Clay Clark Client Success Story | “It’s a No-Brainer. The Return On Investment Can’t Be Quantified.” – Doctor Amber Teten | Celebrating 200% Growth of NavigationEyeCare.com + Giving Birth to a Successful Business + Tim Redmond Success Story

Audio Transcription

All right, Thrive Nation, if you’re looking for a success story, something to encourage you that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity to succeed, today’s show is gonna be a blasty blast. And a show that I recommend that you take notes, you visit the website, you verify that today’s guest is a real person and she’s not a hologram. Dr. Amber, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you? What? I am doing great. So Jordan, we’ve had the opportunity to work with Dr. Amber here for a while and she’s having massive growth. So before we get into the details, could you describe what makes her great to work with? Because you’re always bragging on her. So what makes her so great to work with? Well, for one, she never misses a meeting. She’s always on time and she always does the action items that I have her do. So whether it’s starting the team, the staff meeting once a week, the daily huddle, getting reviews, video reviews, the group interview. She just does it. And so my understanding is, Dr. Amber, you’re up, the business has grown. As a percentage, how much have you grown? Is it 2%, 5%? What kind of a percentage of growth have you had? Wow. So just as some examples, in December we grew over like 150%. The month before November, we grew, I think it was, Jordan, like 280%. We haven’t yet hit the end of January, so we’re waiting on the results for that, but we’ve only been open for a little over one year, and we’ve already seen, I mean, amazing growth. That’s awesome. So you’re having the big growth, and I think there’s a lot of people that view success as sort of a murky, mystical thing. I’ll give you an example, folks. In my family, my wife used to get together with all the aunts for a big Thanksgiving meal once a year. All the women would get together, all the guys would get together for a big Thanksgiving meal, and there were some of the recipes they had over the years that were written, they were passed down from grandmothers and great aunts, and you could no longer read the actual ingredients on the note card. It was just a note card with like the remnants of what used to be words. And I’m looking at it, I’m like, how are you possibly making a pie using this? What does this say? And they would hold it for the nostalgic reason, but it really carried no actual practical value because nothing was written down. That’s how the recipe was. I think a lot of people view success that way. They view it as kind of a woo-woo series of guesswork, and they’re chasing this elusive thing called success. And I want you to know here at the Thrive Time Show, we break down that complicated idea of success into tangible action steps that you can take here. So, Dr. Amber, I want to get your thoughts on this real quick, just some basic stuff. First off, what kind of a doctor are you? I am an eye doctor or also known as an optometrist. How long did you have to go to school to become an optometrist? For about eight years. So, eight years. And what’s the proper pronunciation of your last name so people can look you up to verify you’re not a hologram? I’m a T-10. Okay, so you went to college for how many years total? Well, total ten years, but it takes about eight years to be an optometrist. Got it. And so you’re having massive growth, and so I want to give people just some visuals here. The first thing we have to do with every client we ever work with is we have to sit down and figure out what are your goals. Now, I’m not asking you to share on this public platform what your goals were or what they are, but did you have in your mind, did you already have goals established or is that something that you needed help thinking of? I would say that’s kind of a twofold. We had, my husband and I, we had some goals in mind, but I think it was truly kind of as a new start business, kind of hard to even categorize those goals and really put into perspective how much you could grow and how much you could reach those. So we knew we wanted to get improved, but we were kind of in a rut and didn’t quite know how to do that. And enter lovely podcast and actually taking the steps to join. I am super, super glad you’re so transparent about this. Cause I know a lot of people feel overwhelmed and so I’m gonna give people kind of a visual here. So step one with every client we work with, and by the way, folks, if you go to thrive timeshow.com, you’ll see thousands of testimonials from real people. Step one, we have to establish our revenue goals. What’s our annual goal for revenue? And then what’s our weekly gross revenue goal? Now, step number two, we got to know how many patients we need to see just to break even. Now, Jordan, you work with a lot of wonderful clients. But again, with Dr. Amber, I mean, you’ve been bragging on her for quite a while here. Some clients, they get kind of emotional when it comes down to making the tracking sheet. What’s the process been like working with our good friend here as far as making that tracking sheet? Was it a complicated thing? Was it a multiple month thing? Or did you guys knock it out pretty quick? No, it took maybe like the first meeting, maybe the first two meetings just to nail down everything and what everything meant. And then from then on, it’s just, it’s always plugged in before every meeting. All the numbers are plugged in. So the income for the week, the expenses for the week, the profit for the week, the leads, how much the ads were this week. It’s all plugged in and it took zero time. It took me- As far as, you have to measure what you treasure. I mean, that’s a big thing. We all have to measure what we treasure. As you as a doctor, Dr. Amber, how does that help you to know all your numbers and to see it all on one spreadsheet? Absolutely. I have been telling Jordan in the past that otherwise you were just kind of flying by the seat of your pants. I mean, I thought the numbers looked good. We’d go day to day at the end of the day looking at like the actual growth, but you had no way to actually track, okay, how many patients did you see? How many new patients did we see? Where is the money going? Also, just looking at the amount of leads and how that kind of correlates in patterns to how many reviews we got, and then also where all of our like Dream 100 is going, Google, all of that. It just really puts it in perspective and gives you a goal and an actual item to be accountable for. And again, I’m looking at the numbers here. It looks like you’re up about 200 percent. I mean, because again, you had some months where you’re up higher than that and some months a little less. But I mean, you are absolutely growing. I want people to know this. I’m going to pull this up just to kind of brag on you. This is so important. I want to do a search here. I want to do a search right now. We’re going to go to usdebtclock.org. I’m not trying to depress anybody. But if you go here, there’s a middle column where they keep an accurate track of how many Americans identify as being self-employed. So in America today with a population of approximately 330 million Americans, we have 9,000,000, 9,000,000, 47,817 self-employed people. And according to Inc Magazine, 96% of businesses fail according to Inc Magazine. Now I’m not saying that Inc Magazine is the end all with stats. You also have the US Chamber of Commerce with similar stats. What we’re finding is most businesses don’t ever succeed. So statistically speaking, just so we’re clear, if there’s 330 million Americans out there and only 9 million of them are self-employed, that’s like 3% of our population is self-employed. Now, if you talk about 96% of them failing, we’re down to now only 4% of that 3% is successful by default. So again, if you’re out there today and you feel like you’re struggling, don’t feel bad. You just gotta follow a proven system. Now, box number three, Jordan works with our clients to figure out your schedule, your boundaries, how many hours you’re willing to work. We’ve got some doctors, true story, we work with, who say, you know, I’m gonna work three days a week, that’s it. Other doctors say six days a week, some say seven days a week. How important was it for you and your husband and your team to figure out the hours that you would be open, the hours you’re not open, just in terms of just blocking out that time? For me, it’s invaluable. So a little bit of personal story, I actually just got back from, quote unquote, I guess you’d call it a maternity leave, Jordan. So it was actually the only time I missed a call with him was when I was giving birth. So finding the time for when I needed to work and when family time was invaluable. And I think also having that be a recipe where I could still succeed makes it even more important, especially as a mom and a wife, being able to have boundaries on when I would actually see patients, when I would work on the business, and then when I would be able to go home. This is awesome. Again, folks, this woman has given birth to a baby, which in my opinion, you deserve a lifetime achievement award. Anytime a woman gives birth to a baby out of their body, they deserve some kind of lifetime achievement award. But also she gave birth to a successful company at the same time. So the time will never be just right, but everybody out there, you got to block out time to be successful. There’s never a perfect time. You’re never too old or too young, or you just got to do it. Now, box number four, if you had to figure out your unique value proposition, and we had to improve the branding box number five. So we look at your website, navigationicare.com, and a website, by the way, folks, is a little bit like a garden. You’re never quite done. You’re always pulling weeds, always tweaking. As we look at it now, I’m sure we’ll catch something we want to fix tomorrow or improve. But the idea is you have to eventually launch, and perfect is the enemy of done. Perfect is the enemy of done. So I want to talk to you about that for a second. I find that a lot of doctors I work with are hesitant to launch the site until it’s perfect, therefore they never launch it. But I find that the clients that are the most successful can launch it and then say, you know what, I’m going to come back later and fix my lobby. I can come back later and adjust my logo. I can come back later and improve the look of my website. Can you talk about the process of launching the website? What was that like to work with Jordan and your team there, our team and your team? It was really helpful. He was pretty confident in us from the beginning. I was, I guess as a doctor, you’re a little nervous and you don’t want to make videos of yourself. I’m a pretty humble person, so that aspect just needed a little push and shove. He’s done great on the website and just basically with our Navigation iCare logo, using that, but also just capturing what the office is, the energy within the office, and also being encouraging when we kind of find a tune, for instance, our no-brainer and our deal on that. He was really helpful in making that succeed. Now, a no-brainer, I don’t want you to get lost with the language, I’m gonna pull up this diagram again. Hopefully this diagram is helpful for everybody. With my clients, they always tell me it’s like it helps them so much to see it. After we start the marketing, this is box number six, the three-legged marketing stool, which is how do we get customers? Once the phone starts ringing or once people start visiting the website, you have to have a no-brainer offer that is so good and so exciting that somebody who doesn’t know you is willing to fill out the form. So just let me give you an example. I’m not the only guy, this just in, the only guy that cuts hair in the city of Oklahoma City. So if you do a search for OKC Men’s Haircuts, my company, Elephant in the Room, is not the only company that cuts hair. But if you do a Google search for OKC Men’s Haircuts, we clearly come up top in the search results. And then people go to the website and they go, I don’t know about this. There’s other options. These aren’t the only people I’m looking at. They’re not loyal to my button. They’re not loyal to my website. And they look and they go, wait a minute, first haircut’s a dollar. I could try that because it’s the risk and reward, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, people do not want to have a bad first experience. I see so many optometrists specifically, and doctors that say, first exam, only $400. People are like, huh? It’s not appealing. People then have a horrible experience and they go, man, I spent $400 for a terrible experience. This is a great offer you guys have come up with. Talk to us about the offer, the no-brainer, and maybe what kind of value that’s had for your business. Absolutely. So the first-time exam and a pair of glasses is $99. We did fine-tune that a little bit at first. We had kind of an age range on it since we see all the way from six months up. Since I came back in December, we actually fine-tuned that to be $99 for everybody. It’s been excellent. Jordan can attest to this. Our phones lately are ringing constantly. Like we kind of have a blessing in disguise, a good problem to have. Our staff is really busy with constant calls for leads or even our lead sheet with people that want to know more. It is a great first step as well. So it gets everybody in the door. It’s not a $99 and then end there. We have so many people that take advantage of that as step in the door and then they love our office and the experience and they want to invest more. They get another pair of glasses, they get contact lenses, they say, oh my goodness, at the checkout, they want to schedule their whole family or their best friend. So it has been invaluable to grow up this. Nothing that we would have ever thought of ourselves. So completely, completely just mind blowing how much we’ve grown since we’ve started using that. You know, one thing about business consulting is it’s a lot like hiring a personal trainer for fitness. They’re very analogous ideas. You hire a personal trainer for fitness and you don’t show up. It’s not something you can delegate. You can’t just say, Jordan, you’re my personal trainer, but I don’t wanna work out today. So I’m sitting in my good friend, Carl, my office assistant. He’s going to work out in my place. He’ll do some pull-ups, get him on the burpees, get him on the pull-ups, have him run a lot of crushers, okay? Because I want to get in shape, so really push that guy. And I think a lot of people view business consulting that way. It is a participation sport. It is a full-contact sport. And if it wasn’t for great people like Dr. Amber, the system wouldn’t work. With a lot of our clients, we help them design their office, their lobby. But in this case with Dr. Amber, she really put a lot of thought into the design of her business. So when we send people into the actual office, they’re having a great experience in the actual location, the sights, the smells, the sounds, the whole atmosphere is great. And a big kudos to you for doing that. Because again, if we help people market off a cliff, we have a lot of our clients, we do the interior design and we help them with that. But there are some doctors that say, I will decorate my own office and it’s the worst thing possible. So you’ve done a great job with that. Now we talk about sales, moving into sales. Eventually we have to sell something. Eventually we have to sell something. So sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, print pieces, all of that. How important has it been for you to begin to put in sales systems? Because the word sales for most optometrists is almost like a curse word. How important has it been to put in sales systems for your optometry clinics success? Well, I would say it’s been a pivotal point of growth. So we had lead sheets where we get back in touch with anybody who wants more communication. We have call scripts that make it just seamless for our team from day one even. We brought on a new staff member the beginning of, or pardon me, the end of December. From day one, she knew how to answer the phone. She knew what was expected and how to schedule a patient. She knew about the no-brainer. It makes it just a lot easier because of the small practice that just opened up. I don’t really have the time, nor am I the most useful in training. As well as my other staff, I would rather have them be answering the phone, scheduling appointments, keep doing their job. And then the sales part, yeah, no optometrist really likes to sell. We would rather like to recommend or prescribe. But it is one of the few practices, along with kind of dentistry, where actually for the profession, yes, I have an eye exam, but we make a lot of our money and a lot of our business by actually selling or the consumer purchasing something. So, with the selling process, Jordan would attest to this, I definitely have A-plus players right now. We’ve kind of weeded out the weeds per se and some B and C-plus players, which has been a great stepping stone to a new office. But the energy and the staff really help in the selling, for them to know the product, for them to feel confident, and for them to kind of quote the deal. And we have checklists for all of that. They make it really easy on, okay, what’s the price on this, can they get this with it, et cetera. Now, for anybody out there who goes to, you want to see an example of a system once it’s done, I should say, or is getting closer to done, if you go to eitrlounge.com, folks, and you click on the staff button, I unfortunately cannot give you the passwords to my franchise, but this is what it should look like behind the scenes. You basically have all your documents and all your checklists documented. So as we work over the years with your practice to help it grow, eventually we’ll have every system, everything documented. So my staff, if they’re looking for the opening daily manager checklist, they can just click on the link and bam, all the documents are there, all the systems. And it’s a process, but at the end of the day, what you look for in business is you look for what’s called a return on investment. Many of our listeners already know that, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page here. My game or my goal, my process is to help you bring in more money than you pay us. And so I hire an accountant. Just full disclosure, folks, I spend about $4,000 a month every month on the same accounting firm. I have no problem with them at all. It’s called CCK. They’re an accounting firm based in Tulsa. They do work with clients all over the country, but it’s called CCK Strategies. I don’t make a commission for recommending them, although I’ve asked, but I do not make a commission for recommending them. But I, you know, I pay about $4,000 a month to them. And you might say, well, why do you pay them every month? Well, because every time I have an accounting question, I can get on the phone and get the answer real quick. And so having those recurring weekly meetings keeps the accounting on track. Full disclosure, I work with a law firm called WintersKing.com. WintersKing, again, I don’t make a commission, although I’ve asked. WintersKing.com. This is who I use for all my legal stuff. And people say, man, why do you spend four grand a month on your legal and four grand a month on accounting? Are you spending eight grand a month recurring? Yes, because I don’t ever want to get myself in a legal conundrum. I want to stay on top of these things. And I think that’s the same thing with business consulting. We charge you $1,700 a month, 1-7-0-0. Could you speak to, you know, just for the sake of time, what is, when you pay the $1,700, how would you describe the value you’re getting back as far as that value proposition, the $1,700 you’re spending versus the value that you’re getting back? Well, the only word I can kind of think right now is no brainer. Pardon to say it, but it’s kind of a non-negotiable. So the return on investment is something that really can’t be quantified with the growth we’ve had and just having the stepping stones along the way on what we need to do. And Jordan kind of says, it’s kind of like almost like a rinse, rather repeat, keep doing and you’ll see growth. But I think having him there as a coach and that accountability to meet each week is just the best. I think my husband and I are all in and we would say it’s just part of our business right now. Now, I would tell people if they lived in your area and they wanted to have an eye care experience that is awesome, I would say, you know, hey, it’s $99. Okay, so worst case scenario, you go in there and you had the worst experience possible, which you’re not going to have, you know, it’s just a no brainer. But at the end of the day, you have to try it out, folks, you have to go to the website, you have to look into it, you have to schedule that consultation. But for anybody who’s in your area, what markets do you serve? Can you tell us what area are you in and where can people, what kind of our, I guess what geographical area do you service? So we’re located in Chesapeake, Virginia. We are, this area is part of a seven city or kind of seven suburb area called the Hampton Roads community. We actually have most of the military. We have the largest Navy base. We have a Air Force base just north of us. So we get an influx of a lot of different communities of people. A lot of people who have been here long-term in the Chesapeake area that’s very rural but growing. We also get people who are from Norfolk, who are from Newport News, who are across the water. It’s really seven cities that is an inner structure of just different bridges and land. Quite different than the Midwest, although my husband and I are from the Midwest. But the Navy is what brought us here, and my husband now is more reserve out of the Navy, active duty, and we just are really blessed to serve a community that supports the Navy and the people in it. And we’re just a quick, brief 14-hour drive from your office. So if you’re in the Tulsa area, it might be worth the 14-hour drive. You don’t have to do the math, folks, but it’s only 14 hours away from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now, if I have a question I have here for you, and again, we help you with the HR, the hiring processes, the checklist. There’s a lot of stuff we do. I just want to be able to celebrate your success and that 200-plus percent growth there. But for anybody other that’s thinking about scheduling a 13-point assessment, we have thousands of testimonials people can see by going to Thrivetimeshow.com and clicking on the testimonials button. But what would you say for anybody who’s thinking about scheduling a free 13-point assessment? You know, because we only take on 160 clients, so I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What would you say to anybody who’s thinking about scheduling a free 13-point assessment with myself? I would say 100% go for it with the caveat are you willing to put in the work? Are you willing to be held accountable every week? And are you excited about growing more than you probably could have ever imagined and more than you’ll be able to do on your own? Boom! Dr. Amber, I really do appreciate you carving out time. Jordan, thank you so much for making this happen. Jordan’s always bragging on you and it’s great to be able to celebrate you here on today’s show. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care. Bye. All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, I want to give you an encouraging word. These are actual real people, real clients we’ve worked with. They’re not holograms and they’ve had real success. I know we’re living in a challenging economy and a challenging world, but I’ve worked with these guys for years and they really are diligent doers. And I just wanted to celebrate their success and let you see that it is possible to achieve massive success in this crazy world. Dave and Tricia of Papagallos and Morning Glory, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you guys? Hey, good, how are you? Doing well. I’m fired up. So Dave, I gotta start with you. How long ago was it when you first heard about us? How many years ago or what year was that, sir? 2017. A customer actually mentioned you guys and we looked into it and I remember our first call I had to hide in the storeroom to get a half an hour to talk to you guys. So you first heard about us six years ago. We’ve been working with you since that time. Trisha, I know that you look at the numbers and so does Dave. When you think about the growth of Papagallas from that first call to now, and then you started Morning Glory since that time, what kind of growth have you guys seen? Oh, God. The Papagallas side, it’s probably four times what it was when we met you guys. And then Morning Glory was an idea, so it’s kind of hard to think about the percentage of growth because it wasn’t a thing yet. But that business is doing well, too, right? Morning Glory? Yeah, surprisingly good. Sometimes it upsets me how well it’s doing so fast, but a lot of the things we’re doing we didn’t do with Papagallos because we didn’t know. And we got to implement some of the things we learned from you guys with the new place and it’s taken off a lot faster. Now your business has a lot of things that you, a lot of variables. I’m going to kind of march through them and I’m going to see if you can teach our listeners about this here. So the first thing with Papagallos, the food has always been great. Morning Glory, the food has always been great. If people are in the Satellite Beach area, they need to check out the food. So I’ve never had to, most restaurants I work with, I have to work with them on food quality. I’ve never had to work with you at all on food quality. However, the one area you guys were not getting reviews from your happy customers. People love the food, but we weren’t getting objective reviews and people read those reviews. Can you talk to us, Dave, about the importance of, I know I harass you about it every week, but can you talk to the listeners out there about the importance of gathering those objective Google reviews and oftentimes video reviews as well? Oh, absolutely. I didn’t think it would be that huge when we started down that road, but every week we get people that come in and go, oh, we drove 40 miles because we read the reviews about the place. And to be honest, if we go out of town, the first thing we do is look at the reviews as well. So I mean, you don’t think it’s going to make that big a deal, but it’s a game changer for sure. Now, Tricia, on the websites, we’ve worked to create the websites for both Morning Glory and Papagallos. And I find a lot of business owners can get stuck infinitely doing small little minutiae changes to their websites instead of building a website that ranks in Google. We’ve worked with you guys on building both websites and we do have to update the menu pricing from time to time and do some things. But how much of a game changer has it been having websites that actually come up top in Google? Well, I mean, coming up on top in Google is huge because everybody’s using their phones these days to ask where they should go. So for that to just pop up up top is, you know, you can’t put a number on that for what it does for your income. And the people look and search your website. I mean, Dave was writing blogs and stuff that helps with the SEO and coming up high on that. And we got a catering just from her reading one of the blogs. I mean, how do you put it? Yeah. Yeah, it’s just been, that part of it’s been a big eye opener for me because I just didn’t put that much weight on it until we started. I kind of, we always kind of start with, we’ll try anything until it doesn’t work. So we went in with that, with, you know, this full blast and it just blew my mind how well that works. Now tracking results is a big thing. And I love working with you guys because you’re diligent people that show up to work every day. And I don’t care how good of a boss you are in the restaurant business. I really don’t. No matter how great of a boss you are, you’re going to have turnover in the restaurant business because young people who are waiters and waitresses, they decide to move, they get pregnant, they get another job. There’s a lot of variables. And so you’re never stopping recruiting. Dave, I can’t tell you how many restaurants I’ve worked with over the years and I tell them, listen, recruiting is a never-ending process as a restaurant owner. It’s like a garden. You have to pull the weeds every week. Can you talk to the listeners out there about the importance of you never stopping recruiting? Because again, I could give you all the advice in the world, but if you would not have implemented it, it wouldn’t help. Can you talk to the listeners out there about the importance of never stopping recruiting? Well, it’s just from week to week, like you said, you never know. One day you don’t have enough shifts, and then the next day you come in and four people disappear in the night, you don’t even know what happened to them. And by having people lined up to come right in, it smooths over the transition. And it’s this never-ending process. And it seems like lately, the new younger groups that come in, the younger kids, they just change jobs every four or five months just because, you know, when I grew up, you got in a job, you liked it, you stayed. But it’s not that way anymore. People change just for the sake of changing. So keeping the recruiting going keeps staff. Now, this is a big thing. The experience itself is a wow. And I know we worked with you guys on making sure we had an intentional wow moment in terms of the decor, the atmosphere, the music, everything. And again, you guys have great food. But I’d love to get Trisha’s thoughts on this. When people go to Morning Glory for the first time or they walk into Papa Gallo’s, and I’ve had friends of mine, the Johnsons, Jared and Jennifer Johnson actually came to your restaurant and their comment was, wow, that’s awesome. Can you talk about the importance of being intentional to make an experience that wows their nutrition? Well, I mean, that’s the people look with their eyes first, so they don’t even see the food yet. So if they’re looking at your, you know, seating or your walls or, and they don’t get that kind of wow from it, they’re not going to get the wow from the food either because that comes later. So it’s very important, especially ladies with bathrooms and stuff is huge. You know, if you’ve got a really poorly put together bathroom and the lady’s got to go in there and they just don’t like it, they’re not coming back. Even if your food is amazing, if your bathroom isn’t there, it’s just a game changer for them. Now checklists and processes. You guys have done a great job making checklists for everything. I’m going to pull up these websites here. Again, if you’re in Florida, it’s worth the drive. PapaGallows.com, MorningGloryEatery.com, it’s worth the drive. You’ve got to check it out there, folks. Checklists and processes for everything. Dave, you’ve got to make a menu, you’ve got to have recipes, you’ve got to have checklists. You can go out there and make a great menu, but you have to deliver on it. You guys do such a great job of that. You have a menu, but you’ve got to deliver on it. So you’ve got the recipes and the checklist. Can you talk to the listeners out there about the importance of taking the time over these past six years and even before that of building checklists for everything? Well, it’s just, especially in the kitchen area, the cooks, even though you tell them certain things, if it’s not written down and make them measure, everybody wants to put a little more of this or a little more of that, and then that messes with your consistency. So having that recipe and being able to see somebody putting something together like the dough recipe and see them measure now how much goes into it versus just eyeballing it is a big deal. And if there’s a checklist and you can just see, okay, it’s out or it’s not. And I’m constantly in the kitchen saying, are you measuring? And use a checklist. Because they don’t, you know, everybody wants to put their little spin on stuff. And you just can’t have that. Now, one thing I really enjoy about working with you, Tricia and Dave, is you’re really, really wonderful people. And you guys aren’t petty people. You’re not, but petty means focusing on small things. You’re not ignoramuses. You’re not jerks. You’re kind people. And so it’s fun to help amplify your business and to see it grow. But growing a business again, is like growing a garden. You know, you have to pull weeds every week. And so every week I hop on the phone call with you at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, three times a week, or the website will go down or there’s a pricing increase or something will change. Or when the COVID lockdowns happened, it was getting PPP funding. And there’s just so many of these urgent things. I’d love to get your thoughts, Trisha, on what it’s like to have our team available to help you in your times of need on a weekly basis. As you know, because a lot of people view growing a business as an event, where really it’s a weekly process. Can you talk to listeners out there about the value of having a weekly support team that you can trust? Yeah, I mean, like with our menu and stuff, especially after COVID, you never know when we’re going to have to change something because we can’t get a product anymore. Or like exactly today, we just found out that one of our wines is discontinued and no longer available. So that’s just going to put a new change on the menu or onto the website as well. The website’s gone down and all of a sudden we get a notice from a customer that it’s down. And now we even have the beach jam on it, which is huge, which you guys helped us with. So that’s got to be up and running, you know, 24-7 as well. I think with COVID, when we were going through COVID, you were ahead of the game as far as everybody else, like we still are getting stuff for ERC credits, you know, which we have already done, thanks to you guys being able to tell us, you know, hey, you need to look into this. So I think your help in all those areas, you know, like you said, on a weekly basis is kept us ahead of every little thing that’s come our way, especially if you’re COVID. Now, Dave, I have a printer guy that I probably haven’t talked enough about my printer guy, but I have a guy, if you’re listening in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, I will give you my printer guy’s number, bud. But I have printers everywhere in my office, printers, flat screen TVs. And I’ve worked with the guy, I think for 10 years. And every time a printer goes out or a TV goes out, I call him, he comes by and fixes it. And I can’t tell you how rare that is to have a vendor that I actually am not fighting with every week, every month. I mean, this guy is on it. Can you talk, Dave, about that? Because we work together every week and the relationship that you and I have, I think, is very responsive. Where if you have something, we knock it out and it’s sort of that win-win relationship. Can you talk, Dave, about the importance of having a team that you can trust to work with you? Because I know there’s a lot of squirrely vendors out there. Well, the biggest help with that is it’s like we get an objective opinion on something. Like, you know, you kind of know what you want to do on any given circumstances, but being able to pick up the phone and have access to your experience and your expertise and say, yeah, that’s a good idea or no, stay away from that because this is why you don’t want to do it. And it’s objective. So it’s not somebody who’s actually got a vested interest in what’s going on, but we get an opinion really quick. And a lot of times we agree with it and it just reaffirms that this is something you should do or shouldn’t. Now, Trisha, one of the things I did when I was growing my first company, djconnection.com is I, um, I had a company I hired for graphic design and somehow no matter what we talked about, it was always $4,000. And then I had a web guy, and every time I’d call my web guy, I don’t know how, but it was always $400. Every time I talked to him, $400, 4,000 graphic design, video guy. I don’t know why it was, but it was always $3,000. And then they would never talk to each other. So my video guy, my web guy, my graphic design, and there was all these vendors, and I could never get any of them to communicate. And I always had these massive bills. How helpful is it for you doing the budgeting? I know you work together doing this, but how helpful is it for you knowing that it’s going to be a flat rate every month? That’s what it’s going to cost. Well, I think we’ve had those conversations before, you know, with like the web and the printing, which we do a lot for at the restaurant and stuff like that. Just have one person, one place, have all of our information already, one-stop shop, you know, instant response. We’re constantly, I think since COVID we’ve been talking about this a lot, but nobody really does their job anymore and follows up on what they’re supposed to do. So we turn into being babysitters and making sure that people do their job, but we don’t have that with everything that you guys do for us. We just know that we reach out to you whenever it needs to be done. Don’t even worry about price. It’s already, you know, set in place and make it happening and actually get it done and not have to babysit yet. It’s huge. I mean, I don’t want to spend on that. My final two questions I have for you is, why should anybody out there who’s in the Satellite Beach area, why should they come by Papa Gallo’s and Morning Glory? Why should they do it, Dave? Why should everybody come by at least once? I would argue people might want to plan a vacation just around the idea of coming to Morning Glory and Papa Gallo’s. Why should people check it out? I think the biggest thing is we’re local. We’ve been, Papagallos has been around for 33 years, Morning Glory going on four, so we’re part of the community. If you want to get an idea of what the community is like, some of the kids have grown up in our place working, so it’s just a local place. It’s a local taste of, you know, Florida, really. Beach is right out back. You can look at the ocean and have a drink or have a pizza or Eggs Benedict and look at the ocean. It’s just a nice Florida experience. And a lot of the comments we get with our staff is, you know, a lot of the people go to restaurants and such, but when they come to our restaurant, the staff is always happy and are there to, yeah, friendly and are there to serve you, not just, oh, you’re another customer, you’re another table, you know, kind of do a shoddy little job and move on. You know, they really do care. And I think that comes from Dave, you know, caring about the food as much. It’s gone on to the staff as well. And it shows through the customers’ responses. And I’m not asking for the number on the show. I’m not asking for a specific number, but since we’ve started working with you, I believe Papa Gala’s is four times larger. And I believe Morning Glory is about the same size as Papa Gala’s. Is that, is that accurate? Yeah. And like I said, sometimes it’s it’s it just drives me crazy because it took 33 years to get Pabagalos to that level. And Morning Glory sometimes beats it and it just drives me bananas. But it’s I mean it’s like I said when we started with Morning Glory we started with both feet in the right place and knew where we were going where we spent a lot of years at Pabagalos trying to figure stuff out and having you in our corner to just bounce ideas off of is a huge comfort and help. Well, Dave, I really do appreciate you guys. And I will listen to my final question for you there, Tricia, for people out there that are thinking about coming to one of our workshops or thinking about hiring us for consulting, we only take on 160 clients. So I don’t want to waste anybody’s time out there who wouldn’t be a good fit. And, you know, I want to respect everybody’s time, but who would be a good fit in your mind for what we do? I mean, pretty much anybody. I mean, you’re not a niche one type of like a restaurant type of person to go to. You do it with all the businesses. So anybody that has a business that wants to grow their business or even make it better and set up the systems and stuff like that, definitely don’t even hesitate. Just give them a call. Well, I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for carving out time. And folks, if you’re watching today, I want to encourage you. We’ve had the craziest last, what, four years, three years possible. It’s never been more difficult to hire people. And Dave and Tricia have done it. They’re very normal people. They’re not holograms, but they’re very abnormally diligent. And so if you’re out there today and you’re a diligent person, I want to encourage you that you, too, can have massive success. Sir, what is your name and what is your wife’s name? My name is Kenny Sutherland and this is my wife Danielle. Okay, and how long have you guys been clients approximately? About 8 months. And you’re here today to talk about, I believe, your growth. What has been your growth in the last 8 months? 261%. Oh, wow. Now, I know that 99% of that 261% growth is accredited to her. Yes, absolutely. But what do you do? What’s your role in the business versus what’s his role in the business? I do all things HR, so anything that applies to having employees, that’s what I do. She’s the people person. The people person. And sir, what’s the name of your website one more time so people can verify you’re real? Yes, highwaymansigns.com. Highwaymansigns.com. And how did you originally hear about us, sir? Through one of our clients, Co-op Fitness. All right. Well, I know you have a date night planned tonight, but thank you for joining us. And you guys, sir, you smell terrific. Love that beard. Thank you. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Thriving Time Show. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, so many of you have small businesses or aspirations to have a small business. And unfortunately, we can only work with about 160 of you at a time, and that is because I have a staff of 47 employees. And you might say, well, why don’t you have 400 employees? For my business consulting business, I only want to have 47 employees because I want to know all of the employees. I want to meet everybody. I want to feel more like a football team than like a small city. You know, I want to feel like a football team. I want to know everybody’s name. All the members of our team are great folks. And I want to know the customers I want to know the clients that we work with, because when we work with a client, the client is kind of a walking billboard for us, so to speak, and meaning that if a client’s doing well, then maybe we’re doing a good job. And if a client’s not doing well, then maybe we’re not doing a good job. So last year, our average client grew by 104%. That was the average number. But these two clients here, they’re growing, they’ve grown their business by and I don’t want to exaggerate, but I believe you’re up 261% in profit year over year. Kenny, is that an accurate number? Yeah, I think so. Okay, so Kenny, tell the listeners out there, what’s your first and last name? And then introduce us to your wife. Sure. My name is Kenny Sutherland, and this is my wife, Danielle. Now Danielle, how do you spell it, Danielle? D-A-N-I-E-L-L-E. That sounds fair. Now, what is the roles that you two have as a couple running the business? So I obviously operate the day-to-day You know all the different things that go in the shop. Yeah, we do obviously we’re a signage company we do I up until recently I did all the graphic designing I even headed up most of the installations and everything and I now handle all of our HR. I do all of our group interviews every week. Anything that is related to our employees is what I do, making sure that they are healthy, they are thriving, and in turn our business is thriving. So what is it, what all are the services that your company offers there, Kenny? And tell us, what’s your website? Highwaymansigns.com. H-I-G-H-W-A-Y-M-A-N-S-I-G-N-S dot com. Highwaymansigns.com? Yes, sir. And what all do you guys do? We do everything that pertains to signage. We do lighted signs, channel letters. We do metal signage. We do decals, business cards, vehicle wraps, everything you can think of, wall wraps. For our listeners, because we have in a typical week, we have well over a million listeners. If people are listening right now and they want to hire you for an auto wrap for their company, can you do that or do you service just the Tulsa or Oklahoma area? We’ve done pretty much everything that anybody asks for. We’ve done everywhere from Topeka, Kansas all the way down to Arlington, Texas, over in Arkansas and Joplin, Missouri. So anywhere we can go or we can mail, we’ll do it. So fire off, Danielle, if you can, just what are all the services that you guys provide? Just to the listeners out there who are visiting highwaymansigns.com, again, it’s highwaymansigns.com, so they can get kind of a mental picture of all that you can provide for them. Yeah, of course. So actually, if you go to our website, we have all of our services listed on there, and it’s really cool, because we have a ton of pictures associated with it, so you can actually get a visual of the products that we provide. So one of some of the bigger items that we do and some are smaller is yard signs. We do a lot of yard signs. A lot of people need yard signs. Banners, we do tons of banners like Kenny was saying. We do wall wraps. We do vehicle wraps. If you ever want a really good way to put your business on blast, a vehicle wrap really is one of the best. You do wall wraps? Yes, sir. Really? Yep. We have one actually in our daughter’s bedroom. Really? How big can these be? As big as you can make them. One of our clients, Cola Fitness. Yeah. So like behind me in our building, it says boom. You could do something like that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. OK, yeah, because we’re moving tomorrow. I don’t know if you guys know. We’re moving into our new building tomorrow. I did not know that. Yeah. Congratulations. We’ve been here for seven years, and we’re just now moving here. So we’re, we finished building the building, but we’re moving everything. So tomorrow all this stuff’s moving. That’s why it feels kind of like, it feels a little bit like you’re in the Death Star from the third Star Wars where it looks like it might not work, but it does. We’re moving everything around right now. So now you guys, how did you originally hear about us there, Kenny? Through that same client, Kolo Fitness, and we saw the growth he was getting and we were like, I want a part of that. Did you guys go to church with Charles or how did you meet Charles Kola at KolaFitness.com? I just met him through, he came to us for some, it started with little car decals and he just said, hey we’re doing some, we’re expanding and we want to change up our look and I wanted to know what we could do for him and we basically started, we gave him a new logo and basically everything that he has now. It started as a business partnership and we’ve just grown to be friends over the years. Wow, okay, so you guys are growing the business and I want the listeners to, I don’t want to go over every single thing that we’ve done with you guys, but it started with a 13-point assessment. So we met in our office, so we met I want to say about maybe 10 months ago? Yeah, nine months ago? December. Okay, so we met in December. And we’re now in August. So we met. And then after we met, we made a plan. And we agreed that you guys would implement the plan, and we would help you. And you guys are now up by 261% in profit. What all do you do in the business on a daily basis, Danielle? As far as when a lead comes in, when someone fills out the form, when they go to highwaymansigns.com, when do you interact with the customer? So I interact with the customers on a day-to-day basis. Even though I do HR, I make sure that my face is well known to all of our