“Why 96 Percent of Businesses Fail (By Default).” – Inc. Magazine + The Power of FOCUS + Steve Jobs Keys to Growing a Successful Business Focusing + Join Tim Tebow At April 9-10 ThrivetimeShow.com Business Conference

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

So we had to decide what are the fundamental directions we’re going in and what makes sense and what doesn’t. And there were a bunch of things that didn’t. And microcosmically, they might have made sense. Macrocosmically, they made no sense. And, you know, the hardest thing is when you think about focusing, right? You think, well, focusing is saying yes.

No, focusing is about saying no. Focusing is about saying no. And you’ve got to say no, no, no. And when you say no, you piss off people. This will date me, but I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old, and he lived in Palo Alto. His number was still in the phone book.

And he answered the phone himself. I said, yes? He said, hi, I’m Steve Jobs. I’m 12 years old. I’m a student in high school, and I want to build a frequency counter. And I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have.

And he laughed, and he gave me the spare parts to build his frequency counter, and he gave me a job that summer in Hewlett -Packard, working on the assembly line, putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built them. And I was in heaven. I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. And when people ask me, I try to be as responsive to pay that debt of gratitude back.

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. And that’s what separates sometimes the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn.

You know, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far. There needs to be someone who is sort of the keeper and reiterator of the vision, because there’s just a ton of work to do. And a lot of times, you know, when you have to walk a thousand miles and you take the first step, it looks like a long ways and it really helps. if there’s someone there saying, well, we’re one step closer. You know, the goal definitely exists.

It’s not just a mirage out there. So in a thousand and one little and sometimes larger ways, the vision needs to be reiterated. I do that a lot.

And it takes enormous amount of time and effort and repetition and proof. You got to close loop the system so that the rewards match the behavior you want. In the end, people are basically good.

You get what you measure and what you reward.

Constantly shaping it, pruning it, like a gardener. You don’t just allow the culture to happen. You design the culture. You have an idea of what you want to do, and you’re just constantly getting this group together. You might have a culture of excellence, and a culture of excellence means I review all the work, and I say, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And eventually, I could not join the meeting, but people know what I’d say.

They’d say, it’s not good enough. This is our standard.

Which brings us to the founding of Interscope, because there was a ton of people after Geffen that had your same idea. We’re like, well, I can do that.

Fourteen labels started with $50 million in funding in 1989 -90.

And how many survived?

None.

You?

Interscope. Yeah.

Me, Ted, John, and Tom Wally.

When you say it has to be, what does that mean?

When you grow up like I did, And you did, and other people that I know.

Yeah, the first time we met, you’re like, you’re definitely bent. When you’re walking forward, right, the sidewalk behind you is caving in. So you have no choice but to walk forward, no matter how scary it is, how much it hurts. So what you have to learn at that moment is how do I take this moment and make it a tailwind instead of a headwind. A lot of my friends and people I know and I watch, the fear stops them.

And the ones that succeed is the fear that propels them forward. If you could harness it, learn how to harness it and take that, because fear is energy. It’s massive energy. It controls your entire system. And if you can learn to take that fuel and have it propel you forward, it’s a powerful thing.

You gotta understand, whenever there’s gatekeepers on anything, your job is to figure out a way around the gatekeeper with something you really believe in.

Whether the gatekeepers are people at your own company, or people in, you know, at radio stations, or at wherever the gatekeepers are, your job is to skate around them.

How’d you get on MTV?

I said, this is the same thing as Guns N’ Roses. So, who do you go to at MTV?

You just go to the top guy?

Like, how do you actually get it done? I said, play this. He goes, I can’t play this. And he had the remote in his hand. His TV was on behind him. I said, I can’t because we play this.

And it was three women singing, and then the next video was a guy, and you know, and all this. But it was pure pop music, right? And I said, I don’t know how to program.

I said, put it next to Guns N’ Roses, and if it doesn’t work, please never play an Interscope record again.

” So he put it on.

You had that much belief. You don’t have to be talented to know that.

I know I had to hustle.

That’s not a bad word.

I love it. By the way, I feel the exact same way. The greatest baseball players in the world were hustlers.

That’s what I call a hustler. I don’t think it’s a pejorative.

I don’t think it’s a negative term.

Well, people think it is.

Oh, not me and you, though.

It’s not. What I’m saying, I know it’s not.

how to hustle, meaning I’m willing to work harder than the next guy. It took to the starting line over 50 years ago, the brainchild of a young track athlete named Phil Buck Knight. He’s now 78, and one of the richest men in the world.

That hope first flickered here, at storied Hayward Field at the University of Oregon, where Knight was a mid -distance runner.

Did you like the roar of the crowd?

Very much.

I didn’t get that many, but…

He wasn’t the fastest, but he just might have been the smartest.

I came here as a 17 -year -old, just very uncertain of everything, and met Bill Bowerman, and I’ve often said, if there’s no Bill Bowerman, there’s no me. Bill Bowerman was Knight’s coach.

He was obsessed with tearing apart track shoes and reassembling them.

creating sort of a frankenshoe of his very own.

What were they like? Well, they were just, he would make them out of goatskin, and so they would just have almost no form in the upper, and then he’d get a spike plate taken off another shoe and then glue it on. They were pretty ugly, but they were light.

And I was one of his guinea pigs, and that, you know, kind of planted a seed. That seed took root while getting his MBA at Stanford.

Knight wrote a paper outlining a strategy of manufacturing running shoes in Japan, where the labor was cheaper. Well, ever since I wrote it, it was sort of taken away in there.

It just kept kind of growing. After graduating, Knight put his paper into action, convincing a Japanese company to let him distribute their brand of running shoe, called Tigers, here in the US.

He began selling them out of the trunk of his car.

His initial investment, a thousand bucks that he split 50 -50 with his new partner and former coach, Bill Bowerman. People say, oh, you hear what Knight’s doing to the Stanford NBA? He’s peddling Japanese track shoes. That was a pretty big joke at the time. But I wanted it, so I said, I got to try it.

I got to try it.

By 1971, their little shoe company had sales of over

.3 million and a new innovation, thanks to Bowerman’s unlikely experiment with his wife’s waffle wire. He put urethane in there. He said, maybe that’s the pattern.

That’s a different pattern that breaks up that should give you more traction and more cushioning.

The result was the Waffle Trainer, a new kind of sole that Knight wanted to manufacture under his own brand.

What was the name you wanted?

No, Dimension 6.

Dimension 6, which no one bought.

It’d be a hard time fitting on a heel tab, wouldn’t it?

Why Dimension 6? Well, there was a fifth dimension, right?

So we wanted to be an extra dimension.

But no one bought that idea.

Nobody liked it. Mercifully, an employee proposed another name, Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. But Knight wasn’t crazy about it, nor did he like the logo. The wing, as it was called then, a design he actually paid a college student just $35 to draw, was supposed to symbolize the sound of speed.

But Knight thought it just looked like a big, fat check mark.

Nothing ever stands out and says, boy, that’s it.

There’s not a eureka moment that, for me, that in almost all these things, I just say, okay, that’s the best we can do, let’s go. Marketing was never Knight’s thing. In fact, he hated advertising. But he soon realized that well -known athletes wearing his shoes could speak and sell volumes. Romanian tennis pro Ilie Nastassi was the first big name signed.

John McEnroe would soon follow.

And then came a 21 -year -old basketball phenom from the University of North Carolina.

Shot, Michael Jordan!

When you first signed Michael Jordan, people thought you were nuts, right?

Well, as Fortune Magazine ran a story about how Nike has lost its way by paying so much money for this basketball player.

From the time, let’s say you’re 20, you start to 65, you did not feel peace?

No.

Not for one second. You become a billionaire, you sell… beats to Apple.

What’d that feel like?

It felt great.

Okay.

No piece though. Well, because a company like Apple pays you a lot of money. I’m my father’s son.

I got a job to do now.

But you have a billion dollars in your bank account. That doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s a job that you’re gonna do that you’re not gonna be…

I have to get the job done right.

But money is a piece of peace. Money is a piece of it. It’s really great. You know what I mean? But if I have your money, I’m fucked, because I gotta do the job. I mean, the record business, God knows what they did to get records played.

But they weren’t gonna play these records. There was no chance. And look, there’s nobody better at this.

No one.

The greatest record executive of all time, of all time, is a guy named Barry Gordy.

I’ve heard the name, but know nothing about him.

Well, he founded Motown.

Oh, okay.

During Jim Crow.

You know what I mean? So his honors weren’t even allowed off the bus. They were considered race records. He had to get those records played. He had to get that into the white market. What he did, talk about wrestling the earth from fools, Barry Gordy, Miracle what he did.

And he made the greatest music in the world. So when he got, when he pushed, it stuck. See, if you know what you have is gonna stick, and if you’re passionate about it, then just break through that wall, because there’s gonna be a lot of resistance. But if it sticks, you win.

That Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

That’s a good word for him, character.

Yeah, that is it. Good, driven, smart. and I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother, and she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, he’s endorsed by his mother, and he’s doing magnificent work.

So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with.

Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning. Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah.

He’s he’s like he’s he’s a machine. He’s a machine. But his you know, I could I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock.

Yes.

Hundreds of people showing up at five a . m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Man, he’s a leader of a leader.

He’s fantastic, young man.

No, he is. He is. All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, America calls itself a Christian nation. But according to Barna Institute Research, what percentage of Americans now have a biblical worldview?

Drumroll, please. Oh, oh, uh… According to the U . S. Chamber of Commerce, 75 % of employees now steal from the workplace. Yes!

And 85 % of employees, according to Inc. Magazine, now lie on their resumes. Hey Carter, do you know what time it is? Uh, no. It’s time to play WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT?! If you get the answers right on this game show, you’re going to leave today with $30.

You get $10 per correct answer. Should you get the answer wrong, you don’t owe me anything. You don’t win any prize, OK? I’ve got three questions for you.

First question is, what percentage of American employees currently admit to stealing from the workplace?

Now again, before you answer the question, the audience, our listeners out there, they know. They know, they’ve looked it up, they’ve already done the research, but what percentage, Jackie, for a chance to win a copy of the home game, what percentage of American employees steal from the workplace? 60 %? 75 %! OK, next question, Jackie. You didn’t win round one.

We’re moving on to round two here. What percentage of American employees now admit to lying on their resumes? So some people think a resume is a nonfiction where you turn in facts about yourself and your previous experience, whatever your education.

These people perceive the resume as a lie.

fictional document where they can just make things up and submit fiction. What percentage of American employees admit to lying on their resumes? 90%. 85%. You’re a negative man. Oh, so you’re so far 0 for 2.

Final question now. Americans like to say that, hey, people like to say America is a Christian nation, OK? And according to the Barna Institute, so Barna Institute, this is not clayclark . com. According to the Barna Institute, 85 % of employees now, OK, they admit to lying on their resumes, according to Inc. Magazine.

75 % of employees admit to stealing from the workplace, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. But the question is, what percentage of people in America today Again, we’re considered a Christian nation and we’re considered to be a Christian nation What percentage of Americans now say that they have a biblical worldview Jackie?

60 % Jackie 4 % of Americans believe that the Bible is real and it should be the basis for their decisions things like thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not lie these sort of things.

So Jackie Unfortunately, you have lost A lot.

You did not win any mega points, but are you shocked by the numbers?

I am pretty shocked by the numbers.

You’re shocked that 4 % of Americans are now have, 4 % of Americans, just 4 % of Americans now have a biblical worldview?

Yes, I thought it would be higher.

You did?

You thought it’d be 60 %? At least, yeah. Well, maybe not. Are you shocked? As you think about it, are you shocked that 85 % of Americans would lie on their resumes? Are you shocked by this information?

I’m not shocked.

What about that 75 % of Americans would steal from the workplace? Is this shocking to you? That, I’m also not shocked.

Really?

But you were shocked that only 4 % of Americans have a Christian worldview, a biblical worldview.

