Dr. Zoellner | The Importance of Avoiding Flaky Up & Down Business Associates, + Dr. Z Shares His 10 Rules for Business Success + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s April 2026 ThrivetimeShow.com Business Conference

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 88)
This is going to be a very good year.

(Speaker 29)
This is the worst.

(Speaker 87)
I’m running away from my responsibilities.

(Speaker 16)
What is happening?

(Speaker 87)
I’m going to stop worrying.

(Speaker 51)
I tried.

(Speaker 23)
I tried.

(Speaker 56)
Oh, my life.

(Speaker 12)
I understand nothing.

(Speaker 7)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities. Why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here.

(Speaker 7)
It’s The Thrive Time Show, starring the former U . S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark. and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women.

(Speaker 7)
13 multi -million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 9)
has answers. It’s your brother from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Exciting edition of the Ask Us Anything segment of the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 4)
And on today’s show, we are answering the question, what would Z do and we are going to be breaking down 10 knowledge bombs that I know are going to bless you but what I want to do I want to see I want to I want to ask all the listeners for a quick ask a quick favor before we get started here I think it’s only fair everybody out there I want you to get a piece of paper or a notepad maybe an etch -a -sketch get something that will allow you to take notes because What you are teaching now is he how old are you right now? I’m 54 or I was gonna say if you’re a millennial you could use the note section on your smartphone.

(Speaker 11)
Talk to text.

(Speaker 4)
Yes, right. Okay, so just clarify You’re 54 right now.

(Speaker 32)
Correct.

(Speaker 4)
For the people out there that maybe won’t have an appreciation for what we’re going to teach here in just a second. I wanted to get up here. Throughout your career, Dr. Z, you first built a what kind of business? Optometric clinic. Where are your two locations now?

(Speaker 5)
Approximately 31st and Harvard and 71st and Memorial.

(Speaker 4)
How would you describe the size of these compared to the average optometrist? They’re above average.

(Speaker 25)
OK.

(Speaker 4)
Successful.

(Speaker 24)
Humble.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, you know.

(Speaker 4)
What was the second business that you started?

(Speaker 5)
The second business was a diagnostic sleep center.

(Speaker 40)
Okay, and what is that called?

(Speaker 11)
Dr. Z’s sleep center.

(Speaker 4)
Get it?

(Speaker 74)
I see what you did there.

(Speaker 4)
Now, nine out of ten startups fail, according to Forbes. That’s true.

(Speaker 51)
And Z, did any of those fail?

(Speaker 4)
The first two, did they fail? No.

(Speaker 5)
they became, in fact, the largest in the region.

(Speaker 4)
Okay, so what was your third business that you started?

(Speaker 5)
I started an auto auction.

(Speaker 4)
What’s that called? Z66 auto auction. Okay and does it do well is it okay? Yeah it’s the largest in the state currently. Okay and what was your next business you started?

(Speaker 5)
A DME company which stands for durable medical equipment company and we do several things but the main thing we do are the CPAP machines that for people that have sleep apnea that we diagnose in the Dr. Z sleep center. Did you not invest early on in Regent Bank, you and Sean Copeland?

(Speaker 4)
It was funny because Sean, actually a good friend of mine, approached me to use their bank and I said, well, I’m tired of switching banks, let’s go buy a bank. And he said, great idea, let’s go buy one.

(Speaker 5)
So Sean, did you know Sean previous to him approaching you?

(Speaker 7)
I was doing a lecture or I was speaking at one of those organizations, you know, one of those lunch groupings, I think could have been, I’m not sure if it was Fellowship of Christian Businessmen or, you know, business dudes that are, you know, really serious dudes. I mean, I forget the name of it, okay. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use, because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom.

(Speaker 86)
Now they’re here.

(Speaker 7)
It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U . S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s bunny, Dr. Robert Sirot.

(Speaker 4)
Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women. Thirteen multi -million dollar businesses. Now we’re at the top, teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops. I break down the books.

(Speaker 9)
Seeds bring in some wisdom and the good roots. As the father of apps, so if you see my wife in kids, please, it’s the CNC upon your business. Business Coach has answers. It’s your broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrivetime Business Coach radio show. of the Ask Us Anything segment of the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 4)
And on today’s show, we are answering the question, what would Z do? And we are going to be breaking down 10 knowledge bombs that I know are going to bless you. But what I want to do, I want to ask all the listeners for a quick ask, a quick favor before we get started here. I think it’s only fair. Everybody out there, I want you to get a piece of paper. or a notepad, maybe an Etch -a -Sketch.

(Speaker 5)
Get something that will allow you to take notes because what you are teaching now, let’s see, how old are you right now?

(Speaker 11)
I’m 54, or I was going to say if you’re a millennial you could use the notes section.

(Speaker 33)
your smartphone.

(Speaker 18)
Talk to text.

(Speaker 4)
Yes. Right.

(Speaker 32)
OK.

(Speaker 4)
So just clarify. You’re 54 right now.

(Speaker 5)
Correct.

(Speaker 4)
For the people out there that maybe won’t have an appreciation for what we’re going to teach here in just a second, I wanted to get up here. OK.

(Speaker 5)
Throughout your career, Dr. Z, you first built a what kind of business?

(Speaker 4)
Optometry clinic. Which your first location? Where are your two locations now?

(Speaker 24)
Approximately 31st in Harvard and 71st in Memorial.

(Speaker 4)
How would you describe the size of these compared to the average optometrist?

(Speaker 5)
They’re above average.

(Speaker 4)
Okay.

(Speaker 5)
Successful.

(Speaker 40)
Humble.

(Speaker 11)
Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, you know.

(Speaker 74)
What was the second business that you started?

(Speaker 4)
The second business was a diagnostic sleep center. Okay, and what is that called? Dr. Z’s Sleep Center. Get it?

(Speaker 5)
I see what you did there.

(Speaker 4)
Now, nine out of ten startups fail, according to Forbes.

(Speaker 29)
That’s true.

(Speaker 4)
And Z, did any of those fail? The first two, did they fail? No, they became, in fact, the largest in the region. Okay, so what was your third business that you started? I started an auto auction.

(Speaker 5)
What’s that called? Z66 auto auction.

(Speaker 4)
Okay and does it do well is it okay?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah it’s the largest in the state currently. Okay and what was your next business you started? A DME company which stands for Durable Medical Equipment Company and we do several things but the main thing we do are the CPAP machines that for people that have sleep apnea that we diagnose in the Dr. Z Sleep Center.

(Speaker 11)
Did you not invest early on in Regent Bank, you and Sean Copeland?

(Speaker 4)
It was funny because Sean, actually a good friend of mine, approached me to use their bank and I said, well, I’m tired of switching banks, let’s go buy a bank.

(Speaker 5)
And he said, great idea, let’s go buy one.

(Speaker 4)
So Sean, did you know Sean previous to him approaching you?

(Speaker 48)
I was doing a lecture or I was speaking at one of those organizations, you know, one of those lunch groupings, I think could have been, I’m not sure if it was Fellowship of Christian Businessmen or, you know, business dudes that are, you know, really serious dudes.

(Speaker 3)
I mean, I forget the name of it, okay.

(Speaker 5)
But I was speaking when maybe it was one of those… Luncheon? Men of Integrity. Men of Integrity Luncheon.

(Speaker 4)
Men of Integrity, the luncheon series. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

(Speaker 5)
Like red cars.

(Speaker 4)
I was speaking at that, and he came up to me afterwards and handed me his card and introduced himself.

(Speaker 5)
And from that point on, we became friends and built a relationship.

(Speaker 4)
And then he was trying to woo me to start using the bank he was working.

(Speaker 5)
currently at and then I said no forget that let’s go buy one so we do it.

(Speaker 4)
My little backstory with Sean is if you’re out there and you don’t know who Sean Copeland is one google the search search the guy it’s Sean s -e -a -n Copeland k -o -u -p -l -e -n he is um a guy who’s kind of like the Joel Osteen of banking. No doubt about it and he’s an author he’s a lecturer he’s a great guy I mean he’s one of the nicest guys ever and he also gives you a bro bro when he meets you he gives you a bro hug. An appropriate bro hug. Does he not? Yes, it’s certified. One of the only bankers I know that gives a basketball -style handshake -hug combo.

(Speaker 4)
Well, he was a basketball player, you know, back in the day. Truly, and it’s an amazing combination. So, Sean Copeland, I knew him when he was at Citizen Security Bank. He was one of the youngest people at that bank. Rose to the top.

(Speaker 5)
He became the president of the Bixby Chamber of Commerce.

(Speaker 4)
I knew him when he moved to Grand Bank and then now Region Bank. And so you said, hey, buddy, I know you’re going to move to different banks and try to drum up deposits. You’re always going to be a top performer.

(Speaker 5)
But why don’t we just buy a bank? The thing about a bank is this, is that I’ve said on different shows that I don’t get involved in a business unless I can control it. But a bank is so controlled by the federal government, by the organization, that they’re under, that I felt comfortable owning a minority piece of a bank because we decided when we went to buy it, Sean and I set up a format that nobody would have a controlling interest. Everybody would have, you know, say 10 guys each own 10 % kind of thing. And as part of the Illuminati, don’t you control the government?

(Speaker 7)
Can I tell a funny Sean Copeland story that’s running?

(Speaker 5)
Please do it out there. Well, his grandfather was a cattle farmer. out by where I have my horse ranch.

(Speaker 11)
They’re actually neighbors of mine out there.

(Speaker 5)
So anyway he was telling me a story that some land came up for sale next to their ranch And the grandfather said, we gotta go buy that. You know, we don’t want any mobile home parks moving in. It’d be the worst.

(Speaker 11)
I mean, we gotta protect. We gotta watch our flanks.

(Speaker 5)
We gotta protect our flanks.

(Speaker 4)
They’re coming to get us. We gotta protect our flanks, family. And they looked at him at the dinner table and they said, Grandpa, you know that’s three miles now from where we live? We’ve protected it pretty well. It’s seven layers deep. That’s across the moat.

(Speaker 4)
You know, it’s kind of far away. The reason why I say all that is because, yes, You’re my friend. Yes, in many respects, I consider you to be kind of like my business dad. You’ve been there for me. You’ve been more than a brother, more than a friend. It’s awesome what you’ve done for my wife and I and our family.

(Speaker 4)
First, hiring my wife, and it’s just little things, but my wife, worked for your optometry clinic, and I didn’t know you super well, but the standard of excellence that you guys created there was inspiring to me. So I would go in the lobby, and I would spy on the business, and look at the checklists. We didn’t have smartphones yet where I could take pictures, but I would actually draw pictures of the checklists. I would go in there, I would, like, why does he set up retail this way, that way?

(Speaker 29)
I just, I studied your company, and it created a source of inspiration for me to see a guy killing the game in optometry.

(Speaker 11)
Then at a time in our life where we didn’t have a lot of money, we were starting djconnection .

(Speaker 4)
com.

(Speaker 42)
I worked at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, a time where you probably should not have said yes.

(Speaker 4)
You agreed to meet with me for lunch and taught me a lot of things about the game of business, one of the first guys who was adamant about advertising. And I can say to Chuck, this is the easiest part of business. Is marketing and branding so easy? Fun stuff. Sales? So easy.

(Speaker 5)
No, just be good.

(Speaker 4)
Isn’t marketing and branding so easy?

(Speaker 5)
It’s fun.

(Speaker 4)
Sales is easy. But then you get into managing people and you have to get to a place where you have core principles that you adhere to pretty much 100 % of the time.

(Speaker 5)
You have core principles that you adhere to. And Dr. Z said, well, you know, Clay, I have these 10 rules for success.

(Speaker 4)
I want to teach you 10 business pig rules. Z, when did you come up with these rules? This has been, you know, I formulated them over the years of business. When did you get down to 10? I would go back to one thing you said.

(Speaker 48)
First of all, thank you for all the kind words.

(Speaker 4)
No, I mean it though. And I do see you as a business younger little brother or son.

(Speaker 32)
I like both of those.

(Speaker 4)
And when your father passed from ALS a few years ago, it was a really bonding moment for the two of us in time we spent together getting you through the grieving you know motion of that but I will give hats off to your wife Vanessa that used to work for me yep and that’s how we met was through her yeah the fact that she could see the inner man that you were because the dude that you were when you came to pick her up was a dude that we all we all sat around the break room and thought What on earth is she with him?

(Speaker 5)
The combination of both dumb and aggressive made it tough.

(Speaker 11)
I mean, really, the fact that she could see through your crusty outer shell into a soft little inner jelly goodness that you are.

(Speaker 5)
Jason talked about this morning in one of our meetings, but if you’re Kanye West and you’re known as having the Kanye scowl, That’s cool because you’re Kanye West. Right.

(Speaker 4)
If you’re Eminem and you’re known as being like, you know, the bad rapper. Yeah.

(Speaker 21)
But in your Eminem, that’s cool.

(Speaker 5)
But if you got nothing and you’re just dumb and aggressive, that’s not a move.

(Speaker 44)
OK.

(Speaker 26)
You pull up in your car and the walls would rattle.

(Speaker 34)
I mean, you had that thing cranked up so loud.

(Speaker 4)
He’s like a clam, right?

(Speaker 5)
There was a pearl inside. You’d come in all skunky eyed and pick a fight with him. So I got to ask you this though.

(Speaker 4)
When did you finally distill your observations from years of experience running companies into these two rules? and I got a, I themed it up and I got one that’s a little unusual. It’s not unusual to have a pig as your theme.

(Speaker 5)
Let me get a wood block. It’s not unusual. Okay, back to you. So I kind of, through speech writing, I formulated these ten, this was a speech that I gave. Okay. And so it kind of forced me to sit down and go, what are my, what are my Okay, here’s what it looks like.

(Speaker 5)
How can I put that into this format?

(Speaker 11)
And all of this goes under the title of what would Z do in my mind.

(Speaker 27)
So I’m going to read the principle.

(Speaker 5)
And then the business pig principle. I’m calling these, these are Dr. Z’s 10 business pig principles for success.

(Speaker 4)
Right, exactly. And I would tell everybody out there that owns a business, if I walked up to one of your employees and said, Hey, how would you handle this situation? One of the things that should go through their mind is how would my owner slash boss handle this situation. And if you haven’t taught them or given them the ability or the the the action steps in order to do that, I would encourage you to to do that because it got inspired by those little bracelets years ago that came out, those little rubber band bracelets.

(Speaker 29)
What would Jesus do?

(Speaker 4)
That’s a really good way to kind of think through it. You’re at a fork in the road and which way would he go? What would he do?

(Speaker 5)
What would he do? And so that’s just the real kind of principle that I’ve always enjoyed having because a lot of times I’ll have an employee come to me with a problem and I look at them and I’d say, well, what would I do? And they go, oh, well, you do this.

(Speaker 11)
Just to demonstrate the mastery of how locked in you and I are now, we’re going to teach a principle and then I’m going to teach a principle.

(Speaker 32)
a song on the cowbell.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, and you can guess what song it is.

(Speaker 85)
Perfect.

(Speaker 5)
See if you see how this are locked in my favorite games. I mean, here we go. So principle number one, name the tune. Pigs get fat, hogs get butchered.

(Speaker 11)
What does that mean?

(Speaker 43)
What does that mean?

(Speaker 5)
I was taught by that from a judge that I met from Racing Pigeons, which is a whole other show. We’ll get into that. You’re making this up. No, no, no, no, no. It’s a thing. Google it.

(Speaker 5)
It’s a thing.

(Speaker 4)
Racing Pigeons.

(Speaker 32)
I did that for years.

(Speaker 5)
His name was Dick Ott, and anyway… Pigeons?

(Speaker 4)
No, no. He taught me that saying.

(Speaker 5)
And as soon as he said it, it was just like a light bulb went off in me. It’s just like my blood started to boil. I just thought it was one of the coolest things ever, because what it deals with is greed. It deals with greed. And there’s a lot of ways business owners can be greedy. One of the ways business owners can be greedy is pricing their product or their services.

(Speaker 5)
So high. So high. Hey, how much does your smoker cost? $1 .2 billion. What do you think about the philosophy that has been taught by many consultants all around the world. If people are willing to pay for it and not complain about the price, you should just keep raising it.

(Speaker 5)
There is something about that, but then the point is that the pig raises it until he gets one or two complaints and then goes, okay, I know I’m probably there.

(Speaker 31)
The hog continues to raise it until he stops selling it.

(Speaker 4)
You see the difference?

(Speaker 5)
So the pig goes, you know what, hey, I raised it five bucks, no one complained.

(Speaker 4)
Hey, I’m going to raise another five bucks.

(Speaker 14)
No one complained.

(Speaker 49)
Right.

(Speaker 5)
And then when he starts to get a little bit of pushback and some complaints, he probably knows. They were kind of wanting to complain before, but they just didn’t know how to verbalize it. But my philosophy was this, is why raise the price when you can expand the building, when you can hire more doctors, when you can just expand that. I mean, there’s always a limiting membrane.

(Speaker 11)
Don’t let the price or the greed be your limiting membrane.

(Speaker 5)
And the other thing, too, is with employees. I know so many people that just beat up their employees on price.

(Speaker 4)
They will not pay them well. Yeah. Listen, if you don’t take good care of your employees, especially your good ones, somebody else will. And that’s another component. It’s also a dating tip. Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
Okay.

(Speaker 25)
But that’s another component of greed.

(Speaker 4)
The third area that I see so many times is people that own a business just want to beat their vendors up. They want to get in there and that sales reps comes in the door and then pretty soon they come in every two weeks and now they’re every month and now they’re every six weeks and now you don’t even see them anymore because they’re tired of getting beat up on price. Come in and go, well you need to knock that thing down another two points, two percentage points. Thinking about making a switch.

(Speaker 5)
I’m thinking about setting this back up for negotiations.

(Speaker 4)
The thing about it, it’s got to be a win -win. Let me give some specifics to this that I’ve asked Dr. Z about over the years that I think, Jeff, would be helpful to add to the show notes. One, as you just said, we need to make a win -win in all scenarios. It needs to be a win for the customer, a win for the employee. We call it the three Ps. You want to have a business that’s profitable.

(Speaker 4)
You want to have a product that you’re proud of. And you want to have people that you like working with. The three Ps.

(Speaker 5)
Also, you want to make a profit of about, what, Z?

(Speaker 4)
20%, 25 % is sort of that target.

(Speaker 5)
Some industries are higher, some are lower, like home building.

(Speaker 4)
Somewhere between 20 and 30 is a pretty healthy margin.

(Speaker 5)
If you’re shooting for more than 30, you’re kind of getting the high.

(Speaker 4)
You see guys are like I made a 70 % margin on this a new homie model. Yeah, it’s my only one I’ve ever gotten though, but I swear I crushed it, right?

(Speaker 5)
Okay, that’s not the Johnson’s. I got him good now cuz now Z. I’m gonna queue up our first song Show name that too. Okay.

(Speaker 4)
I want you to think about the song I’m gonna play it and as I play it on the cowboy I want you to ask yourself to see what song is this on this edition of name that tune?

(Speaker 22)
Think about this.

(Speaker 5)
I’m a former DJ. I know a catalog of hundreds of thousands.

(Speaker 56)
of songs.

(Speaker 4)
And I’m not.

(Speaker 5)
It could be any song.

(Speaker 4)
I know.

(Speaker 26)
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a genre, that way we narrowed it down.

(Speaker 5)
No, no, no, don’t even, don’t cheapen this moment.

(Speaker 4)
No, I just, okay. It’s a song that was sang by a male artist.

(Speaker 11)
Okay, got it. I think I narrowed it down pretty…

(Speaker 4)
I think I already know this song.

(Speaker 26)
Almost gave it away.

(Speaker 48)
Okay, here we go.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, that’s easy. Michael Jackson, Beat It. Yes! That was impressive.

(Speaker 84)
Well, thank you.

(Speaker 5)
I don’t know how you do that every time.

(Speaker 4)
It’s crazy. It’s crazy good.

(Speaker 11)
To demonstrate how out of sync Chup and I are now, Chup, I’m going to tee up a song here.

(Speaker 38)
This song was sang by a male artist, and I’m going to play it, and I want you to see if you can guess what it is. I’m ready.

(Speaker 5)
Ready?

(Speaker 11)
I know it.

(Speaker 70)
On top of Old Smokies.

(Speaker 47)
No, it’s Purple Rain.

(Speaker 21)
Purple Rain, Purple Rain.

(Speaker 30)
It’s so obvious.

(Speaker 27)
We haven’t spent enough time together, Chuck.

(Speaker 5)
We need to get more in osmosis, more in a flow.

(Speaker 76)
Okay, principle number two from Dr. Z’s business pig principles for success.

(Speaker 17)
Principle number two, be the pig at breakfast, not the chicken.

(Speaker 47)
What?

(Speaker 11)
What does that mean? What does it mean?

(Speaker 4)
Well, let’s look at the roles at breakfast. My love rolls.

(Speaker 11)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 4)
But is that place where you throw them at each other?

(Speaker 11)
I went there this weekend.

(Speaker 5)
You did?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, yeah. Lambert.

(Speaker 5)
Lambert. Lambert. That’s right. Shout out to Lambert.

(Speaker 4)
The road rolls. Hey, you know what? Are you serious? You went there? I went there on Friday night. Let me celebrate this moment.

(Speaker 4)
You went to Lambert’s! I was at Lambert’s! Out of all the restaurants in the world he could have possibly gone to, how did that happen? Z and I are in sync here.

(Speaker 5)
We can’t make this stuff up.

(Speaker 4)
So, being the pig means you gave your life for bacon, ham, sausage.

(Speaker 41)
Sausage.

(Speaker 5)
That means fully committed. In other words, you were all in. The chicken lays an egg, and you know, it’s kind of like maybe I’ll lay an egg tomorrow if I feel like it. Let me go off for a second. Let me go off for a second.

(Speaker 5)
This is something I hear all the time. I see people say all the time.

(Speaker 4)
I’m going to try out this idea and see if it works. Because if this idea works, then I’ll go ahead and keep pursuing it. So I’m just going to try this, but my fallback position is this other job. I’m going to put a little bit of money into this coffee shop, but if it requires work and I don’t get traction, I am going to stop. See, why is that such jackassery to not do it? be the pig at breakfast.

