Audio Visual Lighting | How to Grow An AVL Company | "I Started With You Guys 2 Years Ago. Our Revenue Has Grown 2.5 Times! I Had the Technician Mindset. I Didn't Know How to Lead a Team." - Daniel Connell - DCProLVA.com

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  My name is Daniel Connell and my company is DC Pro LVA for lighting, video and audio. Our website, real simple for our website, it's DCProLVA.com. I've started with you, I actually looked, it was two years ago this month. Gross revenue has grown two and a half times since then in our, in our company. Beyond that, we are standing at the door right now of another major push. I can see it, I can see it coming, the pieces are getting into place. So have this conversation with me again a year from now and I bet I can say the same thing again, that we've grown two and a half times just between now and then. We can kind of exist in two spaces. A huge client pool of ours is houses of worship, you know, mainly churches. We've worked a lot of big clients in that area.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Bethel Church, Elevation Church, Life Church here in Oklahoma, Church of the Highlands out of Alabama. You kind of name it if you're, you're a large church in those areas. We work with them, but what I always like to stress when I say that, those are fun to work with. Some of our favorite clients are the smaller churches around, you know, the ones that just want to have a good way to communicate with, with their congregations. So smaller churches shouldn't hesitate to reach out to us. We also do a lot in the corporate space. We, we work with Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. I know a lot of your listeners are probably very familiar with Charlie, the awesome work he does. We do all the Turning Point events. We had the honor of providing lighting for 11 of President Trump's stops that he did with Turning Point on the election cycle. Hopefully going to have some more here and you know, occasionally we get to work with other more unique artists and, and clients.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  We've worked with Nitro Circus, which is the guys that do the crazy backflips on the motorcycles. We've worked with SpaceX, Tesla, a lot of big corporate events. So again, I know a lot of your listeners are people that are own corporations, run companies. Having events that are presented with excellence, so represents your, your, your company well is huge. And that's a lot of what we do is helping other companies with that. It's audio, video, lighting, AVL. We made a little joke in our name. My personal background is as a lighting and production designer. So we decided to switch it up and call ourselves an LVA company. You know, we put lighting first where it belongs instead of the tail end. But we do all that, pretty much any, anything we're going to have a live event where you're going to have an audience, a crowd, a church service, a concert, a corporate event. We specialize in all those types of things and we're also starting to branch out into TV studio spaces,

• 2:10Speaker 00

  corporate boardrooms, you know, I can't imagine a bigger failure than when you're in a corporate boardroom and you're trying to communicate with a client and you're having AVL failures. You know, you're not linking up to your Zoom correctly, you don't sound well, you don't look well. Even, you know, right here in my little office, we make sure we have proper lighting, proper microphones. I want to sound good, I want to look good. So we're also starting to help people with that. But I was the technician mindset, so I understood how to do the service work that we do very well. I didn't know how to lead a team doing it. I didn't know how to structure, you know, our sales team properly to take that load off. And you know, I found myself just showing up at the office every day and going, what, what, what hill do I need to climb today? And what that usually meant is that other people got to take control of my time. You know, whether it would be my employees or our customers, they dictated what my days looked like.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  You know, when I reached out to you guys, started working with you, what I thought, you know, and what I thought I wanted from you guys was a bunch of pre-belt systems that you would hand off to me and go, okay, here's the way you need to do it. What you did and what has been the real secret for me is that you worked on me first. And example, right here in front of me, if I'm looking at my desk, this, you know, this is my daily clipboard I carry around. It's got my calendar on one side, my to-do list on the other. Such a simple thing, literally life-changing. This is the first part of my day every day. And what I've found is this has been such an anxiety relief, such a stress relief, that allows me to step, step away from the working in my business and work on my business. Because before I get to that point every day, I can look through and go, no, that's not something I need to do. At the bottom of that to-do list, what you probably couldn't see, because I, I showed it pretty fast,

• 3:39Speaker 00

  is I have a delegate section on my to-do list where I will start to write a note for me and go, no, someone else can do that and I'll put it in the delegate. That pre-planning of my time has made us millions of dollars. The major benefit for me is, you know, and again, initially my pushback was that we have QuickBooks that we use. It shows me all this. No, it definitely does not. What we've been able to identify because of the uniqueness of the industry we're in, we don't have short-term payoffs. You know, we don't have clients giving us money every single day. We get money in big chunks spread out over a larger period of time. And what it's helped me identify is a weird cash flow variable with our, in our industry that we didn't understand before. And we kind of do this over the weeks. So I will have three or four weeks in a row with a low cash flow season.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  And then I'll have two or three with a high cash flow season. What that has allowed us to start doing now is adjusting our spending where we're doing it at the peaks and not in the valleys of that cash flow. Seems like a minor thing, but has kept us from either number one, missing opportunities, because we were trying to time the cash flow at the wrong time. Or, you know, just, you know, not, not spending that money in the proper place.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Folks, on today's show, I'm super excited to introduce you to an entrepreneur that's having a lot of success. Why? Because I think when I interview someone like Wolfgang Puck or John Maxwell or the founder of FUBU or an Eric Trump, I think it seems sometimes unapproachable. I think sometimes when you see somebody who's having that level of success, it seems unapproachable. Then I think there's somebody watching today's show and you've got an idea for a startup. You want to start something or maybe you have a company and you're just kind of stuck. And you say, I want to have massive success, but I need to hear the, a success story of somebody else that has done it, that is doing it, somebody who's in the trenches with me. Because it's going to build your confidence and your faith that you too can do it.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And so on today's show, I want to introduce you to a man who has built and is building a super successful company that's adding a ton of, a ton of value. It's adding a ton of value in the audio visual space. Daniel Connell, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Thanks so much, I'm doing great. I think that may be one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, definitely the best introduction I've ever gotten, so.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate you very much. I know there's somebody watching this going, is this guy an AI model? Is he real? So can you share with us your first and last name and the name of your website?

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely. My name's Daniel Connell. You know, my company is DC Pro LVA for lighting, video and audio. Our website, real simple for our website, it's DCProLVA.com.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm going to pull it up real quick on the screen so people can verify that it is a real website. And if anybody out there who has, is kind of watching today's show and you want to add value to today's guest, if you go to DCProLVA.com and share that link on your social media, what that does is it helps Daniel's website rank higher in the search results too. So if you're watching today's show, go to DCProLVA.com. Click there right now and you can see the website and you can verify he's a real person. Now, Daniel, you work on some of the biggest projects in America, some visually spectacular things. Tell us over the years, who are some of the projects or what kinds of projects have you worked on over the years?

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely. We can kind of exist in two spaces. A huge client pool of ours is houses of worship, you know, mainly churches. We've worked a lot of big clients in that area. Bethel Church, Elevation Church, Life Church here in Oklahoma, Church of the Highlands out of Alabama. You kind of name it if you're, you're a large church in those areas. We work with them, but what I always like to stress when I say that, those are fun to work with. Some of our favorite clients are the smaller churches around, you know, the ones that just want to have a good way to communicate with, with their congregations. So smaller churches shouldn't hesitate to reach out to us. We also do a lot in the corporate space. We, we work with Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. I know a lot of your listeners are probably very familiar with Charlie, the awesome work he does. We do all the Turning Point events. We had the honor of providing lighting for 11 of President Trump's stops

• 7:35Speaker 00

  that he did with Turning Point on the election cycle. Hopefully going to have some more here. You know, occasionally we get to work with other more unique artists and, and clients. We've worked with Nitro Circus, which is the guys that do the crazy backflips on the motorcycles. We've worked with SpaceX, Tesla, a lot of big corporate events. So again, I know a lot of your listeners are people that are own corporations, run companies. Having events that are presented with excellence, so represents your, your, your company well is huge. And that's a lot of what we do is helping other companies with that.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  If you had to describe the, the services that you provide, would you describe yourself as audio visual lighting? Or what, what, what do you call that? What's kind of the industry terminology that would be best used to describe what you do?

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And you kind of hit the nail on the head there. It's audio, video, lighting, AVL. We made a little joke in our name. My personal background is as a lighting and production designer. So we decided to switch it up and call ourselves an LVA company. You know, we put lighting first where it belongs instead of the tail end. But we do all that, pretty much any, anything we're going to have a live event where you're going to have an audience, a crowd, a church service, a concert, a corporate event. We specialize in all those types of things and we're also starting to branch out into TV studio spaces, corporate boardrooms, you know, I can't imagine a bigger failure than when you're in a corporate boardroom and you're trying to communicate with a client and you're having AVL failures. You know, you're not linking up to your Zoom correctly, you don't sound well, you don't look well. Even, you know, right here in my little office, we make sure we have proper lighting, proper microphones. I want to sound good, I want to look good. So we're also starting to help people with that.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  So for anybody watching today's show, if they want to hire you guys or learn more about your services before we get into your story, everybody go out there right now to DCProLVA.com. Who's your ideal and likely buyer? Like who do you work with? Is it typically churches? Is it corporate America? Is it, what's kind of your ideal and likely buyer?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  We are between 16 and 70% of our clients being churches. And again, I mentioned some big names in the church world there. We work with all sizes. If you just, even if you just need some good speakers to make sure your pastor's voice is clear with every seat in the room, we can serve churches that size, up to the biggest in the country. After that, we work with a lot of corporate companies. We do less and less of the musical concerts and things of that, that nature anymore. But if you're a corporation that wants to host an event for employees, you want to host an event for clients to come to, we'd be a great company to reach out to just to make sure your message is presented with excellence.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Now, how did you first start this company? Again, for anybody out there, if you're listening on, if you're listening right now and you're taking notes, it's DCProLVA.com. How did you start DCProLVA.com? What was the, the process like?

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Very bad.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  No, I, this is all I've done my whole career. I've been a lighting production designer, you know, until DC Pro started about six or seven years ago. I hired my first full-time employee in January of 2020. So I kind of considered that personally the start of the company when I started bringing more people into it here. And you know, for anyone out there that's read the book, E-Myth, that's how I started the company. I started the book as a technician and going, well, I know how to do lighting and production very well. So I bet I can get people to buy it. And after a couple of years of doing that, I realized I needed help. And that's where I reached out to people like you guys to help show me how to not just do the work of the business, but build a business out of it. So we started out by just using my network, people I already had relationships with and going, hey,

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Rather than just hiring me to provide the service for you, now we provide product. Now we provide rental solutions. Now we provide this and just building off of my network. And then what you guys have helped me with so much of the past couple of years of working with you is figuring out how to start to reach outside of my network to new customers, new leads that we don't have an existing relationship with.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Now, on part two of today's show, I kind of teed it up, so I'm going to put Michael Gerber. I did an interview with Michael Gerber. I'm going to add it to part two of today's show. Michael Gerber is the author of the E-Myth because years ago I met Michael and Michael and I were comparing notes and he was asking me, you know, where do you see clients that are typically stuck? Where do you see it? Business owners, Clay, where do you see? And I said, well, in your book, as you articulated, you know, Michael Gerber wrote that most entrepreneurs are technicians that are working in their business rather than on their business. And I said, Michael, what I find the challenge I find when I work with clients is that you, the theory or the idea, the belief of, hey, I should work on my business. That is absolutely something people believe in.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  But then there's the urgency of needing to sell something at a profit. Another example is there are people out there that are watching today's show and they say, man, I want to achieve physical fitness like Daniel has. I want to, I want to be physically fit like Daniel and I want to do it. I want to take my fitness goals to the next level. However, they have a job that has them working the night shift and they're, and they're kind of viewing it like I can't focus on fitness until I'm done with the night shift. Or I can't start working on my business until I actually, you know, get to a certain place financially, then I'll work on the business. I can't work out until I get to this spot in my life with my schedule. And what I find, I told, and I told Michael Gerber this, I said, it's the messy middle.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  That's what I help clients through is that messy middle. So I want to get your thoughts about the messy middle because you, you have the biggest organizations in America and middle-sized companies reaching out to you every day. Meanwhile, you're trying to work on the business. What was the biggest challenge or what is the biggest challenge of, of working through that together of these past couple of years?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  You know, I think personally for me, the biggest challenge was I went from being exactly like you said, a technician, which by the way, please tell Mr. Gerber, I'm reading his book for the third time right now and it's, it's like I'm reading it again for the first, so valuable. But I was the technician mindset, so I understood how to do the service work that we do very well. I didn't know how to lead a team doing it. I didn't know how to structure, you know, our sales team properly to take that load off. And, you know, I found myself just showing up at the office every day and going, what, what, what hill do I need to climb today? And what that usually meant is that other people got to take control of my time. You know, whether it would be my employees or our customers, they dictated what my days looked like. You know, when I reached out to you guys, started working with you, what I thought, you know, and what I thought I wanted from you guys was a bunch of pre-belt systems that you would hand off to me and go, okay, here's the way you need to do it.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  What you did and what has been the real secret for me is that you worked on me first. And example, right here in front of me, if I'm looking at my desk, this, you know, this is my daily clipboard I carry around. It's got my calendar on one side, my to-do list on the other. Such a simple thing, literally life-changing. This is the first part of my day every day. And what I have found is this has been such an anxiety relief, such a stress relief that allows me to step, step away from the working in my business and work on my business. Because before I get to that point every day, I can look through and go, no, that's not something I need to do. At the bottom of that to-do list, what you probably couldn't see because I, I showed it pretty fast, is I have a delegate section on my to-do list where I will start to write a note for me and go, no, someone else can do that. And I'll put it in the delegate.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  That pre-planning of my time has made us millions of dollars.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  This, what you just said, I literally just got goosebumps. This is exactly, I mean, again, I, I tell people who watch this show, they say, why do you do it? Folks, I'm 44 years old. When I grew up, my dad was delivering pizzas at Domino's. He was working at QuickTrip the night shift. He was absolutely doing the very best he could to provide for my family. He had a college degree, so he was trying to provide for my mom and my brother and I, and he just didn't know how to do it. And so every time I talk to somebody, whether it's you, Daniel, or somebody online, or someone who comes to our workshop, I, I try to speak to, not in a new age kind of way, but I try to speak to Tom Clark, my father, may he rest in peace, because he had to exchange

• 15:11Speaker 01

  the night shift and virtually every holiday and every day to put food on our table. And he didn't know how to do it. He didn't know how to grow a company. And I think that's a really valuable thing about, about coaching is, you know, it's, it's different to have somebody tell you, hey, go do this. But coaching is the follow-up to make sure we're actually doing it. And I think that's a powerful thing is the, the follow-up. But I want to get your thoughts on this because if you're not, if you're new to coaching or new to having somebody helping you grow your company, it can seem tedious. It can even be frustrating having somebody follow up when you're working on yourself. But really, that's why I see professional athletes have coaches.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  People that are in great shape tend to work out with, with a, with a partner or a group. People that have strong financials tend to work with an accountant or a financial coach. Can you talk about just the nature of the coaching relationship? Because I do think it can be tedious. It can be redundant. It could be, but it needs to be.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  It can be and it definitely was. And, you know, I even went through a cycle with you guys where I wasn't sure what we were doing. And I went and talked to my coach about it and luckily I got some clarity through that. But, you know, what the big mental shift for me was, was like I said a second ago, I thought you guys were going to work on my business for me. And that was just a misunderstanding on my part. It's exactly what you said, it's coaching. You're working on me so that I can work on my business. You know, some of the, the tedious tracking, again, I didn't understand in the beginning, you know, some of my pushback to my coach was we already have systems in place for this. You know, we have things that do this, but what he pointed out very clearly, we have those, but I couldn't explain them to him at a granular level. And if I can't, as the owner of the company, explain it to my coach of how this works in

• 16:58Speaker 00

  our company, you know, and what it's tracking, it means that it's, it's not actually working. So the tracking sheets that you guys have us do, I have a much more of a granular understanding of the finances of our company now than I ever did before. Tracking our Google, Google reviews. I'm going to be real honest, my industry, I did not in the beginning think that was something that was valuable. I was so wrong. And it's not just getting the Google reviews to improve our, our SEO. What it's done is helped build processes within my team to where I'm giving my guys ownership over that process. You know, I'm getting buy-in from them. So the, the result of the Google reviews is rather than just benefiting, like I said, our SEO, it's taught my team to, at the end of the project, to go talk to the clients,

• 17:41Speaker 00

  to get the review from them, to find out what went well, to lean into it. So all of that stems from these little, like you said, somewhat tedious things. But what I'd say with anybody that starts coaching, starts coaching with you guys, it took me probably seven to 10 months before I really got it. And once I did, the value is, is off the charts.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Now, I'm going to unpack, there were six, I've taken notes here as you were talking, there are six areas I'm going to have you unpack one by one with the limited time we have here. So first off, as I was taking notes, tracking, system number one, tracking. I find that most business owners don't track. Now, let me give you an example. Charles Colaw, I'm going to pull up his website real quick. Longtime client of mine, unbelievable guy, probably the most physically fit specimen I've ever seen in my life. This guy, he is jacked. Charles is absolutely focused on fitness. And if you're around him, he's always taking notes on what he's eating. He tracks every meal, what he eats and what he does in the gym. And he looks like it.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  And so Charles is very intentional about tracking in the areas of fitness. And when I started showing him how to track in business, it resonated with him, it connected with him because he goes, okay, I do that in the gym. I don't know why I'm not doing it with my company. And I think somebody out there watching today's show, you're maybe just new to tracking. How does it help you to see a tracking sheet where you can see each week what got done or what didn't get done, or what, just, just where you can see all the results in one place?

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, the major benefit for me is, you know, and again, initially my pushback was that we have QuickBooks that we use. It shows me all this. No, it definitely does not. What we've been able to identify because of the uniqueness of the industry we're in, we don't have short-term payoffs. You know, we don't have clients giving us money every single day. We get money in big chunks spread out over a larger period of time. And what it's helped me identify is a weird cash flow variable with our, in our industry that we didn't understand before. And we kind of do this over the week. So I will have three or four weeks in a row with a low cash flow season. And then I'll have two or three with a high cash flow season. What that has allowed us to start doing now is adjusting our spending where we're doing it at the peaks and not in the valleys of that cash flow.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Seems like a minor thing, but has kept us from either number one, missing opportunities because we were trying to time the cash flow at the wrong time. Or, you know, just, you know, not, not spending that money in the proper place.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Now, the next area I wanted to get in, get more detailed into is online reputation management. You know, you go to DCProLVA.com. I was having this conversation with Eric Trump, actually. It's very interesting. He came and spoke at, what, I think we've done 26 events together. But the first one he came to, one of our attendees said, what does he do? I remember they said, they were, they were literally, they came up to me in line. This is Eric Trump. They come up to me, this is President Trump's son. And one of the attendees says, what does he do? Like, what's his job? You know, is he like on the, does he help kind of manage things? Or what does he do? And I remember thinking to myself, that is so commonly asked to me.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  People always say, what does Eric do? And I explained to him, well, Eric Trump, you know, he actually runs the Trump Organization. Like, you talk about the Trump Organization, who runs it? That's Eric Trump. Okay, so the guy who manages thousands of employees. And I said, Eric, I don't think most people know what you do. And he's like, really? And it was kind of, he didn't know that people didn't know what he does. And I think the same thing's true with your business. People go to your website and you're almost like the best kept secret. You know, people didn't know that you had done projects for certain people. Unless it's documented on the website, unless you have images to prove you've done what you've done, unless you have testimonials or reviews of some kind.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  People wouldn't know that you've done the audio visual for some of the Trump rallies and the Charlie Kirk events in Bethel, unless you had documented it. Could you talk about that? Cause I know you're, you're a humble guy. And I know you don't like to spend your time talking about yourself, which is part of the problem from a branding perspective. Can you talk about that for a second? Like, this, the importance of, or maybe how that's helped you by documenting over the years, some of the events you've done in the past?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  You know, actually, it's funny you bring that up. This is something we're in the middle of right now. You know, and I'll, you know, share the bad with the good. This is an area we're really trying to work on still. That website, you keep bringing it up, that's actually our old website. You guys are helping me, as we speak right now, get the new website launched. So I'm very much in the middle of doing what you're talking about. And it's, it's that, you know, I, I'm not, I don't have a marketing background. So anytime I focus on marketing, it's, to me, it feels like bragging. It feels like, you know, I'm trying to show off. No, I'm trying to tell people and communicate about my business. We're very much still in the middle of this right now. A lot of what you guys are helping me with, we're doing both printed marketing materials. I don't, I haven't had a great way, when my sales team, my business development team goes and meets with clients,

• 22:42Speaker 00

  to have an easier visual of showing, hey, here's what we do, you know? And one of the things I'm noticing, as the business continues to expand, when you're the founder, it's one thing to be able to stand there and go, yeah, I did this. I was there. And you can speak about it to a different degree than the people on your team can. So we're, as we speak, going through and giving our team a lot of those materials they need to show, here's what we do as a team, here's what the history of the company did. We're both doing that on the website. You guys are personally working through with me on that. And then across the board, we are doing a whole marketing push of printed documentation, easy one flyer handouts. That's one you guys have helped me understand a lot better. It's just having something I can put into a customer's hand. They give them a quick, simple, easy to explain overview of what we do and who we are.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Tying into the next item here, building the systems that other people who are not experts can do. That's a big thing. I call it the curse of knowledge, but it's where you're really good at graphic design. So you hire somebody with a graphic design degree and you assume they can do what you want them to do, but they can't. It's where you have an audio visual background. So you hire somebody with an audio visual degree and you think they can do what you can do, but they can't. And so building systems that other people can use. Can you talk about that, how that's impacted your business? Building systems that other people who are not you can use?

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And that's one too, that we just, I didn't, I didn't see until you guys coached me through it. Because it's not just doing audio, video and lighting. It's doing audio, video and lighting my way. Because, you know, the customer's not coming to us for the commodity. And they're not coming to us for the fixtures and the speakers and the microphones. They're coming to us for DC Pro and the way that DC Pro uses those tools for their events. So I, you know, I did not, I, in my head, having never built anything like this before, thought that that had to be some big, complex system. We've started using simple, just Google Docs. And anytime a topic comes up where a person has a question about how we do this, that now immediately triggers a discussion inside of, oh, we need a Google Doc spelling out that process. We have complicated ones that go through our entire sales process,

• 24:42Speaker 00

  from the moment a client calls to when we finalize their job. And it goes through every step. That particular one is almost a four-page document at this point. We've also broken down sections of that. But being able to step back and see that whole workflow and talk through it and have everyone on the team know what the expectations are, have been huge. And we just hired a new office assistant. She started last week. That was the first new hire we've had where we had all of our onboarding documents already detailed out, down to call scripts. So she now sees when someone calls, word for word, here's what I say. And that has been huge for getting her up to speed and going.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Final three questions, final five minutes, here we come. One is for anybody out there watching online that may be going, you know what? I have a church, or I go to a church and maybe, maybe, maybe this company could help me. Maybe if I go to DCProLVA.com, maybe they can help my church. Or somebody who's a pastor, you're saying it can help my church. Or again, you attend a church, you're going, that could help. Or maybe you're a praise and worship leader. Or maybe you attend a place where you're going, man, our church really needs to go to the next level with the audio visual. What makes your company unique? Or why should everybody check out your business?

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Specifically for churches. One of the things we love is almost every person that works at DC Pro, definitely every person at management level and above, has worked in full-time ministry at some point. We understand the challenges of churches. It's not just about putting equipment in there. How do we put equipment in there that's going to honor your budget? Cause that's first and foremost. Some person tithes to pay for whatever you're going to pay us. We take that very seriously. We want to honor that money. Secondary, you most likely have volunteers making sure your service works every weekend. If we put in complicated systems, if we put in systems that they can't win at, that's going to fall apart. And when you're talking about something like church, that's a very serious matter. If your microphone is feeding back, if your screen glitches out, if things aren't working right, you know, that very could, very well could distract someone who's at your church for the first time

• 26:31Speaker 00

  and interfere with them getting a relationship with Christ. So, yeah, we are very serious about the, the quality, the simplicity, the excellence of what we do across the board, but even more so with churches.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Second question for you. A lot of people, you know, they, they come to our conferences and they say, Clay, that business conference I came to, it really ignited something for me. Some people say, the weekly coaching, it really holds me accountable, it helps me grow. Some people say it's all of it together. What do you say to somebody out there that hasn't been to one of our workshops or hasn't scheduled a free 13-point assessment with our team yet?

• 27:04Speaker 00

  I have been to one of your guys' conferences and that was absolutely the first thing that hooked me. And it was literally something you said in that conference that got me in. I thought that what you guys were going to coach me on was just work harder, work more hours, work all the time. And that was not something that was going to work for me personally. It wasn't that. You made it very clear that every business leader is looking for one of two things, or maybe both, financial freedom or time freedom. And it's important that you understand what you're going for and then you build your business to get what you want out of that. That is what made me understand, okay, this is a team I want to talk to.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  You and I did a quick 30-minute onboarding and that is what took me the rest of the, the rest of the way. Absolutely. I have found more value in the coaching, 100%. But I highly recommend someone attends at least one conference, because it really gives you a great overview of your guys' approach.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Final question for you. For anybody out there that, well, you, maybe you're stuck in an elevator with somebody and they say, okay, give me a 60-second or less overview of how the coaching has impacted your company. How would you describe it for somebody who's going, all right, 60 seconds, you and I are in an elevator. Tell me how the, the coaching has impacted your company.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  You know, I think for every company, it's going to be a little different, you know? And in the beginning, like I've said a couple of times, I thought you guys were there to help work on my company. No, you're there to help work on me. But what that's done is it's taken me from that technician we've talked about from the E-Myth book and turned me into that entrepreneur. I have a background in the industry. I don't, I don't need you guys to help me understand audio, video, lighting everywhere anymore. But what you've done is optimized me. I now get more done in one day here at the office than I used to get done in a week or weeks at the office. But on top of that, I leave the office every day at 2:00. Because I have, you know, my family is uber important to me. Getting to the gym every day to make sure I'm mentally, physically feeling well, so that I can do all the things I need to do is very important to me.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  So I get up every day at 4:00 AM, go straight to my office at home and work for three hours before I ever get to the, to the office. Now, some people may be saying, that sounds horrible. But yeah, what if it meant you could get away at 2:00? So it's, it took months and months of Andrew from your team, really individually honing in on every little detail. But I'm now optimized to the point where, you know, it's not just that you guys helped me with DC Pro. There's a few more things we're trying to get lined out of DC Pro. So it's at the point where I feel like I want it. But now I can't wait to start for my next business and the next business after that, and the next business after that. We have two in the cooker right now that I'm not quite ready to launch. But when I do, it's going to be huge. The reason I can do that is not because you told me how to run DC Pro. You taught me how to run me.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, our service, we do charge $1,700 a month for our service. We do that. We make a 20% profit margin. So I make $340 a month for a client. From an ROI perspective, or a, you know, return on investment perspective, what kind of ROI have you seen?