Yes. Were you shocked by that? Which one is the most shocking stat for you? the world view. Yeah.

Pretty crazy stuff.

And again, folks, I’ll put a link to it on the show notes.

Jackie, thank you for this word of discouragement.

And unfortunately, you did not win any Mega Points.

Thank you. What are you doing?

Cleaning the bathroom.

Let’s go watch.

What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years?

3 .45 million. I had those stats before I got on here.

So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million?

Yeah. $3 ,450 ,000. Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it? Or have we gone up by half? Almost three, not quite.

Can you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, OK, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge. Or he’s not going to go, oops, we had two calls, so it’s more. Or, wow, we didn’t meet this week, so it’s less. Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web, the search, the ads, all of that is a monthly thing? Yeah.

Not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing. and I’m like half of the bottom number is what spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working because we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. And as far as the SEO, I’ve messed up and didn’t didn’t send money to the hosting service and crashed my website. Clay had it back up in half a day. It’s really great to have somebody call just fixes it.

I can do what I do, you do what you do. It’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on, no matter what crashes, you can take care of it. I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain. I don’t know how you do what you do, as cheap as you do, but it actually is super economical for me. Man, if you want change, you need to change, right? And if you knew what you needed to know to change it, you would already change it.

So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this, you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now. So if you don’t increase that, you can’t, you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right? A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant and don’t think they need any help. Never even read a book on business.

That was me.

And then wonder why you’re having trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business. And I read books now and I value knowledge, but it was a journey that really opened, took the lid off of me or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in when I came came to you. So I would encourage everybody, even for your health, your marriage, fix it. You need to fix it. You might say, come on, this guy’s not real.

He’s an actor. He’s a paid model. His website is RC Auto Specialists. RC Auto Specialists, that’s his company number one. Company number two is thegarageba . com.

This is an automotive repair business. And over here, the Ford business. It’s a diesel repair specialty shop. And again, he could be a male model. He could be an actor.

He could be a rapper. He could be an AI -generated example of perfection.

But he’s Roy Cockshall. He’s in the flesh. Roy, welcome onto the throne. How are you, sir? I’m happy. Thanks for having me on, Clay.

Well, I wanted to have you on the show because I have a client that I’m working with right now. Great guy. And this is not a passive aggressive testimonial, but he’s in the automotive space. And he’s kind of going, yeah, but my industry is different.

So let’s start off with the success, and then we’ll get into how we’ve done it together. What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? 3 .45 million. I got those stats before I got on here. So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million?

Yeah, 3 ,450 ,000.

Would that be like if you took the combined revenue, maybe doubled it? Have we gone up by? Almost three, not quite. Got it. So almost three times. Yes, 275 % at least.

Now, What happens with a lot of people, and I’m going to send this show right away to this particular guy, is a lot of times we have a bakery, a dentistry, a law firm, a product, and a lot of my clients will say, You know, it’s different in my industry because I’m sure you see the same thing in your business. People bring in a car and they say, look, I don’t need a diagnostic. I think what it is is this. Look, I don’t need you to look at my car. I think it’s this. Could you maybe just talk about when you and I first met, what were you thinking or what was kind of going through your mind as you were being introduced to me by some of your friends?

Yeah, you know, I was in a crisis situation.

my second business, I was minus 250 ,000. Now my first business went pretty good. But I was a mechanic trying to run a business. I wasn’t a businessman. And that second one taught me a pretty good lesson. So a good friend of mine, Aaron Antus recommended you and so that’s why I reached out to you.

And when I first started working, I always tell people, they say, how do I grow a company? I’m going to pull out my sheet, or at least how I look at it. I’m going to pull it up. I’m going to go to rumble . com. I’m going to pull up our recent business videos so people can see this.

And if anybody out there, you want to follow along, go to any of my business shows. I always put the proven plan in those notes. Let me pull this up real quick. And I’m scrolling down. And here we go. So people say, what’s the most important step I need to take to grow my business?

I say, there’s 14 steps, but let’s go one by one.

The first step is you have to know your revenue goals. Roy, every time someone comes in to service their vehicle, you’re the kindest guy I know. And I know that you do this. If nothing else, you like undercharge for stuff. And if you’re not intentional and you don’t know your revenue goals, what’s going to happen by default for a guy like you who, frankly, would give the shirt off your back to people?

And you do that. What would happen if you’re, or I guess, what was happening by default? Yeah, we were just going under, you know, and I was like I said, I didn’t have the knowledge to pull it out because I was a mechanic trying to run a business and this one was going to require a businessman.

So my journey with you was learning metrics, learning all 14 of those steps were foreign to me. I just thought, hey, I can do this.

And like I said, the first one just kind of went by itself. The second one was the one that forced me to change. So that is. how my journey began with Mr. Clark here. So now second step is, you know, you have to know your break even numbers and make even is just, you know, how much business do we have to do just to break even? And maybe for the listeners out there that don’t have a context of what you do, could you maybe share

about the kinds of services that you provide at your automotive businesses, just so listeners can get an idea of the kinds of solutions you provide before we get into the break -even numbers? Sure. My big store, the Ford Specialty Store, we go from anything from all changes to putting engines in diesel trucks. And so it’s turnkey all the way across the board.

thing get done at the dealer, you can get done at that shop. Garage is a little different model, let’s say the neighborhood garage around the corner. We’ve done a few engines that’s not really our mainstream would be air conditioners, electrical alternators, things like that, alignments, suspension issues, general auto repair. And it doesn’t matter whether someone’s a doctor, a dentist, or a lawyer, we have to know our break -even points. And the break -even point is how much revenue do you have to do just to break even? Could you talk about how you frame that in your mind now that you do know your break -even point?

Now that you know how many days a month you have to, how many customers you have to see a month just to break even, how does that impact how you run your business?

Yeah, I mean, you’re behind, you’re under until you hit that number. And so there’s some urgency to get to that number. And I’ve found that with my employees, if they don’t have a target either, then they don’t really strive to hit it. And so I’ve structured my pay plans to where we’re all on commission. And so we all are going the same direction for the same reason, and it works good for us. But they most definitely know where that break -even point is when we start making money.

At this point, my break -even point is right at $48 ,000 gross profit per week, shops combined. And you know that. I love how you mentioned the merit -based pay. Everybody on your team is getting paid based off what they produce, not based on how much they make. per week that they occupy space and breathe air. Moving on to step three, you have to figure out how many hours per week you’re going to work.

Now this is one thing that’s been interesting about you and the different clients I work with, is I have some clients that I work with that are 25 years old and I say, how many hours a week do you want to work? And they go, 30 hours a week. And you go, really? Then there’s a guy like you who you’ve been working six days, seven days a week for years. And you’re a Bible believer. You always take your family to church.

But you would do whatever it took. And you have done whatever it takes to be successful. And so you did that. But you knew in your mind that you had a vision, that you wanted to get to a place where you could take your wonderful wife on dates and spend time with the grandkids and do that.

And so you were willing to put in the work, but you also had boundaries on how many hours per week you’re willing to work and what days you wanted to be free to travel. Could you talk about the balance of that? Because I do see a lot of young whippersnappers being unwilling to put in any work at all to grow the company. Then I also see grizzled entrepreneurs willing to work seven days a week. Family, don’t even worry about the family. We’re just going to work seven days a week.

I want to get your thoughts on how you balance that. Yeah, I believe there’s seasons of life. Starting a business, you’re all in. There’s kind of a, I would call it an adrenaline rush for at least the first two or three years where I’m working literally 70, 80 hours and not really even thinking about it. It’s just what we have to get done here. And after you get some success, I’ve throttled that back some, I’ve got a couple young 35 year olds that are doing the heavy lifting.

And I’m actually running it like a business.

Thank you, Mr. Clark. And I was a mechanic attempting to do it. And I was in what I call micromanager hell, I didn’t have systems processes. So I was a fireman, and there was always more fires than I could put out. So hence the 75 year not real efficient.

So now I can I can take off a week or two and not even get a phone call. But that was after many years of grinding and getting to that point. So powerful. I want everybody to take notes. What you’re hearing, folks, is a real entrepreneur, a real grandpa, a real committed husband, a real committed dad, who’s just giving you real information here, OK? There’s no BS here, folks.

Now, step number four, you’ve got to figure out your unique value proposition. We have to figure out your unique value proposition. And there’s a lot of automotive repair shops competing for business out there, a lot of diesel repair shops competing for the marketplace. And you and I sat down, and I think that was the first area where maybe you and I had some mental friction because I was obsessed. I said, Roy, you and I, every single week, we’ve got to get video reviews. We’ve got to get images on that website.

We’ve got to write search engine content that no one’s going to read. And we’ve got to get more Google reviews. And then we’ve got to run the same ads every week. We don’t have to change them every week, but we keep those ads. So B -I -S -M -D. For people taking notes, it’s video reviews, images, search engine content, more Google reviews, and then run those ads, never turn them off.

That was the first time where you were kind of going, I don’t know if you know what you’re talking about. Could you talk about that a little bit? Well, first of all, several of those, I thought to myself, well, Clay doesn’t understand my business, and that’s not going to work. But I actually did it because I was going to prove you wrong. And I’m glad I didn’t open my mouth because I actually prove you right.

And in my mind, I finally said, look, obviously, I don’t know how to do it. I’m sinking this ship at minus 250 ,000. So I’m going to go ahead and listen to my business coach and do it even if I don’t think it’s going to work. And lo and behold, it did work. So really, if you’re reaching out for help, maybe you ought to listen to the person that’s trying to help you is kind of my from that.

And even though I thought it wouldn’t work, I obviously did not know, and that’s why I needed help. Now, the thing about marketing and ads, most marketing companies, I’m sure you’ve never experienced this, but I have, they want to come up with a new ad of the week, a new logo, a new ad, a new theme, a new vision, a new brand. Hey, wow, Mr. Client, look, it’s the spring. We should do new ads, new vision, new promo. And they do that to stay busy. Because they want to show, which would be analogous to me, if I ran an automotive repair shop, this is where the analogy would go.

That would be like me saying, Roy, I just fixed your truck.

But guess what? I just broke it again. I’ll be back in there fixing it. I mean, it’s creating problems. And really, what needs to be done is just diligently executing those systems. Could you talk about maybe the mind freedom or the time freedom that’s created for you now that you’re following the same system and we’re just doing it as opposed to coming up with a new idea every week?

Sure. The franchise system, somebody actually developed a business strong strengths processes, and then they hand you this model and you just keep doing the same thing every week. Everybody knows what to do. It’s really hard for us entrepreneurs to do that because we had to start out micromanaging. The transferring out of that is key to having freedom and for the money to scale up. I found that people my age, when they start, they had a big, giant capacity.

Well, that capacity shrinks up as you age out. And if you don’t do something about it and install systems and processes, your business is going to shrink with your capacity because you become a giant funnel. And so those processes, what we do weekly, monthly, Day in, day out, we’re getting reviews. We’re constantly getting reviews. Those reviews drive customers 24 -7. and they’re my most important thing, and the website on the videos gets me on the front page, obviously, and so we keep doing what it takes to stay on the front page.

I’ve tried all kinds of fancy marketing, and I’ve wasted a ton of money, and I couldn’t measure one customer that came in because of that. That’s so powerful for somebody out there. Now, Roy, one thing is when you go into the garage, I’m going to put up on the screen here. When we go to the garage automotive repair shop and the RC auto specialists, you and your family, you guys have really taken a pride and ownership into running it in a way where it creates a nice atmosphere. It’s a good place to do business. When you go there, you don’t feel like you’re going to a prison.

A lot of auto repair shops have a prison theme going on. You’ve worked really hard to create a nice atmosphere. And when you and I first started working together, we went in there. We kind of overhauled that lobby. We did some nice changes to the website. We updated the website so the website looked as good as the location.

We did a lot of that. But now we’re not in there repainting the whole thing every two days. We’re not coming up with a new theme every hour. I see these automotive repair people I work with, wonderful people, who feel the need to, every week, come up with a new theme, repaint the whole thing.

They’re constantly putting up different mailers. They’re doing billboards. They’re doing the billboards. They got the new. There’s local magazines. They’re just doing a lot of work, and they’re not getting the results.

Can you talk about just tracking the numbers and why that has helped you, just tracking the numbers? Yeah, you measure what’s important to you.

And the term metrics, I didn’t know what that meant before I started started working with you. But they’re the key performance indicators that I liken them to gauges on a car or a scan tool. Like if I’m trying to fix a car, and I don’t have any metrics, any facts, it’s going to be real hard. I may stumble across it if I threw enough parts at it, but it’s a whole lot more effective if I can look at some data. The metrics we track every week are the data, that’s the measuring system.

So I know if my marketing is working or not because I can track it in dollars every week, super important. So we’re moving on here, folks. Again, if you’re taking notes at home, step number one is establish your revenue goal. Step number two, know your break -even point. Step number three, define how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Step number four, we have to define our unique value proposition.

And what we focused on, just to be clear with the garage and the diesel repair business, was you were already doing a great job repairing cars, but we had to get documented evidence that that was true. Because everybody’s competing for that dollar, so we had to gather objective video reviews, a lot of them. And by the way, hundreds of them. And not just 200 or 300, but 500 of them per company, per location. It’s pretty powerful. Next is we had to establish a three -legged marketing stool.

So we had to think about who are the ideal and likely buyers, and what’s the most sustainable way for Roy as the business owner to reach them? Some of my clients love hopping on podcasts. One of my clients does RV. They sell RVs. And he loves being on commercials. And he loves being the face of the business.

And he wants to do all that. Other business owners don’t want to do that. So what we did is we created a three -legged marketing stool that allowed Roy to implement it without needing to be on camera all day or without needing to post on social media every two minutes. Roy, can you talk about that for a second?

Because there’s so many marketing strategies that could work.

But many of them require the owner to live on social media.

Could you talk about why you and I together have not gone with the, hey, let’s make Roy the viral TikTok king in order to grow? Well, I’m happy. I’m thankful about that. It’s really not my personality.

But yeah, just doing a company that knows what works, i .

e. Clay Clark’s company. I don’t know how many of you work at 600 companies. You’ve You’ve been doing it for what? How many years? 15 years?

20 years. 20 years. So after a while, maybe, just maybe, you know what you’re doing, I think. So with the marketing, I call it the low -hanging fruit marketing, the stuff that actually works. best value, I can go on radio, but my ROI goes down significantly. So what we’re doing right now, we track those numbers.

And it’s it’s amazing how many new customers come in per week based on the same marketing we do week after week after week after week. Now, Roy, you know, I remember this like it was yesterday, and I’ll let you share as much of it as you want. But every client we ever work with, I always say I tell that business owner, I said, we need to install call recording. Oh, man. I had a fantastic conversation with the dentist this morning. And I say fantastic. It did not go well.

And I was on the phone with Mr. Dentist. I said, Mr. Dentist, I know you’re paying me to help you. I really want to help you. And he says, I just have pushback on the call recording. I said, why? He goes, because if I play the calls, it’s going to create an awkward culture.

And we found out that his daughter is the one answering the phones. And so I said, can we just go in and just listen to a couple? And they were rough. And it was like she didn’t want to know. So I said, do we have anybody you’re not related to? He said, well, one more.

We’ve got a lady we know from church. We play the calls. And they were actually not in any way, shape, or form following the script. And she was trying to convince the patients that the dental practice was super busy, and that they’d shut down for the day, and that people should just call back. She’ll work around 3 o ‘clock every day. She’s going, yeah, we’re all booked out, but the doctor, he’s all gone.

But if you could just call back on Monday.

And so she was trying to make the business conform to her schedule, which involved leaving early.

Aaron, this is who you referenced earlier, who referred me to you. Aaron found that people on the phone were using his phone line to poach customers. So he had people on his phone saying, thank you for calling Shaw Homes, how can I help you? And they would answer the phone, these salespeople, and they would refer the deals over to other customers. other home builders that were willing to pay more of a commission. I mean, did you, when you started putting call recording in place, did you discover anything exciting?

Wow. I was at a loss of why the garage was struggling so bad and why customers didn’t come back. And I listened to three phone calls and went down and fired the manager on the spot. It couldn’t have been any worse if he was, I don’t know that he wasn’t on purpose trying to tank my business. It was so, bad.

And then I realized he’s representing me. I mean, just a sketchy human bad. So it was a key to turning that thing around, because I remember you said, oh, there’s a couple of rats. And I go, no, no, these are good people. And I mean, you better check, because, yeah, these were not good people at all. So I almost, I don’t know, a couple of people stayed, but I had to turn over the whole staff. And that’s when things started getting better.

But I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t hear. Now, again, Roy’s implemented the scripts. We talk about installing sales systems. I’m talking about scripts, folks. I’m talking about pre -written emails. I’m talking about recorded calls.

We have a whole system for this, and Roy’s implemented that. Step number eight, you’ve got to track how much does it cost you to gain a new customer. So every week, Roy and I, we track those numbers. We look at them. We go, OK, we spent this much on advertising. And just to be clear, this is remarkable.

I want people to know this. We’re down right now to spending about $150 a week on ads. which is incredible for a location where, I mean, there are people that reach out to me. And right now, I’m thinking about this automotive guy that I’m going to send this to.

He’s spending right now over $2 ,000 a week on ads.

And you’re now down to $150 ,000.

on ads or less. Could you talk about just the idea that tracking every single week? I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now.

I mean, how many years have we been doing this? I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now. I think 2016, I believe. Yeah. So we’re like nine years into it, and we’re tracking. And you can see that number that you were spending on ads is going down, down, down.

Can you talk about that a little bit? I did the same thing. You get a couple of slow days and somebody tells you they could just overwhelm you with customers. It always takes a little more, a little more, a little more. But if you’re not measuring, you don’t know where they’re coming from. You don’t know if you’re bringing in one.

I’ll never forget this young man just got out of college and he had a marketing degree. And he’s all excited about how he’s going to just, man, explode my business. And so I think it was ClickFunnels or something. And, and the young man really believed it. I mean, you know, he was passionate, and he believed what they told him. So I said, Well, how much do we got to spend to know if it even works?

And he gave me a number. Well, I doubled, I said, Well, let’s double that number.

And let’s do it for a month and see if I can. And we asked where people come from, because we vet our customers at the counter. And so and I said, Let’s give it a month. So he did all this stuff. And not one customer said, that’s what they heard about after a month of doubling what he said it would take to make it work. But he believed he was sincere, he was just sincerely wrong.

So again, working with somebody that actually knows what works is pretty important. Now, step number nine, I want to brag on Roy for a second, folks, for anybody watching this. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. One thing Roy does really well is he’s organized. And it’s hard to build an organization unless you’re organized. And I would say that the clients I work with are not organized.

And so when you’re organizing, the garage or RC auto specialist, everything has a place.

Everything’s organized.

You can leave knowing that your vehicle is going to be repaired with quality and a focus on quality, taking care of your vehicle. That’s something Roy’s always done. But if you’re watching today’s show, I won’t mention the name of the company, but there was a bakery I’d worked with for a while. And I’m not kidding. Every meeting, she would take a call. Clay, I got to take the call.

What’s going on? Sorry, someone’s calling me. And I say, what happened? She goes, oh, they ran out of eggs. I’m like, OK, OK, next week. Clay, got to take the call real quick.

Sorry. They ran out of flour. Got to take the call. They ran out of toilet paper. And finally, I’m going, hey, we’re focusing on the marketing and the accounting and the systems and the legal and the tracking. But your core thing is you make cookies and bakery items, right?

How often do you run out of material? She goes, oh, every day. It’s like every couple hours. It’s just a zoo. So again, if you’re out there today, you’ve got to be organized. We’ll help you with that.

We didn’t have to help Roy with that. But most of our clients, we do have to help on that. Next is managing, step number 10.

I would argue that managing people is the hardest thing for compassionate people to do, holding people accountable to a standard of excellence. And Roy, you’ve done a great job of really assembling an all -star team piece by piece, almost like the NFL draft. Every year, if you have a team that’s a loser, you’ve got to go hire a good guy, another good player, maybe do a trade, maybe do a different. And you’ve built a wonderful team now. Could you talk about maybe the pain of recognizing that someone’s not a good fit? and yet you want to be compassionate, but you also know that if you don’t fire a bad employee, the customer will fire you.

Could you talk about that? Because you’ve really built a great team now. Yeah, we have the best humans we’ve ever had, but that was on purpose. And so one thing I’ve learned is to hire slowly, fire quickly if you know you’ve made a mistake. It really affects the whole team, the whole atmosphere of the shop, one bad guy. I don’t care how much work he’s putting out, it is not worth it.

I believe there’s a proverb says, get rid of the mocker and all strife will cease. And I mean, the whole atmosphere of the shop changes. So now I’ve left it up to my employees.

I say, if I hire somebody, I stick them in here and they don’t fit our culture, you just let me know. So two of them lasted a week. It’s not worth it. I won’t do it. And like I said, we do well, but I’ve got good humans, no drama. Everybody shows up to work.

They’re family guys, but it was on purpose. I’m telling you, I’ve been through a few. Now, next question I have here for you. Next question I have here for you is, or next step, step number 11.

You’ve got to create a repetitive schedule.

You and your wife are really involved in missions and outreach, and I’ll just kind of keep it vague there.

But you guys are passionate about, weekly going out and sowing seeds and investing time in ministry, and that’s a big part of your schedule. Could you talk about the importance of you and your wife having a schedule that you two agree on? Because you guys have that. And a lot of clients I see, it’s the husband and wife have a very different view of how the schedule should be. And rather than just agreeing to disagree or setting a schedule that works, there’s a constant fight. Could you talk about just the importance of you and your wife having a schedule you both agree on?

Wow. Yeah. How can two walk together unless they be agreed? She’s right underneath the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as far as any success I’ve had and not blown it up three or four times. So I’m very thankful for her. So she’s a high priority for me.

And so we have come to an agreement about how much we’re going to work and where we’re going to be. And we have determined to be together. There was a season there that we couldn’t, but we changed that pretty quick.

It wasn’t healthy. And then I look back behind me and see how many people have been together. We’ve been 37 years now. And I mean, it is a huge win over any of these businesses, but it ties to those businesses. I could not have done what I’ve done without her back behind the scenes. You know, she’s my strength.

So we agree on everything. If we don’t, I’m going to park it till we do, because that’s that important to me. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s kind of how we operate. No, this is big. I’m telling you, as a business consultant, you start to see people walk in a different direction. And if they’re married, that gets odd. If they’re business partners, it gets odd.

So you’ve really set a great example for that. A final couple of steps here. Again, folks, if you’re taking notes, I put all of them in the show notes here. The next step, step number 12, human resources.

We talked about it a little bit. But it’s hard to manage people if you don’t have good people. So I would just say, never stop hiring. That’s one thing I obsess on. Roy, you’ve quickly adopted that. Most business owners will fight me on the idea.

They’ll say, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

Roy, what do you say to someone who says, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

I’ve lost three people in one week. So you better have some back on the bench ready to come in. trying to find them. When you’re in crisis situation, you usually end up getting a bad hire to just got a desperation to get a human body in there. And then you have to back up and punt again. And so we we have a several deep applications, people that we know and if there’s somebody really good, I’ll make them a spot I will I will pay him and it looks like you’re losing money.

I’m not because there will be a need and when you need them, you can’t find it. That’s what I found. Now, step number 13, folks, you got to know your numbers. We talked about that earlier, but you got to know your accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. And Roy and I.

We get into it.

