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You know, it’s a strange thing about life. Most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning their financial freedom. And yet they wonder why 10 years go by and nothing changes. Same paycheck, same stress, same story. You see, the truth isn’t that life is unfair. The truth is that most people never learn the rules of the game.

They trade their time for money, and then they spend that money buying back tiny bits of happiness they could have owned permanently, if only they’d learned how to think differently. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment, tracking every dollar. What gets measured gets improved. When I first began to manage my finances, I didn’t have spreadsheets or fancy apps. I had a small notebook and a pen. Every week, I wrote down what came in, what went out, and what I saved.

Tracking your money turns confusion into confidence. It allows you to make decisions rather than react emotionally. For example, if you notice you spend $200 a month on dining out, you can choose to cut back or reallocate it to an investment or asset building activity. The choice becomes intentional, not accidental. Now, the strategy here is simple, but it requires discipline. Start small.

Begin with a weekly money log. List your income, every expense and your savings. Use whatever method works for you, a notebook, a spreadsheet. Don’t skip weeks because it feels tedious. Every Sunday, review the numbers. Ask yourself, where did money leak?

Where did it work for me? What could I do differently next week? Over time, these small acts of awareness compound just like your investments. The more you track, the more intelligent your decisions become. I’ve seen people transform their financial life just by starting this one habit.

A simple weekly review turns waste into opportunity, stress into confidence, and uncertainty into freedom. Tracking every dollar is not about fear or deprivation. It’s about empowerment. It tells your money where to go instead of asking, where did it go? The moment you take control of your money through awareness, you step into the mindset of the 3%, the mindset of the wealthy, disciplined and intentional. When you track every dollar, you not only see your finances clearly, you see your values, your habits and your priorities.

Awareness is power. Start today and watch how this one habit begins to shape your financial future. Let me ask you something. How many of you have felt like no matter how much you earn, it’s never enough? You get a raise, a bonus, or even a windfall, and somehow it disappears as fast as it came. That’s the trap most people fall into.

They let their lifestyle dictate their income instead of the other way around. I learned early in my life that if you can’t live on 90 % of your income, you can’t live on 900 % either. It’s not about how much money you make. It’s about how much control you have over it. Wealth begins when you take command of your lifestyle before it starts controlling you. I remember when I first started my career, I earned very little, but I had dreams of wealth.

And yet I saw friends who earned more than I did, living paycheck to paycheck, trapped in debt and impulse purchases. They thought money alone would solve the problem. But the truth is discipline is what builds wealth. Money without discipline is just a mirage. It vanishes under the weight of habits that go unchecked. I knew I had to live differently.

I had to adopt a rule. Spend less than I earn and save the rest. The strategy is simple but profound. Divide your income in a way that serves your future. I like this formula. 70 % for living expenses, 10 % for learning, 10 % for investing, and 10 % for giving.

Why this division? Because life isn’t just about money. It’s about growth, contribution, and building assets that work for you. The 70 % is enough to cover your needs and keep life comfortable, but it forces you to be intentional. Emotional spending, the kind that makes you feel good for a moment, but leaves your finances empty, has no place here. You learn to differentiate between wants and needs, between instant gratification and long -term growth.

I remember when I wanted a new car early in my career, I could have stretched, borrowed and spent, but instead I chose discipline. I delayed that pleasure and invested in myself instead, books, seminars, mentorship. That small act of delayed gratification created leverage that paid dividends far beyond any car I might have bought. And here’s the key, the rich by leverage, the poor by luxury. If you spend every dollar on luxury now, You rob your future of the tools and assets that can make you wealthy. But if you live below your means and invest the difference, your money begins to work for you.

Practical steps are straightforward, but require consistency. Automate this allocation if you can. Let 70 % cover your living. 10 % flow into knowledge that sharpens your skills, 10 % into assets that grow independently of your labor, and 10 % into giving that expands your perspective and influence.

You could decide today to become an automatic millionaire simply by changing just a few daily habits. And the good news is you only have to make the decision one time and then you could be 100 % certain for sure that you would, in fact, retire as an automatic millionaire.

Well, on today’s show, the nine time New York Times bestselling author, Mr. David Bach, joins us to teach you his secrets for becoming an automatic millionaire.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Thriving Time Show.

Thrive Nation, ladies and gentlemen, on today’s show, we are interviewing a nine -time New York Times best -selling author who is best known for his Finish Rich book and the Automatic Millionaire series of financial books. He’s just recently released his 20th anniversary edition of his mega -seller, Smart Women Finish Rich. David holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California, and throughout his career, he has appeared on the Today Show, CNBC, Fox Business, live with Regis and Kelly, The View, Larry King, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and anywhere on the planet that TVs are sold. Ladies and gentlemen, David has impacted my life in a profound way with this thing he calls the latte effect. Let’s welcome on, without any further ado, Mr. David Bach.

Welcome on, sir.

Wow, I love it.

Well, it’s great to be on the show with you. Thank you for, I don’t know, just a totally awesome introduction. I love your energy.

David, years ago, My wife and I, we were getting this book called The Automatic Millionaire because I don’t do road trips unless I have an audio book. And then if I listen to the audio book and I like it, I buy the physical book. So I picked up the book called The Automatic Millionaire. And at the time, I had a company called DJ Connection, which I later sold. But before I sold it, we were doing 4 ,000 weddings or corporate events a year. And it still exists today.

DJConnection . com. And you said, you challenged me. You said, you Mr. Clay Clark, you Mr. Listener, you Mr. whoever you are, you have to save at least one hour per day of income regardless of how much money you’re making. And at the time I was making a copious amount of money.

Can you talk to us about the importance of beginning to save one hour per day of income regardless of how much money we’re making?

Yeah, I mean, I would love you because honestly, this is what should be taught to you before you get out of like the eighth grade. So let me start by saying this, the average person in America is going to work 90 ,000 hours. That’s a lot of hours, right? And if you’re both working, which today many families both work, right? You could have a family that the two of you combined will work over 200 ,000 hours during your lifetime. So if you just take that math and you go, well, geez, well, so I guess if people are working so hard, then they must all end up with a lot of money, right?

