How to Build a Time-Freedom & Financial-Freedom Creating Business with ColawFitness.com and Clay Clark

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. an Amazon bestselling author, singer, songwriter, and founder of several multimillion dollar businesses. And today we'll talk about turnkey lead generation, scalable systems, improvement processes, customer wow systems, measure what you treasure, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clay and our sponsors. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead of the pack. Right now, get the business guide, Demystifying AI, free at netsuite.com slash fire. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash fire.

1:01Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, we are here. We're talking about how to build time freedom. We're talking about how to build financial freedom. And who better to talk with this about than Mr. Clay Clark himself? I told you all about him in the intro. He's an incredible entrepreneur on so many different levels. And we're going to be talking about so many different things today.

1:42I mean, turnkey lead generation is one of Clay's specialties. And Clay, I want to start here. Have you just kind of talk a little bit about this. Bring in our two guests and then just keep the fire going. because you talk about creating turnkey lead generation as a path to higher compensation. Break that down for us. What does a truly automated, scalable lead system look like, and why does it directly impact our income? Well, first off, I'll say, John Lee Dumas, somebody's listening to this show right now, and they're going, is this show for me? Is this show for someone else? If you're listening to this show right now, this show's for you.

2:19I Jim Rohn, bestselling author, quoted often by Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, R-O-H-N. I'm paraphrasing, but he used to talk about how he said there is no someday. If you look at the standard calendar, there's just today, right? You got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But if you look at your calendar, there's no someday. And what, eight years ago, nine years ago, a beautiful man by the name of Charles Kolaw and a wonderful woman by the name of Amber Kolaw, they were listening to this podcast. JLD, they were listening to the EO Fire podcast, and they were wanting to build turnkey systems to help them grow and scale their company.

2:58Their company is colawfitness.com. Imagine if, like, Planet Fitness teamed up with Chick-fil-A. It's that Chick-fil-A level of customer service with the Planet Fitness level of equipment. They reached out. They were probably nervous and afraid that they might end up talking to me at some point. But they went to ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash EO Fire. They filled out the form. This is, I think, almost eight years ago, nine years ago. And from the time that we initially talked for our first consultation, when they were looking to create turnkey systems, Colaw Fitness has grown exponentially. And that is going to be our case study guests on today's show.

3:39So without any further ado, JLD, we've got Amber Colaw, Charles Colaw, uh charles colaw colawfitness.com charles and amber welcome on to the show all right we are excited we are for having us on yeah absolutely we're excited about talking to you guys and so i would just say this jld that i'll throw back to you is if you're watching this business or show right now you're listening to the show if you don't have a way to generate leads your business will not succeed let me try that again it kind of rhymes if you don't have a way to generate perpetually new leads, your business will just simply not succeed, right?

4:16So your business needs a turnkey way to do that. So you say, well, how do we do that? Well, if you go to colawfitness.com, colawfitness.com, that's the website, that's the case study. You can go there and check it out. And also, JLD, we have over 2 ,000 case studies at timeshow.com of both online and offline businesses. So the colaws, they are both online and offline. What does that mean? It means you can interact with their business online, but they're also offline. They have an actual physical gym you can go to. But what we had to do is step number one is we had to install a turnkey way to generate leads.

4:48Now with their particular business, this is how we do it. One, JLD, they need to be top in the search engine results. Now that goes to ROC, open AI, artificial intelligence. You want to be top in those search engine results, whether it be AI or not. And we have a system for doing that. Number two is they need to make sure that when you're driving by their locations that you know that they exist. If you're driving by a co-law fitness gym in Joplin or Oklahoma City or Tulsa or Topeka or Dallas, Texas, and you don't know that they exist, it's very hard to interact with them. So again, they got to be top in the search results.

5:25Two, they got to be top of mind when you drive by. And then third, from a social media marketing perspective, people need to verify that they are real. And so we need case studies and testimonials. But again, with Coloff Fitness or every other business, if you're listening to today's show, no matter what business you have, you must implement a three-legged marketing stool, JLD, a way in which you generate leads in a turnkey and scalable way that does not involve your actual individual effort as the owner of the company. Okay. Value bombs were dropped. Mics were dropped, Fire Nation. I know you're fired up right now, but first I got to ask you two that are the guests on the show right now.

6:03Don't you guys owe me a trip down to Puerto Rico? Don't I remember that? Oh yeah. We need to come. We're, we're excited about doing that. We need to do that. I mean, I described my whole home gym. I said, you're not going to miss a beat. I have weights down here. I've got the whole nine yards, poolside, Caribbean side. It's going to happen. You guys are going to come down. I mean, we were hanging out at the event. You said you're coming down. It's been a couple of years now. What's the holdup? We're right on the edge of doing that. We've got a lot that we are, we've placed in service, but we're wanting to, we're wanting to come.