• 29:48Speaker 00

  So I've started with you. I actually looked, it was two years ago this month. Gross revenue has grown two and a half times since then in our, in our company. Beyond that, we are standing at the door right now of another major push. I can see it. I can see it coming. The pieces are getting into place. So have this conversation with me again a year from now. And I bet I can say the same thing again, that we've grown two and a half times just between now and then.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Daniel, it's an honor to serve you. Thank you so much for sharing your story, for encouraging everybody out there. And again, I just, I, I got goosebumps when you're explaining to me the transformation. So I couldn't be more excited to serve you. Thanks for joining us today.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  I appreciate you guys so much.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Take care. Bye-bye.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Clay, you're an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. And as they say in Stoic, "The obstacle is the way." And so if you let, you let these pinheads get in your way, you're in trouble.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Robert, one of the things that you said on multiple interviews, multiple times, and every time you said it, I thought to myself, have I not been paying attention? Because it felt like new information to me the first time I heard it, which was probably the 50th time I'd heard it. You said "octa non verba." And maybe the first time you said it, I was driving while I'm, you know, listening to the podcast while driving. And maybe I was half paying attention, but I "octa non verba." And then it was like, almost like an angelic moment for me. Ah, and I "octa non verba." And once I finally understood what it meant and what you were saying and how it could be used, I think it was life-changing for me and how I approach business. Could you explain "octa non verba," what it means,

• 31:27Speaker 01

  and how our listeners can apply it?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Clay, you gave me goosebumps, man. I'm glad it hit you as hard as it did. "Octa non verba" is the motto of the US Merch Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. I had appointments with Naval Academy in Kings Point Merch Marine Academy. And Merch Marine Academy's motto was "octa non verba." In other words, don't listen to what a person says. Watch what they do. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you, so congratulations. I learned at the academy, Kings Point in New York, "octa non verba."

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Watch what a person does, not what they say.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Ryan Wimpy.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  And I'm Rachel Wimpy, and the name of our business is Tip Top Canine.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn't learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all, just dog training. And that's what's so great about working with Clay and his team, because they do it all for us.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  So that we can focus on our passion, and that's training dogs. Clay and his team here, they're so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment here at Thrive.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  We've been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay's helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, script for emails, script for text messages, scripting for everything.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They're so effective. It's worth every minute. Things get done. We'll ask for things like different flyers, and they're done before our hour is up. So it's just awesome, extremely effective.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  If you don't use Clay and his team, you're probably going to be pulling your hair out or you're going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and produce your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You're really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and that actually knows what they're doing when you already have something that's your core focus and you already know how to do it.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don't. They can't afford one. And their local web guy or local person that they know probably can't do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There's a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, really, I mean, really ride them to get stuff done. And stuff is done so fast here. And people, there's a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I'm Ryan Wimpy. I'm originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I've definitely learned a lot about life design

• 34:35Speaker 03

  and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So the, having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That's really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It's invigorating. The walls are super, it's just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It's a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that's here

• 35:16Speaker 03

  at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Clay is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation. Today's a very special occasion because you never know, Josh Wilson, who you are going to meet at a Trump Hotel room. You never know. When you go to the Trump Hotel in Chicago, you never know who you're going to meet there. And I met the man and the myth, the guy who's behind the E-Myth series of books that absolutely changed the way that I approach business, Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth. I met him there in the Chicago Hotel. And I asked him if he would be on the show. He made a poor life choice, and he's decided to be here with us. Michael Gerber, how are you, sir?

• 36:44Speaker 05

  Delighted to be here.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. You are just absolutely a living legend. And your book helped so many people. But before we get into your book, and specifically chapter five of your book, could you share with the listeners where you grew up and kind of your background, just so they know that you weren't born at the top of the mountain?

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Well, hear me, nobody is born at the top of the mountain. I certainly wasn't. I was born in New Jersey, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, of a couple of beautiful Jewish parents and part of a growing family. In 1936, in 1936, in the heart of the Depression, just as the horror was taking place in Europe and just before the Holocaust was to take place in Europe. I grew up as a little boy in that season without any understanding of what was going on

• 37:51Speaker 05

  in the world around me. My parents decided to move from New Jersey to California in 1947. And we did move to Anaheim, California. And I was raised in Anaheim, California. And my journey started in Anaheim, California. And my journey continued for the rest of my life to the point where you speak to me here today. And I could go into all of that, but it is such an uninteresting story about Michael Gerber, where he was, what he did, how he did it, why he didn't do it, what he could have done.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  So let me ask you this. When did you kind of start to figure out? When did you start to figure out what you wanted to do professionally? What age were you when you had that idea?

• 38:41Speaker 05

  I didn't. I never focused on what I wanted to do. I was a jazz saxophone player. I was an encyclopedia salesman. I did this, I did that, I did that, I did this. All the time that I was doing that, I was reading and reading and studying and studying philosophy, spirituality, music, jazz, all the stuff anybody would ever be attracted to until I hit the age of 41. Now, hear me, all of this started, Clay, then, at the age of 41.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  41.

• 39:19Speaker 05

  And at 41, a friend of mine who owned a small advertising agency in Silicon Valley, California, asked me if I'd meet with one of his clients who was having difficulty converting leads that my brother-in-law's ad agency was creating for him into sales. And I told my brother-in-law, Ace, that's his name, that's still his name, God bless him. I said, "Ace, I don't know anything about business, and I certainly don't know anything about high-tech business." He said, "Michael, you know more than you think you do. Just meet with the guy. Let's see what happens." So Ace dropped me off to meet with a guy who I'm calling Bob. Bab had a high-tech product.

• 40:02Speaker 05

  He had sales engineers having difficulty selling that product. And Ace dropped me off and said, "Bob, Ace, Michael, guys, get to know each other. I'll be back in an hour." So obviously, Bob said to me, "Michael, what do you know about my business?" And I said, "Nothing, Bob," because I didn't.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:23Speaker 05

  And he said, "Well, what do you know about our product?" I said, "Less than that, Bob." And obviously, he's looking at his watch and thinking, "I've got an hour with this guy. He doesn't know anything. What in the hell am I going to do with him?" But instead, he said, "So if you don't know anything about my business, and you don't know anything about my product, how can you help me?" And I said, "I haven't a clue, Bob, but we've got an hour to kill, so let's start so I can ask you some questions." And that's how all this started. I began to ask Bob questions, and I realized, despite the fact that he owned a small business, despite the fact that he was the CEO of a small business, despite the fact that he

• 41:03Speaker 05

  thought of himself as an entrepreneur, starting that small business, every answer Bob gave me was anecdotal. There was no facts underlying anything he said. So I'd ask more, and then I'd ask more, and then I'd ask more, and then I'd ask more. And I suddenly realized, I did know something about business. I knew that selling is a system. And I knew that Bob didn't have one.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Thrive Nation, that deserves a quick time out right there. That is absolutely huge. In order to create time freedom and financial freedom, again, in order to create both time and financial freedom, you must create systems that are both repeatable and quickly learnable. You have to create sales systems that other people can implement who are not you. And that way, you can quickly train new members of your team how to create a repeatably, predictably successful system for sales. Otherwise, again, it always comes down to you doing the selling. You've got to create repeatable systems that wow the customers each and every time. So I would ask you today, specifically, when somebody calls your business phone, how is

• 42:14Speaker 01

  the phone answered? And if you don't know the answer to that, make a call script for answering your phones. You need to have a call script for answering your phones. You need to have a pre-written email that you send to new potential clients. You need to have a frequently asked questions script, so that way, when anybody calls you and asks your new hire frequently asked questions, they're going to have all the answers. You want to think about every aspect of your system, and you want to make it scalable and repeatable. You want to make sure that your on-hold music is music that is going to wow the customer each and every time. You want to make sure that every interaction with your customer is, in fact, scalable. It is repeatable, and that it does wow the customers.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  And I told Bob, "Without a selling system, you're not going anywhere with this." He said, "What's a selling system?" I said, "Just think of it as a script. First, you say this, then you say that, then you say this, then you say that. First, he does this, then he does that, then he does this, then he does that. And in the process of doing this, and doing that, and saying this, and saying that, something happens, and you can predict what that's going to be after you've gotten it down, really gotten it down into a groove."

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Into a groove?

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Into a groove. And he said to me, "Well, can you create that for me?" And I said, "Of course." So when Ace came to pick me up, he said, "What happened?" I said, "I just got a job." He said, "What do you mean a job?" I said, "I'm now a consultant." He said, "What do you mean a consultant?" I said, "I'm now consulting Bob on creating a selling system." He said, "What do you know about that?" I said, "I guess everything." And that was the beginning of it. And that was the beginning of this, that was the beginning of E-Myth. That was the beginning of everything I've done since that point in time.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Remember, keep this planted firmly in your mind, that entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem for your ideal and likely buyers in exchange for compensation. Again, entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem in exchange for the compensation that you seek for your ideal and likely buyers. Think about all of the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers. Make a list of all the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers, and offer your customer, offer your ideal and likely buyers, those solutions in exchange for the money you seek, and you will create both time and financial freedom. It is that easy, my friends. It is unbelievable.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Find a problem that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers, and then make the system repeatable, make it scalable, and make sure that it wows your ideal and likely buyers. Make sure that the business can work without you, and you shall experience both time and financial freedom.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  So you might say, "I didn't come to the realization of why I was here on the planet until I turned 40."

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Forty years old. Let me ask you, at the age of 40, you began to have these epiphanies, discovering that many of the people out there, most of our listeners, most people on the planet, we have bought into this thing called the E-Myth, where we've bought into this wrong mindset to business, or this wrong way about looking at business. Can you explain what the E-Myth is for people out there that don't know what the E-Myth stands for?

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Sure. The E-Myth is the entrepreneurial myth. It's based upon the assumption that everybody believes anybody and everybody who starts their own business is an entrepreneur. And the fact is, they're not. What I learned with Bob, and then with Mary, and then with Judy, and the various little companies that I worked on behalf of Ace's ad agency, until the point it became obvious that I was going to do this on my own, not in Ace's ad agency, because Ace didn't believe in what I was saying either. But I came to realize that none of them were entrepreneurs. They were all what I came to call technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  All they did was create a job for themselves.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  True.

• 46:24Speaker 05

  So every small business is a job for the idiot who started it. And now they're working for a really big idiot themselves.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:34Speaker 05

  And they're saying to themselves, "Yeah, but this isn't working." And of course, it's not working, because they didn't design it to work. They didn't build it to work. They didn't launch it to work. They didn't grow it to work. How to do that, design it, build it, launch it, and grow it, is what the E-Myth is all about.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  If you're out there today, and you found yourself creating a business that has created financial freedom for you, but you don't know how to escape the wage cage, and you don't know how to actually create time freedom to go along with that financial freedom, that's why we have our in-person workshops and the one-on-one coaching. To learn more, go to ThriveTimeShow.com, that's ThriveTimeShow.com, and click on the conferences button. And there's no upsells at our workshops, and you're going to be seated by real entrepreneurs, people that actually own successful companies, who are now where you once were. These are real entrepreneurs that needed to learn how to create both time and financial freedom. And many of our conference attendees come back year after year, because now that they

• 47:36Speaker 01

  have created time and financial freedom, they want to refine the systems, to make them even more efficient, or they want to receive a refresher course. Maybe they want to get re-inspired. But it's really awesome, because you're going to be seated by real entrepreneurs, just like you, who own a company that is already doing well, but they just want to create both time and financial freedom at this point. And so, I would encourage you to check it out today. Go to ThriveTimeShow.com, and then click on the conferences button, and book your conference tickets today. And don't let finances be an obstacle here. If you're in a tight spot, we have scholarship options available. Essentially, we'll meet you where you're at financially, to make sure that the finances, the financial obligations of purchasing a ThriveTimeShow.com ticket are not going to

• 48:21Speaker 01

  exceed your ability to pay for them. And so, without any further ado, back to my interview with Michael Gerber. What I find is that some of us think that we know what we're doing. So some of us, we think, when I was building my first company, DJ Connection, before Brent Lawless gave me your book, I was having "success." I was selling a lot of wedding packages with DJConnection.com. I was booking thousands of events. I was winning awards. I was being told I was the best entertainer. My company was great. And I, when I read chapter five of your book, you mentioned that I was creating a job and not a business.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  And I started contemplating, "Well, what's the difference between busyness and a business?" Because they're spelled slightly differently, but busyness, there's a Y in there. And I don't know why I'm in business when I'm busyness. Busyness means I don't know why. And then, business means a business exists to serve me. There's an I in business. So business, a business exists to serve me, okay. And I had to read that chapter over and over and over. And you challenged me in the Chicago hotel room at Trump Hotel. You challenged me to read the chapter again. So I read the book again. I read it, I went through all my highlights, and I took photos of them, and I sent it to your wife, because I wanted you to know that I'd read it again. And so, I would like to go into, if we can, to chapter five of your book, and to page 51. We're going to open up the book, E-Myth Revisited, where you wrote, "Every adolescent business

• 49:51Speaker 01

  reaches a point where it pushes beyond its owner's comfort zone." For me, it was DJConnection.com. "The boundary within which he feels secure in his ability to control his environment, and outside of which he begins to lose control." That's why I wanted to DJ 250 events, Michael, before your book saved me. I literally did 250 events in one year. I personally made the playlist for every wedding. I did everything. Tons of money, no time to spend it. It was awesome and terrible at the same time, and the world kept cheering. The world kept cheering. Help our listeners out there that are stuck in this adolescent phase, where we want to control everything, or we want to abdicate and assign items to members of our team who are poorly trained, and then we never follow up.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  So we either want to do it ourself, or we want to do it ourselves, or we want to assign the project to somebody on our team who is poorly trained and poorly equipped to have success, and then we do a poor job of following up. Help the listeners out there, my friends.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  So the evolution of a company from infancy to adolescence to maturity is an absolutely universal process. Most small companies, we're talking about small companies, we're talking about a hamburger stand, we're talking about a meat market, we're talking about anything and everything that depends upon somebody doing some work. The butcher does the work, the gardener does the work, the hairdresser does the work, the poodle clipper does the work. You understand what I'm saying? There's work to be done. There's work to be done in every single business on the planet. Now, some of that work is very unsophisticated. Some of that work is very sophisticated. But despite whether sophisticated or unsophisticated,

• 51:37Speaker 05

  every single small business owner who starts a business is actually that technician. The hairdresser starts a beauty shop. The guy behind the microphone starts a thing behind the microphone. A chiropractor starts a chiropractic practice and so forth and so forth. Well, of course they do, because that's what they do. That's what they know how to do.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  You're correct. Everybody, everybody starts that way. I hundred percent agree with you.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Yep. So infancy is that startup. Infancy is the very beginning. Infancy was that joyous time, Clay, at the very beginning of what you were doing behind that microphone.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Where you just shined. And you, you remember that.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  You, you just shined.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Oh, it was awesome. It was a new idea and it was exciting and I did it myself and people cheered. I got tipped.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  You got up every day. You got up every day. You got up every day.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Oh, tell me the story.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  You did that. Absolutely, absolutely. Just like the woman in the beauty parlor. She gets up every day and she goes to work and she takes out her brush and her needles and her thing and that and that. And she goes to work and the lady that comes in and then the lady who follows and then the lady who follows and they schmooze and they talk and they dance and they play and they do whatever they do. And the lady who comes in loves her and the other one loves her, the other one loves her and so forth and so on. And then she gets busy, busy, busy, busy. That's where adolescence steps in. Your company grew beyond just beginning phase. So suddenly you've got to do this, you've got to do this, you've got to do this, because

• 53:22Speaker 05

  if you stop doing this, if you stop doing this, you're out of business.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  That's the deal. If you stop doing this, you're out of business. And that's where adolescence begins to take its toll. In other words, you've got to get this done, you've got to get that done, you've got to get, and you can't do everything anymore. There's too much to do, too little time to do it. And also you don't know everything that needs to be done. So you've got to learn everything that needs to be done. Now you're stretched, stretched, stretched, stretched.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Quality's going down. You're stretched thin. The quality's going down. You're dropping the ball. You're making money, but now you're kind of offering shoddy work, shoddy quality. You start to lose the, the excitement about your business. You feel trapped in your business, Michael, right? I mean, you, you feel trapped.

• 54:16Speaker 05

  Yep. And your kids begin to wonder, where's dad? Where's dad? Where's mom? Where's mom?

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Now you're just being mean.

• 54:22Speaker 05

  How come you're never home? How come you're never, how come you're always working? How come you're always working? Well, I got to work. I got to work. I got to work. I created this thing that depends upon me because I'm the star. So understand it's that star issue. I'm the star. It won't work unless Clay Clark does it. It won't work unless Michael E. Gerber does it. I'm the star. That's when the business begins to fail. And it begins to fail big time. And what happens is instead of doing this and doing that and doing this and doing that, instead of all of a sudden having people doing it, but they're not doing it as well

• 55:05Speaker 05

  as you do it, you had to bring people in, you had to bring people in, you had to bring in a bookkeeper, you had to bring in a whatever. They're not doing it as well as you did it. So finally you realize they don't work as well as you do. So you let them go.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Let them go.

• 55:20Speaker 05

  And when you let them go, now it's still there waiting to be done.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  And now you get to do it yourself again because you've created a job and not a business.

• 55:28Speaker 05

  Right. So what do you do? You get small again.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 05

  And that's what everybody does. They grow and they shrink. And then it goes to adolescence again and then they shrink. And finally, they're through. So last year, there were roughly 550,000 small companies that shut their doors in this country. 550,000 small businesses that shut their doors, not because of the pandemic. You understand the pandemic? Yeah, that's a problem. But understand the problem I'm talking about is a pandemic and has been a pandemic for generations.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  It's worse than a pandemic. What you're talking about is worse than a pandemic. This happens every year, every decade, over and over and over. And what I, what I find, I like to dive into, I'd like to dive into this with you. I have a lot of people that I have been friends with over the years, who they start hiring everybody, like you were just talking about. They begin hiring people and they began, then they begin to abdicate, but they think what they're doing is to delegate. They, they, they think that they're delegating when they're actually abdicating. Um, could you talk about this? I see, I see it with accounting almost a hundred percent of the time, where people, they bring in someone to do their accounting and they do not follow up with them because they're supposed to be the expert. I mean, can you, can you help the listeners out there and maybe tell us about the differences

• 56:59Speaker 01

  between abdicating and delegating?

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Very simple. Abdication is where you turn over responsibility for something and there is no system. You turn over responsibility for a result, but there is no system. There's no method by which that result is intended to be produced. You understand when McDonald's was first formulated, the very first franchise store, the franchise prototype in Des Plaines, Illinois, Ray Kroc went to work on that McDonald's hamburger stand to perfect the systems in that hamburger store. So that whomever he hired would master the system. Master the system.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  The system was the solution, not the person he hired. In every case you're talking about, where we abdicate accountability, we're effectively turning over the responsibility to produce a result to somebody who's going to do it whatever way they do it. And every single person we turn it over to does it differently. So there is no way we do it. And if there is no way we do it, there is no, in quotes, McDonald's. There is no franchise. There is no turnkey system. There is no evolution of a methodology that identifies a brand from everyone else.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  You, uh, when you talk about a system, this might sound mean and, and Michael, please feel free to, to argue with me if you need to here. You can straighten me out here. But I, I know people that say to me, business owners who, who I meet at conferences or who I meet in my building, they'll say, Clay, the system is Kara. The system is Steve. The system is Josh. They are, they are, they're assuming that a person is the system because the person does the job. And then that key person who's been with them since day one, or maybe day 10, or maybe month six, they move on. But I have found since implementing your, your approach to business, working on a business, the E-Myth approach, I now am no longer dependent upon personalities. So when somebody feels like it's time to move on, I can encourage them to move on with great joy.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean that I can be, I can be happy for them. I don't have to hold them hostage and they don't hold me hostage.

• 59:19Speaker 05

  Because this, because the system stays here.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 05

  Because you own the system. You own the brand. You own the methodology. You own the ability to produce the result that you have designed your company to produce again and again and again and again. So when people tune in, when people come in, when people come to the store, when people go online, no matter where it is, online, offline, it doesn't make any difference. It produces exactly the result they came to get because it is an intelligent system. That's the key to the E-Myth. That's one of the critical keys to the E-Myth. It's the system, stupid.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  I have a, uh, before I let Josh ask you some questions, Josh with Living Water Irrigation is here. Now I want to brag on Josh. He's grown a business, uh, from $300,000 in, in revenue to, he's on pace to hit, uh, 3 million this year. But last year, Josh, what were your sales last year? What, what'd you end, end the year at? Uh, 1.8. 1.8 million dollars. He's been a client of mine for a long time and he's probably been tired of me referencing you. He's probably tired of, he's probably saying, stop referencing. This guy doesn't even exist, probably. He thinks you're probably like, like a mythical person. But I, I show him the book cover, he Googles you, he verifies, he knows you're real now. And now he's here with you and he has some questions for you, Michael. So, uh, Josh, what questions do you have for the great one, Mr. Michael Gerbert? Uh, well, Michael, first and foremost, thank you so much.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  It really, honestly is an honor to speak to you, um, due to you and all the coaching from Clay.

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  It's truly sincerely changed my life and the trajectory of it. So first and foremost, I'm thankful and grateful, sir. Well, thank you. Beyond that, my first question would be, what is the easiest way for us as a company? You know, we're having some pretty exponential growth and we're really excited about it. But what's the easiest way for us to define our biggest limiting factor? And for other business owners out there, what's the easiest way to actually define that, Michael? Well, your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you hope to produce. Your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you intend to produce, what you hope to produce, what your dream says you're there to produce.

• 1:01:36Speaker 05

  And so everything starts with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. That's the most critical thing you have to do at the beginning of all of this. I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a purpose, I have a mission. In 1977, when I started this thing that I'm so crazed about. When I started in 1977, we started with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. Our dream then, literally, in quote, was to transform the state of small business worldwide.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  Our vision was to invent the McDonald's of small business consulting.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Our purpose was that every single small business owner who was attracted to our paradigm and implemented it could be as successful as a McDonald's franchisee, or even more. And our mission was to invent the business development system that made our dream, our vision, our purpose possible. So we started our company, we started with the dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. So the first thing I would say to you, what's your dream? What's your vision? What's your purpose? What's your mission? That is phenomenal.

• 1:03:02Speaker 05

  Until you then can say, "Our dream is our," not mine, "our dream, our vision, our purpose, our mission," and explicate them clearly to every single person who joins you in your company.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  You'll not truly begin to grow it to the degree it's waiting to be grown.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  So you want our listeners to define their dream, their mission, and their purpose? Am I correct, sir? The dream, the mission, and the purpose?

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  Vision. Dream, vision, purpose, mission. Step one, step two, step three, step four. The first four steps of what I call the Eightfold Path.

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  First, my dream. My dream is the great result we're here to produce. Second, my vision. My vision is the form our dream is going to take place on the street.

• 1:04:01Speaker 05

  Our purpose. Our purpose must truly transform the state of our individual customer's mindset about who he or she is and what he or she can expect from an economic, social, relational, familial life. And finally, our mission is to invent the system. And it's always to invent the system. The mission is always about the system at the heart of our great growing enterprise. So you see, what I'm saying is, if you take this little business of yours, just that I'm

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  saying this is a little business of yours, where you're behind the microphone, where you're reaching out to your audience, et cetera, and so forth. And you take that dream, vision, purpose, and mission, you can immediately begin to see that the end result is always worldwide.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  When you were growing the E-Myth program and the book and the team, the movement, and you defined your dream and your vision and your purpose and your mission, and you began to craft the book, to write the book, to work with clients, to do your research, how long did it take you, Mr. Michael Gerber, to go from consulting your first client at the age of 41 to penning the E-Myth Revisited book? How many years was that?

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  The E-Myth, the first E-Myth book called E-Myth, Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, was published in 1985. I started my company in 1977.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Eight years, eight years of data and research.

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  Before that book would ever been written, I had to do it.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  And so the first years, from '77, '78, '79, '80, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I was working on the Michael Thomas Corporation to design, build, launch, and grow our turnkey capability to transform the state of small business worldwide.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  The first eight years, you were working on the business, the first eight years, and...

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  Well, the first eight years and then every year after that. So you've got to understand, it's, you know, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this. Everybody wants to get it now. Everybody wants to get it now. Everybody wants to get it. Can I do this in a year and a half? Can I do this in six minutes? Can I do this tomorrow? Everybody is simply stupid, stupid, stupid, Clay, when they think about this. Because you can't do anything right, right now.

• 1:06:47Speaker 05

  It takes time to absorb what in fact the implications of what you're setting out to do really are. Because if I'm seriously saying, "I'm going to transform the state of small business worldwide," that means by doing what we're planning on doing, the business failure rate is going to decrease exponentially. The business success rate is going to increase exponentially.

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  The experience of people inside of companies is going to be transformed radically. Lives are going to be transformed in the process. That's how big this is. And that's why it can't be done in a minute.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  I do not want to be even slightly negative. I want to just be very practical.

• 1:07:42Speaker 05

  Be as negative as you want to be.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Well, I want to bring this up because I know that you look like you're 22 years old. I mean, you're a young man, but you've been doing this a long time. And there are certain people who do what Thomas Edison once wrote. He calls it hallucination. Thomas Edison once famously wrote, he said, "Vision without execution is hallucination." Vision without execution is hallucination. What percentage of the time do you sit down and meet somebody and do you find yourself saying, "I wish they would just implement"? I mean, at what point do you say, "I just wish they would implement"? Is it a third of the time that people seek knowledge and they don't want to implement? Is it a tenth of the time? How often do people seek the knowledge?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  You give them the knowledge, but they don't want to implement? Because I hear so many E-Myth success stories. I just want to know, what percentage of people get the knowledge and they don't want to implement?

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  You have to understand, anybody can come to me at any point in time, and they do.

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  And they could say, "I want to do this," or "I want to do that." And I say, "Absolutely extraordinary." And I said, "And the good news is, there's a process for doing that.

• 1:08:55Speaker 05

  And the better news is, it's a universal process. Meaning you don't have to invent it. It already exists. It's what I call the Eightfold Path. Step one, step two, just like I've just done. Now, what happens at that point is what shapes what happens next. Because what happens at that point is, a person might say, "Yeah, but I don't want to do all that stuff. All I want to do is, all I want to do..."

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  All I want to do, I don't want that stuff.

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  I hear you, I hear you. You don't want to do all that stuff. And I said, "You have no idea what it takes to do what you just told me you wish to do. But I know exactly what it takes. And the wonderful news is, we've got a method to make it possible for you to mature in the process of discovering the truth about what it is you're setting out to do. Step one, step two," and I go back and back and back. What they do in that process will tell you everything you need to know. We get to change that.

• 1:10:07Speaker 05

  But you understand, the only way we get to change that is take responsibility for our own life.

• 1:10:14Speaker 05

  Not for their lives, not for hers, not for his, not for its, not for the community, not for the state, not for the government, not for the federal, not for the international, our life, my life. I've got to go to work on my life just in exactly the way they went to work on me in boot camp.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Now hear me, I've got to put myself into boot camp.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  And I've got to get all of the bullshit out of me. So I can suddenly discover what truth means. We don't even know what the word "truth" means.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Well, truth is offensive. Truth is, it hurts. Truth is something people can't handle. I mean, when you sit down and you explain to a young whippersnapper, some people come to our conferences and they want to know how search engines work. So you sit down and you explain to them how the Google algorithm works and you show them examples, and they go, "Well, I don't want to have to do all of that." Is there an easy way? And you say, "No, you can't." I won't get too nerdy into it, but you tell them, "You have to have the most original HTML content. You have to have a canonically compliant website. You have to have the most reviews and the most mobile compliance." There's four variables. And they say, "Canonical? That is multiple syllables."

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, but hear me, Clay, it's not you have to, it's it has to.

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  So understand, not you have to, it has to.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  What you have to do is to come face to face and understand how little you actually know.

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  So if you were to take the average human being in these United States today, if you were to take everybody out there on the street.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  Who's burning everything down. And have them take a test. And I'm not talking about a hard test. I'm talking about a simple test.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Simple test.

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  I'm talking about your ABCs. I'm talking about your 1, 2, 3s. If you were to put them through that process, the vast majority of them would fail. Absolutely abject failure. And then you've got to say, if you don't even know that, what leads you to presume that you could tell me how to live my life? Time for boot camp. So my point is, one of the greatest things that anybody could possibly do for America is put everybody into boot camp. Everybody goes to boot camp.

• 1:13:08Speaker 05

  You've got to have a boot camp in whatever you're deciding to do. You've got to have a boot camp because that's where people demonstrate who they are and what they know and what they do and what they don't and what they're not willing to do. Boot camp, boot camp. You've got to open them up.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Tears are weakness leaving the body, as my uncle used to tell me. I think what you're telling us is mind altering for some people. And I want to respect your time. I had a couple more questions on part one of this interview. I wanted to ask you specifically, on page 67 of your book, you wrote something to me, the reader, to all the readers, you wrote this to us. You said, "You did the best you could. It's time to get on with your life, to build your business in an enlivening way." What does it mean to build your business in an enlivening way?

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  What does it mean to enliven? Is that what you're asking?

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yes, because it's a word I don't hear people use.

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  Well, it means to bring true life to it. In short, when folks come to work, they're coming to invest their life for a particular period of time, to engage in work with the intent of producing a result. It's going to add value to every single person associated with that work. That means your customer, that means the guy at the desk next door, means the guy you

• 1:14:48Speaker 05

  report to, means the woman in the accounting department, means everybody and anybody who's joined in here, come here every day. It's like a prayer at the beginning of the day, every day to enliven the experience, come closer to God. So I've been given to say of late, if we're born in the image of God, and in Genesis it says we are, then it means we're born to create. God is the Creator. So if we're born in the image of God, it means we're born to create, to create what?

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  To create a world fit for God. Well, what would a world fit for God look like? Well, you can begin by reading the Ten Commandments. And you suddenly begin to see that we can engage in a way to enliven our experience of being committed, zealously engaged human beings, creators all, here to create an experience that we can experience as we do it and after we've done it and before we do it, that literally

• 1:16:14Speaker 05

  brings life to everything I do. Imagine that. And then you see what I mean by that.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  You have given me an enlivened existence where I was able to escape the rat race. So today, while we've been talking, I think my team has probably cut, we have three stores, there's five stores that are open that cut hair, and I don't have the ability to cut hair. So the barber shop, there's five stores open we have. So there's probably 200 people that got their hair cut in the last hour and a half, two hours, about 200 people getting their hair cut.

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  Wait a second, wait a second, Clay. That's not true, what you just said.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  You said, "I don't have to do anything." No, hear me, you have to be something.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  So at the heart of what you've created is your energy. And the heart of your energy is a love for God.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:17:18Speaker 05

  And the heart of your love for God is your determination to transform the state of every human being you connect with in whatever way is possible. Economically, socially, spiritually, relationally. What an extraordinary thing to possess, as Clay Clark possesses it. And what an extraordinary thing for Clay Clark to pursue, to pursue with every bit of energy you've got.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  I appreciate you saying that, and I want you to know, you unshackled me personally. It was a thing where you allowed me to get away from the DJ microphone at these weddings, to get away from the day-to-day operations and the reactivity, to be able to build proactive businesses. So now, we can hopefully together mentor millions of people. And you have helped me, and I would love to give you the microphone to share what you're working on now, because whatever you're working on now deserves a Harry Carey holy cow. Holy cow. Whatever, because we met in Chicago, so whatever you're working on now deserves a Chicago Harry Carey holy cow. Holy cow. So tell us, what are you working on now, sir? What are you doing?

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  Well, hear me, I want you to think of a university, spelled Y-O-U, university. A university called Radical U. Radical Y-O-U. I want you to imagine awakening the entrepreneur within every human being on the planet. Every human being on the planet capable of studying, capable of working. That's what we've created.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  So we have created a university, an entrepreneurial development university, to take out to the world and to transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide to a degree that's never been accomplished before. Our university is five years long. Our university is devoted to what we call the Eightfold Path.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  And every student in our university will discover their dream, their vision, their purpose, their mission, their job, their practice, their business, their enterprise. An evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000 called beyond the E米. The evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000. And here's the best part, and you can promote this, promote this, promote this, promote this, Clay, until you're blue in the face, but every person within the sound of your voice needs to understand this, that we're giving the first year of Radical U away for $10.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  $10? The whole year?

• 1:20:30Speaker 05

  $10 for the entire year. 52 weeks, 52 video sessions, online, right now. And every single person within the sound of my voice, or can see my face, or see my Panama hat, or see your jacket, whatever it is, every single human being, I'm inviting them to join us in Radical U. And when those people join us in Radical U, Clay, we're going to bring folks like you, folks like the other gentleman who just said hurrah, folks like every person you're connected with who wants to become a teacher of creativity, you're going to come and join us at Radical

• 1:21:13Speaker 05

  U, and you're going to teach something, and they're going to teach something, and I'm going to teach you what to teach. But hear me, that's what we're working on, 5 million students within the next three years. And then guess what's going to happen?

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  What's going to happen?

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  Apple, Apple the company is going to acquire Radical U.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Michael, I want to respect your time. I know you're taking your wife on a great date tonight.

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  I've got to go.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you so much, my friend. I really do appreciate you.

• 1:21:42Speaker 05

  Clay, see you in Oklahoma. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where's my buddy Clay?

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He's like the greatest guy.

• 1:21:58Speaker 06

  I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

• 1:22:02Speaker 05

  So this guy is like the greatest marketer you've ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is, is, is marketing.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

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• 1:22:53Speaker 01

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  We're going to teach you specifically what you need to learn to manage a team of people. We're going to teach you how to manage your finances, how to look at the numbers, and to figure out the specific steps that you need to take to create a time freedom and financial freedom-producing business. At the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop, we've been teaching entrepreneurs everything they need to know to start and grow a successful company since 2005. In fact, at our two-day interactive business workshops, we're going to teach you marketing, systems and scaling, human resources, accounting, social media marketing, branding, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management, and so much more. You can learn more and request tickets today simply by going to ThriveTimeShow.com.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

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• 1:24:38Speaker 06

  My name is Kevin Thomas, and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service, and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown, probably five times. We've added, we, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees, and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn't really have any systems or processes in place. I've probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I've probably been to 12 to 13 business

• 1:25:23Speaker 06

  conferences, and amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new, and I'm so excited to bring it back and, and show the team about marketing and how to implement.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Okay, Aaron Antis, November 5th and 6th. Guess who's coming back to Tulsa? I will give you a hint. His first name is Eric, and his last name is Trump. And his father is the 47th President of these United States. Yes, Eric Trump is joining us once again here September 25th and 26th in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. But Eric Trump is bringing friends. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Amanda Grace will be in the place. Dr. Stella Emanuel will be here in T-Town in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Julie Green will be on the scene. Mel K will be here to say, "Hey."

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Dave Scarlett from the His Glory team will be here. It's going to be a blast-y blast right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you want to start or grow a super successful company, if you want to make your wallet great again, or make your wallet great for the first time, if you want to learn marketing, systems, scaling, human resources, accounting, social media, branding, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management, and more, get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com. Once again, that's ThriveTimeShow.com.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Ryan Wimpy. I'm originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I've definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. Um, we have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so the, having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That's really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls, figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It's invigorating. The walls are super, um, it's just very cool. The atmosphere's cool. The people are nice. It's a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  I literally want to model it and steal everything that's here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Clay is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. Um, and we've been learning a lot, which, you know, we've been sitting here, we've been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely, definitely helps. It breaks it up. Um, but the content is awesome, off the charts, and it's very interactive. You can raise your hand. It's not like you're just listening to the professor speak, you know? The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts, and he takes questions, so that's awesome. If you're not attending the conference, you're missing about three-quarters to half of your life.

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  Um, you're definitely, it's, it's probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you're missing the thought process of someone that's already started, like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where's my buddy Clay?

• 1:28:37Speaker 05

  Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He's like the greatest guy.

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

• 1:28:47Speaker 05

  So this guy is like the greatest marketer you've ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is, is, is marketing.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  People don't know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There's not 50 employees. The, the Trump Organization, again, most people don't know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees, and while Donald J. Trump was the 45th President of these United States, he needed a competent man to run and execute his business plans. Showtime! So the man that runs the Trump Organization for Donald J. Trump, as he was the 45th President of the United States, and now the 47th President of the United States, is Eric Trump. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  build, I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it, and this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015, he's been the man behind it. So you're talking, we're into nine, going into 10 years of him running it, and we get to tap into that knowledge. That's going to be amazing. Now, think about this for a second.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  But Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  It's a good word for him, "character." Yeah, that is it.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  Driven, smart, and I've never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He's doing so much good. And then I met his mother, and she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so you, he's endorsed by his mother, and he's doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His, Clay Clark starts his days at 5:00 in the morning. Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, he's, he's like, he's, he's a machine. He's a machine. But his, you know, I got, I have problems with my company starting at 9:00.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Yes, hundreds of people showing up at 5:00 AM in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he's a leader of a leader. He's fantastic, man. No, he is.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  The lineup continues to grow, and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It's $500 for a VIP ticket. We've always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it's $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that, and the reason why we do that, is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it's like to be in a tight spot. So if you want to attend, it's $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That's how I do it. And it's $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here, but the most people we've ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here, the legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa, and we had 718 people.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  And I thought to myself, there's no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple of people had VIP seats in the men's restroom. Oh, no, just kidding. But I thought, so I thought, you know what? We should probably add on. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com. Go to ThriveTimeShow.com. When you go to ThriveTimeShow.com, you'll go there, you'll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, "I want you to call me right now." Just text my number. It's my cellphone number, my personal cellphone number. We'll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We'll keep that private, and anybody, don't share that with anybody except for everybody. That's my private cellphone number. It's 918-851-0102. 918-851-0102.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  I know we have a lot of the Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences, and so to be bilingually sensitive, my cellphone number is 918-851-0102. That is not actually bilingual. Just saying one for one, it's not the same thing. I think you're attacking me. Now, let's talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So Aaron, you've been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let's talk about it. I'll tee up the thing and you tell me what you're going to learn here. Okay. Okay. You're going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh yeah, we're going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I gotta get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand, right? You want to get that brand out there.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  It's like, how do I actually make people know what my business is? And make it a, a household name. You're going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You're going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can't sell. So we're going to teach you sales. We're going to teach you search engine optimization. How to come up top in the search engine results. We're going to teach you how to manage, how to manage people. Aaron, you, you, I mean, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it can be a challenge.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes and you're really good at selecting great ones. And we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they're teachable, they're driven, all of those things, then you know, you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we're going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We're going to teach you accounting. We're going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We're going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you, how do you, how do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you're not organized? How do you do, how do you do organization?

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two day interactive business workshop. Now let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two day interactive 15. Think about this, folks, it's two, it's two days. Each day it starts at 7:00 AM and it goes until 5:00 PM. So from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM, two days, it's a two day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30 minute teaching session and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15 minute question and answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it's the best part about the workshops because here's what happens. I've been to lots of these things over the years. I've paid many thousands of dollars to go to them.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they're constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing, or this program or this membership. And you don't, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you're doing on your marketing. And what's awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks and it's very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we, we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. Yep. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15 minute break to, to stretch. And to make it entertaining when you're stretching, and this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you'll be greeted by mariachis.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  There's going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, there's just. You had a crocodile one time. That was, that was pretty interesting. You know, I, I, I should write that down and. I feel sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face so that it, right? We duct taped. No, it was a baby crocodile. And it was duct taped. Yeah, duct tape around the mouth so it didn't bite anybody, but it was really cool passing that thing around and. I should, I should do that. I should. We have a, a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It's going to be great. And then you're in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there's not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there's less than 10 million people today, according to US debt clock, that identify as being self-employed.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that's even self-employed. So it's, you only have three out of every hundred people in America that are self-employed to begin with. And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default, you have a one out of a thousand chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this. And this is no, no, no hyperbole, no exaggeration. And I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. Double, and you say double? Yeah, there's businesses that we have tripled. There's businesses we've grown 8X.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  There's so many examples you can see at ThriveTimeShow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they've said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I've got a very successful practice in three different cities, make good money. Just wanted to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Paul Hood.

• 1:38:34Speaker 05

  I've been a CPA for 33 years.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let's say five, six years?

• 1:38:41Speaker 05

  The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing 3 million. This year we'll be, we'll do 24 million.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  And you say, Clay, I still, I'm not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. Okay, fine. We're going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We have, we cater in the food. And because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It's Ted Escudzito's, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That's going to happen. And someone says, I want more. This is not enough. Give me more. Okay, I'm not going to mention their names right now because I'm, because I'm working on it behind the scenes here. But we've got one guy who's given me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who's one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he's built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  value. He's made a lot of money in the, it's the, it's where you rent, it's short term, not, it's where you're renting storage spaces. He's a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you, what do you call that? The rental, the. Storage space. Storage units. This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis. But they're not like customer facing. Most, most people don't know who owns the mini storage facility or most people don't know who owns the warehouse that's passively making money. Most people don't know who owns the railroad cars. But this guy, he's given me a verbal that he will be here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you're out there today, you want to change your life, you want to give yourself

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  a incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to ThriveTimeShow.com. Go there right now. ThriveTimeShow.com. Request a ticket for the two day interactive event.

• 1:40:25Speaker 05

  Hey, how's it going? I'm Thomas Cross and owner and founder of Full Package Media in Dallas, Texas. I've been a coaching client with Clay Clark since the beginning of our business. We started about a year ago, August of last year. I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue really what was going on. And now we've grown to where we've got six photographers, got office spaces here. I have an admin, sales person that works for us full time, developing an online system. And a lot of that growth we attribute to Clay helping us. And there's so many things that, no, I mean, his stuff is not, you know, revolutionary. It's not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff. It's just real, real stuff.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  It's going to be a blast, a blast. There's no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible. And there's somebody out there right now, you're, you're watching and you're like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. I think that's going to change your life. I promise you, this will be 10 times better than that.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Don't do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference. That is, I've tried it, don't do it. Yeah, chain smoking is not a viable, I mean, it is life-changing. It is life-changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life-changing. Best weight loss program though. Right, not really. If you're looking to have life-changing results in a way that won't cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at ThriveTimeShow.com. Again, that's Aaron Antis. I'm Clay Clark and reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two day interactive Thrive Time Show workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. We can't wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

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

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  3.45 million. I got those stats before I got on here.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  So you've grown by 3.45 million?

• 1:42:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, 3 million 450,000.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it? Have we, have we gone up by?

• 1:42:39Speaker 05

  About, almost three, not quite.