From Startup to SUPER Success with Clay Clark

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 The Hustle Daily. Today, we'll be breaking down from startup to super success. To drop these value bombs, I brought Clay Clark into EO Fire Studios. Clay is known as America's number one business growth coach, the US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Oklahoma, the founder of several multi-million dollar companies and host of the Thrive Time Show podcast, which has been number one overall on the iTunes business charts six times.

0:36In today's information, we'll talk about generating leads, scalable, easy to implement, turnkey sales systems. We'll talk about KPIs and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clay and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business. Join my friend, Donna Miller, each week as he shares value bombs on topics like the secret to making better marketing decisions. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Fire Nation, we are back and of course we are on fire. Talking about from startup, not just to success, but to super success. And of course I have Clay Clark who blows your mind every single time he's on the mic. I also have Jordan and Danica on the mic as well. And I want to start, Clay, by talking about generating leads because we hear about this all the time, but so few people actually do this consistently.

2:01Despite your bold pronouncement, which I love, without solid leads, your business will die slowly as it bleeds money. True story, Fire Nation. Clay, tell us more about this. Well, you know, with Jordan and Danica here as an example, they have a fence company. And I challenge everybody out there to not believe what I'm saying. If you go to cornerstonefencetulsa.com, Tulsa is a city, cornerstonefencetulsa.com, you go there and we can talk about workflows and how to manage people and accounting and legal strategies or in your case, moving to Puerto Rico to take a wonderful advantage of a totally legal tax loophole.

2:36There's all these things you could talk about, but none of that matters if you don't have leads. Leads are like oxygen for your business. If you don't have oxygen, you're not going to be around very long. It's like food for your business. And so if you're out there listening today and you feel like, wow, I've got a great product or a service. I can solve a problem for people. I'm a doctor. I'm an attorney. I'm a lawyer. I'm a home builder. But I don't have any leads. Then if you don't have any leads, it's sort of like you're playing a video game back in the day, Contra, that video game, and you're running out of life or something.

3:04It's like playing Street Fighter and you're running out of lives. It's like you just got to have leads. And so if you're out there today and you need leads, that's what I really want to focus on today is teaching everybody out there how to systemically, so how to do it as a system and how to sustainably generate leads. Okay. I love everything about that except your Contra reference because anybody who really knows Contra knows left, right, left, right, B, A, B, select, start, A, B, A, B, something, something. We'll give you 30 lives with every one of your continues as well. So you actually never end up running out of lives.

3:39But for Street Fighter, totally realistic. Now, Clay, let's bring in Jordan and Danica. How did you work with them to make this happen in their business? Now, I'm going to go to Danica first because Danica, how did you even hear about me or what we do here at thethrivetimeshow.com? So initially, we went to one of the first two Reawaken America tours. Yeah. And after that, I found out one of my good friends who also has a really successful business was currently coaching with Clay. So I bounced ideas off her and she's like, just come to my meeting with Clay and he can kind of go through everything with you and see if it's a good fit to start working with him.

4:16And Jordan, you are and or were a firefighter as well as a business owner. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Still a firefighter. And so from the time we met, I think you guys were doing, what was the amount of revenue you were doing per year before we met? Maybe Jordan versus now. So being a full-time firefighter, I would just build fences on my days off. It was more of just, could I get a little bit of just some extra money, walking around money. And then that, so we did all of 2020 by ourselves. Start of 2021, I think we're on pace to do, I don't know, maybe$60 ,000 or$70 ,000 in revenue. Of gross revenue.

4:52Total gross revenue. Yeah. and then uh so we came to you uh end of towards the end of 2021 i think it was october and uh now this year i think we just hit 1.2 million on the year we've got a few months left and so hopefully we're gonna hit 1.5 1.6 and jld what i'll tell you this is so important for people to know this you got to go to cornerstone fence tulsa.com to look at these people they're very normal people and uh husband and wife great team and they have an incredible product and i've actually hired them to build a fence on our property, JLD, where you came to one of our in-person workshops, and the fence is straight.

5:29It's not falling down. It's high quality. I'm actually putting ivy on the fence, and it's a great fence. But none of that would matter if we didn't know how to generate leads. So what we do, if you're out there today, you need to generate a three-legged marketing stool, as I talk about often on your program. So imagine you're listening right now, and you have a stool, and you're sitting on the stool, and the stool has one leg. It's probably a short sitting experience. Or if you're on a two-legged stool, that's probably be odd. A three-legged stool is sturdy. A four-legged stool would be great too.

5:56But you want to have a stool or three ways to generate leads that are sustainable. So the three that we decided to go with, with their fencing company, if you're out there today, by the way, and you want to license, maybe you want to license a fencing company and use their business model, perhaps they would be open to helping teach you. Maybe not. We'll see. But I can tell you, this is how you grow the fencing company. You have to dominate the search engines. What? Yes, this just in. People We use Google. You have to dominate the search engines. This just – someone says, but some people use DuckDuckGo.

6:24That's cool, but we want to dominate Google and DuckDuckGo. Okay. The second is you've got to have what's called the Dream 100, and that's where you want to get contractors and builders and other people to recommend you. So one of my great friends, his company is called Outside Inc., he comes to me and he says, Clay, I don't do fences, but my customers are asking me about installing fences. I'm a landscaper. And I said, well, you've got to talk to my good friends over here at Cornerstone Fence, and they do that all the time. That's called the Dream 100. That's where you're marketing to your ideal and likely referral sources.

6:52And then finally, you've got to use online ads. You've got to do online advertisement. You have to do that because when people Google search something or they go on Instagram or they go on Facebook or they go on TikTok or whatever, you want your ads to be showing in front of your ideal and likely buyers. And that's the kind of things that we teach at our in-person two-day workshops. And if you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO Fire, if you come to our workshops, we always charge$250 or whatever amount you can afford. And we take two days and 16 hours of training to get into the weeds of how to do that.

7:25But you got to have a three-legged or a four-legged marketing stool to make your business grow. See, this is so powerful, Fire Nation. And guess what? I was at one of the more recent events that Clay threw, and I left with a page full of notes every single day because I was like, these are things that are right there in front of me, low-hanging fruit in some cases. Sometimes it's medium, sometimes it was high-hanging fruit, but I wanted it all. And these are things that I could apply to my business after having run a multimillion-dollar business for now 11 years in a row. So there's something for everybody there.

7:59And I love that three-legged stool effect. And that's so cool what's been happening with the businesses that Clay's been working with because they've all had great results. Because there's power, Fire Nation, in scalable, easy to implement, turnkey sales systems. So Clay, what did you do with Jordan and Danica when it came to this? Well, I'll just say this. And the way they work together, Danica, how would you describe what you do with the company with CornerstoneFenceTulsa.com? What's your role? So my role is really behind the scenes. I do interact with a lot of the incoming customers and then just kind of putting out fires and just keeping everything on target, making sure that we're profitable, making sure our employees are kind of staying within our guidelines.

8:47So you're kind of like the back end of the system, right? Yes. And does this crazy guy, your husband here, does Jordan, does he, does he, do you build the fencing or do you oversee those that build or what is your role? So when we started, yes, I was building all the fences. But in the last year and a half, two years, really once we started with you, it got too busy for me to be out building fences because we were getting so many leads that my role kind of turned into really the estimator in the face of the business with the customer. And then coordinating the crews and getting them to the jobs and making sure, doing the final walkthrough with the customers, making sure they're happy with the product that we're turning out.

9:22Now, folks, I'm not going to be sacrilegious at all, but in the Bible it says, where there is no vision, the people perish. And a lot of times people look at the Bible and they go, how does that relate to my life? Again, this is Proverbs 29, 18. It says, where there is no vision, the people perish. Now, we go back to business. I always tell people where there is no vism, your leads will perish. What? Vism, V-I-S-M. You've got to get video reviews. And nobody does a better job than my clients getting video reviews. Why? Because I harass these people all the time. because when somebody gets a great fence installed or they get their teeth worked on, the last thing a cosmetic dentist thinks about is, you know what?

9:58I should record a video review of you expressing your gratitude for me fixing your smile. But I have to work with my dentist to get them to do that. So you want to get a video review. Next, you want to get images or proof of the work you do. So all the dentists I work with, we do before and after photos. We don't show the rest of the face. We just show before and after, you know, the teeth. And the before and afters are tremendous. If you're installing fences, if you're building homes, you've got to get images. So V for video reviews, I for images, S for search engine content. Folks, this just in, you got to write it down.

10:27You got to write search engine every day, every day, every day. Now, if you hire my company, this is what I do. I charge my clients$1 ,700 a month and then a small percentage of their growth. So$1 ,700 a month, it's month to month. And then a small percentage of their growth. We do that deal. So most of my clients, in fact, all of my clients elect to not write their own content. But if you want to write your content, you have, but you need to write 1 ,000 words of content on your website every day. So that's S, more search engine content, and then M, more Google reviews. So V, video reviews. I, images.

10:57S, search engine optimization content. We're talking about 1 ,000 words of original HTML content, and M, get more reviews. Now, I'm not attacking AI. A lot of your wonderful guests talk about AI. But right now, there are people that are creating fake apps claiming to write original content using AI. and I'm seeing people get their websites flagged left and right for having AI, quote unquote, write their content when it is a fake app that's just basically scraping the internet and writing bogus content. So you need to write original content. And if you're doing it right, JLD, it shouldn't take you more than about 15 minutes a day.

11:31So it's kind of like with your program. I mean, I suppose we could use an AI to host your show for you, but you as the host, I want to host your own show. So if you're out there today, I just encourage everybody out there, take the time needed to get the video reviews, the images, the search engine content, and more Google reviews. Fire Nation, I hope you're getting even more fired up hearing from Jordan and Danica, where they were, where they are now, what they're doing. It's not rock science. And we're going to talk about more around this topic when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Fire Nation, the holidays are near and I know you're rocking your year-end goals.

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13:53ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash F-I-R-E. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world, and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDxTalks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest.

14:29You might be thinking a TEDxTalk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that is going to teach you how to land a TEDxTalk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for his free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. All right, we're back. And Fire Nation, Clay does something that I like to call provoking duh moment.

15:08Like, duh, that is obviously going to work. What he's saying right now, why wasn't I already doing this? But what's obvious isn't always common sense, isn't always being done by people that are wanting to grow their business because you're just caught up in the minutiae. You're not doing the obvious thing. So Jordan, Danica, let me put you on the spot and we'll start with Jordan. What was a dumb moment with Clay that really just sticks out to you right now? So when we first started, we were trying to grow the business. And at that point it was all word of mouth. Um, so we would, again, I was just doing this on my days off, but, uh, we were getting maybe one, two leads a month, uh, that was coming into the business and we were never, uh, our customers were happy, but we're never really trying to get the Google reviews.

15:58Um, well, a dumb moment was when we started with Clay is we need reviews. Like, like today we need reviews because if you want more leads, people got to be able to find you. Um, and, uh, so that was kind of one of those moments. And once we did what Clay told us to do, uh, I think that first month we were working on getting the reviews that second month, the phone started ringing a little bit. And then, you know, we got into our busy season, just this, uh, springtime is kind of spring and summer real busy. Um, but just this last year. It goes from two years ago, we're getting one or two a month in leads.

16:36And now we're in a busy time. It's 30 or 40 a week. And those leads are what matters. Now, Danica, putting it on you, what was your dumb moment? Over and above the leads part, just even the accountability of holding us accountable. Do you know where you're at every single week? There's been weeks where we've lost $30 ,000 or$40 ,000. And it's like, if you do that for too long, you get yourself in a pretty bad spot. So even just being accountable to ourselves and somebody else. And tracking it, like having a sheet where you actually, we know where we're at because we go through our numbers every week.

17:15Before we had a coach, you really just would gauge that off the bank account and once a month and look at the account and be like, oh man, we didn't do good. One thing I want to brag on, JLD, and this is not a commercial for my attorney, but my attorney, I work with a company called wintersking.com and I don't make a commission to pitch that. Although I've asked for a commission, but I don't make a commission. And so wintersking.com, I mean, if you look at these guys represent, I mean, Joel Osteen, TD Jake, some of the biggest names in the world, you know, and I'm not a household name, but I have had some success as an author.

17:45And I thought to myself, you know what? I need to work with a literary attorney that can help me through some of the details that related to putting out copious amounts of books. And now that I've written 20 books, I'm glad I did that. And I think everybody out there, if you're struggling, you've got three phases to stop struggling. One, you have to learn what to do. You have to learn the proven system. Two, you have to be accountable to doing the system. And then three, you have to measure what you treasure. And I just know working with Winner's King, my wife loves it because of the nature of what I do and just how many shows I put out at thrivetimeshow.com and how many books.

18:21There's just a lot of stuff. And having an attorney that I'm paying$4 ,000 to$5 ,000 a month to every month to make sure that we're complying with all the new laws. And as I buy investment properties, isn't it great to know that you can take certain money from a sale of one piece of real estate and roll it over to another one? And isn't it nice to know what the taxable rate is? And isn't it great to know what states charge what tax rate? And so there's kind of a merger of where the accounting meets the legal. And I recommend everybody out there, if you feel stuck, whether you hire me or somebody else, you got to have someone who knows the way, someone who's going to hold you accountable and someone who's going to help you track and just measure what you treasure.

18:55Measure what you treasure, which actually leads me to where I want to end with a bang. KPIs, key performance indicators. And most people, Clay, they would just give a blank stare if you ask them what their KPIs are. But the power of knowing your KPIs is undeniable. We have to hold our entire team accountable. You know, as Danica mentioned, the accountability factor is so key. But how specifically do we do this in the real world? Well, let me hammer this here. So with the good folks, and again, I encourage everyone to look this up. These people are not holograms. They're great people. Go to cornerstonefencetulsa.com.

19:34When you go to their website here, these are real people. We have a tracking sheet every week, and we track, you know, every week. It's week to week. How many video reviews did we get? How many objective Google reviews did we get? How much content did we write? Where are we ranking in the search engine results? How many leads are coming in? And we track all these things. And every week we look at it. And what happens is you only want to measure what you treasure. So you don't need to track things that don't matter. So a good example for Cornerstone is I like to know the conversion rate. So for every 10 leads you get, how many of them turn into a client?

20:07And when you look at that, Danica, when you look at the numbers and you say, wow, we had this many clients and this many converted. How does that help you to know your conversion rate? Well, it helps one to know where our price point is. If we're not getting a single job out of 20 leads, there's a problem there. If we're winning 96 % of the jobs, then we're probably a little cheaper than the competition should bump up and compete with the market. This is great stuff at JLD. I think a lot of shows and I'm not attacking other podcasts, but you know, you can get these highfalutin ideas, but at the end of the day, are you generating enough leads?

20:40And so I want to give people some homework here real quick. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com and you click on the testimonials button, we have over 2 ,000 client documented testimonials via video. You can't fake that stuff. And if that doesn't work for you, go to oxyfresh.com and ask yourself, how did they grow from three locations to 517 locations? Go to wintersking.com and look at their growth. Go to cornerstonefencetulsa.com. Go to tiptopcanine.com. Say, how do they grow from one location to 18 locations? Go to pmhokc.com. Go to shahomes.com and say, how do they grow from 15 million to 150 million?

21:16And what you're going to find is all of the companies had kind of flat growth or no growth. And then they met me through a lot of times through your show. And then my incredible team, we work with wonderful clients to help them grow. We teach them proven systems. and now these companies begin to scale and they move beyond having thoughts about how are we going to pay the bills to what are we going to do with all this money and so I just encourage you out there if you feel stuck go right now to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO Fire and book your attendance to one of our in-person workshops you can get those tickets today for$250 or whatever price you can afford or schedule a one-on-one consultation with myself it's called a 13 point assessment and because I only take on 160 clients we're a little bit fastidious about who we decide to take on as a client.

22:00We have about 10 people a day that reach out and we have about one person a month that we can onboard because our average client sticks with us for six years or longer. But I encourage everybody, be a doer. Don't just be a hearer. Take action. Remember, folks, action is the real measure of intelligence. Fire Nation, I hope that your pulse is pumping a little bit right now saying, this is something that I can get on board with and that I should be getting on board with because there have been, as he mentioned, over 2 ,000 video testimonials of people that Clay's worked with. Many, many people within Fire Nation have listened to past episodes just like these, heard inspiring stories just like Jordan and Danica's, and they've gone on, booked the call, taken the assessment, and become clients.

22:43And then some of them have come on this show to talk about it. And it's been really cool and really inspiring. So Clay, take us home, brother. What is the final word you want to say to Fire Nation? Kind of end on a downer upper, but when my dad died of Lou Garrick's disease, that was a tough time. And people said to me, man, do you regret anything? I closed my inner circle. Do you regret anything? I said, no, because my dad and I, we scheduled time to be with each other. I hired my dad when I was, I think, 27 years old. We grew up without money. And my goal was to hire my dad someday and to have him work in my office.

23:16And I did that. But if I hadn't hired my father and if I hadn't spent those times, I would have had regret. And And I think a lot of times what happens is people don't take action for fear of what might happen if they take action and it doesn't work. And so hopefully people out there know with my program, it's a month to month consulting program. So if it's not a good fit, you're not stuck with me. And if you are in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area and you go to CornerstoneFenceTulsa.com, it's a free quote. So if you schedule a consultation to have someone look at your fence and decide to see if it's a good fit or not, you're not obligated to move forward just because you did a free quote.