6:30We just have, we're always busy, but we need to make it work. I love it. Well, we're always, always busy. And you know, that's just the world that we live in. So with what Clay just shared with about, you know, how the two of you approached him and, you know, it's been eight, nine years now. I mean, what are a couple of things that you have implemented into your business based off of what Clay was just sharing about this turnkey lead generation, these systems at scale that just really have made a big difference for your business? Absolutely. Well, the big thing I've learned, because Amber and I, we live in Florida.

7:00Our clubs are in the Midwest. So Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. We have a chain of gyms. Clay has helped us build systems that don't require us to actually work in the business. We just work on the business and on the business systems. And so Clay's helped us do that. And so to kind of deep dive some of that, we've kind of created an eight-armed marketing octopus over the years. Of course, three is really great to start with. but Clay's really kind of one-upped it with us over the years and so we have a lot of different ways that we're in front of the ideal and likely buyer with a lot of great no-brainer offers and our ads literally never stop so we always have ads running we never cut the ads they always are running they're always no-brainer offers and so whether they come in the club or they get pulled into our software automation or we actually have a call center and customer service department that is constantly calling texting and emailing guests and we do leverage software within our software to stay in front of the ideal likely buyer, any hot lead, any lead that we have, we make sure all of that's automated.

7:55And it's always on full go all the time. That's fire. Amber, what do you want to add to that? Like, what's something that you've really implemented because of working with Clay that you're just like, you know, we probably wouldn't have not done that. Or we definitely would have not done that without Clay's genius, without Jean's zone, without Clay's zone of fire. What's that thing? That thing for us absolutely has to be a culture of accountability. Clay was so encouraging to encourage us to hold our staff accountable. And that was something that was really tough for us in the beginning, learning how to manage people.

8:28It's always hard and you feel like the bad guy and you don't want to hurt people's feelings. But he really encouraged us to have that culture of accountability. So on all of these items, it's holding all of these staff members that make these things happen accountable. The marketing department, the customer service department, the general managers on location, that all these things are happening on site and behind the scenes so that well-oiled machine never stops. And so that, I think the accountability part, as far as our leadership and management has been the key to keeping it going. I love that you brought that up.

9:10I mean, I've now interviewed over 4 ,800 entrepreneurs and so many of them say something along the lines of like, John, it's so frustrating. Like my employees, they don't hold themselves accountable. Like they don't work nearly as hard as me, like blah, blah, blah. I'm like, why would they? Why would they work as hard as you? You're getting all the benefit of the wins and you're paying them an hourly rate. So like you have to create the systems to keep them accountable. There's going to be reasons and benefits and rewards. So I love that. And Fire Nation, you're going to love exactly what we have coming up for you as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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12:43Seriously, every question that pops up, They will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Clay, we're going to move on to customer wow systems because I think that's an important topic. But before we do, wrap this up for us. What do you want to share around what we just heard from these two amazing individuals? Well, the thing is, you know, JLD, I grew up in a home where poverty was normal.

13:20And if you're listening to this show, hello, I'm talking to you. OK, if you're listening to this show, I mean, I grew up, my dad was delivering pizzas for Domino's. My father was working at a gas station, a quick trip. And may my father rest in peace. But he did the best he could, JLD, to put food on our table. But he did not know how to get unstuck. He didn't know. He didn't know the path of entrepreneurship. leadership and so Charles and Amber they reached out with a coachable spirit and they said look we're not looking for fitness tips we're not looking for industry tips on fitness what we're looking for is how to scale our company so I would say pro tip number one I would rate yourself on a scale of one to ten if you're listening to the show if ten is man you've got leads coming in all day and you say woo to quote Ric Flair I am perpetually busy woo to quote Ric Flair then But if one is, you know, we don't ever get leads, or we get leads primarily word of mouth if they ever happen, and you're starting to run out of leads, that's a one.

14:15And you want to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten. And then the branding, scale of one to ten. If ten is the best website ever and one is terrible, rate yourself, because ColawFitness.com, as a mechanical, functional, technical, objective review, it generates leads. So the purpose of a muffler is to do what? The purpose of a car is to do what? The purpose of a steering wheel is to do what? But the purpose of a website for their business is to generate leads, and it's doing it. So if a 10 is colawfitness.com and a 1 is a website where it looks great, but it doesn't generate leads, rate your website on a scale of 1 to 10 because with our coaching, with our one-on-one coaching, which I shamelessly charge$1 ,700 a month for every month with clients.

14:54By the way, my average client is with us for over six years. I repeat, my average client is with me for over six years. It's not about acquiring education. It's about implementation. And so what we had to do was guide the co-law family, the co-law team into implementing, and they have diligently implemented everything. Now, as it relates to wowing those customers, JLD, I wanted people to know this. If you're listening to today's show and you're a Christian, you're a Muslim, you're Jewish, you're agnostic, you're atheist, whatever, you have to know what your purpose is, right? You have to know your purpose.

15:25Now, I happen to be a Christian. I know the co-laws are as well. You don't have to be a Christian. to, you have to have a bigger reason for wanting to grow your company. Stephen Covey, the best selling author of seven habits of highly effective people. He once said, you have to start with the end in mind. And so every time that you sign up for a membership at colawfitness.com, the Colaw family, they give people a Bible. Like that's their entire reason, JLD, for being in business is they want to give, give out Bibles. Now you might be listening to this show today and you say, I don't want to give up Bibles.

15:58JLD, one of my clients, they help people drill water wells in third world countries. So every time that you go to their website and you pay them to buy the thing, they actually help you drill water wells in third world countries. My company, Elephant in the Room, it's a haircut chain, EITRLounge.com. If you get your haircut at Elephant in the Room, this just in, we provide education and clothing for kids in third world countries via Compassion.com. So you talk about great companies like Tom's Shoes. You buy a pair, you give a pair. They know why they're in business. You talk about companies like Warby Parker.

16:34They know why they're in business. You talk about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, his whole goal was to create a user experience that would blow your mind. So if you're listening to today's show, you have to know why you're in business and then how to create those wow moments. And I'll go to Amber Cola on this, but at colawfitness.com, we've been very intentional about making checklists. Checklists. You want to write this down, folks? a checklist for the following areas. What is the sights, the sounds, the smells? What are the sights, sounds, smells, and experiences that you want your customer to have?

17:07Let's try that again. What are your sights, sounds, smells, and experiences you want your customer to have, whether it's online or offline? And Amber, you guys have a checklist for everything because you want that consistency to be next level, Chick-fil-A level, Starbucks level, despite the fact that your businesses are in the Midwest and you guys are located in Florida. Amber, could you talk about the importance of checklists? Yeah, again, the checklists are the basis for accountability. And we couldn't do what we do working on the business if the person in the business wasn't following the checklist.

17:44So our sights and sounds and smells in that experience wouldn't be the same from one co-law fitness to the next if they weren't following that checklist. You know, so, you know, for instance, you've got a general manager who's on site. It's part of their checklist and a certain time of each month or a certain time of the week that they go around and they have to check our scent diffusers to make sure those are working properly. They've got the correct scent in it. There's a checklist that the correct scent itself is ordered. so every time you walk into a cold law fitness it's the same smell you know we that the right music is playing that you know the front desk is greeting appropriately i mean that's part of their coaching and training and checklist to make sure that those experiences are top notch yes yes absolutely i'm going to add just a little bit to it but with five senses we had to meet or beat our competition so most time it's a five mile radius want to make sure that every location we know where a competition does and the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch are better for the customer.

18:48So customer service has got to be equal or better. Quality of the product has to be equal or better. And the price point has to be equal or better. And it's a no-brainer offer. Clay's been really good at helping us build those checklists and systems. We make sure that we role play that at the front with scripts. So like a lot of times you hire people and they're not really great. They're these young people that are working the front desk. And so you want to script it, you want to role play it and make sure that they understand how to do the sales, how to do fulfillment continuous training you always are doing that every week so you're role playing that people are good until they're not so you want to make sure that's a culture of accountability there's continuous training happening on site and all of its complete mind freedom and yeah it's just it's and we also like to do this it's like huge public praise we like to huge like when somebody does something like yeah all right we just like well we want to make everybody to like their job because people work for people not just for companies So you want to make sure that you're working with people that really want to do that job.

19:42They like their leader. So we try to really build great leaders. Operational excellence is really how you wow people, like the Chick-fil-A, since Planet Fitness is kind of like the McDonald's of gyms. Co-op Fitness is the Chick-fil-A. So we just really have to work on operational excellence and building great leaders. And Clay has done a great job helping us. That just goes to the wow systems, Fire Nation. I mean, you need to be implementing systems that create a customer wow that can actually drive referrals and consistent growth for you right now. I mean, what would that wow experience look like in your business, Fire Nation?

20:14How can you build it into every single touchpoint? And Clay, I want to now talk about measuring what you treasure. I mean, I've always loved this phrase. We talk about it a lot. Measure what you treasure. How does tracking the right metrics, not the wrong ones, the right metrics unlock predictability and help entrepreneurs hit their financial goals with confidence? Folks, Chet Holmes, may he rest in peace, the bestselling author of The Ultimate Sales Machine. It's a red cover book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. This guy worked directly with Charlie Munger. You say, who's Charlie Munger? You know, Warren Buffett.

20:46This is Warren Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger. So Chet Holmes is working directly in that world of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. He once said, I'm giving you a quote from his book, Ultimate Sales Machine. He says, the missing ingredient for nearly all of the 1 ,000 plus clients that I've worked with directly to improve their business is pig-headed discipline and determination or PhD. You want a PhD? Pig-headed discipline. Everybody. Everybody. Oh, yeah. This is what happens is we get all excited at workshops. We get fired up about business building gurus. We love podcasts. We get the books.

21:19We got the new Gary Vaynerchuk book. We read JLD's book. We read my book. We read Tony Robbins. We read it all. And now we go to our office and the people are not following the script. They're not following the system. They won't call the leads. They won't show up on time. What is wrong with these people? And you start to go, what happened to the self-help book? You start to go, maybe I'm a terrible manager. What happens is if you're not tracking, you're slacking. Let me try again. Any area where you're not tracking, you're slacking. You have to measure what you treasure. So in my office today, it's a true story.

21:51We have a young lady on my team today. This is a beautiful story. I always tell people my favorite ability is dependability. And every day this woman faithfully comes to work and she shows up on time and JLD, she knocks out her checklists. She does all of her homework. And you say, what kind of homework does she do? She does search engine optimization for our clients. She does video edits for our clients. She typesets the books for our clients. She does a great job. And so JLD, because I tracked the results on a daily basis, I said to her without any passive aggressiveness, without any fake compliments, 100 % real, I said, you are doing an exceptional job.

22:30And because of that, we want to reward you financially. And nobody around the office had any disagreement with it, JLD. People were so excited for her because she's been putting in the work. But most organizations, they don't track anything. so you don't know who's doing a good job and who's doing a bad job you know who's deserving of that promotion we gave today who's deserving of that raise today who is getting it done who's not getting it done most companies don't keep score so if you're out there today and you're imagine you're watching an nba game or an nfl game or a major league baseball game imagine that they quit keeping score oh like how fun would that be if you didn't know who's winning who's losing so if you're watching this show today or listening to today's show you're taking notes but i want want you to do is I want you to write down the following phrase.

23:18It's key performance indicators. You hear a lot of business jargon. People say KPI, but key performance indicator, or if you like to call it what I like to call it, I call it crap, core, repeatable, actionable processes. It's the crap, right? The crap core, repeatable, actionable processes. So for everything in your business that you expect to be done, you have to schedule a daily follow-up on the crap. Anything that you want to be done. You have to work off the assumption that it was not done. And then you have to follow up with relentless enthusiasm. So every single day, anything you want to be done, you've got to schedule some sort of system where either you as the owner or a manager follows up.

24:02And what you want to do is you want to follow up until the action items blow up until your business begins to succeed, right? So you have to have that in place. But JLD, so many people were so busy chasing new ideas and big visions that we don't often take the time needed to measure what we treasure. And therefore we begin to, we begin to slack where we don't track. All right, Charles, I can hear you getting fired up and I'm going to move to you next Amber. So listen, with everything that Clay was just talking about, the measuring what you treasure, what specifically does your mind go to first that you can share with Fire Nation?

24:33First thing is, is Clay's really made us know our numbers and what our breakeven is. So we know what our daily targets for sales, weekly targets and monthly so we know what our targets are for break even we're always trying to stay in that that way i call the next term i call it bankable rate it's we always want to stay within a 20 to 40 profit margin for all of our locations or any of the services that we're offering that we were always bankable and clay has used and taught us the pig and hog analogy you want to be a pig but not a hog pig is where you get fed so 20 to 40 good profit margins is competitive and healthy and the bank likes it you like it you grow but hog is where you get way way a lot of margin.

25:09A lot of times it's a competitive environment sees a lot of opportunity there and some of your people will turn into your competition. So be careful with that. So bankable rate, 20 to 40%, we hit that. And then tracking, everything has to be tracked. We have Google Docs and Sheets and we also have our club software. And so Clay's been really good at helping us build Google Docs, Google Sheets, really making sure that we're tracking revenue per member, costs to acquire the member, the net promoter score, making sure that we're keeping our our fulfillment, our quality of fulfillment high, making sure that we have definitely the most and highest reviewed Google review gym in our areas.