customers. I try to set an example for all of our employees on how we want our customers to be treated from the start of the product to the finish. So I do also help with training. We’ve got some new people that we just hired and myself and our regional manager have been doing some one-on-one training with our employees, and then also just making sure that our customers are 100% satisfied. If there’s ever an issue with a product or a service that we’re providing, whether it be timeline or anything at all, I insert myself and make sure that the customer knows that I’m gonna take care of them, and that at the end of the day, they’re gonna get what they came in for. So what are the areas of the business that you feel like you’ve improved the most? I’ll start with Kenny and I’ll go to Danielle here. What part? Because again, I know for me, this is something that I, I, it’s very easy for me to understand this, but I think sometimes people, I don’t know if it’s pride or I don’t know what it is, but I just know for me, when I went to college at Oklahoma State University, I went to St. Cloud State, then I went to Oral Roberts University, I went to OSU. People say, why’d you go to different colleges? I wasn’t interested in a degree, I was interested in learning how to do things. So I found the guy in my class who was best at Photoshop. I said to the guy, hey, guy, can I pay you to teach me Photoshop? And he goes, sure. He taught me Photoshop, thus saving myself years or months or whatever that is of of guesswork. And so I pay accountants to help me with accounting. I pay lawyers to help with the legal bills. I’ve paid PR consultants to teach me how to do interviews or media. I’ve paid people to help me write books. But a lot of times entrepreneurs just kind of wing it and run through the minefield of life, kind of learning through trial and error. But now that you’ve worked with us, I hope that you’ve learned some things quicker and faster. And what are some of the things that you’ve learned and actually implemented this year so far, Kenny? Oh gosh, we’ve, I want to say one of the biggest things, well, the hardest thing for me was getting everything out of my head and on paper so we could actually like train people better because for a long time it was just like you said trial and error and I had all the knowledge in my head and so it was like training somebody I literally could not take my foot off the gas enough to get people to learn it so they literally had to just run next to me to learn it and now we’ve gotten everything on paper we’ve we’ve been able to you know like to the scripts and stuff like that actually kind of get everything out of this noggin and on paper so people can see that and actually be like, okay, like train people faster. And we’ve hired, gosh, we’ve hired more people and interviewed way more people than we have. Now let’s talk about the interview thing. I mean this, I’m not being disrespectful or difficult or insane, but whenever I need to hire people, I’ve never had a struggle finding good people so my process is you know we do ads every week on LinkedIn and indeed I put out a new commercial today I’ll show it to you guys like a commercial it’s more of just like a two-minute like but I’ll put these out it takes me like 15 minutes to make I’ll play the audio no people watching or can’t see it but I put this out today let me see if I can get it here okay here we go so my this is what my ad says. This is my Facebook post today. It says, are you not a Marxist, godless communist, live in Tulsa, don’t want to wear a mask, don’t want to have to take the shot, I’m hiring now, earn up to $27 per hour. Apply today by texting 851-0102. Note, Governor Sitt is not eligible to work here. We only want job candidates that live their values. Let me hit play. Hi, my name’s Clay Clark, and I am now hiring. I’m looking for great people like you. We have a job right now, we have two jobs open right now, where if your mind works and you try hard, you can make an average of about $22 to $25 an hour. And the only things I’m looking for is people that are diligent, hardworking, great energy. And you can’t be a communist, you can’t be a Marxist, you can’t be a member of Antifa. I need somebody who’s going to come to work who loves this country, who loves the Lord and wants to do a great job. And I put out this commercial and then I give out my phone number in it, you know. And so here we are today and I’ve got 238 people that have texted in looking for a job. And then, you know, that’s how I do it. And then I don’t interview people one on one. I never would do that. I bring them all in a group. And every Wednesday night for my life at 530, anybody who wants a job, I interview them all simultaneously. And it’s crazy what you can learn because when you tell somebody the interview is at 530. Like this one who just walked by, she’s the best. She just moved here from Florida. Great, great lady. I met her at a conference. Her name’s Katie with K-A-D-I. And, you know, she said, hey, I’d like the opportunity to work with you. Well, if she comes in and we say the interview is going to be at 530, if she shows up at 530, that’s like only way. But what I mean, what are you guys finding maybe half the candidates show up anywhere close to on time we lock the door yeah yeah we lock the door so the interviews start at 5 p.m. exactly yeah at 5 p.m. that door is locked what percentage of people are there on time half a third two-thirds if they show up if they show what percentage of the people that say they want to be there actually show up oh okay honestly it’s been a whirlwind of different stuff. 30%? Sometimes I’ll have two out of 15 show up. Got it. Sometimes I’ll have 16 out of 30 show up. Okay, and then, so when the interview starts, do you interview them, Danielle? Yeah, that’s me and our regional manager. We do that together. And so, and then the interview, during the process, how does that process work? What do you say? How does it go? So we actually shadowed one of Cola’s group interviews to kind of get an idea of how they do it and how we should implement ours. So when they come in, the first thing that we do is we have them fill out a just a about me form and I’ve kind of tweaked it a little bit to really fit what it is that I’m looking for in an employee. One of my biggest things really is what position did you apply for? If they don’t know what position they applied for, they’re not a good candidate. So, really what we do is we just, we show our now hiring video, sometimes I’ll show them our about us video. Up until five o’clock, sometimes I’ll show some of the videos that we have of work that we’ve done, so that they have something in the background if they finish their paper early, and they wanna go ahead and just kinda dive into some of the stuff that we do. I do ask questions during the group interview too, and one of my favorite things to ask them is, tell me something unique about yourself. Because that’s really when the personalities start to come out. And it’s really cool to see how people react. And so you’ve, we’ve worked with you, but you guys have implemented this. I want people to make sure people understand this idea. If you’re listening right now, okay, listen folks, tonight’s my late night because we have cheerleading tonight. And so cheerleading is kind of like my party night. Because when my kids do cheer my wife and I have agreed that’s when I can stay late and work on stuff so I’m working on stuff tonight, I’m excited about it. I want to talk to Justin James, he’s a shoemaker in I think North Carolina or something, who makes shoes in America pays Americans to make shoes. What? Yeah, he doesn’t use slave labor to make his shoes What? Yeah, great. So he wants to become a client, I love this guy and then we’ve got a Maga Hulk. You’ve seen Maga Hulk? You guys haven’t seen Maga Hulk? Oh my gosh, look at this guy. I love this guy. This guy. This is Maga Hulk. And he is a pro patriot slash bodybuilder guy. He’s huge. No, he’s crazy. Look at this. He’s just a man. And so this guy, I’ll be talking to him tonight. And I like it. I mean, there’s so many people that reach out that want to become clients. I don’t want to convince people to do the homework. I want to work with people that actually are willing to put in the work. And that’s what makes it such a joy to work with you guys is because our team’s always bragging on you. You guys implemented the hiring, training, and retaining processes to define good people. The online reputation management, a lot of times clients, it’s new to them to manage their reputation. But I’ve noticed you guys have been very intentional of asking your real customers for real reviews after you do a real service for them. Kenny, how much has that helped your business? Oh, tremendously. We get a lot more Google calls, like people that just search for us on Google, or not even search for us, but search for signs on Google. And having all those Google reviews help a lot. And then we get a lot of out-of-state calls too because of it. And you guys, as far as the online advertisement, do we manage those ads for you? Do we turn them on? Are you doing online ads right now? Yes. And we track those and manage those with you? Okay, and I just know for me, man, when I was building my first DJ company, my first wedding business, my first entertainment company, DJConnection.com, I had to launch my own ads. And you put your ads up there, and there’s all these questions, like what zip code, what address, are you advertising to men or women, and what age, and pretty soon I’m like in the black hole, I’m like I don’t know, maybe ClickFunnels work man, I don’t know man, and then, you know, because you start to see Tai Lopez videos and you start to ClickFunnels and all of a sudden you’re going I don’t know, and then you run your ads, if you’re not careful, this is what I did when I was first starting out, you run your ads and you don’t really know how much you’re gonna spend because it’s kind of weird how it works. Next thing you know, you get a multiple thousand dollar bill and you go, oh, shunda. So does that help having somebody will help when you run your ads? Absolutely. I used to wear me out, bro. It’s been something of a, almost a nightmare for me because I’ve been wanting to get a website off the ground for so many years. And I’ve tried, I’ve built my own one myself. Yeah. I’ve paid other people to build one, and how to promote it, and ads, and I didn’t know any of it. And all the people just, like, I literally paid somebody a few thousand dollars to build a website, and they got half of it done, and then was asking for content. And I’m like, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what SEO is. I don’t know any of that stuff. And we’ve learned all those things. And where do you guys live? What part of America do you live in? We live in Skytook, Oklahoma, just a little bit north of Tulsa. And do you guys have any kids? Yes, we’ve got an 18-month-old. Wow, okay. And my wife’s a child. Oh boy. Oh boy. Now, okay, so we have five kids, so we love the kids. What’s kind of your… And I’m not saying I’m a super person, I’m just wondering… Because the business exists to serve the owner. That’s why I’m excited about helping you guys, because I met you guys, I’m like, these are really cool people. And so I like to help really cool people, because I know that God’s put dreams and visions in your life and things that he feels, you know, that he’s called you to do. And I think that the business exists to help you guys achieve those goals. Is there something kind of exciting that you’re working towards? Have you as a couple kind of thought about like where you want to take the business? And I’m not asking for specific, you know, details that you don’t feel comfortable sharing, but I’m just saying, are you, is there something you guys are kind of excited about in the near future? Maybe an expansion or a new building or a new hire or a new truck or a new… What are you guys working on? Oh, absolutely. We’ve got a list of goals because we’re really big into actually writing our goals down. You know, we can go… Gosh, I mean, as far as like, yeah, with the business growth… So you write your goals down? Yes. And it’s on our fridge so that we can see it every day. How long have you guys been married? Almost three years. Three years. How did you guys meet? We met at church. At church? What kind of church did you guys go to? Non-denominational. Right now we’re going to church on the move. Does it matter to you, I’m just curious, because for me I can’t work with clients that don’t serve the same God as me because I think there’s only one God and I don’t want to help the bad guys, you know, especially when you know the bad guys’ agenda. Does that matter to you at all? Do you care about these things? Does it matter knowing that we have the same worldviews or do you not care about that? It matters to me. Also, I try to treat everyone like I would want to be treated. Jesus came here. He didn’t come to the well. He came to the sick. There he goes. That’s how I look. If somebody comes in that’s a customer and it doesn’t exactly agree with my worldviews as long as… You want to love everybody like Christ loved? Exactly. I try to treat everybody with respect just like I would. Okay, so now I’m going to ask you a question that’s probably going to paint you into a corner, but I’ll give you time to think about it. It’s okay. Managing people, a lot of clients say as they grow, managing people is the hardest part. And I’m not saying it’s because all employees are difficult. I’m just saying the personalities, the hours, a lot of women today are working women. A lot of men are sharing dad duties slash working. Schedules are more complex. Is managing people a difficult, what’s the most difficult aspect of running your company? 100% it’s managing people. Yeah, managing people. One of the things that has been hard is like implementing the systems has been great. Getting our people to follow all the steps has been tough. A lot of them have been with us for four or five years. And so trying to get that through their head, hey, we’re doing things a little bit differently now, has been kind of a big hurdle. But we’ve made strides. I’m hearing your team is doing a great job. And I, again, comparatively speaking, because we work with a lot of different companies, and so I see clients that have a team that’s not willing to do anything at all, and some that take a while to learn. It sounds like your team is up to the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. And now, as far as growth goes, do you want to open up multiple locations or what’s the vision for the brand? My main goal, I want to get an online store going. I want to be the Vista print of signs. I want to get an online store where they come in, they can put in their own graphics that they want or our team can design something for them and we can ship out any yard signs or decals or whatever they’re asking for or if they want to start franchises and they need a solid, dependable sign company to do all of their stuff, we can travel with them and travel all across the country and do all of their stores. Now, for people out there that have not worked with our program before, I mean, just tonight I was interviewed on a show that is somewhat going viral, so we’re getting just bombarded with probably one person, I don’t know, every 10 minutes reaching out for help. And I always try to tell people like, please don’t reach out to me if you’re actually not wanting to implement anything. You know, so we’re not like a emotional support organization. We’re a business consulting business. But who do you think would be a good fit for what we do and who would not be a good fit just for Anybody you’ve been in the program for a while now. Yeah, I Would say anybody who is open to change open to jam you definitely definitely Have to be flexible with that if you’re not then it’s not a good option for you If you’re very much stuck in your ways, but if you’re wanting to see an active change not just in your business, but in your life, you’re definitely a good fit. Is your schedule, Danielle, getting different now? Is it improving your personal schedule? Yeah, yeah, it is. Is it really? Yeah, so I’ve actually changed my schedule quite a bit since really coming on board. When I first started with you guys, I was actually working three jobs at the time. Three jobs? I believe you were working in the medical field. I was, yes. Were you? I was working at a dental office in Tulsa. I also worked for a church and then I also worked for our business. And so our business, unfortunately, started to become on the back burner and that’s when I recognized just seeing all of the things that we were implementing that I was more needed in our family business. And so that’s really where I’m at. Do you remember the day that you retired from your other job? So from the church, I only worked with them temporarily was very short term and that was back in the end of January and then as far as the dental office I worked with them up until the middle of May. So you you told me and I remember this and maybe I’m misquoting so correct me if I’m wrong you actually really enjoyed that job. Like you’re right didn’t you enjoy it I mean it was something you wanted to you like doing that. Oh yeah I absolutely, 1000%, loved that job, loved the people I worked with. It was really hard to step away from that emotionally, but I understood where my priorities lie. And just seeing the growth that our business was going through, it helped me even more. What’s it like having your wife back? It’s kind of like dating your wife all the time now, right? Is that exciting? Was that exciting? It’s been an interesting road. Some days it’s harder than others. But I think on a whole, it’s been good. And it’s been important to me, too, to see her be a part of it, too, because I ran a business. We’ve been, either this year or next year, it depends who you ask, we’ve been open for 20 years. Wow. And since family business, my parents started it and I took over in 2009. So I’ve been, obviously this has been a huge part of my life for a long time and you know we’ve you know we’ve been together for just a few years now and so her coming in she was like okay I want to be a part of this. You know and that’s just really cool to me. And then as far as the 13-point assessment, a lot of times people are like, ah, 13 point assessment, I’m going to get roped into one of these multi-level programs that are going to keep me in some sort of retention cell. Like it’s going to be like a time share things and I’ll be stuck there for four hours. I mean, we’ve all, have you guys been on a time share tour? Yeah. Oh my God. Have you been? Yeah. Twice. Really? My wife thought it’d be cool to get a free lunch on our honeymoon. Hey, hey, listen, listen, you listen here. We got a free stay somewhere. Listen to this. I want your wife to know this. Because I’m going to one-up your wife. It doesn’t matter what your wife has done. She will leave here looking like an all-star. We went to Vegas. I grew up with no money. And I’ve always thought, if you spend less money, you maybe can keep more money. That’s just a theory I’ve had. If you spend less, you keep more. And so we just got married. How long had you guys been married when you did your time share tour? Well, our it was on our honeymoon. So, yeah, yeah. And let me tell you, you come at it with from a sense of purity because your wife, someone says, hey, would you like a free was a free trip or what do they offer you? A free hotel? Is it a free meal? Free was it? It was a free stay at another hotel. We did use. But I’m just saying I want to make sure we get this. It starts off. Hey, listen, everybody, I’m going to educate you on how you get sucked into a time share. So I’m going down to Vegas and they said, hey, you know, sir, would you like to go to a free show? You’re walking around. My wife’s getting ready to get up early. Would you like to take your wife to a free show or do it? Is this other ring? You know, I’m going, well, yes, I would. And they go, well, we’ve got they listed off. It’s like boys to men in concert or, you know, it’s Britney Spears or it’s all the all the predictable people. And I’m going, I would like to take my wife to a show. And would you like to do a great dinner? There’s a cuisine, there’s a this. And all you have to do is take a one hour tour. That was the pitch. Was that for you, one hour pitch? Yeah. And I’m going, dude, we just got married. One hour pitch. You promise me? I said, I’m telling you, going into it, I’m not going to buy anything. And he goes, oh yeah, for sure. So then they show up on some shuttle bus and they take us out to like Tantawene or someplace where Yoda lives. Oh, God, yeah. You know, we’re on the island of Endor. We’re somewhere where Yoda lives. We’re going Dagobah, Dagobah, that’s where we go. We end up like in this resort, but it’s kind of off the path. Is that what they did to you? Yeah, they definitely corner you. And then they’re there, and they start saying to my wife, they go, sir, well, they said, ma’am, do you like this trip? And it’s like, nice, everything’s nice. And she’s like, oh, I do. Well, if for as little as, you know, it was like $400 a month, what if you could come here whenever you want? And that, it seems like a, you know, blue dab would be great. And they go, well, let’s just see what you qualify for. Next thing you know, they got paperwork out for us to sign, did that happen to you? And then, and I’m like a naturally aggressive dude, so that’s very good or bad, depending upon how you, the situation. You know, so I’m like, hey, I definitely don’t wanna sign, but I appreciate you. As I mentioned, I’m just here for free stuff. And he goes like, so you mean you took my whole day with no intention of actually buying anything? So you wasted my time? I thought you were, you know, I thought, you know, so you’ve spent my whole, I mean, if you weren’t gonna, if you’re just gonna come in for free stuff, I mean, why don’t you just say something because then I wouldn’t have spent my time. He’s trying to make me feel bad. And I’m like, did they do that to you, by the way? Because there’s like three or four moves they do. And I go, well, hey, I don’t know that you, I just remember telling him, I know that you think that I care, but I don’t care. So furthermore, I’ll probably come back tomorrow for another free thing, because I’m never going to buy anything, because that’s what you offered. And this guy starts getting into the whole, like, well, let me talk to your wife. And he cornered my wife. Did they do that to you? Oh, yeah, they did that to me. And they preyed on the emotion thing. And my wife starts to do the, like, because she cares. My wife’s a nice person. And somehow he convinced her that, like, he wouldn’t be able to feed his family and that we were wasting his time. Yeah, they tried that. Oh, man, it was dirty. But my wife almost said yes just to get out of it. I Tried getting up a few times. I was difficult During it and they they got me by myself and was like hey, dude, you know if it’s if it’s your wife You know, you can just you can go inside everything do this and this this is where it gets crazy Oh my god, so after we had a horrible experience my wife leaves in tears I do I did I Signed up again. Because I was like, I’m gonna go, and this time I’m gonna win, and my wife’s not gonna cry, and my wife’s like, so next day, she’s like, what are you doing today? And I’m like, I’m doing the timeshare again, you can stay here, I’m gonna dominate that timeshare guy. And she’s like, you gotta be kidding me. No, so that’s what I did. So anyway, that, so no matter what your wife did by signing up for a timeshare, I just want you to know it comes from a pure place. She was trying to do the right thing. But me, I came from a dark place. I was just trying to get even at that point. So anyway, but you guys are absolutely great. I encourage everybody out there, if you want to put a wrap on your wall in your building, maybe you’re looking to auto wrap your business, your vehicle, your truck, go to highwaymansigns.com. You can see all the services that they provide. It’s highwaymansigns.com. It’s single