Robert Greene | Interview Iconic Best-Selling Author, Robert Greene + How to Gain Traction In A World Filled With Perpetual Distraction + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s June 5-6 Business Growth Conference In Tulsa, Oklahoma

Audio Transcription

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(Speaker 20)
Bean? and it’s all kind of quiet and it feels like a library. But not us, we’re going in with a lot of energy today. So Bean, take your battle station, get to your battle station, get to your, Aubrey, get on the drums, Aubrey, the drums.

(Speaker 41)
Get on the drums, get on the drums.

(Speaker 20)
Okay, let me drop that beat, let me drop that beat. Beat ready? Beat, give me a little sample,

(Speaker 4)
give me your sample of how the song sounds. Okay, let me jump it. I gotta find that beat. Here we go. Let’s go! Alright Thrive Nation, on today’s edition of the Thrive Time Show we are interviewing the international best-selling author Robert Greene. Robert Greene is the best-selling author of The 48 Laws of Power, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery,

(Speaker 4)
and The Laws of Human Nature. And he joins us today to share the importance of truly understanding human psychology and how to stay focused in a world that is irrevocably distracted. Now, Aaron Antis, I want to ask you this question

(Speaker 4)
because this is is as you run Oklahoma’s largest home building company, Shawhomes.com, that’s Shawhomes.com with your brother Joe and a great team there. You guys have to stay focused. Oh yeah. And how often do you see as a leader in the home building industry, do you see a top salesperson who loses their focus and then loses their traction? Oh yeah, I’ve definitely seen it.

(Speaker 4)
We’ve had people who were at the very top of the leaderboard and then lose focus for some reason and eventually don’t work there anymore because they aren’t producing. Folks, if you’re out there and you struggle with perpetual distraction,

(Speaker 4)
you’re struggling to gain traction with your career,

(Speaker 1)
I encourage you to take notes as we interview Robert Green as he showcases and shares with us his words of wisdom.

(Speaker 40)
Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 25)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show

(Speaker 38)
you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here.

(Speaker 4)
We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. Z’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi.

(Speaker 4)
It’s C and Z up on your radio and now three two one here we go Yes, yes, yes Yes, Prime Nation. We are in the air everywhere and we are joined by the international Best-selling author of the 48 laws of power the art of seduction the 33 strategies of war the 50th law mastery in the laws of human nature Robert Green is on the scene sir welcome how are you well brother I’m excited to have you on the

(Speaker 4)
show and I just want to say this is probably this is probably gonna be a backhanded compliment probably probably is I? Was introduced to your book 48 laws of power I? Read the book and I thought to myself on the first pass What does this book mean I? Mean seriously it’s like a deep book. It’s deep I go back, and I’m going I think

(Speaker 4)
Maybe this is a bad book. Maybe this is a book that I shouldn’t have read. Mmm, but then I read it again I’m going no. No, he’s showing me the moves that bad people are always using to get ahead That’s what that’s what he’s doing. So I read the second time then I go through the third time and I’m going These moves are everywhere People are using these moves say it so it helped me to see the world as it is And not as I wanted it to be so Robert. I wanted to ask you

(Speaker 1)
I mean when did you first have that idea to write 48 laws of power?

(Speaker 5)
Well I was starting in the early 80s as a journalist. And I had, my girlfriend and I, I had like 50, 60 different jobs. In those jobs, I had seen all kinds of power games, all kinds of maneuvers. And then I started working in Hollywood. And I was really kind of shocked by the kind of double game that was going on. People would appear to be so liberal, so woe, so understanding, but behind the scenes they were incredibly manipulative. What they really wanted was power, but nobody writes a book about this. People write books

(Speaker 5)
about business management. They make it seem as if everyone are these little angels walking around, that everyone just wants to cooperate and be a team player. But my experience in all of my different jobs was extremely different. That all these games are being played behind the, when doors are closed, all kinds of manipulations are going on. And nobody writes a book like that. It made me kind of angry.

(Speaker 5)
So I thought I’m going to expose all these things that I’ve observed and that I’ve read about in history. So that was sort of what inspired the book. What motivated me.

(Speaker 4)
Now, when you wrote the book, 48 Laws of Power, for people who don’t have a copy of the book, who haven’t read it, it’s, it’s a deep read and then you cite everything that you say so Uh, I don’t know your process for writing books, but I wanted to hear it from you. We’ve interviewed

(Speaker 1)
many people on the show Uh, including ryan holiday who knows you and has worked with you who have bragged about your or not brag that they have Celebrated your writing process. Could you share us? What is your process?

(Speaker 4)
for writing a book

(Speaker 5)
Well, it’s something I’ve all known maybe about 22 years 23 years since I started writing books and basically I Do a lot of research. So when I’m writing a book about power for instance I read hundreds literally hundreds of books on the subject I try and cover every aspect every every culture around the world, every time period, because I want my books to be sort of universal. So I do massive amounts of research.

(Speaker 5)
And then as I’m doing the research, the ideas for the book chapters for the book start coming to me and I put them on note cards. So when I finished reading a book, I go back a month later and I put them on note cards. So when I finish reading a book, I go back a month later and I put the ideas on it on cards. Each card contains like a separate idea. And then when I’ve finished the research, it’s time to begin writing the book.

(Speaker 5)
I’ll have amassed maybe well over a thousand cards, sometimes 1,500 cards that I keep in these kind of shoeboxes and they’re categorized So when it comes time to writing I have okay. This is a chapter this chapter has 50 or 60 cards I pull them out. I go. Well, okay. Here’s the chapter. Here’s the research here the ideas and that’s sort of my process I’ve kind of owned it over the course of six books but that’s basically how I do it.

(Speaker 1)
Now once you write the manuscript, how many times do you edit the book? Where you start off at the beginning and you go through the whole book and for anybody who hasn’t written a book before, you know, you think when you first write it, if it’s your first book you go, oh yeah, this is good. But then when you read it again you say this is bad who wrote this book and then what around the third time you start to think I’m a bad writer I mean how many times do you go through before you’re happy with the

(Speaker 5)
book edits well just to go back just for a second back to the last question the reason I do all that structuring is it is because I think what makes a good book is that it’s well organized. Your ideas are organized. A lot of books fall apart because people have an interesting idea, but they don’t know how to structure. And so by the fifth chapter, things start repeating, et cetera. But to go back to your question here, I’m very hard on myself. So I write a chapter or I write a section, and then I go back and I start editing it. And my first draft, if you read my first draft, you go,

(Speaker 5)
this guy sucks. I don’t know how he became a bestselling writer. He’s not any good. He’s mediocre. So my goal, I improved everything by editing. If I didn’t edit. My books would be absolutely terrible. So maybe three, four, five, six drafts, it starts getting better and better, and I’m quite a perfectionist. So I’m never happy until it’s spot on, but I’m somebody that absolutely depends on five or six passes on the same thing to make it readable.

(Speaker 1)
And then once it’s readable, how many times do you edit it before it’s then publishable?

(Speaker 5)
Well once it’s readable, I go through it a couple of times and my girlfriend who’s been with me for many years, she reads all of the chapters and she helps me edit it. She gives the seal of approval and all that. And then I know that Ben is pretty much ready to send it to New York to my editor and say, so once I’ve gone through those five, six, or seven passes,

(Speaker 5)
it’s pretty much there.

(Speaker 1)
Who has, because there’s so many big names that have read your books, who are some of the big names that have read your books that have wowed you? Because when you’re writing this book, I mean, you’re not surrounded by celebrities, you’re doing your research.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, who are some of the people that have reached out to you and have said, hey, I enjoyed

(Speaker 4)
your book that just blew your mind?

(Speaker 5)
Well, there were a lot of rappers, 50 Cent, Jay Z, Dre, I’ve met, I’ve worked with, and then a lot of athletes, Kobe Bryant, I’m sorry his name escapes me, plays for the Portland Trail Blazers, anyway. There are quite a few basketball players who reached out to be coaches. I’ve worked with somebody who’s now an NBA coach, I can’t name his name.

(Speaker 11)
Sure.

(Speaker 5)
I’ve been consulting with them. And politicians, I heard through the great mind of Daniel Castro, I had my book in his hand. And there were presidents in different countries, like president of Guatemala, for instance, and people in Ukraine, politicians. So, you know, Bill Gates has the book. Then when the war book came out, my strategy book came out, Chuck Hagel, who’s then the Secretary of Defense, wrote how much he loved the book, and he gave a copy of it to Barack Obama. He’s 33 strategies. There are others. Bill Smith, the actor, a lot of actors, Hollywood reached out to me and film directors. I could go on and on. I don’t want to brag, but it’s

(Speaker 1)
extensive. You, uh, a lot of deals. He didn’t mention Clay Clark. He did not mention me. I didn’t know. He did. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he did No Z, you know a lot of athletes He’s using a power move on me somehow we gotta open the book and flip through now This is this is a thing. I want to bring up to a lot of athletes want to become rappers a lot of rappers Want to become athletes it’s kind of like singers and actors Robert when are you when are you dropping your

(Speaker 4)
rap album when you drop in the first yeah what are you

(Speaker 5)
after I’m dead because I am the world’s worst singer I actually can make a lot of people laugh by how bad a singer I am and I’m just a really dirty white guy and I kind of know my place. So you have to get me really drunk or high on peyote or something before I start cutting any kind of raps.

(Speaker 4)
All right. Well, what I’m going to do now is I’m going to go through a few of the 48 laws of power, just a few, because I want to demonstrate to the listeners how I perceive knowing these laws has helped me with my career. And I want to get Robert’s take on this, since he’s right here. So, law number nine from 48 Laws of Power.

(Speaker 4)
It reads, win through your actions, never through argument. To me it sounds a lot like Proverbs 14, 23 reads, in all labor there is profit, but the talk of the lips tendeth only to pinnery. Why do people need to know that they need to win through actions and never through argument? How is that practical for our business listeners out there?

(Speaker 5)
Well, words are a diamond dust. Words can cheat anybody and say anything. They should defend their actions or try to persuade you what they want you to believe. And so we’ve all become very distrustful. We’re barraged with advertisements, we hear politicians lie all the time. Anybody can say anything about what they, about their accomplishments, about what they’re going to do. So people are naturally

(Speaker 5)
distrustful when you start trying to tell them what your great idea is or how they are wrong. But if you show it, show it through an action, it’s much more powerful. It goes directly to the brain. It goes, I demonstrated to you the rightness of my idea or the wrongness of your idea, for instance. So, it’s much more powerful, you know, instead of like trying to tell people why you did what you did

(Speaker 5)
Just demonstrate it to show it through what you’ve done through what you’ve accomplished. I have a story I’ve used it I believe in my second book on seduction where this woman said When I sat next to William Gladstone, this is in the 19th century, he was a prime minister. I thought I was the most brilliant woman in the world.

(Speaker 5)
When I sat next to Benjamin Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone’s great rival, I thought that I was the most, I’m sorry, I had it backwards. She said, I thought Mr. Gladstone was the most brilliant man in the world. After I sat next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought that I was the most brilliant man in the world. After I sat next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought that I was the most brilliant person in the world. So he made her feel like she was brilliant and wonderful and great,

(Speaker 5)
instead of telling her, trying to please her and flatter her, he just showed it to her by listening to her, by paying attention, by making her feel like she was the star.

(Speaker 4)
You know, your book has, again, if you’re reading a Robert Green book, this is not your recommendation. It’s just my recommendation. You’ve got to take some notes. I mean, you’ve got to sit there. So you gotta go, you have to get the highlighter out. You gotta get the highlighter, take the notes.

(Speaker 4)
You got to stop and go, what does this mean? It’s a lot like the Bible. You know, how does this mean how does this apply? What’s the principle law number 10? You wrote infection? Avoid the unhappy or the unlucky I guess it says again Avoid the unhappy or the unlucky when I first read that part of the book. I thought This is this is a mean Mean, but then I opened up to Proverbs, you know proverbs from the the Bible. Proverbs 13, 20 reads, he that walketh with the wise shall be wise,

(Speaker 4)
but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Yeah. I’m thinking, I think he’s talking about avoiding idiots. And I started thinking about my business and my career

(Speaker 1)
and all the business successes I’ve had

(Speaker 39)
and all the problems I’ve had.

(Speaker 1)
And how many idiots you’ve had along the way. It seems like all of the major issues were caused by people with major issues. Yeah, I imagine that Could you maybe help the listeners? What’s the balance that you have because I know that you’re a compassionate guy you want to help people But if you hire somebody who’s a complete disaster to edit your books you probably will never get them done I mean, where’s the balance there Robert because I know you are a compassionate guy. Well, the idea is that we’re very susceptible to the moods and emotions of other people. So if we’re around somebody who’s got really bad ideas, who’s stupid, who’s incompetent, who’s inefficient, we’re going to absorb their energy, whether we’re aware of it or not. And so the thing is, people don’t announce themselves.

(Speaker 5)
They don’t say, hey, I’m an idiot or I’ve got bad ideas or I’m a very aggressive person. And so you get trapped in their lives. And a lot of people who are very infecting are very dramatic. They seem very exciting when you first meet them.

(Speaker 5)
Then slowly you realize that they’re drama kings or kings and they’re embroiling you in all of this emotional turmoil. It’s very hard to disentangle yourself. So who you associate with is going to play a very large role in how you feel in your moods, in your emotions, in the success that you have.

(Speaker 5)
So if you surround yourself, you don’t choose wisely. Just choose people, how they appear, they appear charming. You’re going to find yourself getting entangled in all these needless dramas and all these other things that you don’t want to suck the energy out of you. On the other hand, associating with people who are successful, who have their act together, who are, you know, very and rational, and who are practical

(Speaker 5)
and get things done. It’s going to have that kind of effect on you. And it’s not that you avoid people who are unlucky. The idea in that chapter is some people appear to be unlucky. They’re surrounded by all kinds of unfortunate things, and you can simply avoid them. But the more you get to know the yugas,

(Speaker 5)
they bring it on themselves. They’re constantly churning out all sorts of problems around them and they create their own bad luck. So people who are genuinely unlucky and unfortunate, you want sympathy for them, you want to help them. The people who you suspect are kind of creating

(Speaker 5)
their own drama for themselves. They’re very big, very big. So that’s basically the idea behind it.

(Speaker 1)
Now, Z, law number 15 from 48 Laws of Power is crush your enemy totally. Now again, at first glance, I read it and I say,

(Speaker 15)
Booo!

(Speaker 38)
I love that.

(Speaker 26)
I love that.

(Speaker 1)
Well, then I open up my Bible to 1 Samuel, chapter 15 verses 2 through 3 and it reads one day Samuel said to Saul It was the Lord who told me to anoint you as the king of his people Israel now listen to this message from the Lord This is what the Lord of Heaven’s armies has declared I have decided to settle accounts with the nation of Amalek for opposing Israel when they came from Egypt. Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation. Men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, even the donkey, even the livestock. So again,

(Speaker 1)
what’s the balance there, Robert? I mean, what are you talking about? How does that

(Speaker 5)
apply to the listeners out there? Well, it’s not really meant for individuals or your little individual battles. It’s really meant for groups or organizations, for businesses, and for armies in a military sense. So, if you notice, sort of the modus operandi of most large corporations, particularly in the tech sector, where their whole idea, their whole strategy is to completely eliminate any rivals. So Facebook, when it’s facing something like Instagram, what does it do?

(Speaker 5)
It buys them out and it now becomes a product of Facebook itself. It can’t allow to have any kind of rivals out there. Because if you give people like that any space, they’re going to turn into something larger and larger and larger. And the idea is you can’t go halfway. When you start making it clear that you want to get rid of a rival, they know it.

(Speaker 5)
And if you don’t go the whole way, they’re going to come back and really make you regret that. And to me, the paradigm of that was Saddam Hussein in the early 90s with the first desert storms where we went in and basically decimated the Iranian and Iraqi army. But we didn’t finish the job. We didn’t go out and get Saddam Hussein because the first Bush decided that was going too far.

(Speaker 5)
And then 10 years later, Saddam Hussein’s back at it. He was worse than ever. And Bush, W, had to go back in there. And whether you like it or not, I think it was a really good strategy, but he had to go in there and waste a lot of lives and money trying to get rid of him. So the first time around is when you need to get rid of the rival, finish the job.

(Speaker 4)
Now Robert, I want to tap into your wisdom. So we have kind of like a town hall assembled here. We have Aaron Antus. He runs Oklahoma’s largest home building company. He’s here. We have Dr. Robert Zellner.

(Speaker 4)
He runs the state’s largest auto auction and optometry clinic. We have James, he’s an attorney. And so I’ve got a couple more questions. Then we’re going into like town hall mode And if we ask you a question and you don’t like the question if it was even if we paint him into a corner If you hang up on us, we’ll know we went too far. I think it’s fair

(Speaker 4)
Okay, we’re not trying to crush you all the way at the end or anything

(Speaker 1)
I’m just saying we’re not gonna apply that principle here. But okay, so law number 29 plan all the way to the end. What does that mean? And how do people not do that by default?

(Speaker 5)
Well, you basically the end of your project, your ideas, is everything, right? How you finish your job, how you finish your book with the end product, producing your business. That’s what how people are going to judge you. That’s what your success depends on. And most people do a kind of half-assed job when it comes to strategizing.

(Speaker 5)
They’re thinking of the goal that they want to reach, the business project they’re launching, or the enterprise they’re launching, or whatever it is, and they kind of imagine the end. They kind of have a wish about how it will end, and how will it be good,

(Speaker 5)
but they’re not thinking all the way through, they’re not getting enough attention. So you want to put all the strategy into how this will actually finish and get a deep thought and not let your wishes and your desires affect the planning process. And so that’s the dividing line between those who are successful and those who aren’t. You’re able to finish the job and able to execute it by planning and thinking as far

(Speaker 5)
ahead as possible.

(Speaker 18)
Is that clear?

(Speaker 1)
It’s very clear. And I, I, I, you said think deeply and it reminded me, right, reminded me of your book mastery and then your book mastery you did, and I’m paraphrasing, but you were talking about that there’s certain people in the future that they’re gonna have a hard time because they can’t focus.

(Speaker 1)
You were talking about how in the future, there’s gonna be this great division between the people that can focus and think deeply and those who are so irrevocably distracted by all the media around them that they can’t focus and sustain a thought.

