Clay Clark | AirBNB | Interview w/ Former AirBNB CEO, Rob Chesnut + How AirBNB Grew from 3 Dudes Renting Air Mattresses to Becoming a Billion Dollar Business + Workflow Design & Management 101 + Tebow Joins Dec 5-6 Workshop!

Audio Transcription

The journey of Airbnb, of being able to build Airbnb, has been unbelievable. It’s been the great joy of my lifetime. And if people could experience what I experienced, I would say to them, it would be the most unbelievable ride of a lifetime. And I wouldn’t want to change a ton because it’s been amazing. But if they’re about, somebody’s listening, and they’re about to go on this journey, I would forewarn them about some things that no one told me and no one told me When I started this journey is two things the first thing is how lonely it would be and It doesn’t have to be but it’s almost like by default You see when I started Airbnb I started with my friends to my friends then we hired people and those people there are employees but they were also kind of our friends. And this notion that I was the boss, there was a power imbalance, well we’re all like broke working at a three bedroom apartment, so what does it mean that I’m CEO? Like that’s kind of just a title. And so I felt really connected. We weren’t a family, but we were more like a family than a business, if it was one or the other. And then as we got successful, then it became more of a corporation. There was a chain of command. There were more boundaries, you know, like you started hiring people that had families. And people with families don’t hang out with you on nights and weekends. And then like, you know, it’s just like, it becomes more formal. And that’s the moment that your employees become your employees and less your friends and that gets more and more isolating. And then people start looking at you a little bit differently and it feels really good, but you can just find yourself working more and more to live up to the responsibility. And you feel like you’re never working enough and you’re working 60 hours a week, then 80 hours a week, and 100 hours a week, and you just almost feel guilty any second you’re alive and you’re not working. And again, I’m huge proponent in pouring your life into something, but I think that what I thought was every incremental hour would make me more productive, but it turns out that we need to step away from work. We need to be happy. We need to have some healthy relationships to probably make good decisions. I don’t, lonely leaders are probably not the best leaders. And when you’re lonely, you’re probably less empathetic. Your sense of vigilance is up. You don’t necessarily see problems really clearly. You don’t have people to bounce ideas off of. When there’s a challenge, you can feel like you’re alone. You don’t have as much resiliency. And so I remember going from being incredibly happy to feeling incredibly isolated, not having been prepared. Now I was prepared for all the business challenges. People told me what it’s like to scale a team, hire executives, but we weren’t really well prepared for the psychological and emotional journey that we would go on. Thrive Nation on today’s show we are interviewing Airbnb’s CEO. Again that’s Airbnb’s Chief Ethics Officer, Rob Chestnut. And he’s joined here with Broken Arrow’s very own mayor, Craig Thurmond. Again, we have the mayor of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Craig Thurmond, and we have the CEO of Airbnb on the same show to talk about intentional integrity. The new book written by today’s guest, Rob Chestnut, is called Intentional Integrity, How Smart Companies Can Lead in an ethical revolution. Easy for me to say. That’s how smart companies can lead an ethical revolution. Why leaders have to constantly communicate with their teams, and why it’s never ethical for a good leader to go streaky. We’re going streaky! Yeah! Woo! Wow! Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them how it’s C and Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one. Here we go. Yes, yes, yes. And yes, Thrive Nation, you are in for a very special occasion as we interview the man, the myth, the guru, the chief ethics officer for Airbnb, Rob Chestnut. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Well, I’ve never gotten an intro before like that. That’s fantastic. I’m doing great. You know, the thing is, many, many years ago, I built America’s largest wedding entertainment DJ company. And essentially, I’m like a guy who wanted to be in the Wu-Tang Clan but couldn’t get in. So I’m your hype man on today’s show. You can be the hype man. I was just thinking, you can be a hype man. I’m your hype man. By the way, real quick question here, very important to the listeners out here. What was your favorite old school group? You go back to the early 90s, maybe it’s 2000s. Would you have a favorite old school group, like a hip hop group or maybe a rock band or just something where it’s kind of old school? Before we get into all this new school stuff, do you have any old school favorite jams or artists you like? I got old school. I actually was a disc jockey in college. I worked my way through college as an FM rock DJ. So we can go back to traffic if you want. That’s really old school, or early Steely Dan. How about that? Now let me ask you this, what was your biggest hell gig? The kind of gig where you thought, what choices have I made that have left me at this show? What was your biggest hell gig of all time? Hell Gig was, in radio it was the 2am to 6am shift, which is where I started out, which was pretty bad. But I worked one summer at a dairy, taking those half-gallon milk jugs off of the line. It was sort of like Laverne and Shirley for your old school users, where those things are just coming off and you’ve got to pull them off and put them in crates and stack the crates up high. That was a hard way to make a little bit of money. Beautiful. Now, you are the chief ethics officer of Airbnb. Can you explain what a chief ethics officer does? My job is to drive integrity into the culture of the company. In other words, to get employees to be thinking in their day-to-day interactions and in the work that they do, whether what they’re doing has integrity and ensuring that I think we are acting with integrity as a company. What was your life like growing up as a kid? Did you get in a lot of trouble as a kid? Did you have like a high integrity problem? Tell us about your life growing up as a kid. Were you a super high integrity little kid? I think I was more an integrity type of kid. I was an only child. Dad was in the Marine Corps. Oh, wow. And I did not dare stray out of line. That would not have been a smart thing. So I was definitely a let’s follow the rules kind of guy. Okay, got it. As I went up, I stayed out of trouble. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. And so I think it just sort of naturally followed me through life that I’ve been to the rules thing. Now that you’ve become the chief ethics officer of Airbnb, do you drink and smoke heavily now? Well, I never picked up smoking, but I started drinking in law school. Okay, all right. I was curious. I wasn’t sure if your success followed these rules. Nothing heavy. A little red wine at the end of the day and take the edge off. Now you graduated from two schools where they just pass out degrees to anybody, so I’m not impressed. But you graduated from Harvard and the University of Virginia. How did you trick your way in there? Did you have good grades or just sort of, you know, what was your move? Well, in the old days, it was easier to get into these schools. I could not get into these schools today. You know, I’m going through this process with my kids. I grew up in Virginia, so going into the University of Virginia as an in-state student, it was a little bit easier back then. The competition today is brutal, and I feel for younger people that are going through that application process today. For the listeners out there that haven’t Googled the name Rob Chestnut yet, he used his beauty to get into college, folks. I mean, it’s like he won the Homecoming King, is what it was. You didn’t know it was something. Beautiful man. It was a radio. I have a face for radio. I’m glad we’re doing this as an audio podcast. He’s a liar, and he’s a chief ethics officer. He’s a beautiful man. Okay, so you worked for 14 years for the U.S. Justice Department, where you prosecuted bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, espionage, and the prosecution of very bad people. What did you learn during your time working for the U.S. Justice Department? It’s a tough job. I think it’s probably the best way to say it, in that it’s a very negative job. Day after day, you are working with people who make bad life choices, and many of them started off under tough circumstances. They make bad choices. Let’s take bank robbers. That’s got to be the worst crime. If you’re thinking about committing a crime, that’s probably about as bad as it gets. Nobody ever gets away with much money. There’s usually an exploding die pack with stuff going all over you. You’re on video. Over and over again, these folks have such sad lives, often drug-fueled incidents. I find that I admire people that are involved in law enforcement for a career. I do think it can be a difficult, kind of a down, negative experience for a lot of folks. That’s why I got out of it. So you then went from that career to landing a position at eBay in 1999, leading the legal team for eBay. How did you get that gig? Well, I was lucky because while I was a prosecutor, I kept getting phone calls from prosecutors all across the country with questions about this one little company in my jurisdiction. And they kept wanting to get records from this company, they wanted to prosecute this company and I kept wondering, what is this company? I better figure it figure this out and the name of the company was AOL America online. Yeah, now some of your listeners may not know about America online, but in the early days of the internet Yeah, that was the only way you could connect to the internet Oh, yeah, and and so I you know in order to figure this thing out I got they they used to give you these discs and you’d start a shove it into your computer You plug your phone line into your computer and that was how you got to the internet. Oh yeah. It was a sweet sound, baby. It was sweet. Oh, it was something. Steve Case mailed a CD to every single person and if you went to Blockbuster Video back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth, you’d go to Blockbuster Video and you’d give us those discs there. That was a sweet time in America. You’ve read about this. Man, you’re not old enough to know about this stuff. I know about this. Beautiful. That’s the way it was in the old days. So I was an early internet adopter just because I had to learn about America online. And one of the companies that I started using was this little company called eBay because I needed to find photography equipment. I was into photography. So I go on to eBay and I find they’ve got all this camera equipment that I could never find in Virginia and I remember back then when you bought something on online you couldn’t pay with a credit card. You had to send like a cashier’s check or a money order. I remember sending 40 bucks to some total stranger thinking I’m never gonna see this money again and the camera arrived perfect condition and I was hooked and I’m like wow this eBay thing this internet thing this may actually work. Yeah. So I wrote an email to eBay. I sent it to jobs at ebay.com. They didn’t have any postings but I didn’t even know where San Jose, California was but I knew California was probably a pretty good place. So I sent them an email and said that they would need somebody like me, that they’d have fraud and illegal items and all kinds of problems. I thought I’d never hear from them again but next day there was a message on my voicemail. A week later I’m interviewing and a month later I’m moving to California. So now you, let’s fast forward because you went from this job and then you landed a job working at Chegg I believe. What did you do at Chegg? Well I was their first lawyer and I basically set up their legal department and helped them transition. You know back in the early days of Chegg, they were the first company that came up with the idea of renting a textbook and saving college students money so that instead of having to buy these incredibly expensive books that you were never able to get really any good money for when you went back to the bookstore to resell them, they helped you save money by running the physical books. So I helped the company transition to a digital company, a digital learning company, and helped take them public. So today, I think they’re like a four, five billion dollar public company doing quite well. And it was something I really believed in because I think the cost of a college education’s too high and we need to do something about it. So how did you go from there to becoming the chief ethics officer at Airbnb? What was your next move? Well Airbnb needed a general counsel. I got a phone call one day. They believed that a lot of the issues they were facing were very similar to the issues that eBay faced in their early days. I was eBay’s third lawyer. eBay only had 170 employees when I started and it was 15,000 when I left. Airbnb was going through a similar trajectory and they wanted somebody that had done it before. They wanted me to be their general counsel, so I said, ìSure.î I went to Airbnb and helped grow their legal department from about 30 people to over 150. We had lawyers in 21 countries. I got really interested in ethics and leadership because I started seeing all these companies getting themselves in trouble like WeWork and Uber and Facebook and Google. I thought, this is avoidable. There are things that we should be able to do to prevent these sorts of problems. I started working on it while I was general counsel. I had so much fun doing it that I decided to do it full-time and write a book about it. I tried to do some research into you, obviously, before interviewing you, and one of the things I found is you’re a likable guy, but yet a lot of people think attorneys are not nice guys. Have you ever grown the legal team so much that you now hate yourselves? You know what? I try to find lawyers that are fun to be around. You believe it or not, they’re out there. I don’t think being a lawyer does not have to be a downer, although I think some lawyers have certainly contributed to the reputation of the profession in that way. But I like enjoying every day. I like having a little bit of fun, and I like the idea that lawyers can actually help do positive things in the world. Do you spend time with the founders of Airbnb? Their story is legendary. They ran out of money, so they’re like selling, they bought cereal and repackaged it and sold Obama O’s to the Captain McCain’s that didn’t sell very well. I mean the way they- Great story. Great story. You spend time with these guys. Oh, absolutely. Brian, Joe, and Nate are at the company. They work full time and more than full time, by the way. They are extremely dedicated to the company. And I love working with them. They are smart. They started the company because they were living in San Francisco, didn’t have any money and were trying to figure out a way to make money and they were design students. They weren’t even business school students. They had gone to design school. There was a big design conference coming to San Francisco and San Francisco is notorious for having a shortage of hotel rooms. When there’s a conference, the price of hotel rooms goes through the roof, the entire city gets booked out. So these guys were thinking, you know what, we know design people that would love just to have any place to lay their head and we’ve got three air mattresses. So they blew up three air mattresses, rented out the air mattresses on the floor of their apartment to design students and that’s where the name Airbnb comes from. actually started really as basically an air mattress company. And, you know, they’ve done a phenomenal job growing the company. I really admire those guys. Do you have nicknames? Do you call Nathan, Nate Dog, or does Joe have like a nickname, or does Brian? Do you have nicknames for the dudes? That’s a great question, but no. Really? Yeah, it’s Brian, Nate, and Joe. I know it’s kind of… It’s not ethical. It’s… Well, you know, some of the executives… There’s a member of the executive team that’s big on nicknames. His name’s Chris Lahane, and he was President Clinton’s chief of staff, and he loves nicknames. My nickname’s the Nutcracker, just because I was a lawyer, and my last name’s Chestnut, and he looks a little like an eagle, so that people call him the Eagle. So there’s some nicknames floating around the company, but none for the founders. So you’re the nutcracker. Right. If you could just maybe take some notes to share with the guys, because I know right now with this whole corona thing, the one thing they’re thinking about is what could our good rapper name be? So Brian, you can call him B-Money. Nate Dogg, it’s obvious. B-Money. And then Joe, I’m not sure, because there’s kind of a sophomore in me that wants to say Joe Mama, but I can’t do that. So you’ll have to come up with a good name for him. You can’t do that. I’ll work on it. I’ll work on it. Okay. I’ll work on it. That could be a career ender if you get that one wrong. That’s right. Now, this is the thing. We have on the show today, kind of a fun deal, we have the mayor of the community that I broadcast from there, Mayor Craig Thurmond. Mayor Craig Thurmond, meet the CEO, the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb. Mayor, meet Rob. Hello, Rob. Mayor. Pleasure, Mayor. Pleasure to meet you. Your Honor. Is it your Honor? I guess you’d call me that, but I usually just go by Craig. So you guys are, this is just a fun unicorn moment. I mean, you’re navigating such unparalleled times. In San Francisco, the place is shut down. Mayor Craig in Broken Arrow in Oklahoma, you guys have your own response you’re doing there. I’m going to start with you here, Rob, as the chief ethics officer. For people out there who are navigating this challenging time, if they were to pick up your new book, Intentional Integrity, How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution, what kind of things could they learn from your book that they could apply in this challenging economy we now have? The book won’t give you integrity. So it’s not a cheap way to, I know, but in the interest of full disclosure, I want to let everybody know that the book doesn’t have answers for all of your ethical questions. What the book does is the book provides a framework for helping a company think through the ethical challenges that they’ve got and it makes a case, I think a very powerful case that it’s an important journey for you to go on. So many companies I think are focused solely on one stakeholder and that is their shareholders. All they’re worried about is what’s the share price this quarter or what’s our revenue target. The book talks about the importance of making integrity an integral part of the way that you think about problems and being long-term in your thinking, and that’s the way to build great companies. Now, somebody out there is saying, I’m a little bit disappointed the book’s not going to give me integrity. Somebody thought, a lot of bad people listening to this show, evil people thought, I’ll buy this book and I’ll take over the world, ethically. But okay, so you’ve got that now. Now, in your book, you teach people the six C’s to foster and manage a culture of integrity. I want to get your take on this, the six C’s. You don’t have to get into all this. You’re going to make me give away? No, no. Am I going to give away? I can’t give away all of them. No, no, you don’t have to give it away. Give it away now. You don’t have to do that. Just a little teaser. It’s like a sample size, like a snack pack. I’ll give a teaser. A little snack pack. We’ll do a little sample of it. Well, the first C is CEO, because if the CEO of a company is not bought in to making integrity a part of the culture, then you’re wasting your time, because trying to create a culture of integrity while the CEO is willing to cut corners, do unethical things, perhaps engage in inappropriate romantic relationships, all you’re going to do is you’re going to look like a hypocrite trying to talk about integrity while your leader is going off and doing something else. So the first C is you’ve got to get alignment from the leader at the top of the company that this is important. In fact, it’s not going to slow your business up. It’s actually going to help turbocharge it if you intentionally make integrity a part of what you’re doing at the office. Can we maybe, because you have six Cs, and I feel like if you give me two Cs, I feel like people are going to want to buy the rest of the book. Folks out there, if you’re listening right now, here’s the verbal pact we’re going to make right now. This is the inferred passive-aggressive approach I’m taking here. Some would say if you have the CEO, the chief ethics officer of Airbnb, taking time out of his busy schedule, during the time of the coronavirus, to come on and share with you two of his six C’s from his new book, Intentional Integrity, some would say, Paul, you might not say, but I would say, you almost have an ethical duty to your family and your country to pick up a copy of the book. Buy the book. That’s what we think. Okay, so we’ll give us maybe one more C. One more. I usually wouldn’t do it, but because you put me on the spot, I’m going to give you one more C. One more C. I won’t ask one more, I promise. And that is constant communication. And that’s the last C. So I’ll leave the meat of the sandwich for the book. But constant communication. One of the people I talk to for the book is Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA. I’ve got a lot of respect for him as a leader. He and I talked about integrity is not something that you just make one speech about or send one email about and then say, ìThank goodness thatís done.î You need to create a constant stream of communication, almost like television advertising. You don’t run one TV ad and then assume that everybody’s got your message. You need to repeat yourself. Often, you’ve got to repeat yourself often so that it really drills into people. But having a culture of integrity means constantly communicating with your team in different ways. Maybe using email, maybe using video, maybe using five minutes at a company meeting, but But making it a consistent part of your communication technique so that it’s something that gets driven into the culture of the company and people know that you’re serious about it. It’s not one email you’re sending out and thinking, thank goodness I finally handled that problem and I can move on to something else. Paul, Rob has fallen into my trap. I had a trap, he fell into my trap and I went to make a point. He teased up where I wanted to go. Yes, you did it, Rob. Here we go. The constant communication. You are the chief ethics officer of Airbnb, and we know with the coronavirus, people are canceling. And, Mayor Craig, I’m sure you get a call every two minutes from somebody asking when Broken Arrow’s going to open up for business again, or when it’s not going to. I’m sure you’re taking heat. You’re taking heat. You know, Rob, people are probably coming after you saying, hey, you know, you guys, you know, you’re canceling, and I needed that money. Mayor Craig, people are probably saying to you, hey, I need my restaurant to be open right now. There’s probably a lot of that, so I want to go around the horn here. I want to ask you, Rob, constant communication. What’s Airbnb doing right now, or what’s the approach you’re taking? Because, really, I mean, if you’re not allowed to be in business, you can’t be in business. How are you constantly communicating? What’s happening? What’s going on on the ground right now? Well, I’ll give you an example. Our offices are closed. So our entire workforce is now remote. But every day, there is an email from a different leader inside of Airbnb out to the entire employee base talking about what’s going on inside the company, what the point of emphasis is in that person’s area. And every week, our CEO does a live CEO Q&A for the entire company to ask any questions they want. This is something we did when the offices were open, but the fact that the offices are closed doesn’t stop it. So now our CEO does a virtual remote town hall. And that way we all stay on the same page, all 6,000 of us all around the world, around what’s going on and what’s expected of us. At the same time, we’re also communicating with our customers and we’re listening to our customers. There are no easy ethical answers when it comes to things like, how do you deal with cancellation of an existing reservation? Does the host end up losing out on the reservation or does the guest get stuck with a reservation in another part of the world that they can’t even go to? I think a lot of it is listening to your customers and doing your best to navigate through and understanding that trying to do the right thing needs to be part of the equation. It can’t always be about let’s just see how much money we can make. Now, Mayor Craig, I’m going to ask you the same thing again. In our city where I live, the city’s shut down and I understand that you are the man who can decide these kinds of things, or your team. Talk to me about how you constantly communicate with people as you find out new information. You’re learning. I mean, it’s every day new stuff’s coming in. The study that just came in from the CDC from Italy reported, this was reported on Bloomberg. It reported 99.2% of all the deaths were from people that had an already compromised immune system or were elderly. Then CNN comes out with their new data. Then China’s got their new data. Elon Musk has got his new take on the new data. President Trump has his. How do you constantly communicate with the citizens of broken Arrow? How do you do that? I think we constantly put stuff on our website. We do the social media. Our office is still open, so we have a social media specialist, and that’s what he does. He constantly puts stuff out, whatever he can get. You know, we’re getting information from the White House and from the governor and from other people and the Tulsa County Health Department and we just put all that out, whatever we can come up with, we put out. We published today about the difference in the new cases that we’ve had. Oklahoma doesn’t have it really bad when you think 81 cases with 4 million people, but there is a little pinup demand there with testing. As those tests start happening and we start seeing more tests come out, we’ll see a spike and then we’ll get back to where our real numbers are. That information is put out constantly through our social media and through the internet. Rob, where’s your headquarters for Airbnb located? San Francisco, California. Talk to me about what it feels like on the ground there right now. It is eerily quiet. Now I haven’t gone out much because all of us are under orders by county and by city to stay in place and stay at home and the only reason you can go out is to go to a grocery store or to a pharmacy or some other essential service. So I go to a grocery store, I go to a pharmacy, I try to do it toward the end of the day when the stores are mostly empty out of safety. It is certainly lacking, the whole entire area that I’ve seen is missing the buzz, the sort of the hum of activity and crowds that you would ordinarily see. It’s a new world. Do you have a family that you live with there in San Francisco or are you a single guy? Yeah, no, I’ve got a 13-year-old son and my daughter is in college, but college is now closed up. She’s moved back here home. And so we’ve got remote education going on in the house, as well as remote work. Everybody’s doing the best they can. Do you guys have fun as a family by making your kids read the new book, the new hit book, Intentional Integrity, How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution? Is that what you guys do for fun? Or what are you, are you watching Netflix? Or are you booking Airbnbs, or what are you doing? You know what, my kids, I admit, have not read the book, although I do give them credit for a couple of the ideas in the book. They’re great kids. Let me just read your book. They’re great kids, but they are busy with their schoolwork, and when they are not doing their schoolwork, we’re trying to have a little fun. We can go outside and shoot baskets, at least, as long as it’s just us. I’m not going to do it in a crowd. And we eat meals together and try to spend some time together as a family. When your kids start going away to college, you actually look at this as an opportunity to reconnect. Paul Hood, you are a CPA with thousands of clients all over the country. All of them are affected differently. We have a unique opportunity here to have the Chief Ethics Officer for Airbnb on today’s show and we have the Mayor of the great city of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. So I thought you could ask both these guys some questions because again, it’s kind of a unicorn event here where you have two people with such leadership responsibilities at this weird time in American history. Let’s start with a question for Rob. What question would you have for Rob? Well, the question I have, Rob, as a CPA, there’s an actual incomplete part of the exam that I take to become a CPA that’s on ethics. And the thing that kind of is almost comical to me is even when I’m studying for that or I take that in college and I take the test, ethics is so dependent upon the individual and how they perceive and when we have continuing education every year I have to have about a hundred hours of continuing education every year for all the things that I’m involved with. We have ethics parts and it’s always a discussion. So my question really for both of you is do you, are there ethical issues in a country built on freedom and freedom of choice to force businesses to close or to force people to stay in their homes for a communicable disease that in all, with all the facts that you look at, there is a very select group of the public that is massively at risk. You’re opening the can of worms. I am. I just want to know ethically. You’re asking the questions that the listeners are probably wanting to ask right now. Yeah. I don’t want to come hard at these two guys. Ethically, what do you think? Okay, Rob, I guess you’re first. You know, there are no definitive answers. I don’t come down from the mountain with stone tablets and all the answers to tough ethical questions. I think the question that you raise really depends on what you believe the role of government ought to be. In a situation like this, I do believe that we need coordinated action, we need leadership to sacrifice if necessary for the common good. So I think my personal take on it ethically would be, yeah, there’s an important role for government to play here and an important role for us as individuals to play. That’s the fun thing about ethics. You can always, you can have a good disagreement about it. Right, right. Mayor? Mayor? I think if everybody acted responsibly and if people acted ethically, we probably wouldn’t need… well, I mean, every ordinance, every government rule that we have is because of some bad acronym. Mayor Craig, I have a jackass story for you that maybe you, Rob, would like to chime in on too. This is real stuff, real stuff. I spoke to a listener today who told me that they are so glad that this only is impacting elderly people. And now they know that. They got the data that’s come in from, or people with compromised immune systems. They got the data. They said, I’m so glad. So this is a true story. I’m not making this up. They said they went then to the nursing home to visit their grandparents to let them know that they’re not, because the grandparents were worried that the kids were at risk, the young kids, you know, who are kind of the younger 20s. And I’m thinking, that’s exactly what you don’t want to do. I’m not sure. But then they said they’re getting their information from Snapchat news. You know, I guess Snapchat has news. I’m not really sure what that means. But true story. True story. So was that the kind of behavior you’re talking about where like a young whippersnapper thinks that they’re healthy so they go to the nursing home to visit people? Is that what you’re referring to? The problem with this is that you can be asymptomatic, not have any symptoms, and you can go and you can infect someone. You can have it and not even know that you have it. You don’t have any symptoms, so you don’t know. 40% of the people around the country that are hospitalized or are sick enough to be hospitalized are between the ages of 20 and 54. So those, you know, those people probably are gonna survive. But the concept is that you can have those symptoms and not even know about it. We have two cases in Oklahoma that are four-year-olds that have symptoms. They’re going to survive, but they have the symptoms, and they can pass that on to someone else. And so that’s one thing we have to be very careful about is passing this on to other people and not even knowing that we’re sick. I’m struck by the divide we have in the country in so many ways, but there’s a divide between the older generation and the younger generation. You know, there’s the phrase, OK, boomer, that has cropped up as being popular with young people who look at the older generation and they’re angry because of the way the older generation has treated the environment and puts their generation at risk due to climate change. By the same token, we have the virus where we have a number of people in the younger generation who may be acting in a manner that is reckless to the health of the older generation. So the ethical issues of how respectful we need to be of each other and how we need to be, you know, we cannot act blindly only in our own interest, but we need to be cognizant of the fact that our actions can have a big impact on others and other generations. I think that’s a big part of thinking ethical. Rob, I’ve got two final questions for you. And then if, Mayor, if you have a question for the CEO, the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, please feel free to fire away, Paul Hood as well. I’ve got two final questions for you. How do you organize your day on a typical day? I realize we’re in the Corona world, so it’s probably different right now, but what time do you wake up between 6.30 and 7 o’clock in the morning. I’m a routine guy, so I have the same breakfast almost every day. What do you eat? I have a low-fat yogurt, with a big handful of blueberries and some low-fat granola. I’ll end up with a cup of coffee a little later on in the morning after that and then I walk to work. And then once I’m at the office, I don’t have control where I can define my day every day. There are always issues being thrown at me. So my calendar gets booked up with meetings or different issues that I’ve got to resolve and it will typically go on Really it goes on all the time because Airbnb is a global company. We’ve got offices and yeah, Oh 25 25 countries so If you let it it simply will take up your life 24-7 and you’re you’re working on something until you turn the light off at night And the first thing you do in the morning is pick up your phone and see what happened, you know, the previous evening in Asia or in Europe. Devin, I’m not sure, you’re a big coffee guy. You know with Starbucks now being closed here, are you aware of this? I’m very aware. It’s not closed. Something that I would encourage you to test this week, I have 13 cats, if you would try drinking cat urine this week to see if it gives you the same wake up that I did. I think that’s hard pass. That was not a very ethical thing to ask. Is that ethical to shut me down? Rob, is that ethical for someone to shut me down like that? Oh no, I think if you cross the line, you’ve got to get shut down. I think I’ve got to throw a flag. A yellow flag. Okay. I mean, for the… Rob, I appreciate you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us, and at some point, you’ll just have to know, I have friends who are going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, and I’m going to be here, Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. And at some point, you just have to know, I have framed images in my office of Nate Dogg and of Joe and of Brian. And at some point, if you can passively, aggressively trick them, like you could say, Hey guys, let’s do a quick conference call about ethics, right? And then they go, now we’re on the Thrive Time Show. That would be the unethical move. Or if you could just trick them and say, why don’t you just call this number and I interview them either way. Now, however you make it happen, that’s my wish, that’s my hope, and I can also handle some solid rejections. But I appreciate you for joining us and the whole Airbnb team. What you guys do is innovative, it’s awesome, it’s great, and thank you so much. Thanks for having me on the show. It was a lot of fun. Take care. All right, Thrive Nation, we like to end each and every show with a boom. And so now, without any further ado, say it with me now. Here we go. Three, two, one. You’re saying it weird. Saying what weird? All of it. What specifically am I saying weird? All of it. Where do you get off? Forget it. I will not forget it. And so Thrive Nation, we will now end with a 3, 2, 1 Boom. Without the distractions from that psychopath. Here we go. 3, 2, 1, boom! I think I need a quarantini. I appreciate you mentioning me in each and every show out there. My name is Juan, and I’ve been quarantined for several weeks now. And I could use a quarantini or seven, which is great because liquor stores are considered to be essential businesses. Other businesses that are actually essential are not essential, but liquor stores are. Oh, yes, thank you for the shout out. Also, marijuana dispensaries are also considered to be essential during the quarantine. 1980 was the year of my conception. From the dorm room found a DJ connection. Entrepreneur open year in 07. On my path to the top I’ve learned a lot of lessons Kicked out of college writing a parody rap, a diss to O.R.U. Liking Trump and Rosie recap, I’ve been known for getting stuff done Not giving a crap, in for jockeying of wins While my competition never does a thrive time show On your radio, catch the broadcast or the pockets download If you’ve got a business, we’ll help it grow God’s got a plan he just didn’t yet know about Workflows, systems, scripts, and hiring He’s motivating yourself when you need inspiring He’s facing me for radio and not TV Talking everything from plate to Z Automatically bangs haircuts, get glasses You want the stuff we’ve already sold to the masses No classes or pre-requisites Just business school as raw as it gets It’s a thrive time show on the radio Yes it is Oh, yeah It’s all about you All about you I’m a maniacal focus, to teach the proven moves, no focus, focus Cause getting rich quick is not a move, but the proven system will make your life improve See I’m more than just a rhymer, like a horse with binders Focused on the lifetime show, that’s where you’ll find us He be the Z and I be the C, teaching business skills from clay to Z We both grew up poor, but we’re poor no more, the goal of this show is to help you score I couldn’t see the light until my son could see, but I learned to rock the mic in the high school scene A young DJ with a billion dollar dream Numb to the pain that rejection brings So I like a softball, I’m sweating for that greed Now I’m on your radio with a thank you and please Share this podcast with a friend and enemy Now it talks of business from place to sea It’s a thrive time show on the radio Yes it is Oh, it is It’s all about you All about you All about you All about you, all about you, all about you, all about you, all about you, yeah, yeah, say we bring the boom, oh. The journey of Airbnb, of being able to build Airbnb, has been unbelievable. It’s been the great joy of my lifetime, and if people could experience what I experienced, I would say to them, it would be the most unbelievable ride of a lifetime. And I wouldn’t want to change a ton because it’s been amazing. But if they’re about, somebody’s listening, and they’re about to go on this journey, I would forewarn them about some things that no one told me. And no one told me, when I started this journey, is two things. The first thing is how lonely it would be. And it doesn’t have to be, but it’s almost like by default. You see, when I started Airbnb, I started with my friends, two of my friends, then we hired people. And those people, they were our employees, but they were also kind of our friends. And this notion that I was the boss, there was a power imbalance, well, we’re all like broke working at a three-bedroom apartment. So what does it mean that I’m CEO? Like, that’s kind of just a title. And so I felt really connected. We weren’t a family, but we were more like a family than a business, if it was one or the other. And then as we got successful, then it became more of a corporation. There was a chain of command. There were more boundaries. You know, like you started hiring people that had families. And people with families don’t hang out with you on nights and weekends. And then like, you know, it’s just like, it becomes more formal. And that’s the moment that your employees become your employees and less your friends, and that gets more and more isolating. And then people start looking at you a little bit differently, and it feels really good, but you can just find yourself working more and more to live up to the responsibility. And you feel like you’re never working enough, and you’re working 60 hours a week, then 80 hours a week, and 100 hours a week, and you just almost feel guilty any second you’re alive and you’re not working. And again, I’m huge proponent in pouring your life into something, but I think that what I thought was every incremental hour would make me more productive, but it turns out that we need to step away from work. We need to be happy. We need to have some healthy relationships to probably make good decisions. I don’t, lonely leaders are probably not the best leaders. And when you’re lonely, you’re probably less empathetic, your sense of vigilance is up, you don’t necessarily see problems really clearly, you don’t have people to bounce ideas off of. When there’s a challenge, you can feel like you’re alone, you don’t have as much resiliency. And so I remember going from being incredibly happy to feeling incredibly isolated, not having been prepared. Now I was prepared for all the business challenges. People told me what it’s like to scale a team, hire executives, but we weren’t really well prepared for the psychological and emotional journey that we would go on. I remember thinking to myself, once I read that chapter, I said, what if we created a storyboard of the perfect vacation on Airbnb, from the time you book to the time you check in, and what if we literally designed the end-to-end journey? You might call this service design, and this became a guiding light to how we design our service. We didn’t just design the screen, the apps, the emails, we designed the experience, the end-to-end experience. Kind of like when I was in industrial design school and we were like designing a ventilator or some product and you’re trying to put yourself in the shoes of the user. So this book became very influential for me. I mean the final thing I’ll just say is like somebody once said numbers are the language of business. And I remember thinking to myself, no, language is the language of business. Numbers are just the only way we have to measure them. But that, you ever notice, there’s 500 companies in a Fortune 500. How many of them are creative people? I don’t know how many, but like, I might be one of the only ones that went to design school. They have boards of directors. Let’s say there’s 12, or 10 people per board, so that’s like 5,000 board members. How many of them are creative people or designers or people from the humanities? Not many. How many CEOs have creative people reporting to them? Not many. And so we have this world now where many people are dissatisfied with the way the world is. We are often given two bad options. We tend to be fighting zero-sum when we could imagine something better, but we don’t have a lot of people in positions of power that can take creative leaps of the imagination and really understand how to design something better that we’re in right now. I think creativity is kind of being systematically squashed from maybe corporate America. You know, Pablo Picasso said, it took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. I think that childhood curiosity is something that creative people are able to typically, I think, hold on to. And I think that’s being a little bit lost. And what I loved about Walt Disney, and I also liked about Steve Jobs, was the sense they were truly creative people that had truly creative companies. They empowered them, and they had an intuition. They didn’t just paint the company by numbers. And that’s the kind of company I’ve always tried to do. I’ve had this dream of creating one of the most creative places on earth, like Disney or Apple. We may not get there, but at least we’ll have the ideal. We did not think Air, Bed, and Breakfast would be a company where three, four million people a night would use to sleep in. We did not think I’d be doing podcasts and I’d be a giant public company, we thought it was gonna be a way for three people, one weekend, to stay in our apartment, sleep on some airbeds, pay us money, we’d have a cool weekend adventure, we’d go about our lives. And the funny thing is, we thought it would pay the rent while Joe and I at the time thought of the big idea. We kept talking about the big idea. An airbed and breakfast was just a way to keep solving our own problem, paying rent, before we came up with the big idea. But when I joined Y Combinator, it’s a very well-known startup incubator of sorts, the founder Paul Graham used to have a saying, and it’s the most important advice I ever got, and it’s what you were saying, and it’s counterintuitive. He said it’s better to have a hundred people love you than a million people that just sort of like you. If you have 100 people that love your service, when they love something, they’ll tell everyone they know. I remember talking to somebody, she loved Airbnb. I’m like, how many people have you told Airbnb? She goes, I probably told 10 or 20. And her friend standing next to her goes, no, she’s told like one or 200 people. And I started realizing people who love something become your marketing department, and they’ll tell other people. And if they tell other people, that grows by what we call word of mouth. So how do you get somebody to love something? I don’t know how you get a million people to like something at the same time when you’re starting from nothing. But I do know how you could get one or two people to like something. You could meet with them. You could understand what their needs are. And you could design something so perfectly spoke just for them. And you could literally think of them as recruiting one person at a time. If you have a business idea, you don’t need to get to a million. Before you get to a million, you need to get to 100,000. Before you get to 100,000, you get to 10,000. And before 10,000, you get to 1,000. And before 10,000, you get to 100. So all you have to do, and all roads lead to 100, don’t focus on the mountaintop. Focus on the first step. Don’t focus on the million. Focus just on the 100. And as you do that, you make the problem small and manageable. Because a million has to build systems, and you start developing complexities you can’t deal with. So all you got to do is get to 100. Once you get to 100, now you get to 1,000. The world doesn’t just change, or at least it doesn’t just transform towards our dreams, ideals, and ambitions. That requires certain types of people. We might call them entrepreneurs, inventors, all sorts of people in different domains that believe the world could be a little different than the one that they live in. They have the audacity to believe that they can do it. And they have the ability to convince other people to go on that journey with them. But along that journey, everything’s gonna be different. You’re gonna get lost, you’re gonna be cold, you’re gonna have like obstacles, things are gonna attack you, you’re gonna fall down pits. And the question is when people are cold and they’re shivering and they’re not sure what to do and you’re running out of resources and rations can you find your way up that mountain do you know why you’re going can you didn’t event all these different apparatus like there’s a stream you can’t figure out you can build a bridge to cross the stream with the limited resources you have can you recruit people along the way and can you beat the drum and when people are tired and they say I want to sleep you say yes we’re gonna rest, but we gotta go. Just 500 more steps. I know it’s right over the edge. I think we can do a little bit better. And can you push people outside their comfort zone? Not enough to hate you, but enough to feel like a trainer. You’re like, three more reps, and you don’t wanna do it. And then that very moment, they’re not your friend, but at the end of the workout, you’re like, thank you for pushing me that hard. This is that kind of person. And can you take divergent ideas that no one’s ever seen before and just continue to reformulate them? Could you store these ideas in your head, a thousand competing ideas, and just reformulate them in your mind? It turns out this stuff is difficult, but you can work your way up there. Most people watching this have the skill set to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has the skill set or the desire to run a giant company. I don’t think everyone needs to do that, but a lot of people have the skill set to do something, to start something. This is what you need to get up the mountain. Your culture is the behaviors of the leaders that get mimicked all the way down every single person. Your culture is every time you choose to hire someone, every time you choose to fire someone, every time you choose to promote somebody. It’s the way everyone does everything. And the way a leader designs the culture is not by writing out a list of values. It’s by basically leading by example every single day and taking a survey of every single thing happening and constantly shaping it, pruning it, like a gardener. You know, you don’t just allow the culture to happen. You design the culture. You have an idea of what you want to do and you’re just constantly getting this group together. You know, you might have a culture of excellence and a culture of excellence means I review all the work and I say, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And eventually, I could not join the meeting but people know what I’d say. They’d say it’s not good enough. This is our standard. Dr. Robert Zellner, a former Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, in your ear, Clay Clark. It’s the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. Three, two, one, boom. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. And as always, my name is Clay Clark. I’m the host with the most, and we are here on the Thrive Time Show today talking about things that you want to know about. We’re talking about how to start and grow a successful business. Specifically, we’re going to be unpacking the story of the company we all know about. We all know about these successful companies. We all cheer for them when they get to the peak, the pinnacle, but nobody knows how they started. It’s how three dudes went from renting air mattresses to becoming a billion dollar business. But before we get started, I’m going to get us started today with kind of a chant, kind of a chant, because I talked to a guy today and he goes, I found this show on the radio and now I love it. And so I’m going to just kind of want to get stuck into your to your to your brain. And here we go. It’s Thrive Time Show, Drive Time Home, Thrive. Time. Show. Drive. Time. Home. There we go. Now, stuck in your cranium. Now, moving forward, just share that with 4 million people and we’re all good. That’s all I’m asking. 4 million shares, that’s all I’m asking for. And to make this show happen today, we’re always surrounded by a cast of characters, great people. Dr. Z today is out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire, and so I am joined with Ms. Sherita, actually, Mrs. Mrs. you guys watching on Facebook Live, she’s single, no she’s married. You be respectful, she’s a married lady. It’s Mrs. Sherita Bent. Mrs. Sherita, how are you? I’m great, happily married and fabulous and happy to be here. Now we have a very special guest today. He is a Thriver, meaning he’s a guy that we’ve worked with. We have an honor to serve him, helping him on website updates and things like that so he can get all that stuff off his plate and focus on his big vision. This guy played football at Boise State. Remember when Boise State beat OU and half of the state was like, I hate Boise State. Well this guy played on the field. Mr. Brett Denton, sir, can you explain a little bit, what was your role on that team? Were you the one individually responsible for that loss? Do we need to blame you? Does the state of Oklahoma need to blame you? Yes, 100% responsible for that loss, as a matter of fact, yes. Okay, now what do you do now? Apparently, you’re founder of a fitness company that’s grown from, you started it from the ground up to now where you have 500 people that attend this fitness facility. I want to know, what’s the name of this facility? And then tell me about this performance coaching that you’re doing now for entrepreneurs who want to achieve a little bit more. Yeah, so the fitness facility, you know, it’s called Cavell Fitness and Nutrition and we just help people get in shape, you know, lose weight, get in shape. And then performance coaching is for executives, it’s for busy people, busy parents, and we help them, you know, reach their peak. I have to ask you this because a lot of people want to know when they start a business, I mean, was it scary for you and did you have overnight success? I mean, how long did it take you before you got the business to a place where you, you know, weren’t just totally freaked out of your mind. How long did it take you to get a little momentum going there with Cavell Fitness? I think it probably took a year. Moved in with my sister, had my car repoed. Oh, nice. I was broke for a while, and yeah, 12 months later I was finally starting to make some money, yeah. Now, before you judge about, you’re going, you moved in with your sister? You got your car repoed? What’s wrong with you? Well, let me tell you what’s wrong with these guys. These are the three dudes who went from renting air mattresses to becoming billion dollar business owners. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Shar, can you kind of share with us a little bit about what Airbnb is all about? Yes, it’s awesome. It’s a peer-to-peer online marketplace. It’s a homestay network, and people are able to list or short-term rent lodging. So you’re staying right now, right? Brett, we were talking about this. He’s using Airbnb right now. So you can rent a home. You can rent portions of a home. You’re staying at Airbnb right now? He is. Right now. What does that mean? Are you staying in someone’s house? I am. Somebody’s room. Are they there? They’re there, yeah. And they’re cool with you being there? They’re cool. They’re nice. Is it weird that you’re there and they’re there? It could be. Have you ever asked them to leave? This is the thing, though. Airbnb. Yeah, it’s cool. Those of you who don’t know about it, you Google this mess, it is awesome. Now I’m going to say this, I love Airbnb. My wife and I, I can’t remember what state we were in, we traveled a lot there for a while. Was it California? My wife’s in the studio, the man cave. Were we in California or was it Las Vegas? She’s not mic’d right now, but she’s telling me here. She’s not, what state was it, California? I think it was California. Okay, so California. We’re in California and we stay in this unbelievable really nice downtown place It’s you’re staying in someone’s house allows people to rent out their homes to make extra incomes It’s like turning your home into a hotel sir air B&B so here’s their story shark you ready for the story. I’m ready Brett. Are you ready for the story ready born? It’s story time so here we go in 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gabia, okay, they’re living in an apartment in San Francisco. Now, have you guys ever been to San Francisco? Brett, have you been to San Francisco? I have not. Sherita? I have. It’s expensive. It is. I mean, everything’s like a $7 hot dog. It’s like a $9 latte. I mean, that’s why people are so many homeless people are there. It’s just super expensive. But you go there, and they move there, and they realize, man, this is expensive. We cannot afford to pay rent. They’ve already signed the lease. So what happens is they rent out three air mattresses. One of them, I’m sure, is Brian. He’s like, hey guys, here’s the deal. We could rent out our rooms to other people and they could stay there and pay us. And I’m sure Joe, the smart guy, he goes, but if we’re renting out our own house, where are we going to stay? And he goes, in the closet. I’m not kidding. These guys stayed in the closet. Like Michael Jackson back in the day, Keep It In The Closet. That’s a song, Michael Jackson. You’ve got to Google that if you haven’t heard it before. Sam, have you heard that? Our producer? No? Okay. It’s Keep it in the closet. You’ve never heard it? I sing about you, baby. It makes me want to give it to you. Sam, it’s awesome. It’s much better when I don’t sing it. Okay. Anyway, it’s great. You’ve got to check it out. So the thing is, these guys, we’ll rent out our house and we’ll live in the closet. And they’re kind of like, well, how would we live here then? But anyway, they honored their lease. What happened was there’s this industrial design conference that’s being held in San Francisco. It’s the industrial design conference. And they’ve got these industrial design society. They’re putting this thing on. And there’s not enough affordable hotel rooms. So people are going, yeah, we do want to stay here. So they went ahead and started a blog website with maps called AirBedAndBreakfast.com. If you check it out, it’s AirBedAndBreakfast.com. That was the original website. And it officially launched, check it out, August 11th of 2008. And check it out, two men, I’m sure it was awkward, and a woman show up. So I mean, imagine what that was like, right? So it’s like, yeah, we’re here to stay at your house and me too. And you’re like, are you guys together? No, we’re just, we’re all, we’re separate, but we’re together tonight. We’re going to sleep in your house. Where are you guys going to sleep? We’ll just chill in the closet. I mean, it’s just gotta be the most awkward, awkward, I guess in San Francisco, maybe that’s normal, I don’t know. But the thing is, this is what Brian Chesky says. He says this, he says, when you start a company, it’s more an art than a science because it’s unknown. Now, Brian Chesky, he is the founder of Airbnb. He says, when you start a company, it’s more an art than a science because it’s totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that’s deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you’re an ordinary person and you’ve just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people. So Sharita, I want to ask you this. Would it be weird, I mean, is Airbnb kind of weird to you? You know, I’ve never used it and stayed in the house with someone. Like, that’s a little weird to me, so like, mad props to you. I’ve used it and like, we’ve had the whole house to ourselves. Really? That’s not weird to me. But I don’t know how I feel about staying with people that I don’t know. I’m asking my wife. We’re in the man cave. My wife, you know, can’t respond necessarily where she can hear her. But this is one of our guys, Eric Chup. Chup, if you’re listening, one of our great producers, a great guy. When we went to New York, he stayed at Airbnb with a lady. And she was like, so, you know, you want some soap? You want some shampoo? You want me to serve your breakfast? Yeah. To me, that’s weird. Is that weird to you, Brett? It’s a little weird. Yeah, I’m staying with a lady right now. Is she being nice to you? Oh, yeah, she’s nice. She’s like, hey, you want to hang out? Yeah, she’s great. You guys want to go rent a movie or what? She wasn’t like that. Okay. I mean, I don’t know what the Airbnb code is. Are you able to go, see you want to go see a movie? Is that weird? It’s a little weird though, yeah. But you’re in their house. I have friends who’ve stayed with people before. And I think just depending on the personality of the host. They might do things together, they might go out for dinner, or they might just leave you alone, just depending on what you want. Well, these guys are renting it out for $80 per person. So you’re like, hey, I’m doing the math here. I’m like a wizard. That’s like $240. That’s huge, Brian.” And Joe was like, that is huge. Like, $240. That would be enough money to put some food inside the closet that we live in. You know? And this is like the real talk, okay? So now, Brian, you say, well, who’s Brian? Was he some genius? No, he’s the son of Deborah. Deborah, big shout out to you and Robert Chesky. His parents, how do I know these things? This is what I do. Other people are watching shows. I’m making shows. The thing is, his parents were both social workers. He has a young sister, Allison. So as a child, Chesky was interested in art, replica paintings, design, shoes, toys. Probably a normal dude. But he later got into landscaping and architecture design. But the thing is, in 2000, what happens is, these guys realized, these guys started to realize around 2007, this could be a thing. But work with me on this. They did not launch the site until August 11th of 2008. So they thought it could be a thing back in 2007. Quick review of the timeline. It’s just audio only. But these guys in 2007, they’re renting out air mattresses. 2008, they go, this could be a thing. How long of a time… For those of you scoring at home. Shark, for those people listening who are struggling to make a timeline in their car, how long is 2007 to 8? That’s like a year? It’s like a year. And you know what, I would love to see what their first blog, that little blog website that they put out. I would love to see what that looks like. I need to go see if we can find like the retro shots of that, you know? Now here’s the deal. When we come back, Thrivers, a lot of you want to know, how can I do that? I have a secret Thunder Move. I’m going to show you how to find the original website. Oh, it’s sick. It’s like he’s got swine flu. Is he caught? I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I’m just sorry to put on this helmet. Darth Vader, you’ll be fine. That’s what happened. Darth Vader just got a cough, next thing you know, the Emperor, he just pulls him aside and is like, seriously, put on this helmet. You’ll be fine. So the next thing you know, be Darth Vader. No, but seriously, Thrivers, it is awesome. When I come back, I’m going to teach you how to find these archived websites. It’s a secret move. A lot of people don’t know the secret move. Not that secret, but okay. So, I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. I’m going to go ahead and show you the secret move. Not that secret, but a little bit secret. And then we’re going to get into the next part of the timeline. We’re going to talk about where these guys go. It could be a thing. So let’s take our thing to the South by Southwest conference down there in Austin, Texas. And let’s try to sell it. And let me tell you what, when they tried to sell it, some crazy stuff happened. And was it, did they have instant success? Maybe. Did they have instant failure? Maybe. Thrive Time should. This show is brought to you by Adobe Creative Cloud. 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You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. All right, Thrivers, what’s going on? Welcome back to The Thrive Time Show. During your drive time home, if you’re listening right now and you’re going, I’m about ready to step inside my casa. I’m about ready to step inside my house and find out what home is all about. But you still want to listen in. You can go to Facebook Live. On Facebook Live, you can join the Thrive Tribe. We have a lady named Donna in Valparaiso, Indiana. Valparaiso, what’s up Donna? Donna, how are you? I know that my flag is not compliant with the patriotic rules. Because I care so much about you, it’s on my to-do list. I’m going to flip that flag, readjust it, flip it, reverse it. I’m going to make it happen for you, and it’s going to be great, and you’re going to love it, and we’re going to have a great thing going on in Valparaiso. You guys are great people out there. And we also, for anybody who’s not listening on Facebook Live, who says, what are you talking about? We’re in the man cave. It is the dojo of Mojo, where we come together on a weekly basis to teach you how to start and grow a business. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. In your ear, and I am joined here, you see ear, ears all rhyming, I’m joined here with Miss Sherita Bent. How are you? I’m great. Hey, real quick, real quick, I want to brag on you. You were working today with a good friend of Mr. Brett Denton. We’ll get to Brett in just a minute. I don’t want to steal your thunder. Yeah. But you’re working with a good friend of Brett’s today. They’re a company called Peak Medical Tech. Neat business, great business. What do they do? What were you doing with these people today? Well, we were working on this great new software that they are launching, which is really pioneering and changing the whole industry as far as pathology software, laboratory work. Pathology software, is that a thing? It is. It’s amazing and it’s revolutionary. And he’s helping just make that path and that process of like dealing with people’s blood work, their reports, everything. And he flew in to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He came to Tulsa. With a teammate. What was her name? Her name is Cheryl Hammond. Flew in to meet with you. Yes. And you and Darlene worked today. You got workflow, charts. Yes. See, Thrivers, when you come to the Thrive15.com World Headquarters, and I’m not bragging, I’m just pointing to the scoreboard. We help people start and grow businesses. We don’t walk on fire. We get it done. We’re not like, do you want to walk on calls? Hey, how do you feel about how you feel? Listen, we could take you to the next level here at the next Tony Robbins seminar. Are you ready to unleash me? I’m Tony Puppet Robinson. Tony, boop! By the way, I always say, because Tony, if you watch his Netflix special, he curses so much. It’s just, it’s unbelievable. But no, you helped him grow. It’s real business. Yeah, definitely. Real deal. He left here with software. It’s developed. It’s ready to go. It’s beautiful. And you didn’t try to high pressure him with the back of the room, high pressure magic money system? No. Crazy. No. I almost can’t believe it. Yeah, it’s true. You know what Tony Robbins had to say about that? Unbelievable. And now we have Brett Denton here from Boise. Now, he’s actually a thriver. He lives up there in Boise, Idaho. And apparently, apparently this is, he worked against us in the state of Oklahoma, he played in the game and actually beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the National Championship game. Sir, why would you do that? Well, it wasn’t quite the National Championship game. There’s Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. So it’s… Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. We can call it whatever we want. It felt like a championship. It felt like one. Any time that we play any game, it’s a championship. Got it. That’s how we are. We’re sold out over here in Oklahoma. No, but seriously, though, so you played in that game and you were responsible for some of that victory sauce. I was responsible for a little bit of it, yeah. A little bit of that. Now, what do you do now? Tell us about what you do and how people can get a hold of you. Yeah, absolutely. So, I run a gym. It’s called Cavell Fitness and Nutrition in Boise, Idaho, but also what I do on a nationwide basis is I coach executives, entrepreneurs, business owners to reach peak levels of performance, whether that be in their family, in their business, in their sport, whatever it may be. And I can be contacted just by calling my phone, 208-991-6537. One more time, that phone number one more time, just kind of slow like a pro, because I’m trying to write it down, I’m trying to drive, and the Congress has passed laws, the state where I can’t text and drive, but I can write and drive. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m writing and driving, here we go. Yep, 208-991-6537. Boom! Now, Thrivers, we’re talking today about the Airbnb story, how three dudes went from renting air mattresses to becoming a billion dollar business. Now I told you guys, they had the idea in 2007. They said, hey, we can’t afford rent in San Francisco. Maybe we should promote our house for sale, maybe on Craigslist or whatever. They had three people, two dudes and a lady show up. They rented out for 80 bucks a piece. And then in 2008, on August 11th, they launched a website called AirBedAndBreakfast.com. And Charita’s was what says, wouldn’t it be cool if you could see that site back in the day? Yeah. Shark, where could people go? I’ve shown you the tools to the keys to the universe. Where can people find it? He showed me the tools. You can go to archive.org, and then when that comes up, there’s this little screen at the top that says Wayback. You type in the website that you want to see, and you pull it up. We did that during the break, and the website actually looks really good. Oh, it looks really good from the very beginning. But you have to click on the bubble after you search. I didn’t know that. Now I’m going to tell you a little story in just a second, okay? So what happens is, 2007 they started to say, it could be a thing. We’ve rendered it out to, we’ve got data. Yeah. We’ve got two dudes, one lady, boom. This is data. It’s three pieces of data. So they said, hey, you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to call our former roommate. Nathan was a former roommate. So you know how you have like roommates where you roll together, you stick together for a long time. I don’t know that dynamic. I can’t get into that mindset. But in my mind, if you’re a former roommate, there is a reason. I mean, there’s a lot of times where you go… Well, you have great stories about business building and your roommates. What happens is, what happened is, I’m just telling you, I went through three roommates, all my fault. But if you’re someone who’s a former roommate, and you say, it’s time to move on, it’s because you’re like, I can’t live with you, usually. Or you get married or something happens. But the thing is they reach out to Nathan and they said, Nathan, now his last name I’m going to spell it for you. It’s amazing. It’s like B-L-E-C-H-A-R-C-Z-Y-K. And they say, well Andrea, you’re supposed to practice the pronunciations before the show. Yeah, you try to pronounce that. I locked myself into a room for like a week trying to practice it. So in 2007, they’re pumped up. They got Nathan, he built the site. He’s a web developer. So their first site was a pro site. They go to South by Southwest. For those of you who don’t know, it’s in Austin, Texas. It is a huge technology conference. It’s one of the biggest in the country. They go out to this thing, and they’ve got a trade show booth. Now who here, Brett, have you ever had a trade show booth? I have, yes. Shark, have you ever had a trade show booth? You’ve been in one? I’ve worked in one before, yes. Okay, so you’ve got the banners going on, you’ve got the trussing, you’ve got a video playing, you’ve got business cards. Brendan, you have like tri-folds? What kind of old journals? Yeah, tri-fold brochures, yep. The tri-fold or the trifecta. And people are walking by, they’re trying to get food samples and all that. And everyone feels like, when I go to a trade show, I’m going to kill it. I’m going to kill it. And by about noon, you’ve been on your feet for like seven hours and you’re just like, I don’t know if I like this trade show. Well, I’m going to tell you, they killed it at this show. They dominated the show. They did so well, in fact, they sold an entire trade show. They spent thousands on it. Beautiful website. They had two bookings! Two bookings! Two bookings! They just killed it! Not only did they have two, but it was almost double what they had before, which was three. Right? So they had two. Could you imagine now the feeling of what it’s like to go to a trade show, to travel from where you’re currently living in San Francisco. Let’s do the math. What does a ticket cost from San Francisco to Austin? A lot. Time, energy, money, code of sight, you travel and you sell too. How many people listening right now would go, this is good data. We’ve doubled the business. It’s time to move on to the next level. I mean, how many of you would hear in your ear, yes, you’re on the right path? Very few. And so, what you have to do right now, if you’re listening right now, you’ve got to ask yourself, if this was your story, would you keep pressing on? Would you do what Brett did, as he mentioned in the previous segment? Would you move in with your sister? Would you have your car repub? Would you be willing to do what it takes to build a successful business? Now, today, Brett Denton, if you Google Cavell Fitness, that’s K-V-E-L-L, fitness. You will see the man has 500 people that go there to work out on a weekly basis, monthly basis, members. Would you be willing to live with your sister? Have your car repoted? Would you be willing to go to South by Southwest and sell two somethings? Or are you going to go, I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like it’s working out. I probably just probably just probably not very good. Let me tell you what. The majority of people would quit right then. They would quit. Not you, though, Thrivers, because you are at the right place at the right time. You are listening to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. Stay tuned. Are you a business owner? You need to ask yourself right now, how are you backing up your files and important documents? Most businesses have no system for the files in their business. If this is you, you got to use Dropbox. At least sign up for one of their 30-day free trials. Real talk, it’s the secure file sharing and storage solution that employees and IT administrators trust. You get as much space as needed at no additional cost. You get unlimited file recovery and versioning, basically creating new versions, and valuable admin controls for secure sharing and collaboration with Dropbox for Business. You gotta check this out. After using Dropbox, you’ll definitely feel more secure knowing that a virus or power surge can’t ruin your computer and your entire business. Try full access to Dropbox Business for 30 days. Head over to Dropbox.com to get started. Again, Dropbox.com to get started. You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to your inspiration station right here. You’re listening to Tulsa’s only local business show. It’s The Thrive Time Show and the audio dojo of Mojo. We’re always broadcasting from the left coast of the Arkansas River, but today we are in the Man Cave. Yes! I’m always broadcasting from the left coast of the Arkansas River, but today we are in the man cave. Yes, an undisclosed location where I choose to be undisclosed. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the father of five human kids. I’m a man who has matriculated several chickens to full maturity, many of which have been abducted by raccoons, but I have coached several to success. I say several, maybe one or two that have not been eaten by the raccoon race. But I’ve had success as a business owner. I was a former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year because I wasn’t focusing on chickens. And I am joined here today, I’m always joined with Dr. Robert Zellner, but today he’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial enterprise. And so today I am joined with the hostess, with the mostess, Ms. Shreeda Bent. How are you? I’m great. And I’m joined here with Mr. Brett Denton, all the way from Boise. Can you tell people a little bit about the business, the businesses that you’re involved out there in Boise, Idaho, the potato state? Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a fitness business called Cavell Fitness and Nutrition. We’ve got a performance coaching business that helps business owners, entrepreneurs, peak performers reach their peak. Now, here’s the thing. Brett has a story. He started at the bottom, kept working, working hard, working on his build a very successful company today. We’re going to get into that in just a little bit, but today’s main focus is we’re talking about the Airbnb story. This is a billion dollar business started by three dudes who went from renting air mattresses to being billionaire business owners. Unbelievable. If you just missed the earlier segment, you can go back to thrivetimeshow.com and listen to the entire show. But now we find ourselves in 2007. They go to the South by Southwest conference, convinced that their idea is going to be awesome because they rented their room to two people, two dudes and one lady for $80 a piece because they couldn’t pay their rent. And by the way, they rented out their apartment so they could pay the rent, therefore they had to live inside a closet. Then they’re like, okay, this is what we’re going to do. They go to the South by Southwest conference. They only sell two reservations. So in 2008, to help fund the website, they created Obama O’s. For those of you who are going, what are Obama O’s? I thought this was a political show. I don’t know if this is the right show. No, this is not a political show. This is a business show. It’s Business School Without the B-S. But these guys started Obama-Os, these cereals. They created this cereal right before a major event. Because what happened is in San Francisco, okay, San Francisco, it’s like a big, pretty liberal, pretty democratic, heavily populated by Democrats. And they had a big political event coming to San Francisco. And so they decided to make these Obama-Os. Now, Shark, are you curious about how they made their own cereal line? I am, but I also want to point out for people that they were equal opportunity, so they represented for the Republicans, too, and they made some Captain McCain’s. Which didn’t sell at all. No, but they did sell maybe two boxes. They tried. Seriously, if you look it up, it’s a historical fact. They didn’t sell hardly any of the Captain McCain’s. The thing is, they went ahead and made these Obama O’s, and what they did is they would go to the store, they would buy the generic cereal. You get that cereal probably in a yellow box or something. The big bag. Big bag. The big bag. I want the bag. The cheaper one is in the bag. It’s in the box. It’s not a good deal, right? Right. The Ultra, I forgot. I remember growing up as a kid, you had all the yellow boxes. Yeah. So I’d open up my cupboard and it would all be yellow boxes. And they’d always say, like, great value. Sure. Oh, this must be a great value. Yeah. Every brand has a great value. Great value. Wow. So I guess now it’s in a bag. So they bought the cereal in a bag, they take the Obama O’s, they take that bag and they put it in the box that they made. So you’re like, you mean they didn’t even make their own cereal? Yeah, because they’re real entrepreneurs. It’s all branding, baby. Now they’re selling these boxes of cereal. Guess how much, Shereeta, they’re selling them for? I mean, if you had to just speculate. I would guess like maybe 8 to 10 bucks is what I would guess. Brett, how much would you pay for some Obama O’s? I would say 5 to 10 bucks. See, this guy shows his political bias. I would pay like 90 for that. You know, guess what party I’m a part of? I’d pay 90 for Obama O’s. No, seriously, but seriously, they sold these for $40 a piece. Uh-uh. Yes. So they generate $30,000. Dumbass. Of money. I’m like the people who bought them. So Paul Graham, who is the founder of Y Combinator. Y Combinator, if you Google Paul Graham, these guys started Dropbox. Dropbox.com, you mean the billion dollar business? Yeah. I didn’t know that. Reddit.com. Reddit? But Paul Graham? You mean Airbnb? The same guy? Yeah, they attracted the attention of this guy, Paul Graham. And Paul Graham says, and I’m repeating, you can Google this, historical fact. He says to Brian, he says, you guys are like cockroaches. And they said, what do you mean? He says, you guys won’t disappear. You guys keep coming back. I mean, you’re funding your Airbnb business, Airbed and Breakfast, by selling ObamaOs? So he sits down with them and he says this. He says, guys, the first thing, this is what Brian Chesky said in an interview, I’m reading quote. He says, the first thing Graham, at this point they’re buddies, he’s like boom, my buddy Graham, boom. He says, the first thing Graham told us was it’s better to have a hundred people that love you than a million people that sort of like you. That’s good. Find a hundred people that love you. That’s good. And Brian’s like, I thought we were trying to make money here. Oh, good deal that we didn’t have a million people because we don’t. So he invests $20,000 in them. They just raised $30,000 doing cereal. So we’re on a hot streak. We got 30, we got twins 50. In San Francisco, we’re living in our closet. This makes sense. Everybody rented out their own house. Imagine you’re living in Tulsa right now, and you’re living in a house, and to make ends meet, you go ahead and rent out your own house, and you’re living in a closet. I mean, to what end? Ridiculous. Well, I guess they have good credit, you know? I’m like, don’t fart, you know what I’m saying? Unbelievable. And was it two of them in one closet? I want to know so many details. There are so many details there. So they get the $20,000 of funding, and when we get back, Thrivers, we’re going to talk about, we’re going to explain to you what they spent the $20,000 on. And then we’re going to get into Brett Denton. We’re going to pick his brain and ask him during that time in his business, when he thought, should I sell these Obama O’s or should I just fold up the tent? Should I repackage this cereal or should I just end it all? I mean, is it worth it? Is it really worth it? Because every entrepreneur has hit that part of their career at some point. Thrive Time Show. 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There’s nobody more of the man than me, but I, holy crap, I work all the time and my business owns me. I don’t even own my own business. What’s going on?” So what happens here is we are going to teach you how to start and grow a successful business, but specifically today, we are talking about the Airbnb story. Airbnb. Shar, have you ever stayed in an Airbnb? Yes, I have. Explain it to the people listening. Just kind of a quick kind of layman’s term. What is Airbnb? Sure. So you go online. It’s AirBad and Breakfast, and you can rent a room in someone’s house. You can rent out an entire house. Some people you can rent out a floor, a loft, you can rent anything that you can imagine. And we have got Brett Denton in the house. He flew in all the way from Boise, Idaho. He’s a thriver. He’s got a very successful business. He’s a very successful entrepreneur growing his business. Brett Denton, he does performance coaching. So what he did is he started a business that teaches people how to get in physical shape, right? And it did very, very well called Cavell Fitness. But then over time, he was like, hey, a lot of my clients are going, hey, could you help me with performance coaching, like how to optimize my schedule, how to better manage my time, how to be more focused at work, boom, boom, boom. So he started working with him in that capacity. He flew all the way in, and he chose to stay in an Airbnb. How perfect, Brett! Yeah, I know, right? Perfect. Brett, are you like a paid endorser for Airbnb? You’re trying to… I wish. Yeah, I wish. Okay, so you’re… And we didn’t plan that either. We did not plan it. It just happened. Real talk. You’re on Facebook Live. That’s a real man. Not a hologram. It’s not some old school Tupac concert with a hologram. No, this is a Michael Jackson hologram. It’s real. This is a real show. But seriously, if you’re on Facebook Live, you’re in for a visual dojo of mojo. When you just look at this man, it’s just so beautiful. But here’s the thing. In 2007, the Airbnb guys, they get this concept, they say, hey, Joe, there’s two guys, one guy’s name is Joe, he says, Joe, hey, Joe, here’s the deal, we can’t pay rent, you know, and he says, oh, okay, why don’t we just rent out a room, why don’t we just rent out a room in our house? They go, we only have a room. Okay, well, let’s rent out the whole apartment then. So they rent out the apartment to two dudes and one lady for 80 bucks a piece, next thing you know, they go, this could be a thing. So they call their former roommate, Nathan, they said, Nathan, hey, can you build us a website? He builds a website. They spend all their money, they go to South by Southwest. At the conference, they try to sell it. It sells so well, they doubled their sales. Almost. They sold two reservations. Kind of a sad time. Then they said, I’m out of money, so now let’s start selling Obama O’s. Obama O’s? What are those? They took Cheerios, old school generic Cheerios, take them out of the generic bag, put them into a box they created. They’re funding their business. For those of you who are political, I thought, wasn’t McCain running at the time too? Yes, they made McCain, was it with Captain McCain? Captain McCain. And they took all the money they raised by repackaging cereal. Now somebody’s listening, this is the thing, some people are listening and you’re not listening. You’re listening, but it’s like a BB, I’m shooting a BB at a battleship, and it’s like bing! Because they’re going bing! And that’s how they’re taking the knowledge. Bing! They’re going, but do they have a business permit? No! Bing! Do they have an LLC? No! Bing! So how do they get their employees? Are they following the Fair Labor Act? Bing! No! These are dudes living in a closet. Someone says, well that’s not ethical. Okay, so Steve Jobs, where did he start his business? I’m going to go on a brief rant because I want to help you. I want to get down to your deep core. Then I’m going to pitch it over to my good friend, Brett Dinn. Some of y’all, we’re in Oklahoma, some of y’all need to hear this. Some of you just need to get real. So I’m going to give you some real talk, and I hope this can just sink into your head. Here we go. Google started in a garage. Did they have a permit? No! It was in a garage! Larry Page, Sergey Brin, they’re graduates of Stanford, they rented it out at a garage with their friend Susan. Susan? Was she a big corporation? No! We move on. Apple started in a garage. Steve Jobs is not wearing shoes, right? But Ron Wayne and Steve Wozniak, they’re showing up, they’re going, your feet smell weird. They have a, bing! Do they have a permit BING? Do they have an LLC BING? Do they have a permit BING? Do they go to a local small business conference and get all their papers together to minimize their risk? No! These are real entrepreneurs. Amazon started in the garage. He runs out of money. He says, Mom and Dad, Jeff Bees us. He says, so I’m out of money, but I wanted to see if you guys would be willing to give me all of your money. They gave him all $300,000 of the retirement to fund the business in the garage. In Walt and Roy Disney, Walt had gone into bankruptcy. They started yet again in the garage. All I’m saying is if you have a garage, you can start a successful business. You don’t have a garage. You have a closet. These homies are starting in a closet. I am. Brett, did you ever get to a point in your career where you were going, I’m in the garage. I’m like in the mental closet. I am basically ready to just mail it in. Where did you get to that? I mean, did you ever get to that point when you were starting your successful company where you go, I don’t know if it’s worth it? Yeah, I think I’ve been there several times, every other week for a while there, but the main time, you know, I was over $100,000 in debt. I wouldn’t tell my parents what I was doing because I didn’t want them to add any negativity to my already negative situation. He’s like, I’m making Obama owes mom. So I started moving with my sister. Car got repoed as I talked about a little bit earlier. I had probably about 20 clients. The only problem is those 20 clients were all free. Oh yeah, yeah. You get the big tribe of free people? Yeah, the whole tribe of free people. So it’s ripped people that weren’t paying. Yeah, yeah. Bro, my six-pack abs are sick, bro. No money though, bro. Yeah, it was great. So that’s kind of where I reached the turning point of I either need to do this or I need to get a job. And I will say, what is the benefit of owning your own business instead of just having a jobby McJobberson? For me, it was control to do what I wanted to do, to build something that I wanted to build and to not have a boss, quite frankly. And I’m going to tell you, some of you are listening right now and you’ve got the, like, you know, remember back in the day that sweet old man, Obi-Wan Kenobi? Yes. How did he talk? Wasn’t he always like, Luke? He’s kind of a European almost like Luke, Luke, come join me, you know, Luke, let’s go. He was a European on Tatooine. So what we’re going to do Luke is we’re going to join, I’m going to grab this lightsaber. This is a little lightsaber, I’m just going to show it to you. Hey Luke, look at the lightsaber. And then meanwhile he’s going, he’s on the other shoulder. Start a business. Join the dark side. You don’t know the power of the dark side. Vroom, vroom, vroom. And then, Doth, if you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. He’s so good. Vroom, vroom, vroom. And so what happens is, is that you right now, listening right now, 57% of you, you go, why did you choose the dark side to be the good side? Because I’m a sick freak. I don’t know. But the point is, 57% of you want to start a business. And you’re listening to that inner ear going, you don’t know the power of the dark side. It can be very scary. It can be very scary to be in that middle because in the middle it’s kind of like, I’m starting a business, maybe I’m not, I don’t know what to do. So here’s the thing I’m just going to tell you, a little encouragement for you, is everybody has to start at the bottom. So what do these guys do? They made $30,000. So an Obama owes, they get the attention of Paul Graham. Paul Graham’s one of the most successful incubators, business coaches on the planet. He goes, guys, you’re like cockroaches. You won’t go. You won’t go away. He says, you guys are like, you guys are awesome. Yeah, let’s do this. So we invest $20,000 in these guys. $20,000. And, Shreeta, if you had $20,000 from Paul Graham, what do you think they did with their $20,000? Well, I would think that they would invest it in their business and try to keep moving forward with that. This is what Paul Graham said to them. He says, remember, Paul Graham says, this is Brian Chesky explaining what Paul said. Paul said, the first thing Paul told us was, it’s better to have 100 people that love you than a million people that just sort of like you. Find 100 people that love you. So Brian took this to be literal. He’s going, hey, our, you know, Paul Graham has said like, we got to get 100 people to like us, bro. So we got to like, go meet them. And he’s going, and their partner is going, we built a website. The idea is that we don’t have to physically meet them so they can book online. Right. No exaggeration, Thrivers, they spent all $20,000 on airplane tickets. And they flew to meet the six people who had booked a room. And they’re like, how did you hear about us? It’s like Garth meeting you. Hey, so how are you guys doing? Kind of good to meet you. We flew all the way from San Francisco. And they’re going, you flew all the way from San Francisco to meet us? You sick freak. Yeah, I want to know what you like about the website, you know?” And over time, they found people said, uh, it was really hard to use, and your photos were weird. And they’re going, why are we recording all night? We were recording all night. We were working so hard. And so they were making $200 a week at this point. Three dudes, $200 a week. But the people started saying, hey, your photos aren’t very good. So they start going, note to self, appears as though the photos are not good. Stat. Check. All right, next person. Photos aren’t very good. Check. Photos aren’t very good. Check. I know what we should do, Nathan, web developer. Why don’t we make the photos look good? Oh, bro. Why don’t we stick together in the closet tonight and snuggle and think about it? This could be our thing. Yeah, let’s snuggle. Okay, managing your money has not been easier. 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Broadcasting from the center of the universe, featuring optometrist turned entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zellner, and USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark. This is the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time show during your drive time home. It’s business school without the B.S. And many of you, many, many of you have started to say, what is this show? Where are you from? What are you talking about? I thought this was the political station. Let me explain this to you. We have some great political shows during the day. You want to talk about constitutional law. You want to talk about who’s elected, who’s not elected, the future of the country, all the very important things. That’s a great, we have a lot of great programming. But if you want to talk about the future of your wallet, hey, you want to talk about the future of your wallet, you want to talk about the future of your monetary system, not the International Monetary Fund, but your own monetary fund, you want to talk about growing your business, you want to talk about creating time freedom, personal freedom, wealth, boom. We talk about it here, it’s a Thrive Time show. It’s Business School Without the BS. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year and I am also a recovering, recovering, I’m just working through a lot of therapy, a lot of therapy, trying to take baby steps, recovering disc jockey. I started DJ Connection back in the day. Today I’m a partner with Elephant in the Room, Men’s Grooming Lounge, a lot of other businesses, partnered up with Dr. Zellner to start an online school called Thrive15.com. It’s an honor to be here with you today. And today we are talking about a subject that is so exciting. It is the history, the timeline of Air, B, and B. How three dudes went from renting air mattresses to becoming a billion dollar business. And as always, I’m joined here with an assortment of awesome people. Typically it’s Dr. Zellner, but he’s not expanding his entrepreneurial empire today. So we brought in, not a substitute, we brought in somebody who’s really, I would say, an intellectual equal of anyone. It’s Mrs. Sherita Bent. How are you? I’m wonderful. And we brought in Mr. Brett Denton, all the way from Boise, Idaho. We shipped him in with a bunch of potatoes. He’s a successful entrepreneur. Brett, for the people who don’t know who you are, could you explain who you are and how they can get a hold of you? Yeah, who I am, I’m a man. I own a fitness business, Cavell Fitness, and a performance coaching business where we help entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs get a hold of their life and live at their peak. If someone’s listening right now, what kind of problems do you solve? What kind of issues, dilemmas do you help them solve in performance coaching? We solve issues where people can’t get a hold of their life. They feel like their life is living them, their business is living them. They don’t have any family time. They don’t have control of their health. They don’t have control of their wealth. Those types of things is what we solve. Well, quick reset. We’re talking about Airbnb. These homies in 2007, they can’t pay the rent, so they decide to rent out their house to two dudes and a lady. It goes so well, they end up living in a closet and renting their house to other people. They decide, hey, this could be a thing. They hire their former roommate Nathan to build out the site. He builds out the site. They’re excited. They go to the South by Southwest conference to pitch the idea. A whopping total of two people rented out their property, which was down. They went from three to five. They almost doubled. They realized, hey, we’re kind of struggling financially. They run out of money. They end up starting their own line of cereal. Their own line of cereal? Yeah, they take cereal they bought generically at the grocery store, they repackage it, they call it Obama-O’s, they sell it for $30,000. They sell $30,000 of Obama-O’s for $40 a box. And they get the attention of a venture capital investor named Paul Graham, and they keep pitching to Paul Graham over and over. He helped fund Dropbox and Reddit. He goes, hey guys, listen. You guys are like cockroaches you keep coming back so I’m gonna go ahead and give you $20,000 they spend all $20,000 flying around the country flying knocking on doors meeting with Airbnb users of which there’s like 10 saying hey what did you like about Airbnb and how can we make it better they do that they end up making $200 a week at this point. Shark, you had a question for Brett about why he didn’t give up or kind of the mindset. Walk us through what kind of questions you were asking Brett off the air there. Sure. Well, it started when you were talking about the successful entrepreneurs that we all admire, Steve Jobs, you know, Sergey, Google, Amazon, all these people who never gave up. And I just wanted to ask you, Brett, like when you had to move in with your sister, when your car got repoed, you have 20 people, they’re not paying you. How do you keep going? What was inside of you? What was that mindset? Hmm? Yeah, I think that’s a good question And you know, I think it comes down to two things Number one, I just didn’t want a boss. I had so much hatred for for ever wanting a boss ever again, really I know strange and And and number two, you know, I At that point had started looking for mentors and I believe that I could find a mentor that I could then rely upon Hmm, so you you just kept pushing through. Yep. Just kept pushing and when you’re pushing through I mean what kind of innards what kind of inner dialogue were you seeing stuff like? You’re so drunk. You don’t even know you’re just gonna just live in this van down by the river No, I’ll even know that you’re not or were you so motivated? Were you like, hey, I am listening to every Joel Osteen ever. I’m listening to all the Joel Osteen. I’ve got T.D. Jakes. I’ve got Napoleon Hill. I am just positive. I am a positive life force. Were you doing yoga? Were you wearing yoga pants? I mean, how did you stay positive, bro? Yeah, you know, at that point, it was just action, action, action. I’d wake up, and I’d work, and I’d work. So there was no time for anything other than that. And Conrad Hilton, who started the Hilton Hotel chain, you mean before Paris Hilton? I didn’t know there was anything before Paris Hilton. I thought Paris Hilton started the business. No, it was Conrad Hilton. And Conrad Hilton, he said that, he says, you can Google it tonight, you can verify, he says that all successful entrepreneurs have a bias for action. Oh, so right now somebody’s paralyzed by analysis. You got that paralysis by analysis. You’re listening right now and you’re going, there’s so many ideas. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Well, check it out. 2008, they’re flying around the country. They realize people don’t like our photos. So, short, what do you think they did at that point? I mean, if you knew you spent 20,000 bucks traveling around the country, all the money you have from your venture capital partner and you discover that no one likes your photos, what would you do? I would get some new photos. So they went to New York City, door to door, to take photos of the houses. They took the photos themselves. Were they trained photographers? No! And I hope I’m getting to the core. I feel like sometimes I’m just this BB gun shooting at the battleship of just, bing, bing, because so many people, you’ve gone to college, you’ve gone to whatever you, and you’ve realized, if I just get one more certification, I’m going to be able to be successful. And every time you come to me, you fly in, you drive in, you call in, you talk and you go, hey, I want to start a business. And I go, you should start a business. I go, I want to. And it’s like a t-shirt company. And I said, you should. I want to. You should. Well, what kind of LLC do I form? I said, listen, stop asking me that question. Listen, go out there and try to sell something before you worry about all the legal stuff. I’ll give you a rule. Don’t ever try to form an LLC until you’ve sold 15 somethings. Now Paul Graham, this is what the advice he gave. This is the guy who started Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit. He’s the guy who took them to the next level. He says this, what I tell founders is not to sweat the business model, LLC, too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. For those of you who needed to hear that in slow motion, want, want, want. For those of you who are going, what, what are those words that you’re saying? What, what, let me repeat it back. What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task is to build something people want. Why are you saying it that way? If you don’t do that, it won’t matter how clever your business model is. You see how clever I was there? It won’t matter how great your… He said it doesn’t matter. You have an LLC, you got a business plan. If you can’t sell it, it doesn’t matter. Shark, you meet people, you work with entrepreneurs, you help coach these people, they fly in, you work with them, you help thrivers, you care. I care, we all care. Where do people get this wrong, my friend? Where are they getting screwed up? Sure. I think some of it may come from like an old mindset. Sometimes things you learn in school, how things need to work, you follow these certain steps and you’re going to get this certain outcome. I would never start a business until I had 27 things done. The first is I would have an LLC. And after I get my LLC, what I’m going to get done is I’m going to get my, what was it? Oh yes, my papers. I’m going to get my papers and my registrations and my licenses. And then I’m going to get my catering company started. And then after I get my papers, what was that? Oh no, I’m too old. What father time? It’s time to die? Oh, I guess I should have started earlier. I enjoy what people do. I love that you pulled the glasses down. I hope you could see that on Facebook Live. It was the best. That’s what happens. Yeah, it is. It is. So how do we move past it? You always talk about this and Brett just highlighted that with his answer. Just action, discipline, and action, discipline and action. So check it out, 2008, this is a full year and a half after starting the business. They end up making $400 per week. Why are you saying that way? Why do you always say wha when it’s supposed to be a w? Because it’s memorable. Memorable? Oh my gosh. Homies, I’m a purple cow. So you’re listening to the radio right now, you’re not used to this. You’re listening to somebody trying to keep it politically correct. I don’t even know what that is. So here’s the thing is $400 per week Shark, what would it be like if you had a business for a year and a half and you and three people are splitting? 400 a week and you’re living in a closet I don’t want to know really How would you feel three partners miserable And you’re splitting 400 a week. I’m very emotional right now. Shar, can you read the next part of our timeline here, point 14? I have to just get myself together. I can. I can. Well, this also happened in 2008. They were rejected hardcore by the famous venture capitalist, Fred Wilson. And Fred Wilson, he’s the guy who has funded Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Kickstarter. So imagine what it’s like. You go up there and you say, I’m going to meet Freddie McWilson. Freddie Wilson. I’m going to meet Freddie freaking. You know what they’re doing. They’re in the car going, Freddie Wilson. Freddie Wilson. Because if you’ve ever listened to this, guys, if you’re a Thriver and you’ve ever started a business, you know what I’m talking about. When you have a good pitch, oh, my wife knows what it’s like for me to get ready for a big pitch. When you get back, Thrivers, I’m going to tell you when I pitched the founder of Sky Vodka, with the preparation that you do when you get ready for the big pitch, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing. It causes… It’s not… My wife didn’t appreciate it, I’m sure. She didn’t like me during this time. But you get focused. You’re ready for your big pitch. You get a chance to meet with one of the top venture capitalists in the world. This guy is funded Foursquare. Tumblr, you’re going, oh, we did it. Oh! Your friends are like, sick, you’re meeting Freddie Wilson. And then what happens is, is that you go meet with him. What’s he gonna say? What’s he gonna do? Stay tuned, it’s a Raptime Show. ♪ When the fire comes out, I wanna see me little proud ♪ This show’s episode is brought to you by Moz.com. If you have ever considered the World Wide Web as a viable strategy for your business, you gotta check out this tool. Online marketing is complicated, but Moz software makes it easy. Companies like 99designs, Otterbox, and Aaron’s, they all use Moz because it works. Explore organic search keywords for your business, research Bing and Google search results for your targeted keywords, and link up Moz Local and Google My Business. Seriously, this tool is crazy powerful with the clarity it brings to online marketing for your business. Even if you’re just curious, start a 30-day trial with Moz.com today. It’s a game changer for your business. Moz.com, M-O-Z.com. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. All right, Thrivers, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. During your drive time home, we’re broadcasting today from the Man Cave, a place where everything is burnable. You can burn anything. You burn paper, you burn wood, anything that’s good, you just burn it. It’s the Man Cave here at an undisclosed location. It’s the Thrive Time Show Remote Edition here. We’re talking today about the success story of Airbnb, how three dudes went from nothing, sleeping on air mattresses, to starting a billion dollar business. If you ever wanted to know how Airbnb or another billion dollar business made it, you can tune in and we teach these things. My name’s Clay Clark, I’m a former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. I have an unhealthy interest in business and I’m here to help you grow a healthy business. And I’m joined here with Mrs. Sherita Bent, how are you? I’m wonderful. And Mr. Brett Denton, Mr. Brett, how are you? I’m unbelievable. Now here’s the deal. You apparently worked together with the good folks at Boise State. Is that the Blue Turf? Blue Turf, yeah. Smurf Turf. Smurf Turf. So you teamed up with Smurf Turf, if you heard, to team up. And you guys beat Oklahoma back in the day in the Nachos Fastitos Tacos Ball. What was that? Tostitos Festival. I’m very hungry. I was just mentioning all the food I want to eat here soon. But the thing is, is that you played on that team. Yep. You went on and you started a business. Tell us about the fitness business that you started. Yeah, group training business. We help people get in shape, you know, general fitness. We help you lose weight and feel good. Where can people get a hold of you if they want to, if they were living in Boise right now and they say, I want to get in shape? Yeah, best things to go to our website K-V-E-L-L-FIT, F-I-T dot com. They can go up there, they can sign up, check it out. It’s a game-changing fitness program and regiment. And you’ve done so well helping people with their performance and fitness that people have begun to reach out to you and go, Hey, could you help me with other areas like my financial fitness, my mindset, my time management? I just need some performance improvement. And, you know, I mean, you’ve said yes, and you’ve started helping people, and then those people refer other people. How do people get a hold of you if they need a little bit of performance coaching outside of the realm of fitness? Yeah, for a little high-level performance coaching action, you can call me at 208-991-6537. Oh, yeah. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers. We were talking about Airbnb. They started in 2007. These two dudes are living together. It was three dudes. They shrank down to two dudes. They couldn’t pay the rent. They start renting out their house on Craigslist and such. Two dudes and a lady rent it out, 80 bucks a piece. Pretty soon they’re living in the closet, barely able to pay rent. They go, this could be a thing. They hire their former roommate Nathan. Nathan builds a website for them. They go to the South by Southwest conference filled with ambition and excitement and optimism. They go, they sell two reservations. Two reservations, not having any success. They kind of well Occupancy almost and so they ended up Turning these they took obscure cereal like we’re talking about generic cereal that you could find in the store They turn it into their own brand of cereal called Obama owes. How do they do it? They get a permit do they have a license do they get a registered? No They straight up just paid someone to do some graphic design. They made their own box of cereal. They took cereal out of another box, put it in a box, sold it for $40 a box during the time when Obama was trying to become president. They make $30,000 doing this. Then they go pitch yet again to Paul Graham, who is one of the big venture capital funders out there. He helped launch Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit. They reach out to this guy, and he was like, you guys are like cockroaches, you won’t quit coming back. So he invests $20,000, that’s so small, $20,000 in them. They take the $20,000, they spend it, they travel around the world, they discover that Airbnb people, they discover that people aren’t using Airbnb because people are saying they don’t like the photos. So they change the photos and now they start having rapid growth. Now they’re going from making $200 a week to $400 a week. And now they get a chance to pitch to Fred Wilson, who’s one of the top venture capital funders of all time, one of the top venture capitalists out there. He’s the guy who funded Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, Kickstarter. And he rejects them. He shuts them down. He says, not gonna do it. So he shuts them down and they’re going, why did you sound like Darth Vader? I thought you were very nice. He says, well I am very nice until I become Darth Vader and I shut you down. The thing is, he shuts them down. And so now they’re like, oh no. But then Barry Manilow’s drummer, they go, Barry Manilow, how obscure is that? Barry Manilow who’s a jingle writer turned pop star. It’s kind of where you’re stretching because you’re like, uh, Barry Manilow’s drummer rented out our place though. He rents out his whole house. And they go, that’s a thing. So they’re able to use that little bit of credibility, that little social proof. And people start to go, Barry Manilow’s drummer uses Airbnb. I should use Airbnb. Then in 2009, they changed the name from AirBedAndBreakfast.com to AirBnB. This is March of 2009. Now the site’s expanded. They’ve learned more from their customers. They’re now renting out treehouses, teepees, igloos, private islands, the whole deal. True story. So now they kind of get the media’s attention because they’re renting out an igloo. Where else can you rent out an igloo or a treehouse or a private island? But I’m going to tell you how it feels when you pitch to somebody and you get rejected. Here’s the deal. Back in the day, this ends positively for me, but the guy who was the founder of Sky Vodka, he reaches out and he says, hey, you know, his assistant says, hey, Mr. Kanbar would like to meet with you about helping him market his properties. Now, if you don’t know, Mr. Kanbar, K-A-N-B-A-R, he owns one third of downtown Tulsa. He invented Sky Vodka, sold the thing for about 650 to 700 million dollars, and he claims, there’s a kind of a court thing you can look into it, but he claims his partner bought downtown Tulsa without his knowledge. Like a third of it. So like the city, the Chase Tower, the Bank of America Tower, these big Tulsa iconic buildings, he owns them now. And so I’m like, oh man, I’m gonna pitch this deal. So what we did, I’m gonna open up my man fridge in the man cave here so I can show you Thrivers. I’m sorry the audio got a little weird there, but this is what we did. I passed out Sky Vodka bottles to everybody on my team, and I said, here’s the deal. I want you to put Sky Vodka and orange juice in a red cup and put it behind you so when he walks in the room, act like you’ve been drinking vodka, but you’re trying to hide it. So everybody, we have red Solo cups. Take orange juice, pour vodka in there with it, and when he walks by, act like you’re trying to hide the bottle. So we’ve got like probably 30 guys doing this, okay? And then I read his entire biography. Vanessa knows his entire autobiography. Read it once, couldn’t sleep, read it again, had all these notes, made a super detailed presentation. He walks in, and we, hello, Mr. Canebar, how are you, sir? He’s kind of a smaller guy. And he walks in, the first guy goes, and if you’re on Facebook Live, you can see him. He’s like, oh, sorry, sir. And he tries to hide the bottle, and he laughs. And then the next guy, oh, sorry, sir. And we all try to act like we’re formal. We’re all in ties, suits and ties, but we’re all hiding vodka bottles. So we sit down to do the presentation, and we use the Brookings Institute as our, they have a paper on urban renewal. I totally reversed engineered that thing, had a super detailed PowerPoint, detailed, it was awesome, it was sick. And I showed them how we’re going to help reinvigorate downtown Tulsa, which we did by the way. And so we helped him recently set all this downtown space. I get halfway through my presentation, he looks at me and I’ll never forget it, he goes, Mr. Clark, sometimes you need to know when to stop talking. I’m like, okay, did I talk too much? And he goes, you’ve got the deal son. And I’m like, yes, touch down. Now imagine the opposite of that feeling when you go meet with Fred Wilson, the top venture capital guy. You’re emotionally pumped up, you’re mentally lubricated, you’re doing push-ups the night before. You’re taking steroids. You’re, pfft, pfft, I’m pumped up. We’re going to meet Freddie Wilson. We’re going to meet the pump top. And then you meet him and your friends go, how’d it go? And you go, we got shut down. What was that, bro? We got shut down. You got shut down? Stay tuned, Thrived Time Show. Right now, how are you taking credit card payments for your business. It’s never been faster or easier to begin taking credit card payments for your business than with Square. You know the little white square that plugs into your phone’s headphone jack? It’s awesome. This payment app is great for businesses such as food trucks, beauty salons, and retail shops. The users receive a small portable card reader that they can attach to a phone or other mobile device to take fast and convenient payments. The way it works is that it subtracts 2.75% of every time a card is run and it does it automatically. So if you sell a sandwich for $20, you’ll see a net gain of $19.45 in your bank account the next day. If you enter the card by hand, it costs 3.5% plus 15 cents on top of that. They encrypt everything so you know you’re secure. They make it super clear to start and even offer bonuses for sharing with friends. So you can learn more at squareup.com. It’s free to download and works on all devices and operating systems. So make sure that you go visit squareup.com. Live, local, now, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. Hello, Thrive Nation, Oklahomies, people in other countries, people in other planetary systems, people in other universes, other galaxies, people in other vast areas of the ether that surrounds us all. Welcome to The Thrive Time Show. This is your place to learn how to start and grow a business. Today we’re talking about the Airbnb story, which is how the guys at Airbnb went from three dudes living on air mattresses to becoming founders of a billion dollar company. If you miss the rest of the story, you’re going to want to tune in. You’re going to want to go to ThriveTimeShow.com, where you can hear the entirety of the story if you missed it. But basically, 2007, they get this idea to rent out their house because they’re out of cash. Now 2009, two years into the business, these guys get shut down by Freddie Wilson, one of the top venture capital people after they’ve spent all of their money. Shark, Sherita Bent, she’s our co-hostess with the most issues with me tonight. Mrs. Sherita, how would you feel if you’ve been working on something for two years and you get shut down by the top? I mean, in your mind, you’re going to meet Yoda. Right. Imagine you’re face-to-face with Yoda and he’s going, no, no, no, I will not. Bad idea. How would you feel? I would be sad and disappointed for sure. You would? Yeah. Now, Brett Dittin, successful entrepreneur from Boise, Idaho. Sir, how would you feel? Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with that one. So you guys would feel a little bit down. Definitely. So this is what happens. 2009, you’re out of space, but people start booking. Oh, they start booking one by one. Just boop, a little bit of email coming in. Boop, another one. They’re going, dude, that’s like two today. And this is after the Manilow drummer, right? Yeah. In fact, very Manilow’s drummer booked with him. Booked his whole house out. They’re going, well, at least we got Barry Manilow’s drummer. Like, who’s, what’s his name? It doesn’t matter. Do we even know for sure he even had a drummer? Is that where we verify this? Don’t worry about it. We’re on a roll. The thing is, so 2009, imagine they’re just barely struggling. They now are starting to get some revenue. They’re barely making it. Revenue is coming in just a little bit. Imagine just the sound of an email coming in. Boop! Okay? They’re like, dude, we booked something. This is crazy. And then, boop! Well, pretty soon, they go, there’s enough boop boops that we now have to hire some people. So, now, in their crappy apartment on Rouse Street, they have 15 people! These are the guys who used to be living in a closet. They rented out their entire house as a way to pay rent. They’re living in a closet. Now they have 15 people. These people apparently don’t value space. There’s 15 people. I could not be with them. I could not. Yes, all 15 employees are working in their bedroom. So they’re just living there. So they can’t afford office space. But here’s the deal. Google started in their garage. Apple started in their garage. Amazon started in their garage. You’re going, well, you just keep saying garage. Disney started in their garage. Hewlett Packard started in their garage. You just keep saying garage. Listen, the Garage Mahal is where y’all need to start. I’m going to repeat that. The Garage Mahal is where, see, it’s Oklahoman, where y’all need to start. That’s how you do it, okay? But I’m telling you, you’ve got to do this. You have to start somewhere. 2010 comes along, November of 2010, early 2011, the company continues to experience rapid growth because they’re starting to sell some things. Now, Sherita, if I’m doing the math, 2007, you know, and you look at 2010, you take seven from ten, how long have they been working on this? They’ve been going at it for three years. Yeah! Now, 2011, early 2011, this is four years. The company continued to experience growth and they raised $7.2 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and Sequoia. And announced that they had 700,000 nights booked out. 80% occurred though in the last six months. So they had nothing, nothing and then boom. Boom! Suddenly. That is always how it happens. And the thing is, on the other side, right when you’re one step away from giving up, that’s when most of the success happens. But a lot of people begin to quit right before that. Right when Yoda says no. So why is that? And Shrita, in your mind, you know a lot of people. A lot of people got motivated, a lot of people were good people, and they just quit. What’s the deal? Well, I think, number one, you have to be really, have a strong personal conviction. That’s what I heard Brett talking about. That’s what you hear from entrepreneurs who have been successful. I know that about you, Clay, as well. You have your own personal truth and conviction about, I’m going to do this. I’m not going to give up on this. I think that’s the first level. You have to have that. I’m not going to quit. Yeah, no matter what. So what year do they start again? 2007. 7. Now 2007, they get, things are taken off. And those of you who’ve ever Googled, just Google Airbnb tonight. They’re taken off. Now my wife isn’t on the set today. She’s on the man cave today because we live here in an undisclosed location. She’s here. But I’m just going to ask Vanessa rhetorically, but could you imagine what it would be like to have worked in a business from 2007 to 20, at this point, okay, it’s 2011, and then to get a class action major lawsuit against you from almost every major city who says it’s illegal to rent out your home, how would that feel? Worse than Yoda. I’m like, worse than Yoda saying no, right? You’re like, oh no. She says stressful, it’d be stressful. Could you imagine opening up your inbox and going, hey bro, what’s that Brian? Here’s the deal, we’re being sued. Oh, it’s cool. It’s cool I mean, we got you know, we got funded 7.2 million dollars from Greylock We’re being sued for like hundreds of millions of dollars from from who probably just random people right bro upset random people. Ah entire cities Like the city government, you know, like the people who are in charge of the planet, you know, in America. I mean, imagine the sinking feeling. But check it out. YouTube. Google them tonight. Has YouTube ever been sued? Yes. Has Google ever been sued? Yes. If you start a successful business, will you ever be sued? Yes. And if you’re going to have success, will you ever be stressed? Yes. So check it out. If you want to have success, this is how it goes. You go from stressed to some success and then to some blast. That’s how it works. We start with that stress, we come back thrivers. We’re gonna talk about how Airbnb has taken it to the next level like Aaron Neville. Octave, boom. Are you looking to start or grow a business? Then you are definitely going to have problems and questions along the way. You will find the answers to all of your business questions at thrive15.com. Thrive15.com provides online video-based business training taught by millionaires and successful entrepreneurs for less than a dollar per day. That’s less than your daily coffee budget. It’s no classrooms, no get-rich-quick seminars. These are trainings broken into 15-minute segments that get you the answers that you need. It’s business school without the BS. I dare you to try a seven-day free trial. Simply go to thrive15.com and the first 100 people will also receive a free downloadable for how to optimize your website. So stop wasting your time and money. Go to thrive15.com and get your business questions answered now. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Top Radio 1170. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to your inspiration station, your audio dojo of mojo, the place where you go to learn what you need to know to start to grow a business. A lot of people have been telling me, they’re going, I was driving down the road one day and then it was like a spiritual, I got slapped in the face and I’m going I didn’t know that I did not know that I’ve been living life I’ve been I’ve been going to school checking the boxes doing the thing but I did not know that and here’s the thing I’m going to give you some things I want you to know and I want you to marinate on this and I want to read them off to you one by one I want you to understand the complexity of what I’m talking about but the simplicity of it okay because complexity does not scale but simplicity does. But it requires a very pig-headed or a very complex mind to grasp this concept. Dr. Zellner is not on the show today because he’s out expanding his vast empire, but between he and I, there’s an auto auction called Z66.com. Z66AA.com, okay? They’ll sell thousands of cars every Friday. And guess what? I’m not out selling a car. He’s not outselling a car. Then he’s invested in a bank called bankregion.com. He’s also invested in an optometry clinic. I have a photography company called epicphotos.com, actually the world’s largest wedding photography company. Elephant in the room men’s grooming lounge exists. And I go on and on and on. There’s Z’s Sleep Center. There’s Sprick Realty. There’s all these companies I’m involved with, he’s involved with, and they’re all growing. And check it out, I’m not actually selling the real estate, parking the car, selling the thing, putting on the glasses, because we built systems that have the capacity to work without us. And that’s why this story today is so phenomenal, because these three dudes, they went from sleeping on air mattresses to building Airbnb into the billion-dollar business that it is today. And if you missed the earlier segments, I’m going to kind of give you an abbreviated version. Basically, in 2007, they are realizing, we live in San Francisco. They’re going, we live in San Francisco and we can’t afford anything. Oh my gosh. Imagine what it’s like getting your utility bill in San Francisco or your rent bill. You go, oh no. You can’t afford to pay it. They said, hey, here’s the deal. We’re going to rent out our apartment. They rent out their apartment to two dudes and a lady. Kind of weird, but two dudes and a lady. They rented it out. And basically, they rented it out for $80 a piece, and they end up bringing in $240 extra, they’re sleeping in the closet, they go, this could be a thing. They take all their money, they hire their good friend Nathan, he builds a website, they go to the South by Southwest conference, they have almost no success. They only sell two bookings. Then they start recycling basically cereal. They take cereal, Cheerios, or generic cereal, generic O’s of some kind. They take those, they put them in a, they keep them in the bag, they put them in a box, and they start this thing called Obama O’s. They start marketing Obama O’s, like President Obama O’s, like President Barack Hussein Obama O’s. They’re starting to sell these Obama O’s, and they raise just enough money selling them for $40 a box during an election year that they stay in business. They go pitch to Paul Graham. Paul Graham. Who’s Paul Graham? Paul Graham’s the guy who helped launch Dropbox and Reddit. Paul Graham says, you guys are like cockroaches, you won’t stop. He gives them twenty thousand dollars. They take the twenty grand, they fly in a plane all around the country. They discover that people don’t like the photos on airbnb.com and that’s why they’re not booking. So they fly back, shoof, and they fix the photos and they fly back out to New York and they take more photos shoot when they fly back They’re out of money They’re making $200 a week. They put the new photos up. They’re making $400 a week And they now are starting to sell enough. They get 15 employees to work together at their house Now they’re basically all living together in some sort of weird branch Davidian Waco, Texas, communal. Do we all need to share our clothes? We all need to share our clothes. We all need to share our wives and our clothes because we’re all going to make Airbnb together. It’s like cultish at this point. It’s weird. I mean, wouldn’t it be weird working with 15 people in a house? In a bedroom, definitely. Isn’t that weird? Definitely. Isn’t that weird for you, Brett? That’s weird. Okay, so we have Ms. Sherita Bent here. Yeah. She’s the Thrive 15 hostess with the mostess here. We have Mr. Brett Denton, a very successful entrepreneur based in Boise, Idaho. He started a company called Cavell Fitness. It’s done very, very well. They’re on the show today, but that’s weird for you guys. Definitely. And sleeping in my closet. It depends on what you’re into. It’s true. It’s true. For me, man, I’ll tell you what I dream of. You’re talking about dreams. I dream of 15 people living together, you know, on an air mattress. And then we rent it out, you know, with a website. I mean, that’s cool. I mean, now you’re throwing some Obama Os, we’re talking like, woo-hoo, that’s great, Leroy. I mean, that’s not, very few people have that dream, right? So what happens is, very few people have that dream. So what happens is, they work hard, they work hard, they grow the business. So now, in 2007, they started. In 2011, they just start making some money, and then they get sued, Sherita. They get sued from all of these cities. I didn’t see that coming. I didn’t see it coming. I thought they had made it. I’m like, they’re done. You guys got to Google this right now. They’re all being sued. Now, I’m going to give you… If someone’s listening to this right now, and you go, that’s a weird story. I’m going to give you a weirder story, and then Sherita’s got some great info for you. Yeah. Sherita, do you know who Rizal is? Rizal? Yep. No, I don’t think so. Oh, okay. So the Roots. We all know the Roots. Yes. The Roots crew. Yes. They’re the band for, I believe, Jimmy Fallon. Yep. They are awesome. So they have a guy who beatboxes. He’s a human beatboxer. Okay. Now imagine what it would be like when you’re around your friends and they’re like, could you please stop making that noise with your mouth? This is what Rizal did. Now listen to this right now, Thrivers, and tell me if this is weird to you. Human voice. Human voice. Could I have some more volume, please? This is all one man. One mic. This could be your vision. It could be weird. You want to be a beatboxer? You want to build Airbnb? People say, you’re weird man. A little more volume please. He wants a little more volume. That’s all he wants. He’s working it. Here we go. Uh oh. Here we go. Oh yeah, see, now you’re 2007, you start that business, you get rejected, no one’s booking, you go to South by Southwest, nobody likes you, you get rejected by Freddie Wilson, Freddie, Wilson, venture capitalist, rejection. Now people 2009 are going, I’ll book it, I’ll book it, okay, Mary Manilow’s drummer booked it, I’ll book it. Okay. I see what you’re working with. 2010, people are starting to book. Now, real quick, in 2010 they get $7.2 million of investment capital. Uh-oh, 2011, 2011, they brought in $112 million of investment capital. Oh, 2013, these homies are now making 2013 Arenas beatboxing Now we got a man who’s going out in an arena. He’s going out in an arena as a beatboxer. How crazy is that? So you go from a crazy person with this dream to make sounds with your mouth, and you’re so poor, all you have is a microphone and your voice. And you just focus on it. And you get to be so good that if you Google right now Razzel, R-A-H-Z-E-L, beatboxing, Red Bull, you can check it out. This guy filled up entire arenas and the stuff he does with his mouth. I just want to play one more audio clip. It’s so good, it makes me cry almost. It’s just, it’s spiritual to me. Listen. Faster. Faster. How is this possible? It’s one voice, but now people cheer for him. Airbnb, now people cheer for them. DJ Connection, I started that in my dorm room. Now people cheer for it. People are going to cheer for it. People are going to cheer for your business. People, if you’re listening right now, I promise you, if you refuse to quit and you will listen to the market and you will continue pivoting and continue learning and continue, just, this is the process, the four-step process. Someone needs to write this down. You define what you want to do, then you act, then you measure, then you refine. Here we go. You define, you act, you measure, and you refine. I’ll bring it back. And you define, and you act, and you measure, and you refine. One more time. And you define, and you act, and you measure, and you refine. One more time. There it is. You got it? You got it? That’s how it works. Now, Sherita, for anybody who wants to define, act, measure, and refine, where do they need to go? They need to go to Thrive15.com because it’s going to be really important who you study, who you partner with, who you work with in community, who you learn from, and we have so many mentors who are successful and they can teach you. You know, we have the guy who did PR for Nike, Pizza Hut, Michael Jackson. Michael Levine, he’s crazy. Yes, we have Rustic Cuff, the owner of Rustic Cuff. Jill Donovan. All these people. Teaching you branding. Yes, giving you all this information. Lee Cockrell, he managed Walt Disney World Resort. 40,000 people. Amazing. David Robinson. It’s $20 a month, homies. Yeah, it’s a no-brainer. How could you not do it? I can tell you how you can’t do it. What you could do is you could be a happy hoper, and you could hope that someday that other people come to help you, and the economy gets better and so good, in fact, that people just help you start your business for you. Or you could be a diligent doer, and you could say, you know what, I don’t want to go to your website, but I’m committing to action. That’s fine. That’s all I’m asking you right now to reject mediocrity and to move into a place of success. And if you want to learn more about today’s guest, Mr. Brett Denton with Cavell, just Google K-V-E-L-L Lab. You can find him. He’s a very successful performance coach. He can help take your career to the next level. And if you want to subscribe to the world’s best business school, just go to thrive15.com, the world’s best business school. And as always, 3, 2, 1, go. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 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, and 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 2-Day Interactive Business Growth Workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. 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 RusticCup.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world Jill Donovan the founder of rustic cuff comm has spoken at the two-day interactive thrive time 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 thrive time show two-day interactive business workshops folks 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. Yes, we’ve designed these events to be affordable for you, and we want to see you live and in person at the two 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 two-day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com. You’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do. How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. 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. You started out with a million dollars in the bank account. No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come. Who? I’m talking to you. You can just get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re 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, 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. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get 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 with 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. And 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 in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. 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 close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing but I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald who’s my age and I can say or cannot say. Well 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 didnít 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. 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, but 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. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changing my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this.