Clay Clark | Robert Kiyosaki | Legendary Best-Selling Author of The Rich Dad Poor Dad Series Teaches Cash Flow Quadrant + Clay Clark Interviews Kiyosaki & Michael Gerber + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s December 5-6 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

Next thing I want to cover with you is one of the most important lessons my rich dad gave me. And it was called the cash flow quadrant. And what my rich dad explained to me is that there’s four people in business. One is our one, our E’s employees, S stands for small business, self-employed or specialist. B stands for big business and I stands for investor. Investor and the thing of note here is that most people who go to school are programmed for the E and the S side For example was my poor dad Who always said to me son go to school so you can get a nice safe secure job And so my poor dad wanted me to be an employee As this the time was a kid get a safe secure job steady paycheck and benefits. Okay, I Didn’t want to be an employee. And I said, mom and dad, I want to be a rich man. And I fight with my dad. So my mother finally said, son, if you want to be rich, my mother was registered nurse. She said, you want to be rich. The richest people I know are doctors. So my mom wanted me to come over here, be a specialist or a small business person. I said, there’s only one problem with that, mom. Doctors are really smart. And she says, you got a good point there. Not going to be a doctor. So I went to school, I have a Bachelor of Science degree. I can drive ships and I can fly planes. I flew for the Marine Corps. But I’ve never used any of that education because I wanted to become a business owner. So it was my rich dad who basically said to me, you know, become a business owner and learn to be a professional investor. So one of the big differences here between these people is that it’s called taxes. In 1943, the US, the federal government passed a law that said employees had to pay tax before they got paid. So when you go to you when you get your paycheck from your employer, you open it up and voila, the government’s always taken a sizable chunk of it. And the harder you work and the more money you make, the more money they take from you. So that’s why it’s not that good to be an employee because you can never get ahead because the more you work, more money you make, the greater they pay in taxes. Now the doctors, the lawyers, and attorneys, accountants were all laughing, saying, oh, these guys, they’re again paying a lot of taxes. So naturally, the federal government changed the laws again. So in 1986 in the US, a thing called the 86 Tax Reform Act. And it basically took a lot of the benefits away from people who are self-employed, small business doctors and lawyers. So today in America, unfortunately, these guys pay the highest percentage in taxes. It is tragic. And a lot of people think they’re investors, but what they’re really doing is they’re just giving their money to people like mutual funds companies and all that. So they’re not, they’re investing, but they’re not really investors. See, the big tax breaks are on this side. You know, the laws are pretty tight here, but this area is very, very great. So by being a business owner on the right-hand side of the quadrant, you can make a lot more money and pay a smaller percentage of taxes legally. And the key word is legally. In the investor quadrant, it is possible to make millions of dollars and pay 0% taxes legally. But you’ve got to know the difference. So one of the beauties of business for the 21st century is it allows people to make the transition from the E and the S side to the B side, especially. And so you can become a big business owner. And the difference between an S and a B, small business and big business, is most of these guys can’t quit working. Most small business owners, if they stop working for more than a month, the business collapses. You know, they don’t really have a business. Most of these people own a job. So the beauty of business for the 21st century, it allows these people to make the transition to the B side so that you don’t have to keep working hard for money and the money can actually come in passively. Then once you have your business up and running, then I always recommend you then begin investing with your excess cash, paying less and less in taxes. And that’s the reason the rich are getting richer. Dead Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. and of 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 this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, I have to, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I said, no. 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 wanted 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. 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 a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpy. And I’m Rachel Wimpy, and the name of our business is Kip Top Keen. Our business is a dog training business, we help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. They’re a threat. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for emails, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done. We’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and producing your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and that actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something That’s your core focus You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business Not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily daily. So no one has a marketing team to most people don’t they can’t afford one and their local Web guy or a local person that they know Probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months There’s a definite sense of urgency with clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people Really? I mean really ride them to get stuff done and stuff is done so fast here people There’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards, it’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show. from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the steps, jumps to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks. Aubrey Dunne, the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. If you see and see up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation, today is a very special occasion because you never know, Josh Wilson, who you are going to meet at a Trump hotel room. You never know when you go to the Trump hotel in Chicago, you never know who you’re going to meet there. I met the man and the myth, the guy who is behind the E-Myth series of books that absolutely changed the way that I approach business. Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth. I met him there in the Chicago Hotel, and I asked him if he would be on the show. He made a poor life choice, and he’s decided to be here with us. Michael Gerber, how are you, sir? Delighted to be here. Oh, wow. You are just absolutely a living legend, and your book helped so many people. Before we get into your book, and specifically chapter 5 of your book, could you share with the listeners where you grew up and your background, just so they know that you weren’t born at the top of the mountain? Well, hear me, nobody is born at the top of the mountain. I certainly wasn’t. was born in New Jersey, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, of a couple of beautiful Jewish parents and part of a growing family. In 1936, in 1936, in the heart of the Depression, just as the horror was taking place in Europe. And just before the Holocaust was to take place in Europe, I grew up as a little boy in that season without any understanding of what was going on in the world around me. My parents decided to move from New Jersey to California in 1947, and we did. Moved to Anaheim, California, and I was raised in Anaheim, California. And my journey started in Anaheim, California, and my journey continued for the rest of my life to the point where you speak to me here today. And I could go into all of that, but it is such an uninteresting story about Michael Gerber, where he was, what he did, how he did it, why he didn’t do it, what he could have done. So let me ask you this. When did you kind of start to figure out, when did you start to figure out what you wanted to do professionally? What age were you when you had that idea? I didn’t. I never focused on what I wanted to do. I was a jazz saxophone player. I was an encyclopedia salesman. I did this, I did that, I did that, I did this. All the time that I was doing that, I was reading and reading and studying and studying philosophy, spirituality, music, jazz, all the stuff anybody would ever be attracted to until I hit the age of 41. 41. At 41, a friend of mine who owned a small advertising agency in Silicon Valley, California, asked me if I’d meet with one of his clients who was having difficulty converting leads that my brother-in-law’s ad agency was creating for him into sales. And I told my brother-in-law, Ace, that’s his name, that’s still his name, God bless him. I said, Ace, I don’t know anything about business, and I certainly don’t know anything about high-tech business. He said, Michael, you know more than you think you do. Just meet with a guy, let’s see what happens. So Ace dropped me off to meet with a guy, we’ll call him Bob. Bob had a high-tech product. He had sales engineers having difficulty selling that product. And Ace dropped me off and said, Bob, Ace, Michael, guys, get to know each other. I’ll be back in an hour. So obviously, Bob said to me, Michael, what do you know about my business? And I said, nothing, Bob, because I didn’t. Right. And he said, well, what do you know about our product? I said, less than that, Bob. And obviously he’s looking at his watch and thinking, I’ve got an hour with this guy. He doesn’t know anything. What in the hell am I going to do with him? But instead he said, so if you don’t know anything about my business and you don’t know anything about my product, how can you help me? And I said, I haven’t a clue, Bob, but we’ve got an hour to kill. So let’s start so I can ask you some questions. And that’s how all this started. I began to ask Bob questions and I realized, despite the fact that he owned a small business, despite the fact that he was the CEO of a small business, despite the fact that he thought of himself as an entrepreneur starting that small business, every answer Bob gave me was anecdotal. There was no facts underlying anything he said. So I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more, and then I’d ask more. And I suddenly realized I did know something about business. I knew that selling is a system, and I knew that Bob didn’t have one. Thrive Nation, that deserves a quick time out right there. That is absolutely huge. In order to create time freedom and financial freedom, again, in order to create both time and financial freedom, you must create systems that are both repeatable and quickly learnable. You have to create sales systems that other people can implement who are not you. And that way you can quickly train new members of your team how to create a repeatably, predictably successful system for sales. Otherwise, again, it always comes down to you doing the selling. You’ve got to create repeatable systems that wow the customers each and every time. So I would ask you today, specifically, when somebody calls your business phone, how is the phone answered? And if you don’t know the answer to that, make a call script for answering your phones. You need to have a call script for answering your phones. You need to have a pre-written email that you send to new potential clients. You need to have a frequently asked questions script so that way when anybody calls you and asks your new hire frequently asked questions they’re gonna have all the answers. You want to think about every aspect of your system and you want to make it scalable and repeatable. You want to make sure that your on-hold music is music that is going to wow the customer each and every time. You want to make sure that every interaction with your customer is in fact scalable. It is repeatable and it does wow the customers. I told Bob, without a selling system, you’re not going anywhere with this. He said, what’s a selling system? I said, just think of it as a script. First you say this, then you say that, then you say this, then you say that. First he does this, then he does that, then he does this, then he does that. And in the process of doing this and doing that and saying this and saying that, something happens. And you can predict what that’s going to be after you’ve gotten it down, really gotten it down into a groove. Into a groove? Into a groove. And he said to me, well, can you create that for me? And I said, of course. So when he came to pick me up, he said, what happened? I said, I just got a job. He said, what do you mean a job? I said, I’m now a consultant. He said, what do you mean a consultant? I said, I’m now consulting Bob on creating a selling system. He said, what do you know about that? I said, I guess everything. And that was the beginning of it, and that was the beginning of this. That was the beginning of the myth. That was the beginning of everything I’ve done since that point in time. Remember, keep this planted firmly in your mind, that entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem for your ideal and likely buyers in exchange for compensation. Again, entrepreneurship is simply solving a problem in exchange for the compensation that you seek for your ideal and likely buyers. Think about all of the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers. Make a list of all the problems that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers and offer your customer, offer your ideal and likely buyers, those solutions in exchange for the money you seek and you will create both time and financial freedom. It is that easy, my friends. It is unbelievable. Find a problem that you can solve for your ideal and likely buyers and then make the system repeatable. Make it scalable and make sure that it wows your ideal and likely buyers. Make sure that the business can work without you and you shall experience both time and financial freedom. So you might say I didn’t come to the realization of why I was here on the planet until I turned 40. 40 years old. Let me ask you, at the age of 40, you began to have these epiphanies, discovering that many of the people out there, most of our listeners, most people on the planet, we have bought into this thing called the E-myth, or we’ve bought into this wrong mindset to business or this wrong way of looking at business. Can you explain what the E-myth is for people out there that don’t know what the E-myth stands for? Sure. The E-myth is the entrepreneurial myth. It’s based upon the assumption that everybody believes anybody and everybody who starts their own business is an entrepreneur. And the fact is they’re not. What I learned with Bob and then with Mary and then with Judy and the various little companies that I worked on behalf of ACES ad agency until the point it became obvious that I was going to do this on my own, not in Ace’s ad agency, because Ace didn’t believe in what I was saying either. When I came to realize that none of them were entrepreneurs. They were all what I came to call technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. All they did was create a job for themselves. True. So every small business is a job for the idiot who started it. And now they’re working for a really big idiot themselves. And they’re saying to themselves, yeah, but this isn’t working. And of course it’s not working, because they didn’t design it to work. They didn’t build it to work. They didn’t launch it to work. They didn’t grow it to work. How to do that, design it, build it, launch it, and grow it is what the E-Myth is all about. If you’re out there today and you found yourself creating a business that has created financial freedom for you, but you don’t know how to escape the wage cage and you don’t know how to actually create time freedom to go along with that financial freedom, that’s why we have our in-person workshops and the one-on-one coaching. To learn more, go to Thrivetimeshow.com, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com, and click on the conferences button. And there’s no upsells at our workshops. And you’re going to be seated by real entrepreneurs, people that actually own successful companies who are now where you once were. These are real entrepreneurs that needed to learn how to create both time and financial freedom. And many of our conference attendees come back year after year because now that they have created time and financial freedom, they want to refine the systems to make them even more efficient. They want to receive a refresher course. Maybe they want to get re-inspired. But it’s really awesome because you’re going to be seated by real entrepreneurs just like you who own a company that is already doing well, but they just want to create both time and financial freedom at this point. And so I would encourage you to check it out today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com and then click on the conferences button and book your conference tickets today. And don’t let finances be an obstacle here. If you’re in a tight spot, we have scholarship options available. Essentially, we’ll meet you where you’re at financially to make sure that the finances, the financial obligations of purchasing a Thrivetimeshow.com ticket are not going to exceed your ability to pay for them. And so, without any further ado, back to my interview with Michael Gerber. What I find is that some of us think that we know what we’re doing. So some of us, we think, and I was building my first company, DJ Connection, before Brent Lawless gave me her book. I was having quote unquote success. I was selling a lot of wedding packages with DJConnection.com. I was booking thousands of events. I was winning awards. I was being told I was the best entertainer. My company was great. And when I read chapter five of your book, you mentioned that I was creating a job and not a business. And I started contemplating, well, what’s the difference between busyness and a business? Because they’re spelled slightly differently, but busyness, there’s a why in there. And I don’t know why I’m in business when I’m busyness. Busyness means I don’t know why. And then business means a business exists to serve me. There’s an I in business. A business exists to serve me. Okay. And I had to read that chapter over and over and over. And you challenged me in the Chicago hotel room at Trump Hotel, you challenged me to read the chapter again. So I read the book again. I read it. I went through all my highlights and I took photos of them and I sent it to your wife because I wanted you to know that I had read it again. And so I would like to go into, if we can, to chapter five of your book and to page 51, we’re going to open up the book, E-Myth Revisited, where you wrote, every adolescent business reaches a point where it pushes beyond its owner’s comfort zone. For me, it was djconnection.com. The boundary within which he feels secure in his ability to control his environment and outside of which he begins to lose control. That’s why I wanted to DJ 250 events, Michael, before your book saved me. I literally did 250 events in one year. I personally made the playlist for every wedding. I did everything. Tons of money, no time to spend it. It was awesome and terrible at the same time, and the world kept cheering, the world kept cheering. Help our listeners out there that are stuck in this adolescent phase where we want to control everything or we want to abdicate and assign items to members of our team who are poorly trained and then we never follow up. So we either want to do it ourselves or we want to do it ourselves or we want to assign the project to somebody on our team who is poorly trained and poorly equipped to have success and then we do a poor job of following up. Help the listeners out there, my friend. So the evolution of a company from infancy to adolescence to maturity is an absolutely universal process. Most small companies, we’re talking about small companies, we’re talking about a hamburger stand, we’re talking about a meat market, we’re talking about anything and everything that depends upon somebody doing some work. The butcher does the work, the gardener does the work, the hairdresser does the work, the poodle clipper does the work. You understand what I’m saying? There’s work to be done. There’s work to be done in every single business on the planet. Now some of that work is very unsophisticated, some of that work is very sophisticated, but despite whether sophisticated or unsophisticated, every single small business owner who starts a business is actually that technician. The hairdresser starts a beauty shop. The guy behind the microphone starts a thing behind the microphone. A chiropractor starts a chiropractic practice, and so forth and so forth. Well, of course they do, because that’s what they do. That’s what they know how to do. You’re correct. Everybody starts that way. I 100% agree with you. Yeah. So infancy is that startup infancy is the very beginning. Infancy was that joyous time. Clay at the very beginning of what you were doing behind that microphone. Oh yeah. Well you just shot. And you you remember that. Oh yeah. You just shot. Oh it was awesome. It was a new idea and it was exciting and I did it myself and people cheered. I got tips. Yeah, of course, you got up every day, you got up every day, you got up every day. Oh, tell me this story. You did this, you did that. Absolutely, absolutely. Just like the woman in the beauty parlor. She gets up every day and she goes to work and she takes out her brush and her needles and her thing and that and that and she goes to work and the lady that comes in and the lady who follows and then the lady who follows and they schmooze and they talk and they dance and they play and they do whatever they do and the lady who comes in loves her and the other one loves her and the other one loves her and so forth and so on and then she gets busy, busy, busy, busy. That’s where adolescence steps in. your company grew beyond just the beginning phase. So suddenly you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do this, because if you stop doing this, if you stop doing this, you’re out of business. Oh yeah. That’s the deal. If you stop doing this, you’re out of business. And that’s where adolescence begins to take its toll. In other words, you’ve got to get this done, you’ve got to get that done, and you can’t do everything anymore. There’s too much to do, too little time to do it, and also you don’t know everything that needs to be done. So you’ve got to learn everything that needs to be done. Now you’re stretched, stretched, stretched, stretched. Quality’s going down, you’re stretched thin, the quality’s going down, you’re dropping the ball, you’re making money but now you’re kind of offering shoddy work, shoddy quality, you start to lose the excitement about your business. You feel trapped in your business, Michael, right? I mean, you feel trapped. Yeah, and your kids begin to wonder, where’s dad? Where’s dad? Where’s mom? Where’s mom? Oh, now you’re just being mean. How come you’re never home? How come you’re never… How come you’re always working? How come you’re always working? Well, I got to work. I got to work. I got to work. I created this thing that depends upon me because I’m the star. So understand it’s that star issue. I’m the star. It won’t work unless Clay Clark does it. It won’t work unless Michael E. Gerber does it. I’m the star. That’s when the business begins to fail. And it begins to fail big time. And what happens is instead of doing this and doing that and doing this and doing that, instead of all of a sudden having people doing it, but they’re not doing it as well as you do it, you had to bring people in, you had to bring people in, you had to bring in a bookkeeper, you had to bring in a whatever, they’re not doing it as well as you did it, so finally you realize they don’t work as well as you do, so you let them go. Let them go. And when you let them go, now it’s still there waiting to be done. And now you get to do it yourself again, because you’ve created a job and not a business. Right. So what do you do? You get small again. Yeah. And that’s what everybody does. They grow and they shrink. And then it goes to adolescence again, and then they shrink, and finally, they’re through. So last year, there were roughly 550,000 small companies that shut their doors in this country. 550,000 small businesses that shut their doors, not because of the pandemic. You understand the pandemic, yeah, that’s a problem. But understand the problem I’m talking about is a pandemic and has been a pandemic for generations. It’s worse than a pandemic. What you’re talking about is worse than a pandemic. This happens every year, every decade, over and over and over. And what I find, and I’d like to dive into this with you. I have a lot of people that I have been friends with over the years who they start hiring everybody like you were just talking about. They begin hiring people and they begin to abdicate, but they think what they’re doing is to delegate. They think that they’re delegating when they’re actually abdicating. Could you talk about this? I see it with accounting almost 100% of the time where people, they bring in someone to do their accounting and they do not follow up with them because they’re supposed to be the expert. I mean, can you help the listeners out there and maybe tell us what the difference is between abdicating and delegating? Very simple. Abdication is where you turn over responsibility for something and there is no system. You turn over responsibility for a result, but there is no system. There’s no method by which that result is intended to be produced. You understand when McDonald’s was first formulated, the very first franchise store, the franchise prototype in Des Plaines, Illinois, Ray Kroc went to work on that McDonald’s hamburger systems in that hamburger store so that whomever he hired would master the system. Master the system. The system was the solution, not the person he hired. In every case you’re talking about, where we abdicate accountability, we’re effectively turning over the responsibility to produce a result to somebody who’s going to do it whatever way they do it. And every single person we turn it over to does it differently. So there is no way we do it. And if there is no way we do it, there is no, in quotes, McDonald’s. There is no franchise. There is no turnkey system. There is no evolution of a methodology that identifies a brand from everyone else. You, when you talk about a system, this might sound mean and Michael, please feel free to argue with me if you need to here. You can straighten me out here. But I know people that say to me, business owners, who I meet at conferences or who I meet in my building, they’ll say, Clay, the system is Kara. The system is Steve. The system is Josh. They are assuming that a person is the system because the person does the job. And then that key person who’s been with them since day one or maybe day 10 or maybe month 6, they move on. But I have found since implementing your approach to business, working on a business, the e-myth approach, I now am no longer dependent upon personalities. So when somebody feels like it’s time to move on, I can encourage them to move on with great joy. I mean, I mean that. I can be happy for them. I don’t have to hold them hostage. And they don’t hold me hostage. Because the system stays here. Yeah. Because you own the system. You own the brand. You own the methodology. You own the ability to produce the result that you have designed your company to produce again and again and again and again. So when people tune in, when people come in, when people come to the store, when people go online, no matter where it is, online, offline, it doesn’t make any difference. It produces exactly the result they came to get, because it is an intelligent system. That’s the key to the EMIC. That’s one of the critical keys to the EMIC. It’s the system, stupid. I have a, before I let Josh ask you some questions, Josh with Living Water Irrigation is here. Now, I want to brag on Josh. He’s grown a business from $300,000 in revenue to he’s on pace to hit $3 million this year. But last year, Josh, what were your sales last year? What did you end the year at? $1.8. $1.8 million. He’s been a client of mine for a long time, and he’s probably been tired of me referencing you. He’s probably tired of you. He’s probably saying, stop referencing me. This guy doesn’t even exist probably. He thinks you’re probably like a mythical person. But I show him the book cover, he Googles you, he verifies, he knows you’re real now. And now he’s here with you and he has some questions for you, Michael. So Josh, what questions do you have for the great one, Mr. Michael Gerber? Well, Michael, first and foremost, thank you so much. It really honestly is an honor to speak to you. Due to you and all the coaching from Clay, it’s truly, sincerely changed my life and the trajectory of it. So, first and foremost, I’m thankful and grateful, sir. Well, thank you. Beyond that, my first question would be, what is the easiest way for us as a company, you know, we’re having some pretty exponential growth and we’re really excited about it, but what’s the easiest way for us to define our biggest limiting factor and for other business owners out there what’s the easiest way to actually define that Michael? Well your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you hope to produce. Your biggest limiting factor is what keeps you from producing what you intend to produce what you hope to produce what your dream says you’re there to produce and so everything starts with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. That’s the most critical thing you have to do at the beginning of all of this. I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a purpose, I have a mission. In 1977, when I started this thing that I’m so crazed about, when I started in 1977, we started with a dream, a vision, a purpose, and a mission. Our dream then, literally, in quote, was to transform the state of small business worldwide. Our vision was to invent the McDonald’s of small business owner who was attracted to our paradigm and implemented it could be as successful as a McDonald’s franchisee or even more. And our mission was to invent the business development system that made our dream, our vision, a purpose, and a mission. So the first thing I would say to you, what’s your dream? What’s your vision? What’s your purpose? What’s your mission? That is funny. Until you then can say, our dream is our, not mine, our dream, our vision, our purpose, to every single person who joins you in your company, you’ll not truly begin to grow it to the degree it’s waiting to be grown. So you want our listeners to define their dream, their mission, and their purpose. Am I correct, sir, for dream, the mission, and the purpose? Vision. Dream, vision, purpose, mission. Step one, step two, step three, step four. The first four steps of what I call the eightfold path. First, my dream. My dream is the great result we’re here to produce. Second, my vision. My vision is the form our dream is going to take place on the street. Our purpose, our purpose must truly transform the state of our individual customer’s mindset about who he or she is and what he or she can expect from an economic, social, relational, familiar life. And finally, our mission is to invent the system. And it’s always to invent the system. The mission is always about the system at the heart of our great growing enterprise. So you see, what I’m saying is, if you take this little business of yours, just that I’m saying this little business of yours, where you’re behind the microphone, where you’re reaching out to your audience, etc. and so forth. You take that dream, vision, purpose, and mission, you can immediately begin to see that the end result is always worldwide. When you were growing the e-myth program and the book and the team, the movement, and you defined your dream and your vision and your purpose and your mission, and you began to craft the book, to write the book, to work with clients, to do your research. How long did it take you, Mr. Michael Gerber, to go from consulting your first client at the age of 41 to pinning the E-Myth Revisited book? How many years was that? The E-Myth, the first E-Myth book called E-Myth, Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to what to do about it, was published in 1985. I started my company in 1977. Eight years, eight years of data and research. Before that book would ever have been written, I had to do it. And so the first years from 77, 78, 79, 80, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I was working on the Michael Thomas Corporation to design, build, launch, and grow our turnkey capability to transform the state of small business worldwide. The first eight years you were working on the business, the first eight years. Well, the first eight years and then every year after that. So you got to understand, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this. Everybody wants to get it now. Everybody wants to get it now. Everybody wants to get it. Can I do this in a year and a half? Can I do this in six minutes? Can I do this tomorrow? Everybody is simply stupid, stupid, stupid, Clay, when they think about this. Because you can’t do anything right, right now. It takes time to absorb what in fact the implications of what you’re setting out to do really are. Because if I’m seriously saying I’m going to transform the state of small business worldwide, that means by doing what we’re planning on doing, the business failure rate is going to decrease exponentially. The experience of people inside of companies is going to be transformed radically. Lives are going to be transformed in the process. That’s how big this is. And that’s why it can’t be done in a minute. I do not want to be even slightly negative. I want to just be very practical. Be as negative as you want to be. Well, I want to bring this up because I know that you look like you’re 22 years old. I mean, you’re a young man. But you’ve been doing this a long time. And there are certain people who do what Thomas Edison once wrote. He calls it hallucination. Thomas Edison once famously wrote, he said, vision without execution is hallucination. Vision without execution is hallucination. What percentage of the time do you sit down and meet somebody and do you find yourself saying, I wish they would just implement? I mean, at what point do you say, I just wish they would implement? Is it a third of the time that people seek knowledge and they don’t want to implement? Is it a tenth of the time? How often do people seek the knowledge, you give them the knowledge, but they don’t want to implement? Because I hear so many e-myths success stories. I just want to know what percentage of people get the knowledge and they don’t want to implement? You have to understand, anybody can come to me at any point in time, and they do. And they could say, I want to do this, or I want to do that. And I say, absolutely extraordinary. And I said, and the good news is there’s a process for doing that. And the better news is it’s a universal process, meaning you don’t have to invent it. It already exists. It’s what I call the eightfold path. Step one, step two, just like I’ve just done. What happens at that point is what shapes what happens next. Because what happens at that point is a person might say, yeah, but I don’t want to do all that stuff. All I want to do is all I want to do. All I want to do. I hear you. I hear you. You don’t want to do all that stuff. And I said, you have no idea what it takes. And the wonderful news is we’ve got a method to make it possible for you to mature in the process of discovering the truth about what it is you’re setting out to do. Step one, step two, and I go back and back and back. What they do in that process will tell you everything you need to know. We get to change that. But you understand the only way we get to change that is to take responsibility for our own life. Not for their lives, not for hers, not for his, not for its, not for the community, not for the state, not for the government, not for the federal, not for the international. Our life. My life. International our life My life I’ve got to go to work on my life Trust in exactly the way they went to work on me in boot camp Now hear me I gotta put myself into boot camp And I’ve got to get all of the bullshit out of me. So I can suddenly discover what truth means. We don’t even know what the word truth means. Well truth is offensive. Truth is, it hurts. Truth is something people can’t handle. I mean, when you sit down and you explain to a young whippersnapper, some people come to our conferences and they want to know how search engines work. So you sit down and you explain to them how the Google algorithm works and you show them examples and they go I don’t want to have to do all of that Is there an easy way and you say no you can and I won’t get too nerdy into it But you tell them you have to have the most original HTML content you have to have a a canonically compliant website You have to have the most reviews and the most mobile compliance. There’s four variables and they say canonical And they say, canonical, that’s multiple syllables. And I would have to be quick. It’s not you have to. It’s it has to. So understand not you have to, it has to. What you have to do is come face to face and understand how little you actually know. So if you were to take the average human being in these United States today, if you were to take everybody out there on the street who’s burning everything down and have them take a test, I’m not talking about a hard test, I’m talking about your 1, 2, 3’s. If you were to put them through that process, the vast majority of them would fail. Absolutely abject failure. And then you’ve got to say, if you don’t even know that, what leads you to presume that you could tell me how to live my life. Time for bootcamp. So my point is, one of the greatest things that anybody could possibly do for America is put everybody into bootcamp. Everybody goes to bootcamp. You gotta have a bootcamp on whatever you decided to do. You gotta have a bootcamp because that’s where people demonstrate who they are and what they know and what they do and what they don’t and what they’re not willing to do. Boot camp. Boot camp. You’ve got to open them up. Tears are weakness leaving the body, as my uncle used to tell me. I think what you’re telling us is mind-altering for some people. I want to respect your time. I had a couple more questions on part one of this interview. I wanted to ask you specifically, on page 67 of your book, you wrote something to me, the reader, to all the readers. You wrote this to us. You said, you did the best you could. It’s time to get on with your life, to build your business in an enlivening way. What does it mean to build your business in an enlivening way? What does it mean to enliven? Is that what you’re asking? Yes, because it’s a word I don’t hear people use. Well, it means to bring true life to it. In short, when folks come to work, they’re coming to invest their life for a particular work with the intent of producing a result, it’s going to add value to every single person associated with that work. That means your customer, that means the guy at the desk next door, it means the woman in the accounting department, means everybody and anybody who’s joined here come here every day. It’s like a prayer at the beginning of the day. Every day to enliven the experience, come closer to God. So I’ve been given to say of late, if we’re born in the image of God, and in Genesis it says we are, then it means we’re born to create. God is the creator. So if we’re born in the image of God, it means we’re born to create. To create what? To create a world fit for God look like? Well, you can begin by reading the Ten Commandments. And you suddenly begin to see that we can engage in a way to enliven our experience of being committed, zealously engaged human beings, creators all, Creators all here to create an experience that we can experience as we do it and after we’ve done it and before we do it that literally brings life to everything I do. Imagine that. And then you see what I mean by that. You have given me an enlivened existence where I was able to escape the rat race. So today, while we’ve been talking, I think my team has probably cut, we have three stores, there’s five stores that are open that cut hair, and I don’t have the ability to cut hair. So the barber shop, there’s five stores open we have. So there’s probably 200 people that got their hair cut in the last hour and a half, two hours, about 200 people getting their hair cut. Wait a second, Clay. That’s not true what you just said. Oh, sure. You said, I don’t have to do anything. No, hear me. You have to be something. True. So at the heart of what you’ve created is your energy. And the heart of your energy is a love for God. True. And the heart of your love for God is your determination to transform the state of every human being you connect with in whatever way is possible. Economically, socially, spiritually, relationally. What an extraordinary thing to possess as Clay Clark possesses it. And what an extraordinary thing for Clay Clark to pursue, to pursue with every bit of energy you’ve got. I appreciate you saying that, and I want you to know you unshackled me personally. It was a thing where you allowed me to get away from the DJ microphone at these weddings, to get away from the day-to-day operations and the reactivity, to be able to build proactive businesses, so now we can hopefully together mentor millions of people. You have helped me, and I would love to give you the microphone to share what you’re working on now, because whatever you’re working on now deserves a Harry Carey holy cow. Holy cow! We met in Chicago, so whatever you’re working on now deserves a Chicago Harry Carey, holy cow. Holy cow! So tell us, what are you working on now, sir? What are you doing? a university called Radical U, Radical Y-O-U. I want you to imagine awakening the entrepreneur within every human being on the planet, every human being on the planet capable of studying, capable of working. That’s what we created. So we have created a university, an entrepreneurial development university to take out to the world and to transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide to a degree that’s never been accomplished before. Our university is devoted to what we call the eightfold path. Wow. And every student in our university will discover their dream, their vision, their purpose, their mission, their job, their practice, their business, their enterprise. An evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000 called beyond the E-Mid. The evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1000. And here’s the best part. And you can promote this, promote this, promote this, promote this Clay, until you’re blue in the face. But every person within the sound of your voice needs to understand this. That we’re giving the first year of Radical You away for $10. Ten bucks the whole year? Ten bucks for the entire year. 52 weeks, 52 video sessions online right now. And every single person within the sound of my voice who can see my face or see my Panama hat or see your jacket, whatever it is, every single human being, I’m inviting them to join us in Radical You. When those people join us in Radical You, Clay, we’re going to bring folks like you, folks like the other gentleman who just said hurrah, folks like every person you’re connected with who wants to become a teacher of creativity. You’re going to come and join us at Radical You, and you’re going to teach something and they’re going to teach something and I’m going to teach you what to teach. But hear me, that’s what we’re working on. Five million students within the next three years. And then guess what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? Apple. Apple, the company, is going to acquire Radical You. Michael, I want to respect your time. I know you’re taking your wife on a great date tonight. I gotta go. Thank you. Thank you so much, my friend. I really do appreciate you. Clay, see you in Oklahoma. This show blows my mind. And now, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! Well you may be considering becoming a client and I thought, well, one of the best ways to make that decision is to hear from somebody that we’ve actually worked with for a long, long time. And he’s become a good friend and I’m excited for you to hear his story. Derek Cisney, welcome onto the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Oh, I’m doing great, sir. Thank you for having me. Hey, so I want to start at the end, and then we’ll kind of work towards the beginning here. So in terms of like, how did the business coaching experience impact you personally? Because when I first met you, you were working in corporate America. And then you went to do your start your own business as a consultant. How did how did the business coaching change your life or impact your life? Oh man, it was I would say the biggest thing that really impacted me was the fact that I had no no direction. You know when you’re when you’re doing stuff like this trying to create a business trying to grow a business trying to scale a business or doing anything like that. You’re just kind of going through the flow, it’s all emotional it seems like, and you’re just kind of guessing, and you’re hoping that you hit on the points. The biggest thing that I took away, the thing that I learned the most is being organized. I mean, waking up early, right? 4.30, four o’clock in the morning, 3.30 in the morning, getting up early, getting organized, getting your day said, and being diligent. Oh gosh, that was diligent doer, diligent doer, Proverbs 10, four, right? So how would you describe, I mean, if you had to, has it been a positive change in your life? Has it been terrible? I mean, if you were to talk into somebody, they said, how did business coaching impact you? How would you describe that? So I actually told this to my wife, is that, so my last name is Cisney. And it’s you and the team have changed generations of Cisneys. So it wasn’t just me, it started with me, but not just that Clay, it impacted in my church, it impacted in the youth group, it impacted at the university level, across the board it has impacted every fiber of who I am, everything about me, things that I didn’t know was capable, that was even inside of me to be able to do it in the first place has been impacted. And then my children, I have a daughter who’s 11 and a daughter who’s 5. I’m teaching them about business. I’m teaching them the diligence, the waking up early, the planning, all those things. So it’s been life-changing for generations of us. Now I have been self-employed since I was 15. And so you have, you know, you hop into my world, but people hop into my world. I don’t, I guess I don’t even recognize that there’s a world out there that exists that doesn’t wake up early, doesn’t achieve their goals, and that doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. I’m just, that’s how I am. And so if you remember, you first heard about me, I think through a radio show. Can you tell people how you first heard about me and what your first experience was working with me or what we’re hearing about me? Yeah, so, so I did. I heard about you through the radio show and I didn’t think anything of it. I was like, okay, who’s this guy? Could you hear a lot of get rich quick schemes, you know, all these things. So you just kind of, you put you in that category in the beginning. And then I was actually applying for jobs. I was like, well, I heard about this guy. So I went and I came and I’ll never forget the day that I walked in and I look around and I’m like, oh man, what did I just walk into and the music was blaring? I mean, there’s all these lights all this it looked like I remember thinking I’ll bet this is how Facebook is if I Walked in Facebook. This is probably how it is And then a Daisy showed me around and she introduced me to you and I remember you saying these words He said are you married? I said, yes, sir. I am and you said he said I think that you’ll be a hard worker Just from from talking to me this few minutes and you said you got the job, and I turned you down. So, that was early on, and then I came back four years later. You don’t go applying for a job, that’s how you started out, right? That’s exactly right, that is exactly right. And then four years later, I came back. You came back four years later as a business growth consultant, and you’re looking to add some clients and increase your revenue. I’m not asking you on this show to share how much money you ended up making per month. But how much is a percentage or how many times did we help you increase your income by? Oh, honestly, it was priceless. Like it was the percentages. I remember talking to someone, I think it was you, you introduced me to some people as well. I mean, in reality, it was almost infinite. So I mean, the most money I ever made at one time in a year was $50,000 before ever joining this. And let’s just say it was a double, triple that. So at the- So you tripled your income? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So yeah. Now just to be clear, so you’re saying that you tripled your income and you learned new life skills and we’ve worked together every week. We have a, every week we had a meeting, every week. The purpose of that meeting is to make sure that you know what to do and that you, I call it IDS or identify, discuss, solve. We identify what needs to be done, we discuss what needs to be, so you know what you’re doing, and then we solve it, like here’s the homework. Can you talk to the listeners out there about the importance of having those meetings every week where a lot of times you might even be going over the same subject, but what’s the importance of having that somebody harassing you on a weekly basis about following the systems? It is so important because people think that they can do it themselves. Some people might have the ability, but to have somebody kind of kick you in the tail, I used to explain it to people as it’s kind of like taking a basketball shot. I’m not the best basketball player by any stretch of the imagination, but having somebody who understands the game beside me and watching me take their shots and say, hey, if you just tweak that just a little bit, you could probably make that better, or you can make that shot more, or if you do more shots, right? If you take it from an NBA perspective, right? They’ll shoot the same shot over and over and over again. They’ll shoot that same shot from that same spot a thousand times, but that’s what makes them so great. And it’s the same thing with business, doing the same thing over and over and over again. It sounds repetitive and it sounds like, okay, it’s insanity, right? But in reality, it’s those small, diligent things that happen for us to grow a business or grow ourselves or anything like that. Now, you’ve been able to shadow multiple times. You actually were in the office quite a bit. How would you describe maybe the impact that shadowing me made on you? When you see that I’m actually working within a highly scheduled environment with an actual to-do list, how did that impact you? It was amazing. To be able to see it and actually see somebody do it. A lot of people, including books, they say, do this. And then they may not do it themselves, or their leadership won’t even do it themselves. That happens a lot. And so watching you and even the leadership and the people inside the building do exactly, and if I remember right, I think it’s mandatory for everybody who works in your building, they have to have a clipboard and a schedule. Like, they have to have the clipboard. So, I mean, everybody doing that, and it’s not a grade but it’s like where’s your clipboard and they used to call it their brain. So we’d say where’s your brain at? So it was amazing to be actually see it implemented and worked on every single morning. Self-help, you know you labeled me as self-help there for a minute and I worry about that. I’ve met a lot of self-help authors. I’ve met a lot of I won’t mention their names on today’s show but people I’ve met and backstage you know at the events, I’m a speaker, you’re a speaker, and they’re like, hey, how do you, how do you, you know, do you actually help your clients grow? And I go, well, yeah. I mean, all my clients, they pay $1,700 a month. It’s month to month, and they grow. And they’re like, yeah, but I mean, I mean, really, what’s the catch? I go, what do you mean, what’s the catch? And these self-help guys, they go, well, you know, I have a program I ultimately signed them up for so they can become a certified coach underneath my program. And that’s how they make their money and they sign up people to long contracts and that’s kind of their game is to you know keep talking people into the next thing. You’ve been to our workshops and I don’t do that at our workshops. How would you describe the workshops themselves? The workshops are eye-opening and it’s almost you could go to a workshop and learn everything that you needed to learn. The problem that I see a lot of people have is they’re like, okay, this is great knowledge, but they don’t understand how to apply the knowledge. And that’s where Clay Clark’s wisdom comes in. No, you’re not self-help, but you’re like, I’ve already been there. I’ve done it. If we’re looking at it from a biblical perspective, right? It’s getting the knowledge, the understanding, and the wisdom to be able to apply it. Well, you can get all the knowledge and you can sort of understand how it works. But, and those business shops, workshops actually help to be able to acquire those. But then that next step, if you want to take that next step, it is that implementation. And that’s what your team is able to provide. Now kind of go in line by line, marketing, you know, we’ll help you with your marketing, your website, your print pieces, all those items. How helpful was that during that time in your life to know that you had a team that could do the website, the photography, the videography, all of the marketing things in one point of contact as opposed to having to run around and look for other designers. It was amazing, it was amazing. Just to be able to come to you, you are my point of contact or another coach is my point of contact and that’s my POC if you use it from a military term. But my point of contact was you. If I needed something, you were on it. Every week, those weekly one hour meetings, it was like, hey, I need this to get done. In fact, with you, a lot of the times, you were able to do it right there on the spot. Like, well, let’s get that fixed right now. So it was amazing. Now the core repeatable actionable processes, I call it the crap, core repeatable actionable processes. What? Core repeatable actionable processes. A lot of entrepreneurs that aren’t successful struggle to bore down and they struggle with boredom. They go, it’s the same thing every week. Oh, man. You know, they want a new idea, a new shiny thing. A lot of men do that with their wives, looking for new girlfriends. That’s not a move. A lot of people do that with new cars, always looking for a new car, always looking for a new book to buy. They buy the book. They don’t read the book. They just buy books. A lot of people are always looking for a new car smell, a new thing. Can you talk about the importance of having that core, repeatable, actionable processes cemented and gone over every day, just the core, repeatable, actionable process, maybe the value of that? You don’t like it. So that’s the reason the acronym is great, it’s CRAP, right? It’s like you’re just kind of going through it, it’s like, I don’t like to do this, I don’t like to do this. But the amazing thing is, people, if you’re listening to this, it’s be diligent in the crap. Be diligent in the crap. Just keep pushing through, keep pushing through. I promise you, if you do what Clay’s team tells you to do, it works. It works. It will, it’s just, it sounds insane. It sounds like it won’t work. It sounds like a get rich quick scheme. It sounds like all these things, but doing the crap actually brings progression and growth. I’ll give you the final word there for anybody out there that’s thinking about filling out the form, coming to a conference, scheduling a one-on-one consultation. We don’t want to waste anybody’s time out there who’s not a good fit, nor do we want anybody who is a good fit to be turned away. What’s the final word you might say to anybody out there that’s contemplating becoming one of our 160 clients by scheduling a one-on-one consultation or coming to an in-person workshop? If you’re sitting on the fence, if you’re really thinking about it, I would tell you definitely 100% come to a workshop. The workshops are, they’re priceless. But if you need that kick in the tail and you’re like, man, I say I’m gonna do this and you’re that hopeful person that’s just like, I want to do this, I want to make this happen. Clay’s team can actually take you to that next level. And if you’re setting, just thinking about it, just do it. Just do it, give it a shot. I believe that there’s no contract, there’s nothing. I mean, there’s no reason for you not to give it a shot. I mean, that’s the amazing thing about it. You have everything in-house right there for you. A marketing team, a coaching team, individuals that are there to help you, even Clay’s network and stuff like that. And it’s just, it’s priceless. And if you’re just thinking about it, go for it. Just do it. Now you and your wife are attending some kind of ministry conference this weekend, which is the whole purpose of growing a business is to create time freedom and financial freedom. So I don’t want to get you in the proverbial doghouse there. So my final question I have here before I let you go is, talk about the time freedom and the financial freedom of just knowing that you have the ability financially to be able to take your wife to a workshop like the one you’re going to, and you don’t have to worry about the money. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing to be able to not have to worry about that and actually be able to go to sleep at night. In the beginning, Clay, you may know this and I know the listeners won’t, I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have anything. I had zero, zero dollars coming in. And this was right before COVID. So you can imagine, really, it was a leap of faith for me. I joined that program and I’ve known you for years, but I joined that program before COVID. And then I don’t know if you remember my text messages I was texting you, I was like, Clay, I’m really freaking out here with all the COVID stuff. And you’re like, just take it easy. And then you guys kind of, you coached me along that. And I am so appreciative of that. Just so appreciative of that. But- I think you got a kind of a friendship with Eric Trump out of the deal too. Eric actually reached out and made sure that you were invited to Laura’s birthday. That’s a real thing. Yes. Right? Yes. I would have never guessed that. I would have never guessed that. Seriously, he calls me and goes, hey, is your guy Derek coming? I said, Derek? He goes, my guy, Derek. I love Derek. Is Derek coming to Laura’s party? We got to get Derek at the party. So that was kind of fun too. So Derek, I really appreciate you. Appreciate all you’ve done in terms of putting forth the effort. If we’re out there teaching people what to do and they don’t implement the proven success systems, it doesn’t work. You’re a diligent doer and I wish you the best of all the endeavors you’re doing right now. And we’ll talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Take care. I can do this and I will do this. This is what I tell myself each day. I know your choice matters. Because of racial segregation, I wasn’t even allowed to use the front door of the bank in Greenville, Mississippi. I remember the back door, but I refused to let that slight cause me to fail. Without the idea of family setting and making a living in the cotton And so can you. I imagined possibilities that did not even exist at the moment, but they eventually became my reality. I became a Pulitzer-nominated author, an entrepreneur, who helped to introduce StairMaster exercise system to the world. Now the president and CEO of two small businesses, and one of the owners of a bank that 50 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to even walk through the front door. The American dream is not dead. Let me say it again. The American dream is not dead. Maybe a jump start is all it needs. So was my success a choice? You better believe it was definitely my choice. You Adversity, for many of us, is a catalyst that initiates the change. It isn’t easy. It’s not always fun, but it’s a choice. You can do this. No matter what situation you find yourself in, you can maximize your potential. You will meet adversity. Trust me, it will strengthen you. You will fail. It will be lessons learned you will never forget. You will be challenged, but your creativity will amaze you. Get rich quick schemes don’t work, no matter how enticing. But if you’re willing to shift your thinking and make the choice to work hard, believe in yourself and continually educate yourself, you can accomplish whatever it is that you have imagined. Just imagine the possibilities and be ready to work them into reality. You know, we’re excited to help you jumpstart your own success story. Now roll up your sleeves. You can do this. Be your own dream come true. Welcome to Thrive. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Aaron Antus, you now run Oklahoma’s largest home building company, one of the largest home building companies in Oklahoma. I’m now an entrepreneur with multiple different businesses, and both of us, we both read this little book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 20 some odd years ago, and it changed our lives. You were in Michigan. I was living in my mom’s basement in Michigan, completely buried in debt, had no sight of how to get out, no college education, flunked out of college. And I was at an Oral Roberts University dorm room, had no idea how to achieve success, and I read this thing called the Cash Flow Quadrant. It said we have to become a great employee, and then we have to become self-employed. And then after that, we get to become a business owner, and then we get to become an investor. So here we are, both of us are investors, and we get to interview the man, the myth, the legend who created the Cash Flow Quadrant, Robert Kiyosaki. Welcome on to this Ragtime Show. How are you, sir? Boy, you guys are already pumped up. I’m about to move to Oklahoma. Anyway, thank you for the kind words. At my old age, to have young people like you saying the book changed their lives is probably the biggest spherical juice I get. It’s because that’s the app. Brother, it changed my life. Changed my life. I probably purchased, conservatively, a thousand copies of your book, given it to folks. And so I wanted to do was I wanted to tap into your wisdom on part one about the cashflow quadrant, because we have a lot of people listening to this show that will become the future generation of entrepreneurs, if we can say, of capitalism in America. Sir, can you walk us through the cash flow quadrant? I think it’s embroidered on the chair behind you. Sure, it’s right there. There it is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But this is my etching of it. And E stands for employee, S stands for self-employed, small business, or a specialist like a doctor or a lawyer. It also stands for smart person. And then B stands for big business, according to the Internal Revenue Service, is 500 employees or more. But B also stands for brand, like McDonald’s is a brand. And brands are very, very valuable assets. And then I stands for investor, but it’s actually an inside investor. And so when I was a kid, you know, 10 years old, studying with my rich dad, he would walk me through this and be talking about your mindset. So, on this side is my poor dad, you know, go to school, get a job. This is, he was a PhD in education. This is my mom. She wanted him to become a doctor or a lawyer. And I said to my mom, the only problem with that, mom, is you have to be smart. She says, you’re right. Guess you’re not going to be a doctor or a lawyer. Cause I really didn’t like school, you know? And then, so my rich dad was over here and he was building a massive, massive business throughout Hawaii. So when you go to Hawaii today, if you look at Waikiki beach, you’ll see the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Rich dad as an inside investor, assembled all that property and another investor took it off his hands and built a Hyatt on it. So I watched both my poor dad and my rich dad, I watched my rich dad get richer and richer and richer, but my poor dad get poorer and poorer and poorer. Now I wanted to ask you this, Robert. You know, for somebody out there listening right now, if they’re an employee, okay, and let’s just, because I’m going back to my 18-year-old mind. I was working at Target, Applebee’s and DirecTV. I was doing a poor job at Target, a poor job at Applebee’s, and a poor job at DirecTV. And I read your book and I’m going, I have to do a good job because I need to be able to get ahead, to become self-employed. What would you say to somebody who’s kind of stuck in that rut of they’re always late, never getting things done, they’re the self, the perpetuating cycle of fail employee right there. What would you say to that employee right there that’s kind of stuck in that rut right now? Yeah, but it goes deeper than that, Clay. The numbers here stand for taxes. So this is worldwide. They’re pretty much worldwide. Employees pay about 40% of their income in taxes. The small business entrepreneur pays 60 percent. Now, when Biden wants to hire 87,000 IRS agents, he’s going after this guy. These guys are already screwed. I mean, they take their taxes out before you get paid. But these guys here, the IRS has to go after them. So the small business guy is going to get screwed by Biden. I mean, I hope I’m not Republican or Democrat. Trump is my friend. But these are the guys that are going to go after. So, what happens to a young person that says, I’m going to quit my job and start a business? Well, you move into a higher tax bracket. If you understand that thing, okay. And on this side, because you have employees, lots of employees, I only pay 20%. But as an insider, I can pay 0% legally. I don’t wanna go to jail and become somebody’s boyfriend. I wanna be an insider all the time. So that’s my way of saying, I don’t own stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs. I don’t touch anything the stock market pumps out. I don’t trust the dollar. I don’t trust the treasury. And I definitely don’t trust government. So that’s kind of why this is so important today, especially today. And with 87,000 IRS agents coming out, you’d better get a great, great, great CPA, a tax guy. That’s the big difference. Yeah. Now, since you brought up Biden for a second, we’ll get into that now. You, I believe, are not only a best-selling author, not only an investor, but I believe you’re a man who was kicked out of Freedom Fest. Could you please explain to us, is that true? Am I making that up? Did you get kicked out of Freedom Fest? And if so, why? What was the question, please? Did you get kicked out of Freedom Fest? Yes. Could you, I forget, you stand for freedom. You come across as a libertarian for me. Why would you get kicked out of Freedom Fest? Well, apparently the person that puts it on, I won’t mention his name. Well, he comes after me every time. I won’t mention his name, but I have no idea because I was talking about a stock market crash and he got very angry at me. He says, markets don’t crash. I’m going, are you kidding me? You know, what happened in 2008? What’s happening right now? So my concern is a lot of times things are misnamed, like, you know, the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. It has nothing to do with inflation. It has to do with the Green New Deal. So I’m always concerned when people pump out these things like the Freedom Fast and all that. But I got hammered for talking about how you prepare for a crash. And the reason I say that is because when markets crash, it’s the best time to get rich. You know, that’s like Neiman Marcus having a sale. So I like crashes, but this guy came after me so hard. He still does. I was up in Vancouver and he still came after me. He says, how dare you say markets crash? I’m going, but they do crash. And so anyway, I really don’t know why he’s after me but he’s come after me every single time and he’s the promoter of Freedom Thrusts. Now, a lot of people have noticed, well, there’s a mask mandate, there’s a lockdown, there’s a quarantine, there’s a curfew, there’s Biden speaking at the World Economic Forum 2016 event at Davos. There seems to be a lot of chatter related to Klaus Schwab and Yuval Noah Harari. And now people who have chosen not to talk about it or think about it, the Great Reset is here and it’s impacting everybody in some way, shape or form. Could you comment on what the Great Reset is and how it is impacting American business? Well, the Great Reset is the collapse of the dollar, the fiat money system. And that’s why when I speak, I don’t think it’s good or bad. I am an inside investor. I’m a real estate guy. I also took this, this is my latest accomplishment. I took this company public on the New York Stock Exchange. I’ve taken three companies public on Toronto Stock Exchange, but this is my first New York Stock Exchange, and it’s the richest gold mine in America. And so I do practice what I teach. But the reason I’m into gold is because a great reset will be the collapse of the dollar system. And that started back in 1971 when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. And in 1971, I was in Vietnam as a Marine helicopter gunship pilot. And I’m going, what the heck does this mean? We’re off the gold standard. And I had no idea. So, because we don’t teach money at school, and I started my co-pilot and I flew behind enemy lines to look for gold, proving Marines aren’t the brightest guys on earth. But I’m sitting there looking for gold from a gold mine, and this little Vietnamese woman with red teeth, they always chewed beetle nuts, and I was trying to get a discount on gold. So gold was 35 an ounce in 71, and by the time I got there, it was $50 an ounce. And so I tried to get a discount because, you know, behind enemy line discounts. And she looked at me and laughed her ass off. Just smiled at the red t-shirt says spot, spot. I said, what the hell is spot? I got a spot on my shirt or something. She didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak Vietnamese. But then I realized gold is international money. Gold is real money. And ever since then, I became a gold bug, which is why I’m very happy to take this company public. I’ll give it a name of it. I wouldn’t invest in it. It’s called ODV. You have to do your research on it, but it’s the richest gold mine in America. It’s 140 years old. And it was just sitting there in Provo, Utah. So there’s opportunities everywhere, but I want to be this kind of investor. I don’t want stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs that I don’t own. Robert, the name of your gold mine is what now? What’s the name of the gold mine investment company? They call it the Trixie mine, but the call sign is ODV. Just check it out. The reason it’s important, because the guy who put it together is a Canadian. And I spent a lot of time in Canada and Vancouver putting gold deals together because I’m an entrepreneur. And this guy found this gold mine 140 years old, and he used technology. He looked at it, and he got 140 years of records from these old gold miners, you know, the guys with the burro and the pick. And he took all their records, and he digitalized it. Wow. How’d you do that? That guy is really smart, obviously. He digitalized it, and then once it was digitalized, he could put it into pictures. And he was going through the records, digitalizing all the records of these gold miners from 140 years ago in Utah. Yeah. And he says, oh my God, they missed the vein. I went, what? He says, they missed the vein. And so that’s why the Trixie mine or ODV is now the richest gold mine in America. It was sitting there empty. So there’s opportunities everywhere I’m saying, you know. Now I have two quick questions for you and then I’m gonna go to Aaron here. As it relates to the value of gold, the price of an ounce of gold in 1971 was approximately $40 an ounce. In 1991, it was $360 an ounce. Then you move on to 2011, it’s $1,500 an ounce. Now we’ll call it $1,800 an ounce. And I think a lot of people want to hear from you right now. You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, if 10 is like you are very concerned about the collapse of the dollar. Like if tennis, you are sounding the alarm, you’re very worried. And a one is you’re not concerned at all about the collapse of the dollar. How concerned are you about the collapse of the US dollar, sir? I’m very concerned. And it’s more than just the US. There’s, you know, there’s a thing called the BRICS nations BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And what happened in 2021, I believe, when we abandoned Afghanistan, on that day, Saudi Arabia shifted allegiances from America, trading in dollars, petrodollars. Saudi Arabia switched sides to China and Russia. It’s the end of the dollar system. So the end is near for the U.S. dollar, and my concern is it’s going to wipe out stock, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs. Just for my generation, the boomer generation, we’re in serious trouble, because the only reason our stock, bonds, mutual funds are up is because the Fed and the Treasury just kept printing more and more money. Instead of fixing the problem from 2008, they just kept printing more money. And it’s about to come to an end. So that’s why when I say to people, buy gold, silver and Bitcoin, you know, you want to stay in what I call real assets, tangible assets. That’s my opinion. Most people say buy U.S. Treasuries. That’s Harry Dent. I don’t like anything that can be printed. Now, the BRICS nations, again, to repeat for everybody who’s hearing this for the first time, you might hear about the BRICS nations, that’s Brazil, Russia, India, China, Africa, those comprise roughly 41% of the Earth’s population, and they are teaming up together to unseat the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And now you have Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Algeria, Turkey, and Argentina all teaming up to unseat the U.S. dollar as the world’s U.S. You’re on it, man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody, listen to this guy. He knows what he’s talking about. You have the macro-mactual picture. Very few people have that point of view. If, let’s just say that the U.S. dollar becomes no longer the world’s reserve currency, what will happen to the value of the dollar, sir? Well, I think you were touching on it before. There was a guy, Klaus Schwab, and the Great Reset, and the Great Reset will be the collapse of the dollar. with China, China’s putting in the Belt and Road Project, 90% of the population is going to be dealing in Chinese Yuan, not US dollars. And America is, I hate to say that, the Fed is pretty corrupt. Everybody says, oh, don’t fight the Fed, trust the Fed and all that stuff. I don’t trust them at all. I don’t trust anything that can be printed. But that’s why I tell the story of being a marine pilot, flying behind enemy lines with my helicopter and finding out what goal was. This is 1972. I’m going, holy mackerel. Why don’t we teach this at school? So that’s my concern. And I commend you. I mean, Kash Patel is a stud, but boy, you know your stuff, too. I’m very impressed. Well, sir, I’m going to give you the floor here. Final 60 seconds. People take notes. I know they’re going to go to richdad.com right now. I know they’re going to be purchasing a copy of Capitalist Manifesto. I know our listeners, our readers and note-takers are going to buy Capitalist Manifesto. I know they’re going to. And if somebody out there still doesn’t own Rich Dad, Poor Dad, what are you doing? Go buy the book. Go buy the book. Come on. We just told you how much it changed our lives. Sir, we’ll give you the final word. What would you say to all the listeners out there? Well, the most important asset you have lies between your left ear and your right ear, you know, it’s your brain or your mind, whatever you want to call it. But you’ve got to be very careful who puts information in there. You know, is the person going to, you know, if it was like my poor dad, I wouldn’t listen to him. And if the person is an entrepreneur and all this, because I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I listened to him. The same as when I was getting ready to go to Vietnam, my teachers were real Marine pilots. They actually came back from combat. And so I was preparing in Camp Pendleton to go to Vietnam, and I chose the instructor very carefully. I wanted to know who the best instructor was, the best gunship pilot. And that guy, I said, just trained the heck out of me. So the most important thing is choose your teachers wisely. You know what I mean? Very much choose your teachers wisely. There is nothing more important than what’s between this year and that year. And be careful who your friends are. You know, there’s people out there who are Judas’s Yeah, screw you. Yeah, we know that happens a lot unfortunately Robert this was better than I possibly could have expected sir, and I’ll tell you the only thing that was unexpected for me I knew it would be good is your glasses are much more incredible than I thought they would be you’ve got some great glasses there Sir, I have at my age. I gotta do anything Hey, thank you brother. We’ll be talking to you soon, okay? Thank you. I’ll be honored. I’m honored to be on the program. So thanks, Cash Hault. Thanks to the Cash Haults. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Gabe Salinas, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? I am wonderful, Clay. I’m glad to be here with you today. And just to give people a little context, how long have we worked with you in your business, sir? A little over three years, Clay. We’ve been together for a little bit of a journey now. And I think we’ve picked the best of times and the worst of times to work together. I mean, it’s like right at the peak of the geopolitical craziness. That’s when we started working with you. But you’ve continued to grow. What kind of growth have you seen over these past three years? Just so the listeners know that you do have, in fact, a business that can navigate through difficult times. Well, we have over doubled our business here at Window Ninjas since working with you. I actually went back and looked through our numbers and I looked at some of our goals that we had set in the original conversation that I had with your team. And we have surpassed my original number that I wanted to hit with you guys. And I was quite shocked at how, I won’t say easy, but systematic it was for us to be able to get to where we wanted to be. JT, do you know what time it is? 4.10. It’s T-Vote time in Tulsa, Rosalim, baby! Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. 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. And a lot of people, you know, 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? Mm, well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the 2-Day Interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the 2-Day Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrivetimeshow.com. You’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. 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. You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. You started out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that, did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russel. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and 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. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? 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 five hundred dollars it’s a two-day interactive business workshop over twenty hours of business training we’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book the millionaires guide to becoming sustainably rich you’re gonna leave with a workbook you’re gonna leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company it’s practical it’s actionable and it’s Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russia get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented, over the last 35 years, 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. 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. 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. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these motivational seminars no money down real estate Ponzi scheme get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything It was like you went there, and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it It was a hollow nothingness, and I wanted the knowledge you’re like oh But we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We 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’ve 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 at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.