How to Scale Your Online or Offline Business with Clay Clark

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. I are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like the Ops Authority. Today, we'll be breaking down how to scale your online or offline business. To drop these value bombs, I are brought to Clay Clark and the EO Fire Studios. Clay is the former US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, founder of six multimillion dollar companies, Forbes contributor, author of 13 books and host of the six times iTunes chart topic podcast. And today we'll be chatting about finding traction, why you must act now, why measuring and tracking is so important, and how having a repeatable process can help you 10X your growth.

0:43And 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. The 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.

1:17All right, Fire Nation, we are rocking and rolling today, as always, talking about scaling our online or offline business. And of course, there's nobody better talk about this than Mr. Clay Clark himself. So I'm just gonna have Clay come on. We've got a couple of amazing guests as well that he's going to introduce. So Clay, say what's up and introduce our lovely guests. If you're listening out there to EO Fire, you're in the right spot. This is where you go. And I'm hoping today we can bring to you real people. JLD, you have thousands of real wonderful listeners that listen to the show, hundreds of thousands, millions.

1:52And I just want to introduce you to two listeners, Deborah and Juliana. There's a little bit of controversy about how to pronounce their last name. You can verify they're real. They're not a hologram. They're not an AI. Their website is giveaderm.com. That's giveaderm.com. So, Deborah, why don't you clear up the controversy on the pronunciation of your last name and tell us who you are? Grimnes. It's a Norwegian last name. I married into it. Deborah Grimnes, and I'm founder of Give a Derm. This is my daughter, Juliana. She's co-founder. Juliana, why don't you go ahead and say hello and give us a little quick introduction of how you guys started what is now this incredible business that, by the way, Fire Nation, my wife is all in on.

2:36I love it. She is lovely, by the way. I love it. So I'm Juliana, and I'm co-founder of Give a Derm. And you know what? It's just been, honestly, it's a redemption story. My mom went through an extreme health crisis whenever her dermatologist misdiagnosed preventative treatment of broad spectrum chemo cream to be used all over her arms, her neck, her back as well. And it just threw her in her acute liver toxicity, which then a few months later, after she was seeking, you know, multiple, like just various, like alternative therapies, that particular practitioner said, what are you still using on your skin?

3:14Because it's like you're drinking alcohol 24 seven. And she said, well, it's the same stuff. It was prescribed by my dermatologist. So then we went through this, these massive, just deep, some of them dark, some of them bright trails that really took us down various paths. And then we realized that even the cleanest skin care out there typically didn't work. And the stuff that worked wasn't clean enough. And it was quite the journey. But then we just realized, gosh, you know, we just we need to team up with a like minded formulator and really create something different that could be an industry disruptor for for Lux toxin free skin care.

3:56And that's where we are now. And so we're just super blessed because we have an incredible product. But before we met Clay, we were stuck. And so we really didn't know how to get it out there in the ways that it needed to get out there. And so he's truly one of our absolute heroes. And he just, he knows the pathways to success in ways that I've really honestly not heard from anyone else. So it's been incredible. And Fire Nation, I'll tell you this. I'm always saying to my listeners here, when you walk out the door, listen, look around. What are problems that are out there? There's so many problems.

4:33What are problems that you're having, your friends are having, your family, your loved ones? because maybe one day a solution to those problems is going to be something that you're going to want to take on, that you're going to want to create. And this is what happened here. And I can tell you, I met these lovely women at a great conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we connected immediately. And I was honest with them. I watched their presentation. I wrote down the information. I took a picture of it. I sent it to my wife because I'm like, you know what? Kate has a great life. But if she would say, if there's one issue that just, she wishes she could snap her fingers and it would disappear with her specific life, it would be the fact that she just doesn't have great luck with soaps, with creams, with the stuff that happens when things just contact her skin with blemishes and with breakouts, et cetera.

5:23And it's really an issue and it's an ongoing thing. And so I put them in touch and they've had a great conversation on a video call. And I mean, my wife has literally been a happier person since. So thank you. She's already a very happy person. Now she's even happier. But here's the fact. And Clay, this is where I want you to jump in because most people, they're literally operating daily without a proven path. And if you don't have a proven path, it's really hard to get something called traction. So tell us more about that. Okay. Now, if you're listening out here today to the show, I want you to grab a pen, a piece of paper, perhaps an Etch-A-Sketch or a ketchup packet.

6:02Do whatever you have to do to take notes, folks. And so what you have to do is you have to develop a VISM. People say a VISM? No, a VISM, V-I-S-M. So if you have an online product or an offline product, as a coach, as a consultant, my job is to make sure that the folks at Give a Derm are making a lot more money than they're paying me. And so I needed to introduce a, what we call a three-legged marketing stool. I also call this VISM, V-I-S-M. So the V, you want to develop, you have to gather video testimonials. If you are selling a product today, online or offline, you have to gather video testimonials.

6:38I, you got to have images of your product before and after photos of the skincare, before and after photos of the carpets you clean, before and after photos of the cakes you make. Whatever it is you're selling, if you're listening to today's show, you got to have images. S, search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is not an event. It is a process. It's like planting a garden, and you got to pull the weeds every week. And then M, more reviews. And that could be more Amazon reviews, more Google reviews, more Facebook reviews, more iTunes reviews, more reviews. So what do you have to do?

7:11V-I-S-M. Where there is no vism, your online presence will vanish. It will disappear. So you might have heard the Bible verse. It says, where there is no vision, the people will perish. Where there is no vism, your business will perish online. So VISM, video reviews, images, search engine optimization, and more objective reviews. And now let's maybe go through how Give a Derm utilized maybe all of these processes as they went through to improve what they have right now as a product, as a service, as visibility. Well, I'll say this. What's been great about working with this team here of Debra and Juliana is they implement what we teach them to do.

7:48But when you're growing a business, there's 14 steps. That's how I look at it. And for anybody who goes to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire, JLD, I just booked an appointment yesterday with one of your longtime listeners. It's a music studio. And he went to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. I think he was shocked that our team actually called him. We went through the 14 steps, and we went through your accounting, your marketing, your sales, your branding. It's 14 aspects of your business. So it's not just marketing. It's not just branding. It's not just sales. It's not just accounting.

8:22It's not just fulfillment. It's not just workflow design. It's not just hiring great people. It's all of those pieces have to come together to complete the puzzle. or if we were a car, the question might be asked, well, what's the most important part of the car? Is it the steering wheel? Is it the motor? Is it the gas tank? Is it the electric battery? Is it the gear shift? Is it the transmission? It's all of those pieces working together. Growing a business is like building a symphony. And when you build all these systems together, you can create beautiful sounds, beautiful success. And that's what's great is that money is a magnifier.

8:59And so saying, I don't even know where to start. I believe that's a little bit where the Give-A-Derm folks were at. They had a great product. They had a great story to tell, a great solution, but they just needed to get in front of more people. And another quick case study example, if you go to grillblazer.com, folks, look it up, grillblazer.com. It's like a small blowtorch used for grilling. It's like buying a consumer-grade flamethrower. The owner of that company, Bob, contacted me in his early 60s. He had never been self-employed his whole life, and he had developed this great product, and he just didn't know what to do.

9:38And a lot of the experts he went to were focused on marketing. They were focused on branding. They were focused on sales, but they weren't focused on all 14 aspects. You really have to nail down all 14 aspects. And what's been great working with GiveAderm.com is that they have diligently implemented all 14 aspects. Despite, you know, JLD, maybe they have a bias. Maybe they like accounting more than marketing. Maybe they like marketing more than accounting. But they've focused on all 14 aspects. It's been really wonderful to see their company grow. And I believe they've grown by 4 ,000 percent since we met it, by 4 ,000 percent.

10:13And I believe that Grillblazer, there's an incalculable growth rate because he went from no sales to millions and millions and millions of dollars of sales. So again, everybody out there, you can do it. Fire Nation, you can do it. And ladies, Deborah, Juliana, I would love for you to step in here and talk maybe in the first person example of some things that you did that Clay just talked about that really worked. To start with, we were initially really focused on getting a very, very good product. So we got the good product. Our customer return, the product return rate is less than 1%. And our customer return rate is like between 50 and 60%.

10:54So we knew we had a good product, but literally we did everything we knew to do and it just wasn't working. So whenever we signed up with Clay, met him at one of his incredible business conferences, he gave us an outline And an incredible coach started walking us through. We had targeted contacts that we felt like would have, they would be representing our most likely buyer. And we were able to connect with them. And that has what skyrocketed. The video reviews are amazing. And with our products, it's really fairly easy because we do demos at different shows. and whenever we only demo one hand, so whenever they look at what just cleansing with our cleanser does, 90 % of the time their jaw drops.

11:47So it's real easy to get some video reviews, but they're vital. They're vital to a consumer. I like to have video reviews. I check them because I want to see whenever you can't be there, you want to be able to verify. So we were able to connect with our Dream 100. We were able to get video reviews, written reviews. The SEO is incredibly important and we were lost. But then Clay and his team zeroed us in, focused and held us accountable. And we are beyond grateful and a bit astonished. It's like we're living in an ethereal reality. and honestly, it's because of Clay, his business profile, his coaching, his accountability, his integrity.

12:36I could go on and on and on and it's real though. Ethereal reality. I mean, Fire Nation, how do you beat that? Juliana, what do you want to add to this? I really think I just want to add that these are proven principles that to be honest with you, I mean, they just have so many, Clay has so many pieces of the puzzle that it's like, oh, I didn't even think about that. I didn't think about that. And honestly, it's very much like building a business and seeing it grow. It's very much like having a baby and you think you're doing super, super well because you know how to take care of a baby. Well, then it's a toddler and this is all new.

13:09And so then you have to figure out how to, you know, how to steward, you know, like a toddler and what that looks like. And then it grows and it grows and it grows. And what's wild is that one week we might be killing it in one area. but then we go okay where are weak spots because we have these weekly calls and then our coach Andrew will say hey listen like you know we actually the only thing I'm not seeing right now for this week is this and I'm like oh you're right we got to tighten that up and so it's so nice to have a point of accountability and honestly to have just a basic thing like a tracking sheet what are your expenses how much money have you made you know the numbers You just can't put, you know, high enough value on that.

13:50And it really does help to know where our weak spots are. And so I just honestly, Clay's principles really, really encompass momentum. And he will get you to a place to where it's kind of like what just happened. And all of a sudden you're elevated to this different stratosphere. And it's like, I don't even know what happened. And it's honestly because he knows how to get people where they want to go. And Fire Nation, we've had so many of Clay's clients on this show who have talked about the successes that they've had. I've met them in person because I've been in his event twice now, very recent one in Tulsa where Tim Tebow is there speaking from stage, doing some cool things.

14:33So, I mean, this is some fun stuff you should be tuning into. And we have a lot more around this topic 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. It 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.

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15:46Grow better, faster with HubSpot's all-in-one intuitive customer platform. Visit HubSpot.com to learn more. Clay, you have a lot of phrases that I simply love. You must measure what you treasure, and you will slack where you do not track. Tell us more about this methodology. I love throwing out case studies because they're real, okay? So one of my longtime clients, it's stevecurrington.com. Everybody can look him up, stevecurrington.com. He does mortgages in all 50 states. Then you've got, let's go shahomes.com. We've helped them grow from 14 million to 150 million, from 14 million to 150 million.

16:28And then you have give a derm. So just so you can have some context here. And with all the businesses, you have to track, because if you don't track, it will slack. What am I saying? So what you do for Steve's business, we had to track how many leads is stevecurrington.com getting? Okay, how many people are applying for a mortgage? How many leads is Shaw Homes getting? How many leads is Give a Derm getting? Okay, great. How many people are hitting the website? Well, if you have a thousand people hitting the website and one person is buying, we got to fix something, right? So we need to optimize the website to increase the conversion rate.

16:58And you say, well, how does that relate to what you talked about earlier? Well, once you add more video reviews, images, search engine content and more reviews, the conversion rate goes up. But you don't know that unless you're looking at the numbers. Now, once you get the conversion rate up, then you say, how many of those leads buy something? How many people visit the website, they go to the shopping cart, but they don't buy? Okay, how do we fix that? How do we increase the no-brainer, the offer, the guarantee, the celebrity endorsement? How do we do that? But you have to measure what you treasure.

17:26And one of the speakers we had at the last business conference, a guy by the name of Sean Baker, He is the author of The Carnivore Diet. He's been on Joe Rogan, and he talks about only eating meat. And what he found was that as a doctor, when he was tracking people that only ate organic meat or organic food, their weight would drop dramatically if they only ate essentially no wheat, no sweets, and no alcohol. So if their diet consisted of no wheat, no sweets, no alcohol, and eating only organic food, organic meat, their weight would go down. And that's nice to say that anecdotally that, wow, your weight will go down.

18:02You're going to feel better. You're going to look better if you eat healthy. But by tracking, Dr. Sean Baker brings these unbelievable case studies where he's showing thousands and thousands of patients that have lost dramatic amounts of weight by implementing his carnivore diet. And that's why it became a bestselling book. And so myself as a business consultant, I track the numbers of every single client. And my little secret for the EO Fire Nation is I make most of my money. That's a percentage of the growth of my clients. So most of my income is just a percentage of the growth. You know, JLD, I can't get rich charging people$1 ,700 a month, month to month, guiding their business and only working with 160 clients.

18:42I only make a 20 % margin. I make$340 a month profit, folks. I charge people less money than it costs to hire a minimum wage employee. But here's where I make my money. I make my money, folks. This is a secret. That's a percentage of the growth. So a company like Oxifresh, I've helped them sell 500 locations. Think about that, folks. 500 locations. Think about what – if I got a small percentage of 150 million, what number is that? That's a good number. So what I do is I sit down with entrepreneurs and I say, look, if you can't afford the$1 ,700 a month, I'll do a scholarship. But either way, I'm going to work with you, and we're going to diligently implement this plan, and we are going to measure what we treasure.

19:20And we know we're going to slack where we don't track. and I'm going to get a small percentage of that growth and a small percentage of zero is not good. So we got to grow that thing. And JLD, I think a lot of people have a fear that they don't qualify to be successful. They don't think success is for them. They think the time won't be just right. They think they're too old. They think they're too young. They think they think they're too short. They're too fat. They're too newly married. They're too newly divorced. But what I have found is that knowledge without application is meaningless, to quote Napoleon Hill.

19:52Knowledge without application is meaningless. You've got to act now. The time to act will never be just right. You must act now. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, if you're not ready to run through a brick wall, I mean, check your pulse because the time is now. Now, Juliana, let's actually start with you. And we talked a little bit about this topic with what you've been doing recently before the break, but let's even dive deeper into maybe one or two specific examples about measuring what you treasure. You will slack where you do not track. Talk to us about this mentality. Well, I think it's just really important, even when we did our 14 point assessment with Clay.

20:30Honestly, just being able to rate, just being able to rate where we felt like we were, it was like, wow, we really are not. I think everything was a three out of one out of 10, except for our product. Everything was a three out of the way, you know, pretending the best. And then recognizing, you know, just having the accountability, like I said, of every week, being able to look at the hard numbers. And some of them are hard numbers because sometimes, you know, when you're purchasing a lot and you've got all this other stuff, you know, it doesn't look really great. Then you've got these incredible weeks that are like, how on God's green earth is this happening?

21:07And so and it's just really being able to I can't emphasize enough about the point of accountability. Honestly, I don't know how often I would run the numbers if I didn't have a coach call or we didn't have a coach call on Friday mornings. And thank God one of our team members, I get I get her the number. She puts them in the tracking sheet because she's a ninja with tracking sheets. And so, you know, we're just we're really we're super blessed because our team's incredible. But going back to that, honestly, like there's nothing like accountability. Absolutely nothing like accountability. It's like hiring a trainer if you want to get stronger.

21:42Well, if you're going to show up, you better show up three times a week, minimally, and you know that you're going to be letting someone down. If you don't, and you have a mutual agreement that you both want to see success, then obviously the accountability is crucial. Debra, what do you want to add to that? You know what? I think I've thought about it in the past. And it's like, if you have the talent to be an Olympic athlete, but you don't have a coach, you probably won't be a part of the Olympics. And I feel like Clay has been our coach that we did. We do have an incredible product. We do. And we just didn't know what to do with it.

22:20And so I can't say enough. If you're on the fence, I'm serious. Clay didn't pay me to say this. But if you're on the fence because we were there, we were at a very discouraging place, sign up, sign up, get the help for your company because it is absolutely worth it. I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen, right? You just walk away. But for us, it was the shift, the absolute shift for us. And Fire Nation, a great product is absolutely necessary for massive success. But you know how many great products have died in the vine? So many, countless, numerous, because they couldn't figure out traction, marketing, sales.

23:06And if you can't figure that part out, then you have something great that is just going to wither away. And you need to think about this as an obligation. If you truly believe, like Debra and Juliana believe, that they have a great product, and now my wife believes it because it is, you have an obligation to get this out to the world, to help people, and that's what they're doing. So Clay, thank you for what you do, and take us home. What do you want to say to Fire Nation as we start to wrap this up? Well, here's what I would say, and I encourage everyone to think about this. My value proposition, if you're listening today, you need to have a unique value proposition, and my unique value proposition is this.

23:43I charge you less money than it costs to hire a minimum wage employee. So I charge you$1 ,700 a month, and what I do, and what I've been doing since 2005, is we help you go and grow your business. So we include the photography, the videography, the web development, the search engine optimization, the accountability, the tracking. We help you with the accounting. We help you with the workflow. We help you with systems creation, online ads. I mean a lot of stuff. And so we do all of that for that flat rate of$1 ,700 a month. And the reason why I only work with 160 clients is what I do, to their point, is very analogous to personal training for fitness.

24:15Like a personal training in fitness, we got to have accountability, and you've got to want it. You've got to be excited about it. You've got to know that, hey, I want you to grow probably as much or more than you do. And so what I would encourage you to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EOfire, Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EOfire. Fill out that form. And when you fill out the form, two great things will happen. A, you can schedule a free 13-point assessment with myself. We can do that with you. The 14th point has to do with life optimization. And that really doesn't matter if you can't pay the bills.

24:46So we'll focus on that later. But we have a 13-point assessment. But also you can get tickets for our upcoming December workshop featuring Tim Tebow, the legendary college football player and entrepreneur. And you can get those tickets again at ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash EO Fire. And the reason why every time I appear on this show, I try to bring a client with me is because I want everybody out there to know success is possible. I grew up poor. I took algebra three times. I get it. But you can have success. So I try to bring real entrepreneurs on this real show. And I really do that believe that what JLD, what you're doing here is really kind of like the gospel of wealth.