We talk about it. We look at the numbers every single week. And I’m telling you, there’s little moves you can do, just a little tweak. Once you get the business to a certain level, you can do one tweak, just one little tweak. And all of a sudden, the profit, the actual money you can keep, will go up in a dramatic, impactful way. And so, Roy, I mean, what do you say for someone who’s afraid of doing a price increase despite record inflation?

or somebody who’s afraid to make a tweak or make a cut? What do you say about really knowing those numbers? Yeah, we did $6 million in sales last year. And we did, let’s call it 6 % better.

It was different at most shops, but average 6 % better to the bottom line. Well, that’s $360 ,000 of profit for 6%. That’s substantial numbers. That’s life changing money that is on top of what you were doing before without even bringing in any more cars. It’s being more efficient, cutting waste. You’ve had me do several things, going through with changing credit card companies and fees and different, just going through and checking all the monthly things that are automated that you’re not even using anymore.

I mean, and these little percentages add up. at the end of the year to a big number, especially when your sales numbers start going up significantly. Now, step number 14, I would ask anybody watching today’s show, what’s the purpose of having a business? I would argue that every day that we have is a gift from God. And what we do with it is a gift to God. And a vehicle is simply, a business is simply a vehicle that allows you to give more, be more, make a bigger impact.

And that’s how I look at it. And I know, Roy, you’re a Christian business owner. You don’t have a sign that says, Christian business owner, Roy Cogshaw. But you are. And I know that the profits that you make, you and your wife like to sow seed into good ground and support missions. Could you talk about how you view a business?

What’s the purpose of a business at this point in your life? What is the purpose of owning a business? Yeah, at this stage of my life, I was just trying to get some money and get out of crisis, starting the business. But we have a nonprofit that the businesses fund. It’s closer to a foundation at this point. I always say you’ll do more for a higher cause than you’ll do for yourself.

Like I, I work night and day inside jobs for my family. I wouldn’t work that hard just for myself. But there’s there’s a higher purpose now with I call it doing some 10 ,000 years from now stuff.

That’s really what flips my switch now.

And I’m going to do a third but I don’t need any more money, but I want to be able to give some more money, right?

So that’s going to require Third, also have some really great humans that work for me and they make really good money. They can work five days a week and enjoy their family. That’s super important for me to have. Also, I actually enjoy being around these guys. So start in the third, we’ll get some room for movement and everybody can move up and make more also. So that’s what flips my switch.

OK, my final two questions. Here we go. When you pay me, we deliver service for you. What I know is I know that you and I have a meeting every week. And at that meeting time, the purpose of that meeting is to make sure that we identify what needs to be discussed. We identify, we discuss, and we solve.

What am I saying? We identify the biggest limiting factor. We discuss the best way to solve it. And then we solve it. So identify, discuss, solve. IDS.

We do it every week. And so the meeting doesn’t need to be two hours.

It doesn’t need to be 90 minutes. The purpose is to identify what needs to be discussed, discuss it, and then solve it. And for me, it’s peaceful knowing that I’m working with 160 people that I actually care about and knowing that they’re going to go out there and take those profits and do great things with it. Can you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, OK, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge. Or he’s not going to go, oops, we had two calls, so it’s more.

Or, wow, we didn’t meet this week, so it’s less. Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web, the search, the ads, all of that is a monthly thing? Yeah. I, not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing.

And, and I’m like half of the bottom number is what spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working, because we’re, we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. And as far as the SEO, and like, I’ve, I’ve messed up and didn’t didn’t send money to the hosting service and crashed my website, Clay had it back up in half a day. It’s really great to have somebody call just fixes it. I can do what I do, you do what you do.

It’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on, no matter what crashes, you can take care of it. I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain. I don’t know how you do what you do, as cheap as you do, but it actually is super economical for me. Now, Roy, what do you say to anybody out there that’s thinking about going to thrivetimeshow . com and scheduling a free 13 -point assessment? They’re thinking about coming to one of our conferences to see Tim Tebow.

They’re thinking about maybe coming out to a conference to see an Eric Trump or thinking about scheduling a free consultation. What do you say? Man, if you want change, you need to change, right? And if you knew what you needed to know to change it, you would already change it. So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this, you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now.

So if you don’t increase that, you can’t you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right? A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant and don’t think they need any help.

Never even read a book on business. That was me. And then wonder why you haven’t trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business. And I read books now and I value knowledge, but it was a journey that really opened, took the lid off of me or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in.

when I came to you.

So I would encourage everybody, even for your health, your marriage, fix it. You need to fix it. Roy, you’re the best joke giver I’ve ever seen. You have a delivery. It’s a mastery.

I’m not trying to paint you into a corner.

I know you have a good joke.

OK. Give yourself a moment to get ready for that joke.

If you’re watching this right now and you don’t find this funny, there’s something wrong with you folks psychologically. Roy’s the best joke.

Every week he has a different joke. So Roy, I’m ready.

What do you call a man with a toe growing out of his knee? Tony. Yes. Yes. Does your wife feed you these jokes? Where do you get this endless source of jokes?

She rolls her eyes. She’s not one of my biggest fans on the jokes at all, but it does slow me down much. Well, thank you. He’s a comedian.

He’s an entrepreneur.

He’s a husband.

He’s a great dad.

He’s a committed Christian.

I encourage everybody out there, check out his websites.

He’s a real guy.

Roy, thank you for carving out time for us today. I really do appreciate you. All right. Thanks, Clay. Have a great day, brother. Take care.

Bye -bye. All right. Bye. one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay.

And he’s helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms.

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

Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go, return on investment, I pay you $1 ,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works the way his mind works, but he’s also got a team of other other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries so he’s worked in every industry, his staff has worked in every industry, he’s got videographers web designers. I mean, just for the fact of like, just the website alone is worth the $1 ,700.

Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself.

And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, maybe some week you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it and then you’re like, You know what I really and then you read it that one time and it’s like God really speaks to your heart and the whole truth is it’s like there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1 ,700 to have a whole team of coaches. Graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket.

And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that that skill set, you have that you have those. It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like just, just understand it.

That’s a, that’s what I think there’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. Um, we’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay. Well, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because a lot of times on The Thrive Time Show, I get to interview people that I am friendly with or have an acquaintance with, that kind of thing. And I enjoy that. But it’s really special.

whenever I get to interview someone who I consider to be a friend or people that I consider to be friends of our family. And it’s awesome when we can celebrate a success story, because it’s a life -giving thing.

And for somebody watching today’s show, if you feel you need like a checkup from the neck up, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you don’t have the resources to get started but you have the resourcefulness, maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear. Because this is a couple.

They started this business together.

out of their house.

And they’ve now grown it into a multi -million dollar, super successful company. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in a consulting or coaching capacity over these past five or six years. And I am so excited to have them on today’s show.

With that being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show.

Amber, how are you?

Great.

Thanks, Clay. It’s awesome to be on here with you.

Yes, we are excited.

Okay, so I got to ask this real quick, because people think you’re a hologram.

How long have we had the opportunity to work with you? Or how long have we worked with you guys together from a kind of a coaching relationship? We started back in 2017. Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years. Yeah, it’s coming up on eight probably, a little over seven. And from that time, I mean, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth.

I mean, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size you guys have grown over these past seven or eight years at colawfitness . com? Absolutely.

We started off, we were getting ready to open our third location. And one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. And he’s helped us go from, you know, Right before we open the third location now to six locations and so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms, and so it’s not the barrier for entries pretty high it’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that.

Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him.

So huge win.

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

So like your living room was where the squat rack was, or the bench press was in the kitchen. Amber, what was that like when you started colawfitness . com? Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see a bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead.

You’re just kind of thinking you have to work, you have to survive, you’ve got to make money, and you’re doing what you love. And so with that, it was just it was kind of more as a of a survival. And also, we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room, a formal dining room. And so. So, um, we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele. And so we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room that cause it’s just an empty room.

And, um, the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring, ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall.

And we just started doing what we needed to do at the time with no, I mean I definitely did not think it was going to be in my house for a couple of years for sure. But, yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure I was like I want to make sure that you know I can provide for my family and And we were trying to just, I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained, want to make sure that it gave me good results. And yeah, next thing you know, we have about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week. And it’s me and about four or five of the trainers training out of there, out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness.

And then Amber also did some hair. So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house. So yeah, the win. Now, I want to share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story with you, but I think our listeners need to hear this because your story is better than mine. But let me just show this to the listeners real quick here.

If we go to 111th and Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my wife and I, we were 20 years old -ish, and I remember I was so excited to be able to build our house. I remember telling my wife, honey, We can afford to build a house. We are going to build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside. She was like, we’re going to buy a house?

And I go, yeah. She’s like, we’re going to build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple. We’ve just been married a couple of years. We’re right here at 111th and Memorial. I found a builder named Rob Brewer, who did a phenomenal job.

I would hire him again. And this is a true story. So I built this house from scratch. And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her. I’m not going to mention her last name. Wendy comes by, and she’s like, hey, what are you doing?

I go, what do you mean? Because I’m having like 40 couples a week that are walking up to my front door, hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard. And she’s like, what are you doing? And I’m going, well, what do you mean what I do? She’s like, this is a residential neighborhood.

What are you doing?

I said, well, I’m running a business. She said, you can’t run a business here. So I had back here in the backyard, no kidding, I had eight different vans back there. And then neighbors kept asking me if I was running drugs. I mean, people were concerned because the first DJ would come to load up gear. At four

in the morning and our last guy would come home at 3 in the morning. It was just. I got to ask you at the gym amber how early were people come into work out to do squats and bench press and cardio what time are they showing up how many people are showing up.

Yeah, so Charles is.

He’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5 a . m. with his first client. And, uh, you know, sometimes it would last until about 10 o ‘clock at night. And so it was, it was, it was just a revolving door.

And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o ‘clock every afternoon. And him and I, and, um, as we added staff, we would all work out together. So it became this big, you know, workout session together. It was awesome. And this is a real thing. Now, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious.

But I mean, did you ever have awkward situations?

I mean, because you’re sleeping there. You’re living there. Do you guys ever have just like, oh. I remember with the DJ business, my wife, about once a week there for a while, she would come downstairs. And one of my DJs would, Clay, where’s the bathroom? I’d say, right there.

And they would walk into our master bedroom. And I’m like, get out of there. That’s my bathroom, you sicko. I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions? Oh, yeah. Totally.

Our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden, I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge. And I remember one day, a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it. And it just shatters all over the kitchen floor that his client was here. So he looks at me kind of like, uh. And I was like, just go.

So I’m cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. One morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs. and I’m just making that short little. jagged over to my bedroom door.

And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on and I opened the door and right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises. And they just, good morning. And I thought, get this out of my house. Yeah, the trainers napping on the couch between clients and our middle son was in pre -K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day. And he’d sit on the couch.

He was just a little, his feet would just stick straight off the couch. And he’d try and watch cartoons and there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor, right in front of the TV doing crunches. And so he’s just watching his little cartoons and someone’s doing crunches in front of him. And so, oh yeah, the whole family was in on it. I just remember when I was building DJConnection . com, I would train my DJs out of my house.

So we would practice announcements, like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up in just a moment, we’re going to introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro. And we would practice, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, we’re going to be cutting the cake. Once again, we got the bride, we got the groom, we got an act that should be exciting. And I’m practicing, and they have a script, and I’m practicing. So adult males are in my house, and we’re practicing introducing.

Because, you know, we grew DJ Connection to do 4 ,000 weddings a year, so I’m training 30 disc jockey every week. So Havana, my oldest, who’s now 20, she starts running around in the office going, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the cutting of the cake. Because she heard it so much. She’s like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the Soul Train line. She knew. Because it was like, I don’t think if you’re watching today’s show and these stories, you can’t relate to it.

That’s okay, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re getting this idea. This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere and it’s not about resourcefulness. It’s about, it’s not, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Again, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness.

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

I want to be a colawfitness . com. I’ll get the website to pull up in just a second. And people always come to me and they say, Clay, what do I need to do? What’s the most important thing? I just had a guy today, huge ministry, huge ministry, multi -million dollar massive ministry called me and said, what’s the one thing I can do to grow my ministry?

And I said, buddy, I’m going to send you today’s show. There are 14 things. that we need to do and a lot of details on those 14. So we’re going to go step by step on today’s show. I’ll go back and forth between Charles and Amber. And for sake of time, we’ll just go back and forth rapid fire.

So here we go.

And Charles, by the way, you get 60 seconds on the clock for each answer. So here we go. Box number one, you have to figure out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. You have to know your revenue goals. What are your gross revenue goals?

What are your weekly revenue goals? What are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals. Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals? rules.

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

And yeah, you got to know how many units of items you have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff. And for us, we have a lot of recurring revenue.

But the whole point is, we want to make sure that we have enough of the payable viable buyers in the system. to continue to grow. And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie, who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach. And when you work with a new client, a lot of times the client’s going to have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding.

But you have to know these numbers.

Amber, anything else you want to talk about as far as the numbers? Because I know your husband is passionate about fitness, and you are as well. But why do you have to focus on the numbers and not just marketing, or not just branding, or not just social media? Why do you have to focus on those numbers? Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going.

And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing, like it just, it leads the whole way. And I think a lot of people tend to do, I’m going to do the marketing or I just want to perform the service. I think a lot of it because people are scared of numbers. I think they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the biggest thing. This is such wisdom, folks.

I’m telling you, if you’re not familiar with colawfitness . com, go to their website. These guys give away a Bible. Every time they sell a new membership, they set aside a portion of the funds to give away a Bible to first -time members at their gym. It’s an incredible, it’s a ministry, it’s a business. It checks all those boxes.

Let’s move on to box number three. Define the number of hours you’re willing to work. Now, Amber, you happen to be married to a man who’s willing to work every hour of the day if need be. I will say this, though. Most of my clients, if I had to think about my 160 clients I work with, And I had to think about the average client.

90 % of them are not willing to work as hard as you guys. Most of my clients are willing to work 40 hours a week, or 50 hours a week. Some will work 60 hours a week. But nobody is willing to go sprint for 40 hours a week. m. to 8 p .

m. , 10 p . m. every day if need be.

Your husband is willing to do that. Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re gonna work, the hours that you’re not gonna work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip? Why is that an important box there, Charles?

That way my wife will stay married to me. Well, I’m like you, I like to just go, go, go. And then we do definitely, we take off and we go to church on Sunday. It’s important for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath, as a day off. Other than that, I like to work. You talked about vacation, to vacate or to leave something.

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

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

Our clubs are in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, how do we want to live our lives? Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly define that. For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that’s it. are just all in on zoom calls, training, coaching, Working with staff.

And so those days are really, really full days. And then the rest of the time, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings. It’s like no meetings that we plan, but we are still, I’m still working on things that I want to work on, but I’m not leveraged to having to. So I’ve kind of created my three day Work week that’s like super long and then the rest of the time I don’t have meetings. I don’t get held hostage on a lot of stuff and people have to kind of have a gatekeeper to get to me. But other than that, that’s how I’ve tried to map that out so that I can continue to mastermind and kind of grow the brand and have some meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow.

So there’s just. So much, again, for folks, if you want to learn entrepreneurship, this is real people. If you’re in the Florida area and you’re looking for a job, if you’re in the Joplin, Missouri area and you’re looking for a career, not just a job, Koloff Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns.

And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. And I also know of the clients that’ll work. Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work. And I look at the Colaw family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring. And I’m telling you folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere.

If you’re looking for a career, check it out, colawfitness . com. Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing. But what is it that makes you unique?

What is it that makes you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition? If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards. Let’s think about everything about your business. Let’s think about the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition?

What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful when there are many other fascinating things? restaurants? What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, dirty convenience stores? What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful? What is it that makes Quick Trip successful? What is the secret sauce that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning lineup year after year.

Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball team. Think about this.

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

He only won his championships with Phil.

Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson. By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. What is that magic formula? A big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Koloff Fitness unique versus other fitness companies? Oh, for us, it’s culture, hands down.

It’s culture all day long. And we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture and make it what we wanted it to be. We wanted a fitness center that everybody could come be a part of. And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it. But It’s definitely our culture and that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we train, develop, encourage that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part.

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

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

And so we really vet that pretty heavily on the front side, on the onboarding with our, you know, like our Christian culture. We play a video. We talk about who we are.

We talk about the Christian values, devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory, determination to stay the course. So the Christian side of it is kind of strong. So either people lean in or lean and lean back. And so when we do group interviews, this is where you’ve taught us a lot of great systems, you see people lean in and see people lean back. So when everybody’s on the boat rowing in the same direction, and they really match that value set, the culture is just, it’s just better. And when you hire people to actually like people, like hire people that like people, they want to acknowledge your presence, close the gap, give them a fist bump, a high five, make somebody feel like the highest, like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door.

So we train people on those systems. So we took the culture that we did when we first opened the club, and we defined it into actual ways that we can role play and script it with our staff so that you have not a purple hair, McDonald’s, perpetually distracted, crayon mark tattoo person, You have a person posted like a McDonald’s, something that runs up to your car like a Chick -fil -A that’s you got their polo on and says, my pleasure. So that’s where we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently than the competition who’s just, you know, scaling up. like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere. They’re just genuine that truly like people.

If you do that, well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out. This is I’m telling you, folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story. And he’s kind of a gremlin. I know him because he didn’t get hired by a friend of mine. And so a friend of mine is like, hey, I didn’t hire this guy.

He’s kind of a gremlin. I said, what do you mean, gremlin? He’s like, yeah, he’s just kind of a curmudgeon, kind of a negative guy, Debbie Downer. And he’s got a big background in fitness, though. And he’s into fitness. And he played sports at a high level.

And he’d love to come work for you, Clay. And I go, OK. And he’s like, yeah, I guess he applied for the Colaw guys a couple of years ago, didn’t get the job. And I’m going, interesting. And I knew that you, and I met the guy. I’m like, you know what?

This guy. I understand why you didn’t hire him, and I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you, you have certain standards. And if people aren’t up to those standards, they can come back and reapply later after they turn that frown upside down. But you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three -legged marketing stool.

At Colaf Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that I work with, what we do is we develop a three -legged marketing stool. Now, I’ll give you a moment, Charles and Amber, to reflect on this. And maybe this is true for you, maybe not. But a lot of my clients that come into my life, I think about Stacey Purcell, longtime client, great lady. I think about Shaw Homes, shawhomes . com.

We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year. I think about Satellite Phones, Tina, her company, SAT123. We’ve helped them grow to $100 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, oxifresh .

com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 -plus locations. And every single time I sit down with a business owner, they have not a three -legged marketing stool. No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we start to figure out what doesn’t work.

And so with Stacey Purcell, with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100 % of the time, thus saving her $8 ,000 a month by turning it off. I just had a client this week, true story, we found he was spending $4 ,000 a week on YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views, No leads. Another client, I’m using a stream of consciousness, another client of mine, they were doing mailers, getting zero response. Another client of mine was doing billboards to the tune of $6 ,000 a month between all their locations. And as you look at the different businesses and you track, you can really, really become much more profitable by nailing down a three -legged marketing stool.

Could you talk about that, Amber? Maybe the impact it’s had or hasn’t had, tracking the results. getting rid of what doesn’t work and focusing on what does work? Yeah. Well, I would say, um, none of that is my part of the business. And I’m so thankful.

I hate marketing, but I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with like, we were talking about your numbers and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side. And I want to know that when the money’s going out, that that return is coming back. Right. And so I do that side of it with we talk about a marketing budget and watching that and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching, you know, the revenue that comes back from that marketing so you may be able to talk more on the marketing that’s your yeah no absolutely well we’ve tracked where they come from sometimes you do get clicks or you do have like sometimes facebook shows you make it but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items and so you really want to make sure that what you’re spending money on is actually quantifying

into dollars. And so Clay’s really been good with us to track that.

We’ve done that for years. And so we can really kind of see in our industry. We market in a five mile radius, really heavy. That’s kind of our ideal and likely buyers within that five mile radius or a 12 minute drive time. We target those. We see what marketing works best.

And a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff that Clay teaches with a lot of his clients is really seeing to making sure that you’re dominating on certain platforms.

And I can go into that. But the whole point is, is Clay has done it in every industry. And when we follow the system, track it correctly, we can monetize our marketing dollars a whole lot better. And so there’s ways you want to get in front of your ideal likely buyer. We make sure we got the right product offering in front of the right ideal likely buyer. And the things that Clay has been doing with his clients over the last seven years with us, it doesn’t change much.

There’s a few little things that adjust, but it’s a proven system and that’s what works. And we’ve just, we’ve done that. We’ve gone from three locations to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue. So it’s been a huge win. Well, I think sometimes people want to market in a certain way because that’s the cool thing to do. Like I want to be on TikTok.

If TikTok doesn’t pay me, if TikTok is not, if it’s not paying my bills, I could care less. I mean, I can watch TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And, um, I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you. Everybody, everybody thinks that it’s a marketing guru because they see ads. And I don’t think that’s true either. Now, I’m going to ask you this, Charles.

And I’m not ready for your answer yet. I’ve got to mentally prepare myself for this. But you do not have the ability to not be honest here, OK? So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away, OK? Guy reaches out to me.

He’s in the construction space, OK? And he goes, what would it? This happens every day, by the way. But he says, what would a relationship look like if I hired you guys as my coach? If I hired you, Clay, and your team, what does that look like?

And I said, well, we charge you $1 ,700 a month.

So it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. That’s what it is. We have a weekly meeting.

And we follow a proven system. And anyway, and I said, there’s accountability. So there’s kind of three parts to it. One is we have a team that helps you get your photography, your video, your web, your search engine done for you, all those things. The second is we provide coaching down a proven path. And then the third is we have workshops every couple months so you can kind of get a tune up.

And I said, Mr. Client, Mr. Potential Client, who I’ve known forever, I said, Clay Stairs describes me as the ass man. And he’s like, the ass man? And I said, yeah, Clay Stairs, longtime client of mine. He’s been a client of mine for like 15 years. He literally tells people that I’m his ass man. And they go, what?

He goes, Clay has helped me grow my company, claystairs . com. He’s helped me get into political office. But he kind of is like an irritant who follows up on the same things every week until they get done. So I wanted to ask you, Charles, how would you describe what the coaching relationship looks like for somebody out there that’s saying, what is it like to work with specifically me and my team? Well, to shoot you straight, I mean, Clay’s highest desire isn’t always your comfort in that coaching.

His highest desire is your continued development that you do hit your goals for financial and a good coach. Think of a good coach. A good coach tells you what you need to hear because he doesn’t just care about the comfort in the room or the comfort of the conversation. He cares about your character development, your personal development to becoming the better leader. And if you want to run a great company, you have to be a great leader. You have to be the avatar.

You have to be the great person. And Clay’s really pushed that in me. And for me, I thought I’ve always needed that. And I was just like, okay, Charles, stay humble, stay coachable. And that’s the biggest thing is most business owners they don’t have the ability to stay, keep a humble, coachable heart and be willing to grow.

When you work with somebody that has a proven system, they’ve worked in every industry. They’ve got a team of videographers, graphic designers, web developers, people that will help you grow. Build the back end of your business correctly.

The proven systems of continuous hiring of staff team, like group hiring that you always have staff ready to go. Somebody in the bullpen, so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’ve never held hostage because there’s somebody that doesn’t know a skill set. You can always replace somebody. Because if you don’t create a system, you’re going to be a limited resource.

And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and makes sure you’ve got that stuff so you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype that you can hand to the lowest skill set. So great people are great, but Clay’s been really good at shooting me straight. If you have a humble, coachable heart and you’re willing to grow and you take two or three action items every week, next thing you know, 50 weeks, 52 weeks in the year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you got a way better website, you got checklist workflows, you got staff following systems, you got backup for each position. Because if you don’t have people in the bullpen, you’re going to be held hostage. And so you want to make sure that you got the right systems, checklist and personnel ready to go.

