Clay Clark | Wolfgang Puck | Legendary Chef, Entrepreneur & Best-Selling Author Wolfgang Puck Shares How He Became a Chef, How He Started His First Business & How He Scaled His Brand + Tebow Joins Dec 5-6 Business Workshop

Audio Transcription

Man, if you have ever run a business without documented systems and processes, you are definitely not experiencing, you’re really not living if you haven’t ever gone through that. And I have gone through that. Before we met with you, Clay, we were doing that exact thing. We had all these things in our head. We kind of knew what was going on, but there was always a problem. And once we got to where we started, like literally writing everything out, doing the checklist, making sure everybody knew how to do them, making sure that there’s processes for every single thing that we do from answering the phone to cleaning a window to pressure washing a house to installing holiday lights or cleaning out a gutter. Man, once we did it all that and then started utilizing those checklists in conjunction with training our employees and teaching them how their specific job was or is supposed to be done and they’re using those checklists and they’re understanding what the process is and they understand that, hey, this is what the whole system looks like and how you’re just one cog in this wheel and it’s super important. Man, when we did that, it was a game changer. It really, really, really increased revenue, increased efficiency, and it took a load off of my shoulders and my manager’s shoulders because we just weren’t running around anymore with our hair on fire. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women thirteen more time million dollar businesses ladies and gentlemen welcome to the front time shop yes Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have the incredible opportunity to interview this celebrity chef whose soup I bought for my wife last week, the tomato basil. Mr. Wolfgang Puck, how are you, sir? Excellent, thank you. Wolfgang, I’m not sure how much money you make per can of soup, but I bought two cans of soup last week. It had nothing to do with interviewing you. I just buy two cans of your soup every week for my incredible life. Thank you. Now I can keep my kids in school for the whole year. That’s nice. That’s nice. Well, you know, you have had so much success, but I’d like to start off at the bottom and the very beginning of your career. And I want to talk about your mother. Your mother was also a chef, and I’d love for you to share about her love of cooking and how that influenced you and now your love of cooking. You know, my mother was an incredible person first, a great mother and everything. The only mistake she did in her life is marrying my step-brother. You know, I don’t even want to get into that, into the step-brother, but like, you know, like a terrorist for us, for the family. And drunk and this and that. But my mother was like a saint. Now every summer when I was like 10, 11, 12, 13 years old I spent time with her in the kitchen in a resort hotel on a lake in Carinthia where she used to work and that’s how I got interested already first in pastries. You know if you’re 10, 12 years old anything sweet if it’s ice cream, a chocolate cake, whatever it is, you know, you get a little bit of it and you are happy. So every time I did that, and then I used to help her bake shakes at home and things like that too. So I got interested, Charlie, early on, and, you know, became friendly with some of the male chefs in the hotel room at the box. And little by little, I became 14 years old, and then I had to decide what to do, to go to school, you know, a tech school or whatever it would be. I wanted to be an architect, but they only had one school in Vienna. So then I talked to my mom and said, you know, maybe I’m gonna become a cook or a pastry cook. And then she had, her boss found me a job in Villach at the Post Hotel. And that’s where I started at 14. I left my home gladly because of my stepfather and I started to cook professionally at 14. So if you’re out there and you’re feeling sorry for yourself that you had to start working at 18 or 19 or 20, I mean I worked at Target and Applebee’s and DirecTV all at the same time. I was working 60 hours a week on a slow week, 90 hours a week on an average week. If you feel overworked because you have to work as a young guy, I have a motivational quote for you from the incredible American philosopher, Adam Sandler. I’d love for you to share with the listeners out there. We have so many Americans that listen to the show and they’re not familiar with your culture. Why at the age of 14 did you have to choose a profession or a technical school? Can you walk us through your culture you grew up in and why you had to make a decision so young? Yeah, I come from Austria in the southern part, really in the countryside totally. There were only 11 houses, two farmers and a few houses. There was no street name, no asphalt on the streets, only dirt roads and everything. If we wanted strawberries or mushrooms, we went up in the forest and picked them in the summer. In the winter, we skied. So it was really in a rural area. We had no running water, no central air or anything like that. The toilet was a hundred meters outside in the garden, in the end of the garden. So I grew up fairly, you know, modest, I would say. You know, we had meat once a week, generally on Sunday. And then the rest, my grandmother and my mother, they’re really good cooks. They cooked a lot of sweets, like a dish called palachinken or kaiserschmarrn or grinschmarrn, all this famous out there in the heart-based place. And I think Sundays we had dinner set or fried chicken. That was our big splurge, you know. And I think I got lucky because it was all palm to table really. You know, when my mother made vegetable soup, she went in the garden, picked up a leek, had two potatoes, some carrots, a little cauliflower, maybe beans or peas, chopped them up, cooked them, and you say, oh my God, that tastes so delicious. And even today still, or when I used to go when she was alive, I always told my mom, make your vegetable soup, and I went in the summer, right from the garden. And she made it and I said, it reminds me of my childhood. So your mom was the queen of organic farm-to-table food before it was a thing. Before it was a category, your mom may have been the innovator of farm-to-table. When you were 17, I understand that you decided to leave and you went to France where you stayed for seven years. What motivated you to move to France and stay there for seven years? We had a restaurant from Dijon called Trois Faisons. They came to cook in our hotel for a week and cook their specialty of Burgundy. So in Burgundy the famous thing is snails, you know, with the garlic butter. And they brought the shells with it, and I looked at it, oh, shucks, yeah, the snails are in the shell, you know, I see them in the garden sometimes when it’s raining, and where my parents lived, and they are eating it, and they were making pate, and they were cooking with a lot of wine, like they make this dish with red wine, and I don’t know how many bottles they used and everything. So I thought, you know, this is really exciting, the way they cook. So I said, I want to go to France. So I wrote them a letter and they accepted me as a stagiaire, and I started to work there. And then after one year, we get a star in the Guide Michelin, and I looked through the guide, and there were one-star, two-star, and three-star restaurants. So I said, I’m not going home to Austria. I want to work in a three-star restaurant. restaurant and the first restaurant who said yes was Beaumontier, Raymond Thuillier at Beaumontier. And I think that was my luck really because up to then I wasn’t even sure if I was going to stay as a cook. You know, I liked it but I wasn’t really passionate about it. So, but when I saw Thuillier at Beaumontier, he was a chef and owner, the passion he had for the ingredients, they pass me at for cooking. I said, I want to be like these guys. And I still remember, you know, looking on the terrace and Queen Elizabeth had lunch there, or he brought Pablo Picasso into the kitchen. And I said, you know what, this is what I want to do. On top of it, he had three stars and cooked amazing food. You are a guy who, I know the listeners out there are listening today, they’re taking notes. Can you give us the recipe? How many bottles of wine do you have to consume before snails become appealing? You know what? It depends where you grow