highwaymansigns.com. Auto wraps. They do LED. You do the LED displays? Yes, sir. How big? As big as you want. Let’s talk about it. We’ve done a, well, we’ve done, most of our customers do a little smaller ones. They’ll do like 2x8s, 4x4s, 4x8s. What does that cost right there? What’s that cost? Looking at this one on the website right now. That’s a 4×4. What’s a 4×4 cost roughly? Double-sided, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of around $18,000. $18,000? Mm-hmm. Whoa! Shaka-baba. Yeah. OK. They’re pricey, but they do. And you guys do lighted signs, you do non-lighted signs. You’re good people, you love the Lord, you check all the boxes. I’m excited for you guys, and thank you for coming into the studio. I know you drove all the way in from Skytook. I didn’t expect you to do that, so I’m so glad you’re here. Well, he came from Bartlesville. We both did. We have two locations. We have one in Bartlesville. Are you guys going out to dinner after this, or what are you doing? I think so. My sister’s got my daughter. They’re down at the pier right now, so we might as well. Okay, well, avoid the timeshares. This time of year, they tend to be high pressure So thank you guys so much for joining us again. My name is clay Clark That’s the thrive time showing your radio and podcast download where we like to the end each and every show We like to end each and every show with a boom because around here boom a stance for big overwhelming Optimistic momentum and that’s what it’s gonna take to take your business to the next level. It’s big overwhelming Optimistic momentum and so now that you further ado, here we go. Three two, what? One boom Now if you are out there today, and you’re looking to become a one-on-one coaching client of myself I only take on 160 clients and so I want to make sure that I’m only working with people that are diligent doers and Goal pursuers, you know I don’t want to work with ask holes People that just want to ask a bunch of questions and don’t actually want to implement what they’re learning I I’m I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had a lot of success early I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had a lot of success of late. I don’t know what the thing is, but I just don’t want to work with people that won’t implement the proven system. I want to work with people that are sufficiently motivated, just like that last couple you just saw. I mean, these are great Americans. They’re hardworking people. And they reached out and they said, can you show us what to do? And I said, sure. And I showed them what to do. And they diligently implemented the systems. That’s why Kenny and Danielle are having epic success. So if you would like to explore the idea of working with us on a one-on-one basis, go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. And when you go there to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire, you can see we document all the client success stories. The average client grew by a hundred and four percent last year and you can schedule a free 13-point consultation right there. The 13-point consultation is really nothing more than a strategic conversation to see if we can identify your biggest limiting factors to see if you’re a good fit for our program and if you are we’d love to help you and if not no worries. You can learn more about it at thrive timeshow.com forward slash EO fire and my name is Clay Clark reminding you that you too can have massive success, but remember vision without execution is hallucination Vision without execution is hallucination Knowledge without application is meaningless. We got to implement. It’s all about implementation And that’s hopefully what I hope that you picked up on today’s conversation and interview with the super successful clients Kenny and Danielle That we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma and we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah, so what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on with our listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed pest and lawn company in the Tulsa area and that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411 percent over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah. So here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. And it’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast, like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Tim Redmond, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you sir? Clay Clark, I am a man that’s grateful because of you and for you. You’ve been an amazing impact in my life. I’ll just say that up front. Well, you and I have a unique relationship because you were my boss for a long time and then I had the opportunity to work with you as a consultant and we’ve been able to work back and forth with each other. Oh, you’ve been hugely helpful. My life is different because of you. So I wanna ask you this. When you meet with business owners today, where do you find that most business owners are stuck? Like when you say you’re talking to somebody out there and they have an accounting practice, a dental practice, a contracting business, and they’re stuck, what are the areas where you see people, most business owners are, where are they most predictably stuck? In the same place that I was stuck when I reached out for your help. In marketing, I did not have a process of constant stream of leads coming in because of lack of marketing. And then I lacked a sales workflow that once the lead came in, in that I could aggressively process it through to get them to come on board so I could help them out. I didn’t have those before I started working with you, Clay, and you helped me out with that. Those are probably two of the most common problems I run into in consulting our clients. One of the things I like to do, and I like to explain this to clients, is that you have to view your business as a linear workflow, kind of from left to right like a timeline. Yeah. And so you have to start with fixing your branding, and then after you fix your branding, then you want to fix your marketing, and after you fix your marketing, you fix your sales, and then after your sales, you fix your hiring and firing, and then you fix your accounting, and you just follow down the path. How often do you find that business owners need help finding good people? That’s never been a challenge for me to find, to hire, train and retain good people, especially during the COVID moments. A lot of people said, well, I can’t find the people now. I still have never had a hard time finding people. But I mean, have you, what are your thoughts on that? How often are business owners having, how often are they struggling to find good people? Well, most of who we get is we have specialty docs and contractors. We market aggressively to go after contractors, so that’s most of our clients. And that, I would say, Clay, that that is the number one need and one of the biggest reasons they come on board to get our help here is they cannot find decent people that’ll show up and actually work. Huge problem. Finding good people. Finding good people, keeping good people, getting people that will actually want to work. Yeah, which that could be defined as a good people. Yeah, it’s a huge problem. And I know that with the systems we teach people, you know, they will learn how to hire, inspire, train, and retain great people. And I think people view hiring as like a one-time event, but it’s really a process. And I’ll give you an example. Harley is a young guy that’s a member of your team. I’ve met him, I think it’s his first day working with you. And he’s been a great member of your team and a great guy. But a lot of people, I speak what they say, I have a hard time retaining employees for more than a month or two. If you had to give people tips on how to hire, inspire, train, and retain good people, what would you say to them? If anybody’s listening and they’re struggling to find, hire, inspire, train, and retain good people? Yeah, well, there’s a number of things here. First of all, you want to create an environment that people are attracted to. So one of the biggest requirements or the biggest ways that a leader becomes effective is they create an environment. Most people respond and react to an environment a lot like a seed. Some grows up, you know the Bible story about some fell away by the side and by the stones and all that, they didn’t grow up very big. But those planted in good soil or a good environment, they’re going to grow and they’re going to really produce. So number one, you’ve got to create a good environment for people to join and if it’s reactive and people are yelling and it’s just an ego clash, that’s not going to attract decent people. Good people are going to leave and they’re going to find another place that’s got a better environment. Number two is you’ve gotta be really clear on what you want them to do. And we have a lot of clients, Clay, and we’ve shared many stories together, we’ve spent many hours together, is a lot of folks here just, they hire people and they just throw them to the dogs and say, hey, I hope you can figure this out as you go. There’s not a training, there’s not a clear expectation. So as a result, they don’t know how to win in their job. And there’s a lot of people, Clay, that they’re dissatisfied because they don’t feel like they’re winning in their job and they don’t know how to win in their job. Tim, you know, at the business conferences that you and I have done, you’ve actually appeared at a lot of them and you’ve MC’d and speak at them. I think one of the things people have enjoyed about those is the ability to ask any questions that they wanna ask and not to be mocked publicly, but to have somebody that actually answers their questions. What are common questions that you get asked by clients as a business consultant? Like if you could just think through sort of the Rolodex, the mental Rolodex of most frequently asked questions. What do people typically ask you? Because I know as a consultant, what I get asked a lot, but I want to get your take. What are their questions? Yeah, okay. So this is a good question, sir. So most of the time, they’re either looking for leads, more leads, or how to hire more staff. And so what has happened is They’ve already gone to two or three or five or seven other marketing firms or hiring firms And they’ve been very unsuccessful and so they come with a lot of frustration And sometimes they’re almost like mad at us to say well, this is what everybody else said I said well, we’re not we’re gonna do it for you coaching companies, so we’re gonna do a lot of this stuff and implement it yourself. I mean, I still hire your staff to get our SEO there and to keep the websites up to date and to get the marketing, digital marketing straightened up. So, you know, it’s really important to be able to deliver something. Can you give me enough leads is a big question. Or how are you going to help me find decent people? Because I’ve been out there, and there’s nobody else out there. And so well, we have a host system that we introduced, but unless you apply this system on a consistent basis, it won’t work. Casualness causes casualties, you know. And so those are big questions. Another big question is, how do I get this business off my back? It just seemed like I’m stuck as a slave in my business. So how do I get out of this business here? How do I get it to, when working in the business, I want to work on the business and not just in it. Those are some of the common ones. Now you and your wife just celebrated and celebrated an anniversary, I believe, correct? Yeah, 33. 33? 33 years, yes. The reason why I bring this up is because my wife and I, we’ve been married 21 years, and I find that in the world of business, there’s a lot of business coaching platforms, a lot of consulting platforms that exist, and I’m not going to mention the specific names today, but I want to. So instead of mentioning them, I’m just going to pull up video clips to show what I’m talking about here. I’m not going to mention them. I’m just going to show examples of them. They have these, and this is not you saying this. This is me saying this. What they do is they project a world that doesn’t exist. I’m going to just type this in. This would be- Oh, Tai Lopez, come on. Okay, so here we go. This is a lot of people come to me after having been to a workshop that’s similar to this one. This guy’s name is Ty Lopez. And Ty Lopez, this is an actual commercial that he’s running right now on YouTube. Watch this. You know what I like more than flying in a private jet like this? My books. Actually not, but I do bring books with me. Okay, now I don’t know, and maybe I have a different world, maybe I come at the world from a different angle than a lot of people, but I’ve never been in a private jet with a guy like this and a girl like that and a girl like that and a guy like that talking about books. Nor have I ever been in a private jet with people like this but the point is, the idea that he’s selling, look at this. We were just talking a little bit earlier on, and speak to my specific, to your specific potential, ideal and likely buyer. There’s only a certain number of clients we can work with at any given time. And I just want to be very clear. So this is another example of what we are not. Let me just hit play here. Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here. Oh, gosh. Here in the Hollywood Hills. But you know what I like a lot more than materialistic things? Oh, here we go. Knowledge. Oh! In fact, I’m a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold 2,000 new books that I bought. It’s like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, the more you learn, the more you earn. Now maybe you’ve seen my TEDx talk where I talk about how I read a book a day. You know, I read a book a day not to show off. It’s again about the knowledge. In fact, the real reason I keep this Lamborghini here is that it’s a reminder, a reminder that dreams are still possible. Because it wasn’t that long ago that I was in a little town across the country, sleeping on a couch in a mobile home with only $47. $47, that’s exactly how many dollars he had. He remembers because he counted how many dollars he had. And Tai Lopez, I mean, he’s got an unbelievable, he has so many different examples of what he does. This is just Tai Lopez. So a lot of people when they think of consulting, that’s what they think of. And that’s not what we do. We work with dentists, doctors, lawyers, contractors to help them grow their business. So if you had to contrast what you do, Tim, as a consultant, that I’ve had the honor of working with for basically a decade. How would you describe what you do versus that of which Tai Lopez does? Because, again, if you say business consultant or business coach, immediately people picture Tai Lopez due to his shameless jet-based marketing. Well, I’ve got some similarities with Tai in that I do have some books. I actually read them and I read them next to a super attractive woman, which is my wife. But that’s about as far as it goes. I know I’m not supposed to say bullshitter, but he’s the biggest bullshitter on the Internet. I’m sorry. And I think you’ll have to probably beep that out. But what we do is we are an outcome-focused company. And so we measure our success. You know, the client has to be happy, but we really look at what are the numbers. We have the sales, we got net profit, we have gross profit, gross profit, and cost of goods sold, we have that. We’ve got how much money you have in the bank account, we actually measure that, we count it. And so it’s, the big difference here is, can you count and visibly and tangibly see the results of the coaching? And if you can’t, kick us out and get rid of us and find, hire Ty Lopez. Please don’t hire him. No, and you’ve been married for 33 years. I mean this because I’m not saying that you’re a marriage guru. I’m normally saying I’m a marriage guru. What I’m saying, though, is that you really want to look at the fruit of the lives of the people that you’re listening to. Because if you look at Ty Lopez and who he’s hanging around with and what he’s all about, if that’s what you want in your life, then maybe you pursue that. But I call that lifestyle jackassery. It’s fake. It’s smoking. Jackassery. It’s fake. It’s smoking. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake. It’s fake, it’s smoking. Jackassery. Didn’t you find his address as being in the middle of some cow pasture in England or somewhere? I did look up the address that he was using at one point, led you to an abandoned warehouse district there. So, Tip, we’ve got listeners from all over the country that tune into the show. Oh, good. And they’re always taking notes. If you had to give the listeners one final pro tip or one final thought before we let you go, what would that be? What would that statement be you want to share with the listeners? I would say that create a cadence in your business and you do that by having a daily planning that you do and then every week you touch every aspect of your business meaning a meeting an Accountability meeting with whoever’s in charge of whatever you’re looking over You visit that aspect of the business like for accounting that’s going to be Monday at 1 o’clock For sales that’s going to be Tuesday and Thursday and Friday but you know we have specific times where we touch every aspect of our business and So creating a cadence in your business is creating this predictable pattern of making sure your business is on track and you’re addressing issues as they go. Tim, I appreciate you carving out time to be here. That’s Tim Redmond from redmondgrowth.com. That’s redmondgrowth.com. He’s a beautiful man, a great American. Tim Redmond, thank you for allowing me to interview you today, sir. Thank you, Clay. And we will talk to you later. Take care. Very good. Awesome. We go back eight years ago. Think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our call. Okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000. It was up and down roller coaster, and so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have grown, I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s 100% growth every year I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean, the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean, that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching but it would go up and down Clay. That’s when I came to you as I was going up and down and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, and he said the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down 5 and 8 appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. On that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you buy a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. That’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012. And at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that… Oh, there it was. So it was Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with clay and the experience working here has To put it real plainly has been just life-changing I Have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge But but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say almost everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn, I have learned a lot in those different categories. Again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life, that standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory and we’re on our own trajectory and the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know, he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people. In short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months, just from being around Clay, following him, and learning from him. And then I would say, come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself, be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals, so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! Alright, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less, and see if you could save save three thousand bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees would you do it yes absolutely holy crap why would somebody out there who’s listening right now who has a sane mind why would they not uh… go to thrive timeshare dot com forward slash credit dash card thrive timeshare dot com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a ten minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they understand how you said the website The three is a symbol of the spirit of the grid wall family Christmas No, that’s that’s clear. Okay, so that that could be a deck of be true So I would encourage everybody check out thrive time show calm board slash credit dash card thrive time show calm board slash credit dash card What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 or more on credit card fees. Maybe they think it is a waste of time and then it won’t. It’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time. There’s probably some someone out there. Okay. Well I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. Because you can compare rates, you can save money, and you know, the big goal, in my opinion, of building a business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. Ah. It’s a profit deal. It takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates, to see if they could save a total of three thousand dollars a year on average. I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Stop looking at me, swan! Well, let me tell you a good story here, real quick. I actually, years ago, compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever, I’ll take ten minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean I’m just not sure. Why can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours. And in my case, in my in my case, my particular case, I save over twenty thousand dollars a year. Holy crap. Wow. Which is like groceries. When my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. No! Everything okay, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy, so I need you to be brave, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod. Do we have it? The brand name of the clock. It’s an elegant, from Ridgway. It’s from Ridgeway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation. It should take you 10 minutes or less and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom, and in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. Let’s go. Let’s go. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So, what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay? I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts, and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessamon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months. Or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year, from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency and doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives and also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut. And we didn’t know… Okay. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy is working in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers and graphic designers and web developers and they run a hundred and sixty companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running a hundred and sixty companies. So in the weekly he’s running a hundred and sixty companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start ups go from start up to being multi millionaires teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like, Clay is, like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right. This is where we used to live two years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work everyday in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems, so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these Motivational seminars no money down real estate Ponzi scheme get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything It was like you went there, and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it. It was a hollow Nothingness, and I wanted the knowledge you’re like oh But we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it.