How to Grow A Successful Restaurant | Celebrating the EPIC 30% Growth of CrawdaddysVisalia.com + The Power of Implementing a Turn-Key Proven Plan + Why “Simplicity Scales Complexity Fails.” – Steve Jobs (Apple Co-Founder)

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

If it’s Cajun cuisine and live music you seek, boy, do we have the place. And in tonight’s Dine and Dish, Dale here hit the South Valley staple known for its food and fun entertainment. Yeah, Margo had warned for two decades this Visalia hotspot has been serving up everything from seafood to steaks from Harris Ranch. Cajun favorites and a lively bar at Crawdaddy’s have brought the spice of life to Main Street in downtown Visalia. I just wanted to bring a lot of fun. For one thing, we have great food with great entertainment.

Chef Fernando Gonzalez has been the heart and soul of this place. And he’s always putting on a fiery show. When halibut is in season, Chef Fernando carves up the biggest and the best. We do that all the time with a specific halibut, salmon, swordfish. This is a 10 -ounce cut of fresh halibut out of Alaska. And then I’m going to lightly bread it.

This has garlic and other spices on it. Cooked to golden brown, slowly encrusted in pistachio nuts. And it’s served with our famous lemon butter sauce that you’re going to taste here in a minute, with our rice pilaf and our fresh vegetables. play. You constantly pushing me has inspired me to continue to work, work, work, and, and the results will be there. Just keep hanging in there.

Keep working hard. All right, folks, for today’s show, I’ve made a visual aid. Uh, I’ve put it in, uh, what I like to call 60 point font. You’ll notice here. Um, I’ve spent a lot of time on this graphic. I can make it green.

I can make it teal. Uh, who knows? I can make it orange. Uh, but I want you to focus it on this folks. This is not a magic trick. This is a,

real thing. You see, in May of last year, a business did $165 ,000 of sales. And then this May, that same business did $215 ,000 of sales. Now, folks, see if you can follow along with me here. If you take $165 ,000, and you divide this and you kind of you get in there and you get into that hardcore math that we did as young children and we say what growth percentage is that and you say no I should have divided this by that I’m messing it up man what do I do I don’t know how to do it I haven’t done this kind of math in a while and you just sit down you really contemplate it appears as though we’re talking about a 30 percent growth rate of this business you say what is this business well folks I went out to do the Reawaken America tour in Visalia, California, and Devin Nunes, President Trump’s right -hand man, the guy leading Truth Social at the time, the congressman, he said, Clay, you’ve got to go to the best restaurant in the history of Visalia, California. I want you to go there for dinner tonight.

And I said, what is this restaurant you speak of? And he said, it’s a place called Crawdaddy’s. And I said, Crawdaddy’s? What? Never heard of it before. And I’m not kidding, folks.

I’m not exaggerating. I’m not overhyping it. This place is God’s gift to food. I walked up to this beautiful place, this palace of pageantry and great food and music. I walk in. First off, the decor is incredible.

The music is next level. They’ve got live music. They’ve got great decor, incredible food. They’ve got kind of a formal setting on the second floor, more of an informal kind of a bar, a sports bar kind of energy on the first floor. And here to talk about it is the man, the myth, the legend, the founder of Crawdaddy’s, the legend from Visalia, Keith Korsgaarden. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show.

How are you, sir? Great, but I’m not the legend, pal. You are. I got to tell you, the first time I went to your restaurant, you said, Clay, whatever you want to get, what we’re here to serve you guys, you just tell us. And Devin had hyped it up.

And I thought, man, I don’t want the food to let it down. In my mind, I’d built it up to be so good. And I ordered steak from you. I got steak and lobster. And it was perhaps the best, I mean, not perhaps, it was the best steak and lobster I’ve ever had. Can you tell the listeners out there, when I ordered a steak and a lobster, how are you preparing that steak and lobster?

About how we’re preparing it, I have a wonderful kitchen. The steak is grilled and we bake the lobster and we serve a 16 ounce lobster. So James was with you that night and he just devoured that lobster and then he had some a stake after that. But I got to tell you the funniest story. Can I have a minute? No, you have multiple minutes.

So we met that night with Devin, right? And you guys had a great time. And you said, Oh, man, this is great. And you had General Flynn out for the reawaken tour. And he goes, oh, this is cool. And I found out you guys are having the great Mike Flynn out there.

And I said, oh, I’d sure like to have him here. And you said, well, I think I could do that. Wow, that’d be amazing. So James and all your guys sent out notifications that you were going to have a meet and greet at Crawdaddy’s the next night. And I thought, oh, that’s cool. So I went down and told my staff, I said, Hey, we’re going to have a VIP here tomorrow night, so be ready.

