Ryan Wimpey | Ryan Wimpey Success Story + Outwitting the Devil Co-Author Sharon Lechter Interview (Part 2) + “It’s definitely gotten a lot better. We’ve got a lot of systems & marketing in place now. I don’t even worry about marketing anymore.”

Audio Transcription

Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live two years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? Nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals, and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you times a thousand. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. Two men, 13 multimillion dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the Thrivetime Business Coach Radio Show. Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show. Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. My name is Clay Clark and I’m interviewing one of my heroes today. Sharon Lecter is the best-selling author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series. A lot of people don’t recognize that. I don’t think they know the whole story. If you get a chance to do some research online, you’ll see it. She served as the CEO of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad company, the Rich Dad series, for over ten years, where she released 14 books with Robert Kiyosaki. Some of you might be saying, where did the book idea come from? Robert Kiyosaki wanted to create a board game, and he pitched the idea to somebody. The idea got to her, and she recommended we need to have a brochure that explains why the game matters, why people should play the board game, how it will help people to gain financial literacy. And that brochure started to grow and grow and grow into what is now called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Then from her own home, she sold over one million copies of the book. She went on to sell 23 million copies of the book with Robert Kiyosaki, who was serving as the pitch man and the face of the franchise. After exiting that venture, the Napoleon Hill’s manuscript for outwitting the devil, which she did. Then she teamed up with the Napoleon Hill Foundation again to release Think and Grow Rich 3 Feet from Gold and Think and Grow Rich for Women. As if that wasn’t enough, in 2009, Sharon was appointed to the National CPA, Financial Literacy Commission, as a national spokesperson. This is a council that served both President George Bush and President Obama Sharon today has a team of over 5,000 people around the world that help her with her various entrepreneurial projects and Assets and on this particular part of our Thrive Time show interview this from this particular podcast We’re asking Sharon about the importance of buying assets. The importance of buying assets. I think a lot of people get this part wrong. It’s so important if you’re going to build a successful portfolio, if you’re going to build some net worth, if you’re going to start to build your snowball. You have to focus on always buying assets and never buying liabilities. Why? What kind of assets should I buy? That’s where Sharon comes in. Thrive Nation, without any further ado, back to our exclusive interview with Ms. Sharon Lechter from the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. One of the things that you write about in your books is the importance of, as you start to grow that company, you want to focus exclusively on buying assets whenever possible, buying assets and avoiding liabilities at all costs. Can you explain to listeners an example of maybe some of the assets that you have, maybe the category types? I think you can expose a lot of our listeners to the types of assets that are out there that people maybe aren’t familiar with. Just kind of give us assets 101. What’s an asset? What’s not an asset? Just give us that asset 101. Well, for those of you familiar with the Rich Dad Poor Dad, we talk about assets are things that put money in your pocket, liabilities are the things that take money out of your pocket. Assets feed you, liabilities eat you. At the end of the day, that’s true. You’ve got, for instance, when you talk about real estate, Rich Dad Poor Dad, we talk about your house is not your asset because it doesn’t make you money. It’s something you have to pay for. And so we want you to create enough assets that are feeding you, assets that are generating income that can pay that you can have the house you want. But don’t look at your house as your bank account. You want to have those businesses. You want to build businesses. You want to have real estate. Obviously people have intellectual property. Intellectual property is the greatest way to build assets because that comes from your mind, writing books, solving problems, serving needs. When you come up with something unique and have the opportunity to protect it, that’s a patent. That’s something that can be earning you money for years and years and years through licensing. If you don’t want to build your own business around it, license it to someone else. And those assets continue to build and grow and continue making you money when you’re sleeping. And that’s the thing. And when they talk about rental real estate, they talk about it being mailbox money. It takes a lot of energy up front to find the properties and to get them done. Then you have a management company. Then it’s not quite as much a headache as it is on a long-term basis. Now in real estate, there’s different types of real estate investments. There’s fix and flip that takes a lot more energy and that’s really not passive income. Then there’s the long-term cash flow play where you buy and hold and you’ve got tenants that are paying your rent. And that debt to buy those properties is good debt as long as what they’re paying you in rent exceeds all the related expenses in your monthly mortgage payment, you’re getting cash flow positive. And that’s something that is an asset. It’s good debt. And so each category of debt you have, you need to look at it and say, how is this going to help me move forward? Is this going to generate an asset for me? Is this going to sustain an asset? And, you know, at the end of the day, most people, we talk about work-life balance. Well, it’s really not work-life balance. It’s debt-life balance. People have too much bad debt and it’s keeping them from living the life they deserve. Sharon, I know that you’re celebrating your 32nd birthday, I believe tomorrow, but in your younger days, when you were like 21, 22, there I’m just going off the photos, Sharon, I think you’re 32, 33. Did you ever make a mistake? A couple of, yeah, a couple of times. Did you ever make a mistake where you thought to yourself, I bought this to produce passive income and it was the biggest most epic Failure, I mean have you ever had a situation like that happen, and if so how did you recover from it? Why? I’m surprised you could even ask that question with a straight face. Yes, of course You know I don’t know anyone that hasn’t had a colossal failure and it’s something that You know Napoleon Hill said out of every adversity comes a seed of an equal or greater benefit. The worst business mistake of my life was when I left public accounting and went with a client to another company. But had I not done that, I wouldn’t have met my husband, Michael Hechter, who we’re now 38 years of marriage. So yes, it was the worst business mistake, but it helped me meet and create the best life decision. So each and every one of us, we have our ups and downs. How we get through them are very important, and everyone listening to this has probably had something that’s stopped them in their tracks, and we can say, why me, why me, and it’s something that is really hard to get over. I started to retire because we lost our youngest son five years ago, and it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone. I would never wish it on anyone. And things that used to upset me don’t upset me anymore, because you talk about reality, and you’re not supposed to outlive your children. And yeah, I continued working. I stayed busy because I’d built a level of success, but it was like I was on autopilot. I wasn’t really feeling good about living life. I wasn’t really feeling good about what I was doing. And that’s when I share with you earlier, last year I actually started thinking maybe I should just retire. And I got a little pushback from my family and my friends and many of my dear clients. And I realized that I’m here to continue to give and I want to serve and I want to help people take control of their financial lives. And I think I even got a little nudge from my son above, saying, get over it, and you have more to do. But each one of us, we have those things that can be considered setbacks or can be considered absolute devastation. And we’re still here, and you’re still here for a reason. There’s more for you to do. There are more people out there waiting to learn from you, to be inspired by you and so understand that that depth of despair is not long-term. You can get out of it and you can let the people around you support you and keep your head above water while you gain your footing again and know that there’s more for you to do. Thrive Nation, that was the New York Times best-selling author and CPA Sharon Lecter. My name is Clay Clark. We thank you so much for investing part of your day to tune in to our podcast. And there’s hundreds of thousands of you. And all I want to do is reward those of you who have subscribed to our podcast by giving you a free ticket to our next in-person Thrive Time Show workshop. The tickets are normally $250. They’re two days long. They go from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. There are two days. There are a Friday and a Saturday. We cover marketing, sales, branding, search engine optimization. You can ask questions. There’s a 45-minute sprint, and there’s a 15-minute question and answer time. And, Chuck, at the time of the recording of this podcast, we’re getting ready for another one just around the corner. And why is it such a powerful learning tool? I mean, we’ve had thousands of people either record a YouTube video review or write us an objective review, but why is it so important for everybody to attend this workshop at least once during your lifetime? This is one of the only places that you’re ever going to go where somebody is going to teach you actionable steps, things that you can literally go home and begin to implement immediately that will move the needle for your business. They’re not vague, esoteric ideas. It is literally, this is how you optimize your Google My Business location, the map on Google. This is how you write a sales script. This is how you hire and fire. This is how you do the things, and you can go home and implement them right away. Now, Chuck, we’ve had thousands of people attend, and many have left us a kind video review or have left an objective review on Google. But we want to give all the listeners a free ticket simply by doing what they’ve already done in most cases. So if you’ve already subscribed to our podcast, or you’ve already written us a review on Google, we want to say thank you. So all you have to do is just take a screenshot of the iTunes review you left, or the Google review you left, and send us proof that you did it to info at thrivetimeshow.com, and we’ll send you the two free tickets with your only cost being the workbook, which is $27. It’s worth it. Now if you say to yourself, I have not done that, how do I do it? So how does somebody leave an iTunes review? First of all, you can just open up an internet window, search browser, and Google search Thrivetimeshow in the word iTunes. It’s going to pop up as a result for iTunes, and you’ll want to open that thing up. You just click subscribe, then click rate and review, and then screenshot that thing and email it to info at Thrivetimeshow.com, and we will get you two free tickets. And without any further ado three two one boom All right Thrive Nation on today’s show I have the pleasure We have the pleasure of interviewing the certified public accountant and entrepreneur that many many people know She’s become a household name. Her name is Sharon Lecter. You see she is the the CEO behind rich dad poor dad she’s the lady who created the book with Robert Kiyosaki. I’m not sure if the listener is out there if you’re aware of this, but the whole Rich Dad Poor Dad book series really started as a result of Robert Kiyosaki wanting to make a board game and Sharon Lecter writing an elaborate sales brochure that mutated or was changed and transformed into the book known as Rich Dad Poor Dad. In fact, they sold the first one million copies of that book out of her home. Ladies and gentlemen, in 2009, Sharon Lecter was appointed to the National CPA Financial Literacy Commission as a national spokesperson. This right here, folks, is the same council that served both President Bush and President Obama. And Sharon today has a team of over 5,000 people around the world who help her with her various assets and entrepreneurial endeavors. And in her free time, she was approached by the Napoleon Hill Foundation to take the manuscript to a book that was written in the 1930s called Outwitting the Devil and to refresh it. So she’s worked with the Napoleon Hill Foundation now to release multiple books, including Think and Grow Rich for Women and Outwitting the Devil. Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, without any further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce to you my friend, Ms. Sharon Lecter. Sharon Lecter. Ms. Lecter, how are you doing today? I am fantastic, Clay. Thank you so much. Hey, I have a question for you that I think a lot of listeners would like to know off the bat here is, when you guys created the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, what was your role with that book? And where did the idea for that book come from? Well, at the time, this is back in 95, Robert Kiyosaki had gone to see my husband, Michael Lecter, who’s an intellectual property attorney, with an idea for a board game. And it was drawn out on a piece of paper, but he needed somebody to help really make it happen. And so we went to see my husband about getting it copyrighted and patented. In that process, I had already been working in the area of financial literacy, and so my husband introduced us. He thought that I would enjoy seeing the potential of the game, which I really did. So I met Robert at the first beta test for the game. And it was drawn out on a piece of butcher block paper. And the playing pieces were different caliber bullets, so first impression is everything, right? Right. Of the three tables, I was the only person who got out of the rat race. But at the same time, I really saw the value of the messaging, which is consistent with my messaging and understanding the importance of passive income, the importance of building assets, not relying on a job or a paycheck for your financial health. And so I volunteered to help, and my background had been I helped build the talking book industry, and in that we also had electronic games. So I had a network of influence that I could draw on. And as we were looking at it, Robert wanted to charge $200 for the board game. And I said, well, maybe we need a brochure. We need a brochure that kind of talks about the philosophy so that people will be convinced to invest $200. And in that process, he asked me to be his partner. And the brochure was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. We never expected it to be the huge success in its own right. It was written really as a brochure to sell the game. And of course the world came and said no your brand is not only cash flow, your brand is Rich Dad. And so we thought well okay maybe we should write it. We decided to write three books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Cash Flow Quadrant, and Guide to Investing. And we did those and then oh no, people still wanted more. So we wrote a total of 15 books during the 10 years that I was his partner. I owned the company, and I led it as the CEO. And then we had a second brand of books that we launched, the Rich Dad Advisors books, along with all of our other programming. And so that’s really how it got started. He was interested in the fact that my background and my philosophy was consistent with his, the fact that I was a CPA, and the fact that I had the experience and the connections to help build the business. We became partners and in 10 years we built the Rich Dad brand globally. Now I understand, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe that you sold the first 1 million copies of the, now we know, brochure slash book out of your actual house. Is that true? Did you actually sell a million copies of a book out of your house? Yes, we did. We really ran the company out of my home for the first three years. And in fact, our local post office got to the point where they said, Sharon, we can’t handle your volume anymore. So a local fulfillment house that would store the inventory and ship for us. But yeah, we sold the first million books. We made it to the New York Times bestseller list. The original book was published by a company that my husband and I own called Tech Press. And it was so that we could control the book. If we wanted to give it away, we could. Traditional publishers, that’s not something you can do with them. And as we built that success and got it on a list, all of a sudden we had all these other publishers coming to us wanting to help us. And it was a good thing because when we really hit the stride, we had a phone call from Oprah wanting us to be on Oprah. We knew we needed to have more depth of distribution, and it was in the middle of these conversations. So we were able to do a deal with Warner Books and the rest of history, seven and a half plus years in the New York Times bestseller list. That’s phenomenal. Sharon, this is Robert Zellner, by the way. Love your books and so excited to have you on the show. When you were writing the pamphlet for the game, when did it morph into the book? I mean, because that’s a big pamphlet for a game. So you’re starting to write the pamphlet and then at what point did you say, I think this is a book? Well we said we need a brochure, but the brochure became the book. It was really to tell the story and to really be able to give it to people for free and really to have a $15 product that would lead to the $200 board game. That’s why it was not originally published in hardback. It was originally published in paperback. Aha. Now, Sharon, we have a, I know you’ve met probably thousands of people all around the world as you’ve become more of a face, you know, yourself. No longer behind the scenes, you’re out there doing more interviews and being more seen. I’m sure you’ve run into people all around the world who’ve said to you, Sharon, your book really did change and impact my life. Well, we have one listener who’s one of my current clients who’s the head of marketing for Shaw Homes. And if you check it out there, Sharon, it’s a shawhomes.com. It’s the largest home builder in Oklahoma. And he claims now again, he claims now, Sharon, you’ll have to get a hold of at some point to verify this, but he used to deliver pizzas for Domino’s. And he said that the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad changed his life. And he told me, he said, you’re going to interview her? Are you kidding me? He said, so he asked me if I would ask you a question on today’s show. So he wanted to know. First tell me what his first name is. Aaron Antus. Aaron, okay. Aaron Antus, the head of marketing for the largest home builder in Oklahoma, shahomes.com. And Aaron said, he wanted me to ask you, he said, when did you have your aha moment in your life, Sharon, that changed your view of your financial world? When did you, Ms. Sharon Lecter, have your aha moment that changed the way you view the financial world? Well, I think our lives are a series of aha moments, but I think first I want to address Aaron because a lot of people come up to me around the world and say that Rich Dad Poor Dad changed their life. And Aaron, I want to tell you nobody changed your life but you. I’m honored and thrilled that something that I wrote inspired you, gave you the motivation to take action. But I want you to own it. I want you to stand in the fact that you sought out the information, but then you actually took action and employed it. So Rich Dad Poor Dad as a book doesn’t change anybody’s lives. Hopefully it inspires people to take action to change their own lives. But as it relates to me, my financial ah-ha’s, there’s probably been quite a few of them, but the first one probably was having grown up in a very entrepreneurial home. We lived in a house between my dad’s used car lot and my mom’s beauty shop. My dad also owned Orange Grows and rental properties. I swore I would never be an entrepreneur because I grew up in that environment. I was going to go be a partner in a large CPA firm and retire with a gold watch. And I was following that dream. And then when I was on the fast track in Cooper’s and Library in Atlanta, Georgia, and I realized that I was working way too many hours for other people. I said, if I’m going to work this hard, I should be working for myself. And that was in 1979, and that’s really when the entrepreneurial bug bit me, and I’ve never looked back. Now, Sharon, your father, now correct me if I’m wrong, I tried to spend a copious amount of time researching you so that I am well prepared. Maybe some of the things that you hadn’t talked about in some of your books. And I had read, or actually watched an interview you did where you’re talking about I believe your father only had a third grade education in terms of formal education. Yet he went on to teach the engineering school for the United States Navy. Is that accurate? Did I get that wrong? Is that correct? He did. He was born in the hills of Alabama. His father died when he was very young, and so he had no formal education past the third grade. But he joined the Navy as early as he could, and ended up becoming…he was a master chief in the Navy. And his last five years, we were in Great Lakes, and he was running the engineering school for the Navy. Now you actually have sold, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but I could tell, I read, I guess you sold 26 million copies of the Rich Dad books while you were CEO, is that correct? Did you sell 26 million copies of that book? Of the Rich Dad series, yes. Primarily Rich Dad, Poor Dad of course was the greatest one, but yes, globally. And it was in over 50 languages and over 100 countries. Well, so Sharon, you could probably stop, you know? So why are you so passionate about financial literacy? Apparently, you’re doing pretty well. I mean, why are you still continuing to, at the young age you are, continuing to go out there, travel around the world, and passionately teach financial literacy when you could have obviously clearly been done years ago? Well, it’s a true statement. I’ve been financially free for 20 years. But I think what drives us is not necessarily, for me, it’s never been about the money. I believe growing up as a little child, my father would ask me each night if I added value to someone’s life. And I still ask myself that. I lost him in 2006. But I continue to feel that each of us has a responsibility to support others, and I think that I have a gift and a responsibility, that I have the ability to teach people about money, how to change their mindsets about money, how to go from scarcity thinking to abundance, realizing that the opportunity is there. You just need to learn how to teach yourself how to recognize it and seize it and take action. And it was literally, you know, what I’m doing this year with the Play Big movement is really me coming back in to focus on what I want to do. I really thought about retiring last year, and it didn’t sit too well with me. And I said, you know, this is what I’m – I’ve been given a gift and an opportunity, and as long as I can continue supporting people taking control of their financial lives. That’s what I want to do. So I’m back in the game and I’m literally doing it and sharing with people what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and inviting them to come along with me in the Play Big movement. There’s a private Facebook page called the Play Big movement with Sharon Lecter that’s joining it for free. And come along with us. Now, Sharon, you know, we have another one of my clients based in Canada, and he actually is a CPA. His name is Josh. And Josh wanted me to ask you a question because he has an accounting firm that is designed to be very, you know, it’s designed to help their clients, steer their clients financially, not just pay their taxes. They’re based in Canada. And he wanted to know, because he listens to our podcast all the time. He wanted to know, from your perspective as a CPA, where do you see most CPAs missing it when it comes to actually helping their clients? Not just teaching them theory, but where do you see most CPAs, or do you see CPAs missing it when it comes to helping their clients? Well, Josh, I appreciate that question, because I applaud you for going the extra mile. And all CPAs are not created equal. And CPAs, you know, you can fall into the category of being a service provider. Give me your stuff, I’ll do your tax returns, give me your financial records, and I’ll give you financial statements. But a CPA has the opportunity to use their depth of experience of looking at multiple different companies and really becoming true advisor to business owners or to individuals financially and to help steer them in the right direction. All certified public accountants are not personal financial planners. They don’t necessarily have that designation, but many of them do. And so to ask them and to sit down and have them walk you through your tax return, both as a business or as an individual. And to find out things that you should be doing or things that you should stop doing is very important. And I think many CPAs should do that. Many of them do and others don’t. So I applaud Josh for going the extra mile because we have, we bring to the table, my years of public accounting still are a huge benefit to me each and every day because I saw how many companies did it right, but probably even more importantly, I saw the mistakes so many companies made. And it’s a tremendous education and being able to share that education through my books, through my games, through my mentoring is a true gift for me. And so when you are a CPA, you have that experience, you have the opportunity to share that wisdom with your clients. Hopefully they all do, but I know not all of them do. Shep, right behind you there in the Man Cave studios, there’s a book on the top shelf. It’s going to be the very, very top shelf. You’re going to see a book with all these Post-it notes coming out of it. I’d like if you’d take a photo of that, or photos of that, and share that with the listeners on today’s show notes. But before you do that, can you explain to the listeners what you’re looking at there? What book that is? This is Guide to Investing, What the Rich Invest in That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not. Look at that book. It’s Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lecter. And that book was- This thing looks like it could be a miniature version, maybe a small rural town’s phone book. Pretty good size for a book. And I don’t know what you’ve done with this tabbing system here, but there’s tabs, stapled, taped, stuck, highlighted, checkmarked, crossed out, circled, drawings, everything. You’ve got this thing. That book, I tell you, that book, I could not put that thing down. It’s like a grilled stuffed burrito. I wrestled with that book for probably a year. It looks like it wrestled back. I mean, seriously, it was probably, I mean, maybe six months of just reading the same book over and over and over. And that book was a game changer. And what’s so exciting is that Sharon Lecter has agreed to be with us on six shows, Chuck. So we’re going to have her on six separate shows. So if you enjoyed today’s interview, you are definitely not going to want to miss out on the future interviews. So how do you make sure you never miss out on an interview? Well, if you never want to miss out on an interview, just go to the Thrive Time Show on iTunes and then click the subscribe button and after you subscribe you’ll never miss an episode. That’s right. And if you want to get yourself some free conference tickets in the process as the Canadians call it, all you have to do is leave us an objective review on iTunes and email us proof that you did it, a screenshot of your review to info at thrive timeshow.com and we’ll give you two free tickets to the world’s highest rated and one of the world’s best workshops. It’s the Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. But objectively, it has the most reviews and I’m telling you, you’re going to absolutely love it. To learn more about the Thrive Time Show Business Conference and why you’d want to attend, go to thrivetimeshow.com, click on the conference button and there is the information. Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, without any further ado, we always want to end this show with a boom. Chuck, are you emotionally prepared to end with a boom? Hold on a second, here we go. Okay, I’m ready. Three, two, one, boom! Two men, thirteen multi-million dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the Thrivetime Business Coach Radio Show. Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show. Set, arms away. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Conversation. It is the Thrive Time show on your radio and podcast download. Now, Chup, as a business coach, you and I have both worked with a lot of top-level, high-flying entrepreneurs. We’ve also worked with a lot of entrepreneurs that come to us slightly broken. They’re a little bit down and we’ve helped repair them and helped them get into a level of success. Stitches and band-aids and things, yeah. But one of the things people always want to talk about is marketing and branding and sales. But people never want to talk about accounting and bookkeeping. They love that. Feelings and visions. New deals. New deals and growth and build-outs. But no one ever wants to talk about financials. They always want to delegate that. But yet, every single successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met really has a fundamental grasp of the financial aspects of the business. So on today’s show, we’re interviewing a certified public accountant. Check. We’re interviewing a New York Times bestselling author. Check. We’re interviewing the CEO of the Rich Dad Poor Dad organization. Check. We’re interviewing somebody who worked with Robert Kiyosaki to write the 14 books of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Check. We’re talking about the lady who took his idea, which was on a piece of paper to make a board game, Robert Kiyosaki’s idea to make a board game, and turned it into a book empire. Check. We’re talking about a lady who was asked by the National CPA, Financial Literacy Commission, to serve as their national spokesperson. This is the same council that served both President Bush and President Obama. Check. This is a lady who has a team of over 5,000 people who help her with her various entrepreneurial projects. 5,000. That’s a lot. Check. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a person here who’s written Napoleon Hill’s or she helped recraft Napoleon Hill’s book, Outwitting the Devil. You see, Napoleon Hill wrote a book, the manuscript for Outwitting the Devil, in the 1930s. But when the best-selling self-help author of all time went to release it, his wife told him not to because she thought it was too controversial. And so years later, Sharon Lecter revived the manuscript and helped her release Outwitting the Devil. Check! She also helped to write Think and Grow Rich for Women. Check. She also helped to release the Napoleon Hill book, Three Feet from Gold. Check. Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest is bona fide. She’s an unbelievable author, a dynamic speaker, a top-level entrepreneur, which indicates that she does not know who I am, because if she did, she would not have agreed to be on today’s show. So ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, our exclusive interview with Sharon Lechter. And she’s teaching you why you just cannot delegate your financials. Now as far as the financials, look at the numbers. Sharon, very few entrepreneurs, I mean we have a ton of people that attend our workshops. When they come to the workshops, and Dr. Z, you’ve seen this. People want to talk about marketing, the vision, sales, and then they want to go back to talking about the vision, marketing, and then sales. Then, Sharon, sometimes they’ll go back to the vision and then back to sales and then back to marketing. But you have to know your numbers. And I’ve heard you talk at length about this, but I’d like for you to share with the listeners about why you can’t abdicate your financials and why you can delegate them to a certain extent, but why you as the owner of the company have to be aware of what is going on financially. Can you coach us? Certainly. And I can’t agree with you more. You do a webinar or a seminar on sales and you sell out. You do a webinar or a seminar on understanding your financials, and it’s hard to get people in their seats. God, I belong here. Because it doesn’t sound exciting. Crickets. But at the end of the day, your numbers tell a story and you’re creating that story. So if your story isn’t going the way you want it to go, the sooner you know about it, the better. So it’s very important for entrepreneurs. And sometimes, you can’t be the one doing the numbers because you want to focus on growing your business, but you need to make sure you have the right people on your team. But you always need to know your numbers and you need to have a dashboard or something so that you’re constantly on it. As I sit at my desk right now speaking to you, I have my accountants outside working on some things for me. They know that I need to, you know, at any given time, I know what kind of accounts I have, I know what kind of money I have just because of my years of experience. a CPA, that’s obviously important to me, but it’s more important to me as a CEO. If you own your company, if you don’t know what the numbers are telling you, then you can get a very rude surprise. And it’s very important for people to understand the importance of understanding the income statement, which is telling you over a period of time how you’re doing it, and then also to understand your balance sheet, which tells you basically like a snapshot of the day and time, showing you what your assets and liabilities are and how those two play together are very important. Sharon, I see, it’s painful for me to see it. And as a coach, and I write for Forbes, and so I have a certain platform, but you have one of the biggest platforms in the world. So I’d like for you to maybe give the tough lesson to the entrepreneurs out there listening who are saying, yeah, I know accounting, I know I need to know my balance sheet, and I know I need to know the income statement, but I don’t because my accountant handles that. Could you give us the tough love for somebody out there who is refusing to know their numbers? I’m sure you’ve met people like this before. Well, they know the stat of the number of businesses fail in the first three years, and the primary reason they fail is lack of capital, lack of funding, and lack of financial management. And what happens is, you know, those entrepreneurs that fall into that category play are the ones who put their head in the sand. And they think that if they just drive faster and they make more sales, everything’s going to be okay. The issue is unless you understand the whole picture and you understand what your margins are, understand what the bottom line is, you can’t really grow your business. And, you know, people that are losing a nickel on something say, if I can just sell more of them, I’ll be okay. No, you’re just going to lose that much more money. You have to understand the cash flow. And so it’s not just understanding that you’re selling a lot, but you need to understand when that money’s coming in and when you have to spend money in order to make the product. So let’s say you sell a million dollars’ worth of product. Well, you have to have that product in your inventory, or you have to have the money to build it so that you can collect a million dollars. And so you probably need a lot of that cash up front. And so what happens is business owners who don’t pay attention to that end up having to go to very expensive money factoring those receivables to be able to pay for the inventory and they get themselves further into debt, further into problems. And instead of feeling good about being successful, that success costs them their business because they have not paid attention to the numbers, to the cash flow and the timing of that cash flow. You know, our show, we’re all about teaching listeners specific action steps they can take. And so I want to take a second to brag on a listener that’s actually doing this properly. But Erin, who I mentioned earlier with Shaw Homes, one of the things that gives them an unfair advantage over their competition is that they know the costs of the materials. So like when the cost of plywood went up drastically recently, Sharon, they know that. And so they were able to quote the clients accurately. And they don’t get to the end of the, when you finish the home, you close on the home, the new buyer moves into the home, they don’t have to tell the buyer, oops, it’s going to cost more money. And they don’t run out of cash. So I’d like for you to put on a little mini seminar here about what we need to know about cash flow. Because Shaw Homes knows cash flow. They know their expenses. That’s why they can quote people a price and honor it. But their competition, I mean, if you go online and read the Google reviews, there are so many reviews by customers complaining about the bait and switch move. I don’t think people are, the other builders are dishonest as much as they just don’t know their numbers. Can you talk to us about cash flow and just kind of cash flow that I just mentioned because it doesn’t, you don’t build a house overnight. And so they have to have the financing to get that house done knowing that the payoff is in the future. And when that payoff comes in, hopefully it’s going to have not only pay off their expenses but give them the profit on top of it. And those expenses include all those materials you’re talking about but even more so the labor of all the people on their team. And so just as in when I talk about cash flow, I want to take a minute about materials. So we talk about just-in-time ordering. So when they’re building that house, they can’t put plumbing in until the time, they have to have the plumbing in before they can pour the concrete over it. Those things have to come in, there’s a stage in which you have things done. You can’t have the roofers waiting to put the roof on when it’s not ready for them. And so each stage of process of building a home has to be timed appropriately so that you have the minimum cost of labor for the people and technicians doing their job. And that has to be perfectly timed. And so that takes talent. That takes people who know what they’re doing. But it also, underlying, takes that expert, that individual understanding what every minute of that costs them. So when they have a delay, or they have products not, you know, the lumber isn’t there, they have a week delay in lumber, they have to recalculate and find out what that’s going to cost them to make sure they’re always working to their budget, to make sure they have the profit that they’re expecting at the end of the day. You know, people, we talk about remodels as the homeowner, all right? You always say it’s, you know, it’s always going to take another, you know, several months past what they promise. It’s a guarantee, and it’s going to cost you more than what you originally commit to because you’re going to have surprises. And that’s something that is, can be very painful, but that’s those unexpected things. Every business has unexpected things. The issue is the sooner you find out about them, the sooner you can plan and recover. And that’s all about cash flow. And cash flow comes with, from the moment you start your business, one of the things that can kill you is that you think you have sales and the sales are there, but you don’t have to, it’s gonna take you 60 to 90 days to collect on those sales. Well, you have to have the cash to be able to build the product, as I said earlier. Well, what happens when all of a sudden you’re hugely successful, and you have a huge order that comes in, and you don’t have the ability to respond to that order? Your business can crumble. And that’s why it’s so important to always have a pulse on your cash flow, not just your income and expenses, but also the cash flow, which is the timing of that. That’s why when Fortune 500 companies, they do an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement, so that you can see what’s happening within the business. Because the assets could go up because they’ve got outdated inventory. You know that when you start looking at the cash flow statements. Now one of the things that you have created that was powerful for me as a young whippersnapper, Sharon, the year would be 1999 I believe. This is maybe, because you wrote the book in 95, is that correct? You and Robert came out with the book in 95? Well, we published it in April of 97. 