And to run six different businesses in four different states, From Florida, in the Midwest, we have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on, and making sure people are holding to that. Clay’s been really great for helping set up the system. But it’s, to be honest, it’s not always, the conversations are definitely sometimes challenging, but understanding that both parties, me as the client, him as the coach, is really help trying to have the highest desire to make you grow into a better person and to help your company grow and be better. And for me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with with Thrive and Clay. Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this.

You know, there was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. And it really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago. But he said, amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. And it’s time, I thought, you know what?

From a legal perspective, I probably need a coach or mentor to help me.

So I hired wintersking .

com, and I’ve used that company for, what, 10 plus years? And it’s really helped me. And I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have her a coach. So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach. When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson.

And I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me, because at the time, he was the top televangelist in America. And he was a phenomenal verbal communicator. But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable. and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing, and I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting and making those little iterations and every week making it a little better?

Because I think some people want to get rich quick. They want to become successful in 10 minutes. They want to ready, set, let’s go. But you guys, every week we go to colawfitness . com.

Every week we enhance the website. Every week we enhance the scripts. week, we enhance the value proposition. Every week, we’re doing little tweaks that are improving the brand. Could you talk about this, that mindset of that weekly improvement? Yeah, absolutely.

With your numbers, you have to have good feedback tools, some key performance KPIs or key performance things you look at for sales over cancellations, and how much dollars you’re spending on marketing. When we track that on a regular basis, we can see that we’re doing well or not doing well, we make pivots. We get coaching feedback from you on best practices. And one thing is, is that you’ve not just worked in our industry, but lots of industries, and having a team of people, a team of coaches that say, hey, this is what’s working, this isn’t what’s working, it’s super valuable. And so, like, I got an MBA in school, but I’m telling you, like, it’s real life is so much more important. and having good people that have good feelers just like it’s you’re not you’re only as good as your team and clay brings a whole team to your team.

And anyways, are we have a weekly meeting our weekly meeting we look at like, what are the key things that impact us, it’s going to be signups, signups over cancels, what are those signups, which ones upgraded to higher tier options, whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options, or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one -on -one coaching or fitness training or nutrition coaching or group training, but getting people into those things and understanding the scripts, How to roleplay that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, roleplay, roleplay until that socially awkward, you know, young person can totally get it and they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking face has gone away. They know how to do it.

Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over costs, and then show them that if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen.

And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life, add years to the life quality to your years by changing new habits. And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating that you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things, and you change a lot of lives. Well, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial. It’s kind of like you’re our blind side, blind spot coach. This is what we’ve created. There’s a lot of emotions attached to it.

It’s what we love. It’s what feeds our family. And so we can become very emotionally charged. And I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, like, So, you kind of keep us focused on separating the emotions from it. And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you, or, you know, we’re in conversations we’ll have and they’ll say, yeah, but you don’t understand landscaping. It’s not like that.

landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week when we meet. But it’s about business, and it’s about where we’re going, and you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability like you talked about. Your set of eyes is super valuable. I’ll just say this.

I mean, colawfitness . com, if you’re looking for a career, folks, I’m telling you, check out colawfitness . com. Now, point number seven, sales conversion. We have to have scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, lead trackers. What?

We need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store.

We call that internal marketing.

There’s external marketing, marketing to your ideal and likely buyers. But internal marketing, letting your current gym members know that you offer personal training or group fitness. Box number eight, you have to have a sustainable customer acquisition cost. What? You have to know what does it cost you to land a new customer. Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems.

When you clean the bathrooms, every day. When you clean the showers, every day. When you clean the locker rooms, every day. When you clean the equipment, every day. When you clean all these things, multiple times a day.

When you change the light bulbs, every day.

When you have to maintain the fitness equipment, every day. When you have to hire people, every day. You have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You’ve got to have checklists and processes. Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people?

What? This just in, we have to manage people. We’ve got to hire people, manage people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. Box number 11, you have to build a system.

sustainable schedule. What is the schedule that your company will keep? What hours will you be open? What kind of shifts do you have? What kind of org chart? Who’s in charge?

Who isn’t? How do you deal with somebody that doesn’t want to follow the systems? Because this just in, a customer will fire you if you won’t fire your bad employees. In box number 12, you’ve got to have a high standard with the A players, the B players. You’ve got to coach up the B players to become A players. You’ve got to coach those A players to become future leaders.

You’ve got to coach the C players out into another job or to the local bus station. You got to get them out of your life. or they will ruin your business. And then box number 13, you got to make sure you’re making money. It’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep.

Box number 14, you have to sit down every day and say, What does God want me to do if every day is a gift? What does God want me to do if every day is a gift from God? What does God want me to do with my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendship, my fun, my focused time? What does God want me to do with this day? That’s all these things we have to think about there. And I’m telling you, folks, everything we’re talking about on today’s show, it wouldn’t matter if Kola Fitness was not obsessed with wowing the customers.

Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your fitness to the next level. If you’re out there today and you are enjoying You’re in Joplin, Missouri. You’re in Texas. You are in all the different markets they’re in. Go to colawfitness . com.

You can see the markets they’re in. I’m telling you, these guys are obsessed with wowing customers. So I’ll go to you, Amber.

Then I’ll go to you, Charles.

Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers.

Everything we talked about doesn’t matter if you don’t wow your customers.

Can you talk about why at the core, even though we’re going over all this business stuff, all these details, at the end of the day, you guys at Colaw Fitness have to wow the customers. Why is that so important, Amber? Well, I think for us it’s important because we love people and everybody needs a belonging and worth. And they need to feel important and they need to feel cared for. And that’s our passion. We just love loving on people.

That’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole company.

It was just his desire to help people and his love for them. And that was the same reason a million years ago that I did hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved and they have value. And if we can pass that on, through all of our front desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, excuse me, and also spread the gospel at the same time, let them know God loves you.

And so that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development even of our staff. I’m Charles Cole. I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you. So here we go. Two final questions.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. There’s somebody out there right now. They’re thinking about coming to one of our in -person workshops. They know Tim Tebow’s going to be there. They know Eric Trump will be there.

They know that you might be there. But maybe if they haven’t been to a workshop in the past, how would you describe the in -person, two -day interactive workshops? How would you describe them, sir? It’s just, it’s raw and real.

I mean, if you really want to try to get, if you really, really, really want to build a company, not just get like a, like if you go to school, you get a business degree, you, you know, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems, that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions, like we are millions of dollars more in revenue because of these systems that we’ve implemented. And we’ve been able to scale and not have to actually work in the business. We work on the business, just the business system. So we can live in Florida.

We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, but we have the systems, we have the checklist, we’ve got the workflows, and we have the systems that we can hold people to. We’ve retained the right talent. We’ve got really people in the bullpen for every position. So they were held hostage to happen to do that. But all that to say it’s going it’s funny. He’s very very I mean Clay’s pretty much like a comedian.

It’s hilarious to listen to if you’re willing to be coachable. if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes. There’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful. And if you’re a diligent doer and you just do one or two action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is, it’s just being more of a marathoner than a sprinter. When you’re working with a coach, just do your two or three action items. And that two or three, If you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150.

Next thing you got a way better website, you got a way better lead funnel, you got way better staff hired, you’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mindfree templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, all that. So you got people in the bullpen for each position, and you’re no longer being held hostage as an owner, and you’ve got a proven system. So that’s Clay and his team.

I’ll one up you.

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

You’re not sitting in this huge ballroom with want, want, want speakers that you feel like are trying to sell you something and you’re trying to stay awake. That’s not the case at all.

It’s a circus.

There’s a whole lot to take home.

Even if you go to the conference and you decide, hey, this is not for me right now, or coaching is not for me, hands down, you will leave with practical business application items. Final question I have for you guys, just like Kola Fitness, I mean you put your name right there on the brand Kola Fitness, you can’t really go to thrivetimeshow . com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in what I do and wowing our customers, but for some reason out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space, who’s like, hey, what would coaching look like for me? Or is coaching for me?

He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say? What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success? Or what kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness . com? Well, I would say first off, personally, I’ve developed a great friendship with some really great people.

And I thought that’s been huge for me. That’s personally, and to know people that are in the same type of pressure that you have is running a company running a business to have people that have that are intelligent, and they care. As a friend, that is huge.

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

Oh, I would say that You were talking about it hasn’t just affected us in our business, but it has affected us in our personal life, too, because all of these things that you learn can be rolled over into your personal life. So that’s been huge. And like Charles was talking about the connections that we’ve made with other business owners. You know, Clay, you said at the very first conference we went to your network is your net worth. Amen. I mean, that is hands down.

If you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses and you’re hanging out with the old people who are complaining about having to work

an eight -hour day, you know, if you’re spending your time with them and, you know, it’s just going to break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re going to stay there. You’re going to stay in that influence of people. And every conference, we meet new people, and we’ve got some of the most awesome friends that own businesses across the country. from the cheesecake store to a pizza shop, right, to dog training, to, I mean, we’ve got some of our friends that live in cities that we have gyms and they’re members at our clubs. And it’s just, it’s so powerful. It gives us a whole community to bounce ideas off of and get encouragement from.

Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go return on investment, I pay you $1 ,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle, or how would you respond to, what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry.

His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers. I mean, just for the fact of like just the website alone is worth the $1 ,700. Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing. done in the in the month is it was pays for itself and then to understand this there’s a part of where you know some maybe some week you may be like well you know what i’m not getting a whole lot out of this call but the bottom line is yeah you it’s like when you read the bible there’s times you’re just reading it and then you’re like you know what i really and then you read it that one time and it’s like god really speaks to your heart and the whole truth is it’s like there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for seventeen hundred dollars have a whole team of coaches, graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket.

And then in the whole thing is, is run your business with being somewhat conservative, make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that, that skill set, you have that you have those, It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like, just, just understand it.

That’s a, that’s what I think there’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind, even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. Um, we’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay. And so that quick call to Clay, and he’s outside the situation, and he has other data points. I mean, we’ve had times that, Clay, you’ve got a quick response, and you can tell us and direct us real quickly, and we’re right off the phone. And there’s other times you’ll go, I’ll call you right back.

And Clay will jump in, and he’ll call his other contacts and get back with us.

Sometimes it takes longer.

But there are times when you feel that way, when you’re like, Is this worth it? I don’t feel like we’re doing much right now or we’re not growing. Inevitably, something like that will come up and that’s our peace of mind. You’re like a crucial team player. You know, well, you know, I it’s an honor to serve you guys and everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you if you’re looking for a career.

Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form, but if you’re looking for a career, go to colawfitness . com because if you live in what Joplin, Missouri, Charles, Dallas, Texas, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Amber, we live in Topeka, Kansas. If you’re out there. Arlington, if you’re out there, go to colawfitness .com com if you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you, too, for carving out time with your busy schedule.

And I’m so glad to have you here today. Take care, guys. Bye bye. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use?

Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands.

They started from the bottom, now they’re here.

It’s The Thrive Time Show, starring the former U .

S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zillner. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re at the top.

We started from the bottom, now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks. I break down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks.

As the father of the squad, I’m alive.

So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them, CNC up on your radio.

Yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because on today’s show, we’re joined by a real Thriver. He could be, you might say, this guy looks like a hologram. He looks like an idealized hologram. This guy could be a male model, but no, he is an actual entrepreneur, a real client, a wonderful man.

We’ve had the opportunity to meet in person during multiple in -person workshops.

He comes from the great state of Iowa.

Josiah Ragsdale, welcome onto The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

I’m doing great. So I got to ask you, how did you originally come in contact with us there, sir? Actually, through Spotify. Through Spotify. Do you remember what you were doing on Spotify? Were you looking for business shows or was it recommended?

How did you find the Thrivetime Show?

I think I was looking for business shows. At the time, I was actually in school to build custom cars, and then I was working on a dragster. I’ve never liked listening to music, so I was looking for either an audio book or a podcast or something. Ran across your guys’ business show because I always figured I’d open up a custom car shop. So that’s kind of how I found you. Now, for anybody out there that wants to verify that you are a real person, the website is autoliftserve .

com. Autolift and serve, S -E -R -V . com.

Josiah, could you share with everybody out there who wants to verify you’re a real person? What’s your first and last name? And what’s the name of your company? Yeah, it’s Josiah Ragsdale. And then the name of the company is Automotive Lift Services.

And what kind of services or solutions do you guys provide there?

I think a lot of people are curious about that. What kind of services do you provide at autoliftserve . com?

Sure, sure. So kind of our main niche is obviously fixing lifts, because we generally

will prioritize a speed of repair. So like we offer like 48 hour repair times guaranteed. But otherwise, as far as the rest of the equipment in the shop, if it’s in a shop, like in the mechanic side, you know, whether it be a exhaust ventilation equipment or air compressor equipment, we service it and sell it as well. But lifts are our main bread and butter. Now, what I wanted to do on today’s show is really brag on you and kind of go through some of the wins that we’ve been able to work on together. Because I think sometimes when people think about a business coach or a business consultant, they may think about a motivational guy.

They may think about some sort of motivational, feelings -focused, almost like business therapist. But that’s not what we do at all. We focus on implementing a linear path to help real business owners grow their real companies. So we’re going to go through all 14 steps today. So step number one. Revenue goals.

I’m not asking you to share on today’s show what your yearly revenue goals are, but why is it important for you as a coaching client and a business owner, why was it important for you to figure out how much money you needed to do per week in sales to hit your goals and what your yearly goals actually were? without knowing our yearly goal, there’s no way to break down into what you need to hit per week. Cause like, that’s a really important thing that we start with every single Monday morning just between the, uh, my service manager here and myself is like figuring out, okay, this is how much cash we need to break even for this week. And this is how much cash we need to break even or should need to break even next week. And then this is what we need to make a profit. Um, and, and the, here’s our goal for profit.

So, uh, I mean, it’s, I don’t know how you would stay in business without knowing it. So let’s drill into that for a second. Are you coming to our workshop coming up here in March?

Are you coming to that?

I will not be, unfortunately. Nope. We’ve got a two -month -old baby, so he’s not moving yet. OK, well, let me pull this up real quick so people can see. you’ve been to a workshop, though. So you’ve been to a workshop.

Oh, yeah. Yep. And I’m just going to throw out some ideas for anybody out there watching. You know, we have Eric Trump. That’s President Trump’s son will be there, Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Eric Trump obviously runs the Trump Organization.

They have thousands of employees. We have Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series. We have Tom Wheelwright, one of the most respected wealth consultants on the planet.

And people say to me, Clay, man, it’s got to be hard putting together an event like that.

And I say, well, you know what?

We could define hard, but I’ll just tell you this. It’s about $175 ,000 for me to put on that event.

And someone says, huh? Real numbers that you put out up front. You say, where does that go to? Well, you got the president’s son here, so you need security. You need great security. We need all the police and all the law enforcement to keep him safe.

You’ve got audio and visual people that work all weekend, and they set up for the event.

We’ve got food.

Anytime you try to feed a small army of people, which will be 400 people, think about it. Even if the average person, if we only invested in $20 over two days to feed them, that would quickly add up. But it’s not $20. So you’re talking about $50 of food per person. You’ve got the security. Then you’ve got the flights, the hotel, the accommodations for the various speakers.

And I can go on and on boring people with details. But you end up spending, quickly, about $150 ,000 to put on the event. And so because we only sell 400 tickets, you kind of do the math and you go, OK, that’s what you need to do to break even. And I think everybody out there needs to have clarity on that. You mentioned it. I want to go back to this workflow for a second.

The break even point, box number two.

Most people do not know how many customers they need to break even.

Why is it absolutely essential for you and for any business owner especially at autoliftserve .

com.

Why is it important for you to know how much you have to sell to break even? Yeah, I mean, if you don’t break even, you’re going bankrupt, so that’s… about as important as it gets, you know, I mean, I don’t know how else to break that down. Well, I think a lot of business owners, though, don’t ever think about these things at all. I mean, I would say 99 % of the wonderful doctors and dentists and lawyers and clients and automotive repair shops I’ve worked with, I mean, of all the clients in our portfolio, I would say 99 % of them don’t know their break -even point before they start coaching. And I think that’s so important for everybody out there to really dial into that idea.

Now, the third step, we’ve got the third step, is you’ve got to know how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Now, you have a baby on the way. Is this baby number one or baby number 407?

How many kids do you have?

This baby is baby number one. Yeah. And so I remember when I first met you, you were baby free. You might have even been girlfriend free. I think you came to the conference with a friend. And I think the work van stopped working, and you guys helped us fix the van or got it working.

So a lot has changed in your life. Why is it important that you and your wife, you and your partner that you guys have, that you’re on the same page with defining your schedule? Oh, definitely.

That’s huge. Because I mean, if like, we want to be happily married and have a good home for, you know, our future kids and whatnot, because we want to have more kids too. But I mean, if I was just like always working, she would not. we probably wouldn’t be married for very long. So like my curfew moved up from like 6 .30pm and being able to start as early as I wanted to like now I quit at five and then I don’t get to work all day and all night on Saturdays anymore.

So my Saturdays start earlier and we’ve kind of changed when his bedtime is to kind of make it match too. But uh, yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s really important. So real stuff. You get divorced, you lose 50 % of what you built. So yeah, All right, now pops number four, defining your unique value proposition. What is it that makes your company unique?

So that’s one thing we do with every client. We help you achieve it. But let’s talk about autoliftserve . com.

What do you guys do differently, autoliftserve .

com, from your competition? What do you do that makes you unique in the world of business? Yeah. So we, uh, we guarantee that we’ll fix the lift within 48 hours or it’s free. Like we’ll try and get people over to our maintenance plan right away. Uh, that, that’s kind of our biggest thing.

Cause most people you go to, you’re going to go ahead and, uh, you’re going to call them. They’re going to come out and diagnose it, bill you for that. And then they’re going to order parts.

You’re going to go through, it’s like a 30 to 60 day lead time on a lot of repairs. And kind of what we do is we’ll go ahead of that and we’ll go, okay, you know, Hey, for, uh, you know, let’s say 100 bucks a month, whatever, we’ll cover your lift. And then if anything breaks, we’ll come out and have it fixed within 48 hours where you don’t have to pay for it that long. So again, you’ve thought through this, and you have a coach that works with you every week. Let’s talk about this here. Moving on to box number five, branding.

That’s the website, photography, video, logo, print pieces, video testimonials. How has improving your branding impacted your ability to go out there and sell in a competitive marketplace? Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s impacted a whole lot. I mean, like, even when I was first showing up, like we were, like, right after starting up with you guys, like the difference between me going in and Dream 100 marketing beforehand and after it was huge, because, like, before I’d go in, they’d be like, Okay, this is just some guy off the street, clearly. But afterwards, I went in, like, we got into the Davis group here in Iowa. And, and I was talking to one of them there.

And they thought we were part of like a franchise. They were like, Oh, wow, are you a franchisee for this company or whatever? I was like, that was the point that made me think like, Oh, wow. Our brand names like really jumped quite a lot. And that’s helped a lot because now they weren’t as worried about like, Oh, do you know, specifically how you’re going to fix this or what you’re doing now? It’s more so like, okay, this is a legit company.

We’re not worried about it. Just book them.

I’m telling you folks. people do judge a book by the cover. People do judge you based upon your branding. It’s so important you nail it down. Box number six, the three -legged marketing stool. There’s got to be a way that every business owner out there that you can stably, consistently, methodically market to your ideal and likely buyers.

There’s got to be a sustainable way proven way for you to market to your ideal and likely buyers. Can you talk about the impact that it’s had having someone like Andrew, one of our coaches working with you to make sure that you’re diligently implementing a three legged marketing stool? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, just having some accountability because one of ours is Dream 100 Marketing. So that’s pretty big where we like physically show up and keep dropping off donuts until they cry die or buy. But so that one’s that one’s big.

That’s more so just the accountability of making sure we’re doing it.

And then obviously, like getting top of Google is our other main one. And then we’re kind of we run a lot of retargeting ads, stuff like that. We’re cranking that up. So like those are two boxes that I really know nothing about. And so Andrew kind of takes the whole takes everything from there. Like we have Lucky Orange on the website.

Him and I go through it on our coach calls every, every week. And we kind of scroll through and see if there’s stuff that could be, have people hanging up on or getting caught on and whatnot. But that’s pretty much, I mean, he’s pretty much taking on all that. Like we write some content too. You guys write a ton of content, but yeah, that’s, that’d be huge. I would have no idea what to do with that.

without you guys, so. If you didn’t have a team helping you get to the top of the Google search results, A, could you do it? And then B, what kind of impact has it made on your business being top in the Google search results? Sure, sure. Yeah. Could I do it?

I probably could. It’d be horrible, though. It’d take me way longer, like way longer and cost a lot more money, because I would have screwed it up royally many times. And the impact is huge, because obviously people find us on Google, we’ve got like several, several of our largest customers have came from a simple Google search. And they’re like people that we’ve been trying to dream 100 market to before that for, for years, and they basically didn’t know who we are.

And then one of these days, you know, somebody’s just googling at their company and finds us and they book us in that. That’s so much easier to when they find us on Google, and they call us to book it, like it’s, it’s light years easier, because now it’s like they’re looking for us. It’s not we’re cold calling them and trying to get them to buy something. So it’s more so like order taking at that point, instead of having to sell. So I mean, it’s a huge impact. Now, next area here.

And again, this is all people, people always say to me, they always say, Josiah, Josiah, people say to me, they’ll say, Clay, what is the most important thing I need to do to grow my company? And I would respond rhetorically, not in a difficult way. I’m just saying, what’s the most important ingredient that makes cookies? Is it butter? Is it eggs? Is it chocolate chips?

They say, what?

I said, well, what’s the most important part of the house? I mean, is it the framing? Is it the tile? Is it the countertops? Could you skip the footings? Could you skip the rebar?

Could you skip the framing? Could you skip the shingles? It’s all of those things working together. And I think a lot of people really don’t think about business that way because of our educational system and the biases that are presented there. So box number seven, you’ve got to create a sales conversion system. It’s a sales conversion system.

You have to have a system that we’re talking about scripts, recorded content. calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, tracking the results. How has tracking the results and having a turnkey system in place impacted your business? Yeah, tracking results is absolutely huge. The lead tracker is probably, that’s probably the biggest, most game -changing thing we’ve done is with you guys. It’s because now we’ve got like one spot all of our notes are in, and it’s nice and simple.

We went through with Andrew, so it’s just like,

if it’s a white box, that just means we need to keep calling them.

They haven’t booked. If it’s green, they’re booked. If it’s red, it’s, you know, they said no, but that’s simplified everything. I mean, that’s definitely the biggest one, the script. That’s kind of always a work in progress. We go through that with Andrew relatively consistently too, because there’s a lot of different steps and a lot of different questions that customers have depending on what they’re calling on.

But it’s huge. what we have now and I would say our stuff right now is nowhere close to being done like it still needs a lot more revisions but without having it right now like we definitely would have sold the wrong equipment into many many shops and that would have been a big problem. Now we move on here to the next box here, folks, going 90 miles an hour. This is how you do it. Box number eight. You have to determine your sustainable customer acquisition costs.

What does it cost you to get a new customer? You have to know what does it cost to obtain a new customer. Do you have a tracking sheet? Do you know how much you’re spending on advertisement? You have to know that. Box number nine.

You’ve got to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization. Repeatable systems. processes, and file organization. Now, this is not a fitness advice to anybody out there, but I’m going to give you an example. One of my clients is unbelievably fit. I mean, this guy is looking incredible.

