Atari Founder | Exclusive Interview w/ Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell | Did You Know That Nolan Bushnell Was Steve Jobs’ First Boss? The founder of Atari & Chuck E. Cheese, Nolan Bushnell Shares How to Turn Your Business Dreams Into Reality

Audio Transcription

I could have owned a third of Apple computer for $50,000 and I turned it down. I’ve got a wonderful family, I’ve got a great wife, my life is wonderful. I’m not sure that if I’d have been uber, uber, uber, uber rich that I’d have had all that. success of finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players but really going for the A players and I found something. I found that when you get enough A players to get them, when you go to through the incredible work to find you know five of these A players, they really like working with each other because they never had a chance to do that before. Andrew, occasionally we have a show where we feature a guest that’s so big, so huge, that we have to shamelessly use the echo effect. And so on today’s show, we’re interviewing Nolan Bushnell. Now who’s Nolan Bushnell? Nolan Bushnell was Steve Jobs’ first boss. You know the guy who started Apple? That guy? This was Steve Jobs’ first boss. This guy’s the founder of Atari. You know, like the godfather of video gaming? This guy’s the former owner who scaled and grew Chuck E. Cheese. The Chuck E. Cheese? Yes! And on today’s show he shares why uninformed decisions are toxic, why you always have to be a little bit paranoid to be a successful entrepreneur, how he founded the video game industry, why Steve Jobs was the hardest working employee on the planet, and how he went from repairing TVs to starting Atari to growing Chuck E. Cheese, and why you must work to learn and not just to earn if you want to become super successful. All this and more on today’s edition of The Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast down below. Get ready to enter The Thrive Time Show. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s C and Z up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re here Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation! We are in the air everywhere, and I mean this sincerely from the bottom and the side of my heart I have never been more excited than for today’s show. This show today, let me tell you folks, many of you grew up playing Atari. You played Atari, many of you played video games, many of you have been to Chuck E. Cheese. This guy here, Nolan Bushnell, he is the founder of Atari. He’s the godfather of video gaming. He was Steve Jobs’ first real boss, the great Steve Jobs. This guy was his first real boss. Nolan, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? My pleasure to be here. So Nolan, I’ve got to ask you here. Atari, such a big company. Massive success you’ve had in so many different industries, and we’re going to get into that. But where did you come from? Were you beamed here, or what was your life like growing up? You’ve done so much. How did you grow up? I basically was born and raised in Utah and went to the University of Utah. I’ve often said that life is more serendipity than planning. I think I was the only electrical engineer in the world that had managed a games department of amusement park while pursuing an engineering degree. One serendipity. Two serendipity. Dr. Evans was the only tenured professor that was focused on connecting video screens to big computers and founded and he basically was responsible for what they call the nine Utah Brats, which are Alan Kay, Bob Warnick, Jim Clark, basically sort of the center of gravity of graphics. I mean, the head of Pixar came out of Utah. And I was the guy who did the games based on some of the technology that we learned at the university, which is cutting edge. You worked at the Lagoon Amusement Park while attending college. What job did you have there? I started out on the Midway selling balls to knock over milk bottles for a quarter. Were you a taunter? Did you taunt people? What was your strategy? Well, taunt is not the right word. Persuade, perhaps. But the real trick was human psychology. You’re supposed to run your game at 33 and a third percent. So that says that for every dollar you came in, you gave away 33 cents of prices. And you could control that by how you set the bottles. Like if I wanted you to win one, I could set the bottle so where it would take a nuclear blast or a major earthquake. We had a dance floor, a place where we’d have Johnny Cash, even Elvis, what have you, come in and put on a concert. That would be date night. Well, one of the strategies I used was if the captain of the football team and the head cheerleader came to play the game, he generally has part of his entourage, the water boy and the librarian. I would give an animal to the, or I would make sure that the water boy and the librarian That meant that I had the captain of the football team every penny that he had. That’s fantastic. Upside down. That’s the move. That’s the move. And you know, the thing is, is you at a very young age, you learn these skills, you take these skills. Every one of these skills you learned built upon itself. And at some point, you had the thought, okay, I’m going to start a video game company. Where did you start it? I mean, did you start actually just physically building an apparatus of some kind? Were you tinkering? Was it in a garage? How did you start Atari? Where did you start Atari? I started Atari in my daughter’s bedroom. What had happened is MSI chips in the space of six months went from $2 a piece to 15 cents a piece. And all of a sudden I said, hey, I believe I can hit the price points to make a video game. Got it. doing it, building an artifice, and we, you know, in probably two and a half weeks, I got a rocket ship flying on the screen. And I showed it to a, I mean, I had no money, I was associate engineer at Ampex at the time, making $880 a month. Wow. And I showed the prototype to a company called Nutting Associates, and they licensed it. And I came and went to work with them after signing a royalty agreement and put Computer Space into the market. What year was this? This was 1970. So when did the first Atari game come out? The first game that was your Atari brand? June 72. June 72. And what was that first game? Pong. Pong was the first? Okay. So good. Now, when you came out with your first game, 1972, a lot of things had to happen. How did you get the capital needed to build this first company? Where did you get the… So many entrepreneurs reach out to us and they say, man, you guys have had success in different industries. Where did you get the capital? We just had a listener today actually that we emailed in about this. I always tell people, one, get three jobs. Two, live super cheap. These are moves. But there is other ways to raise capital. But how did you raise your initial capital? Basically, my initial capital came from my back pocket. We were capitalized the company at $500. I put in $250, my partner put in $250, and that was all the money that we raised until we were at about $30 million in sales. This was kind of before venture capital had been invented. Did you ever meet Bill Draper, the kind of the godfather of venture capital? Did you ever meet Bill? I did. In fact, I had an opportunity to… He didn’t invest in Atari, but he was part of the… He kind of could have, but didn’t. Now you’re doing $30 million a year. Now again, people aren’t maybe aware of inflation, but inflation is the gradual decrease in the value of money as government continues to print money they don’t have. And so, the $30 million in 1970, when were you doing $30 million a year of sales? What year would that have been? 74. 74. So in today’s dollars, Aaron, you can look that up on the Inflation Calendar. I’m working on it right now. That would be hundreds, maybe 150 million today of revenue. It’s a large number. At what point did you hire Steve Jobs? Actually, 1974. Al actually hired him, but he and I became subsequently good friends. Al hired him. Who was Al? Al Alcorn was my head of research, or head of design. Now I am not going to disrespect a dead man. I’m just kind of quoting some things from Walter Isaacson’s book he did with Steve Jobs, which I believe to be accurate because he and Steve worked together on the book. But Steve kind of described himself as being an unusual character at the time he was working for you. Could you maybe explain the character? How old was Steve Jobs, and what was he like as a young man? He was 19 or 20, I think, maybe 21 at the end. He actually worked for me two times. He started out and then he took a hiatus and went to India to study with a guru, and then he came back and worked for Atari again. Disheveled, not well-kemped, and a little bit obnoxious. Steve tended to not abide fools gladly. If he thought you were a dumb s***, he would tell you so. That’s not a good way to make friends. My understanding with Steve is that Steve, in his book he talks about he really came to get something done. And he loved working with A players and he just couldn’t stand B players or C players. He had a real hard time with it. I want to make sure the listeners get something they can apply as a result of this. Are there any character traits that you would say, okay, that’s why Steve Jobs did well. If somebody out there is listening and they’re at that young age where they have to decide, you know, am I going to go this path or that path? Is there any character traits that you observed from Steve Jobs where you maybe thought, well, that guy is going to go on to be successful? He was the hardest worker I’ve ever had work for me. He was one of the few guys that I’d come in on a Monday morning and he’d be asleep on a futon under his desk. He basically had one speed, full on, get it done, make it happen. I think that that is a characteristic. You can’t be smarter than anybody, but you can outwork everybody. True. So good. That’s powerful. Now, there’s somebody out there that is wondering in the background where you are. Do you live in California? Where exactly do you live? In Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. And can you describe the room you’re in? People out there that maybe can’t, a lot of people just listen to the show, some people watch it. What are we seeing behind you? This is a lab that I have in which I’m essentially surrounded by computer screens and I have all kinds of little cubbies that are full of things like resistors and capacitors and Arduinos and basically I solder here. I can… I can… How many screens do you have in pretty? How many screens do you have seven screens? I think the visual bandwidth is an important thing for efficiency. So when you’re on a desktop, you’re really not looking at pictures like this. You really want it to be like this so that you can scan things with your eyes. So like I have one screen that is strictly email. I have another one that is all my calendar information and my work day stuff. And then there’s one that’s a news feed. Now Randy Pausch wrote the book called The Last Lecture and he was basically oddly healthy but he knew he was going to die. And he wrote this lecture and he talked about how having multiple screens is really, he’s a Carnegie Mellon professor. He talked about how multiple screens allows you to be much more efficient. I am right now working, I have four screens in front of me. I think just even going to two screens is so powerful. My first screen in front of me, the one I’m looking at you at now, is I would say 40 inches. The one to the right where I keep extra notes if I need to pull in data or citations, that one’s about 30 inches. The one to the left of the one I’m looking at right now, that’s about 35 inches. And then I have a Mac that’s again about 30 inches. So 30, 30, 35, 40. How big are your screens? So you’ve got some good bandwidth. Now, another question. Are they all the same resolution? They’re not all the same resolution. Okay, because what I find is that there are certain things that I want a lot of data, but I don’t need a lot of clarity. And other places that I want a lot of clarity. And, you know, so if I’m reading something, I want it in my, it’s basically a screen that amplifies the size of everything. And so I like to have that flexibility of choosing quickly and easily the resolution that I’m looking at. What I’d like to do, if I could, and this will be probably the most unusual interview of all time, but I have so much I want to ask you, and I want to try to go big and then kind of get into some of the habits and details and routines you do, because I think there’s a lot to learn there. Can you maybe share with the listeners, because you didn’t just build Atari. It wasn’t like, okay, that was it. You went on to then be the Chuck E. Cheese guy. And then you went on to… Can you kind of just give us, if you were sitting there giving us a recap of your career, can you maybe share with us all the things you’ve been able to do because it’s truly fascinating and I’d love to hear it direct from you. My first big entrepreneurial thing was I was a TV repairman when I was 10 and 11. Then I set up a TV repair route in the days when you know everything was a house call because the TVs were big and bulky and heavy. And so I always got used to having a lot of money even though I was a poor boy from Utah. But compared to my friends I always had more cash. Yeah. Then I did a… am I going back too far? No, no, this is great. This is great. This is your world. I’m just invading your space. And then I started a thing called the Campus Company, which created a blotter that had the calendar events for the university and sold advertising around the edge. And that, the economics there were I could sell about $3,000 worth of ads and it cost me $500 to print and I’d give them away at the beginning of every quarter. And it was really a good business. I mean, in college I was putting myself through school and driving a 190 SL Mercedes. Wow. So that was how I came to work at Lagoon. And my theory was I was making so much money, the worst thing I could do is have summer nights free in Utah because I would spend it all on girls and fun. So I said, I’m just going to get a fun job that just keeps me occupied and out of harm’s way. And so therefore I ended up at Lagoon, which was a minimum wage job, which, you know, but then I found out that you got commission if you went over quota. And I found that I was pretty good. And so I was, you know, I basically was doubling my salary based on photos. There’s a teaching moment there that I want to make sure the listeners get. People always ask me, they’ll say, Clay, why are you volunteering? There’s a church back in the day, I volunteered and I would do the voices for the puppets. And people would say, why are you, in your late 20s, financially successful, why are you doing voices for puppets at a church service when no one knows it’s you? And I’m going, I just feel like in the future that is a skill I want to learn is how to switch voices. Not really knowing how that would work. And then people say, you’re a disc jockey. Why did you go from disc jockey to dentistry? Why did you invest in dentistry? And I’m going, well, I had some teeth that needed to be fixed. I wanted to get myself. And I figured if I’m going to get veneers, I might as well figure out a way to pay for them. So I worked with a dentist, scaled his business, did a little dentistry on my own face, paid him to do so. And I realized, wow, now I can go into medical, disc jockey, voices, and then they say, how do you have a podcast with a half a million listeners? And you’re like, well, the ability to do different voices and to know how to scale different industries and mix music, it all comes together. But a lot of people won’t take a job working at Lagoon Amusement Park for a low pay when they already have a lot of money. You were already making a lot of money and you said, I’m going to go work at this job for a minimum wage, not knowing there’s even commission, and had a good attitude about it. Do you think that’s a principle that people need to work to learn and not so much to earn? Is that something that’s a principle you believe in? What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. In fact, my advice right now is if you’re a high school senior, take a gap year, maybe without COVID, but move to Las Vegas and attend every trade show. I believe that would be the best first year education you could possibly get. My mind is blown right now. That is so powerful. That is such an amazing idea. Real quick, mind blown, just a second. That is a great idea. I love that. Well, and what I think that uninformed decisions are toxic and if you, I mean, when the kid’s going to college and they say, what do you want to be? He has no clue. He has no clue about what the actuality of what’s going on. I just think that that’s wrong. You’ve got to get out and mix it up. This is something, certainly you don’t need someone to pile on and be your hype man, but I just want to point this out. My wife went to college to do broadcast journalism because she’s a beautiful lady, she’s well-spoken, people are like, oh, you should do, oh, you should do, you’re the make and model, you should do broadcast journalism. They forgot. She doesn’t want to. So she became a freshman, scored well, sophomore scored well, junior scored well, senior, the senior year is the first year you get to hop up on the screen as an intern at a local TV station. And she found that every morning these people wake up, literally, I’m not exaggerating, this is not me ripping mainstream media, this is just the reality, I’m ripping humanity. Humans want to hear about death, gossip, destruction, racism, violence, economic turmoil, bad weather, they just want to. So my wife wakes up every morning in her day, starts with, we need someone to go find information about that homicide, about the tornado, about the economy falling. This is back in 99. And she realizes these people then fight each other over who can get the scoop, who can get the story. And they go, tonight at six, after the break, we’ll be talking about the homicide. And all of a sudden you’re like out, you’re one-upping each other about who has the worst thing that happened. And it was like depressing and all the reporters were depressed and they’re all reading. No one you know they’re all reading teleprompters and when you would sit down and ask them in the break room, what are your thoughts on that election? They would go, I don’t know, I just read the teleprompter. No, no, I mean it was just crazy. But she didn’t have that epiphany till after $100,000 of education was invested. I love the idea of taking that gap year or interning. That’s powerful. Do you have any other pro tips for the young people listening right now? Aaron’s got a young man and his family who’s going off to college. So many listeners out there are thinking, do you have any other pro tips out there for the young people 18, 19, 20 that are thinking about what should I do after high school? Oh, absolutely. Intern whatever you can get. For example, you go to a random office building if you’re in the city and you knock on every door and say, I would like to intern here. I’ll work for minimum wage and do whatever. I want to learn your business. And just do that. Just get a broad range of experiences. Broad range of jobs. Kind of Also, start making a life plan with a spreadsheet of what things are going to cost versus what you’re going to be making in whatever you do. You can decide that you don’t need to make a lot of money, but then you get a wife and a house and a kid and a dog and you realize that you probably do need to make some money. Right, right. Now, I don’t want to dig too deep into your personal life there unless you want to go there. I just want to ask you, did you get married as a young guy? Did you stay single a lot? I mean, because you did so much. I was married at 22 to a college sweetheart. That lasted for seven years. And she hated me being an entrepreneur. She wanted me to be in college, she wanted me to be, I was still in college when we got married. We split up and then right after I sold Atari, I met my current wife. She hates to be called my current wife, but sounds too temporary for her. We’ve been married for 42 years. I have 8 children, 2 by my first wife and 6 by Nancy. And we have a great life. It’s great fun. Now Proverbs 13.20 reads, it says, He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” You might say, okay, you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. What I have found, previous to this show, I have been super intentional since the age of, I’d say, 20 years old. I decide I am not going to hang around with people that have consistent, self-inflicted life problems during the day. I’m just not going to. I’m going to surround myself with people that have goals and aspirations and I’m going to have positive conversations, period. And I have found that when I’m in the room with Maurice Kanbar, who invented Sky Vodka, or I’m in the room with David Robinson, the NBA Hall of Famer, or I’m in the room with a governor of a state, the conversations and the opportunities are so much better. And it’s great. There’s no gossip, no doom and gloom. It’s positive. Oh, it’s great. So who do you spend the most time with? Who are your homies? Who are your buddies? Who do you spend time with? I have a… I’m a member of a group called Metal. It started out sort of as a Saturday morning breakfast club where they’d have a couple of speakers and a bunch of… It’s called… It’s a men’s group. Men’s group. What’s that? Is it the men’s group? Is it like a religious thing, like a Christian men’s group? Is it a coders group? In fact, we don’t talk religion or politics. Got it. It’s all about helping one another and learning about various things. And I’d say that there are several of the members there that I’m quite close with, that I do things with. Of course, my family. I’m finding that my oldest son is 42 now. You know, they’re really, my kids are really smart. And they’re part of my brain trust as well as my wife. Your current wife. My current wife. Ha ha ha ha ha. Now the thing is, you have touched so many things. You went from Atari to Chuck E. Cheese. When did you feel like it was time to sell Atari? I needed to sell Atari because the 2600 required so much more capital than I could raise at the time. And when you said the 2600, that was a model of? Yeah, the Atari 2600. Yeah, that’s the Atari. Yeah. Which, by the way, that $30 million a year, Clay, was $187 million when you look at inflation today. So Nolan, after you sold the company and you got a check, and I’m not going to ask you the amount, I’m not going to ask you how much you sold it for, but when you got the check or the checks, did you set it up where you were getting paid residually or did you get one big check? For tax planning reasons, I got a debenture that gave me a big downstroke and then an amount of money for the next eight years of a pretty good-sized check. When you finally got a big check, did you have a thing that you wanted to buy? Did you say, now that I have this nice check, I shall get myself a burrito? Whatever kind I want. I don’t care if I get an extra guac. I’m doing the whole thing. Did you have a big goal like that? Did you have a thing you wanted to do? I did. I did a thing where during the sale I was spending a lot of time in San Francisco and living in Los Gatos at the time. And I said, hey, instead of an hour and a half drive from San Francisco, why don’t I just go from Atari and swing the compass around and get closer to San Francisco? That came to an area called Woodside or Palo Alto. I started looking for a house up there. I found an old turn-of-the-century mansion. It was called the Folger Estate. A five-story house with a ballroom and all kinds of stuff on 16 acres, pool, what have you. But it was kind of decrepit. And I said, shit, I could do here. And I bought that. And it was just a wonderful house that I was determined to fill it up with kids. And so you renovated that. So it was like a purchase, but it was also a problem you could solve. You bought the house. When did you decide, hey, it’s time to get into the cheese business, into the Chuck E. Cheese business? It’s time to get into the… When did that happen? It was actually before I sold Atari. Oh, really? I started Chuck E. Cheese inside Atari. And then after Warner bought it, they said, we don’t want to be in the food business. So they sold it to me. And so I had the technology in the purchase and one location. And I said, okay, I’m just going to replicate it, figure out what the things we did wrong on the first one, fix it. The first one was way too small. It was only 5,000 square feet. The next one was 25,000 square feet. That was too big. And then the third one was 13,000 square feet, and that seemed to be about right, and that was the template that we expanded with. Before I open it up to the town hall for the guys here inside the studio to ask you any questions they want to ask, I want to ask you, you are in a different world than I’m in. You’re in California. I’m in Oklahoma. We’ve interviewed the former CEO of Pizza Hut or NBA Hall of Famer David Robinson, a lot of these neat people, but we have not really deep-dived into the tech world because it’s so far west. It seems weird, but geographically we have a lot of Midwest guests and a lot of East Coast. Are there certain people that you’ve rubbed shoulders with over the years where you go, Clay, you’ve got to have that guy on your show? Is there somebody that’s like an unknown, but you’re going, this guy, this guy. Because you’ve employed so many cool people that I’m sure have gone on to do big things. Is there anybody that you would just say that’s, they’re an under, I mean we all know the Zuckerbergs, you know, we all know the big names, but is there somebody out there that you’ve kind of mentored up that you feel like’s gone on to do some big things? Oh boy. Several, several people. Several people, I mean, Al Alcorn is a brilliant guy and fun. Al Alcorn? What is he? He was my head of research at Atari and he later went to Apple and did a stint with several other things and he’s done some neat stuff. I don’t know, but I think Jim Clark is a brilliant guy. Jim Clark, we share the last name, but I don’t know who he is. Who’s Jim Clark? He did HealthMD. He did three, what was the name of his company? HealthMD, we’ve all been there. He also did Netscape. And Netscape, a little company called Netscape. You guys are amazing. I’m just, your background, I’ve never seen your office, but I thought it would look like this. So this is confirming. Now, Aaron Antus, you run Oklahoma’s largest home building company. What question do you have here for Nolan here, the guy who’s the founder of Atari? Sure. So, I mean, first of all, honored to talk to you. A huge fan, grew up on this. I did also want to point out that today, over the last couple of days, my son, I have an 18 year old and a 19 year old boys, and of course video games are prevalent in my home. My sons are trying to get the new PlayStation 5 right now, and it’s sold out, and you can’t get it. The games that come out with that are always just so amazing. It’s what we dreamt of when Atari Pong was what we were playing. It was what we thought video games could become. And so, the funny part is, I talk to my sons and I say, now when I was growing up, I played Pong, or I played Tank, and then eventually Pitfall, and just so many cool games. So what inspired the game of Pong? How did you go, I’m going to make a game that’s these two little lines and a little, I guess a ball, although it’s a square because there’s like three pixels on the screen. A square ball. Yeah. And like what inspired you to do that? Because it’s literally, this is not meant to be an insult, it’s the most well-known game that really isn’t any good at all in comparison to what we have today, but my kids are like, oh yeah, I know what Pong really came, whenever you’re getting into a business, the first thing you do is you list all the sports. You say we can do sports emulation and things like that. Sure. But Pong was actually inspired by a competitor. And I’d been in the video game business for a couple of years and somebody said, hey, there’s a company that’s showing a video game in a hotel room. And so I went up and it was the Magnavox Odyssey. And I looked at it and the stuff was fuzzy and it didn’t have any sound and no score. And I thought, oh, yeah, this is really crappy. But I looked around and people were playing this game. It was kind of a pong-like game. But it was silly because you could make the ball move after with a knob and stuff like that. And I thought to myself, okay, but people are kind of having fun with that game. And that happened to be the first day that Al came to work for Atari. And he needed a training project, something that was just butt simple to get through, to learn all the tech. And I described the game to him and I said, let’s give it a go. And he had it programmed and he had it developed in about a week, a little less. Wow. And then we started tweaking it. And the more we tweaked it, the funner it got. It was never, we never thought that it was going to be a marketable product. Then we did it, it turned out to be so much fun, and then we put it on location and it earned massive amounts of money. How did you market your games? How did you market Pong and the different games that you created? These were coin-operated games, so basically you’d put it out in a bar, you’d collect the money after a week, and that was, you know, they were income generating machines. And if the revenue that they earned got around, then there are these guys called, in every And they sell to a guy called an operator. This can be a retired fireman who has 50 machines out in bars and restaurants. They go into a bar and say, let me put my machine in and I’ll give you half the revenue. And that’s the business. That’s the move. Also, I wanted to know, where did the name Atari come from? Because it’s like, it sounds like maybe it’s a space thing or something. I’m really curious, how did that name come about? It came from the game of Go. And Atari, when you say Atari, it’s like check in chess. It means your opponent is under threat, immediate threat. I just thought that would be an appropriate name for a company to warn all my competitors that they are under threat. Nice! I love it! Now, we have, I want to respect your time, so we have three questions in five minutes. Josh Wilson, this guy runs a company, they do outdoor irrigation systems. His company is called Living Water Irrigation, ok.com. There’s a fly that’s flying right by me. And Josh, what question do you have? I’m sure you grew up playing some Atari. What questions do you have? We did. I had two older brothers and it was a constant argument and fight. Yeah, it was great. You started a lot of fights in the Wilson household, so my mother is very grateful for that Nolan. That’s true. In my house too, Josh. Make you strong. Make you strong. Absolutely. Anything you can walk away. I have beat my brother with an Atari controller before. That’s a truth. Yeah, I lost one of the paddles. Anyway, we digress. So I thought that advice for young folks was absolutely one of the most powerful things we’ve ever heard on our show, of moving to Vegas for a year and going to all the trade shows. So for a lot of our listeners or entrepreneurs who are actually living it right now, what would you advise them? What would that big piece of advice that you offer for young folks? If somebody is maybe a young folk out there that owns a company? That’s already operating, that’s already doing it, and you obviously did it multiple, multiple, multiple times Nolan, so what would you offer? Always be a little paranoid and figure out that if you’re doing something successful, somebody is going to notice that you’re doing something successful, think they can improve on what you’re doing and take you out. So you have to always be paranoid and say, what kind of company could take me out? And then you have to be that company. And I call it the eat your babies paradox, where you have your baby, you’ve nurtured it in terms of the concept of your company and everything like that. But every once in a while you have to cannibalize that in order to move forward. The failure of Atari was they didn’t allow for, they didn’t move on with new technology. They thought they were a software company and that it would go on forever. Because Warner put in all record executives. And they didn’t realize that they were also in the record player business. And so when they didn’t up, you know, now we take it as a axiom that there’s a new piece of hardware every three to five years. I thought that the 2600 should be replaced in two to three years because there were so many trade-offs and Warner didn’t want to do it. That was one of the reasons why I left. Now, James, you’re an attorney from Manhattan. You grew up, you were familiar with the Atari growing up as a kid, my friend. Oh, for sure. So what question would you have for Nolan, my friend? Hi, Nolan, nice to speak with you, and I agree with Alan, it is certainly, and Aaron, excuse me, it is an honor to speak with you. The question I have is, was there ever any game or concept that was kind of on the drafting table that you decided to scrap and then later, you know, even decades later thought about, man, that could have been a great idea. And if so, what was it? Interesting question. I think James is getting ready to launch a new, maybe a new console called Batari. The 2700. The planned version of Batari. A couple of things that I kind of put the kibosh on, and this will sound very quaint, is that I wouldn’t allow Atari games to commit violence against a person. That you could shoot down a tank, you could shoot down an airplane, but you couldn’t shoot a person. That’s why it was Space Invaders instead of Face Invaders. What I felt, believe it or not, the early days of the video game business, it was controversial. There were Senate hearings and various… Some countries outlawed video games. They thought they were bad for the people, bad for the employee. Not realizing that video games are kind of the training wheels of computer literacy. I know no programmer that isn’t a gamer. So I just didn’t want to add the idea of violence against people to that issue. I will say that there are a lot of studies that show that you might have had some wisdom in not wanting to do graphic violence against people. You never know these things until years and years and years of research are done. I appreciate that stance. I do. As a father of kids, I do appreciate that stance. We have time for one more question. This is Pastor Craig Hagan. He runs a church called Rhema Church. It’s a mega church. They have thousands and thousands of members. They’ve actually launched thousands of churches all across the world. Craig, you probably grew up playing some Atari, right? Oh, yeah. I had Pong and I had the Atari 2600. We just called it the Atari. What final question would you have for Nolan Bushnell? I love Atari, but I want to ask you a question about Chuck E. Cheese. Oh. My wife, actually, her very first job was at Chuck E. Cheese and sometimes she was Chuck E. Cheese. And it’s just a phenomenal concept. I mean, my granddaughter, it’s her favorite place to go. And I think it’s because of Chuck E. Because there’s other places that have kind of taken your concept and kind of maybe gone a little bit further, but she still likes Chuck E. Cheese better because of the mouse and all the figures. So what was kind of the idea, how’d you get the idea for the Chuck E. Cheese franchise? It was really about vertically integrating towards the market. And we were selling video games, coin-operated video games at the time, for $1,500 to $2,000. In their life cycle, they take $30,000 to $50,000 in coin drop. So it didn’t take rocket science to say I was on the wrong side of that equation. What I wanted to do was to create a chain of massive arcades and disguise it as a pizza parlor. I love it. That’s awesome. Brilliant. And I felt that the kids were going to want to be in the game room. I had to keep the parents amused so that they’d stay longer. And so that’s where the robotic animals came. You listen to the scripts, they were all aimed more at adults than they were at kids. The birthday party, that was all for kids. But really it was to make the waiting time for the parents while they’re sitting at the table less painful, less boring. To give them something to do. Brother I appreciate you so much for being on the show. I know that you’re a busy guy. You’re always tinkering, working on projects, business deals, always committed to your family. I really do appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to join us. I’d like to ask you, is there a website where you would like to direct our listeners to visit to learn more about you? Or is there an action item you’d like our listeners to take? I know you’re certainly not out there marketing yourself. You’re not out there trying to pitch a book. You’re just doing this out of your own goodness of your heart. No, no. Here comes the commercial. Okay. Do it. Yeah. Bring it. I’m working on a company called Versix and we are going to have a Kickstarter for a game called Screen Test. And it’s, think, we’re building board games, family games that are enabled by the Amazon Echo and the Google Home. So now we have technology enhanced board games. So technology, you know, these smart speakers, they can throw the dice, they can add sound effects and music, they can time things, and, but more than that, they can provide a synthetic, verbal, non-playing character. Wow! So if people want to learn more about that, they go to Kickstarter and then look at how to make… Kickstarter, I think it’s going to be up in December, December 2nd, December 3rd. And they’ll look for ScreenTest, you’re calling it ScreenTest? Yeah. Is that verse six, how do you spell that? V-I-R-S-I-X. Okay. V-I-R-S-I-X. Nolan, it is a pleasure, I thank you for being… One second, I got one more. No, do it, yeah, no, do it. I’m also on the board of a company called Perone Robotics that has the best stack of software for automated automobiles. And they’re just doing some wonderful things, and they’re going to be doing a refunder, a refunder. And I think that an investment in there can be extraordinary because it’s one of the things that I’ve chosen and I’ve got a pretty good hit record of picking winners. The WeFunder will be up probably early December as well. So it’s Perone Robotics. How do you spell Perone Robotics? P-E-R-O-N-E. What does Perone mean? It’s this guy’s name. Okay, nice. Okay, so WeFunder, and it’s Perone Robotics. We can learn more about what you’re doing there. We can invest there. And then there’s ScreenTest. You can check that out on Kickstarter as well. Both of these are… our listeners should look forward to this in December. So I’ll make sure that we release this show. When in December will these things come out? It’ll probably be the 5th or 6th, something like that. Okay. Our first game from Bersix was Saint Noir, which was a detective game. It’s available on Amazon right now as well. Brother, I appreciate you for being here. Thank you so much. You are an American icon. You’re just a treasure and we learned so much on today’s show. Thank you so much. It’s great fun being here. Take care. And now, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! and do… 3, 2, 1, boom! that you did it and your contact information to info at thrive timeshow.com Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zuckner. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. I’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here. True life started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops. I break down the books. She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the CNC up on your right, yo. And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals, and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on hot coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. All right and now ladies and gentlemen I’m gonna bring up my good friend Ryan Wimpy, my good friend Ryan Wimpy and his dog Odin, this dog has the ability to eat me so I’m sort of concerned. I’ll pass the mic to you and Odin you can have your own mic if you want whatever you want Odin. Okay. Hi I’m Ryan Wimpy. And I’m Rachel Wimpy and the name of our business is Kiptack Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. It’s just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic, their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment, they’re at drive. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for e-mails, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done. We’ll ask for things like different flyers, and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and producing your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business Not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily So no one has a marketing team to most people don’t they can’t afford one and their local Web guy or a local person that they know Probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, really, I mean, really ride them to get stuff done. And stuff is done so fast here. And people, there’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak, you know. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So, you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So, not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in their thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where it was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I don’t wanna like bang my head into a wall and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you, shut up, and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry. So, glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. Thrive Nation, on part one of today’s show, we interviewed the founder of Atari. I mean, what a great interview that was. The founder of Atari, I’m not a big video game guy. I don’t endorse playing video games. I do think you should actually go outside, meet other people, look people in the eye, go outside, move your body, these sorts of things. However, that was a profound interview. Now on part two of today’s show, I’m going to introduce you to another great thinker and a guy who I’ve had the pleasure to work with and to serve over these past three, four years. He’s building what we would call a franchise. Now a lot of times the language, we get hung up on the language because we don’t know what it means. A franchise just means that he has perfected a business model to the point where it is scalable, meaning that somebody who’s not him can buy the franchise and operate the business with similar results. Let me give you an example. You might go to college to become a welder because you theoretically want to learn how to weld things. You might go to college to become a dentist because you want to become a doctor who practices dentistry. You might go to college to study law to become a lawyer. These are all careers or skills that you learn to pay the bills. And oftentimes you might pay $100,000 or more, $200,000 or more for this education. Well, what he does with Window Ninjas is he’s selling a vocation now. What am I saying? He’s selling a vocation. So when you go to windowninjas.com, you’re paying for a proven system that he’s created and that I’ve had the pleasure of working with him behind the scenes on quite a bit to help him perfect. I feel very good about the brand. So if you’re out there today and you’re looking for a new vocation, perhaps this is the conversation you need to hear. With that being said, Gabe Salinas, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am great, Clay. Thanks for asking. It’s been a wonderful day down here in Wilmington, North Carolina. My call center is thriving. I just got back from Dallas, went to a franchise expo last weekend, got a lot of leads. Man, it’s been a wonderful week. Exciting things over here at Window Ninjas. What I’m going to do is kind of with a football theme here. We’re going to go into almost like a no huddle offense here for just a minute where I’m going to throw out some rapid fire questions for you and then we’re going to get into maybe some long form questions. But I really want to just rapid fire with you with the limited time we have. First off, how long have I known you or worked with you, just for people out there that want to know? I vouch for you. I tell our listeners that you have a great product and service, but how long have we known each other? We’ve known each other for a little over three years. A little over three years. And during those three years, how much have you grown at Window Ninjas? We have definitely doubled in size, for sure. And now that we’re franchising out, we’re looking to double in size again within the next three years as well. So, man, we’ve had a tremendous amount of growth. If somebody goes to windowninjas.com and they buy a franchise from you, my understanding, and maybe you could clarify, is that what’s expected for me if I buy a franchise from you, is that I need to clean windows and teach people to clean windows. That’s basically my job, is to teach to clean windows, hire a team of other people that clean windows, and then get objective Google reviews from happy customers. Again, repeat my big three things I have to do. Clean Windows, teach other people who are not me to clean Windows, actually employ people who clean Windows, and then gather objective reviews from happy customers. It seems too simple to be true. Is that accurate? Like you are 100% correct. I mean, it’s pretty simple because we have the system in place. All you gotta do is the services that we provide, it’d be very positive, collect some Google reviews, and then all the magic on the backside is on our shoulders with our call center and our marketing team, and it’s just a match made in heaven. So what happens is, is you handle the marketing, you have a proven turnkey system for that. So if somebody buys a Window Ninja’s vocation from you, you then have a call center that books the jobs for them, you handle all the marketing for them. You handle the cleaning strategies for them. You teach them how to clean windows. How many months, how many years, how many quarters, how many months does it take if someone goes to windowninjas.com and they want to learn how to clean windows your way, they want to learn how to run a franchise your way, how long of a time investment is it on behalf of the franchisee, how much time I guess do they need to invest learning how to run a franchise if they buy one from you? Well, when they come in to us, Clay, part of what we do is we spend two quality weeks with the franchisee. Within that two weeks, what we do is we teach them the systems that they’re gonna be using every single day, and we actually teach them the skill of each and every one of our services. So because we offer window cleaning as well as pressure washing and gutter cleaning, and a couple of other services as well. We spend a lot of quality time with them as far as like training and educating them, all the tools, all the equipment, the know-how, the knowledge, and the actual application of the services. And then there’s ongoing training as well. We have weekly meetings. We have follow-ups and things of that nature every single week so that we can make sure that each and every one of our franchise owners and location owners are being successful and following the process. But if they have any questions or have any concerns or have any trouble, you know, they can always reach out to one of our operations people and they can walk them through the steps of whatever the issue may be. So there’s always, I would say, Clay, there’s always ongoing training. But as far as getting a franchise up and running and knowledgeable and educated enough to where they can go out in their backyard and do business, man, we can get it done in two weeks. So many people spent two years, they spent six years, they spent eight years studying business. I got a master’s degree at the university from the University of Yadda. I see so many people that will literally, they fill out the form, they apply for a job working for me or other people and they’ll say, I’ve got my master’s degree from the University of Who Gives a Crap. I’ve got my undergraduate from the University of Who Gives a Crap. I studied psychology from University of Who Gives a Crap. I’ve got a marketing degree. I’m thinking about going back though to get my doctorate in who gives a crap. I’m not kidding people go to college for six years, seven years, eight years and they have no idea how to make money. I talked to a guy yesterday, man I wish this guy wanted to buy your franchise and I’m not, true story, I tried to send him your way. I tried to send him to OxyFresh. I tried so hard but this guy he’s got all the degrees. He’s got more degrees than a thermometer. He’s in his late, he’s probably gonna get pissed off when he hears this. I’m being vague, but he’s in his late 30s, has more degrees than a thermometer. He claims to be a long-time listener. I don’t know if this is true. He went to thrivetimeshow.com. He filled out the form. I don’t think he’s listened to our show too long, or I don’t think he would have asked these questions. But he’s like, Clay, I want you to help me introduce my skills to the marketplace in a financially viable way. And I said, what do you do? And he says, I’m a business growth strategist. And I said, have you ever grown a business no So you’re a business growth strategist. Yeah Have you ever grown a business? No, did you go to college? Yes, how would you go to college years and years and years? What did you study? And he’s he has all this theory, but he’s never actually done it So I said if you were gonna work with my business, what would you tell me to do? And he says well The first thing we got to do is you got to look at your business and you got to look at the diversity of your workforce, the equity, the inclusion. You need to look at your carbon footprint. You need to begin to look at the things that make your business sustainable. You got to look at the impact you’re making on the community. And I go, yeah, yes, yes, yes. But these are all based off of the assumption that I have a profitable company. And by the way, 96% of businesses aren’t profitable as it is. What advice would you have for the business owners that actually want to grow their business? He says, that’s not what I do. I focus on diversity, equity, community, recycling. And I’m going, what? And this is what he’s learned after a decade of college. How is it possible that you in two weeks can teach people how to grow a successful company when people in eight years, seven years do not know how to do it? Well, first of all, Clay, we’re always looking for great people. Great people that have the willpower to understand that knowledge without application is simply a hallucination. I think you say that many times. I’ve heard you say that. And it’s correct. So we find the right people. We bring them into our system. We interview them first before we even even decide to give them a territory. And we make sure that we’re a right fit. We’ve got to make sure that we’re right fit for them and they’re right fit for us. Somebody that has been in school for six years doesn’t have any application of the knowledge that they’ve been putting forth over the last six years or over the last 20 years, whatever the case may be, they may not be a good client for us, right? And we may turn those people down. But we look for people that are go-getters, understand that they should be doers, and do what is asked of them on a regular basis. And our process is pretty simple. And most of the time when people get in front of us and they decide that they want to join forces with Window Ninjas, they have already done their research, they have already done some sort of business or been in some sort of career that they have taken their knowledge and applied it to that specific field of work, and they want more. And so they typically have a great attitude. They definitely have a growth mindset. And we start weeding out the garden pretty quickly by just asking some really good in-depth questions and getting to know the person on the other side of the coin. I got to ask you this here. Again, I think it’s possible to fill our minds with general knowledge, knowledge you cannot apply, knowledge of, you know, windows, knowledge of cleaning, knowledge of cleaning windows, knowledge of Georgia, knowledge of South Carolina, knowledge of the geography, knowledge of Myrtle Beach, knowledge of North Carolina, knowledge of Florida, knowledge of Georgia, knowledge of all the States, the geography, knowledge of window cleaning, knowledge that the internet exists. Yet people don’t know how to put it all together into a profitable business. And so walk me through why, why isn’t just general knowledge key to achieving success? Well, I think you gain general knowledge just through going through everyday life, right, things that you may pick up at the grocery store when you interact with the lady that’s checking you out, or how the person, when you’re looking for an avocado that’s non-organic and you ask for some help, how that person at that store actually helps you and serves you and facilitates your needs without telling you their story about how grandma has got a bunion on her foot and they had to remove it yesterday from the hospital. We don’t want information like that. I just want the information of the avocado and where to find it as long as it’s not organic. So it’s really important that we find people that are really, really great. It’s really important that we find people that want knowledge and are good stewards of actually applying the knowledge that we teach them. We have found that the most successful people in our system do just that. And then we have found that the people that don’t last very long around here at Window Ninjas are people that fill their brains with useless information and can’t even apply that knowledge either. So let’s talk about the practical steps. If we go to windowninjas.com, walk me through step one, two, three. What do I need to do if I want to learn more about buying a Window Ninjas franchise today? Well, you can go to our opportunities page on our Window Ninja’s website. It gives you a full list of information, a whole host of info, all of the knowledge that you need to understand what it’s going to take to own and operate a Window Ninja’s, what it’s going to cost you, the time involved with that process. And you can fill out that form that’s on that page. And when you do that, it’s going to get emailed right over to me. It’s going to come across my desk. And then I’m going to pick up the phone and we’re going to have a one-on-one conversation. And that one-on-one conversation is going to allow you the opportunity to dive deep into what makes Gabe Salinas and Window Ninjas so great and how we can help you on the other side. Right. So we’re going to give you as much knowledge as possible. We’re going to give you as much information as possible. And then we’re just going to keep going down that road so that when you say yes, you want to open up a Window Ninjas franchise in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then we’re going to go ahead and get all the, the, the financial stuff done. We’re going to go ahead and get all the legal stuff done. And then we’re going to bring you into our system and we’re going to teach you and we’re going to love you. And we’re going to train you how to be a successful person and run a successful business. So you know, practical level, one of the questions that people are asking you right now, people that are reaching out to you, you’re at, you went to the trade show, you had a great result. A lot of people are reaching out to buy a franchise. What are the questions that people are asking you right now? The people that want to buy a window ninjas franchise. Um, first of all, they like the, the, the, the ones that are serious. We’ll start asking me about me. What, how long have I been in the industry? How long has when it has been around? Oh, um, what do you, what do you provide as a franchise or to the franchisees? And, um, and I love those questions, right? I’ve been in the industry for 32 years, Clay. I mean, I’m almost 50 years old. I’ve been in this since I was 17 years old. So, I got a little bit of knowledge about the window and pressure cleaning industry, right? And so, you know, plus I provide benefits. I always want to make sure that things are beneficial to the person on the other side, as well as our company. And, you know, part of the benefits is we run a really tight ship over here at Window Ninjas and we have a call center that facilitates the needs of all of our franchisees. So, our franchisees don’t have to have a brick and mortar business, they can run this business out of their home or they can get a storage unit, it’s very cost effective for them. We handle all their calls, we facilitate the customer’s needs, we schedule jobs for them, we set up quotes for them and it allows them to get out there and meet and greet people in their community, make great clients happy and be successful without having to take the full load of operating a window ninjas business. Okay, now as far as the cost, again going back to the cost, how much money did you say it was? $49,500 is the franchise fee, all in. You’re looking somewhere between your trucks, your equipment, service packages, things like that. You’re looking all in somewhere between $125,000 and $190,000 depending on what options you choose. Okay, and if someone were to finance that, like a car, you know, a lot of people that buy an oxy-fresh, they tend to get a business loan. If somebody gets a business loan, essentially you’re buying, it’s almost like you’re buying a couple of Suburbans, is what your car payment would be like, or in this case, your business payment. Talk about that, because I think a lot of people are leery to invest in their business. They’re willing to borrow money to buy a car they don’t need to impress people they don’t know, but for some reason they’re concerned about borrowing money to buy a business. Well, I would say, don’t be afraid to borrow money to us. Or a window in his franchise or any kind of business at all. You know, one of the cool things that I’ve done over the past couple of weeks, big success that we’ve had is I’ve got three different, three different lender lending companies right now that are willing to finance people who are interested in window ninjas and operating window ninjas business. We are in that sweet spot for most lenders, for most business lenders. Our investment is between $100,000 and $200,000 and most lenders that are willing to spend, willing to give loans out to new business owners, that’s where they want to be. The interest rates are great, the terms are great, and it’s much easier to do than an SBA loan. So if you’re interested in forming a winter business or maybe some other business as well, you got to make sure that you’re looking out for people who have already done the work as far as setting you up for success. So when somebody comes in and fills out the form and says, hey, I want to take over Tulsa, but I need financing. Great. Fill out the form, send me the information. I’m going to give you my guy. He’s going to get in touch with you. We’re going to get you set up. We’re going to get you the money. And then as soon as you get that money in your hand, you’re going to turn it back over to us and we’re going to set everything up for you and put you in Tulsa so that you can rock and roll. Again, it’s cash flow, folks. I mean, you’re borrowing money and theoretically you should be bringing in more money than your payment every month. And that’s how you cash flow that business. Again, to learn more, go to WindowNinjas.com. Gabe Salinas, I know you’re a very busy guy. Thank you for carving out time, sir. We’ll talk to you next week. All right, Clay. Hope you’re having a great day, buddy. Thanks. Bye. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah, so what we wanna do is we wanna share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process, and that has obviously the 411% shows that that that system works. Yeah so here’s a big one for you so last week alone our booking percentage was 91% we actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months or I’m sorry the first we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability, we’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success but that like is of the diligence and consistency and doing those and that system has really really been a big blessing in our lives and also you know it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense. Starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. use of services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from start ups go from start ups to being multi millionaires. Teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like Clay is, like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live. Here’s the house. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship. And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us just thank you, thank you, thank you, times 1000. The Thrive Time Show, two day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick walk on hot coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it.