(Speaker 1)
I think we’re seeing a lot of that happen right now. We’re seeing that happen in front of us. We’re seeing a lot of headline reading, a lot of people just grabbing a headline and sharing without knowing what the actual article’s about. Could you talk about your book, Mastery, for a second

(Speaker 1)
and what you hoped to accomplish with your book, Mastery, and again, and maybe even just thinking deeply, because that book was powerful for me, about teaching me how to think more deeply.

(Speaker 5)
Well, I was thinking out of a deep concern what was going on in the world. I thought a lot of young people, we live in this age with incredible amounts of information at our disposal, and I really have spent a lot of time writing my books.

(Speaker 5)
I can tap into anything that’s ever been written, any ideas or scientific papers or journals, all around the world. It’s absolutely amazing. But at the same time, people are so distracted, they can’t focus anymore, as she put it. They’re on their phone and they’re doing this, that, the other, and the other. And so you see it in all the things that are being made today.

(Speaker 5)
These are not made well. People don’t know how to make a product. They don’t have a craftsman sort of mentality where you’re actually put pride to making something that’s well done. And so, you know, I remember traveling around the world

(Speaker 5)
to different hotels, and I would look at how, look closely to see how shoddily things are made, you know. And so I was one of the people that don’t know how to make things anymore. Don’t know how to build anything, don’t know how to create anything that’s solid, that’s going to last. So I wanted to show you the sort of timeless wisdom. This is what people, since the beginning of, since we were intelligent beings, this is the path that they follow to create something amazing, to become a master in their field.

(Speaker 5)
I’m not talking about just writing books, I’m talking about business, I’m talking about even if you’re working with your hands, I’m talking about athletes in any field. You have to have patience, you have to first of all choose the career that suits you so that you’re emotionally engaged. If you’re interested in literature and then you go into law, you’re probably going to

(Speaker 5)
burn out because it’s not what you’re good at. Then you’ve got to go through an apprenticeship phase. You learn a lot of skills. You’ve got to be patient. You’ve got to be willing to take criticism. That is a problem that most people, a lot of young people have.

(Speaker 5)
You can’t criticize them. They get all personal. They think everything is about them and we’re just trying to help them improve themselves. That was what made me who I’m on to Ryan Holiday as my assistant. It was amazing, but I could also criticize him if he didn’t take it personally. Then you have to understand how to work with people. And then you have to take all this knowledge and become creative with it. And I take you step by step by step through this process. This is how the human brain works. You follow this path. Yeah, you put your 10,000 or

(Speaker 5)
20,000 hours and the end result will be success. You will you will accomplish something great.

(Speaker 1)
That’s sort of the idea behind it. The quote that I was referencing is from the book Mastery that you wrote. It says, in the future, there’ll be a great division. It says the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle the complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them

(Speaker 1)
and those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn Z you are a man who is mixed focus with fun So to the to the person who doesn’t know you very well funnest or funnest, okay?

(Speaker 1)
People will see the lookup dr. Zellner and they go. Oh man this guy owns a bank. He owns an optometry clinic He’s travels a lot this guy man. This guy must really just be 90 miles an hour this guy just guys But really you’re a guy that knows how to turn on the take it down a notch Take it down focus mode you make the checklist and the systems and the processes and once you nail it Z

(Speaker 4)
You scale it you you do it. So you what questions would you have for the great Robert Green?

(Speaker 15)
Well first thanks for being on the show Love your books and I and if I were to ask you this question about Other than your books because we know your books are awesome and that you would recommend What’s a two or three or four books that really impacted you have been fun for you to read that? Meant a lot to you for our listeners out there. I’m kind of slide them towards, I mean, obviously they’re going to get yours in the gift pack. There’s probably a, like a, you know, all the books in one pack.

(Speaker 34)
Um, but what are some other books that you would recommend?

(Speaker 5)
A bit prejudice, but I think Brian holiday’s books are really, really excellent. And my favorite book is the obstacles, the way, which is, this is an idea that I have used a lot in my books, but Brian really nails. And it’s basically any kind of adversity in your life, any kind of resistance is actually a good thing. You want to push against it, right? You want to go past it, you want it to be a teaching moment for you. So the negative

(Speaker 5)
things in your life, the negative experiences, they’re going to enrich you some in some deep way. Another book I like that’s a little bit different is by Howard Gardner. I don’t know if I have the title exactly right, but it’s something like Five Brains of Intelligence, something that I used a lot in Mastery. And the idea is that basically there are…

(Speaker 5)
We tend to think of intelligence as just this intellectual process, people who are great at abstract reasoning, whatever. But he shows that there are these different forms of intelligence, and each person, each child, for instance, is basically primed for one of them.

(Speaker 5)
Might be good at two of them, but there’s really one dominant one. And it’s not, it could be words, it could be patterns of abstract reasoning, it could be kinetic, actually moving your body, it could be music, and that sort of thing. It could be social.

(Speaker 5)
And the trick and the idea in that book is to discover what your natural form of intelligence that you are suited to, and be willing to lean in that the most your choice of a career and if you if someone who’s like word-oriented and then you choose something that’s not suited for that

(Speaker 4)
you’re gonna have a life of misery i found that book very profound which is why you’re not a rapper is that correct yeah yeah but maybe after this show maybe i’ll change my mind i think you got to do you got a I’m just saying I think you could you and you and 50-cent should sit down I mean come on these guys love your stuff you should say Jay-z and 50-cent let’s sit down let’s do a rap and you could maybe they maybe it’s like a hook maybe you’re on the hook yeah maybe they sample you I’m just saying you you gotta have a sample is hook oh yeah I

(Speaker 5)
don’t even know you got to talk to the you know it’s sort of knowing your place and about knowing which intelligent form of intelligence you good at and being able to master it I am not gonna ever master. I’m sorry.

(Speaker 15)
Robert, maybe you could use this example of, like, folks, this is what happens when you get out of your lane. Don’t do this. Well, what I’m saying is this, he could do the, what is the classic Michael, you’re the old DJ, the Michael Jackson song, Thriller. Thriller, yeah. And then who’s the guy that reads in the middle of it? I mean, he was an old Vincent Price Vincent Price there you go that that’s the move

(Speaker 1)
well you’re very what you’re very welcome free ideas I absolutely I will I tell you what it’s consider it done now I want to ask you this because And I mean this again not a backhanded compliment and this isn’t one of these things where you say with all due respect and then You attack the person this is just what it you just attack I have reached out to try to have we’ve reached out to try to have Robert on the show for years and as our audience has grown You know, we’re honored to have you on but at a certain point your your handlers or yourself or somebody had to say Nope, not gonna be on the show and I get I respect that and when we just keep coming back

(Speaker 1)
We’re like bamboo Z. We just keep you cut us down and we’re just Interviewing we keep coming so I just want to ask you What are your laws your rules you have maybe a couple of what you say? Yes to and what you say no to because people are so irrevocably distracted by smartphone updates emails tech met text messages Requests for speaking etc. What’s kind of your rules for okay? I’m not gonna do you have like a rule that you don’t look at your smartphone during the day

(Speaker 1)
Do you have certain rules you’ve done to allow yourself to stay focused?

(Speaker 5)
Well, mostly it’s kind of fear moves. So I have a book to write, I have deadlines, and I’m always feeling like the devil on my heels. Like if I don’t put my five hours of writing today, I’m worthless, the book is gonna fail, I won’t finish it in time.

(Speaker 5)
So that won’t keep you very very focused if you realize like today, when I finished this interview, I know I have like four or five hours and I’m going to make the count every minute, because I’m actually way behind on this chapter that I’m writing. So having projects and having things to have to get done, and feeling a sense of urgency, just something I’m very, I talk a lot about,

(Speaker 5)
I have this thing in my strategy book, I call it the death ground strategy. And the idea is, comes from Sun Tzu. When you want your army to fight harder, put their back against an ocean or their back against the mountain, and they have to either win

(Speaker 5)
or they die, you put them on death. I put myself on death. I have to finish this by the end of the day. I have to finish this by the end of the week, or I am not going to make it. And that motivates me and that focuses me. And it helps me decide, okay, today I can take an interview, but it’s got to be this late. God isn’t worth it, because it’s’s gonna distract me from my goal and I’m ruthless about it.

(Speaker 5)
It’s, you know, I’m absolutely ruthless because the thing that matters the most to me is getting things done, is having results, having books out there, having projects that I realize.

(Speaker 1)
Aaron Antus, you are a man who likes to read. You like to study authors. What question would you have for Robert Green? Being that I’m not an author, my main question is, like, I know when we build homes, there’s like a certain one that I like the most,

(Speaker 1)
and there’s certain neighborhoods that we’ve developed. The thatch roof. Not model plan roof, but typically machine When I go back and look at a community after it’s all done. It’s like wow that was that really turned out good Is there is there a particular book that you’ve written you’ve written a lot of books. Is there a big kahuna? I particularly like mastery, but you know like what is your favorite work that you or how about

(Speaker 1)
this? If there’s somebody out there who hasn’t read any of your books, is there like a snack pack? Is there one they should start with or, or, and then, and then I was also going to say, and why, what, what was it about that book that just really, was it the experience of writing it that you grew or, you know, what was it that made it turn out as your favorite, let’s say? Well, it’s a little bit hard to say because often for me, when I’m writing a book, it’s

(Speaker 5)
the one that I’ve just finished or the one that I’m working on that I’m most emotionally engaged in. So, when I wrote my last book, The Laws of Nature, which came out about two years ago, it was kind of the I considered the culmination of all of my thinking of my whole life, to put it bluntly.

