Clay Clark | Memory | What Was Your Name Again? Five-Time USA Memory Champion, Holding the Record for Most Wins of National Memory Champion Title, Nelson Dellis + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s Dec 5th-6th 2024 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

As busy entrepreneurs, many of us struggle to remember names. Many of us struggle to remember numbers. Many of us struggle to remember almost anything. So we end up saying, ah, so what’s your name again? And to kill rapport further, we then say, ah, remind me one more time. What was your name again? So we thought that it might make sense to bring on the current four-time USA memory champion, Nelson Delis, to teach us how to memorize almost anything. Throughout Nelson’s career, he’s been the speaker and presenter of choice for Pepsi, CNN, Living Social, and countless massive companies. He’s been featured on CNBC, Wired, Saturday Night Live, CNN, Fast Company, the Lewis Howes Podcast, Dr. Drew Weekly Infusion Podcast, the Maria Shriver Blog, Wall Street Journal Live, Dr. Oz, Huffington Post, Forbes Online, USA Today, NPR, All Things Considered, the New York Daily News, ESPN.com, and many, many more media outlets. Thrive Nation, without any further ado, I present to you, Mr. Nelson Dulles. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show. show. You know, Z, we have, as entrepreneurs, a lot of things going on in our lives. And I’m not sure if you’ve ever found yourself in a spot where you thought, am I supposed to be doing something right now? I think you’re supposed to be on the radio show right now. I could be wrong. Or at a Christmas party, right? We had the big Christmas party. Oh, it was fabulous. And everyone’s introducing you to their spouse. They’re saying, hi, this is my spouse. Her name is Kimberly. Rebecca, Kimberly. This is my husband. His name is Greg. Greg. There’s 500 people at our Christmas party, and you and I are trying to remember the names. Trying, yes. And then when you see them again the second time, and you have to ask them, what was your name again? That awkwardness. What if you could stop that awkwardness? What if you could memorize numbers? That’s not possible. Names? That’s not possible. What if you could do it? Well, I thought, you know, you’re not qualified to talk about it. Oh, I’m not. I’m not qualified. Paul, do you feel like you’re qualified to teach how to memorize things? Not in the slightest. Paul, look, CPA is not qualified. So I thought, let’s reach out to the one-time USA Memory Champion. Four times. And I thought, no, no, let’s go to the two-time. Let’s reach out. We need the four-time USA memory champion of the world! Nelson Delos, welcome on to the show, sir. How are you? That’s one heck of an intro. I’m great, thank you. I was trying to remember it. I forgot about half of it. All right, so Nelson, for the listeners out there that are not familiar with the competitive memory world, how many competitions are there? How does one go about winning the four-time USA Memory Championship. I mean, walk us, help us enter into the world of competitive memorization. Yeah, it’s a fascinating kind of subculture of people who are just enthralled by memorizing stuff, which just sounds incredibly boring, but when you learn about actually how it’s done, it’s kind of fascinating and fun, and when you can kind of harness your own memory skills, you get addicted to it. So there’s a bunch of people who do this, all ages, all kinds of people all across the globe and there’s the world championships, there’s the US, there’s the UK, all these different countries host their own championships around the world. And basically what it is, is it’s a day or a couple days of different events. So you’re targeted with memorizing a deck of cards as fast as possible, or a bunch of people’s names that are printed out on a piece of paper with their head shots, or poems, or lists of words, historic dates, you name it. It’s basically the person who can memorize the most accurately by the end of the day is crowned the champ. Now, you’re the USA champ. Who’s the reigning world champ? The reigning world champ, well it’s tricky because there’s kind of this faction going on where there’s like two different world championships now because the old owners didn’t like this. But so I think there’s one other guy, Alex Mullin, who’s currently the world champion on one side and then I think there’s a Mongolian lady who’s really good on the other side. Do you feel like you could take down the Mongolian lady? Definitely not. So I am one of the best in the US, but when it comes to the world, it’s maybe top 10 to top 20 at this point. It’s another level of commitment and training. You know, I know Mongolian beef is really good. Oh yeah. Mongolian grills are really good. That sounds good, let’s get a sunlight. The Mongolians have this resurgence of young kids in these schools there that just train them how to do these memory techniques obsessively. They just go after school to these after school places and just train, train, train, and then they turn out these incredible competitors. It’s insane. Probably on steroids. They’re probably all. No, tell them what’s the regulations are for. You have Andrago Method. Yeah, I know. Now I want to ask you this here, Nelson. I went to the State Fair recently. Nelson, did you ever go to the State Fair? Yeah, yeah, sure. I went to the State Fair, and you’ve seen over by the fireplace. We’re broadcasting today from Camp Clark in Chicken Palace, which is essentially a 17-acre abode where we live behind a wall, we have trees everywhere, we have chickens, we have turkeys. It’s kind of a fabulous setup here. And I saw this guy at the fair who can carve anything out of wood. So I paid to have him carve my Camp Clark into this wood. And I’m talking to the guy, and have you spent a lot of time in Oklahoma before, Nelson? I have never been to Oklahoma. Wow! It’s actually the tourist capital of the world if you’re into sod farms. And so I asked the guy, I said, hey, how did you know you were good at that? I mean, because these are beautiful pieces of cedar wood and things. He’s working through it and he’s like, well, man, I just got in there and just started using a chainsaw. All of a sudden, I was… He could carve like a beaver, like a bear, like a lion, anything you want. And I would ask the same question for you. How did you know you were good at this? I mean, did you spend all night just memorizing things and then show your mom? How did you know you were good at this? You know what? I wasn’t good at this. I heard about it and was fascinated by the idea of, hey, maybe I could make my memory good if I practiced and learned some little tricks. I tried it and was able to do something that was better than what my memory was at the time, but it wasn’t necessarily good compared to the best competitors in the world. But I realized that with a bit of practice and daily training and a bit of regimen, I could get to a point where I was in contention to compete with these guys. And so it wasn’t so much that I realized that I was good at this. It was that I realized that I could get good at this with just a little bit of elbow grease. And like I said before, it’s really addictive when you realize that you and if you work on it a little bit, you can even make it greater. So I just got obsessed with trying to memorize more numbers, more names, and more cards faster. And before I knew it, I was really good. Nelson, my understanding is that your grandmother passed away in 2009. Am I correct on that? That’s right. Yep, that’s right. Yeah. And when she passed away, again, my understanding, I tried to watch as many interviews with you as I could and read up. It seemed like she had a huge impact on your life and career. How did her death impact your decision to go all in as a memorization expert? She had Alzheimer’s and like you said, she passed away in 2009. That was kind of where I turned from just being mildly interested in these memory techniques to pretty much obsessed. And I was hell-bent on trying to take this thing I had learned about, because of my grandmother’s situation, I had researched a bit about memory and brain health and stumbled upon this memory competition. And so it just motivated me to take it to another level. And part of it was my own fascination, but part of it was also in honor of her. I wanted to kind of prove to the world or prove to myself that you can have an amazing memory no matter what age. Nelson, and also, we had this big Christmas party this past weekend at the Mayo Hotel. It’s a historic hotel. Some would say it’s the nicest or one of the nicest hotels in Oklahoma. And we’re there, we’ve got hundreds of employees and their families there. And I am not exaggerating, Z. I probably had two dozen people tell me, hey, this is my spouse. Their name is such and such. And I’m going, OK, so I’ve tried to repeat their name. And I’ll say, how do you spell that? And with even doing that move, I got, I would say, if I’d estimate Z, probably 5% of the people introduced me who I met, I could recall their name and you are a guy who apparently you hold the record in America for memorizing 217 names in like 15 minutes Is that correct? Yeah, it’s your 17 names. That’s right. How on earth? Yes Well for one it wasn’t it’s not at a party it’s on paper So, you know I can go through the the faces as fast as possible at a party You actually have to like talk to people right? Otherwise, otherwise, you’re really creepy. Yeah What’s your name? Okay. Thanks. Bye. What’s your name? But no, you know that’s that’s a great situation that you put yourself in a great example of what people often encounters You know, even if they try these little techniques that you may have heard of repeat the name ask them how to spell it You know and you still walk away with just 5% that’s rough and it’s like you’re trying, you know, and it’s still not working. So a big part of why it’s not sticking is because even though you are trying to reinforce the name somehow by asking them about it, you’re not attaching it to some kind of place in your mind that you already know, right? Basically, you gotta make some type of association to something that’s already grounded in your mind that you know so easily, right? So let’s say you meet a Nelson. What you want to do is think of something that the name reminds you of, right? So what does Nelson remind you of when I say that word? Nail salon. Oh, that’s good. That’s actually really good. Nail salon. Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela, right? Both are images, right, that you can think of. Nelson Mandela is very memorable, you can imagine his face, a nail salon you can picture what that would look like, people getting their nails did, people with their feet in little baths getting scrubbed down, whatever. And so what you do is you take that picture for the name and you try to anchor it to something about the person that you notice, so something that’s physical about them that you would notice probably the next time you saw them. So if you saw me, I’m very tall, you might notice that and say, wow, that guy’s tall. You know, you say this quietly in your mind. And so what you then do is you try to associate the name, the image that you have in Nail Salon or Nelson Mandela to that feature. So give it a reason. Why would they be any way connected? What does height have to do with a nail salon? So maybe you would imagine a really tall, ceilinged hair salon, right? Everything inside, everybody’s tall. The machines are really tall. The people have really long nails. They’re all tall. Something really weird, right? And then on the other flip side, if you have Nelson Mandela, maybe you imagine him being really tall. And then why would he be tall? Maybe he’s tall because he wants to give people a very motivational speech, so he’s called to kind of get above them and to speak below to them, you know. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s coming up with a picture for the name and then kind of attaching it to something about the person. Now Nelson, you are a handsome man. I went to your website, by the way. We went to his website. Are these actual pictures of him or does he have a male model on him? Well, let me just say. Yes, that’s what I thought. I went to nelsondellis.com and I went there and I thought to myself, Z, I feel bad about myself now. Because he’s a handsome man. He’s got the headphones on. He just… The good thing is you’ll forget about it soon. But Nelson, are you in front of a computer where you could Google search something real quick? Yeah, sure. I’m right here. Okay, if you would just Google search the Nelson Band after the rain and click on images. And as you’re doing that, this is honestly what I thought about when I first heard your name. And I’m going to play the song that I thought of, but I, here we go, let me give you a cue up here. That’s what I thought of! That’s what I thought of! Let me get to the chorus. Let me get to the chorus. These two blonde haired brothers. Oh yeah. That’s just sex on a stick right there. That’s just sex stuff. Let’s get to the chorus. Here we go. It’s going to happen. I don’t know why there’s still that relevancy. Here we go. Oh, cap it off. Come on, more cap it off. That’s scary. So, anyway, I apologize. I don’t think I’ll ever forget you now after that. It’s just burned into my redness. That’s perfect. That’s the exact process you need to go through with everybody’s name, but mentally. After the rain! I’m serious, when I heard the name Nelson, I immediately thought of that, and John’s like, stop doing that. He’s not going to like that. He’s not going to like that. No, I actually did love that. So if you would picture that song playing in your head, my whole body is being covered in rain, right? Because of After the Rain, and you can’t help but hear that song. That’s perfect. Now, let’s talk about the practical uses for memorization. You’ve given talks. Can you list off some of the big companies that you have spoken to over the years or big organizations? Because I understand that you get booked now as a speaker, and you’re actually an author now. Talk to us about who are some of the companies you’ve spoken to over the years or organizations. Yeah. Let’s see. I’ve talked to poor CNN employees, PepsiCo, Living Social, a bunch of different CPA firms and often private businessmen, athletes. It’s all over the board. Everybody has a memory. Everybody needs help with remembering things. So it’s so hard to pick those out because there’s just so many across the board. You’re speaking for big companies. I just want to ask you this. Like if you’re speaking to Pepsi or CNN, what kind of things do the people in the audience ask you all the time? You know, you’re speaking to larger groups and maybe you do Q&A afterwards. You know, there’s a cocktail party or you’re mingling amongst the audience. What kind of questions do people ask you a lot about memory? Yeah, I mean, the first one I always get is, do you want to go to Vegas or something like that? Or do you count cards? That’s a thought. Yeah, but I always shut that down because card counting honestly has nothing to do with memory. You’re just literally counting cards and they shuffle the deck and if you try to memorize it, you’re actually doing more work than you need to. So I always let people know that it’s not as interesting as they might think. But yeah, I think that having a good memory would help somewhere in Vegas, right? So, okay. Now, Paul, you’re a CPA. I am a CPA. And if you had hired Nelson to come speak to your group or were on the show here, what questions would you have for Nelson before I get back into my pre-prepared, super hot questions? Well, I would ask, as far as my CPA practice is, how can I get people to actually remember to do what I tell them to do instead of doing what they want to do. That sounds like a deeper… Yeah, certainly. No, we have great staff. Nelson, I do wonder though, you said your grandmother had Alzheimer’s. Do you think there’s an application for the things that you teach to retrain the brain? Is that something that you’ve ever thought about? Yeah, sure. That’s a common question too, is this something that I can use or work on now so that eventually I may not get Alzheimer’s or I would push it back. Even though I’m not a doctor, I can’t officially say anything, and I’ve heard studies that say yes to one side, maybe to the other. I personally think that if you work on your memory as a skill and you build this skill set of different tricks and tips that you kind of store in the back of your head when you need them, you can access them for whatever you need to memorize, that when you get older and you need maybe a little bit of a crutch because you are getting Alzheimer’s or just getting a little slower with your steps, your mental steps, then these techniques should help you in that time, right? And that would help you kind of be cognitively sharper for longer. I don’t think there’s any way to contradict that or argue against that. So I definitely think that you can use these techniques to kind of further your mind at old age. And what you’re doing is exactly what you said, you’re retraining your brain. You’re retraining it in how it basically perceives how to memorize things, because we’re never taught how to memorize. So if I can teach you that and different ways to approach information that hits you and you want to store, you’re essentially retraining and rewiring your brain to think differently about memory. Nelson, this might sound like a passive-aggressive compliment here, but I’ve been looking up nelsondellis.com. I went to the website, which by the way, all the listeners should do at least once. Absolutely. Thank you. And I discovered that he’s got a book coming out here called Remember It. You got the book out there. It appears to me as though you have this thing that Michael Levine, our friend there, the guy who was the PR consultant for Nike and Prince and Michael Jackson, he refers to it as a magnificent obsession. It appears as though you are obsessed with teaching the world how to improve their memories. It seems like you really, really, in a way, you know how when you were starting your optometry clinic, you were obsessed with making that business take off. Absolutely. And then you were obsessed with the auto auction. You were obsessed with the bank. You were obsessed. It seems like that, Nelson, you are obsessed with this idea of helping people to improve their memories. And I would just say, why? Why? Yeah. I mean, I am obsessed. Or you could maybe put that a little milder. I’m passionate about it, right? But yeah, why? I don’t know. When I started this, I didn’t think that this would be my all-consuming life kind of project. It was just a hobby, and I did it out of self-interest and kind of out of the interest of kind of what my grandmother went through. But as I realized that not many people know about these techniques or that not many people value their mind or their brain health, I just, I thought it was my mission to kind of do that. Um, and you know, the more kind of attention I got for it by my wins at these competitions and getting a bit of media, I felt like I had the perfect platform or I could build upon the platform that I was starting on to kind of get to more people and to educate people. Because man, if anybody could experience what I went through training for these championships and getting better at memory, I just feel like it would help so many people just with their confidence in life, in their personal relationships at work, and hopefully their health for the long term. So there’s just too many obvious benefits that I had to do this. It just became so important to me. You know, you were actually interviewed by John Brinkus, who we’ve also had on the Thrive Time Show from Sports Science. Could you share with us what you and John talked about on his podcast? I know the listeners, as soon as we wrap up today, said, I’ve got to search this guy. I’m going to go listen to some more stuff. Why did John have you on his show, and what was your interview all about with John Brinkus? Yeah, so actually, I met John through a mutual friend. I went out to his studio in L.A., and I basically sat in one of his conference rooms. He didn’t know who I was, and I memorized a deck of cards in front of him, and he was blown away. And we kind of kept this phone conversation going for a while and he called me and he was working on memorizing a deck of cards as well because of that. And he’d tell me, you know, I was on this flight and I memorized a deck of cards in three minutes. And the next time he’d call me, he’d be like, I just, you know, got my times down to two minutes. He was insanely obsessed with it too. And eventually he had me on the show and the main topic of the show was he was asking me what was kind of like my brink of midnight um brink john brinkus that’s the connection there uh brink of midnight moment right when I kind of it he said I could answer that however I wanted but I basically brought back to why or how I got into memory right because on earlier in my life I wasn’t into memory I didn’t really think anything about it had an average memory and then suddenly I’m a memory champion so how did that go from zero to 60 and I basically talked about my grandmother and just kind of how it was the right time For me to get into this Nelson I’m dying inside. How do you memorize a deck of cards in? three minutes Yeah, first of all you put that song on and then look at the card yeah, no So, okay. So this is one of the kind of The highlights of these memory competitions because it’s so cool to watch these speed demon Card memorizers like shuffle through these cards so fast and we’re talking three minutes is good But in championships, we’re talking like 30 seconds or less Yeah The world record right now was broken by, yet again, a Mongolian kid. Oh, the Mongolians. It’s about 12 seconds, if you can believe that. I can, because there’s one thing I know, and I know the Mongolians can memorize. Back to you. Yeah. So, basically, what you do is similar to what we were talking about with the names. First of all, with the cards, because it’s such an abstract, you know, there’s 52 cards. When you shuffle them, it’s just a barrage of colors and you know pictures and numbers It’s hard to get them straight in your mind So what you do is you give each card kind of a pre-assigned image An association and this has to be learned this might take a little bit of time but once you have it, it’s there and some of them you can make kind of Just associations that are intuitive like King of Hearts You know, I look at that and I see the heart and the king I think of like my dad, right? He’s the king of my family. Hearts represents family. And then Queen of Hearts could be my mother, right? And then Jack of Hearts could be me, right? Or Jack of Diamonds could be my sister because her name is Jennifer Dulles. J, D are her initials, and that’s a Jack and Diamonds, right? So I’ve translated these cards into pictures. So whenever I see these cards, I actually see a different picture than the actual suit and number I speak a language right with the cards And so when you use shuffle deck of cards or somebody random shuffles the cards and gives it to me I basically see a story of you know people that I know characters from my favorite books Objects that are very memorable kind of interacting with each other in this long narrative. And I know it sounds like that seems like a lot of work, you know, memorizing all these 52 pictures intertwined, but it’s like watching a movie. And if you can tap into your visual memory and you practice this a lot, you actually get a lot better at it quickly. And it’s more memorable than trying to remember 52 different suits and numbers in a row. Okay, so I’m gonna throw some cards out at you and you tell me what your image is, okay? Two of clubs. Okay. Say it again? Two of clubs? Two of clubs. Two of clubs is Jesus. Okay, I would not have picked that up. Seven of diamonds. Seven of diamonds is Gerard Depardieu as Musketeer. That’s awesome. I love it. Okay, how about the ten of spades? Ten of spades is Steve Jobs. Oh, that’s appropriate. I would not have guessed that. I would not have guessed that. Okay, and the prettiest card in the deck, the ace of spades. What do you got on tap for that one? That one is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, of course it is. You got to pop it up. Pop it up. Obvious. I’m obvious. I will crush you. And I will dominate. The game that dominates. That’s fun. So you, wow. So then you, so let’s say you’re going through, now you’re repeating to somebody, and the story you have in your brain, three minutes, two minutes, I mean 12 seconds is incredible, but what’s your best time, by the way? In competition, it’s 40 seconds, and then personally, in perfect setting at home, it’s 29. Okay. So that story in your brain would go something like this and then Arnold met my mom who was with my dad Hanging out with Jesus. That’s that’s kind of what you’re doing your brain when you’re coming back exactly Yeah, and and there’s a second part to it because you might think like okay if I’m doing that for 52 things I’m gonna kind of flub the order so what you do is there’s this other technique that you kind of mix in with it called the Memory Palace. And what it is, is you basically use a house or some kind of familiar place that you know well to place all of these images or interactions along a path. So, you know, if Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ace of Spades is the first card, I might picture him knocking on my door, right? So that’s the first location of my house. And then that’s the first card as well. So I walk in and then maybe I’m in, I find myself in the kitchen and there’s my mom cooking a meal for my dad, Queen of Hearts, King of Hearts. And then I go to the couch in the living room and there is my sister, Jack of Diamonds, and she’s punching Steve Jobs in the face, tennis spades. Well, sure she would be. Yeah, she’s an angry sister sometimes. So there I’ve already got like five cards, right? Ace of spades in my front door, queen of hearts, king of hearts in the kitchen, my mom and my dad, and then jack of diamonds, ten of spades, my sister and Steve Jobs in the living room. And that’s the pathway through that space, that memory palace, is what preserves the order and kind of breaks it up into these manageable bite-sized pieces. I would like to see if we could do this. Paul has a question for you, but I’d like to see if you’re okay with this. I’d like to see if Z could write down a 20 number sequence. He could put it on the show note, Z, and you could read it to him slowly, and then to see if Nelson could repeat it back to you. Nelson, is that a fair challenge or is that a bad thing? No, no, no, this is great. This is actually one of the events they have at the championship where there’s an audio recording of random numbers being said aloud one digit per second. So that’s what I would ask of you, is if you could say the digits one by one, spaced out by a single second. So Zeke, could you go ahead and prepare your list, type it on the show notes there real quick? Oh, sure. Your numbers, and that way we have… And Paul, you had a question for Mr. Nelson. Yeah, Nelson, I always wonder, people that are great at certain things, especially sports or something physical, a lot of times there’s something special about them. Maybe their physique, maybe they’re a pole vaulter or a basketball player and the distance with their legs. They always talk about that a lot on the sports science technology about the force and everything. Do you think that applies to memorization? Do you think that there was something in you, in your DNA, in your makeup, in your mind that makes you special? Or do you think that anybody could do this? That’s a great question and point. I always say that I think anybody can do what I do. I think what I mean usually when I say that is anybody can improve their memory, I think, by a large factor, but I don’t think everybody could be a memory champion. But I don’t know if that’s because of the memory skill. more, maybe not everybody’s got the motivation in them to train enough to be, you know. At some point, you know, maybe you’re interested in memory techniques and fascinated by how many digits you can memorize, but after a while you’re like, okay, I only need this to be able to memorize 40 digits. I don’t care about a thousand. So maybe what I have that not many other people have is just this, but again, that obsession for whatever reason, and maybe that’s somewhere a DNA thing. Maybe it is easier for me slightly to come up with these pictures, and that’s why I like it so much. I don’t know, but I do think in general anybody can do this. Now, Nelson, your book, as he’s preparing his numbers, your newest book, your new book called Remember It, is available for people to purchase. Before I have you share about the book, I wanted just to tee up an idea. I’m not sure, Nelson, if you’re aware of this, but throughout your career, you’ve been featured on the Maria Shriver blog, Wall Street Journal Live, the Dr. Oz Show, the Huffington Post, Forbes Online, USA Today, NPR, All Things Considered, the New York Daily News, ESPN, Lewis Howes, the Break of Midnight with John Brinkus, Fast Company, CNN, CNBC. Oh, Wired, you’ve been everywhere, man. You’re missing one that was my greatest of all time, which was on the weekend update of SNL, they did a little bit about me. You were on SNL? Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t personally, but they used my name and picture. It was great. So SNL used you. And did that help you kind of, was that like for you, like a high water mark where you thought, oh man, I’m on SNL? Yeah, I mean, I was asleep and friends were texting me, hey, you’re on SNL. I was like, okay, whatever. I woke up in the morning and realized I actually was on SNL. And I was like, I’m done, yeah, that’s good. Drop the mic, drop the mic. You’ve been doing this since 2010, I believe was your first media appearance. I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. When did you start this professionally? Kind of about then. Well, 2011, after I won my first championship. I was a software developer, and I said, you know what? I’m going to see what I can do. I love this, and I think I can make a living off of it. And it was a bit scary at first, but here I am, almost eight years later. How have you been able to pay the bills? Like when you went pro, and when you went professional with this, did you start off doing some speaking, some sponsorships? And how did you pay the bills? So luckily the first, the reason I was able to quit my job is there was a sponsor that came off of the championship and was very interested in working with me. And they were a flash memory, like for computers company out in Park City. And they had the best memory in the world and they wanted to work with me who had the best memory. So we did, I basically was sponsored for two years by them and that kind of let me, it let me, I was able to quit my job and you know I was doing other gigs on the side as well, speaking engagements and so on and TV appearances and that kind of built from there. I don’t work with that company anymore. I think they kind of closed shop, but it’s kind of been a flux of different sponsorship deals, TV appearances, speaking gigs, book opportunities. Yeah, that’s a bunch of different things. I would never say that if you’re a listener out there and you’ve been fascinated by today’s show and you don’t buy a copy of Nelson’s book, remember it, I’m not going to go out as far as to say you’re a horrible person. You wouldn’t go that far. I wouldn’t even suggest that, Paul. That’s not the kind of thing I would do. Close to it, though. But what I could say is some have suggested that we should say that. Some have. Some of the greatest minds in the world have said, if you love today’s show and you don’t at least invest, you know, what, $20 to buy this thing on Amazon, remember it, you may remember this for the rest of your lives. You might. You’ve let us down. Beginning of the end, Clay. Right. You might have let us down. So, Zee, have you prepared your numbers? I have. Now, they are numbers from 1 to 100. Is that fair or do you want the single digits? You can feed them to me as single digits. That’s the easiest. One per second. So single digits. And how many do you have there? Well, I’ll do 20 then. So I’ll do them one at a time. We’re working through this here, folks. Get ready, Dr. Zellner is here. He’s running out of fingers to count, buddy. Okay, so now I have them all single digits, 20 of them, and I am ready to rock and roll. Here we go. All right, just one per second. Just not too quickly, not too slow. Okay. Somewhere in the middle. Okay. You ready? Yep. Six, three, four, nine, nine, one, five, six, three, seven, zero, eight, one, two, one, four, one, four, three, five. Let me just review that quickly in my mind. Okay, 634-991-563-708-1214-1435. Unbelievable! It’s a win of the week! It’s a win of the week, folks! That’s incredible! There we go, that’s the reason to buy that book right now. Oh, buy that book! In fact, the book is going to be more expensive. Wow! Let me let this song play out here. Let’s give the listener 30 seconds to buy the book. Oh, buy the book, remember it. Oh, wow, that right there, that was impressive. You guys are great. That book made me want, I want to hit all the buttons. Oh, holy cow! I want to hit all the buttons. That’s a win for America. I want to go talk into a box fan and say this. La la la loo. He’s using the force, see? I’m pretty excited because I think I may have a secondary career as a dude to go to the memory contest reading the numbers for God’s sake. You say those numbers really good. Thank you. It’s one of my superpowers to just say random numbers. Your spacing was amazing there. Thank you. It was very consistent, wasn’t it, don’t you think? Okay, now, Nelson, now, I want to get into some entrepreneurial questions for you, because you are an entrepreneur. Do you have a… tell us about your family. Are you a single guy? You married? Tell us about your family life. Sure. I am married, two years married. We just actually had a baby boy three months ago. Congratulations, man. Thank you, thank you. So I’m a father now, too, which is crazy to think of. But my parents, my dad was a businessman, I mean he still is, and he was actually the CEO of Burger King for a while. And then Hertz, he worked for Hertz, and then Europe Car. So he’s a very successful businessman. My mom was a very successful home engineer taking care of us. And yeah, we grew up kind of moving around. I was born in England and we moved back and forth between Europe and Miami, which is where I live now, growing up. And Miami’s where I live now. I think a lot of people, when I started my first company, DJ Connection, it grew to be the largest wedding entertainment company in the country. I was starting DJConnection.com. I remember so many people said, you’re going to become a full-time wedding DJ? What? What are you going to fall back on, man? When I dropped out of college to do it, they’re like, that put the official stamp of crazy on it. Oh, absolutely. And I think when you tell people, guys, here’s the deal. I’m going to memorize numbers and things. You’re like, OK, you’re kind of whack. And you go, and I’m going to memorize, and I’m going to actually do it professionally. And you’re like, has anybody else derived an income from this? You’re like, well, there are people in Mongolia who are dominant. You’re like, Greg, me? Bro, best practices typically not in Mongolia. You don’t find a lot of top industries in Mongolia. People had to have thought. There had to be a lot of haters, a lot of doubters, a lot of people going, I don’t know. I think the vast majority of humanity has had to think, they had to think that you are crazy. So how were you able to fund yourself over the years? How did you fight through the doubt? Just walk us through what it’s like to tell people, I want to become a memory expert. You know, it’s crazy because even when I did quit my job and I had that sponsor deal, I think even then I wasn’t saying to myself, you know, I’m going to build off of that at least for the duration of this sponsorship. I happened to do a decent job of that and things built from there. I made a lot of connections. So many people told me I was crazy to quit my job for this because they were like, once it runs out, what are you going to do? Deep down, I knew I’d figure something out, but I didn’t really have an answer for them yet. But, like I said, I think it falls back onto the thing that I was able to let people know and make people aware of the fact that memory is for everyone. Everybody can benefit from an amazing memory, and that’s kind of what I’ve stuck to, and it’s helped me keep this career going. You know, the first four hours of somebody’s day, we’ve interviewed billionaires, millionaires. We have the founder of Priceline coming up here. The founder of Ritz Carlton will be on the show soon. The founder of Expedia. We’ve got John Maxwell on the show. We’ve had really the who’s who. We’ve had some of the top entrepreneurial minds on the planet. The guy who used to manage Walt Disney World Resorts. They’re just huge people. Every time we interview them, our listeners are always fascinated to hear about your daily routine. You know, how you structure the first four hours of your day as an entrepreneur. So I just want to get into that. How do you typically organize? How do you spend the first four hours of your day? Yeah, and I’d say that those first four are probably the most productive and important to get my day going. If I don’t start it off with those in the same way that I usually do it’s it’s a bad day and it doesn’t happen very often but I start by waking up about quarter to six. I go to the gym for an hour and a half I go to a CrossFit gym. I do the class and then I do some kind of extra accessory work So fitness is a big part of kind of my whole spiel with with brain health But um, that’s how I start my morning off. I come back ate a healthy kind of brain breakfast, and then I get into my memory training, which- I’m sorry to interrupt you, brain breakfast. Can you educate us as to what the brain breakfast looks like? Yeah, so I experiment with a lot of different things, but I try to, they come in and out. So the most recent thing I’ve been obsessed with is keto diet, but what I typically will eat for breakfast is a lot of antioxidant kind of berries, and then kind of bacon and eggs, some good fats, and then I take my daily kind of supplements, which part of it includes, and kind of the most important part is the DHA omega-3 kind of supplements that I take. And that’s kind of what I eat every day. I don’t know if it’s more of a habit thing, but that kind of fuels me for the next few hours when I sit down and start memorizing. So you, DHA omega-3, is that fish oil? Essentially, yeah, it’s fish oil. I knew it! I knew it, Z! I knew! I’ve heard enough people tell us, DHA omega-3, I’ve memorized it now, that that is fish oil. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now, with your schedule, what happens next? I sit down to memorize, and then I’m doing drills and sets of memorizing cards, memorizing numbers, and I have a bunch of spreadsheets and books of all my scores and notes on my performance and what I did yesterday that might have affected how I perform today and what my goals are, what my records are, and where I stand. I have a question for you about this. You seem like you’re very regimented, but you are self-employed. Am I correct? That’s correct, yeah. How many people work for you or with you? Is it you and your wife, or do you have a big team of people, like an assistant? Who’s kind of helping run the NelsonDelis.com ship? It’s me. It’s all me. I probably should have an assistant, but my problem is I think I can do everything myself and I prefer to do it myself, but sometimes that’s a bad thing to think. You keep it lean. You keep it lean. Yeah. I know Z has a question for you. I’m just asking you, how do you discipline yourself? So many people, Z, have this idea of what I’m going to do is I’m going to stop memorizing every single day in a row. Then I’m just starting tomorrow. I hope I don’t forget to do that. And then I will, I forgot, but then starting the next day I will begin. You know, I got two days in a row. I’ll start Monday. I’ll start Monday. Yeah, so how do you discipline yourself? Do you have a taser? Do you wear a shot collar? What do you do? I don’t know. It’s hard to say because at this point if I don’t do it, I just hate myself so much that I got to go back into it over time. But you know, you got to think back. Like at some point I had to say I was going to do this every day. And it’s, I don’t know, you get to some point eventually and you’re just like, I’m sick of just putting this off. I want to be the best. And you know, you realize, yeah, I can put it off for one more day, but you can also just start like right now, like immediately, as you’re thinking about it. Just drop what you’re doing and make some work towards this thing you wanna do every day. I journal a lot, I make lists a lot, and I cross things off lists when I do them. And so those kinds of things have been really helpful for me to just be satisfied with getting work done every single day. And the thing is, is the more you do it, kind of every day, it just becomes habit. And like I said, if you skip it, it feels weird, and you don’t like it. So you end up always going back to it. So waking up early, going to the gym, doing my daily memory exercises, if I don’t get that in, I’m a miserable sod. So it’s just part of my life, you know? Part of it. Well, I’ve got two questions for you. Who? Two. Coming in hot and sassy. Hot and sassy. One, do you keep a calendar or do you just remember everything? Oh, no, I have some kind of like, I make my own kind of Google Docs calendar to keep track of that stuff. That’s the air sucking in. Uh-huh, okay. I know there’s people out there listening, they probably pulled their car over, maybe in a truck stop, maybe at some grocery store. Or a Burger King. Or a Burger King. And they’re saying to themselves, how did you do? I just read, for those of you, if you’re just now tuning in, I read 20 numbers, random numbers I just wrote down. I read 20 numbers at the pace that you requested and you repeated them. What was that story in your brain? Do you still remember that 20 numbers? Yeah, I’ll tell you. So the first thing I did was, before you told me, I decided on a memory palace that I was going to use. So I have, you know, we have talked about my house for the cards, but I actually have, you know, 50 or so different memory palaces that I have stored in my head that I use for different things. And there are places that I visited or lived or grew up in, you know, they’re familiar places. And so for this one, I used a hotel I stayed in once on a trip to the Himalayas a few years ago. And it’s just a memorable experience, and I have it fresh in my head. I always use it for this kind of demo with numbers spoken to me. So then, you know, you said the numbers, and what I’m doing is I’m transforming these numbers into kind of an image of a person doing some kind of action. So the first four digits were 6349, and that translated to Stephen Colbert catching a football. And this was happening at the doorstep of the entryway to the hotel. And then I kind of walked into the lobby on the lobby desk, the concierge desk kind of thing. The next one was 9156, which was a spaceman, or Neil Armstrong, cutting up his suit with a pair of scissors. Of course. Yep, of course, yeah. And then we move over to the couch in the lobby area and next was Bruce Willis. I love Bruce. And his action, I don’t know how PG this radio show is, but he was pleasuring himself on the couch. What? What? Okay, I don’t love you that much anymore. I don’t understand. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how that happened, but continue please. So yeah, there’s some very random stuff in there, but that helps make it memorable. And then, continuing on, what do we have? It was me, I’m number 12 actually, and I was playing hockey in kind of this side room that I remember, and then I went up the stairs, and then there was a hockey player shooting a revolver at the wall. Wow. My mind is blown. I’m going to try to duct tape it together. I know Paul Hood has a question for you. I would like to ask you this on behalf of all the entrepreneurs out there listening. You are an entrepreneur. I mean, you are a memory expert, but you also are self-employed. You know, you’re building a career. Yeah, I’m trying to, yeah. And, you know, so what books have helped you from an entrepreneurial perspective the most? Do you have a book or two or three that you would say, these are books that really helped you to turn your skill into a career? Man, I read a lot of nerdy books out there and I like to read a lot of fantasy stuff like Game of Thrones and stuff like that. But I do like a lot, that doesn’t help my entrepreneurial skills at all. But I don’t know. I read a lot of brain teasers and things that have to do with math. I honestly don’t read much that has to do with entrepreneurship. I know there’s a ton of books out there. My friend is into it, and he always shares them with me, and I never read them. This is great. This is the real and raw stuff. I just want to know if there’s been a book that impacted you. If not, it’s great. I’ll put Game of Thrones down here. Is there another book you’d recommend for listeners out there? Game of Thrones book series? He loves the Game of Thrones. I love the Game of Thrones. He does. One of my favorite books, and this might be a bit too nerdy for a lot of people, but I really encourage people to maybe check it out, because in my mind it’s a classic. It’s called Gertl, Escher, and Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid. It was written in the 70s by this guy Douglas Hofstetter. He was a computer scientist. And it’s a fascinating read about how our mind works. And it’s interweaving kind of music, art, and just brain teasers and kind of science. It’s fascinating. And that’s actually one of the books that opened my mind to just everything. It’s not entrepreneurial at all, but it’s just this kind of… How did you hear about that book? How did you even hear about this book? Because that’s what I studied. Physics, math, computer science. Those were my college days. I love Escher. I love Escher. I’ve got a lot of Escher prints in my house. Love it. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. And Gödel, that’s the mathematician. He’s a famous mathematician who broke all the boundaries of mathematics many, many years ago. But yes, Escher, Gödel, and Bach all together. It’s a great book. You’ve blown my mind. I’m going to just… We get off today, Shaman, and I’m just crying. I can’t even fathom it. My mind’s been blown so many times. Paul, final question from you, sir. What’s your final question? Well, Clay, I’ve got a very, very important question for Nelson. And actually, the entire moral fiber of this country may depend upon your answer. Wow, wow. I was going to be quick. So how can you save marriages, save relationships with the answer to this question? I don’t know. How can you help us men remember our wives and girlfriends’ birthday? What’s the trick? It’s easy. I have the perfect answer for this. If you want to remember your significant other’s birthday or anniversary, all you’ve got to do is forget it once. Oh! Oh! Hey! That’s a bonus point right there, folks. Holy cow! Okay, now Nelson, your book, you’ve got a book here called Remember It. Yeah. And I know the listeners out there, we have a lot of readers who listen to our show, a lot of people who listen to our show. We just had Ken Schmidt, the guy who led the Harley Davidson turnaround from 1985 to 1999, he came to our workshop there in December, and he sold out his books. Our listeners love to buy books. Can you share with the listeners why they should pick up a copy of your book, Remember It? Yeah, I’d love to. So, Remember It just came out a few months ago. It’s been a thing that I’ve been working on for years. I’m really proud of it because, yes, there are memory books that exist out there that have been around for a while sharing kind of similar techniques, but I feel like mine is different because, first of all, it’s a memorable book. It’s very colorful, lots of pictures. The design in it, I think, is a very memorable experience. And I just think it’s from me, and I feel like I have a very relatable voice. I try to make it as practical as possible, so real-life examples that we all encounter. Where you parked your car, why you walked into a room and suddenly forgot why you were there, names. And so all that stuff’s in there in these kind of bite-sized pieces that it’s really kind of easy to read. You don’t have to train to be a champion or anything. It’s just to help you get by with the everyday stuff. So I think it can help out anybody and it’s a quick, un-invasive read, you know? I’m going to put a link to it on today’s show notes. And Dr. Z, we like to end every show with a boom. Oh yeah, booming up baby. Which Nelson around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. Which is what we believe everybody needs to bring to their work day on a daily basis to get things done. Paul, are you prepared to bring a boom? I have stretched and I’m ready. Z, are you prepared? I am ready. Nelson, are you prepared to bring the boom? I’m prepared. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom. Wealththrive Nation, one thing that Clay Stairs and I get to do is to help wonderful people work on their business and to transform their business from maybe a job that seems overwhelming at times as a self-employed person into a business that they love. And we are passionate about helping you to grow your company because we’re passionate about the clients that we serve. This next guest, this next person I’m going to introduce you to, this next testimonial, is a guy that I actually hired him to build my home. I was very, very happy with the home building process. My wife was super happy with the complete project because she worked with him to design it. I want to make sure my wife is happy with the house that she co-designed. I kept hearing great things about today’s guest, Brian Wiggs, from other people that have used Brian Wiggs. And then when we started on the initial Pathways Stairs, one of the things we do with our clients is to help them improve their branding, which involves them calling up their current and former customers and to gather video reviews. And every person that we contacted, they wanted to do a testimonial for Brian Wiggs because they loved in the product that he built for them. It’s enough of any further ado, Brian Wiggs, welcome on to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, I am doing great. Thanks for having me on. I’m glad to talk to you guys. Well, Brian, I’m going to hit you up with five quick questions, and I’m going to go to Clay Stairs to interrogate you here. Here we go. How did you first hear about our team, Clay Stairs? How did that happen? Originally, Clay and I met at a Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Gene’s Hope, Oklahoma, in my hometown here. And he had some good things to say, so I went in and talked to him afterwards, and he started telling me about the way you guys work, and it sounded very intriguing. So that first connected us a couple of years ago. And you guys meet every week. Every week you meet, and you leave the meeting with homework. And just like with all of our clients, you leave with homework, and we leave with homework. What kind of improvements have you seen Claystairs and the team make to your business over these last couple of years? I think the main thing that has changed in me, and it’s what Clay told me one of the very first times we met, he said the biggest hurdle was going to be me, that I was going to have to do some mindset changes. That seemed okay. I thought I could be ready for that. But when you really get into it, you realize I have a lot of mindset changes to make. And you have to make them one at a time. You have to dig them out. And so, Play has helped me with that week by week, reminding me of the things I need to be doing and helping me understand better how to grow my business. Now, question number three of five here. I’m going to pull up your website. And a lot of people tell me that, you know, they have someone that helps them with their mindset and they have someone else who helps them with their website, and someone else that helps them with their online reputation, and someone else who helps them with their online ads. How has working with Clay Stairs and the team helped you, having one person or one team that does all of that? Well, it’s great to have it because we don’t have to mess with the technical piece of it as much. We’re really good at building houses. We’re not great at building websites or trying to do all the other things that are back room pieces that you need to have. They’re just great to be able to hand this to them and go, this is the way I want my story to be told and they tell it. Now question number four, for anybody out there that would be considering working with clay stairs and the key. Now are you numbering for those at home? I’m doing this. Well, I’m doing this because I like that. For those doing the home version. I want people to know, I mean, there are certain things I get asked all the time by potential clients and I want to hit on those. I love it. So number four, what would you say to anybody who’s thinking about working with Clay Stairs and the team? What would you say? What would be your thoughts? I think that he is a genuine, he’s available, he’s wise, and he’s infuriating. And then finally, my question number five is the weekly meetings. What I find is that consistent people who grow businesses, they embrace this idea. Some call it Kaizen. I’m not going to argue about the philosophy you have to endorse here, but the idea of continual improvement, the idea of every week you’re whittling away a different iteration. You’re making it a little bit better, 1% better a week for 50 weeks, 2% better a week for 50 weeks, as opposed to an event. How has the weekly, that methodology of having a weekly meeting where our team leaves with homework and you leave with homework, how has that methodology impacted your business? Well, of course it helps us as we’re trying to grow, but it also has helped us design meetings that we have with our clients and our trade partners. We start handling them the same way when we come in with a regular agenda. We talk about the same things. We know what we’re going to do in advance. We know how to measure it. And so it helps us on a daily basis in our work. And then it helps us grow when we come meet with Clay because we know we have to do our homework and show up and be able to answer the questions and study and analyze the answers. Now, Stairs, I’m going to turn it over to you because you guys work together weekly. I just wanted to kind of hit those questions that I get asked a lot from potential clients. Sure. Yeah. Well, Brian, hey, I first of all want to congratulate you guys on your big win just this last week, winning the Tulsa Parade of Homes. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. We were very proud of that. It’s always fun to win. Yeah. And you guys actually won another award there too, right? Wasn’t it the- Yes, we also won the Best Interior Design. So when the judges come through, they’re judging the overall house and that impact, but they also look at the interior design and we won on that award as well. Fantastic. Judging you. It doesn’t sound like a safe environment when those judges come in. No, it’s not a safe environment, but you have to put yourself out there sometimes so you can win. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s not, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, but that’s not the only Parade of Homes award you’ve received over the years. How many are you up to now from the parade? Oh, gosh. I’m not sure. We’ve been in the parade of homes for over 30 years, and we’ve been able to do that consistently. So several years and multiple years, we’ve won in different categories and in different places. But we’ve done it in the last 10 years, we’ve probably won eight or 10 times. Fantastic. That’s not a toss. Yeah. And, Brian, I’d like for you to talk a little bit as well. You’re a family business, literally family business. You have your son and your son-in-law and your daughter-in-law working with you as well. How have we been able to help you navigate that minefield with working with your family? I think it’s the having systems. You know, when you’re working with family and you have close relationships, trying to call out people to accountability is a little kind of a sticky wicket. But if you have a system, you can just ask a question. Do we have a system for that? Did you follow the system for that? And then that can lead you into the right conversations and you don’t have to be challenging each other personally. You’re challenging the system. Are we working the system? Is it working for us? And that makes it a lot easier on a daily basis. And we have that conversation all the time about do we have a system for that? Let’s write a system for that. Let’s follow the system for that. Yep. That’s fantastic. That’s been just one of the things that at the Leadership Initiative, Clay, I know you begin to see this as well. When our clients begin to talk through the lens of systems and begin to ask that question, do we have a system for that? That’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. And I think that’s a big part of the leadership initiative. talk through the lens of systems and begin to ask that question, do we have a system for that? That’s when you know that you’re actually beginning to think like a manager. I love language. Yeah, exactly. You’re getting away from just the emotional, oh no, what are we going to do, and beginning to think systematically. So that has been one thing that I’ve really enjoyed about working with you and your team and how you guys are consistently each week putting more and more systems together. Now Brian I want to interject this and then we’ll go to Sean here. What I find is that successful business owners they like to bore down on the details and people that are not successful tend to struggle with boredom and they want to move on to a new thing. And so the natural current again according to Inc. magazine 96% of businesses fail. So as a coach, our job is to coach you down a proven path. And so there’s a lot of repetitive things we have to go over every week. We need to gather Google reviews from your happy customers. We need to gather video reviews from your happy customers. And those Google reviews and video reviews are what we would call online reputation. And so when a potential buyer then thinks about working with you, they can find your reputation easily. And so, as whereas before, you may have had to tell the customer, hey, I’ve built this many houses and here are some phone numbers. But now, those testimonials are unearthed and the real people are here on display, on camera, on video, and you’re building multi-million dollar homes, can you talk about how the video reviews and the Google reviews that we go over every week have impacted your sales process? Oh, tremendously. When we have people come in, we used to have people come into our office to hear about our process and how we build homes. They didn’t know us. They didn’t know what we were going to do. They didn’t know what to expect. Now, when they come in, they’ve already seen it. They’ve already heard a video from me. They’ve already seen our clients telling them about us. So, it’s a lot easier to be able to then get back down to the really the brass tacks of what it’s going to be like to build their house. They’re already believing in us. And that value of them believing in us in advance is just immeasurable. So you are, and again, this is just something I want to get your thoughts because I work with so many home builders all over the country. And Aaron Antus once said this, and he runs a company called Shaw Homes, which by the way we don’t work with two people that do the same thing in each city. Right. And I reached out to Aaron when we first, when you guys were talking about working with each other, and I asked Aaron, is it okay if we work with another home builder in Tulsa? And Aaron goes, oh absolutely, Brian has a stellar reputation and he doesn’t do what we do, he builds custom houses and that’s who you, you got, we do, you know, Shaw is more of a, you buy in a neighborhood where you guys customize. Well, anyway, Aaron told me, he said, Clay, when we used to have people that reach out to us, they used to have a lot of questions and were very unsure of working with us. And he said, now that we have all these video reviews and Google reviews, you’ve helped us gather over the past six or seven years, people are pretty much going in from like, well, they’re, I don’t know, we’re comparing you to five or six other builders, to we’ve pretty much already made the decision before we’ve even reached out. Are you hearing that at all, or is that just unique to maybe Shaw? We broke ground this morning on a new project, about a $4 million house. And when the people walked in, they said, we saw you online and we knew you were the guy. We just felt that that was what we needed to do. So when we came here, we wanted to work with you. And they found us by reaching out and seeing us online. We had never met them before. And when they walked in the door, they said, let’s go. And that’s amazing to me. I didn’t believe you guys when you told me that would happen. I was scared. I thought that that could happen. Nobody does. Nobody does. Now, and then, final question, I don’t want to go to Sean here. I have a lot of builders, and I’m going to send this to them today. Yes. Is that what you get? I’ve got builders and just other clients that are, they bought Clay on this one area of getting Google reviews and getting video testimonials. Oh, I just don’t have time. Clay, I don’t know that’s weird. And every one of my clients that gets Google reviews, I mean, they win. The pizza business I work with in Florida, Papagallo’s. Papagallo’s. They tell me people are driving 30 miles to get pizza because it’s the highest rated pizza place in Florida? It works. So what would you say to somebody out there who’s a little bit resistant, maybe they’re kind of reminding you, maybe your first meeting with Clay Stairs and there’s a little, you’re trying to figure it out. What would you say to anybody that’s a little resistant to getting objective video reviews and Google reviews from actual clients? I think it’s invaluable. We’re spending quite a bit of time doing that. And it’s amazing to me that when you ask people, they will actually do it. I was very resistant to that. But when you start asking them and you start asking them, what do you think about our product? How do you like our home? What do you like about Brian Ewig’s homes? They will tell you. And it’s like, that’s amazing that they’ll tell other people. You’re just standing there and listening to it. Sometimes it’s embarrassing that they say such good things. But it’s like, wow, let’s get that out there. Now, Sean, you work with a lot of wonderful clients. You also assist working with Brian Wiggs. What question would you have for Brian? Well, Brian, do you recall the first group interview at Brian D. Wiggs Homes that we did? I do. That was some amazing, crazy interview. So the group interview is something that I’m always astounded that people haven’t heard of it. I’ve got the curse of knowledge now. It’s just such a useful tool. But I think there were about 30 people there. We couldn’t even fit them inside your little office. We had to do it on the front porch on your Main Street office at Jinks. Out of that effort of having to grow your team, maybe a little bit beyond your family there and having to start look outside of that, how has that process worked out and how did the group interview was great. It was awkward. I had to change my mindset, like I mentioned earlier, because you’re working through a great number of people. I didn’t think as many people would show up as they did. We shared the place. We told them to do it. And so then we really did have 30 people. We couldn’t get them in our building, and we went outside, and I stood out basically in the street on Main Street and yelled at 30 people and asked them questions. But ultimately, we hired a new woman that has just been fantastic. She fits us perfectly. She’s almost like family. So, how’d that happen? I don’t know. But the group interview certainly led us to it. That’s where she came from. I love it. Now, you, one thing that you and Clay Stairs have, and I’m not just saying this because you’re both here, this is a real thing. You say that to all the people. No, there are times, you see me sometimes get into altercations with people, you’ve seen it. Clay, I have seen it. I don’t avoid combat, okay, or conflict, so, no seriously. Conflict, not combat. Well, I do sometimes both, it’s kind of, but you speak highly of Brian Wiggs when he’s not here. Yeah. And you always praise the quality of his work. And without reservation, you praise him. But if people can’t find him, what we feel about him doesn’t matter. Exactly. That’s a really good point. So I’m having a lot of people that I’m running into now that are reaching out to me and they go, hey, I saw your wife has a testimonial. And this has happened multiple times. I have seen your wife’s testimonial on Brian D. Wiggs’ website. Do you really like him? I go, oh, yeah. He’s like, well, okay. And I’m getting a lot of that. How rewarding is that for you, Brian, now that you’re finally, after years of building homes, you’re finally starting to have new people that you did not know previously finding you online. What’s that been like for you, sir? Yeah. Well, it’s been really good because we’ve been, we’ve taken a lot of pride in the product that we produce. We think we’ve built the great houses. I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I’m very proud of it. But when people can’t find me, and they don’t even know me, then they go build with somebody else and I see the house going up and I’m thinking, why? Why? Why didn’t you come to me? I’m the one that builds the great houses. But they didn’t know me. So being able to get online and find me has just been amazing for us. It’s like they can finally get out and we can put our product out to a lot more people. Yeah. Yeah, Brian, you and I, going back to the mindset, you and I have spent quite a bit of time, even outside of our weekly meeting, talking about this journey that you’ve been on in just changing your mindset. Huge visionary, big visionary, loving the big vision, and struggling with, a lot of times, struggling with the minutiae and the details and everything. But if somebody else were in this same spot, if we had other clients that were really getting stuck in that emotional phase and getting stuck with that mindset, what would be some of the things that you did to help press through and change the way you think to allow you to be able to take these steps that you’ve taken at Brian D. Wiggs at Holmes? Well, we do deal with the emotional dragon a lot here. And each of us have had to deal with that. And we’ve been sort of sharing that with our clients. Go, hey, emotional dragon is going to pop up here. Be ready for it. It’s going to hit you. It’s going to hit us. And so we know how to work through it. But the way we work through it is when we create these processes. We write them down. What is it that I do on a daily basis? Where do I run into that emotional dragon? And then I work out ways that I can be prepared and go, okay, what’s my system? And we’ll work through that. So it’s back to the process, back to the system is what helps us overcome that emotional dragon. Yeah. I’ve been very proud of you and your sons as you guys have been able to work more and more and follow, not just put them together, but follow your son’s journey. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. And I think that’s a really important thing. to work more and more and follow, not just put them together, but follow your systems in your company. Now, I want to go to Sean next, I’ve got one more question for you. Being present is a present. And a lot of people are not present, but they are physically present. Let me try again. So there’s a lot of people who, and thankfully I’ve got a wonderful roster of clients that mentally participate in what we’re doing, so I don’t have these problems. But there are people that, you know, they wanna do their weekly coaching call while eating a salad, while on the road. And what I do, that’s why I only take on 160 clients. That’s why we have a limited number of clients that Clay Stairs takes on, because if someone’s coachable, it’s very easy to work with them. But when you have somebody who’s clearly eating a salad, clearly at lunch, clearly mentally at lunch, and physically at lunch while trying to do your weekly call, because most of our clients are not in Tulsa, it makes it almost impossible. And I love the idea that you mentally participate. Can you maybe talk, as a coaching client, how, what kind of is, on the receiving end of the coaching, how much time do you have to block out for that weekly meeting and what does that look like? Well, we meet with Clay for an hour once a week. Sometimes we’ll meet with him in his office, sometimes we’ll catch each other on the road, but when we do, we stop and we’re 100% present for that period of time. And just being, I don’t know I could do it unless I was 100% present. Many times Clay’s sharing ideas with me, and I’m like, okay, wait a second. So what you’re saying is, and I can repeat it back, and then finally work through it. But it takes that, I gotta be paying attention to it. I’m a slow learner, so I gotta work through it piece at a time. Sean, any final question you would have for Brian D. Wiggs? We got that website, folks. I’ll make sure I put it on the show notes. That’s briandwiggs.com. He could be a male model, but he’s not. It’s briandwiggs.com. He’s a good looking man. He’s a real person, real business, briandwiggs.com. He’s not a hired actor. Sean, what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, more than a question, I just wanted to bring up at the beginning how you and Clay Stairs met. You guys met at the Chamber, but actually, you hold a special place in my heart, Brian, because you were the first person that I cold called off of the Tulsa Home Builders Association list to start getting clients for Clay Stairs as I came into the business over six years ago. And you said yes. You were the first guy that was like, yeah, I’ll meet with Clay. And I was like, it works. I remember that phone call, Sean. I remember where I was sitting in front of one of my projects, phone call came in, I started talking about it, and it seemed like it was the right time for us to start growing. That’s great. And I remember our first meeting down at Utica Square, sitting in a bunch together. I remember that forever ago. That’s right. Now, the way it works with Clay Stairs and I, it all starts with that initial phone call. It starts with scheduling a consultation and just scheduling a free assessment to see if someone’s a good fit. What would you say to anybody out there considering working with Clay Stairs and Sean and the coaches and working with them? What would you say? I’d say give it some time to come in and hear what they have to say and really listen. Like you just said, be 100% present even in those first moments. I remember asking Clay, I said, okay, if what you say is true, I’ll do this. And he goes, trust me, if you’ll do what I say, it will work. And that was the truth. Yeah. Now, you have three monitors and a circular table. I’m not sure what percentage of your success is attributed to that. He’s got his name on his table. Do the listeners have to have a custom table to be successful, Brian? You don’t have to do that, but it helps. You can get there faster if you do that. We live in the house that Brian built, and the way I did that, and Brian can attest to this, I’m sure, I told my wife, you design it how you want so that you’re happy with the house that you built. I get the pool, though. There you go. Can we talk about the pool? The pool’s an incredible thing. You’ve got to go to the pool. My wife, though, she really, really loves it, and there’s not a day that goes by that she doesn’t compliment it or give someone a tour. She’s always proud. And we’ve built multiple houses, but this is the favorite home that we’ve lived in. So thank you on behalf of my wife and our family. I appreciate you very much, Brian. And again, folks, if you’re looking to build a home and you happen to be in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, that’s briandwigs.com. Thank you, Brian, for joining us. We really do appreciate you. Thanks a lot, Brian. Thanks, guys. Enjoy. Take care, brother. See you. See you. Well, Pride Nation, on part one of today’s show, we talked about entrepreneurship and the importance of becoming a proactive person and that might be helpful. However Many people who watch this show tell me they say clay. I love the pro tips on life optimization I love the pro tips on how to become a more proactive person a more productive person However, I need to find an actual business that I can own I need to find a business that I can own that’s gonna allow me to achieve Time freedom and financial freedom and oh by the way, I don’t have a lot of startup capital sitting around looking for a good idea. So joining us today is Matt Klein, the franchise brand developer of OxiFresh, O-X-I, fresh. This is a man who helps people that feel like they’re stuck in a dead-end job to own their own business. This is a man who helps people that want to open up another revenue stream in their life to start another business. This is a man who helps people go from being employed to becoming self-employed. And with that being said, Matt Klein, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am doing good, thanks for having me. Matt, we got five questions in five minutes for you coming in hot. One, if somebody wants to buy an OxyPresh, how much money does it cost? Yeah, so you wanna think about your investment in two phases. You wanna think about 47,000 being your upfront investment to become a franchise, get your protected territory, get all the equipment and product that you need, get training in Colorado, and get set on your onboarding process. That all is encompassing that $47,000 there. But to me, you want to have about $25,000 in additional capital just available to you for operating, right? Getting marketing out, employee cost, the vehicle cost, monthly marketing costs, all the things that will allow your business to get up to a point where you’re cashflow positive. Now, the reason why someone would want to buy a franchise as opposed to starting a business from scratch is that you guys have turnkey systems and processes. How many locations do you have open at this point? How many territories do you have open at this point there Matt? Yeah we’re well over 500 at this point so we’re about 510, 512 now so you know we’ve entered a new level of franchising which we’re very excited about. 500 is a pretty big number that most franchise companies will never get to. Now, a history of success. Oxifresh wasn’t born yesterday. Tell us about the history. How many years has the brand been around? And just walk us through, because again, when people are thinking about buying a franchise, they want to team up with a stable brand that they can trust. Yeah, we started in 2006, right? So we’re near that 20-year mark. And the great thing is we’ve been able to consistently stay on top of innovation and marketing changes and trends and even in chemistry and our cleaning system. So, even though we’ve been doing this a long time, I feel like every new franchise that come on board, the environment’s a little bit different, right? Technology is a little bit different. Marketing, buying behavior is different. So, even though we have been evolving over time and we have been increasing our capabilities. Each new franchise is a new franchise, right? It’s the same business, but it’s a new business in that market that somebody is running. So we have a lot left to do and a lot left to accomplish with this, and we really need great franchisees to do it. Final two questions for you. In terms of the cutting edge carpet cleaning technology, you guys are the world’s greenest carpet cleaning service, and that’s great. But you also have a lot of technology on the back end, in terms of like, if I’m a franchisee, if I buy a franchise from you, you guys actually handle all the scheduling for me as the local franchise owner. You guys handle all the online marketing for me. Tell us about the marketing and the back end technology stack or software. Tell us a little bit about the technology that the franchisees have access to if they team up with you. Yeah, so for the last 15 years, we’ve been building our own software. It’s called the FAS system, okay, and it encompasses everything that we need unique to our business, right. So instead of buying an out-of-the-box software or trying to have a company build it, we’ve been building it in-house. So from scheduling to pulling reports to franchisees being able to change pricing structure and days and times of individual technicians that are in the field to ordering product, creating marketing collateral, having Oxford University as a training platform. It’s all encompassed in a one single sign-on platform that comes with the franchise. So we have a team headed up by Kelly, who’s going to be able to teach you how to use it. I’m on it constantly. I can already tell you like this week, I can look at the system. I know I’ve booked 17 jobs so far. It’s Monday at three, I still have a bunch. So we’re off to a really great start. But I’ve been on the phone, I’ve been talking to people, potential franchisees, and my business on the side here is producing at a high level because all of those things are happening at the same time. Marketing’s out, scheduling center’s booking, my software’s collecting it, my employees know where they need to be. So we’ve tried very hard to automate as much stuff as possible. Final question for you. For people out there that want to buy an Oxifresh franchise, what do they need to do? I mean, when somebody goes to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh. What do they need to do next? What happens? Walk us through that process. Yeah. So once you fill out that form, we’re going to get your information. You’re going to get several points of contact, call, a text, an email. We’re going to set up an introductory call and we’re going to start talking about what your goals are, what Oxfresh capabilities are, territory that you live in, competition within that area, right? We’re really going to get down to what’s got you looking, the financing behind it, the potential income behind it. So we’re going to break down the entire environment of what a franchise might look like inside of your current life and figure out through many calls and conversations and document sharing and screen shares whether this might be a good fit for you or not. Matt Klein, thank you for carving out time for us today. I know you have a busy day planned and we’ll talk to you next week. All right, thank you very much. Take care. JT, do you know what time it is? 4.10. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim TiVo 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 have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. 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 in 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. You know, over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. 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 ThriveTime show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the ThriveTime show two-day interactive business workshops. Interactive Business Workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. What? 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 two-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 have 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 gonna see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com, and some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do, how does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com, let’s go there now, we’re feeling the flow, we’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get any inheritance from parents, 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, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! 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. We do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. Those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation really life-changing and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrivetime 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, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business from. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point, New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me you’re intelligent and so this gentleman is very intelligent I’ve done this show before also but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts as a Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend Eric Eric Trump but we’re also about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, 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, ìHave you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad?î I said, ìNo.î My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. 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, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.