Will this system work for speakers?
Business Coaching for Speakers
“I’ve been able to turn a $2500 or a $3500 deal into $10,000 or $12,000.”
My name is Clay Staires. I am the founder of claystaires.com and The Leadership Initiative. Growing up, as I went through middle school and as I went through high school, I was pretty much a big fish in a small pond. I had an overinflated sense of self, so once I graduated from college, I might’ve been like a lot of folks, graduated from college terrified. So I ran to ministry, ran to the church really quick. From there, I jumped into being a school teacher. But all the while, I knew there was something more inside of me.
I took over Shepherd’s Fold Ranch, which was a summer camp and retreat center, but then once again, now here I am at about 47 years old and I’m feeling like it’s time. There’s this shift beginning to go on, like, “Okay, at this place I’ve done what I’ve needed to do. It’s time for me to expand. It’s time for me to grow.” But I didn’t know anything about how to run my own business. As I made that shift from being the executive director of a nonprofit organization into running my own company, I found out really quickly where my weaknesses were. I’ve got to know something about sales and marketing and all those things that terrify me.
So it was about at that time when we were doing some fundraising for Shepherd’s Fold Ranch that I met a young man named Clay Clark. Clay would tell me, “It’s just a formula. Do these things and out comes production. Out comes money.” I just didn’t believe him. It was probably just there in the first month, maybe six weeks with Clay in his Business Coaching for Speakers program, that I got my first speaking engagement. But when we started talking about money, I totally locked up and just said, “I’ll just come down and do it for free.” But after that first few months, it was like I stepped off a cliff and all of a sudden everything stopped.
So Clay started talking to me about making phone calls and beginning to do that, and making 100 phone calls a day I was like, “Are you kidding?” No one has ever done that in the history of man. Thrive has provided this confidence that I didn’t have before, and as a result, I’ve been able to turn a $2500 or a $3500 deal into $10,000 or $12,000. Through working with Clay and working with the Thrive Business Coaching for Speakers program, I’ve been able to look through the lens not of my capacity, but I’ve been able to look through the lens of my destiny.Â