(Speaker 5)
So I took all of these ideas that I’ve accumulated, all the lessons I’ve learned, all the bad things that I have done and experienced from it, and lessons from all the consulting work I’ve done, and I put my heart and soul into the laws of nature.

(Speaker 5)
And it came because I thought a big problem that people have nowadays is they’re so immersed in their smartphones and their technology, but they don’t know how to understand people. They’re really bad at psychology. And because of that, they hire exactly the wrong person. They pay, they have a business partner that ends up making them miserable and they spend years getting over it.

(Speaker 5)
Or they choose the wrong partner for an intimate relationship that causes all this damage. Or they don’t know how to influence people. They don’t know how to persuade them of their great idea against the funding, on and on and on. So I put so much energy, so much of my heart into that book. And I chew on all the things that I’ve learned that perhaps I would say it’s my favorite

(Speaker 5)
to me, sort of the most important book. Maybe my favorite in some ways would be Mastery, because it’s also extremely important. It’s a very different book. I was kind of stretching myself there, but I think I’ve had a lot of great positive

(Speaker 1)
So I would say those are my two papers now the thing about mastery and for people that don’t know and haven’t read the book There’s so many examples in the book You know you’re getting into like sir Isaac Newton, you know and you know you might think okay I know about sir Isaac Newton, but do you really know about sir Isaac Newton? No, no, no, and then you read your book and you learn a lot about history. I just I love the way you write It’s great now James. You’re an attorney from from New York

(Speaker 1)
Robert we have a theme song for the for our New York attorney here. This is his theme song a

(Speaker 4)
Lot of people have

(Speaker 14)
Feelings towards attorneys Robert I get a different intro than you do, by the way.

(Speaker 37)
OK, nice.

(Speaker 4)
OK, so what are your what question would you have for Robert Green, sir?

(Speaker 14)
OK, now I heard you talk about your process earlier, your writing process. I also heard you mention something about 10,000 to 20,000 hours. Maybe that’s your time limit, or maybe that’s your average time frame, or the first person, or a person’s first experience at writing’s timeline.

(Speaker 14)
What was your timeline for your first book, from inception of the idea, the concept, the title, to actual, you know, put your last pencil down, you’re done, and it’s ready to go to publication, and then compared with what you’ve done now with the laws of nature.

(Speaker 5)
Well, it’s a very interesting question because my first book, I started writing it when I was basically 35, 36 years old. I was really desperate because at that time I hadn’t had any real success in life. I’d been kind of wandering from job to job and my parents were starting to get really worried about me. I was desperate to make this book a success. I was the most motivated person on the planet. To this day, I guess because I was a lot younger, I don’t even

(Speaker 5)
understand how I did it. But essentially, I pulled that entire book off in two years. And what that meant was, I had to create the concept that I’ve now used for all of my books. So I had to create it out of nothing. In other words, using stories from history, creating different sections, creating kind of sections on ideas and then quotes, the things on the margins and all of that.

(Speaker 5)
And then I had to read hundreds of books, organize it, write it. I don’t know how I did it. And as a contrast, my last book essentially took five years five years

(Speaker 36)
Yes

(Speaker 1)
Whoa, is that your cat that was my cat how many cats do you have to what are their names?

(Speaker 5)
Claudius

(Speaker 4)
Claudius and Jacques the two cats now. I want to to ask you my final question here for you, sir. You have the mic. Sometimes we have shows, Z, that have millions of downloads. Sometimes we have shows with hundreds of thousands of downloads. And I want to give you the mic to just share whatever you want to share with the Thrive Nation, and maybe you can tell us where listeners can find more about you.

(Speaker 5)
Well, I’m always hungry hungry for new readers, my books, because what really motivates me is there are a lot of self-help books out there. Everybody’s interested in changing yourself and improving their lives, better what they do. But my experience is a lot of these books don’t actually

(Speaker 5)
affect you. And my whole strategy is I’m trying to get out of your system. I really want to change how you think, how you approach people, how you look at people, etc. And change you from within and have a long-lasting effect. You might find that a bit nefarious, but that’s sort of my strategy. And I think that’s why a lot of readers identify with my books,

(Speaker 5)
and they have this kind of bigger effect than other books. And so to to contact me, I have a website that I started, gosh, I don’t know about 16 years ago, believe it, and I kept it it’s power, seduction, and war.com. And spelled out. That’s power, seduction, and war.com and dispelled out.

(Speaker 27)
That’s power seduction at war.com.

(Speaker 35)
There’s an air of our song.

(Speaker 4)
But that’s it. We’ve got to cut down power seduction will be the name of the song.

(Speaker 1)
That’s a great action in war.

(Speaker 34)
Yeah, I love it.

(Speaker 15)
50 Cent. That’s your rap song. Yeah, I’m featuring Robert Green. Yes.

(Speaker 31)
I’m going to write for absolutely.

(Speaker 15)
And I won’t. It won’t take five years. I promise you that oh

(Speaker 4)
I’m not good. It’ll be but it won’t take Your quality and speed would have we have to choose. He’s gonna go with speed on this one. Yeah

(Speaker 15)
More like Big Daddy green The green machine. I like that one. That’s another one that’s jumped out to me.

(Speaker 4)
You could wear a big green hat. It’ll be a costume. We won’t even know it’s you. A big green hat. Beautiful idea. See, we should really spend hours thinking about this.

(Speaker 33)
We need to do it. We need to do it.

(Speaker 24)
We need to do it.

(Speaker 1)
We’ll circle back. Thank you so much for being on the show and for lowering your standards to allow us to be, to interview you today.

(Speaker 4)
I really do appreciate you.

(Speaker 15)
Yes, big move.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, it was. Well, you know, I lowered it just far enough for the boot, I liked it, so thank you. Maybe I’ll keep lowering it even further.

(Speaker 32)
All right.

(Speaker 4)
And now, without any further ado,

(Speaker 32)
three, two, one, boom!

(Speaker 1)
How much growth have you had from the, since, you know, for since you and I first met to now,

(Speaker 4)
as maybe as a percentage or something?

(Speaker 2)
Oh gosh, I’m guessing, but at least 400% since we started and that was through COVID. Our sales are four times higher than they were

(Speaker 10)
since we started.

(Speaker 1)
I just want people to reflect on that for a second because I talk to people every day, Lindsay, who come into my place, just like you do, people that come in, they’re not maybe not feeling healthy and they come to you for treatments. who come into my place, just like you do, people that come in, they’re maybe not feeling healthy, and they come to you for treatments. People come into my life and they go,

(Speaker 1)
my husband and I, we’re contractors, we’re dentists, we’re doctors, we’re lawyers. I just got off the phone with a lawyer, who’s, he’s a great lawyer, he went to college, he’s checking all the boxes, you say the guy, literally, I just talked to a guy just a moment ago, and he’s in a different state and he’s going, I have the degrees, I’ve got the accolades, I’ve got the resumes, I don’t have any customers. And you can

(Speaker 1)
tell he’s right on the verge of a breakdown in need of a breakthrough. What do you say to somebody who can kind of maybe feel like they’re overwhelmed with

(Speaker 4)
this whole entrepreneurship thing? I say it’s doable.

(Speaker 10)
I have a husband that has a high demand career. He works 80 hours a week in the fall. We have seven children together. They’re all active in sports. So I know what a full plate looks like and it’s not impossible to be successful

(Speaker 10)
as an entrepreneur. You’ve got to follow the recipe. You may feel like Clay’s given some advice that feels redundant, but it does work. And it doesn’t require you to completely leave your other obligations alone. I’m at my kids sports, I’m there

(Speaker 10)
for them on the weekends, I get them carpooled everywhere, and I still own a multi million dollar business.

(Speaker 4)
Now I’m going to get into the details. I want everybody to listen to what I’m saying. But as I’m getting into the details, please understand folks, everything I’m saying does not matter if you don’t wow your customers. So everything that I’m saying to you right now is predicated on the premise that you will wow your customers. Okay, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, I am so fired up for you to meet two people. One, there is an unbelievable cheesecake business I work with based in Oregon, who’s

(Speaker 4)
doubled her company in the last 12 months, and you’re going to love the story. And the second business, actually the first one on today’s show, we had the opportunity to work with this wonderful company for years. And one half of the team behind the scenes

(Speaker 4)
that makes Revitalize Medical Spa happen is today’s guest, Lindsay Blankenship. Welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you?

(Speaker 10)
I’m doing good, thanks.

(Speaker 4)
Hey, well I’m gonna pull up your website real quick because I want people to know that you’re not a hologram and you’re a real person. So Revitalize Medical, that’s the business, revitalizemedicalspa.com. Tell us about the services that you guys provide there

(Speaker 4)
at revitalizemedicalSpa.com?

(Speaker 10)
We provide all of your basic aesthetics like Botox and Juvederm fillers, all sorts of different brands of toxin fillers as well. Then we’ve added hormones, wellness, weight loss, peptides. That’s really the niche that I’ve sprung into that I just love and adore in watching people feel better about themselves again and feeling like they’re 20 again. So we do everything.

(Speaker 10)
We love women feeling like themselves again.

(Speaker 4)
Let me ask you this. If we go back to when you were 20 again, did you wanna run a medical spa when you were, and I know you’re still 20, but did you have that vision when you were 19 that you wanted to run a medical spa

(Speaker 4)
or how did you arrive into this wonderful, thriving business that you’ve built?