” And they go, oh yeah, Keith, we’ve heard all your promotional stuff and whatever. And I said, no, you better be ready. And the next night, General Flynn came, and it looked like January or something. there. They just stormed the beach. Was that amazing?

I’ll tell you how crazy it was. This is a true story. I am up on the second floor where you’ve got more of a formal setting. Downstairs, it’s the bar restaurant. I’m on the second floor and the person who was with me said, hey, I’d like to order a beverage from the bar. And I’m not kidding, folks.

From me to the bar, it was maybe like 15 feet. And we couldn’t get to the bar. It wasn’t possible physically to get to the bar. It was so packed. So I, I’m not kidding. I took a $20 bill and I passed it to the guy next to me and he said, I’ll get it down the line.

And they’re passing the order down the line. And this is a true story. So the beer bartender says, what do you guys want to order? And then it passes down the line. Three people say, what do you want to order? Pass it down.

What do you want to order? Pass it. And so then I’d say, Hey, Mike, Mike, you know, this, this is a guy I’m getting this beverage for. I said, he would like to get a Moscow mule. And then four people pass it down. Moscow, Mule.

So they’re passing the message. They’re passing the order. They’re passing the dollars. I have never seen a place more packed in my life. I mean, it was incredible. I don’t have any idea.

I’ve never seen Crawdaddies that packed. And I got to tell you one more Quick story, so my servers who didn’t believe me, this all started happening. I go into the kitchen and Jose, my server on the second floor, is usually very calm. And he come running down in a panic. He goes, what in the heck is going on here? And I said, I told you, this Clay Clark gets it done with the marketing man.

So Clay, that was the coolest day. In 20 years, that was probably one of the most That was the memory of 20 years here at Crawdouties. They’re a doctor, they’re a dentist, they’re a lawyer, and they’re businessmen. They’ve been trying everything. They’ve been trying, you know, billboards. They’ve been trying mailers.

They’ve been trying yellow page ads back in the day, magazine ads. They’re doing billboards today. In fact, there’s probably someone watching this right now, you’re doing billboards right now. You’ve tried geo -fencing, geo -targeting, but nothing’s better, nothing’s sweeter than once you have a simple plan that works, once you know the plan. and you’ve got that plan in your hand, which is what you and I do together every week. We now have a plan and we’re following the plan and it is producing big fruit.

So I wanted to ask you just real quick, what’s it like to have a restaurant where you’re seeing new customers come in every day? Can you describe what that’s like as a business owner who’s been doing this a long time when you see new people coming in, new families and they say, oh yeah, by the way, I found you guys online? Well, Yeah, that’s hard. That’s obvious, right? I mean, it’s so exciting to say, oh, hey, I’ve never seen in here. Welcome.

Yeah, we found you on Google, Google Maps. We found you on on the internet, whatever. And look, 20 years of this. I was stubborn. I didn’t, you know, I was like, boy, I’m glad I don’t have to pay for these yellow page ads. But you convinced me that, hey, you know, Google is now the new yellow pages and if you want to be in that big yellow page a lot of young people don’t probably don’t even remember this but what you got a service business you wanted to be on the top with a big ad and that’s what it is to be rated high on Google and it is creating great results and a lot of great people to.

Now, we go to Google right now. This was a I found to be an abomination, but because you’re a guy who spoke out, you know, in favor of freedom, you know, you spoke out in favor of freedom during the lockdowns. People had really punished. you know, political activists had punished the search results. So when you go to online, you type in Vasellia seafood, what would happen is, not only could people not find you in the search results, but the but the the reviews were almost all politically charged. So you would read the reviews, objectively, Keith, and you would see that, wow, there Food’s great.

Love the food. Love the food. Love the business. These are the comments I’m reading over and over. I’m looking at the comments on crawdaddies. And then you would see someone leave a one star and it’s like, I hate that guy.

You know, I hate that. It’s like, wow. Like, okay, you got a hundred positive reviews and then one guy just hates him. And then, you know, you’re reading a hundred more reviews, great flavor, wonderful food, great staff. I’ve been coming here for 20 years. Great.

And then an outlier comes in and it’s like, I hate that guy. He’s the worst Republican ever. You know, and you’re going, well, can I, can I chime in? Uh, what I did was I was instrumental in stopping a LGBT, uh, friendly, uh, What do you call it? Drag show for kids. And so I got the event stopped and boy, they came out just with guns ablaze and just destroying our reviews.

So we had to fight through that. If I had to do it, I’d do it again. But anyway, that’s what Clay is talking about, everybody. And, you know, it hurt. But we’ve done so well that those things have been buried. And I appreciate it.

I can’t tell you, Clay, how much I appreciate you just constantly being a thorn in my side, telling me, get to work, get it done. And we are getting it done. Well, I want to pull this quote here from Steve Jobs, the guy who obviously built Apple. People don’t know this, but I don’t think most people think about this in the profound way that I think. to think about this. But Steve Jobs, he introduced the iPhone, he introduced the iPad, he introduced iTunes.

Think about this. One guy introduced the iPhone, iTunes, iPad, your personal computer. He also turned around Pixar when it was failing. I can go on and on. But he says simplicity scales, complexity fails. Simplicity scales, complexity fails.

Now, when you have a restaurant with many, many employees and great food, I wasn’t trying to paint you into a corner about the lobster or the steak. But the reality is, as a business owner, you’re not getting into the minutiae of exactly what your expert team of chefs does to make this great lobster. You have to make sure that the result is that customers leave wowed. And you have a lot of different moving parts. I want to get your thoughts on that. Why does simplicity scale?

and complexity fail when you’re a business owner trying to execute a plan? You know, that’s interesting that you bring that up. I’ve always gone by that thing. Keep it simple, stupid, the method. Just continue to crank out what you do best. Don’t make it too complicated for your staff.

Make sure that they can deliver the best quality product every day. And that goes for out in the kitchen and out front. Now, again, we’re going to get into it real quick here. So for your business, what we have to do is every week, and this is the part that people maybe don’t want to hear, but I’m going to give it to you here. Every week as a business consultant or a coach, we’ve got to make sure that we are doing the things that move the needle. And so, Keith, every day, step number one, I’m going to go through the five steps we have to do.

There’s six steps. I’m going to get into a rapid fire here, but there’s five steps that you have to do, six of which, the sixth one I’m doing. So step number one, you’ve got to wow your customers. You just have to do it. I mean, if people Google search Vassellia Seafood, they find you now. That’s great.

That’s awesome. Wow. Woo. We’re excited about that. However, if they Google search Vasellia restaurants, I’m very excited that people are now finding you and more and more people are finding you as you climb up higher and higher up the search results. However, if you don’t wow that first time customer, the whole thing was a waste of time.

Let’s talk about that for a second. The very basic level. Why do you have to wow every single customer? Wow. Okay. how I want to answer this.

Okay, your job and my job in marketing is to get them in the door. Then once we get them in the door, even if we do a perfect job, you know, it’s not a guarantee that they’re going to come back. But, you know, I think we do everything we can to be friendly and like what you’ve encouraged us to do is give a free appetizer and say welcome. And so when we get that first person in, We welcome them and give them a free appetizer of their choice, which usually it’s our grilled calamari, because that’s what we’re kind of well known for, topped with lemon butter sauce. And that’s unique, and it’s impressive. Step number two, we have to gather video clips that showcase what you actually do.

Because I’ve been to your restaurant. I love it. I’ve told my kids, I said, kids, listen, don’t make me go on a family vacation just to take you to this restaurant. Don’t make me, don’t make me do that because I will, I will literally plan a family vacation to Visalia just for the purposes of visiting the Taj Mahal of music and incredible food. This place, it’s so, it’s so good. But I’m telling somebody out there and they might say, Clay, you’re overhyping this thing.

I said, no, no, it really is great. But then I took my good friends who run the, they run the Flyover Conservatives podcast. I took them and I said, you guys got to go to the restaurant. And Stacey and David, they said, this is perhaps the best restaurant ever. But, but Keith, if we don’t have footage or images of real people having a real good time at your real restaurant, it’s almost like it’s not real. So we got to get video clips every week.

Let’s talk about that for a second. Why do we, I mean, again, there’s, there’s a search engine optimization reason why we have to do it, but why can’t, why do we have to just every week focus on getting those video clips? Before I say that, I’ve got some great video clips of Stacey dancing their way to the band. And I love Stacey and David. I haven’t heard or seen from them in a while. I hope they’re doing well.

But it’s constantly getting info out there, putting clips on there so you stay ranking. So Google is recognizing that you’re still out there, right? That’s what we do, folks. Now, the third step, three. Someone’s taking notes. Step one, wow the customer.

Step two, gather video clips. Step number three, you got to gather images. A little different than videos, a little different than videos. These are just photos, you know, photos of people at the restaurant having a good time, photos of the food. By the way, the gallery section of the Crawdaddy’s website. Everyone should go there right now.

The gallery section, you should check it out. They’re constantly adding to the gallery. And on the gallery, you can see photos of the food, photos of the decor, photos of the atmosphere. Why, again, do we have to do it every week? Because I think some people might hear this and they say, you know, I’m going to get excited about this idea for a week and then move on to a new idea. We’re seeing fruit.

We know we’re seeing fruit. But why do we have to do it every week? Because there’s constant, first of all, it’s showing up. I mean, we’re also on on all the other social medias, but then it goes on the website and there’s, you know, hey, I don’t care if I put a one video out a video out there and I gain one customer every time I put one out. If I put three hundred and sixty five out there, that’s three hundred and sixty five customers. And hopefully a lot of them are going to say, man, this is my go to place.

And it’s starting to show fruits. We’re getting a lot of people that are becoming regular. here. Step number four, folks, step number four, we got to write search engine content. We do that for Keith and his team. However, if you’re watching this show, very few, but some of our clients want to write their own content.

I want to get your thoughts on that, Keith. Keith, is there a reason why you don’t want to write an average of 5 ,000 words a week of content related to Vasellia Restaurants? Well, mainly, I guess, it’s because I’m a product of the California school district. I don’t know any of my clients. Seriously, none of my clients want to write the content, so we do it for almost all of our clients. No, I don’t want to do that.

I got too many other things to do. Yeah, but again, you have to write it. You guys are doing a great job on that, too, so thank you. Make your rank, folks, OK? So again, what are the steps? Step number one, wow the customer.

Step number two, gather video clips. Step number three, gather images. Step number four, we got to write that search engine content. And step number five, this is a big one, Every single week my team updates the websites for all my clients and uh this is why yeah i mean huh i mean think about it folks the new iphone just came out right the new samsung just came out oh did you get the new ipad oh wow hey look we gotta update the site And you say, why do you have to update the site? Keith, we have to update the site. I mean, the technology keeps changing.

And by the way, people are using Grok and ChatGPT. It never ends. So we have to constantly update that. I want to get your thoughts. As a business owner, what does that do for your peace of mind, knowing that you have our team, myself and our team behind the scenes, updating your site every day so you don’t have to? Well, you know, I don’t know how to say this.

I don’t judge people by their intentions, because everybody’s got great intentions. That’s right. Clay, your team gets results and that’s all that matters. It’s obvious when you look in Google reviews. You remember when we first started and we’d Google crawdaddy seafood and we were nowhere to be found. Right.

Constantly number one or number two. You Google steaks, we’re moving way up the line. All these things. People are out there, they come into town, they want to eat seafood. So they say they’re in Tulsa, they say seafood Tulsa. Those people want to be up to get these new faces.

Now folks, final step we want to do is we got to get more Google reviews. We can’t ever be done. And this is something I battle. I battle it. It’s not easy. It’s not complicated.

But it’s not easy. You say, what’s not easy? Well, every week, Keith, one of my clients, he’s out there in Joplin, Missouri, and this guy’s doing battle with huge companies. His company is called Colaw Fitness, and he’s out there doing battle with major, I mean, literally billion -dollar gyms. And every week, he has to wow the customers, and he has to gather objective Google reviews. There he is, Charles Colaw, Colaw Fitness, My Haircut Place, Elephant in the Room, Men’s Grooming Lounge.

We’ve got to get Google reviews. And it’s not like we’re ever done. You know, we got to get Google reviews. We got to spell elephant in the room right when I do the search results. But we got to get those Google reviews. And we’re never done, Keith.

I mean, it’s never done. And you got to get you just got to obsessively get those reviews. Because if you don’t do it, by default, you’re only going to get a bad review coming in from your competition. You’re going to get a bad review from the guy who applied for the job that we decided not to hire. You’re going to get a bad review from someone who politically doesn’t agree with you. Can you talk about just the battle, the daily battle of making sure that you and your wonderful team, after you do all that great work, that you actually gather objective Google reviews?

Well, Steve, my manager, and I are constantly pounding everybody. Hey, tell your people. It would mean a lot to me if you’d give us a Google review. And you know, since there’s a few people listening here, it’d mean a lot to me, all you listeners out there. if you’d give Crawdaddy’s Visalia a Google review. Amen to that.

Now, folks, let me show you how to do it real quick here. What you want to do is you want to Google search Crawdaddy’s. Okay, so Crawdaddy’s. All right. And then just type in the word Vasellia. That’s the best way to get there.

Type in Crawdaddy’s and Vasellia. You say, what’s the best way to get there? Google search Crawdaddy’s and Vasellia. And then you can go here and you’ll look here for the reviews. You look for them. And then you want to look for the reviews.

And there you can write a review right there. So we’re going to write a review. Okay, so I’m leaving a review. I’m doing it right now. Okay. What am I doing?

Get five star food service atmosphere. You could leave a review about the atmosphere. You could leave a review about the decor, the experience, what you’ve heard about about put, um, when you go to crawdaddies, okay. Crawdaddies, you are going to experience more than just flavorful, flavorful food, the live music, the attentive staff, and the incredible decor. is truly the best restaurant that I have been to on the west coast in this beautiful country known as America. That’s real.

That’s a real statement. I’m posting that. Boom. I posted. Now, you gotta do that, folks. You gotta do it, okay?

It’s not about knowing, it’s about doing. Acta non verba. It’s acta non verba. So what does that mean? In Latin, it means action, not words. Deeds, not words, okay?

The book of James, in the Bible, it says, don’t be a hearer, be a doer. I’m just asking you right now, take action. Leave Keith a review. Other thing you can do, folks, if you go to crawdaddiesvicellia . com and you just visit the website and you click around, just you going to the website right now will make his website rank higher. So if you’re out there today and you’re curious,

go to crawdaddiesvacilia .com, com, go to the website, check it out. Please feel free to share on social media. Keith, I’m going to give you the final word there, because there’s somebody out there who’s in a challenging market like California, a challenging market like Chicago, a challenging market like New York, a challenging market like everywhere in America right now, that you could feel discouraged or you could say, you know what? I’m going to focus on what I can control. And despite a challenging economy, I’m going to put in the work and implement a proven plan and grow this business.

What do you say to the entrepreneur out there that feels a little bit down and out right now as they’re facing a little bit more of a challenging economy? Well, I’ve sure been there. And I got to tell you, Clay, You constantly pushing me has inspired me to continue to work, work, work, and the results will be there. Just keep hanging in there, keep working hard. And if I can have my Mike Lindell closing statement where I can pitch my product. We just started a YouTube channel and we live stream all our bands four nights a week.

So go to YouTube. Crawdaddy’s Visalia channel, and please subscribe to our channel. And you know, if you wanna look in and see what the restaurant looks like on the first floor, you can get a good look at it. I don’t have it going on the second floor, but I’d love to have your viewers check us out, okay? We got music five nights a week, Wednesday through Sunday, and I’d love to have you come watch what’s going on here at Crawdaddy’s. Keith, thank you so much.

You’re a gentleman, you’re a scholar, you’re God’s gift to California. Thank you so much, sir. And we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, Clay. I appreciate you, buddy. All right.

I couldn’t wait a full minute before trying that halibut. Thank you, brother. First of all, this place is so good. More sauce than we needed, but that’s OK. Pasta jambalaya is our number one pasta and dually sausage, chicken breast and shrimp, bell pepper and onion. We’re going to be finished this with.

With some wine wine. And then pasta. for the lambalaya. Chef Fernando sprinkles a special Cajun seasoning on some dishes. This is blackened chicken used with Fernando’s own crawdaddy’s blackened seasoning. We just put this on the market now.

The spice is nice and low in salt. You shouldn’t leave here hungry, Dale. And I won’t. This is one of our Our top dishes, this is a grilled calamari. Most people are used to eating fried calamari. This is a pounded out steak.

That’s a lemon butter sauce. You can’t get that. too many places. That’s very nice. And people come from all over to try them. That kitchen is always popping with action.

The Acadian shrimp pasta, which is in a reduced white wine and butter sauce. The second floor is available for gatherings. Crawdaddy’s opened back in 2006. My brother and I, Troy, came to me and said, let’s build this building. Let’s build a restaurant and I thought, oh yeah, that can’t be any work. Let’s do that.

Keith has sold the place, but the new owner had a request. If I want you to keep being the face of karate, I’m more than happy to oblige, because I love being here. I mean, he loves it so much. Keith had an apartment built on the third floor, so he never has to go far if he needs to get some rest. Home and work. Yes, indeed.

The portions are amazing. It’s like a plate fit for a family. We loved everything there. Yeah. Clay Clark, man, he is one character. That’s a good word for him, 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 a great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His Clay 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 got I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock. Yes. About hundreds of people showing up at 5 a . 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 and 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 feedback. 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 1 ,800 % increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot.

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

My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love 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 access. help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out.

But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. 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. So we’re pretty excited about that. 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. like such good insight, the resources they have for specific business questions.

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

I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least. I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet. So I’m gonna check my notes here.

So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week. Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day.

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’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it.

Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having 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. Um, so it just, it’s the best thing ever.

And I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So, uh, sorry for the long winded reply, but I just had so much to say. Um, and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. Um, 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, um, years to come. Thanks so much for watching.

So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life, so he was my coach. 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 you’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. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it.

Transcribed with Cockatoo