Gay Hendricks | The Best-Selling Author of The Big Leap, The Genius Zone & More + Are You Ready to Make the Big Leap of Improvement? How to Move Past Self-Sabotage + How to Flip the Switch & Take Control of Your Life NOW!

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

On today’s edition of The Thrive Time Show, we interview an American psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth, relationships, and body intelligence. He’s best known for his work in relationship enhancement and in the development of conscious breathing exercises. After receiving his PhD in psychology from Stanford University in 1974, Hendricks began teaching at the University of Colorado. He spent 21 years at the University of Colorado and became a full professor in the counseling psychology department while founding the Hendricks Institute. Gay Hendricks conducts workshops with his wife of nearly 40 years, Dr. Kathleen Hendricks. Not to burst your bubble or anything, but it’s Kathleen.

It is Kathleen. Like I was saying with his wife, Kathleen Hendricks. Gay Hendricks and his wife, Kathleen Hendricks teamed up together to write numerous books. I hate to be this guy, but they have actually written 35 books, which is more than numerous. Most people, when they say numerous, they might think 12 or 15, but it’s actually 35. Thanks for pointing that out.

I really do appreciate that. Could you clarify what you mean by that? Because a lot of times people say, I appreciate that, but it’s really more of a passive aggressive, like a stop talking. What part of what I told you do you appreciate the most overall? I appreciate the hell out of all the feedback you’ve just given me. And now that he further ado, Back to my intro.

Together they have authored, they have co -authored over 35 books. Think about that folks, over 35 books. Think about it folks. Our incredible announcer guy has got it right. He has written over 35 books. He and his wife have appeared on numerous radio shows, television shows, including Oprah.

Huh? And ladies and gentlemen, on today’s show, he’s lowered his standards. Yes, he’s lowered his standards. We caught him off guard, and he’s agreed to be right here on the Thrive Time Show. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, please join me in welcoming Gay Hendricks onto the Thrive Time Show. Folks, to the right of me, to my right,

we have a longtime client by the name of James D. Cristofaro. He’s a respected attorney based in New York. He flew into Tulsa, Oklahoma just to be in the studio today to kind of co -interview Gay Hendricks. And I’ll tell you why. Because James D. Cristofaro is the biggest hype man, biggest believer of all things Gay Hendricks in the history of humanity, probably. James, tell us about why you love the writings of Gay Hendricks, and then we’ll introduce today’s guest here.

Well, yeah, hi, Gay. Thank you so much, Mr. Hendricks, for agreeing to jump on the show today, and thank you, Clay, for getting in touch with Gay Hendricks. It’s an honor to be here, and thank you so much. Well, I’ve read two of your books. I’ve read The Big Leap, and then what I call the follow -on to that, which is, you know, The Genius Zone. Both of them, you know, I read the first one, The Big Leap, probably about 10 years ago, and then it came across my lap again very recently within the past several months and I read it again and within the few short months that I’ve read it and then followed on with the near the genius zone, my life has changed dramatically.

It was very, very interesting because I noticed that upper limit like creeping constantly. So I look forward to you getting into that more today and then how to penetrate that upper limit, to transcend that upper limit and to hit the genius zone. And with that being said, Gay Hendrix, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m very well. I’ve been up bright and early.

I’m an early riser, so I pop open around 5 or 5 .30 in the morning, and then I do a lot of my serious, heavy lifting early in the morning, and then the rest of my day is play. Well, I gotta ask you this, sir. What inspired you to write this book, The Big Leap, the book that made a big impact on James’s life? What inspired you to write that book, sir? Well, first of all, I noticed something in myself I call the upper limit problem.

And, um, a good example of it. The first time I noticed it, I didn’t write the book about it for another 30 years, but it made a big impression on me. I used to be very obese and I changed my life about 50 years ago. And within the first month I lost about 35 pounds. And so I, you know, was well on my way to eliminating my excess body weight. But after a month, I was feeling so high and good. And I had energy that I hadn’t had in years.

And so what did I do? I was walking past a ice cream shop and I just completely went unconscious. And I went in there and bought this gigantic banana split for 20 minutes. I felt like the king of the universe while all that sugar was pumping through me. But 20 minutes after that, I felt like I was just, I had a stomach ache and I was just low. And I said, why did I do that?

Why did I sabotage myself? And eventually I started asking other people questions about how they sabotage themselves. So that’s when somewhere back in there, this phrase, the upper limit problem popped into my mind. And what the upper limit problem is, is basically being allergic to feeling good. And so what happens when you begin to feel more success or more abundance or more good feeling or more love, it trips old switches in us, old, old limiting beliefs. And then out of those limiting beliefs, we find some way to sabotage ourselves.

So when I wrote The Big Leap, I’d been thinking about this for 30 years. Wow. Big Leap kind of came out in a whoosh over six months or so is all it took me to write it. Now, what I’m going to do for the format today with the limited time we have, we’ll go back and forth between James and myself with some questions here. I do have a question for you about this dramatic weight loss that you made. For anybody out there that goes, wow, tell me more about that.

What did you do? I mean, how did you lose that much weight or how did you become, because now people would know you as a guy who’s perpetually in shape or a guy who’s perpetually thin. How did you make that switch? Wow. This is a big life -changing moment in my life that happened in 1969. And as I said, I was obese, but not only was I obese, I had a glandular problem I was born with that made me gain weight.

So I was the only fat kid in a family where everybody else was thin and I was eating the same food. And so I was taken around to different medical specialists and given shots and put on pills. And anyway, but the problem never got resolved until this thing happened in 1969. And so I went out. Oh, by the way, I was a heavy smoker at the time, too. And that all changed on this particular day.

And I was also in a pretty toxic relationship that I’d been in a couple of years and I had a crummy job. So just about all of my cylinders weren’t firing very well. So I went out for a walk and I slipped on the ice and I went down in a big whoop. And I didn’t knock myself unconscious, but I put it like I knocked myself conscious, but because for about two minutes, I could feel and see all of these old emotions in myself that I’d never dealt with grief about my father’s death and anger about being fat and all these things. but I’d never really seen them clearly until this two minutes. But what happened at the end of that was I realized that there was also this huge open space that I call pure consciousness that’s underneath all of our emotions.

And it’s a gift. We’re born with it. But most of us don’t know we have it because we keep them covered up with anger and fear and sadness and all sorts of distractions that keeps us from realizing that we have this essence of pure consciousness. So this happened in about two minutes. And then I got up and I walked back home. But everything changed because I started eating only food that I felt would feed that pure consciousness.

In other words, anything I’d eaten up until then, I said, OK, that all made me fat. From now on, I’m only going to eat foods that feel like it feeds this free part of me inside. So I started eating things like fruits and vegetables that I’d never paid any attention to. My main vegetable at the time was the French fry. But I started discovering other things like broccoli and spinach and all sorts of things. And so it was an exciting time in my life because over the next year, not only did I lose all the weight, but also I had a couple of other amazing things change, which was my eyesight actually changed.

I’d never been able to pass my driver’s test without glasses, but after this experience, I took a driving test and I didn’t need my glasses. And so I’m not claiming any miracles there. It’s just unusual that those two things would happen at the same time. But that’s the story. And the the ultimate Hendrix diet is absolutely free and you can use it any day. And that’s just start choosing food that feels like it feeds the real essential

the one that you want to become. And that’s my diet secret. Wow. Okay. Now, James, you love the book, The Genius Zone. I’m going to let you ask Mr. Hendricks there, any questions you have about The Genius Zone, sir?

I do. I do have a question. I’m not sure if this applies to The Big Leap or The Genius Zone, probably to both. And what I want to do, since we have only a limited amount of time, is give you what I’ve come up with a term called thought messes. Right. I think it’s thought messes, a mess, a mess of thoughts that I have in my head.

So, and it’s based on two experience that I had that I had recently. One of the experience was I was walking onto a ferry going from, I live in Manhattan in New York city, and I was walking onto a walk on passenger only ferry, no cars. It’s fairly small. It’s like a commuter ferry. And I was going from Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey. There was an ice cream place, believe it or not, that I wanted to visit there.

And when I was walking onto the ferry, I walked up to one of the attendants, I would call him a greeter attendant, and I asked him a question, I said, how do you get up to the top level? And he just looked at me blankly, and I said, all right, I was thinking to myself, maybe he didn’t hear me. So then I said, I repeated my question, how do you get to the top level? And he just stared at me blankly again. And I said, oh, so you are hearing me and you’re choosing not to answer the question. And I continued on.

And I said to the person I was with, I said, you know what an asshole that guy is. Right. And so I want to stop right there because that hooked me. It got annoying to me. And I just I wanted to have a conversation. I want to know why this guy wasn’t responding to me and why I had that reaction.

And does this tie into upper limiting at all? Well, just think about that, because almost everybody has had experiences of not being able to communicate what we really want. or what we really need. And most of those go back to very early times in our life. So yeah, I think most of us have an upper limit about communication and getting triggered because we can’t get our message across. But let me go one step deeper than that.

In The Big Leap, as you probably know, I talked about not one or two, but several limiting beliefs that people carry around. And the biggest one is the limiting belief that I don’t deserve the good things of life. I don’t deserve love. I don’t deserve abundance. And so when we start getting some, it triggers that old feeling back in there, that old decision somewhere that got made before we could think for ourselves about, I don’t deserve this. So that’s one of the biggest ones.

So whenever, the reason I’m mentioning this is because anytime you encounter a glitch like that, a communication breakdown like that, it’s really a good idea to look inside and say, Okay, was that one of my limiting book? Am I operating out of a limiting belief? Another limiting belief is not just that I don’t deserve the good things of life, but I can’t have them. Because of factors in my past, like I feel like I would abandon my family if I thought a new way. Like a fellow that we worked with a while back that you know, was the only member of his family, basically, as a kid to say, no, I don’t want to smoke. And everybody thought that was an odd thing because everybody in his family smoked.

And but, you know, thank goodness he had the wisdom to choose out of that particular pattern. But it’s often not a use. You know, it’s not celebrated often when we make a breakthrough. My friend Jack, who has now 27, I think, years of sobriety, when he said he was going to his first AA meeting, a bunch of his friends try to almost kind of kidnap him and try to keep him from going, you know, because they all depended on him being part of their community. And so a lot of times in life that when we make some kind of a breakthrough into a new dimension, it’s a it’s a moment for us to move beyond any kind of upper limit.

So like back to your example, What did you, did you find out anything more? Like, did you find out if the guy had hearing aids or did you find out anything more or was that the end of the conversation? It wasn’t the end of the conversation. It was actually the beginning of like a two hour bit of nonsense that I didn’t want to have anything to do with because I just wanted to make that passing comment and, and then move on. Yes. There’s a bunch of different things that could come up.

Maybe he had a speech impediment. Maybe there was, you know, go down the parade of, Parade of issues that this that this man could have had another issue is I said that okay So then why are they putting him if he is that person in? As the face of you know, he’s like a greeter to people coming on the ferry a greeter at Walmart So what is this person doing greeting people as they’re walking on the ferry is in the wrong position. I don’t know So my Mike I’m gonna throw it back to you and and so how do we tie that then into the you know? This is about me. I guess right. How do I tie this into my sort of upper limit?

That’s exactly a great point, because look at what was happening just before you had that encounter. Were you feeling good? Peace. Yes, absolutely. You were feeling good. And then all of a sudden, this thing happened for whatever reason.

And boom, you’re not feeling good. anymore. So yeah, that’s an upper limit problem in action. So my suggestion is to look at that, look and see if that’s any kind of theme in your relationships at home or at work or whatever. Do you get to a certain level of feeling good And then some kind of relationship drama happens because that’s one of the most typical common upper limit problems is, in fact, that’s where I originally got onto it with working with executives. I had an executive that had the biggest upper limit problem of his life.

And what had happened an hour before is he got $150 ,000 bonus that he wasn’t expecting. He was sitting in his office and his supervisor came in with an envelope and said, hey, look, the board wants to give you a little something extra for your work on this successful project, whatever it was. And he said, well, thank you. And he opened the thing. It was $150 ,000. And he made $180 ,000 was his normal salary.

So you would think, of course, that he’d celebrate on that, but what happened instead was he drove home that afternoon and got into the biggest fight with his wife in 12 years of marriage, and even his children got involved, his two kids got involved. It was like the worst thing that ever happened to him happened an hour after this thing, this beautiful thing. And so, That’s an extreme example, but we have to look very carefully at our lives as we’re going through and really find out where we stop ourselves from feeling good or from growing or from accepting something or from loving something. And so if you begin to look at where the glitch points are, that’ll point you to where your upper limits are. And then you can deal with that. because you can see them coming and you don’t have to act on them.

For someone who hasn’t read your books, I want to just chime in here and see if I’m understanding this here. You know, it sounds like you’re describing maybe self -sabotage, where people have this burning desire to set their career on fire or do things that cause them to go back to the beginning of the board game, figuratively speaking? Or could this be also called self -sabotage, this upper limit? Or for anybody who’s not familiar with your writings, Gay, do you talk about self -sabotage a lot, sir? Yes, that’s that’s the term that I think a lot of people are fairly familiar with. But what I did in the big leap was break it down so you can see how it actually works.

And so you can see how it’s happening in you. And so, yes, it’s definitely a form of self -sabotage. And to that point, I appreciate you bringing it up, because to deal with your upper limits, all of them come out of fear. You get scared about something and then the upper limit happens. And generally what happens is we get scared about something and then we pick a fight or we get scared about something and we withdraw. So what happens is we need to become kind of a connoisseur and a student of fear, because fear and anxiety will tell you when you’re experiencing an upper limit problem.

All you have to do is say, OK, do I have those butterflies in my belly? Oh, OK, I’m in the middle of an upper limit problem. What am I? Hmm. What’s the good thing that’s trying to break through? See, because on the other side of every upper limit problem is a breakthrough.

some new version of yourself that can accept more love or can accept more abundance. Like in my guy that got triggered by the $150 ,000 bonus, if they’d given him $10, he might not have started a fight with his wife. But something stirred up that level of fear. And then he acted out of that. Now I’m going to read a little bio here, and then James will go back to you for anybody who’s not familiar with Gay Hendricks. And again, I don’t know anybody who’s more passionate about the writings of Gay Hendricks than James D. Cristofaro, attorney.

This is so great. I’m so glad this is happening here. So Gay, allegedly you were born in 1945. You’re an American psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth, relationships, and body intelligence. You’re best known for work about relationship enhancement and in the development of conscious breathing exercises. You’ve received a PhD.

in psychology from Stanford in 1974. And you began teaching at the University of Colorado. You spent 21 years at the University of Colorado. You became a professional. You became a full -time or a full professor in counseling psychology department while founding the Hendricks Institute. You are a multiple -time bestselling author.

And you have done workshops with your wife of nearly 40 years, Dr. Kathleen Hendricks. And together, you two have written 35 books. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay.

So, uh, back to you, James. Okay. That was a great introduction. And one of the questions that I think would be helpful, or one of the things that I think you could do for, for our listeners is walk through the steps of, I think there are four of them about identifying. Okay. So you’re at, you’ve got this issue and you want to break through and transcend through your upper limit and enter the zone of genius.

Is there, is there a process that you use? I believe it’s identifying it saying that you can’t control it. And making a declaration of that and then go doing something that you enjoy doing and that would help others. I think I missed a step there, but is that the general gist of it? Yes, that compresses a lot into one sentence, but usually most of us don’t get through it that quickly. But yeah, here’s the here’s the thing.

happens. One day, hopefully you will wake up as I did in the middle of an argument with your partner or a business partner. It doesn’t even have to be a romantic partner. But what happened for me, 40, 48 years ago, my wife and I have been together actually 47 years now. So, but just before I met her, I woke up kind of in the middle of an argument with a woman that I’d had this on and off relationship with for five years. And I realized, oh, this is not our first argument.

This is not our 500th argument. This is our 500th run through of the same thing. Yeah. And I realized at that moment how we each created conflict. One of us would not tell the truth about something. And it could be just hiding a feeling like, you know, I wouldn’t tell her I was angry about something she did or she wouldn’t tell me she was hurt about something that happened.

So there would be a concealment and then there’d be a projection onto the other person. If I’m concealing anger, of course, I’m going to project it onto the other person because I feel like I’m the victim. And so the the victim move is always to blame another person. And that’s what I would do. I would get into these arguments with this particular person named Carol and they would never end in the sense we would never get them resolved. And I realized it was because no one would ever take responsibility.

We always had this victim perpetrator, victim, and she did it too. She thought she was the victim and I was the perpetrator. And so on this one beautiful day, I realized oh, there’s only one solution to that. And that’s for each person to take 100 % responsibility to create a relationship where there’s no victims and villains, there’s just stuff to work out. And if you get locked in the victim perpetrator mode, then those arguments continue, like, We’ve seen, I think, close to 5 ,000 couples in our seminars or in here in our office.

And we’ve had people come in that have been married for 30 years. that have been having the same argument over and over and over and never cracked through it because they stayed in that victim, persecutor, victim, perpetrator mode, where if I go victim, I have to make the other person the bad guy. And of course, she’s busy at the same time making me the bad guy. And so it’s a kind of a vicious cycle until somebody has the consciousness to pop out of it and say, OK, I take responsibility for having created. would you take responsibility also? Once you can get two people operating at the 100 % level, you have a genuine relationship.

If you don’t, you’re going to continue to have problems over and over again. So that’s one of the main things we help straighten out, by the way, and not just in romantic relationships. I’ve worked, I think the last time they told me I’d worked with something like 1800 executives over the years. And often this would come on their turf, I would go down there to straighten out some kind of issue they were having in their boardroom or Michael Dell was one of them. That reminds me of one of the is one of the people that you worked with, right? You met you talked about him in your book.

Yeah, yeah. And so that’s a good example, by the way, because I use basically the same tools that I would use to straighten out a relationship issue in their boardroom. And once everybody got it, wow, you know, the energy was gone. was incredible. And so relationship problems, we say in the bedroom or the boardroom are basically exactly the same. Now, James, what I want to do with the limited time we have here, I want to provide an opportunity for you to ask an additional question, but I also want to pull this up so people can see here.

If we’re out there today and we’re wanting to buy a copy of the book here, I’m going to pull it up real quick here. I encourage everybody, if you haven’t picked up a copy of The Genius Zone, I’ll put a link to it on the show notes, a link to it, The Genius Zone, check it out. Get it on Amazon. I’ll put a link to it. It’s The Genius Zone, The Breakthrough Process to End Negative Thinking and Live in True Creativity. Also here we’ve got, again, we’ve got The Big Leap.

Let me pull this up real quick. The Big Leap. These are both books, James, that you love. The Big Leap first. The Big Leap first? Yes.

OK, back to you, James. All right. Now, Clay has a very interesting story about how he met his wife, Vanessa, and the path that he took to meet her and how they agreed to continue their relationship, because he would have a checklist of questions to ask. And then most women, well, all but one did not check all the boxes off of that checklist. And that reminds me, and I think that you two will connect on this point. Can you please, Gay, share the first words that you said to Kathleen?

Yes, I can. So time travel back to January 10th, 1980. Were you guys born in January 10th, 1973? I’m 1973. So I was born in 1980. Okay.

All right. So I had written a couple of books by then. And I came to the Institute of transpersonal psychology, which is a place where you go to get your master’s and your PhD in counseling. And gave an address to their student body and their professors. And then I was going to do a seminar over the weekend with their students.

So I walked in this room and there’s about 50 or 60 people there. And they’re all in a big circle as the way they did things at this particular school. And so across the room, I don’t know how it happened, but I just saw this woman. that was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, not only beautiful physically, but I could tell just by looking at her how loving she was. And it was just an instant imprint.

And I had the thought in the back of my head, I’ve got to figure out some way to, I don’t know who she is. I later found out she was one of the professors there and was also getting her PhD. And she was trading teaching classes for finishing her PhD. So I got to figure out a way to make contact with this woman. So I give my talk and then I take a break and I’m going to finish my talk. And during the break, she came over to ask me a question. So magic is happening already because I didn’t even have to make that long trek across there and run the possibility of rejection.

So she came up and I said, by the way, I didn’t even hear the question. I said, by the way, before you asked me, she said, I have a question for you. I said, before you ask me, I need to tell you something. And that is that I feel very attracted to you. And I want to let you know that I only want to be in relationships where both people tell the truth. And both people take responsibility instead of playing the blame game.

And where both people are completely dedicated to their creativity, because those are the three things that I’ve screwed up in my past and I don’t want to screw them up anymore. So on the basis of that, would you like to have a cup of coffee with me? There we go. Boom. Boom.

Boom. Wait for her answer. Wait for her answer. What did she say? Well, first she didn’t say anything. Her eyes kind of rolled up in her head for about 10 or 15 seconds.

She was like, And because she had some technical question about stuff I’ve been talking about, she was not expecting that. And all of a sudden, she came out of that and she said, how about lunch? There we go. How about that? So I had coffee. She said lunch and.

47 years later and 500 appearances, including Oprah and 500 other TV shows and 20 ,000 clients. We’re still having the time of our lives. And if you think love is great in your 40s, 50s, 60s, wait till you do it in your 70s and 80s. It is really superb. It’s like, I’m not a wine drinker, but friends of mine, you know, rhapsody is about a sip of wine. great wine, you know, it’s like that all the time, but it feels, it feels like making love 24 hours a day, really.

Wow. I’m going to pull this up real quick here because I want people to see the website is Hendrix . com. That’s the website. Gay, if people want to learn more about your work, where’s the best place for our listeners to go to there, sir? Well, go to Hendrix .

com and the thing to look for there is our brand new thing. It’s called the Coaches Portal. And what we did was hire a really smart guy from MIT, and he took all of our training materials, our exclusive training manuals, 900 pages and 200 videos and five, you know, so put it all in an A .I. I. portal.

And so any coach can go into it or any person. And you can just ask it any question you want about life and love and anxiety and depression. And it’s mainly used now by professionals, but it’s open to the public, too. So go check it out. I think you can get a week free trial or something, but it’s easy to play with. And I think you’d really enjoy it.

Thank you so much, sir, for carving out time. I know this was a dream come true for you, James. And I’m so glad you flew in from New York to be here, James, for this in -person interview. And thank you, Gay, for carving out time. I encourage everyone to check out your work. I’ll put links to your books and your website on the show notes.

Again, thank you so much for your time, sir. It’s an honor to be here with you. And we hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And come out and sit in our backyard sometime.

If you’re flying to Tulsa, you can fly to California. All right. I’ll take you up on it. Take care, brother. Bye -bye. But Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

It’s a good word for character. Yeah, that is it. Good, driven, smart. And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother and she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark.

I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother. And he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His client Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning. Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah.

He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine. He’s a machine, but his, you know, I could, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock. Yes. How’d that happen? people showing up at 5 a .m. m.

in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man. No, he is. He is. He also has this wealth of knowledge.

He’s worked with so many different companies and different businesses. He could take a concept that he’s used before in the past with somebody in a totally different industry and see how it would work perfectly for you in whatever niche market you’re in or whatever type of service you’re providing. And so his brain is just a wealth of knowledge. And just to have that type of perspective as a part of your team and your own company is huge, super valuable. So I would definitely encourage people to use him. But one thing is you got to be coachable.

You got to be wanting to get feedback. You got to be wanting to really grow your company. You got to want to put that extra 10 hours a week to working on your business and not just in your business. And so, yes, I would recommend it to anybody who’s wanting to grow their company and provide great systems, checklists, workflows, great encouragement, and have accountability. Hi, I’m Aaron Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them.

And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes.

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

So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry.

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

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

And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800 % increase in our internet leads.

Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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

I love the building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. the processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent, everything that we do. is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago.

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

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

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

I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 investment. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan.

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

can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean?

People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations. from expecting maybe $250 ,000 this year to we’re at $400 ,000. Hi, I’m Kelsey with K &D’s Wood Refinishing. I’m a business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K &D’s company for about five years now.

And we started working with Thrive not too long this year to we’re at 4C. So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s just listening to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help. and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly. Such good insight, the resources that they have for specific business questions.

It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I would recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system. And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis.

Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least.

I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet. So I’m going to check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week. Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees.

I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. Hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses. I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and interviewing every single week.

It’s just been great, and I don’t waste as much time on low -quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be, when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great. Worth every penny.

I mean, I bet you that. him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me.

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

They’re so excited for me. So it’s the best thing ever, and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long -winded reply, but I just had so much to say, and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me, and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching. My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach.

And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they you know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach, you know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me, they’re younger than me, they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important to me. rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life.

So he was my coach. I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these motivational seminars no money down real estate Ponzi scheme get motivated seminars and they would never teach me anything it was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny but inside of it it was a hollow nothingness and I wanted the knowledge they’re like oh but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying.

And I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’ll even give you your money back if you don’t loan it.

We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it.

Transcribed with Cockatoo