And he made the comment to me years ago. I said, you look great. And he said, thank you. I pay for it. And I remember he said it like he’d been thinking about it. And I said, man, you look great.

And he goes, thank you. I pay for it. And I was thinking, so he was ready for that response. And so I said, can I ask what that means? He’s like, oh, I pay for a trainer seven days a week. So seven days a week, I have a trainer, somebody who’s a coach who pushes me.

And I said, you look great. You’ve had a trainer. This is a guy in his mid 40s. I’m like, so you have a trainer seven days a week.

He said, yeah. I said, can I ask why? And I kind of knew why, but it helps to hear it from somebody else. And he said, because if I don’t. I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to have the workout pants on, the workout shoes on.

I’m going to be there. And I’m not going to work out. And if I do, I’m not going to push myself. And so I have a trainer that pushes me for 40 minutes a day and who pushes me. And I said, what do you pay per session? True story.

He said, $100 a session.

I said, so you’re spending per week $700 a week. He said, no. Yeah, that’s why I look like I do. I mean, that’s something I’ve invested in. Now, again, I hear that all the time with people that have a great lawyer. They say, man, your legal systems are dialed in.

They go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a lawyer. I see people that are phenomenal in the game of investing. And they go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a financial strategist. I think everybody in any area of our lives where we want to get better, we need to have a coach of some kind.

Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, what that’s done for you? Having somebody like Andrew that actually gives a crap about your business, that actually is 100 % focused on how he meets you every week, knowing it’s a flat rate, but also knowing that you have somebody that each week is going to follow up with you and make sure that all these systems are being implemented. Can you talk about the impact of that?

Yeah, it’s huge. I’d say the biggest impact is probably every week kind of pulling me out of Turtleview and back up into kind of looking further out. So like I’d commonly, so like for a long time, especially in the beginning, I was still doing a lot of technician work, not so much anymore, but I was doing a lot of technician work. So it was like every Wednesday was like, our call. That’s like what got me back up to the point of thinking about, Oh, okay. You know, I’m actually building a company, you know, eventually we’re going to have somebody, somebody in this role.

I’m not going to have to do this forever, you know, that kind of deal.

Uh, but it’s big, I’d say a lot of it’s just like, you know, of course the accountability and getting numbers in your tracking sheet and stuff like that. So you know where you are and if you’re gaining or not, but I’d say the bigger thing is like helping you get out of your own head and kind of see, at least for me, helping me get out of my own head. see that, oh, OK, I’m not trapped, you know, and here’s the next step I can do to get us a little bit further down the road. And he really kind of pulls that out, because a lot of times I’ll feel like I have no idea what to do next to keep growing the company. But in my conversation with him, a lot of times he can kind of pull that out just through us talking. And then it’s like a lot more clear on how to keep growing.

I find it very interesting that all of the people I’ve met in my life who are very successful, they all have a coach, an advisor, or somebody that pushes them. The guy that I meet that has the jacked up haircut is normally the guy that cuts his own hair. The guy that I meet that has a really, really nice car typically did not hand make the car. They typically reached out to someone who has proven to be an expert in the car making, and they bought the car from the Ferrari dealership. from the Lamborghini dealership. The guy that has the great haircut typically has a professional they’re hiring.

And in business out there, if you feel stuck, you’ve got to implement all these systems. So box number 10 and 11. Box number 10, you’ve got to learn how to manage people. And that’s not something that’s normal, managing people. Do the people on your team know what their jobs are? And are they being held accountable for doing those jobs?

Do the people on your team know what they’re supposed to be doing?

And are they doing those things? Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, how much of that’s made on your ability to manage people? Yeah, that’s another area that’s really helpful because, you know, I had no management experience prior to this. Yeah, I don’t connect with a lot of people very well either. So I don’t, yeah, it was like, basically, every single week, I just have a problem, we go over with Andrew on like some kind of crazy thing that I didn’t think people did, which is probably the most common thing that’s like, why is this like, like, this is the job, this is all you got to do, like, What’s the problem here? But Andrew’s very helpful in us helping us figure out, you know, how to manage people.

That’s a big part of helping me.

manage was helping me get the group interview going, enrolling properly, because that has probably been the biggest influence on helping me manage people better is maybe kind of moving some people out sooner and or moving some job shadows in, which kind of speeds people up then a little bit too.

Yeah, but like none of that, I wouldn’t have figured out any of that without him. Now, we move on here to the final couple of steps here. You have to create a repetitive weekly schedule. You have to schedule a time every week for the group interview, like we talked about, or your daily huddles. And that’s something we work with, teaching our clients how to time block and build a schedule that works for them. Box number 12, teaching you how to hire and recruit great people.

How do you hire, inspire, train, retain great people?

Box number 13, step number 13, you’ve got to create an accounting system so you’re actually aware of your money. Where is it going? But all of this, the whole point of doing all this, box 14, is so that you can achieve success in the area of your faith, your family, your friendship, your fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus.

And so I encourage everybody out there, make a list today. What are your goals for your faith, your family, your friendship, fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus?

What are your goals for faith, family, friendship, what are your goals?

fitness, finance is fun, focus. What are your goals? And then the business exists just to help you achieve those goals. And so my final two questions I’d have for you, the listeners out there know that we’ve helped you with accounting and branding and online ads and search engine optimization. But my final two questions for you would be this. If you could explain to somebody in 60 seconds or less -ish, what kind of an impact has weekly business coaching made on you and your business?

Yeah. It’s made a huge impact. I mean, like I said, I don’t think we would be anywhere close to where we are right now if you’ve been still in business without it. It’s like you guys have really helped just continue us, continue growing because like without you guys, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have it. cranking. We wouldn’t have a bunch of leads.

I’d probably be stuck in my own head. I’d probably still be stuck as a self -employed technician and not have really figured out how to get out of that phase. I really think I’d be stuck there for many years without a weekly call. Final question, there’s somebody out there that is a big statistic guy. They want him to see stats. I’m not asking you for your private numbers.

But as far as a percentage, how much have you grown since we met you? Are you up like 2%, 7%, 10 %? What kind of a percentage? How would you quantify that? Yeah, when we met, we were probably at, I don’t exactly know what the percentage, but you could probably figure it out.

When we met and first started with you guys, we probably had done like maybe $60 ,000 in a year. And we probably now do more like $2 million to $2 .5 million in a year. So you would say, let’s just do some math here. So if I take $2 million and I divide that by $60 grand, we could say you’re up 33 times? Yep. I mean, that’s an accurate number.

You guys have grown 33 times.

That’s powerful.

So I encourage everybody, go to thrivetimeshow . com. I have two calls to action for everybody out there today. First off, I want everyone to go to autoliftserve . com. And even if you don’t know why, share this link on your socials.

Because what it does is it helps my wonderful client, Josiah.

It helps Josiah to rank higher in the search engine results. So if you just share. A link to autoliftserve . com, it does help him rank higher on the search results. Second thing, if you want to come to one of our in -person workshops, you just go to thrivetimeshow . com.

The tickets are always $250 or whatever price you can afford. So we’ve made it affordable for everybody. That’s thrivetimeshow . com. They’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. How would you describe the workshops?

You’ve been to the workshops.

You’ve done the 13 -point assessment. How would you describe the free 13 -point assessment and the workshops? Oh, the workshops are a blast. It’s like you’re in a room with a ton of other people who want to do kind of the same thing. It’s probably the most, I don’t know, it’s just excellent.

Like, you just got to go. Like, you go in, the whole thing is very different. Like, I’ve never seen anything like it. You get to see a bunch of people who, like I said, are kind of in the same boat as you. meet them. And they’re not normally just people who are kind of like, I, you know, I’m just trying to sell insurance to this, to this small group that you’re somehow a part of in in your town.

But no, this is like, these are like people who are like, really growing their companies. Like I can think of like Ryan Wells, for instance, grows like crazy, like he’s a ton of fun to talk to when we go down there. And I always get new ideas from it, too. So I’m like, wow, we’re really dropping the ball in this area. And these guys are killing it. So it’s, it’s awesome.

Well, congratulations on baby number one. Thank you for carving out time for us. I encourage everyone, one more time, folks, if you haven’t checked out that website, it does help our wonderful client, Josiah Ragsdale, to rank higher if you visit that website. So you might say, how do I do it? All you got to do is just go on over there to AutoLift. Let me pull it up again here.

The domain is AutoLiftServe, AutoLiftServe . com, Auto, L -I -F -T, Serve, S -E -R -V. If you go there, what it does is it helps our client rank higher in the search results if you share today’s link, if you share a link to his website.

So make sure you do that, folks. Again, Josiah, thank you so much for your time, sir. And we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Bye -bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do, I hear. The ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you.

So congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening on June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters.

June 5th and 6th. He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner. But he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day. How often is not having enough time a problem for business owners?

all the time. It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90 % of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in -person Thrive Time Show 2 -Day Interactive Business Workshop. And he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self -discipline and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here. Also at the 2 -Day Interactive Workshop, Sean, we are going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train, and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, Search Engine Optimization.

Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people? What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay.

You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here. The two -day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops.

So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales.

And so that’s a really big one. Break even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce?

What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, branding.

Marketing, your three -legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads?

It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times, they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more.

more leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, create a sales conversion system.

Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system.

Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you gotta have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight. What does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer?

Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people.

Box number 13, accounting.

This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, What is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over what is the point of even achieving success, how to design a life that you’re excited about, how to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re going to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that, all this and more.

Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th. It’s a two -day interactive workshop. And tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available?

if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket?

Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work. Now, 7 AM to 5, Sean, why don’t we go from 7 to 5 both days?

I mean, it’s 10 hours a day.

20 hours of training over two days. Why

Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops?

We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question and answer session, and then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer, then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions.

and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board, and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay.

It’s really a very engaging format.

I enjoy it a lot. Sean, final 60 seconds, pop quiz here.

What date is the conference? June 5th and 6th, 2025, this year. Question number two, who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean? Tim Tebow. is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in -person two -day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? P -U -M -U -R -T -C -E -R -T. I -R -E. Ooh, that took a long time.

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

It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Jerusalem. You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. Clay Clark is here somewhere.

Where’s my buddy Clay? is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound.

He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on.

People are starting to show up for the conference, and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here, we’ve got people playing the drums, we’ve got a fire breather, and man, people are excited as they come in. People are so excited to be here for day two. It is going to be as in store. Here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, what is that?

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

Then we take approximately a 15 -minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break. And also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. This is real melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right?

It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to so that we can make the most of the time that we have. Systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes, and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere’s second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say.

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

workshop I took back really the importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. Man, I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, companies. has learned a lot of lessons. You know, that’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am.

And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. willing to listen. In my career I’ve sold a little over 800 million dollars in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing.

I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet

leads from our website has actually in a four -month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening.

One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me.

It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest dreams. of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything.

I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town.

And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way.

I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800 % increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of DSprick Realty.

Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things.

The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago.

And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge.

It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient.

I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient, and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways.

I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve.

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

He helped me with web development. and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I am Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

I hear the ripple effects from you. are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations. From expecting maybe $250 ,000 this year to we’re at $400 ,000.

Hi, I’m Kelsey with K &D’s Wood refinishing. I’m a business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K &D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago. expecting maybe $250 ,000 this year to we’re at $400 ,000. That’s what we’re gonna hit or exceed. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Pretty much just listening to what they have to say, their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and like such good insight, the resources that they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system. And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around.

They’re the ones that people can work with on a day to day basis. Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least.

I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my life. business in pretty much every facet. So I’m going to check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week. Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week.

I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. And hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses.

I have amazing employees now, and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time on low -quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great.

Worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky.

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

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

But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me, and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching. My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they you know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach, you know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me, they’re younger than me, they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches.

So I’ve always had coaches for whatever is important. My rich dad was one of those persons. You’re on it, man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody listen to this guy.

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

And so if you let you let these pinheads get in your way you’re in trouble.

Transcribed with Cockatoo