up, probably. You know, it’s like people eat duck feet or eat the eyes of the fish or eat the brain. So it really depends how you grow up. You know, you look at the Chinese days, everything possible. Wolfgang, you said duck feet? Did you say duck feet? Yeah. Wow. That is… You cook them, you cook, obviously you clean them of all the outer shells really well, and then you cook them in a good sauce until they get really gelatinous. Obviously, before you cook them, you cut off the nails and everything so it looks better. You don’t want dirty nails in there. And then you eat them and say, oh my God, this is really delicious. Okay, okay. Now, you, my understanding is that you started hearing about Cadillacs, Chevrolets, American movies, and then you got inspired to move to the United States. Do you remember that moment when you thought, okay, I’m going to go to the United States of America. You know, as kids in Austria, we watched cowboy movies and we watched these movies, I think, about the car chases in San Francisco and everything. And that was amazing. And then the pastry chef, I was working at McCain’s in Paris, but they’re all at the beginning when I just started there. And he came back from Chicago. Martin had opened an outpost in Chicago and he told me, you know what, you’re young, you should go to America. You’ll make so much more money and it’s amazing and this and that. And he walked me into it and then by accident, a year later, a guy came to me, he’s been in from New York and he needed a chef and we had the same friend. He lived in New York already But he had a friend in Paris who was also my friend and they talked and just you know what I have this young Austrian who wants to go to America let’s talk to him and so they talked to me and I got all excited and came to New York So what was the first job that you landed in New York. So my friend, Jean Desnauliers, who is my friend now, brought me over to be a chef in his restaurant in New York called La Coulee. They all had a few different versions of it. They just opened a new one, I think, on 61st Street and Madison. But at that time, it was 70th Street and Madison. And I walked into the restaurant and I said, this is not the cooking I want to do. They had like this piece, you know, like they had steak, and just simple dishes, you know, good dishes, maybe, but simple. But I cooked in street style restaurants like Bonbonniere or Maxime’s or whatever, in Monaco and so forth. So I said, I don’t want to cook here. And then a friend of mine who owned La Grenouille in New York, Charles Mazon, I went to see him. I knew him from Paris. I went to see him. Maybe he had a job. And he said, you know, I don’t have a job right now, but let me call my friend in Chicago. He called his friend in Chicago and they said, we need a chef in Indianapolis. And I said, Indianapolis, my eyes lit up because I know of the 500 mile race they have there every May. And then I said, you know, I want to go because Indianapolis, I lived in Monaco, you know, I said, Monaco, you have to take out the race. And I said, oh, that would be probably similar to Monaco. So I took the Greyhound bus with the last hundred dollars I had left and took the bus from New York to Indianapolis, which took like, I think a day and a half or something to get there. And I got there and I said, oh, this is Indianapolis. Nothing like Monaco. But I had no more money. And I got the job there as a chef in a French restaurant. Now, who first inspired you, or what first inspired you to become a restaurant owner? When I came from Indianapolis to LA, and I worked in a restaurant called Mamezon. Mamezon at that time, they’d like $20,000 a month in business. I mean, that was in the seventies. And little by little, we went to 50,000. A year later to a hundred thousand a month. That was the total revenue a month. And then we grew and grew and grew. But Patrick, who was the owner then, still didn’t trust me really. We still had to manage our time with Bucks when he wasn’t there and everything. Even I was a top owner too. They didn’t have the money to pay me, so he gave me like 8 or 10% of the restaurant. And you know, at that time it was 8 or 10% of nothing really because we didn’t make any money. Everything was on COD. You know, when I went to the fish market, I bought the lobster shells to make lobster soup. And some famous restaurant here called Scandia. They bought the lobster meat to make lobster cocktail. So we had no money, but I became successful with the restaurant. People loved the food. It became one of the most talked about restaurants. I remember having awesome Welsh come every day for lunch, and I used to sit and talk to him, even while the little introduction from my cookbook. So we became very friendly with a lot of other people too, like Billy Wilder, you know, the house, and the movie director and writer, and with Chuck Lemon and Susan Blachett, and brought new ones. So they all used to come like two, three times a week to our restaurant to my maison. But Patrick didn’t really trust me. And then I said, you know, I have to do my own restaurant. I wanna be in charge. I don’t wanna ask somebody for a raise. I wanna decide what I’m gonna cook, even I did that there anyway. But if I wanted more money, if I wanted to change the plates, anything like that, I had to ask him because he signed the checks. So I said, I want to sign the checks. I want to be the one in charge. And then in 1981, I found this place on Sunset Boulevard. And in 1982, in January 16, I opened Spago. And the rest is history. My friend, how did you first get the money needed to open your restaurant and how did you market Spago? Okay, so I had a cooking school called Macuzine and I had a lot of lawyers, I had dentists and some shrinks and everything, who used to come to my cooking classes because I made it participation. So they’re all working, drinking, and I always had a case of wine there too, so I had like 18 people in my cooking class. And one day I announced that I wanna open my own restaurant, but I don’t have the money. So I drew up a business plan with a lawyer and said, okay, we’re gonna get investors. We need $500,000. And hopefully we have the space on Sunset Pool Bar and hopefully we can raise the money. So we raised the money. I went to the bank and got and I got $60,000 and we put together then I think like $550,000 and then I took the place, signed the lease and built the restaurant. And the funny thing is when I left my maison, Patrick told me, you know, you will be back crying for your job. You know, you had a good job here, but you’re leaving this and that. I said, well, I’m not coming back. And as a matter of fact, so we opened in January, Spago. It was a whole new way of a restaurant, new style of a restaurant with an open kitchen. We had a wood-burning pizza oven, a wood-burning grill. Now it seems like every restaurant has to have that, but at that time it was nothing in L.A. like that or in California. So… We talk about this often, but probably not enough. If you’re going to open up a restaurant or any kind of business at all, you must be remarkable. And Wolfgang Puck just explained to you how his first restaurant, Spago, was different than the other restaurants of its time it had an open kitchen where nobody else did it had an open Wood burning stove and nobody else did it was just a different kind of restaurant and if you’re out there in the in this cluttered world of commerce and capitalism and you want to Get in front of your ideal and likely buyers and be Successful you’re going to have to be remarkable. But one of the byproducts of being remarkable is that nobody ever receives unanimous praise, ever. It doesn’t matter if you’re the President of the United States, if you are the President of the United States, and you are President Obama, nobody receives unanimous praise. Even President Obama, who had a very high favorability score at one point would only be approved by 58% of Americans, 57% of Americans. Even President Ronald Reagan, who was loved by Americans for a while there, his approval rating isn’t going to go north of 60%, 65%. Nobody receives unanimous praise ever. And you cannot afford to die the death of a thousand compromises with your business. You must absolutely fight for that purple cow that’s going to differentiate your business and make you stand out. Because if you are not memorable, you are forgettable in this cluttered world of commerce and capitalism. And now back to our interview with Wolfgang Puck. We opened a restaurant and it became this immediate success, bigger than I ever thought. I wanted to have a little neighborhood restaurant, but it became huge. And I think it was the hardest thing. Every morning I went to the fish market. I went to the farm down in Rancho Santa Fe, the Geno farm, picking up vegetables. So we used really basic food and didn’t make it complicated, but we just used the best ingredients. And I remember I had kept them at Johnny Cotton. You know, we made pizzas at that time. So we made the Smoked Almond Pizza, Duck Sausage Pizza, and things like that. And Johnny, every Friday, used to come and take 10 pizzas home. And I said to him, oh, Johnny, what are you doing with 10 pizzas? You have a party? He said, no, I put them in my freezer. And then when I played cards with my friends, my housekeeper makes me a pizza, and it’s just as good as yours. He said, oh, that’s not possible. And that’s actually how I started my frozen pizza company, because he said he can cook them as well. So it ended up in another business. So Johnny Carson is the inspiration for your frozen pizza collection. Yeah. I want to make sure we don’t skip over some powerful knowledge bombs that Wolfgang Puck is breaking down. One, he talked about every morning he would go out and pick out fresh vegetables and fresh produce and fresh meat. Every day he would pick out the freshest ingredients, every day. And as you listen to this interview, think about how hard Wolfgang Puck was working at the time. You see, success is built as a result of daily diligence that is implemented over the design of a decade or over five years. It’s not about being diligent one time. It’s not about being highly motivated for one day or having that one big idea. It’s about being consistent. The diligence is the difference maker. Diligence means the steady application of effort and the diligent people always win. Now I want to tee up this particular portion of the interview. I want to make sure you’re not skipping over this part. He said that Johnny Carson and others would basically buy pizzas from him and bring them home and put it in their freezers and then reheat them later. And he noticed that people were doing this and then that became a product. You see, products just solve problems for your ideal and likely buyers at a profit. Again, entrepreneurs, they simply entrepreneurs, business people, successful business entrepreneurs. All they’re doing is finding a problem that is being experienced by many of their ideal and likely buyers, and then they solve that problem at a profit. It is so important that you learn the process of finding a need and filling it. Every entrepreneur I’ve ever met who’s super successful. They have this ability to see the problem that the customer is expressing or speaking about that nobody else really sees. They seem to be able to see the problem that Johnny Carson had. Johnny Carson wanted to have Wolfgang Puck’s frozen pizza, but the product didn’t exist yet to fill that market need. And so Wolfgang, after he saw this Johnny Carson routinely buying his pizzas and freezing them, he realized, wow, that’s a problem that the market has and I’m gonna fill it. I’m gonna find a need and fill it. And that right there is why I’m so fired up about Wolfgang Puck. Grab a pen and a pad and let’s get back into the lab as we interview Wolfgang Puck. Your life is a fascinating one and I don’t expect you to do a bunch of research on me, but I did a bunch of research on you. I grew up poor. It sounds like you grew up with very humble beginnings. I don’t know what it’s like to not be on my feet and to work 12 hours a day. I don’t understand. I’ve never had a 9 to 5 job where I take a break. I started my first business when I was 16 in my parents’ basement. I’ve been self-employed for a long time. Can I ask you, how many hours a week were you working when you launched Spago? Well, let me just tell you how I started. When I interviewed somebody for a job, then they asked me how many hours they work. I told them 12 hours is only half a day. If you wanna work half a day, it’s fine. People looked at me and said, what are you talking about? I said, yeah, isn’t 12 hours half a day. They said yeah So I said well you can work half a day or you can work more You know, obviously I paid them and everything But so we or myself or a for sure never counted their hours, you know I can you can you put just for me just for the benefit of our listeners about there’s about half a million people that just want To know what time were you waking up when you were launching Spago? Were you waking up at 2 or 5 in the morning? I used to go at 6.30 in the morning. So I woke up at 6.30 in the morning. I used to go to the fish market downtown, pick up the fish, and then come back to the restaurant, you know, maybe by nine or so, have a coffee, maybe go home, take a shower. I didn’t live too far away. And then went back, talked with Mark Beale and Nancy Silverton who were the chef and the pastry chef, what we’re going to do that day, we looked at the fish I bought and everything and then walked and finished the last customer maybe at midnight, midnight, 1230. And often I used to sit at the end of the night and looking out the window and I said, I don’t know how I’m going to run this restaurant. You know, people want to come. I tell them, come at 1030. They said, okay, we come at 1030. So we were cooking from 6, like the service was from 6 until 12, 1230 at night. And what gang was that? Seven days late? Behind the grill and everything. It was really like crazy. I never thought we’re going to go that, going to be that busy. And I remember the second month we were open, we were positive. We made money. Were you open seven days a week? Yeah. I know you’ve never counted the hours, but I’m going to help you here because I know you don’t want the listeners out there to know. It sounds like you’re working at least 18 hours a day, you know, and seven days a week. So you probably logged 126 hours a week. I think that’s a fair estimate, 120. So that is awesome and that is so encouraging for somebody out there who feels like, man, I’m working so hard because now people look at you and say, wow. But a lot of people don’t want to focus on the grind and the energy and the effort you put in all those years to build this thing. Can you comment on, there was Japanese investors that reached out to you to open a SPAGO in Tokyo. And if I get this story correct, I think they said, we would love to open up a SPAGO in Tokyo. We’d love for you to help us, but if not, we’ll just open it on our own. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. As you begin to scale your business, somebody is going to want to copy your business plan in your systems exactly. It’s going to happen, so just go ahead and emotionally prepare yourself. So what happened is these Japanese people came over, and because we got so much press so far, you know, the whole new sensation and open kitchen, nobody had their white tablecloth restaurant with the kitchen open, and it was like a theater stage and everything. I said, no, forget it. I barely can run one restaurant. How can I run a restaurant in Tokyo so far away? So that came back maybe three or four months later. And with the plans, with the kitchen layout, exactly what I had at that point, as a matter of fact, it was funny because, just like Spago, it was up the hill a little bit from Sunset, they found this thing on the second floor of a little building that you have to go up some steps. And they lined the kitchen up with the pizza oven, with the pasta cooker, with everything, the cold station, exactly like I had it. They took pictures of the furniture, they knew where to get the chairs, where to get everything. If you are an entrepreneur, I’m telling you, trust nobody. You have so many competitors out there, they’re looking just to copy your stuff. They’re going to want to copy all your business cards, your print pieces, your strategies, your processes, every checklist. People are going to want to copy it. So once you begin to nail down your business model and the systems that work, now you want to look at copywriting and trademarking the things you’ve worked so hard to build and test in this marketplace. Again, get out there, try to sell it. Get it in front of the marketplace. Don’t listen to what people say about your product, but look at whether people buy your product. Don’t sit there and run your product idea by a bunch of your good buddies and they all say, yeah, I’m definitely going to buy it. Go out there and actually market the product and see how many people buy the product. And then when people don’t buy the product, ask them what you could do to improve that product or service or restaurant or business. And then once you get that business model refined, that product refined, once you create something that the world likes and the world wants to buy, it is absolutely vital as soon as possible, once you nail it down and before you scale it, that you take the time to trademark and copyright the core aspects of your business model that make it unique. So they basically told me that, you know, and I didn’t copyright the name Spago or anything like that. So they told me, you know, we’re going to open Spago with you or without you. So I said, okay, let’s open it with me. So they gave me one third of the business. And then we went and the year after, in 83 in April, we opened Spago in Tokyo, which was a trip and I took, you know, the pastry chef with me and I took a chef with me and a manager with me and they all stayed there. I stayed there maybe two weeks and it was, it was an experience for me, I must say. You know what, I never thought that after a year I could open my second restaurant so far away. And then six months later in September, I opened a restaurant in Santa Monica called Chinois, which was my version of a Chinese restaurant. And that came like by accident. Somebody owned this little building there. And they said, oh, Joaquin, we want asparagus in Santa Monica, which is like 12 miles from the original asparagus. And I said, no, no, I don’t want to do another asparagus. It’s too boring doing the same thing. And they said, so what do you want to do? I said, I want to do a Chinese restaurant. So then the guy said, okay, whatever you do, I’m sure it will be good. So we opened this Chinese restaurant, but I didn’t know about Chinese food. I never cooked Chinese food. I never cooked in a wok. So I said, okay, I want to do my style of Chinese food. And it really became this sensation. And even yesterday, it was Chinese New Year, we celebrated at Xinhua, a group of Chinese people who came from China and ate the food and the first thing they said is that, you know, we never had Chinese New Year. We never had a menu like that in Beijing. They were from Beijing. They said, we’re going to come now for every Chinese New Year celebration you have. So even the Chinese said, you know what, this is really interesting. Now some local Chinese restaurants didn’t like it because we were packed. You have to reserve two weeks ahead of time and their restaurant was maybe half empty and it was different. And they said, that’s a Caucasian cooking Chinese food. How can that happen? So you have some controversy with it. I’m going to keep harping on this idea because it is so important that somebody out there gets this idea today. Seth Godin, the bestselling author of The Purple Cow, Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, writes, �If you�re remarkable, it�s likely that some people won�t like you. That�s part of the definition of �remarkable.� Nobody gets unanimous praise ever. The best a timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. Wolfgang was out there in the marketplace generating a buzz. He�s out there creating Chinese food, but yet he’s a Caucasian guy. And you know what happened? Certain people got upset with him. And you know what’s going to happen to you? Certain people are going to get upset with you, because if you are remarkable, somebody won’t like it. Just read my iTunes reviews to see. Nobody ever receives unanimous praise. It doesn’t matter how hard I work on this podcast. It doesn’t matter how hard you work on your business. It doesn’t matter what I say on this show or what I don’t say on this show. It doesn’t matter what you do in your business or what you don’t do. Even if you do everything perfectly to the absolute best of your ability, you will receive criticism because the best that Timothy can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. You don’t look Chinese to me. Do you have any Chinese ancestry at all there, Wolfgang? Because you make some incredible Chinese food. You know, I tell everybody I’m half Chinese. My mother was Chinese, half Chinese. That was a joke. No, but I think today, you know, you look in America, you don’t, doesn’t matter if you are from Africa or if you are from England or wherever you are from, you can cook great food. So let’s know love food and as long as love passion. Now we interviewed recently a man by the name of Shep Gordon, a man who I know you know very well. Yes. Could you talk to me about your relationship with Shep and the role he played in helping you to become the celebrity chef that you are today? You know it’s so interesting because when I met, I know Chef Gordon for many years, so he’s a big fan of Chef Gordon. So when Chef was in LA and he produced movies, he was in the record business with Alice Cooper and all these guys. And we became very friendly because he liked food. You know, I became friends with anybody who likes food, like you know, that was awesome. Well, and then I met Chef Gordon. So one time with every Chef, he came to us, we did the whole thing in Hawaii. I think it was on a big island of Hawaii, like a set, you know, like for the bounty of Hawaii. So we had different chefs from all over the country, a little bit like Fort Prudhomme, or Alice Waters, Jonathan Batchman, I don’t know, maybe a few more. And we were like the main thing. So then, when it was over, the next day, we were all sitting there for lunch, and I had my step-son, Pustri, or Mitch Holden, make lunch for us. And then they gave us a bill. You know, I was full-eyed because we had some salad, but we actually went and made the food. And then they gave us the bill, and he said, What is wrong with this picture here? You guys work here? He said, did they pay you? I said, no. They gave us a free room and paid for the trip. He said, yeah, but they talked to every customer. They not even talked to you. So he said, you guys have an agent? I said, no. And he said, maybe we have to get a and plan it better. So I called my friends, I called Paul and Alice and Emeril and Jonathan and I don’t know how many, there are maybe eight or 10 chefs, Mark Miller and Larry Pagione. And so then we all sat together in a restaurant in San Francisco and decided we should become our agent. Now, at that time, I started to get really busy already. So what a chef really did a lot, and for Emeril, for Dean Faring. I got so busy already because I owned all these restaurants already by then. You know, I did consulting for an airline. I did consulting for the mansion in Dallas, for the Hannah Ranch in Maui, for the Remington in Houston. So I didn’t need really a chef to do work for me because I couldn’t go and cook in New Orleans or in Dallas or whatever and get $5,000 a day. So at that time for us was a lot of money. But he helped a lot all these other guys who did not have TV experience. Like I did the Johnny Carpenter show and David Letterman show and Good Morning America from 86 on. So I was already on TV at that time. There were no chef really was on TV as much as I was. But you know, he helped a lot of other chefs and he did a great job with them and we are still great friends. Now, did he influence my career? He did. Why? And what was really positive, he said, don’t sell yourself cheap, so charge enough money. Now your food, your name, your brand is synonymous with cuisine, with gourmet, with celebrity chef. Why have you decided to put your name on all of your products? A lot of people pull back from that. Why have you decided to put your name on all of the products? You know, curiosity. I am very curious about doing all the franchise. So in the 80s, a friend of mine told me, OK, we don’t have any good soups there. You know, you have Campbell’s soup and Progreso, but they are not really quality. Why don’t you devise recipes and make soup? So we went then and made a really delicious soup just like we made it in the restaurant. Now we had to put it in a can too, but at least the ingredients were good. Like at that time, when you taste that, like my fudge onion soup and their fudge onion soup of the other companies, it was like day and night. So that became pretty successful too then. So I was always interested in different things. So then I remember Lou Wasserman came up to me and said that they built a universal city walk. And so it’s both saying, you know, why you don’t build this cargo up there? You know, we really need a restaurant. I said, you know, CityWalk is a touristy idea. People don’t want to spend that money on that much time. They come and visit Universal Film Studios. So that’s when I started the first cafe. And now we have cafes like that in airports around the world and in Disney World and places like that. So I think for me, something new, I really love it. And then years later, in the 90s, I was friendly with George Foreman. And George Foreman and a friend of mine made up this girl, the Foreman girl, which became a sensation, brutally successful. And then the guy who worked with George told me and said, well Ken, why you don’t do something like that? I said, well, okay. You know, and then we started to make packs and bags. We tried to sell them on QVC. I didn’t know how to sell them or what I want. I think we did a way to expensive and whatever. So then we sold them off at HSN. And then I talked to the people at HSN and we made it cheaper gross stuff, but still good quality, but not as expensive, not as thick, the iron and everything. So then that became a really good business all of a sudden. So I stayed with it and I’m still there for over 20 years now. So why do I do it? Sometimes I ask myself, why do all that stuff? And like two years ago, there was a journal with an article about me. And then they asked me, so what can you do all these things? And what is your dream? What’s your thinking of? And I said, my dream would be to go to Harvard. I never went to high school. I never went to college or anything. Sure enough, a few days later, the Dean of Harvard Business School calls and says, well, Ken, I have the perfect thing for you. It’s called OPM, owner, president, management. It’s about three months long, not in one course, it’s three times a month. You should try to do that if you really want to go, if that is really your dream. So what did I do? I enrolled at Harvard, so I have one more month to go. So in March, end of March, I’m going to graduate. Well, pre-congratulations. That’s exciting, my friend. I said, who would have known that I come from this little village in Austria, you know, where the school had two rooms only, two classrooms, and now I’m gonna, I went to Harvard, you know, it’s like, to me, it is like the dream sometimes, and I think, is it really true? You know, it’s funny, but what it is really is my curiosity, I think. I’m interested in so many different things. I’m serious, so many different things. So that’s why I do so many things. And sometimes, Galila, my wife, tells me, when you’re going to rest, when you’re going to be, you’re not so young anymore, you’re saying, you’re not that young anymore. Why don’t you just relax and don’t do all that stuff? I say, well, but I like it. My friends, you see, Wolfgang Puck isn’t in a rush to retire because he loves what he does. And I’ll never forget years ago I was reading a book called Life and Death, which is written by Russell Simmons. And Russell Simmons is the legendary founder, the legendary co-founder of a company called Death Jam. They introduced the world to the Beastie Boys, to LL Cool J, to Jay-Z, and other massive hip-hop artists. He essentially is known as the father of hip-hop. He also launched the Def Comedy Jam and he was the founder of the Fat Farm clothing and apparel line. But he says, the goal is to be able to live your life the way that Michael Jordan played basketball or Marvin Gaye sang a song. To be able to feel the way you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to feel that way all the time. What would it be like if you could build a business that would allow you the time, freedom, and financial freedom to do whatever you wanted to do on a daily basis? To pursue your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun. What would it be like if you could do that? Because once you get to a place in life where every day is a perfect day that has been perfectly designed by you, it is so exciting. Yeah, there will be some interruptions and a few frustrations along the way, but that is infinitely exciting for me. I can honestly tell you that’s what I love about doing this show is because I know that every time I interview these guests, this is what the Lord wants me to do. I’m doing what I’m called to do. I’m helping great people like you and I know that you’re going to find that business model that’s going to create that time and financial freedom for you as well. Now back to our interview with Wolfgang Puck. I am 69. Well you look like you’re probably you know 34. If I had to guess you probably know that organic stuff your mom taught you about it as a kid. That’s probably what’s going on right there. I want to ask you this because there are so many listeners that are just infinitely curious about this. How do you organize the first four hours of your day and what time do you typically wake up? So I get up like at six in the morning. I wake up my son Oliver, and then, you know, I read the paper a little bit, I wake him up, and then we have the trainer who comes, and he exercises with me in the morning, or sometimes he doesn’t exercise, when he doesn’t have to go to school or whatever, but at school he goes to his five minutes away, so it makes it really easy. So then after that, you know, I take his shower, get ready, and then I look what are my appointments for today, which I have to keep, you know? So, and then by nine o’clock, I leave the house, and I go out to Spago, or to the Bel Air Hotel, or to Casa de la Revolución, look what’s going on there. Now, on Wednesdays, I might go in the morning early, like right after the exercise is 7.30, I go to the farmer’s market and set the monitor. Sometimes I go downtown also to the fish market still. I don’t have to, but I like it. So, and then at 12 o’clock, generally I go to Spago because we have lunch, or the Bella Hotel, we have lunch. But then two hours there, then I come here to my office and look through all the things I have to do and plan new restaurants and do all that stuff and then at six at six o’clock And sometimes at four or thirty I go and play tennis for an hour I mean if I especially find stressed about something tennis is good because I can hit the ball as hard as I want to I just talk back Yeah, so then I go to that and then around 637 I have dinner with my wife, my two boys, Alexander Oliver and right now Byron also, who is, you know, chef and the rest of us too. And then I go back to the restaurant maybe for a few hours. Like last night, I was down at Chihuahua for Chinese New Year and I sat with the Queen and Paltrow for a while and Dr. Alatrash, who is the doctor for the Rams, and talked about the Super Bowl, and walked to the kitchen and talked to Chef Reynier for a while. And then at 11 o’clock I got off home. So you went home at 11 o’clock last night? Yeah. Now, you are a guy who, you’re involved in a lot of things. You’ve got your own brands of food, you have books you’ve written, you have restaurants, you’re running. How many different businesses, and maybe you don’t even know the exact answer, but how many different businesses are you involved in right now, or different locations? How many different businesses? Okay, to make it simpler for you, we have really three divisions in our business. I have three divisions in my business. One is called fine dining. You know, we have all the restaurants, we have 27 restaurants around the world. We are in LA, Las Vegas, Dallas, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Detroit, Washington, Orlando, London, Istanbul, Singapore, Bahrain, Qatar, and so forth. Maui. So we have 27 of them. I am two more in the building process. One in Washington, D.C. a cup. And then one in Los Angeles here at the pantry hotel. They’re going to run the whole food service. So we’re working on that right now. And then the most exciting part is going to be, but it’s a few years away, we are working with Frank Gehry to open a restaurant on the beach here in L.A. So that’s going to be a big project. And, you know, but it’s a few years away. Now, I want to ask you about, two final questions for you. You have this restaurant in New York that you’ve launched. Tell us about this newest venture and what it’s like and why all the listeners should go check it out. Yeah, you know what? Cutting in New York at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown is really a jewel in a way, you know. It is a steak restaurant, a steakhouse restaurant, but with a lot of different options. If you’re a vegan, you can go there and have the most exciting vegan meal. Like I was there and I had the risotto with celery and black truffle. I said, you know what? I don’t need meat if I have a dish like that. But you also have turbo, which is my favorite fish. We also have black bass, which is great, and lobster. And then we have meats from all over a little bit, but also a lot of local ingredients. You know, we use local beef and local lamb from New York state, actually. And from Pennsylvania, we get the duck and chicken. So it’s really locally oriented. And it was designed by Jacques Garcia, who is really an amazing designer. So you can come to the bar and have little snacks at the bar from the mini burgers to a steak tartare or some Asian-influenced dishes. And like we all do have little biscuits, like a Southern-esque biscuits with caviar and smoked salmon. So you can have that all you go to the restaurant. And then you have great appetizers, great raw fish dishes and things like that, salads. And then if you love steak, like one of my favorite one is the double New York steak cooked on the bone. And I cook it like medium rare and cook the bone really well done. So it gets really hot inside too. And then just keep it simple, you know, put a little sea salt on top and maybe a little salt from my French fries because I love French fries and onion rings. And then for dessert, I love pies. You know, one of the great legends in America is all these different pies. This is a pecan pie or a key lime pie or a banana chip pie or a raspberry or blackberry pie or blueberry pie. So I’m bringing this whole new idea of modernizing and putting it there so people can have a great steak and maybe a blueberry pie with some blueberry icing for the syrup or maybe a pecan pie. So for me, it’s really exciting also to reinvent the old school dishes and make them new again. Wolfgang, my final- I think cut, if you go to cut, I think you can come to the bar, just hang out at the bar, have a drink and have some bar snacks, but really good, interesting one. Like right now we have a great sourdough right there and we make a grilled cheese sandwich with black truffles. And you know what? People say, I’m just going to have a dinner with that, have a glass or two glasses of red wine and have that for dinner. You know, the grilled cheese sandwich with black truffles or people don’t want truffles, we make it without the truffles. But I think it’s really simple and really, really tasty. Now for the listeners out there that are taking notes, where is this located again? You said it’s in the Four Seasons? In the Four Seasons Hotel downtown on Kirk Street. Okay, now my final question for you, listeners out there who won’t get a chance to talk to you one-on-one, if you’re sitting down there with a young entrepreneur today and they’re asking you for Wolfgang, what’s the one piece of advice? What’s the one, if you could give me just one piece of the golden keys to the universe. Talk to me, what’s the advice you would give all the entrepreneurs out there? Well, I really believe, you know, if you are passionate about whatever you do, if it’s in the food business, in the tech business, I think you have to follow your dreams and don’t take no for an answer. There are so many naysayers out there who said you won’t be successful. And like when I told people, you know, 38 years ago that I’m going to make pizza, they said Wolfgang, you’re crazy. Nobody’s going to come to your restaurant and eat pizza. You know, and then we invented a new style of pizza and it became all the rage. And then, you know, it’s bound up hundreds of restaurants that make different pizzas. So don’t take no for an answer, but also be patient. You know, a lot of people think success is overnight. Success is like walking up steps into a big building. You know, it’s one step at a time. And I think that’s really important. But I tell all the young chefs, especially, to be patient, go to work and go to a restaurant, make the mistakes there, learn there, and then if you’re ready, you say, okay, I know cooking is an important part of the restaurant business, but you have to manage a lot of people. You won’t have to make money because if not, you won’t stay in business. So it’s a lot of components to run a restaurant or any business. Wolfgang, it is an honor to have you on the show. Hopefully, this is not the worst interview you’ve ever been on. I thank you so much, my friend. Never, never, never. You know what? I really think, for me, if I can inspire some young people and tell them, you know what, I started with nothing. I had not a penny left when I went to Indianapolis. I had to stay in a motel I couldn’t check out. I had no money to pay for it. But I think at the end of the day, if you work hard and you think for yourself 12 hours is only half a day, I guarantee you if you’re patient, you have passion, you will be successful. Wolfgang, thank you so much and I hope you have a great rest of your evening. Thank you. I know I’m getting ready for the Oscars almost. Oh wow. All right. Will you take care, sir? Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. All right, so if you’ve been listening to today’s show, there’s a lot you can unpack. There’s a lot of specific steps that Wolfgang taught, but I just want to kind of recap a few of the knowledge bombs that I think that every listener out there should be very aware of. One, Wolfgang Puck was willing to work seven days a week to make his dreams happen. I’m not saying you should work seven days a week, but I think you should ask the question to yourself rhetorically, how many hours per week am I actually willing to work to turn my goals and dreams into reality? Because Wolfgang Puck was willing to work seven days a week. Maybe you want to work five days a week or six days a week, but you have to be intellectually honest about what you’re asking for. If you want to be great, you’ve got to be willing to invest great amounts of hours. If you want to be average, you’ve got to put in an average amount of hours. That’s just what’s required to be successful. Second teaching point. Wolfgang Puck talked about this. He said that he went out there and borrowed, he raised money, he raised over half a million dollars of investment capital to start his first restaurant, after he’d been working for years for other people. I would ask you this, what’s your risk tolerance? Are you willing to raise a half million dollars to start something you believe in, or maybe $10,000 or $20,000 or $100,000? But you’ve got to be very self-aware about your risk tolerance and how much money you’re willing to bet on your big idea. Knowledge bomb number three, action item number three that I heard during today’s show is Wolfgang created a Purple Cow. When Wolfgang created his first restaurant, Spago, he created a business that was very different from any other business. It was the only restaurant that he knew of with an open kitchen and a wood-fired oven. It was the first restaurant that did a lot of things differently than everybody else, and that’s why he stood out. out when he started his first Asian restaurant. He was a Caucasian guy starting an Asian restaurant. Again, these are purple cows. These are remarkable ideas. And that is why his businesses stood out in the cluttered world of commerce and capitalism. So I want you to ask yourself today, what are your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? What are your goals for your faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship and fun? And what are you willing to give up in order to achieve those goals? And if you enjoyed today’s show, I would encourage you to share today’s show with a friend or a family member. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. And therefore we end each and every show with a boom because we believe that the big overwhelming optimistic momentum that Wolfgang Puck brought to his business on a daily basis is what you need to succeed. And so without any further ado, three, two, one, boom! I had on my original website, I had maybe one or two testimonial videos, but with And with your suggestion, we’ve got dozens and dozens on there now. And that just shows credibility of all the great things that we’ve done. Not to boast my, toot my own horn and all that, but we are the number one college planner in Arizona, if not the West Coast. through the search engine optimization, the ad role and the video proof, all of those things are instrumental in helping our growth double and even triple. This last month, we’ve had the most incredible month that we’ve had, and that was August. And now September 2024, we’re on track to doing the same revenue that we did last month, but probably even more than August. And that just trend seems to continue. Well, folks, on today’s show, we’re interviewing somebody who provides a solution that I believe most of the people watching this show, you’ll probably need at some point. This guy helps kids to earn more scholarship money. He also happens to be a long-time client. JD, welcome on to the Thriving Time Show. How are you, sir? I am doing fantastic, Mr. Clay. How are you? Brother, I’m excited to have you on the show. And so I’ve got a plethora of questions for you. First off, how do we properly pronounce your last name? Wysock. JD Wysock. How do you spell that for people out there? We’ve got a lot of academics watching this show. They’re right now going, I don’t know how to spell that. Every other letter is silent. So it’s W-Y, C as in cat, Z as in zebra, A-L-E-K, Wyzolic. Sounds just like a spell. Now how did you originally hear about us there, sir? I went to one of your Awakening tours in Phoenix, Arizona, and I’m like, I kind of like and what intrigued me was that General Flynn and Eric Trump and some of the other guest speakers that you had there. And then and then like any stalker, I just started looking you up and. Found out you do all this other stuff on the side. You know, what’s interesting is what’s interesting is that, you know, whenever we do podcasts and broadcasts, I put these podcasts and broadcasts out, out to kind of like messages in a bottle to help people. And I never know who we’re going to help. And on part two of today’s show, we have a listener that claims he’s listened to our show for nine years before he reached out and asked for help. And now we’ve helped him triple the size of his business in 12 months, but he had been listening for nine years. And so I was just curious, what was kind of your tipping point where you thought, you know what, I’m going to go to Thrivetimeshow.com and schedule a free consultation? Well, I’ve been working with – I started the business in August of 2007. And when I launched the business, I had several coaches that helped me out with that. And eventually I just kind of grew out of their need. And probably in the last two or three years, I started figuring out, you know what, I probably need to get some additional coaching from some other different angle. And that’s how I kind of stumbled on you. I did some research on what you did and attended one of your business conferences and decided, you know what, this is the right move. And I started, well, probably about a year or so ago. Now, from a growth perspective, one of the things that I’ve been tracking on your particular, I call it a file or account or project or your business, is you guys have azcollegeplanning.com, azcollegeplanning.com. You have a lot of value that you offer that was kind of hidden a little bit. It’s like a lot of value, and it makes a lot of sense to hire you if people get it. But if they don’t get it, it makes zero sense to hire you. So could you talk about some of the things that we’ve been able to work with you on to get that value value more top of mind for your potential ideal and likely buyers? Yeah, well if you’re interested in learning how to not go broke paying for college, then go to azcollegeplanning.com and fill out one of the contact forms and I’ll reach out to you and schedule a consultation and see how we can help you. And what I figured out, I’m getting back to you in a roundabout way. What I figured out is that if there’s an upward trend in any category that’s ranked in the ranking system, the ranking system is extremely important to colleges. And you’ve probably seen a dozen different publications, this college is ranked number one in this category, this college is ranked number 12 in this category, et cetera. If there’s any category that has an upward trend in the ranking system, that attracts attention and more attention means more application and more application fees. So one of the things that we do is we show students and parents how to properly market themselves to the colleges so that college says, yes, we need you, we want you. And that’s kind of what you’re doing in a business sense is showing businesses how to properly market themselves to gain clients and customers. And one of the areas that really helped is, I had always been using scripts, and with you and your team, we’ve recrafted the scripts to be even more powerful. And from that, we also did some optimization on the website, and now I’m getting at least three or four leads every week, which is great because, yeah, it’s just great. Now I’m pulling this up because I want people to look at your website. One of the things about a website, if you own a business, I want you to think about this. It has a purpose. Like, what’s the function of it? So let’s do an example. Let me give you an extreme example, a teaching moment for somebody out there. Paul Graham, okay? Paul Graham is a person that nobody really knows about, hardly, but he’s one of the most successful people on the planet. You say, who? Paul Graham. Somebody out there right now, you’re watching this, you’re going, who is that? This is the guy credited to being like, as being one of the founders of the online shopping cart. Okay, so it was his idea, ViaWeb, which was sold to Yahoo store and became the first online shopping platform It is he who started Airbnb Dropbox Reddit he’s now credited. This is Paul Graham So what’s this who’s this guy Paul Graham with having the most number of successful startups? known to man 1300 of them including stripe what yes, I mean this guy including reddit including the who Stripe. What? Yes. I mean, this guy, including Reddit, including who? Paul Graham. You say, well, what’s his website? Look at this website. This is his website. People say, why won’t he update his website? Who built that website? What’s wrong with this guy? Who built this website? And he’s explained this during multiple interviews, that his website does not exist for me or for anybody out there that thinks he should update it. It exists for Paul Graham. And Paul Graham made his website so he could write his essays. So he got his website, everything he knows, he writes it out in an essay form and he puts it on the internet and he sees no need in updating it. This is the same guy, folks, who’s behind Airbnb. Look at Airbnb. Looks like a beautiful website, state-of-the-art website, Airbnb. Wow, an incredible website. Look at Airbnb. Dropbox. Someone says Dropbox. Look at Dropbox. Look at Airbnb. These are sites. Sorry, it’s loading slow here, folks. Dropbox, Reddit. These are big companies, huge companies, and these companies have beautiful sites. I’m not sure why this is loading slow here, but he doesn’t feel the need to update his own website. And someone says, well, why not? Because he understands the function of his website. And the function of his website is so that he can write essays for his own personal use. And I just want to get your thoughts on this for a second. Your website exists to generate leads. Somebody out there who’s trying to pay for their kid’s college without going broke, that’s what you do. And so we wanted to pack your website with value so that more and more people would reach out to you, not just visit the site, but that people would actually fill out the form. And I think I heard you say you’re having, you know, between two and four leads a week now from Google. Can you talk about some of the things that we’ve helped you to do that have helped to increase the lead volume on your website? Besides the search optimization, you and your team rebuilt the entire website. I think my original website looked a little bit like Paul Graham’s Yeah, it was a you know dated from 2007 so Thank you for doing that and the graphics just all pop and all that stuff the Search optimization is really one of the big Tickets there and then also add roll add roll was huge by adding that in there. I didn’t have that in my previous website. So I’m getting a lot more clickbacks because of AdRoll. Now, AdRoll is a tool that follows people around on the internet. So if you’re watching this show and you have a kid, you want your kid to go to college, you go to the website azcollegeplanting.com. And then AdRoll, the ads keep following people around. So when they go to different websites, they keep seeing advertisements from your business. That’s a powerful tool. Also on your website, we wanted to make sure we gathered objective reviews from real customers. You have real customers that like you, we want to gather those objective reviews, put those front and center. Also you offer a free consultation and a free workshop, which is powerful for people that are thinking about hiring you. Very few people in your space offer a free consultation or a free workshop, and you do. And making that button, those buttons prominent there, the red buttons on the site, talk to us about that. When people reach out to you now, how often is it, is somebody reaching out to you because they’re wanting the free consultation or because they want the free workshop? I mean, how often is that the no-brainer that pulls people in? That’s 95% of the time. And anyone who is reaching out to me who is a prospect, they’re either asking for information about the free workshops that I host. And those free workshops are typically held at least once a month. They’re also asking about the free consultation. And in the free consultation, we talk about their specific needs and come up with a plan on how to save them tens of thousands of dollars off the cost of college. If we look at in-state costs, we’re looking at about $35,000 a year. If we’re looking at private colleges, we’re looking at like $90,000 a year. And what my goal is, is to help these students get into some really great colleges and get some amazing scholarship packages at colleges that they want to attend and make it less expensive for them to go to an out-of-state private college than it would be for them to go to an in-state college. And that’s all done through azcollegeplan.com. You know, one thing again that we helped you do that I’m gonna pull, I’ve got some notes here of some stuff, is you had so many success stories. There’s so many people that you have worked with over the years to help them. And, you know, when I remember doing our 13-point assessment with you, I could immediately visualize the success we were going to have. Because you weren’t a charlatan, and you actually offer people real results. And so I was thinking to myself, we’ve got to get these testimonials and these success stories documented on the website. We’ve got to create success posters and video testimonials. And we have to gather real proof from real clients about the real results that you really did generate. And I say the word real a lot because there’s, in a world of shamockery and a world of bogusness and a world of jackassery, there’s a lot of people that have bogus offers, bogus claims, bogus solutions, just bogusness. But you have so many success stories. Can you talk to us about how adding those success stories to the site has helped you to increase your growth and the amount of success that you’ve been able to have as a business? Those are all real videos. And it was very simple to ask, can you make a one-minute video on how we helped you? And 100% of them all said, yes, I would love to do that. And 100% of them have all sent me referrals. So we’re doing some really great things for those families, and we want to do some really great things for your families as well. That was all done through your suggestion. I had on my original website, I had maybe one or two testimonial videos, but with your suggestion, we’ve got dozens and dozens on there now and that just shows credibility of all the great things that we’ve done. Not to boast my, toot my own horn and all that, but we are the number one college planner in Arizona, if not the West Coast. So and that’s all due through the search engine optimization, the ad roll and the video proof, all of those things are instrumental in helping our growth double and even triple. This last month, we’ve had the most incredible month that we’ve had, and that was August. And now September 2024, we’re on track to doing the same revenue that we did last month, but probably even more than August. And that just trend seems to continue. So if you had to describe in kind of two sentences or less, the impact that having somebody coach you down a proven path has made on your business, how would you maybe describe that? I would describe that as freedom and income. So what do you say to somebody who’s, you know, I offer free consultations as well as you, so what do you say to somebody who’s, you know, they’re going to thrive timeshow.com and they’re going, wow, you know, do I schedule a free consultation? Because most people, they go to the testimonials button and they look at thousands of testimonials, which I’ve gathered methodically since 2005. So they look at it and they go, wow, you guys have so many success stories. Okay. But what would you say to somebody who’s on the fence about scheduling a free 13-point consultation with myself? That’s where I started. I scheduled that 13-point consultation because I wanted to know more. And if you want to know more, the only way to know more is by scheduling that consultation. And as I learn more about you from that consultation, as I learn more about you by checking out all the different things that you’ve done online and watching some of the other video testimonials that you have on your website. I’m like, yeah, this is a positive move. And from there, decided to jump on board, and it’s been a great thing. So let’s talk about your business for a second. Final question I have here for you. You know, people out there are busy listeners. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time, and I don’t want to waste your time. So for somebody who goes to azcollegeplanning.com, kind of explain to us how your business model works and how you make money. When people go to azcollegeplanning.com, how do you make money? How does the customer win? Just kind of explain to us the win-win so people can at least conceptually understand what you do for people. So in the free consultation, and please go to the website azcollegeplanning.com, click on the contact form there, and I will reach out to you to schedule that free consultation. And that free consultation, I’m going to ask you and your students some questions. And then from there, we’re going to come up with a game plan. And when I do talk with you about the free consultation, I will be very, very frank with you and say, yes, I can help you, or no, I can’t help you. If I cannot help you, I’ll point you in the right direction and say, this is what you need to do. Go and do these things. If I say, yes, I can help you, I already know that if your student follows my proven plan and proven path, I’ve got a roadmap. Follow this roadmap. And if your student does that, your student is going to receive at least $35,000 in scholarships. Wow and again folks that’s azcollegeplanning.com. JT I really appreciate you joining us, sharing with us about your business, clarifying how to pronounce and spell your name. Thank you so much sir and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you Clay. Bye-bye. JT do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Rosalim, baby! Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. 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. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rustic cuff.com has spoken at the two day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson. A man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. 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 gonna blow your mind Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the thrive time show today interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies Watch those testimonials today at thrive timeshow.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? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope. Did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it, and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? You. I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia Get those tickets today at thrive times show calm again. That’s thrive time show dot-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 systems 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, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you 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, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And of our special guest today, a definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts as a Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? What just- Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I wanna 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, but I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changing a life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York. Acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.