Nick Vujicic | No Arms, No Legs, No Problem. | What Will We Do With the Talents That God Has Given Us? Matthew 25:14-30 + How to Turn Your Bitterness Into Betterness + What Is ProLifeFintech.com?

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 5)
First and foremost, if you don’t see humour, you’re not really living at its fullest. And, you know, we had a difficult 2019. Some people tried to sue me for an arm and a leg and they were not successful.

(Speaker 14)
It’s an overworked word, but there’s no other way to describe Nick Vojtic. He really is inspiring. Nick was born without arms or legs. And when he tells the story of his birth, the shock, the confusion suffered by his parents, he’ll have you in tears. Growing up wasn’t all that much fun either. So how did this poor little Aussie kid do

(Speaker 14)
so well? Become school captain, go to uni, get a double degree and set himself up in a really great job. That’s the story we’re about to tell. A message of hope that’s helped teenagers all over the world cope with their problems. A message you’ll never forget.

(Speaker 31)
You should jump in, mate.

(Speaker 14)
Nick Vojcic was born with no legs and no arms.

(Speaker 5)
I’m going out on a limb, what do you want?

(Speaker 14)
But he’s sure got plenty of guts.

(Speaker 7)
This is scary right here, mate.

(Speaker 36)
This is where you’ve got to have guts.

(Speaker 35)
Or…

(Speaker 34)
..you’re a bit crazy!

(Speaker 33)
Ten.

(Speaker 7)
Nice, mate. Thank you very much. You’re a generous judge.

(Speaker 14)
This 25-year-old Australian is climbing over every obstacle life puts in front of him,

(Speaker 1)
and he’s doing it with style.

(Speaker 3)
I saw today’s guest in person. We were sharing the stage at an event that I was asked to emcee, featuring America’s General Flynn. And one of the great joys I have is watching somebody else introduce today’s speaker, because everybody takes their own take

(Speaker 3)
on how to pronounce his last name. So we’re gonna deal with that controversy. That’s probably the most interesting thing about today’s guest, outside of the fact he’s building a banking system, outside of the fact he’s a pro-life advocate, outside of the fact that he doesn’t have arms or legs, but yet he gets more done than most people that have arms

(Speaker 3)
and legs. But the biggest thing I think you’re focused on, folks, if you’re watching today’s show, is how do we pronounce his name? Nick, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? I’m good. The, sit with me now. Voyage. If you’re in your car right now, you’re driving right now in your car, Voyage. Everybody right now, you’re taking notes. Voyage. Okay, there we go.

(Speaker 3)
Now we’ve got that behind us. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 5)
Clay, I’ve never been better.

(Speaker 2)
If I was any better, I’d need two of myself to contain it.

(Speaker 1)
I believe that to be true. Now I have got a stack of stuff. I wanna get into what you’re working on now, but I wanna reintroduce you to our listeners that might not know your story. Obviously you were born on this earth. Everybody’s given certain gifts, certain talents. There’s the parable of the talents in the Bible. And God really holds us accountable

(Speaker 1)
for what we do with our time, treasure, and talents. You were born without arms and legs yet you’re getting so much done. You’re a best-selling author, basically a sought-after speaker. But how did you get

(Speaker 3)
from where you started to where you are now?

(Speaker 5)
Look, in a nutshell, without my faith in God, I wouldn’t be where I am today whatsoever. I think our existence is really a quadrant of our soul, our spirit, our mind, and then our purpose. And for me, I didn’t feel like I had any purpose. I never had peace with the fact that it felt like I’m the only one without limbs. Why does everyone else have more than me? Born and raised in Australia, no medical reason as to why I was born without my arms and legs, suicidal at age 10, tried to drown myself in six inches of water, convinced that

(Speaker 5)
I would never find hope, convinced I would never have a good life, and that I was a burden to everyone around me. And I was asking the bigger questions of life, finding no answers at that time. And I’m so glad though, that I decided to stay I did not go through with the suicide attempt, of course, but that was a fragile age of 10. At age 13. The first turning point kept clay for me was choosing either

(Speaker 5)
to be angry for what I don’t have, or be thankful for what I do have. And then the big milestone year was age 15. And it was when I realized that if God had a plan for the blind man, according to John chapter nine, then he’s got a plan for me. I prayed for arms and legs.

(Speaker 5)
I still have a pair of shoes in my closet in case he gives me arms and legs, but I ain’t waiting for arms and legs to be happy. My soul saved. I’ve got the peace in my spirit.

(Speaker 5)
It’s his spirit, his power, not me. And he’s healed my heart. And obviously now on mission, just to understand that when you don’t get a miracle, you can still be one. So that’s the nutshell of the story. Living in Dallas, beautiful wife, beautiful four nutshell of the story living in Dallas. Beautiful wife, beautiful

(Speaker 5)
four kids love living here in Dallas.

(Speaker 1)
You know, I used to stutter as a kid and I thought that was the biggest thing ever not being able to talk. I was mocked made fun of I didn’t see the humor in it. Somebody watching today’s show maybe you lost a loved one. Maybe you were raised without a mom or a dad. Maybe your parents were alcoholics. Maybe you lost your best friend in a car accident. Maybe your father died from Lou Gehrig’s. A lot of these examples I’m throwing out

(Speaker 1)
are just things that I can personally relate to with my clients in my own life. And I know when I lost my dad of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or I lost my best friend in a car accident, or I used to stutter, we can get bitter. bitter, but you’ve decided to turn that into betterness. And you’re kind of like a Hope dealer.

(Speaker 3)
That’s what you do.

(Speaker 23)
You-

(Speaker 31)
I love it.

(Speaker 5)
I want that shirt, Clay. HopeDealer.com. I think that’s wonderful.

(Speaker 1)
So tell us, how did you become a best-selling author? How did you, a lot of people say, I’ve got arms, I’ve got legs, but I can’t have time to type the book, write the book, get the book. How did you become a bestselling author?

(Speaker 5)
Well really, the whole speaking thing came at age 17 when the janitor at my high school actually came up to me after he saw I did a speech as the vice president of the high school in front of 1,400 students. And it’s actually on my up and coming documentary coming in every theater 1600 screens in October this year called No Limbs No Limits and the janitor came up to me and he said you’re going to go around the world and give people hope.

(Speaker 5)
And I’m like you’re crazy. He says you got a powerful story. I said no I don’t. And he actually organized my first speech at age 17. I went into real estate at age 19. I was a stock trader as a teenager as well.

(Speaker 5)
Never thought I’d go into speaking or have a book. And so with so thankful I came from Australia in the early 2000s and got a book deal with the literary agent, Dupree Miller and Associates out in Dallas. They saw me, they heard about me at a couple churches, thanks to some friends in California. It was just the beginning of an incredible journey that’s now taken me all around the world. Those books, I’ve got six books, translated in over 40 languages.

(Speaker 5)
I’ve been in 84 countries, met 35 presidents and vice presidents. My largest crowd was 800,000 people in person. It’s been an incredible ride where through book, you can give someone hope. If you’ve ever felt like, hey, that’s something that I want to do, a dream of mine, do it.

(Speaker 5)
You have no idea how much we can do, Clay. We just two hours set aside on a Saturday. Well, I don’t get, well, wish I had more time of the day. Yeah, I have the same amount of time as you. And I also have no limbs.

(Speaker 5)
We shouldn’t be making excuses. My challenge is, are you sure that’s your real dream? Because if you really want it, you go out there and you do your part and learn all that you can to get the ball rolling. Take one step at a time, but dream big.

(Speaker 1)
Now, you’re a funny guy. For people out there who haven’t seen you speak, you’re actually much funnier I mean you’re not a comedian but I mean your talks are pointed but I was told years ago by Lee Cockrell the former executive vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts who at the time he was managing 40,000 employees think about that he managed 40,000 employees and a million customers a week at Disney World

(Speaker 1)
he was the head of the Disney World Resorts. He told me, he said, Clay Clark, remember this, if you’re going to be honest, you better be funny. And I’m like, oh, I’m writing that down. That’s good. And so you’re a funny guy. So I sensed about you, there’s a certain charm, a certain you choose to see the funny side of life, friends, Sean Copeland. Now just so people, they don’t know this, Sean Copeland is the man, he, Dr. Zellner and Sean Copeland, I’ll pull it up on the screen so people can see these are real people. Sean Copeland and Dr. Zellner, two great Americans, they decided to buy this bank called Bank of Nahuatl years ago.

(Speaker 1)
That’s Dr. Zellner. He and I host the podcast together. He’s on our broadcasts about 50% of the time. And then there’s Sean Copeland. I heard these two guys, they were wanting to buy this thing called Bank of Nowata and turn it around into what’s now called Regent Bank. Bank, Regent, Regent Bank. And it’s regentbank.com. I knew this thing would be successful. Let me, maybe I put the email address in wrong or that we put a bank region There might be something wrong with my internet here. Let’s see it could be it could be regent dot bank

(Speaker 1)
There it is regent dot bank. So when I heard these guys were teaming up to buy slash refurbish reinvigorate Bank, I knew it would be successful And then when I heard that you as one of America’s most prolific pro-life advocates were teaming up with Sean Copeland. I knew that was going to be a hit. Tell everybody out there what you’re doing with Regent Bank,

(Speaker 3)
what you’re doing with your bank, what’s going on?

(Speaker 5)
Well, look, first and foremost, if you don’t see humor, you’re not really living at its fullest. And we had a difficult 2019. Some people tried to sue me for an arm and a leg, and they were not successful. I was framed as anti-LGBTQ while I was living in Southern California, feeling like I had

(Speaker 5)
to look over my shoulder. We even had a grenade at our house. We had the bomb squad there. And I was a target with 16 million social media fans. I would have had more of a number if all the big techs were not so corrupt. But the bottom line is I’ve had a lot of targets on my back since 2019. And I went viral in some gay magazine framing me as anti LGBTQ.

(Speaker 5)
And it was horrific to wake up one morning and I never got Clay, you know me. I don’t go out of my way to use my platform to tell people why I think I think that I’m more important than them or more right than them. I don’t do that. I love everyone. It’s quite the contrary if you actually look at all the videos of

(Speaker 5)
me out there. But someone decided to target me and I got targeted and they got me and it was a silver bullet. For me, I woke up and someone in the bank, Chase Bank, I was banking with them as a customer for many, many years, woke up and my for-profit company and my personal accounts were all frozen. My credit cards, my debit cards, my credit line, my credit scores, normally you get three triple digit numbers for your credit score. I only had one of those numbers, which was 200 or so points lower overnight and then I had dashes. The bank refused to talk to me. All they said to me was that there’s a letter coming and

(Speaker 5)
long story short the letter came the next day and I’m like I don’t know what’s going on like where are my fingerprints anywhere? What have I done wrong?

(Speaker 17)
I did nothing wrong. And the letter said nothing except for we reviewed who you are.

(Speaker 16)
You got 30 days to find another bank or we take your cash.

(Speaker 5)
Now I’m an entrepreneur and I left Australia for opportunity in the United States of America. And I never thought that this would ever be possible. And as under the Constitution, a privately held company can do with their choices as they wish, which is great, because now with ProLife Fintech, we don’t want to help give anyone a loan that’s doing something bad like Regent Bank. They’re very careful with who they actually accept as a customer. We’re not going to grow your strip club business per se.

(Speaker 5)
And so the Constitution is there, but under religious freedom and just because they wanted to click a button, that’s exactly how we felt. And so I wasn’t going out of my way, Clay, to go into the banking industry whatsoever. But it was just funny if people don’t believe in God. I certainly do. And I’ve seen miracles again and again. And one of them was eight weeks before I did get cancelled out of the

(Speaker 5)
bank, Chase Bank. I was actually eight weeks prior invited to be a co-founder with Betsy Gray, who found out that there was actually quite a lot of weaponization in the banking industry in our country, wherein us who have Judeo-Christian values would be very surprised, as we found out in 2018, that most banks give to organizations that supply abortions, for instance, Planned Parenthood, who’s also now the number one funder, apparently, number one funder of hormone alternative drugs for transgender things for the minors to receive these hormone treatments, which, you know, as someone

(Speaker 5)
who believes the Bible, they all call me a conservative Christian. Clay, we’re all called conservatives. I don’t see the word once in the Bible, conservative. You’re either a believer, you believe the Bible, or you don’t. And when we understand that the weaponization of BlackRock, all these very big wealth management giants out there, funding things that are quite contradictory in many ways to our beliefs. And so once I got cancelled at Chase Bank and the dust settled, and I was able to open another major bank just like that.

(Speaker 5)
So that was proof that I didn’t really do anything wrong whatsoever. I wasn’t a terrorist. I wasn’t laundering money. I wasn’t on some kind of list. And I’ve been fine ever since. It was someone who decided to say, no, let’s get rid of them. And Clay, this is actually still happening. Like, like every single month. There are just banks out there that are walking away from churches and Christians. And I’m actually getting ready to do a

(Speaker 5)
mini documentary about the weaponization of the banking industry. And Sean Copeland, sorry to answer your question the long way around, Sean Copeland is the president and CEO of Regent Bank, a bank that is blatantly Christian and tells everyone that, you know, we love you, but where we philanthropically give money will be Judeo-Christian values based. And so that’s basically the alternative. And FDIC ensured brick and mortar, multiple states and presidents chapters of Regent Bank. ProLife FinTech is simply an online banking alternative, a digital front door if you will of Regent Bank and we’re so thankful

(Speaker 5)
that Sean is on our board as well as Charles with decades and decades and decades of experience in

(Speaker 1)
the banking industry. So that’s the whole story. Now, again, just to be clear, you still choose to find funny. I mean, despite the fact that life can get crazy, you continue to find funny. And when people watch you speak, you’re a joyful, cheerful man. You turn the proverbial lemons into lemonade. I watch you do it time and time again.

(Speaker 1)
It really is a powerful thing to watch you do this. But I want to show someone an example of what you’re talking about. So when we did these Reawaken America Tour events, which I no longer do, but Eric Trump and General Flynn and I and Kash Patel, we did 24 events together.

(Speaker 1)
And at these events, I would reimburse people for their travel fees from time to time. So some of the speakers, you know, were financially in a bad spot due to the lockdowns, the quarantines, the curfews. And so we’re getting, you know, Eric Trump and General Flynn and I would reimburse certain people for their travel. And when I would go to reimburse it, my wife would tell me, hey, their bank denied it. Their bank reported it as fraud. Their bank rejected it. And we’re talking about Peter Navarro, this is the President Trump’s chief economic advisor. We’re talking about Kash Patel, the now FBI director. We’re talking about Mike

(Speaker 1)
Lindell. I mean, we’re talking about Sean Foyt. And as I’m wiring people money or reimbursing money or trying to send money, it became crazy because you had to figure out, will my bank allow me to send your bank money or will your bank receive the money from my bank?” And thankfully, we do a lot of work with Regent Bank, so that resolved that in our mind. But so many of these speakers go, they were saying, why won’t my bank receive funds from you? And it was creating almost a source of friction.

(Speaker 1)
And then General Flynn, because most people think when a bank doesn’t receive payment or a bank’s canceling somebody, surely that can’t be true. Well then General Flynn hopped on our show the very day that Chase Bank cancelled him. And so I want people to know what you’re saying is very real, it’s very true, it’s happening to outspoken conservatives and people of faith, it’s happening

(Speaker 1)
to outspoken Christians, it is happening. And so what you’re doing is you’re trying to be part of the solution, and my understanding is you’re teaming up with General Flynn, Charlie Kirk, Kevin Freeman, and a whole handful or a whole host of well-known, respected, unapologetic Christians. Tell us about

(Speaker 5)
this event that you’re working on there, sir. So the event, unfortunately, did happen already on the 8th of March for anyone out there, but we’re actually releasing a 30-minute highlight of what we call the grand opening night celebration of Pro-Life FinTech. And if you can actually get up Pro-Life FinTech.com, Clay, just so people see the website, this is how the website looks like, Pro-Life FinTech.com. It’s just an incredible array of information to really get to know who is on our board, who our CEO is.

(Speaker 5)
We want a banking alternative for people that honors God. And so we’ve got Charles White, we got Sean Copeland, Stephen Libman, and Russ is our CEO. And all of us understand that there was just not the right solution. And we are just, if you will, the tip of the spear of a movement of a greater ecosystem that does honor the Lord.

(Speaker 5)
And so it’s been an incredible ride. It really, really has. And for those of you who do not really understand the banking industry, the FDIC insurance for any brick and mortar bank, they need to raise 10% capital per year to keep up with the deposits. And what we’re doing actually is, so Charlie Kirk was on the grand opening, Kevin Freeman, Yakub Boyens, Sean Copeland spoke. So that’s going

(Speaker 5)
to be uploaded on the website, highlights of it within the next couple of weeks. But what we’re really excited about, Clay, and I, and if you’d ever want me back, we’re actually bringing an alliance of Christian bankers across the country, where we actually can then, once we do hit the top of the silos, you can actually, what’s normal practice in the banking industry is off-sell deposits.

(Speaker 5)
And so what we’re trying to do is make an alliance of hundreds of bankers who would be bold, who would be the tip of the spear, because it’s more than just Pro-Life FinTech. It’s more than just Regent Bank, even though they’re our sponsor charter. We know this is a movement that the Lord wants, and it needs to happen. It really does. And so we’re really excited about that. And having Charlie on stage was absolutely incredible.

(Speaker 3)
Now again, it was so fun and was so great and so how God puts things together. I did not know that you were teaming up with Charlie Kirk, but I’ve had Charlie Kirk come to our Reawaken America tour events. I did not know that you were going

(Speaker 3)
to team up with Sean Copeland, but I’ve known Sean Copeland for years. In fact, Sean Copeland was the first adult male that I’ve ever sat down with who was in a leadership position of a bank, in a bank, that told me, hey, you know, it might be a good idea for you to set aside a set percentage of your savings into gold because

(Speaker 3)
of this thing called inflation. And I’m a 25-year-old guy building this super successful entertainment company with no knowledge of the concepts of inflation. All I knew is I’m growing my massive company at the time called DJConnection.com, which I haven’t had

(Speaker 3)
for over 15 years, but I was building this business. And here’s a guy who owns a bank who had the compassion to tell me, hey, there’s this thing called inflation. You may want to buy gold and silver to hedge against that. I did not know that you were teaming up with Regent Bank. I’ve known Dr. Zellner, who teamed up with Sean Copeland. Why? Because they’re high character people. And so it’s great to see that you’ve chosen to surround yourself with those kind of people. And I think that speaks volumes about what you’re doing. Can you walk us through the kind of banking

(Speaker 5)
experience that people could expect if they do team up with you? Yeah, I really appreciate it. And General Flynn, he was amazing. He was called by Trump. He couldn’t make it, but he did an incredible video that we’re gonna make public as well. Yeah, look, the banking experience, if you go to prolifefintech.com right now,

(Speaker 5)
you’ll see at the top of the page a way that you can just click on the top button, open an account. And so if you want a personal checking savings account, a money markets account, we’ve got some pretty competitive earning interest accounts for you to consider.

(Speaker 5)
And thanks to God, number one, but thanks to Sean Copeland and Regent Bank team, we’ve actually now been able to partner with Regent on a deeper level, faster level, and quicker to actually just open up right now, corporate accounts, trust accounts, business accounts for non-profits and all.

(Speaker 5)
Everyone can now open up an account and that link is there on that home page to just open it up at Regent. And if the code’s there still, that means that they haven’t just done the customized page yet for us. But it’s already open. It’s just whether you need to put PLF code in or not. And so all the information is all active right now. And if there is a code, your listeners can basically just go straight there on that link and put in PLF that stands for ProLife Fintech. And you can open up an account wherever you are in America.

(Speaker 5)
In the United States of America, all ATM withdrawals are free, and a lot of more people are getting more used to solely online banking solutions. And so we’re one of them. And we though will also give 10% net profits to biblically aligned nonprofit organizations that actually would please the Lord and honor the Lord.

(Speaker 1)
Now with the final five minutes we have, I’m gonna ask you three questions that maybe you’ve never been asked on interviews, maybe you have, but I’m gonna go for it. Three questions, five minutes, a rapid fire, hot seat, here we go.

(Speaker 1)
Your wife, you’ve got a great family. You have a great family. And I’m gonna see if I can pull up a picture of your great family. But you guys have a great family. And so many people I know have arms, have legs, and talk about, hey, I can’t seem to find my spouse. I can’t seem to find my dream person. But yet you have a great family.

(Speaker 1)
So I’m going to do a search for you, going to do a little online cyberstalking. We’re going to look for you online and see if we can’t find your family here. Here we go, pulling it up. You’ve got, this is your great family, right?

(Speaker 3)
This is you guys here?

(Speaker 32)
Yeah.

(Speaker 3)
How did you go about finding a spouse? Maybe walk us through that because I think so many people are excited, and maybe even slightly shocked that you have been able to do so many things that everybody with arms and legs can’t seem to be able to do. Tell us about your wife and your wonderful family.

(Speaker 5)
You know, thanks to God that that was part of our plan, part of our plan, sorry, part of God’s plan that we would both get married. Not everyone gets married, but that was our desire. And we were planning on having children later on in life. But we were surprised by the timing of that. And we’ll be adopting a baby as well next year, God willing. We felt that was part of God’s plan too.

(Speaker 5)
Look, you need to put yourself out there, right? Actually, there’s a book that we co-wrote together, Clay, called Love Without Limits to actually inspire people that true love still exists. And, you know, I was worried that I’d never find a partner. But how you perceive yourself is how also other people perceive you. And so I

(Speaker 5)
think that was something that I learned as a kid having the disability that I had, that I needed to accept me and love me and and and be okay with me. Many people are not. I’m not saying to not become better and better and better and better, but to put yourself out there, go out on dates and go for it.

(Speaker 5)
So that book, Love Without Limits is online as well. And it actually shares the whole story. It’s a love at first sight. I looked at her, she looked at me, I couldn’t feel my legs and I couldn’t keep my hands off of her. So we had to quickly get married.

(Speaker 31)
That’s so good.

(Speaker 1)
Now next question I have for you, hot seat here, is some people are saying, well, how do you organize your day? With all the things you have coming at you, all the opportunities you have. At a certain point, there’s this thing called a tipping point for anybody out there that doesn’t know, but it’s where the market starts chasing you, where people start reaching out to you, or podcasts like mine reach out to great people like you and say, hey, could you be on our show? How do you organize your day today?

(Speaker 5)
So I have a right hand who’s been with me for 23 years, who would be classed as my chief of staff. I actually have four companies, 35 employees, 25 contractors, and currently four startups. And so what’s beautiful is, and I’ve switched off my phone last year for eight weeks straight, what really was game-changing for me, Clay, was one of my mentors, John Phelps, one of the founders of Full Sail University, or the founder of Full Sail University, F-U-L-L-S-A-I-L. And he basically taught me how to reverse engineer, delegate, manage people, and push the leveraging levers of just scaling, basically.

(Speaker 5)
And he told me anything you ever want to dream, it’s possible. You just got to figure out prioritization processes, team building. And that’s what I started doing. I started hiring and firing people at age 26. And so those skills helped me to like, this is the only thing I’m doing today. I’ve got guests over from Ohio. We go fishing in the backyard, the

(Speaker 5)
chickens are right next to me. I like I love being at home. And so we were going on vacation soon. So time management, prioritization, management of people, all these skills helped me to do what I wanted, what I feel the Lord wanting me to do at the pace that we’re doing it. It’s kind of people won’t believe how quickly we’re building many things. But you know, can I say

(Speaker 5)
it this way, Clay? Some people have known Nick for 20 years, and you know what they’ve called me? An overachiever. And to me, I think that’s unfair, actually. Because no one calls Elon Musk an overachiever today. He’s now called a genius.

(Speaker 5)
So when you look at Sean Copeland, he’s got 49 companies. No one calls him an overachiever. So don’t call anyone an overachiever unless they really, really are. For anyone who’s been framed as an overachiever, just keep on doing it. Don’t worry about what the world says. Get a second opinion.

(Speaker 5)
Keep going, and one day we’ll look back and say, Oh, that was amazing. Nick, Perlite FinTech happened. You’ve been talking about it for years. Yeah, here it is, and it’s so exciting. So don’t listen to the world when they’re a little negative to you.

(Speaker 1)
Final question I have here for you. So many people wanna follow you, they wanna team up with you, they wanna support you. I’ve got the website, I believe this is the correct website, nickvministries.org, nickvministries.org and then we’ve got the ProLifeFintech.com for somebody taking notes while driving, maybe pull over, but that’s ProLifeFintech.com, ProLifeFintech.com, somebody

(Speaker 1)
using an Etch-a-Sketch, that’s Nickvministries.org, Nickvministries.org. Are those the right websites or where do you want people to go?

(Speaker 5)
Where should we direct traffic today there, sir? Yeah, if anybody wants to hear more about faith, nickvministries.org is the correct website. Check that out. If anyone wants to know more about the banking alternative Pro-Life Fintech, go to prolifefintech.com. If you actually want to see the trailer of the new documentary coming out, you can go to nickvteam.com right now. Nick v team.com. We’re actually going to be doing a crowdfund of approximately $5 million for the marketing budget of the no limbs no limits documentary coming out. And that’s that’s all the three websites I could give you that we’d prefer

(Speaker 5)
you to know about. So thank you so much for asking it and the way you asked.

(Speaker 1)
Do you have a team that’s kind of helping you crowdfund for the Nick V team? Or is there a website they go people if we’re watching right now that maybe want to put money into the creation of the film?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, that announcement is going to be made in about 30 days, but you’re not going to hear the announcement anywhere else first, except for Nick V team. We’re making a massive, if you scroll down actually on that page, you’ll see the trailer is there and you can just watch the trailer. That’s the trailer.

(Speaker 5)
It’s huge. It’s beautiful. It’s going to change a lot of people’s lives. And it’s coming out in October 2025. And yes, if you sign up on that website, you’ll be the very first to know if you get to be the 5,000 people

(Speaker 5)
who are gonna be investing for a 5 million raise. And that’s going live very soon.

(Speaker 3)
Powerful stuff, powerful stuff. Again, Nick, I really do appreciate you carving out time for us today. I’ve just seen you resonate with audiences where people, you come out on stage, people aren’t quite sure what to expect, what to do, how do we react, what’s going to happen. And you have a great way of sharing things we need to know that are profound and they

(Speaker 3)
are things that cause kind of a reverent, introspective look at where we are versus where we want to be. I would say your talks oftentimes create an aura or energy of accountability, of reflection, of it makes people want to do better, be more, do more. But at the same time, amidst the conviction and all that, you provide so much humor that it works in a way that I encourage everybody,

(Speaker 3)
if they haven’t seen you in person, they really should do it. Thank you so much, I really do appreciate you.

(Speaker 5)
Love you, Clay. God bless you and everything you’re doing and God bless all your listeners.

(Speaker 1)
Take care, brother.

(Speaker 26)
Bye-bye.

(Speaker 1)
Well, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because a lot of times on the Thrive Time show I get to interview people that I am friendly with or have an acquaintance with, that kind of thing, and I enjoy that. But it’s really an honor whenever I get to interview someone who I consider to be a friend or people that I consider to be friends of our family. And it’s awesome when we can celebrate a success story because it’s a life-giving thing and for somebody watching today’s show, if you feel you need like a checkup from the neck up, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you

(Speaker 1)
don’t have the resources to get started but you have the resourcefulness, maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear because this is a couple, they started this business together out of their house and they’ve now grown it into a multi-million dollar super successful company and I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in a consulting or coaching capacity over these past five or six years.

(Speaker 1)
And I am so excited to have them on today’s show. And that being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 3)
Amber, how are you?

(Speaker 8)
Great, thanks Clay. It’s awesome to be on here with you.

(Speaker 2)
Yes, we are excited.

(Speaker 1)
Okay, so I to ask this real quick, because people think you’re a hologram. How long have we had the opportunity to work with you, or how long have we worked with you guys together from a coaching relationship?

(Speaker 2)
We probably started back in 2017. 2017.

(Speaker 8)
Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years.

(Speaker 3)
Yeah.

(Speaker 2)
It’s coming up on eight probably. It’s a little over seven.

(Speaker 1)
And from that time, I mean, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth. I mean, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size you guys have

(Speaker 3)
grown over these past seven or eight years at colawfitness.com?

(Speaker 2)
Absolutely. We started off, we’re getting ready to open our third location. And our one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy clay. So we ended up meeting with clay. These helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms. And so

(Speaker 2)
it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot for us running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him.

(Speaker 2)
So huge win.

(Speaker 1)
Now I’m gonna ask you guys this story because I want you to be able to encourage somebody. I’m not sure who’s going to watch this show, but I view every show as kind of a message in a bottle. So somebody’s watching this show, and they’re going to relate to this story. I’m going to let Amber go first, because I think she’ll maybe have a less rosy view of how it was. But you guys started Colawfitness.com doing personal training to individual clients in

(Speaker 1)
your actual home. So like your living room was where the squat rack was or the bench press was in the kitchen or, Amber, what was that like

(Speaker 3)
when you started colawfitness.com?

(Speaker 8)
Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead. You’re just kind of thinking you have to work. You have to survive. You’ve got to make money

(Speaker 8)
and you’re doing what you love. And so with that, it was just it was kind of more of a survival. And also we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room, a formal dining room. And so so we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele. And so we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room

(Speaker 8)
because it’s just an empty room. And the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring, ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall. And we just started doing what we needed to do at the time

(Speaker 8)
with no, I mean, I definitely did not think

(Speaker 4)
it was gonna be in my house for a couple of years for sure.

(Speaker 23)
But-

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure. I was like, I wanna make sure that, you know, I can provide for my family. And we were trying to just, I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained, wanna make sure that it gave me good results.

(Speaker 2)
And yeah, next thing you know, we have about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week. And it’s me and about four or five other trainers training out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness.

(Speaker 2)
And then Amber also did some hair. So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house.

(Speaker 30)
So yeah, the win.

(Speaker 3)
Now I wanna share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story with you but I think our listeners need to hear this because your story is better than mine. But let me just show this to the listeners real quick here. to 111th and Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My wife and I, we were 20 years old-ish, and I remember I was so excited

(Speaker 3)
to be able to build our house. I remember telling my wife, honey, we can afford to build a house. We are gonna build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside.

(Speaker 3)
She was like, we’re gonna buy a house? I go, yeah. She’s like, we’re gonna build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple. We’d just been married a couple years. Right here at 111th and Memorial, I found a builder named Rob Brewer who did a phenomenal job.

(Speaker 3)
I would hire him again. And this is a true story. So I built this house from scratch. neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her, I’m not gonna mention her last name, Wendy comes by and she’s like, hey, what are you doing? I go, what do you mean? Because I’m having like 40 couples a week

(Speaker 3)
that are walking up to my front door, hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard. And she’s like, What are you doing? I said, well, I’m running a business. She said, you can’t run a business here. So I had back here in the backyard, no kidding.

(Speaker 3)
I had eight different vans back there. And then neighbors kept asking me if I was running drugs. I mean, people were concerned because the first DJ would come to load up gear at four in the morning and our last guy would come home at three in the morning. Uh, and it was just, I got to ask you what the gym Amber, how early were people coming to work out to do squats and bench press and cardio?

(Speaker 3)
What time were they showing up? How many people were showing up?

(Speaker 29)
Oh yeah.

(Speaker 8)
So Charles is. He’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5 a.m. with his first client. And sometimes it would last until about 10 o’clock at night. And so it was, it was just a revolving door. And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon

(Speaker 8)
at two o’clock every afternoon. And him and I, and as we added staff, we would all work out together. So it became this big workout you know, workout session together. It was awesome.

(Speaker 3)
And this is a real thing. Now, how, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious, but I mean, did you ever have awkward situations? I mean, cause you’re trying, you’re sleeping there. You’re living there.

(Speaker 3)
Do you guys ever have just like, I remember with the DJ business, my wife, about once a week there for a while, she would come downstairs and one of my DJs would, okay, Clay, where’s the bathroom? I’d say, right there. And they would walk into our master bedroom and I’m like, get out of there, that’s my bathroom,

(Speaker 3)
you sicko.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions?

(Speaker 8)
Oh yeah, totally. From, you know, our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge. And I remember one day a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it and it just shatters all over the kitchen floor. But his client was here. So he he looks at me kind of like, oh, and I was like, just just go.

(Speaker 8)
I got like some cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. One morning, I had gotten out of the shower, and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs. And I’m just making that short little jag over to my bedroom door.

(Speaker 8)
And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on, and I opened the door. And right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises. And they just, good morning. And I thought, get this out of my house.

(Speaker 19)
Yeah, yeah.

(Speaker 8)
The trainers napping on the couch between clients and our middle son was in pre-K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day and he’d sit on the couch. He was just so little, his feet would just stick straight off the day and he’d sit on the couch. He was just a little his feet would just stick straight off the couch and he try and watch cartoons. And there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor right in front of the TV doing crunches. And so he’s just watching his

(Speaker 8)
little cartoons and someone’s doing crunches in front of him. And so Oh, yeah, the whole family.

(Speaker 3)
I just remember when I was building DJConnection.com, I would train my DJs out of my house. So we would practice announcements like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up in just a moment, we’re gonna introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro.

(Speaker 3)
And we would practice, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, we’re gonna be cutting the cake. And I’m practicing and they have a script and I’m practicing so adult males are in my house And we’re practicing introducing because you know we grew DJ connection to do 4,000 weddings a year So I’m training 30 disc jockey every week so Havana my oldest who’s now 20 She starts running around in the office going ladies and gentlemen coming up next the cutting of a cake I heard it so much

(Speaker 3)
He’s like ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the Soul Train line. She knew, because it was like, and I don’t think if you’re watching today’s show and these stories, you can’t relate to it. That’s okay, but I’m just trying to make sure

(Speaker 3)
we’re getting this idea. This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere. And it’s not about resourcefulness. It’s about, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Again, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Look at the backyard.

(Speaker 3)
I turned half my backyard into a concrete slab so that we could park all the vans back here. I mean, look at all the trees I planted. We block the view. So now you look at Colaw Fitness and you go, super successful company. Wow, I want to be the next Kola Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it.

(Speaker 3)
I want to be a KolaFitness.com. I’ll get the website to pull up in just a second. And people always come to me and they say, Clay, what do I need to do? What’s the most important thing? I just had a guy today, huge ministry, huge ministry.

(Speaker 3)
Multi-million dollar massive ministry called me and said what’s the one thing I can do to grow my ministry and I said buddy I’m gonna send you today’s show there are 14 things that we need to do and a lot of details on those 14 So we’re gonna go step by step on today’s show. I’ll go back and forth between Charles and Amber and for sake of time We’ll just go back and forth rapid-fire. So here we go and Charles, by the way You get 60 seconds on the clock for each answer. So here we go. Box number one, you have to figure out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. You have to

(Speaker 3)
know your revenue goals. What are your gross revenue goals? What are your weekly revenue goals? What are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals. Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals?

(Speaker 2)
Yes, you have to know your revenue goals. So you know, you have to know your revenue goals so you know if you’re going to be making money or not. And for us, we want to make sure that we’re staying bankable, that we can open more locations. Our gyms are a ministry for us. We want to make sure that we continue to expand and making sure we got at least a 20% profit margin off of all of our expenses to income over expenses. And we know how many memberships we have to sell, we know how many clients that we have to service to hit those goals for our set overhead costs.

(Speaker 2)
And yeah, so you got to know how many units of items you have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff. And for us, we have a lot of it’s recurring revenue, but the whole point is that we want to make sure that we have enough of the payable, viable buyers

(Speaker 1)
in the system to continue to grow. And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie, who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach. And when you work with a new client, a lot of times

(Speaker 1)
the client’s going to have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding. But you have to know these numbers. Amber, anything else you wanna talk about as far as the numbers?

(Speaker 3)
Because I know your husband is passionate about fitness and you are as well, but why do you have to focus on the numbers and not just marketing or not just branding or not just social media? Why do you have to focus on those numbers?

(Speaker 8)
Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing. Like it just leads the whole way. And I think a lot of people tend to do,

(Speaker 8)
I’m going to do the marketing, or I just want to perform the service. I think a lot of it because people are scared of numbers. I think they feel of it because people are scared of numbers. I think, um, they, they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the big.

(Speaker 1)
This is such wisdom folks. I’m telling you, if you’re not familiar with colawfitness.com, go to their website. These guys give away a Bible every time they sell a new membership, they set aside a portion of the funds to give away a Bible to first time members at their gym. It’s an incredible, it’s a ministry, it’s a business, it checks all those boxes. Let’s move on to box number three.

(Speaker 1)
Define the number of hours you’re willing to work. Now Amber, you happen to be married to a man who’s willing to work every hour of the day if need be. I will say this though, most of my clients, clients I work with, and I had to think about the average client, 90% of them are not willing to work as hard as you guys. Most of my clients are willing to work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week.

(Speaker 1)
Some will work 60 hours a week, but nobody is willing to go sprint from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., 10 p.m. every day if need be. Your husband is willing to do that. Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re going to work, the hours that you’re not going to work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip? Why

(Speaker 2)
is that an important box there, Charles? That way, my wife will stay married to me. And well, I’m like you, I like to just go, go, go. And then we do definitely we take off and we go to church on Sunday. It’s important for us for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath as a day off. Other than that, we I like to work like you talked about vacation to vacate or leave something. I love to work. I love to build the systems and build the documents and

(Speaker 8)
train staff, build the systems and so on. But we do have to make sure that once a quarter, we try to look at taking time off. Right. Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, family and work, expectations and boundaries. Those two things have to be very clear all the time. So as long as he understands what my expectations are and I need him to fulfill a husband role in addition to working, as long as he understands that these are my expectations

(Speaker 8)
and then these are my boundaries. And as long as we communicate that, then we’re good.

(Speaker 2)
I’ll say one more thing is that for us, we’ve kind of at the spot to to where we just work on the business, not in the business, so we don’t actually do the day-to-day stuff, but we work on the business systems, checklist, workflows, training, coaching people remotely, because we do live in Florida.

(Speaker 2)
Our clubs are in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. Running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, how do we want to live our lives? Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly define that.

(Speaker 2)
For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those days are just all in on Zoom calls, training, coaching, working with staff. And so those days are really, really full days. And then the rest of the time like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings. It’s like no meetings that we plan but we are

(Speaker 2)
still I’m still working on things that I want to work on but I’m not leveraged to having to. So I’ve kind of created my three-day work week that’s like super long and then the rest of the time I don’t have meetings. I don’t get held hostage on a lot of stuff. And people have to kind of have a gatekeeper to get to me. But other than that, that’s how I’ve tried to map that out so that I can continue to mastermind and kind of grow the brand and have some meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow.

(Speaker 3)
So there’s just so much again, for folks, if you want to learn entrepreneurship, this is this is real people. If you’re in the Florida area and you’re looking for a job, if you’re in the Joplin, Missouri area and you’re looking for a career, not just a job, Colaw Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns. I work with clients and I help them implement patterns that work. I also know of the clients that’ll work. Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work.

(Speaker 3)
And I look at the Kola family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring, and I’m telling you folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career,

(Speaker 3)
check it out, KolaFitness.com. Box number four and five, to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing. What is it that makes you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition? If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards.

(Speaker 3)
Let’s think about everything about your business. Let’s think about the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition? What is it that makes Chick-fil-A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants? What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful

(Speaker 3)
when there are so many gross, nasty, dirty convenience stores? What is it that makes Chick-fil-A successful? What is it that makes Quick Trip successful? What is the secret sauce that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning

(Speaker 3)
lineup year after year? Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball team. Think about this. He took a college called Butler, the size of Earl Roberts

(Speaker 3)
University, and took them to the Final Four multiple times. And then he takes that same recipe and goes to the NBA and they win a championship and he’s putting out a winner year after year. What is the secret sauce that allowed Phil Jackson to win year after year? Michael Jordan couldn’t win a championship without Phil Jackson. He played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson.

(Speaker 3)
He only won his championships with Phil. Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson. By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. What is that magic formula? But a big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition.

(Speaker 3)
So Amber, what is it that makes Kola Fitness unique versus other fitness companies?

(Speaker 8)
Oh, for us, it’s culture, hands down. It’s culture all day long. And we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture and make it what we wanted it to be. We wanted a fitness center that everybody could come be a part of.

(Speaker 8)
And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it, but it’s definitely our culture. And that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we train, develop, encourage,

(Speaker 8)
that the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part.

(Speaker 2)
Yep, and that’s the big part. I’m going to just kind of jump on a little bit more. We’re unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think if Planet Fitness is the McDonald’s of gyms, Cola Fitness is the Chick-fil-A. And what I mean by that is

(Speaker 2)
we are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that match that. They don’t have to be a Christian, but they do have to align with those values. All of Christianity summed up in one word is the word agape. That’s an unconditional love. We want to make sure that we actually hire people that are into customer service, like likes people who’d have thought customer service, we’re going to find people that actually like to serve people. And so we really are, we talk about the Christian values,

(Speaker 2)
devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory, determination to stay in the school, of course. So the Christian side of it is kind of strong. So either people lean in or lean and lean back. And so when we do group interviews,

(Speaker 2)
this is where you’ve taught us a lot of great systems. You see people lean in and see people lean back. So when everybody’s on the boat rowing in the same direction and they really match that value set, the culture is just better. And when you hire people that actually like people, like hire people that like people, they want to acknowledge your presence, close the gap,

(Speaker 2)
give them a fist bump, a high five, make somebody feel like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door. So we train people on those systems. So we took the culture that we did when we first opened the club and we defined it into actual ways

(Speaker 2)
that we can role play and script it with our staff so that you have not a purple hair, McDonald’s perpetually distracted, crayon mark tattoo person. You have a person posted like a McDonald’s, somebody that runs up to your car like a Chick-fil-A, that’s you got their polo on and says my pleasure. So that’s where

(Speaker 2)
we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently than the competition who’s just, you know, scaling out like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere, that are just genuine, that truly like people. If you do that well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out.

(Speaker 1)
I’m telling you folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story, and he’s didn’t hire this guy. He’s kind of a gremlin. I said, what do you mean gremlin? He’s like, yeah, he’s just kind of a curmudgeon,

(Speaker 1)
kind of a negative guy, Debbie Downer. And he’s got a big background in fitness though. And he’s into fitness and he played sports at a high level I guess he applied for the Colaw guys a couple years ago, didn’t get the job and I’m going, interesting. And I knew that you, and I met the guy, I’m like, this guy, I understand why you didn’t hire him and I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you, you have certain standards and if people aren’t up to those

(Speaker 1)
standards they can come back and reapply later after they turn that frown upside down, but you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three-legged marketing stool. At Colaw Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that I work with, what we do is we develop a three-legged marketing stool. Now, I’ll give you a moment, Charles and Amber, to reflect on this, and maybe this is true for you,

(Speaker 1)
maybe not, but a lot of my clients that come into my life, I think about Stacey Purcell shawhomes.com. We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year. I think about satellite phones, Tina, her company Sat123. We’ve helped them grow to $100 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, oxifresh.com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 plus locations.

(Speaker 1)
Every single time I sit down with a business owner, they have not a three-legged marketing

(Speaker 3)
stool. No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we start to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100% of the time, thus saving her $8,000 a month by turning it off. I just had a client this week, true story, we found he was spending $4,000 a week on YouTube ads,

(Speaker 3)
Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views, no leads. Another client, I’m using a stream of consciousness, another client of mine, they were doing mailers, getting zero response. Another client of mine was doing billboards

(Speaker 3)
to the tune of $6,000 a month between all their locations. And as you look at the different businesses and you track, you can really, really become much more profitable by nailing down a three-legged marketing stool. Could you talk about that, Amber? Maybe the impact it’s had or hasn’t had, tracking the results, getting rid of what doesn’t work,

(Speaker 8)
and focusing on what does work? Yeah, well, I would say none of that is my part of the business. And I’m so thankful. I hate marketing. But I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with like we were talking about your numbers and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side. And I wanna know that when the money’s going out, that that return is coming back, right?

(Speaker 8)
And so I do that side of it with, we talk about a marketing budget and watching that and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching the revenue that comes back from that marketing. So you may be able to talk more on the marketing. That’s your…

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve tracked where they come from. Sometimes you do get clicks or you have like, sometimes Facebook shows you, you’re making, but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items.

(Speaker 2)
And so you really want to make sure that what you’re spending money on is actually quantifying out into dollars. And so Clay’s really been good with us to track that. We’ve done that for years. And so we can really kind of see in our industry, we market in a five mile radius, really heavy. That’s kind of our ideal and likely buyers within that five mile radius or a 12 minute drive time. We target those. We see what marketing works best.

(Speaker 2)
And a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff that Clay teaches with a lot of his clients is really seeing to making sure that you’re dominating on certain platforms. And I can go into that. But the whole point is,

(Speaker 2)
is Clay has done it in every industry. And when we follow the system, track it correctly, we can monetize our marketing dollars a whole lot better. And so there’s ways you want to get in front of your ideal likely buyer. We make sure we got the right product offering in front of the right ideal likely buyer.

(Speaker 2)
And the things that Clay’s been doing with his clients over the last seven years with us, it doesn’t change much. There’s a few little things that adjust, but it’s a proven system and that’s what works. And we’ve just, we’ve done that. We’ve gone from three locations to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue. So it’s been a huge win.

(Speaker 8)
Well, I think sometimes people want to market in a certain way because that’s the cool thing to do. Like I want to be on TikTok. If TikTok doesn’t pay me, if TikTok is not, if it’s not paying my bills, I could care less. I mean, I’ve watched TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing

(Speaker 8)
dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you. Everybody, everybody thinks there’s a marketing guru, you know, because they see ads. And I don’t think that’s true either.

(Speaker 1)
Now, I’m going to ask you this, Charles. And I’m not ready for your answer yet. I got to mentally prepare myself for this. But you do not have the ability to not be honest here, OK? So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away.

(Speaker 1)
Guy reaches out to me. He’s in the construction space. He goes, what would it, this happens every day by the way, but he says, what would a relationship look like if I hired you guys as my coach? If I hired you, Clay, and your team, what does that look like? And I said, well, we charge you $1,700 a month,

(Speaker 1)
so it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee, that’s what it is. We have a weekly meeting, and we follow a proven system and Anyway, and I said, you know, there’s a there’s accountability. There’s There’s kind of three parts to it One is we have a team that helps you get your photography your video your web your search engine done for you All those things the second is we provide coaching down a proven path

(Speaker 1)
And then the third is we have workshops every couple months so you can kind of get a tune-up and I said, you know

(Speaker 3)
I said, mr. Klein mr. Potential client who I’ve known forever.

(Speaker 16)
I said, uh, Clay stairs describes me as the ass man.

(Speaker 17)
And he’s like the ass man.

(Speaker 1)
And I said, yeah, Clay stairs, longtime client of mine. He’s been a client of mine for like 15 years. He literally tells people that I’m his ass man.

(Speaker 28)
And they go, what?

(Speaker 3)
He goes, Clay, you know, Clay has helped me grow my company, claystairs.com. He’s helped me get into political office. But he kind of is like an irritant who follows up on the same things every week until they get done. So I want to ask you, Charles, how would you describe what the coaching relationship looks like for somebody out there that’s saying,

(Speaker 3)
what is it like to work with specifically me and my team?

(Speaker 2)
Well, to shoot you straight, I mean, Clay’s highest desire isn’t always your comfort in that coaching. His highest desire is your continued development, that you do hit your goals for financial. And a good coach, think of a good coach. A good coach tells you what you need to hear, because he doesn’t just care about the comfort in the room or the comfort of the conversation.

(Speaker 2)
He cares about your character development, your personal development to becoming the better leader. And if you want to run a great company, you have to be a great leader. You have to be the avatar. You have to be the great person. And Clay has really pushed that in me. And for me, I thought I’ve always needed that.

(Speaker 2)
And I was just like, okay, Charles, stay humble, stay coachable. And that’s the biggest thing is most business owners, they don’t have the ability to stay, you want to grow when you work with somebody that has a proven system. They’ve worked in every industry. They’ve got a team of videographers, graphic designers, web developers, people that will help you build the back end of your business correctly. The proven systems of continuous hiring of staff team,

(Speaker 2)
like group hiring that you always have staff ready to go. Somebody in the bullpen, so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’ve never held hostages because there’s somebody that doesn’t know a skill set. You can always replace somebody because if you don’t create a system,

(Speaker 2)
you’re gonna be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and make sure you’ve got that stuff so you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype

(Speaker 2)
that you can handle the lowest skill set. So great people are great, but Clay’s been really good at shooting me straight. If you have a humble, coachable heart, you’re willing to grow and you take two or three action items every week, next thing you know, 50 weeks, 52 weeks in the year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you got a way better website, you got checklist workflows, you got staff following systems, you got

(Speaker 2)
backup for each position, because if you don’t have people in the in the bullpen, you’re going to be held hostage. And so you want to make sure that you got the right systems, checklist and personnel ready to go. And to run six different businesses in four different states from Florida in the Midwest, so we went with there, we have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on and making sure people are holding to that.

(Speaker 2)
Clay’s been really great for helping set up the system. So yeah. But it’s to be honest, it’s not always, the conversations are definitely sometimes challenging, but understanding that both parties, me as the client, him as the coach, is really help trying to have the highest desire to make you grow

(Speaker 2)
into a better person and to help your company grow and be better. And for me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with Thrive and Clay.

(Speaker 1)
Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this. There was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. It really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago, but he said, amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. At the time, I thought, you know what?

(Speaker 1)
From a legal perspective, I probably need a coach or mentor to help me. I hired wintersking.com. I’ve used that company for 10 plus years, and it’s really helped me. I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have her a coach. So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach.

(Speaker 1)
When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson, and I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me, because at the time, he was the top televangelist in America and he was a phenomenal verbal communicator. But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable and if he wasn’t willing to coach. You guys have done such a great job over these years implementing and I just see the future is so bright here. When we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting and making

(Speaker 1)
those little iterations and every week making it a little better? Because I think some people want to get rich quick. They want to become successful in 10 minutes. They want to ready, set, let’s go. But you guys, every week we go to colawfitness.com.

(Speaker 1)
Every week we enhance the website. Every week we enhance the scripts. Every week we enhance the value proposition. Every week we’re doing little tweaks that are improving the brand. Could you talk about this, that mindset

(Speaker 3)
of that weekly improvement? Yeah, absolutely.

(Speaker 2)
With your numbers, you have to have good feedback tools, some key performance KPIs or key performance things you look at for sales over cancellations and how much dollars you’re spending in marketing. When we track that on a regular basis, we can see that we’re doing well or not doing well. We make pivots. We get coaching feedback from you on best practices. And one

(Speaker 2)
thing is, is that you’ve not just worked in our industry, but lots of industries and having a team of people, a team of coaches that say, Hey, this is what’s working. This isn’t what’s working. It’s super valuable. And so, um, like I, I, I, I, I mean, I’ve got an MBA in school, but I’m telling you, like, it’s real life is so much more important and having good people that have good feelers. It’s like, you’re only as good as your team.

(Speaker 2)
And Clay brings the whole team to your team. And anyways, we have a weekly meeting. Our weekly meeting, we look at like, what are the key things that impact us? It’s gonna be signups, signups over cancels.

(Speaker 27)
What are those signups, signups over cancels. What are those

(Speaker 2)
signups? Which one’s upgraded to higher tier options, whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options, or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one-on-one coaching or fitness training, or nutrition coaching or group training. But getting people into those things and understanding the scripts, how to role play that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, role play, role play, until that socially awkward, you know, young person can totally

(Speaker 2)
get it and they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking face has gone away. They know how to do it. Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over cost, and then show them that if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen. And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life, add years to life quality to your years by changing new habits.

(Speaker 2)
And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating that you change a lot of lives. Well, I, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial.

(Speaker 8)
It’s kind of like you’re our blind side or a blind spot coach. We, this is what we’ve created. There’s a lot of emotions attached to it. It’s what we love. It’s what feeds our family. And so we can become very emotionally charged.

(Speaker 8)
And I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, like, so you kind of keep us focused, separating the emotions from it. And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you, or in conversations we’ll have, and they’ll say, yeah, but you don’t understand landscaping.

(Speaker 8)
It’s not about understanding landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week, right? We meet. But it’s about it’s it’s the it’s about business. And it’s about where we’re going. And you really help keep us on

(Speaker 6)
track. There’s that accountability like you talked

(Speaker 26)
about, you guys are

(Speaker 2)
super valuable. Your set of eyes is super valuable. Yeah, yeah.

(Speaker 3)
I’ll just say this. I mean, Colawfitness.com, if you’re looking for a career, folks, I’m telling you, check out Colawfitness.com. Now, point number seven, sales conversion. We have to have scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, lead trackers. What we need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store, we call that internal marketing, letting your current gym members know that you offer personal training or group fitness.

(Speaker 3)
Box number eight, you have to have a sustainable customer acquisition cost. You have to know what does it cost you to land a new customer. Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems. When you clean the bathrooms, every day. When you clean the showers, every day. When you clean the locker rooms, every day, when you clean the locker rooms every day, when you clean the equipment every day, when you clean all these things multiple times a day,

(Speaker 3)
when you change the light bulbs every day, when you have to maintain the fitness equipment every day, when you have to hire people every day, you have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You gotta have checklists and processes.

(Speaker 3)
Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people, manage people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. Box number 11, you have to build a sustainable schedule. What is the schedule that your company will keep? What hours will you be open? How would you, what kind of shifts do you have? What kind of org chart?

(Speaker 3)
Who’s in charge? Who isn’t? How do you deal with somebody that doesn’t want to follow the systems? if you won’t fire your bad employees. And box number 12, you gotta have a high standard with the A players, the B players. You gotta coach up the B players to become A players. You gotta coach those A players to become future leaders.

(Speaker 3)
You gotta coach the C players out into another job or to the local bus station. You gotta get them out of your life or they will ruin your business. And then box number 13, you gotta make sure you’re making money. It’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep. Box number 14, you have to sit down every day and say, what does God want me to do if

(Speaker 3)
every day is a gift? What does God want me to do if every day is a gift from God? What does God want me to do with my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendship, my fun, my focused time? want me to do with this day. That’s all these things we have to think about there and I’m telling you folks everything we’re talking about on today’s show it wouldn’t matter if Kola Fitness was not obsessed with wowing the customers. Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your

(Speaker 3)
fitness to the next level. If you’re out there today and you are in Joplin, Missouri, you’re in Texas, you are in all the different markets they’re in. Go to Colawfitness.com. You can see the markets they’re in. I’m telling you, these guys are obsessed with wowing customers. So I’ll go to you, Amber, then I’ll go to you, Charles. Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers. Everything we talked about doesn’t matter if you don’t wow your customers. Can you talk about why at the core, even though we’re going over all this business stuff, all these details. At the end of the day, you guys at Colaw Fitness have to wow the customers.

(Speaker 2)
Why is that so important, Amber?

(Speaker 8)
Well, I think for us it’s important because we love people. And everybody needs a belonging and worth. And they need to feel important. And they need to feel cared for. And that’s our passion.

(Speaker 8)
We just love loving on people. That’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole company. It was just his desire to help people and his love for them. And that was the same reason, you know, a million years ago that I did hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved and they have value.

(Speaker 8)
And if we can pass that on through all of our Front Desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, and also spread the gospel at the same time.

(Speaker 8)
Let them know God loves you. And so that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development, even of our staff.

(Speaker 1)
And Charles Cole, I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you.

(Speaker 3)
So here we go, two final questions.

(Speaker 17)
Yes, sir.

(Speaker 25)
Yes, sir.

(Speaker 16)
Yes, sir.

(Speaker 1)
There’s somebody out there right now, they’re thinking about coming to one of our in-person workshops. They know Tim Tebow is going to be there. They know Eric Trump will be there. They know that you might be there, but maybe if they haven’t been to a workshop in the past, how would you describe

(Speaker 2)
the in-person two-day interactive workshops? How would you describe them, sir? It’s just raw and real. If you really want to try to get, if you really, really, really want to build a company, not just get like, like if you go to school, you get a business degree, you, you know, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business, business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions of like, we are millions of dollars more in revenue

(Speaker 2)
because of these systems that we’ve implemented. And we’ve been able to scale and not have to actually work in the business, we work on the business, just the business system. So we can live in Florida. We’re definitely engaged with our staff

(Speaker 2)
that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, but we have the systems, we have the checklist, we’ve got the workflows, and we have the systems that we can hold people to. We’ve retained the right talent. We’ve got really people in the bullpen for every position, so they were held hostage to happen to do that. But all that to say, it’s going, it’s funny. He’s very, I mean, Clay’s pretty much like a comedian. It’s hilarious to listen to. If you’re willing to be coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart

(Speaker 2)
that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes. There’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful. And if you’re a diligent doer and you just do one or two action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is, it’s just being a more of a marathoner than a sprinter when you’re working with a coach, just do your two or three action items. And that two or three, if you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150 next day, you got a way better website, you got a way better lead funnel,

(Speaker 2)
you’ve got way better staff hired, you’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mind-free templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, all that. So you got people in the bullpen for each position and you’re no longer being held hostage as an owner. And you’ve got a proven system. So that’s Clay and his team.

(Speaker 8)
Well, I’ll one up you. I will one up him this one time. Like there’s truly nothing more exciting than to come to the conference. And we’ve been to almost every conference you’ve had for the last seven to eight years. And it is completely refreshing. I always get something new out of it. It’s very practical.

(Speaker 8)
You’re not sitting in this huge ballroom with want, want, want speakers that you feel like are trying to sell you something and you’re trying to stay awake. And that’s not the case at all. It’s kind of a circus with it, with a, with a whole lot of, there’s a whole lot to take home. Even if you go to the conference and you decide, Hey, this is not for me right now, or, or coaching is not for me, hands

(Speaker 8)
down, you will leave with practical business application items.

(Speaker 1)
Now, final question I have for you guys, just like Kola Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand Kola Fitness. You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow.com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in what I do and wowing our customers. But for somebody out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space, who’s like, hey,

(Speaker 1)
what would coaching look like for me, or is coaching for me? He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say? What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success?

(Speaker 2)
Or what kind of impact has the coaching coaching made on kola fitness.com? Well, I would say first off, personally, I’ve developed a great friendship with some really great people. And I thought that’s been huge for me. That’s personally, and to know people that are in the same type of pressure that you have is running a company running a business to have people that have that are intelligent, and they care as a friend that is

(Speaker 2)
huge. That’s number one personally and then professionally to have a whole bullpen of a whole data set of lots of different industries, best practices, whether that’s, you know, generally it’s either a sales issue, like you don’t have enough sales, or then it’s a staffing issue. You don’t have the right staff, whether it’s a scaling it, how do I, you know, build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done over and over and over again. And to where you have like a cognitive dissonance, like a mental disease with understanding it, they don’t. And when you have somebody that gives you peace

(Speaker 2)
because it is something they’ve done before, that’s it’s priceless. So, yeah.

(Speaker 8)
Yeah. Oh, I would say that you were talking about, it hasn’t just affected us in our business, but it has affected us in our personal life, too, because all of these things that you learn can be rolled over into your personal life. So that’s been huge.

(Speaker 8)
And like Charles was talking about the connections that we’ve made with other business owners, you know, Clay, you said at the very first conference we went to your network is your net worth. Amen. That I mean, that is hands down. If you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses, and you’re hanging out with the old people who are complaining about

(Speaker 8)
having to work an eight hour day, you know, if you’re spending your time with them, and you know, it’s just gonna break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re spending your time with them and it’s just gonna break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re gonna stay there. You’re gonna stay in that influence of people. And every conference we meet new people

(Speaker 8)
and we’ve got some of the most awesome friends that own businesses across the country from the cheesecake store to a pizza shop, right? To dog training to, I mean, we’ve got some of our friends that live in cities that we have gyms and they’re members at our clubs.

(Speaker 8)
And it’s just, it’s so powerful. It gives us a whole community to bounce ideas off of and get encouragement from.

(Speaker 3)
Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s gonna look at it and go, return on investment, I pay you 1,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to, what return on investment have you seen

(Speaker 1)
for the $1,700 a month you’re paying?

(Speaker 2)
Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works, but he’s also got a team of other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry, his staff has worked in every industry, he’s got videographers, web designers. I mean,

(Speaker 2)
just for the fact of like just the website alone is worth the $1,700. Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing, or whether that’s a staffing thing. Like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself. And then to understand this, there’s a part of where,

(Speaker 2)
you know, some maybe some week you may be like,

(Speaker 24)
well, you know what?

(Speaker 2)
I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it and then you’re like, you know what? And then you read it that one time and it’s like, God really speaks to your heart. And the whole truth is, it’s like,

(Speaker 2)
there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1,700 to have a whole team of coaches, graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative.

(Speaker 2)
Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that skill set. You have those tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like just understand that’s what you wanna do.

(Speaker 8)
I think there’s a, Sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind even. Because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will either be butting heads on something, we’re super confused about something, we’re fearful about something,

(Speaker 8)
something in the markets changed, and it’s a quick call to clay. That quick call to clay, and he’s outside the situation and he has other data points. I mean, we’ve had times that Clay, you got a quick response and you can tell us and direct us real quickly.

(Speaker 8)
And we’re we’re right off the phone. And there’s other times you’ll go, I’ll call you right back. And and Clay will jump in and he’ll call his other contacts and get back with us. Sometimes it takes longer. But there are times when you feel that way when you’re like, is this worth it? You know, I don’t feel like we’re doing much right now or we’re not growing. Inevitably,

(Speaker 8)
something like that will come up. And like, that’s our peace of mind. Like he’s, you’re like a crucial team player, you know?

(Speaker 1)
Well, you know, I, I, it’s an honor to serve you guys and everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you if you’re looking for a career. Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form, but if you’re looking for a career, Oklahoma, Amber. We live in Topeka, Kansas. If you’re out there, Arlington, if you’re out there, go to Kola Fitness dot com. If you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you, too, for carving time with your busy schedule.

(Speaker 3)
And I’m so glad to have you here today.

(Speaker 8)
Thanks. Awesome.

(Speaker 3)
Take care, guys. Bye bye.

(Speaker 10)
Bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 2)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 18)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 10)
People rave about what they learned from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 3)
Sean, guess what’s happening on June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably gonna have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters, June 5th and 6th. He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done?

(Speaker 3)
Every day. How often is is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time. It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90% of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is gonna come join us here at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. And he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self-discipline

(Speaker 3)
and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here. Also at the two-day interactive workshop, Sean, we are going to be, accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising,

(Speaker 3)
search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people? What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners and being able to manage their time is the

(Speaker 3)
First thing once they get that under control then generally the numbers You know being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is A big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay, you love to hammer on time management.

(Speaker 3)
It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now I’m gonna pull this up real quick here because we’re gonna go through, if you’re not excited, I wanna get you excited about what we’re gonna cover at the workshop here.

(Speaker 23)
Okay, good.

(Speaker 3)
The two day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals.

(Speaker 1)
Would you agree or am I off my rocker?

(Speaker 12)
No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one.

(Speaker 3)
Now, next is the break even numbers.

(Speaker 22)
Oh yeah.

(Speaker 3)
What kind of sales do you have to do to do to even break even?

(Speaker 12)
Yeah.

(Speaker 3)
Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, marketing. Your three-legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed? Because

(Speaker 3)
if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads?

(Speaker 3)
Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre-written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor,

(Speaker 3)
you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you gotta have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re gonna teach you how to create repeatable systems,

(Speaker 3)
processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re gonna teach you how to manage people, real people on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re gonna teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule

(Speaker 3)
that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting, this just in. We have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.

(Speaker 3)
We’re gonna cover all the accounting things you need to know and step 14, finally, what is the point of even achieving success? We’re gonna go over that. What is the point of even achieving success? How to design a life that you’re excited about? How to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re going

(Speaker 3)
to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that all this and more. Now the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. Tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission

(Speaker 21)
ticket?

(Speaker 12)
Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure

(Speaker 12)
that your average people out there have access to the things that work.

(Speaker 3)
Now 7 AM to 5, Sean, why do we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back-to-back workshops. We do a 30-minute teaching session. We do a 15-minute question and answer session.

(Speaker 3)
And then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer. Then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean?

(Speaker 12)
That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions. And that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board, and Clay will tee off

(Speaker 12)
and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay. It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoyed a lot.

(Speaker 3)
Sean, final 60 seconds, pop quiz here. What date is the conference? June 5 and 6,, 2025 this year. Question number two, who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean? Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s

(Speaker 3)
$250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? P-M-U-R-T-C-I-R-E.

(Speaker 12)
Ooh, that took a long time.

(Speaker 3)
I’ll have to listen to this. All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in-person Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive workshop, June 5th and 6th, right here in Tulsa, Russell, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shawn, I really am, I’m excited to have this event, I’m excited to see you at the event, June 5th and 6th,

(Speaker 1)
right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay?

(Speaker 2)
Clay is 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.

(Speaker 20)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

(Speaker 2)
So this guy is like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing.

(Speaker 11)
Hey guys, Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We got grill going over here. We’ve got people playing the drums.

(Speaker 1)
We’ve got a fire breather and man people are so excited as they come in.

(Speaker 11)
Conference is kicked off. this house is packed. We’ve got Aaron Antos with ShopLibs up there. We’ve got Steve Curry and Tim with Total Ending Concepts up there. Talking about what is possible when you just implement, when you implement, when you do the improvements. It’s so exciting, people are going crazy. Guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Time Show here with you.

(Speaker 11)
It is day two and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for day two.

(Speaker 19)
Follow me.

(Speaker 16)
Come on, come on. Come on, come on. Come on, come on.

(Speaker 11)
Come on, come on. to be here for day two. It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, what is that?

(Speaker 11)
What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break, and what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes.

(Speaker 11)
Then we take approximately a 15-minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life right it’s here for a time but we all

(Speaker 11)
need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning

(Speaker 7)
so that we can make the most of the time that we have. I heard about it on the podcast, started listening to the podcast, became a fan and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes

(Speaker 7)
and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere’s second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Just something every entrepreneur I think would appreciate and love.

(Speaker 7)
I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key. A lot of business coaches or seminars maybe are high on motivation and making you feel good but don’t have a lot of substance that you can take back and implement you know the following Monday where his does. Man there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say like I came to this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the

(Speaker 7)
importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. Man, I think they’re missing out on, you you know expert advice from somebody who’s been there done that built companies, has learned a lot of lessons

(Speaker 7)
you know that’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am and I think if you choose not to come you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that can help your business.

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
In my career, I’ve sold a little over 800 million dollars 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

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
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

(Speaker 1)
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

(Speaker 1)
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

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
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

(Speaker 1)
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 a hundred and eighty a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 9)
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.

(Speaker 9)
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 people. I love working with people. I love building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me

(Speaker 9)
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,

(Speaker 9)
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.

(Speaker 9)
Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

(Speaker 6)
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.

(Speaker 6)
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 embezzlement.

(Speaker 6)
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.

(Speaker 6)
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.

(Speaker 6)
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.

(Speaker 10)
Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 2)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 18)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 10)
People rave about what they learned from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 13)
And we went 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 in this K&D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. That’s what we’re going to hit or exceed. So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s been pretty much just listening to what they have to say.

(Speaker 13)
Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and the just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and 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

(Speaker 15)
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

(Speaker 4)
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

(Speaker 4)
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

(Speaker 4)
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. And hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring.

(Speaker 4)
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.

(Speaker 4)
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

(Speaker 4)
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 in place of you know of course I’m going to be successful it’s 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

(Speaker 4)
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

(Speaker 4)
for years to come. Thanks so much for watching.

(Speaker 10)
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,

(Speaker 10)
they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons.

(Speaker 10)
You’re on it, man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody, listen to this guy. He knows what he’s talking about. You have the macro, macro picture.

(Speaker 10)
Very few people have that point of view. Clay, you’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo