How to Nail It Then Scale It | 7 Steps to Super Success and 35% Annual Growth with Clay Clark: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like inclusion and marketing. Today, we're pulling a classic episodes from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to nail it, then scale it, seven steps to super success and 35 % annual growth. To drop these value bombs, I brought Clay Clark into EO Fire Studios. Clay is the founder of six multi-million dollar businesses, author of 12 books, a Forbes contributor, a former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, and more.

0:35And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about how a goal is a dream with a deadline, about knowing how much it costs for you to achieve your goals for your life, your goals for your faith, family finances, fitness, friendship, and fun, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clay and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

1:09A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Hostinger is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to hostinger.com slash onfire and use code onfire for an exclusive 10 % discount. That's hostinger.com slash on fire and the code on fire. Clay, say what's up to Fire Nation and also share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, Thrive Nation, hello. Greetings to you. Thrive Nation, what are you doing?

1:50Are you in automatic mode right now? Let me try again. Hello, Fire Nation. My name is Clay Clark, and greetings from the frozen Tulsa, Oklahoma, tundra here. And one thing that I believe that most people don't, I think, or that most people disagree with is I believe Proverbs 13, 20 is true from that controversial book called the Bible where it says, He that walketh with the wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Essentially, modern translation, you want to surround yourself with people who are committed to being good people, to achieving success, and your life will improve.

2:27If you surround yourself with nefarious people who are trying to scam their way to success, you will lose. Fire Nation, you're listening to myself and Clay Clark. Your five is already getting pretty darn good with the two of us. I'm not going to lie, and there might even be a third person on the mic we'll be bringing in a little bit because we're talking about how to nail it, then scale it. specifically a seven-step formula to super success and 35 % annual growth. I love the specificity of these numbers. So Clay, let's just dive into the juicy stuff right here. What the heck does it even mean to nail it, then scale it?

3:02Well, to nail it is you build a system that is so good, so consistent, the quality is consistent. The customers can rely on the quality in a way that the customer is wowed. So let me throw out some examples. If you go to In-N-Out Burger, I know not everybody agrees, but if you go to In-N-Out Burger, most people would say, wow, and they go back. And in fact, there's a big line to prove it. There's a line, and there's not – I've been to In-N-Out Burgers where there has been a team of geniuses, a crack squad of geniuses working there, and I've been to some where there seems to be a lot of people there that were probably like me in my youth, maybe don't know a lot about a lot of things.

3:40but the consistency of the quality is phenomenal. And so if you build a system that is scalable, people that are super mature and wise and people that are new in kind of learning the game of business or learning the game of life, they can run it efficiently as well. So you want to build a business so good, so tight, all the systems in place, that an idiot could run it because someday in the future an idiot may be running it or a genius can be running it, but you want predictable results that wow customers and that produce a predictable amount of profit. So therefore you can have time freedom and financial freedom and you can move to Puerto Rico and share the massive avocados with you there right there in Puerto Rico.

4:19We are talking basketball size avocados, Fire Nation. You need to see these to believe them and they are amazing. And listen, Clay has made a living. He has made a fortune. He has made a lot of other people fortunes by teaching them and implementing himself how to nail it, then scale it. So please heed these wise words. And listen, we want super success, not just like success. We want super success. So what is that first step, Clay, to achieving super success? If you're listening right now and you own a business that solves a problem for real customers, that's step number one. You got to ask yourself, do I have a business where I'm selling a product to real customers that they actually want?

5:04And so I'll provide three examples. And I call these the booming bearded boys from Oklahoma City. The booming bearded boys from Oklahoma City. These are three friends who are now clients. The first bearded guy, he builds pergolas. He builds outdoor kitchens. He does cedar cabinets that you can order all over the nation. Everybody listening right now, all the Fire Nation, they can order his TV cabinets. His company is called PMHOKC. People are already searching for pergolas. They're already searching for outdoor kitchens. Many of your listeners right now, if you check it out, go to pmhokc.com. He doesn't have to change your behaviors or your habits to get you to want to buy an outdoor fire place or an outdoor kitchen or pergola.

5:50People already want it. So Randy Antrikan of PMHOKC is simply solving a problem that already exists. He's building a better mousetrap. Now, if you're going to try to invent a product that changes the way that we forever think about life, you might be Steve Jobs. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you want to find a problem that people already have right now. I don't think a lot of people thought, I want something between a laptop and a phone but bigger. Yeah, that's what I want. No, no, not that small. No, not that big. I know what I want. I want an iPad. No, Steve Jobs came up with that and convinced us that we wanted it.

6:27But I'm talking about if you have a problem that you can solve for real people. Another example from the booming bearded boys would be there's a guy. He sells insurance. I can't mention his name, JLD, because I'm not – with his business model, you're not supposed to have certain outside consulting. But the point is this man, whoever he is, he sells insurance. And when you sell insurance, you and I probably don't even want insurance. I mean does anybody out there want a piece of paper and a promise? No. But we have to. To drive on the roads in Oklahoma or other states, you have to have car insurance.

7:01You have to have home insurance. You probably should have life insurance. And so I don't know that I'm waking up every day saying, oh my gosh, wow, I need insurance. This is exciting. No, but I have to have it. So my bearded, booming friend, he sells insurance. And we taught him how to do it in a scalable way that wows customers. And the third example would be flow photography. Every real estate agent out there, every real estate agent out there, if you're a real estate agent, You know what I'm talking about. You need photos, videos, drone, 3D tours. You need all of that. And it's hard to find photographers that show up on time, that do a good job, and that provide editing that wows with a fast turnaround time.

7:40So one of my clients and one of my friends, Ryan, started a company called flowphotos.com, flowphotos.com. and he wows real estate agents so much that he says, listen, the first shoot, I'm going to do the first real estate shoot for you for a dollar. And a real estate agent says, what? I've been looking for a photographer that shows up on time that does a good job. You're going to do it for a dollar? He says, yes. They say, what's the catch? He says, well, the catch is I hope you use me again. But again, the first step is find a problem that the world has and solve it in a scalable way. that that's the plan find problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers and if you don't have a problem you can solve if you're thinking right now i want to be an entrepreneur but i just don't know what i would do i encourage you to look into buying a franchise or licensing a business fire nation so many value bombs coming your way and by the way uh said photo flow gentleman may or may not be in the studio so we'll see if clay decides to weave him in throughout our conversation today, but I want to talk real quickly about goals because listen, you believe that your goals and you also believe that your values and you also believe that the plan of your coach all align.

8:55Break this down for us. What do you mean by these three things? First off, you can't talk about goals without saying,

9:09okay sorry that was great i always think of brazil too i don't know they kind of own that but go ahead i don't watch a lot of soccer but i do watch that highlight it's amazing but goals a goal is um it's it's to quote napoleon hill the best-selling author of think and grow rich napoleon hill he writes and by the way i named my son after napoleon hill because i learned so much about goals. He says, a goal is a dream with a deadline. So when I was 16, it occurred to me, I had no money. And I thought, I want to make a lot of money. Oh, yes. And so I thought, what's a problem I can solve? And I thought, you know what?

9:45School dances are terrible. Terrible. Terrible. People leave early. Weddings are terrible. People are, you know how it is. Girls on one side, boys on the other. Nobody's talking to each other. Nobody. And then what you do when you're an adult, you go to a wedding, you say, I think the babysitter's calling me. And the babysitter's not calling you. So you call the babysitter because you're an ethical person. You say, babysitter, I want you to call me over and over and over starting in 10 minutes and demand that I come home and tell me there's an emergency because I have to leave this wedding. It's so terrible.

10:12But a great DJ can get people to stick around. People that vaguely know the couple will stick around until 2 in the morning if the DJ is good. And I thought to myself, I could DJ better than any disc jockey I've ever seen. How do I know this? because I have thought about how bad they are, and I'm just going to make it a little bit better. And that became my first company, DJConnection.com. Little did I know that wedding by wedding, by delaying gratification, that I would build it into the largest wedding DJ entertainment company in the region and some have said in the nation. I didn't realize I would be doing 4 ,000 wedding receptions a year.

10:46But when you build a system where every bride who's looking for you online finds you and every bride who goes to a venue is recommended to you and every bride says, wow, you guys are the best. And when we offer unlimited time and nobody else does and we offer lights and sounds and customized weddings, I haven't owned that company in over a decade, but we were wowing customers. But my goal, JLD, as I said, I wanted to be worth a million dollars. I wanted to save. I'm not talking about my worth as a person, but my net worth. I needed it to be over a million by the age of 30 or my head was going to explode.

11:20And so I found a way. I made roughly$175 per wedding. My wife tells me it's$167 because that's the accurate number of profit we made per wedding. I say$175 because I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an optimist. I'm rounding up. But we made$167 per wedding. And when you do 4 ,000 weddings a year, somebody do the math, take 4 ,000 times 167, and you say, okay, I got a profit of maybe$668 ,000 a year that I can procure from this business that I can make. So I want to encourage everybody out there, listen to me. How much does it cost for you to achieve your goals for your F6 life? F6, your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun.

12:03Okay, what does it cost for you to achieve your goals for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? What does it cost? And I'll just give you an example. One of my companies is called Elephant in the Room. It's a men's grooming lounge. It's like a country club for men's haircuts. And I pay myself$2 per haircut, being very transparent with your listeners. If you go to eitrlounge.com, chances are I can't make any money by cutting your hair because we're just in Oklahoma. But I make$2 per haircut, all right? And we do 4 ,000 haircuts a month. So that provides my family a profit every year, okay?

12:38It's 8 ,000 a month, 12 months a year,$96 ,000, $96 ,000 a year, right? Now, after taxes, how much do I keep? And then whenever the account of the business goes over$100 ,000, whenever we get the bank account over$100 ,000, we do a profit distribution, right? But again, the goal is we have five kids. I want my kids to be able to do gymnastics and dance classes and drum lessons. And I want my wife to buy those expensive avocados from Whole Foods. Those are my goals. How am I going to achieve my goals? What I have to do is I have to sell haircuts. So how do I do it? I do a haircut that is better than most places in Tulsa.

13:19It's a 27-minute haircut, paraffin hand dip, hot towel treatment. It's manscaping. People love it. It feels like a country club. It's beautiful. So that's how we do it. Am I passionate about hair? No. Do I wear a hat every day? Yes. Do I only not wear a hat when I do interviews? True. This is audio only, so I am wearing a hat right now. Yes. But another example would be Oxifresh.com. It's a client. He's been a client of mine for, I think, 13 years now. Oxifresh.com. We have 450-plus locations open right now. Wow. And we make money by cleaning carpet. And it is the world's greenest carpet cleaner.

13:55And we do it so well that other people want to license or franchise the business model. And now Oxifresh has 450-plus locations, and people are achieving time freedom one carpet at a time. but you've got to find a problem that you can solve for the world and figure out how much does that cost. And then that's how you do it. You sit down and make your goals and you got to say, how many somethings do I need to sell to achieve my goals? No wonder why you keep saying yes to entrepreneurs on fire because you get to wear a hat. Clay, it is all making sense now. Click, click, click. I'm not wearing pants.

14:26I'm wearing shorts. I'm wearing And1 shorts. I bought the And1 shorts for$10. I went into Walmart. They had a deal where you could get four of them for like$40. I'm thinking, wow, that's three or$4 less than I normally pay. So I bought the and one shorts. I bought as many as they would sell me. And so if you're out there, folks, I highly endorse. They don't want me to endorse, but I endorse the and one shorts at Walmart. They're about$10 to $15 and they're beautiful. Okay. Okay. TMI. So anyways, Fire Nation, we have so much valuable information coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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17:01That's hostinger, H-O-S-T-I-N-G-E-R.com slash onfire and the code onfire. So Clay, we're back and let's be frank, you've already dropped an enormous amount of value bombs thus far. And I wanna talk about trust now because trust is a tricky word these days. You believe it's important to trust, but verify. Expound upon this. Well, what happens is a lot of people hop on shows. You are unique because you vet your guests, but there are a lot of shows out there where they'll just let anybody on the show. Or there's a lot of people that let anybody speak at the conference. There's a lot of trade shows that let anybody sell something as long as they pay for the booth.

17:44So a lot of people are paying for their platform. People are paying for fake numbers of Twitter followers or Instagram followers. We've all seen that game. And so what you want to do is when you're looking at taking advice from somebody, but whether it be a business consultant or a conference or a franchise you're looking to buy or something you're looking to license, I encourage you to trust but verify. So you first ask yourself, is there fruit? And then go back to the root. Ask yourself, is there fruit? And then go back to the root. Because so often people say things. People are leasing the Mercedes and they can't afford gas.

18:23They're saying, please, please, hopefully they don't see me pushing my Mercedes into the parking lot. You know what I mean? People are pushing their Mercedes into the parking lot. They can't afford gas, but they're leasing it. People are faking it until you make it. And all I would say is before you take the advice of anybody out there, make sure you look at the fruit in the lives of these people and then chase it back to the root. And that's super important. And is everybody going to be loved? No. No. And people don't receive universal praise, but success leaves clues. And so Winston Churchill, this is Winston Churchill, the famous prime minister who led Britain over a courageous battle versus the Nazis.

19:08He fought against Hitler. He said, you have enemies? Question mark. Good. That means you've stood up for something sometime in your life. So do your research. I recommend if you're going to build a house, call their testimonials. Talk to them. If you're going to buy a franchise, call the franchisees. Ask them how's it going. If you're going to hire a consultant, do your research. And that's why at Thrivetimeshow.com, if you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, the home of our podcast and website, Thrivetimeshow.com, you click on the testimonials button. We have now over 1 ,000 video testimonials that I have compiled since 2006.

19:48So, I mean, you can see fashion patterns change, JLD. I mean, you can see people back in the day, 2006, or people this year sharing about their success. We proudly give out their cell phone numbers so you can call them, verify. If you're going to buy a franchise, call the franchisees. If you're going to use a realtor, call the references. It's so important to trust but verify. One of the many things, and I mean many things, that I love about you, Clay, it's your bluntness. So let's just call a spade a spade, brother, right now. Now, where do most people, and I'm talking about Fire Nation, I'm talking about Thrive Nation, I'm just talking about human beings and entrepreneurs in general, where do most people go wrong with their attempts at business growth?

20:29Well, we're looking to get rich quick. I mean, that's what happens. We're all kind of doing it, right? I mean, there's a line to get into the buffet at the casino, and you're thinking, maybe I could just kind of sneak in there. You're going to a game, you didn't pay for a ticket to sit there on the sidelines and you kind of want to sneak in. People are kind of wanting to get the study guide. There's just this primal desire we have to get rich quick, to take the shortcut. And so what I see, and it's unfortunate, but many people before they call me have already gone to seminars where they say, JLD, here's the deal.

21:12There's 13 secrets to getting rich. and I'm going to teach you 12.7 of them. Now, it's the final point three. That is where you get rich, but the 12.7, this is going to just get your beak wet. But if you want to know the magic money, then you have to come to the next one. And so a trusting person says, okay, I'll come to the next one. And then they say, we're going to teach you 10 steps. Today we only have time to cover one step because, you know, here comes a celebrity invasion. So next conference we'll teach you the nine. And they keep doing this and pretty soon you're going, I have dropped I've seen people who've come to me and said I've spent$80 ,000 on consulting 80, actually one guy I just talked to spent$86 ,000 JLD,$86 ,000 on it was an 8 grand a month program and I remember that I was thinking 8 grand a month, that's what I pay myself from elephant in the room how are you even like what?

22:04and this is a guy who desperately wanted success he got roped into one of these search engine programs where you sign a long term contract and now he had to finance it and do a home equity line to pay it off. And I see these sad stories all the time. And all I would just say, I recommend you look for consulting, mentorship that is month to month, that you try before you buy, you can trust but verify. But I would just really avoid the get-rich-quick stuff. And I would just give you a notable quotable. Andy Grove, who's the co-founder of Intel, who escaped from communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 to move to the United States.

22:44He wrote a book, and he titled it, Only the Paranoid Survive. Only the Paranoid Survive. And so I would just say I started off the show by talking about PMHOKC. This is a guy who grew from doing$50 ,000 a month of sales to$200 ,000 a week. $200 ,000 a week from$50 ,000 a month to$200 ,000 a week. That's a real example. I'm giving you the website, pmhokc.com. Just everybody out there, do a search right now. Type in OKC Pergola. Type it in. OKC Pergola, P-E-R-G-O-L-A. You can see who comes up top. Another example, type in Joplin Gyms, J-O-P-L-I-N, Joplin Gyms. Who comes up top? One of my clients.

23:29Colaw Fitness. These guys have grown five times the size in less than three years. These are real examples. You can verify. I'm giving you the names of these people. But beware of the consultant, educator, speaker guy who speaks in vagaries and says, well, JLD, I have so many testimonials. It's hard for me to remember even one because if I were to think of even one, I would black out. And I have NDAs, and I don't want to black out, and I don't want to violate my NDAs, and I also don't want to validate the confidentiality. So I have no references that you can verify, but trust me because I'm leasing a Mercedes.

24:03Trust me, Fire Nation. I'm leasing a Hyundai. You know what I mean, though? You've seen it. Big hat, no cattle. You've seen it, JLD. You've seen it. And you do such a great job of vetting people. You know what I'm talking about. There are people out there that are scamtastic. They're scamtastic. And listen, this is why from day one, I was so inspired by Pat Flynn publishing his income reports and wanting to do the exact same thing and wanting to even kind of like up that level of being like, hey, how can I bring in my lawyer? to not only share a legal tip and bring in my account, not only to share a tax tip, but also just to prove and to verify that these are real numbers.

24:35This is what we are doing. This is what's working in the market right now. Here it is. These aren't just numbers being thrown out in the air that a lot of people can do from stage or from wherever, from online. But Fire Nation, you've got to verify. And Clay, people are so scared when it comes to building a team, mostly because they don't know how to do it. But you and I both know that you must surround yourself with a competent team if you want to fulfill the dream. How do we do this? Okay. Well, if you're listening right now, you want to know specifically how I find great people. Today, we're recording this show on a Wednesday.

25:11I never know when the show's come out, but tonight at 5.30 PM, I'm going to be interviewing on a typical week about 50 to 75 candidates who say that they want a job on the planet Earth. And so I am doing the hiring. I'm in charge of the hiring as a consultant for shahomes.com. It's Oklahoma's largest home builder. For myself, my marketing company is one of the largest in Oklahoma called makeyourlifeepic.com for Elephant in the Room, our haircut business. And I don't want to bore your listeners, but I'm doing interviewing for real companies. I'm just citing them so people know I'm not making this up.