OXIFresh.com | The Founder of OXIFresh.com Jonathan Barnett Shares How He Built OXIFresh.com Into 500+ Locations + Celebrating the Redmond Growth Business Consulting Success Story “I’ve doubled every year since working w/ you.” – Tim Redmond

Audio Transcription

Hey Erin, finally you’re here. We’re already behind schedule. First action is reprogramming everything. Okay, so the first thing you need to do is reconstruct the API, the SSO, and then we’re going to have to denormalize the DV cache. Got it? And once we’ve updated the core cycling unit, then we’ll update the brushing system. Okay, so the first thing we’ve got to do is make sure we’re in and out of the system at the same time. Right, Erin? Uh… Oof. Uh… Um, perfect. Alright, next project. Biking? It’s an acronym, right Byron? Uh, yeah. Alright, you bet. Start with the V. So, that’s everything that we need done today. Alright, you think you can handle that? Uh, but it’s 5.30. Perfect, so we’ve got plenty of time. You got this. Uh… Z, on today’s show, we are interviewing the founder and the CEO of OxiFresh Carpet Cleaning Franchises. Now, my friend, on today’s show, we’re interviewing the guy whose business is a carpet cleaning franchise. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter. of oxy-fresh carpet cleaning franchises. Now my friend, on today’s show we’re interviewing the guy whose business has a hundred and fifty-one thousand Google reviews. Wow! 396 locations. Wow! What could we possibly learn from this man, Tim? Ouch! A lot. We come back, going green, can your small business profit by turning eco-friendly? We’re going to talk with the CEO of one business who says it is working for him. That is the head on Fox Business giving you the power to prosper. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. What this show does, two men, eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and Dr. Z, guess who is today’s guest? I am… it’s fresh. It’s hot and fresh. It’s hot and it’s fresh. It’s America’s… It’s the founder of America’s greenest carpet cleaning company. It is none other than my brother from another mother, Mr. Jonathan Barnett. Welcome on to the show, sir. How are you? I’m fantastic, Clay. How are you doing, brother? You doing good down there? We are… we are psychologically and emotionally prepared for this interview. And we’re just going to ask you a ton of tough questions. See, we’re gonna paint them into a corner with tough questions. Hard hitting, hard hitting. All right, so, Jonathan, people who’ve Googled you know that you’ve had some tremendous success throughout your career. So I wanna start by asking you about the bottom and the fireworks stand that started it all. How did you start Oxifresh? You know, that’s a great question, and I get to tell this story quite a bit nowadays, but when you look back at it, sometimes you don’t appreciate the story, your stories of the hard times you’ve gone through or your beginning. So I think all of us have that. And if you don’t have that out there, that’s why you’re listening to this show right now. So in the very beginning, before I started a carp cleaning company that was nationwide with 150,000 reviews on the web, there was very humble beginnings. And I grew up with a single mom that always taught me to, you know, work hard in school, work hard in sports, get a good job, this and that. And we grew up without a lot of money, but I saw how hard she worked. So my grandpa, my dad’s side of the family gave all of his grandkids, and he had a lot of them, most of them I’ve never met, $10,000 for Christmas. So I was reading this book in my dorm room at Oral Roberts University, and Clay, I know we both went to school there, and we didn’t know each other that much then, but we knew who each other were. Yeah. And I know you’re an entrepreneur at school as well, and so I think it’s kind of how we knew each other, really. But basically, reading that book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, it talks about, you know, the guy that had two dads, a stepdad and a real dad, one dad, you know, always encouraged him to go get a job, get a good education, get a good job and keep it safe. And then the other dad was creating jobs for other people, a little more risky, right? But, and he watched his dads grow as they got older. And the safe dad, the dad with the education and good job, he did well longer at the beginning. But over time, the other dad blew him away. And so when I was driving down the road after reading this book with this check in my hand and I saw out there in Tulsa, which is kind of cool that you’re there, but I’m in Denver now, but I saw this fireworks stand and, you know, it was wintertime, but I saw it and I was like, how hard is that? Like if someone else can do it, why can’t I do it? So I started looking up fireworks for the buy them in wholesale, you buy them in different states, this and that. So I invested that money I had, the $10,000. I bought two or three grand worth of fireworks, drove over to Kansas, bought wholesale fireworks, drove them back, and had to build a stand that me and my buddy, we slept up for two weeks in the summertime. And that two or three grand worth of fireworks, we turned into 20 grand in sales. Now there’s other expenses we had. So I don’t want to get all the details of this fireworks story. But what… Let’s talk about how tall the fireworks stand was. Yeah. How deep was it and how tall? Approximately. We have a few more detailed questions about this fireworks stand. How big was it? Because you were sleeping there, right? Well, so here’s the thing. I had a pop-up camper I was sleeping in. Okay. And had a mobile mini that I put the fireworks stand so the people wouldn’t steal them at night. But the fireworks stand was actually eight foot, it was eight foot by four foot planks, I think, or six by eight, whatever. There’s two of them, so 16 foot long. Me and my buddy built it. We’re so proud of it. We named it College Fund Fireworks. We put it right next to the big guys and people would stop by and say, hey, I want to buy some new, I don’t want to buy the big guys, I want to support the college kids. We’re like, perfect. So I loved it, but the problem was that I had to jump in the hotel across the street every night to take my shower because I had to sleep outside. I traded in town, I traded fireworks for food. My market for fireworks was four or five to one, so every time I traded someone five dollars for fireworks, it cost me a dollar. See, I want to marinate on that idea for just a second, that he could buy fireworks and then sell them for four or five times more than he paid for them. Wait a second, time out, time out. Is that ethical? Well, I would like to get into the ethics of this with you because this is a question that I think somebody out there is asking. So in the optometry clinic, in the optometry game, in the jewelry game, in the auto auction game and in the banking game, these are all different industries that we know about. I’ve coached in different businesses, and you’ve owned them. So let’s talk about jewelry. Why in the jewelry industry is the markup so much higher than it would be in other industries? Some industries have more markups than others. I think it’s a pleasure item. It’s also, you know, it has a distinct feel to it. I mean, when you’re buying jewelry, what are you really buying? You know, you’re buying love. Think about that. You’re blind. That right there is a deep thought for somebody. Is that a deep thought? Well, I mean, if I wasn’t married to Vanessa, there’s no way I’d ever buy a diamond. Well, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. Back in the day, back in the day, when you had your little straight earrings in, back when you… I had hoops. That’s right. You were in hoops. I had hoops. I used to have holes in my ears. They won’t go away. Oh, you need to tag a picture of you back at your prime on the show. Show notes. Maybe you’ll stand up and do that. That’d be kind of fun. I think the Thrive Nation would really like to see the old Clay Clark. Here’s what I’ll do. Before you and I leave today’s recording session, we will do a show about the old… I’ve got some really good audio files that I think you would have loved. Oh, perfect. But I think that jewelry is one of those that it’s a… And I think also, too, by marking it up a lot, it gives them a lot of opportunities for discounts. And so a lot of times you can say, you know, half off price, which means I’m not going to rip your head off completely, just partly. So I’m not going to ask you for the specific margins you have on your specific items, but let’s go with like the auto auction. In that industry, there’s no way you could have a four and five time markup on a car at an auto auction, could you? Well, the thing about an auto auction is I don’t actually sell the… I just do the service. So let’s look at an auto dealership, for instance. Their markups are much less. Now, in a used car, if bought correctly, sometimes they can buy a car for $10,000 to $15,000 range, let’s say, and they can add up $3,000, $4,000, maybe even $5,000 on top of that. So let’s say that somebody goes to your auto auction who’s a used car dealer, and they buy a truck. truck I’m picturing f250 mm-hmm and it’s got about 50,000 miles on it okay and they buy that thing I don’t even know if that would cost me let’s just say it was like 25,000 bucks okay 25,000 you’re saying that somebody could then the used car dealer could take that vehicle back clean it up detail it out and maybe mark it up $5,000 yeah they probably mark it at $29.99 or something put it on their lot I would imagine and then hopefully try to get you know $28, $29 maybe out of it because everybody comes in buy a car knowing you’re going to do a little dealing, wheeling and dealing on it, right? Now what’s interesting is this, you talk about the auto industry, is that the guys who do the buy here, sell here, they mark theirs up a lot more. Really? A lot. Really? Because they have a very unique clientele that can’t get financing conventionally. And so it’s like the poorer you are, the worse you get beat up financially. It’s interesting. It’s very interesting because you think about different industries. I see so many people I’ve met at workshops who are contractors. I’ll think of a good example of a contractor that I’m a big fan of is our pool guy right now. Yeah, he’s doing a great job. Doing an awesome job. Our pool guy, he didn’t apologize for the profit. He says, this is what it’s going to cost for labor and materials, and then this is how much I add on as my profit. He didn’t apologize for it. He didn’t feel bad. And he was transparent. That’s unusual. And he did not feel bad about it. So unusual to be transparent. That’s not normal. It’s not. But every other pool guy was kind of, not every, there was a couple, I think five or six people we were talking to, but there was like three of them that were just squirrely. They wouldn’t show you what they were spending on materials. They couldn’t give you a hard cost They couldn’t and so I would just say that that you don’t need but there’s I think there’s more entrepreneurs out there than not Who are really underpaying themselves and not marking up their products and services enough to achieve their goals? I think every for every five that are gouging you know somebody with too high of prices I would say there’s 50 who are underpaying themselves. It’s a shame, and that’s why in my soon-to-be-released book, Business Pig, Big Pig eats first at the trough. You’ve got to pay yourself. If you’re not able to pay yourself enough money to live, you’re not charging enough. If you can’t charge enough, in other words, if you say to yourself, I can’t charge that, well try it. You may lose a few customers, but overall, you know, like when you went up on your DJ, when you went from like $600 to $650, some crazy move, you lose a few, right? Yeah, I know that with the DJ business, I was doing my first shows for $225, $225, $250, very, very low. And I had this mental… What a bargain they got. I had this mental block, though, thinking I’ll lose all my customers, all of them. And you’re all going to start talking. If I raise my prices to $500, I’m going to lose all of them. And I stayed there at that poverty line for a couple of years, just refusing to raise the prices, thinking I would lose all my customers. Right. It’s a shame. Yeah, and I think a lot of people stay there. Why do people stay at that level where they’re underpaying themselves? Why do they do it? You know, I don’t know. I think a lot of people just don’t understand all the costs that go into running a business. So they have just a simple mindset of, okay, I already own my speakers, I’ve got gas in the van, I’ve got a payment on the van. You don’t realize all the small stuff that goes into the taxes, and the cable company, and the phone bills. We think about your optometry clinic, the one by the mall there, Woodland Hills Mall. That piece of land is a million dollar piece of real estate right there. Probably now, when I bought it 26, 27 years ago, I bought it for, guess how much I bought it for? How much did you buy it for? Take a guess. Well, right now, based on the volume of the construction outside, based upon the weather conditions, based upon these things, I would say a quarter of an acre, right next to the mall. It’s a pad side, out in front of the mall. You had to have bought it for $200,000. It was $300,000, and I actually paid $310,000 for it. That’s a great story. $310,000. Yes. And today, it’s got to be worth at least $2-3 million. Well, with the building on it, yes, of course. I think last time I had praise, it was about $1.5 million. $1.5 million? Yeah. And then you’ve got to pay taxes on that thing. Oh, yeah. But you’re aware of it, and so therefore, when you’re charging someone for the glasses, you’re not just charging them for the glasses, you’re charging them for the insurance, you’re charging them for the real estate, you’re charging them for electricity. So what you’re going to do, I want to make this actionable for all the listeners out there, what I want you to do is I want you to get out a sheet of paper or maybe a spreadsheet and I want you to add in every single cost last month that you’re going to get next month. Every fixed cost, add them all up. Add up every single cost. Add them all up. Now, on the next column, I want you to add up all of your variable costs. That’s like the cost of doing business, the goods. The goods. The glasses that you buy that you have to resell, that kind of thing. Add all those up. Get to a total between the fixed expenses and the variable expenses. And whatever that number is, add 20% on top of that, and that’s about the profit margin you should be making minimum. I would go a little higher. Because you want to end up with 20 and there’s always that uh-ohs for the month. I mean that’s the minimum though. Right, that’s the minimum. I would probably start with 30 and hopefully you can end up with 25 in your pocket. Can we talk about rushing to the bottom for a second? Rushing to the bottom? It’s almost like… I thought you were going to say rushing to the bottom. I go… The hunt for red October? I want to talk about this. So this is Russia. There are a lot of business owners that want to bottom feed and be the carp of that industry. They’re rushing to the bottom. The cheapest price, the cheapest service, the cheapest employees. Bam. Bam. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Now, if you have that mindset that you want to be the Walmart of your industry, what pretty much always ends up happening, unless you’re Walmart? You have not a very good business. And you can’t pay really good people? You can’t pay really good people. And you can’t use good products? And you can’t use good products. And you can’t do good advertising. Forget that. And you end up living in a van down by the river. Ta-da! Now what kind of a profit margin do you think somebody should have if they have a restaurant? If you were coaching a business owner who has a restaurant out there listening today, and they have a very, very nice food, right? And you sit down with them and you discover they have a really crappy decor, crappy location, but great food. So you convince them to move to a new location, new menus, new decor, new ambiance, new. The food is good, though. What kind of a margin would you sit down? If you had a buddy of yours who has a restaurant, would you say, buddy, we’ve got to be at least a 30% or a 10%? How would you advise someone to do that? I would shoot any business out there listening. Listen up. Here we go. Any business out there, unless you’re some unique, nobody else is doing it, you invent the widget that is unbelievable. Unless you’re hand-making axes out of recycled grass. Nobody else can make. Right, out of plutonium. Right. Is that a thing? I don’t even know. It could be. I would tell everybody to shoot for that. Shoot for 30% markup and then try to get 20, 25% of your gross sales in your pocket. Now, sometimes, the busier you are, sometimes you can give up a little bit of that percentage. Sometimes it’s not about the percentage, it’s about how much you’re making, too. Some larger companies, in other words, like Walmart, they don’t try to make 20% of their gross sales. No, they don’t. They can’t. They can’t. But they do so much volume that they can make 4% and 5%. What about people who lose money and then try to make up for it? People who lose money per transaction, who try to make up for it with volume. They lose money per transaction. Forbes has a column for these people. Forbes actually has defined these people for us. Forbes is our business bible, for those of you who don’t know. We comment on it a lot, because we like, for our stuff to be fact-checked. We like to go to reliable sources, like the Google and the Forbes. It’s called Forbes, but if you want to mispronounce it at home, you could say F. Orbs. You could. You could. Okay, back to you. They have a category for that, and that falls into their 80 to 90% category of failed businesses. They call it the FB, the failed business. Now let’s talk about this. We’ll get back to the interview in just a second. Let’s talk about this. Oxifresh has a great billing system, accounting system. They’ve thought through all the systems, okay? Right. But there’s a lot of independent carpet guys that are out there that are one of the invoice people, and I know this because I’ve met them. And they’ll say, hey, I’m having a cash flow problem. And I’ll say, what kind of problem do you have? They’ll say, well, I cleaned Clay’s carpet. I cleaned Dr. Z’s carpet. I cleaned the carpets. I’m cleaning carpets. I’ve cleaned a record number of carpets. How many carpets are you cleaning? They’ll say, well, I’m cleaning a lot more than before because of your coaching and the mentorship. I’m getting two times as many carpets cleaned as before. I’m going, that’s good. They say, no, no, it’s bad. I said, how is it bad? They said, well, what’s going on? I have been invoicing my clients and they haven’t paid me yet. And now I would say, I would submit to the business owner, I would say, don’t invoice for carpet, nor should the grocery store say, Dr. Z, do you want these avocados, these seven avocados and this almond milk? Great. Here’s an invoice. Pay us in the next 30 days. Yeah, we’ll bill you. Remember back in the good old days when they had the hardwood store, they’d throw it on the old Westerns. Put it on your tandem. Yeah, put it on. I need a sack of sugar. I need two fat fours. What is going on with that? Can you please explain to me why a business owner would like to, wants to, needs to invoice like plumbers? Why are plumbers invoicing individuals? See, I had a plumber come to my house probably, what, three months ago? No, it was four months ago. He comes to my house and I had a little bit of an issue. He was fixing it. I don’t remember what it was, but he said, OK, you want to do debit card or credit card? After he did the work, it was like 80 bucks or something. I don’t want an invoice. No! No! No! The builder guy doing the work for me right now, he says, hey, to get started building the deck, I need a quarter, 25% down to buy the materials, and then I do draws each week as we go. I don’t want an invoice from this guy 90 days after he completes the job. I don’t want him living like he’s homeless because he’s trying to finance my deck? Exactly. He’s like, I noticed you’ve been wearing the same clothes the last three days, and it looks like there’s some blankets over here by the corner of my house. He goes, yeah, I just want to get here on time. What makes an entrepreneur want to have death by invoice? I don’t know, but you know what? I’m not sure, Clay. Maybe you’ve done a lot of business coaching, as the world’s foremost business coach, what do you think is more challenging for a first or a new entrepreneur, and that is to ask for the business or to ask for the payment of the business? I think asking for the payment is harder for most people. I think so too, and why is that? Why do people just have this mental block in their head? I have a lot of reasons, and if I can go quasi-political just for a second, I’ll give it to you. Okay, here we go. Okay, there we go. There was a study that I was looking at the other day, and they’re talking about who’s going to run for president in the next two years, Democrat and Republican. And they were showing that well over half of millennials will vote for a socialist if they can choose, a socialist option. And then the justifications that I was reading this person explaining, they said that once you have enough, you need to be paying 70% taxes. This is what this person was saying, this candidate. She says, once you earn enough… And we’ll decide that, right? Have you heard of this story? Have you heard of this thing? This person is proposing a 70% income tax once you’ve made enough. And what is the enough? That’s my point. This is what I’m saying. Oh, I’ve heard variations of this. I think that poverty mentality, though, of like, okay, just because Dr. Z’s making a lot, now we should take 70%. 70%. Go to Canada. I think Canada’s way up there, too. 70%. Think about it. 70%. And the fact that the vast majority of people are saying, that sounds great. That indicates to me the vast majority of the Americans who are surveyed have a psychological problem that I could not possibly diagnose. Well, no, the average person, the average person, not our listeners, not the Thrive Nation, but the average person out there, they want to live on somebody else’s money. I mean, why wouldn’t you? If you have no ambition, no drive. There it is. So if you want to live on someone else’s dime, it’s because what you want to do is you want to do the easy route. Water runs downhill. So people are saying it’s easier not to ask you for the money. It sounds good. Somebody else pay for my health care. It’s easier to not have to go get a job and work hard. Somebody else buy my food. It’s easier to not have to ask the client, will you pay me? Well… It’s easier not to ask. It’s easier. You think it’s easier until you’re poor. That’s right. Then it’s harder. That’s right. So life gets easier when you do hard things. And you know, one of the hard things that Jonathan Barnett’s been doing is building the world’s best carpet cleaning franchise. This company has 396 locations, and for under $50,000, all of our listeners out there, for $50,000, you could have yourself your own business. It’s incredible. It’s an incredible business. It’s a move. It’s a move. I think somebody there at Oxifresh is going to say, don’t say under $50,000. Fine. For some amount under $60,000, you could buy a business and be financially free as a result of oxy I can hear about here now with John No, I know clay was very firm. I can play it back for if you want to say okay. No no I’m not gonna pay 53. I’m not gonna pay 54 even so why he said was 50 and as of today They have over a hundred and fifty thousand objective Google reviews and have any further ado back to the interview. See, this is the rest of the story here. I don’t know what year it was. I just know that I had a big DJ company at the time I was in college. I had about five or six DJs working for me. He was doing three or four hundred thousand bucks a year at this DJ company. And I get a call from this Jonathan Barnett guy, who I knew of, and asks if we can DJ for this college fun fireworks. And you offered to do trade-out. So we did trade-out, and now I know that you made quite a markup on that. But here’s the thing, that was the first year that Vanessa and I ever bought fireworks. Now I buy them every single year. But dude, you traded out, I think, $500 of fireworks. I’m like, this guy’s the man! I’m slaughtering this guy! This guy’s just taking advantage of this guy! Because I quoted you $150, and you’re like, nah, let’s do $500 of fireworks. And I’m just like, yes! Yes! Which is actually less than $150! It was a fun gig! I was playing chess and not checkers with you right there. I was playing a little chess with you and not checkers. But I’m sure that you played more chess with me than I played with you. Okay, it was a fun time and I can vouch for you, you were out there, you guys were sweaty, you were up there all night, all day, every day. And how did you kind of go from the fireworks into the next phase of your career? What role did your grandfather have in that transformation from the firework king to the carpet king? Great question. So check this out, the fireworks. This is all going to lead to the franchising, but out there for two weeks sleeping out there. Yeah, I made some money and stuff, but it wasn’t like a ton and it’s seasonal. So the next year, I did tents instead of stands and I could rent the tents for way cheaper and I could build the one stand and they were bigger. So I looked way bigger, but instead of running the stands myself, I had youth groups do it and they got paid as a fundraiser. So their whole church would buy. So they had all these flyers. So my sales doubled and yet I would go and I Had two stands in different locations. So I swing by picking up the money. They were winning I was winning I learned it was a win-win and I had a lot more fun that summer versus sleeping outside all summer. So I Guess looking back. It was really hard and I was stressed because you do 80% of your sales the last couple days so if it rains, if last couple of days, man, you’re in major trouble. So, but how all this led to what I do now with franchising is I was able to help create an opportunity for a win for that youth group, but also a win for me where I could scale and grow. So franchising isn’t too much different than that. It’s you’re creating opportunity for others to win, but then an opportunity for the brand to win also. And when the brand can win and the franchisee can win, the franchisees can win more because you get more resources, you get more stocks, you get more fine tuning games. The more franchisees you have, it keeps getting, they make you get better. I wanna ask you this. This is my attempt to be nonlinear, just to mess with you here. I wanna ask you this. You’ve got some franchisees who are really winning as a result of the Oxifresh system now. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are doing very, very well. Do you have a particular franchisee that you want to brag on that’s been able to utilize the systems and really do well with Oxifresh? Yeah, I mean, you go to different categories, right? But I have lots of franchisees that I would love to brag about. One particular stick in mind reminds me of this fireworks story because he’s 20 years old. He’s a full-time student at Lubbock, Texas, and he’s setting records in our system for the most jobs done in his first year of business. And I think he has somewhere over like 300 or 400 Google My Business reviews. Wow. And he’s a full-time student. He has two techs that are full-time, and he’s making – he’s doing so well. And you know, it’s so encouraging to see that if they follow the systems and they have passion and they don’t wake up the day and just be lazy but they what can I do to work on my business today make it better and he’s a full-time student and he’s crushing these guys some of these guys that are have owned businesses before or whatever and we have great friends that’s using our system but I would like to give a shout out to Leo Johns out of Lubbock Texas for being 20 years old and having that same passion I had when I had the fireworks stand. So that’s awesome. That’d be one guy that I definitely want in the show. Yeah. And it’s Leo, his name’s Leo? Leo Jones out of Lubbock, Texas. Big, see, you know what, that deserves a big shout out to Leo Jones. Winds of the week! Yes, Leo Jones, Winds of the Week, Lubbock, Texas. Big shout out to you. Here we go. Oh, yeah. Come on, Andrew, get that light on him. Here we go. Oh, the room is spinning. The room is spinning. OK, we’ll calm down now. So back to the story. He got an award at our conference this year, and at the award ceremony, Matt was pretty funny. He gave him a bottle of milk, since, you know, he’s 20 and he couldn’t drink at the award ceremony. So, John, we appreciate you, buddy. You’re doing great out there. See, does it blow your mind that there’s a 20-year-old franchise owner in the OxiFresh system right now who’s killing it. Does it blow your mind that a 20-year-old is doing that well? It doesn’t blow my mind. I see young people all the time. When I was a young man, the idea that you have that drive in you, I think if you have that drive in you, and they say that 67% of the people listening out there want or are thinking about wanting to start their own business. That means you’ve got that little spark, that little seed in you. You know, if you’re 20 years old and you want to be successful, you might not need a degree. A full disclaimer, if you want to be an optometrist, if you want to be a dentist, if you want to be a chiropractor, then you will need to go and get that dad in your school. And in those specific instances where you have a profession or a technical skill, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No I hear you. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No I hear you. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No I hear you. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No I hear you. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. No I hear you. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated incidents. But for those vast majority of people, I would agree with you and I am 100% wrong in those isolated get a degree, what you need is a system, a proven system. You need a proven process, systems, strategies. You need, Z, if you could have all of that. If you could have all of that, Z, in one place, that would be our business coaching program. If you say, I don’t want that, I just want the system, that’s an OxyFresh, that’s a Papa John’s, that’s a franchise. That’s a franchise. That’s unbelievable. Franchises are wonderful. I think there’s what, there’s 30, how many different franchise opportunities are there out there? Oh boy. I think Jonathan’s going to tell us. In terms of franchises, I will say this. The failure rate for a startup right now, according to Forbes, is 9 out of 10. So 9 out of 10 startups fail, according to Forbes. Do you know what we need to look up? Andrew, look it up. Andrew, see if you can Google this through Forbes. See how the number of franchises that startups fail. The number of franchises. That would be a fun thing to look at. I’ve sat through and attended many franchise conferences, and I will say that the statistics are almost reverse. So it’s like instead of 90%… Oh, very good. You know then. We’ll get the actual stat for you, but instead of 90% of startups failing, in the world of franchising it’s like 10%. It’s very little. It’s almost completely reverse. We’ll get the stats here for you. But you know why franchises don’t fail very much? Because they have a system. Right? It’s proven. It’s proven. You can’t make up things. You have to disclose your financials. And you don’t even know how much to charge for your sandwich. Dude, it’s crazy. They’ve got it all figured out. It’s a push button. They broke it down. You just hit the button. Guess how many franchises in 2017 were operating in the United States of America? How many franchises? I got it right here. Oh, I don’t even want to, I don’t even know. I mean, it could, uh… 745,290. Well, in honor of Tom Brady, I guess 12. What’s the number? What do you think? 745,290. Is that the score of the Patriots versus the Rams? Oh, sorry. It could be 291 listening out there. Repeat that number one more time. 745,290. 745,290. Oh, shunned up. And you know what one of the fastest growing franchises in the world is right now? It’s Oxifresh. Oxifresh, I know. And you know what? He’s on today’s show. Now, back to our interview with JB. Oh, it’s awesome. Come on, JB. That is great. Now, you, okay, okay. Now, back to our linear story here. So, from the firework stand to the Oxifresh. How’d it happen? Right, okay. So, you know you gotta live your passions right so if money is your passion I that’s to me that you’re in danger swing, but but you know money is important It’s what makes things work, but my passion at the time was a basketball outreach called crossover And as you know I played basketball whole Roberts I was a walk-on so I I didn’t play a whole lot, but it taught me a lot But basketball was like my identity and like what I thought, you know, looked at myself as. And that’s what, if money becomes your identity or this or that, it’s very dangerous for anything you do in your life. So I decided to use basketball as a platform to reach youth around the world. We did a traveling team across the world for 10 years. But I did a 501c3 nonprofit, tried to raise money for multiple years. Everyone just thought I wanted to keep playing basketball. So then I decided, okay, I’m just gonna start my own business to fund it. So Oxifresh, the carpet cleaning franchise that you’re probably wanna hear the most about, more than fireworks. But the thing is, my why was bigger. Oxifresh, my why, why I started Oxifresh was to help fund something I was passionate about, which was Crossover. So some people’s why out there might be their family, more time, that they’re just, they’re eight to five, they don’t have any time with their kids, or they can’t take vacations, or they’re stuck. So for me, my why was this crossover thing. So whatever your why is, if you make that very important, then it’ll drive you past certain obstacles that are bigger than yourself, right? Did you feel like that your grandfather taught you these lessons? Because he was an entrepreneur. You know, your grandfather, is that where you got some of this mojo? Was it from your mom? Were you checking out a lot of entrepreneur magazines? Where did this entrepreneurial fire come from? You know, it’s funny because you could hear, you know, people that are brothers and sisters, they have the same parents, they could have different, whatever. For me, what I took is I did take a lot from my grandfather. He was always inventing things, trying to, he always thought outside the box. So he was always never settling, questioning things, thinking there’s a better way. And I thought that’s how it was supposed to be. I wanted to be like him. So, you know, then on the other hand, my mom was a little bit more opposite, but she was no quitter, just very tenacious. And then my grandmother was like, love no matter what. So I was very blessed to have three unique people raise me with their different values that helped me become. And I also got it probably my coach Sutton at ORU was a big, he taught me how to delegate and I learned so much playing basketball there that I didn’t even realize it at the time. So that I use today. Which I know you like Belichick and the Patriots and you know sports teaches us so much, right? Sure does. So. Hey JB, I promise you there’s somebody out there listening, probably more than one, maybe hundreds, that have a successful business, are killing it, doing very well, and they have been told over and over and over, you should franchise this. You should franchise this. You should franchise this. You should franchise this. This is what you should be doing. I love it. Holy cow. Holy cow. And for those out there listening going, oh my gosh, he’s read my mail, that’s me. Walk them through the initial steps of when you have a successful business, when you’ve figured it out, what to do next, that process of… Because it seems pretty daunting to the average entrepreneur, to the average business owner out there. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s no way I can do that, that’s overwhelming. So walk them through the process of steps, the baby steps to get through taking a successful business to franchise. You’ve got what, over 400 now working out there? We’re close to 400. We’re right towards 400 right now. Well, don’t let the facts ruin my good faith. Yeah, don’t let the facts get in the way of the truthiness. Come on, come on. Don’t let the facts get in the way of the truthiness. You’re going to call me a liar for two franchises probably. I mean, come on. All right, okay, walk us through. Okay, so here’s the main thing with franchising is one is it’s a very big responsibility. When someone buys a franchise from you, they could have saved their whole life savings for this. So it’s not something to take lightly. But at the same time, if you’re planning on franchising your business, you almost start looking at your business differently from day one, right? So because it’s not about, you can’t rely just about the people. You can have the right people. If you have your own business and you’re not franchising it, it’s probably is focused just on the people and that’s fine. But when you get to where you’re scaling it and you gotta make it bigger and duplicatable bigger than that one person, you really gotta start focusing on your systems and your processes. And sometimes that is such a deep dive that it makes people nauseous or they’ll do it tomorrow because when you get down into your systems and your processes, sometimes it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, man, I got a lot to work on here with myself. So I would say the first thing I would say is if your vision is to franchise it, one is you better make sure your business is profitable. And I like to say, I always like to say around shoot it for 20%, but it can be less, it can be more depending on how much volume you’re doing. A high volume business can be less percentage than a smaller business. But it definitely needs to be profitable and it needs to be able to be profitable without with, if you could substitute different people in. So not, if you, if you don’t go to work for a week or for a year and come back, how is that, how is your business running? You said three things that I think are gonna blow somebody’s minds. Powerful, powerful. Okay, so you said what kind of margin should their business be running at if they want to franchise, do you think, is an approximate kind of a range, best practice? Yeah, so if you’re working in your business as an employee, pay yourself what you would pay someone else at that job. Don’t pay yourself a bigger salary just because you’re the owner. Pay yourself, that bigger part comes out of the profit, the distributions. Pay yourself what you’d pay anyone else. Okay. But if you, if you are, uh, if you’re going to franchise your business, your profitability after you pay all your employees should, you know, you want it to be profitable, but 20% is the like you shoot for, but if a higher. Volume business can be less percentage, right? If you’re doing millions of dollars a year in sales for the, for that store, then it can be less, but it’s, if you’re a smaller business, then, you know, that’s a good goal to shoot for. If you want to be profitable, you should be franchising in the first place. And then you said the business should be able to run without specific people. So let’s talk about how you did that with Oxifresh. I remember this specifically. It was the funniest. I just remember reconnecting with you and I went to your condo in Denver. And you was like, you, and I think you had like three dudes living with you. Am I making that up? Was it like you, three dudes, and a dog? Am I making that up? When I lived in a little townhouse, I had five roommates and a dog. Five roommates? Okay, so you… Plus a condo, that was two. That was just one roommate. Okay, so it might have been the five dudes. So anyway, and you now had one location in Denver that was doing well, and then you lived below your means, and you opened another one. And you lived below your means, and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to franchise. See all the checklists you have to make, copywriting things, trademarking things, building the franchise disclosure document. How long did you really, really, really live below your means? Like five dudes in a condo with a dog. How long were you doing that before you finally got Oxifresh to a place where you could start selling other franchises? How long did that take you? It’s kind of a unique story, and I wouldn’t recommend people do it this way from the beginning, but when I franchised it, I franchised, I had a, I franchised it this first year that I started Auction Fresh. But the reason why is I had it in my mind that was the model I wanted to go for from the beginning, and we were more of a low-cost model. And so, well, we didn’t have everything figured out. That was my intent. So, from the beginning, I was focusing on the systems and the processes versus the right, versus just the people because I knew I wanted to franchise it. But to answer your question, I definitely live below my means because every dollar that we made, instead of keeping it, my rent was $300 a month after with my five roommates that you’re talking about. We all paid $300 a month. A lot of those guys cleaned carpet for me, and I paid them just a percentage of the jobs they did. All my expenses were variable. I had no overhead. I was able to keep putting it all back in. We sold 17 franchises our first year. Talk about the database you used. You had a spreadsheet, right? You had a spreadsheet, a cold call technology. How did you sell those first ten franchises? The first four were friends and family that had seen me cleaning carpet and seeing what I was doing for a long time. They were in different spots in their lives where they wanted to own their own thing. One of them happened to be my mom, and she was a college professor for many years. Somehow she was getting fed up with that, and I got her to buy a franchise. And so she’s been a franchisee in Phoenix. Did you give her a good deal? Did you give her a good deal? Come on, J.B., did you give her a good deal? I gave the first four out to friends and family. They got a extremely good deal. But everyone since has been the regular price. There’s been no discounts. Well, I mean, you’re like a brother to us. Can we get a deal? I mean, we’ll pay with fireworks. We’re like… We’re fine. I would love to do deals, but the thing is, we can be in another call, but the ethics of not what I want to do, but what’s right for the other franchisees that have paid. And so that’s why we don’t do that, even if we want to, just because it’s just the right thing to do. But, I mean… He used to have a podcast called The Ethics Podcast, but he quit doing it. I was too unethical for it, so I couldn’t. He had to ask you. So, JB, your company now, you guys have over 150,000 reviews as of today. I believe nearly 400 territories. You’ve got a great support staff. The call center in Denver is rocking. You have the state-of-the-art technology, a turnkey system where someone can call you today and for around $50,000 be in the game as a self-employed person, owning their own business, what was the hardest part of building the OxiFresh franchise to get where it is today? There’s been different phases of hard. I would say in the beginning, the hardest thing would be to… We definitely didn’t have everything figured out. So when we start, like you bragged on a bunch of things like our call center, our technology, all that type of stuff and our reviews. In the beginning, we had two products that we cleaned with. We booked jobs on Excel spreadsheets in the basement of that little house, that condo that you were talking about. And we had four of those phones, green carpet, orange countertops. And so getting someone to come out and buy a franchise when you’re doing your meeting in the hotel lobby, the area that you’re in now, it’s definitely challenging, right? But then you sell a bunch of those and they’re doing well. The challenges become different because now that you have up to 100 franchises, they expect more support than you had if it were two. So every year it’s just a different, it’s a different challenge. So I would encourage the listeners out there and if you’ve heard, read of any of my articles or listen to me I say this because I mean it but don’t wait so everything’s perfect to get started you operate as if you have the green light until you get the red light and Most people wait they operate as if they have the red light till it turns green the problem with that is What most people most people? Wait till it’s perfectly it started they never get started If I would have waited till we had everything that we have here to start, I wouldn’t be even, Oxyfix wouldn’t exist. I had to start, even though our products weren’t perfect, I had to start when our call center wasn’t perfect. I had to start, I had to get started. I had some core things that were fixed. The core thing has got to be ready to go. Like I knew I would be able to update the products. I knew I would be able to update the call center once we had more franchisees. And I told the franchisees that. I communicated, hey, we’re not perfect, you’re getting in the beginning, but here’s our vision, here’s our future, and I had a plan. So don’t just start your business and franchise it just because you don’t have everything figured out. Have a plan and a goal to work towards, but don’t wait until it’s all figured out before you go, otherwise you’ll never go. You had the green light in your mind mentally to start OxiFresh. Were you obsessed with carpet as a kid? I mean, you just think to yourself, wow, that carpet looks hot. That is some good stuff. That is some good stuff. Hey, did you, I saw a commercial the other day where they had a carpet shower. There was a shower. Have you ever thought about putting a carpet in your shower? I mean, on the floor, on the walls. I mean, were you into carpet as a kid? What made you want to get into the carpet game? No, and again, I looked at this business as a vehicle to help me achieve my dreams and goals. So, I looked at what is something that’s not going to go away, right? I didn’t want to build like at the time there’s big yogurt fat franchises coming out this and that and I’m like That could change because you know, everything keeps changing all that stuff But every flooring and upholstery everyone’s gonna have that forever So I I wanted to trade in the sexiness where people would be like, oh, that’s a cool concept You’re starting and I had to walk into restaurants or, you know, on my dates when I was, I’m married now with five beautiful children, almost, almost five. But when I meet people, whatever, what do you do? Oh, I’m a carpet cleaner. You know, that’s what I have to say, but you know what? I love saying it made it made it kind of fun, but uh, no, I didn’t dream to be a carpet cleaner. But what I did dream to do is to provide for my family. Like I was just telling you guys before we started, I got to play Pebble Beach golf this weekend. Just doing, traveling and letting the business serve me and serve my goals versus I’d rather have that and stay in my carpet cleaner than, you know, doing something that sounds all cool, but yet I don’t have any of the free time I want to spend it with the loved ones I want. Mm, mm, mm. That was hot. You know, you might be the same, same with carpet cleaning, you could say, I make love to carpet. You can do that. You probably will not be allowed to speak at your next convention. I make your carpet feel good. At a national conference this past week, it was called Ignite, so we’re getting everyone excited at Igniting Up for 2019, and I asked them all, everyone in the room, stand up if you’re on the first page of Google for the word carpe clini in your city, almost everyone stood up. But then I said, okay, stand up if you dream of being a carpe clini when you’re a grown-up. Nobody stood up. I told them from you. Hi, dad! I was in there! I missed my call! Can we get Shaq back? I want more Shaq! Okay. All right. So my final question, I know Z has a final question for you, but my final question for you is this. How did you go out there and get the first 100 jobs booked but it was just you against the world, you had that green light, you just made a killing selling fireworks, how did you land your first hundred customers? Did you go door-to-door, house-to-house, cold call, what were you doing? This point right here could resonate with anyone in business and I please think just think about this, this is really important, this is fundamental for us from the very beginning. So it was some people out there, they call them, they’re marketing guys, but they say to folks on branding. I like branding, it’s all good and all, but I’m a marketing guy that likes to track the ROI. And so in the beginning, I used to do door to door flyers, right? And I could get to carry around 500 flyers from the post office, or that was the route that used 500 flyers on a door. I’d get 50 cents a business per flyer I pass out. So I knew I could do 500 flyers in five hours. So once I figured that out, it’s just a math game. 500 flyers, I get 50 cents of business flyer, it’s 250 bucks in five hours. Okay, I could pay somebody 10 bucks an hour to pass it out. 10 bucks an hour, that’s 10 cents a flyer. So I have 40 cents of flyer margin. So it’s a numbers game. Labor ready, I had 10-man crew sitting at my front door every morning, 500 bands, 500 flyers, 500 rubber bands, 500 flyers to pass out. There was a different code on each flyer so I could track the sales off of each one and I was getting a very positive ROI. Okay, so you’re probably wondering, wow, that’s great, sounds amazing. There’s a problem. When I did it myself, I got 50 cents of business per flyer when I had these guys do it I was getting about 20 cents of business per flyer of business Good stuff started driving around and I was seeing all these flyers hanging out of barbecue grills all sorts of weird stuff, right so I learned as people do it you inspect now what you expect But one knowing I wanted to scale this be franchisable This was in a scalable way. So, right, so I had to do other marketing and scale. But the point of it is, how do we get to those first 100 jobs? I tracked my ROI in whatever marketing I did, and I put the cost of that marketing, and I was able to track the sales. Once you know what cost is creating a certain web sale, then you can do more of it or less of it, right? Most people just do marketing. They don’t track it. They don’t think about how important that piece is. But once you know, and Dr. Z, if I told you, hey, if you give me $10 doing this, I’ll give you 500, you’d probably give me 1,000, right? I’d give you a lot more than that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay. Did I just say that out loud? This is what baffles me. This is what literally baffles me a lot in business, is that people don’t track the ROIs very much. When you answer that phone, you’re booking that job, in our call center we get a code. Every marketing piece has a code. In the online marketing, we create a unique URL that is attached onto our URL that goes to our website. So if you put in your zip code, a certain code comes up, so we know where that came from. So we track where everything comes from and we know what the cost is so that we can tell banks, do you do more of this or do less of it But if you’re not tracking it and that’s the majority of and then they do what they say when they can’t track it or branding Right exactly exactly just brain. Yeah, just in case we know the Thrive Nation knows these acronyms We know that the people that listen to us on a daily basis have the acronym. You know, they’re very intelligent That’s what I mean. Absolutely. They’re in Wonders onto our podcast who’s not in our Thrive Nation. Surely you can’t be serious. I’m a regular. I am serious. I am? And don’t call me sure. No, no, no, don’t call me sure. I mean, I’m just saying. So break down ROI for like an eighth grader. Yeah, who’s Roy? Or like an eight-year-old. Yeah, who is he? Yeah, break that down. Okay, ROI, return on investment. If I spend a dollar on this, how many dollars back does that get me? Okay, then you can multiply it by a hundred or a thousand or whatever you want later. But if I spend $100 on this part margin, whether it’s ValPAC or a radio add, or whatever you’re spending it on, you got to be able to track the sales off of that. Then once you track the sales, if you get $400 back and you spend $100, you got a 4 to 1. You could subtract out the $100, so it’s 3 to 1 or 4 to 1, however you want to look at it. But you spend $100, you got $400 back. So now, if you’re profitable with that, spend a thousand, get four thousand back. Now at some point there’s a law of marginal utility and you’re not going to get the same return as before, but if you’re not tracking that, which is, you know, it’s bizarre to me. I got in an argument, I don’t know if you guys heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, but we had dinner this past year and we got into a little heated argument at the table because he’s a branding guy and I’m a numbers guy and he was trying to tell me how I’m a numbers guy and that’s old school and he’s a branding guy and what’s the ROI on social media because he wanted to know what’s the ROI of my mom. And it was pretty hilarious. But basically, it’s harder to track ROI on that stuff but you still can. But at least be trying to and asking that because branding is important but if you can figure out your ROI, then you can scale and duplicate any business you have. If you can know what to spend to create a revenue source back, then you’ll be able to scale it. That’s beautiful. And there’s someone listening out there going, but how do I track that? I mean, you had to clever way on your flyers. You had a different code. I like that. Clay, there’s some other ways. You can have different landing pages. You want Oxifresh. What is so cool is that when you buy a franchise, they’re going to have this call center that does all this for you. If you’re out there listening and you don’t have a call center, you have to do all this yourself. Either way, the phone rings. You guys are very methodical about asking people how they heard about you. You guys use promo codes. I would say, for my businesses, we ask every single person at the point of purchase how they heard about us. We track it every single time. We ask, and then we have unique landing pages so we can track. One of the things that’s kind of crazy is some people will go to your landing page and then call you a month later. It’s crazy. The other thing, too, we used to do back old school. I’m old, so this is old school. You and Moses did this movie. We actually sometimes do different phone numbers. What? Yeah, I know. Come on. Different phone numbers. No way. Oh, yeah. Call on in and see where they’re coming from. Not possible. You can have different landing pages. Dr. Z, let me talk on this for a second. Is that okay? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m going to speak on this. This is pretty interesting. So you guys talked about if it’s your site or splash page, Dr. Z, we use splash pages. We don’t do those anymore. We put all the pay-per-click content or Facebook, we drive them to the city page of that location, but we just add on a different extension on the end. And what that can do, Dr. Z, it’s gonna blow your mind, is it can dynamically change the phone number on that website, even though the customer doesn’t know the phone number changed. Right? On top of that, it dynamically adds a marketing code to the top of that page on the website. You guys can try it, go into our hoxiepress.com now, but click there, going through a different, like Facebook link or a pay-per-click link. The phone number changes. Why? Because when it calls our call center, the phone number, it forwards to a phone number in our call center that has a marketing code on the phone screen saying the pay-per-click code. So the customer never, they clicked a pay-per-click ad, the code’s different than if they clicked our website organically versus a Facebook ad. All of this is going to the same website, but it’s dynamically changing the code in the back end so that we can track, we can measure the ROI on social media. Boom. Oh, I play that just, I just got me excited right there. I mean, that’s just fun technology. Do you have a question? What’s the ROI of your mom? I got a question for you. What’s my ROI? Oh, I don’t even know that question. I just, it’s crazy. Big Schmell, okay. We’ll continue to probably not have him on a guest for yet another reason. Yeah. Okay. That’ll just continue. It was all good fun, though. It was all good fun. And he believes in what he’s saying. He’s passionate. And he does more of an, he doesn’t have individual occasions that if they’re not doing well, they call him, chew him out. So he’s his own brand. So I get it, he’s branding. And I don’t know how, but we definitely, when we can, we track the ROI, but we can’t. There’s a lot of people that every year believed hopelessly that the Browns would win, right? Correct. But now we have a winner on the team, it’s logical to think they’re going to win. They have Baker Mayfield on the team. Yeah, well, they won seven games. But I mean, people have been like, this is their year. This is their year for what, 20-something years? Oh, yeah. I think that’s a lot like saying you don’t need to track your ROI. You can be passionate about it, but you can be passionately wrong. By tracking it, what it does is it lets you spend your dollars where you get your biggest bang. You get your biggest bang. If this gives you a 100 times return, this gives you a 10 times return, you’re making money on both. Who cares about the bank for your buck when you can just be blowing money? Or fireworks. Oh, my God. Blow it up fireworks. Blow up your money. I love that JB’s like, I would have made 20 grand, but we blew up Kid K a profit in fireworks. Well JB, here’s the deal. I’m going to call this, in faith, part one of the Jonathan Barnett Chronicles. Yes. Because we really need to have you on for a second show. John, could you do another show at some point? Could you do another show? Sure, absolutely. Okay, this will be part one, and we’ll reach back out to you in time. We’ve got to interview Wolfgang Puck between now and then. So I think we’ve got to take the show down a little bit. We’ve got to take down the celebrity status. We’ll do Wolfgang Puck, and then we’ll come back to you. But if people want to learn more about buying an Oxifresh franchise, what’s the best way to get ahold of you guys? What’s the action step for somebody out there who wants to create time and financial freedom by buying an Oxifresh franchise, or at least learning more about buying one? Yeah, you can just visit our website at Oxifresh.com or our franchise website at OxifreshFranchise.com and just put in the notes that you heard about us on the DriveTime show. That will help us out. So we can track again, you know, where our leads are coming from. There you go. But again, there’s lots of great concepts out there. There’s 3,800 different franchise concepts out there. So just be careful of what you’re looking at and make sure it’s the right fit for you. But Oxyfresh, you know, we’re really enjoying the time that we have right now. And Clay and Dr. D, thanks for having us on the show. We really enjoyed it. Hey, big shout out to Rob, to Aaron, to Matt, everybody behind the scenes over there. Kelly at Oxifresh, you guys do a great job. To Jordan, we appreciate you guys so much for making Oxifresh such a great company to do business with. And Z, we like to end every show with a boom. Every show. JB, are you prepared to bring a Rocky Mountain boom? I’m prepared. Okay, Z, are you ready? I’m absolutely ready. Andrew’s probably ready. Here we go. 3, 2, 1, boom! Alright, Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re going to talk about two big ideas. One, what makes the Denver Nuggets superstar player so good? I can’t quite figure it out. What makes the Denver Nuggets best player so good? We’re going to talk about it here. And then I want to talk about what makes the best and worst franchisees. Not looking for names, but Matt Klein here happens to work with hundreds of franchisees, and they all have access to the same systems. When you go to Oxifresh.com and you buy an Oxifresh franchise, it’s a proven system. It’s the world’s greenest carpet cleaning system. There’s a call center that books the jobs for you. And every franchisee has access to the same tools, yet some people perform 10x to that of another franchisee with the same tools, the same systems, the same training. Somebody can be 10 times more effective than somebody else. And so we’re going to start off by talking about the Denver Nuggets. Matt Klein, how’s it going there, sir? It’s going well. How are you, Matt? I’m doing great, bro. I got to ask you here for the listeners out there that don’t know what’s your position on the OxiFresh team? How would you describe what is your role? Yeah, I’m the director of franchise development. So myself and I have a team of guys that work with me to bring the most qualified candidates through the process of evaluating OxyPress that eventually become a franchise owner in their market, who are there running their own small business. We’re supporting them, and they’re hiring people, and they’re essentially a small business owner at that point. But I get them all the way to the point of becoming a franchise. So as you look at the franchisees that are the most successful, let’s kind of view it like a team. And I’m sure you can think of really great franchisees and really underperforming franchisees. And your job is to, you know, you want everyone to be successful. Let’s switch gears just for a second. Let’s go Denver Nuggets. This past weekend I got an opportunity to watch the Denver Nuggets from the Skybox up there from the luxury box suite there. The Oxenfresh box suite. And you were introducing me to your best player who is the best player on the Denver Nuggets as of 2024 Name is Nikolai Jokic Nikolai Jokic and what makes Nikolai Jokic so good He just does everything right team play there he passes correctly he Lets the game come to him. He doesn’t force anything. He’s a great shooter. I mean, I think statistically, he’s probably top five players ever in the NBA at this point, statistically-wise, in terms of efficiency. So he’s just awesome. Everything. And I’m sure that all the players on the Denver Nuggets have access to the same coaching, the same training, the same weight room, the same tools. What makes him so good? I mean, what makes it? Is it just, well, break down a few of the moves, just a few moves that he does that you watch him play countless times in person. What are a couple moves that he does on the court that are amazing? Maybe they’re not that athletic or maybe not that seemingly hard to do, but they’re just incredible moves. Yeah, so he has like a very uncanny ability to draw multiple people to him while he has the ball that allows other people to be open. And so for him, like he’s a pass first big man that also just leads the team in scoring. So like he’s not only a threat in terms of scoring, but he draws attention of all the defenders and then allows his other teammates to get open. So like, you know, you might see his stats and see he scores 30 points, but you’ll realize he also gets 10 assists, which means he’s allowed his teammates off of the pass that he made to create 10 more buckets, right? So he’s a good scorer, but he’s also probably a better passer. And I think a lot of the things that he does well, you, I mean, you play basketball at a high level in high school and you also played Division I basketball. I’m sure you’ve heard coaches preach on doing the things that he does, but yet so few execute at the level he does. Why is that? I don’t know. I mean, he’s he’s he’ll never meet the eye test. Like if you watch him play, he’ll never look like he’s the best player. He’s certainly not the most athletic player on the floor. But I think for him, I think he has an unselfish demeanor about him. I think his goal is to make sure that he has the best chance of winning and his best chance of winning is everyone on his team playing good at the same time. Whereas if you see a lot of other players, if they’re the best player on the team, they’re going to be so ball dominant. They’re going to get their own points, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their team’s going to do well because maybe they don’t have a flow or they’re not getting the ball as much. So, for him, you know, obviously he’s practiced as much or more than anybody else because to be the least athletic person on the field or on the floor in basketball, while also being the most productive is not something you ever see, right? It’s just not something you see in basketball. So I think he’s put the work in, he’s practiced. You know, part of his greatness is that he’s played with the same team for five years, right? So he knows their tendencies, what they’re going to do. He’s just really good to watch. So let’s switch to the OxyFresh team for a second. I mean, if you had to think about like the core five moves that you have to do, once you buy a franchise and once you’ve gone through the training, I’m gonna identify the five moves that I think are key to being successful. Maybe you disagree, maybe you have a different top five, but I’m gonna rattle off my five and I wanna get your reaction to them. One, you’ve gotta train people and never be done training people. I mean, you have to train people to clean carpets and clean carpets, but you can never be done training people. You have to commit to the process of always recruiting and training people. I think that’s a critical thing to run a successful OxyFresh, maybe you disagree. What say you? Yeah, I mean, you should be always looking at better people to replace your current employees, not because your current employees are bad, but if you’re doing the right things by your business, you should always be growing, which means you either have to add more people to your staff or you have to replace folks that maybe aren’t meeting the criteria that you feel is going to be great for your success. So I agree with you there. Also people that are already on your team. I mean, if you stop training them the moment that they’re actually hired, I think you’re really kind of not you’re not giving them what an owner should be giving them, which is ongoing training, right, ongoing kind of motivation, more tools on which they can do their job better. So I think that’s not only in the recruiting phase, but also as they’re on your team. Okay, now the second thing I think Oxifresh owners need to do to be successful is you have to keep your advertisements on. Like you can’t turn on your Google ads, turn off your Google ads. You can’t stop your online ads, start online ads. You have to be very consistent. Could you maybe comment on that? Because I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they’re an Oxifresh franchisee or not, they tend to start and stop with their advertising. Yeah, I see this a lot. There’s a thought process out there that when I get to a place where I’m really big, I can stop advertising. It’s like, I think what people should think about is the bigger that you get, the more money you get out of the advertising you’re spending money on. But your advertising as you grow should never get smaller, it should get larger. But the money that you make off of each dollar should get better, right? And so, if you reduce your marketing spend, somebody else in your industry is going to take your place. Right? And so you can’t stop marketing. You need to look at marketing more areas as you grow, increasing your marketing budget and getting more per dollar spent as you grow. Okay. Next is I really do sincerely believe to run a successful OxyFresh, you can’t ever stop gathering objective reviews from customers that like you. I mean, after you’ve cleaned the carpet, after you’ve delivered the results, I think it is absolutely critically important to gather an objective review from every single customer that you work with. What say you? Yeah, I think this is probably even more important than spending money on ads, because even good ads without validation, which to me is reviews, will still kind of lead to lower sales. I mean, if you don’t have reviews that are in the current week or at least the current month, customers are pretty savvy, right? They’ll look at your business, they’ll say, hey, they’ve been open for 17 years, but they haven’t gotten a review in a year. It looks like you’re closed, right? So Google knows that, your customers know that. So yeah, if you stop getting reviews, it looks like you’ve given up on your business almost. So you should, it should be your number one priority as a business owner. So never stop, you know, this idea of training people, folks, never ever stop training and recruiting people if you buy an OxiFresh. Never stop the online ads. Never stop gathering objective Google reviews. Number four, I get on my list here, this is super important, never stop measuring what you treasure. Like never stop tracking your numbers. Never stop because if you do stop, I believe you’re going to create problems for yourself. What are your thoughts on the importance of always tracking? Yeah, this is such an important piece to our business. I mean, we’ve set up, we’ve created all of the ways you can just pull reports. Most small businesses, they struggle at actually getting the information, right? They have to build something to get the information. With Oxfords, we give it to you with a click of a button. We can tell you what your ROIs are in a given marketing campaign. We can tell you what your overall sales are in a given day and where they came from on a map. You can look at what your technician’s upsells are in a given period of time. I even have access to my driving record in a weekly basis and how my employees drive my vehicles. All of those are tangible numbers that I get. It tells me where my business is good and or bad or where my employees are good and or bad. If you don’t have that information, you’re just looking at your bank account monthly, you’re gonna miss all of the little things that you could be managing on and adjusting your business to get better, right? It could be that your employee is driving all over the place, right? For no reason. It could be that you have an entire swath of area in your business where you don’t do any jobs, but you’re still marketing to that area, right? There’s all sorts of ways. So if you don’t have a good understanding of your KPIs and your actual business when it comes to numbers, you’re going to have a hard time adjusting to what’s going to be most beneficial to your business. Now, the final thing I believe you can never stop doing, and there’s a lot more things you should never stop doing if you run an Oxifresh, but is talking to your team on a daily basis, doing a daily huddle, a daily check-in, a weekly meeting. There’s got to be some sort of way that you stay in touch with your team. You can’t just hire a team of, because many Oxifresh owners have a remote business or a non-owner operated business, meaning that the owner of the franchise doesn’t actually clean the majority of the carpets. And I believe you really do have to check in with your team and maintain that rapport. What say you, Matt? Yeah, I mean, if you’re not closely tied to your employees, all of the time, things are going to get missed. I mean, you need to be talking to them, engaging with them. If you can’t call your employees and understand from a small conversation, if they’re having a good or bad day, you’re probably not spending enough time with them. I think it’s crucial to have a relationship with your employees so they know that at times when it’s maybe not great, they have someone that they can rely on, someone that’s gonna motivate them, someone that’s gonna steer them in the right direction. So I think, especially if you have employees, they need to be a part of almost your family. Like they have to be really in tune with you and vice versa. So Matt, that being said, those are kind of the top five I would identify. Is there anything else that you need to be doing on a daily or weekly basis if you’re an OxyFresh owner, where you just have to commit to these core tasks, these fundamentals to be successful? Yeah, I find that for me, when I’m running my personal business, you know, and you kind of touched on a little bit with the last one, but I find it so important to where if I have expectations that my employees need to meet, those need to be verbalized almost on a daily or weekly basis. Like I have never stopped talking about, well, that’s not true, I have stopped talking about certain things and what I’ll see is them drop, right? And so instead of assuming that I say something one time and then my employees are going to do it forever, that’s a bad, bad look. So I always, every time I have a conversation, I have a few key things that I always ask my employees. One, how are you? How is your family? Then I say, you know, what are some of your struggles this week? Also, what’s your goal in terms of getting Google reviews and getting commissions? I ask them every single time, and they know that if they have a conversation with me, they should know the answer to that and keep it up, because if they don’t get them, they know the next conversation is going to be why, right? Why aren’t we getting these? Why aren’t you, you know, because if you don’t hold your employees accountable for the things that you require and you don’t keep, you know, keep that up, then they’re just going to not do it because they know it’s not important to you. And you’ve been running an Oxifresh for a long time. I mean, one, as an owner of a franchise, Oxifresh franchise, also you work there as a franchise brand developer. Is there any other, is there any other core tasks that you feel like the franchisees that are the most successful are knocking out of the park and the ones that are maybe not as successful are not doing? Yeah, I think the reviews over time, we’ve become very, very good at really instilling to our franchisees the importance of reviews, giving them resources so they can easily get reviews from customers. Because we’ve learned it’s not that customers don’t want to give you reviews, it’s that they don’t want to jump through hoops to do it. So you have to make it extremely simple for someone to give you a review and they will do it, right? So we’ve had a great amount of success with reviews. We certainly have more reviews than anybody else in the country. That I’m very confident with. Some of the other stuff is just making sure, you know, most people that we bring through the system has never hired someone before. And so we really need to spend time, and this will always be a challenge because people will, you know, maybe hire the wrong person because it makes them feel good, or they won’t read their resumes right. So we just spend a ton of time making sure that, when people are hiring, they know who to hire, what that person needs to be kind of responsible for, and we’re getting better and better at that. But there’s always gonna be something there where people need to go a little bit through the mud, hire a few people, get their legs underneath them and make sure they feel comfortable, like expanding their brand to multiple people, multiple employees. I’m going to pull up your website. Why I wanted to dial into the best player on the nuggets today is that when you look at him on the court, you wouldn’t say, wow, this is the most athletic guy. You wouldn’t say this is the fastest guy. And you pointed that out to me as soon as I got into the box. You said, you’ve seen this guy play? And I had never seen him play. And you said, this guy is like the most efficient player you’re ever going to see. And having played basketball in high school, you know, I know a lot about the game and I thought, man, this guy, he’s probably the most entertaining player I’ve ever watched in my entire life. I mean, it’s unbelievable how good he is, but at the same time, he’s focusing on the fundamentals. You don’t see a lot of flashy moves. And I really think that’s the key to be building a successful OxiFresh franchise. Did you agree with that Matt? Or do you think you have to be put on a laser show and be the most compelling personality on the Oxifresh roster to be a successful franchisee? Oh, I agree. I think actually most of the things we do are not flashy. They’re not sexy, right? Looking at your KPIs is not sexy, but it’s vitally important. Making sure you’re talking to your employees about the importance of getting Google reviews and getting upsells is not sexy, right? But it’s super important. Making sure that you’re actually looking at your Google pages daily and see where you rank compared to your competition, so you can set a daily goal. That’s not sexy, right? Like nothing we’re doing in this industry is really sexy, but if you just pay attention to what’s going on and you actually make the changes and you hold your teams accountable, your business is gonna become very sexy because it’s gonna make a lot of money. That’s unbelievable. And again, folks, I encourage everybody out there, if you do a search today for carpet cleaning quotes, Oxifresh is one of the highest rated most reviewed companies on the planet of any category clocking in with 274,754 reviews. Again, the brand’s been around for 15 plus years. If you want to learn more about buying an Oxifresh franchise, just go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash Oxifresh Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash Oxifresh. If you do want to learn more about their proven turnkey system, their history of success, their low startup costs, their cutting edge carpet cleaning technology, you can learn all of that by going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh. Matt, for anybody out there that’s contemplating clicking the button and requesting more information, what would be your final thoughts there, sir? Yeah, I just definitely do it. We have a lot of ways of owning this business, which people don’t realize, whether it’s you want to keep your job and create a business on the side for now because maybe you find that it’s too risky to just cut and then go to something else. We have a great model for that. I’m currently considered a semi-absentee business. I have multiple income streams now because I don’t have to pull all the strings for Oxifresh. Also too, people think that every franchise is a million dollars. Our investment’s 45,000 up front with an additional 25,000 operating capital. Most people get that finance in some way or another. So there is a way to get into a business. There is a way to create more income for yourself. Most people don’t realize that. So set up the, you know, just go on, fill your information. We’ll contact you. It’s free. It takes, you know, the first call is going to be about 20 minutes. We’ll just have a conversation. We’ll learn about each other, learn about the business and see if there’s some good synergy to move on to the next phase of that exploration. But yeah, I mean, it’s free, doesn’t take much time. And I think it’s a great resource, because even if you don’t go with an oxfish, it might just turn something into where now you want to explore, you know, entrepreneurship. Now, Matt, I want to ask you this, I guess, my final, final question here for you. You know, a lot of people have not bought a business before. And I sometimes struggle to relate to that because I haven’t really been not self-employed since I was 16 years old. I mean, I worked at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV to save up money to grow my own business, but I’ve always been self-employed since I was 16 years old. And so I understand the idea of being self-employed. And so the best example I can give you is if you go out there today and you buy a brand new Suburban, I don’t know exactly what it’s going to cost you, but let’s just say it’s $75,000 for the Suburban. Maybe someone says it’s $60,000. Let’s just say it’s $35,000, and you go out and get a car payment on that Suburban, your payment per month is gonna cost you, let’s say $1,500 a month to drive that vehicle. I talked to a client the other day, true story, Matt, a long-time client of mine, he said he spent $2,400 a month on the car payment for his luxury vehicle, $2,400 a month for the payment on his luxury vehicle. And this was a guy that we’ve been working with for a long time, and he’s in kind of a cash crunch because basically he’s in the home construction business, and a couple key clients haven’t paid him yet. And so he’s trying to look for extra money. And I said, you spend $2,400 a month on your car payment. That’s more than you spend on your online ads. I mean, that’s incredible. And again, I’ve never had a car payment. I’m always the guy who drives the used car that’s paid off. I’m not trying to buy a car. I can’t afford to impress people I don’t know. I think buying an Oxyfresh is kind of like buying a vehicle, but instead of buying a vehicle that might impress people that you don’t know using money that you don’t have, you could buy an Oxyfresh vehicle that actually produces the potential for you to have time freedom and financial freedom. When you buy an Oxyfresh, are most people financing these Matt, or how does that work? Yeah, about 70% of them will finance through some form, whether it’s a retirement rollover, which has become very important or very popular, SBA loans, people do unsecured lines of credit, people do home equity lines of credit, right? People take, you know, like private funds as well. So we have people that will work with you on that. They’ll look at three criteria. Your credit score has to be above a 670. They’ll look at your debt to income, right? And they’re going to look at if you’ve had any bankruptcy. We’re not a high net worth franchise. So most people that have a decent financial standing, good, decent credit, you can get a loan for this. What kind of credit score do you have to have minimum there? 670 or better. And do you introduce people to financing options? If someone says, hey, I have a job. I worked the same job for many years. I want to buy an Oxifresh, potentially look into it. Do you connect people with financing options? We do, yeah. We’ll give you several that you can look at to make sure you’re comfortable with the options out there. I mean, even if you’re like, let’s say you’re at 630 credit score. I still wouldn’t take it off the table because what I’ve found in the last 10 years I’ve done this, I’ve probably brought a few hundred people, even if they went through Oxifresh, when they get done with the process, they at least have a decent credit score because they go through a credit repair company that will help them get to a place where they could potentially buy a franchise. And so, you know, it’s not that very, there’s very rarely people that can’t get funding if they have the will, right? It’s just going through the steps to do it. How long does it take to become an Oxifresh franchisee? Once somebody decides to buy one, are we talking about a year of training or how long does it take to get trained to be an Oxifresh owner? Yeah, so the evaluation process typically takes about 30 to 90 days. The onboarding process, when someone’s decided, will take about 30 to 45 days from the time you actually invest to getting training, getting Google Pages up, and actually opening your doors. So it’s a pretty quick ramp up. Because we don’t have real estate, we don’t have to deal with any of that, we can spin up a business locally where you live in a matter of one to two months. Matt, I’ll leave you with this thought here. You know, whenever somebody recommends a movie to me, I always worry, because I think it might take our relationship to the bottom or to the top, I don’t know. A lot of people will say, oh, you should watch this movie. And I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine years ago, he says, Clay, Jeremy, he says, Clay, you’re gonna love this movie. I said, what is the movie? He said, oh, dude, just watch it. Dude, just listen. Don’t even ask me about it. You’re gonna love it, it’s incredible. So I find myself watching Fargo with my wife Fargo. And I thought to myself about halfway through the scene where they’re putting a person through the wood chipper, I thought to myself, this might be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And my friend says to me, this movie was incredible. What do you think about it? What do you think, Clay? How was it? The next morning he says, how was the movie? Do you love it? It’s incredible, isn’t it? I’m going, no. This was in fact the worst movie I have ever seen and I now think less of you and I’m trying to work through the cognitive dissonance. I thought you were an A caliber guy, you recommended me a D minus movie. I don’t know how to deal with this emotion here. I am super, super glad that you said, Clay, hone in on the big fundamental, our player here on the Denver Nuggets. And for everybody out there that doesn’t know his name, Matt, can you tell us his name again? Because it was truly the most incredible experience I’ve ever had watching NBA. And I used to watch a lot of NBA. Yeah, his name’s Nikolai Jokic. Nikolai Jokic. It’s either Nikolai. He’s like the most underrated. He’s the most underrated person I’ve ever seen. I mean, this guy is, Matt, I mean, it is incredible. Matt, does your brain explode every time you watch this guy? I mean, he’s great. Watched him for years. I mean, he’s amazing. I mean, he is the reigning NBA champion MVP. So it’s not that he’s not noticed, I think, but he’s just, he’s so unorthodox that it’s fun to watch. It’s incredible. Matt Klein, thank you so much, sir. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks. Bye. Tim Redmond, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Clay Clark, I am a man that’s grateful because of you and for you. You’ve been an amazing impact in my life. I’ll just say that up front. Well, you and I have a unique relationship because you were my boss for a long time and then I had the opportunity to work with you as a consultant and we’ve been able to work back and forth with each other. Oh, you’ve been hugely helpful. My life is different because of you. All right, Thrive Nation, on part one of today’s show, we just shared with you an incredible success story, Jordan, about a long-time client who grew her business by 42.2% year over year. And that is an incredible number. And again, this incredible woman, she sells goat soap. Now, Jordan, in your mind, let’s say that was not our client, that was not your client, client and you weren’t, if you heard somebody say, yeah, I’ve worked with the Clay Clark coaching team and I’ve grown my business in one year by 42.2% does that sound believable? I would say yeah. Sounds believable. Yeah, if somebody was like, oh yeah, 3,000% I was like, mmm. But 42.2% seems believable to you? Yeah. Okay, so James I want to ask you now, imagine James that we worked with a client and I were to tell you that we helped this client to grow his business, we helped his business double every year. I mean, imagine that I said to you that we had worked with Tim Redmond, T-I-M-R-E-D-M-O-N-D. Imagine I said we worked with Tim Redmond, Tulsa business consultant, Tim Redmond, and we helped him double every year. Would that seem believable to you? It’s hard to believe. I mean knowing you I trust what you say because you tell the truth but double every year that’s incredible. I mean Jordan I mean if you didn’t know me you didn’t work here you here on today’s edition of the Thrive Time Show we were talking about Tim Redmond and how we helped him double his business every year. I mean doesn’t that seem impossible? Or what are your thoughts on that? I mean, double every year? That’s awfully consistent. I don’t know. I mean, it’s really hard to double a business. Just so we’re clear, the number that you’re doubling every year just becomes bigger and bigger if you’re doubling. So in Tim’s case, he started out and he said, he said, Clay, I used to always have between 5 and 20 clients. Let me read the quote. He says, I would have anywhere from five clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Now we are in excess of 100 clients. I have doubled every year since working with you. It’s 100% growth every year. I’ve doubled five times. That’s why I started coaching, but it would go up, but it would go down, Clay. That’s why I came to you. I mean, wow! So on part two of today’s showbooks, you’re going to hear his testimonial, but I thought we could do is just to share maybe some of the things about the Tim Redmond story that… and really what we’re doing right now is we’re having a Tim Redmond, I would call it… would you call it Appreciation Day, James, or Tim Redmond Appreciation Month, or Tim Redmond Appreciation Year? We’re at Tim Redmond Appreciation Month approaching Tim Redmond Appreciation Year. I bet you, we’ve done 11 podcasts so far appreciating Tim Redmond in some way, shape, or form. I bet you we’re going to do 365 this year. That’s what I believe. Now, we might do more. We might do a little bit more than that, but the main thing we want to do is we want everybody out there to know that you, too, can achieve massive success. But I want you to know the things we did for Tim Redmond that are a little bit different than what we would do from a typical client. Okay, so first thing, Jordan, why don’t I let every single client, again, if anybody becomes a client of ours, we charge them $1,700 a month, 1-7-0-0 per month, as of 2024, and we make a 20% margin per client, so we’re making $340 a month per client. Why don’t we let every client just office in our office for free? Because then there would be no room for anybody to do anything. Okay, and what would be another reason we don’t let every client office in our office building for free? For free, every client, just because every client is not going to be a great fit. So, if we take someone on and we’re giving them a free space in the office, that’s… And we gave Tim Redmond a free office, a space in our office, and James, you know, you have never met Tim Redmond, but why have you heard that we gave Tim Redmond free office space to office for years? Well, I heard he’s an honest guy who always honors his agreements. Well, that’s what Tim Redmond was. He was an honest guy who always honored his agreements, and that’s the kind of guy he was. Now, let’s walk you through a couple of other things. Tim said to me, Clay, I don’t have any employees that know how to coach clients. In the event that I get clients, I don’t know how to coach them down your path. So I taught Tim Redmond my proven coaching system. I let him license slash use my coaching system. And I even taught his son how to become his first employee coaching client. And I taught his next first, his next employee. And I actually let his whole team attend my daily coaches meetings, my weekly staff meetings. I let them shadow me. I let them have full access. We actually are the first cold callers that made cold calls for Tim Redmond and the redmondgrowth.com. We let all of those clients, we let our team make the calls for Tim Redmond. So again, Tim Redmond got to use our team to make his first calls, his first cold calls on behalf of his business. Now again, Jordan, why don’t we do that for every client? That’s a great question. I don’t know. I don’t know. Just because everyone, we can’t give everyone everything. So we gave Tim Reznor- It’s not possible. No. We gave him everything. Dude, imagine you showed up in my life and you said to me, hey, Clay, I want you to help me grow my consulting business. And I said, what do you mean consulting? You say, well, I want to learn your system. I want an office in your office for free. I want to use your employees to make calls because I don’t have any. I want you to onboard my first employees because I don’t have any. I want you to teach my son how to become a business consultant.” Wow. It’s like a real life cheat code. We did it. James, why did we do it for Tim Redmond? Oh, because he’s an honest guy who always honors his agreements. That’s the kind of guy he was. He was an honest guy who would always honor his agreements. And we’re actually putting the agreement on today’s show notes so you can read it and look at it yourself. It’s an incredible agreement. And we helped Tim Redmond to grow from where he said between 5 and 20 clients to over 100 plus clients. And on today’s show, to get on the show notes to make it easier for you folks, if you’re looking there for more information about Tim. I’ve put all the information about him. You can learn more about Tim and what he does and how he did it. Let me just walk you through the things that we taught Tim Redmond how to do. You ready? Ready. We taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to generate consistent business coaching leads. We taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to build a business coaching consulting business. We taught Robert and Tim Redmond my entire proven system, online ads, web development, videography, photography, web all of that. And we let Tim Redmond and Robert Redmond use my team all on a, we only charged them $750 per new client. So they didn’t even have to pay up front for the use of those teammates. They just paid if they landed a new client. I actually onboarded Tim and Robert Redmond’s first clients for them using my 13-point assessment system. I actually taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to create workflows. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to build redmondgrowth.com. I actually built the Tim Redmond logo. I built the Tim Redmond core story. I built the Tim Redmond value proposition. I built the Tim Redmond outbound sales scripts. I built the Tim Redmond headshots. I built the Tim Redmond PR kit. I taught Tim Redmond how to use call recording using clarityvoice.com. I taught Tim Redmond how to hire, inspire, train, and retain call representatives that made the outbound calls for Tim Redmond to acquire new clients. I provided Tim Redmond free office space so that he would have an office environment that would be attractive for recruiting Redmond & Groves first new employees. I let Tim Redmond learn how to conduct a weekly group interview so that he could find and hire employees. I actually conducted the group interview for him. I conducted the Monday morning meetings to train Tim Redmond’s first employees. I actually provided coaching meetings and training for Tim Redmond’s team for years. I actually trained Tim Redmond’s first coach and consultant to Tim’s son, Robert Redman. I actually taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman search engine optimization. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how meta content works for websites. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to build landing pages that convert. I actually taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to write search engine optimization content. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to train a sales team. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to conduct a group interview. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to launch online advertisements. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to track online advertisements. I taught Robert Redmond and Tim Redmond how to turn speak-it-a-bits into viable leads. I taught Robert Redmond and Tim Redmond how to acquire new clients. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to do the initial client onboarding. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to retain clients. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to lead a business workshop conference by allowing Robert and Tim Redmond to speak for free, James, at our Thrive Time Show workshops. It’s incredible. Workshops I’ve been doing since 2005, I’ve been doing workshops. I said, you guys can come speak at my workshops for free so you can learn how to do it. But why would I do that? Because he’s an honest guy who always honors his agreements. That’s the kind of guy he was, and you wouldn’t do a deal like this unless that’s the kind of guy Tim Redmond was. Now we continue. I let Tim Redmond and Robert Redmond paint the door red, the exterior door on my office building so that people would have a door they could go into that would be separate from our main door. I actually designed their interior office space so that it would be conducive for hiring new employees. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond the importance of holding a daily staff meeting and huddle to prevent drifting. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond the importance of holding a weekly staff meeting to audit sales calls and to verify that team members are in fact following and implementing the sales systems, scripts, and processes. This is big. And I don’t think, you know, again, somebody would say, Jordan, wow, wow, why? Why would you do that? I mean, do you hate yourself? Are you nuts? Well, the thing is, what I find is we can create a win-win relationship, Jordan, with a lot of clients. A lot of our clients, we say, hey, we’re going to help you grow. We just want a percentage of the growth. In the case of Tim Redmond, I said, hey, we’ll let you use our systems. You just pay me $750 per new client that you add, which if you get to 100 clients, that’s a $75,000 a month income. We help Tim Redmond to get there. But I think a lot of people hear about the Tim Redmond success story. A lot of people reach out to me and they go, man, that Tim Redmond guy, man, I want to do what he did. I want to get that free office space. I want to get the free training. I would like it if you could hire my employees. What if you could just teach me all your systems? And again, why wouldn’t we do that for every single person, Jordan? Because we can’t run everyone’s business for everyone. There you go. But you know what, James, you know why we did run it for Tim Redmond? I know exactly why. He was high integrity. He’s an honest guy that always honors his agreements. Maybe it’s just me, but he really sounds like an honest guy. That’s the kind of guy he was, and that’s why we helped Robert and Tim Redmond grow Redmond Growth a lot like that. It’s an incredible book. You should read the agreement. And so we taught Robert Redmond and Tim Redmond how to improve their branding for their clients in a linear fashion We taught Robert and Tim Redman how to install a three-legged marketing stool We thought of what a three-legged marketing stool was actually we taught Robert and Tim Redman how to install a three-legged marketing stool for their Clients we taught Robert and Tim Redman what a three-legged marketing stool was we taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman How to build a one sheet for their clients we taught Robert and Tim Redman how to create a one sheet for Redmond growth We taught Robert and Tim Redman how to write a pre-written sales email. We taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to create a sales culture and outbound call center. We taught Robert and Tim Redman how to create tracking sheets for clients that are usable and trackable. We taught Robert and Tim Redman how to use checklists, how to create checklists and repeatable processes for clients. We taught Robert and Tim Redman what practical business books should be used to teach clients. You know, this just in, there are thousands of books, James. Right. And if you go to the business section of a bookstore, you might say, holy crap, I don’t even know where to start. Right. So we taught, you know, we said, Rob, you know, we said, Tim, you got to read The Ultimate Sales Machine. This is one of the books you got to read. Because there’s all these books you could read. But I said, you got to read The Ultimate Sales Machine. You got to read Soft Selling in a hard, and I’m just taking notes right here, folks, so you can hear me typing away, In a Hard World by Jerry Vass, an incredible book. I interviewed Jerry Vass, may he rest in peace. The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. I never did interview him before his passing, but he was an incredible sales trainer. We taught Robert and Tim Redmond to read the book Winning by Jack Welch. And these are all like, there’s so many business books that exist, but it’s like, what are the good ones? Which ones should I read, which ones should I not? We walked them through that entire process. I taught Robert Redmond and Tim Redmond how to train business coaches by actually training the Redman Growth business coaches myself. I actually taught Robert and Tim Redman the importance of having a weekly accountability meeting with their clients to prevent drifting. I actually taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to gather video reviews from happy clients. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to enhance their online reputation. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to produce podcasts. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to document client success stories and case studies. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to create effective no-brainer offers for their clients. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to design online and offline advertisements that generate leads. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to generate speaking opportunities via online marketing. I taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to create a history timeline. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to create an About Us video. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to create a How It Works video. I taught Robert and Redman how to utilize public relations to increase their online conversion. I taught Robert and Tim Redman how to use WordPress sites and I allowed them to use my proven systems and templates for the web development process. I actually taught Robert Redman and Tim Redman how to create WordPress websites. I taught Robert and Tim Redmond how to start and grow a business coaching and business growth business. I did this because Robert and Tim Redmond had entered into a signed contractual agreement where Tim Redmond agreed to pay me a flat monthly fee of $750 per month per new client he added to facilitate the growth of his client. He could charge his clients whatever price he wanted. I would get that $750 a month. I’m going to put a link so people can read the agreement if they want to. And, James, you wouldn’t want to pressure someone into signing an agreement like that. I would never do that. Of course not. So, Jordan, why do you think I give somebody an agreement like that, like a guy like Tim Redmond, why would I give him the agreement, the win-win, long-term license agreement, why would I give that to him well in advance so that he could read it for days, weeks, months before signing it. That way he could come through it and make sure it was exactly what he wanted to do. That way there’s no surprises in it, right? So he knows what he’s signing up for. And then, James, why would I not enter into a deal like that with almost anybody? Because money’s a magnifier and you want to make sure that whoever you’re having an agreement with that they’re an honest person who’s going to honor the agreement. And although somebody’s past is no indication of their future and vice versa, you sort of look for patterns over time. Right. And so from what you’ve heard, James, what did we know about Tim Redmond’s character? Well, he’s high integrity. He’s got a high character. He’s a hard worker and he wants to help people grow. And he’s just an honest guy who honors his agreement, Clay. That’s the kind of guy he was, and that’s why we entered into the agreement. He was the kind of guy who always honored his agreements. On the next portion of today’s show, you’re going to hear Tim Redman talk about how we helped him grow, but I just want people to understand this. Our business, consulting business, typically we help somebody double their company in the first 12 months. That’s pretty easy to do, but it’s not super easy to double every year because that number gets larger every year. The only way that I would know how to sustain that record of growth is to have a certain intensity to the coaching process, which frankly is not scalable. I mean, you’d have to office in my office. You would have to have access to my team for basically working on a commission-only basis. You would have to have a lot of focus on your business that would be disproportionately unscalable. And that’s what we offered for Tim Redmond. So I didn’t want anybody out there to think that this success story is unbelievable. Guys, I really do appreciate your time. For anybody looking for images of Tim Redmond, and I know you are, we’ve got a complete gallery, I think, on today’s show. You can click down there. You’re going to see there’s probably 250, maybe 300 images of Tim Redmond, which have been optimized. So anybody out there looking for Tim Redmond can find Tim Redmond. We’ve got video clips where you can find any videos of Tim Redmond, talking about all things that Tim Redmond Business Consulting can do. I mean, if you’re looking for all things Tim Redmond, you’re going to find it on today’s podcast. It’s a blasty blast. It’s going to be mind-changing, mind-expanding, and it is real. So without any further ado, let’s end this segue with a boom. Are you guys ready? Yes. Oh, yeah. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom. If you go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our call. Okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage what is that? I have grown, I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. It’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked. Now so, so I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean, the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating new, some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, is I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results. You lean into them, and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to 300 calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there’s having a hard time. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012 and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. You were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that- Oh, there it was. So it was Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship, but I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, a business consultant. I work with different businesses, implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn, I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement, no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay, are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall, in the group interview, talks about how, you know, the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory and the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is unique in that I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s, again, unique because no one else I’ve seen gets so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people and in short anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with clay, so if You’re meeting clay for the first time the advice I’d give you is Definitely come ready to take tons of notes every time clay speaks he Gives you a wealth of knowledge That you don’t want to miss I remember the first time that I met clay I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the system, the checklist, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up, and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups, go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. And when we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. And he told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or, you know, navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to how to get back open, how to just survive through all the covid shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and Just teaching sales, which is awesome. But Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out Into systems into manuals and scripts and actually build a team So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you times a thousand. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. Every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. We go back eight years ago. Think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our talk. Well, Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. So now, we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100. As a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s 100% growth every year I’ve worked with you. So I’m looking, we’ve been good friends 7, 8 years and I’ve got doubled 5 times. Which is just incredible. I mean, the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean, that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results. You lean into them, and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them, and it will give you X number of leads, you follow up with those leads, turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management. He said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. That’s really what it’s all about. With a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script, and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there’s having a hard time. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you bought a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. That’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012. And at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well we had that speaking thing that… Oh, there it was! So it was Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redmond. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here as a business coach, business consultant, I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say almost everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then again, the mindset here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement, no matter what you’re involved in? I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall and the group interview talks about how you know the best fits for this organization are the people that that are goal-oriented so they’re on their own trajectory and we’re on our own trajectory and the the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship. That as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know, he’s sending people encouraging messages. You can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that a motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.