Clay Clark | Entrepreneur | Rogue One – The George Lucas Story

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime 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’ve written 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. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we’re about to do. Hello, Thrive Nation. Welcome back into the conversation, the Thrive Time Show on your radio. It’s a Wednesday. It’s hump day. And it continues to be Patriot Day. The parade is over. There is still some pageantry in the air, but I was running it by the people there at 1170. I asked them, I said, is it okay, is it cool if we change the name of the show to the Patriot Time Show? And they said no, but I still hold out hope that that may happen. And I’m just feeling good. And if you’ll notice, I’m not wearing a Falcons jersey at all this week. I’m celebrating the Patriots and the really the barbecue from Oklahoma Joe’s, the world’s best barbecue by the way, that Dr. Robert Zellner had to purchase and bring to me personally as a result of losing the Super Bowl bet. But I digress. Z, how are you? Oh my goodness. You know, it’s just gonna be, I wonder how long you’re going to bask in the glowing of your victory. I just feel like, not only did we have a great game, but he threw me secretly through, secretly through for nearly 500 yards. The guy was just unbelievable comeback, most Super Bowls ever, best comeback ever, most yards, just the whole thing. It blew my mind and here I am on a Wednesday, four days after the Super Bowl, still just… I’m playing the crying game almost. I just can’t get it emotionally together. Any type of… Even just the word… Any words that start with the letter P take me to the Patriots and I get all emotional again. I’m trying to get it together. Well, I guess Brady established that he is the GOAT. I mean, greatest of all time. I mean, you know he’s still got some meat left on the bone. I mean, still a little chicken left on that chicken leg. I’ll give them five more years. Oh gosh, five. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Awesome. Now Thrivers, today, Inside the Box that Rocks, we always try to bring in some great Americans inside the box that rocks. We bring in entrepreneurs, Oklahomies who know what they’re doing in the world of business. And today, we’re so excited because we have a guy who’s a very successful business consultant. He’s also a speaker. Many people listening right now, you want to become a speaker, you want to become a trainer or an author He’s all three that he’s the trifecta. He’s a speaker. He’s an author. He’s a consultant. He’s a trifecta It’s like it’s like one horse Coming in first second and third all in the same race. It’s you don’t hear about it very often I’ll tell you this He’s the only guest we’ve had on the show that I could say almost is I mean, he’s kind of tied in my mind with Oklahoma Joe’s for being one of the best tourism draws to Oklahoma. Mr. Clay Stairs, sir, how are you? I’m doing fantastic, Clay. What I’m really enjoying here is that on this side, I do get to say that the Patriots, best comeback ever. Yes. But in the same breath, when I’m saying that to you, I have to look over here and say, you lost the biggest lead ever. Ever. You know what? I mean, think about it. I was daydreaming. They were the second, you know, the half time’s over. Lady Gaga’s done her thing, which I thought she did a great job. Yeah, she did a great job. I agree. And I’m sitting there thinking, oh, am I going to get burnt ends? Am I going to get baked? I’m just kind of daydreaming. And all of a sudden I kind of wake up, you know how you do, and you’re looking at the big TV and you’re going, no way. This is happening. This is not possible. As you were doing that, because I’m a man of huge faith for America’s team, I was starting to salivate, this is a medical term, I was salivating over the Oklahoma Joes and the burnt ends of the baked beans, knowing that we were right where we wanted to be. I’m the same way. I was going, oh no, it’s Tom Brady. It’s going to happen. It’s Tom Brady. Do not count this thing out. All right, now, Thrivers, today we’re talking about something that I’m excited about, something that I think the listener, you as a listener, should be excited about. This is the George Lucas story. The George Lucas story. Z, are you excited about talking about the George Lucas, the founder of the Star Wars franchise? I’m excited to be talking about anybody other than Tom Brady right now. I mean, I’m just being honest with you. Well, okay, let me get into it now. Here we go, here we go. So, George Lucas, he was born on May 14, 1944, and at age 27, okay, he made his first feature film, which was THX 1138. Have you ever seen that before, Clay Stairs? Have you seen this? No, I have not. Z, have you seen this? No I didn’t know anything about THX 1138. But that’s the thing that comes up in front of movies. You need to, if you guys a good chance to go on YouTube, this is something for all the thrivers to do today. One, you definitely go to Oklahoma Joe’s and get some baked beans, but two, just YouTube THX 1138. When you see this movie you realize, oh no, that was the worst movie of all time. It was bad. And to think that he was able to… During the break, you need to watch the video clips of this, because I’m telling you, it is so epically bad. You would go, how did he create Star Wars? What’s it about? It’s a science fiction movie he made. And basically, it’s having like android police officers. But the special effects were… It looked like I made them. You know, there’s third grade boys that are playing and they’re playing with cap guns and they’re pretending to be aliens and stuff. That’s about the quality there. It’s brutal. And so two years later, he’s going, okay, based off of the epic flop of my first movie here, I’m going to move on to my next one, which is American Graffiti. Now, have you seen that movie, Zig? Yes, yes. That actually was a hit. That was a good movie. That was a big movie. Yeah. Do you remember going to see it? I mean, Z, do you remember seeing that movie? I did see it. I saw it at a drive-in. Really? Yeah, I’m trying to remember when I saw it first, but I was 1973. I would have been nine. I know I didn’t see it at the movie theater, but I did see it later on. Well, I’ll tell you what. This is who was in that movie, just to kind of refresh the Thrivers memories. We had Richard Dreyfuss. Remember him from What About Bob? Richard Dreyfuss? He was in there. He was in the movie. He was in the movie. He was in the movie. to refresh the Thrivers memories. We had Richard Dreyfuss. Remember him from What About Bob? Richard Dreyfuss? He was in there. We had Ron Howard. You had Harrison Ford. You had a lot of these big-name people who went on to do some big things all in this movie. The movie did so well that he was able to now get a little bit of swag. See, that’s where I want to dive in here a little bit. As an entrepreneur, I’m listening right now, and let’s say that I’m 27 years old and I want to be a movie producer or I want to start my own business and I’ve had no traction at this point in my career. And then I finally get a little bit of money and I make a bad movie. So the first time that people say, finally, we’ll invest in your movie, we’ll go for it, and I bomb. Is that kind of normal a little bit to have a little bit of struggles early on in your career? I mean, if you’re 29 and you haven’t been a major success yet. Should you feel like an idiot? No, you shouldn’t. I mean, history is full of guys that the first stab at something, they were unsuccessful. A lot of very, very successful people out there failed the first time out. And then they could have said, oh, well, I guess that was my one chance, my one shot, and fold up the tents and go home. But obviously, George Lucas didn’t do that. Now, I want to ask you this, Clay, because you work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are people who have visions of being a successful entrepreneur. They say, I’m going to make my feature film. This film is going to be awesome. And Clay, I’m telling you what, if I get the funding I need, I’m going to team up with Francis Ford Coppola to make THX 1138. And this crazy movie is going to be super successful. And then it comes out and people go, oh, oh, that’s bad. Talk to me about how do you encourage entrepreneurs here, maybe in their 40s, in their 30s, they haven’t had any success yet, they’re starting to feel like an idiot. How do you encourage them? What advice would you have for the entrepreneurs out there who are listening? It’s great. I actually was talking with one of my clients just this morning about this. So it’s wonderful. So you teed me up really good. Were you talking to George Lucas? I was not talking to George. I was talking to the Falcons and trying to encourage them for where they were. Sorry about that, Z. But the idea here is that Robert Kiyosaki, I was reading a book by him. It’s like the nine things you need to do before you start your business, before you decide to be an entrepreneur. And one of the things he was talking about was going to his rich dad and saying, I’m being all frustrated because he had failed. And his rich dad laughed at him and he said, your problem is that you are not failing fast enough. You need to fail faster and you need to fail more. Wait a second, I thought you just said, he’s failed faster. And I have audio of what you just said, because I was trying to process what you just said. Let me. Is that what you just said? That is pretty much. Yes, I think that’s pretty much what I just said. So the idea here is how do I encourage somebody in the midst of failure? The idea is the four steps that Kiyosaki talks about is first of all you have to act. After you act you have to fail. Fail is a piece of the equation. And then you learn and adjust. But if you are afraid to fail, you’ll never act. You’ve got to act. Now here’s the deal, Thrivers. I want to encourage you. If you’re listening right now, I want you to get out a sheet of paper. Why do I always have to get out a sheet of paper? Why can’t I put it on an iPad? Fine. Get on an iPad. Why do you have to use an iPad? Are you sponsored by Apple? No, you can use any type of tablet, any type of napkin, whatever you have. But I want you to make a list on one side of the sheet of paper, on the left side of the sheet of paper, make a list of all of the failures you’ve had up until this point. And make a list of all of the excuses that you could have for not succeeding in the future. Go ahead and list them out there, okay? So maybe you grew up poor. Maybe you don’t have a lot of connections. Maybe the first business you had failed. Maybe you’re over the age of 40. Maybe you’re over the age of 50. Maybe you aren’t aware that Ray Kroc did not have any success in the world of business until age 52. So Z, how old are you now? I’m 52. Oh! So Ray, you would have been hanging around with Ray. I could open up a burger joint now. You and the Kroc. But think about that for a second though. Ray Kroc went on to buy the San Diego Padres and to build a business before he died that was producing over $700 million a year of revenue, which in today’s money would be like a five billion dollar business Wow and he did it all after The age of 52 it’s amazing and that gives you hope I mean so you’re not too old To not chase your dreams to not start that business. You know that’s what this shows all about clay Yeah, now Z. Well. I was 47 when I started my thing 47 He’s 7 years of teaching and then working as a camp director at 47 was when I started my thing. I’m just commenting. If you’re on Facebook Live, it’s hard to really picture the eye candy unless you’re on Facebook Live. If you’re on Facebook Live, you can see what I’m talking about. Did you feel like you were held back by your beauty? Did people not take you seriously? Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Well, that’s hard to do. Now I want to ask you, Zee, for anybody who is listening right now who says, I don’t feel good right now about my career because of my THX 1138 movie that I made. I mean, if you’re sitting across the table from an entrepreneur who has failed once or twice, what would you say to them? What kind of encouragement would you have for them? Just pack it up and go home. Oh, wow. You know, oh, I tell you what, there’s a lot of overpasses and cardboard boxes and you can, you know, build a fine, you know, fine home out of cardboard and, uh, you know, you might want to move somewhere a little warmer. No, I would say to you is get off that couch and make something happen. Today’s the first day of the rest of your life. So you know what? So many guys out there and so many women out there fail the first time, their second time, their third time. What does that matter? What does that mean? You know, you have a dream, you want to start a business, you’ve started a business, now you need to grow it. That’s why you’re listening to this show. We’re going to encourage you and we’re going to coach you up on how to do it. So hey, get in there. We’ve got lots of different ways to help you, Clay. You know, you can listen to the Thrive Time Show every day here, 12 to 2, Monday through Friday on Talk Radio 1170. Boomer. Second way is? We have an unbelievable workshop this month, February 24th and 25th. You want to mark your calendar. I’m telling you what, I don’t want to give you hyperbole, I don’t want to give you hype, but this workshop, if you just Google Thrive 15 Reviews, you can see some of the video reviews, but it will change your life. It will absolutely change your life. Yeah, so you come to the, it’s an in-person workshop. We have scholarships, so you can’t afford it. We don’t do any up-sales, and you get to meet other entrepreneurs, other people that are starting their businesses or have started and want to grow it. And you say to yourself, well I don’t have a business, but I’ve got an idea. Come to the workshop. We can help you take that idea and turn it into a business. We also have one-on-one business coaching and we have the world’s best business school available for you at thrive15.com. Now when we get back, we’re going to talk about how did George Lucas go from making his first successful movie into making Star Wars. How long did it take him to write that script? Stay tuned, Thrift Time Show. Alright, welcome back to the Thrift Time Show on your radio. We’re talking about George Lucas and how he was able to turn his entrepreneurial visions into the Star Wars franchise. You know, Rogue One, if you haven’t seen Rogue One, you gotta go check it out. But if you go to any toy store, in any Target, any Wal-Mart, you can’t escape the Star Wars toys, the items, the licensed products. If you go to the Disney store, it’s there. It’s the number one Disney attraction right now. It is a game changer, but it all started out with George Lucas making his first film, very unsuccessfully I might note, called THX 1138 at the age of 27. You graduate high school at age 18. He’s working on this first movie for nine years, and he comes out with it, and it bombs. So then age 29, this is 11 years after high school, he makes American Graffiti, and it does well. So then he says, I know what I’ll do. I’ll sit down, and what I’ll do is I’ll make a little movie called Star Wars. And so he starts writing this movie at age 29, 1973, after he has a little bit of momentum from this movie, American Graffiti. And Zee, I’m going to read this to you. You tell me, if I’m George Lucas and we’re buddies, and we’re getting together, do you like to do billiards? Do you like to play pool? Yes, I do. I fancy the game. Okay, so let’s say that I’m meeting you at some place to play some billiards, and this is what I say to you. Okay. Okay, so Zee, here’s the idea. Basically, it’s going to be a movie I’m working on. It’s called Star Wars. Okay. Now, by the way, you’ve seen my other movie, THX 1138, which is the worst piece of video made ever. You know, it’s still there. So I know that the movie I made, American Graffiti, was not based on space at all, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever done successfully. But anyway, so I’ve got this movie based upon space, and I’ve got this character named Han Solo. Okay, alright. And he’s a frog-like man. And the main character, his name is uh… came stock you look and uh… he basically uses the uh… dark side of the force which i like to call the bogan okay so uh… what do you think about my idea well i probably take and so on making my dashing kind of uh… you know gunslinger maybe you know use here’s the time he’s wrong he’s a large he’s a green skin monster with gills. I would say the star killer dude, I probably, you know, Luke, you know, did you talk about the dad? Oh, talk about Darth Vader, right? No, here’s the thing, so the Bogan is the bad side of the force, I call the dark side, the Bogan, and then I got Luke Starkiller, and I’ve got this frog-like man, who’s a, by the way, he’s a Karelian. Oh, um, yeah, I’d be sitting there shooting pool going, dude, what are you on? Now, hey, don’t interrupt me real quick. I just ordered some beers, and I want to get into the next part. This is the part that people are going to love. They’re going to line up to buy these movie tickets, all right? So here’s the deal. It’s going to also, I’ve got this guy, I’m calling him Chewbacca. He is permanently indebted to the frog-like man. And he’s over 200 years old. And he’s based upon this Alaskan Malamute dog that I had as a kid, and it’s going to be awesome. He’s huge, and he’s hairy, and he sounds like he’s yawning all the time. So you want a break or do you want me to break? No I think I need a break from your movie ideas and let’s play some billiards. So now I come back two years later after sitting down and having this disturbing conversation with you playing billiards. Now I say, so here’s the deal. I’m on my second draft of the movie. His new name is now Luke Stardkiller. And a couple years into it, I’m almost out of cash from my first movie. And I wanted to know, would you be willing to invest? You know what I mean? OVAR. I mean, it’s going to be great. Come on. Do it. Come on. I need some money. Please invest. No. No. I mean, you know, it sounds like a great idea, and I wish you the best. And I like shooting pool with you and hanging out with you, but I’m not going to give my hard-earned cash into that. The force has a mystical energy field. Okay, maybe now. It’s based loosely on all religions. Okay, it’s epic. I’m going to Weirdville. Okay, so that’s how it was though. The Bogan. It sounds like a fourth grader that he did something weird as a kid and now you named it after him. Oh, that’s the Bogan. That’s the Bogan. Some third grader’s last name. Billy Bogan. Yeah, he was in Milwaukee. Now, I hate to go back to this sound clip too often just because it’s a new one, but I really am excited about it. This is the thing. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are sitting down and you’re trying to explain your business idea to somebody, and this is how it sounds to the investors. You’re out there trying to pitch your idea to investors and they go, so tell me about your idea. And you say, Get the hell out of here. What in the world? You’ve never heard that? No, where’s that from? That’s your favorite actor, Adam Sandler. Oh, God. No, but I’m just saying that’s the thing. As a lot of entrepreneurs, though, we struggle to communicate with the investors because an investor has to have already had some success to have some money to invest, and you’re getting in front of them talking about your furry, wookie idea, and you’re getting discouraged that people don’t hear you. So I want to start with you, Clay. If I’m listening right now, and I have a great business idea, but the world just doesn’t understand the grandeur, the epicness of my idea, what advice would you have for the entrepreneur. Wow, I think that especially if we’re talking about a woolly character here on this, I think first of all, you’ve got to come from the standpoint of what is that investor looking for? Oh, boy. What is their dream? What are they wanting to find success in? And then if I can discover that, then my next piece is to engage and kind of align myself with what they’re trying to do and go, hey, I got an idea on how to help you get what you want. Well, here’s what happens is he’s trying to pitch it to people and no one gets it. So finally, one time one day during a pitch, he says, it’s kind of like Flash Gordon. And they go, oh, yeah, OK. Like so he had to just have that little phrase. It’s kind of like Flash Gordon. It’s kind of like Flash Gordon. And the thing about it is, could you imagine him on the show right now, Shark Tank, with those guys, how they would tear him up. He walks in there, you know, in a frog like outfit with a tall dude wearing a mop, basically. This is going to be my sidekick, Chewbacca. I’m a frog-like creature named Han Solo. It just wouldn’t go over very well. The idea is, Thrivers, you have to find a way to communicate your idea to people. They call this the elevator pitch. Oh, yes. You’ve got to find a way to say, like, for Thrive 15, people say, what is Thrive 15? We say it’s like the Netflix of business education. Anything you ever wanted to know to learn to start or grow a business, there it is. People say, what’s the Thrive Time show? We say, well, it’s business. It’s like business school without the BS. Right. That’s, so you’ve got to find a way to communicate with the capital. So what happens is people like the idea so much about Flash Gordon that they start to say, oh yeah, that makes sense. So he tries to raise money to buy Flash Gordon. Yeah. And what do you do? Seriously, he tried to do that. Yeah, no, I believe you. I mean, he’s a clever guy. And obviously, we all know the end of the story. He got her done, as they say. But I think that’s an excellent point, what you brought up there. A lot of times we say elevator pitch, and people are like, what is that? And I don’t want to gloss over that too quickly, because that right there is an important part in selling. And what I mean by that is that if you’re trying to explain, let’s say you’re trying to get someone gathered up. You want their business, you want their money, you want their, you know. Yeah, you want their coaching, their mentorship. Whatever. So whenever you’re trying to sell whatever you’re selling, if what you say doesn’t get a question back at you, you’re not doing it right. In other words, you want to start them on the first floor, why it’s called an elevator pitch, you start them on the first floor and then you take them to the second and the third and the fourth. So let’s say you sell life insurance. So someone walks up to you in a parking and says, what do you do? And you say, you sit there and look at this person going, I’d like to sell them life insurance. I’d like to be their insurance broker. You know, right? So you look at them and you say, will I sell life insurance? And then that doesn’t ask them, then they go, oh, okay, thanks. They take their beverage and walk away from you. Yeah. But you want to find a way to beg the question. What you say is you say, you know, I secure dreams. You what do you do? I secure dreams. Are you a mystic? I give people financial freedom. Are you a money tree? I take care of people’s families. What do you do? What? What do you do? That leads to the conversation. Oh. And then to the business. Oh. When we come back, we’re going to deep dive into George Lucas and the elevator pitch. Warning, you are about ready to enter the epicenter of entrepreneurship. We are broadcasting live right now from the left coast of the Arkansas River inside the beautiful Thrive15.com world headquarters inside the box that rocks, which is located right by where you are going to be on February 24th and 25th. And Z, why are people going to be here? Why is the listener going to be here on February 24th and 25th, my friend? Well now they’re just kind of curious. Is this really a real deal? Is this a thing? Are you really a person or is this just a computer generated voice thing? If you’re a computer generated, then computers can now generate perfection because you’re beautiful. Well, what happens is this. We started off at thrive15.com, the world’s best business school without the BS of course of course yep, and be more like we want more We want more we want to be able to Touch and feel and see what’s really going on and so we started these in-person workshops. It’s two days of power 15 hours of just awesomeness a lot of people wanted to kind of they wanted to hear directly from the Godfather They wanted to hear. You see, I got a story for you. Michael, what’s the story? The story is I got a business proposition. What is the proposition? It’s a deal you can’t refuse. Go ahead, tell me. I’ll give you my support. It’s a two day workshop. You can come and you can leave really smart about business and stuff. Do you get into the discussion of how to use a lead pipe to close a deal? I call it the think about the thing workshop. Oh, the think about the thing workshop. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. discussion of how to use a lead pipe to close a deal. I call it the Think About the Thing Workshop. Oh, the Think About the Thing. Yeah. OK. So it’s in person. You show up. You get, I mean, listen, folks, it’s hands on. It’s limited space. We just don’t pack out like hundreds of people. And what happens is you show up. You get to meet other entrepreneurs, which is kind of cool. You actually get to meet the team, which is kind of cool. And then you get downloadables, you get hands-on training, you actually get to learn the stuff. You know, we had a person the other day who bought a ticket and Victoria, one of our agents, talked to her on the phone, talked to this person on the phone, and they said when they Googled Thrive 15 and reviews, they were able to watch videos and they said when hearing what other people had to say about the workshop was very helpful for them. So I just encourage you, if you’re curious about what the Thrive 15 two-day workshops are all about, just Google Thrive 15 Conference, and you’ll find reviews. Just watch the video reviews, read the reviews. You can see. But we do get into sales, marketing, lead conversion, search engine optimization, accounting, leadership, management, delegation, time management, oh, social media marketing. Back to time management, which reminds me of time management because everyone struggles to manage their time. We talk about boundary setting, how to fire people, how to hire people. We talk about just everything you’ll ever need to know to start or grow a successful company. It’s all going to be discussed there at a two-day workshop. And now we’re back into the George Lucas conversation. Real quickly, one more thing about the workshop, right? Which I think is very important excited it which is very important and that is this show is here to help you start and grow Your business number one and number two Oh, you know Forbes says about 57% of you out there listening to have that little entrepreneur spirit inside of you And you want to start your own business, okay, so you say well, I’m not gonna start it tomorrow But you know what you can come to the workshop and you can get trained on the steps It’s like just like Clay was saying the steps that you needed to do before you start your business. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Did you know this? George Lucas described his first six years in business before mentorship as this. This is what George Lucas says. He did not come to our workshops, but guess who George Lucas’ mentor was? Anybody wanna guess? Who was George Lucas’ personal mentor? Anybody know? Yoda. Steven Spielberg. Oh! So Spielberg, there he got to be buddies, and Spielberg’s like, bro, you cannot launch the movie. If you see Star Wars before they finish editing it for like the fifth time. Move away from the Brogan. Yeah. He was about ready to launch it, and Spielberg, he’d been working on this for like two years, and Spielberg says, you cannot launch it like that. You need to have a professional soundtrack. And he says, well, who does that? And he’s like, well, my good buddy, John Williams. He’ll make the score for you That’s where the Star Wars music. Oh wow I mean epic music But this is what this is what George George Lucas said about his first six years in business before mentorship And drivers, maybe this is how you feel he says my first six years in the business were hopeless Hopeless hopeless there are a lot of times when you sit, and you say why am I doing this? I’ll never make it It’s just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job and try to survive. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. That doesn’t feel very encouraging, but to know that now where he is, and he said basically he was learning from mistakes, but he needed a mentor. We found that mentor in Steven Spielberg. His whole life changed. I’m just telling you, George Lucas has gone on to do fairly well for himself with a little mentorship. Fairly well. In a beloved movie series he created. I mean, as a young boy, I remember the first time I watched that movie, Star Wars, and it was like, wow. Do you know why he made the movie? I’m going to give you a notable quotable. This is what George Lucas says why he made Star Wars. He says, the reason I’m making Star Wars is that I want to give young people some sort of far away exotic environment for their imaginations to run around it. That is awesome! And you did it! That’s exactly how you would describe Star Wars. Yeah, and I have to tell you, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now, and you’ve had six years without success, maybe all you need is a little mentorship. Now, Clay Stairs is on the show today. He’s a business consultant, he’s a speaker, he’s an author. Clay, if I’m listening right now, and I’ve never had that mentorship, and I feel like I’m just not ever getting ahead. I’m just stuck. I’m just totally in the toilet of entrepreneurship. I hear people having success. I’m putting on my suit. I’m showing up at the networking events, but I’m just not having any success. I’m looking the part, but I’m not having any success. What advice would you have for them? This kind of goes back to your idea with the elevator pitch, too, with people kind of understanding what this whole mentoring thing looks like. That idea of a mentor is just not really embraced in our culture very much. One of the things that I like to talk to people about is that Luke Skywalker had Yoda. And Frodo had Gandalf. Yoda! Yeah, exactly. And Neo had Morpheus. And people start nodding their heads. Even Kung Fu Panda had that little white furry guy. I was right, he did. At this point, everybody’s nodding their head and I’m going, the question is though, who do you have? And it’s like, drop the mic. Drop the mic. People are just going, I don’t have anybody. I don’t have a small green creature named Yoda. I don’t have a furry white fluffy thing. All I have is the Brogan. That one, by the way, if you’re just now tuning in, that was what he called The Force before he changed it to The Force. Previously, it was called The Brogan. The third grade kid from Milwaukee, Bobby Brogan. Billy Brogan. Billy Brogan. That was not a good thing. He’s a bully, so Brogan is the bad side. I’m sorry, The Bogan. We added an R there somewhere. I got the R. Sorry about that. I think I know someone with Brogan. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers. If you’re listening right now and you’re going, okay, I already have a business plan. I already have a business that’s doing fine. I just need a little bit of capital. I need a small business loan to grow my business. Well, we are sponsored by an unbelievable sponsor, a sponsor called Regent Bank. These guys make capital accessible for business people like you. They understand what it’s like to start and grow a business and the struggles of it. And I will tell you, they’re one of the most pro-business banks in Tulsa. And in honor of them, I went ahead and wrote a theme song for them over the weekend. Ze, you ready for it? Oh, this ought to be good. Here we go. It might sound like a song you know, but that’s just because it’s so good. Here we go, Thrivers. Regenbank, Regenbank, Regenbank You see that and people go, wow, how did you? I feel like I know that song. Regenbank, and you do that for about 12 minutes. For about 12 minutes in a row. And when I sing it, I typically wear purple. And I’ll wear it to the platforms. And I’m starting to refer to myself as a symbol, no longer a name. You have a puffy, fluffy pirate shirt you wear to it. Nothing more melanin than a puffy, fluffy pirate shirt. All right, Thrive Nation, stay tuned. We’re going to learn more about George Lucas. Stay tuned. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to your Inspiration Station, your daily resource to learn how to produce more money. And why would you want to make more money? Because you might want to have time freedom, financial freedom, or maybe you’re one of those crazy people. And 57% of our population, according to Forbes, 57% of you want to start or grow a successful business. I’m going to tell you there’s two reasons out there why you want to go out there and start a successful business. Reason number one is, wow, the kind of person you have to become to build a successful company. The personal changes and transformations, Z, that you have to make to become a successful entrepreneur, that’s inspiring. It is, and I’ll tell you what, we talked earlier, and we’ve been talking about the show, we’ve mentioned this often, but you’re gonna learn one of two ways. You’re gonna learn by mentoring or by mistakes. And we’re all about learning the mentoring part, learning to have a mentor, to get a mentor. You know, we teach you, once you get that mentor, what you’re trying to get from them too. And that’s what we do on the show. We’re trying to help you with the steps. You know, all those steps you have to do to before you start a business when you’re starting the business and then to grow The business that’s what we’re here. You were your resource lean on it lean on me That’s unbelievable I’m gonna play so I’m gonna I’m gonna get that queued up here in a minute I think that would cute up because that’s what that’s what we’re all about I’m a brother Call me brother when you need a hand. We all need… That’s unbelievable right now. Now there’s a second reason why you want to start or grow a successful company. I’ll tell you why. Well, there’s… Okay. The second reason. If you go to Oklahoma Joe’s for lunch, it’s about $8.50 for a great lunch there. Yes, yes. And the thing is, rumor has it, it’s not free. Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So the rumor has it, if you want to go ahead and get the finer things in life, get some time freedom, and get yourself to where you can afford your insurance, no, I’ll just pay with hope. I’ll just pay with my positivity. No, you’ve got to pay with cash for your health insurance. Do you want to accept glitter? I’ve never actually tried that again. I’ve got a bag of glitter here. I think that’s currency, isn’t it? It is. And actually, if you want to invest in the Denari, the Iraqi Denari, the Iraqis are starting to use glitter and Denari. Both of them apparently have the same value right now if you’ve bought a lot of it. Man, I don’t need to start a business because you’re not buying a lottery ticket. That’s the move, Brent. You’ve all got some Iraqi Denari. You know, Denar. It’s Denar. Clay Stas, I want to ask you this question. I want to ask you, what percentage of your income should you be investing in lottery tickets? Is it half or 80%? Because I was reading online, I thought the half’s about, you know, more conservative. I want to diversify. I’m also getting those quick lotto instant scratches, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, well, you want to make sure that you’re investing a lot because if you win, you make a lot. Oh, yeah! I mean, that’s the thing. So you don’t want to go low, you got to go high. Go high or go home. Go high or go home. Because if you win, think about it. That should be a shirt that the state of Colorado endorses. Go high or go home. Go high or go home. Wow. Okay. I get the connection. I get it. Now here’s the deal, Thrivers. We’re talking about George Lucas and how George Lucas went on to become the successful tycoon that we know today. The guy who’s worth billions of dollars. How he built Star Wars. Well, first, step one, age 27, he builds THX 1138 and it bombs. An absolute failure of a movie. I mean, horrible movie. Awful movie. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube and it’s gotten to a point where he no longer even cares. It’s just up there. The whole down. It’s up there. It’s not a thing where they, you know, a lot of times if you have a great piece of music up there, they’ll flag it and you can’t listen to it. Like, you can’t find Prince songs on YouTube or Garth Brooks because they ban those things. He’s like, fine, just have it. It’s just terrible. I got enough money. Then he makes a second movie, American Graffiti, age 29. The movie does well. At the age of 29, he’s making some money. So now he takes two years of his life to make this movie called Star Wars. Now when he’s making Star Wars, what happens is he finally writes the script and he has to go out and pitch. And every time he goes to pitch it, every person he pitched it to says no. They say no. It’s crazy, Z, but he has a movie featuring a very tall, hairy, dog-like man, a guy named Luke Starkiller, a guy who uses the force, and he has his previous sci-fi movie was a complete flop. His special effects skills were lacking, and everyone said no. That is crazy, Z. It’s crazy. The thing about it is, I think George Lucas’ story in his life is inspiring because it’s not just, hey, a guy did this and he just rocketed to success. You talk about a huge failure to start off your career. You almost don’t want to put that on your resume. You’re out pitching people for American Graffiti to get some money, to get people to act in it and you’re gathering up them. You’re trying to do this movie and they’re like, so what have you done before? What? Is your name George Lucas? No. I was… Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What happened? What? Is your name George Lucas? No. No. Victor Morris? No, no. That was Billy Lucas. Did you come up with the bogan? No, no, no. I did not come up with the bogan. I did not. That was someone else who came up with it. For those of you who are just tuning in, the bogan was what he used to call the force. I can’t believe it. That was my second cousin on my mother’s side. He’s also named George Lucas. It’s just a coincidence. I feel like we have a lot of listeners in Boston, and I just talked to one of them this morning and I’m just telling you, I have a feeling that sounds like a Bostonian was influencing him. I’m like, dude, you need to call the force, the Bogan. The Bogan. Just the Bogan. All right, so here’s the deal. So he finally, out of exasperation, he’s been trying to pitch this movie for four years, Thrivers, for four years, he’s trying to pitch this movie. So this is what he does. He goes, okay, I’m out of cash. I’ve got to do something. So Z, this is what he does. You want to hear what he does? I want to hear what he does. He takes the… if you’re watching on Facebook Live, we have a wall over here called the Boom Wall. Boom! And if you’re looking at it, it’s probably what? Is that 25 feet tall? 20 feet tall? I mean, how tall is that thing? Yeah, about that. Okay. So he gets a wall about that size. You can Google this and find it. And what he does… It’s about that big….is he pays an artist to… yeah, if you’re on Facebook live it’s about that big it’s not that big actually but the thing is if you’re listening right now that’s also very helpful it’s that big but the thing is he finds a 25-foot wall he this isn’t even a building he owns he hires an artist and says I want you to paint the Millennium Falcon to wow the producers and potential investors and he hired Ralph Angus McQuarrie to paint this. Angus? And imagine what it would be like to be Ralph and going, so you’re a broke guy who’s made one good movie and one bad movie. You’ve been working on this script for four years with no discernible success and you want me to take all of your available funds and you want to commission me to paint the Millennium what? Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. And so I have a feeling that when he talked to Ralph and was trying to explain his idea, I got a chance to watch the movie about this and read about it, but he said he was getting frustrated because he was trying to explain to Ralph what he wanted and Ralph wasn’t understanding. So Z, I have audio of George Lucas trying to explain this to Ralph. We were able to get the audio. It was tough to recover it, but here it goes. This is audio of George Lucas speaking to Ralph Angus Macquarie explaining to him how to paint a mural on the wall. As he said, he said, I always get them when I go, hut, hut, hut! And then, hut, and it’s on four. Now watch him, he’s going, hut, hut, hut! See, but the guy got his guy, Keith Van Horn, number 78. At a certain point, you didn’t know what John Madden was talking about. Yeah, of course not. At a certain point. At a certain point, I guess you would understand what he was saying. But all I’m saying is that he was not having any luck even explaining it. So then he ends up having to basically camp out at this wall. He’s not making any income, by the way, and he paints this thing. So anyway, he finally gets it painted, and he calls up this guy Ladd, who told him no previously numerous times. He’s a Fox executive. And he says, this is Alan Ladd Jr. He calls Alan and he says, Alan, please come see the mural. And he’s like, I’ve already told you no to your crazy idea. Quit calling me. You’ve got to see it. I’m telling you, if you see the Millennium Falcon, and again, you’re on the phone, you’re going, what is that? Just get over here. So he walks in and the story goes, Alan walks in and sees it and he goes, oh my gosh, I get it. Wow. Did he saw the scope and the size of it? He goes, that’s what it’s gonna look like. I get it, it wasn’t cheesy. So George Lucas says that Ralph saved Star Wars. Ralph Angus McCrory is the reason why Star Wars got made was that mural. I mean, that’s the thing, I mean, it’s pretty incredible. That is pretty incredible. But you know what? Hats off to George. I mean, he took a flyer on that one, right? Absolutely. I mean, it was a deal where he went for the… He’s swaying for the fences. And so this guy, Ralph, delivers. He gets money. And basically, he knew that the movie would cost $18 million for the film. So he asked for $7.5 million. Okay. So he’s not getting enough to do the movie. What he did is he realized that he didn’t have enough money to make the movie, so he cut it into a third. That’s why it starts off with The New Hope was the first movie. Because he realized, I don’t have enough money to make the whole thing the way I want it to. He wanted to start with the original movie, but he’s like, this can’t happen. So he cut it into three parts, and the only person who knew was him. He didn’t tell people. He took his script and cut it into three parts. And that’s why Star Wars, if you’re new to the Star Wars world, you’re always like, why am I watching prequels and then I have to go back and watch this and that. Why are they all shot out of order? It was because he felt like this was the only thing he could afford to do. And so it took two months just to begin construction of the sets. And then they determined, this is what he’s telling his staff. He says, guys, the good news is your sets look good, but the video technology needed to actually shoot this movie currently doesn’t exist. So I’m going to start a separate company called LucasArts, and we’re going to invent the technology needed to make the movie. Well, that’s yeah. And why not? And why not? You’ve got to have the technology, right? Star Wars, during the break, or Thrivers, during the break, during the break, Google real quick, go to YouTube and type in Darth Vader original voice Darth Vader’s original voice. It is hilarious. Stay tuned All right, Thrive Nation green country, Oklahoma’s people out there in Tennessee. Welcome back to the Thrive Time show today We are talking about how George Lucas turned his entrepreneurial visions into reality And for those of you just tuning in I’m telling you what he makes his first movie Which is a complete flop at the age of 27 called THX 1138. It was a sci-fi movie and it was weird and it was bad and if you watch it on YouTube you’ll regret having watched that movie. Then at age 29 he makes American Graffiti and has some success with that movie. That was a very successful movie. Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford, success is happening. And so he says, okay I’m now gonna move on to my big project. This is what he wants to do. He wants to make Star Wars. And so he says at age 29, this is what he said, I’m quoting him, he says, I worked on it eight hours a day, five days a week. So from age 29 to age 31, he’s writing the script for Star Wars. And nobody wants to invest in the movie. So he takes every dime he has, he pays a friend, pays the guy he knows, Ralph Angus McCrory, to draw a mural of the Millennium Falcon, and he goes back to all the investors who told him no. And finally, Alan Ladd Jr. with Fox, the guy who had previously told him no, a Fox executive, gave him the green light and said, move forward my friend. How much do you need? And George said, well, I need $18 million to shoot the movie. And he goes, we’ll go ahead and give you $7.5. He goes, sure, no problem. So he cuts the script in a third. So now he cuts two thirds of the script out and here we go So he’s starting to make Star Wars and he realizes Z that after me after spending two months They haven’t shot anything by the way. This is on in movies at the time Nobody was taking two months to make a set before they shot anything So it’s two months in and he hasn’t shot anything and he’s made the sets and he goes guys Here’s the deal I’ve determined that the technology that we do need to do to shoot that that that scene is the scene from the first Star Wars where the X-Wings are going down that trench and they’re shooting and they’re trying to blow up the Death Star. Coach Calvert, have you seen that scene from Star Wars? He realizes it’s not possible unless they invent technology. And they go, we’re not going to give you a bigger budget, buddy. And he goes, oh, it’s okay. So he starts a company called THX and he starts a thing called LucasArts. And basically he starts LucasArts and raises money on another deal to raise money for LucasArts to create the technology for a movie that Oh, by the way, he says guys. Here’s the deal Z imagine. He’s saying this to you. Okay, so it’s two months in We’ve been shoot. We’ve been making the sets and I haven’t shot anything yet The technology I need to make the movies currently not available available but I’m getting investors to build that on a separate deal and We’re gonna need to shoot this thing in Tunisia on North Africa so that we can get the right look for Tatooine. Isn’t that cool? I’d be like, can I get my money back? And Alan Lett Jr. said the whole time, he was like, the only saving grace he had is he knew that he was all in it. Like he knew that he had skin in the game and he was emotionally committed. And so I want to ask you this, see, I want to ask the same question to Coach Calvert of Score Basketball. I want to ask you the same question here. How important is it for the entrepreneurs listening to be all in when it comes to their idea to be 100% sold out to their Star Wars? Well, you know that question once takes me back to the, well it’s taken me down to the farm. You see the farm, I love the farm analogies, farm stories, agrarian society of yesteryears Yeah! The agrarian society of yesteryears, when we all rode around on horses. Could you move my truck, Z? We all ate organic because that’s all there was. You know, you didn’t have a choice. Well, in my book, Business Pig, chapter two deals with this very same topic, and that is, and I jokingly call it my farm logic, but it is kind of, it’s to be the pig at breakfast and not the chicken. What does that mean? What does that mean? Why do I got to be a pig? The pig, you see, gave his life and is fully committed to breakfast. In other words, if you have bacon, i.e. meat, the pig had to give its life. The chicken, though, he just laid an egg. So he’s just kind of, you know, he’s not committed. He’s like, I’m a little involved. I’ll give you an egg. Have a good breakfast. I’ll see you tomorrow kind of thing you know so that’s the thing about it Is if you’re going to start your own business? Nobody’s going to care about it as much as you do and if you don’t care about it with all your heart It’s gonna be tough to To get to make it happen Do you know how they knew that George Lucas was all in it the you know some of the signs that they knew that he was? all Committed to making this movie he had a skin in the game skin in the game in other words his own money Yes And they asked him they said hey we want to pay you Typically the way I worked in Hollywood back in the day is you would get paid an upfront fee to direct your movie and you Get a small percentage of what the movie made and this is what he says he says No, I want to Reduce that as much as possible so that I could go ahead and keep the rights for the sequels and the merchandising. And they go, sequels? Like other movies? Like you actually plan on finishing this one? And he goes, oh yeah, I’m going to make probably 9 to 12, and I just want to go ahead and get the rights to that and all the merchandising. You guys don’t really need to worry about paying me so much. I just want to make sure that I have the rights for the merchandising. Well he was brilliant because back then, I mean, it was like that was nothing. They were laughing going, we got him! And then what’s happening is as he starts putting more and more capital in, pretty soon they go, we have to finish this. Yeah. At that point you’ve got to finish it. This movie has to get out there. So Coach, I want to ask you, when did you go all in with your business, Score Basketball? Because obviously today you’re one of Oklahoma’s top basketball training facilities. You’re actually the largest training facility in Oklahoma for basketball, teaching kids how to play competitive basketball, improving their game and skill. When did you go, okay, I’m all in, this is what I’m doing full time, I’m starting score basketball? I was fortunate because I got fired from a job. Really? And I’d worked there for 10 years and it was just time to move on. And so we call it being a wandering generality. A wandering generality. As opposed to a particular specific. I don’t think your schedule will match what it needs to be if you don’t buy in. Like today, I’ve already been on this phone for three hours. I’ve already worked out a schedule of what I want to get done today. Every minute is given towards what I feel like I’ve got to do to succeed. Until you get to that point where it’s do or die with your schedule, you’re just not going to plan yourself that way. Well, I have a little notable quotable from George Lucas. So now he’s making the Star Wars. He’s in Tunisia. He’s filming. He’s way over budget. He’s trying to invent technology. And one of the people pulls him aside and says, Hey, man, the movie’s not going to appeal to this whole audience unless you make this change or that change or this change. And this is what he says. He says, right or wrong, this is my movie, this is my decision, this is my creative vision, and if people don’t like it, they don’t have to see it. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Now, if you think about your optometry clinic, your optometry clinic, Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates, right there by the Woodland Hills Mall, it is very different than that of the typical optometry center. It’s a whole different game. So when you decided to build this, I mean, when you started to build the monstrosity after you’ve been in business for a few years and you decide, I’m not going to ask you how much you spent on it, but it is a big facility. When you decided to go all in with that undertaking, when did you have that realization, I can’t stop this adventure even if I wanted to. I’m all in. I mean, when did that happen? Well, I built that building in 2000. It started in 99, finished up in 2000, and I started seeing patients there. But I had had for nine years the success that I built upon of my own businesses. And then, of course, I stepped out and I said, I’m going to own my own building. I’m going to buy some land. I’m going to do that. But I think there was more of a telling thing just a few years ago back when I was getting back into the auto auction business. And I’d bought 15 acres and I was building, you know, we were pouring cement, we were building the building and, you know, I had all my team kind of assembled. I loved the decor team and I went from that, I hope this works, to, oh my goodness, this has to work. This is how I feel like it sounds in the mind of an entrepreneur when it happens. This is how it starts. You’re going along and you go, I put a lot of money into this. It’s almost like a, it feels light and fluffy at that point. It’s kind of like I put money into it and you’re so excited about the new idea. Oh, this is going to be great, all the potential. But then all of a sudden this happens where you basically realize, I have to make this happen. This epic has to happen. I had a successful business that was going and then I built what I built. You’re sitting there looking at it and your friends are looking at it and your family’s looking at it and everybody’s looking at it going, dude, really? You’re going to go there? I’m like, well, yeah. After a while you get a few doubting, negative naysayers in your life and they are like, man, you’re over building, you can’t feel that. You know what you have to do? You have to just get away from those people as quickly as possible because you go for that point where sometimes you get to doubt yourself and you’re like, oh my gosh, maybe I did build too much. Maybe I did. Maybe I did take too big a bite of that elephant. Maybe I won’t be able to. You know, that’s one of the things I love about our one-on-one business coaching that to me is pretty exciting. I was talking to these guys today in Boston. It’s called Wave Media, Wave’s Media. It’s plural. Wave’s Media. They’re in Boston. Boston. They listen faithfully to the show. Boston. Oh, good. And here’s the deal is, these guys, one, it’s three days now, it’s Wednesday after the Super Bowl, we’re still talking about the afterglow of the Patriots’ victory. But after we spent the first 45 minutes talking about that, and I’m just kidding, but then we’re talking, and the thing is, they have a great product. They have a great product, and they are just as qualified as anybody else to have success. And so I feel like some of the coaching, I’d say 80% of our business coaching is helping people build their website, optimize the site, all the technical stuff, how to build a performa, how to build a handbook, how to deal with sales funnels, scripting, those things. But then there’s about 20% Z that kind of feel, you know, a little bit like this. It’s like you have Mick, you know Mickey if you remember Mickey Rockies a coach So I’m an entrepreneur listening right now, and I’ve just been up against the ropes. I’ve been beat up I’m in the fourth round my nose is is beat up, and I’m going Rock up me just rock me. I’m not Adrian. I’m Nick. I’m Nick What would you what would you say for somebody who’s just almost punch drunk at this point? They’ve been just beat up there in that corner. They’re feeling dejected. What do you say to them? I say, hey, listen, circle on your calendar February 24th and the 25th. You’re like, okay, that doesn’t make me feel any better. There’s more. What you need to do is you need to get your happy self to Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you’re already in Tulsa, guess what? You’re already here. And you need to come to the headquarters of thrive15.com because those two days we’re going to have our in-person workshop where we will personally, I’ll be there, Clay will be there, and you’ll be there. And you’ll be there. And you’ll be there. And you’ll be there. Because those two days we’re going to have our in-person workshop. Where we will personally, I’ll be there, Clay will be there, and we will personally pump you up. We’ll be like, uh, hands in front. We might even wear like sweat outfits. And, and… We are here to pump you up. We are here to tell you it’s going to be okay. Listen to what I say, and you know what I have to say later. Is that okay? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, well we better get busy because the 24th is right around the corner And I I don’t feel adequately bulked up to do Hans and Franz now drivers Let me tell you this when you come to the workshop you can expect it starts at 7 a.m.. It goes to 3 p.m. And there is such a really a morning person can I can I can roll in about 1030? I have audio of you encouraging our last group of people at the workshop when we had one guy He said I I’m not an early person. I’ve I’ve audio of what you said to him. Oh yeah, what did I say? Just do your job! Don’t try to make too much out of it! Just do your job! It’s your job! And your job is to get up and be here at 7 o’clock in the morning! You’ve got to do it. Now Thrivers, I’m telling you what, if you’re listening right now to the George Lucas story, why we share these stories with you is because so many of us learn through stories effectively. We say, man, if George Lucas can go through it. I can too. Well, we come back, we’re going to get into C-3PO. Apparently he’s having some issues. So they’re finally out there in the desert in Tunisia. They’re starting to shoot the Star Wars movie and C-3PO is having some problems. You understand that C-3PO was a man who was physically locked inside a metal suit of armor that he couldn’t get out of. And it’s in the desert. So he’s like overheating and he’s literally burning himself inside a metallic suit. Oh no. We’re going to get into the details of how they deep fried a man accidentally while shooting the Star Wars movie in Tunisia. Did you know Zee? I did not know that. I can hardly wait to the rest of the story. Stay tuned. All right Thrive Nation, welcome back into your inspirational conversation. We’re just 16 days away from the Thrive Time in-person two-day business workshops. They are the world’s best business workshops. If you haven’t heard about them, make sure you google Thrive 15 reviews. Read the reviews. Watch the video reviews of actual conference attendees. It’s a game changer, and we want to help you change your game for the better. But today we are talking about the George Lucas story and how George Lucas went from a struggling director to the guy who built the Star Wars franchise. And so if you’re just tuning in, you can want to go to thrivetimeshow.com to listen to the rest of the podcast so you can kind of hear what you missed. But basically he’s funded. He’s now in Tunisia. He’s got a whole crew of people. These are full time people. And he has this guy named Anthony Daniels, who’s an actor. And he says, Anthony, I want you to put on this suit. And he goes, what suit? He goes, you know, put on the it’s a metallic suit, and I’m going to bulge it in there.” And he’s like, you mean like medieval, how they would torture people, they’d put them in an armor and they wouldn’t let them out? You mean like claustrophobic kind of thing? And he’s like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So he gets in the suit, which I would never have done, but he’s in the suit and the way it, the suit is so tight, they can’t hear him. And they’re in the desert where it’s consistently over a hundred degrees and it’s windy, so there’s sand everywhere, so they can’t hear him. And on two occasions they accidentally left him by himself by a sand dune. And on one particular occasion, the story goes, that a piece of the suit had broken and it shattered and it stabbed him in the foot. So he’s profusely bleeding. He’s in a suit, a metal suit, and it’s over a hundred outside, which means it’s like a sauna in there. I mean, have you ever, Coach, Coach Calvert of SubScore Basketball, have you ever been in a sauna too long? Oh yeah, and the old gyms. I’m old. The old 70’s gym, no air conditioning, it was hot. You’d have those ceiling fans that would blow the hot air around. So here’s how I picture it. Whenever I go into a sauna and I’ve been in there a little too long, I always know I can just open the door and get out. He’s stuck in there. And so imagine the morale of your crew when you have ten main actors and one of them has to be in a suit all day. And by the way, you forgot about him twice. Then you have R2-D2, who is a midget in a small robot suit, and he claims that people keep forgetting about him and when he gets knocked over, no one picks him up, so he’s just laying there in his suit, stuck in there. Oh, just even thinking about it makes me cringe. And to keep the cost down he decided to only hire actors that had no experience and Harrison Ford was the only exception really. So Carrie Fisher obviously her mother was a famous actress but he really wanted to avoid people. Here are the people who tried out for the part of Han Solo. You can watch all these people on YouTube by the way. They tried out and he goes nope you’re too famous. Here they are. Kurt Russell no he tried out said he can’t do it. Too famous. Nick Nolte. Nope. Too famous. Sylvester Stallone. Yo, uh, yo, Chewbacca. Christopher Walken. Ah, he’d been, ah. Burt Reynolds. Jack Nicholson. Al Pacino. They’d, no, no, no, no, no. So he decides on Harrison Ford. So all these rookie actors, OK? And Harrison Ford, who he knew through his movie, American Graffiti. All these rando actors. And he won’t tell them the script of what the part is going to be so no one has ever read the whole script Because he knows that people will mock him and they won’t think it’s like they won’t they won’t take it seriously So he refuses to tell them the script until the day of No way are you serious? Yeah, so like they said like when when Luke found out that his father was You know Darth Vader that was the spoiler alert if you ever watch the shows, I mean, alright, you know. The first day that he found out that Luke, that Darth Vader was his father was when they shot that scene. Yeah, now that I’d heard. So he was like, they kept doing this where he just wouldn’t, he just wouldn’t feed him. Now, this is the audio, this is the audio, this is the live audio, this is the recording of Darth Vader before he edited the voice. Okay. And he didn’t tell anyone he was going to edit the voice. This is just how it sounded on all the film. Here we go. Start tearing this shit apart piece by piece until you’ve found those tapes. Find the packages of this mess. I want them alive! That didn’t sound too scary. And they’re going, well George, you know, people, some of the high level producers started asking him, hey, how are you going to make that voice sound menacing? Because that guy does not sound very tough. And he goes, I’ve got a plan. He didn’t have a plan though. He didn’t have a plan. So what he did is he ended up taking a lavalier mic and throwing it inside his scuba diver oxygen tank. And that’s where that voice comes from. The Darth Vader voice. Very, it’s a cool voice. So the thing is, you got to admit, that’s pretty cool. So drivers, if you’re listening right now and you’re going, I’m surrounded by a man who I’m trapping in a metallic suit. I’m in the desert in Tunisia. I’m quickly running out of money. And I have a midget actor who doesn’t understand why he has to be in the robot suit and by the way the character every time that he was supposed to make noise the character was supposed to do it so this midget guys going they didn’t have like a mechanical thing yet and no one knew they were going to replace it later so you can imagine what this would be like to be an actor thinking you’re making a movie that’s gonna be horrible and you’re going now what was the other movie you made before the other sci-fi. Seriously, imagine what it would be like following this guy and he goes, oh yeah, I made THX 1138. Here’s the thing. If you watch that movie online, it is the worst movie of all time. I can’t oversell how bad THX 1138 was. The morale was terrible. He talked about how one of the things that he had to do was to try to get the actors to take it seriously because they didn’t think the movie would ever work. So I want to start with you, Coach. When you built Score Basketball, did you ever have a situation where maybe everyone around you thought you were delusional and that your idea wasn’t ever going to work? Oh yeah, they put me up in upstairs and I had this, you know, the old cheap Walmart goals. I had this little cheap Walmart goal. Oh nice! And they made me practice on that for a while. Was it the Rydell? The Rydell brand? Oh, it was, you know where you hit the rim and it bounces really high? The Lifetime brand. Yeah, it was really nice. Yeah, nice. So they put me on that. And once I got full, then I told them, I can’t do this anymore. I’m leaving if you don’t take care of me. Then they built me a gym. Wow. Now, I want to ask you this here, Z. Have you ever, you know, got pretty far into a project, and let’s say with the auto auction as an example, where you realize that the momentum in the building is not positive? Or do you realize maybe you haven’t lost faith, but everybody else thinks you’re crazy? Oh yeah, I’ve been there. I’ve been there before, and it’s kind of like with the auto auction. At some point, people are kind of going, oh, you should lay asphalt. You shouldn’t do that. Why are you building so big? What are you thinking? You’ve got so much competition here in town and and hey just because you did it before a little successfully you years ago the games change you know and so at that point you kind of you know you do have those moments we look in the mirror and go am I crazy and you just you just soldier through you just soldier through is what you do kind of like c-3po did that that’s locked in a metal suit in the middle of a desert forgotten I’ve been not built I’d be like, oh man, that just makes me almost feel claustrophobic even right now. I’m not in a metal suit. Now, Thrivers, I want to tell you this. This is a quotable from Harrison Ford. They’re asking him off set, they’re asking him, hey, what do you think about the movie? This is what he says. He goes, I think it’s kind of weird that the princess has weird buns in her hair. That’s his quote about the movie before they released it. I mean, it was just like nobody on the… Harrison Ford said it was hard for him sometimes to not laugh when shooting because they thought This is what George Lucas has to say about it. He says this, You have to find something that you love enough to jump over hurdles and break through the brick walls. Break through the brick walls. What a great analogy. Talk about entrepreneurship. Isn’t that what it’s about Z? Breaking through the brick walls? Absolutely. And you may say to yourself, yeah, but how do I do that? What do you mean, Rick? I want to be successful. What are the steps I take? Well, I’ll tell you what. If you want to know the steps to take, we’ve got four solutions for you. One, go to thrivetimeshow.com, find the podcast, find the conference. Two, thrive15.com, the world’s best business school. And this just in, in-person, real-life, one-on-one business mentorship. It is the best mentorship on the planet, and because of the way we built it, it’s seven times less expensive than almost any other program. Stay tuned. More about George Lucas and his success story, Thrive Time Show. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back inside the box that rocks. I’m broadcasting here via the magical microphone, and I’m always honored to have a guy who’s an optometrist turned entrepreneur turned tycoon. It’s Dr. Robert Zellner. And I’m going to tell you this, I mean this in kind of a nice way. I don’t mean this in a weird way. It’s probably going to come across wrong, but have you ever seen the movie Aviator? Where Howard Hughes just understands so much about the way the world works that it’s overwhelming for him and he kind of blows up. He just kind of is like, ugh. Howard Hughes was a genius. He was so far ahead of everybody else in film and aviation. Every niche he went into he was so far ahead. You’re kind of like that except you haven’t blown up. You go into the auto auction space with no real knowledge of that niche and then you just make it happen. You go there and you decide, hey, you know what? I’m going to team up in a medical business and you have success there. Then you say, hey, I’m going to go from there. I’m going to go and get a ranch and raise competitive horses, one of which I believe is still on the road to the Kentucky Derby. Is that correct? That is correct. Yes. And so you seem like you are a little bit ahead of the game. And like business has become, I wouldn’t say easy for you, but I would say it’s become simple for you. Would you agree that business is now a little more simple at this point for you? Not easy, but simple. Well, you know why I learned the secret What’s the secret? Give us the secret to your horse racing riches I know the secret. What is it? And you want to know it does it involve do you want to know it? Oh, we want to know it the secret is All the all the you can I don’t care what you’re doing in business. They’re all the same formula. They’re all the same formula? Yeah. And you know what? Here at Thrive Nation, we’re going to teach you in person all those different steps, give you a book that outline all of them. The boom book that Clay wrote, which is an awesome book by the way. 13 Proven Steps on How to Start and Grow Your Business. Because you may say to yourself, oh well, you know, you had a DJ company, you’re an optometrist, you’ve got a sleep center, you’ve got this, you’re doing this. But I want to start a pizza company. I want to sell tennis shoes. I want to, and you’ve never done that. I want to brag, you mentioned a pizza company, I want to brag. We have Thrivers all over the world, one of which owns a pizzeria, and they are booming just because they implemented the Google optimization strategy and the group hiring process. The process where you interview people and you fire people that won’t perform. Yes, yes. And they did that and now they have an all-star crew of people performing. Their whole business has changed by just implementing two of the moves that are in that book. And so I’m telling you, if you’re struggling right now, or maybe you’re just not growing at the pace that you want to, you’ve got to get out to our two-day, in-person Thrive15 workshops. February 24th and 25th is the next one. Get all the information you need at ThriveTimeShow.com or look for reviews from people just like you who have written reviews about what they’ve learned by typing Thrive15, space conference, and you can read the reviews. And we’re talking today specifically about how George Lucas overcame almost every kind of adversity out there to build the successful Star Wars franchise. So now we’re in Tunisia. We’re in the desert. We’re in North Africa. We’re filming. George Lucas is filming. He’s over budget. He’s running out of money, he’s uh… Nearly killing some of his actors. Yeah, because he’s locked, the guy who played C-3PO is locked inside a metallic suit in the desert where it’s 100 degrees and it’s so tight he can’t speak, he can’t be heard. And so he’s like, guys, let me out! Guys! And he’s screaming, you can imagine what he’s feeling, just screaming, let me out! And so he’s in there just like having a sauna, he’s sweating, and then Harrison Ford is going, why does Princess Leia have the weird buns in her hair? That’s so weird. He’s starting to have heart problems. He’s starting to have, literally, he’s having heart failure. This is what he started doing when he was directing. This was the thing, all the actors there, Coach Calvert, you’re going to love this. What feedback do you think, because he was directing, right? He’s directing the movie. What tip did all the actors, they interview the actors afterwards and they say, what acting advice did George Lucas give you? If you could just speculate, what was the tip that he gave all the actors on the set? He wasn’t even listening. They would say, what do I need to do to make this scene better? He would yell the same thing over and over and over because he was just exasperated and tired of explaining. What do you think he said? What do you think, my friend? He’s in Tunisia, over budget, North Africa, out of money. Z, what do you think? I think he probably yields something like, uh, just, uh, I don’t know, but I’m curious. No! Now you got my curiosity. This is what he said. I want to know now. This is what he said. Faster, more intense. Faster, more intense. Because he was out of money, and he wanted to get the freaking thing done. Of course, that makes sense now. So now he’s age 33. He’s been working on this movie for like 5 years, okay? And check it out. He finishes editing the movie and he sits down with his mentor. By the way, if you don’t have a mentor, you’re not going to have any success. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. I don’t want to brush over what I just said, but I want to underscore the profundity. I want to underline it verbally. Wait, wait, wait. What if I, you know, what if I don’t want a mentor? You will lose I’m just going to just learn from mistakes I’m gonna make mistakes after mistakes after mistakes after mistakes and you know what I’ll figure it out eventually I was in business for 15 years, and I knew I needed help after 15 years I finally got help 15 years and then boom and now you’ve been putting up with us for a long time now six years six years He’s been putting up with me unbelievable that the tenacity he has here tenacity. Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal thrivers This is what happens is he’s supposed to release the movie on Christmas of 1976 and he shows it to the only man in his life who is his mentor and he hadn’t become a full-fledged mentor yet But it’s Steven Spielberg That’s a pretty good mentor if you’re gonna pick one by the way and Spielberg was you know starting to have success with his career Okay, he was a little bit ahead of George Lucas at this point. And he shows him the speeder scene where Luke Skywalker gets in that speeder that’s hovering over the desert. He shows it to him and he goes, you’ve got to re-edit the whole movie. This is awful. Oh no way. Four years into it. And he says, you have to start over. And he goes, yeah. He goes, your editor’s awful. You need to have music. My friend John Williams, perhaps you could convince him to make a movie. He’s the one who made the Star Wars, the legendary… John Williams directs music. He composes music while watching the movie. So he watches the movie before there’s music, and then he composes it. So he composed it based upon Darth Vader. That’s how he did it. But anyway, it’s crazy. He sees music. That’s what John Williams says. He says he sees music, and that’s how he makes it. But long story short, he says, you’re going to have to re-edit the whole thing. At this point they’re totally out of money. So he goes, well what do you mean I need to re-edit? He says, I think you need to re-do the whole thing. Long story short, the final movie that you saw contains only 30% of what was in the first edit. So 70% of it was just gone. Oh my goodness. Complete re-editing. And so there’s a scene in the movie where the sand people are going, you’ll see in the first movie where they’re fighting Luke Skywalker, they didn’t have any good footage, so Spielberg made them just shoot the same, use the same footage twice. And so if you watch that scene, and they did the sound effect backward and forward, the same scenes, they were just like, dude, there’s no good scenes here. There’s no good scenes. What do you mean? We were in the desert. You know what? It’s just amazing that this movie was made. I mean if you think about all the failures and all the the unsuccess that he had leading up to this point right now in the story it’s kind of like wow it’s incredible how he just fought through all this. And here’s the problem is that his director wasn’t ever going to get it and that’s what I want to talk about when we come back. When you have a system and you’ve been told by your Steven Spielberg this is how you do it this is what you need to do. And you realize that the guy who’s editing your movie, who’s been with you for four years editing your movie, doesn’t have what it takes to get to the next level. And you realize, oh no, I have to replace a friend or an employee or a valued team member or this thing is going to fail. And so he’s forced with this dilemma, am I going to replace my friend or am I going to stick with this movie that’s not going to work out? We’re going to have you, Zeke, kind of coach us through what to do when we realize that our director is not the right one to make our final edit of our Star Wars. Stay tuned, it’s our time show. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the George Lucas focused conversation. We’re talking about how George Lucas overcame nearly every adversity possible to build the Star Wars franchise that we know and love today. But the thing is, Thrivers, if you missed the earlier parts, there’s so many good nuggets in there. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Hear the rest of the episode. It’s a game-changer. But here’s the thing. George Lucas now finds himself, he’s been working on this project for four and a half years, and his good buddy Steven Spielberg, his first real mentor, to look at the footage says, George, this is awful and you need to do a complete re-edit. He looks to the left, he looks to the right, and he realizes that his editor, a guy by the last name Jimpson, okay, so it’s J-Y-M-P-S-O-N, Jimpson, he realizes that Jimpson isn’t ever going to get it. He’s talked to him about it over and over and he realizes, man, this guy’s a good dude, but he’s not going to get it. But wait a second, he’s got so much invested in this guy. I mean, four years, he’s got the vision. He’s been doing it. I mean, that’s… They’re probably buddies. They’re… by now, you’d think so. Four years. They went to the desert and back. They went to the… went to the… They’ve been together long enough. They’ve been together long enough where he can say, you know, Hey, I remember when we started this. Yeah. Four years. Yeah. He’s probably one of the few guys that got it. Unlike all the actors laughing, going, this is a joke. I mean, he, he got the thing. And so this is what happens is he realizes it’s not going to work so he replaces him with Paul Hirsch, Richard Chu, and because he needed someone to oversee to make sure it was going to get done on time, his wife at the time. So Marshall Lucas helped edit the final edit of Star Wars to the specifications of Steven Spielberg. You know what’s so powerful about that? You know the thing that you’re just glossing over? What is it, my friend? So powerful. Oh, come on, give it to me. So powerful. Give me the power, I’ll pump it up. How many people along the way with George Lucas said, that’s a ridiculous idea, that will never work, shut it down, save your money, go make American Graffiti Part 2, do something else instead of this epic star western thing that you’re doing. But you know what he said to them? This is my deal, I’m going to do it my way, and get out of my way right that’s what he says that’s what he says okay now now what happens why all of a sudden did someone say to him that’s horrible redo it and he listened to him what you know why cuz the guy was telling the truth and well the other people were telling the truth too right I mean think about somebody knew the way it had gone the way the mentor had already done it there you touched on something. It was his mentor. So someone he highly valued and when he said hey scrap 70% of your movie, right? Oh, ah and you listen to him get rid of your editor Who’s your friend and your buddy and been with you for four years and all that get you know? You need to you know, we hit the reset button. I’m looking at Spielberg and saying oh, you know what? Thanks for the advice buddy. But hey, this is my vision and this is what we’re doing and we’re going forward with it. I have something I’m going to say right now that it’s definitely not going to be what the Thrivers want to hear. But I have to make sure that you hear it, okay? If you implement, let’s say you’re an entrepreneur right now and you have no business systems at all. So your business is basically just you and a skill or you and a product. That’s okay. If you can sell something, that’s good because you’re in business. Now once you build your systems, once you build your processes, once you’ve hired a coach or a mentor to help you build the systems, you will probably have to fire everybody. No, you don’t put that. I’m driving, I’m coming back from lunch, I’m listening to Thrive Time Show, I’m getting pumped up, I’m excited, I’m listening to George Lucas’ failures. You don’t want to. And I’m like, you know. You don’t want to, but this is what happens is there’s something called habit. Okay. And people say, well, this is the way I always did it. This isn’t how it used to be. And so you realize that you’re having the same meeting every week going, hey, could you make the call? Can you preach a little bit on this? I will. Okay, okay. Here’s, okay, I am ready. I’m getting myself emotionally geared up. Here we go. Okay, let’s get my preacher ready for preaching. Here we go. All right, survivors, if you are tired of having the same conversation about the same topic every week with your team. You’re saying, are you making those calls? And they say, I will try to remember to make those calls. I’ll try. And you say, are you making those calls? I’ll try. And they say, I will try to make those calls. And you said, Hey, did you fill out the checklist? And they say, I will try to fill out the checklist. And pretty soon you realize that nothing’s going to get done until somebody gets fired. I’m talking about fired. From the root word fire. Fired. Here’s the deal. Certain people cannot be inspired and those people must be fired. I hate firing people but I’m just telling you what, every single time I go into a business, every single time, every single time. You just said hyperbole. You said every single, yes, every single time. Years ago I was working with a mortgage company and I’m in the meeting for like the fifth time and the lady goes, I just feel overwhelmed. I never get a chance to call my leads. So here’s what I did one day. I did a super shady thing called, I will call the leads myself. So I had my team, we called the leads. When the leads came off the website, we just called them. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. And I pulled up on the agenda and I’m meeting with the owner. And I’m meeting with the lady who refuses to do her job. And I said, Hey, owner, did you guys call the leads this week? And she goes, Oh, I didn’t have a chance. I had so much work. It’s so overwhelming. And I said, I did. She goes, What? I said, I took about an hour and a half of my time yesterday, and I called all the leads, and I have nine appointments for you. Nine. Not quite ten, but nine. I set up nine appointments in an hour and a half, and because I actually picked up the phone, I dialed and smiled, which is why I do not think you should work here anymore. And as the outside consultant, he had given me, he had told me, hey, if you need to have some coming to Jesus talks, you can do that. I give you autonomy. And I’m just telling you, I see it all the time. And so, coach, you see it in basketball where a player, you’re a basketball coach, you’ve trained some of the best players out there, and you see a player that’s used to not hustling, he’s used to not going hard to the rim, he’s used to settling for the jump shot as opposed to going into the lane there, drawing a foul. How do you, eventually do you have to have either an intense conversation or a confrontation to change a player’s habit? I tell them they need to quit and take up golf because golf is a really easy going sport and they can be lazy. So that’s why we have to, that’s why I told so many golfers, they’ve all came to SCORE and you told them to quit, is that the deal? Yeah, a great golf program here. No, but seriously, you have to be real, don’t you? That’s what we’re known for at Score, is we tell you the truth. We’ll tell you you’re too slow or you don’t work hard enough or you need to quit being a… We call them a drama queen, where everything is such a huge deal. And I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here, but I will tell you this. Many of you are listening right now, you grew up where you played a sport and when you lost the game, you still got ice cream and you still got that third place trophy and someone still told you you have potential. But you go out there and you start a successful business, or you try to start a successful business and you don’t sell anything, let me tell you what, zero rounded up is still zero. You’re not going to make any money. Why are you being so mean? I’m just telling you it’s a win or lose game. It’s a deal where in business, if you don’t deliver, you’re out of the game. So if you’re listening right now and you’re going, man, I don’t know how to manage people. I can’t get my people to execute. You don’t have to fire every single person and you don’t want to, but you have to create this thing called accountability. And when the Patriots won the Super Bowl, one of the things that I loved about the whole game and watching the game is that Bill Belichick is constantly, he’s known for saying this, the team wears stocking caps that say this, they have sweatshirts that say this, he says this all the time, he’s painted it all over the weight room, he’s obsessed with it, and this is what Bill Belichick says over and over and over again. Just do your job! Alright, don’t try to make too much out of it! Just do your job! That’s the whole thing, do your job. And so I’m telling you what, you’ve got to hold people accountable. When you do it, check out what this produced for George Lucas, the fruits of this. When the movie comes out, he’s super nervous, he’s worried about it, and then when the movie gets out, this becomes the number one selling movie of all time. The film grossed over $513 million worldwide. And during the original release of the movie, 513. So today’s money, that would be, I don’t even know what that would be, but adjusted to inflation. I mean, the movie was a mega hit and he didn’t give up hope and he held onto those merchandising rights and the rights to make other sequels. And so now he’s a billionaire and now we know the rest of the story. But here’s the final notable quotable Z I want to read to you from George Lucas. He says lay it on me. The secret is not to give up Hope it’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side Z It’s a powerful statement And you know what the what the one of the key statistics out there which that I just hate by the way I hate this and we’re going to do everything we can to eradicate this number but eight out of ten businesses that start up fail they fail they fail you know and the thing about you say well what why why do they fail the for a number of reasons I mean there’s all kinds of reason we go through the list of why they fail but I’ll tell you this is that when a business succeeds yep they followed the 13 steps that we teach you in our workshop. There’s 13 steps, yes. At a two-day workshop, we will teach you how to get to the top of Google. If you’re on your computer right now, just type in Tulsa basketball camps, and you’re going to find Coach Calvert and his wonderful company, Score Basketball, right there. So you have to learn search engine optimization, you have to learn sales, you have to learn marketing, leadership, customer service, you have to learn all of that. We teach all of that at the two-day workshops. Yes, but you know what? One of the things I hear the most that drives me crazy, because, you know, just call it what it is you can look crazy. It’s people’s head around the time I don’t have the time I’m trying to watch the voice every night. I’ve got the reruns I’ve got a watch all the my DVRs getting stacked up with shows every come on Netflix puts out a new movie like every 30 minutes trying to stay on top of that. It’s just frustrating I don’t have the time we teach you time management. We teach you the secret of getting things done Yes, there is we are purposeful. We have handouts we give you. You can actually use your hands and do stuff while you’re here. We have whiteboards. We have curriculum, role-playing, training. You can ask questions. It’s the Thrive Time workshops. It’s two days. They’re 15 hours of power. Get all the info you need at thrivetimeshow.com. And if you missed the beginning of today’s radio show, you want to hear the whole George Lucas story, go to thrivetimeshow.com. And remember that caring is sharing. So just share that podcast. It’s a great way to get people to know you. And if you’re not a fan of the radio show, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com. And if you’re not a fan of the radio show, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com. And if you’re not a fan of the radio show, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com. Remember that caring is sharing. So just share that podcast with a friend. And I’m telling you what, it might just make their day awesome. See, as always, 3, 2, 1, boom. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth. Wow. Who will be presenting. Now, we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some real estate sort of things. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a hundred million dollar net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind Nine Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He’s inspired me listening to him talk and not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches, so he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers, so you got to come learn from him. Also, let me tell you this folks, I don’t get this wrong because if I get it wrong, someone’s gonna say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine, he’s gonna be coming, you say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t want to get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan. 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes! Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup. But I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27th and 28th. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where’s it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow in jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th and 28th? Who? You! You’re gonna come. Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can just get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… Have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting up shows day after day. And now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast and he’s traveling all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th, primetime show, two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to get in, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show business workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas and countless big-time super successful entrepreneurs. It’s gonna be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrive timeshow.com. James, what website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com. James, one more time for the Ford Enthusiasts. ThriveTimeshow.com. Everything rides on tonight, even if I got three strikes, I’ma go for it. This moment, we own it, eh. I’m not to be played with because it could get dangerous. See, these people I ride with, this moment, we own it. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. 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. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, octa non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t – what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. First of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. You know more than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey, I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. 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. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and 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. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business, whether it’s marketing, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the roadmap out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the roadmap out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference like motivated me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. They’re stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working, and it’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition is going to come eventually or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. 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. This is our old neighborhood. See? This is, uh, 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 been 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 4 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. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the drive time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The Atmosphere plays office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key. Marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing, and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me, and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things, and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purpose for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone.