Clay Clark | Entrepreneur | The 5 Keys That Separate Professionals From Amateurs

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 hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a 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 three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Boom, boom, boom. Welcome back inside the room, the audio dojo of Mojo. It is a thrive15.com Thrive Time show, where we talk about business school without the BS. Essentially we teach you what you need to do, what you need to know to make your wallet grow. And today I’m gonna be joined inside the box that rocks with a man who rarely gets a mic time. It’s the guy who is our producer of the Thrive Time Show, Sam Parker. Sam, how are you doing, sir? I’m doing great. I slept great this morning. My wife, she got to go to the gym. And when I woke up, I actually checked because I did not hear her move. Really? I never heard her leave. Well, she just used a sneak attack. What time did she work out this morning? She got to the gym about 515. All right. All right. Well, here’s what we’re talking about today, Thrive Nation. We’re talking about professionals versus amateurs. Basically, drifters versus doers. Let me give an example here. A professional versus an amateur. Let’s talk about the game of basketball. Sam, do you watch basketball at all? Do you care about basketball or football? What sport do you get into? I only watch when the thunder is on, but only if I’m around a TV that’s got it. Okay, but you watch the thunder. Yes. Okay, so as an example, professional basketball, there’s a vast difference between a professional basketball player and an amateur basketball player. Oh, yeah. Huge difference. I mean, there’s a different I remember playing high school and When I was I played up until the sophomore and as a sophomore I was I would say Competitive I wasn’t Great by any by any measure But there’s I remember just you know Wanting to be able to start and I was able to start on the starting five on different teams I was on but then when you went to from high school to college, I mean, when I watched Division One basketball and I watched the Earl Roberts University basketball players play, I remember Kyan Brown was a six foot eight, I believe he was a six foot eight player from Alaska who got very little playing time while at ORU, but he would come into the open gym where basically average dudes, amateur guys could play basketball, pick up games, and he would come in and just destroy us. And here he was, not even a starter really on the college level, and he just beat the heck out of us. And many of the guys he beat the heck out of were pretty good high school players. And the difference between a good high school player and a Division I basketball player is vast. And then when you think about the difference between somebody who’s okay at the Division I level, and the difference between them and then a starting professional player, it’s just a huge difference. And the great thing about the world of business is that when you play professional sports, what separates the pros from the amateurs is that the pros typically have incredible athleticism and a great work ethic. I mean, that’s what separates them. They have an unbelievable athleticism and a work ethic. When you get to the pro level, you can’t just get by just off athleticism and talent. You really have to work at it. But the great thing about business is that in business, you don’t need supreme athleticism. You don’t have to be an ultimate athlete or be born with supernatural singing talents or the ability to dance or the ability to play basketball or football or baseball. You don’t have to be born with these athletic skills. You can just develop them. And I would even argue if you are a parent right now and you want your kid to become awesome at a sport, I believe most kids, if you work with them young enough, they can develop to be awesome at almost anything. And I’ve seen this at SCORE Basketball. Coach Calvert, we have him on the show all the time, but he’ll work with a kid who, I remember there’s one kid at Bishop Kelly High School about a decade ago, he’s working with this kid, and the kid was riding the pine all the time, he never got a chance to play, he’s always sitting on the bench. He came in to score basketball, he’s I believe an eighth grader, and he ended up starting his junior and senior year and went on to play at the college level as a result of just focusing and becoming as close to a professional as he could be. I mean, the intensity of the training and the workouts the preparation that coach Calvert put this kid through really Separated him for being Somebody who just you know was playing basketball because it was fun and somebody who was dominant and so today we’re talking about What’s the difference in the world of business between a professional and an amateur? Between somebody who’s a real doer they get stuff done and a drifter and I have distilled I’ve studied successful people for years. I’ve read as many autobiographies as I can possibly consume. I’m always reading them. I just finished reading Larry Bird’s book called Drive. Phenomenal, phenomenal autobiography. You know, but I’m always reading one. Every week I’m firing through a different one. But there’s a notable quotable that I’m going to read to you, the thrivers. And Sam, I’d like to get your feedback on this notable quotable. So I’m gonna read it to you, and I’d like to have you kind of unpack what it means to you as a listener. So here we go. This is from Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich, which is the number one self-help book of all time. He’s the author that I named my son after, and he is the guy who was Oral Roberts. You know, Oral Roberts, the televangelist who started Oral Roberts University? He is Oral Roberts’ mentor. He was his mentor. So this is what he says. He says, A Carnegie or a Rockefeller or a James J. Hill or a Marshall Field, for anybody who doesn’t know these names, these were the wealthiest people during their lifetime, the most successful people, accumulates a fortune through the application of the same principles available to all of us. But we envy them and their wealth without ever thinking of studying their philosophy and applying it to ourselves. We look at a successful person and their hour of triumph and wonder how they did it, but we overlook the importance of analyzing their methods and we forget the price they had to pay and the careful and well-organized preparation that had to be made before they could reap the fruits of their efforts. So Sam, you’ve seen Dr. Z. You’ve been around success. You’ve been around this office. When you hear that success is possible, anybody can achieve success if we’re willing to study their methods and their best practices. What’s kind of your thought on that? I mean, do you believe in that? You’ve been around a lot of successful entrepreneurs now. You’ve obviously helped to produce the Thrive Time Show for quite a while now. Oh yeah. Do you believe it’s possible for anybody to achieve success? I believe anybody can as long as they’re willing to put in the work. Nowadays with Facebook, Instagram, anything like that, we see snapshots of people’s highlight reel. We don’t get to see the background of how you started your business or how people get success. And I think like with this here, nobody stops to actually ask questions. They’re like, ask for advice. How did you get there? How can I do what you did? So you’ve worked here long enough where you probably understand five or six big epiphanies, game-changing, needle-moving moves that every thriver could, if they applied it to their own business, it would change their life. I’ll give you an example. One is search engine. You now know how to get to the top of Google, correct? Oh, yeah. Can you explain in layman’s terms to maybe some of the listeners who think that maybe getting to the top of Google is based upon luck or upon buying ads. Can you explain to them roughly from your perspective how you get to the top of Google if you want to get to the top of Google? I think it’s whoever pays Google the most. No, I’m just kidding. No, it’s actually very simple. It’s just like if you were to name something in your computer, it’s based on like whatever has the most relevant content for whatever keyword you’re using. Whoever’s got the most keywords in their back links, videos and all these different things that Google requires in each article on the backside of your website. I mean, it’s really easy to learn and do. You just have to know how to do it. And I know I put you on the spot by asking. We have checklists around here for how to do it. But just as an example, Thrivers, if you want to get to the top of Google, step number one is you have to have a website that is canonical compliant. That means you’re following the Google standards. That’s step one. And if you don’t know how to do that, you just email us to info at thrive15.com, info at thrive15.com. We’ll run a battery of tests on your website and we’ll show you what you need to do to fix it. That’s step one. Step two is it’s whoever has the most reviews. So you’ve got to make a Google map and get the reviews. If you don’t know how to make a Google map, go to google.com forward slash my business and you can set it up or you can email us info at thrive15.com, we’ll show you how to do it. Or you can get out to our next in-person workshop which you can book your tickets to thrive timeshow.com just go to thrive timeshow.com and you can book your tickets to our two-day in-person workshops. We’ll teach you how to optimize your map, how to get the most reviews. Move number three is whoever has the most content, the most words, you have to have the most content. It’s not luck, it’s a grind. You have to have the most words, you have to do it. And the fourth is it’s the most mobile compliance. Now most people don’t want to break it down to that level of detail and to really think about that, but that’s how you do it. Another question here for you, Sam. So again, number one, number one, is that if you want to get to the top of Google, right, you learn that system and I’m just telling you, if you own a bakery right now, if you’re a photographer, if you’re a real estate agent, that alone, that move right there, if you implement getting to the top of Google, you can make millions. Millions! Millions! I don’t understand. I want to help you Thrivers. I want to hug you. I want to help you. I don’t understand the concept of watching television and watching TV shows and watching Netflix when you could just sacrifice some of that time, not time away from family, but time when you’re not really with family, you’re just drifting along. You could take those hours and invest them into optimizing your site. And when you get to the top of Google, you can do whatever the heck you want because you have copious amounts of cash. That’s a move. That’s a thing. Move number two, though, is people always ask, Clay, how do you find time to get stuff done? I have five kids, right? We own multiple companies. People ask, well, how do you find the time to get stuff done? Sam, typically, when do you see me arrive at this building? Around 3 or 4 o’clock every morning oh yeah and you know what you know what’s going on there drivers nothing else there’s no traffic my my kids are awake yet I don’t have questions and I’ve called of distractions I can just focus on this thing called meta time where meta means from the Greek word above where I can focus on proactive things not reactive three things in between the hours of three and six, there’s unbelievable amounts of productivity that I can get done. Sean Copeland, he’s the CEO of Regent Bank, guess what time home he gets up? The same thing. We get up previous. You know, the thing is, it’s hard to get a lot done when you’re asleep. And the thing is, is that as a culture, as a society, we get told all these different things. I would recommend you talk to a medical doctor and figure out how many hours of sleep you need, but you need about six hours of sleep. You know, maybe you need seven hours, maybe someone listening needs eight, but let’s say you need six hours of sleep. If you go to bed at 10, right, and you get up at 3, that’s five hours. So if you get up at 4, if you go to bed at 10 and get up at 4, that’s six hours. If you need eight, then you can sleep until 6. But Thrivers, I’m just telling you what, today we’re going to teach you the specific moves, the things that you need to do to become a professional. Now move number one is preparation. Everybody, if you want to become the best at what you do, you have to prepare. There is no substitute for preparation. You know, Bobby Knight, who is the famous chair throwing basketball coach who had a basketball team team he coached there in Indiana that won year after year after year and all the players graduated as well and he says this notable quotable he says the key is not the will to win everybody has that it is the will to prepare to win that is important so if you want to win I’m talking about if you want to win in the world of business you’ve got to prepare and we come back I’m going to talk to you about a specific example of preparation and it has to do with speaking events. And I’m telling you what, I’ve done so many speaking events all over the world and when I do speaking events for big companies like Hewlett Packard or Maytag University or O’Reilly’s Auto Parts or whatever the name of the company may be, Valspar Paints, I could go on and on listing off these companies. But when you do a speaking event, the audience will know immediately when you step on the stage whether you prepared or not. So when we come back, we’re going to teach you about the art of preparation. And to get those tickets for the next in-person workshop, go to thrivetimeshow.com. Stay tuned. We’re going to show you how to prepare to become a professional in the world of business. Alright, Thrive Nation, I get it. Life is not easy. Life can be tough, life can be hard. Life is hard. A little fun factoid for you out there. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former United States Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year and the father of five human kids. But I’m a human, right? I’m a dude. And so as a man, as a guy, as a person on the planet, you are going through something right now. We’re all going through something. In fact, the only way to not go through something is to die, right? So this year, my dad passed away from ALS. It’s Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s basically a disease where over time, your body gradually atrophies, you lose the ability to use your limbs, and then you die from suffocation. Does it sound exciting? Does it sound fun? No, it’s awful. My best friend died in a car accident. My son was born blind. But you know who gives a crap? Nobody gives a crap, because at the end of the day, you have to become the successful person that you want to be, and no one can do that for you. I mean, no one gives me a hall pass. No one came up to me and said, hey, because your dad is going through this personal situation, you don’t need to pay this bill. Hey, because you’re going through this situation, right, because your best friend died in a car accident, guess what, you don’t need to prepare for the next entertainment event that you have booked. No one came up to me and said, hey, because your son is born blind, you do not have to entertain for the wedding that you’ve signed up for. And I just struggle to understand the mindset of these morons who are on the planet who will send me text messages who work in some of our businesses and will say, hey, it’s my birthday. Can I take the day off? No, because you’re already committed to do what you’re supposed to do. And I don’t give a crap if it’s your birthday. They’ll say, hey, you know, my best friend passed away. Can I take off today? I’m not a mean, barbaric person, but if your friend died at no point, does that allow you to just take off vast periods of time because you’re not feeling good? If you want to take off time, that’s OK. But the consequence of that is that if you take off a day of work every time you don’t feel good, you’re never going to have any momentum. You know, Jerry West, the NBA Hall of Fame basketball legend, the basketball player, the general manager for the Lakers back then, he said, it’s hard to get anything done if you only work on the days you feel like it. And I’m going to be real with you. I don’t feel like it about 20% of the time. There’s about 20% of the time where I don’t feel like it. You know, today I got up, I worked out, I planned out my day, I got everything laid out today and I came in and it was a tornado of three specific bad things that all happened at one time. Pew, pew, pew. They all come in and it was like I’m entering, it’s like I was entering a mind blender. Three specific issues. And they’re all related to people making poor personal choices in their life and they somehow want to take the day off as a result of them making poor choices. Now I have some options here because as owner of Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge or Make Your Life Epic, our PR firm, or maybe you own a different business, maybe you want to own a business. I guess when you go to Southwest Airlines, you know, you get you you get ready to hop on the plane, you grab a seat, and they go, Attention passengers, one of our pilots made some poor life choices and decided not to come into work today. If they did that, how often would you fly? I mean, if you went into Whole Foods, and they said, Attention to Whole Foods customers, we’re gonna be closed today because Clay is having a rough day. I mean, no, you can’t do that. So in the world of small business, for whatever reason, people think that crap is okay. But it’s not okay because when you take off all the time, when you only work on the days you feel like it, you will not have success. So if you want to have success, you need to continue taking action on a daily basis. On a daily basis, you have to prepare, right? Prepare. You know, Malcolm Gladwell is the bestselling author of a book called The Outliers. The Outliers. Sam, have you heard about The Outliers? Have you read The Outliers? Do you know anything about this book, The Outliers? I do not. Okay. Well, The Outliers is a book where, and I highly recommend you read this, by the way, where he studies Bill Gates, you know, the Beatles, basically people who are awesome. And he discovered that all of them have invested 10,000 hours into becoming awesome. So somebody, let’s get out a calculator real quick here. Okay, 10,000 hours. So let’s just get out a calculator. Okay, Sam, you got a calculator ready to go, buddy? Yep. Okay, I’m pulling up. Radio listeners, I apologize that listening to somebody use a calculator is not the most exciting thing in the world. We’re going to take 10,000 hours, and Sam’s doing it with me, and we’re going to divide that by, let’s say that you work 60 hours a week as an entrepreneur. Then it would take you a hundred but thirty weeks, but thirty eights full-time Yeah, according to Just see what others there’s research or studies out there fast company that report Inc. Magazines done one Forbes you name it the average American employee Is only working about 32 hours a week and they only work about 41 weeks a year Because of all the time they call in sick and all the holidays and all the jackassery which they buy into which repels wealth on a consistent basis. We’re going to take 166, okay? That’s 166 weeks you would need, okay? And we’re going to divide that by 52, so we’re going to take 52. So now it would take you 3.2 years at working 60 hours a week to become awesome at anything. And the reason why we have business owners that come to, that call me from all over the world and say, Clay Clark, can you help me grow my business? And I’ll say, well sure, how did you hear about me? And they’ll say, oh, the guy at UPS referred you. Or the guy at O’Reilly’s referred you. Or the guy at whatever referred you. And the reason why they refer me is because we’ve generated results for a long time. And the reason why we’ve generated results for a long time is because I have obsessed about search engine optimization, as an example, for thousands of hours. And so now it’s not like it’s luck, it’s more of a science at this point. It’s become intuitive, it’s become an art, but there is no shortcut. So if you’re listening right now and you want to become awesome at something, step one, commit 10,000 hours to it. All right, step number one, preparation. Step number two, there’s a little controversial book out there called the Bible. Sam, have you heard about this controversial book called the Bible? I have, yes. Okay, well, allegedly in the Bible, you know, God created the earth on a Monday, on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday, on a Friday, on a Saturday. On a sixth day, apparently he worked six, God himself worked six days to create… But that was Old Testament, so… Okay, so he worked six days to create the planet, but on the seventh day he rested right now Allegedly the Bible uses symbolism patterns and ways to demonstrate to teach Timeless principles, so maybe when they talk about the sixth day principle taken off on the seventh, maybe that’s just random Maybe when the guys were writing the Bible, I mean if you’re a scribe back of the day I mean writing that with a quill pen I mean at some point you had to get distracted, and maybe they just started thinking, well, we’ll just go ahead and write in some random stuff here that isn’t actually right. No, no, we believe it’s an infallible word of God, and therefore the six day principle is actually, there’s some meaning to it. Or, if you don’t believe in the Bible, and you just look up Elon Musk, or you look up Bill Gates, you know, Bill Gates was asked, what’s the key to success? And he said, don’t ever take a day off until you get there. I mean, you could go on and on about all the examples, but at the end of the day, you have got to get your 10,000 hours in to become a master at anything, and there is no shortcut. And when we come back, again, as we’re talking about the difference between professionals and amateurs, we’re gonna talk about focus, and what it’s like to focus at a level of mastery, because most people have never focused on anything to become a master at anything. We’re gonna teach you how to become a master of your profession, stay tuned. All right, Thrive Time Show, welcome back in to the radio, your radio audio dojo of choice. It is the Thrive Time Show where we’re broadcasting from the left coast of the Arkansas River. It’s business school without the BS, presented to you by Oklahoma Joes. And I’m telling you what, there is nothing better to have for lunch than those incredible baked beans by Oklahoma Joe’s and those burnt ends, they are game changers. They’re mind benders. Be careful though because they will blow your mind. You might have to go in there and wear a helmet and then duct tape your skull so when you have when you’re overwhelmed by the profundity of the flavor buffet, when you go in there and you’re just, the flavors of the baked beans and the burnt ends overwhelm you and your brain begins to explode, at least you’ll be able to contain your brain matter by duct taping it all together. But today what we’re talking about, we’re talking about professionals versus amateurs. And step number one to become a professional is you have to prepare. You have to prepare. And I’m trying to give you very specific examples. But one is you’ve just got to embrace this mindset that you’ve got to invest 10,000 hours to becoming great at something to you got to work six days a week you have to I don’t know anybody I have yet to meet a single person ever who’s ever become Successful in anything who did not work six days a week for a while You know, dr. Z works for for seven days a week while building his businesses now He doesn’t work like that now. He works like six hours a week, right? But he had to grind. Now Sam, you’re around a lot of humans that I’ve surrounded myself with basically like a bubble of alpha achievers. So basically I’m only around people who dominate their given craft and that’s by intention. But I remember going to Oral Roberts University and we had people of all different types there. We had some people who were big achievers, and some people that were connectors, and some people that were, you know, I’m not sure what their quest in life was. But why do you feel like most people stop when they start working six days a week, or they start getting into a groove, or they’re starting to have some success, and they’re starting to learn how to prepare like a boss? Why do most people eventually stop and return to their old habit of just sort of drifting along and we’ll just see what happens and kind of taking some days off and taking the birthday off. What begins to happen, Sam? I believe that they start seeing a little bit of success and they start getting comfortable with it and then they are like, well, I could probably let up here and then that just is a downward spiral and then they’re like, well, I’ll just see what happens. I believe that there is a massive gravitational pull that’s pulling you towards failure. I call this peer pressure, I call this most people, I call this culture, just as an example, most people by default, ask yourself this, right? I want you to ask yourself, if you are a high schooler with a brain that functions and you have a decent GPA, what does your guidance counselor tell you you should do? What should you do? According to your guidance counselor, you should go to college. And then after you go to college, you probably shouldn’t have any kids or get married until you’re out of college. That’s what society thinks you should do. And then you should have maybe two kids. You never want to have like five kids. Like me, I have five kids. I guess I’m a complete screw-up. You’ve got to make sure you have those two kids. And then you want to get like a Prius or some sort of environmental and responsible car. You know, so the Hummer that I drive is just super offensive. So you want to have the two kids, you want to have the college degree, you want to have a ton of student debt, you want to have a car loan, and then you want to have two kids. Then what you want to do is you want to get a job that is going to provide you health insurance. I mean, how many of us at the age of 12, you’re talking to your teacher and your teacher says to you so what do you want to do when you grow up Bobby I want to have health insurance I want to have a mediocre job that I don’t like I want to be in debt up to my eyeballs a student debt and I want to have health insurance and a car payment that’s what I want no nobody wants mediocrity right but what happens is is it’s easy to drift into mediocrity because people say this stuff all the time to me and if you say it to me Please stop saying it to me people see me. Oh people say to me all the time clay. Why do you work so hard? Because I have goals because I like it because my work is my worship. Why did Kobe Bryant work so hard? Why did Michael Jordan work so hard? Why is the founder of Hobby Lobby? Never retiring right? Why did he not retire? Why did Jack Welch work late into life? Because they like it. You see, the thing is, when you find something that you do, when you turn your passion into your profits, it’s not something that you want to just mindlessly drift through five days a week. You see, I don’t work five days a week hoping and wishing and waiting for the weekend. I hear people all the time in like elevators, you know, how are you doing this week, Craig? Well, I’m doing good, you know, it’s Wednesday, just two more days. I would absolutely hate my life if I waited for the weekend. I love every day, I love every day, I love what I do, and if I ever find myself doing something I don’t like doing too many days in a row, I quit doing that thing. I love what I do, and you as a listener right now, I challenge you to design your F6 life. Write out your goals for your faith, for your family, for your finances, for your friendship, for your fitness, for your fun. Write out those goals and then commit to building a business that will allow you to achieve the financial freedom and time freedom you need to go get those goals. But step one is preparation. Now step number two is focus. This is the difference between professionals and amateurs, focus. I’m gonna read you a notable quotable and I’m gonna give you just a moment to gather a pen or a writing device or something that will allow you to document what you’re gonna hear here. So that’s a profound thing. So let me go ahead and kinda get my music all ready here for you. Let me kinda, I gotta get my music going here. One second, see, I’m gonna get that music. Oh, nice, here we go now. Here we go. This is your note taking music thrivers. Working solo today with Sam. So I guess we’re working duo today. Dr. Z’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire. So I got to get the music cues and the notable quotables. It’s a tough life. So here we go. This is the notable quotable. In the future. This is from Robert Green in his book, Mastery. He says in the future, the great division will be will be between those who have trained themselves to handle complexities, to handle these complexities of life and those who are overwhelmed by them. Those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn. What he’s getting at is you have got to focus. You’ve got to commit to executing your game plan until you achieve success. So Sam, when we come back, I’m gonna walk the thrivers through how I started my speaking career. I’m now essentially done with my speaking career, but I wanna walk the thrivers through how I did it, and I’m gonna walk the thrivers through the specific path that you can take if you wanna become a professional speaker. But when I walk you through these steps, they’re not complicated, but they’re not easy. They require work and diligent work. And I don’t think a lot of people are have really thought about what diligence means. You know, diligence, if you look up the Webster’s definition of it or you look up maybe the Google definition or the definition of diligence is diligence is the steady application of effort the steady application of effort which means that every day you do it whether you feel like it or not you just do it you have self-discipline you see people who can self-discipline themselves don’t require other people to discipline them okay but if you if you are self-disciplined, you will eventually be put in charge of things because most people need somebody to manage them. Stay tuned, we come back, we’re gonna learn more about professionals versus amateurs. Stay tuned right here on thethrivetimeshow.com. All right, welcome back to The Thrive Time Show on your radio, and today we are talking about the difference between professionals and amateurs. Now, difference number one is the level of preparation needed. The second is the focus. And Sam, before the break, I was telling the listeners that I’m gonna walk you through how I began my speaking career. But I wanna get your perspective. How did I begin speaking? From your, if you, I mean, if you had to take a guess there, Sam, you produced the show. How do you think I began my speaking career? Recognition, like you won an award and people wanted to know how you got there? Oh, okay, we’ll go with a partially true for 500, Alex. Boop, boop, okay, so here we go. What happened was I wanted to become a speaker because I would DJ weddings, and whenever, I was a disc jockey, I had a company called DJ Connection, and before I sold it, we did thousands of weddings per year. And when you DJ, what you do is you entertain people. People leave, they say, oh my gosh, that was so fun. That wedding was exciting. But you don’t ever go deep. You don’t ever touch somebody and change their life. You don’t impact people. So you wanted to make a difference. I wanted to make a difference. And what was happening was, is people in the wedding industry, fellow colleagues in the industry, like a florist reached out to me, a bridal store, bridal stores reached out to me, florists reached out to me, photographers, and they would say, hey, how did you build DJ Connection? And I would show them, and one by one, they would achieve big success. And they typically would send me a thank you card or an email. And I thought, man, you know, that feels much better better to me, it’s more satisfying to me than DJing weddings. And so I thought, you know, I want to eventually help mentor business owners as opposed to entertaining people. And so I decided to volunteer at Junior Achievement. I won an award called the Young Chamber, it’s the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award through the Chamber of Commerce, and I won a U.S. Chamber Award. I won those awards you’re speaking of, and I got asked to do a speaking event. And I did my first event, and it was awful. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I tried my best, I thought, but I did not prepare. I did not have statistics, quotes, stories, action items. There was just, it was just a lot of motivation. I didn’t have any specific game plan I was following. And so I realized, I watched the video and I realized that wasn’t very good. And I realized, you know what, I’m a professional disc jockey by all measures. I’m winning all these awards and I’m now becoming a master of this craft. I want to become a master speaker. And I know, and again, Thrivers, I shared with you on the previous segment, the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on this, as well as the book Mastery by Robert Green. Or if you just study the lives of anybody who’s awesome at anything, you’ll discover that they’ve spent 10,000 hours mastering their craft. I’ll give you an example. Sam, can you ride a bike without hands, without using your hands? I can, yeah. Can you really? Oh, yeah. Okay, so riding a bike, when you first got on the bike, the first time that we all learned to ride a bike, I’m sure we all fell. The second time we fell, eventually we learned not to fall. Some of us got a little craftier, though. We decided to spend time devoting to learn how to ride without our hands. Some people can even learn to stand on the bike frame while riding. Could you do that? Oh, yeah. Okay, see, so there’s people out there that, and at a certain point, you approach mastery where there’s people that can now do unicycles. You know they can ride things that don’t use their hands at all, it’s all balanced, but at a certain point when you start something it requires all your brain to think about what you’re doing on a mechanical level. So as a speaker you get up there to speak and here are the thoughts I used to have was like okay just make sure you don’t look at it you don’t look anyone in the eyes, stop moving back and forth, stop shaking, stop breathing heavily, stop crinkling the paper, stand up straight, look at the exit signs, look around, scan the room, and then I was focused on those things. Stop looking nervous. Oh my gosh, why are you sweating? I mean, these are things I was thinking to myself. Why am I sweating so much? I’ve never sweat like this before. Oh no, I’m sweating out the pits of my shirt and I just started these are the thoughts I would have And I realized if I’m ever going to become a masterful speaker I have got to commit myself to becoming great at it and put in the time So I called up junior achievement who had asked me to speak and I said, hey, can I speak? I Think it was every Thursday I want to speak every Thursday at the Broken Arrow High School where I’ve gotten some good reviews over as my most recent events I started getting better reviews I would like to do it every week and like every week yeah every week for seven hours and they’re going seven hours are you sure yes I want to commit to it I want to do it I’m going to do it and so I would disappear every week for an entire day and I did this for miss Farquhar it was a former teacher from Broken Arrow High School. She could tell you more accurately than I did, but I think I did that for six years. Wow. So for six years, I spoke seven hours a week and I don’t know how many weeks that was. But at the end of the day, I spoke to I spoke these events to a level where I was no longer nervous and I could focus entirely on communicating the message. And communication hasn’t happened until both parties understand, right? So if you’re saying something to somebody and they don’t get it, then you haven’t really communicated. That’s just you talking at people. And so then I began to study humor and speaking. So I read Brian Tracy’s book on standing and presenting. Then I read Dale Carnegie’s book on the art of public speaking. Then I began to read more and more books about public speaking. I read Joel Osteen’s books. I read T.D. Jake’s. I watched as many Joel Osteen sermons as I could watch. I watched Jerry Seinfeld till my brain exploded. I’m watching. I’m not just watching like in sort of a passive way. I’m watching in a very active way, taking notes. I learned Steve Martin’s five elements of humor. I learned that humor can be achieved by self-deprecation where you make fun of yourself. Humor can be achieved through shock and awe, where you say things that people don’t expect. Humor can be achieved through telling a story. Humor can be achieved through telling a joke. And humor can be achieved through physicality, or using different voices. And I learned these things, and I began to weave them into my speaking events. And then over time, people started, the teachers started telling other teachers, wow, this guy’s really good. And then people started filming the events and started telling other people that they were really good. And I was filming my own talks so that I could watch myself and self-analyze. And eventually I got asked by other schools to speak and then other corporations. And then bam, I find myself on the stage of some of the biggest companies on the planet delivering speaking events for Hewlett Packard and Maytag and O’Reilly Auto Parts, but I had to focus on something. No different than someone has to focus on learning how to ride a bike without hands or how to play baseball. Sam, you’re sort of a master of power lifting. How much weight can you lift over your shoulders? Is that something you do, shoulder presses? Yeah, I do that. How much can you lift? Around 350 pounds overhead. 350 pounds? Yeah. What are some other kind of lifts that you can, I mean, when you do your competitions, what are some of the, you know, the exercises that you compete on? Well, we start out with squat, and I’ve done 500 pounds for 9 reps. So you can squat 500 pounds 9 times? In a row, yes. And what’s another thing you compete on? Bench. I can bench 400. You can bench 400 pounds. Yep. What else? And then deadlift 700. What’s deadlifting? What does that look like? It’s when the weight is all on the ground, and you just go down and grab the bar and stand up. So you bend over? Yeah. I mean, it’s more technical than that, but yes. But I mean, you’ve had to learn the skills, you’ve had to learn the fundamentals, you’ve had to learn the mindset. What are you thinking through your mind right before you try to bench press, would you say 400 pounds? Yeah. Right before you’re, what’s going through your mind? What do you say to yourself right before you apply that pressure and that force needed to get up that much weight? Honestly, when I’m doing the warm-ups, when the weight is only 135 pounds, I treat that the same way I do the heavy weight. As I’m working up in weight, the only thing that changes is the weight. The same thing goes through my mind when it’s something that doesn’t matter compared to something that’s going to kill me. So you, but I mean you’ve trained yourself to do this. Yes. And how many hours, if you had to say, how many hours have you spent in the weight room? I mean, could you think about that? I mean, how many hours a week are you in the weight room? Five days a week, about an hour and a half a day, six days a week, and then spend about three years. So you’re about seven and a half hours a week in the weight room? Probably eight hours a week for three years straight. Okay, and then do you read books on working out? Yes. Magazines and articles? Yes. Videos. I teach myself through watching experts and I listen to podcasts on it. And then also, like you were saying, you videoed your speaking events so you could critique yourself. Yeah. I have about 300 videos on my phone where I’ve recorded myself and my wife’s like, why do you keep recording yourself? I’m like, well, because I go back and I critique myself. Like, not everybody’s going to show me what I did wrong, so I’m going to teach myself how to do it. So here’s what blows my mind about people’s career most people at work They don’t have a problem texting being distracted Basically being not mentally present at the workplace But when it comes to your hobby or a passion most people are a hundred percent focused while doing that Yeah, so the key is what if you could find a career where you could turn turn your passion into your job. Then your level of mastery would just be incredible. So Thrive Nation, we come back. We’re going to talk more about how you can become a professional and not just an amateur in the game of business. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. For anyone just tuning in today, we’re talking about professionals versus amateurs. What it means to be a master of a craft versus just being a drifter. And most people work with me here. I’m talking to you, the listener, and probably not you, probably talking to someone you know, probably not talking about you, but talking about someone you know. Most people, according to Time Magazine, don’t get mad at me, according to the Atlantic Magazine, the average American has less than $400 saved. That’s $400 saved. Now, according to USA Today, right, USA Today, it’s a magazine out there, or if you want to read the Gallup poll, G-A-L-L-U-P, well over 60% of Americans hate their jobs. That means you dislike your job, right? I mean, hate from the root word, don’t like. So if you don’t strongly, strongly don’t like, I mean hate, I mean hate is a strong word. So if you, if the average American hates their job and has no money saved after having worked at the job, what is the point? Yeah. I mean, what is the point? I would argue that there is no point, right? So I want your life to have a point. I want you to be able to achieve your goals. So I’m not trying to put my goals on you. I’m not trying to tell you what success is. I’m trying to tell you that you need to achieve your success. So I want you to get out a sheet of paper if you haven’t done it yet and write down your F6 goals. Faith. What are your goals for your faith? What are your goals for your family? What are your goals for your fitness? What are your goals for your friendship? What are your goals for your finances? What are the goals for fun? Write down those specific goals and then build a business that allows you to achieve the success that you want. Build a business that’s going to allow you to achieve the time freedom and financial freedom. Because when you have money, money is just a unit of time. You can buy your time with money. So I’m going to kind of go through, Sam, some of these scenarios with you. And I want to make sure that the thrivers are getting this. Okay? So if you want to become a professional, if you want to become somebody who achieves time freedom and financial freedom, you have to become a professional. And the difference between being an amateur and a professional is so, so big. It’s like the two worlds can’t even communicate. So one is a professional prepares. You have to prepare. Bob Knight, as we mentioned earlier, he says, the key is not the will to win. Everybody has it. It’s the will to prepare that is so important. You know Malcolm Gladwell again the best-selling author of outliers He studied the world’s most successful people and he discovered that the that these that these geniuses these gurus these people We placed upon the pedestals of Mount awesome These people have devoted 10,000 hours to becoming great at something in his book He says in fact researchers have settled in on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise? 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours! Yeah. So move number two is focus. And what you have to do is focus means to operate without distraction on a thing. So I’m going to give you some examples of focusing right now, Thrivers, that will dramatically increase your income. This is an example. If you implement What I’m telling you today, and you actually have a product or service that people really want So if you have a product or service that the human race actually wants I’ll tell you like an insurance agent or a real estate agent or a mortgage professional or a plumber or anybody who has a discernible Skill you have something that people are willing to pay for if you do this move, you will become successful. Now it’s gonna be hard, it’s gonna be hard, because, why? How much time does the average person spend watching TV? So the average American, I’m looking this up here, Thrivers, look it up, the average American, how many hours do they spend watching TV? Like five hours a day or something. Okay, here we go, USA Today, this is coming in hot. Coming in hot. USA Today is showing the average American right now is spending five hours per day watching TV. One hour on top of that on Facebook. So one hour on Facebook. So you’re going to have to give up either Facebook or one of those five hours watching TV. But if you do this move, I guarantee you that you will for sure become a member of the hundred thousand dollar club before the end of the next 12 months. Clay, that’s a full-time job. Well this is this is the 35 hours watching TV watching TV. Yeah, and I would say that that most people you know Proverbs 10 for so that God blesses the hand of the diligent and he punishes the slackers. And again I’m not talking about you the listener. We’re obviously talking about people you know people that you know not you but other people that you know. But think about this. My friend Phil Pressey played in the NBA, the National Basketball Association. And I am not good enough to play in the NBA. But imagine how insane this would be. Imagine we have a home fellowship group at your house, Sam. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you ever had home fellowship at your house? Or have you ever been to a home fellowship? I have been to a home fellowship, not at my house. OK, so you go. And usually there’s a guy playing a guitar. And he’s kind of a scruffy looking and he’s got some tighter, you know, he had the tight pants on, the tight jeans. He looks like Jesus in skinny jeans. Exactly. He’s got some kind of messed up hair. He’s got sandals on. And this is what he’s going to do. He’s going to bust out the guitar and go, our God is an awesome God. We hear it from heaven above. And he’s going to sing with kind of a raspy voice because typically home fellowship, if you have a guy who sings, Oh God is an awesome God, he reigns from heaven. And then you have that part. And then you’re going to eat some carrots, probably some cheese cubes, maybe some slices of ham. Hummus. Hummus, right. Hummus, a lot of hummus going on there, a lot of celery sticks. And then you’ll do a Bible time where you read the Bible and you’ll sit in a circle, maybe a semi circle or a complete circle You’ll be in that circle and it goes around and it’s time for prayer requests. It’s time to Request what you want someone to pray for you about and this is typically the prayer requests that I would hear at home fellowships all The time which is why I personally choose not to attend them because it makes me Angry, but someone will say for the 18th week in a row. I just hope that God will help me find a job Okay, so let’s talk about that topic. If you want to find a job, step number one is volunteer to work for free somewhere. Find a millionaire and volunteer to work free for them. That seems extreme. Okay, I’ve done it. How do you think that I met Dr. Zellner? Just throwing that out there. So what about Puff Daddy? How did he get started? He volunteered working for free for a millionaire. What about Ryan Tedder, the Grammy-winning artist who is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who ended up teaming up with Timbaland to release a song, Too Late to Apologize, who writes songs for Taylor Swift, who writes songs for U2. What did he do? He volunteered to work for free for a millionaire. What about Steven Spielberg? He volunteered to work for free. You’re starting to see a pattern. What about Oprah? He volunteered. Oh, so it’s the same thing over and over that’s move number one move number two is Send out 20 resumes every day. This is the thing you could do move number three quit watching TV and go back to college I mean these are moves you could do but quit coming to home fellowship and praying for a job How insane would it be though if I’m overweight? I’m not in shape I’m not good at basketball and I go Sam. I have a prayer request. Sam, are you ready? Sam? Yes. I want to pray that I can become a professional basketball player. I know I’m 36 and I never work out, but I want to become a professional basketball player. I’m praying that I can jump higher. I’m looking for 47 inches of height, you know, vertical leap. I’m looking for quickness. I’m looking for the ability to really penetrate the lane off the dribble. I want to go left and right. Behind the back pass would be nice too. I mean, would that even make sense? No, not at all. Now God, he can do whatever he wants in the supernatural, right? I mean, he can do whatever he wants. But quit praying for things that you can do in the natural. It says in Proverbs, God blesses the hand of the diligent and he punishes the slackered. You’ve got to get off your ass. So you’re saying that… Quit asking people for help and begin doing something. So you’re saying that if you get started, then you’ve got to help. Yes, but you’ve got to do in the natural what you can do. You have to move forward. You’ve got to take action. And so this move, move number three to become a professional is you must be consistent. Consistency. I’m talking about showing up. Here’s a fun game for you. I’ve told the employees of our company this for years. Let’s play, someone says, hey, I want to make $100,000 a year. I hear this all the time. I say, if you want to do that, I got two steps for you. Move number one, work the exact same schedule that I work. Oh yeah. Two, take as many days off as I take off. Then at the end of the year, you’ll be there. And you know, the only people that ever take me up on it, you know, Jonathan Kelly took me up on it years ago. Jason Bailey, who now owns DJ Connections, taking me up on it. But a lot of people don’t want to do that. You want to have the success. You want to have the time freedom. I want to have the financial freedom. I want to have time freedom and financial freedom, and I want to do all that, but I do want to watch five hours a day of TV, and I want to be on Facebook. You make tradeoffs. I spend time with my family. I spend time with my wife. Let’s go through my F6 goals. My faith. I spend time at the house of worship of my choice. I do that, right? Do I do it when I want to? Do I do it when they want me to? I don’t know, but I do it when I want to. Right? So faith, family. I do family day every Sunday. I hang out with my kids at night. Right? Friendships. I hang out with people that I admire, people I look up to, people that are high quality, high character, get it done people. Right? Friendships. I don’t hang out with idiots. I gotta be honest. I don’t suffer fools. Can’t do that, right? Friendships, fitness, I work out, get up at 4 a.m., go work out. You know, am I a genius? No. Am I the most in shape person in the world? No, but I do it, right? Friendships, right? Fitness, right? What, what, what, what, what? Finances. I put in the time. Fun. I schedule time to go on dates with my wife. You know, took her out to a movie the other night. There’s no master, there’s no mystery in how we’ve been married for 15 years and we’re happily married. It’s because I commit to taking her on a date every week. And if you knew me, if you saw my face and you met my wife, you would realize that my wife has to be legally blind to stay married to me. I’m a man-bear pig and she’s a virtuous, awesome queen. And the only way you can keep a great person like that happily married to you is you’ve got to commit. You’ve got to put in the time in order to put in that time. I got to turn off the TV. I can’t watch five hours of TV a day. You can’t either. So you’ve got to commit to consistency. I’m going to read you a notable quotable that totally set my mind ablaze. Back in the day, I read, remember reading this passage from Aug Mandino’s book. And when I read this book, the greatest salesman in the world. It really, really just blew my mind. I mean, it was a deal where after I read it, it was kind of like a before and after. Once I read this, I realized, oh my gosh, I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know that I didn’t know this. This is huge. He says, in the Orient, young bulls are tested for the fight arena in a certain manner. Each is brought to the ring and allowed to attack a Picador who pricks them with a lance the bravery of each bull is then rated with care according to the number of times He demonstrates his willingness to charge in spite of the sting of the blade henceforth I will recognize that each day I am tested by life and like and like manner if I persist if I continue to try if I continue to charge forward I will succeed the thing is you’re going to run into opposition It’s going to happen every day. I mean every single day. I can, Thrivers, listen to this. I’m telling you about my real-life deal. The elephant in the room, we have over 80 employees. We have some really great people that we have great teammates. But if I could string together just one week in a row where all 84 people didn’t call in with some sort of personal life issue, I never call in. I do not ever call in. I show up every day, whether I’m sick, whether I’m healthy, I just show up, because that’s the crazy thing. I realize you won’t be able to reap if you don’t sow, right? You’ve got to sow before you reap. I realize that’s kind of a process. If you take a day off from sowing, then you’re probably going to have to take a day off from reaping, right? So I show up, but if I could have one week in a row where everybody showed up on time and did what they were supposed to do, I would probably break down in tears. And then I think God would take me up to heaven in a pillar of fire because I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, I don’t think it’s I don’t think we’ve ever had a week where everybody shows up to work on time and does what they’re supposed to do. And if you do those things, guess what? Guess who we’ve put in charge of our stores? The people who are in charge are the diligent people. It’s the consistent people, right? If you’re sitting on a three-legged stool and you sit down and the leg collapses one time, how likely are you going to want to sit on that? How likely are you to be to want to sit on that stool again? We’re looking for consistent people. People out there, if you want to become a manager, this just in. We’re looking for consistent people. The world is looking for consistency. Where are you? Where are you? Thrive Nation, if you’ve been looking for your mentor, guess what? You’ve found it. Dr. Z and I have committed millions of dollars and thousands of hours to building you the world’s best business school. That’s right. It’s thrive15.com. It is the world’s most effective, the world’s most affordable business school, and it is now available for a dollar for your first month. Also, when you subscribe to thrive15.com, you get exclusive access to our in-person workshops. So our in-person workshops are two days long. They’re 15 hours of power. And Dr. Zellner and I will teach you our 13 proven points system to business success. There is no luck. There is no smoke and mirrors. If you want to achieve success, if you want to commit to success, if you implement what I’m going to teach you right now, I guarantee you that you’ll make six figures. You will definitely make $100,000 per year. And here’s what you do. One, turn off your TV for two hours a day. Okay, turn it off. Two, I want you to write every single day for two hours a day about the keyword that you want to become top in Google for locally. So let’s say you’re a plumber. So just take two hours a week and write about Tulsa plumbing. If you write about Tulsa plumbing for two hours a week, for two hours a day, I’m sorry, for two hours a day, every single day, seven days a week, let’s go ahead and observe the Sabbath. Let’s say six days a week, two hours a day, you write about Tulsa plumbing. At the end of the year, if you have a service and you can deliver on it, you will make $100,000 a year. That’s how it works. So I want you to go ahead and do a search for me real quick. Do a little quiz. Let’s go ahead and search, let’s go with Jinx Men’s Haircuts. I’ll go ahead and give you a moment. So I’ve been Jinx Men’s Haircuts. And this just in, who comes up top? This just in, Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge and it’s a business that I own. Oh, so back in the day when I owned DJ Connection, if you typed in Tulsa DJs, guess who came up top in Google? I don’t know. DJ Connection, a company I own. Bam, guess what? If you Google Tulsa men’s haircuts, who comes up top? Bam, elephant in the room. What if you Google downtown Tulsa haircuts? What if you Google broken arrow men’s haircuts? What if you Google, that’s how you do it. What if you Google Tulsa mortgages? One of our clients, Steve Currington, comes up top in Google. What if you Google Tulsa dog training? One of our clients, Tip Top Canine, comes up top and Google. What if you… Is there a pattern here? Am I detecting… Is there… I feel like there’s a pattern that is starting to set in here. What if you Google Tulsa cookies? Who comes up top? Tulsa gluten-free cookies. It’s Barbie cookies. So, when the news media announced recently that the Tulsa Oilers set an attendance record for 16,000 tickets sold they filled up the be okay for the first time. Do you know who was not shocked? Do you know who wasn’t wasn’t it all? Totally just wowed by this who wasn’t going man. I can’t believe they did it It was me Why because I’ve been working with these guys for two and a half years and as a business coach when I work with a client They are always successful if they implement the proven path They just always are if you implement the proven path, you’re going to have success. But this concept of consistency is so foreign to most people. And I’ll give you an example. I went to Oral Roberts University, and I’m not ripping Oral Roberts University specifically. I’m just ripping the entire concept of college. Because you go to ORU and they go, attention students, we’re going to have a fall break. You get two weeks off for fall break. What the heck is fall break? I mean, you’re trying to condition people to become professionals, and then you give them two weeks off for fall break. And what unicorn life experience, and what system that’s not socialistic can you just take off two weeks for fall break? They’re getting you ready for the five weeks of paid vacation that you get. And then after you get that time off, then you can, this is just Oral Roberts University, when I was there, if you fail a test, you can take it again. You fail a test, you can take that thing as much as you want. I remember going to Oklahoma State, Okmulgee, I could take the test multiple times. You know what I did? I didn’t even study. What was the point? There was no point. I mean, they’re giving out degrees like PES at these colleges. I’m telling you, I graduated with many people, when I went to high school, many of the people I graduated with, they were so high on pot, it’s amazing they could even process information. And then when I went to college, some of these people have degrees. I’ve met these people. We’ve gone to class with these people. I mean, a college degree means almost nothing. It’s just it’s ridiculous. But the concept is that then you get spring break, then you get what you get Christmas break. You get there’s so many breaks that you get right. But when you own a business, nobody gives a crap if it’s your birthday, or if it’s the week before Christmas, or if it’s the day before Easter, or if it’s the week after Easter, or if it’s the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, or the weekend before the 4th of July. Nobody cares. Nobody cares at all. And so, if you’re a business owner, what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to put consistency right at the focal point of your business. If nothing else, you need to be a consistently diligent person. Now, step number four, if you wanna become a professional and not just be an amateur, because if you wanna become a professional, by the way, the pros make copious amounts of cash. Professional basketball players make a lot, amateur players, not so much. Professional speakers make a lot. There’s so many books written about did you know that’s professional speaking pays the most of any profession in the world Yeah, if you’re great, and then if you’re awful it doesn’t pay at all I mean recently I remember this young guy. I know who was asked to speak at a church He graduated from oral Roberts University with a degree in theology And so he was asked to speak and you know how many minutes he spent preparing for the talk? I mean, being real, you have any minutes he spent preparing? So if you want to guess how many minutes he spent preparing for a sermon that he was asked to give for a church? As long as the sermon lasts? He said he spent 15 minutes jotting down some notes and I watched his sermon and it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I watched the video footage and he’s like, I don’t understand why people didn’t respond to it. I don’t understand. I see business owners that will come to our in-person workshop and they learn quickly, oh my gosh, this is what I have to do to get to the top of Google. It’s not super complicated, but it’s a lot of work. I’ve got to go do that thing. I want to brag on some clients right now. Let’s think about security. Let’s think about witness security. These guys, witness security, they’re thrivers out there just like you. They have a great security business and they’ve decided to commit themselves to becoming top in Google. And they faithfully come in every single week, super early in the morning and they record over and over and over their podcasts. They transcribe them. They’re becoming like the experts, the Wikipedia of the Tulsa security industry, of the Owasso security industry, of the Broken Arrow home security industry. And that’s why they’re top in Google I mean Steve Carrington the reason why he’s top in Tulsa you type in the word Tulsa mortgages is because he’s committed he’s invested copious amounts of time into writing the content needed to become top in Google the reason why you know a Danielle Sprick a real estate agent that we worked with why she became successful is because she implemented the proven plan. There are no smoke and mirrors, my friend. You must commit to consistency. So if you want to become a professional, I’m walking you through the steps. One, you’ve got to commit to prepare. Two, you’ve got to maintain focus. You’ve got to know what you stand for and what you don’t stand for. Three, you have just got to be consistent. Move number four, you’ve got to have tenacity. Now tenacity is this concept of where you press through even when things get rough. When you run into some rejections, when you run into some obstacles, you don’t just run into walls. You climb over the wall, you run through the wall, you dig under the wall, you do whatever you need to do to achieve success. When we come back, we’re going to talk more about how you can go from being an amateur to becoming a professional. Sign up for our next in-person workshop today at ThriveTimeShow.com. Again, it’s ThriveTimeShow.com. Alright, Thrive Nation, Justin Bieber’s song, he says, Where are you now that I need you? And I’m going to tell you this, if you’re not intentional about your F6 goals, specifically your faith, right, your family, but your friendships, if you’re not intentional about surrounding yourself with people that lift you up, if you’re not intentional about surrounding yourself with people that push you to become the very best that you can be, nobody will be there for you. Have you ever, I mean, if you, Thrivers, have you ever surrounded yourself with morons? Has that ever happened to you? Where you’ve discovered that all your friends are idiots? Well, when that happens is when you get to the lowest bottom of the barrel, when life hits you in the face with a ton of bricks, when you really struggle, when you surround yourself with idiots, you will fail. You will fall to the bottom and no one will be there to catch you. But when you’re intentional about surrounding yourself with people that are going where you want to go, people who share the same faith and values as you, it’s amazing how much friendships can help you and help be there for you when you need them. But today we’re talking about professionals versus amateurs and what the differences are. What does a professional do versus an amateur? Well, the next the next thing a professional does is they have tenacity. And I’m going to read you a notable quotable from Napoleon Hill, the best selling author of Think and Grow Rich, the author that I named my son, Aubrey Napoleon Hill, after the foundation, the Napoleon Hill Foundation that Tulsa’s very own Jim Stovall works with, the speech writer for FDR, Napoleon Hill, the consultant of choice for Oral Roberts himself, Napoleon Hill, the personal apprentice of Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill. He says this, “‘Drifters make no attempt to discipline “‘or control their thoughts, “‘and never learn the difference “‘between positive and negative thinking. Drifters in life allow their minds to drift with any stray thought which may float into it. People who drift in and out with their thought habits are sure to drift on other subjects as well. Sam, you’ve been around me long enough. Could you describe maybe the level of tenacity or focus or what maybe you notice about maybe how Dr. Z or I operate during the day during the moments that we share with you here at the thrive15.com world headquarters. You guys are laser focused on what you’re getting ready to do or what you are doing. I’ve brought stuff up to you said hey I read this real quick you’re like I honestly can’t read anything right now because I’m so focused on what I’m doing right now. And it’s not that… It’s not that you’re dumb, it’s just that you are like you compartmentalize everything and that’s why you guys are so successful. You don’t let anything distract you. And you’re a power lifter. You lift powerfully. You lift massive amounts of weight for anybody you might have missed. You can bench press 400 pounds. Yeah. You can squat how many pounds? 650. Okay, so when you can squat that much weight, if I came up to you while you’re squatting, and I’m like, hey, hey, Sam, Sam, I have a question real quick. On Facebook, somebody wrote a bad review. How do you want me to handle it? What would be your response? I mean, what sounds do you make typically? Go ahead and demonstrate. What sounds do you make typically when bench pressing or squatting north of 400 pounds? Let me tell you, before I tell you this noise, my wife told me that when I’m out of powerlifting meat she’s like why do you always look like you’re demon possessed? Oh wow. I get so focused and then right when I’m getting ready to do a lift I’ll get ready I’ll touch the bar and I’ll go. I have to back up a little bit. Go ahead. Wow. One more time. Just one more time. Wow. And what does that sound do for you when you’re powerlifting? Honestly, I think that it it Triggers my adrenaline and then I honestly scare people in the gym after I’m done with the lift and I yell really loud It echoes in there and I’m sorry everybody. I mean, uh, sorry You do apologize to the office staff out here at the traffic downcom world headquarters I have all your walking around the box that rocks going what’s going on? Is he okay? Is he coughing? No, but the thing is drivers is that when you are when you Sam are working out, you’re laser-focused. And the word focus means focus on core tasks until success. Focus on core tasks until success. I am laser-focused at work. I mean, the work is my playing field. So it’s like the game of football. If you go to an NFL game, the size of the athletes is truly amazing. My wife got me tickets years ago to go watch Brett Favre play his final season and he was playing a game versus the Arizona Cardinals. I remember one of the players on the Vikings was returning a kick and when he got hit, the sound of him getting hit sounded like I had witnessed a car accident. Oh yeah. And I can tell you when they’re playing football for those three or four hours they’re out there on the field, if you ran onto the field going, hey, hey, Brett Favre, I’ve got a question for you about a Facebook, or hey, Brett, can you look at this tweet, or hey, Brett, I’ve got a Chuck Norris joke for you, or if you ran onto the field and said, hey, Brett, I’ve got a question for you, what do you want to eat for lunch? You’re not going to get a very good response. But when I work, people do it to me all the time. Oh, yeah. They come, hey, what do you want to get for lunch? What do you want to get? Hey, quick question. How do you feel about the varieties of coffees that we have in our office? Hey, quick question for you. There was a tweet that came across recently where we had some guy who had six million views on YouTube who said, hello, I don’t care. I’m not into it because my entire focus is on helping business owners grow. When I work nine to five That’s my entire focus is on if you are a business coaching client of mine Your business will grow if you execute the plan it happens every time and is because I am laser Focused on that thing and if you want to achieve success in your world of business You have got to somehow find a way to conjure up the will The mindset that whatever that is that you need to do you need to find a way to get to a level of focus Where you can absolutely? Be mentally stuck on an idea for hours at a time for me It’s an example. I write books right and when you write books the biggest challenge of writing a book is Focusing you got to sit down and edit that thing. And then after you edit, you’ve got to sit down and edit it again. And then after you edit that, what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to fact check it. And then, that’s round four, by the way, then you send it to a professional editor who edits it, and then you have to typeset it. And then you have to, it goes round and round and round, and about, typically, about four to five hundred hours later, you have a book that you’re proud of. And Thrive Nation, I’m telling you, you and I, we can absolutely become a professional in one area, but I would argue that it will be very hard, if not impossible, for you to become a professional in two areas, two. So you need to decide right now, Thrive Nation, what, professionally speaking, are you going to become a professional at? Anybody can go get a job, but what is something where you’re going to move beyond the job, job standing for just over broke, right? Just over broke, where you’re living in a wage cage, where you exchange your hours, right, for money. What are you going to do? What’s the thing that you’re going to do? What’s the business you’re going to build? What’s the foundation you’re going to pour? What is that life work? What is that life’s work, that hobby that’s going to go from a hobby and it’s going to grow into a passion, and you’re going to turn that passion into your profit center. What is that thing that you can obsess about? And if you don’t know, it’s okay. But what you need to do is you need to go to thrivetimeshow.com and you need to book your tickets for the next in-person Thrivetime Show workshop. The thrivetimeshow.com workshops have great reviews from great people just like you. And don’t believe me. Do not believe me. Go read the reviews. I’m trying to sell you something, but I encourage you to check it out. And we have a scholarship available. We have scholarship dollars available. You don’t have to pay back. That are there for people just like you, because we believe that everybody deserves a hand up. I am totally against handouts. I don’t believe in making you dependent upon something, but we want to help you get to where you want to go. And I know you have it within you to get there. Stay tuned, ThriveTimeShow.com. Thrive Nation, I’m going to tell you what, if you are going through a challenging time, if you’re going through a difficult situation personally, I encourage you to come out to our next in-person Thrive Time workshop. And Sam, I did not tell you this, but this is a true story that I just discovered yesterday. Yeah. We had a thriver that has been in business for over 10 years. Yeah. In the Tulsa area, and I spoke to him yesterday, and he said, and I’m not exaggerating, this true story, and I’m still marinating on it, I’m still trying to process what he said, but he was actually contemplating killing himself before coming out to our last workshop. Wow. True story. And I he told me this on the phone. I said, what? And he said, I just worked and I’ve never got ahead and I’m working all the time. I’ve been trying to make all the employees happy. I’m not making any money. I’m not. And he goes, when you talked about at the workshop, you showed specifically how you and your wife have designed the life that you want for your faith, your family, your finances, your friendship, your fitness, your fun, those areas. He said, I finally get it. And so I designed the life that I want and I realized I had been living a life I didn’t want for over a decade. You gave him hope. Yeah, and he felt like he had hope and he also had a plan. He left with a proven, specific plan. And Sam, you’ve attended, you’ve actually seen him. Oh yeah, it’s amazing. Can you describe to the Thrivers maybe what an in-person two-day, 15-hour workshop looks like from your perspective? It literally gives you step-by-step action items to do to take your business to the next level. I mean, if you don’t know how to do search engine optimization to get your company to the top of Google or how to do your finances or how to do merit-based pay or how to hire and fire. Like literally, they’ll answer your questions but they’ll also show you the proven path to get there. If you don’t know how to raise capital, you don’t know how to sell your business that you have, you don’t know how to systemize it to get time freedom, you don’t know sales conversion, you don’t know how to manage people, you don’t know how to fire people, you don’t know how to run social media ads. You just don’t know these things. You’re not an idiot, but you’re gonna need to either learn from mentors or mistakes. And it can be painful when you have to learn from mistakes. I remember before Dr. Z entered into my life, and I had to go get these guys, by the way, because they’re busy, right? You have to go chase them, right? Because the mentors are busy, right? And someone who’s building a multimillion dollar business is busy. You gotta go chase these people. You gotta be consistent, you gotta be diligent, you gotta be committed to it. But before Clifton Talbert spoke into my life, before Lee Cockrell, you know, I mean, think about Lee Cockrell. I mean, he managed 40,000 people as the executive vice president of Walt Disney World. Before he spoke into my life, before these different people entered into my life, I didn’t know what I was doing. And I was just passionately going the wrong way like a boat without a rudder and you’re just going super fast the wrong direction You know and you’re just going 90 miles an hour, but the wrong direction and if that’s you you’re not an idiot But you’re somebody who needs some direction you need some guidance and that is why We have built the two-day in-person thrive time show Workshops there has never been a workshop more in-depth more detailed than this workshop. But I know because I’ve spoken at workshops all over the world and at the back of the room they’re always trying to sell you some crap. Sam, have you ever been to a seminar in Tulsa, you find yourself at a hotel or a banquet center somewhere where you listen to a talk and then here it comes and they’re trying to pitch you. Have you ever seen this happen? I’ve honestly only been fortunate enough to come to the Thrive Time Workshop. Oh, so you haven’t witnessed this yet. I have not. I’ve heard many stories, many tragic stories. Well, I’ll tell you, we had a Thriver the other day who told us they went to a workshop and they got upsold a $12,000 Get Rich program, Get Rich Quick program. That’s it? Yeah, it was ridiculous. And I’m just telling you, Thrivers, if that’s been your experience, you just got to throw all that to the wayside, read the reviews, do your research, and book your ticket to thrivetimeshow.com, our two-day in-person workshops. Now today, we’re talking about being a professional versus being an amateur, being a doer, a diligent doer versus being a drifter. And so step number one is you have to prepare, right? Step number two, you’ve gotta be focused. Step number three, you have to be consistent. Step number four, you have to be tenacious. And I’m going to read you the notable quotable from Napoleon Hill again. He says, Drifters make no attempt to discipline or control their thoughts and never learn the difference between positive and negative thinking. Drifters in life allow their minds to drift with any stray thought which may float into it. Listen, thrivers, if you’re a drifter and you always get the new idea of the week, the new idea of the month, the new idea of the, you’re never going to have success. I mean, getting to the top of Google, just as just one example, requires a consistency that I don’t think most people are used to. It’s like unnerving to people to do the same thing over and over and over and over. And I’m telling you, when you do this, when you make the commitment in your schedule to block off, oh, by the way, USA Today, so the average person’s watching five hours of TV a day. When you take two of those hours and you devote them towards something productive, it’s amazing what big gains you can make in your fitness. It’s amazing the big gains you can make in your family when you block out time to spend time with your wife. It’s amazing the excellence you can achieve when you turn off Facebook and you say hello to your kids. It’s amazing what happens when you block out time. We want you to be successful in business, but also in life now this final step is ardor Now ardor you have to have an ardor now. What does the word ardor mean ardor means a fiery passion or Enthusiasm for something Tommy Hilfiger has notable coil. I’m gonna read this to you Tommy Hilfiger says the road to success Is not easy to navigate but with hard work, drive, and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American dream. Russell Simmons, the guy who introduced Def Jam Records, that’s the label that carried Jay-Z, Run DMC, he introduced the Fat Farm clothing line, he introduced the Def Comedy Jam, he says, in my experience, there’s only one thing that will always steer you toward success. That’s to have a vision and to stick with it. Once I have a vision for a new venture, I’m going to ride that vision until the wheels come off. What I’m talking about, what he’s talking about is you and I must commit today to that 10,000 hour path. We know where the mountain is. We look up the mountain. We were taking a second. We’re taking a moment out of our busy day. Sure, we might be at Oklahoma Joe’s and join some baked beans and some burnt ends, but we take just a second, we’ll time out, and we look at where we want to go with our life. We write down these goals. We’re taking the time right now. Most people aren’t doing this, but you’re doing this. You’re writing, you’re getting out a pen, you’re writing this down. This is gonna be a game-changing, life-changing day for you. You get out that pen, you write out your goals for your faith. You’re writing out your goals for your family. You’re writing out your goals for your friendships, for your fitness, for your finances, and for your fun. And now you’re going the next step. You’re actually scheduling it into your schedule. You’re putting it into your schedule. You’re blocking out time, Sam, into the schedule. Sam, when you work out, have you blocked out time for that? Oh, yeah. When do you work out? Every morning from 5.15 to 6.30. So you put it in your schedule? Yeah. And because you’ve blocked out time for it, guess what happens? It gets done. It gets done. But anything you don’t schedule, according to Lee Cockrell, this is a notable quotable from Lee Cockrell, the guy who used to manage Walt Disney World Resorts, anything that you don’t schedule won’t get done. I repeat, anything you don’t schedule won’t get done. So now you’ve blocked out time for faith, family, finances, friendships, fitness, fun. Now you’re going to go do it, right? You’re going to go do it. And you know what? The mountain, it’s a big mountain. I mean, that’s why you want to get up to the top of it, because it’s a mountain worth getting to. It’s a great view up there. It’s awesome. And it’s lonely up there, by the way. As a thriver, as somebody who’s achieved massive success in the world of business, and I don’t mean lonely in a bad way. I like it like, I enjoy it. I enjoy being up there with people who’ve sacrificed, people who, like a mighty oak, have gained their strength through struggle. They’ve pushed through the pain. And when you understand there is no gain without pain, there is no success without sacrifice, there is no freedom without sacrifice. When you get that and you understand it, there’s no reaping without sowing. It’s fun to meet other people like you at the top of that mountain, but it requires those baby steps, those daily steps, that commitment to getting up at 5 a.m. I love seeing the professionals who get to work at 5 a.m. At 6 a.m., I love meeting these people at Quick Dremore Pump and Gas, people who get up earlier than most people think is normal and they achieve incomes that are larger than most people think is normal. I love those people. If you’re the kind of person I could give a high five to at 5 a.m., you’re the kind of person that is going to love our next in-person Thrive Time workshop. You’re gonna meet the people there who are just like you, people who are thankful and grateful for the life they have, but who believe that they have what it takes to make the money they need to make to achieve that time, freedom, and financial freedom. And why? Because they know the life they wanna live. They wanna live a life of abundance. That’s what you wanna live, and that’s why I look forward to seeing you at the next in-person Thrive Time Workshop. Now, perhaps you can’t get out to the workshop. We still have three other ways to help you. I’m And I encourage you strongly to check out the podcast version of this show. So if you ever miss a segment, you can check it out. Also, you can share your favorite shows with your friends. DriveTimeShow.com, as always. 3, 2, 1, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, my 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? Hmm. Well, they’re going to have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tibo is 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, Russel, 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 has 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’ve 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 going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. He said, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan. 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times best-selling 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? I don’t know what 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. 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 could 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 Yeah, 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 anything like that I had to work for it and I I’m super grateful. I came to a business conference That’s actually I met you met Peter Tannen. 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 is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. It’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show 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 going to come. Who? You. I’m talking to you. You can 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 going to 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, Russell. 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. Have I told you this? You have not told me that. Oh, he’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. 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 traveled all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time 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 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 going to 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 We own it. 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 chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system. When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s 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 got to 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 king’s point new york octagon watch what a person not what they say good morning good morning good morning barbecue soccer is that radio show today on broadcasting uh… from phoenix arizona not scott till arizona their clothes but the completely different worlds. And we 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 hours. 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 Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. What’s going on? 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 Thorne, 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 too, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not 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 in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. 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, you know, 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’ve got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the road map out step by step. He 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 will be answered. This conference like motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s 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. It’s super fun, it’s super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivated me. Your competition’s gonna 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 wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just wanna 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. This is where we used to live two years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s good. Nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from 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 wanna 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 Thrive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere of today’s 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 completely eliminates 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 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 purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.