(Speaker 4)
I’m going to tell you an example.

(Speaker 83)
Yes.

(Speaker 80)
I was mentoring a young man who wanted to open up a high kind of a swanky clothing store, kind of, you know, that kind of that swank that they have those pants with swagalicious kind of stuff that Caleb would buy.

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(Speaker 4)
You know, you know, the kind of cool t -shirt, you know, very stylish, you know, crazy socks and all that stuff. And a few months later, you know, we have another meeting and he comes by to kind of, you know, And I’m like, what’s up? Because I think I have to shut it down.

(Speaker 5)
I’m like, I’m going to shut this thing down, bro.

(Speaker 24)
And I’m like, what’s going on?

(Speaker 5)
He goes, well, it’s hard to find good help. And I’ve got this dude on Saturdays just keeps stealing from me, I think, you know, man, just giving free stuff away to his friends and robbing the kitty and all that kind of stuff. I’m like, well, why don’t you just, why don’t you get in there and work on Saturdays?

(Speaker 4)
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no this person said to you.

(Speaker 5)
I know it’s kind of unethical for me to have miked a private conversation between you and a man that you were mentoring to start this clothing company.

(Speaker 4)
I want to make sure it was a clothing company, because I mike all conversations. It’s hard to sort through my audio files. But this is what he said to you. You said to him, you said, buddy, you got to be willing to do whatever it takes. And this is what he said to you. Surely you can’t be serious.

(Speaker 5)
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. I don’t quite understand the exchange.

(Speaker 4)
In Napoleon Dynamite’s book, he talks about burning the boats.

(Speaker 35)
Burning the boats.

(Speaker 4)
And what that means is that from one island, they would go and attack the next island. Yes. And the idea was is that there was no retreat. There was no plan B. We’re either going to take this island or die. I mean, that’s a huge, you think about that.

(Speaker 26)
Think about this.

(Speaker 4)
The mindset of that. Think about this. After reading that book, I read that book 2000 -ish.

(Speaker 21)
Then I had a lunch with you.

(Speaker 4)
Teed up by Kylie, our manager, who’s still there. By the way, super excited for the holiday party. Christmas party is coming up very soon. Clay, I just want to point one thing out. When you pulled up for lunch and you lit your car on fire, it’s not the same thing, OK? You don’t have to burn your car.

(Speaker 4)
Bro, I took that to be literal. Burn the Buick. I was also one of the early jihadi recruits, and so I just went ahead and pulled out the manual for car bombs.

(Speaker 59)
The point is, seriously, I had just finished reading that book, and I met with you, and I remember this.

(Speaker 4)
You said, Clay, can I be frank with you? And I go, okay. I thought you were Robert, but okay. But you said this. You said, you have got to advertise you you eventually have to buy an ad you have i and i remember kind of like having quite well but yeah but i can’t afford it you’re like listen i’m not a paid consultant just buy an ad i had you were just very direct on that and i remember going This guy’s a jerk. You got up and went to the salad bar.

(Speaker 4)
And I remember going, I wrote that down. I’m like, this guy. Because Vanessa and I were in a spot where I was working at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, three jobs. Vanessa had a job at Office Depot and Oral Roberts University. And I remember going, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. And so I went and talked to Vanessa.

(Speaker 5)
And I’m like, burn the boats, Dr. Z. It’s like an hour -long windup.

(Speaker 4)
And I’m like, we’re going to have to turn off the air conditioning or the heat.

(Speaker 82)
We’ve got to do something.

(Speaker 5)
I don’t know. It was a powerful moment in your life.

(Speaker 38)
No, seriously.

(Speaker 36)
And we actually sold.

(Speaker 5)
We had a white car.

(Speaker 4)
I cannot remember. It was like a I want to say it was it was an American model like a Buick or something. My parents had sold for me that my parents sold to me for like nothing.

(Speaker 11)
It was very low cost. I sold that. And we just had the Mazda MPV and she started walking to work and she would drop me off at my jobs.

(Speaker 4)
And we decided to buy a yellow page ad from Sally, who is the mother of one of your clients, Kevin Lewis, and it was like two grand a month. See, has there ever been a better time in American history? I mean, right now, you can turn on your YouTube ads or your Facebook ads month to month, man, week to week. See, do you remember the times when you had to commit to an agreement for like a year to buy a Yellow Page ad?

(Speaker 5)
I know. I tell you what, business owners starting today have got that part of it much easier. Oh, it’s so easy. I mean, it’s so much easier than we had it back in the day. But I remember, I’ll tell you what, you put that picture in there and you made sure you had the big ones here up front.

(Speaker 81)
I mean, come on now.

(Speaker 5)
I was like, I’m so hot.

(Speaker 29)
It’s like fishing for gold.

(Speaker 5)
Jeff Ramsey was my first inbound call ever.

(Speaker 4)
You remember?

(Speaker 11)
Jeff Ramsey.

(Speaker 4)
Oh yeah.

(Speaker 5)
It’s crazy. You were saying the other day on the show, Clay, that you had to commit to whatever marketing strategy you were going for for a year. There was no A -B testing, there was no trying things out. Let me tell you how he did it. Dr. Z said if your ad doesn’t grab somebody by the throat. Z, can you explain what kind of ad you want?

(Speaker 5)
If you’re going to launch an ad, what your ad has to do in terms of getting the attention of your ideal and likely buyers? You’ve got to have a call to action. The ad has to inspire you.

(Speaker 4)
How many times right now you’re listening right now, you’ve heard an ad on the radio, you’ve seen an ad in a magazine or newspaper, you’ve watched an ad on TV and you go, I don’t know. And then the ad comes along that makes you laugh, makes you remember it, makes you go, I’ve got to have that thing. If I don’t have that thing, I may not make it.

(Speaker 36)
I might not.

(Speaker 4)
I might not. I do. My quality of life would be horrible without that thing. I need a ham from the Hamlet. Honeycut ham. Honeycut ham from the Hamlet.

(Speaker 4)
You have to have a call to action. And we, you know, we, in order to do that, you have to have some kind of component of a deal that just is so awesome. So incredible. So back in the day, you see now you, now it’s like you want to drive them to a website.

(Speaker 5)
You want to drive them to something else. But back in the day, my whole goal was to get them to pick up the phone and call me that I’m going to have something so crazy.

(Speaker 4)
So outlandish. So over the top call to action, they have no choice, but to pick up the phone and call.

(Speaker 5)
Cause that was the move back in the, back in the day. All I did was I looked at my competition and they had an ad that said something like started in 1984. founded in 1984.

(Speaker 4)
So I’m going, well, conceived in 1980. Yeah, that was you.

(Speaker 14)
So I’m like, OK, I got that.

(Speaker 11)
And then it said, we have over 100 ,000 songs.

(Speaker 4)
And I thought to myself, talking to Z, I mean, I could conceivably get up to a million songs. So I wrote something like, we can get up to 110 ,000 songs, or something just more than that. And I just one -upped them. And I said, we’ll be any competitor’s price.

(Speaker 5)
And my ad was smoking hot, dude. It worked. It got attention. I put my head… That’s what advertising does.

(Speaker 4)
If done correctly, it makes the phones ring. Literally, all the ads were kind of conservative. I took my head and put it on a body of a person in a suit using Photoshop, so it was like a caricature head, like a bobble head on a normal -sized man body, but like a five times larger head, and it worked, dude.

(Speaker 5)
Clay, I don’t want to be mean, and I don’t want to be disrespectful, and, you know, I’ve got a lot of man love for you.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, you know that, right?

(Speaker 5)
Yep. But your head is really, really big. No, I gotta be honest with you. I did not enlarge the photo at all. Yeah, thank you. Senior picture.

(Speaker 5)
But I mean, when I went out there and launched the ad, though, I had to, I had to be the pig at breakfast. I had to commit to it.

(Speaker 11)
And that’s one of the things that I think, you know, why we have such a high fail rate on businesses, according to Forbes, which is kind of our business Bible. We like to quote Forbes a lot because they’ve done a lot of the research. And it’s the easy button, we don’t have to go do it.

(Speaker 38)
Let’s be honest with you, they’ve already done it.

(Speaker 45)
And 90 % of businesses fail, up to 80%, 90 % of startups, and then 80 % of businesses fail.

(Speaker 4)
And that rate is way too high. That’s one of the things that started us down this pathway of building a business school online, of doing in -person workshops, doing the radio show, which is now a podcast, having one -on -one, now even, you know, One -on -one coaching, business coaching.

(Speaker 11)
A quick clarification.

(Speaker 5)
A lot of people might have misunderstood what you just said.

(Speaker 9)
When you said Forbes, you weren’t saying F -orbs.

(Speaker 4)
Nope.

(Speaker 5)
No, I was saying Forbes.

(Speaker 38)
Spherical bodies or globes, you have no problem with those.

(Speaker 4)
And when I meet an entrepreneur that has that fire in their eye and says, you know, I’m going to do this no matter what. Studies show that people that say I have a plan B. I might fall back. I’m not gonna burn my boats. I Have a I have a I have an escape door, right? I have a parachute. I have a parachute.

(Speaker 33)
Yes, you think well, that’s wisdom That just sounds wise that sounds a prudent man has it, you know has this, you know wouldn’t be print No, no be the pig fully commit get your mindset wrapped around It’s good 67 % of you out there according to Forbes again want to start a business and we want to help you start it and grow it but Be committed to saying, you know what?

(Speaker 38)
I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

(Speaker 4)
We’ve talked about this in the past on the show, but the thought of a founder’s mentality, that means there’s urgency within your actions.

(Speaker 5)
And if you’ve only dipping a toe in the jacuzzi, if you’re only trying out the waters.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, in the jacuzzi? Yeah, if you’re only testing out the waters. You pulled out the toe, yeah. I’ll tell you what.

(Speaker 31)
You brought it on yourself right now.

(Speaker 4)
Chubb, you infected. I got a nice double dipper, Chubb.

(Speaker 34)
I’m taking my shirt off right now.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s get in the jacuzzi.

(Speaker 4)
Z, remember, today’s show, the entire focus of today’s show is what would Z do? Yeah, I get the jacuzzi.

(Speaker 5)
What would Z do?

(Speaker 32)
The business picks 10 business principles for success, all right?

(Speaker 5)
So Z, what would you do?

(Speaker 4)
gonna cue up my next song from Name That Tune here. I’m gonna play the song.

(Speaker 9)
This song is a male artist from the 80s.

(Speaker 4)
A male artist, think about it for a second, think about it. Okay, hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

(Speaker 32)
I transmit the signal to you.

(Speaker 5)
Is it an individual or is it a boy band?

(Speaker 4)
I couldn’t give that much information. Because if I give that much information, it’s like, oh, this isn’t magical. So I’m going to go ahead and play the beat.

(Speaker 79)
And you can tell me what it is.

(Speaker 31)
Here we go.

(Speaker 80)
Name that tune with Dr. Z to demonstrate how in sync we are mentally.

(Speaker 58)
Here we go.

(Speaker 79)
Oh, that’s easy.

(Speaker 78)
Bobby Brown, Don’t Be Cruel.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t be cruel. I would never be that cruel to you.

(Speaker 5)
It’s so simple. No, no, no. You’ve got to give me a harder one. Sorry. I’m trying. I’m trying over here.

(Speaker 5)
Okay, so principle number three. Business pig principle number three that has allowed Dr. Z to build multiple multi -million dollar businesses. It’s know when to cook the pig. What?

(Speaker 43)
What does that mean?

(Speaker 37)
Z, audio.

(Speaker 18)
Quick audio.

(Speaker 4)
Let’s do quick audio here.

(Speaker 5)
You’re saying it weird. Saying what weird? All of it. Where do you get off?

(Speaker 29)
I just don’t get why you’re saying it that way.

(Speaker 41)
Why I’m saying what, what way?

(Speaker 5)
Okay, now we’ve clarified what you’re saying, Z. What you’re saying.

(Speaker 4)
Talk to me, talk to us about what you mean when we say, no, when to cook the pig. Well, I always loved those scenes in Hawaii.

(Speaker 5)
Of course, he doesn’t love Hawaii.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, you know, come on.

(Speaker 5)
So they have the luau.

(Speaker 34)
And in the luau, one of the standards in the luau is pig.

(Speaker 5)
You know, with an apple in its mouth. I mean, the whole pig being cooked, right?

(Speaker 21)
And it’s always a celebration.

(Speaker 4)
They’re always a big family celebration. It’s a wedding.

(Speaker 13)
There we go.

(Speaker 4)
There we go.

(Speaker 5)
Uh -huh. Keep going.

(Speaker 4)
So the idea that you’re going to cook a pig means you’re partying.

(Speaker 5)
It means you’re having fun.

(Speaker 4)
It means you’re celebrating. It means you are having a good time. Oh, nice, nice.

(Speaker 5)
Tis the season.

(Speaker 4)
And so for me, it’s very important. So, for example, this December 8th, we’re going to have probably more than 500 people at our Christmas party.

(Speaker 5)
It’s going to be epic. Employee Christmas party.

(Speaker 4)
It’s going to be epic. They’re at the famous Mayo Hotel. The iconic. Iconic and the crystal. Historic.

(Speaker 5)
Yes, and the crystal ballroom.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, wow. Where they actually have original, it’s like original old school marble crown molding, the detail there. I mean, they don’t make hotels like that anymore. They don’t. The history. So I’m going to tell you, if you’re a business owner out there and your team, you have some wins, go celebrate it.

(Speaker 4)
Hey, take them to a pizza joint, go bowling, go to a billiards. You took my wife and I to Magoo’s. Yes, which is a billiards.

(Speaker 5)
You took all your employees to Magoo’s.

(Speaker 4)
Shovel board and billiards.

(Speaker 5)
We had a great time.

(Speaker 4)
Fabulous time. I’m just telling you, at the time though, when you did it, Vanessa and I couldn’t afford to go on dates.

(Speaker 5)
It was a huge highlight for us, man. It’s a win -win. One, selfishly, as the employer, I get my team bonding together, even tighter, better friends, and fired up. And they also know that if they work hard and they hit the numbers and we have a successful month, guess what? Chicken butt. Exactly.

(Speaker 58)
No, it was a great night out.

(Speaker 77)
It was exciting.

(Speaker 5)
It was very fun. Also, I remember the Christmas party was the first time we had a formal event since we got married.

(Speaker 27)
It’s so much fun.

(Speaker 5)
So if you’re the casino theme going on, remember back in the day, it was so much fun because I’m telling you out there business owners, if you’re not celebrating the victories with your staff, you’re missing an opportunity to not only bond with them, but also show them that they’re in the boat with you. I have a question on behalf of a listener who couldn’t be here. and Chep will kind of tee it up here.

(Speaker 4)
So Dr. Z, why can’t you have a cheap -ass Christmas party? Why can’t you have just the cheapest ass thing, you know, the cheapest, the most unbelievably tacky, because for years I’ve been buying my employees, I’ve been regifting, you know what I mean? I regift and it’s been kind of a secret thing, no one really knows, but I’ve been regifting and it’s been working well.

(Speaker 14)
Why do I have to spend all the time and the money to put together a holiday party?

(Speaker 4)
Here again, these are one of the things that help you build a culture of the environment of your workplace.

(Speaker 43)
Come on now.

(Speaker 4)
And when your staff knows that there is something, there is something at the end of the rainbow. I mean, it did a suck if you ever get to the end of the rainbow and there’s no pot of gold and you’re like, oh, man, I thought, I was always told. He’s after me like a charm. So the idea is that you’re team building, at the same time you’re celebrating the victory. And so when I went to listen to one of my favorite business gurus of all time, Jack Welch, One of my favorite business books, Winning. I just love that.

(Speaker 11)
Winning, because that’s what it’s about. People are like, well, don’t you think we need a show? No, win. Win. Win.

(Speaker 73)
What about winning?

(Speaker 4)
And when he got up there on stage and basically said the same thing, he said, listen, you’ve got to go out there, you know, make sure you hire people you want to celebrate things with, because if you don’t want to go out and hang out with them, then you shouldn’t have hired them to begin with.

(Speaker 5)
Amen.

(Speaker 11)
That was a caveat.

(Speaker 5)
But he said, go out and celebrate, celebrate victories. And I thought, it resonated with me, and I thought, Can I come up there and give you a bro hug?

(Speaker 24)
But I mean this, though.

(Speaker 5)
There’s many hotels we could have chosen, but it’s at a nice place.

(Speaker 4)
We could go tacky with the buffet. We could.

(Speaker 5)
But we don’t.

(Speaker 11)
We don’t.

(Speaker 5)
The whole thing, it’s a really, it’s a, Chuck, you’ve been there before.

(Speaker 12)
Can you describe the energy?

(Speaker 30)
Because for anybody out there who’s listening right now, who is attending our December conference, December 7th and 8th, as a little sneak attack, kind of a little thing here, we’re going to be

(Speaker 5)
a drawing to see who gets to have lunch with Michael Levine the great one the PR consultant for Nike for Michael Jackson for Prince for pizza And we’re gonna be doing drawings to see who wants to attend the Christmas party You’ll get to see it firsthand and in person.

(Speaker 11)
It’s a game -changing event.

(Speaker 4)
Can you explain what the party was like last year? It’s fun. I saw dr. Z do the double splits. It’s first -class.

(Speaker 5)
It’s an amazing experience So the thing is, like Dr. Z was saying, it is an awesome bonding experience.

(Speaker 18)
I’ve met tons of people that work at other businesses, Z, that you own, and it’s awesome to meet these people that are all bought into the same value and same culture and celebrate together, like he was saying.

(Speaker 4)
Celebrate!

(Speaker 5)
So that’s a picture of that, cooking the pig, because you know when you cook that pig, you’ve got a celebration. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that in all the celebrations I’ve done with all my employees over 20, almost 27 years now, I’ve never once cooked a pig.

(Speaker 41)
Hey, can we bury a pig in your backyard, Clay, sometime and cook it?

(Speaker 25)
Can we do that?

(Speaker 51)
Can we cook a pig in your backyard?

(Speaker 4)
I know how to do it. The chicken complex, Clark. I’m committing right now.

(Speaker 11)
This has to happen.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, no. Oh, my gosh.

(Speaker 5)
I saw the wheels turn and just…

(Speaker 4)
Look at him light up. Look at him light up.

(Speaker 43)
This has to happen, Chuck.

(Speaker 4)
Thrive Nation, you can’t see this, but I… He’s freaking out right now. Chuck, put it on the notes. We have to do this. This has to happen.

(Speaker 32)
We have to cook the pig.

(Speaker 35)
Let’s cook a pig.

(Speaker 4)
I’m not sure. We have the land. You know what we could do for our in -person conference?

(Speaker 76)
I bet we could bring one out there and cook one down and do it for lunch.

(Speaker 4)
Chuck, put it down! It’s on there! Put it down! Okay! Put it down! One of the barbecue places must have it.

(Speaker 4)
No, seriously, you’ve got to get Cesco on the to -do list, and we have to activate this idea, because when you just have ideas, you don’t act upon it, it’s just hallucination.

(Speaker 35)
I’m gonna put it on my to -do list.

(Speaker 4)
Let’s do it!

(Speaker 11)
Yeah!

(Speaker 4)
We should cook the pig, that’s a thing!

(Speaker 11)
That’s a thing!

(Speaker 4)
Okay, Z, next, next, just to show how locked in we are.

(Speaker 35)
This next song was written by an artist. Okay.

(Speaker 59)
and it’s a song that people love.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t want to give it all away.

(Speaker 24)
It’s a song people know.

(Speaker 5)
It’s a song that you…

(Speaker 57)
No, seriously.

(Speaker 76)
Someone knows this.

(Speaker 5)
No, no.

(Speaker 4)
People know this song.

(Speaker 68)
I’m going to cue it up now.

(Speaker 4)
And again, Chubb.

(Speaker 5)
Chubb. Chubb, a lot of people are saying you’re making a mockery of this name, that tune.

(Speaker 42)
No, I’m not.

(Speaker 5)
This is a sincere name, that tune.

(Speaker 4)
Chubb, I’ll tell you this.

(Speaker 5)
I’ll play the song first, and you guess.

(Speaker 57)
We’ll see if you get it right.

(Speaker 5)
And then Z, you get to go second, okay? I like this. I like this.

(Speaker 4)
Here we go.

(Speaker 5)
I feel like I’m set up for success.

(Speaker 4)
Here we go, Chubb.

(Speaker 34)
We already did, if I could turn back time, Clay, in the last show.

(Speaker 5)
By Cher? Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
No. Okay.

(Speaker 5)
Okay, Z. Here we go.

(Speaker 4)
That’s easy. Bruno Mars, Locked Out of Heaven.

(Speaker 5)
Locked Out of Heaven!

(Speaker 16)
Yes! That’s right!

(Speaker 14)
He even slowed it down a little bit.

(Speaker 4)
You still got it.

(Speaker 5)
That’s amazing.

(Speaker 4)
See, that’s amazing right there.

(Speaker 5)
It’s a gift. What can I say?

(Speaker 14)
What can I say?

(Speaker 4)
What can I say?

(Speaker 14)
What can I say?

(Speaker 5)
I knew you were going to go a little hip -hop on me. I knew you were going that direction.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, a little R &B, a little bit of hip -hop.

(Speaker 14)
I’m going to leave it all over the board, doing old school down new school.

(Speaker 5)
I know your actions.

(Speaker 75)
Okay, so now the next principle number four, piggy bank.

(Speaker 14)
What is the piggy bank all about, my man? How many people do you think I’m gonna fend with this? Uh, 17 .27%.

(Speaker 5)
That’s fair. I think that’s a fair number. I was gonna put it at 20, but I think you’re, you know, I’m aggressive. Can we go with a kind of a godfather kind of a theme here? That way it’s more palatable.

(Speaker 4)
I think that’d be appropriate.

(Speaker 48)
It’s kind of funny.

(Speaker 4)
I think that’d be appropriate.

(Speaker 54)
I think that’d be appropriate.

(Speaker 41)
All right, so tell us, what’s the principle of the piggy bank?

(Speaker 5)
Here’s the concept. Everybody out there listening, say to yourself, how much money am I saving every month?

(Speaker 4)
How much money am I saving?

(Speaker 74)
And if you say to yourself, I’m not saving any money because I go paycheck to paycheck to paycheck to paycheck.

(Speaker 32)
Well I gotta talk to Snicks, he’s got a brown paper bag. Every now and then I get a little overtime and guess what?

(Speaker 5)
I get to go and, you know, blow it on something else.

(Speaker 73)
Because that’s what you do, right?

(Speaker 4)
Well if I gotta zero money down, I gotta, it’s unbelievable, no payments for 24 months.

(Speaker 5)
I did some research.

(Speaker 4)
The average American family has $400 in savings.

(Speaker 11)
That’s only if you’re crediting the Federal Reserve and looking at the statistics and facts.

(Speaker 4)
That’s a crime! It’s a crime to only have that in the bank.

(Speaker 5)
That’s a crime. You gotta live below your means. You gotta delay gratifications. Gratitude is the family. It’s a piggy bank for a reason. You gotta save some, shove some little money in that thing.

(Speaker 5)
Take it off the top.

(Speaker 26)
Feed the pig before you feed anything else.

(Speaker 4)
Feed the pig before you feed yourself.

(Speaker 5)
See, I wanna ask you a question real quick here. Okay. Do you know what sneaks is? What’s sneaks? Sneaks, yeah. Here’s the deal here’s the deal everybody out there that’s getting a paycheck raise your hand right now if you’re listening this got it you could be wherever you are If you’re getting a paycheck boom now now If you’re saving money, raise the other hand.

(Speaker 5)
And there’s not as many hands I’m looking at across the country. Real quick, Andrew in our office, Andrew Bloomer, Chup, how much of a percentage of his paycheck is he now saving automated? 25%. Dude. Sexy. That’s aggressive.

(Speaker 5)
I’m sexy.

(Speaker 4)
I always coach people 5 to 10.

(Speaker 34)
Five minimum.

(Speaker 4)
He has been living at the office. Yeah.

(Speaker 27)
Him and his newlywed wife.

(Speaker 11)
No, but seriously, he has been saving 25%.

(Speaker 4)
And see, that’s enough to pay the future rent right there. What I’m telling you folks is this, is that what’ll happen is you may go, well, I don’t need to save any money right now because I’m making good money. And I mean, hey, I’m living the dream. I get it. You can’t take it with you, Z. I get it.

(Speaker 29)
But what’ll happen is in about a year and a half to two years, maybe three years, maybe four years down the road, you’re going to say to yourself, you know what?

(Speaker 4)
I’m done punching a time clock and I want to start my own thing. And were those guys I used to listen to, yeah, the Thrive Time guy, get it on school, get it on online business school, and be like, bam, bam, bam, bam, now you have your idea, you’re like, this widget will change the world. This widget will change everything.

(Speaker 28)
It’s brilliant.

(Speaker 4)
And then you’ll say now all I need is money to start it. So what I’m saying for this, save for a rainy day, because rainy days come. I know Southern California, you’re listening to our podcast right now, you do get rain every now and then. Of course, all the fires out there, I’m sorry to hear all the destruction, but you do need some more rain. But rainy days come, folks. So you need to have a savings, number one.

(Speaker 4)
If you own a business, you should be able to not make any money for a month and survive, all right?

(Speaker 53)
Oh, that’s huge.

(Speaker 4)
These are huge things, okay? And by getting a war chest, I call it a war chest, because starting a business, if you don’t think of it as going into battle, you really don’t have the right mindset to start it, okay? But having a war chest enables you now to put your own skin in the game, enables you to start your business, enables you to change your life, change your stars. So I know you may not have the business idea today. But you know what? You’ll have it down the road.

(Speaker 4)
Start saving today. I used to love when my DJ competitors would go out of business. They always put their gear for sale on Craigslist. For nothing. 30 cents on the dollar. On classifieds in the Tulsa world.

(Speaker 4)
Back in the day when the classified ads were a thing. Craig wasn’t even born yet.

(Speaker 3)
And I could buy that equipment for 10 cents on the dollar.

(Speaker 22)
Nothing like buying discounted DJ gear from a former competitor.

(Speaker 11)
Beautiful.

(Speaker 36)
Beautiful.

(Speaker 5)
But saving allows you to buy opportunities. Now, Z, for this next round of Name That Tune, just to show how locked in step we are, I’m going to just kind of cue it up here.

(Speaker 4)
This time, I will give a little bit of lyrics. OK? A little bit of lyrics. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

(Speaker 36)
Here we go.

(Speaker 5)
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could touch your body.

(Speaker 11)
I know not everybody has got a body like you What song is it?

(Speaker 4)
I have no idea. I know what it is, but I gotta think twice Before I give my heart away. I know all the games play because I play them too fuzzy It’s right said free.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, but I need some time off from that emotion fuzzy time to pick my nose

(Speaker 11)
I’m actually starting a cowbell band.

(Speaker 4)
We’re huge in Michigan on the wood huge huge Yeah, faith.

(Speaker 54)
You gotta have faith in the systems.

(Speaker 5)
You gotta believe that what you’re teaching actually works.

(Speaker 4)
These are principles that have been proven to work. And Z, these principles, you haven’t just sat around on a lily pad thinking, well, even though I have never started a company, here are principles that I want to teach someday. Nor do you make any money in the self -help industry.

(Speaker 32)
You just are a business owner who, by the way, has taken the time to distill the common denominators of the principles you’ve learned over the years.

(Speaker 4)
You know what’s sad is I have friends that make $100 ,000 and they’re broke.

(Speaker 5)
I have friends that make $500 ,000 and they’re broke.

(Speaker 4)
In other words, if you said, hey, can you write me a check for $5 ,000 or $10 ,000, I’d be like, no, bro. Why? I’m not a payday. Are you crazy? It’s the end of the month, see? Oh, wait.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, you can sit in my new jacuzzi just over there. Why would you ask about me? Anyway, the point is that it goes all across all socioeconomic dividers in the country. And that is that people aren’t saving. and we’re just we’re told not to we’re hey credit cards I mean there’s a whole culture of America spend money spend money spend money and a lot of that was formed back in the days of you know when we have social security take care of you we got your back end you know so a lot of that has trickled down to every generation but I’m telling you what folks use that piggy bank and the fact that you know it’s a pig it kind of fits with the old kind of you know business pig kind of tin business pig concepts you get it okay thank you But if you’re not saving, I would really encourage you to do it. Yeah, you may have to get rid of a third car.

(Speaker 4)
You may have to get rid of some other luxury item that you have. Third girlfriend. You may have to get rid of that. get rid of that.

(Speaker 5)
Second girlfriend.

(Speaker 4)
Even that.

(Speaker 26)
Third party in your marriage.

(Speaker 4)
You know, you may have to get rid of cable or you have to choose between cable or dish. I mean, I know it’s a tough thing. You don’t like to party. But wait, man, there’s things on dish that I can’t get on cable and vice versa, bro. Bro. So, bro, come on, man, bro.

(Speaker 31)
So here we go.

(Speaker 49)
We have six more principles in six minutes.

(Speaker 4)
Here we go.

(Speaker 3)
Oh God.

(Speaker 4)
Next principle.

(Speaker 5)
Are you kidding me? No. Principle number five. Showtime blue ribbon pig. What does that mean? That means that when you’re at work, when you’re doing your thing, the most important thing you can be doing is what you’re doing.

(Speaker 5)
And what I mean by that is this, is that there’s a lot of things that get in your brain throughout the day. You know, something going on at the house, the toilet’s plugged up at the business. I mean, did I wash my hands completely? But what I’m saying is, is that our society is so far out so much about not being there.

(Speaker 35)
I mean, I go around and I look at people in restaurants sitting there across the seat from each other, and they’re both sitting there on their phones.

(Speaker 4)
They’re like, they’re not even around each other. Here’s a picture of my food. So I used to have a little thing that I used to do, and I know this sounds silly and corny, but it worked for me, and that is every time before I’d walk into an exam room, I’d clear my head, and I’d say to myself, showtime, and the most important thing in the world, the most important thing right then and there, was to walk into that room, and to smile, to greet that patient, to connect with that patient, and to solve that patient’s problem, and to answer the age -old question of why are you here, and what can I do for you? without thinking about all the things that are pulling on me without thinking about the phone call I need to make without thinking about the guy that just yelled at me because a car was parked in the wrong spot out and just whatever all the stuff that happens all that peripheral stuff you know and I think that’s what happens a lot of times you see employees do this well they bring like you tell them that you know leave your family problems at the door when you come in the business it’s almost impossible to do I realize that I mean things affect us they’re at the front desk singing last Christmas I gave you my heart Employees though, seriously, there was a guy the other day at a local convenience store. I said, how are you?

(Speaker 4)
He goes, I’m good as soon as I get done with my shift. Yeah, exactly.

(Speaker 11)
And I go, okay.

(Speaker 4)
Inspiring. I mean, seriously. I said, how are you doing? Just like that.

(Speaker 72)
He goes, I’m good as soon as I get done with my shift.

(Speaker 9)
And I’m like, okay, well, so I’d like to go ahead and buy an ice drink and some gas.

(Speaker 5)
All right, whatever, bro. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. I mean, wow. Wow. So I wanted to hit him with the stick that I use to beat the cowbell.

(Speaker 4)
So if you own a business, say you own a construction business and you’re given a quote, Forget all the negative in your life.

(Speaker 11)
When you walk up, when you go, when you go to that family, then you’re going to talk about, give them a quote to build a pool in their backyard.

(Speaker 5)
You be connected with them and it’s show. And the showtime is showtime.

(Speaker 4)
It’s showtime.

(Speaker 11)
And that’s where you connect.

(Speaker 4)
That’s where you build your business. That’s where you make your money or those showtime events. And if you sit there and not your phone, your phone’s ringing the whole time.

(Speaker 5)
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Real quick. And now if you decide not to bring showtime every day, this is the motivational. This is what’s going to happen to you. See, if you decide not to bring show time on a daily basis. This is what is going to happen to you.

(Speaker 4)
And luckily, Z, we were able to mic somebody who is a former employee for one of my companies.

(Speaker 5)
He decided not to bring show time on a daily basis.

(Speaker 4)
And without his permission, I put a lifetime microphone.

(Speaker 5)
I embedded a chip deep inside his epidermis.

(Speaker 4)
He thought it was a flu shot.

(Speaker 71)
Right.

(Speaker 40)
And this is the motivational talk he recently gave to a group of young high school kids who talked to him about how they just didn’t want to bring show time.

(Speaker 34)
on a daily basis because they wanted to keep it real.

(Speaker 5)
They wanted to be transparent.

(Speaker 4)
Now, you kids are probably saying to yourselves, hey, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re probably gonna find out as you go out there that you’re not going to be Okay, so you don’t want that to happen to you. No, no.

(Speaker 5)
So you have to be purposeful and you also have to understand the important moments. It’s kind of like having a to -do list and there’s maybe one thing on the list that is a must -do today. It’s kind of the same thing.

(Speaker 33)
I mean, when I was getting ready to walk into that exam room, nothing else mattered.

(Speaker 5)
Nothing.

(Speaker 4)
nothing else it was show time and the show was for me to laser show given great eye exam connect with the person and Make them happy what I’ve seen a lot Z is that people just aren’t mentally aware of themselves, right?

(Speaker 5)
So when you’re saying show time look at yourself pay attention to actually how you’re acting not just how you feel Absolutely. So those are those moments. You have them throughout the day. And then when you’re out of the exam room and you’re out from in front of that patient, for example, and that’s my example that I have for my optometry clinics, then you go back in your office and then you can do all the stuff you need to do. Throw stuff against the wall.

(Speaker 4)
Big pig eats first at the trough.

(Speaker 5)
What is this principle? Principle number six. This is the one. This is the one across the board.

(Speaker 4)
Every time I give this speech, every time I talk about my ten principles, this is the one that gives me the most backlash.

(Speaker 5)
People can’t stand it. They cannot stand it. They cannot stand it. Poor people love to boo this one. Oh, they do. They will line up after you speak and they will sit there and berate you.

(Speaker 5)
Their hands, as soon as you ask for a question, the first question happens about this one.

(Speaker 11)
Excuse me, why do you hate people?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, why?

(Speaker 4)
Just curious.

(Speaker 32)
I don’t understand.

(Speaker 5)
I don’t understand your point six.

(Speaker 4)
Point six. Big pig eats first to the tree. What do you mean by this? I’m telling you what, folks. If you’re starting a business, this is going to be a concept. I don’t want this to sound mean, but it should be for you.

(Speaker 4)
For you. It should be for you. The business exists to serve you. It does. And so many times I hear people say, well, I want to open up a business to, uh, to serve the local community. I mean, to, yeah, to, you know, to change, you know, change, change people’s life.

(Speaker 5)
Don’t the life you’re going to change.

(Speaker 40)
most is yours.

(Speaker 5)
I’ll say it again. The life you’re going to change most is yours when you start a business.

(Speaker 4)
We’re going to teach you how to grow that thing.

(Speaker 29)
And then you’re going to figure out how to have time freedom and financial freedom.

(Speaker 4)
You know, kind of a segue on that, Jack Welch was giving a speech, was talking about, he had a bunch of his staff come to him and said they wanted him to create a green light bulb.

(Speaker 70)
Yeah, make it green.

(Speaker 5)
Make it green, you know, safe for the environment. It was safe for the environment. And you know what, let’s change the world with a green light bulb. And they did all the engineering on it and it was going to be like 10 times the cost. but not be that much more, you know, it’s not gonna last longer, it’s not gonna have those kind of features. I can see one that maybe lasts 10 times longer, being 10 times the cost.

(Speaker 4)
But it was just gonna be a green, environmentally safe sound, more sound product.

(Speaker 11)
Not like green, like green light.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, and Jack Welch says, oh, that’s a great idea, that’ll put us out of business, and then we can all go find other jobs. He goes, and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna make inexpensive light bulbs that do the same thing, and then make a lot of money, and then with that money, we can go change the world. There you go. And then we have a business. And so, so many times I see business owners really suffering because they have let other people take their business hostage. Principle number seven, I love this principle, happy as a pig in the mud.

(Speaker 5)
I love this principle because it’s so applicable for everybody out there. If you’re a business owner and you’ve ever had to decide what overhead music will be played, or what volume it will be played, or what decor you’re going to have, or where the decor will be, or what the logo is going to be, like or what the color of the logo is going to look like or made any decision at all.

(Speaker 4)
It is impossible to universally appease every single member of your team. But yet as a culture, we’re taught, you know, if you shouldn’t bring candy to school, they should bring enough candy for everybody else. You shouldn’t make a playlist unless everyone approves it.

(Speaker 11)
Everyone gets to chime in on a song. Z, talk to me about this idea of making an environment where you are happy as a pig in the mud.

(Speaker 4)
Well, here again, it goes back to this idea that your business and you have an idea of what you want for your business. Don’t let anybody take you hostage for it. And just a real quick thing that a gentleman came up to me the last time I was speaking and gave me this little love nugget. Love nugget. A little love nugget, and it was really fun.

(Speaker 15)
And the idea goes like something like that.

(Speaker 4)
There’s a book out there called The Bible.

(Speaker 33)
Bibble.

(Speaker 4)
Could be a Bibble. Either way. I think it’s Bible. And in there it says, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

(Speaker 11)
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

(Speaker 4)
And that implies that you have to love yourself first. Now, getting on to this point about picking the mud, I mean, I think that when you walk into your place, you should be so happy to be in there. It should have the right smell. It should have the right sound. The right people.

(Speaker 5)
The right people. They write everything about it because it’s yours. It’s your baby. And you don’t have to do the gamble of the genetic gamble, right? When you have a kid, you’re like, oh man, I just think it could go either way. And guess what?

(Speaker 4)
It’s yours.

(Speaker 5)
It’s yours.

(Speaker 4)
So when you’re business, think of it as a baby that you can create. And you need to make sure that you have an atmosphere that you love to be in, just like a pig loves to be in the wood. You know speaking of creating babies, one thing I just love, I just love this segment of the show. Okay, now, okay, now, okay, we’re moving on. He had to stop himself. Oh, he’s back!

(Speaker 4)
Chubb, I just wanted to say that you just look so nice in the light over there. Just something over there that says to me. I just want to email myself. I just emailed myself right now.

(Speaker 5)
I said, self, that is nice. Mm -hmm, that is nice. OK, so moving on now. Yes. Principal number eight, The O Show. Chip, I don’t know whether I want to move on right now.

(Speaker 4)
I just want to recycle it like it’s Al Gore’s birthday over and over. Just recycle, reuse it, reuse it.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s reduce.

(Speaker 4)
Principle number eight.

(Speaker 5)
Ocho, pig -headed, but don’t be a fool. Pig -headed, don’t be a fool.

(Speaker 4)
Z, what do you mean by pig -headed, but don’t be a fool?

(Speaker 5)
Be pig -headed, but don’t be a fool. Well, I mean, don’t be pig -headed. Don’t be a fool. Pig -headed is a term that people give that are people that are being foolish, that are being, you know, they don’t have any flexibility. They’re being pig -headed. They’re being a fool.

(Speaker 5)
And I, years ago, I had to… You, by the way, you have really worked wonders with me about this, because I’m somebody who loves to latch on… You were pig -headed when I met you. I do love, even to this day, I love to latch on to principles. You know, like, I’ll wear the same thing every day. Right, and that’s okay.

(Speaker 5)
And then you’re like, Clay, you got to flow though. There’s like water going around the rock. There’s no need, there’s a time and place for rock, but you don’t need to like, and this could happen if you’re somebody who’s very principled in your religious views or your worldviews, this can be very tough to learn this. This is a very valuable lesson for me and many people out there like me. Talk to me about Don’t be a pig -headed fool. But you also have to be resolved to certain principles.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, give us the balance. Yeah, well, there is a balance, thank you for asking. And so there’s so many principles and so many things I can talk about.

(Speaker 4)
One of the things I really want to encourage everybody out there on a side note, sidebar, is your top five friends around you, if any of them are not encouraging, edifying, and life -giving people at this point,

(Speaker 5)
we call the… they suck the joy and the bone marrow out of you when you’re around them, get rid of them. If they’re not… if they’re idiots, you know what I mean by that. I’m not being hateful. I’m just like, if they’re just people that take you down the wrong road over and over, they’re negative people. What do you say when punting people that are negative perpetually? What do I say to them?

(Speaker 5)
What do you say? Well, I just… I tell them that they’re fired from my life. Do you do this really quickly? Yeah, nobody. Here’s the thing, folks.

(Speaker 5)
Nobody likes to be ghosted. This whole ghosting concept to just kind of forget.

(Speaker 4)
You know, I got a new phone, lost your number. Who are you?

(Speaker 25)
You know, all this kind of stuff, all the jackass where you do.

(Speaker 56)
I have purposely sat down with a few men in my life.

(Speaker 4)
And I said, listen, I’m just gonna tell you right now that I’m I’m I’m just not gonna spend as much time with you.

(Speaker 11)
And I’m and I’m moving on.

(Speaker 5)
And I’m moving on your seat. And, you know, so have a nice life.

(Speaker 4)
But don’t don’t be offended if I don’t, you know, text you back immediately or I don’t call you back or we’re not seeing each other, I’m moving on.

(Speaker 18)
My time, I’m busy, I’ve got things to do and you can kind of soft sell a little bit to them.

(Speaker 13)
You don’t want to be mean. On the flip side, you’re being mean to yourself by being a fool and having those kind of people have access to you.

(Speaker 5)
Now in business, you have to make your decisions, what’s best for the business? And yes, sometimes somebody may be in there to scam you out of whatever, whatever, whatever. But understand this, what’s best for the business? We had a patient come in, And the lady came in, she was really upset about her glasses she had picked out. Well, they fit her fine, the prescription was fine, everything was good on them. It was very fine.

(Speaker 5)
And I think what happened was that she went home and one of her kids or her husband made a comment that they didn’t like the way they looked on her.

(Speaker 21)
And that got her all twisted, you know?

(Speaker 5)
And so she couldn’t just come in. She didn’t think she could come in and say, you know what? I made a mistake in picking out this style or color or frame. She kind of went out.

(Speaker 4)
There was a little edgy. She kind of went out there.

(Speaker 38)
It was kind of fun.

(Speaker 44)
Looked good on her.

(Speaker 4)
But she came in and she was just, so she thought she had to come in, kind of be demonstrative and be like, I can’t see.

(Speaker 13)
I can’t see anything in these glasses. These glasses are horrible. I need my money back on these glasses. Good Lord, I can’t see anything.

(Speaker 5)
These glasses are terrible. Unbelievable. I can’t even see ya. I can’t believe you sold these to me. I swear, Robert, you as a tailor.

(Speaker 70)
Are you going back in time?

(Speaker 4)
I’m calling the BBB. I’m calling the… And so then you just calm them down. You go, whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s okay. It’s okay.

(Speaker 5)
It’s okay. You know, let’s… And so then my staff came in too going, they’re fine.

(Speaker 4)
She’s just trying to, you know… She could be patient for life and that’s so many more transactions.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s take care of her now I we realized we did the right thing on this and she’s not doing the right thing on this Let’s not be a fool and try to challenge her on say no you paid for it. You picked him out We spent the 45 minutes helping you pick him out. We were there. No, that’s your deal Now if you want another something else, we’ll do it.

(Speaker 4)
No, no, no, we backed up.

(Speaker 69)
We said, you know what?

(Speaker 5)
We’re gonna have to eat eat some of this, but that’s okay. We made her happy. You back that thing up. Yeah. Listen, listen, listen.

(Speaker 4)
And I looked at her and I said, listen, for whatever reason you want to exchange those for another pair. That’s okay. It’s okay.

(Speaker 34)
Just settle down.

(Speaker 5)
It’s okay.

(Speaker 4)
That’s all right.

(Speaker 25)
We’re here to help you.

(Speaker 4)
We want you to be happy.

(Speaker 5)
We want you to see clearly, comfortably and be happy with your choice. Amen. Final two principles from the Business Pig. These are, again, Business Pig principles taught by Dr. Robert Zoellner. The ten Business Pig principles for success that he has used to grow multiple multi -million dollar companies.

(Speaker 4)
Principle number nine.

(Speaker 11)
Three little pigs.

(Speaker 5)
What do you mean by that?

(Speaker 4)
It’s so awesome. Well, if you show up on December 7th and 8th, which is our next in -person workshop, I think we have a few tickets left.

(Speaker 5)
Do we play or are we all sold out? We’re down to the top.

(Speaker 4)
We’re down to the final 20. Okay, we got 20 tickets left. So if you’re listening to this, come on out. One of the things we teach is whenever you’re advertising, marketing, you want to have three different branches of that. We call it the three -legged stool.

(Speaker 11)
You can call it some other things, but in the story, the three pigs, the person that used just one, i .

(Speaker 4)
e.

(Speaker 34)
straw, form of advertising, got his house blown away by The Wolf.

(Speaker 4)
And The Wolf denotes your competitors.

(Speaker 5)
Because I know this sounds mean, but your competitors don’t have a lot of love for you.

(Speaker 4)
They might greet your hand and smile when you’re in Costco with them, or Reesers, or, you know, Walmart. They may slap you on the back and ask you how, you know. Good to see you there, Dr. Robertson. I love to see you. I’m so glad you’re here right now. Hope you’re doing well, yes, of course, you know.

(Speaker 5)
Can’t buy your groceries for you, in fact. Burns, did you cut his brake line? Yeah, right. I mean, just kidding, right? I mean, they are like they are like the wolf in the story. The second one used just sticks, I believe something like that, or mud trying to remember now.

(Speaker 5)
And so boom, blown away again. And the third one had a combination. See, in order to make a brick, you take straw, you take the clay, you take some other components, sulfur, I’m trying to remember what it was. Two parts will pass.

(Speaker 38)
Smash it with your hooves.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, you big it down, you know. And now I’m saying by having three different areas, you build your house, it withstood the enemy, which was your business wolf down the road.

(Speaker 4)
If you don’t have three ways to market your business all going simultaneously, you will lose. And that’s what we teach in our workshop. To me, it was a camera. I thought one of three, three, three, three bags. Very practical, elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge, one of my companies. We never, Chep, you see the ads, we never stop our Facebook ads, never stop our YouTube ads, never stop our retargeting ads.

(Speaker 4)
That’s our digital presence.

(Speaker 13)
Yep.

(Speaker 4)
Then we never stop getting online reviews, ever. Ever.

(Speaker 32)
And we never stop putting out our signs and doing our mailers.

(Speaker 4)
That’s the way it works. We just never stop.

(Speaker 37)
Never do it, never stop.

(Speaker 14)
And that’s how we get in new customers week after week.

(Speaker 5)
Final principle we’re going to teach you as we’re short for time.

(Speaker 11)
Principle number 10.

(Speaker 4)
Dr. Z, let the fun begin here.

(Speaker 5)
Here we go.

(Speaker 68)
Pig advice.

(Speaker 27)
Well, let’s fire through these.

(Speaker 4)
You can kind of see how you can have some fun with each one of these.

(Speaker 11)
But if you’re a pig, give me another pig advice.

(Speaker 4)
What would you say?

(Speaker 3)
You’d say, Hey, listen, buddy, once you eat well, keep your snout clean.

(Speaker 5)
Never smoke.

(Speaker 4)
on your friends.

(Speaker 11)
That’s so big.

(Speaker 24)
Don’t be gossiping.

(Speaker 11)
Don’t be talking about other people in the workplace, especially, all right?

(Speaker 32)
Come on, now.

(Speaker 4)
Be curious.

(Speaker 33)
I mean, a pig is curious by nature.

(Speaker 5)
And that’s one of the things that I love to see, when I see a young person that’s curious, because that curiosity leads to inventions, leads to businesses, leads to ideas to grow, start businesses. I’m curious, do you know the next song that I’m gonna choose for name that tune, the final song I’m gonna choose?

(Speaker 4)
This is for 4 ,000 megapoints.

(Speaker 23)
Ooh, 4 ,000.

(Speaker 53)
Now, Chuck, if you get it wrong, or a right, there’s 4 ,000 megapoints involved here for the right.

(Speaker 4)
For the wrong, you lose a total of 5 ,000 megapoints, which means you’re going to have to wear a Christmas suit at the Christmas party. So, uh, Chup, I’m gonna, I’m gonna play the song, and the category is gonna be songs that were sang by men. Okay. Here we go, Chup.

(Speaker 11)
Are you ready?

(Speaker 24)
I’m ready.

(Speaker 53)
Super easy one, by the way.

(Speaker 50)
Let me try again here.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. I got it. I feel like that was a Madonna song, Clay. Nope.

(Speaker 5)
First off, Madonna’s not a man. I know, I know.

(Speaker 24)
She’s aggressively… Okay, give me one more time.

(Speaker 5)
Listen, listen, listen. First off, you need to deal with your whole gender bender confusion thing.

(Speaker 20)
I thought you said man, and then it was a Madonna song, and it’s…

(Speaker 5)
Listen, I’m gonna go back. Here we go. Can I tell you the song? Okay, Z, let me tell you.

(Speaker 11)
I know where I got confused.

(Speaker 5)
What was it?

(Speaker 4)
It was Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue.

(Speaker 11)
No.

(Speaker 5)
No.

(Speaker 4)
Okay, Z, here we go. Go for it. This harkens back, this one’s a special one, because it harkens back to Clay’s college days.

(Speaker 32)
Ryan Tedder, one of his good friends, now does One Republic.

(Speaker 9)
What does it say? Apologize. It’s too late to apologize. It’s too late. Gotta weave in the Timbaland beating of the seal.

(Speaker 4)
That’s what made this song a hit. But he’s cleaned it up and have the other version out now. I think that was more of a gray whale. Okay. That you made there. Could be.

(Speaker 4)
Okay, nice. So if you’re out there and you’re saying to yourself, you know what, these 10 prints, are principles that I need to apply in my own life and business, go to thrivetimeshow .com,

(Speaker 67)
com, click on the podcast button, there you can find each and every archived broadcast, and Z has two final pig jokes.

(Speaker 5)
This is by George Bernard Shaw. Never wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Wait, wait, wait. There you go. Okay. And this next one’s from the great, I mean, the great Winston Churchill.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, come on. Really? I am fond of pigs.

(Speaker 4)
Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.

(Speaker 66)
Pigs treat us as equals.

(Speaker 65)
It tastes great, too.

(Speaker 4)
You know, a sidebar, a sidebar, the pig is the animal that has the closest internal organ systems as a human does. That’s a little sidebar there. Look at this guy.

(Speaker 64)
A little science, a little science going on there.

(Speaker 4)
I think he could have just known that by just looking at it. Have you ever seen a pig’s colon? Yes, actually. It’s called sausage. Sausage. Want to attend the legendary Thrive Time Show business workshop for free?

(Speaker 5)
Subscribe on iTunes, leave an objective review, and send us confirmation at info at thrivetimeshow . com to claim your tickets. Want to live in a van down by the river? Come by and see us at our Riverwalk offices, and we’ll be able to make your dreams come true. All right, Z, we’re back. We have 10 bonus questions.

(Speaker 5)
And here are the rules, Z, for the final bonus 10 questions, all right? I’m going to ask you the 10 questions. And per question, you have approximately three minutes to answer the question. Should you go over?

(Speaker 63)
It’s your show.

(Speaker 35)
You do what you want.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, my.

(Speaker 34)
But three minutes.

(Speaker 4)
would be preferable so we have enough time to get all the questions oh perfect okay here we go so question number one coming in hot what have been the hardest trade -offs that you have had to make in order to become successful who the hardest trade -offs that I had to do yeah it was delaying gratification number one Number two was choosing to spend time with the people I spent time with. In other words, I had to say no to people I really kind of wanted to spend time with, but I couldn’t do it all. Also too, another, I remember when I was a dishwasher, when I was a teenager, I was a professional dishwasher. You may not know that. Oh, you probably do. I never went to a high school football game because I was always working because Friday nights were the big money nights.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, that’s, you know, hey, date night and the couple’s out and I’m busting. I get tipped out by the waiters at the end of the night.

(Speaker 5)
So, you know, you make decisions, you make choices and you have to then live with them. And so I think one trade off that you’ve made that you did not just say and I looked at it from the outside. So if you disagree with me, it’s fine. Oh, no, no. Go ahead. I feel like you’ve held yourself.

(Speaker 5)
and your businesses to a certain high standard, which has caused you to have friction that you don’t often talk about on the show. But you’ve held employees and people accountable to a certain standard, right? Right.

(Speaker 4)
So eventually, I’m sure you’ve never been screwed over.

(Speaker 5)
You’ve never had a key employee leave you. I’ve never had someone try to download your database and give it to a competitor.

(Speaker 24)
I’m sure you’ve never involved in litigation.

(Speaker 4)
I’m sure you’ve never had people that you’d call buddies or friends or even family screw you and get mad at you as a result of you holding yourself and the company to a high standard.

(Speaker 43)
Has this ever happened to you, my friend?

(Speaker 21)
Oh, of course it has.

(Speaker 4)
And if you’re successful, you know, you’re going to have those challenges. and you have to you have to overcome them and then you have to make decisions and I think that you’re answering your question on on what did I say no to at times there were you know times I would miss when my kids were real little I would miss time being around them but then I was purposeful knowing that you know when they’re one I don’t think they’re gonna remember too much I think I’m safe there you know but when they’re ten it’s a whole different game then. You know, then they remember, then they get a little fussy if you’re not there. So, you know, hopefully you start your business before your kids come around, and then you kind of build it while they’re young, and then when they get a little older, you can actually carve a little time out for them, because that’s very important. You know, we just did an interview with Daniel Goldman. He’s probably the top psychologist on the planet, and I asked him a question at the end of the show, you know, my last kind of hitting question.

(Speaker 4)
I said, if you could go back, you know, in time a couple decades ago, what would you tell yourself? And he paused and he said, spend more time with my kids. I thought that was powerful. Powerful.

(Speaker 5)
OK.

(Speaker 24)
These questions are hot, hot, hot questions.

(Speaker 5)
Hot sauce.

(Speaker 4)
Next question, question number two.

(Speaker 5)
I give you time to think about this. Here we go. When building your businesses, did you ever partner with somebody that wanted to grow past your original goals?

(Speaker 3)
So you had a goal for, let’s say, the auction, or the optometry clinic, or some business you’re involved in.

(Speaker 5)
And somebody who worked for you, and they You set an original goal, I’m just making it up, to sell 500 cars every Friday.

(Speaker 62)
But they wanted to grow well beyond that goal.

(Speaker 5)
Has that ever happened to you? Ironically, it hasn’t. I’m sitting here thinking about all the businesses I’ve started. It hasn’t. I mean, I’m a pretty aggressive guy by nature, and I set pretty high goals. So my goals were always a tad bit higher than them.

(Speaker 4)
And when I say partners, I mean, even like a good general manager, I kind of feel as intrigued as a partner.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, I think that that’s, you know, when I introduce some of my general managers, I say, you know, even introduce them as my partner, you know, because you are a partner in the growing of the business. And that term doesn’t have to mean that they have stock or that they’re, you know, financially, they are financially invested, because if the business doesn’t do well, guess what? Chicken butt.

(Speaker 4)
They lose their job, you know? I mean, it is all profit sharing, because if there’s no profit, you can’t share anything. Okay, okay.

(Speaker 5)
More questions about humans working with humans. Okay.

(Speaker 34)
All right.

(Speaker 21)
do you handle insubordination?

(Speaker 4)
Do you move past it or deal with it right then?

(Speaker 5)
Now, quick caveat.

(Speaker 4)
I’m giving you these questions because people ask these questions.

(Speaker 61)
I know how you handle this.

(Speaker 4)
I do know. So this is not me asking.

(Speaker 60)
I’m just saying, I know now, but when there’s somebody who is just out of their mind, but you can’t fire them, How do you handle it?

(Speaker 5)
When there’s somebody out of their mind and you can fire them, how do you handle it? I mean, just when someone’s insubordinate, talk to us, how do you handle these scenarios? Can I tell you a story? Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
And in this story, you’ll see how I handle it. Oh, nice.

(Speaker 5)
OK. So I have at the time, I believe I had five, maybe six doctors working for me. Yes. And you were open seven days a week. So there’s a big schedule and people are working hard. Right.

(Speaker 4)
And we’re extremely busy. Yes. All that fun stuff.

(Speaker 5)
And so I had one of my female doctors, her name will remain nameless, came up to me and said my husband got transferred and I’m unfortunately going to have to leave.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t want to, but I have to keep my marriage together, that kind of thing.

(Speaker 5)
I said, well, I absolutely respect that. She said, our deal was for me to give you 30 day notice. I’m giving you my 30 day notice.

(Speaker 46)
It’s very fair.

(Speaker 5)
And I said, you know, I do. We did an appropriate hug. H . R. would’ve been happy.

(Speaker 59)
Nice side hug.

(Speaker 4)
High five. High five.

(Speaker 30)
Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
Then a high five.

(Speaker 32)
High five’s kind of my move anymore.

(Speaker 5)
It’s quick.

(Speaker 58)
It’s quicker.

(Speaker 5)
It’s quicker.

(Speaker 4)
Or a fist bump. Fist bump’s really good.

(Speaker 29)
Fist bump’s good.

(Speaker 5)
But girls really don’t.

(Speaker 4)
Elbow bump from across the room.

(Speaker 5)
That’s the new move.

(Speaker 4)
That’s another thing too.

(Speaker 5)
And so I was like, OK, well, I got to get to I got to get to work.

(Speaker 4)
So I set up my desk.

(Speaker 5)
I’m starting to get online. I’m starting to get a letter started up to send out. Looking for good people. Looking for a good person, a good doctor. And a little while later, I hear a knock on the door. There you go.

(Speaker 5)
Open the door. It’s another one of my doctors. It just coincidentally happened to be another female doctor. Real quick, I want to clarify. Did the door sound like this or more like that? More like the second one.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, the second one. OK, continue. So she comes in, and I say, well, hello, how are you? And she says, I’m doing great.

(Speaker 4)
I said, well, I’m doing fantastic.

(Speaker 57)
That’s fabulous.

(Speaker 18)
So we go to our pleasantries, and she says, well, can I shut the door?

(Speaker 4)
May I shut the door?

(Speaker 25)
May I shut the door?

(Speaker 4)
It never goes well when the door gets shut. It’s just a general rule of thumb. That’s just a rule. It’s just a rule, not hard and fast. Unless it’s a marital discussion, and you shut the door. It could be a good thing.

(Speaker 4)
It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing.

(Speaker 26)
It could be a good thing.

(Speaker 4)
It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing.

(Speaker 4)
It could be a good thing. It could be a good thing. It could be a And she looks at me and she says, I hate to say this, or I hate to do this.

(Speaker 27)
With all due respect.

(Speaker 56)
I go, well, I’m thinking of my break, then why are you doing it if you hate to do it?

(Speaker 32)
Why are you doing it?

(Speaker 5)
She said, well, I just heard that so -and -so is putting her 30 -day notice.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 5)
And, well, I just want you to know that I’m going to have to put in my 30 -day notice if I don’t get a pay raise and a schedule change.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, well, that seems cool. It seems the way you negotiate those kind of things. First off, I’m sure you negotiated your facial expression. Oh, I was just concerned. You’re the best poker player ever. And I’m listening with deep concern, and I’m nodding, and I’m listening.

(Speaker 4)
And then she said, I know it’s going to be hard to replace one, and two, that’s going to be really tough on you. And I hate to put you in that position, but that’s where I am. And I stopped.

(Speaker 55)
It took me about not even half a second.

(Speaker 5)
I smiled, and I said, you know what? You’ve been such a great employee. I think you deserve a raise. And that schedule, we should have given you that cheesy, sweet, scheduled… long time ago. You get both of those things.

(Speaker 5)
In fact, let’s make them start today. And she smiled real big, and she’s really good. Absolutely would never want to lose you.

(Speaker 4)
And what am I really thinking in the back of my mind?

(Speaker 16)
You’re fired.

(Speaker 4)
I’ve got to go hire two now. Now, OK.

(Speaker 5)
Whoa, whoa, whoa.

(Speaker 4)
I want to just break this down. OK. Because there’s somebody out there that right away is struggling with this. And I want the people out there to know this.

(Speaker 54)
John Kelly.

(Speaker 5)
Marshall knew me when I was the other way.

(Speaker 54)
So the other way was immediately, and I don’t know if you ever saw me do it, but immediately I would just fire you at the first sign of insubordination.

(Speaker 44)
And then I would always, as a penalty, have to DJ.

(Speaker 4)
Marshall, every weekend I’d DJ. I’m serious. If someone was insubordinate to me, they’d say, you know what? I don’t appreciate. Because what happened? You’d come back from the show, and your CDs have to be organized in order.

(Speaker 4)
The CDs have to be alphabetized. I’d open up the case.

(Speaker 5)
And I would, if you hear that this person I saw, that their CD case was disorganized, and I would say, we need to go ahead and organize them very nicely.

(Speaker 4)
And they’d go, whatever, dude.

(Speaker 5)
And if they said that to me, I said, excuse me, what did you just say?

(Speaker 44)
Whatever, dude.

(Speaker 5)
I go, whatever, dude, your ass is fired. And I was like, yes!

(Speaker 4)
Yes!

(Speaker 5)
Woo!

(Speaker 4)
Yeah! And then you started to sort out the CD case. And then I had to DJ every night. We had to get the CDs in alphabetical order first.

(Speaker 50)
This continued, though, for almost a decade, OK?

(Speaker 4)
So when you taught me this story, this was like Matrix for me. So immediately I did the move. This is what I shouldn’t have done, but everyone does this. I did it. Whenever you struggle to understand a principle, understand how chess is played, this is the question I asked you. Is that ethical?

(Speaker 34)
Yes, of course.

(Speaker 5)
I remember Man Cave, I said, is that ethical? Absolutely.

(Speaker 4)
I tell you what, employees will quit you on their time, and we feel like it’s bad for us to fire them on our time.

(Speaker 33)
And that’s just not the way that it is.

(Speaker 5)
It’s your business.

(Speaker 4)
You deal with it the way you want to deal with it. So what I did is I went out and hired two new doctors. I got them in place. And about a month later, about a month, I called her up to my room. Hey, could you send so -and -so doctor so -and -so up to my office right now? She comes bee -bopping in and she’s in a fantastic mood.

(Speaker 4)
She’s coming in there be bothered. I mean, she’s coming. She’s like, you know, this has been the best month of my life She’s bopping the beep. I got the pay raise. I’ve always wanted I got the schedule that allows me to do that. This is that the dissing things are great I mean, you know I have I have audio of what she was what she heard in her mind when you called up the office because last time she Came up there.

(Speaker 4)
She got a raise got the schedule. She wanted things were great.

(Speaker 5)
So this is what she was hearing in her mind Yes!

(Speaker 4)
Here it comes! He might be giving me another raise! Unbelievable! Oh, yes! The great benevolent dictator calls me out. This is how Rodman probably felt every time that Kim Jong -un sent him a text.

(Speaker 4)
Benevolent dictator, this is great! So she walks into my office, and I’m going to save any entrepreneur out there, any business owner, hours, hours of your life. Come on now. Hours of your life. I looked at her and I said, uh doctor so and so things just aren’t working out you’re fired in fact you were fired 30 days ago i just now get the privilege of being able to say it i love that pack up your stuff i love that story and hit the road joe i know that that story is not in any way sexual, but it’s sexual to me. It’s that good.

(Speaker 4)
It’s that good. It’s an orgasmic story for business. And I can’t make something up that clever.

(Speaker 5)
No, it’s so good.

(Speaker 4)
It actually happened. It did. I’m like, are you kidding me, people? And not only that, but it happens metaphorically daily. Sure. In all the businesses.

(Speaker 53)
So this is the question I’d like to ask you then.

(Speaker 4)
So let’s say that you know that that employee is screwing you. The contractor’s taking advantage of you. You know it. You know it. You know it. And they know it, and you know that they know it.

(Speaker 4)
Everyone knows it. Everyone knows it. How long do you pretend like everything’s OK because you need them to keep doing their job?

(Speaker 33)
How long?

(Speaker 4)
Until I can replace them, unless I want to do the work. Now, I could have fired her that day, and I could have, you know, dusted off my scrubs and picked up a few more days, and I could have gone in there and got down in the, you know, the… You know about my punching my brother, don’t you?

(Speaker 14)
I told you about this story.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, gosh, yeah. This is a funny story for all the Thrivers out there. My dad contracted it. He got ALS, came down with ALS, was diagnosed with the disease. And we talked. It was really funny.

(Speaker 4)
My dad goes, son, I’m going to be dead soon, so I’ve got a couple of questions, a couple of asks. I said, what’s up? I’m trying to keep it light. He can still talk fine.

(Speaker 21)
He goes, I want to record a video so I can share with you some things I want to share with you on video for you and your brother.

(Speaker 4)
And I know you guys don’t get along at all, because you never have.

(Speaker 52)
And I know you don’t like each other.

(Speaker 4)
And I know, but just until I’m dead, could you please, when he, if he talks to you and antagonizes you, because I’ve seen it happen, would you please just go with it, go with the flow? And I’m going, OK. That seems like a reasonable request. Yeah, so we go to my dad’s house. And right away, I parked my Hummer over here, parked my Hummer over there. And my brother says to me, could you move the Hummer?

(Speaker 5)
And I think, yeah, I could move the Hummer. So I move the Hummer. And then the whole day is like, hey, is your vehicle, by the way, how much gas mileage does it get? I’m like, it’s like eight. He goes, oh, OK, pretty environmentally responsible of you, right? And I go, OK.

(Speaker 5)
And then he’s like, hey, did you vote for Trump? And I said, yeah.

(Speaker 4)
And he’s like, OK, so you, as a Judeo -Christian, you like a guy who’s had multiple affairs his whole life, who really just is morally reprehensible. That’s your guy, right? And I’m like, OK.

(Speaker 5)
And then it’s like the entire day is like this.

(Speaker 4)
I’ll just try to get you to take the bait. And I’m not kidding. I made a mental commitment to my wife. I’m like, I am not going to knock him out until his body is in the ground. So that was like my thing. And I put up with it for so long.

(Speaker 4)
And after the funeral, I knocked him out. Bam. But I mean, I had to do a back story. At my dad’s funeral, you know, he’s talking about how just he’s not happy about the way he was raised and not happy.

(Speaker 31)
And I’m telling you, it was so hard for me.

(Speaker 4)
The family, it’s hilarious, but the family that gets me, there’s a few of them. One guy, he was a pastor of a megachurch. He texts me and he says, this is the text message, I’ll never forget it. He goes, what your brother said at the funeral was effed up.

(Speaker 41)
And he types it out and hits send.

(Speaker 4)
And you know there’s that correction tool? Oh yeah. And he’s like, good job. But the rest of the family’s like, why would you hit him? Why would you do that?

(Speaker 5)
Why would you do that? And I just hit block, block, block, block, block. And I’ve been the happiest guy since that moment. But I mean, I was delaying gratification for the longest time. And I think, I’m serious.

(Speaker 4)
And I do that all the time. I remember elephant in the room.

(Speaker 36)
We had a person who worked for us, this is at the very beginning, who I knew was duly employed for us and the company he was starting.

(Speaker 5)
Like, he literally was starting his own company while working for us. Sure. But he was in my brother -in -law’s wedding, and I didn’t have the heart to tell my brother -in -law at that moment, because he’s getting married, like, that day. Sure. Like, hey, by the way, in the last week, I’ve discovered that your best man is screwing us. Yes.

(Speaker 4)
And I just told him after the wedding.

(Speaker 5)
And I don’t regret doing that.

(Speaker 4)
I think there’s a lot of timing things.

(Speaker 5)
There’s timing.

(Speaker 4)
I think there’s time.

(Speaker 28)
But I think, initially, I used to feel like, I got to tell somebody right away.

(Speaker 4)
feel bad well it’s like that song you know living on Tulsa time you should be living on your time living on your time timing is a huge thing though isn’t it is it timing huge oh it is and and as a business owner as an entrepreneur you have to do it what’s best for you always always put it through that filter of what’s best for the business.

(Speaker 43)
What’s best for the business?

(Speaker 40)
And sometimes it’s you eating what you want to say and then smiling and being nice and going with the flow and knowing it’s just a little season.

(Speaker 4)
It’s just a little moment.

(Speaker 51)
It’s just a little hot minute.

(Speaker 42)
A hot minute you’re getting through, but you’ll get through it.

(Speaker 4)
And then once you get things in place, then you can drop that.

(Speaker 50)
Let’s say that something really irritates you, really makes you mad?

(Speaker 14)
How long do you now allow something to make you mad before you get over it?

(Speaker 16)
How long does it take you to get over something that’s really just making you mad?

(Speaker 4)
I mean, you’re talking about an employee doing something, or you’re talking about just anything? Well, it doesn’t work. It’s like, OK, as an example, John Kelly, you can relate to this. John Kelly wanted an identification badge to get into the Riverwalk office, OK? He asked somebody, can I get an ID badge? The person said, yes, I’ll get it to you tomorrow.

(Speaker 4)
And this went on. John, you could yell it out. How many weeks was it? Two weeks, four weeks, three weeks? Was it four and a half weeks? Four and a half weeks.

(Speaker 4)
Four and a half weeks.

(Speaker 5)
Every day, it’s like, hey, could you get me an ID badge? Yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow. For four and a half weeks, and then finally, I look over there and I watched John having this discussion and then John just went off and I let it happen to me. I was like, this is awesome. This is so good. This is a cage fight that has needed to happen for a long time. But for John, it was four and a half weeks of needing an ID card every morning.

(Speaker 5)
But then I think he got over it really quick. I think he was mad there and then it was good.

(Speaker 4)
But again, John does a very good job of recovering real quickly. How long does it take you? Yeah, the older I get, the less mad I get and the less unless I stay mad.

(Speaker 49)
I mean, I try to do it immediately, you know, because I always focus on the positive, focus on the good, and so when something bad happens, and bad’s gonna happen, you’re already kind of pre -set up for it.

(Speaker 4)
You already know, I mean, the idea that someone’s going through the day thinking, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize something bad might happen today. How do I handle this? I actually think now, why hasn’t something bad happened yet? And I wish it would happen earlier in the day. So I just get it over with. Right.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, get it out of the way. So I think there’s some ways that you can think about things. And you should, whenever something comes up that irritates you, you can let it grab a hold of you.

(Speaker 5)
And you can be irritated.

(Speaker 4)
I’ve seen people be irritated.

(Speaker 5)
The rest of their lives. Their lives. I mean, I know people that have held on to grudges for 30, 40, 50 years. People talking about the breakup that happened 10 years ago.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, my goodness.

(Speaker 26)
You know, the divorce that happened 30 years ago.

(Speaker 4)
30 years ago. I mean, are you kidding me?

(Speaker 5)
It’s still fresh. Fresh wound. Too soon. It’s too soon. It’s too soon. Too soon.

(Speaker 5)
Stop telling the Whitney jokes. It’s too soon. It’s too soon. It’s too soon. Okay. Now, if you could give advice to your younger self right now.

(Speaker 5)
You’re saying, younger self, okay.

(Speaker 24)
Here we are.

(Speaker 5)
You’re now 30. And I am 58, because I am you in the distant future. No, no, I’m 54, because I’m the current me. But I’m talking to my past self. The point is, you’re 30. I’m 54.

(Speaker 5)
This is what I want to tell you. Stop doing this, and life will be better. Or start doing this. What advice would you give to your 30 -year -old self now that you are at the ripe old age of 54? I would have invested in real estate sooner. I would have grown faster.

(Speaker 5)
I would have delayed even more. I would have been more aggressive in opening up more businesses sooner. And that’s what I told myself. I said, listen, you’re you’re you got a great life ahead of you. You go get them. Just just go a little faster.

(Speaker 5)
So this is this is a question that may be a little rough. And if you don’t like it, I’ll pick up on that because you won’t answer probably. But for somebody out there who has family. OK.

(Speaker 4)
And their family wants, they yearn to be an entrepreneur.

(Speaker 27)
Uncles, sisters, cousins, sons, brothers, whatever.

(Speaker 4)
They say, I want to, I see your success, Dr. Z. and I want it. Sure. Everyone can make that statement verbally. Sure. But when it is abundantly clear that they do not have the work ethic or the grind needed to do it, how do you handle that?

(Speaker 4)
I tell them not to quit their day job. And if they want to do something on the side, start it really, really, really, really, really small and see how they go. and what’ll happen is, or what’s even better is I say, I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t you get me a, why don’t we, you know what? That’s your best move, by the way. Before you jump into it, why don’t you get me, why don’t you get me, let’s go over a business plan.

(Speaker 4)
Why don’t you make a business plan? And then that just kills it right there. Because, you know, they don’t have the work ethic to even make a business plan. So have you ever had to sit down with somebody in your extended family, and again, just, we can be very vague, so it’s very safe. Very safe. Where you sit down with someone who is just perpetually failing in the game of business, and you’ve had to sit down and give them that tough love that wasn’t wanted, or do you just let it go?

(Speaker 4)
I mean, if somebody fairly close to you is just bombing time and time again, how do you have that conversation, or do you? That’s a very good question. And you know, there’s a lot of different categories that that can come into. Some of it is they’re bombing affecting me financially. If it is, then I feel like I have the open window to talk to them and give them the hard talk, okay? Because now I’m financially involved in the bad decisions that they’re making.

(Speaker 4)
And that’s happened, and that’s no fun. And that’s, you know, me bringing out the paddle and the black hat and explaining how the cow ate the cabbage. And then trying to get a plan and then trying to put some guardrails on this deal to where, you know, we could turn it around or make it better. The other one is casual friends that you just see they’re just headed for a train wreck.

(Speaker 5)
And you sometimes you sometimes if sometimes I’ll say, well, would you like some advice?

(Speaker 4)
And oftentimes, they don’t want advice.

(Speaker 5)
They think they have it nailed down.

(Speaker 4)
They think they have it going on.

(Speaker 5)
Gotta unlock.

(Speaker 4)
And I think that’s one of the strengths of why we started Thrive 15, why we started our online business school, why we started the radio show, the podcast, the in -person workshops, the one -on -one business coaching.

(Speaker 18)
It’s because you don’t know what you don’t know.

(Speaker 4)
And a lot of times you can see things. And is it mean not to, not to mention it? Well, I think it is. It’s kind of like, um, sir, you’re getting ready to run over your foot. I mean, you want to, you’re, you’re, you know, you can help point things out in a way. Now, some people are receptive to it.

(Speaker 5)
You know, some people listen to our podcast and learn from it. We get a lot of testimonials, you know, emails back and going, Hey, this has been a game changer, a life changer. Thank you so much guys.

(Speaker 4)
And so, you know, those who have ears to listen, I mean, you know, we’re talking and listen and we’re helping and anything we’re not covering that you need to be covered. Email us. Ask us.

(Speaker 5)
That’s what we’re doing today.

(Speaker 4)
This is one of these Ask Us segments.

(Speaker 3)
But different categories, Clay.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, you’ve had to see some young men that you see were train wrecks.

(Speaker 45)
What’s the best, what’s the worst way you’ve handled that over the course of your life?

(Speaker 4)
Well, I did something I regret. And maybe you and I have, maybe we differ in this idea. I used to, every time I saw somebody heading for a train wreck, if they asked me for advice, I would give them candid and honest feedback. I used to always do it. Sure. And it almost universally caused resentment.

(Speaker 4)
So as an example, one young man years ago just told me he couldn’t get stuff done.

(Speaker 5)
He’s just struggling, can’t get it done. Oh my gosh, I’m struggling. I said, well, here’s the deal. What time do you wake up every day?

(Speaker 4)
And he goes, oh, I get up at 7. OK. And what time do you go to bed? He’s like, ah, like 2 AM. I go, well, what are you doing during the day? We make a list of all the things he’s doing.

(Speaker 4)
The point is he’s not working very hard. Sure. So I said, here’s the deal. Your business is not doing well because you’re not focused.

(Speaker 5)
So you are going to need to not go on any trips, date anybody, or watch TV.

(Speaker 33)
TV at night, like you’re doing every night until you wake up.

(Speaker 48)
Once you get there, then you can do whatever you want.

(Speaker 4)
But until that time, it’s not going to work for you, okay? And it was a car rental kind of business, okay? And the guy was like, are you trying to tell me? that I can’t date somebody, that I can’t enjoy my weekend.

(Speaker 5)
That’s why I started a company.

(Speaker 4)
I’m like, I know, but you’re not there yet. So you wanting to enjoy and bask in the ocean view is a lot like me going halfway between Oklahoma and Florida, parking my car in Arkansas and going, let’s stop and enjoy the view. It doesn’t make any sense, man. You’re not there yet. You can’t live like that. It’s a good analogy, by the way.

(Speaker 4)
Because I’m very passionate. Arkansas isn’t halfway, by the way.

(Speaker 5)
Well, because I’m very passionate, though, about this.

(Speaker 47)
I’m going to Google that.

(Speaker 5)
Marshall, will you Google that? It could be better. Yeah, I’ll pull it up. I’ll pull it up.

(Speaker 4)
See, you know what I’m saying, though? When you’re passionate, though, and I’m trying to tell somebody, I really, really care about you, man, and I’m telling you, you’re going to lose everything.

(Speaker 5)
Get serious.

(Speaker 21)
People don’t like that.

(Speaker 5)
They don’t, and that’s that hard talk that… But they’re asking me for the feedback. They are. And I tell them, and they’re like, yeah, but… What do you do when you see somebody that doesn’t ask you, but you see them hit it for a train wreck? I will say, do you want any feedback?

(Speaker 4)
And if they say no, then I just have to move on. And sadly, I would say 9 out of 10 people don’t want feedback.

(Speaker 46)
No, they want to learn through the minefield.

(Speaker 4)
They’re like, I like to discover the mines by myself. I’m just going to run through the minefield and see what’s out there.

(Speaker 5)
Hey, look, there’s one over there.

(Speaker 4)
I lost a foot.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, it’s unbelievable.

(Speaker 4)
It’s just OK. So I would just say I don’t ever give feedback to someone unless they want it.

(Speaker 8)
But I do ask, hey, would you be interested in feedback?

(Speaker 4)
And they always go. Yeah, but your industry’s different. I mean, DJing’s different than, or real estate’s different than photography, or photography’s different than… Or that’s mean. You know, I have, a lot of times I’ll have a business owner come up to me and just rail and rail and rail about an employee, and then look at me and go, what do you think I should do? And I go, it’s easy, whack him.

(Speaker 4)
And it’s just almost like they’re like, oh my God, that’s the meanest thing you could ever do.

(Speaker 5)
I remember we took a guy out to your man cave. your house one time. Yeah. And you had some hammer laying out there because someone was doing some work by the pool or something. And you told this guy, it was the funniest thing ever, you told this guy, you said, listen, you need to fire the person. And they’re like, yeah, but they’re a friend, they’re a family, I can’t do it.

(Speaker 5)
I don’t understand, my industry’s different, it’s hard to find good people.

(Speaker 4)
And you’re like, you’re just telling me they’re costing you more than you’re paying them. They don’t show up to work on time, they never get something done.

(Speaker 5)
And you said, can you pick up that hammer? So he picks up the hammer and he said, every day you don’t fire that person, I want you to just hit yourself in the crotch because it will be less painful. I remember that.

(Speaker 4)
You remember that?

(Speaker 5)
Oh yeah.

(Speaker 4)
And that guy, the next – He was a chiropractor or something.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, like the next Monday that he’s like, that, I just – That hammer hurt. Seriously, he tells me, he was like, That was just the worst, that was the most mean, most cruel, most inhumane advice. Now true story, probably 90 days later come back, he goes, that’s the best advice I ever got. in that truth. But he had to like endure it for 90 days.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t understand.

(Speaker 5)
And he got mad. He got mad that we gave him.

(Speaker 4)
He wanted to ask you the question.

(Speaker 41)
I’m like, no, no, you don’t want the truth.

(Speaker 5)
You can’t handle the truth. You don’t want the truth. You can’t handle the truth. Right.

(Speaker 45)
And that’s the thing about it is, but sometimes that truth and that directness is what you need.

(Speaker 4)
And you need to just deal with it. And when you know things aren’t right, you’ve got to do the right thing to fix it. And sometimes that’s the hard thing. So OK, here we go. What advice would you give to someone who has not yet hit their financial goals, but has to balance a family life, a growing family, with a growing business? That’s a tough one.

(Speaker 4)
Uh -oh. And what I always tell them is this. Hey, your significant other, they’ll let you know. Work like heck. Work as hard as you can. And whenever you get that text message from your kid or your spouse that says, what’s your name again?

(Speaker 4)
And what do you look like? And what if their significant other is a communist, a socialist, or an unmotivated human? Seriously. Seriously, what if? I mean, I ask this because my wife, as an example, is ambitious to a point.

(Speaker 4)
She gets it. She does. She gets it. But my wife, she… But there’s still, there was still a day, there’s still a day and multiple days where she says, honey, Today was when, today, today we had the, she had said today, so she said, she says, baby, you have to stay up until 9 p . m.

(Speaker 4)
every night. And I go, what? She goes, you can’t go to bed at 8 .30 anymore, you gotta stay up until 9. I’m like, are you so hateful? Because she knows my normal, I love the flow, Z, if the kids are going to cheerleading, I’m going, I can go to sleep right now. And I’ll go to bed like at seven.

(Speaker 4)
I love it, like at 7 .30 and then I wake up like at midnight or one. So today she lays it out and she says, listen here, here’s the deal, buddy. you have to stay up till nine o ‘clock and i’m going and you also have to back are forbidden from waking up before three which causes you to go to bed before nine yes exactly oh double caveat that happened just today that’s what i’m saying so Make sure your spouse has permission. Say, listen, I’m doing this for us. I’m doing this for the family. I’m not always going to work this hard, but it’s startup.

(Speaker 4)
It’s like putting that rocket ship up into orbit.

(Speaker 7)
I mean, at first it takes a lot of energy, a lot of fuel.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, so much fuel that what half the rocket is just the fuel to get it up out of, you know, the atmosphere.

(Speaker 5)
But then when it gets up there in the orbit, it’s just a little thruster.

(Speaker 4)
What if your wife is a communist, a socialist, or has not very much motivation? One, sorry, you get a bad picker. I don’t know what to say.

(Speaker 5)
I don’t know what to say.

(Speaker 4)
Hopefully there’s a lot of benefit.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, exactly. Hopefully things are going well in other areas. Well, I don’t know. Maybe if they really feel that way and they just don’t understand why you’re working and why you’re just not home and collecting your free food stamps and chickens and things that they do in the communist countries. That’s a tough one because when you go into business, you have to understand that your spouse is a partner. Now, when you sit down and you say, listen, Here’s what I see.

(Speaker 5)
Are you on board? Are you on board?

(Speaker 4)
Are you on board?

(Speaker 5)
Matter of fact, you got to make them signs.

(Speaker 21)
Spock, Spock, are you on board?

(Speaker 44)
Spock, Spock.

(Speaker 5)
If you think you’re just saying what you want, get out a contract and make them, hey, here’s what’s going to happen. Are you on board? And then have that. And then the next time they fuss at you for working, however what you’re working, you pull out your contract. So that was our deal. I want to give this encouragement for anybody out there who’s single.

(Speaker 4)
Napoleon Hill did a research of what causes people to fail. the 30 causes of failure. Yes. And one of them was being married to a low ambition person.

(Speaker 5)
Now, if you are married to a low ambition person, I’ve only seen it work in two scenarios.

(Speaker 4)
I have two scenarios. I’ll be very vague, so no one can guess who they are. OK. One person worked for me years ago, comes to me and says, I want to be successful. I go, OK. I’ve lived at the 89th Lynn Lane, 8900 Lynn Lane office, nice house.

(Speaker 4)
They assumed I was doing well. I was doing well. They said, I want to know, how can I become successful? This is a person who’s really struggling in life. And I said, you need to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and think and grow rich. Basically buy assets, not liabilities.

(Speaker 4)
Buy assets, whatever you can. Buy an asset, real estate, whatever, with your savings. And then read, think, and grow rich. Implement. Well, this guy reads it. He grew up poor.

(Speaker 4)
He reads the book.

(Speaker 5)
And see, this is like a renewed mind. This guy’s coming to work like perpetually an oversleeper, getting to work.

(Speaker 4)
He goes, what time do you get to work? I get to work like at 6. This guy’s getting there at 5. He’s over delivering.

(Speaker 5)
He finds out I like coffee with just a little, a little hot chocolate in there. He brings that every time. He’s reading books and this guy’s on fire Spouse calls me true story. I just want you to know I don’t appreciate you changing my husband and it’s more of like a redneck II kind of voice It’s more. I don’t appreciate you call my tell my husband what to do. You ain’t gonna change us Now this person was so resentful Four years later, three years later, it had been a while, at one of the Christmas parties, they came up to me, this person, tears in her eyes, I’m so sorry.

(Speaker 5)
I just want you to know, I love our life. But they had to, it seems like the resentment always has to happen first.

(Speaker 43)
Always.

(Speaker 5)
Every time.

(Speaker 4)
Every time.

(Speaker 43)
Every time.

(Speaker 4)
It’s like you’re, I hate the analogy, but it’s the best I have. It’s like you’re mentally raping people when you’re forcing them to have success that they don’t want. Crazy, isn’t it? I mean, people don’t want it.

(Speaker 43)
I know, it’s crazy.

(Speaker 29)
And yet they want the results of it.

(Speaker 5)
They just don’t want the work to get there.

(Speaker 4)
And that’s the thing that I think that this society does.

(Speaker 36)
I mean, our news stations, all of our social medias, it just shows the end game.

(Speaker 5)
It shows the big yacht. It shows the vacationing, the Bora Bora. You know, and the Fiji Fijis. The Fiji Fijis. You know, and the Cancun Cancuns.

(Speaker 4)
Mmm.

(Speaker 15)
Mmm.

(Speaker 5)
You know, it shows all that.

(Speaker 4)
It shows the end game. It shows what you get for your hard work. It never shows the late night, the struggles up front, the shoveledness, the, I don’t think I showered for two days because I’ve been working so hard.

(Speaker 5)
It never shows that part of it.

(Speaker 3)
You know, nobody puts on their Instagram, you know, here on Captain and pulled another all -nighter to get the business going.

(Speaker 5)
I saw a cool video this week that a friend of mine showed me and it was Kanye West in the studio recording an album that is now a Grammy award -winning album and it shows him in the Studio Z for three hours.

(Speaker 4)
He’s playing the beat.

(Speaker 18)
and he’s going…

(Speaker 4)
There’s no words.

(Speaker 31)
Okay, fair enough.

(Speaker 4)
For three hours.

(Speaker 5)
And by the way, I’ve worked with other musicians who do this too. And it’s because the rhyme scheme the rhyming pattern matters not more than the words, but as much as the words.

(Speaker 4)
Okay.

(Speaker 13)
Then once he nailed down his scheme, he works on the words.

(Speaker 4)
But these people had never worked with a Grammy award -winning artist. I mean, this guy’s won 21 Grammys. And they’re going mentally like… Imagine what it’s like to be in a room with someone for three consecutive hours. They’re like, do you mind if we film? No.

(Speaker 4)
But for three hours… And he finally found one that worked, and he’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it.

(Speaker 5)
That’s it.

(Speaker 4)
Okay.

(Speaker 5)
And they’re like, what just happened? You recorded gibberish.

(Speaker 4)
That’s hot walks out.

(Speaker 18)
I don’t think people realize that he’s spending three hours figuring out the rhyming pattern and the syncopation of the words before he even comes up with words.

(Speaker 4)
Then he’ll spend a week coming up with the words.

(Speaker 5)
That’s work.

(Speaker 42)
That’s dedication.

(Speaker 38)
But that’s why he won 21 Grammys.

(Speaker 5)
21 Grammys. I don’t think people realize. See, what was the absolute The worst moment for you as you were building your businesses, when you were working seven days a week, what was the absolute low point of just overwhelming this stress or maybe the high point of your resiliency, where you were just like, oh. My high watermark was my two -year -old son had fallen and broken his femur. That’s the big bone in your leg. So he was in traction in the hospital.

(Speaker 5)
They couldn’t do surgery on that one that young. My my wife was pregnant with our youngest and she had a kidney stone.

(Speaker 4)
She was in the hospital.

(Speaker 5)
I’d had a former employee just sued.

(Speaker 4)
for wrongful termination. That was fine. My first lawsuit, bada boom, bada bing.

(Speaker 5)
Did you get a poster for that?

(Speaker 41)
Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
Go start by my name. Have you seen in the bathroom that I do this sometimes? What?

(Speaker 5)
Whenever I win these little wrongful termination things, I frame them and put them in random places. So the bathroom, next time you go, you can see one.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, fantastic.

(Speaker 35)
It’s good.

(Speaker 5)
It’s commemorative.

(Speaker 24)
Commemorative.

(Speaker 5)
I’ll sign one for you. All right.

(Speaker 4)
So now, on top of that, it’s the busiest I’ve ever been, and I’m working six days a week at this point, not the fun seven days.

(Speaker 40)
And so I would go straight from work to the hospital, spend the night with my son, get up, go home, shower, come to work, work all day, see tons of patients, and just repeat, repeat.

(Speaker 5)
And then my daughter, was three or four and she was irate so now I had to get her watched and now she’s irate because one, where’s her family? Two of them are in the hospital and I’m working and so now she’s upset that she has no attention and she is fussy. That was probably one of the hardest times in my business career, and ironically it was right when we were taking a big upswing in business. So I was super busy, super slammed, and I would have to understand that being away from my son in the hospital during the day was tough on me because I wanted to be there with him and comfort him because he was laying there in traction for 30 days. Three days! But I also knew the importance of going to work and keeping the business going, building the business, because I knew the long -term effect of what that was going to be for us.

(Speaker 5)
I know Facebook wasn’t around yet at that time.

(Speaker 39)
This would be like 1990, 2001, 2002 at this point when this happened.

(Speaker 4)
What year was this?

(Speaker 5)
Let’s see, Blake is 26, he was two, so 24 years ago. So, okay, 24, that would be a long time.

(Speaker 4)
1992. Okay, so around that time, I mean, did you go on Facebook and lament? No. Did you email everyone you know complaining? No. Did you go to every bar every single night and drink till you couldn’t move?

(Speaker 4)
There wasn’t one patient that came in in that time frame that knew anything in my personal life. And my employees, some of them knew just because of the, some of them I had to help move around kids. Because you pulled out all your, all your eyebrows as a nervous habit. Okay. Now, okay. Now when people, people getting ahold of you, uh, your family.

(Speaker 4)
people that you want to reach you. How do you decide who to answer the phone for? When a phone call comes in or a text message comes in, how do you decide who to respond to? I have a hierarchy in my mind and there’s some people that even if I’m whatever I’m doing if I see that they’re calling because sometimes I put my phone on silent obviously and I don’t it doesn’t buzz or anything when it’s on silence it’s silent but even then sometimes you’ll you’ll you know you’ll notice your phone light up and curiosity can glance over and see that’s one of my one of my children. One of my children gets an immediate answer if I see it. I mean, unless, you know, unless I’m in a meeting on my phones, I purposely kept it in my bag or it’s been turned off.

(Speaker 4)
But, you know, I have a hierarchy of people and my managers, my children, and there’s a few close friends, a few close business acquaintances that I’ll always answer the phone. But by default, you don’t respond. Correct.

(Speaker 5)
Is that weird? That’s awesome. It is weird. And it’s also, I think, one of the most rare things that allows you to be successful. Yeah, you know what, you could choose to be, I remember as a kid, you know, you’d be sitting around there watching National Geographic or Disney at Sunday night, just the Disney movies with a little, think about it.

(Speaker 4)
The original movies. Hi everybody, yeah, welcome to Mickey Mouse Club.

(Speaker 32)
And something magical would happen.

(Speaker 4)
You would hear the phone ring, and the old they were connected to the wall, Marshall.

(Speaker 32)
You’re too young to know this.

(Speaker 4)
You’re way too young to know this. And as young kids, we would look into the kitchen where the phone was, and we would, me and maybe two or three of my brothers would get in that like sprinter’s pose of getting up and going, you know? And we would literally race into the kitchen. Because it was, because that phone, it was calling us. It was screaming. And oh my goodness.

(Speaker 4)
It could be long distance. It could be long distance. If it was long distance, we went to DEFCON 4.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, it was like a minor emergency. Everybody be quiet. She’s calling long distance.

(Speaker 4)
Shh.

(Speaker 5)
Everybody, shh. Shh.

(Speaker 30)
She’s in South Dakota.

(Speaker 24)
Whoever got that phone first, you answered it.

(Speaker 38)
We had a script.

(Speaker 5)
You had to follow the script now when you answer the phone.

(Speaker 4)
OK, here we go. Zellner residence, whom I asked is calling. Oh, wow. That was scripted out for us. How formal. Oh, very formal.

(Speaker 4)
Nice. I remember that. And then, you know, if it was long distance, it’d be like, Mom, it’s long distance, it’s Aunt Connie, or whoever it was. And I mean, the whole house just shook, you know, because the phone rang.

(Speaker 37)
And that’s just being a slave to the phone, you know what I mean?

(Speaker 5)
The phone rings down, it’s like, if I don’t know the number, I never answer it.

(Speaker 27)
And I’m like, don’t forget it.

(Speaker 4)
You know, because it’s usually, oh, hello, this is Veronica from Card Member Services.

(Speaker 5)
I’m just calling to make sure you’re happy with your credit cards.

(Speaker 4)
Would you want some more?

(Speaker 5)
I wanted to pick your brain about a bad idea that I half -baked in my mind this morning. Yeah, exactly. So it’s kind of like, and then you get on the phone, and then, what’s so funny is I see people that answer those numbers, and then they spend 10 minutes trying to get off the phone with these people. You said one thing in a meeting one time that blew my mind. Okay.

(Speaker 4)
You said, you waited until everybody left, but you pulled somebody aside, and I heard you do it, and I was like, oh, that’s good.

(Speaker 34)
You go, I do not appreciate meaningless non -updates.

(Speaker 5)
So please don’t call me to update me about non -updates. I don’t want updates that are meaningless. I don’t want not and you said it in a way and I’m like, oh, this is I’m just gonna let him have his way because you were having this conversation. There was somebody who just kept telling you mindless data that didn’t matter.

(Speaker 36)
I didn’t ask for I didn’t care about it.

(Speaker 10)
I mean, it was it was like it was a knowledge box.

(Speaker 4)
I think some people feel like they need to just communicate like, hey, just you know, yeah, Isn’t that a thing though? People that usually don’t rise to a huge level of success spend their whole day just sort of, I just want to send out this newsletter to this organization, this community of men that I get together. There’s a lot of people that they get together in these community groups, these networking things, these breakfast groups, these luncheon groups, these community groups. And really, we’re not connecting with anybody at all.

(Speaker 24)
We’re just, you know, pledging the flag.

(Speaker 5)
We’re reciting the pledge.

(Speaker 24)
We’re having cheese cubes.

(Speaker 4)
We’re talking about, you know, something that we can’t control. And then we send out newsletters and we update the newsletters and we update our site. And you see a lot of unsuccessful people sending out a newsletter, update the site, do the flag, do the pledge, serve the cheese. Next month, we’re having this other person come in.

(Speaker 33)
Nothing gets done.

(Speaker 35)
Well, you’re right.

(Speaker 4)
And then going back to the employees sending me updates that were not updates and that I didn’t ask for. that you really care about. I think some people do that because they think, you know what, I want to make sure that the boss or the bosses know that I’m working. So if I just flood them with stuff, they know I’m working. And you know when they didn’t do real work, too. You know when somebody says they’re talking in a circle.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah. Basically, I was doing some updates.

(Speaker 5)
I was doing some research. Yes. How pissed does it make you when someone says, I’m just doing my research right now. I’m really circling back.

(Speaker 4)
I’m trying to really get down to a different understanding. I’m trying to burn it down.

(Speaker 5)
You hear these general phrases. I’m going to burn it down to the ground to build it back up. Trying to kind of circulate back to it. I’m just trying to dive deeper. I should have something to show you next week.

(Speaker 4)
I love that. The thing that kind of gets me even more fired up is when you’re talking to someone and you’ve given them an assignment. In other words, you said, get this done. Get this done, baby. And the next week you’re in the meeting and you look at them and you say, did you get that done? And that is a yes or no question.

(Speaker 4)
What do you mean by that?

(Speaker 5)
What do you mean by that? Shh, calm down. That’s not a 10 -minute oration on why you didn’t get it done. I didn’t ask why you didn’t get it done. There’s three excuses.

(Speaker 4)
I’ll role -play with you.

(Speaker 5)
Here are the three.

(Speaker 4)
First one is miscommunication. There was a miscommunication. Did you want me to do that or Marshall? Because when you said, Clay, do it, I thought you said Marshall. When you said, Clay, Clark, I thought that meant Marshall and I. So I was, Marshall, is it done?

(Speaker 5)
I mean, have you seen that move, right?

(Speaker 4)
Oh, yeah. That’s a move.

(Speaker 5)
That’s a move.

(Speaker 4)
OK.

(Speaker 5)
How do you handle it?

(Speaker 4)
How do I handle that?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, how do you handle it? If it’s her first time, first time it happened, I’ll say, well, let’s clarify right now. Okay.

(Speaker 24)
Okay.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s maybe even put it in writing.

(Speaker 4)
Maybe even, you know, send them an email. Send me an email to what … You send me an email right now or a text message right now as to what you’re supposed to get done by next week. You. You, right now.

(Speaker 5)
And then they …

(Speaker 4)
Okay, perfect.

(Speaker 5)
Nice. It’s from you to me. Here’s what you’re supposed to do. I’ll see you next week. Okay, next. Okay.

(Speaker 5)
Emotional. I was going to do it. I have a baby, and my baby was … It was up all night.

(Speaker 4)
And I just got so overwhelmed and I just, I just, I just, I don’t know how to use, I’m new to town and I couldn’t find the locations in my Google Map and I’m just new to town. What do you do? Eat the baby, get Google Maps better.

(Speaker 34)
What do you do?

(Speaker 4)
Cause you know, somebody will bring up like their baby and their inability to use Google Maps as a reason for not, like they, they combine them or they’ll go, I have a thyroid problem and I saw a specialist, it’s very concerning. I mean, you know, there are people that can force cry. You know force cryers. Oh, heck yeah. Come on.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, don’t doubt about it. I can in a pinch.

(Speaker 4)
Here’s the thing about that is that they are defining what kind of employee they are.

(Speaker 12)
Right.

(Speaker 4)
Now you’re the idiot that doesn’t listen to that.

(Speaker 5)
you know you’re the idiot that keeps thinking that they’re going to show up on time and they’re always late and being upset with them you should be upset with yourself because that’s they are defining the kind of employee they are so if you want to continue to give that kind of person high level jobs to get done on a weekly basis, then who’s the fool, right?

(Speaker 27)
So every now and then, you know, everybody gets a mulligan in life.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, you’ve hired him, you put some time into him. We’ve all made mistakes, but there are moves. These are the moves, but you’ve kept them around for a reason at this point. So, and maybe that was a straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe that’s the 17th time they’ve done that. So then yeah, whack them, move on.

(Speaker 5)
Move three is I forgot. I just, I just, oof, oof. Here again, they are defining what kind of employee they are, and that is a move that happens on occasion, and that’s why you have to be purposeful in then teaching them on how to make lists, make to -do lists. Put this on the top of your to -do list. Let’s pull it out right now. Let’s make a to -do list.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s get a big chief tablet and a number two pencil, and let’s just make your list. You’ve obviously achieved many of your financial and time freedom goals. What’s your big goals now that you care to speak of publicly? Because that is a rule of all super successful people. Almost all super successful people that I know will never share with you their true big goal. They might share little glimpses of their goal, but I could spend a whole podcast about why you should never share your big goals to everyone.

(Speaker 5)
You only just shared your closest, your inner circle. But you’ve achieved a lot of goals so far, financially and time freedom goals. What are a few goals now that you could share on a podcast that hundreds of thousands of people listen to? I’m really excited about this next chapter of my life. I’m going to be in business with my children for the first. I’m in business with my daughter.

(Speaker 5)
She’s now a doctor in my optometry clinic. By the way, sounds really good on the commercials. She does. She’s always been a rock star on those. And the funniest person, I’m not kidding. You might not appreciate how funny she is, but I’m telling you, she is the funniest conversation I have ever met.

(Speaker 5)
been around. At your birthday party a couple years back. She’s a rock star.

(Speaker 4)
She just knows how to, Z, she’s got your magic there. She’s so good conversational.

(Speaker 5)
She’s got that emotional intelligence.

(Speaker 4)
It’s off the charts.

(Speaker 5)
It goes so well.

(Speaker 4)
Off the charts.

(Speaker 5)
I’m so proud of her. So that’s been kind of a fun new chapter. My son, my middle child, my son, he is getting ready to graduate optometry school, and he just gave my second grandbaby, Matthew, shout out to Matthew.

(Speaker 4)
Wow. Wooka, wooka, wooka, Sebastian and Matthew.

(Speaker 24)
Is it kind of like a factory deal?

(Speaker 5)
Like you have a certain production quota, like every nine months you want another one or what? Yeah, I’ve kind of laid down the law for my kids.

(Speaker 4)
I’m like, come on, let’s keep going. My daughter’s going to have her first one in January. I have a little granddaughter. Really? I got that coming. That’s kind of a big deal.

(Speaker 4)
And then the third, my third child, Beau, my youngest, he and I are getting ready to start some new businesses, and I’m excited about those. And so I think for me, it’s always that entrepreneurial spirit. I think I still have a good 10, 15, 20 years running me to start some businesses and grow businesses. What I enjoy doing, apparently, it’s one of the few things in life I can do well. I’m going to do it. And now I’m going to do it with my children.

(Speaker 4)
And that has a new excitement to it. I’ve never done that. And so to help them now, to help them now get their time freedom and financial freedoms and to move forward in their life is going to be very rewarding, I feel.

(Speaker 5)
Now, the books.

(Speaker 4)
Final two questions here. Books. We’ve talked about it on previous shows. But if you had to recommend two books, or more, but let’s just say at least two books to the listeners out there.

(Speaker 31)
Again, I know these because we’ve had previous shows.

(Speaker 4)
on it, but we get these questions asked a lot. What books would Dr. Z recommend for every entrepreneur out there? If you had to recommend, let’s say at least two, what would you recommend? I would recommend Winning by Jack Welch. I think that is a modern look at how to bootstrap it up and how to old school grow a business. The former CEO of GE, by the way, who grew the company by 4 ,000.

(Speaker 4)
percent. The company was stagnant before he took over. And at the time of him leaving I think was the world’s largest corporation. Yeah. And by the way when he left it’s just it’s gone off. It’s going to get off the rails.

(Speaker 29)
They’re just they’re just not able to implement what he because he had certain principles and systems and mindsets.

(Speaker 4)
He’s probably one of the most effective managers of all time.

(Speaker 7)
If you’re struggling to manage people winning by Jack Welch read it once read it twice.

(Speaker 4)
That book is nice. And I think one it’s an old school book and it’s kind of a weird book to recommend in a business mentality. But I think it’s one of the things that’s lacking in so many business owners’ brain power. And that is it’s a book written, you know, 3 ,000 years ago by a Chinese general of war. It’s called The Art of War by Shen Tzu.

(Speaker 5)
And it is the 13 chapters deal with the 13, his 13 steps in how to prepare and defeat the enemy.

(Speaker 4)
And I don’t know why, but it seems like that so many people I talk to When I talk about business being war, they just kind of pucker up. This new kind of offensive world we live in is like, oh, that’s offensive. That’s just mean. This isn’t war. I just want to sell cookies.

(Speaker 14)
I just want to teach people.

(Speaker 4)
I want to teach dogs how to have better manners.

(Speaker 14)
I want to sell pizzas.

(Speaker 32)
You’ve got to understand, if you don’t understand that you’re headed into battle, then you’ve lost.

(Speaker 5)
And I think that’s why, according to Forbes, our business bible, that… to 90 % of all businesses out there fail.

(Speaker 4)
And I think a lot of people don’t have that mindset of, hey, it is war. I do have competition out there. They don’t want me to succeed. They’re gonna do whatever they can do to be more successful. Therefore, it makes me less successful. Folks, it’s a battle out there.

(Speaker 5)
And that book really kind of, I mean, it fires you up.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, it’s kind of cool. It’s talking about scouting your enemy. We call it, Mystery shopping?

(Speaker 5)
Right. Yeah, it talks about all these different moves.

(Speaker 4)
Appear to be weak when you’re strong.

(Speaker 14)
Appear to be strong when you’re weak.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, it’s so fun. And there’s so many moves.

(Speaker 33)
So many moves.

(Speaker 4)
I love the moves. And they’re ageless. I mean, these were back in, you know, 3 ,000 B . C. , so maybe 5 ,000 years ago. Dude, I remember one time, a guy actually, this is funny, but I’d read that book, and there was a competitor of ours, Z, who really was being shady, and he drove from Oklahoma City to Tulsa to meet me, because he said he wanted to sell his company to me.

(Speaker 4)
And Z, the idea of appearing to be weak when you’re strong. Oh yeah. Oh, I worked that.

(Speaker 32)
Oh, it’s so fun.

(Speaker 5)
So he’s like, how are things? I go, oh, the house is good. The business is good, but I gotta be honest with you. Can I share something with you? And I said, it’s getting tight. Get in tight.

(Speaker 5)
Now Z, I didn’t say what that meant. I implied, I didn’t say a specific dollar amount.

(Speaker 4)
It’s getting tight. Well, it’s just.

(Speaker 5)
And so because I knew that he was disingenuous for coming to, he told me he was coming to Tulsa to sell his company to me, but multiple people that I knew who actually worked there were like, dude, this guy, former employees of mine were like, this guy is trying to spy on you and then come to Tulsa. So he’s like, well, why is it tight? I said, well, you know, right now we raised our prices. We’re raising our prices to a minimum of $1 ,000 per wedding. because the industry’s gotten too loose. You are not being completely truthful there.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, no, I’m playing games. Oh, yeah. And he’s like, so what? And I said, well, you know, we forever we did, you know, five hundred fifty six hundred dollars for the wedding.

(Speaker 31)
And it was unlimited time.

(Speaker 4)
That was great.

(Speaker 30)
We had so much business.

(Speaker 5)
I decided, you know what?

(Speaker 4)
I need to charge as much as possible. And unless people are just really outrageously complaining, I’m not, I’m doing the other DJs of disservice like you. So I’ve raised my prices, but I think we might’ve got, what do you charge us? Well, I mean, a lot of money.

(Speaker 5)
It’s a little higher than I want.

(Speaker 4)
And he’s like, how much?

(Speaker 5)
I’m like, I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s a lot.

(Speaker 29)
I mean, we probably overshot.

(Speaker 5)
He goes, well, are you gonna, to lower your prices. No, I got it.

(Speaker 4)
I can’t. You can’t lose face. You lose. You lose face.

(Speaker 5)
You told your whole team we’re going to raise prices. I can only tell a guy like you.

(Speaker 4)
I can’t tell.

(Speaker 5)
I can’t tell everybody.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t tell anyone. I can’t make a change like this. So please don’t tell anyone because I know he’s immediately going to go down.

(Speaker 5)
So this jackass comes into Tulsa prices raised as high as he can go.

(Speaker 4)
Just a little under what I told him. And we destroyed him. Destroyed him.

(Speaker 5)
Thank you, Sun Tzu.

(Speaker 4)
Thank you. Thank you. And it was about 3 ,000 years ago. It was about 600, 700 BC. Final question I have for you. You’re very successful because you do things a different way than most people.

(Speaker 4)
Because most people are not successful.

(Speaker 3)
And you are successful. Therefore, you do things differently than most people. What is one thing that you do differently than everybody every single day? Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, something that you’re just swimming upstream, bro. I have a lot of things I could list off that I see you do, but feel free to…

(Speaker 3)
If you want me to give you a few just to kind of… Can I get me started there? Because I’m trying to think how deep you want me to go on that. One, you, by default, do not answer your phone. Okay. By default, you do not answer your phone.

(Speaker 3)
That’s profound. Yes. Two, by default, you do not feel the need to return a call or to return any correspondence to anyone ever. Three, You definitely always do what’s best for your business. You always do what’s best for the business. You always do what’s best for the business, because that creates all the jobs for all your people.

(Speaker 3)
It’s your goal to be successful. Can you talk about that idea of doing what’s best for the business? Well, as I said before, I have that filtered. It says, is this what’s best for the business? And that’s a hard decision to make sometimes, because you may be looking at someone that is a friend, a lifelong friend, could be a family member, could be someone who’s worked for you for years, and you know what’s best for the business is for them to move on, for them to be labeled customer status and not employee status. Customer status.

(Speaker 3)
I’ve just upgraded you to customer. Thank you very much. Status.

(Speaker 4)
And that’s a difficult thing to do. Firing people is probably one of the most difficult things to do. as a business owner. Also, you know, whenever, so that’s the hardest thing. So let’s focus on that, because everything else is, you know, typically, usually easier than that. Another thing out there that I see with business owners is pride.

(Speaker 28)
And pride’s a horrible thing, something I try to beat out of myself every day.

(Speaker 3)
It comes before the fall. It does. And pride in this sense, and I went through a little season of it myself, just to be very transparent here. And that is this pride of, I can’t do this. I could do this all on my own. I’m smart, and I figured this out.

(Speaker 3)
This is my baby, my business. I started this thing up three years ago, and by gosh, I’m going to do this all by myself. I don’t need to read any of those silly business books. I don’t need to read any of those. I don’t need to go to the in -person workshop. Are you kidding me?

(Speaker 3)
They probably just want to upsell me and try to take all my money. Because I’m the man. Because I’m the man. I’m the man. My name is Aziz, and it’s on every business. Listen, the richest man in the world. Well, Bill Gates goes back and forth with Bezos.

(Speaker 3)
We’ll check the stock here in a second and let you know. So either first or second richest man in the world, when asked, The advice he would give to a startup business owner, he said… You need to have a coach. Business coach. Yes. A business coach.

(Speaker 3)
A coach can make a lot of difference. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said, you gotta have a business coach. The CEO of Google, you’d think, the guy’s pretty successful, obviously, but these guys have guys behind them. You know, it’s funny, I was telling someone the other day, we were talking about basketball, and we did a series on Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings. Oh, so good, I love that.

(Speaker 4)
And I looked at them and I said, Michael Jordan said, yeah. Kobe Bryant, oh, two of the best. I said, do you realize neither one of them won a championship without Phil Jackson as their coach? And they went, what? Those guys could play like a combined like 35, I think, years between the both two of them. And they didn’t win a single NBA championship when Phil Jackson wasn’t coaching them.

(Speaker 3)
And you might say, Kobe and Michael could have said, Phil Jackson, you’re not that good a basketball player. I mean, you’re okay, but you’re not like us superstars.

(Speaker 4)
And Kobe actually did one time. He got Phil Jackson fired, and then he had to apologize and get him back. He’s like, I can’t win without him. Exactly. A coach can make all the difference between winning and losing. I’ll tell you what, if you’re out there and you are struggling to have success, listen to this podcast until your brain explodes.

(Speaker 27)
Z, I appreciate you sharing some candid feedback for the listeners out there.

(Speaker 3)
And as always, we want to end every show with a boom. Three, two, one, boom! Bobby Williamson, welcome onto The Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 15)
How are you, sir? Man, I’m doing great.

(Speaker 4)
Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the time.

(Speaker 3)
I’ve been doing this 32 years. On January 13th of this coming year, 32 years. God’s been good to us. I do a lot of TV advertising. I do a lot of radio. I do newspaper.

(Speaker 3)
And this is probably the best money I spend for the leads that are generated from what y ‘all do for our company. We get several, over 120 leads last month just generated off of what the website y ‘all developed for us produced and the results are on paper. We’re providing the services in the area and the only way I can do any more is hire more people. But I would highly recommend anybody looking to do, you know, increase their business and cash flow and to go with your company on that and retain your services for that.

(Speaker 4)
The $1 ,700 I pay your company is very well, I mean, that’s not even a, I mean, it pays for itself and what we get for the services. I mean, y ‘all built the website for me, for my company, and it’s a good -looking website. I mean, it’s not just something you produce overnight.

(Speaker 3)
I mean, it’s, they put word, they increase our traffic and by Providing the information in the website that, you know, updating it continually with photos or progress photos or pictures we do on projects. And it takes a lot of work. And your team does that work. And I don’t want to just brag on Sean, but Devin helped us a lot initially also. So you’ve got a good team of people.

(Speaker 4)
And we thank you for it.

(Speaker 3)
And it’s been well worth the investment. And we look forward to continued growth. And it’s just going to go better from here. I would definitely do it if I was a business of any type. What you provide, the service you provide, they can only benefit the company that you represent. And so I would highly recommend them to use your services.

(Speaker 3)
Bobby Williamson Flooring. Bobby Williamson Flooring.

(Speaker 4)
I’ll put a link on the show notes. For anybody out there that isn’t familiar with your company, BobbyWilliamsonFlooring . com. Tell us about the products or services that you provide at BobbyWilliamsonFlooring . com, sir. Yes, sir.

(Speaker 4)
any floor covering, new homes, remodels, you know, porcelain tile, carpet, vinyl. We build custom showers, granite courts, countertops, backsplashes, any type of home improvement product that you might need for your home.

(Speaker 3)
You know, we can pretty well fill in the blanks with all that. Yeah, we’re in West Monroe, Louisiana, which is We’re in the northeast corner of the boot. If you’re familiar with Louisiana, we have a, we’re close to Arkansas and really close to Mississippi. So we, we serve the northeast portion of that boot, probably a 60 mile radius to 90. We’re doing work right now in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is a nursing home and doing that kind of stuff. So we will go outside of our boundaries, but most of our 90 % of our work is done within a 60 -mile radius of West Monroe, Louisiana, which is population of maybe 155 ,000 in the parish.

(Speaker 3)
So not an overly populated area. What I did, Clay, I heard one of your podcasts during the COVID years in 2020, and I was just impressed with your ability to uh, you know, I was impressed with your story on your, when you DJ weddings and you, and I said, that’s the guy I want to learn from right there. I want to, I want to know what he did that made him successful.

(Speaker 4)
And, and I, I think that’s what made me do it and pull the trigger. And, and you’re an inspiration to me. And, uh, And I just want to learn from what you put, you’ve been successful. I want to learn those techniques and do what you’ve done to be successful in business. It means the world to us. We can spend our time focusing on actual clients that the leads are bringing, coming into our shop, just off of the website y ‘all developed and the leads you’re producing.

(Speaker 4)
And that’s what we do best. I mean, Just look at some of the photos that Sean’s going to upload tomorrow on some of the craftsmanship of the tile work we do. And he will, the picture will describe what we do. We can focus our time on that. Y ‘all’s business is generating leads for our company. And that’s what y ‘all do well.

(Speaker 3)
And we’re thankful for it. And I would recommend anybody to go spend that little bit of money and put it into their business, whether you’re a plumber, electrician, floor covering dealer, whatever it is, it’s money well spent. We can focus our time on the client, delivering satisfactory results and delivering it on a quality workmanship. and budget. Well, Thrive Nation, what I wanted to do today is I wanted to celebrate a client. He’s a diligent doer.

(Speaker 3)
He’s a man of his word. He’s a guy who’s doing his absolute best to serve God and to provide quality services and quality products for his customers and great jobs for his employees. Bobby Williamson, welcome onto The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 4)
Man, I’m doing great. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the time to come talk to you tonight. Now, I’m going to pull up your website, because it really does actually help your search engine rank. If everybody visits your website, it’s Bobby Williamson Flooring. Bobby Williamson Flooring. I’ll put a link on the show notes.

(Speaker 4)
For anybody out there that isn’t familiar with your company, bobbywilliamsonflooring . com, tell us about the products or services that you provide at bobbywilliamsonflooring . com, sir. Yes, sir. We provide any floor covering, new homes, remodels, porcelain tile, carpet, vinyl. We build custom showers, granite courts, countertops, backsplashes, any type of home improvement product that you might need for your home.

(Speaker 3)
We can pretty well fill in the blanks with all that. Now, what market area do you serve? So maybe you could tell us about the towns you’re in or the cities that you operate in for anybody out there that’s not familiar with your service area. Yeah, we’re in West Monroe, Louisiana, which is we’re in the northeast corner of the boot. If you’re familiar with Louisiana, we have a we’re close to Arkansas and really close to Mississippi. So we we serve the northeast portion of that boot probably as well.

(Speaker 3)
mile radius to 90. We’re doing work right now in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is a nursing home and doing that kind of stuff. So we will go outside of our boundaries. But most of our 90 percent of our work is done within a 60 mile radius of West Monroe, Louisiana, which is population of maybe 155 ,000 in the parish.

(Speaker 4)
So not an overly populated area, but we have Metta coming in the future in the next few years. It’s expanding their site to Richland Parish, which is just one parish over probably 30 miles. So a lot of growth there and we’re just lucky to serve those clients in that area.

(Speaker 11)
Now, a couple of questions here for you that I want to get into my stack of stuff here just to give people some background.

(Speaker 4)
How long have you been in this business or this line of work? How many years have you been doing this? I’ve been doing this 32 years. On January 13th of this coming year, 32 years, God’s been good to us. And we look forward, if the good Lord let me live another few years. My son Chad’s taking over the business in the next few years.

(Speaker 3)
We’re going to prepare the next generation to take over and do what we need to do to serve Northeast Louisiana. Now, how did you initially come in contact with, uh, myself and or our, our thrive time show business, uh, coaching platform? Well, what I did, Clay, I heard, I heard one of your podcasts. during the COVID years in 2020. And I was just impressed with your ability to, uh, you know, I was impressed with your story on your, when you DJed weddings and you, and I said, that’s the guy I want to learn from right there. I want to, I want to know what he did that made him successful.

(Speaker 3)
And, and I, I think that’s what made me do it and pull the trigger. And you’re an inspiration to me. And I just want to learn from what you’ve been successful.

(Speaker 4)
I want to learn those techniques and do what you’ve done to be successful in business. Now, there’s somebody out there that’s watching this. And for our coaching platform, what I do, and Bobby, you know the drill, because I’ve worked with you and I work with you, but I do a free consultation or a free 13 -point assessment where I let people, we hop on a phone call, we figure out where your business is now and what your goals are, and to basically come up with a plan to get you from point A to point B. So it’s always a free consultation at thrivetimeshow . com. And then once we go over the plan, if somebody wants to move forward, we charge you and everybody we work with, we charge you $1 ,700. a month to grow your business.

(Speaker 3)
And the question always is, well, are you good at that? And so if you go to thrivetimeshow . com, we have thousands, literally thousands of clients that we’ve helped to grow their company over the past 20 years. Could you talk about the growth?

(Speaker 12)
I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that you’re up 25 % this year, or maybe I’m wrong, or maybe you can talk about the growth you’re having and or maybe not having. No, absolutely. We’re 25 % up from a year ago today, and a lot of that is directly attributable to your company. and what you provide, the services that you provide our company.

(Speaker 4)
We’ve learned so much. It’s been a blessing to our business. And 25 % is pretty, that’s a lot of revenue to put on the table from a year ago. and it wasn’t done easily. We’ve had to work diligently with your staff and we’re the most highly rated flooring store in West Monroe, Louisiana on our Google rating. And we’re working hard to get more Google reviews and increase that number and reach other people that to so we can show them what we do and provide those services and and just continue our good work along with yourself.

(Speaker 4)
Now, my wife and I, we have five kids, and we have kind of a fleet of vehicles with all the companies. And so I have a trusted mechanic that I go to every time I want to tune up a vehicle.

(Speaker 1)
So we’re headed out to Breckenridge here soon.

(Speaker 27)
And I took my vehicles to our trusted resource, and I said, could you tune up the vehicles before the trip?

(Speaker 4)
Could you make sure they’re functioning properly, change the oil, check the fluids, that kind of thing?

(Speaker 1)
And I know he’s going to treat me fairly. I know I’m not going to get screwed with on the pricing.

(Speaker 4)
Could you talk about the peace of mind that our company provides you and or doesn’t provide you. Knowing that you have a flat rate every month, you’re not getting a bill per conversation, per hour, per email.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not like an accountant or a law firm where you’re constantly getting variable pricing with unexpected bills. Can you talk about the kind of the mindset that that, I guess the mindset that

(Speaker 4)
mind freedom that that does or does not provide you, knowing you have a flat monthly fee? I’m going to tell you, the services that your people provide us, Sean Lowman is my daily contact. And what he brings to the table, I mean, he represents your company well.

(Speaker 1)
The $1 ,700 I pay your company is very well, I mean, that’s not even a, I mean, it pays for itself and what we get for the services.

(Speaker 4)
I mean, y ‘all built the website for me, for my company, and it’s a good -looking website. I mean, it’s not just something you produce overnight. They put word, they increase our traffic by providing the information in the website, you know, updating it continually with photos or progress photos of pictures we do on projects.

(Speaker 1)
And it takes a lot of work, and your team does that work.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t want to just brag on Sean, but Devin helped us a lot initially also. So you got a good team of people, and we thank you for it, and it’s been well worth the investment.

(Speaker 23)
And we look forward to continued growth, and it’s just going to go better from here.

(Speaker 1)
Now, my final two questions I have for you is somebody out there today, they’re going, all right, so you have a coach. You meet him once a week. It’s a flat rate of $1 ,700 a month. But should I do it?

(Speaker 22)
There’s a plus.

(Speaker 4)
watching this. There’s a doctor watching this. There’s a dentist. There’s a lawyer. There’s somebody thinking about going to thrivetimeshow . com and thinking about scheduling that free 13 -point assessment.

(Speaker 4)
What would you say to that person who’s thinking about scheduling a free consultation there, sir? I would definitely do it. If I was a business of any type, what you provide, the service you provide, or what they can only benefit the company that you represent. And so I would highly recommend them to use your services. I do a lot of TV advertising.

(Speaker 1)
I do a lot of radio. I do newspaper. And this is probably the best money I spend for the leads that are generated from what y ‘all do for our company. You know, we get several, you know, over 120 leads last month just generated off of what the website y ‘all developed for us, produced, and the results are on paper. You know, we’re providing the services in the area, and the only way I can do any more is hire more people. But I would highly recommend anybody looking to do, you know, increase their business and cash flow and to go with your company on that and retain your services for that.

(Speaker 4)
Now, final question I have here for you, you know, my wife and I, we have a wonderful tile guy that we use for our properties. And I look at the work that he does and I say, wow, that’s amazing work. And just, I’m, I’m in awe of the, of the mastery of the craft. craft. I mean, this guy knows how to do tile work. I’m in awe of my automotive mechanic who we use for all of our different vehicles.

(Speaker 4)
And I don’t have a problem with somebody knowing more than me about a given subject. I want to get your thoughts on this.

(Speaker 1)
What’s it like knowing that you have a team that can handle Google optimization, artificial intelligence, optimizing your website, keeping up with all the endless digital updates. What does that do for you as a business owner knowing, OK, I got experts doing the expert thing, and I can call them if I have questions? It means the world to us. We can spend our time focusing on actual clients that the leads are coming into our shop just off of the website y ‘all developed and the leads you’re producing. And that’s what we do best. I mean, just look at some of the photos that Sean’s going to upload tomorrow on some of the craftsmanship of the the tile work we do, and he will, the picture will describe what we do.

(Speaker 1)
We can focus our time on that.

(Speaker 4)
Y ‘all’s business is generating leads for our company, and that’s what y ‘all do well, and we’re thankful for it, and I would recommend anybody to go spend that little bit of money and put it into their business, whether you’re a plumber, electrician, floor covering dealer, whatever it is, it’s money well spent. We can focus our time on the client delivering satisfactory results and delivering it on a quality workmanship and budget. Bobby, I really do appreciate your time and your energy and allowing us to interview you today and sharing your success story. I encourage everybody out there, check out Bobby Williams, again, BobbyWilliamsonFlooring .

(Speaker 1)
com. BobbyWilliamsonFlooring . com. I’ll put a link to it right there on the show notes. That’s, again, BobbyWilliamsonFlooring . com.

(Speaker 1)
Bobby, again, thank you for your time, sir. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

(Speaker 4)
And we’ll talk to you soon, sir. You too, Clay. Thank you for all you do, buddy. I appreciate you. Bye bye.

(Speaker 1)
Without a vision, discipline feels like punishment. But with a vision, discipline feels like alignment. The hard things start to feel like the right things because they are building something. I know many of you have had a challenging year.

(Speaker 4)
Many of you watching this have a successful company. Many of you have a business that has struggled. Maybe you’ve had a business that you’ve just, for whatever reason, have never been able to get over the hump. Maybe you’ve always been just kind of stuck in a rut, and that’s become your normal. Maybe you went from the goal you used to have a goal to thrive, and now your goal is just to survive. Well, to build your faith and to build your encouragement that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity needed to succeed, I thought I would get one of our younger success stories on to The Thrive Time Show, so you can talk to an entrepreneur who I don’t believe is yet 30 years old, but yet is still achieving massive success.

(Speaker 4)
Stephanie, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you? Good Clay. Thank you. So Stephanie where’s home for you. I live in rural western Wisconsin.

(Speaker 4)
So Sparta Wisconsin.

(Speaker 1)
And how did you originally hear about the Thrive Time Show business consulting program. I heard about you guys actually through entrepreneurs on fire. You did an interview with J . D. over there.

(Speaker 4)
And do you remember the when you were you were when you first heard that show? I was cleaning a house, actually. Well, you’re cleaning a house in Wisconsin. And from the time that you – I remember the exact house, yep. From the time that you decided to get up the courage needed to schedule a call until now, how much have you grown?

(Speaker 4)
Since then, let’s see, 1 ,462%.

(Speaker 1)
1 ,462%. And what kind of a time frame has that been from the time that you reached out to now? Yep. I reached out. We started working together in March of 2020. It is October, end of October 2021.

(Speaker 1)
So a year and a half.

(Speaker 4)
Wow. OK. So we’ve done a lot together. And many things you’ve done very, very well. And so I thought I’d do on today’s show is I’m going to bring up the things that you’ve been able to implement that we’ve taught you. And I’d love to get your take on how you’ve been able to implement these.

(Speaker 4)
I’m going to go through 10 core systems that I believe you’ve been able to implement well. And I’d like to get your take on it. First off, you were not resistant to the idea of upgrading your branding. You were not resistant to the idea of upgrading your website print pieces. You actually leaned in and you wanted to get it done and get it done quickly. Talk to the listeners out there about how having an upgraded website has helped you.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, the just overwhelming professionalism that people get from visiting our website just really blows them away to make them like realize that we are professional and that we stand apart from everybody else in the area. So the website was key. I also think one thing that a lot of clients probably get stuck on is being like too nitpicky about things and just like wanting it perfect as opposed to wanting it done. So I think the biggest thing is get it done.

(Speaker 1)
We can always change things later. but it’s better to have an awesome website than a perfect website like right now, you know. Now, step two, we optimized your website. A lot of people have great websites that look wonderful, but they’re not canonically compliant. They’re not indexable. They’re not searchable.

(Speaker 1)
So therefore, humans on the planet Earth who are using search engines can’t find them. Again, you didn’t push back.

(Speaker 4)
You leaned into it. Talk to the listeners out there about how optimizing your website has helped increase your leads. Oh, definitely. So Google leads are like huge for us and people finding our website are huge. So writing the content articles, making sure those keywords are showing up. We’re showing up when people search.

(Speaker 4)
or whatever they’re searching, whatever search terms we’re trying to show up for. So that’s huge. And of course, the review side of things is huge, too, for pointing people towards our website. OK, you jumped ahead on my little cheat sheet here.

(Speaker 1)
But step three, gathering objective reviews. You guys have done a great job of gathering objective reviews from your happy clients. Talk to the listeners out there about the importance of gathering objective Google reviews from your happy clients. Oh, it’s so important. When I started working with Thrive, I definitely didn’t think I needed to focus on that. I think I had 12 Google reviews when we started working together.

(Speaker 4)
And now, between the two locations, we have, I think, like 210 or something like that, like five -star reviews, all real. And when people find us, I mean, it’s not even how much do you cost.

(Speaker 1)
It’s when can you come. I don’t care how much you cost.

(Speaker 24)
So people are ready to close like that.

(Speaker 4)
Now step four is building a transparent and easy to understand sales system.

(Speaker 1)
A pricing structure where somebody who maybe is not the most complicated individual, somebody who’s very simple like me could understand your pricing real quickly.

(Speaker 4)
Again, you’ve leaned in on that. You’ve been great to work with. Talk to listeners about the importance of having a simple to understand pricing structure that your ideal and likely buyer can understand immediately. You just want them to not be confused. They’re like, why, why is this like this or whatever?

(Speaker 1)
And also from the like inside perspective of the managers or whoever is answering your phone, they need to be able to quickly, you know, answer questions and stuff without having a lot of training. So it needs to be able to be, you know, in like the sales script when they’re doing a call that they can just very quickly know what the numbers are and not have to be complex about it. Now, step five is implementing sales scripting. You have done a great job of implementing sales scripting. And so many entrepreneurs, I’m telling you, oh, they say, I don’t want to do a script because I don’t want to sound like I’m reading a script. I don’t want my staff to be sounding like they’re reading.

(Speaker 1)
I want my team to have their own personality. I want them to embrace their true selves.

(Speaker 4)
And therefore, when their phone rings at their local business, Every time their phone rings, it’s just like a minefield.

(Speaker 1)
You never know if the phone’s going to be answered professionally, if it’ll be answered at all.

(Speaker 22)
You never know what people are going to say.

(Speaker 4)
Nothing’s written down. It becomes a verbal tribal tradition. It becomes a celebration of jackassery. Tell the listeners out there, why have you embraced sales scripting and how has it helped your company? Sales scripts are amazing, as well as, of course, the call recording so that we can hold people accountable to the sales script. But it just takes all the guesswork and then all of the variables of what people say are removed.

(Speaker 4)
So that if, you know, something’s not working, we’re able to pinpoint what that is and tweak one thing as opposed to like, whatever the people are deciding to say. So, and it also like, It’s just it flows really nicely and it doesn’t sound robotic at all once you get used to it. It’s like I could I could say it off the top of my head the exact scripts we use and we know they close and that way we know it works instead of just people doing whatever they feel like. Now you also implemented a quality control checklist system where basically it’s not in people’s minds. They don’t remember your technicians don’t have to remember what they’re supposed to do. There’s a checklist for everything.

(Speaker 4)
I mean everything. When you go into clean a home

(Speaker 1)
or a commercial business, there’s a checklist for everything. Talk to the listeners out there about the mind freedom that you’ve experienced since, you know, taking it out of your head and putting it on a checklist. Yeah, it just makes it so simple.

(Speaker 4)
Because it’s like, here’s the standard the cleaning tech is responsible for and is going to be held accountable to. And if that’s not hit, then we know that there’s a problem. They don’t get to say like, well, I didn’t know, they don’t get to say I didn’t know. And then on the client side, they have expectations set instead of them setting the expectation, we are setting the expectation as opposed to them being like, well, I thought you guys were going to clean my gutters. It’s like, well, it ain’t on the checklist. So we’re not going to clean your gutters, you know?

(Speaker 4)
and optimizing your numbers in terms of the financial aspects of the company. Again, you’ve leaned into that. A lot of people who are into fitness, I find, lean into that. They want to know how much they weigh, what their body fat percentage is, how many calories they’re eating. People that don’t want to lean into fitness, don’t want to know how many calories are eating, don’t want to know their body fat percentage. People that are into artwork and doing well at art, musicians.

(Speaker 4)
I’ve worked with a lot of musicians. Musicians that are good want to know how they sound. They want to hear themselves. People that are not good don’t want to hear themselves.

(Speaker 1)
Great ballet dancers and performers want to see themselves in a mirror. They want to analyze. Great builders want to see checklists and processes and blueprints. People, the accountants who are good at their job, they want to know the numbers. Entrepreneurs who are not good at entrepreneurship never want to know their numbers.

(Speaker 4)
Talk to the listeners out there about the importance of knowing and optimizing your numbers, actually knowing how much profit you’re going to make per job. Yeah, I would say number one most important thing in my opinion is the tracking sheet that we implement together and that, you know, every single day I’m in the tracking sheet and knowing like exactly where my business is, especially now I am very removed from the day to day kind of operations to a point, I’m not answering the phones, I’m not doing this, I’m not like seeing the complaints or any quality issues or whatever, but I have, you know, my finger on the pulse of my business and every single aspect of the, you know, revenue, expenses, leads, closing rates, number of appointments, number of reviews, number of photos that are getting uploaded, like just everything you could possibly know about the business, I know. So I’m never questioning like, are going off of emotion, because that’s not what we want to do. We want to go off of facts and numbers. And so I know that we’re growing or whatever, we’re closing, et cetera, et cetera, because the numbers don’t lie.

(Speaker 26)
So I love the tracking sheet.

(Speaker 4)
And I think it’s the number one thing that people should implement. If they don’t do nothing else, they need to know their numbers. Now, you’ve attended a multiple in -person two -day interactive business workshops. And the reason why we include that is a quasi -free service. What do I mean by that? I mean, it’s not a revenue generator for me.

(Speaker 4)
If you’re a client of mine, I say, hey, you can come to these events. We make it very, very affordable. If you’re not a client, you can pay $250 to attend the workshop. And if you’re in a tight spot, we have scholarship tickets available. But the point is, everybody can afford to attend. Can you explain how the interactive business workshops have actually helped you to maybe further understand the path or to get a whole picture view of the actual business plan?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, I love I love the conferences because I always walk away with action items, even though like I go over these things with my coach every every week. It just I always walk away with something like wow, I didn’t like a fresh perspective on things because you’re interacting with a lot of other business owners and like bouncing ideas off of each other and hearing what worked for them or what people are struggling with. And of course, then like having you like explain it in the way that you do. It just makes it very like actionable.

(Speaker 22)
Like I I would go away with like, this is what I need to do on Monday to make these things happen.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not just like this motivational thing. Do you laugh a little bit? Do you have a little bit of fun? I do. I have a lot of fun at the conferences. Okay.

(Speaker 1)
And what kind of people attend the conferences? not liberals. It seems like all we start at 7 a . m. and it seems like you know the entrepreneurs are like this is awesome we started. I can be done by three.

(Speaker 4)
I can still make some calls. Uh, what again, you’re sitting next to people that have had massive success, people that have been in the program for years. Um, is that helpful to sit next to other people that have actually, I can’t even like the people I’ve met there have been life. They’ve changed my life. Like, obviously you guys have all changed my life. Literally.

(Speaker 4)
I’m not just, you know, blowing smoke here. Um, but meeting the people, you know, the Josh Wilson’s of the world who I literally texted him today. Like, you know, we’re on a friend basis. We have calls all the time. Like, Just the people that I’ve met is just, it’s life changing.

(Speaker 1)
What is your website if people right now want to go online and they want to look up your website and kind of, you know, see who you are and what you’re all about? Yeah, it is www . serene -clean . com. And OK, so you came to the workshop. You’ve implemented the tracking sheet, the group interview.

(Speaker 1)
People say, it’s so hard to find people. I’ve never had a hard time finding people.

(Speaker 4)
Even right now, I don’t have a hard time finding people. But I can tell you, it’s a system that I’ve applied. It’s a proven system, a proven process that I’ve done.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve been doing this process of hiring people. This marks, I know it’s crazy, 22 years. of doing the same system every week, interviewing people.

(Speaker 4)
22 years I’ve been doing this.

(Speaker 25)
I’m a 40 year old person.

(Speaker 4)
I’ve been doing the group interview for 22 years. Can you talk about the importance of doing the group interview and how it’s changed your business? Oh, it’s so important.

(Speaker 19)
Like, um, that has been, I would say that’s a big game changer too, because I always have candidates like ready to go when something happens.

(Speaker 4)
And you know, in the past two months, we’ve taken on a huge contract and I have hired probably 40 people and somebody quit today, somebody quit yesterday, I fired somebody three days ago, it doesn’t matter, next, next, next, you know, so it’s amazing.

(Speaker 24)
Just a little context, just so you know, things that will get you fired if you’re out there and you don’t know about serene -clean .

(Speaker 1)
com. If you’re not on time, if you don’t honor your commitments to the client, you’re gonna get fired. And there are certain people on the planet Earth that don’t want to honor their commitments to their client, and they don’t want to show up on time. And therefore, you’re not a good fit for Serene Colleen. So she’s not running around just randomly firing people. She’s just saying, if you have a certain standard and expectation, and on behalf of the customer, because you’re a customer advocate, you’re saying, this is the standard we have to deliver at.

(Speaker 1)
Now, next thing, step number 11 here. You pay yourself well, and you don’t apologize for it. Now, it is going to be said that you actually make more money now per month than many people make per year. And I repeat that. You make now more money per month than many people now make per year. And you’ve learned to pay yourself well and not apologize for it.

(Speaker 1)
But I knew you going back to when you first called us to where you were really grinding to make it work.

(Speaker 23)
And now you’re doing really well.

(Speaker 6)
Now that you’re paying yourself well and not apologizing for it, are you able to enjoy more time freedom to work out, to read, to spend time with family, friends, to think more meta on your business? Or how has that impacted you? Oh, yeah, definitely not having to worry about income is is really empowering.

(Speaker 1)
And also, of course, that just allows you to do a lot of good in the world. Because number one, we’re here to make money, but money is just a tool. And so that allows us to, you know, help the community help our families, you know, buy cool stuff, of course, but the time freedom is really that’s the whole point of this for me is like, I don’t want to have to be anywhere I don’t want to be at any given time. So and now I can do that. Now, final thing is you’ve been able to sustain diligence and accountability. What does that mean?

(Speaker 1)
Diligence is where it’s the steady application of effort over time. It’s like long after the motivation, the big idea wears off, you know, there’s always the excitement of a new idea. Oh, new idea. Yes. New idea.

(Speaker 1)
Love the new idea.

(Speaker 6)
Just had a new idea. I should buy a boat. I should buy. I should start a company. It should be called serene clean. Well, long after that idea has worn off, then diligence kicks in.

(Speaker 6)
And diligence is a steady application of effort. If you’re out there and you’ve ever played sports at a high level, you’ve ever been a top -notch speaker, you’ve ever been a top musician, anybody out there who’s done anything at a high level, you know the level of preparation is what prepares you for the ovations. Again, the preparation is what prepares you for the ovations. And then but everybody out there if you have a sound mind and you’re being honest you need a little bit accountability.

(Speaker 1)
We all need accountability.

(Speaker 6)
Somebody that can hold us accountable to push through goals push through obstacles that made that time seem insurmountable. You know sometimes it’s like it seems overwhelming.

(Speaker 1)
How has the weekly meeting and the accountability helped you to stay diligent and consistent over time. Yeah. Um, I love that. Um, my coach definitely like holds me because everybody needs to be held accountable no matter how high achieving you think you are. And obviously like, you know, the, the pigheaded discipline is, is awesome to have that, but you still need somebody to hold you accountable. And like, for me, you know, there’s certain things like, there’s always some place that you can do better and improve on.

(Speaker 1)
And so what my coach Bloomer, he always, uh, you know, it’s like, okay, it’s been two weeks now. You haven’t gotten a video review.

(Speaker 22)
What’s going on?

(Speaker 1)
And it’s like, I don’t like getting video reviews. Like he’s calling me out on it.

(Speaker 19)
I love that because like, I hate it, but I love it.

(Speaker 1)
And because that’s, we need to be told where we’re failing. I mean, they’re telling us where we’re good, but we need to be told where we’re failing. Oh, that’s amazing. Now, again, you are a diligent woman who’s reached out.

(Speaker 21)
We only take on 160 clients.

(Speaker 6)
I think you certainly occupy one of those spaces well.

(Speaker 1)
What’s interesting is you know last year average client grew by a 104 % we didn’t have any client that grew. by over 500%. So 1 ,462 % is certainly going to impact that average. What advice would you have for anybody out there listening who’s contemplating going to thrive timeshow . com forward slash EO fire to schedule a consultation because again, if people want to schedule a free consultation with me, I don’t charge for that we do have call screeners, they’re going to make sure I’m not wasting your time and you’re not wasting my time to see if you’re a good fit. But there’s people out there contemplating going to thrive time show dot com forward slash e o fire dot com it’s thrive time show dot com forward slash e o fire dot com.

(Speaker 1)
What advice would you have or feedback would you have for somebody thinking about attending one of our in -person workshops or scheduling a one -on -one consultation. I think that most people should definitely go to the conference. But when it comes to the one -on -one coaching, I think you really need to look at yourself and say, am I ready to maybe be told to do things that I’m not comfortable with?

(Speaker 20)
And am I ready to do it?

(Speaker 1)
Because you can always heim and hau and go back and forth. But if you’re not ready to implement anything, it’s probably not a good fit because your coaches are going to push you. And that’s the whole point. You’re paying them to push you. So if you’re not ready and willing to make changes, then don’t bother. I tell you what, I really do appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us.

(Speaker 1)
I’m so excited about your growth there, and hopefully we’ll see you in December. Are you coming in December to the conference? Not with this big job.

(Speaker 2)
I’m on a military base. I’m on a military base right now. I’m rejected. OK, that’s fine. But maybe we’ll see you at the next one, OK? Thank you for being here.

(Speaker 2)
I appreciate you. Thank you, Clay. Take care. Bye bye. okay hey guys my name is stephanie pipkin i own serene clean and this is my grandma sue and we are gonna briefly just go over the dream 100 drop offs that she does for serene clean and how it has really helped grow our business uh and spread the word of our business in our area.

(Speaker 2)
So just a little background on Serene Clean and working with Thrive Coaching. So I’ve used Thrive out of Oklahoma for two years this month. And when we started working with Thrive, we were at about $200 ,000 in revenue a year. And this year, we’re projected to do 1 .4 million in revenue a year. So it’s grown very, very drastically since we’ve implemented all the systems. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is one of the systems that they have encouraged and harassed us to use.

(Speaker 2)
And it works really good. And that’s Dream 100 Dropoffs. And that’s something that my grandma Sue does for me. And she is absolutely killing it. Grandma, basically, if you can just describe what it is that you do at these drop -offs. What do you do?

(Speaker 2)
When I get there, of course, I introduce… myself and the business and I just tell them that I am a business -to -business call. I’m not there to sell them anything. I’m just there to introduce them to a new business in our area. And what do you bring and leave with them? I actually have a little gift for them and then a sweet treat and I have the paperwork that Explains all about serene clean and as I’m talking to them I try to like give a little bit of thing talk about things that Would encourage them makes it a little more relaxed and casual and then I I do sign my name on all the things so I tell them that they can’t forget me and put a little smiley face with it and Leave them as I go then I say and here’s a sweet treat to get you through the day. So So basically, she just goes, gets a box of donuts, hits all her stops for the day.

(Speaker 2)
And what she’s leaving behind is basically a sales sheet that explains what makes Serene Clean different. And on the back of it is commercial references of companies. that we already cleaned for. So the whole purpose of this is to get us more janitorial accounts, because those are excellent accounts for us. And the thing she’s also asking is, you know, who do they, how do they clean now? And, you know, are they using a service now?

(Speaker 2)
How happy are they with it? Like, is there any issues? And who are you usually talking to? Are you talking to the receptionist? Who are you talking to? It’s kind of split.

(Speaker 19)
A lot of the businesses I’ve been to recently, I’ve actually talked to the owners.

(Speaker 1)
If it’s a large, large business, I’ll be talking to the lady or person, it’s usually a girl, at the front desk and I ask her. Sometimes they don’t know or they don’t tell me and sometimes they do know, so it just works out really well to find out from them. do they have a cleaner? And like a lot of them that I talk to the owners, they actually are doing a lot of the cleaning themselves. So it just gives me a little heads up too of what they’re doing. And then I pass it on to Steph.

(Speaker 1)
Yes, so then at the end of her stop she types up a little synopsis of who she talked to, what was the reaction, things like that, and you know, is there room, because really the goal of her doing this is to get the foot in the door for me to do a walkthrough and bid an account. That is the whole purpose of this, and overall how would you say the reaction is? It’s been really well. You don’t know, but I always I get excited when it’s a great day and the sun is shining and sometimes it’s snowing, but whenever, when I have a great day and everybody’s just happy to see me, it just makes it a fun thing to know them. I’ve been from the area for a long time, so a lot of times I see old friends also while I’m out. Yeah, this has worked really well for Grandma in particular because it’s just one of those

(Speaker 1)
a very not salesy place at all. It’s not, you know, they’re not trying to sell. She’s just trying to introduce them and it’s very, you know, a lot of people are just so like turned off by, you know, like very hard selling. And so it’s just like one, getting them with the doughnuts, like nobody will turn that down. And then, um, really it’s just, yeah, a very friendly thing. And this is like a long game thing.

(Speaker 1)
thing. Almost never is it the first stop that they’re gonna you know have us do a walkthrough. A lot of times that sheet will sit on a desk for a long time and then when they’re ready to go um and you know they they’re either pissed off about their current service or they’re just overwhelmed doing it themselves Who is that lady who dropped off the donuts? Where is that? She, ah, serene clean. And then it’s top of mind.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s just really impressive. And so kind of like the highlight of her doing this, she’s done this, how long have you been doing this? Did you say? Eight months. Eight months. She got me a walkthrough at a very large manufacturing facility who is like a dream client.

(Speaker 1)
It’s daytime commercial, Monday through Friday, like an amazing account, like who I would wildly want. And she got me a walkthrough and we ended up winning the bid. have been cleaning for them for two weeks now, and that’s like a $5 ,000 a month account. So it’s significantly impactful. And again, this is long game thinking of, you know, she’s making these introductions and, you know, we’ve gotten plenty of smaller accounts as well from her doing these things. And, you know, just being consistent, you know, that’s the biggest thing is, you know, you do this every week, right?

(Speaker 1)
right every single week unless we have a significant snowstorm every week and it’s it’s fairly you know inexpensive from like for us we always did the donuts i’ve tried other things but the donuts just seem to be a hit um and yeah i just know a lot of people are are hesitant to do this but if we can do this in a small town and to have that kind of success rate and um it really we just want to be top of mind and it’s it’s working and it’s growing uh the business is growing really well. And it’s just fun to work with grandma. So yeah, so that is how we did Dream 100 and it’s working great. And we just say, go do it. Don’t be scared.

(Speaker 1)
Just make yourself do it basically. And for me, I don’t like to do it, but I knew grandma would be great at it. And so this is one of those things of delegating and outsourcing if you don’t want to do it. But if you don’t have somebody to do it, you need to do it because if you don’t, your business will just not grow the way you want. Um, so yeah, that is, uh, how we handle this stuff. My name is Elizabeth Walker.

(Speaker 1)
I own a business, Nook and Cranny Homekeeping, LLC. I was looking to learn pretty much anything there is to learn about business. I’m a new business owner, less than a year. So I really needed to know everything about everything. I have learned how to implement systems from hiring to the actual day -to -day systems in the company. I like that the workshop gave tangible systems, but it was very entertaining and interactive.

(Speaker 1)
Clay’s presentation style was energetic, it was exciting, and it gave me hope that there’s actually a lot of success still to be done in my business. The atmosphere was energizing, invigorating, nothing boring about it, it was absolutely exciting. Maybe that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned is that this can be simple, and I think that’s what they’re missing out on. My name is Elizabeth Walker. I’m the owner of Nook and Cranny Homekeeping. I first heard about Clay on the radio on 1170 KFAQ.

(Speaker 1)
I was just switching through the radio stations, and I heard them talking, and they were kind of funny. So I hung around a little bit. Clay’s team has impacted my amount of internet leads through Google, and we just have people calling us almost every single day saying, they found us on Google. So it’s definitely broadened our horizons and our clientele. But we also have people that find us in other avenues, and I always direct them to our Google reviews.

(Speaker 1)
The typical interaction during our weekly meetings is fun, it is accountability, it’s an hour of hard discussions and a lot of learning. We try to laugh. I always share concerns I had during the week. The team always asks me what I need help with and then they help put me back on track where I need to be. Every business owner needs Clay Clark and his team because they put a path out in front of you, a proven system of success, and then they coach you along the way. They don’t do it for you.

(Speaker 1)
They don’t hold your hand. They just stand right beside you. They cheer you on. They share with you what you need to hear, whether it’s good or it’s bad or it’s what you want to hear or it’s what you don’t want to hear. Every business owner needs that accountability next to them, that proven, person next to them that can keep them going. Most people think that they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because human nature tends to say we can do it all.

(Speaker 1)
And sometimes we believe that. Or maybe people are prideful and they don’t want to ask for help. Or I’m not really sure.

(Speaker 18)
I believe that one of the smartest things I’ve ever done in my whole life, definitely in my business, is hiring Clay Clark and his team.

(Speaker 4)
Somebody is missing out on years and years and years of experience if they don’t hire them.

(Speaker 10)
You can either make mistakes in your business because you don’t have the experience, so you just go out there and you make mistakes. Or you can have somebody next to you that has been there, they’ve done that, and they can give you a heads up. You’re going in the wrong direction. Or they can give you just that wise advice that says, maybe you should go in this direction. That’s what they’re missing out on.

(Speaker 18)
They’re missing out on years of experience that they have not gleaned themselves.

(Speaker 17)
Hi there.

(Speaker 10)
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.

(Speaker 8)
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 really 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.

(Speaker 7)
I was getting probably like two leads a week. Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week.

(Speaker 8)
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. I don’t waste as much time on low quality candidates anymore.

I have successfully gained our second largest commercial client and that’s was during covid so again I started working with looking clay in February and then covid hit in was mid -march or so so for the entire month of April we were shut down residential April and may I believe and so despite that and again being a new business and all this stuff I mean we came out of covid like. Stronger than ever and now hitting our highest numbers in the history of the company It just leads just piling in and the beauty is when people call us They’re already sold because of our Google reviews our online presence the no -brainer offer that we now give to our clients which is You know if they book their second appointment within a month of the first they get 50 % off and again They’re just ready to book. I hardly have to do any work. It feels like sometimes to actually book people so that’s amazing So… Uh, every week I meet with Luke, um, and it’s awesome. Obviously I’m in Wisconsin, he’s in Oklahoma, but we have a great time.

I know I can text him at any time, call him at any time with any issues I’m having, especially when COVID did hit. They were so helpful in, um, helping me get the PPP grants and everything, uh, settled away there and really pushed me to make sure I was on the ball and getting all of the grants that I was possibly able to, which was amazing. Um, so they’ve just been such a wealth of information. and when I’m freaking out because you know a burning fire is happening Luke’s there to calm me down and you know back me off the cliff edge and it’s just awesome to have him you know as a resource there so every week we meet and we have a big tracking sheet so we track all my leads we track my numbers, where the leads are coming from, any complaints. I love my tracking sheet.

I know it’s probably a little extra, but I love it because I can see everything that’s actually happening in my business. And this is so important because it’s not like I’m just saying, well, I feel like it’s busier. I know if it’s busier and I know, are we making a profit every week? Why or why not? It’s just amazing. tracking my Google reviews tracking my competitors Google reviews and Luke is always pushing me to get more reviews even though you know I was not very comfortable with that at first it felt just pushy but now I’m seeing the effects of having a lot of Google reviews you know a lot to me at least not very high compared to others but People are finding us on Google and they’re already ready to book because of our reviews.

Going for those reviews has been so integral in having basically easy sell leads. So tracking has been just so vital and I really enjoy it actually. Anybody who is skeptical about working with clay or Luke, you know the whole team at thrive time I was definitely skeptical and to me again new business It seemed like a lot of money but in comparison to other business coaches especially like specific to the cleaning industry like I’m in I mean you’re talking like $10 ,000 a month and honestly, I feel like I get like that much value out of Luke Just my meeting with him once a week, it’s amazing. And it has just transformed my business in every single aspect. I mean, I always aspired to be a successful business owner. And now, I mean, it’s not even a question that this business is going to be successful, even if a pandemic happens and you have to shut down.

I mean, if I can make it through that and be directly because of them, it is absolutely because of them. Obviously, you know, I’m a hard worker, blah, blah, blah, all that. And, you know, I was made to be an entrepreneur. However, having them as like the guiding light of this is what you need to do. And it’s very straightforward. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is very straightforward of what needs to be done.

And I like that. I like having that step -by -step process and I love having the accountability because there’s a lot of stuff that they have me do that I don’t want to do. It’s not fun, but it works. And, and that, you know, having that discipline to just do the things week after week, regardless if it’s dull or boring or you don’t want to do it. Um, Luke really pushes me to do those things, which I love. I mean, I hate it at the time, but I love it because I can see how it’s affecting my business in a positive way.

And, you know, I don’t want to be just good. I want to be the best. And I see them as an integral part of that. And I will not be the best if I don’t have them with me. So I just I love having them on my team. And it just feels like the best decision I ever made in my business.

And I know I’m still really small and things like that. like that but there’s a reason I reached out to them when I was small because I want to be big and I want to not grow and then collapse because I grew too quickly without the correct systems in place. So it’s just, it’s been amazing and I would suggest anybody who’s willing to put in the work and do things that make you uncomfortable, reach out to them. But if you are not willing to change the way you are doing things, if you’re not willing to implement a no -brainer, if you’re not willing to ask for Google reviews, if you’re not willing to write content, really, really boring content for your website so the Google bots find you, then don’t reach out. You need to be willing to put in the work as well. And your coach will hold you accountable, I mean, which I love.

Again, the tough love is really great. You know, Luke’s like, a stern father figure but he’s also nice but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them so that’s just great worth every penny I mean I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can and maybe someday I’ll be able to but I would just say go for it if it seems like a good fit just go for it just Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes.

That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having 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 to come. 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. 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. I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees, and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences. Amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and show the team about marketing and how to implement.

Transcribed with Cockatoo