Clay Clark | Guy Kawasaki | Working Directly for Steve Jobs: “Steve Jobs Did Not Suffer Fools” + “Everybody Who Worked for Him Loved the Experience. The Coaches & Teachers That Help You the Most Were Usually the Toughest.” – Kawasaki

Audio Transcription

I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players. And I found something. I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other because they’ve never had a chance to do that before and They don’t want to work with B&C players And so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more a players and so you build up these pockets of a players and it propagates and That’s what the Mac team is like Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilner. Two men, eight kids, please tell them hi. It’s the CNC up on your right knee, y’all. And now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we is. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we is. We started from the bottom, now we is. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we are interviewing an entrepreneur, a best-selling author, a man who actually worked directly with Steve Jobs, a man who’s become a brand ambassador for Mercedes, a best-selling author who’s always working on a new book, a guy who enjoys surfing, and a guy who always has a quip or a witty comment. I am super excited to interview Guy Kawasaki for the second time on The Thrive Time Show. Guy Kawasaki, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Oh my God, you got to start drinking decaf. How are you? Well, sir, I got to ask you, you know, last time I interviewed you, you were working on a different book. And before we get into your new book, I want to go back to the beginning. When did you first show up in Silicon Valley? When did that happen? How did that happen? Well, depending on how you define showing up, I went to Stanford and that was in 1972. So you could make the case that that’s the first time I was in the Valley. Now so 1972, you’re in, you know, you’re at Stanford, you’re in the Valley, and somehow from there to Apple. How did that, just how was that transition? How did you go from Stanford to Apple, sir? Well, I am living proof of the goodness of nepotism because my college buddy and roommate at Stanford, after we both went on our separate careers for a while, in fact, I went to law school for a couple of weeks out. And then I got an MBA and I was working in the jewelry business of all things. And I fell in love with computers and he was already in computers and he was in the Macintosh division. So he recruited me. Basically, I went from the jewelry business to the computer business, the Macintosh division. And so I had no qualifications for that. I had an undergraduate degree in psychology. Fundamentally, my business experience was working for a jewelry manufacturer. I did a short stint for a software company, but not enough to justify hiring me. So it’s, you know, the lesson is be nice to everybody in college because you just never know when they might give you a job. Now you at some point became a man who was really charged with or helped to lead the introduction of the Macintosh computer to the masses. At some point, I mean, you became this guy who helped to really sell the product. There’s a lot of great products that never get sold, but you’ve worked your way into Apple as a man who helped lead the charge in selling the products. How did that transition occur? How did you go from first joining Apple to then helping lead the charge to actually sell the computers? This is also a great story because, as I just said, I had an undergraduate degree in psych. I had an MBA in marketing. I had a background in jewelry. So if there was LinkedIn back then and a recruiter looked at my profile. I would not be in the stack of people to call, let’s just say. And it was basically because I fell in love with the product and I worked hard. And you know, obviously I’m not stupid. So not being stupid and working hard and loving the product basically helped me overcome lack of background. And you know, that’s a very important lesson because I think many people in the position of hiring, they default to only two things, which is relevant work experience and relevant academic degree. There’s a third variable to check, which is does the candidate get it? Does the candidate love what they do? Does the candidate actually use our stuff already? And I might make the argument that certainly that’s as important as education and work experience, but it may be even more important than education and work experience. You know, you worked for Steve Jobs and you demonstrated through your hustle, through your love of the product, through your, you got it. And Steve Jobs was a guy who got it. But a lot of people did not like Steve Jobs. And I’m a guy who has always looked at Steve Jobs as an enigma. I mean, you look at what he did with Pixar, basically saving the brand. You look at how he introduced downloadable music. You look at how he introduced the iPhone, the iPad, the personal computer. He did so many things, but I think he was one of the most misunderstood people. Can you tell us, what was it like working for him? Or do you have any stories about working with him that demonstrated his personality type? How long does your podcast go? So, I’ll tell you a Steve Jobs story. So one day, I’m in my cubicle and I’m working. He shows up with this guy I never met, and he didn’t exactly introduce him. He just shows up there and he says, what do you think of this product called KNOWARE? K-N-O-W-A-R-E. I said, Steve, it’s educational software. It’s kind of mediocre. It doesn’t really take advantage of the graphics or the speed or user interface of Macintosh. It’s not that strategic for us. The company is not that a big deal for us. And then he turns to the guy, and then he turns to me and he says, I want you to meet the CEO of Nowhere. So talk about a set. Now Steve, again, this is a guy, Steve Jobs, I mean, like him, hate him, he changed the world. And Steve Jobs once said this here during his Stanford address. And I’m sure he said it during other times and different times he talked to the team, but he said here famously while addressing the Stanford graduating class, he said, remembering that you’re going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You’re already naked. There’s no reason not to follow your heart. Working for Steve, did you see a guy who was insanely passionate about life or what was he like in a staff meeting around the office on a day-to-day basis? He was scary. He was scary because not only was he passionate and smart, he did not suffer fools. I mean, he would not hesitate to just rip you to shreds in front of your peers. And that was very intimidating because when he ripped you to shreds 99 times out of 100, he was right. And so, you constantly lived in fear of being just ridiculed and stuff. Now, you know, when you hear me tell you this, many people would say, oh my God, what an asshole. How could you work for somebody like that? But I’ll tell you something, everybody who worked for him loved the experience and we would not go back and change that. And I’ll tell you why, and it may take 10 or 20 years for people to realize this, but the coaches and the teachers and the bosses in your life, the ones that help you the most were usually the toughest. When you’re inside the battle, you’re thinking, oh, I’ve got to find an easy teacher who grades easy, doesn’t give homework, easy boss, lets me get away with murder. I can telecommute from Bali, he doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. From the outside looking in, you wouldn’t say, oh, I want to play for Vince Lombardi or Bobby Knight, to use sports analogies. But the people who did that, they loved Vince Lombardi, they loved Bobby Knight, they loved Steve Jobs, and it was an honor and privilege to work for him. The danger of looking at Steve from the outside looking in is that you hear stories like that and you conclude that he was an asshole, which he was, but people confuse being an asshole with being a genius, and it’s very easy to get the asshole part. It’s hard to get the genius part. So you could make a very deep philosophical discussion, being an asshole helped you be a genius, or being a genius meant that people would tolerate you being an asshole. That is a question to ponder for the ages. Now, you know, before I get into your new book and all the new things you’re working on, I have one more Steve Jobs question for you because you’ve had a quote that he said, or he’s quoted as saying, that had a big impact on my life. And I was building a massive entertainment company at the time called DJConnection.com. I haven’t owned that company in over 15 years, but we were doing about 80 weddings per weekend. So 4,000 weddings a year sound like… 80 weekends? 80. 80 weddings every weekend. Oh my God. It was a wild world for me. Plus I ran a big bridal exhibit show. It was like a bridal showcase. And then I had a party rental company. I had a lot going on. One of his quotes, he said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, which sort of reminded me of the William Shakespeare ode to William Shakespeare, brevity is the soul of wit. And I began to really ponder on that, of why is it that simplicity scales and complexity fails? And I started thinking about my business going, what are the steps in my supply chain that I could eliminate that wouldn’t hurt the user experience for the bride who went to our website, djconnection.com, filled out the form, scheduled a consultation, and how do we go from there into the wedding and eliminate steps but also increase quality? It was somehow, how could we do that? And I marinated on that, I pondered it, and I really did. That helped me a lot. Can I ask you, just that idea that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, how has that impacted your life? Well, I’ll tell you something. Steve Jobs was more Japanese than me. So the Japanese have this mentality of elegance and simplicity and minimalism, and Steve believed in all of that. that you were doing 80 weddings a weekend, it sounds very intimidating, but I think you’re right that if you simplify your business and make it elegant and just do the most important things well, it’s not a problem to do 80 weddings, right? I mean, if you got the system just like Steve Jobs, they’re making tens of millions of Macintoshes, you think, oh my God, what’s it take to do that? But once you’ve got the right system and you’ve simplified the system to not make yourself crazy, it scales. Now you have some controversial world views on a lot of things. So I’m going to get right up in your business and Philprint, hang up on me if you don’t like it, okay? So the email, how do you deal with emails? Because you are one of the most sought after authors, speakers, people reach out to you all the time. And people today with the technology we have, not even getting into AI, people can find people’s email addresses, people can do it, and they’re gonna shoot you an email. And if you’re not careful, your whole life will be defined by responding to emails from random people that reach out to you. How do you, at this point in your life, deal with email? But this is a complicated question because first line of defense is I work very hard and I admit I constantly answer email, even ones that I probably shouldn’t answer. So that’s number one, I am willing to grind it out. Number two is that I have a very good virtual assistant who takes a lot of the load off my shoulders, and she responds as me. Arguably, her responses as me is better than what I would have said. So that’s a second factor. And then the third factor is that I understand people who say email can take over your life and make you crazy, but I think that that’s just the cost of doing business. And if you’re visible and you want to be a successful person, you just have to pay the price. I would love to say I don’t have to answer any email and the money and everything just flows in. That’s not true. That’s a lie. I have to work. Then the final thought on email is that I have done this several times where I’ve had close friends die and I look at my inbox and it’s got 250, 300, 400 emails to resolve and I just say, you know what, in honor of my friend, I’m going to take all those emails and just throw them away. And I’ve done this several times. I went inbox zero and I noticed something very interesting, which is nobody, nobody sends a second email and says, I sent you an email 30 days ago, you didn’t answer, what’s up, did you get it? So my logic is, you’re telling me I can throw away all those emails, nobody will follow up. Maybe it wasn’t that important to them in the first place. So I realize this advice is completely contradictory, but I’m telling you, that’s my methods. Now, this is going to be controversial. And again, you feel free to hang up on me here. I always look at every interview as like, this might be my last interview. And just to be clear and transparent so you kind of know my background, I, you know, after I sold my entertainment company, I thought to myself, I don’t know what I want to do with myself. So I sold it, and I found myself in my late 20s going, I don’t really need to work anymore. What do I want to do? And what I found was people would reach out to me saying, can I pick your brain? And I thought, you know what? I’ll say yes. And then I said, yes, and yes, we have five kids. And my wife says, honey, perhaps you should charge people to help them. And I said, okay, but let’s just do something that makes sense to me. I’ll get a small percentage of the growth. So that’s how I derive an income. My podcast is not an income generating resource for myself. I team up with entrepreneurs. I only take 160 in what I call my master class. I just get a small percentage of the growth, and so I have very little turnover, very few new clients, and I just kind of help those 160 along the way. Kind of a four-man’s version of Paul Graham from Y Combinators. That’s what I do. Because of that, I feel like I can ask questions, and I know that certain guests will never hop on my show again, and that’s okay because I’m not trying to monetize my show anyway. So here we go. When Steve Jobs died, when Steve Jobs died, you probably had to think about your death. And when my dad died of Lou Gehrig’s disease a few years ago, I had to think about my death. Now my world view is that of a Judeo-Christian. I believe in Jesus. That’s my world view. We don’t maybe share the same world view. But how did you process Steve Jobs’ death, and how did his death impact the way you view death? Well, certainly, you know, when someone is powerful and visionary and smart, and all of the above passes away like that, it kind of shakes you, right? I mean, if somebody was 95 years old and smoked a pack a day. You kind of say, okay, you know, his time, her time has come. But I feel like the world is a lot less interesting without Steve Jobs. Now, you could make the case that God needed Steve Jobs, so he called him or she called him early. That’s one way of looking at it. And I too believe in God. And I kind of think that right now, Steve Jobs is telling God what to do. Okay, now, so now with your life and you think about your life, I mean, you’ve written many, many books and I’m just gonna focus on a couple of them before we get into your new book here. You could sit down and basically, I’m gonna pull up your books to my right here. I’m not playing Oregon Trail here. I’m not doing the old school Oregon Trail. Okay, so I look at your books, you know, so The Art of Start. That’s an incredible book, but you could have sat home and done nothing and maybe moved to middle America and bought a lake house somewhere and kind of moved off the grid, but you’ve decided to continue to put information out there. So let’s talk about the art of START. What inspired you to write that book? What inspired me was the fact that as a venture capitalist and a pretty visible person in Silicon Valley, I was constantly asked for advice and reviews and you know stuff like that. And I’m not as smart as you so I didn’t figure out a way to monetize that. So what I did is I said, you know what? I’m being asked the same questions every time. How many slides? What should be in the slides? How do I do a pitch? How do I raise money? So I thought, oh my God, I’ll just write this freaking thing down and then I’ll just tell people to read my book and then I don’t have to deal with them one at a time. So, that’s kind of the sarcastic way of looking at it. I also feel quite fortunate to have known Steve Jobs, known entrepreneurs, done some companies. And I truly do believe in the concept of noblesse oblige, although I have changed noblesse oblige to success oblige. And I believe that in the last part of your career, what remarkable people do is they pay back. They pay back because of their good fortune. And they went through a door because of luck and hard work and whatever. But after, when you’re in the third part of your career, you’re not supposed to shut that door. You’re supposed to keep that door open. In fact, you should make that door bigger. So, you know, we’ve been talking about death. When I die, I want people to say that I helped them make a difference. You know, when you were 38 years old, you wrote this book called Selling the Dream, 1992, actually, and Selling the Dream, that was a very hopeful, optimistic, very practical book about how to promote products. A lot of times people talk about their product, their idea, their vision, but how do you sell that thing? And it was an unapologetic book about how to promote a product, how to get it out there. Why do you think a lot of entrepreneurs feel almost bad about promoting a product, or they have a reluctance to promote the product. Why do entrepreneurs have that dissonance all the time about getting out there and pitching that thing? Yeah, that’s a complicated question. I mean, one factor is just, you know, it’s kind of human behavior that you don’t want to be seen as the shock and jive, Joe Isuzu, you know, show me the money. Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire, right? I mean, that’s just not cool. So that’s one factor. I think a second factor is that I think deep down inside they realize that maybe their product isn’t so good. So they feel guilty that they’re trying to promote it because they know they’re trying to make people buy, you know, shit and they shouldn’t. So that’s a second factor. And the whole thing about evangelism, which is different than sales, evangelism is the concept that you’re bringing the good news. So the good news of Jesus was eternal life. The good news of Macintosh was increased creativity and productivity. Now I’m the chief evangelist of Canva, and Canva’s good news is you can be a better communicator. You can be a graphic artist, too. So when you have good news like that, you don’t have to hesitate about trying to get people to use it. In a sense, the difference between evangelism and sales is that an evangelist has the other person’s best interests at heart, not just his or her own. So let’s talk about Canva for a second. First off, what is Canva for anybody out there that doesn’t know what that is? And then you’re a, I believe, described as a brand ambassador for Canva. So I guess, what is a brand ambassador and what is Canva? Well, Canva is an online graphics design service. servers and what it enables you to do is that literally within minutes, faster than you could even boot Photoshop, it enables you to create finished graphics. So with Photoshop you’re giving a blank canvas and 200 tools and have at it. With Canva, Canva has figured out the few hundred common uses of graphics, Instagram, Square format, Etsy store background, Facebook album, Facebook post, all the comments, 16 by 9 presentations, websites. There’s templates for every one of those things. If you want to make a TikTok video, you go to Canva, you enter the word TikTok, and it shows you all these templates for TikTok videos, you pick one of those templates, you obviously put in your own pictures and your own text, and within minutes you’re done. So rather than giving you a blank canvas and saying, God bless you, have at it, it helps you with these templates, and that has been a game changer for people. So you wrote this book called Wise Guy, which by the way, I think of all the book covers, that’s the one you look the best on. Of all the photos, if you Google Guy Kawasaki, and you look you up, and you click on images, and after all the Photoshop, and all the photographers, you know how it is, you sit for an hour, people taking photos and stuff. The Wise Guy cover is a really great cover, that’s just my take on it. Wise Guy, what made you write Wise Guy? Wiseguy because, first of all, it is not a memoir or an autobiography. Wiseguy is a compilation of all the stories in my life and the lessons that I learned. And so that’s my previous book. You could kind of make the case that Wiseguy is this compilation of guy stories. So I went from guy-centric to remarkable people-centric. Remarkable people. You hang out in Silicon Valley all the time. Obviously, Steve Jobs is the name that many people think of when they think about Steve Jobs. You also mentioned that you have been and you still are an investor. You’ve been an investor in businesses. And I think a lot of people, when they think about a venture capitalist, they think about a guy who analyzes a business and never gets it wrong. But most of the venture capitalists that I’ve ever met have told me that they basically try to meet with as many entrepreneurs as they can, and they hopefully select ten that they think are most likely to win or be successful, and maybe they’re successful 10% of the time. That’s what I keep hearing, but I’d love to hear from you. What’s your approach to venture capitalism? Well, I served as a venture capitalist for a while and I do not like that business because fundamentally that business 99.9% of the time you’re saying no and I’m just not I I’m just like a more positive, uplifting, upbeat kind of person. I want to say yes to everything, but you’ve got to keep saying no. And even when you say yes that one out of a hundred times, you know that one out of one hundred of the hundred that you said yes to is going to be successful. So it’s random because when I look at the decisions I made and the companies I thought were sure winners and the companies I passed on and I thought were sure losers, I can’t tell you that I had a very good track record. So for people outside Silicon Valley, just so you understand, the way venture capital truly works is you throw a lot of things up against the wall. Some of them stick. Then you go up to the wall and you paint the bullseye around what’s stuck and you say, I hit the bullseye because I’m so smart. Well, you can always hit the bullseye if you paint that afterwards. So let’s get a little philosophical, then we’ll get into your new book here, a little bit of philosophical. Again, you have got a passion and energy to your work. My wife always asks me, you know, why I’m so motivated to work. And I derive my passion a lot from my faith that the Hebrew word for work means worship and worship means work. And so I view my, I believe as a Christian, the Bible states I’m supposed to work as unto the Lord. So whether I’m getting screwed over in a deal or whether the deal is going well, I just feel like I’m supposed to bring my A-game every time. There’s other people like Michael Jordan, who was the best at what he did, and he just wanted to bring his A-game every time. It was maybe a pride thing, a work ethic thing. I don’t know how to describe it. Everyone has their own different driving force. What is it that’s driving you at where you’re at in life right now to continue putting out content, lowering your standards to do interviews with guys like me, what’s motivating you? That’s not true. Listen, when I die, I really want people to say that I made a difference. And I don’t want them to say, oh, he made a billion dollars or, oh, he became a hedge fund billionaire and he rooted out plagiarism. I mean, I want people to say that I empowered them. I empowered them with my podcast, with my books, with my speaking, with my investing, with my advising. I just, I want to be a catalyst to help people make a difference. What is the website that you call home these days? I know you’re working, doing a lot of work behind the scenes for a lot of different brands, but what’s the website that our listeners need to go to to hear directly from you? What’s the official website? Well Yeah, you ask questions that seemingly are simple, but it’s complicated So I’ll be well, maybe not obviously but I have guy Kawasaki calm so I own that My books are well are, well, the most recent book is thinkremarkable.com because I know how to buy domains. And yet, I will tell you that the place that I am most on edge and transparent, for better or for worse, is probably LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn as a social media platform as opposed to some place to find a job. I just have, I feel I have a moral obligation to use my platform for good. And some of that, using that platform for good, means taking strong stances that could, you know, potentially make people not follow you or not hire you or not read your book. But I’m willing to take that chance. Now tell me, the new book here, what’s the idea behind the new book and what got you fired up to write it? Yeah, so the idea behind the new book is I have been interviewing remarkable people for about five years right now. And these people are really remarkable. This is not, you know, Joe Blow of Blow Consulting who wrote the Blow book. This is Steve Wozniak. You know, I have MacArthur fellows and stuff on my show. And at some point I figured out, man, there is a lot of good stuff in this podcast, but to get all that good stuff, you’d have to listen to 200 hours or you could read 4,000 pages of transcripts. So what I should do is, using my 50 years of experience, act as the filter to take 4,000 pages of transcripts down to 170 pages in a book. So you have distilled what you believe to be the best of the best and put it into your new book. Yes. Yes. Now I’ve got to ask you, we hop off today’s interview and you wrap up your interviews for the day and you’re done doing all the things you’re doing, what are you doing after that? I mean, after you’re done with all the business stuff, what are you doing today? That’s my final question for you. What are you doing? I mean, after all the business stuff, what are you doing after that? You might not believe this, but I fold the laundry. I unload the dishwasher. I clean the kitchen. I vacuum. I do all that kind of stuff. I mean, I’m not Jeff Bezos living on a yacht. I find those things very satisfying. I just like to do that kind of stuff. My number one passion and hobby is surfing. It’s raining right now or bad weather right now. I surf two or three hours a day. So between two or three hours a day of surfing, an hour, hour and a half of cleaning up stuff and my podcast, my day is done. Awesome. So you still surf two hours a day? I try. I’m very late to surfing. I took up surfing at 60 and that’s actually evidence of a key concept from my book, which is the growth mindset. And let’s just say not a lot of people are taking up surfing at 60. Maybe they’re playing golf. Mostly they’re probably watching Fox. But I decided to take up surfing at 60 because of my daughter. And let’s just say that’s about 55 years too late. Wow. Well, I appreciate you opening your heart and your head to us today, sharing your worldviews and sharing about your career and your books. And I just really do thank you for your time. Thanks for hopping on the show for installment number two on the Thrive Time Show. And I hope you have a great rest of your day there, Guy. Thank you very much and all the best to you. And thanks for the great interview. It’s been a great interview. Thank you. Thanks a lot, brother. Have a great day. Alrighty. Bye. Alright, Gene, we’ve got a quick announcement here that deserves the subtlety of a megaphone. Right now on the Thrive Time Show podcast, a little less than 5% of the people that listen to the podcast are actually subscribers. Are you aware of this? I had no idea of that. Holy crap. Yeah, so let me pull this up real quick and explain what we’re going to do here. So if you’re listening to the show right now and you want a chance to win a conference ticket for an upcoming business conference, I do business conferences every two months, all you have to do is find the Thrive Time Show on Rumble or iTunes or wherever you consume podcasts and you just click the subscribe button. And so you click the subscribe button, the join, the follow, whatever that is. And then what you’re going to do, James, is you’re going to text proof that you’ve actually subscribed to my cell phone number. James, when I say it’s my cell phone number, tell the folks what this phone number 918-851-0102 really is. That really is your cell phone number, and that’s the number that you call your wife on, your children on, Eric Trump on, Cash Patel on. That’s the number. That’s your number, Clay. That’s the actual number. So what we’re going to do is recap the moves, let’s recap the system, make sure we’re on the same page here about what needs to happen next year. So what we need to do is if we want to win a conference ticket for an upcoming event, step one, we need to what, James? You got to call the number. No. Step one, we need to what? You got to subscribe. Yes, we need to subscribe. Let me recap. Perhaps I’m a bad teacher. Okay, so here we go. So step one if people want to Ticket they need to do what you got to subscribe to the Thrive Time show Step two if they want to write conference ticket people need to you got it text proof of subscription To your cell phone number screenshot, right? And then step three people have a chance to do what judge? You’ll have the chance to get a ticket to the show. That’s how to win a backstage pass or a VIP ticket to an upcoming business conference. That’s what you have to do. And again folks, the reason why I’m making this announcement is because a little less than 5% of the people that watch the Thrive Time Show actually subscribe. When you subscribe, it helps us reach more people. And so, without any further ado, James, this concludes this urgent update. on today’s show we’re interviewing the legendary former key Apple employee turned venture capitalist best-selling author chief evangelist for Canva and Mercedes-Benz is none other than my brother from another mother, Mr. Guy Kawasaki. And on today’s show, Guy shares why he believes that the secret of his success is his ability to outwork people. Why he believes that there are two fundamental functions in life. Somebody has to make it and somebody has to sell it. Why he believes that getting the crap beat out of him while attempting to sell diamonds at a jewelry store was key to his professional development. Why he believes that surrounding yourself with a network of great people is key to creating great opportunities. Why he believes that if you have a great resume, you can’t hide behind it. And why he believes if you don’t have a great resume, why you can’t use that as an excuse. Why he lived in perpetual fear of Steve Jobs, but yet he wouldn’t trade those days for anything. Why he believes that real entrepreneurs ship a product and then test it based upon actual market feedback. Why he believes that you shouldn’t waste your day checking emails, how he decides what projects to work on, and why at Apple the employees wore shirts that read, Working 60 hours per week and loving it, and why his personal mantra is to empower people like you. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show. Now, three, two, one, here we go! 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. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! On today’s show, Chuck, we have a very special guest. We have the iconic Guy Kawasaki on this show. Oh, yes. Oh, come on, Guy Kawasaki. Mr. Guy Kawasaki, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? That’s quite an intro. I’ve been working on that for about 14 hours in a row now. I’ll try again if I need to. Welcome on to the show, sir. Thank you. I can tell already it’s going to be a fun day here. Yes. Now, okay, now, your career deserves, you could have 15 shows about you. I tried to distill, to break down today’s questions into the ones that I think will impact our audience the most. So let’s go back to college, and you’re selling jewelry. Could you talk about selling jewelry and how that job helped you? Yeah. So I was in the MBA program at UCLA, which was a four-day-a-week program, and I needed money and had an extra day. So I started working for a jewelry manufacturer in downtown LA where I counted diamonds. Really? Yeah, literally counted diamonds. Later, when I graduated from the MBA program, I went to work for that jewelry company instead of Wells Fargo or McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, unlike my classmates. Yeah, and I became the eventually the vice president of marketing and sales for this company and So I had to go and sell jewelry to jewelry retailers around the world and I have to tell you that was great training because in my humble opinion there are two fundamental functions in life. Somebody has to make it and somebody has to sell it. So if you can do one of those two things, you will always be okay. Did you have a specific book or a specific mentor or a specific method that you learned that allowed you to become good at sales? Because most people by default are not very good at sales and then everything else begins to fail when you can’t sell anything. How did you become a sales master? Basically, I got the crap beat out of me. I mean, I think that’s the way. Take the sort of more intellectual extreme of that. If you go to work for Procter & Gamble and you’re selling Tide and Bold and whatever they sell, Swiffers, and you’re calling on supermarkets I would think that you’re getting the crap beaten out of you true and That is very good training because you really learn to sell and you learn empathy and you learn to work hard, and you know none of this kind of I I created a website and I did a sex tape and now I’m an internet influencer. I got to cross that off my list because I was telling the guys, I said, guys, if we could just get a sex tape made, and this is what they said to me, I said, guys, that could have been our move, but you’re saying that’s not the move. No, keep your day job, bro. Okay, we’re moving on here. Now, you then somehow landed at Apple. And for the listeners who haven’t read your books and followed you and cyberstalked you like myself, can you explain how you went from the jewelry store to Apple? Nepotism. Nepotism. Nepotism. Nepotism is when you hire a friend or a family. So I went to school with a guy named Mike Boich, and he eventually hired me into Apple where he was. So I had the wrong educational background, psychology. I had the wrong work experience, counting diamonds, to go to work for Apple. It was pure and simple nepotism. And in my book Wise Guy, I talk about this story and there’s a lesson there. And the lesson there is, number one, make friends in college. Number two is, you may not have the perfect background, but don’t let that stop you. So the key is to get in, and once you get in, to work yourself and succeed. So it’s not how you got in. It could be your father’s connections, your mother’s connections, it could be your classmate. It doesn’t matter how you get in. It just matters what you do once you get in. And there’s a corollary to that. The corollary to that is, let’s say you had the world’s greatest background, right? So, you went to Dartmouth and Yale, and you worked for Goldman Sachs. You’re just perfect on paper. You had a 4.2 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa, just everything. So you get this job, and guess what? The next day, nobody gives a shit if you went to Harvard or Dartmouth or Yale or Stanford or you had a 4.2 or whatever. You either produce or you don’t produce. Jeff, I want to marinate on that for a second there because that is a deep thought. I was just hyping that onto the show notes as a notable quotable. You either produce or you don’t produce. But that is, where do you see a lot of people who get that wrong? They think that, like you’re saying, the pedigree matters or the background matters or the education matters and a lot of times that does, but when it comes down to business, it’s black or white, red or black. You either produce or you don’t. One thing that I’ve noticed that’s really, really tough for highly educated entrepreneurs to grasp is that simply because you have your doctorate in something or you have a degree where you could be maybe an architect or an attorney, it doesn’t matter. The market doesn’t care. Right. He said earlier in the interview, someone has to make it, someone has to sell it, and if you can do both of those, you’re good. Those are the two things that matter the most difficult situations for me as a business coach to work with or to work in, in the past, was working with somebody who was over-educated and under-action-focused. And so I have a lot of people that back in the day, I was 27 when I sold DJ Connection, so I had people reaching out to me who were attorneys and doctors saying, I have my degree, I’ve got my master’s degree, I have an MBA, I’m an attorney, I’ve gone to school for seven years, eight years, and I have no customers. I just think this is an important concept for somebody to hear. I’m going to cue it up again, then we’ll get back into the interview with Mr. Guy Kawasaki. Nobody gives you that you went to Harvard or Dartmouth or Yale or Stanford or you had a 4.2 or whatever. You either produce or you don’t produce. So that’s a very valuable lesson that if you have this perfect background, you can’t live off of it. If you don’t have a perfect background, it doesn’t matter if you work or not. In your book, Wise Guy, you talk a lot about your experience working at Apple, and I’d just like for the listeners to hear it from you. Did they hire you as their leading diamond purchaser, seller? What did you do at Apple when you started? My nepotistic friend hired me. We went out and evangelized Macintosh to software companies and hardware companies. Our job was to take a pre-release computer with no install base, very few tools, very little documentation, and convince companies to write Macintosh software and create Macintosh hardware. So you started there through nepotism in this position, you’re evangelizing. How often did you interact with Steve Jobs? As little as I could. That’s fair. He was two or three layers above me. It was a small division though, so we’d ran into each other. But I can’t tell you that I was in his inner circle, and it’s not clear to me being in his inner circle is safe. So he was a very challenging perfectionist kind of person. I lived in fear of him, but I would not trade those days for anything You’ve done talk so I’ve seen video interviews where you’ve video presentations where you’ve talked about some of the things you’ve learned From Steve you talked about these 12 pivotal lessons. You’ve learned from Steve Jobs Could you talk about his his personality a little bit because you know there’s there’s movies made about him where there’s like the Ashton Kutcher movie You know there’s kind of like the happy one, and there’s the Walter Isaacson book he did with Steve, which I enjoyed. What was the personality like of Steve Jobs? Well, basically all those movies and books are kind of accurate, I mean, to some extent. And so, you know, there may be some factual issues and all that, but, you know, he kind of was what he was. He was a perfectionist. He didn’t really care about people’s feelings. That sounds more negative than it is, because there are some people who don’t care about people’s feelings because they’re just 24-carat orifices, right? There are other people that it’s just not on their radar. They just don’t think about other people’s feelings. It’s not part of their operating system to consider other people’s feelings. They just blurt out the truth, or they blurt out their opinion. Whereas there are other people who are trying to drill you into the ground. Steve was just not in his operating system. He just was what he was. Truly the first WYSIWYG CEO. Well, in my shameless attempt to help you sell your book, Wiseguy, here, in your book, you talk about these 12 pivotal lessons. I’d like for you to share three of them. That way, the listeners are going to say, I can’t stand it. I’ve got to buy the Wiseguy book today. So let’s talk about one of these pivotal lessons here. Value is different from price. What does that mean? Yes, yes. Well, in the case of Apple, no one ever bought anything from Apple because it had the lowest list price. And if you just compare apples against apples, no pun intended, for performance, screen size, you know, et cetera, et cetera, Apple products are never the cheapest. You never buy an Apple product on price. You do buy an Apple product on value. So value considers other things besides the simple dollar amount. It considers ease of use, ease of conversion, coolness, all those other things, lack of the need for IT support, all this kind of thing. So when you buy a Macintosh, it’s because you’re going to get up to speed faster, you’re going to have better results, and you’re going to have to have less support. So is it more expensive when you buy it? Yes. But over the course of a lifetime, will it give you more value? Also yes. Have you ever used a PC? Is it like unethical in your mind to use a PC? Have you ever used a PC? You know, I used one about six years ago for about 30 seconds, I remember But generally I never ever use a PC never used never used Okay, that’s what I wanted I wanted to ask you because this is these are the tough questions the thrivers want to ask you now you Have started saying I’ve seen a few talks where you’ve talked about this and then in your book wise guy you talk about this you say real entrepreneurs Ship do you remember when you first started talking about this idea publicly? Do I remember when? Yeah. I don’t remember what I did yesterday, man. I feel like you’ve been saying that, though, for about a decade, haven’t you? I mean, it’s easier to see what you’ve been saying on YouTube now than it was, you know, before YouTube, but… Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, but what I mean by that is I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs, and they’ve been in their garage or in their bedroom, and they’ve been noodling with this idea and tinkering around for years and they’re waiting for, I don’t know what they’re waiting for, they’re waiting for the perfect product with the perfect market with adequate funding and no competition. And that just does not describe the real world. And so real entrepreneurs, they ship and then they test. So you ship a Macintosh 128K, it doesn’t have enough RAM, the chip’s too slow, the monitor’s monochrome, there’s not enough software. There’s lots of flaws with what you ship. But once you ship, that’s when the real work begins. Okay, Chuck, that right there is a knowledge bomb worth playing one more time. I’m going to play the audio clip one more time. All right, let’s hear it. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to go around the world, kind of around the horn. We’re going to break it down because somebody out there needs to hear this idea. So on today’s show, we have Tim Redmond on the show. Now Tim Redmond helped to grow a company called Taxon Accounting Software from two employees to 450 employees. That’s a couple more. Then we have a business coach by the name of Eric Chup. That would be you. That’s me. And you work with real entrepreneurs all the time that get stuck on this idea of trying to make the product perfect before they ship. And then all the Thrivers are stuck with me co-hosting this show making it happen So oh, yeah, I want I just I want you to listen to this listen to this quote one more time bike from a guy Kawasaki take notes on it and then we are gonna break this thing down Like we’ve got unlimited triple-a memberships, and we don’t even care if we have a breakdown Real entrepreneurs they ship and then they test so you ship a Macintosh 128k It doesn’t have enough RAM. The chip’s too slow. The monitor’s monochrome. There’s not enough software. There’s lots of flaws with what you ship. But once you ship, that’s when the real work begins. And that’s also when you truly know what you have to do. Because you can sit in your dark cave in your mother’s house and, you know, cogitate about what will be necessary for your product. But the moment you shift, harsh reality slaps you in the face. Hey, I’m Ryan Limpie. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super…it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. This is where we used to live. Here’s the house. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. All right. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to bring up my good friend, Ryan Wimpy, my good friend Ryan Wimpy, and his dog, Odin, this dog has the ability to eat me, so I’m sort of concerned. I’ll pass the mic to you, and Odin, you can have your own mic if you want, whatever you want, Odin. Okay, I’m a little bit afraid of Odin. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpy. And I’m Rachel Wimpy, and the name of our business is Kip Top Canine. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic, their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. They’re at grind. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for email, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done. We’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and produce your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus and you already know how to do it. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one. And their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean, really ride them to get stuff done. And stuff is done so fast here. And people, there’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Oh look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. Alright, Dave, Sean, on today’s show I’m very excited for you to hear this success story about this wonderful couple that Sean, I would describe them as they are killing the game in the most non-violent way possible. They’re killing the game. Yeah. And the most non-violent way possible. They are blowing up in a good way. Folks, I’m telling you, these folks are really growing their business. And what makes them great is they’re really kind, hardworking, diligent people. And we’re honored to serve them. We’ve got Jenny and Mike here joining us. Jenny and Mike, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you two? Fine. Thank you. Good. We’re doing well. Okay. Now, I’ll start with you, Jenny, because frankly, Sean likes you more, no, I’m just kidding. So how did you first discover us and the business coaching that we provide? So I was listening to different podcasts about business. I was starting up our business, and so you were the first one to pop up on our podcast on Apple. I think Apple is what I was on. And so I started listening to you. I got on your website and I was just a little girl starting a business. And I said, I’m going to ask this guy to be my coach. And I don’t think I’m going to get a shot, but sure enough, within a week, you called me. Now, who is this cute, cute child here? But Micah, who is this cute kid here? It’s Lennon Rose. She is about to be 10 months old. I hate to do this to you, but can you kind of hold up the baby to the camera a little bit? This is probably- Oh, look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. Okay. So, Mike, can you tell us, what’s the name of your website there? I think people want to look you up and verify you’re real people that don’t just happen to have a cute baby. Yeah. Our website is newconcept.healthcare. Newconcept.healthcare. So, newconcept.healthcare. I’m going to pull it up right now, folks, so we can all verify that they’re not just a couple who’s taking advantage of the cute baby they have to get a podcast here. This is a real couple. I’m gonna pull that up here. So, this is the website. It’s newconcept.healthcare. And can you tell our listeners, what services do you guys provide at newconcept.healthcare? So we offer more functional medicine. So we offer IV therapies. We offer hormone replacement therapies, we also do acute care. We do pretty much everything, but we’re very much alternative. We believe in medical freedom, and that’s what we offer. You guys, you reached out. Do you remember that initial consultation there? Do you remember, Mike, that initial consultation? Do you remember what that was like? Yeah. Yeah, it was actually pretty overwhelming that when we started in this business with absolutely nothing and we had the opportunity to work with five timeshare. Well, you know, the one thing I always try to do is, you know, my father, great guy, may he rest in peace, he worked his tail off like so many people do, and there was no real economic result that was achieved from it. There wasn’t any, you know, he had the college degree. He’s working two jobs. I remember he’s late thirties. He’s working at Domino’s delivering pizzas, working at Quick Trip. He worked at furniture stores. And I always try to look at every new client we have as though I’m talking to my dad, you know? Cause like, what would, what would my dad, you know, what could he have learned at the age of 37 that could have changed the financial trajectory of his life? You know, and I try to look at it that way. And so you guys, I paired you up with Sean. You’ve been working with Sean, I believe, Sean, since October of 2020. Is that correct, Sean? I think that’s when they started their business. It wasn’t until about April of 2021. April. Yeah. That’s when it actually got going. So April of 2021. And at that point, from that point to now, Sean, how much growth have you guys achieved from 2021 to now? Do you know that number? Yeah. I mean, we’re sitting at 2023 revenues. We’re 821,000. And there in October of 2020, like they only had a few months, they made about $95,000 by the end of 2020. And then we grew significantly that first year, about 375% to $588,000. And we continued to grow there ever since, all the way up to where we’re getting close to the million dollar mark at this point here just like three years in. Jenny, how would you describe the growth? Would you say you’ve doubled or you’re five times larger? How would you describe that? Oh, no, I definitely feel the growth. There’s been some growing pains and you guys have helped us through that too. So it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing to help people because that’s what I’m passionate about. And you guys have really helped us expand and tell people what we’re about. So step one here, we do this with all the clients, I’m going to walk people through the steps. We really needed to nail down your branding. And that’s a big thing because, you know, branding is to humans what clothing is. So as an example, you know, you wake up today, folks, if you run around and you’re streaking through life, you’re probably not going to get a lot of conversations started. So we all have to be intentional about, you know, what are we going to wear? Are we going to wear a tie? Are we going to wear a polo? Are we going to do makeup? Are we not? So people, they judge us based on our appearance. And so we really had to get a website built. We had to optimize the online brand. Jenny, we do it all included for our clients. So we don’t refer you to another vendor. We do it all. Can you talk about the impact that that has made on the business? Oh, for sure. Just the website itself, it looks so great. We would have never been able to make it look that great. The way you all optimize everything and keep us with Google, just where people search us and we’re the first people that come up. And that’s actually how we’ve established our business and started offering some of the things that we offer is because of the tags that we have. I didn’t originally start off as doing IV therapy, but due to people Googling, you know, health care functional medicine, I had three phone calls in a week that said, hey, do you offer IV therapy? And it was very interesting, and I was like, well, no, but I can. And so it was because of you guys that that kind of snowballed and took effect. So yeah, there’s a lot that you guys have done for us. Now, Sean, we’re working with these wonderful clients here. I’ll pick on Mike here. You know, you always say great things about Mike and Jenny. What makes them good to work with? Because I want to make sure for anybody out there, if you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, I consistently offer a free 13-point assessment. I’ve been doing that since 2005. I do it without reservation. There’s no obligation. But there’s usually about one to two knuckleheads a week that will fill out the form and probably 20 really great people that fill out the form. And then we only take on 160 clients and so I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What makes Mike so great to work with? Well Clay, I mean you, when I first started coaching you taught me about these you know these two types of business owners. There’s the happy hopers out there and then there’s the diligent doers and I think these guys are a great example of the diligent doer. They continually apply effort to work on their business, not just in their business. They consistently show up to their meetings, they track all of the critical numbers of their business, and they are aware of what’s going on with all of their employees, they’re paying attention to all the little things going on, they’re keeping all the plates spinning, and they ask great questions. They actually really do make a great effort consistently to apply our systems and help their business grow. It’s been working. So step one, we get the branding nailed down. That’s the website, the print pieces, the logos, the business cards. But then you have to develop that online reputation. Now, that could be a tough thing to do, Jenny. And I’m not, this isn’t a backhanded compliment. I’m just saying, but for people that are humble and very kind, of which I would put Jenny in that category, sometimes asking for reviews is more difficult because you almost feel like you’re self-promoting. I’ve never had this conversation with you. But when you, has that been difficult for you to ask people to give you video reviews and Google reviews after you provided the service? Or was that easy for you to do? It was not, it’s not easy. It still isn’t easy. It is, it’s difficult because you feel like you’re begging for something, even though you know you did the right thing. So it is, it’s difficult for me. It’s just my personality type, but we get it done anyways. I’ll find this for the diligent, kind customers we work with. It’s very difficult sometimes to ask for those objective reviews from real customers. And I find that from my clients I’ve worked with that are sort of like self-described barbarians. I had a guy years ago I worked with, I won’t mention his name or his industry, but I’ll just say he’s obsessed with physical fitness. And he told me, he says, I’m kind of a business barbarian. You tell me what to do and I will slay the dragons.” And I’m like, okay, you need to get Google reviews from everybody you’ve ever worked with. And he’s like, oh, I’m on it. And this guy’s just shamelessly calling through his phone and just lighting people up going, give me a review. Come on, give me a review. Why would you not give me a review? He’s on like, go ahead, dial it down a little bit. So again, you guys are humble, diligent doers. You’re the ideal person here. So I appreciate you sharing that. The next thing we had to do is we had to create a no-brainer. Now, a no-brainer is an offer so good, so amazing, that people simply cannot say no to it. Now, I won’t mention the name of the company, but I worked years ago, and I still work with this company. They’re a medical company. They’re doing well now. And for whatever reason, they put on their website, first initial consult, 497. And he went to one of these like borderline spiritual motivational conference things where Jesus isn’t described, but they kind of talk about metaphysical alignment and getting your woosaw, getting in your groove, alignment, no friction. And he came back and he’s like, Clay, I believe in the seventh number of completion. I go, I agree. He says, four is the number that’s urgent. I’m like, okay. And I go, what? And he’s like, I don’t want tire kickers. So I’m going to do 497 for my first consult. That way I don’t deal with the tire kickers. And I’m like, Doc, I love you so much. You’re a doctor. I love it. You don’t have any customers. That’s why you came to me. You don’t have any customers. So why don’t you do a first free consult? I’m not going to do it. I’m going to kick out Sean the tire kicker. So I’m sure you’ve never seen this with a client. Oh, never. And so now what makes it worse is his wife also went to the Metaphysical Alignment Motivational Jackassery Festival, and she was like, 497 is the number. I had a dream about it. I’m like, yeah, you probably talked about it all weekend. You probably are subconsciously thinking about it. You’re probably creating a neural pathway related to 497. And so anyway, after about a year, he finally says, okay, I came to your conference and I saw a person that did the first consult for a dollar. I’m going to go with that. And now his business is blowing up. Could you talk about your no-brainer, your first consult for a dollar? How has that helped you having that no-brainer offer? Yeah, so it gets people in. And so when we get people in, we know that we’re doing a good job. And we know that we’re trustworthy, and our health care is superior to most. So just getting people in for that dollar, because a lot of people are nervous about going to the doctor, or they don’t trust health care system. And so they know that they can come in. They’re only going to spend a dollar. They can figure out whether or not they trust us, figure out whether or not we’re the place for them. And we know 100% of the time we will be. So it’s really helped us just get people in and get people to trust us more. Now, once somebody fills out the form, folks, again, there’s a linear pathway here. I’m trying to give you a visual here. So you establish your revenue goals, you figure out your numbers to break even, you figure out how many hours a week you’re willing to work. Even though you have a cute baby, you got to figure out how you’re going to get it done. Step number four is you define your unique value proposition. What makes you unique? That’s something you and Sean have worked on together. You improve your branding. Now you’re coming in contact with humans. Business is a contact sport. I love this part. That’s when you start marketing. You launch your marketing. You have your online ads. You optimize your website. You begin to come up top in the search results. You start to get leads. Do you remember what it was like, Jenny, when you first got your first online lead. Do you remember the first one where you’re like, it’s working? Do you remember that moment? Yeah, it was almost like we wanted to, well, we did celebrate because it finally had happened. And then as soon as the first one came in, the second one came in. And like I said, it was, it was almost a growing pain experience. We’ve had so many leads so fast. Um, so it was great. And, uh, we still celebrate every lead that we get. Now, Mike, the next step is you have to make sales scripts. We recommend to every client that the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a sales script, calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a one sheet that tracks your pricing, you have pre-written emails, you begin tracking. Sean’s always bragging about you guys with tracking. Mike, how has it helped to have tracking in place where you can see, you know, how does that help you? Well, really a good benefit because, you know, at the end of the week, you know what your income was, you know, what your leads was. So wherever we’re lacking in, we can quickly adjust and make that adjustment and make it work for the next week. Now, when you, if you don’t have tracking, uh, folks, this is a true story. It’s kind of a sad story. So I’ll, I’ll speak in generality. Sean, I talked to a guy the other day, share terrible story, long time client. He got motivated. He’s he set up a trade show. He didn’t tell me he was doing it, it’s fine, you don’t have to tell me, but he set up a trade show. I think he was going to try to surprise me with the fruit of the trade show. So he set up the trade show and he gets on the call, his energy is kind of off, and I’m like, are you okay? Yeah, dude, fine. What’s wrong? Hi, just, I don’t know. I’m like, your lead sheet, we’re getting 10 to 15 leads a week, it’s very consistent, revenue looks good. He’s like, yeah, I’m in a tight spot. We’re in a tight spot. We’re in a tight spot. He says, I did a trade show. You did a trade show. Yeah, I got roped into four. I did a thing where you get the billboard, you get the trade show, you get the magazine ad. And I did the trade show and we got no leads. And I go, what kind of trade show did you do? And he says, well, I went to the whatever trade show. And Sean, what I find is that there’s the emotional excitement about being on the billboard, being on the magazine cover. And he got called probably by one of these kind of scam. I call it a scam mockery. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. I’m going to be on the magazine cover. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And he said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. And I said, well, I’m going to be on the billboard. scam, I call it a scam-och-ery or jackassery. They call you and they go, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hey, is this Sean? Yeah, this is Sean. Sean, yeah, I, we noticed that you have an incredible healthcare company and we want to honor you by giving you the yada yada of the region award. It’s the yada yada, it’s a regional, it’s a prestigious award. We’d like to meet with you. Can we meet with you? Yeah. So now I meet here. Now, Sean, again, I’m not on the phone, but I still like the phone voice here. So now, Sean, so because we’re so honored, you know, we’re inviting you to a plated dinner to honor your just your honor, your honor, your greatness, your humbleness. And it’s going to be a thousand dollars a plate, you know, for you and your wife. And did you want four seats or eight? Most people do eight. Oh, I guess just four. Four. Four. And that does include a glossy magazine feature. And we’ll just call it Missouri local top doctor Jack Assery. It’s a great magazine. And you’re also on the billboard. We’ve teamed up with the billboard. It rotates through your thing. Oh, hey, don’t get too excited. And just because we’re honored. We’re not, again, we’re just honored. Now, did you want to do the four tickets? Yeah, absolutely. Now, the way it works is it’s going to be a four payments of four thousand for a total of sixteen thousand. And that’s serious. And now they’re in the trade shows and he’s going to the trade show and there ain’t nobody there. There is nobody there. It needs to be technical. Nobody was at this trade show. I mean, everybody was not at the trade show. He’s got photos of like him and his wife and his team in an empty booth. He’s got a magazine and no leads are coming. He was so excited to tell me. I’m sure you’ve never encountered this sort of thing, Virginia. Have you ever seen a situation where that sort of shamockery advertising has been entered into your world in some capacity? I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve set up everything and paid employees. I felt like I was nothing more than a free pin show. The only people that were there were people looking for free pins. Oh, I know, and it feels terrible. And then you kind of have to sell it to yourself all day. Guys, we’re getting our name out there. Sean, can you pass the megaphone back there? It’s right behind you. Yeah, because I always tell people, if you want to get your name out there, what you do is you just run outside and say, all right, come visit New Parnsup Healthcare. And people go, why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to shop for my groceries. New parts of health care. My name out there. Is this effective? Of course it’s effective. I’m getting my name out there. And that leads to buying frisbees, branded frisbees, Right. Goozies. You know what I’m saying? Branded pens. Yes. All of a sudden you buy these things. Sean, you know what I’m talking about. Oh yeah. Okay. So now we have to do, and I’m going to show you, this is kind of the back end of one of my companies, it’s called Elephant in the Room. And you do a search for eitrlounge.com, and then you go to forward slash staff, I’m not going to give you the password, folks, but you log in, and these are all the systems needed to run the haircut chain. Now, one thing I thought was very interesting is Truth Social, President Trump’s social media platform, the other day they were disclosing, Newsweek was disclosing the revenue of it. I just want people to know this because I think, and just full disclosure, I’m a very conservative person, but I just want people to see this. This is just something to look at. Truth Social, they declared in their filing that they did $3.3 million of revenue and had $49 million of losses, which by the way, that’s very normal for a tech startup company. company and their users are going up and they’re having an after there’s like a reaction in the marketplace. People are actually putting more money in, they’re investing, the stock price is going up. But I don’t know anybody that I’ve met in my life, but I’ve never met a client that can afford to bring in three point three million and lose forty nine million, you know. So like for my haircut chain, we have five locations. We bring in more than 3.3 million, and this just in, we don’t spend 49 million. So we have to, we call it a lean startup. You got to keep that thing lean. And so when you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff, every document needed to manage the business is here. So the opening checklist for the manager, you click here, boom, this is what the manager has to do to start the day. Everything is documented. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now with Ginny and Mike’s business. We’re in the process of building all those checklists. Yeah. Sean, what kind of checklists have you built so far? Oh, man. We have a whole page. Their staff page is pretty built out. We’re really getting there. I think more right now, it’s getting, correct me if I’m wrong, we need some managers in there so we can free you guys up from the business. And so we have a lot of the worker level systems. We’re just now working on more of how do we get those manager level systems and find those high quality managers. Now let me give Jenny a little mentor moment here. This will be helpful for you. I’m going to hop on a flight in about two and a half hours, three hours to go to Denver. And I got to go to Denver to meet with the founder of Oxifresh.com. This is a brand we’ve worked with and helped them to grow to 550 locations. Now 550 locations, okay. And if you type in carpet cleaning quotes, we’re the world’s highest rated and most reviewed company in the world, in the world. Okay. 274,000 reviews. We’ve been holding this idea in our mind for 15 consecutive years. I’ve been working on this, Sajan, before I met you, we just were to grind in. Okay. Yeah. And the biggest challenge that the locations have is managers. Finding good manager. And I tell people this, and it never goes over well, but hopefully eventually it will. I’ll keep refining it, refining the idea. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. Let me try that again. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. And I have found it’s not so much trainable as it’s findable. So as an example, where we’re getting ready to head out to Denver, Sean, you know my personality type. If you know that I have to pack all this stuff to get ready to go. You saw my suitcase out there. Yep. How many times do you think I’ve followed up with the people involved in the trip so far before leaving? Oh man, it’s probably on your to-do list and you’ve checked it off like probably at least five times today, I would think. And what kind of things do you think I might’ve put on my checklist to travel to Denver? First off, just making sure that the timing is working, making sure that you have all the stuff that you need, making sure that you have double of the stuff that you need in case something gets broken, making sure that the people who are there know you’re coming and when you’re going to be there and what to expect from you. Do you think I’m checking a bag? Oh, yeah. You’re probably not checking a bag. There it is. You’re going to get lost. All right. No. And am I getting a flight a lot earlier than I need to be there? Way earlier. Yeah, if I’m having a meeting tomorrow, which I am, I’m leaving today at 1230. That’s the sort of paranoia that makes management possible. So I have literally called, I said, all right, I’m getting on the 1230 flight. We’re meeting tomorrow. I should be in by like four o’clock Denver time. Our meeting’s tomorrow. If that flight gets delayed and the next one gets delayed and the next one, I’ll still be there. I’ve got backup phone chargers. I have a rule, everybody going with me, you cannot check a bag. I want to check a bag. Can’t check a bag. Why? Because it could get lost. This is real. I’m not every I am completely paranoid. And that is the paranoia is what makes the businesses run. Yeah. Yeah. And I asked my staff every day, guys, elephant in the room. Did you guys get a review? And they say, yeah, we got a review. You asked me 10 minutes ago. OK, I’ll talk to you in four minutes. You hear me say that. I’ll say I’ll talk to you in five minutes. Yeah. And I’ll do it. And it’s a follow up of because I have to make sure that the checklists are being followed. The reviews are being followed. We’re a licensed business. People don’t know that hair care. You’re licensed by the state. So we have certain cleanliness standards. We could have random people from the state show up. So we got checklists and I follow up and it doesn’t bother me to follow up with the same adult who’s in their 40s six times within a 50 minute span of time. It doesn’t bother me. But most people, that bothers them. And so have you found that, Jenny, that a lot of people don’t like to follow up? Have you found that or is that just something unique to me? I found that they don’t like to follow up. No, people don’t like to follow up. It’s almost like an awkward communication thing that people try to avoid. Yeah. And it’s not necessarily that you’re being mean or any type of way, but I feel like that’s probably the way that we feel when we continuously follow up. Like we’re having to step on people’s toes, but really we’re not. We’re just getting the job done. My mentorship moment for you is probably the same feeling you have when you ask for reviews. Yeah. It’s probably the same. So I’m just saying, and then Mike, did you ever play football or a sport of some kind? Yeah, I used to play soccer. Okay, soccer. So like when you, what position did you play? Goalkeeper. Goalkeeper. Okay. So is a goal, this is a great example. I didn’t know you were a goalkeeper. But when you’re a goalkeeper and someone’s kicking that ball at you fast, I mean, just the ball’s coming in there. I mean, people can really kick a soccer ball fast. There are certain people that want to be a goalkeeper, but they kind of avoid the ball. They try to hide from it. They flinch. You know what I’m talking about? But you actually would lunge into it. Am I correct? Right. I mean, you’re aggressive, right? I mean, you’re like, you had for some reason you enjoyed it. Yeah. Right? I’m getting a hundred miles an hour fastball. Have you ever seen somebody who tried to be a goalie? I’m not looking for a name here, but somebody who would kind of hide from the ball. Yeah. This is the same thing for management. Like, as a manager, you have to want, like, you have to sort of seek out conflict, but like people. So I’ll say things like, okay, it’s eight o’clock. I need to make sure you put out the flags in front of the elephant in the room store today Mr. Manager put out the flags that draw the attention by the road put up the flags and I’m gonna call you in ten minutes to follow up call him in ten minutes are the flags up Can you send me a picture? They’re like do you not trust me? Absolutely not. I trust no And then I’ll call him back 30 minutes later, hey, did you get Google reviews? Yeah, we got one review You know, the quote is 10. Yeah, I’ll call you back in two minutes. You know, calm back. Hey, did you get a review? It’s been two minutes. I know. I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you back in an hour. And my whole day is just following up. And then over time, the culture happens where people go, he’s going to follow up. And now the people that like to follow up, like to work there and it’s become a great thing. And that’s where we’re kind of at right now, I think, is we’re getting into the follow-up phase. Do you have call recording in place there, Mike? Do you have the call recording for quality assurance installed yet? Yes, we do. And are you learning some things? Yes. It is very hard to train people on recording scripts. Yeah. Okay. That’s something we got to do. Now we’re just going through the workflow. And then the wowing the customers. What Sean is saying is that your patients are consistently wowed. Now, I don’t know if that’s because Sean is your hype man or if that’s a real thing, but it seems like people are actually wowing. They’re being wowed right now. People, when they come in, this is, if you look at the workflow, they buy something, right here we have to wow them. You’ve got to create that wow moment. And again, if you want to download this diagram, folks, just go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. You can download it from my newest book called A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’ve got to create that wow moment. I mean, amidst the checklists and the tracking, at some point here, you’ve got to create a moment that wows people where they go, wow. So I’m trying to get everybody’s creative juices flowing here. So if you have a restaurant, I work with a restaurant in Florida right now, a great restaurant, they say, welcome in. Is it your first time? They say, yeah, it’s my first time. Oh, well, hey, you get free appetizers on us today and one free adult beverage. Welcome in. And that every time it’s that wow. And then when you come back later and ask for a review or hey, what entree do you want? Guess what? People become generous with how they buy. Another example, I work with an auto auction. The auto auction says, your first time that you buy from the auto auction, you only have to pay a dollar more than the actual cost of the vehicle. Just to wow people, to get that going. I happen to work with a carpet cleaning business, carpet cleaning business. And what they do is they say, hey, the first time we clean your carpet we’ll beat any competitor’s price and it will be at least half off of our normal price. And they go, okay, great. You’ve got to have that wow moment. What are you guys doing, Jenny, to wow your customers there? Well, there are things that we do. We will oftentimes like give samples of certain things because we know they work. We have a lot of supplement sales that we do. Again, the dollar console is a wow moment because we will spend some, you know, 10 to 15 minutes explaining how we’re different. And I feel like they’re wowed because of that. Also, our services are so much different. We spend time in the room with our patients. We listen to them. They’re not just a number. And a lot of times people have never experienced that. So there’s a lot of wow moments, I think, for all of our patients. I understand that 59% of your customers are now from word of mouth. Is that accurate? Yeah. That’s huge. Yeah. Well, and with the customer acquisitions cost, too, I’ve heard you say this before, Clay, that if you’re advertising and you’re doing a good job wowing at the same time, they compound each other and you’ll end up having two to three word-of-mouth referrals from those patients that are wowed for every one lead you have from advertising. We measured and tracked that they had this last year. For every dollar they spent on advertising, they were able to bring back in $4.61. So that’s a 461% return on their marketing investment. It’s incredible stuff. And the great news is, as we build these systems, if you guys ever wanted to franchise or license or open up multiple locations, if done properly, you should be able to scale it. It should be very repeatable, very duplicatable. Other things you guys have done, you’ve implemented a database to keep track of your customers. You’re gathering objective video reviews. You guys are really checking all the boxes. I’d like for you, if you can, Jenny, here, to give a word of encouragement for any of our listeners out there that are a little bit on the fence right now and they’re going, you know, I have thought about scheduling a free consultation, but I don’t know, I hear it’s $1,700 a month. Can you maybe explain your thoughts, what you’d say to anybody who’s a friend of yours or family that asks you about the value about the business consulting? Oh, well, I would say that the $1,700 a month is an excuse not to have someone to mentor you. It’s kind of like being in a gym when you need a trainer. We’re not always perfect and business owning is not easy and you need a mentor. I’ve never missed the $1,700 a month, even when I was only six months in when we started with you guys. I’ve never even considered it a loss. It was scary at first to make that, but that wasn’t an excuse. I knew I needed someone to guide me through this, and you guys have guided us through this through the entire thing, through employees, through income, through spending, through all of it. And we come through so many problems. There are a lot of problems that are established when you have a business. I mean, you become very overwhelmed very fast, and you need somebody that you can call who’s successful who’s been there that says you’re not crazy this happens to all of us here’s what you do about it it’s been the best decision that we’ve made final question I have here for you as far as having a turn like a one-stop shop years ago I hired a business consultant who was great and he would say things like and I’m not ripping him I’m just telling you what would happen he would say Clay you got to work on your business and not in it. I’m going, that’s true. He goes, you got to delegate to elevate. That’s true. Clay, your website is not optimized. And I’m going, this is great. Fresh perspective. I go, Bruce, could you help me optimize? No, I don’t optimize. Could you help me work on it? No. Could you help me make a checklist? No. Do you make, do you help me with the print pieces that I need to make? No. Can you make a video? No. Do you help me with my online ads? No. Clay. And he would use that. He was kind of an Eastern, he’s an Eastern, Northeastern American guy. And he used to say, Clay baby, let me tell you what, I don’t make print pieces. What am I, a print piece guy? I’m not a web guy. We know what I am. I’m a work on the business guy. You got to find a good web guy. So every meeting we would have, would result in me having to find another vendor to pay another $8,000 to, to build the website, 4,000 to make the video, 5,000 to do it. So every time you give a recommendation, it would lead to another cost. Can you maybe explain the value of having a flat monthly fee? Yeah, I don’t have to ever worry about it. I know if I need the website updated, it’s a text away. I know if I’m having trouble with an employee, it’s a text away. I know if I need financial advice, it’s a text away. And again, we meet every single week, and all our questions are answered, and we’re held accountable to what we need to be held accountable for. So it really works for us. Jenny and Mike, thank you guys for your time so much. I really do value your time. I appreciate you guys being here today. And on part two of today’s show, we’re gonna tee up another success story because we want people to know it is possible, despite the financial jackassery plaguing our nation right now, it is possible to become successful and you guys are a living example of it. Thank you guys for bringing your baby on the show. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals. So it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful, in your mind, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless holy crap alright so the question i would have here for you if you can take like ten minutes or less and see if you could save three thousand bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees would you do it yes absolutely holy crap why would somebody out there who’s listening right now who has a sane mind why would they not go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a ten minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year? Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. Now that’s clear. That can be true. So I encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t. It’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes, and they’re like nah, that’s not worth my time Probably some someone out there, okay, I would think that well I’ll just tell you folks if you’re out there today, and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes I would highly recommend that you go to thrive timeshare.com forward slash credit dash hard because you can compare rates you can save money and you know the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time freedom and financial freedom and in order to do that you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal. It takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average? I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me, swan. Let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services, and I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical, I just thought, whatever, I’ll take 10 minutes, I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean, I’m just not sure. Or can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case, in my case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is, you know, like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. No! Everything okay, ma’am? Oh, it’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t gonna be easy, so I need you to be brave, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod, the name of the clock it’s an elegant from Ridgway, it’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock. I encourage everybody out there go to thrive timeshow.com forward slash credit dash card you schedule a free consultation request information a member of our team will call you they’ll schedule a free consultation it should take you ten minutes or less and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than three thousand dollars a year off of your credit card processing you were hoping what I would know you money at the end of the day no you don’t owe us money because at the end of the day at the end of the day the goal of the business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. Let’s go. Let’s go. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. What we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessimon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% were up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. We, it was a system that we, that we followed with Thrive and in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that, that that system works. Yeah. So here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. Oh, sorry, the last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it, do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crocker, or Head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers. And they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up. And he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. And when we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. And he told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. Anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma baby! Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 2-Day Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old and a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is JT, how does he do it? Well they’re gonna 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. And over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrivetime Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’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, 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 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrivetimeshow.com. You’re 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 how I do it. How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in a 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 Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come. I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re gonna leave with a workbook, you’re gonna leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars, and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, 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 at Kings Point in New York octa non verba. Watch what a person does not what they say. Good morning good morning good morning Harvard Keel Sox and the Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just wanna tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah, that’s 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 change my life. I’m doing this I’m doing this I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York octa nonverba octa nonverba Watch what a person does not what they say