97, okay, so the year is 1999. Dr. Zellner can vouch for me here. I dressed like Eminem. I had no idea what I was doing. Sharon and I went on to build the largest wedding entertainment company in the country called DJConnection.com. We did 4,000 events per year at the peak before I sold it. But I’m there working in a call center. I’m reading this book, the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and at some point you’re talking about this cash flow quadrant concept. I’m not sure how refined it was at that point. It was probably 2001 when I really started paying attention to the book and really understanding it. So it’s 2001, so I might have even read Cashflow Quadrant. But you talked about, there’s this quadrant, and you said to me directly like it was yesterday, you said, Clay, you start off as an employee, step one. I’m going, oh, that’s good, that’s good. Step two, you become self-employed, you own your job. And I’m going, yeah, that’s awesome. Step three, you own a business where other people work at the business. It creates jobs for others and time freedom for you. And then step four, you become an investor. And I realized I am an employee and I can’t afford to become self-employed yet. I now must get three jobs. So I worked at Target, Applebee’s, and Direct TV. My wife worked at Office Depot and Oral Roberts University. I turned off my air conditioning, Ms. Sharon. You caused me to turn off my air conditioning. It is your fault and your credit. So it was very hot in Oklahoma in June and July. We had no air conditioning, it was hot. And I’m reinvesting in myself, but I didn’t quit my day job until I could afford to become self-employed. Can you walk us through those four steps about being an employee and when it’s time to make the jump to become self-employed and what it looks like to become a business owner? Just walk us through your cash flow quadrant. Well, the cash flow quadrant, if you imagine just across the top left corner is E for employee, the bottom left is S for self-employed. And so that left side of the quadrant, that’s what school teaches us. You know, that’s how we are taught. And that’s exchanging your time for money as an employee or self-employed individual or even a small business owner who really owns a job, not a business. The right side of the quadrant, the top right corner, is B for business. And that’s where you have systems, you have other people working for you. And the real test of whether you’re on S or B, as a B, you own a business. If you walked away and came back in six months, it would still be operating. It’s not dependent on you being there. So you totally own an asset, and that asset is the business, and the business is being run by systems and people. And then you have investor is the bottom right, and investor is where your money is working for you, whether you’re invested in real estate or in the stock market or in IRAs, whatever that is, that’s your money working for you. So your personal business is your personal financial statement. When you put money into your asset column, they’re like employees working for you. Those are your investments. And you want, you know, every wealthy person in the world has one thing in common, they own investments, they own assets, and those assets work for them. So on the right side of the quadrant, school doesn’t teach us how to be business owners, school doesn’t teach us how to be investors. We learn that through the real world education or through the world of hard knocks. As I sit here today on this phone call, I live in all four quadrants. The vast majority of my income comes as an investor and a business owner, but I’m still an employee of my own corporation. I still am self-employed. When I go out and speak, I get a speaker’s fee, and that’s the left side of the quadrant. But I want more and more of my income to come from the right side because that’s not me working for money, it’s my assets working for money, business owners and investors. And so you don’t have to be an only one, you want to be. Everyone wants to have money as investors that are working for you, and have a business owner. And if you own real estate, that’s a business. You are in the business of real estate. So all of those things work together. And your ability to earn money on the left side as an employee or a self-employed person is finite. You only have so many hours, so many days in a week. However, on the right side, as a business owner and as an investor, your ability to make money is infinite. I think a lot of people get stuck there in that self-employed area where their ability to earn is limited. It is finite. They get stuck there. Why do people get stuck there, Sharon? How can we, you’ve helped people get unstuck in that area. What’s that doom loop where people are stuck in that self-employed area? Well, I think a lot of times you start getting so busy working in your business, you forget to work on your business. People feel like they have to do everything on their own. They don’t bring in the talent to help them grow their business. I mean, in order to be able to go from a small business to a big business, you have to have systems. And when you do everything yourself, it’s going to be hard to grow. And nobody’s going to ever be doing it exactly the way you want to. But if you create the system, obviously, we can think of the most perfect example. McDonald’s everywhere. The owner is not there. It’s run by teenagers, and it’s done that because the systems are so ironclad that all that somebody has to do is follow the systems. And that’s the ideal of going from a small business to a big business. A big business has systems, and you manage the systems, not necessarily the people. And you have people working for you, your systems are working for you, other people’s money. And that’s what really gets you out of a small business to a large business. Now maybe as a small business, you’re a doctor or you’re a lawyer, so how do you do that? Well, you hire other doctors or other lawyers, and you start building a practice around it so that you have the ability to earn, have systems on how the operations are being handled, and you make a percentage off the other doctors and lawyers. You’re taking the overhead and your ability to grow and leverage. In order to, you might have a very successful small business, but a successful small business can only scale and therefore be sustainable if it has systems. I feel like the systems involve checklists, processes, workflows, and sharing their things. They’re so boring. I mean, they’re not vision. They’re not sales. They’re not marketing. I mean, the systems thing, I’m kind of a sick freak in that I actually enjoy making systems because I like the results, and I think I also just like the process of making systems. But I think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race, and they’re not even looking for a way out. Why do you feel like a lot of people get stuck and they’re not even, I mean, before they’ll be, I think people will come up to you at a seminar, they’re 45 years old, and they’ve been stuck in the rat race for 20 years, and then it just occurred to them for the first time at your seminar that it is possible to get out of the rat race. Why do you think people don’t even try to get out of the rat race? What, is it just they don’t know, or they’re overwhelmed, or what, you’ve seen it probably more up close than I have. Why do you think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race? Well, sometimes we get in a world of comfort and that comfort turns into complacency. And even though we’re not where we wanna be, we’re able to pay our bills and we can put our head on the pillow at night. And we end up just getting too comfortable. What happens is a lot of times we have a crisis and we get thrown into chaos and we end up having to become creative again and that gives us the ability to have a bigger vision. The whole concept of understanding what’s possible. I think a huge issue is your environment. Are you hanging out with other people that are in that same category? People who are just getting by, people who are on the rat race. And if that’s the environment you’re putting yourself in, then it seems normal, right? If you want to get out of that environment, then you need to put yourself in an environment with people who are really striving for success, because they can help you. And most of the time, school certainly teaches us to do it on our own. And so, you know, we come out in the business world and we think we have to do everything on our own. And it’s so important that we realize that you have the right people around you, the right team, the right peer network. We have the opportunity to really grow more quickly. The right mentor. Mentors are priceless because they’ve been successful where you want to go. And they can help speed your way to success by opening doors, steering you around the pitfalls. And there’s a difference between a mentor and a coach. A coach may not have that success, but they know what you want to do and they can help you be accountable and make sure you stay on track. All right. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to bring up my good friend Ryan Wimpy, my good friend Ryan Wimpy, and his dog, Odin, this dog has the ability to eat me, so I’m sort of concerned. I’ll pass the mic to you. And Odin, you can have your own mic if you want, whatever you want, Odin. Okay. I’m a little bit afraid of Odin. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey, and the name of our business is Kip Top Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training, and that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training jobs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic, their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment, spirit grind. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35 percent. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for email, scripts for text message, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done. We’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and producing your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing. When you already have something that’s your core focus, you already know how to do it. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team? We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one, and their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean really ride them to get stuff done, and stuff is done so fast here. There’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. It’s great. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The goal setting, while it’s not like it’s somewhat basic stuff, making sure we have different goals for every part of your life is super important. Also the linear workflow. The linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards. It’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps. It breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand. It’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely… It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars, so you’re missing the thought process of someone who’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches. Getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold us like half the conference, and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall, and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you, shut up, and go with the presentation that we paid for, and that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, that makes me angry. So, glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. My name is Rachel Wimpey and I’m originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ve really, I mean I’ve learned so much, my head, I feel like it’s about to explode, but a lot that I’ve taken away from it is the working on your business instead of in your business because I have the tendency to just want to do it all myself. And that’s one thing that Clay really teaches us to have systems in place that you don’t have to be there running it and your business can actually run without you. It’s just awesome. It’s like the entrepreneur playground. It’s amazing here. So it’s really awesome. I mean, a fun atmosphere, lots of cool stuff, lots of fun quotes. It’s just a really cool place to be. Clay’s presentation and his style is so different than most. It’s been really one-on-one. He takes the time to just kind of answer your questions about your business rather than just a generic answer. He’ll personalize it for different people’s businesses because everybody’s is different, but at the same time you implement those very same systems that he’s discovered throughout all of the businesses he’s ran and it’s just a lot of good information, really good presentation. When you, if you don’t come, you’re just going to be missing out on so much. So much actually knowledge that’s applicable, rather than just accounting information. It’s just very hands-on. The Thrive15 conference has been great because there is no real upsell. He’s not pushing anything down our throats. I’ve gone to different conferences before where my husband and I have been upsold over and over and over again, and they’ve just been pushing that down our throats and it’s um I mean you know how it is it’s annoying and so there’s none of that here it’s been really nice most business conferences are very very expensive and to just go and then get sold again to spend even more money and this one’s very affordable it’s definitely worth it it’ll completely change your mindset it’ll completely change your mindset about you know just working your business, working your business, working your business, to actually being a business owner and actually being able to apply all that knowledge that you will learn here. It’s going to change your business. It’s going to bring you from you know where you thought you could go to higher. It’s very, you should definitely do it. You should definitely check it out I’m Ryan. I’m the founder of tip-top canine, and this is my wife Rachel, and I’m the I first got started in the dog training business because I had a dog that I could do a million tricks with and if I open The front door he’d run away. So I started looking for an answer, something that would actually work and that’s how we got hooked up doing what we’re doing right now. What excites me about dog training is I get so many calls all the time from people not able to have their family or friends over because their dog is jumping on them or barking at them, whether they’re aggressive or just don’t have manners. I mean, so many times I get calls. They’re so fed up, they’re not enjoying their dog anymore. And that’s what we do. We come in and we get to fix those problems so not only they can enjoy their dog but also their family and friends can come over and enjoy their dog. Yeah, exactly. We love seeing people, they have this dog, it’s a nuisance, and it goes back to being their best friend. That’s why they got the dog in the first place so they could enjoy it and if it’s totally out of control, they can’t. So we love seeing people enjoy their dog, love their dog, being able to have people over again because the dog is terrorizing all their guests. We love seeing people enjoy their dog again. What Tiptop Canine does that’s different from most dog training companies is we actually come out for the first time for only a dollar. We’ll customize our package that will best suit you and your family, your time, your schedule, your budget, and then if you’re not happy with the results, we’ll actually give your money back. People should consider using us because first, your first lesson is only a dollar, which is a no-brainer. You can’t lose. Second, they should consider using us because we have guarantees. We guarantee results or your money back. And third, we get exceptional results. We’re going to get tons of control in just a few weeks. We’re going to fix almost all of your behavioral issues in just a few weeks or your money back. If you’re watching the video right now, fill out one of our contact forms. Your first lesson is only a dollar and we’re excited to hear from you. The location in South Lake, Texas, probably 15 miles from here where we’re at right now, their biggest month last year was $63,000. Wow! It’s a cool way of franchising. And they started out of their house in the South Lake, Texas. Oh, and it’s all publicly disclosed, so we have to give everyone an item 19. Is this on your website at TipTopK9? They can go to TipTopK9.com and request the information, and I’ll send it to them. They just have to be in a non-communist state. You can’t send it to the communist states like California and New York. Outside of that, it’s good. Yeah, outside of that. So yeah, we have people that did it completely owner-operator. They just want to do it by themselves out of their house. And they’re able to do $12,000 to $18,000 a month gross just by themselves no real business just doing it loving what they’re doing. That is remarkable. Training dogs. We’ve had multiple people leave six digit incomes, salespeople, mortgage broker, graphic designer to come do it and it’s so rewarding. People wake up passionate about what they’re doing. It’s awesome. You know Thrive Nation years ago I had a young lady in my office by the name of Kat and Kat was a graphic designer and I was working with a client that was training dogs. So if you could picture this, folks, I’m working with a company that’s training dogs. And I have an employee by the name of Kat. And Kat asked me, she said, Clay, with this tip-top canine business that you’re helping to grow and franchise, I’m seeing the growth. I might be interested in opening a tip-top canine franchise. And that’s kind of how that conversation went, is how I can remember. But I wanted to interview the man married to the cat, Adam Stockdall. Welcome on to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Oh, doing great. Like, always good to talk to you. Hey, so how did you, can you kind of tell the story of how you first heard about a Tip Top Canine Franchise opportunity? Yeah, that was about five, six years ago. I, my wife, Kat, talked me into getting a cute little puppy, and that cute little puppy decided to use me as a chew toy. So at the same time, she was working on some marketing materials for Top K9, the original location in Tulsa. And it wasn’t too long after that, that we hired them to train our own dog. And when Ryan was over, I was very impressed with the services, the company in general. And I actually said to him, and he can verify this, at the consultation I said, you know, I think I’m in the wrong business. So six, seven months later when I heard through you that they were looking to expand through the franchise model, it wasn’t too hard a decision for me to say, sign me up. Now you own the Tip Top K9 franchise, what are the territories that you own at this point, the cities or the territories that you guys have rights to? Yeah, so we have four main service areas all within the Dallas-Fort Worth area. First one that we opened up about five years ago was the Southlake location. Southlake, Texas, just for you out-of-towners, that is between Dallas and Fort Worth. So you have Fort Worth on the west, you got Dallas on the east. So Southlake is to the north, even though it says south, north of Dallas and Fort Worth in the middle. And before becoming a Tip Top K9 franchise owner, you were in the mortgage business, is that correct? That is correct. And so my understanding is, after, I know you guys asked me a lot of questions about it, I know your wife asked me a lot of questions about it. You guys met with Ryan and Rachel and you decided to move forward. Can you kind of explain what those six weeks of hands-on training was like? Because there’s somebody out there listening right now that’s maybe thinking about buying a Tip Top K9 franchise, and they should know what that experience was like. What were those first six weeks of hands-on dog training like? Yeah, Clay. So, Tip Top K9 has a training service that they call Doggy Boot Camp, where they take your dog and train them intensively for several weeks, and then they come back a different and better dog. I’d say it’s the exact same way, same process the franchisees go through. It’s definitely a boot camp. It is morning to night. It is six days a week for about six weeks. But by the end of that, you’re gonna be very comfortable with the training process and you’re gonna feel like you are well equipped to go out and start training dogs on your own. So you did this, and Rachel and Ryan, I mean, I feel like they do a great job training people on how to train dogs. And they really, Ryan does a really good job teaching the sales aspect of it. And you do a great job because you come from a sales background. So you’re down there in Texas now. And for somebody out there that’s thinking about owning a tip-top, once you know how to train a dog, and you’ve paid all the money up front to auto-wrap your car and to go to the six weeks of training, now you’re down in Texas, you’re running the business, and I really wanted to identify what you believe to be the maybe the three or four biggest drivers of the growth, because my understanding, I could be wrong, but I think your official title this year is you were the Franchise of the Year both this year and last year. Is that accurate? Out of the years they’ve been doing the Franchise of the Year award, we’ve won half of them. Okay, so we got this past year, then the year before that. Okay, so you were this year’s Franchise of the Year. What do you believe to be like the four things that you have to do on a weekly basis beyond training dogs that allows your location to not only survive, but to thrive? Yeah, so number one, it just, the most important underlying theme in all this is going to be consistency. So the thing that I really loved about the Tip Top K9 model is that you do not have to arrange your own calendar. We have a scheduling center that’s going to call and book leads for you and set up your schedule every day. And really half the battle, especially when you’re starting out, is just showing up. The dog training world is not, on average, a super sophisticated crowd. So if you just show up to your appointment, you’re already in the top 20% of the dog training world. So showing up, being consistent, being on time, being where you say you’re going to be when you say you’re going to be there, that would be the first thing. Second of all is being able to effectively train people. It’s one thing, this is a, it’s a very physically challenging business. You’re only going to be able to do so much on your own, you’re going to have to hire people. And the faster you train those people, the faster you’re going to be able to grow. So one, be consistent, be lead by example, do what you say you’re going to do. Two is train people. Three is assisting the office lead generation. There’s a lot being taken care of on the back end. We’re doing a lot, Clayton’s team is doing a lot of search engine optimization. The team is booking incoming calls. How you’re going to help with that is by going around to places that can refer you dog training and just, once again, being consistent with those relationships. So that looks like veterinarians, for example. You’re going into veterinarians’ offices. You’re saying hi. You’re doing that for a couple weeks in a row. Then you’re asking to sit down with the vet, talk to them about the training, and then you’re going to start getting referrals. And just the past week in one of our locations, we got four vet referrals, and that’s just in one of our four locations. So that’s a big driver of business. And then, you know, just putting in the time. When you’re starting out, it is a pretty grueling schedule. It’s 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. And if you don’t have somebody to help you work in those hours, then those are the hours you’re working. So it’s by no means easy money, but if you do it right and you approach it with the right mindset, it can be very good money. Now what would happen if you stopped doing the group interview every week? And on part two of today’s show, we’re going to talk about the group interview process. What would happen if you stopped doing the weekly group interview? Yeah, so if we stopped doing the weekly group interview, we would be totally fine for about two months. And then we would start having natural turnover. Maybe somebody was good, maybe they’re not good anymore. And then if you don’t have somebody to replace them, then now you are having to do their job. And if you’re doing their job, nobody is doing your job, which is training people. So you’re going to find yourself trying to do two jobs, and then somebody else is going to drop it. You’ll be doing three jobs, and you’re just not going to be able to find good people to come in. If you’re not doing the group interview, you’re going to hire somebody out of desperation. It’s going to be the wrong person, and you’re just going to exacerbate that turnover problem. Now what if you stopped getting Google reviews from your happy customers? I mean, you guys are very consistent at gathering objective reviews from happy customers. What would happen if you stopped getting Google reviews? Yeah, so there’s a very specific type of person that’s going to leave a Google review without asking, and those typically are not the people you want leading Google reviews. That is what you’re going to get by default. That is gravity. That is pulling you down. What you need are the rocket boosters of intentionally gathering reviews from your real and happy customers in order to launch you into orbit. The next is video reviews. You guys do a great job gathering video reviews from your happy customers. And what I’ve heard from many of the franchisees, because I talk to many of you every week, is that potential buyers will come to you already convinced that Tip Top K9 is the right choice if they’ve read enough reviews and watched the video reviews. What impact does video reviews play in the business itself? Yeah, so video reviews just puts a face to the name. You know, we have hundreds and hundreds, I think between our locations, we have over a thousand five-star Google reviews. And I still get people at a consultation be like, yeah, but do you have any references, right? And it’s one thing to see a name with a review next to it, it’s another name to see the face of somebody talking at you. So the video reviews, it gives you more of that personal feel of somebody’s story. You get to see that they’re a real person with a real dog that’s really trained. Now the Dream 100, again, this is where you make a list of your ideal and likely referral sources, dog groomers, veterinarians. What would happen if you never visited the Dream 100 list by default, what would happen? Yeah, so there are, there’s a lot of people that are going to find you online on Google. If you get all your reviews and you have good search engine optimization, you’re gonna dominate the search results. There is a significant portion of your market that just isn’t relying on Google for this type of thing. So people really love their dogs. It’s a very emotional topic. So, with emotional topics, people are talking to their friends, other people they trust. The veterinarians are a big source of trust. So, if you are not getting those veterinarian groomer referrals, you’re not aligning yourself with these authorities in the space, then those people are just never going to hear about you because it doesn’t even occur to them to go online and search about this because they’re going to ask their vet who to go through. Now both you and I are very efficient individuals, so we typically, when we hop on a weekly coaching call, I mean if it needs to be longer, it’s longer, but it’s usually like a touch point, like a 10-minute, like let’s make sure things are not drifting. How important is it to have somebody like Andrew who’s following up every week just to make sure that videos get uploaded, that the ads are running? How important is that weekly call to keep things running? Yeah, I mean, there’s really no substitute for it. I mean, you check on things you care about, right? And I care about the business, so that’s just our time to really make sure we’re being accountable for our portion of things. Accountability is a huge part of this because, yeah, it’s easy to just get busy and let these things drift over time. Now, I have worked in the franchise space quite a bit outside of tip-top canine. I’ve worked with brands like Oxifresh or EXP Realty. I’ve worked with UPS franchises. I’ve worked with just a lot of them. And what I find is a lot of times there are certain franchise programs that have like a quarterly coaching call. So like you basically talk to your coach once a quarter or once a month. Why do you believe it’s an important thing for the culture to have kind of a weekly touch point as opposed to a quarterly or monthly touch point? Yeah, so I am involved in several businesses and every business I’m involved in, there is a weekly call because I would not be involved in a business that did not have a weekly touch point. Especially during the startup phase, it’s vital because if you’re doing something wrong, you’re going to be able to catch it early and correct it. So make, go ahead. Yeah, you seriously, if it’s weekly, you can catch it early and correct it, is that what you’re saying? Yes, yeah. If you’re going off course, it’s better to go off course a little bit than a lot. Now, the other thing I wanted to bring up is I knew your wife very well because she worked in the office, and she knew me because she worked on my payroll. You know, so we had that friendship there and also that camaraderie. You were kind of the wild card. I didn’t quite know about you, but your wife was like, no, he’s a great guy. And so – but when you’re looking into – when we’re working in my case, I’m looking into selling a franchise to you. I don’t want to sell a franchise to somebody that won’t put in the work. On your case, as a buyer, you don’t want to buy a franchise system that won’t work. What were some of the decision points that you went through to decide whether buying a tip-top canine was right for you? One thing I definitely wanted, really one of the huge driving factors of decision for me was the scheduling center at Tip Top K9. So with me being coming from mortgage industry, I was the front line. Somebody had questions, somebody needed to talk to somebody. That was me they were talking to. And it made it difficult to focus on my work because I was just fielding calls all day. With Tip Top K9, you do have a scheduling center there for you. They’re talking to customers, they’re collecting payments, they’re doing a lot of the day-to-day administrative stuff that would really just take hours out of your day and bog you down. So the fact that we had that at our disposal, already included in the franchise fee, was just absolutely massive. So and just kind of recap, and I want to make sure the listeners out there get this if they’re thinking about buying a tip-top canine. The key drivers to success is, you know, one, you’re saying you wouldn’t be involved in an organization if it didn’t have a weekly call for accountability. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Second is, you really, the call center was a big appeal for you. Is that correct? I mean, you knew we wanted to have a call center that handles a lot of admin? Oh, huge. Yeah. Okay. Three, you got the group interview. Four, you got the Google reviews. Five, you got the video reviews. Six, you got that Dream 100 marketing. And then seven, our team runs the online ads for you to make sure that they’re never off and to make sure the retargeting ads are happening. We’re also writing search engine content for you behind the scenes. How valuable is it to do that as opposed to you having to write search engine content every day? Oh, it would be impossible. It wouldn’t get done. I can just tell you, like, there’s no world in which myself or really any other franchisee trying to run this kind of business would be able to do that. And then Andrew is not here, so we can say something nice about him and we’ll see if he watches this show, we’ll find out. But Andrew has been on my team for years, I know he loves serving you guys, but how would you describe what it’s like to have a person, like a point person like Andrew, to kind of help you with the account if there’s a burning fire. Yeah, so it’s really nice to know that you have somebody that’s on your team and is knowledgeable enough. He’s seen it before, right? So if you come on, you buy a tip-top canine franchise, you’re not the first one. The problems, any issues you run into, you’re not going to be the first one having these issues. Andrew’s seen it before and he’s been able to help other locations through it before. So just having that experience on your side is huge. It just gives you a little bit of peace of mind. Now, we do have a lot of listeners that are in the Texas area. So again, what are the cities you cover? If anybody out there is listening, has a dog they want to have you guys train? Yeah, for sure. Pretty much anywhere on the north side of Dallas, Fort Worth. So we’ve got all of Fort Worth. We’ve got South Lake, which is kind of between Dallas and Fort Worth. Then we’ve got McKinney and Frisco, which are on the north side of Dallas. Adam, I really do appreciate you. You’ve been a great friend, and it’s wonderful to see you and your wife thriving. Congratulations again on winning the Franchise of the Year again, and I appreciate your diligence. It’s fun to work with you, sir. We’ll talk to you soon. All right, thanks, Mac. We’ll see you. Take care. Oh, look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. All right, Nation, on today’s show, I’m very excited for you to hear this success story about this wonderful couple that, Sean, I would describe them as they are killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible. They’re killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible. They are blowing up in a good way. Folks, I’m telling you, these folks are really growing their business, and what makes them great is they’re really kind, hardworking, diligent people, and we’re honored to serve them. We’ve got Jenny and Mike here joining us. Jenny and Mike, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you two? Hi, thank you. Good, we’re doing well. Okay, now I’ll start with you, Jenny, because frankly, Sean likes you more, no, I’m just kidding. So, how did you first discover us and the business coaching that we provide? So I was listening to different podcasts about business. I was starting up our business, and so you were the first one to pop up on our podcast on Apple. I think Apple is what I was on. And so I started listening to you. I got on your website, and I was just a little girl starting a business, and I said, I’m going to ask this guy to be my coach, and I don’t think I’m going to get a shot. But sure enough, within a week, you called me. Now who is this cute, cute child here? But Micah, who is this cute kid here? It’s Lennon Rose. She is about to be 10 months old. I hate to do this to you, but can you kind of hold up the baby to the camera a little bit? This is probably… Oh, look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. Okay. So, so, Micah, can you tell us, what’s the name of your website there? I think people want to look you up and verify you’re real people that don’t just happen to have a cute baby. Yeah, our website is newconcept.healthcare. Newconcept.healthcare. So newconcept.healthcare. I’m going to pull it up right now, folks, so we can all verify that they’re not just a couple who’s taking advantage of the cute baby they have to get a podcast here. This is a real couple because I’m pulling it up here. So this is the website. It’s newconcept.healthcare. And can you tell our listeners what services do you guys provide at new concept? dot health care So we offer more functional medicine. So we offer IV therapies. We offer hormone replacement therapies We also do acute care we do pretty much everything but we’re very much alternative so we believe in medical freedom and That’s what we offer. And you guys, you reached out. Do you remember that initial consultation there? Do you remember, Mike, that initial consultation? Do you remember what that was like? Yeah, it was actually pretty overwhelming that we started in this business with absolutely nothing and we had the opportunity to work with a five-time share. Well, you know, the one thing I always try to do is, you know, my father, great guy, may he rest in peace. He worked his tail off like so many people do, and there was no real economic result that was achieved from it. There wasn’t any, you know, he had a college degree, he’s working two jobs. I remember he’s late 30s, he’s working at Domino’s delivering pizzas, working at Quick Trip, he worked at furniture stores. And I always try to look at every new client we have as though I’m talking to my dad, you know, because like, what would my dad, you know, what could he have learned at the age of 37 that could have changed the financial trajectory of his life? You know, I try to look at it that way. And so you guys, I paired you up with Sean. You’ve been working with Sean, I believe, Sean, since October of 2020. Is that correct, Sean? I think that’s when they started their business. It wasn’t until about April of 2021. So April of 2021. And at that point, from that point to now, Sean, how much growth have you guys achieved from 2021 to now? Do you know that number? Yeah, I mean, we’re sitting at 2023 revenues were $821,000. And there in October of 2020, they only had a few months. They made about $95,000. And we continued to grow there ever since, all the way up to where we’re getting close to the million dollar mark at this point here, just like three years in. Jenny, how would you describe the growth? Would you say you’ve doubled? Are you five times larger? How would you describe that? Oh, no, I definitely feel the growth. There’s been some growing pains, and you guys have helped us through that too. So it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing to help people because that’s what I’m passionate about. And you guys have really helped us expand and tell people what we’re about. So step one here, we do this with all the clients. I’m going to walk people through the steps. We really needed to nail down your branding. And that’s a big thing because, you know, branding is to humans what clothing is. So, as an example, you know, you wake up today, folks, if you run around and you’re streaking through life, you’re probably not going to get a lot of conversations started. So we all have to be intentional about, you know, what are we going to wear? Are we going to wear a tie? Are we going to wear a polo? Are we going to do makeup? Are we not? So people, they judge us based on our appearance. And so we really had to get a website built. We had to optimize the online brand. Jenny, we do it all included for our clients, so we don’t refer you to another vendor. We do it all. Can you talk about the impact that that has made on the business? Oh, for sure. Just the website itself, it looks so great. We would have never been able to make it look that great. The way y’all optimize everything and keep us with Google, just where people search us and we’re the first people that come up. And that’s actually how we’ve established our business and started offering some of the things that we offer is because of the tags that we have. I didn’t originally start off as doing IV therapy, but due to people Googling, you know, health care functional medicine, I had three phone calls in a week that said, hey, do you offer IV therapy? And it was very interesting. And I was like, well, no, but I can. And so it was because of you guys that that kind of snowballed and took effect. So yeah, there’s a lot that you guys have done for us. Now, Sean, we’re working with these wonderful clients here. I’ll pick on Mike here. You know, you always say great things about Mike and Jenny. What makes them good to work with? Because I want to make sure for anybody out there, if you go to thrive timeshow.com, I consistently offer a free 13-point assessment. I’ve been doing that since 2005. I do it without reservation. There’s no obligation. But there’s usually about one to two knuckleheads a week that will fill out the form and probably 20 really great people that fill out the form. And then we only take on 160 clients. So I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What makes Mike so great to work with? Well, Clay, I mean, you, when I first started coaching, you taught me about these, you know, these two types of business owners. There’s the happy hopers out there and then there’s the diligent doers. I think these guys are a great example of the diligent doer. They continually apply effort to work on their business, not just in their business. They consistently show up to their meetings. They track all of the critical numbers of their business. They’re aware of what’s going on with all of their employees. They’re paying attention to all the little things going on. They’re keeping all the plates spinning, and they ask great questions. They actually really do make a great effort consistently to apply our systems and help their business grow. It’s been working. So step one, we get the branding nailed down. That’s the website, the print pieces, the logos, the business cards. But then you have to develop that online reputation. Now, that can be a tough thing to do, Jenny. And I’ll just, I’m not, this isn’t a backhand compliment. I’m just saying, but for people that are humble and very kind of which I would put Jenny in that category, sometimes asking for reviews is more difficult because you almost feel like you’re self-promoting. I’ve never had this conversation with you, but when you, has that been difficult for you to ask people to give you video reviews and Google reviews after you provided the service or was that easy for you to do? It was not, it’s not easy. It still isn’t easy. It’s difficult because you feel like you’re begging for something even though you know you did the right thing. So it is difficult for me. It’s just my personality type, but we get it done anyways. I’ll find this for the diligent, kind customers we work with. It’s very difficult sometimes to ask for those objective reviews from real customers. And I find that from my clients I’ve worked with that are sort of like self-described barbarians. I had a guy years ago I worked with, he’s a, I won’t mention his name or his industry, but I’ll just say he’s obsessed with physical fitness. And he told me, he says, I’m kind of a business barbarian. You tell me what to do and I will slay the dragons. And I’m like, okay, you need to get Google reviews from everybody you’ve ever worked with. And he’s like, oh, I’m on it. And this guy’s just shamelessly calling through his phone and just lighting people up going, give me a review. Come on, give me a review. Why would you not give me a review? I’m like, go ahead, dial it down a little bit. So again, you guys are humble, diligent doers. You’re the ideal person here. So I appreciate you sharing that. The next thing we had to do is we had to create a no-brainer. Now a no-brainer is an offer so good, so amazing that people simply cannot say no to it. Now I won’t mention the name of the company, but I worked years ago and I still work with this company. They’re a medical company, they’re doing well now. And for whatever reason, they put on their website, first initial consult, 497. And he went to one of these like borderline spiritual motivational conference things where Jesus isn’t described, but they kind of talk about metaphysical alignment and getting your woosaw, getting in your groove, alignment, no friction. And he came back and he’s like, Clay, I believe in the seventh number of completion. I go, I agree. He says, four is the number that’s urgent. I’m like, okay. Not, and I go, what? I don’t want tire kickers. So I’m going to do 497 for my first consult. That way I don’t deal with the tire kickers. And I’m like, Doc, I love you so much. You’re a doctor. I love it. You don’t have any customers. That’s why you came to me. You don’t have any customers. So why don’t you do a first free consult? I’m not going to do it. I’m going to kick out Sean the tire kicker. I’m sure you’ve never seen this with a client. Oh, never. And so, now what makes it worse is his wife also went to the Metaphysical Alignment Motivational Jackassery Festival, and she was like, 497 is the number. I had a dream about it. I’m like, yeah, you probably talked about it all weekend. You probably are subconsciously thinking about it. You’re probably creating a neural pathway related to 497. And so anyway, after about a year, he finally says, okay, I came to your conference and I saw a person that did the first consult for a dollar, I’m gonna go with that. And now his business is blowing up. Could you talk about your no-brainer, your first consult for a dollar? How has that helped you having that no-brainer offer? Yeah, so it gets people in. And so when we get people in, we know that we’re doing a good job and we know that we’re trustworthy and our healthcare is superior to most. So just getting people in for that dollar, because a lot of people are nervous about going to the doctor or they don’t trust health care system. And so they know that they can come in, they’re only going to spend a dollar, they can figure out whether or not they trust us, figure out whether or not we’re the place for them. And we know 100% of the time we will be. So it’s really helped us just get people in and get people to trust us more. Now once somebody fills out the form, folks, there’s a linear pathway here. I’m trying to give you a visual here. So you establish your revenue goals, you figure out your numbers to break even, you figure out how many hours a week you’re willing to work. Even though you have a cute baby, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get it done. Step number four is you define your unique value proposition. What makes you unique? That’s something you and Sean have worked on together. You improve your branding. Now you’re coming in contact with humans. Business is a contact sport. I love this part. That’s when you start marketing. You launch your marketing. You have your online ads. You optimize your website. You begin to come up top in the search results. You start to get leads. Do you remember what it was like, Jenny, when you first got your first online lead? Do you remember the first one where you’re like, it’s working? Do you remember that moment? Yeah, it was almost like we wanted to, well, we did celebrate because it finally had happened. And then as soon as the first one came in, the second one came in. And like I said, it was almost a growing pain experience. We have so many leads so fast. So it was great. And we still celebrate every lead that we get. Now, Mike, the next step is you have to make sales scripts. We recommend to every client that the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a sales script, call the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a one sheet that tracks your pricing, you have prewritten emails, you begin tracking. Sean’s always bragging about you guys with tracking. Mike, how has it helped to have tracking in place where you can see, you know, how does that help you? Well, it’s really a good benefit because, you know, at the end of the week, you know what your income was, you know what your leads was. So wherever we’re lacking in, we can quickly adjust and make that adjustment to make it work for the next week. Now when you, if you don’t have tracking, uh, folks, this is a true story. It’s kind of a sad story. So I’ll speak in generality. Sean, I talked to a guy the other day and share terrible story. Longtime client and he got motivated. He set up a trade show. He didn’t tell me he’s doing that. It’s fine. You don’t have to tell me, but he set up a trade show. I think he was going to try to surprise me with the fruit, the trade show. So he set up the trade show and, uh, he gets on the call. His energy is kind of off and I’m like, are you okay? Yeah, dude, fine. What’s wrong? Hi, just, I don’t know. I’m like, you’re, we’re getting, you know, 10 to 15 leads a week. It’s very consistent. Revenue looks good. He’s like, yeah, I’m in a tight spot. We are a tight spot. We’re in a tight spot. He says, I did a trade show. You did a trade show. Yeah, I got roped into four. I did a thing where you get the billboard, you get the trade show, you get the magazine ad. And I did the trade show and we got no leads. And I go, what kind of trade show did you do? And he says, well, I went to the whatever trade show. And Sean, what I find is that there’s the emotional excitement about being on the billboard, being on the magazine cover. And he got called probably by one of these kind of scam, I call it a scam mockery or jackassery. They call you and they go, hey, is this Sean? Yeah, this is Sean. Sean, yeah, I noticed that you have an incredible health care company and we want to honor you by giving you the yada yada of the region award. It’s the yada yada, it’s a regional, it’s a prestigious award. We’d like to meet with you. Can we meet with you? Yeah. So now I meet here. Now, Sean, again, I’m not wearing the phone, but I still like the phone voice here. So now, Sean, so because we’re so honored, you know, we’re inviting you to a plated dinner to honor your, just your honor, your honoredness, your greatness, your humbleness. And it’s going to be $1,000 a plate for you and your wife. Did you want four seats or eight? Most people do eight. Oh, I guess just four. Four? That does include a glossy magazine feature in, we’ll just call it Missouri local top doctor Jack Assery. It’s a great magazine. And you’re also on the, you’ll be on a billboard. We’ve teamed up with the billboard. It rotates through your, hey, don’t get too excited. And just because we’re honored. We’re not, you know, again, we’re just honored. Now, do you want to do the four, four tickets there? Yeah, absolutely. Now, the way it works is it’s going to be a four payments of 4,000 for a total of 16,000. And that’s, no, I’m serious. And now they’re in the trade shows and he’s going to the trade show and there ain’t nobody there. There is nobody there. To be technical, nobody was at this trade show. I mean, everybody was not at the trade show. He’s got photos of like him and his wife and his team in an empty booth and he’s got a magazine and no leads are coming. And he was so excited to tell me. I’m sure you’ve never encountered this sort of thing. Virginia, have you, you know, have you ever seen a situation where that sort of sham occurry advertising has been entered into your world in some capacity? I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where, what you’re talking about. And I’ve set up everything and paid employees and I felt like I was nothing more than a free pin show. The only people that were there were people looking for free pins. Oh, I know. And it feels terrible. And then you kind of have to sell it to yourself all day. Guys, we’re getting our name out there. Sean, can you pass the megaphone back there? I’m trying to… Yeah, because I always tell people, when you get your name out there, what you do is you just run outside and say, all right, come visit New Ponce Health Care. And people go, why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to shop for my groceries. New Ponce Health Care, get my name out there. Is this effective? Of course it’s effective. I’m getting my name out there. And that leads to buying Frisbees, branded Frisbees, Goozies. You know what I’m saying, branded pens. Yes. All of a sudden, you buy these things. Sean, you know what I’m talking about. Oh, yeah. OK. So now we have to do it. I’m going to show you. This is kind of the back end of one of my companies. It’s called Elephant in the Room. And you do a search for eitrlounge.com. And then you go to forward slash staff. I’m not going to give you the password, folks. But you log in. And these are all the systems needed to run the haircut chain. Now one thing I thought was very interesting is Truth Social, President Trump’s social media platform, the other day they were disclosing, Newsweek was disclosing the revenue of it. And I just want people to know this because I think, and just full disclosure, I’m a very conservative person, but I just want people to see this. This is just something to look at. In the initial, they declared in their filing that they did $3.3 million of revenue and had $49 million of losses, which by the way, that’s very normal for a tech startup company. Their users are going up and they’re having an after, there’s like a reaction in the marketplace. People are actually putting more money in, they’re investing, the stock price is going up. But I don’t know anybody that I’ve met in my life, I’ve never met a client that can afford to bring in $3.3 million and lose $49 million. So for my haircut chain, we have five locations, we bring in more than $3.3 million, and this just in, we don’t spend $49 million. So we have to, we call it a lean startup. You got to keep that thing lean. And so when you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff, every document needed to manage the business is here. So the opening checklist for the manager, you click here, boom. This is what the manager has to do to start the day. Everything is documented. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now with Jenny and Mike’s business. We’re in the process of building all those checklists. Yeah. Sean, what kind of checklist have you built so far? Oh, man, we have a whole page. Their staff page is pretty built out. We’re really getting there. I think more right now, it’s getting, correct me if I’m wrong, we need some managers in there so we can free you guys up from the business. So we have a lot of the worker level systems, we’re just now working on more of how do we get those manager level systems and find those high quality managers. Now let me give Jenny a little mentor moment here, this will be helpful for you. I’m going to hop on a flight in about two and a half hours, three hours to go to Denver. And I’ve got to go to Denver to meet with the founder of Oxifresh.com. This is a brand we’ve worked with and helped them to grow to 550 locations. Now, 550 locations, okay? And if you type in carpet cleaning quotes, we’re the world’s highest rated and most reviewed company in the world. In the world, okay? 274,000 reviews. We’ve been holding this idea in our mind for 15 consecutive years. I’ve been working on this, Sajan, before I met you, we just were grinding, okay? And the biggest challenge that the locations have is managers, finding a good manager. And I tell people this, and it never goes over well, but hopefully eventually it will. I’ll keep refining the idea. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. Let me try that again. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. And I have found it’s not so much trainable as it’s findable. So as an example, where we’re getting ready to head out to Denver, Sean, you know my personality type. You know that I have to pack all this stuff to get ready to go. You saw my suitcase out there. Yep. How many times do you think I’ve followed up with the people involved in the trip so far before leaving? Oh man, it’s probably on your to-do list and you’ve checked it off like probably at least five times today I would think. And what kind of things do you think I might have put on my checklist to travel to Denver? First off, just making sure that the timing is working, making sure that you have all the stuff that you need, making sure that you have double of the stuff that you need in case something gets broken, making sure that the people who are there know you’re coming and when you’re going to be there. Keep going. Do you think I’m checking a bag? Oh yeah, you’re probably not checking a bag. There it is! You’re going to get lost. Right! No. And am I, do you think I’m catching a flight a lot earlier than I need to be there? Way earlier. Yeah, if I’m having a meeting tomorrow, which I am, I’m leaving today at 1230. So this is, that’s the sort of paranoia that makes management possible. So I have literally called, I said, alright, I’m getting on the 1230 flight, we’re meeting tomorrow, I should be in by like four o’clock Denver time our meetings tomorrow If that flight gets delayed and the next one gets delayed and the next one I’ll still be there I’ve got backup phone chargers. I have a rule everybody going with me. You cannot check a bag I want to check a bag can’t check a bag why because it could get lost This is real. I’m not guy every I am completely paranoid and that is the paranoia is what makes the businesses run Yeah, yeah, and I asked my staff every day, guys, elephant in the room, did you guys get a review? And they say, yeah, we got a review. You asked me 10 minutes ago. Okay, I’ll talk to you in four minutes. You hear me say that, I’ll say, I’ll talk to you in five minutes. And I’ll do it, and it’s a follow up of, because I have to make sure that the checklists are being followed, the reviews are being followed. We’re a licensed business, people don’t know that. Haircare, you’re licensed by the state, so we have certain cleanliness standards. We could have random people from the state show up. So we got checklists and I follow up and it doesn’t bother me to follow up with the same adult who’s in their 40s six times within a 50 minute span of time. It doesn’t bother me. But most people that bothers them. Yeah. And so have you found that Jenny, that a lot of people don’t like to follow up? Have you found that or is that just something unique to me? I found that they don’t like to follow up. No, people don’t like to follow up. It’s almost like an awkward communication thing that people try to avoid. Yeah. And it’s not necessarily that you’re being mean or any type of way, but I feel like that’s probably the way that we feel when we continuously follow up. Like we’re having to step on people’s toes, but really we’re not. We’re just getting the job done. My mentorship moment for you is it’s probably the same. So, and I’m just saying, and then, and if, Mike, do you ever play football or a sport of some kind? Yeah, I used to play soccer. Okay, soccer. So, like, when you, what position did you play? Goalkeeper. Goalkeeper, okay. So, is a goal, this is a great example, I didn’t know you were a goalkeeper, but when you’re a goalkeeper and someone’s kicking that ball at you fast, I mean, just the ball’s coming in there, I mean, people can really kick a soccer ball fast. There are certain people that want to be a goalkeeper, but they kind of avoid the ball. They try to hide from it. They flinch. You know what I’m talking about? But you actually would lunge into it, am I correct? Right. I mean, you’re aggressive, right? I mean, you’re like, you, for some reason, you enjoyed it. Yeah. Right? I’m getting 100 miles an hour fastball. Did you ever see somebody who tried to be a goalie? I’m not looking for a name here, but somebody who would kind of hide from the ball? Yeah. This is the same thing for management. Like as a manager, you have to want, like you have to sort of seek out conflict, but like people. So I’ll say things like, okay, it’s eight o’clock. I need to make sure you put out the flags in front of the elephant in the room store today, Mr. Manager, put out the flags that draw the attention by the road, put out the flags. And I’m going to call you in 10 minutes to follow up. Call him in 10 minutes. Are the flags up? Can you send me a picture? They’re like, do you not trust me? Absolutely not. I trust nobody. Go ahead and send him. And then I’ll call him back 30 minutes later. Hey, did you get Google reviews? Yeah, we got one Google review. You know, the quote is 10. Yeah, I’ll call you back in two minutes. You know, call him back. Hey, did you get a review? It’s been two minutes. I know. I’ll tell you what, I’ll call you back in an hour. And my whole day is just following up. And then over time, the culture happens where people go, he’s going to follow up. And now the people that like the follow up like to work there. And it’s become a great thing. And that’s where we’re kind of at right now, I think, is we’re getting into the follow-up phase. Do you have call recording in place there, Mike? Do you have the call recording for quality assurance installed yet? Yes, we do. And are you learning some things? Yes, it is very hard to train people on recording. It’s serious. Yeah, okay, that’s something we got to do. Now we’re just going through the workflow. And then the wowing the customers. What Sean is saying is that your patients are consistently wowed. Now, I don’t know if that’s because Sean is your hype man or if that’s a real thing, but it seems like people are actually wowing. They’re being wowed right now. People when they come in, if you look at the workflow, they buy something, right here we have to wow them. You’ve got to create that wow moment. And again, if you want to download this diagram, folks, just go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. You can download it from my newest book called A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You got to create that wow moment. I mean, amidst the checklists and the tracking, at some point here, you’ve got to create a moment that wows people where they go, wow. So I’m trying to get everybody’s creative juices flowing here. So if you have a restaurant, I work with a restaurant in Florida right now, a great restaurant. They say, welcome in, is it your first time? They say, yeah, it’s my first time. Oh, well, hey, you get free appetizers on us today and one free adult beverage. Welcome in. And that every time it’s that wow. And then when you come back later and ask for a review or hey, what entree do you want? Guess what? People become generous with how they buy. Another example, I work with an auto auction. The auto auction says your first time that you buy from the auto auction, you only have to pay a dollar more than the actual cost of the vehicle, just to wow people, to get that going. I happen to work with a carpet cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and what they do is they say, hey, the first time we clean your carpet will be any competitor’s price, and it will be at least half off of our normal price. And they go, okay, great. You gotta have that wow moment. What are you guys doing, Jenny, to wow your customers there? Well, there are things that we do. We will oftentimes give samples of certain things because we know they work. We have a lot of supplement sales that we do. Again, the dollar consult is a wow moment because we will spend 10 to 15 minutes explaining how we’re different. I feel like they’re wowed because of that. Also, our services are so much different. We spend time in the room with our patients. We listen to them. They’re not just a number. A lot of times, people have never experienced that. So there’s a lot of wow moments, I think, for all of our patients. I understand that 59% of your customers are now from word of mouth. Is that accurate? Yeah. That’s huge. Yeah. Well, and with the customer acquisitions cost, too, I’ve heard you say this before, Clay, that if you’re advertising and you’re doing a good job wowing at the same time, they compound each other and you’ll end up having two to three word of mouth referrals from those patients that are wowed for every one lead you have from advertising. We measured and tracked that they had this last year. For every dollar they spent on advertising, they were able to bring back in $4.61. So that’s a 461% return on their marketing investment. It’s incredible stuff. And the great news is, as we build these systems, if you guys ever wanted to franchise or license or open up multiple locations, if done properly, you should be able to scale it. It should be very repeatable, very duplicatable. Other things you guys have done, you’ve implemented a database to keep track of your customers, you’re gathering objective video reviews. You guys are really checking all the boxes. I’d like for you, if you can, Jenny here, to give a word of encouragement for any of our listeners out there that are a little bit on the fence right now, and they’re going, I have thought about scheduling a free consultation, but I don’t know, I hear it’s $1,700 a month. Can you maybe explain your thoughts, what you’d say to anybody who’s a friend of yours or family that asks you about the value about the business consulting? Oh, well, I would say that the $1,700 a month is an excuse not to have someone to mentor you. It’s kind of like being in a gym when you need a trainer. We’re not always perfect and business owning is not easy and you need a mentor. I’ve never missed the $1,700 a month even when I was only six months in when we started with you guys. I’ve never I’ve never even considered it a loss. It was it was scary at first to make that but that wasn’t an excuse. I knew I needed someone to guide me through this and you guys have guided us through this through the entire thing. Through employees, through income, through spending, through all of it. And we come through so many problems. There are a lot of problems that are established when you have a business. I mean, you become very overwhelmed very fast and you need somebody that you can call who’s successful, who’s been there that says, you’re not crazy. This happens to all of us. Here’s what you do about it. It’s been the best decision that we’ve made. Final question I have here for you. As far as having a turn, like a one-stop shop. Years ago, I hired a business consultant who was great. And he would say things like, and I’m not ripping him. I’m just telling you what would happen. He would say, Clay, you got to work on your business and not in it. I’m going, that’s true. He goes, you got to delegate to elevate. That’s true. Clay, your website is not optimized. And I’m going, this is great. Fresh perspective. I go, Bruce, could you help me optimize? No, I don’t optimize. Could you help me work on it? No. Could you help me make a checklist? No. Do you help me with the print pieces that I need to make? No. Can you make a video? No. Do you help me with my online ads? No. Clay, and he used to, he was kind of an Eastern, he’s a Northeastern American guy, and he used to say, Clay, baby, let me tell you something. I don’t make print pieces. What am I, a print piece guy? I’m not a web guy. We know what I am. I’m a work on the business guy. You’ve got to find a good web guy. So every meeting we would have would result in me having to find another vendor to pay another $8,000 to build the website, 4,000 to make the video, 5,000 to do. So every time you give a recommendation, it would lead to another cost. Can you maybe explain the value of having a flat monthly fee? Yeah, I don’t have to ever worry about it. Like I know if I need the website updated, it’s a text away. I know if I need financial advice, it’s a text away. And again, we meet every single week and all our questions are answered and we’re held accountable to what we need to be held accountable for. So it really works for us. Jenny and Mike, thank you guys for your time so much. I really do value your time. I appreciate you guys being here today. And on part two of today’s show, we’re going to tee up another success story because we want people to know it is possible, despite the financial jackassery plaguing our nation right now. It is possible to become successful and you guys are a living example of it. Thank you guys for bringing your baby on the show. We’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah so what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed pest and lawn company in the Tulsa area. That’s really helped with our conversion rate. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to first of all like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten people really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow and so when customers call in they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. And it’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews, that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists that when everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. What was the name of it? The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut. Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crocker, the head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies every six to eight weeks. He’s doing reawaken America tours every six to eight weeks. He’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that like Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past. And they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month. And we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you thankful for Thrive and your mentorship. And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us just thank you, thank you, thank you times 1000. The Thrive Time Show. Today interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the Adipic chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. We go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years do you think? We got to inspire somebody out there who just well have the time to listen. Okay, so clay It’s it’s like I would go up and down from About ten thousand dollars a month up to about forty thousand was up and down rollercoaster and so now We we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of a hundred clients That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. It’s 100% growth every year I’ve worked with you. So I’m looking, we’ve been good friends 7-8 years and I’ve got doubled 5 times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it. But we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system So creating a system is you have nailed down Specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel no matter the results you lean into them and you do them Regardless of what’s happening you lean into them and it will give you X number of leads you follow up with those leads Turns into sales. Well, I tell you, you know, it’s if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system Then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy Just to figure out what are you going to do? Right and the best executives Peter Drucker is a father of Modern management. He said the most effective executives make one decision a year What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. Call them script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you buy a personal computer, a PC. The computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012, and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to hideaway pizza. But you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well we had that speaking thing that… Oh there it was! So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redmond. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help, you know, direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life, that standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall, in the group interview, talks about how, you know, the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship, that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is It’s it’s unique in that. I don’t know if there’s anyone else’s that can be as passionate You know whenever a business starts working with clay It’s almost as like clay is is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake You know he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know, he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that wanna get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by. People who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, and in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.