom. It is that easy, my friends. It is unbelievable. Find a problem that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers, and then make the system repeatable.

(Speaker 7)
Make it scalable, and make sure that it wows your ideal and likely buyers. Make sure that the business can work without you, and you shall experience both time and financial freedom. So you might say, I didn’t come to the realization of why I was here on the planet until I turned 40. 40 years old. Let me ask you, at the age of 40, you began to have these epiphanies, discovering that many of the people out there, most of our listeners, most people on the planet, we have bought into this thing called the E -myth, or we’ve bought into this wrong mindset to business, or this wrong way about looking at business. Can you explain what the E -myth is for people out there that don’t know what the E -myth stands for?

(Speaker 7)
Sure. The E -myth is the entrepreneurial myth. It’s based upon the assumption that everybody believes anybody and everybody who starts their own business is an entrepreneur. And the fact is they’re not. What I learned with Bob and then with Mary and then with Judy and the various little companies that I worked on behalf of Ace’s ad agency, until the point it became obvious that I was going to do this on my own, not in Ace’s ad agency, because Ace didn’t believe in what I was saying either.

(Speaker 7)
But I came to realize that none of them were entrepreneurs. They were all what I came to call technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. All they did was create a job for themselves. So every small business is a job for the idiot who started it. And now they’re working for a really big idiot themselves.

(Speaker 1)
And they’re saying to themselves, yeah, but this isn’t working. And of course it’s not working, because they didn’t design it to work. They didn’t build it to work. They didn’t launch it to work. They didn’t grow it to work. How do you do that?

(Speaker 1)
Design it, build it, launch it, and grow it is what the E -Myth is all about. If you’re out there today and you found yourself creating a business that has created financial freedom for you, but you don’t know how to escape the wage cage and you don’t know how to actually create time freedom to go along with that financial freedom, that’s why we have our in -person workshops and the one -on -one coaching. To learn more, go to thrivetimeshow . com. That’s thrivetimeshow . com.

(Speaker 1)
And click on the conferences button. And there’s no upsells at our workshops. And you’re going to be seated by real entrepreneurs, people that actually own successful companies, who are now where you once were. These are real entrepreneurs that needed to learn how to create both time and financial freedom. And many of our conference attendees come back year after year because now that they have created time and financial freedom, they want to refine the systems to make them even more efficient. Or they want to receive a refresher course.

(Speaker 1)
Maybe they want to get re -inspired. because you’re gonna be seated by real entrepreneurs just like you who own a company. that is already doing well, but they just want to create both time and financial freedom at this point. I would encourage you to check it out today. Go to Thrivetimeshow . com.

(Speaker 1)
And then click on the conferences button and book your conference tickets today. And don’t let finances be an obstacle here. If you’re in a tight spot, we have scholarship options available. Essentially, we’ll meet you where you’re at financially to make sure that the finances, the financial obligations of purchasing a Thrivetimeshow . com ticket are not going to exceed your ability to pay for them. And so without any further ado, back to my interview with Michael Gerber.

(Speaker 1)
What I find is that some of us think that we know what we’re doing. I was having quote -unquote success. I was selling a lot of wedding packages with djconnection . com. I was booking thousands of events. I was winning awards.

(Speaker 1)
I was being told I was the best entertainer. My company was great. And when I read chapter five of your book, you mentioned that I was creating a job and not a business. And I started contemplating, well, what’s the difference between busyness and a business, because they’re spelled slightly differently, but busyness, there’s a Y in there. And I don’t know why I’m in business when I’m busyness. Busyness means I don’t know why.

(Speaker 1)
And then business means a business exists to serve me. There’s an I in business. A business exists to serve me. OK. And I had to read that chapter over and over and over. And you challenged me in the Chicago hotel room at Trump Hotel.

(Speaker 43)
You challenged me to read the chapter again.

(Speaker 1)
So I read the book again. I read it. I went through all my highlights and I took photos of them and I sent it to your wife because I wanted you to know that I’d read it again. And so I would like to go into, if we can, to chapter 5 of your book and to page 51. We’re going to open up the book. E -Myth Revisited, where you wrote, every adolescent business reaches a point where it pushes beyond its owners.

(Speaker 1)
comfort zone. For me, it was DJConnection . com. The boundary within which he feels secure in his ability to control his environment and outside of which he begins to lose control.

(Speaker 7)
That’s why I wanted to DJ 250 events, Michael, before your book saved me. I literally did 250 events in one year. I personally made the playlist for every wedding. I did everything. Tons of money, no time to spend it. It was awesome and terrible at the same time and the world kept cheering. The world kept cheering.

(Speaker 7)
Help our listeners out there that are stuck in this adolescent phase where we want to control everything or we want to abdicate and assign items to members of our team who are poorly trained and then we never follow up. So we either want to do it ourself or we want to do it ourselves or we want to assign the project to somebody on our team who is poorly trained and poorly equipped to have success, and then we do a poor job of following up. Help the listeners out there, my friend. So the evolution of a company from infancy to adolescence to maturity is an absolutely universal process. Most small companies, we’re talking about small companies, we’re talking about a hamburger stand, we’re talking about a meat market, we’re talking about anything and everything that depends upon somebody doing some work. The butcher does the work.

(Speaker 7)
The gardener does the work. The hairdresser does the work. The poodle clipper does the work. You understand what I’m saying? There’s work to be done.

(Speaker 27)
There’s work to be done in every single business on the planet.

(Speaker 1)
Now, some of that work is very unsophisticated. Some of that work is very sophisticated.

(Speaker 7)
But despite whether sophisticated or unsophisticated, every single small business owner who starts a business is actually that technician. The hairdresser starts a beauty shop. The guy behind the microphone starts a thing behind the microphone.

(Speaker 42)
A chiropractor starts a chiropractic practice, and so forth and so forth.

(Speaker 7)
Well, of course they do, because that’s what they do. That’s what they know how to do.

(Speaker 22)
You’re correct.

(Speaker 7)
Everybody starts that way.

(Speaker 1)
I 100 % agree with you. Yeah. So infancy is that startup. Infancy is the very beginning. Infancy was that joyous time, Clay, at the very beginning of what you were doing behind that microphone.

(Speaker 41)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 7)
Where you just shined.

(Speaker 40)
And you remember that.

(Speaker 7)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
You just shined.

(Speaker 39)
Oh, it was awesome.

(Speaker 5)
And it was a new idea.

(Speaker 38)
And it was exciting.

(Speaker 7)
And I did it myself. And people cheered. I got tips. Yeah, of course. You got up every day. You got up every day.

(Speaker 7)
You got up every day. Oh, tell me this story.

(Speaker 19)
You did this.

(Speaker 7)
You did that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m just like the woman in the beauty parlor. She gets up every day and she goes to work and she takes out her brush and her needles and her thing and that and she goes to work and the lady that comes in and then the lady who follows and then the lady who follows and they schmooze and they talk and they dance and they play and they do whatever they do.

(Speaker 1)
And the lady who comes in loves her and the other one loves her and the other one loves her and so forth and so on. And then she gets busy, busy, busy, busy.

(Speaker 7)
That’s where adolescence steps in.

(Speaker 11)
your company grew beyond just beginning phase.

(Speaker 7)
So suddenly, you’ve got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this. Because if you stop doing this, if you stop doing this, you’re out of business. Oh, yeah, that’s the deal. If you stop doing this, you’re out of business. And that’s where adolescence begins to take its toll. In other words, you’ve got to get this done, you’ve got to get that done, and you can’t do everything anymore.

(Speaker 7)
There’s too much to do, too little time to do it, and also you don’t know everything that needs to be done. So you’ve got to learn everything that needs to be done. Now you’re stretched, stretched, stretched, stretched, qualities going down, you’re stretched thin, the quality is going down, you’re dropping the ball, you’re making money, but now you’re kind of offering shoddy work shoddy quality, you start to lose the the excitement about your business, you feel trapped in your business, Michael, right? I mean, you feel trapped. Yeah.

(Speaker 5)
And kids begin to wonder, where’s dad?

(Speaker 7)
Where’s dad? Where’s mom? Where’s mom? How come you’re never home? How come you’re never? How come you’re always working?

(Speaker 7)
How come you’re always working? Well, I got to work. I got to work. I got to work.

(Speaker 22)
I created this thing that depends upon me because I’m the star.

(Speaker 7)
So understand it’s that star issue.

(Speaker 1)
I’m the star.

(Speaker 32)
It won’t work unless Clay Clark does it.

(Speaker 7)
It won’t work unless Michael E. Gerber does it. I’m the star. That’s when the business begins to fail. It begins to fail big time. And what happens is instead of doing this and doing that and doing this and doing that, instead of all of a sudden having people doing it, but they’re not doing it as well as you do it. You had to bring people in, you had to bring people in, you had to bring in a bookkeeper, you had to bring in a whatever.

(Speaker 7)
They’re not doing it as well as you did it. So finally you realize they don’t work as well as you do. So you let them go.

(Speaker 1)
Let them go. And when you let them go, now it’s still there waiting to be done. And now you get to do it yourself again, because you’ve created a job and not a business. Right. So what do you do to get small again? And that’s what everybody does.

(Speaker 1)
They grow and they shrink. And then it goes to adolescents again, and then they shrink, and finally, they’re through. So, last year, there were roughly 550 ,000 small companies that shut their doors in this country.

(Speaker 7)
550 ,000 small businesses that shut their doors. Not because of the pandemic. You understand the pandemic, yeah, that’s a problem. But understand the problem I’m talking about… is a pandemic and has been a pandemic for generations. It’s worse than a pandemic. What you’re talking about is worse than a pandemic.

(Speaker 7)
This happens every year, every decade, over and over and over. And what I find, and I’d like to dive into this with you, I have a lot of people that I have been friends with over the years who they start hiring everybody, like you were just talking about. They begin hiring people, and then they begin to abdicate but they think what they’re doing is to delegate. They think that they’re delegating when they’re actually abdicating. Could you talk about this? I see it with accounting almost 100 % of the time, where people, they bring in someone to do their accounting and they do not follow up with them because they’re supposed to be the expert.

(Speaker 7)
I mean, could you help the listeners out there and maybe tell us what the difference is between abdicating and delegating? Very simple. Abdication is where you turn over responsibility for something and there is no system. You turn over responsibility for a result, but there is no system.

(Speaker 1)
There’s no method by which that result is intended to be produced. You understand when McDonald’s was first formulated, the very first franchise store, the franchise prototype in Des Plaines, Illinois. Ray Kroc went to work on that McDonald’s hamburger stand, perfect the systems in that hamburger store so that whomever he hired would master the system, master the system. The system was the solution, not the person he hired. In every case you’re talking about, where we abdicate accountability, we’re effectively turning over the responsibility to produce a result to somebody who’s going to do it whatever way they do it.

(Speaker 1)
And every single person we turn it over to does it differently. So there is no way we do it. And if there is no way we do it, there is no, in quotes, McDonald’s. There is no franchise.

(Speaker 7)
There is no turnkey system.

(Speaker 1)
There is no evolution.

(Speaker 7)
of a methodology that identifies a brand from everyone else. You when you talk about a system this might sound mean and Michael please feel free to to argue with me if you need to hear you can straighten me out here. But I know people that say to me business owners who I meet at conferences or who I meet in my building they’ll say Clay the system is Kara. The system is Steve. The system is Josh. They’re assuming that a person is the system because the person does the job.

(Speaker 7)
And then that key person who’s been with them since day one, or maybe day 10, or maybe month six, they move on. But I have found since implementing your approach to business, working on a business, the e -myth approach, I now am no longer dependent upon personalities. So when somebody feels like it’s time to move on, I can encourage them to move on with great joy.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, I mean that I can be, I can be happy for them. I don’t have to hold them hostage and they don’t hold me hostage. Cause the system stays here. Yeah. Because you own the system.

(Speaker 5)
You own the brand.

(Speaker 1)
You own the methodology. You own the ability to produce the result that you have designed your company to produce again and again and again and again. So when people tune in, when people come in, when people come to the store, when people go online, no matter where it is, online, offline, it doesn’t make any difference. It produces exactly the result they came to get because it is an intelligent system. That’s the key to the EMIC. That’s one of the critical keys to the EMIC.

(Speaker 1)
It’s the system, stupid. I have a, before I let Josh ask you some questions, Josh with Living Water Irrigation is here. Now I want to brag on Josh. He’s grown a business from $300 ,000 in revenue to he’s on pace to hit $3 million this year. But last year, Josh, what were your sales last year? What did you end the year at?

(Speaker 2)
$1 .8. $1 .8 million. He’s been a client of mine for a long time, and he’s probably been tired of me referencing you.

(Speaker 13)
He’s probably tired of you.

(Speaker 30)
He’s probably saying, stop referencing.

(Speaker 13)
This guy doesn’t even exist, probably. He thinks you’re probably like a mythical person. But I show him the book cover.

(Speaker 7)
He Googles you. He verifies. He knows you’re real now. And now he’s here with you, and he has some questions for you, Michael. What questions do you have for the great one, Mr. Michael Gerber? Well, Michael, first and foremost, thank you so much.

(Speaker 7)
It really, honestly, is an honor to speak to you. Due to you and all the coaching from Clay, it’s truly, sincerely changed my life and the trajectory of it. So first and foremost, I’m thankful and grateful, sir. Well, thank you. Beyond that, my first question would be, what is the easiest way for us as a company? having some pretty exponential growth and we’re really excited about it, but what’s the easiest way for us to define our biggest limiting factor?

(Speaker 7)
And for other business owners out there, what’s the easiest way to actually define it? Michael? Well, your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you hope to produce. Your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you intend to produce, what you hope to produce, what your dream says you’re there to produce. And so everything starts with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. That’s the most critical thing you have to do at the beginning of all of this.

(Speaker 1)
I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a purpose, I have a mission. In 1977, when I started this thing that I’m so crazed about, when I started in 1977, we started with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. Our dream then, literally, end quote, was to transform the state of small business worldwide.

(Speaker 7)
Our vision was to invent the McDonald’s of small business consulting. Our purpose was that every single small business owner who was attracted to our paradigm and implemented it could be as successful as a McDonald’s franchisee or even more. And our mission was to invent the business development system that made our dream, our vision, our purpose possible. So we started our company, we started with the dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. So the first thing I would say to you, what’s your dream? What’s your vision?

(Speaker 7)
What’s your purpose? What’s your mission? Until you then can say, our dream is our, not mine, our dream, our vision, our purpose, our mission, and explicate them clearly. every single person who joins you in your company. You’ll not truly begin to grow it to the degree it’s waiting to be grown. So you want our listeners to define their dream, their mission, and their purpose.

(Speaker 7)
Am I correct, sir? The dream, the mission, and the purpose? Vision. Dream, vision.

(Speaker 1)
purpose, mission. Step one, step two, step three, step four. The first four steps of what I call the Eightfold Path.

(Speaker 7)
First, my dream. My dream is the great result we’re here to produce.

(Speaker 1)
Second, my vision.

(Speaker 7)
My vision is the form our dream is going to take place on the street. Our purpose. Our purpose must truly transform the state. of our individual customer’s mindset about who he or she is and what he or she can expect from an economic, social, relational, familial life. And finally, our mission is to invent the system. And it’s always to invent the system.

(Speaker 7)
The mission is always about the system at the heart of our great growing enterprise. So you see, what I’m saying is, if you take this little business of yours, just that I’m saying there’s a little business of yours where you’re behind the microphone, where you’re reaching out to your audience, et cetera, and so forth. And you take that dream, vision, purpose, and mission, you can immediately begin to see that the end result is always worldwide. When you were growing the e -myth program and the book and the TV the movement, and you defined your dream and your vision and your purpose and your mission and you began to craft the book, to write the book, to work with clients, to do your research, how long did it take you, Mr. Michael Gerber, to go from consulting your first client at the age of 41 to pinning the e -myth revisited book? How many years was that?

(Speaker 7)
The E -Myth, the first E -Myth book called E -Myth, Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It was published in 1985. I started my company in 1977. It’s eight years, eight years of data and research. Before that book would ever been written, I had to do it. And so the first years from 77, 78, 79, 80, one, two, three, four, five, I was working on the Michael Thomas Corporation. to design, build, launch and grow our turnkey capability to transform the state of small business worldwide.

(Speaker 7)
First eight years, you’re working on the business the first eight years and well, the first eight years and then every year after that, So you got to understand, it’s, you know, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this. Everybody wants to get it now.

(Speaker 1)
Everybody wants to get it now. Everybody wants to get it.

(Speaker 7)
Can I, can I do this in a year and a half?

(Speaker 1)
Can I do this in six minutes? Can I do this tomorrow? Everybody is simply stupid, stupid, stupid, Clay, when they think about this. Because you can’t do anything right, right now. It takes time to absorb what in fact the implications of what you’re setting out to do really are. Because if I’m seriously saying I’m going to transform the state of small business worldwide,

(Speaker 1)
that means by doing what we’re planning on doing, the business failure rate is going to decrease exponentially. The business success rate is going to increase exponentially. The experience of people inside of companies is going to be transformed radically. Lives are going to be transformed in the process. That’s how big this is. And that’s why it can’t be done in a minute.

(Speaker 1)
I do not want to be even slightly negative. I want to just be very practical.

(Speaker 7)
Be as negative as you want to be. Well, I want to bring this up, because I know that you look like you’re 22 years old. I mean, you’re a young man. But you’ve been doing this a long time. And there are certain people who do what Thomas Edison once wrote. He calls it hallucination.

(Speaker 7)
Thomas Edison once famously wrote, he said, vision without execution is hallucination. Vision without execution is hallucination. What percentage of the time do you sit down and meet somebody and do you find yourself saying, I wish they would just implode? I mean, at what point do you say, I just wish they would implement? Is it a third of the time that people seek knowledge and they don’t want to implement?

(Speaker 37)
Is it a tenth of the time?

(Speaker 7)
How often do people seek the knowledge, you give them the knowledge, but they don’t want to implement?

(Speaker 1)
Because I hear so many e -myth success stories. I just want to know what percentage of people get the knowledge and they don’t want to implement.

(Speaker 7)
You have to understand, anybody can come to me at any point in time and they do. And they could say, I want to do this or I want to do that. And I say, absolutely extraordinary. And I said, and the good news is there’s a process for doing that. And the better news is it’s a universal process. meaning you don’t have to invent it.

(Speaker 7)
It already exists. It’s what I call the eightfold path. Step one, step two, just like I’ve just done. Now, what happens at that point is what shapes what happens next.

(Speaker 1)
Because what happens at that point is a person might say, yeah, but I don’t want to do all that stuff. Hmm. I want to do is all I want to do. I want to do. I hear you. I hear you don’t want to do all that stuff.

(Speaker 1)
And I said, you have no idea what it takes to do what you just told me you wish to do. But I know exactly what it takes. And the wonderful news is, we’ve got a method to make it possible for you to mature in the process of discovering the truth about what it is you’re setting out to do. step one, step two, and I go back and back, got it back, what they do in that process will tell you everything you need to know, we get to change that. But you understand the only way we get to change that is take responsibility for our own life, not for their lives, for hers, not for his, not for it’s not for the community, not for the state, not for the government, not for the federal, not for the international, our life, my life, I’ve got to go to work on my life. Trust in exactly the way they went to work on me in boot camp.

(Speaker 20)
Now hear me, I gotta put myself into boot camp, and I’ve gotta get all of the bullshit out of me.

(Speaker 1)
so I can suddenly discover what truth means.

(Speaker 27)
We don’t even know what the word truth means.

(Speaker 7)
Well, truth is offensive. Truth is it hurts. Truth is something people can’t handle. I mean, when you sit down and you explain to a young whippersnapper, some people come to our conferences and they want to know how search engines work. So you sit down and you explain to them how the Google algorithm works and you show them examples and they go. I don’t want to have to do all of that.

(Speaker 7)
Is there an easy way? And you say, no, you can’t.

(Speaker 25)
I won’t get too nerdy into it.

(Speaker 7)
But you tell them, you have to have the most original HTML content. You have to have a canonically compliant website. You have to have the most reviews and the most mobile compliance. There’s four variables. And they say, canonical? That’s multiple syllables.

(Speaker 7)
And I would have a play. It’s not you have to. It’s it has to. So I’m just saying not you have to, it has to. What you have to do is to come face to face and understand how little you actually know.

(Speaker 36)
So if you were to take the average human being in these United States today, if you were to take everybody out there on the street, who’s burning everything down, have them take a test.

(Speaker 7)
I’m not talking about a hard test. I’m talking about a simple test.

(Speaker 1)
Simple test. I’m talking about your A, B, C’s. I’m talking about your 1, 2, 3’s. If you were to put them through that process, the vast majority of them would fail. Absolutely abject failure. And then you’ve got to say, if you don’t even know that!

(Speaker 1)
leads you to presume that you can tell me how to live my life.

(Speaker 7)
I’m for boot camp. So my point is, one of the greatest things that anybody could possibly do for America is put everybody into boot camp.

(Speaker 1)
Everybody goes to boot camp.

(Speaker 7)
You gotta have a boot camp on whatever you’re deciding to do. You gotta have a boot camp, because that’s where people demonstrate who they are and what they know and what they do and what they don’t and what they’re not willing to do. Boot camp. Boot camp. You gotta open them up. Tears are weakness leaving the body, as my uncle used to tell me. I think what you’re telling us is mind -altering for some people, and I want to respect your time.

(Speaker 7)
I had a couple more questions on part one of this interview. I wanted to ask you specifically, on page 67 of your book, you wrote something to me, the reader, to all the readers. You wrote this to us. You said, you did the best you could. It’s time to get on with your life, to build your business in an enlivening way. What does it mean to build your business in an enlivening way?

(Speaker 7)
What does it mean to enliven? Is that what you’re asking? Yes, because it’s a word that I don’t hear people use. Well, it means to bring true life to it. In short, when folks come to work, they’re coming to invest their life for a particular period of time to engage in work with the intent of producing a result. It’s gonna add value to every single person associated with that work.

(Speaker 7)
That means your customer.

(Speaker 1)
That means the guy at the desk next door. It means the guy you report to. It means the woman in the accounting department. It means everybody and anybody who’s joined here, come here every day.

(Speaker 7)
It’s like a prayer at the beginning of the day. Every day to enliven the experience, come closer to God.

(Speaker 37)
So I’ve been given to say of late, if we’re born in the image of God, and in Genesis it says, we are, then it means we’re born to create.

(Speaker 7)
God is the creator. So if we’re born in the image of God, it means we’re born to create. To create what? To create a world fit for God. Well, what would a world fit for God? Well, you can begin by reading the Ten Commandments, and you suddenly begin to see that we can engage in a way to enliven our experience of being committed, zealously, engaged human beings, creators all here to create an experience that we can experience as we do it, and after we’ve done it, and before we do it.

(Speaker 7)
That literally brings life to everything I do. Imagine that, and then you see what I mean by that.

(Speaker 1)
You have given me an enlivened existence, where I was able to escape the rat race. So today, while we’ve been talking, I think my team has probably cut, we have three stores, or there’s five stores that are open that cut hair, and I don’t have the ability to cut hair. So the barbershop, there’s five stores open we have. So there’s probably 200 people that got their hair cut in the last hour and a half, two hours, about 200 people getting their hair cut. Wait a second, Clay. Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
That’s not true what you just said. Oh, sure.

(Speaker 7)
You said, I don’t have to do anything. No, hear me. You have to be something. True. At the heart of what you’ve created is your energy. At the heart of your energy is a love for God.

(Speaker 7)
At the heart of your love for God is your determination to transform the state of every human being you connect with in whatever way is possible, economically, socially, spiritually, relationally. What an extraordinary thing to possess as Clay Clark possesses it. And what an extraordinary thing for Clay Clark to pursue, pursue with every bit of energy you’ve got. I appreciate you saying that and I want you to know you unshackled me personally. It was a thing where you allowed me to get away from the DJ microphone at these weddings to get away from the day to day operations and the reactivity to be able to build proactive businesses. So now we can hopefully together mentor millions of people.

(Speaker 7)
And you have helped me and I would love to give you the microphone to share what you’re working on now. because whatever you’re working on now deserves a Harry Carey holy cow.

(Speaker 22)
We met in Chicago, so whatever you’re working on now deserves a Chicago Harry Carey holy cow.

(Speaker 1)
So tell us, what are you working on now, sir?

(Speaker 7)
What are you doing? Well, hear me. I want you to think of university spelled Y O U. University. University called radical U. Radical Y O U. I want you to imagine awakening the entrepreneur within every human being on the planet. Every human being on the planet capable of studying. capable of working. That’s what we’ve created.

(Speaker 7)
So we have created a university, an entrepreneurial development university to take out to the world and to transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide to a degree that’s never been accomplished before.

(Speaker 1)
Our university is five years long. Our university is devoted to what we call the Eightfold Path.

(Speaker 7)
Wow.

(Speaker 1)
And every student in our university will discover their dream, their vision, their purpose, their mission, their job, their practice, their business, their enterprise. An evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1 ,000 called Beyond the E -Myth. The evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1 ,000.

(Speaker 36)
And here’s the best part.

(Speaker 1)
And you can promote this, promote this, promote this, promote this, Clay, until you’re blue in the face. But every person within the sound of your voice needs to understand this, that we’re giving the first year of radical you away for 10 years.

(Speaker 5)
$10?

(Speaker 27)
The whole year?

(Speaker 18)
$10 for the entire year.

(Speaker 8)
52 weeks, 52 video sessions online right now. And every single person within the sound of my voice who can see my face or see my Panama hat or see your jacket, whatever it is, every single human being, I’m inviting them to join us in Radical You. And when those people join us in Radical You, Clay, we’re going to bring folks like you, folks like the other gentleman who just said hurrah, folks like every person you’re connected with who wants to become a teacher of creativity. You’re going to come and join us at Radical You, and you’re going to teach something, and they’re going to teach something, and I’m going to teach you what to teach. But hear me, that’s what we’re working on. Five million students within the next three years.

(Speaker 26)
And then guess what’s going to happen?

(Speaker 8)
What’s going to happen? Apple.

(Speaker 5)
Apple, the company, is going to acquire Radical You. Michael, I want to respect your time.

(Speaker 16)
I know you’re taking your wife on a great date tonight.

(Speaker 5)
I gotta go. Thank you. Thank you so much, my friend. I really do appreciate you. Clay, see you in Oklahoma. Clay Clark is here somewhere.

(Speaker 5)
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.

(Speaker 5)
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. Years from now, some of them may look back and ask themselves whether they’ve made the right choice, whether they’ve made the most of the opportunities they’ve been given. Together, we have the same

(Speaker 5)
mission. Over the course of your life, you will find that things are not always fair. You will find that things happen to you that you do not deserve and that are not always warranted. But you have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight. Never, ever, ever give up. Don’t give in.

(Speaker 5)
Don’t back down and never stop doing what you know is right. Nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy. And the more righteous your fight, the more opposition that you will face. In your hearts are inscribed the values of service, sacrifice, and devotion. Now you must go forth into the world and turn your hopes and dreams into action. America has always been the land of dreams because America is a nation of true believers.

(Speaker 5)
When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they prayed. When the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they invoked our creator four times. Because in America, we don’t worship government, we worship God. It is why our currency proudly declares, in God we trust. And it’s why we proudly proclaim that we are one nation under God. The story of America is the story of an adventure that began with deep faith, big dreams, and humble beginnings.

(Speaker 5)
The next generation of American leaders never, ever give up. There’ll be times in your life you’ll want to quit. Never quit. Never stop fighting for what you believe in and for the people who care about you. Carry yourself with dignity and pride. Demand the best from yourself.

(Speaker 5)
The more people tell you it’s not possible, that it can’t be done, the more you should be absolutely determined to prove them wrong.

(Speaker 35)
Treat the word impossible as nothing more than motivation.

(Speaker 34)
Relish the opportunity to be an outsider.

(Speaker 9)
The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead. You must keep pushing forward. And always have the courage to be yourself.

(Speaker 23)
America is better when people put their faith into action. Pray to God and follow his teachings.

(Speaker 33)
Today, each of you begins a new chapter as well.

(Speaker 12)
When your story goes from here, it will be defined by your vision, your perseverance, and your grit. You will build a future where we have the courage to chase our dreams no matter what the cynics and the doubters have to say. You will have the confidence to speak the hopes in your hearts and to express the love that stirs your souls.

(Speaker 32)
As long as you have pride in your beliefs, courage in your convictions, and faith in God,

(Speaker 31)
then you will not fail.

(Speaker 30)
As long as America remains true to its values, loyal to its citizens, and devoted to its Creator, then our best days are yet to come.

(Speaker 9)
May God bless the United States of America. And I just want to let you know that God blesses you. And I want to just say, You are special in every way. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you very much.

(Speaker 29)
Thank you.

(Speaker 9)
from Tulsa, Palm Beach. I’m in the charcoal grilling industry, and the name of my business is Grillblazer. How will I apply what I’ve learned so far into my business?

(Speaker 1)
I’m actually a client of the I -15, and I learned so much from what I’m learning at this conference and from my regular weekly attendances that it’s helping me establish the business and get it off the ground. Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the grill gun. I would have greened that anyway.

(Speaker 28)
I need.

(Speaker 13)
This nozzle on the top you slightly turn like almost nothing so a little bit of the gas starts coming out and then you press the trigger.

(Speaker 1)
You can either turn the nozzle on the top to have more power and this one here is a full power trigger basically madness. Push it down and it is a lot of fun. Check it out.

(Speaker 28)
Super cool that.

(Speaker 27)
I enjoyed it.

(Speaker 4)
I know.

(Speaker 8)
If you walk in, they think they’re coming into a carnival, and frankly they are. It’s just great fun. There’s not another conference like it. You just don’t go to a carnival atmosphere and learn like we do here at the Thrive Conference. It’s great. The reason people should attend at least one of these conferences is because it’s common sense.

(Speaker 26)
And everybody’s fed an entire line about actually running a business, which is, candidly, what you learn here, how to run a business.

(Speaker 8)
You don’t know what you’re doing. One of the gentlemen, his name is Bob Healy, came to our conference with a quasi -functional prototype.

(Speaker 1)
He had terminal cancer. And Bob came to me and said, help.

(Speaker 25)
Entrepreneur Clay Clark has built several multi -million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 1)
Now, he helps budding entrepreneurs like Bob turbocharge their ideas with a 14 -step plan. And grillblazer . com is now a massively successful business. company that’s becoming a household name in many American homes. This This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek. Clay Clark is here somewhere.

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
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. OK, Aaron Antis, on March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia? Oh, Santa Claus?

(Speaker 1)
No. No, that’s March. March 6th and 7th, you’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki.

(Speaker 24)
Robert Kiyosaki.

(Speaker 1)
Best -selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

(Speaker 23)
Probably the best -selling, or one of the best -selling business authors of all time.

(Speaker 1)
And he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump. We’ve got Eric Trump. and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place? In the same place. Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki?

(Speaker 1)
Well, you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit, as many other people.

(Speaker 1)
Now, since you won’t brag on yourself, I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true. And the book that that kick -started it all for you, Rich Dad Pornhub, the author, the best -selling author of Rich Dad Pornhub, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick -started your career.

(Speaker 15)
Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
He’s gonna be here. He’s gonna be here. I’m pumped.

(Speaker 15)
And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees.

(Speaker 1)
There’s not 50 employees. The Detroit

(Speaker 22)
Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees.

(Speaker 1)
And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States and soon to be the 47th president of these United States, he needed someone to run the companies for him. And so the man that runs the Trump Organization Before Donald J. Trump, as he was the 45th president of the United States, and now the 47th president of the United States, is Eric Trump. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages Billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand?

(Speaker 1)
I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine, going into 10 years of him running it. And we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing.

(Speaker 1)
Now, think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best -selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, yeah. Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best -selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow, and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody.

(Speaker 1)
I grew up without money.

(Speaker 21)
I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot.

(Speaker 1)
So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here.

(Speaker 1)
The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people. were here, 419 people. And I thought to myself that there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. No, I’m just kidding.

(Speaker 1)
So I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck or the top shelf.

(Speaker 20)
So the seats are very close to the presenters.

(Speaker 1)
But we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 15)
com. Go to thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 1)
com. When you go to thrivetimeshow . com, you’ll go there. You’ll request a ticket. Boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now.

(Speaker 1)
Just text my number.

(Speaker 19)
It’s my cell phone number.

(Speaker 1)
My personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that. private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number.

(Speaker 1)
It’s 918 -851 -0102. 918 -851 -0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish -speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918 -851 -0102. 1 -8 -8 -5 -1 -0 -1 -0 -2. That is not actually bilingual.

(Speaker 1)
That’s just saying Juan for a one. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show Workshop? So Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years.

(Speaker 1)
So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re going to learn. here, okay? You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh yeah, we’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand, right?

(Speaker 1)
You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales skills. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell.

(Speaker 1)
So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people?

(Speaker 1)
Well, because first of all, you either have great people or you have people who suck. suck. And so it could be a challenge, you know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones.

(Speaker 18)
And we have a process we teach about how to find great people.

(Speaker 1)
When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time?

(Speaker 1)
How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? build an org chart, everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two day interactive business workshop. But let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two day

(Speaker 1)
interactive 15 Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 a . m. , and it goes until 5 p .

(Speaker 15)
m.

(Speaker 1)
So from 7 a . m. to 5 p . m. , two days. It’s a two -day interactive workshop.

(Speaker 1)
The way we do it is we do a 30 -minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question -and -answer session. So, Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15 -minute question -and -answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them and you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership. And you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing.

(Speaker 1)
And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15 -minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. That’s a true story.

(Speaker 1)
When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, there’s just… You had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. I should write that down.

(Speaker 1)
Sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face. Right? We duct taped it. No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool bouncing that thing around and petting it. I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs.

(Speaker 1)
So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 1 ,000 people million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self -employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3 % of our population that’s even self -employed. So you only have three out of every 100 people in America that are self -employed to begin with. And when Inc.

(Speaker 1)
Magazine reports that 96 % of businesses fail by default, By default, you have a 1 out of 1 ,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet, the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the size. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months.

(Speaker 1)
And you say, double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x.

(Speaker 17)
There’s so many examples.

(Speaker 1)
see it thrivetimeshow . com. But again, this is the most interactive best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization.

(Speaker 1)
You add to that Sean Baker. Now, you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more. Well, OK, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages?

(Speaker 1)
Who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story.

(Speaker 1)
We cater to the food and because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home, and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products.

(Speaker 1)
That’s rusticcuff . com. And someone says, I want more. This is not enough. Give me more. OK. I’m not going to mention their names right now, because I’m working on it behind the scenes here.

(Speaker 1)
But we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma. And nobody really knows who he is. because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian, that offer a lot of value. He’s made a lot of money in the, it’s the, it’s where you rent, it’s short, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy.

(Speaker 15)
He owns the, what do you call that?

(Speaker 16)
The rental, the – A storage space?

(Speaker 1)
Storage units.

(Speaker 2)
This guy owns storage units.

(Speaker 1)
He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know, who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money.

(Speaker 15)
Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars, but this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here.

(Speaker 1)
And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, You want to give yourself a incredible gift.

(Speaker 14)
You want a life -changing experience.

(Speaker 1)
You want to learn how to start and grow a company. Go to Thrivetimeshow . com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow . com.

Request a ticket for the two -day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th, we just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best -selling author, rich dad, poor dad, he’ll be here. Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast.

There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible. And there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching, and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. I think that’s going to change your life. I promise you, this will be a blast.

times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the smoke your way to thin, conference. That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it. Yeah, chain smoking is not a viable, I mean, it is life changing. It is life changing.

If you become a chain smoker, it is life changing. Not the best weight loss program though. Right, not really. So if you’re looking to have life changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at thrivetimeshow . com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis, I’m Clay Clark, reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two -day interactive Thrive Time Show workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I promise you, it will be a life -changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Transcribed with Cockatoo