(Speaker 10)
Well, I think it’s a little bit of a God thing. I never wanted to be a business owner. I always wanted to be a doctor, little girl. Discovered PA school as an option that seemed to fit me better. And then I met another PA who is my business partner now.

(Speaker 10)
And we just decided to get trained in Botox together, do it on the side, and we treated people right, have great customer satisfaction. And so it just exploded into this huge business with three locations. So we couldn’t be happier now,

(Speaker 10)
but neither one of us had the entrepreneurial dream

(Speaker 2)
when we were 20.

(Speaker 4)
What is a PA? For people that don’t know that language, that nomenclature was PA stand for.

(Speaker 10)
He is a physician assistant. So I described to my kids is kind of in between a nurse and a doctor we we can prescribe we have much more privileges than and are in but not quite as many as a full-fledged MD we can do surgery by ourselves, but we can do all the aesthetics and weight loss and wellness

(Speaker 10)
and take care of people. So that’s who we are.

(Speaker 4)
Now, for a lot of our listeners, we’ve got about a million people a week that will download the show. Obviously, there’s some listeners that will listen to two shows, and some will listen to one. But there’s about a million people

(Speaker 4)
a week that will download this broadcast on the various channels. And a lot of them live right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Some of them don’t. For anybody who’s in the Tulsa area, tell us about the services that you provide. Maybe kind of for anybody who’s going, they’re not at all familiar with your industry. Or maybe who’s your ideal and likely customer or buyer?

(Speaker 1)
Who’s a good fit for you guys at RevitalizeMedicalSpa.com?

(Speaker 2)
Well, we treat men and women, but mostly women. As you start to notice differences in aging, whether that’s physically on your face or in your body or how you feel. So pretty much 35 and up is kind of our prime market. But we do have some 20-year-olds.

(Speaker 2)
We have some 80-year-olds. But mostly that kind of mid-age mom that’s not feeling like she used to and just wants to freshen up, like I said, on the outward appearance or from the internal aspect.

(Speaker 1)
Now I can say this, you and I’ve worked together long enough now, I think it’s been about five years and I know people that have gone to your facility that speak very highly of your facility. How did you originally come in contact with us and my team? Do you remember how that happened? Or

(Speaker 4)
how did you initially come in contact with us? I know it was Krista, my business partner. She’s

(Speaker 2)
the other 50% of Revitalize. She had a connection, word of mouth. I think it was somebody that was

(Speaker 10)
elephant in the room connection, maybe, I don’t know. A haircut business, okay.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, and I just want to encourage somebody, there’s somebody watching today’s show and they feel like you. They feel like, wow, I’m a mom, I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, I’m a dad, I somehow have found myself

(Speaker 1)
being an entrepreneur, and you guys over the past five years, I mean you guys have had tremendous growth and now you’re opening up your third location. Uh, so I’ve got a few questions here for you. One is how much growth have you had from the, since, you know, for, since you

(Speaker 4)
and I first met to now as maybe as a percentage or something.

(Speaker 10)
Oh gosh.

(Speaker 2)
Uh, I’m guessing, but at least 400% since we started and that was through COVID. So you’re saying, just to be clear,

(Speaker 4)
you’re saying you’re like, you’ve grown four times larger than you were since you and I’ve met. That’s a real.

(Speaker 10)
Yes, our sales are four times higher than they were since we started.

(Speaker 1)
I just want people to reflect on that for a second. Cause I talk to people every day, Lindsay, who come into my place, just like you do, people that come in, they’re maybe not feeling healthy, and they come to you for treatments. People come into my life and they go, my husband and I were contractors, we’re dentists, we’re doctors, we’re lawyers. I just got off the phone with a lawyer.

(Speaker 1)
He’s a great lawyer, he went to college, he’s checking all the boxes, he has the degree, no customers. What do you say the guy, literally, I just talked to a guy just a moment ago, and he’s in a different state, and he’s going, I have the degrees, I’ve got the accolades, I’ve got the resumes, I don’t have any customers. And you can tell he’s right on the verge of a breakdown in need of a breakthrough. What do you say to somebody

(Speaker 10)
who can kind of maybe feel like they’re overwhelmed with this whole entrepreneurship thing? I say it’s doable. I have a husband that has a high demand career. He works 80 hours a week in the fall. We have seven children together. They’re all active in sports. So I know what a full plate looks like. And it’s not impossible to be successful as an entrepreneur. You’ve got to follow the recipe. You may feel like Clay’s given some advice that feels redundant, but it does work and it doesn’t require you to completely leave your other obligations alone.

(Speaker 10)
I met my kids sports, I’m there for them on the weekends, I get them carpooled everywhere, and I still own a multi-million dollar business.

(Speaker 4)
Now, I’m going to get into the details. I want everybody to listen to what I’m saying. But as I’m getting into the details, please understand folks, everything I’m saying does not matter if you don’t wow your customers, okay? So everything that I’m saying to you right now

(Speaker 4)
is predicated on the premise that you will wow your customers. Every advice I’m giving you henceforth only works if you wow your customers. So step number one, step number one, you’ve got to be intentional about gathering testimonials from real customers that really like you. And I’m going to give you a backhanded compliment.

(Speaker 4)
You’re like the best kept secret in Tulsa. You guys do such a great job, and customers love you, but it’s not in your nature to brag on yourself. And so the process of gathering actual testimonials from actual customers, that’s been something you’ve learned to do. Could you talk about that for a second? Because before I met you, you were already wowing your customers. It

(Speaker 4)
just we needed to gather, you know, case studies and testimonials from real people. Could you talk about that?

(Speaker 2)
Sure. Yes. Chris and I are medical people. We are not salespeople and we

(Speaker 10)
We hate asking people first things

(Speaker 31)
But it works and and they’re happy to do it if they love you and if you treat people, right, they love you

(Speaker 10)
and sure enough the majority of our referrals are from Google reviews or video testimonials and they don’t they really don’t mind helping you out when they love you. People love to talk about what they love.

(Speaker 4)
Now tracking, again, none of this matters if you don’t wow your customers, which is what you do. You have to track. We measure what we treasure. So your husband is in a profession where they track the amount of points that are scored.

(Speaker 4)
Anybody out there who watches sports, if you’re watching a game that matters, they’re keeping score. But for some reason in business, people don’t track. They don’t measure by default. Can you talk about the importance of measuring what you treasure and you and your business partner

(Speaker 4)
diligently tracking the numbers every week?

(Speaker 10)
I think what’s helped us with tracking the most is encouraging each other. When you feel like you’re going through the motions and you’re working your tail off and not realizing how much you’re growing. The tracking is vital. Also seeing where leads are coming from and knowing all this Google review stuff is actually working is vital. I think knowing where our money’s going is important and just kind of blindly doing it without knowing any

(Speaker 10)
of this is not helpful in your growth.

(Speaker 4)
And working with you, one thing just to be very transparent with our listeners, I charge you a flat monthly fee. You know what the fee is going to be every month. It’s a flat monthly fee. That’s how I work.

(Speaker 4)
But there’s a lot of vendors, and I’m sure you’ve dealt with them in the past over these last few years, that if you’re not careful, to send you an invoice for something you didn’t ask for. They’re going to send you some just today. I got a massive invoice, over $5,000, from a vendor that I never agreed to. And it’s usually in those professional services.

(Speaker 4)
It’s normally in the legal, and the accounting, and the real estate. And they hit you with these fees. And if you’re not careful, if you don’t fight for your profitability, nobody will. Could you talk about that a little bit?

(Speaker 4)
Because then again, we’re flat rate. That’s what we charge you. It’s a flat rate. But I’m sure you’ve started to see vendors try to solicit invoices and charge you for things. Could you talk about that, about watching your numbers?

(Speaker 2)
Absolutely. I think greed is so dangerous and other people that claim to be helping you or contracting with you see your sales or see some very intimate information like your bookkeeping and all of a sudden they think they deserve more or a percent of your gross sales or whatnot. And so I think finding the right fit is super important. I think knowing the fees up front and making sure you’re signing or not signing contracts

(Speaker 2)
is vital, especially as you grow, because people want a piece of your money.

(Speaker 1)
Well, in the final five minutes I’ve got you here today, I want to ask you this here. For anybody out there that hasn’t been to one of my conferences before or hasn’t worked with us before, I always hear horror stories, as recently as just a moment ago from this attorney.

(Speaker 1)
And he’s like, you know, I went to this guy’s conference, next thing you know, it’s like 7,000 a month once you add up all the fees and it’s just this crazy contract I found myself in. And he was struggling to even grasp the idea that we do month to month and it’s flat rate. And he’s like, well, how long do you work with your clients? And I’m going, well, the average client’s usually with us until they sell the brand.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, six years or seven years or I don’t know, it’s been oxy fresh has been 18 years. Could you talk about the impact it’s made on your business knowing that, you know,

(Speaker 10)
that we’re a flat rate and you don’t have to think about I think when we do analyze our tracking and our costs and where we can cut costs, our business coach is never on the table as far as that goes, because we know it’s a flat rate. You’re not going to hike up prices on us and all the recipe you’ve given us for success is working. So and just the accountability, like, we would probably slack a little bit on those video testimonials if you weren’t at us weekly about it. But I think it’s important, and it’s

(Speaker 10)
invaluable, the price you pay.

(Speaker 1)
Now, I have two final questions for you. You have a great team. For anybody out there, if you haven’t been to the website, I encourage everybody out there. This is a pro tip for everybody out there. If you’re watching today’s show and you go to revitalizemedicalspa.com, just that traffic helps increase the rank of someone’s website.

(Speaker 1)
So if you wanna help your friends, go to their websites. It helps increase their rank in the search engine. So I encourage everybody, no matter where you’re watching from, go to revitalizemedicalspa.com. But when we go to your website, you have a great team.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s why I try not to tell you my wife is a cheerleading mother. We have kids in cheerleading and I try not to tell anybody at all that I work with you. I just I watch it happen and I hear people all the time brag about oh my gosh, that’s the place to go if you that they’re awesome. They’re great. But you have great people. You have great people. Could you talk

(Speaker 10)
about why you’re so intentional about who you hire there at your business? Yes. I think we had to learn the hard way. We hired some bad apples to finally find the good apples. Our team is amazing. You’ve got to find like-minded people. I think our patients too make the business. I think we’ve learned to be picky with who our market is. Some people want a look that we don’t want to give. And so we we tell them and we’re not scared to turn away clients and say, we’re probably not your best fit. So that helps a lot finding your ideal and likely market and being specific

(Speaker 2)
with that and picky. And same with your employees. That’s so important. Don’t settle. Don’t ever

(Speaker 4)
settle because it’ll bite you in the butt. Now, my final question I have here for you, I’m pulling it up right now, and I’m going to show you some data. You’re a smart woman. You’re an analytical person. You look at things. So I’m not assuming you just blindly believe these numbers.

(Speaker 4)
But this is the US debt clock. This is the website that tracks the national debt. And you might see people post about this. I’m not gonna try to focus on these numbers, but I wanna zoom in on one number in particular. In a country of 341 million people, Americans, we only have 8.9 million self-employed people. Now, just to give you some background on this, folks, just some perspective.

(Speaker 4)
If 10% of our population was self-employed, we would have 34 million self-employed people, but we don’t. And so if 3% of our population was self-employed, we would have 9 million self-employed people-ish. But we don’t. Folks, we are talking about, we only have 2%-ish

(Speaker 4)
of the American population that is self-employed. And then according to Inc. Magazine, this is gonna blow someone’s mind here. According to Inc. Magazine, and the US Chamber has their own studies too, but 96% of businesses fail.

(Speaker 4)
Think about that. I mean, by default, most people have no idea where they’re going. And so, and by default, they fail. So as you are triumphantly opening up your third location, can you talk about just the peace of mind you have

(Speaker 4)
knowing that you’re following a proven plan? Because everybody else by default seems to be guessing and failing. And you guys are following this plan. You’re doing it week after week. Now you’re opening up the third location.

(Speaker 4)
Can you talk about just maybe the peace of mind you feel following a proven plan?

(Speaker 10)
It’s worked. It’s worked through three locations. And we’re about to move into this brand new building for our third location and Because it’s worked historically in the past. We just trust it’s gonna keep working

(Speaker 31)
Are we always at the end of the year when we’re looking at our total sales?

(Speaker 10)
It always blows us out a little out of the water It’s way over what we predicted or shot for and it’s because we follow the process we do do the work and it works. Now I’m not going to mention your husband what

(Speaker 4)
he does but I’m just going to say this. You guys are great people. I think your husband is first class. I think you’re great. You and one of my clients in Oklahoma City are the only people that I know who have seven kids. I have five kids. I’ve read stories about people that have more than six kids but you guys have seven kids. You’re doing it, everybody out there, I’m telling you if Lindsey can find time to do it, you can do it too. Lindsey, final 30 seconds, I’ll give you the final word.

(Speaker 4)
What do you wanna say to everybody out there who’s watching today’s show, maybe feeling a little overwhelmed,

(Speaker 1)
struggling to find the time to do it, you’re doing it,

(Speaker 10)
what would you say to anybody out there watching? First of all, I think I’m my husband’s biggest fan too, and he’s awesome. My biggest advice is don’t give up. You can do it one day at a time, one step at a time. Again, I work 28 hours a week now, and I have seven kids, and this multimillion dollar business that we just keep opening more locations,

(Speaker 10)
and it’s doable. We do the hard work. We don’t slack off in any department, but it’s worth it, and I wouldn’t trade being my own boss for anything in the world.

(Speaker 4)
Well, it’s an absolute honor to serve you, and I appreciate you carving out time. And just so people know, you’re having massive success. I called Lindsay. I said, is there any way you can hop on the show to encourage some of our listeners?

(Speaker 1)
She did not call me. She’s a very humble person behind the scenes. And I just was, I appreciate you stepping out of your comfort zone to be here with us.

(Speaker 4)
Thank you so much.

(Speaker 5)
Thank you.

(Speaker 22)
Thank you, thank you.

(Speaker 4)
Take care, bye-bye.

(Speaker 30)
Bye.

(Speaker 12)
Well, I can say just from this last January to last January, if you just took that month with our online shipping orders, we grew 240%. I would say two things and you did not pay me at all to say this, but I would definitely go to one of your conferences because what I tell people, it’s not a motivational conference, it’s an action packed conference and you’re going to learn the steps to grow your business

(Speaker 12)
and scale it if you want. If your mom has a sweet tooth, you might want to listen up. We recently talked to an Albany-based cheesecake company led by a mom with an inspirational story and some delicious decadent cakes.

(Speaker 29)
Check it out.

(Speaker 17)
I’m joined now by the owners of Beloved Cheesecakes, Jen Jacobson-Brusa and Gabe Jacobson. Thank you both for coming on. Welcome.

(Speaker 28)
Thank you for having us.

(Speaker 27)
Thank you so much.

(Speaker 4)
Folks, on today’s show, we have the pleasure, the honor, to be joined with a real longtime client of mine, a wonderful lady. She’s built a wonderful business called BelovedCheesecakes.com. Jen, welcome to the Thrived Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you? I’m was good. The reason why I wanted to interview on today’s show is that at the conference we did, the last conference we did, you came up for a while. We had you do kind of a question and answer session. And we had one particular conference attendee that was telling me they were very inspired by the fact that you are just on your grind,

(Speaker 1)
you’re implementing these action items. And they were saying that they felt through hearing you talk about how you were embracing the grind and diligently implementing the action steps that we’d been coaching you through, it inspired them that they too could do it.

(Speaker 1)
So I wanted to ask you first, how did you originally hear about us or the coaching program that we offer here

(Speaker 4)
at the Thrive Time Show?

(Speaker 2)
My first time hearing about you was at the Reawaken America

(Speaker 12)
tour in Oregon of 2022.

(Speaker 4)
OK. And we’ve worked with you since that time, and it’s been really spectacular to watch you grow your business. For the listeners out there that aren’t familiar, I’m going to pull up your website.

(Speaker 4)
It’s belovedcheesecakes.com, belovedcheesecakes.com. Tell us about the business, how many locations you have, and just kind of give us a little bit of familiarity into your business there.

(Speaker 12)
Yeah, so I started Beloved Cheesecakes five and a half years ago as a brick and mortar in a small town, Silverton, Oregon. And that was eight months before the lockdown. And anyways, ended up having you come on board. And we’ve been growing.

(Speaker 12)
We now have two brick and mortar locations, have an online presence, and now I’m in a prestigious like bougie grocery store and 20 different restaurants and growing.

(Speaker 1)
So let’s talk about it real quick here. Jack Welch, the CEO of GE, and I’m not trying to paint you into a corner, and I don’t expect you to be a Jack Welch expert, but he did grow GE by 4,000%. He’s also the best-selling author of a book called Winning.

(Speaker 1)
He wrote the following quote. He said, you’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments while you develop a long-term strategy, envision, and implement it. The success of doing both, walking and chewing gum, if you will. Get it done in the short range while delivering a long-range

(Speaker 1)
plan and executing on that. Man, I wish more entrepreneurs could hear that quote and understand it. As it relates to your business and as it relates to you being a coaching client of ours, talk to us about the balance between having the big vision of where you’re going and then also needing

(Speaker 1)
to answer the door when a new consumer, new customer comes in, shipping the cheesecakes out, hiring staff. Talk to us about the balance of thinking about your long-term vision and also your short-term

(Speaker 2)
daily demands? Yes, well, what I’ve learned from you and the business conference is how important it is to have a schedule. And if you don’t have a schedule, your schedule is going to run you having your to do list. And that’s what it is. It’s not I, I in the past have been easily distracted with the busy things, you know, and I have to stay focused.

(Speaker 2)
I’ve learned that from you as well. There’s so much I’ve learned from you. But, you know, I mean, just today, I’m having to work the front, I’m dealing with customers, but I’m also having to make sure that we have everything taken care of for next week

(Speaker 2)
and have our inventory and supplies and taken care of for next week and have our inventory and supplies and all that ready for next week. So it’s just staying on task, not getting sidetracked, and being able to say, I mean, I just had customers come in and they know me and they’re like, oh, hi, I haven’t seen forever and I’m like, I’m so sorry, I have a call I have to take, you know?

(Speaker 12)
So it’s just staying on task.

(Speaker 4)
Now I’m going to pull up the kind of the, I’m going to go 90 miles an hour because that’s what it’s like being an entrepreneur. So I’m going to go 90 miles an hour because that’s what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. And I’m going to walk people through

(Speaker 4)
this path that we’re guiding you down, the path that you’re going down you. First off, you have to know your goals. Jen, 90 miles an hour. Why do you have to know your goals as an entrepreneur every single day?

(Speaker 12)
Well, if you don’t have your goals, then what are you shooting for? It’s like you’re not making, I’ve never been a basketball player, but you’re not making the shot. You’re just like throwing the ball and just hope it goes wherever. So you’ve got to know where you’re shooting and have your goals for that.

(Speaker 4)
Now, I’m not fishing around for you to tell me the answer on this, but I want the listeners to know, you know your break-even point. You have to know how many customers you need just to break even.

(Speaker 4)
Maybe it’s not the most fun to think about that, but every entrepreneur needs to know the numbers. Box number three, you have to know how many hours you’re willing to work, and you’re somebody who will outwork almost anybody. You are a very hard worker, a diligent worker. You’re also a business owner. You’re also a mom.

(Speaker 4)
Let’s talk about that, because the Bible in Genesis and Exodus, it talks about working six days a week and resting on the seventh. I think most Americans today don’t work more than 40 hours a week. Let’s talk about the grind.

(Speaker 12)
It’s real. We now are in this bougie market called Zupan’s Market here in the Portland area and we have to deliver to them. So we have to be up at 4.30 in the morning on Wednesdays and be delivering. And then Wednesday we had an event that started at 5.00 and went until 10.00 at night. So we didn’t get home until 11.30. And that’s just what you have to do.

(Speaker 12)
You have to keep digging the ditch. I know it won’t be like this forever,

(Speaker 10)
but right now, you just have to keep doing it.

(Speaker 1)
Now, the next area, the next box, and I want to brag on you for this, a lot of clients come to me and they say, hey, I don’t really have a unique value proposition. You guys had already, box number four, had already established, step number four, a unique value proposition. Beloved Cheesecakes, you had already developed the flavors, the product, a great dessert item. I didn’t need to help you with any of that. You’d already had that in place. I think the one thing we had to work together on, though,

(Speaker 1)
was to gather objective reviews from happy customers. Now when people go to belovedcheesecakes.com, we’ve got a large variety of happy client testimonials, objective reviews on Google, video reviews, and you can’t fake that stuff. Can you talk about the importance of A, having a unique value proposition, and then B, gathering reviews from real people

(Speaker 4)
so that other people know about your unique value proposition?

(Speaker 2)
Well, definitely. We have an amazing product that we’re consistent. It’s high quality. We have our no-brainer, which is free cheesecake samples. I try to tell a lot of my business friends, offer something for free, like how you do a dollar for your first month of coaching. And then what was the second part of the question?

(Speaker 4)
No, I’m sorry to do a two-part question, but I mean, one is you already had a great product. But I think one thing you and I have worked on together is making sure that the world knows it’s great by gathering objective reviews. And before I met you, I think you had,

(Speaker 4)
people loved the product, but there wasn’t a lot of online evidence that people did. No, there wasn’t, and I’m gonna be honest,

(Speaker 12)
the first month coaching with you, I thought this is so dumb, why am I focusing on Google reviews? But I’m so glad that I focused on it. We’ve got amazing reviews, and it does make a difference. It keeps us up in the algorithm, it keeps us up on,

(Speaker 12)
people find us all the time through Google searching for best dessert or cheesecake, and then it is. You want real experience, you want people to actually share and not be fake.

(Speaker 6)
So I look at reviews.

(Speaker 4)
Now since you and I have met, have you noticed an increase in the amount of online traffic or online orders or online purchases? Because again, you already had a great product before you and I met. And have you seen an increased amount of online traffic?

(Speaker 2)
Oh, 100%. Increase in online traffic, increase in walk-ins. I mean, it’s everything that I’ve implemented. Having you as a coach, if I wasn’t doing the action steps that you share with us, then I wouldn’t be where I’m at today and I mean I think of myself without you in my life and There’s no way I would not have known about the dream 100. I wouldn’t have known about the Google reviews the images

(Speaker 2)
The SEO that more images more reviews

(Speaker 4)
I wouldn’t but you’re in dig what’s so fun and why I called you today, I said we have to get you on the show, is here we have an entrepreneur you’ve never met before, and I won’t mention his name, but he was coming to our conference, almost depressed about where he was at

(Speaker 4)
with his life and his business, and he came to the conference because his family is so successful. So his family said, look, look here, buddy, you should come to this conference. And so he is a member of the same family,

(Speaker 4)
different business, and he’s like, wow, my family’s having success. I must, there must be something wrong with me. I don’t know why I’m not having success. And when you came up and had the courage to just share about, wow, this is a grind. It inspired him to take action, and it’s

(Speaker 4)
been unbelievable the success it’s had on him. Box number five, branding. You guys have great branding. Everybody out there, if you want to see great branding, go to belovedcheesecakes.com, order a cheesecake, and you’re going to see great branding.

(Speaker 4)
I’m talking about the packaging, the way the product shows up, the way the product tastes, the follow-up process, the way you call consumers if they have questions. Branding is a big thing. Branding is what consumers think about when they think about your business. Can you talk about the importance of being

(Speaker 4)
intentional about your branding?

(Speaker 2)
We are very intentional with our branding. So we are all about having a high quality, consistent product and giving excellent customer service. So we do a handwritten note with every cheesecake that is shipped. We call our orders. I mean that’s kind of a dinosaur age of people calling on the phone nowadays, but we call

(Speaker 2)
and thank them for their order, verify it, confirm it. And that’s what we want to be branded for, is having exceptional customer service, an exceptional product, and just even coming in, like going to your conference, I can try to tell everyone to go to the conference, but you have to go and experience it.

(Speaker 2)
And it’s the same thing with Beloved Cheesecakes. I can tell you all about it. You can experience the taste of it, but it’s different when you actually come in our building. And that’s another exceptional brand that we have. We have signs all over the walls,

(Speaker 12)
and that’s our branding inspiration.

(Speaker 4)
Now, the final five minutes we have you here, again, we’re going to go 90 miles an hour, because that’s the way entrepreneurs go. You broke away from your very busy day to do this interview, and I appreciate you doing that. A three-legged marketing stool, you have to have a consistent, turnkey, repeatable way to get customers. Now, in your business, we do the Dream 100,

(Speaker 4)
where we reach out to our ideal and likely buyers, and we let people know about the product, aka the gourmet grocery store, podcasters, influencers, that kind of thing. The second leg is we gather objective reviews from happy consumers. And we also write search engine content to come up top. So leg number one is Dream 100 marketing.

(Speaker 4)
Leg number two is online marketing. And leg number three is signs and wonders. You have compelling locations. You put up signage that makes sense. You’re always offering the consumer a no-brainer offer for first-time customers.

(Speaker 1)
Can you talk about the mental stress

(Speaker 26)
that has gone away

(Speaker 4)
by knowing that you have a three-legged marketing stool of things that work? Because so many of my coaching clients tell me, they say, Clay, before we started working with you, we were trying everything and we didn’t know what would work and now we’ve got three things that do work.

(Speaker 4)
Could you talk about that, the importance of having a three-legged marketing stool in place?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, well, I think it does. Because when you’re hit as a small business owner, you have the people that have magazines. They want you to be in their ad or your radio stations. And before I knew you, I was investing and bleeding with these radio ads and magazines and you

(Speaker 2)
know it’s very simple we have our Google reviews we have signage we have the SEO we have all of these things and we track how we ask every single person how they hear about us and so we have a spreadsheet and we’re able to keep track of how people are hearing about us. And so we can see where our marketing dollars are of value. And we have returning customers and so many people come in because they see the signs and then the Google reviews, you know, so it is important and it’s simple.

(Speaker 2)
We make it so much harder by, you know, doing all the other fluff, I guess.

(Speaker 1)
And yeah. I’m not going to, I don’t want to page you to a corner. I’m not looking for a hard number. I’m just trying to build somebody’s encouragement. They can do it. If you had to think back two years ago, two and a half years ago, in terms of the amount of online business

(Speaker 1)
you’re generating now, people that find you from the internet, whether it be locally or online, from out of state. How much kind of an increase do you think you’ve seen in online or traffic that’s generated from search engine optimization, that kind of thing

(Speaker 4)
than maybe two years ago?

(Speaker 12)
Well, I can say just from this last January to last January, if you just took that month with our online shipping orders, we grew 240%.

(Speaker 4)
It’s so great. If you’re out there, folks, I get emotional coughing it up here, allergies. But if you, folks, if you look up Jen and her business, you are a very approachable, very normal person, but you’re in the grind. And so my final two questions I have for you, Question one, what do you say to any entrepreneur out there that’s stuck? They feel like, oh my gosh, I have so much that I need to do

(Speaker 4)
and in this case, this young man came to a conference and his own family’s there with him. He’s feeling like he’s not keeping up, like he doesn’t have what it takes. And your message encouraged him so much. He felt like he could do it. What do you say to somebody out there that feels kind of stuck?