Because you trade your time for money when you can.

to work.

So are they? And that’s really the core issue. They’re not, right? So one out of two Americans right now, according to the Federal Reserve, can’t get their hands on $400 in case of emergency purposes.

True.

$400, right?

$400, yeah.

So the follow -up book to The Automatic Millionaire was actually a book called Start Late, Finish Rich. And when I wrote Start Late Finish Rich, the thing that blew my mind away was that the statistics said that 60 % to 70 % of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So what I started saying to people was, look, here’s the deal. The entire secret to building wealth is that you have to fight for your paycheck and you have to keep the first hour day of your income. And what that means, super simple, is you go to work at nine o ‘clock and you work until five. On a typical day, you need to keep whatever you earn the first hour.

So from nine to 10, let’s say you make $20 an hour, or $50 an hour, or $100 an hour. Whatever that first hour of income is, it’s gotta go straight to you. And the only legal way to have it go straight to you, where it doesn’t go to taxes, or social security, or state tax, like I live in New York City, right? I’ve got federal tax, I’ve got state tax, I’ve got city tax, I’ve got social security tax. When I earn a dollar, over 40 cents on the dollar is gone before I can ever see it, right? The only way I can not pay those taxes, and the key word here is legally, is if I take money that first hour day of my income and I put it in a deductible retirement account.

So for someone who’s listening that’s got a job, it’s going to be like a 401k plan. Or if you’re a teacher, it’s going to be a 403b plan. Or if you’re a government worker, it might be a TSA plan. Or if you’re self -employed, like you probably, you know, you were self -employed, right? When you had this DJ connections, it’s a self -employed retirement plan. It’s like a SEP IRA account.

And, you know, many entrepreneurs don’t even fund these accounts because they don’t even know about them. So the whole concept of pay yourself first, one hour a day of your income, is that if you do that, you’re saving 12 .5 % of your gross income. And that’s a really good starting number. Now, I gotta be honest, I’m starting to try to get Americans to save more than that. 15 to 20 % of your gross income is even better, and I taught that in The Automatic Millionaire. If you wanna get rich faster, it’s 15 to 20%.

But getting people to focus on one hour a day of your income, I really do think it’s been a game changer. When I put out The Automatic Millionaire, we launched the book on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and this is back in 2004, And this idea of getting people to think about it in terms of why would you go to work and not keep the first hour day of your income? I think it was like a light bulb moment for people. Like obviously it reached you, right? Like you remembered it and it got other people to kind of go home and think about that and talk about it with their wife and talk about it with their family and make that a goal. And it’s a great goal.

One thing that, and I mean this in a positive way. So if you don’t like this compliment, if you feel like this is a backhanded compliment, you can feel free to hang up and I’ll know, I’ll pick up on that subtle cue. But you are not Yoda. you know, you’re more of a broda. I mean, you are like, the way you write, the way you write is like, I feel like it’s my brother from another mother writing on a third grade level that I can understand. You don’t talk in financial jargon.

Your books are very easy to read, easy to understand. They’re real page turners. I mean, they’re very easy to read. And one of your books you wrote, you said, the number one financial mistake is not to have your finances on automatic. And I wrote that down in my man journal. Man Journal, wrote it down.

And I wrote it down and I go, automatic. I mean everything about my company, DJ Connection, was automatic. Every DJ had a checklist for their shows. After the wedding, we sent the bride a survey. Based on their survey, we determined how much the DJ got paid. And so if a DJ got a bad review, he made very little money.

If he got a great review, he made a lot of money. And everything in my life’s automatic. Checklists, systems, processes. Why aren’t my finances automatic? Can you explain to our listeners what it means to have… Help us.

Help us get our finances on automatic.

Yeah, well, I mean, here’s why it needs to be automatic. I mean, I learned this by being a financial advisor, working with people in the real world. What I saw is that when someone says, you know, I’m disciplined, David, I’m going to write a check. I’ll bring you the money every month to save. Nobody did it. Right.

Like they might they might do it for two months. The record was six. So what I what I saw firsthand was the only way people will will really save money is for whatever it is, retirement, buying a home, college savings, wanting to start a new business. The only way people are successful at investing and saving is when they save automatically and when they have the money moved automatically. So the automatic millionaire was really about simple idea and nothing’s changed because it’s timeless principles. First of all, don’t try to have a budget, because budgets suck.

People have been told for decades and generations, you need a budget. If budgets worked, then everybody would be wealthy. But you go on a budget, they’re totally frustrated, couples fight over their budgets all the time. What works is saving money automatically. So I taught in the automatic millionaire throw the budget out. I learned my clients forget the budget.

Let’s just make sure you’re taking 10 percent off the top or 20 percent off the top. Let’s move this money automatically. Every time money comes in let’s move it automatically into the places it needs to go. And that’s kind of the next part of automation is where does the money go. to go? And when you get into real financial planning, if you were to simplify it, which is what I live to do, is to make it simple, because the problem with money is people make it too complicated.

If you were to simplify money, there’s like a handful of things that you need to make automatic. You need your bills made automatic. You need your emergency account made automatic.

You need your retirement account made automatic, and then you need a dream account made automatic. Oh, yes. David, I want to put this all in the show notes. My passive aggressive attempt to book you on the show again. I mean, you are so good. You’re preaching this automatic, automatic, automatic.

Somebody out there is going, I want to make it automatic.

What do I do?

What do I do, David? And here’s the thing that’s incredible is like, this used to be so hard. This didn’t used to be easy to do, right? Like 20 years ago, I got in this business in 1993. I didn’t think about this for a second. So, you know, back in the day, if you would come into my office and I was at Morgan Stanley and I wanted to just automate a savings account for you, I’d have to have you fill out like six pieces of paperwork.

It was a huge process, right? Today, when somebody wants to do anything automated, Now with technology, you can literally open up your iPhone, go click, click, click, and most financial service companies today are at a point where you can have your financial life, in some cases, automated in less than 10 minutes. You can open up a savings account in less than 10 minutes online. You can have an automated retirement account with a diversified portfolio in less than 10 minutes. Things have been made really simple. And by the way, that simplicity is also making it so that now more and more people are saving money automatically.

There are now a lot of people who are building real wealth because of automated savings. And by the way, back in 1993, a lot of our listeners probably couldn’t focus on their finances because they were listening to whomp. There it is. And now people have the ability to buy That song was hot back in 1993. Just a little DJ fun factoid for you.

I want to ask you this because I know there’s somebody out there who’s a big fan of Marie Forleo. And I saw you on an interview with her where you were quoted as having written in the past, you wrote, we need to start with our values because your values can determine how hard you are willing to work. work to achieve your financial goals, how much money you currently spend, and how much money you will actually need for retirement.

Could you talk to us about the importance of knowing our financial values? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, I love Marie Forleo, and I love that you watched that video. It’s a great video.

People can go and find that, David Bach, Marie Forleo.

I’ll put a link to it on the show notes. Yeah, because that was a great interview, and I love her, and she’s here in New York City also, and we’ve become good friends. What I’ve, and I’ve known Marie for over 10 years and I think, you know, what I’ve always talked about since the beginning of my career is that all financial planning is personal, but it should be based off your values. If you can look at what’s really most important to you, why do you want money? Instead of just saying like, oh, I want a million dollars. What is it that you want?

Why do you want money? Well, I want to be financially free. Well, what does that mean to you? I’d like to go start a new business, or I’d like to take my family to Hawaii, or I want to make sure that I have security. I want to be able to give back to my community. If you can drill down deeper into what your values are, And I teach in some of my first books, like Smart Women Finish Rich, which we just put out as a 20 year anniversary edition.

That was my first book. Smart Women Finish Rich starts by having you look at what your values are. And once you’re clear on your values, you make your financial goals based off of those.

And then you do all your financial planning. I have a quick confession real quick, because Smart women finish rich in preparation for today’s show We had the 20th anniversary and it was like it was it wasn’t you know, it wasn’t super woo -woo I mean, you didn’t tell me clay you make sure you get estrogen injections. I mean, it wasn’t super weird I mean But the thing is there’s so many women in my in my case and my family my wife and I we were we have five kids and we work together on everything we work together in every business and I’m offense and My wife’s defense and the service we offer or the product we offer for any company is the special teams. I’m the offense. I do the marketing, the advertising, that kind of the sales.

And my wife does the accounting, the financial planning. And when I picked up the book, that’s what my wife does. Vanessa does the financial planning for our family. And I think there’s a lot of women out there who have their head down and they assume that their husband is doing the financial planning. They assume that they’re doing something.

They go through a divorce, they go through a medical issue, their husband passes away, something terrible happens and they discover that their husband has not been actually saving money.

Can you talk to the ladies out there, all the single ladies, all the married ladies, all the sophisticated mamas out there, who are finding themselves totally unaware of what’s going on financially and why they should pick up Smart Women Finish Rich? Yeah, well, I mean, absolutely. So Smart Women Finish Rich was the first book that I wrote. And I’m glad that you read it because, you know, I give that book to a lot of my guy friends back when I wrote it. And it’s very helpful. I think the thing for women to know is this.

If you’re in a marriage right now and you have a good marriage, that’s great.

But what you need to know is you’re going to outlive your husband.

Oh, come on.

So negative. So I’m going to I’m going to like cut to the chase here because there’s really three core issues that women face. In most cases, women outlive their husbands. 80 percent of women die widowed and 80 percent of men die married. So the average age of widowhood when I wrote the book originally was 56. Today, it’s gone up, it’s 59.

That’s still really young. And people go, how is that possible? Because women tend to marry men that are older. Men pass away first. So the first thing you need to know is, I always tell ladies, I don’t care if you’re married to the local bank president. At some point, there’s a very good chance you’ll be the one in charge of the money.

The time to be in charge of not just paying the bills, but knowing where all the money is, is today. So knowing where’s the will, where’s the life insurance, do we have life insurance, where are the retirement accounts, are we putting enough away in our retirement accounts, are the beneficiaries up to date. You know, where’s the college savings plan? All these things. There’s like 17 things that I list in the book that there’s like a little, what I call a finish rich quiz. And you go through all these questions to take a look at, like, what do you know or what don’t you know since you can get on track with it?

But the thing women need to know is you’re going to be in charge of the money at some point, so it’s the best time to be in charge of the money now. Second thing to know is you’re going to live longer in retirement than most men do. Women are often retired 5, 10, 15, 20, some cases 30 years longer than their husbands. So you need more money set aside for retirement. And the third thing you need to know is that a lot of women are earning less than men, which women know this, but the reasons why haven’t changed a lot over 20 years. One is, first of all, they’re not paid equally in many cases.

but then they take time off from work to be full -time moms, which is a full -time job. And on average, women take somewhere between seven to 11 years off from work and prime earning years. So when they have children, and I don’t know, it doesn’t sound like your wife did this, but when a lot of women have children, that becomes their full -time job. And therefore, they’re walking away from work or they’re having to leave work because of their situation in their prime earning years, which impacts their income and impacts how much money they have in savings. And it’s not just in savings, it’s in social security. and it’s in pension plans, and women have less money in Social Security and pension plans.

So what Smart Women Finish Rich was all about was empowering women to wake up to what it is you specifically need to do to fix this, what’s called a retirement gap. How do you protect yourself as a woman? My mission, my mantra for 20 some years has been, I don’t care if you’re a woman, I don’t care if you’re married, single, widowed, divorced, you have to be the one in charge of your financial life. And, you know, I learned about money from my grandmother, Rose Bach. She was a woman who started with nothing, without a college education. She became a self -made millionaire.

She was broke at 30. She learned how to do this and she passed the lessons forward. She taught my father how to do it, myself, my sister. And really, when I started teaching seminars for women and money back in 1994, it was in an effort to basically Pass along these lessons from my grandmother because I had seen so many women hurt through widowhood and divorce Financially and I just wanted to do something about it. And you know, the crazy thing is here. I’m tear 24 years later I smart women finish Richard sold a million copies It’s one of the most popular books for women and money that’s ever been out and when I’m psyched that you just read it because when I went to go update it I

you know, the message was timeless. I just had to update things like the tax rules and the different retirement accounts that are available and the different financial service companies. But the message is timely, is timeless, and it’s timely. So I think more women today are waking up to, you know, the Me Too world.

We’re waking up to the fact that, like, if you want to be in charge of your life, be in charge of your money. David, just for the listeners out there who listen to our show regularly, I want to share this with you. When I was building DJ Connection, my wife and I, we got married when we were 20 years old. We started our company. Everyone kept saying, when’s the baby due? We weren’t pregnant.

We just got married early. We went to Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We started DJ Connection and we decided, you know, we want to have five kids.

We want to be married for a few years. And so we ended up having, we were married about four years and then we had five kids under the age of seven.

Boom, boom, boom.

And then twins at one time.

Boom, boom. And so my wife did peace out. She did leave. She did exit the daily operations of the company. But every week she would look at our finances and she would say, baby, Are you saving some money? And I would say, because I’m the spender in the family, David.

I go, baby, I just want to buy a little bit of pinion wood, just a little bit of nice limestone rocks for my backyard.

I’m the guy who always wants to buy one more accoutrement, one more piece of decor.

You know what I mean? I’m the guy who likes to buy speakers, new microphones. I’m kind of an audiophile. But my wife would always rein it in and say, this is how much you can spend this week. And when she first started presenting this to me about year two of our marriage, I thought, she hates me. She hates me. I thought that because my wife would tell me, you have definitely exceeded your $1 ,000 per week discretionary spending, you know, budget or whatever.

And so next week you can spend 200. And I’m like, oh, you’re unbelievable.

Why, why do you hate me?

dreams? But I think there’s somebody out there in the family. Talk to the couples out there. Maybe the husband’s the one who’s locking down the automatic savings.

Maybe it’s the wife who’s doing it.

Can you talk about why the person who’s being financially prudent and who sets up the automatic millionaire process is not actually the enemy, but they’re actually the hero.

Okay, so let me ask you, because this happened to you, are you glad that she did this to you? Yes, yes, but I was so pissed consistently.

I thought she hated me every week, but then I was happy the next week. So let’s talk about you, because you’re a living, breathing example of this.

When did you turn the corner and realize, you know what, actually this was a pretty good idea, I’m glad we did this? A little confession. I know you’re not a priest, but you could be the financial coaching priest for people out there. I’ve been married 17 years.

I’m 37.

And I think when I turned 27, I finally said, thank you, because I’m a horrible person. Well, you know, it’s interesting, right? Because it’s seven years. So I think what it is, is that Here’s the truth about saving and investing and doing these things really right. You don’t notice the impact, the positive impact, always right away. You might notice the pain at first, right?

Like, oh, I don’t have the money, I’m not being allowed to go out. Like, I’ll lose my grandmother box. She realized at 30 she was broke, living paycheck to paycheck, and was never gonna be able to get ahead unless she changed things in her life. And so she started saving 50 cents a week. 50 cents out of her paycheck, 50 cents out of my grandfather’s paycheck in order to do that. She had to go She worked at Gimbel’s department store, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and she had to brown bag her lunch And when she went to Gimbel’s with her brown bag of lunch and her girlfriends would go out to lunch They would tease her and be like, oh Rose you’re so cheap and she’d say you know what?

I’ve made a decision I’m gonna start saving money because I want to have I want to retire down here the beach at some point.

And they laughed at her.

Right. Well, you know, later on in life, she wasn’t spending the winters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it’s freezing. She was at the beach in Laguna Beach, California. And, you know, but that took for that took like four decades. Right. So where I go back to for you is like, seven years, right?

Like, it makes sense to me that you say, well, in seven years, I started going, wow, you know, this is pretty good. Because what happens is over time that, you know, you, for some people, they’re in debt, but they go out two, three years later, all of a sudden they’re, they’re out of debt. If you, if you’re automatically paying your debt down early, and I teach you in the automatic millionaire book how to do that, but all of a sudden your debt’s gone, or all of a sudden you’re like, wow, you know what? I never had any emergency money set aside. And now I do, or you turn around seven years later, and this is what happens. I get people stopping me on the street and in the airports and sending me emails.

Seven years later, you turn around and people come up to me like, David, I have $100 ,000 in savings now, or I have a quarter of a million dollars now, or I’ve got … Somebody just put on Amazon the other day that the Latte Factory, they now own three homes, and they were a renter. They didn’t go from stopping drinking coffee to owning three homes in 30 days. What happened was they read The Automatic Millionaire in 2004 and were sitting here in 2018. And so over 14 years of doing all this, their whole life is completely different. So what I would say to somebody, back to your question, is that someone’s really trying to get your financial act together.

Instead of fighting it, Go with it. Go with it, because here’s the thing. You’re going to be older, right? You’re going to blink your eyes and 10 years are going to go by, and you’re either going to be 10 years older and still broke, or you could be 10 years older and in much better financial shape. One of my things in the book I say is that isn’t built in days, it’s built in decades.

And most people who are a lot of times, I mean, you know, you’re in the podcast world, right? People so often it’s all about this whole get rich quick scheme. Like, you know, I got I got this thing for you and this is opportunity. And, you know, I don’t know anybody who’s who’s gotten rich quick.

I know a whole lot of people who have spent their whole life trying to get rich quick and they just they stay broke fast.

It takes longer to get rich quick.

Actually, if you look at the math there, it takes so much longer. And the weird thing is, like, you know, the compound interest charts that you see in these books where they show you like, hey, you saved $5 a day or $10 a day and you invested it, it could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or it could be worth millions. It all comes true.

It all works. I knew this would happen because I have like 31 questions prepared for you. I’ve probably gone through seven of them so far. And you are like the world’s number one financial coach. If I had to give an elevator pitch, David Bach, world’s number one financial coach. And people listen to the show, they go, Clay’s not that smart.

He took algebra three times and his ACT three times, but he’s kind of funny, so we listen. So I want to break down three notable quotables, and then I want to tell people about the most current project you’re working on, and I want to allow time for you to share with the listeners your most recent project and why they should check it out here.

You have said in the past that people basically inflate in their mind how much money they actually make, and they almost universally underestimate what they actually spend.

What do you mean by this? All the time.

So if you’re with a buddy and your buddy’s like, yeah, I make $100 ,000 a year.

$100 ,000 a year.

Unbelievable. And then you open up the tax returns. Because this is the thing about being a financial advisor. You actually get to see the truth, right?

So if someone says to you, I make $100 ,000 a year.

Boom. Then you open it up and you really look at the tax returns. No, they don’t. They make $85 ,000 a year. They rounded it up, right? Nobody says, oh, I make $83 ,000 a year.

They go, I make 85 or I make 90. People round up what they make. They tell other people and they tell themselves, I’m actually making more. So if someone’s making 85, they’ll, they’ll say to people, they’re making a hundred. Okay. That’s number one.

Number two is that then people, when you tell, ask people, how much do you spend?

Cause I always would do this. How much do you think you spend a month? Very little at all. I absolutely always am very conservative.

I never overspend. I’m huge. They give you their number, right? I’m spending, I think, you know, we probably, and people sort of know, right? They go, I think we’re spending, let’s say 7 ,000 a month. I’m just giving you a random, a random number.

Okay. And then again, I’ll go into the math. And if they said they’re spending 7 ,000 a month, once I go into the real numbers, they’re not, they’re usually spending eight or 9 ,000 a month. It’s always more. So what happens is if it’s just off by 10%, if a person inflates in their mind what they’re making by 10 % and then they spend 10 % more than they think they are, there’s a 20 % difference there, right? But this is why people go, I don’t understand what’s wrong with me. I’m working so hard and I’m making good money and I’m still broke.

One of the things is often wrong for people is that they’re not telling them the truth to themselves about what they really make. And here’s the other thing I’ll say there. People take their gross number, right?

So I make $100 ,000 a year. Well, no, you don’t. After taxes, you made $55 ,000. I moved to Latvia.

I have expatriated my money. I no longer pay taxes. I am in some trouble with the IRS right now, but okay, you’re right. So, I mean, that’s one right there. And I think, You know, money’s funny because you made the point about algebra and geometry. By the way, I hated those classes.

I always tell people, you know, the good thing about money is it’s super basic math.

And like if you can take a number 10 and subtract one and realize it’s nine, you know all you need to know about money. That’s it. Like, make $10 and you save a buck, you’re in pretty decent shape, much better than most people. And they go, what? Like, yeah, that’s a good place to start.

You make a hundred bucks, you save $10. Can you figure that out?

Yeah, okay, then good, start there. You know, I want to respect your time and I want to ask you two more questions here. The American way, the more we make, the more we spend. And if we’re not careful, the more we owe. Who said that? David Bach.

You said the American way. The more we make, the more we spend. And if we’re not careful, the more we owe. I circled that. I highlighted that. I wrote that down.

I thought about embroidering it on my face. I thought that might be kind of intense, but I decided not to.

But I mean, talk to me about that. The American way. Why is it so screwed up by default? Well, I mean, we created the concept of a consumer society, right? So the American dream is to have a lot of stuff. And it’s never been easier to market to us to have more stuff, right?

So you’re on your phone, and now it’s an Instagram ad. Click, click, click, buy something. It’s never been easier to spend money than it is today. Literally, it’s never been easier. You can just click and buy. And so everything around us, it used to be we were bombarded by tens of thousands of messages a year, and now we’re bombarded by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of messages a year to spend more money.

And, you know, I went on this tirade the other day on, um, where was, I don’t know, CNBC, it might’ve been Yahoo. I can’t even track, I’ve done so many interviews lately, but it was a tirade about the insanity of buying new cars every three years. And the American way, the American system, the American marketing machine has us programmed to buy new cars every three years. It has this program that if we come in any money, we should buy a new car. It has this program that if we get a tax refund, it’s time for a new car. And so Americans go out and they buy new cars and they borrow money

money. And there’s just there’s no worse place to put your money than into a brand new car. And yet there’s like one point five trillion dollars now in car loans. We have more money in car loans and credit card loans and student loans. And a lot of those loans like People, they just keep going out and you buy a new car, you buy a $50 ,000 new car, and you’ve been focused on the monthly payment because that’s how they marketed to you. And you drive that car off the lot and that car has gone down in value by $10 ,000, $15 ,000 the moment you drive it off the lot.

You borrowed money to buy an asset that immediately goes down in value. It’s not an asset, it’s a liability. So the whole key to really building wealth in America is this. You can either be somebody who spends money, and you can be the consumer, or you can be somebody who owns things. Owners get rich, right?

So you can go to Starbucks and have a coffee and spend five bucks, or if you’re gonna not give that up, then at least own Starbucks stock.

Right?

Because if you did, you could have made a forfeit.

lands and not brands.

Thank you.

I missed that part of the interview. Yeah, you got to watch it.

You got to watch it the fifth time. I just heard about the Superman hat. I was like, I didn’t know. When you watch it the fifth time, if you stare at the picture long enough, you will find the notable quotable. I want to ask you this here. You said in one of your books, and again, I’ve got highlights everywhere, and I add it into a big doc that I look at.

It says, the truth about business is that it’s normally very tough. It’s very rare that you will start something and succeed right away. And if you do succeed, you might not make a lot of money.

Most businesses take at least two or three years to show profits. In my mind, you’re America’s number one financial coach. Why did you say that? Well, I mean, it’s the truth, right? Most, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs that make money their first couple of years in business. I mean, I mean, I know entrepreneurs have been in business, unfortunately, five, six, seven, eight years, and they still haven’t made any money.

What they’re hoping is that as their top line grows, they’re going to turn around and sell the business, and that’s where their money’s going to come from. In fact, the entrepreneur fantasy is, I’m going to build a business, and I’m going to sell it, and then that’s how I’ll have money to retire. Today, with all these billion dollar unicorn businesses, it seems like it’s easy, but that’s the small, small percentage. In fact, most businesses don’t do a million dollars a year in revenue. I think it’s less than 5 % of businesses do more than a million. I might have that wrong.

I have to double check, but it looks like less than 5 % of businesses do over a million dollars a year in revenue. I was in a group called Entrepreneur’s Organization for like 16, 17 years. It’s one of the leading entrepreneur organizations, and you had to do a million dollars in revenue to be in the organization. You had to be the founder of the company. And that was like, you know, that line in the sand that you had to do a million dollars or more weeds out most entrepreneurs. So most entrepreneurs don’t have big businesses and many entrepreneurs, you know, they’re constantly putting their money back in the business to grow and they’re not taking money out for themselves or what they’ve been trained to do by their accountants is run all their expenses through their business.

And when they do that, they get to the end of the year and then they have no profit. And then if they have no profit, what it really means is they actually don’t have any money. And you know, I do, I like that sound you just made. I’ll do that from stage in front of entrepreneurs where I’ll diagram what that looks like. I’ll literally do the math.

And they told you to run all these expenses through and now you got to the end of the year and you’re at zero and they go, this is great. You paid no taxes. And then I go, so where’s your money? The thing is, you know, there’s a sound effect that really typifies, explains what you just said. That’s how we feel. That’s how we feel.

A lot of accountants are coaching us to be poor, but you’re coaching your clients, your listeners, your nation to be successful. And I would like for you to share with listeners, what is the most recent project you’re working on right now?

because I’m an absolute homer for you and not because I’m delusional, not because I’m delirious, but because I’m serious about success and you have blessed me profoundly and I have only paid you in my lifetime $80 that I know of.

Purchase four of your books, because I’m a bad person. I need to pay you more. Well, and you know, really, if you bought eight out of the books, it means that I made about probably $250 in royalties, right? Look at Amelius. I’m going to set up a PayPal GoFundMe account for you. We’ll see if we can support David Bach, America’s number one financial coach.

Seriously, you’ve helped me so much, brother. I mean it. And I just want the listeners to know what you’re working on right now, because they need to go check it out. Hey, well I’m super grateful to you. This has been really fun and I would love to do a show with you again. So this was a blast.

I enjoyed it. First of all, come visit me over at my website.

Go to davidbach .

com and you can join our newsletter which is free and about every two weeks I send out ideas and tidbits that can help you live and finish rich for the rest of your life. So that’s davidbach . com. The new book, Smart Women Finish Rich, just came out about two weeks ago. It’s in stores now. It’s updated 20th anniversary edition.

We also brought an updated edition of Smart Couples Finish Rich. That’s a brand new updated book and it’s in stores now. It’s all on my website. Automatic Millionaire has been updated, so three of my books we’ve updated in the last 18 months, all brand new, available for you. Also, from an entrepreneur standpoint, I’m a co -founder of a financial service company. The name of it is AE Wealth Management.

and we have financial volunteers all over the country. And so that’s been my entrepreneur passion project the last three years.

We’re the second fastest growing RIA in America, according to Investment News.

And we’re really growing fast and having a ton of fun doing that, helping retirees all across America. And then the last thing is I am working on finishing My next book which I’ll come back and talk to you about which is coming out May 7th 2019. Yes.

It is called the latte factor and it is a parable It’s like a who moved my cheese for personal finance that for written for people who probably normally would never read a financial book I’ve put my best wisdom simple nuggets into a little story that you can read in like less than an hour and And hopefully that’s a book that my dream is it will translate all over the world.

And we’ll spread the message of these simple ideas that, you know, pay yourself first, find your latte factor, save money automatically, but we’ll spread it in a way that especially young people will begin to realize that you don’t need to be rich to live rich.

That’s really my next big push.

I want to sneak in a bonus question that you can hang up here. Yeah. Why? Because you are so successful. You’ve been a nine times New York Times best -selling author. You’ve been on Oprah.

You’ve been on The View. And by the way, you didn’t go on Oprah to confess something. A lot of people go on to Oprah.

You go on Oprah the first time because you have a new book, the second time to confess.

You’ve been on Regis and Kelly. You’ve been on Larry King. Go ahead, Gala. You’ve been on The Today Show, CNBC, Fox Business. I mean, you are the who’s who. You are the financial coach for America.

Why are you so passionate about helping people?

the listener listening right now. Not the listeners, but the specific person listening right now. Why do you care so much about their financial future? You know, it’s such a good question. I’ll just be like totally open hearted and honest with you at this very moment because I’m at a raw point.

It’s been a long day.

I’ve had a computer crash and I’ve had like four interviews and then I’ve rewritten the copy, the actual copy that’s going to go on Amazon for this new book, The Latte Factor. We’ve been rewriting the copy for three weeks. Hopefully this is not your worst interview of the day. And the funny thing, as I basically looked at this document 45 minutes ago before I got on this interview with you, and I thought to myself, why am I still torturing myself with this work? And the answer is, well, I don’t know, it’s like a disease, right? I just deeply still care about what I teach.

I love talking to people like you before we did the interview and finding out, I wrote a little book, and that message somehow reached you, and it helped change your life. And I still absolutely positively love that feeling that I get from knowing that I’m making an impact with my life. And for whatever reason, I think God put me here with this gift. And this is like my gift. And I keep saying to God, like, am I supposed to keep doing this? And here’s the funny thing, like the latte, like I just watched his interview with Tim Ferriss.

And I remember when Tim Ferriss reached out to me before he put out his first book. And I was watching this interview with Tim Ferriss. And he was talking about, you know, how does he choose the things he works on. He said, when I go to bed and I’m thinking about something and I wake up and I’m still thinking about it, a lot of times I know that’s something I have to work on. I’ll take The Latte Factor as an example, this book I’m working on finishing right now. I’ve had that voice in me for 14 years.

In 2004, I wanted to do that book after The Automatic Millionaire, and for 10 years, Random House, who was my publisher, I would bring it up every year, I want to do this book, and they’d go, no, no, no, do a different book, right? And so finally I said, you know what, I’m going to go write this book. and then I’m gonna go sell it to someone else if they don’t wanna buy it. And literally, like this book, I went out, first time, wrote the book, designed it exactly how I want it, and it’s gonna come out with Simon & Schuster. And so, you know, 14 years, there was that voice inside me that just said, you have to go do this book, you have to get this message out. And I don’t think I’m unique in that way, right?

That’s the way I am. entrepreneurs are. There’s always something. I think when you’re called to do something location. Yep. It’s your you know you’re called from a higher power.

Paulo Coelho calls it your personal legend. And you know I love if you haven’t read if you haven’t read The Alchemist. Everybody should go read The Alchemist. It’s like the greatest book ever written on the show and it’s alchemist. Yeah. The alchemist Paulo Coelho.

And Yeah, I went out and met with Paulo Coelho in Geneva, because he’s like my idol in terms of authors. He’s sold like 150 million books, and his stories have translated all over the world. And we were out having dinner, and then we were out having a lot of drinks. And I think it was around two in the morning, and Paulo turned to me and said, What is the book that you haven’t written that you need to write? And I start telling him about the Latte Factor.

I go, Paulo, I want to write this book that will translate all over the world and spread this message to more people. And he looks at me and he goes, well then, David, you must write that book. So that was 2012. So, you know, it’s going to come out, it’s going to come out in May 7, 2019. I have a Bible verse I want to give you that you’d probably don’t want from me, because I’m certainly not a biblical prophet, but Colossians 3, 23, 24, to me explains the career of David Bach. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.

It is the Lord Christ you are serving. David, thank you for serving. Thank you for helping.

I appreciate you so much.

And we’d like to end the show with a boom, which stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum.

And so we’d like to count it down.

Shep, are you ready to count it down? Let’s do it. David, are you ready to bring the boom here?

Yeah, boom, man. I love it. Here we go.

Here we go.

3, 2, 1, boom!

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 learned from you. So congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening? April 9th and 10th, 2026.

Uh, we are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes. We’re joined by Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show world headquarters, June 5th and 6th.

He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day. How often is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time. It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90 % of the issues as people are trying to grow their company.

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

Is it hiring people? What’s next? biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops?

Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners and being able to manage their time is the first thing.

Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers You know, being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay. You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now, I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here, OK?

OK.

All right.

The two -day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops.

So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here.

So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one.

break even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses?

In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand. Box number six, marketing, your three -legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads?

so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time.

It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems and then they need to create more. but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot.

Box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business. Whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, a lawyer, you got to have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer?

Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems. processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth.

Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know.

And step 14, finally, What is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over that. What is the point of even achieving success? How to design a life that you’re excited about, how to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun. and where you’re going to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that, all this and more.

Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s April 9th and 10th. It’s a two -day interactive workshop. And tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford.

Sean, why do we let people name their price?

Why do we have scholarship tickets available if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket? Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You know, you could be at a startup phase or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work.

Now, 7 AM to 5, Sean, why don’t we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day. 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops? We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question -and -answer session, and then we take a break.

30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question -and -answer, then we take a break.

Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions, and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal and your questions on the board, and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay. It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoy it a lot.

Once again, folks, this event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow . com.

Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow .

com.

Who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean?

Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in -person in two day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right. $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean how do you spell Eric Trump backwards uh p uh m u r t c I -R -E.

Ooh, that took a long time.

I’ll have to listen to this.

All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman.

I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive workshop. This event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow . com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow . com.

Right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tim Tebow, baby.

It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia.

Clay Clark is here somewhere.

Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound.

He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. It’s Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We got grill guns over here.

We’ve got people playing the drums. We’ve got a fireplace.

And man, people are excited as they come in. My name is Kevin Thomas and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times. We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and now we have a little over 300 employees. We got involved with Thrive Time.

We didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences. And amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and, and show the team.

4 ,000%. from February to February. Now, I can better that. OK, Clay, I don’t think you know this. I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself.

And if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February. in the last two and a half days. I heard about it on the podcast, started listening to the podcast, became a fan and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency, and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes.

always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere is second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Something every entrepreneur I think would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous high energy and full of substance which I think is the key.

A lot of business coaches or seminars.

Maybe you’re high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you could take back and implement, you know, the following Monday. Where his does. Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m going to say, like, I came to this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the the importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable.

It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. Man, I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons, You know, that’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am. And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Hi, this is Charles and Amber Kola.

We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. We heard about Clay Clark through Paul Hood, our CPA. We’ve worked with Clay Clark for the last two years. Clay Clark has helped us take our three locations in three different states and create checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks for every employee.

He’s helped us with creating systems and audits for every department, quantitative scorecards for each department. and every position so that everybody has a number. It’s been able to give us a lot of time freedom and financial freedom and peace. of mind to know that everything’s running efficiently, and he’s been helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google, and pretty much every area of the business. He’s been very, very helpful.

We would describe the experience of working with Clay as very energetic.

He’s full of energy, he’s very encouraging, very motivating, but also accountable.

So he keeps us accountable and we love that accountability. It keeps our drive in the right direction so we’re not chasing things that aren’t worth spending our time on. He’s a great coach. He helps push us on certain areas, helps coach us in certain areas. You know, we’re all emotional creatures and we go up and down and you actually will tell us kind of where we’re at, how we can get from there. And even like emotionally, like when we’re stressed about something, you’ll have a story to relate to.

And it really helps us in every area of our business. It’s been very, very helpful. I think Clay’s ability to have a whole team behind him that helped him with all of his clients, all his coaching clients, is that it allows Clay to do what he’s really good at and that’s working one -on -one with the client and coaching them and then he can have his amazing staff come in and help you accomplish all these goals that you’re setting. And of course, he has all these resources, whether it’s videographers or whether it’s web developers, that they can quickly jump on your project, knock things out. He can quickly give you the right coaching. He’s just got a whole team of people that whatever area you’re lacking in, in your own company, he’s got resources from like video, web design, search engine guys who

are just knowledgeable in that. Even though he knows a lot of that stuff, he’s got these capable lieutenants that are ready to just take off and help you get that stuff done. More stuff gets done on a weekly basis than you would on like probably most individual or some other company. We’ve worked with several companies before and it just not as many things get done on a weekly basis, so it’s been very helpful. Well, the conferences for me, I’m a slow learner, so I have to learn over and over again, hear things over and over again.

I’ve been to, I think, eight different conferences, and each time you come, I learn a few new components. Some things are repetitive, but a lot of the stuff just resettles, and I get a little bit more depth into each component. So, I mean, I’ve been to eight of them. They’re all super entertaining. He’s very funny, very encouraging.

You get to kind of self -reflect a lot. A lot of the stuff is really polarizing. You do a personal inventory of yourself, and you’ll think like, hey, I’ve really got to work on this, really got to work on that. So every time you come, I still get a lot of value out of it. And as much as every conference is the same, it’s totally different. So I think we’ll hear stories we haven’t heard before.

He’ll have entertainment, or he’ll have speakers he didn’t have before. And like you said, you just always catch a different part of the material that maybe you didn’t catch before. It’s worded differently. And it’s really cool because some people that you’ve seen like a year ago at a conference, now they’re being showcased as a success story. And you get to see their website. You get to see how their stats and all their metrics have improved and the revenue improved.

So it’s really cool to see people that just a year ago, that of course we’ve been here two years, that just came, that I met, is now being successful. It’s really encouraging to see other people, you know, accomplish that stuff. So McClay has helped us optimize our website and helped with really topping the right search engines that we need to make sure that we are very, very competitive with all of our other competitors. He’s done, basically he outlines exactly what you need to be accomplishing and he creates tasks that we have to accomplish and his team has to accomplish. I would say over the last two years, we’ve re -totally ramped our website.

We’re topping Google in every one of our markets. We’re just doing, I would say just doing really, really good. I feel very, very confident in all of our future locations and making sure that we’re in front of the ideal and likely buyer. It’s very encouraging. It’s important to me that to know when I’m working with Clay, you know, I’ve been in business for a while and met with him even when I already had three, three businesses in three different states. And to know that what I share with him is staying private.

He’s not sending that out to anybody else. to know that when he’s working with me he’s only working with one other, no other gyms that are in direct competition with me. It’s very encouraging to have something you can trust and rely on that he isn’t going to like somehow tell your trade secrets or give information away. Just really awesome that he’s a trustworthy guy, really cares about you as a client.

For us, it’s been a complete mind freedom, because Clay has helped us create a lot of different documents and one sheets for every department, put quantitative scorecards to each department. And so for us, it’s been very encouraging.

It gives us peace. As an entrepreneur, it’s stressful. You go to bed at night, you’re worried, like, did we cover this? Did we cover that? So he helps extract everything out of your brain, everything from your business, put it into document creation, put it into checklists and workflows for every person in each department, and make sure that everything’s getting done every week, every month, and funnel that all into KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, as you can see, on a weekly basis, to make sure you’re moving the needle in the right area of your company. So you’re very encouraging, and give you a complete mind, freedom, and peace to know that that stuff’s created, so you’re easy to duplicate and stack,

company. Right, and then we can spend time doing what we’re really good at. and just trust the system. I honestly believe everybody needs a coach. I think we’re all inherently lazy, selfish, and carnal. I truly believe that humans are humans.

If we’re standing, we’d rather sit. If we’re sitting, we’d rather lay down. And if we’re laying down, we’d rather be asleep. So to have somebody that challenges you, have real active candor, and be honest with you on every aspect of your company is really, really encouraging to me because I want to know. I want to work on what we’re weak at. I want to see any areas that we’re not doing well in and see his perspective.

from a third party, because you can look at your own business and just see the good. It’s good to have somebody who’s done this with hundreds of companies. Really look at your company, reflect on your company, and see little chinks in the armor to make sure you cover that up, so your competition can’t get to you, and that you’re successful overall in the big picture. Yes, I would recommend Clay Clark, because he is a great friend, great encourager. To me, he’s been a wonderful friend. You can tell he cares.

wealth of knowledge. He’s worked with so many different companies and different businesses. He could take a concept that he’s used before in the past with somebody totally different industry and see how it would work perfectly for you in whatever niche market you’re in or whatever type of service you’re providing.

And so his brain is just a wealth of knowledge. And just to have that type of perspective on, you know, as a part of your team and your own company is huge, super valuable. So I would definitely encourage people to use him. But one thing is you’ve got to be coachable. You’ve got to be wanting to get feedback. You’ve got to be wanting to really grow your company.

You got to want to put that extra 10 hours a week to working on your business and not just in your business. And so, yes, I would recommend it to anybody who’s wanting to grow their company and provide good service. systems, checklists, workflows, great encouragement, and have accountability. mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate.

So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay.

So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually, in a four month period of time, has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay.

So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing.

And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because The results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic, and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything.

I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs.

I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 year history of Shaw Homes, This is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1 ,800 % increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot.

I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did.

My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us.

We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago. And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge.

It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient.

I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outsourcing. help in many ways.

I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement.

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

He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan.

He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization.

We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Classic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. 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.

So we’re pretty excited about that.

That’s just listening to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and such good insight, the resources that they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system.

And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis. Hi there. My name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old, and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019, and it is now mid -June of 2020.

So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least. I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet. So I’m going to check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week.

Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. Hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work.

I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses. I have amazing employees now, and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews, and interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time on interviews. low -quality candidates anymore and your coach will hold you accountable I mean which I love again the tough love is really great you know looks like a a stern father figure but he’s also nice but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them so that’s just great worth every penny I mean I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can and maybe someday I’ll be able to but I would just say go for it if it seems like a good fit just go for it Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me.

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

And I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that.

They’re so excited for me. So it just it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them.

So sorry for the long winded reply but I just had so much to say and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there. Everything you guys have done for me and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years. years to come. Thanks so much for watching. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important.

My rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach.

Transcribed with Cockatoo