400% Over 4 Years of Coaching with Clay Clark: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like DTC Pod. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down 400 % over four years of coaching. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Clay Clark and the EO Fire Studios. Clay is a former US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, founder of six multimillion dollar companies, a Forbes contributor, author of 13 books, and oh, so much more. In today's value bombs, Fire Nation, we all have good ideas.

0:36The problem is that most companies don't know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their business. And people who will not give you references and testimonials are the people you want to be worried about and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clay and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:12The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Clay, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation, what's up? Hey, my name is Clay Clark. And one thing I believe that most people don't believe is I believe that achieving financial success in the world of business is very easy to do in a capitalistic society. It's very easy to do and it's not complicated. Well, Fire Nation, we're going to be talking step by step today on how to create a time and financial freedom creating business now.

1:57Not tomorrow, but now. And per usual, if you've listened to some of these past episodes, Clay always brings on one of his clients and we get to talk through the kind of changes, the kind of improvements, the kind of adjustments and pivots and just awesomeness that Clay's helped his clients create over time. And today we have Ryan and I want to talk to Ryan first. So Ryan, we will start with you today. How did you first hear about Clay Clark and his business growth coaching? Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on this episode. I had a couple of friends in Oklahoma City, where I'm from, that had seen some real significant success in their business.

2:39And I got super curious because I saw them buying new things, houses, cars, all these things. And even one of them sending me pictures of these large checks that he was getting from his customers. And so I said, hey, what are you guys doing? What's happening here? And they said, well, there's this conference. You need to go to the Thrive Time conference and you have to meet this guy named Clay Clark. And so I got online and did a little bit of research and decided, yeah, I think I need to go to this conference. And after going to the two-day conference, I knew that Clay had the systems in place that he could coach me and teach me.

3:15And I decided, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and let's go for it. Let's go for it. And again, Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the introduction, Ryan Wells of Flow Photography. So you already kind of mentioned where you're from. Maybe go into a little more detail about that. Tell us a little bit about your business as well so we can get a sense of what it is that you do. Yeah, yeah. So a few years ago, we started a company called Flow Real Estate Photography. And from the name, you can tell we take pictures of houses for sale. So it doesn't matter really what city that you're living in, you see these real estate signs all over the place.

3:51And people aren't just driving by looking at houses anymore. Most searches happen online. And so we provide the photos that go online that helps realtors and home builders sell houses. Fire Nation, you can tell that Ryan is not a rookie when it comes to explaining what he does and who he serves. And I think some of that probably has to do with the value and the coaching that Clay's been providing with him over time. So I kind of want to move on to you for a second here, Clay, because you've taken Ryan through eight steps that resulted in increasing the size of his business. Not 1x, not 2x, not 4x.

4:29We're talking 5 flippant X, Fire Nation. Clay, what the heck are those steps? Well, again, going back to my initial controversial statement, I believe that growing a business is very successful, or building a very successful business is very easy. It's very as you're following a proven plan and you adhere to a step-by-step system. And so with Ryan, with any client I work with, okay, I do a four-point assessment. It's called a 13-point assessment, but I'm just telling you the big four things I look for that are like a no-go zone. So if you're listening out here today, I will not take on a client if you don't meet the following four criteria.

5:05It's called a 13-point assessment. I do, but I'm looking for these four criteria. One I'm looking for, does the client actually solve a problem that people on the planet Earth want to have solved? I mean, real estate agents everywhere are looking for photography, videography, drone, 3D tours. And so I, yes. Second is, is the client able to actually solve the problem? You know, they're not just pointing out a problem. Can they solve it? And Ryan had already provided world-class photography, videography, 3D tour before I met him. The third is, is it scalable? Because if it's not scalable, I mean, if someone reached out to me and they say, you know, I am a butter sculptor.

5:39That's what I do. I sculpt things out of butter. It's amazing. It just requires thousands of dollars of butter and it requires a large fridge. And I'm the only one who can do it. I would say that's probably not a business, but that's exciting. It's a hobby. And then the final thing is the financial aspect of the business. Is the business financially viable? And so Ryan checked all those boxes and I thought, OK, let's do it. So we start with step one. So step one is Ryan scheduled a 13 point assessment, which requires me to be or the client. If you're listening out there today, it requires you being stuck on the phone with me for about 30 minutes to an hour where I hit you with a barrage of questions.

6:16And most of the people that do a 13-point assessment tell me that that particular 13-point assessment is actually life-changing in and of itself. Because I'll ask questions like, you know, do you have a call script in place when the phone rings? Is there a system for that? Do you have a script in place for gathering objective reviews after the service is provided? Do you have your key performance indicators? Do you have – and a lot of people just say, no. So it started with that initial 13-point assessment. And what we do, JLD, is after we determine all these problems, I mean we leave the meeting with I would say 100 – it's on average 20-something pages of action steps.

6:55We have to turn that goal into a deadline. So Napoleon Hill once said, a goal is a dream with a deadline, Napoleon Hill. I named my son after Napoleon Hill, the bestselling author of Think and Grow Rich, because it made such a mark on my life. So I tell the client, and this is all part of the assessment, I say, if we work together, it's month to month, okay, it's$1 ,700 a month, it's month to month, but I don't want to waste your time or my time, but this is what we have to do. Are we committed to doing it? And Ryan, step one, he said, yeah, I am committed to doing it. So that's my first step is we do that 13-point assessment to see if somebody is, in fact, a potentially scalable business.

7:32So if you're out there today and you carve sculptures out of butter, I respect the game, but I can't help you. Now, one thing that I've always admired about you is you actually limit the amount of clients you work with to 160. Why do you keep it at 160? Well, it's really interesting, but I have a house. It's a great house. And by the way, I saw one of our listeners sent me a YouTube video of your home in Puerto Rico. I'm not sure how current that video is. But you live in a beautiful home. I live in a beautiful home. You're committed to one woman. I'm committed to one woman. And you kind of look at your life and you go, if life is about accumulating stuff that I don't need to impress people I don't know, I don't know if that's the life I want to live.

8:13I don't know if I want to buy things that I don't need to impress people I don't know. So when you have your house paid off and you have all the things you need, what more do you need to succeed? And I determined I have five kids, and I should probably know who they are. So last night in my living room, I was talking to my daughter about the book of Revelation. We were talking about Revelation chapter 6. We had a great conversation about that. We had a great conversation about the book of Daniel last night. We had a great conversation about Matthew. She's 18 years old, and my son is 16 years old.

8:40We had a great conversation about his landscaping business. I don't think my son recognized that it gets to be 105 degrees in Oklahoma every day during the month of July. And so he has this landscaping business with 15 clients, and he's like, Dad, I don't think I want any more than 15 clients. And so I just know with 160 clients, JLD, I can be responsive. Ryan can call me, text me. If he has a question, I'm available for him. But when we get beyond 160 clients, although we have multiple coaches that work with the client, I can't be responsive beyond that. I never want to be a business where you have to call the 1-800 number and press 7 to be connected to another of our team.

9:18I never want to be that guy. I want to be the guy where you text me and I call you back. So Clay, I want to put you on the spot here for a second. I think you're pretty good at this kind of stuff, but you've did and you've done a lot for Ryan's business. I mean, you've increased it by 5X. What's one thing that you did that we can get specific about that you're just really like, that was cool. We did this one thing and it really just made an impact. And Ryan can attack me and say, you're a hundred percent wrong, buddy. But I feel like on a scale of 1 to 10, if 10 is a highly optimized website that was booming with traffic, if a 10 is like you're getting web leads all day and a 0 is like no web leads, I feel like you were in the 1 or 2 range.

9:57I think you had almost 0 leads or very few leads. And I feel like this week, how many web leads did you get this week? 21. 21. So he went from 0 inbound leads to 21. And then the second thing is his business was successful because he and his wife put in a lot of work. And it was successful. Check this out. Someone should write this down and put it on a t-shirt. His business was successful because his life was stressful. So I want you to write that down. His business was successful because his life was stressful. I mean, he worked all the time. And this guy worked. I mean, this guy was working.

10:26This guy would make, you know, John Madden, early John Madden coaching. He would rival that sort of intensity and focus. He had the work ethic of a young Donald J. Trump. He had the work ethic of a, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, of a startup JLD. I mean, he was just working that thing, you know. But I'm going, hey, we need to scale it. And so we had to create a turnkey marketing system so that the phone rings even if he's not out there doing things. So we built a search. We did three things. We built a search engine optimization system that's bar none the best in the business. So it's a turnkey system.

11:00And how many hours a week do you spend on optimizing your website now? Zero. Zero. We do it all for them. That's part of the service. Two is we had to create a no-brainer offer, an offer that's so hot that anybody listening, even if you have SPF 5000 sunblock on, But it's so hot, you cannot reject the offer. And so the offer for anybody who goes to Flow, Photos.com, for any realtors out there that use your service, how much does it cost for the first service? $1 for your first photo shoot. $1! And that deal is so hot. You know, JLD, a lot of times people from your show schedule a 13-point assessment with me.

11:32They say to my callers, my call screeners, they say, so what's the catch? I mean, it's a free consultation. How does this guy make any money? And Sarah or a member of my team will say, well, we don't make any money unless you're a good fit. And if you are a good fit, our average client sticks around for almost a decade. So it could be an epic waste of your time or a waste of our time, but we don't want to waste your time or our time. Do you actually want to grow your business? And if somebody does, so again, you want to make a no-brainer offer that's hot. And then the third is the branding. I feel like the branding, if you go to flowphotos.com, and one of the clients that he was referencing that we've been able to help grow quite a bit, who's also been on the show, is Randy Antrikan.

12:07He goes to church with Ryan. His website is pmhokc.com. So anybody out there, you can use your own judgment. But go to PMHOKC.com. Go to flowphotos.com. And even go to oxyfresh.com, O-X-I-fresh.com. Those are just three clients I'm referencing right now. Oxyfresh.com. We've helped them to grow into one of the largest carpet cleaning franchises in America. Then you have PMHOKC.com. We've helped him grow from one location to four. And then you have flowphotos. And when you have that turnkey marketing system and that great branding and that great no-brainer, Your phone just rings all day, and then he could be on great shows like your show as opposed to having to go out there and, I mean, networking, all the endless networking at real estate events and passing out business cards at Chamber of Commerce, networking breakfasts, you know, the whole real estate game.

12:56Yeah, I've done those all. Oh, yeah. So we got him out of that networking. We got him into a place where he was building a turnkey business. And I'm actually on the site right now, and I mean right in the top right-hand corner, schedule your first shoot for$1. Book now. It could not be more irresistible. There's a nice, you know, big red arrow that says, you know, let's basically press play on this video. And then of course it's going to pop up and Ryan's going to give an amazing spiel that I'm sure was helped by Clay and it's home of Oklahoma's highest rated and most reviewed real estate photography company.

13:25And that's what you do, Clay. I've noticed time and time again, is that you take any company that's in a specific niche and you immediately get them to the highest rated, most rated, best ranked, because it's such a low hanging fruit because Fire Nation, your competition's not doing it. And we have so much more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The overwhelm that comes with choosing the right software and tools for growing your business is real. With so many options and so little time, how are you supposed to know which platform is best? You've got your email marketing platform, payment systems, content tools, the list goes on.

14:01It can sometimes feel like you're spending more time organizing all the moving pieces and places than actually connecting with prospects and customers. And this is where HubSpot steps in. HubSpot is the all-on-one customer platform for growing better. Imagine this. Marketers generate better leads. Sales builds tighter relationships with customers and closes more deals. And service supports your customers at scale with tools like HubSpot's AI chatbot and knowledge base. Plus, with built-in AI to answer common customer questions, brainstorm and write marketing content, easily pull reports and more, your teams can slash their busy work, meaning your marketers, sales reps, and service teams actually have the time to be, well, marketers, sales reps, and service teams.

14:46And when they grow, the sky's the limit for your business too. Grow better, faster with HubSpot's all-in-one intuitive customer platform. Visit HubSpot.com to learn more. Okay, Ryan, you've been patient. I want to get back to you because Clay's coaching business program, it's month to month, meaning meaning you are on a month-to-month plan. You're not locked in for six months, not for a year, month-to-month. And it also includes a team of photographers, videographers, web developers, search engine optimizers, workflow mappers, and more. Was that important to you? And if so, why? Yeah, definitely.

15:21So a lot of those things I was trying to do on my own. Clay mentioned earlier, you know, that I was working my tail off. And really, my wife and I, we both own the business together. We work together in this business. And it seemed like we would spend all day working, doing these things, trying to create a little bit of marketing here and there. Number one, it wasn't super effective because we didn't really know what we were doing. And then number two, it took a lot of our time. So when I found out that all of these things were included in that monthly fee, it was a no-brainer for us. No flipping brainer.

15:53And Clay mentioned this earlier before the break, but at$1 ,700 per month, Ryan, Clay's program is actually three times less than many effective other business coaching programs. But let's be honest,$1 ,700, I mean, that's not a small dollar amount. That's not something to sniff at. So how would you describe your experience with Clay and his team thus far? Yeah, it's been incredible, really. So from the get-go, with the list of action items that Clay gave me after doing the assessment, it gave me a goal that I could work toward really every single day from writing search engine content for the website on the main pages to getting our tracking of our numbers and everything like that together.

16:37It made us finally feel like a business, if that makes sense. We were just sort of out taking pictures of houses, and that's really all we were doing. We didn't see the potential. But with his systems in place, it really started to feel like, hey, this is something that can be very successful if we just put our shoulder to the wheel. And so that's what we did. It's helped in other areas of my life, especially. You know, it's funny whenever you start to tidy up things like your business, how that bleeds over into your personal life. For me personally, I've lost 90 pounds since working with Clay.

17:10Nine zero? What? You could be a weight loss coach, right? Well, you have a lot more time to focus on things that matter. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, even in our spiritual life, I've been able to meet goals of reading the Bible every day and things like that that are important to us, but things that have been put on the back burner before because we were so stressed out trying to run our business. That's fantastic stuff. And I mean, Fire Nation, I am actually on video with this whole crew right now. So I can tell you that Clay does not have a gun to Ryan's head right now. This is just Ryan speaking the truth.

17:42He's being genuine. He's being honest. I know you guys are listening audio only right now, Fire Nation, but listen, this is real results from real people. You've heard it before. You will hear it again. Clay, you recommend putting on blinders and just focusing on implementation after, and this is a key word, after you find your coach and have a proven plan. Tell us why. Well, what happens is you can get distracted by things that don't matter. So I'm going to give people an example today, okay? So if you go to thrivetimeshow.com and you read the reviews about me, I want everyone just to go right now, type in Thrive Time Show, Jinx, that's the city I'm in, J-E-N-K-S, you can see my Google map, and I have thousands of very, very happy conference attendees.

18:26I mean, just thousands. And better yet, if you go to ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash EOFire, ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash EOFire, you can see literally over 2 ,000 video testimonials from people that have attended our conferences. And I know that number because we actually number each review we get. So I know we're over 2 ,000 video reviews. And so what am I doing? What I'm doing is a system that works. However, there is always somebody that's not happy, which is why my program is month to month. So let me just give an example. Recently, we had a conference attendee that came to the conference and it was raining.

19:00Now, Ryan, it rains in Oklahoma. You know this. We have thunder. Yep. And this wonderful listener, I'm sure she wasn't your listener, but she's from Southern California and she's never been to Oklahoma. And in Oklahoma, true story, when it thunders, it's boom. That's why our basketball team is called the Thunder. So this woman is looking at me, JLD. She looks like she's trying to defuse a bomb during the conference. She looks like MacGyver trying to cut the right wire. I mean, this lady looks like she's going to cry. And I pulled her aside because we do a 45 at our workshops. We do a 45 minute intensive training and a 15 minute break for questions.

19:33So I talked to her and she says, I didn't know it was going to rain so much. It's just scary. And I'm like, are you really scared? She goes, it's tornado alley. And I'm like, I've lived in Oklahoma for a long time and I've never been abducted by a tornado, nor do I know anybody who has. And I've never seen a tornado hit my town or any town near money, but I guess, but I mean, she was upset that we didn't warn her about the thunderstorms and we are in a massive building. You know, it gets loud in here if it rains. Anyway, long story short, you know, we gave her money back, try to make her happy.

20:01But beyond that, I would spend my whole day on that distraction if I wasn't focused on the actions I had to take. So the action I had to take was I had to make sure that all 150 other attendees were happy, were empowered, were educated, were ready to go. There was a good energy there. And people sitting by her were like, what's going on with her? Is she okay? And maybe she had some trauma. I don't know. But the point is, if you're not careful, you spend your whole day focusing on the one person who's upset about the weather and getting distracted from the main thing. Or another example is we have a haircut chain called Elephant in the Room, and we cut hair for men.

20:33And there's occasionally a woman that comes in that wants her haircut. And I'm not going to argue with you if you are a woman and you want to get a haircut at a men's place. But you could spend your whole day arguing about that. There's just things we could spend our day arguing on, but we need to focus on gaining ground. And so what I encourage everyone to do today is you want to write down these things called key performance indicators, KPIs. And a key performance indicator is the number that you need to hit on a daily basis. So if you're out there today and you're saying, I want to own my own business, I want to open my own company, if you were to license a flow photography, which is what Ryan's to a point now where his business is so successful, he's licensing other locations.

21:12And so if you're out there today and you've got$10 ,000 or less, that's all he's charging to open up. That includes all the equipment and everything. But if you open your own flow photography, we have a couple in Kansas City opening their own flow. And they said, what do we need to do on a daily basis to be successful? And I told them, you need to gather objective reviews from actual real estate clients every day. Get one objective review from an actual happy client every day. Two, you need to go talk to a realtor every day, at least five realtors a day, and tell them that you would love to do their photo shoot, their first shoot for a dollar.

21:42So what do I have to do? make the pitch for the$1 first shoot every day to five people and gather one Google review a day. What else do I do? Well, in the event that you get those two things done, third, you want to gather an objective review. So those are proactive activities. You want to gather one video review, one Google review, and five$1 first-time shoots. That's all you have to do as it relates to marketing. That's a key performance indicator. Now, the next thing that you have to do if you open up a flow is you have to do a weekly interview where you interview potential candidates because you need a flow and influx of new potential talent because you're always training and equipping your new employees.

22:21Because Brian's built a system where you can teach someone who has no knowledge of photography how to be an outstanding member of your team in 15 hours or less, but that doesn't work if you don't have a new pipeline of talent. So again, you define your key performance indicators, and once you have that written down, then you have to decide what you're not going to do. So today I'm just going to pull out my phone and I'm going to show this to Ryan. Ryan, right here, you're looking at my phone. How many missed text messages do I have today on my phone? 4 ,630. How many missed calls? 161. Right. And I don't feel bad about that.

22:54Okay. And when you have a podcast in our case, that's hit number one on iTunes five different times or six different times. And when you have, occasionally my shows will go viral just like yours. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. You just can't respond to everybody. And so, you know, my wife can reach me, but that's about it, you know, and my clients. And so again, but if you're not careful about defining what matters, I could spend my whole day today, JLD, and I'm just going to read two of them before we go to the next part here. I have a text message from someone right now. I haven't read it.

23:23And they said, hey, could we call? I just finished talking to Sarah. A lady from Iowa says, call me when you get a minute. I don't know who this is. A man who defines himself as a chaplain, he says, I loved your recent show. Can we talk? Another guy says, hey, can we call any? I mean, it's endless. And I couldn't do this show if I was looking at my phone all the time. So you've got to say no to the distractions and say yes to the actions that matter. Clay, something that I hear you say often is that we must surround ourselves with a competent team if we want to fulfill the dream. Expound upon that.