(Speaker 12)
Um, well, I would say, uh, two things and you did not pay me at all to say this, but I would definitely go to one of your conferences because what I tell people, it’s not a motivational conference It’s an action-packed conference and you’re gonna learn the steps to grow your business and scale it if you want and then also You know we do

(Speaker 12)
Here at beloved cheesecakes. We’ve take we have our to-do list but we’ve taken six of the to-do list items, seven of them, make them our priority for the day, and at least to check off those seven items, six, seven items a day. So that way you are doing a little bit every day and you’re seeing a dent in your to-do list as it keeps growing.

(Speaker 4)
Now final question I have here, Perron, and I know you have to get back to your shop because it’s a very busy day there at BelovedCheesecakes.com. A lot of our listeners, they look for a great gift idea. They want to get their spouse somebody, something for maybe an anniversary. Somebody’s dating somebody.

(Speaker 4)
They’re looking for a gift. Maybe they’re going to take a gift to a family member. It’s a birthday, Valentines, 4th of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever the holiday is. And I encourage everybody out there to check out your products. But what should everybody check out if they have yet to experience belovedcheesecakes.com?

(Speaker 12)
I would say check out our mini cheesecakes. You can get those. They’re four-inch cheesecakes. And you can pick up to four kinds. That’s our ultimate sampler, you could do that. But yeah, we have Easter coming up,

(Speaker 12)
we have Mother’s Day, we have graduations, all of those things coming up. It does make such a unique gift

(Speaker 2)
to give to someone that has everything.

(Speaker 4)
Jen, thank you so much for your courage, A, to come up at the conference and share your story. I’d encourage so many people. And B, thank you for carving out time amidst your very busy day to be on the Thrive Time Show today. I encourage everyone to go to belovedcheesecakes.com.

(Speaker 4)
That’s plural, belovedcheesecakes with an S. Belovedcheesecakes.com. Jen, thank you so much.

(Speaker 11)
Have a great day. Thank you, Clay. You have a great day too. Bye-bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 21)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 11)
People rave about what they learn from you.

(Speaker 4)
So congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably going to have an amazing business conference

(Speaker 13)
here at Tulsa, Russia.

(Speaker 4)
Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters June 5 and 6. He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean,

(Speaker 4)
real clients you really work with, help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day. How often is not having enough time a problem for business owners?

(Speaker 25)
All the time.

(Speaker 4)
It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90% of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. And he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self-discipline and getting things done.

(Speaker 4)
Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here. Also at the two-day interactive workshop, Sean, we are going to be, oh, there it is. We’re going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train, and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, search engine optimization.

(Speaker 4)
Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people? What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they

(Speaker 4)
come to one of our workshops?

(Speaker 13)
Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners. And being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers, being able to track their business and be

(Speaker 13)
able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay, you love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference.

(Speaker 4)
Now I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here.

(Speaker 24)
OK.

(Speaker 4)
All right. workshop here. The two-day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals.

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

(Speaker 4)
No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into the daily goals for sales.

(Speaker 13)
And so that’s a really big one.

(Speaker 4)
Now next is the break-even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce?

(Speaker 4)
What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five,

(Speaker 4)
branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, marketing. Your three-legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads?

(Speaker 4)
It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios

(Speaker 4)
where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre-written emails,

(Speaker 4)
lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business. Whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you’ve got to have sales systems in place. We help you with that.

(Speaker 4)
Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re gonna teach you how to create repeatable systems,

(Speaker 4)
processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re gonna teach you how to manage people, real people on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re gonna teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule

(Speaker 4)
that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re gonna cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, what is the point of even achieving success? We’re gonna go over that. what is the point of even achieving success, how to design a life that you’re excited about, how to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re

(Speaker 4)
going to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that, all this and more. Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th. It’s a two or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket?

(Speaker 13)
Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there

(Speaker 13)
have access to the things that work.

(Speaker 4)
Now 7 AM to 5, Sean, why do we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back-to-back workshops? We do a 30-minute teaching session. We do a 15-minute question and answer session.

(Speaker 4)
And then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer. Then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening,

(Speaker 4)
but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions and that’s really where the the juiciness of the conference comes out is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program you can get direct coaching from Clay. It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoyed a lot. Sean, final 60 seconds pop quiz here. What date is the conference? June 5th and 6th, 2025, this year. Question number two, who’s our keynote speaker

(Speaker 4)
coming to the conference there, Sean?

(Speaker 13)
Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker.

(Speaker 1)
Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in-person, two-day interactive

(Speaker 4)
business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? P-M-U-R-T-C-I-R-E. Ooh, that took a long time. I’ll have to listen to this. Alright, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive

(Speaker 4)
workshop June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shawn, I really am excited to have this event. I’m excited to see you at the event June 5th and 6th

(Speaker 1)
right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 4)
Tim Tebow, baby. Oh, yeah, also Ruslan you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here

(Speaker 18)
Late Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy play?

(Speaker 23)
Play is the greatest I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound He’s like the greatest guy ran from his goats his chickens his dogs

(Speaker 22)
So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing.

(Speaker 9)
Hey guys, Luke Erickson here with the Thrivetime Show.

(Speaker 19)
As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on.

(Speaker 9)
People are starting to show up for the conference, and it is hot in this place. We got grill coming over here. We’ve got people playing the drums. We’ve got a fire breather. And man, people are so excited as they come in.

(Speaker 18)
Woo! Woo! Woo!

(Speaker 9)
Woo! The conference has kicked off, this house is packed. We’ve got Aaron Andis with ShopRooms up there. We’ve got Steve Curry and Tim with Total Winding Concepts up there. Talking about what is possible when you just implement, when you implement, when you do the improvements. It’s so exciting, people are going crazy. Guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Guys show here with you.

(Speaker 9)
It is day two and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for day two. Follow me. I’ll tell you what, people are so excited to be here for day two.

(Speaker 9)
It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included,

(Speaker 9)
if you hear that term, you go, what is that? What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable, it’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break and what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the

(Speaker 9)
hour for 45 minutes. Then we take approximately a 15-minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun, melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome.

(Speaker 9)
The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have.

(Speaker 3)
I heard about it on the podcast. Started listening to the podcast, became a fan, and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes.

(Speaker 3)
I’m big on systems and processes and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere’s second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say.

(Speaker 3)
Just something every entrepreneur, I think, would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key. A lot of business coaches or seminars maybe are high on motivation and making you feel good,

(Speaker 3)
but don’t have a lot of substance that you can take back and implement the following Monday, where his does. Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say, I came to this, this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the importance

(Speaker 3)
of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes. And that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far.

(Speaker 3)
Man, I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. That’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am. I think if you choose

(Speaker 1)
not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them and I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden so I was willing to listen. In my career I’ve sold a little over 800 million dollars in real estate. So honestly I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay

(Speaker 1)
and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And, I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years.

(Speaker 1)
We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time,

(Speaker 1)
has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience.

(Speaker 1)
I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field.

(Speaker 1)
Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry, but the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that

(Speaker 1)
hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental.

(Speaker 1)
It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic. And as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made.

(Speaker 1)
I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely

(Speaker 1)
one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens.

(Speaker 1)
I think in the 35 year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with clay is I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally

(Speaker 1)
an 1800% increase in our internet leads going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team.

(Speaker 6)
I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do. My degree and my background is an education. But after being a mom and staying home and all of that I just didn’t have a passion for like I once did.

(Speaker 6)
My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder. So real estate and home building go hand in hand and we just rolled with it. I love people I love working with people I love that building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the

(Speaker 6)
business side of things the process is and the advertising and marketing I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time. And he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent.

(Speaker 6)
Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve

(Speaker 6)
offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

(Speaker 7)
I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient, and that’s it.

(Speaker 7)
My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement.

(Speaker 7)
I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes

(Speaker 7)
that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business.

(Speaker 7)
I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

(Speaker 11)
Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 21)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 11)
People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 8)
And we went from expecting maybe 250,000 this year to we’re at 400,000. Hi, I’m Kelsey with K&D’s Wood Refinishing, business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K&D’s company for about five years now.

(Speaker 8)
And we started working with Thrive not too long ago. And we went from expecting maybe 250,000 this year to we’re at 400,000. That’s what we’re gonna hit or exceed. So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s been pretty much just listening

(Speaker 8)
to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and the, just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and, uh, like such good insight, uh,

(Speaker 8)
the resources that they have for specific business questions. Uh, it’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I would recommend it to anybody.

(Speaker 16)
What I’ve seen from clay and his group at thrive is they’ll give you a simple system and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day-to-day basis.

(Speaker 2)
Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid-June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach Luke from Thrive Time. It has been insane to say the least I started working with them in mid-february of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has

(Speaker 2)
Completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet So I check my notes here So in four months my leads have tripled I was getting probably like two leads a week, now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees.

(Speaker 2)
I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. And hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically

(Speaker 2)
only get maybe two complaints a month if that and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses. I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and higher interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time on low-quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure,

(Speaker 2)
but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great. Worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous,

(Speaker 2)
just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful. It’s an absolute, because I have all this stuff in the background

(Speaker 2)
happening and I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success. And I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it just it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long-winded reply but I just had so much to say and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the

(Speaker 2)
entire team there. Everything you guys have done for me. And I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching.

(Speaker 11)
My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach. You know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me,

(Speaker 11)
they’re younger than me, they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons. You’re on it, man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody, listen to this guy.

(Speaker 11)
He knows what he’s talking about. You have the macro, macro picture. Very few people have that point of view. Clay, you’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. Clay, you’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo