Why Smart Entreprenuers BUY Instead of Build A Business with Gary L. Clark

Author, serial entrepreneur, former financial advisor – Gary L. Clark

Gary L. Clark is serial entrepreneur and financial advisor that has built and sold multiple businesses. He is also the author of the book, “The Simplification of Becoming a Millionaire.” His artful understanding of crunching numbers brings a new view to how we get to the freedom and flexibility we want in business (hint: it’s not starting your own!) Plus, he reveals a surprisingly simple formula to predict the profitability in a business before you go all in.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• The Simplification of Becoming a Millionaire by Gary L. Clark
• E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Check out sbprabooks.com/garylclark for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and on the show today I have Gary Clark. Gary is a serial entrepreneur, he was a financial advisor, he also wrote a book called 'The Simplification of Becoming a Millionaire.' How perfect for our show today. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Gary.

Gary: Thank you very much for having me.

Jaime: I want to get into all your businesses and all of that fun stuff but what made you write the book 'The Simplification of Becoming a Millionaire'?

Gary: The final business I had was as a financial advisor and I was actually going to retire at 50 years old and I wanted to find something that I really enjoyed doing and, as it spells out in my book, while I was with Sears I was in human resources and as a human resource director at the time they really started 401Ks and, as you know or may not know, 401Ks were not that big at the time so being in human resources and trying to get more and more people encouraged to sign into the 401K, obviously I had to learn a lot about it. I became almost like a resident expert and then, further down the road, a couple of friends and I started an investment club and didn't know a lot about it. I'm a big fan of Warren Buffett, by the way. So the way it started was as a way to get the guys out one night a month. Well, they appointed me the president of the club, and at the time you didn't have computers so you literally had to go to the library. If you'd asked me to spell 'Wall Street' I probably couldn't have spelled Wall Street at the time. Anyway, long story short, we started an investment club, we really enjoyed just the ambience of the market. If you've read my book you'll see that I started out very poor and worked for Sears for 20 years - well, my whole goal after 20 years was to save enough money and go into business for myself. One of the problems that I have is taking orders from people and it's really bad when the people that you're working, you do not feel that they, first, know as much as you do and, a lot of times, people that you work for may be intimidated. I've always had an outwards style; I've always been a quick learner and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. My goal, when I was working for a corporation, was that every 3-5 years I needed to be promoted. I wanted to be promoted, I knew what the goal was, and so I set that goal to find out what I wanted to do. So I guess you could say  semi-retired at 50 and one of the things I enjoyed was financial planning so I did a lot of research and actually went to work for Ameriprise Financial as an independent contractor because, primarily what it did, it was one of the few companies that literally did financial planning and I really enjoyed developing a plan, enjoyed putting a plan in place for people and one of the greatest achievements is you listen to what I ask you to do, you do it and I can tell you, this is what's going to happen. So that's how I really got started. It was something that I really enjoyed doing along the way so when I decided to leave Sears, like I said, I had four other businesses before that, but once I retired I looked at it as though it was a hobby. I knew that, for the first couple of years, I was going to have to build my clientele, build my base, I knew how many clients I wanted, I knew how many planning clients I wanted, and once I got that my average work week was about three days a week and I was going to retired after about four or five years but I always felt that I had an obligation and a responsibility to my clients. 2001 happened so I said 'Okay, let's get them past that,' and then, unfortunately, 2008 happened, so once I got them past that I said 'Okay, it's time to go.' And what I wanted to do with my practice was that I wanted to make sure that I was the one to select who I wanted to be their financial advisor. I wanted them to have a philosophy the same as mine, clients always need to be protected and we have an obligation and responsibility to make sure they are. I don't know if that's too long of an answer.

Jaime: It's never too long of an answer! A lot of people think that investing is daunting and you said you sort of made it into a club, which is great, but what made you start to learn about it and get into it? Because it's a beast in itself to try to learn something so vast.

Gary: Two things, and one of the things I write about in my book - when I first got involved in it, when I worked with Sears in human resources - because what you said is absolutely true. Most people look at investing as almost like gambling - taking a risk, taking a chance - and it's really not. So I really initially got involved in it when I was working with Sears in human resources and was responsible for signing people up for the 401Ks. What I wanted to do was, one, when I give out information I wanted to make sure that people understand exactly what they were doing and there was obviously a lot of questions. One of the things, as a financial advisor, that I always felt that I had an obligation to do, in addition to being a financial advisor, is almost like being a psychologist from the standpoint that you really want to make sure that you keep the emotions out of investment and to make sure that, when clients go too far one way or the other, and of course living in Florida, and I guess Texas too, is you have a lot of thunderstorms and the way I explained it was like 'Look, it's like driving through a thunderstorm. When you're in the middle of that thunderstorm you don't know whether to stop, pull over or do what, but when you get out of the thunderstorm the sun shines out and the skies are blue,' so it was to make sure that, from an emotional standpoint, you take the emotion out of it. But the way I originally got started with Sears was doing the 401K plans and the enhancement was once I got into the investment club.

Jaime: I want to ask about financial advising and how you found clients but before I go into how you grew that practice, you said you had four other businesses beforehand. What where they and how did you get into that? Did they work or did they not work? Tell me more about that.

Gary: Like I said earlier, I knew that I always wanted to go into business. First, like I said, growing up, very poor, but the second thing is that I, unfortunately, am a Vietnam veteran. It couldn't have been two months, maybe a month, after I got out of high school that I got drafted into the military. Well the thing is, I knew somebody or knew somebody who knew somebody who was either getting killed or getting disabled so I made a decision - I said 'I'm going into the navy and I'm going to be a cook,' because even if they catch cooks, they don't kill cooks. Unfortunately, they made me a radioman and the average life expectancy of a radioman was 17 seconds. Fortunately, my first duty station was in Porto Rico so I didn't have to go there. I did have two brothers in Vietnam because, again, like I said, almost everybody at the time - this was in '65, they graduated in '66, '67 - just about everybody who got out of school, once you graduated, if you didn't have some type of deferment... Anyway, long story short, the best thing that ever happened to me was getting drafted into the military because what it did - and I tell this story in my book also - is that I never planned on going to college, simply because I didn't have the money, I was just poor, it was never an idea to do that, and one of the things that happened in the military is that there was a young lieutenant junior grade - this is somebody who was fresh out of boot camp, he was an officer - and me and a couple of buddies were on one side of the street, he was walking down the other side of the street with his girlfriend, and, trying to impress her, he jumped out said 'Don't you know to salute me, sailor?' We looked at him, laughed, and said 'Okay,' and I made up my mind right then - I said 'I can be a salutee or a saluter,' and I made up my mind to go to college at that point. Again, I appreciate the military - I think one of the worst mistakes they ever made was when they cut the draft out because it takes them out of the environment that they're in and gives them the opportunity to go to school. So once I got out of the military I went to college, finished college, finished in two and a half years and then, because I had worked for Sears part time, I mean I actually worked for Sears full time - at that time, if you were in the military, if you got drafted, companies were obligated to take you back. So I appreciate Sears to this day because they did take me back and, as a matter of fact, when I got out of college I had 13 job offers but because Sears had really treated me well I felt somewhat of an obligation to work for them in their management program. I wanted to be a lawyer - I watched a lot of Perry Masons - but after looking into the law program I had a scholarship to the LBJ University, which is in Texas, and I just said, after looking into it, 'I'm going to stay in business. I can do just as well.' And, like I said, my whole intent was to work 20 years to save up money to have the opportunity to start my own business and one of the ways I looked at it - as a matter of fact I had many clients who were business owners and there were many times that I would advise business owners that business is not the best thing for you. As you know, something like 95% of all businesses fail in the first 1-3 years, for two reasons - one, poor management, and two, and probably more important, under capitalization. You can go out and start a business but if you don't have the money or the wherewithal to keep it going, you're just not going to be successful. But anyway, I had a pretty good idea that I needed to save money, because I had two kids and I needed to make sure they were taken care of, my family was taken care of, and 20 years was just a good timeframe that I used, I knew how much money I wanted to have saved up, because I figured it was going to take my three years to get established, and so the very first business I had was an AAMCO Transmissions franchise. Now, how did I pick an AAMCO Transmissions franchise? This is something that's very important - the business that you go into is that important and the reason that I say that is this - the whole objective of going into business, in my opinion, is two things: one is to have the potential to make more money than you would if you were working for somebody else and second, which I think is the most important thing, is the freedom to be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it. It's just the freedom of time. So, again, like I said, once I had the 20 years, and the way I picked the franchise was that Sears, at the time, had an automotive center and in looking at the automotive center, what item did people really need? You didn't have them on every street corner and had some level of technical side to it and so I came up with automatic transmissions. It wasn't that it was anything to do with AAMCO, it was just this is the type of business that had a very good cash flow and a good return on investment and so once I made a decision, automatic transmissions, automotive repair, okay, what part of automotive repair? Because as you know or may not know, the automotive industry was going from mechanical to electronics and people just got to the point where they couldn't work on them so everybody was having to go to the dealers. So anyway, I started the AAMCO Transmissions franchise and my whole idea was to keep it for five years, build it up to a certain level, sell it. The rest of it had to do with automotive, because there's a lot of money in automotive, and once I sold the business I took six months to a year off, just to do what I wanted to do and I sold the third business and I was getting ready to go to the Montreux Jazz Festival - this is a quick story, I'll make this one quick - and there was a friend of mine that I had worked with at Sears and that's how I got to Claremont, by the way. Walmart built a distribution center in a place called Brooksville so he called me over, invited me for lunch, I had no idea what he was talking about. I had sold my third business and he calls me two days later and says 'Look, how would you like to go and work for us at the distribution center?' It was about a million square foot building. I said 'I don't want to. I don't like working for people.' So he calls up about three times and I tell him the same thing. He ups the ante every time and I tell him 'I don't want to.' He knew my wife so he called the house one day and my wife picked the phone up and she said 'Well, listen, he's at work right now. He needs to go to work.' So anyway, they got together and kind of bribed me into it, so long story short I said 'I'll go to work for you if you do this, this and this. I'm going to stay there for about a year or so, help you get it started running.' We had about 2,400 people, we ran a billion dollars through it every year and so, long story short, I wake up one day and three years has gone by, because every time I got ready to leave it was raises and promotions and then they wanted me to help them open up another center so I said 'I'll do that but after one year I'm done,' so after one year I left and this is where I was really at the point where I could almost retire so I said 'Okay, what do I want to do? I want to do financial planning.'

Jaime: So were you doing all of these businesses while you were working at Sears?

Gary: No, no, no - I made a decision to leave. The whole purpose after 20 years was to leave and go into business. Again, the whole point about the 20 years was to build up enough money and enough savings to go into business because I always wanted to go into business. I actually wanted to go into business right after college but I didn't have the money to do it. Like I said, I had two small kids, a family, so I said 'Okay, I'm going to need X amount of dollars.'

Jaime: Okay, so I have a couple of questions on the timeline. 20 years is a long time. My generation is 'I kind of want it now. If I can't have it in six months, I don't want it.'

Gary: That's true, but here's the thing - see, you can be an intrepreneur or an entrepreneur. As I said earlier, when I encouraged businesses owners, I said 'Look, you're losing. You need to go to work for somebody but here's how you need to look at it - look at it from the standpoint that it's your business. that you are an intrepreneur so you can make as much money and have as much time off if you look at it from that standpoint and you become the best at what you're doing.' If you remember, I said I had to be at certain points in certain timeframes - I put everything in timeframes. The last job I had, I think I had something like 5,000 people that I was responsible for but I remember someone saying 'Mr. Clark, you don't stress,' and I said 'No, I don't stress. I have other people that stress for me,' but, again, that goes into timeframes, it goes into management and the willingness to make a decision and the ability to have no fear, and what I mean by that is one of the things that happens with a lot of business owners, even major business owners, I mean CEOs, is that a lot of people are afraid to make decisions. When I was working for myself or when I was working for the corporation, one of the things that I always told the people that were responsible for making me look good was 'Don't be afraid to make a decision. Get all the facts and then make a decision. Nothing you do will blow up the world. If it's a bad decision, then we will do what needs to be done to make it right.' So, again, the whole purpose of the 20 years was to accumulate enough money to make sure that my first business was successful.

Jaime: That's amazing. It's really impressive. People nowadays don't think of it that way - getting everything set up and ready to go and learning all the right skills and all of that fun stuff, so what was your timeframe? Because I'm a little confused - I thought you went into financial planning at 50 but you're saying then you went into the automotive business?

Gary: No, no, no. Keep in mind that I left Sears long before 50.

Jaime: Oh, that makes more sense!

Gary: Yeah, I think I was maybe 40 or something.

Jaime: Okay, so it was my misunderstanding. I thought you retired from Sears at 50 but I just heard wrong. So you were in your late 30s or 40s when you left Sears?

Gary: I think it was about 45 or something like that.

Jaime: You did business to business to business and your retirement was still being a financial advisor because, way back when, you were at Sears and started working with 401Ks.

Gary: That's how I eventually came to it. That's how I eventually made a decision to do that.

Jaime: So tell me a little bit about this - the people that are listening are business owners and a lot of them may not be making a ton of cash right now or they're in a day job and looking to quit and business is where it's at in their heads so what they'll do is they'll reinvest into their business a lot, especially at the beginning, so where does investing in the market come into play, do you think, for somebody?

Gary: The most important thing, whether you're in business or not, is that investing comes from the standpoint that you need to always be paying yourself. One of the things you said is that if you are constantly putting money back in and not getting anything out of it, there is absolutely no reason to work for nothing and if you can't pay yourself working for yourself then you really probably need to look at doing something else. I know that may not be the answer you want to hear but remember what I said about going into business - I think there's two important things. One is that it gives you the potential to make more money working for yourself than anybody else and the freedom to be able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it, so even if you do have a small business, the one thing that you always want to do is say 'Okay, how do I pay myself?' Let's say you are working for another company and you do have a 401K or something set aside like that, somewhere along the way you need to be systematically investing and I don't care, you don't need a whole lot of money to invest to grow wealthy. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I say in my book is that, if you start young, you can put away as little as $50 and by the time you get to 60 you'll be a millionaire but obviously the older you get and the less your timeframe is the more you're going to have to put away but, again, the important point that I want to make here is that I don't care where you are or what you're doing - you need to always go in with the concept of 'I am going to pay myself,' and when somebody says 'I can't pay myself,' again, I'm going to say what I said earlier - would you work for free if you were working for somebody else? The answer is obviously no, so why would you work for yourself for free? One of the things I always used to tell my business clients - they wouldn't take a vacation, the last people that they would pay is themselves. As you know, just listening to you, you work with a lot of individual business owners - they work very hard. Most of them work very hard and long hours and, again, you have to have a strategy in place. Again, as I said earlier, I was at the point where I was working three days a week. It wasn't that I wasn't doing a lot, I just had everything in timeframes, I knew what I needed to do, and then, if I had to have somebody working for me, don't be afraid to give the people that you are paying the responsibility to do what they're supposed to be doing. If I'm paying somebody to do a job and I have to be there to do that job, then guess what? I don't need that person. So, again, always pay yourself. And here's a thing that I also write about - one way or another, you are going to pay Uncle Sam, so if you're going to have to pay Uncle Sam, by putting into an investment account, you're reducing your income and this is money that can grow and actually it's seven and a half before you even start paying taxes on it. By that time you'll have it all figured out, I think most people should.

Jaime: Definitely. I just talked to my tax accountant and she was like 'This is how much more you have to pay into your investments,' and I was like 'Okay, I'll do whatever you tell me to do. I just want my tax bill to be less, please.'

Gary: Right.

Jaime: Oh my goodness. So tell me this - since you started so many different types of companies, how long, on average, based on what you've been through, does it take to really get profitable? Because especially when you buy a franchise and stuff like that, it's hard to pay yourself first.

Gary: Not necessarily. Here's the thing - I would recommend any time you go into business, and every business that I went into, I always knew, I always projected what the outcome would be and if it wasn't making money, guess what? I wasn't going to do it. That's another thing - I'll tell you about the franchise, whether it be a franchise or whether it's another business, one of the things that I always recommend to my clients who wanted to go into business was, one, don't start from scratch. Starting a business from scratch is the hardest thing to do and the reason why is because you don't know what the numbers are and what to expect and the other part about it is building up a clientele just to get where you are so, in buying businesses, one of the thing that a person might want to do is say 'Okay, what kind of business do I want to go into?' I don't have a problem with franchises and here's why - most franchises are turnkey operations. They put these things in place and if you follow what that franchise tells you to do, you are going to make money. So the next part of that is this - I know what the numbers are up front. I don't have to guess what's going to happen. If this is what the expectations are and I do everything I'm supposed to do then I know this is what the numbers are going to be. It doesn't necessarily have to be a franchise. let's say if I want to get into baking - I don't know why anybody would want to do that but there are people who do it and do well with it - rather than start from scratch, I'm going to go in, I'm going to look, I'm going to get a broker and I'm going to go 'I'm looking for a bakery,' and oftentimes what happens is you find a lot of businesses where people are looking to retire, for example, or some people have just said 'Look, it's time to go,' but even when you go into those businesses, what are the numbers? What is it going to cost me? And how much am I going to have left over? So the answer to that question would be this - never buy a business that's not making money and always know what the outcome is before you go into it.

Jaime: That makes a lot of sense and it is different to starting your own and trying to validate the market, because all of that stuff takes time.

Gary: It's hard.

Jaime: Yeah.

Gary: Absolutely right. I agree 100%. Like I said, there's almost no business that you want to go into that does not exist and, after saying that, there's no business that exists that somebody's not willing to sell and I think the biggest thing about a lot of people that go into business, they just go in with the idea of 'I want to start a business.' There's a book that I used to give to all of my business owners. It's called 'The E-Myth Revisited', I don't know if you've ever read that.

Jaime: You're my fourth interview today and it's been mentioned in two other interviews also. It's crazy how much it's mentioned over and over and over again. That's awesome.

Gary: Wow. I would give them a copy and say 'Read this. Make sure you understand this and then come back and ask my questions. If you still want to do it, then let's talk about that.'

Jaime: That's awesome. I highly recommend it. It's so funny how often it comes up. My mentor, when I first met him, he had sold a million dollar business, I was 24 when I met him and that's the first book he gave me. He was like 'I give this to all of my clients.' It's the Holy Grail.

Gary: It is definitely something that someone who wants to go into business can look at and if they understand that, then it really is a guideline that they can use to be successful.

Jaime: I love your take on buying businesses. I'm going to see a friend tonight and that's what he does - he buys and sells businesses, that's his whole thing, because you don't have to go through this long-term startup phase where you're trying to get the wheels turning from a stop motion.

Gary: Exactly right and one of the things I want to mention too is that a lot of times you can buy a business and the owners will finance, which makes it even better. Sometimes you might have to pay a little bit more of an interest rate but, you know what? That's just not that big of a deal. The whole purpose of the book when I wrote it was not necessarily for people to do it themselves, it was, one, how simple it is to become a millionaire but the thing that I focus on more than anything else is don't be afraid to pay somebody to help get you where you need to be. Even if it costs me a couple of percentages to buy businesses that are already going it gives me a lot more potential to make more money than if I was starting from scratch and I'm okay with that because, guess what? At some point that note's paid off and now I'm free and running.

Jaime: So how do you pick them? I know you talked a little bit about the transmission one but how do you go through and figure out which business you want to be in? Is it just a numbers game and you're just checking out what the numbers look like?

Gary: Well, yeah. It doesn't really matter what the business is if you're comfortable doing it. I don't have to be an expert on anything because, nine times out of ten, if I buy a business - let's say I want to buy an accounting firm - I don't know anything about accounting but when I buy that firm, there's people that's working for that firm. Guess what? Remember what I said earlier - you pay people to do what they're supposed to do. As an entrepreneur and I think this is something else and as you know, in 'The E-Myth Revisited' this is what it talks about, you can't be a worker bee. Your job as an entrepreneur is to grow the business, go out and grow the business and to find clients to do what they need to do or to be constantly selling yourself or, I guess, constantly marketing yourself. But one of the things that helps is that if you have an idea of what you'd really like to do then, if you'd like to do it and you really feel like you're an expert on it and this is something that you really want to do, then, like I said earlier, somebody is selling the business that you want to get involved in. But to answer you question, the business itself never bothered me, it was all about 'Okay, what am I getting out of it? What's my return on investment?' and if it's a good return I don't care if I don't know anything about it because if you're around anything you can learn something about anything, right?

Jaime: Definitely.

Gary: So, again, like I said, the type of business, in my opinion, is not necessarily relevant. The bottom line is the most relevant thing.

Jaime: You must be pretty darn good at sales and marketing because it's not as though you buy this business and then don't do anything and it's fine. You have to grow it also - isn't that a piece in sales and marketing?

Gary: Again, that is the job, as a manager, as an entrepreneur, is to grow that business, is to go out and develop that business, is to go out and make contacts. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I did, in almost every business I had, in getting started, was that I knew how many clients I wanted. You started to ask me that - how did I go about getting my clients? Well, one, at the time, in almost any firm you go with, for example, you can buy leads from them. Those leads are not good but it gives you a place to start. One of the things I used to do - it's interesting, they did an article on me today in the Orlando Business Journal and one of the things I used to do was, every Wednesday, I used to schedule a tee time at one o'clock and I'd tell the person at the course 'Put me with a twosome or a threesome.' I don't know whether you play golf or not.

Jaime: No, but I should!

Gary: That's absolutely right for a couple of reasons and I'll tell you that in a second but the thing that someone will always ask you in playing golf is 'What do you do?' and what I would say is 'I'm a financial advisor,' and they would say 'Tell me about that,' and I would say 'Let's go ahead and finish golf and when we get to the club house we'll sit down and talk about it,' and I?d give them my elevator speech - 'This is what I do. Let's schedule a 30-45 minute meeting. I will go through all of the things that I can do for you. If you're comfortable with it, we'll move forward. If not, I'll see you at the golf course the next time,' and I would pick up one or two clients every month from that. The other thing - and this is what a lot of people don't do - is referrals. Ask people for referrals. You'd be amazed. If you don't ask for a referral, people may not know that you even want referrals, but if you have clients, I mean think about it, if I started off with five clients and I said 'Hey, listen. Here's what I'd like you to do for me. Do you like what I'm doing for you? Here's what I'd like for you to do. I want you to refer somebody that's as interested in their financial life as you are and refer them to me. Think about that.' Now, all of a sudden, you've got ten clients. Then, all of a sudden, you've got twenty clients. I knew, just based on the numbers that I worked out, that it would take me about two or three years. It took me about two and a half years to have the client base that I wanted. So I guess the answer is marketing - go out and meet people. One of the other things that I also recommend and I've always been involved in doing this is the local chamber of commerce. Playing golf, you meet people that you want to do business with. Well, your local chamber of commerce is people you want to do business with, so get involved with that. I never went to the chamber to ask anybody for business but what I wanted to do is, once people know that you're serious about what you do, they will ask you to be clients. There are people I wouldn't even take as clients. By the way, 2014, this past year, I was named Citizen of the Year for the South Lake Chamber of Commerce, which is a big deal. Again, it's just being involved and it's the level of respect that people have for you within a community. I found that an extraordinary place to meet people that you want to do business with and, again, the more people you meet, the more referrals you get. I would almost say probably 60% of my clients came from referrals.

Jaime: That's awesome. That means you're providing an amazing service which I think is hugely important.

Gary: Well, absolutely right. You have to be honest, you have to treat people like you want to be treated. What's that they say? Always go above and beyond what anybody expects from you. A real quick story - when I first opened my transmission shop - and I didn't know this until after time had gone by - you had to get so many permits and all that type of stuff and so this was a franchise, an AAMCO franchise, there were three or four, maybe five, independents in the area and, one of the guys, they were friends with somebody at the inspection office and so they came in and inspected and they were like 'No, you gotta do this,' and then I'd do that, 'Now you've got to do this.' Finally I went to the mayor, I said 'Look, I don't know what this is. Every time this guy comes in he tells me to do this and I do it and I've got to do something else,' so he says 'Okay, don't worry about, I'll take care of it.' Long story short, I got the permit, I was open for business, the guy called me and said 'Look, you won't be in business for six months.' A year later he was out of business. Here's the thing that I did - the same thing as with the financial planning. I'm one of the few people who ever got 100% client satisfaction but I also became business of the year. Here's what I would do - if you bring your transmission into me, most people would take a week or longer. If you brought your transmission into me, I said 'Look, I'm going to have this ready for you tomorrow and, by the way, I'm going to give you a year's warranty on it, unless you want a lifetime warranty.' If you came back the next day and I didn't have your car ready, I was going to rent a car for you. So, again, go above and beyond what your clients expect from you. Like you said, referrals are automatic.

Jaime: That's awesome. That's the key differentiator - you stood out on service in that situation. It's a no-brainer. Who wouldn't go to you? If I have to wait somewhere else for a long time it just makes perfect sense to do that, which I think is important.

Gary: Right. It got to the point that 92% of all of my business was coming from referrals so, you know.

Jaime: That's awesome. I think that's an amazing thing. We have to start wrapping up so I'm going to ask you my signature last question which is what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Gary: Know where you need to go to become a millionaire. If you don't know where you're going, you can never get there. That's the most important that I can do. The other thing is - don't be afraid to pay somebody to get you where you need to be. I like to tell this story - you don't know what you don't know. A real quick story about when I first went into business - the first year I had to pay a lot of money in taxes. I had been taxes all year. I asked a guy 'Why in the world am I having to pay all of these taxes?' Well, you didn't have enough write-offs. He said 'You need to go and see a financial advisor.' Okay what can he do for me? 'Well, I don't really know.' Again, keep in mind that I wasn't doing investing at that time. It's not like today - financial advisors were not that popular or not as relevant as they are today. I said 'Tell you what - you tell me what I need to do to reduce my taxes and I'll take care of the investing.' So for the next four years, I was spending money like a drunken sailor and once I became a financial advisor I found out there were all kinds of things that individual business owners can do to save money. So the point there is that I didn't know what I didn't know and I could have ended up having a lot more money. Of course, I had a good time spending money but I like saving it as well as spending it. I think that's the most important thing - understand where you need to go and have everything in place to get there and the second thing is don't be afraid to pay somebody for what you don't know. So those would be the two most important things.

Jaime: I love that and I highly recommend that too. It's an investment when you can pay somebody who knows more than you.

Gary: Absolutely right.

Jaime: Perfect. Where can we find out more about you and your book and all of that fun stuff?

Gary: You can go to Amazon.com. It's on that site and of course my website - GaryClark.com - but the easiest thing to do is to go to Amazon.com

Jaime: Awesome, and the book is called 'The Simplification of Becoming a Millionaire?. Everyone check that book out and thank you so much for coming on the show today, Gary. I appreciate it.

Gary: Thank you very much and continued success. Take care.

Jaime: You too, bye bye.

Gary: Bye.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Business Growth, Business Scaling, buy and sell, buying businesses, financial advisor, Gary L. Clark, millionaire interview, Profitability, selling businesses

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Finances, Goals, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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