Clay Clark | Business Conference | How to Turn Rejection Into Everyday Greatness w/ Dr. Stolz + “I Just Don’t Think I Could Take That Kind of Rejection.” – Marty McFly + Join Tebow At Clay Clark’s Dec 5-6 Business Workshop

Audio Transcription

I mean, what if they say I’m no good? What if they say, get out of here, kid, you got no future. I mean, I just don’t think I can take that kind of rejection. What if she said no? I don’t know if I can take that kind of a rejection. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay! Clay Clark! Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens, I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats his chickens his dogs So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen right his entire life clay Clark his entire life is is marketing or thousand percent From February to February now I can better that okay clay. I don’t think you know this I don’t think you know this I’m pinching myself, and if I cry forgive me in the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February. And the last two and a half days. So, and the phone’s blowing up. Everything’s just blowing up. Well, you’re right. It is like a rocket ship. So we’re pinching ourselves, actually. I learned at the Academy, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. And you chose to go somewhere you said, man, I can go and I can get better. I can go and I can learn. I can go and I can maybe go from where I’m at to where I want to go. important things that you will ever do or not do in your life is to value and seek wise counsel. To be coached hard means you have to be willing to be uncomfortable. 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 US 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, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re here We took flight, started from the bottom And now we’re at the top, teaching you the systems To give what we got, Colton Dixon’s on the hooks I break down the books, she’s bringing some wisdom And the good looks, as the father of five That’s why I’m alive, so if you see my wife in camps Please tell her hi, it’s the CNC up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get there. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Thrivetime Show on your radio and podcast download. My name is Clay Tiberius Clark. I’m the father of five human kids. My partner, Dr. Robert Zellner, is the father of three human kids. Each child was created from different women. It’s not weird. It’s not weird. And actually, I have one grandchild and two on the way. In my face. You’ve won up to me. In your face. But between the two of us, we built 13 multimillion dollar businesses. And it’s because we seek out the mentorship and the guidance from proven experts. And on today’s show, I could not be more excited than to interview Dr. Paul G. Stoltz. He’s an expert in the area of resilience and a New York Times best-selling author. His newest book is called Grit, the new science of what it takes to persevere, flourish, and succeed. Throughout Paul’s career, he has guest lectured at such universities as Cornell, Carnegie Cornell. Oh my. Carnegie Mellon. See these are all schools that rejected. And Harvard Business School. Paul, welcome on to the show. How are you sir? I’m fabulous. It’s really great to join both of you and thank you for having me be part of the mix. Now Paul, for our listeners out there that are really not as familiar with your formal education and background, can you share with us a little bit about your experience at the University of Minnesota and what you studied. You know, I had the most amazing experience there because I had a rogue advisor who knew I was kind of different. I wasn’t a traditional academic. So he let me do what we now call a multidisciplinary PhD. And so what I did is I really wanted to research what is it that’s sort of at the epicenter of human endeavor. And that started, you know, way earlier with my undergraduate, and I’ll tell you that story. But anyway, I studied in the fields of organizational communication, business, training and development, learning, psychology, neuroscience, and a bunch of other things that we put together under the auspices of one unified degree. And that was just skull exploding for me. Okay, before we go any farther, I just, is he too classy for us? I mean, do we… He’s too classy. We gotta pump the brakes. I mean, is this… We need to cut it short. Can we bite off more than we can swallow? Maybe we can re-interview him at a dive bar. There we go. I don’t know. You know what, guys? Just give it another five minutes, then you’ll be sure that’s not the case. Okay, all right, good. All right, all right. There you go. Now, so, when you went to college, I mean, it seemed like you had this yearning to figure out what made people successful. You know, life is all about the question, isn’t it? And when I was 19 years old, I came up to my advisor my undergraduate days, the University of California, and I had this really cool guy. So I kind of got in his grill and I said, Hey, how do we know who wins? And he looked at me and he goes, What do you mean? At what? And I said, okay, uh-huh, who fails and who prevails? And then he did the smartest thing ever, changed my life. He pointed at me and he said, that’s your first research project. So I went to this strange place called the library and I started to kind of dig in and I thought I was so smug, I thought I was going to bang this out in an afternoon. Here I am 39 years later still excavating through all these different sciences on that question. You actually went as far as to coin the phrase the adversity quotient in 1997. Now just to be clear I graduated from Cocado High School, Dassel Cocado High School, west of Minneapolis in 1999. So you coined this phrase before I really knew it was going on. I’d love for you to share with the listeners your path to becoming the expert in the area of resilience. And I’d love for you to share about your, you know, just the education and the research you put into this, because you are, man, if you look up the adversity quotient, whether it’s Wikipedia, Webster, you’re the guy who’s known as being the guy who coined the phrase, the adversity quotient. Tell us about this. You know, what happened was, and I want everything I say to be of keen relevance to your listeners. So, you know, we all have these moments where inquiry and questions drive everything. And for me, you know, the question I was looking at, the good news for me is I became theoretically agnostic, which meant I wasn’t married to just psychology because psychology at the time was definitely not answering the question. So I started to go scientifically far afield. And you know, the best thing you could do sometimes is have the courage to ask ignorant questions. So if you go to the head of neuroscience at Harvard and ask a question, you’re going to learn things for sure. And I did this all over the world and we did this with 21 different scientific disciplines. So here’s the moment of truth. The day came, we’re in a 30 foot by 20 foot room, we dumped out all the crates of research and put them in piles. This was actually in 1990. And put them in piles and said what’s the unifying concept. First we had to put a sheet on top that kind of described that stack, blah, blah, blah, on and on. This took days. Then we said what is the single unifying thing that puts all these studies together, which is now 3,500 studies? And the answer was one thing, adversity. And we said, okay, and this is like 15 years, what, before emotional intelligence came out. So I said, gosh, you know, maybe if we have this thing called an IQ, which we know is not terribly predictive of much in life, what if there were something called an AQ, an adversity quotient where you actually could measure and gosh, what if you could actually measurably improve how people respond to the tough stuff, big and small, all of it. And so we started going at it and then you fast forward, I mean just a very short time, we started to create 1.0, then 1.1, then 1.2, what’s now called the ACUE profile, which is the instrument we’ve used to measure this, more than a million people around the world, in 137 countries and all different levels of life. And we had our first 5,000 data sets. And I did the dumbest but most courageous thing. I gave it to the head of statistical research at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, they do those little things called like the college entrance exams. And I said, it’s like handing your child and saying, is this okay? And so this person came back on there, forget, she slammed this data on my desk. She had these big thick glasses and she said, do you have any idea what you have here? And I want to know what you’re going to do with this. And the point was, at that point, she said in many ways, this was more robust than any college entrance exam. And this was like version 1.3. So we said, wow, is this a tattoo? Like, is AQ something that just sticks with you, kind of like we thought IQ did? Or is it something we could measurably improve permanently, rewire and improve? So that became our quest. And that set us on our path. And I formed peak learning my my global company around this 32 years ago. Paul, you’ve written that for organizations, leaders and individuals, a queue is the bedrock of human endeavor, enhanced a queue for real gains and productivity, capacity, performance, innovation, morale, and more. I would love for you to share about the adversity quotient and the more than 1,500 studies and the more than 500,000 people worldwide that have gone into developing this theory, maybe even a million now. I mean, talk to me about this. I mean, the research that you’ve put into this. It’s getting, you’ve been doing this now, did you say 37 years? At 39, the research, I’ve had the company I’ve formed for 32 years. And Touchwood as an entrepreneur, which is in my blood, we’ve grown Peak for 32 straight years. And just by doing this good work in the world and trying to enrich people’s lives this way. So you know, AQ is incredibly potent. I have to tell you, I’m just obsessed with this because what I’m interested in is what’s underneath what’s underneath. So when people say you’ve got to enhance performance, you’ve got to grow engagement, you’ve got to improve innovation, you’ve got to enhance energy or health or quality of life or relationships or optimism or anything that people are talking about, I want to know what undergirds that? What’s the deep bedrock of that where you can’t literally go any deeper? So you know what one of my favorite moments is? I just love this moment because we’ve done this in collaboration with Harvard Business School. We’ve done this in collaboration with MIT’s entrepreneurship program where they have me teach this there, Carnegie Mellon’s Global Leaders program, NCI, all these different schools that make us better and better and better. And my favorite moment is when we do this with companies and entrepreneurs around the world, is there’s this moment, imagine the most cynical, jaded people you could ever meet, who’s heard it all been through it all arms folded across their chest like, yeah, right. And when you serve up the science of a queue, and then I ask them this question. Of all the factors that influence your happiness, well being and success, or I asked of all the factors, the human factors that drive your business success, which ones are in some way affected by your AQ. And then there’s this brilliant pause, and then you hear this kind of grumble in the room like, well, all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them. And I say, pardon me? And they go, all of them. I say, so you’re saying that if you could focus on and master one thing that could fortify and enhance everything else, this is it? And they go, well, yeah. I say, okay, now here’s my next question. Can you think of anything else you could focus on and grow that would have that kind of impact? And usually I get blank stares. So I love that moment because what that says to me, and I haven’t given up, guys, I’m still working on it, but if we excavate down, We’ve got some real bedrock here. If we can measurably strengthen how we respond to and deal with the tough stuff It affects everything we care about You know, dr. Zellner My partner here. He is he when is your birthday? January. Oh, yes. No yours is in January mines, October 3rd. So October 3rd when you on October 3rd Thank you, buddy. How old were you turn on October 3rd, Dr. Z? 54. Okay, so at the age of 54, you obviously grew up without financial resources. Some could even classify it as poor. Correct. You and I share in that same background. My wife, Dr. Paul, actually worked for Dr. Zellner at the age of 1920. So my wife was his front desk lady some 18, 19 years ago. And that’s kind of how we got to meet each other. But you, Z, were rejected by almost every bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma when you wanted to build your optometry clinic, which is now the largest or the most successful in the Tulsa area. Your auto auction is now very successful. You now own a large percentage of a bank. And by the way, all the banks rejected you. You’ve had a lot of success. You own a durable medical equipment company. There’s a lot of other businesses I’m not mentioning, but you’ve had a lot of success. And so you have mastered this adversity quotient. Z, why have you been able to push on when most people stopped? And what question would you have for Dr. Paul? Well, I think I pushed on because I didn’t have a choice in my mind. You know, it’s when you grow up the way you do and you don’t want to live like that, then you’ve got to figure out ways to be successful in life. And so obviously being an optometrist, that’s what my degree is in, Dr. Paul. And so I started that business and grew that and then did other businesses within Tulsa because I’m really kind of an entrepreneur stuck. Trapped inside. In an optometrist body. But this adversity quotient, this is mind-blowing stuff. You’ve been piddling with, I say piddling in a very nice term. Researching. You’ve been researching and doing and diving into you’ve been owning for almost 40 years and it’s Fascinating to think that this could be a bedrock formation of people’s success or not success right and And I guess my my mind is what what left what do you have left to prove? What do you have left to? Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrivetime Show on your radio and podcast download. My name is Clay Tiberius Clark. I’m the father of five human kids. My partner, Dr. Robert Zellner, is the father of three human kids. Each child was created… They’re different women. It’s not weird. It’s not weird. And actually, I have one grandchild and two on the way. In my face. You’ve one up to me. In your face. But between the two of us, we built 13 multi-million dollar businesses, and it’s because we seek out the mentorship and the guidance from proven experts. And on today’s show, I could not be more excited than to interview Dr. Paul G. Stoltz he’s an expert in the area of resilience and a New York Times best-selling author his newest book is called grit The new science of what it takes to persevere Flourish and succeed throughout Pope Paul’s career. He has guest lectured at such universities as Cornell oh my Carnegie Mellon see these are all schools that reject very I mean and Harvard Business School Paul welcome on to the show How are you, sir? I’m fabulous. It’s really great to join both of you and thank you for having me be part of the mix. Now, Paul, for our listeners out there that are really not as familiar with your formal education and background, can you share with us a little bit about your experience at the University of Minnesota and what you studied? You know, I had the most amazing experience there because I had a rogue advisor who knew I was kind of different. I wasn’t a traditional academic. So he let me do what we now call a multidisciplinary PhD. And so what I did is I really wanted to research what is it that’s sort of at the epicenter of human endeavor. And that started, you know, way earlier with my undergraduate, and I’ll tell you that story. But anyway, I studied in the fields of organizational communication, business, training and development, learning psychology, neuroscience, and a bunch of other things that we put together under the auspices of one unified degree. And that was just skull exploding for me. Clay, before we go any farther, I just, is he too classy for us? I mean, do we, we got to, we got to pump the brake. I mean, is this, is this, can we bite off more than we can swallow? Maybe we can re-interview him at a dive bar. There we go. I don’t know. You know what guys, just give it another five minutes, then you’ll be sure that’s not the case. Okay, alright, good, alright. There you go. When you went to college, it seemed like you had this yearning to figure out what made people successful. You know, life is all about the question, isn’t it? And when I was 19 years old, I came up to my advisor my undergraduate days, the University of California, and I had this really cool guy. So I kind of got in his grill. And I said, Hey, how do we know who wins? And he looked at me and he goes, What do you mean? At what? And I said, business sports life school, like, how do we know who wins and who loses? He goes, say it a different way. So I said, Okay, uh, who fails and who prevails. And then he did the smartest thing ever, changed my life, he pointed at me and he said, that’s your first research project. So I went to this strange place called the library and I started to kind of dig in and I thought, I was so smug, I thought I was going to bang this out in an afternoon. Here I am 39 years later, still excavating through all these different sciences on that question. You actually went as far as to coin the phrase the adversity quotient in 1997. Now just to be clear I graduated from Cocado High School, Dassel Cocado High School, west of Minneapolis about 45 miles west of Minneapolis in 1999. So you coined this phrase before I really knew what was going on. I’d love for you to share with the listeners your path to becoming the expert in the area of resilience, and I’d love for you to share about the education and the research you put into this, because if you look up the adversity quotient, whether it’s Wikipedia, Webster, you’re the guy who’s known as being the guy who coined the phrase, the adversity quotient. Tell us about this. You know, what happened was, and I want everything I say to be of keen relevance to your listeners. So, you know, we all have these moments where inquiry and questions drive everything. And for me, you know, the question I was looking at, the good news for me is I became theoretically agnostic, which meant I wasn’t married to just psychology because psychology at the time was definitely not answering the question. So I started to go scientifically far afield. And you know, the best thing you could do sometimes is have the courage to ask ignorant questions. So if you go to the head of neuroscience at Harvard and ask a question, you’re going to learn things for sure. And I did this all over the world, and we did this with 21 different scientific disciplines. So here’s the moment of truth. The day came, we’re in a 30 foot by 20 foot room, we dumped out all the crates of research and put them in piles. This was actually in 1990. And put them in piles and said what’s the unifying concept. First we had to put a sheet on top that kind of described that stack, blah, blah, blah, on and on. This took days. Then we said what is the single unifying thing that puts all these studies together, which is now 3500 studies. And the answer was one thing, adversity. And we said, Okay, and this is like, you know, 15 years, what before emotional intelligence came out. So I said, Gosh, you know, maybe if we have this thing called an IQ, which we know is not terribly predictive of much in life, what if there were something called an AQ and adversity quotient, where you actually could measure, and gosh, what if you could actually measurably improve how people respond to the tough stuff, big and small, all of it. And so we started going at it, and then you fast forward, I mean, just a very short time, we started to create version 1.0, then 1.1, then 1.2, of what’s now called the AQ profile, which is the instrument we’ve used to measure this, more than a million people around the world, in 137 countries, in all different levels of life, and we had our first 5,000 data sets. And I did the dumbest but most courageous thing. I gave it to the head of statistical research at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. You know, they do those little things called like the college entrance exams. And I said, it’s like handing your child and saying, is this okay? than any college entrance exam. And this was like version 1.3. So we said, wow, is this a tattoo? Like, is AQ something that just sticks with you, kind of like we thought IQ did? Or is it something we could measurably improve permanently, rewire and improve? So that became our quest, and that set us on our path. And I formed Peak Learning, my global company, around this 32 years ago. Paul, you’ve written that for organizations, leaders, and individuals, AQ is the bedrock of human endeavor. Enhance AQ for real gains in productivity, capacity, performance, innovation, morale, and more. I would love for you to share about the adversity quotient and the more than 1,500 studies and the more than 500,000 people worldwide that have gone into developing this theory, maybe even a million now. I mean, talk to me about this. I mean, the research that you put into this, this is, it’s getting, you’ve been doing this now, did you say 37 years? At 39, the research, I’ve had Peak, the company I’ve formed for 32 years. And Touchwood as an entrepreneur, which is in my blood, we’ve grown peak for 32 straight years. And just by doing this good work in the world and trying to enrich people’s lives this way. So, you know, AQ is incredibly potent. I have to tell you, I’m just obsessed with this because what I’m interested in is what’s underneath what’s underneath. So when people say you gotta enhance performance, you gotta grow engagement, you gotta improve innovation, you gotta enhance energy or health or quality of life or relationships or optimism or anything that people are talking about. I want to know what undergirds that? What’s the deep bedrock of that where you can’t literally go any deeper? So you know what one of my favorite moments is? I just love this moment because we’ve done this in collaboration with Harvard Business School. We’ve done this in collaboration with MIT’s entrepreneurship program, where they have me teach this, their Carnegie Mellon’s global leaders program in Seattle, all these different schools that make us better and better and better. And my favorite moment is when we do this with companies and entrepreneurs around the world. Is there’s this moment you imagine the most cynical jaded people you could ever meet, who’s heard it all been through it all arms folded across their chest like, yeah, right. And when you serve up the science of AQ, and then I ask them this question, of all the factors that influence your happiness, well being and success, or I asked, of all the factors, the human factors that drive your business success, which ones are in some way affected by your AQ. And then there’s this brilliant pause, and then you hear this kind of grumble in the room like, well, all of them, all of them, all of them, all of them. And I say, pardon me? And they go, all of them. I say, so you’re saying that if you could focus on and master one thing that could fortify and enhance everything else, this is it? And they go, well, yeah. I say, okay, now here’s my next question. Can you think of anything else you could focus on and grow that would have that kind of impact? And usually I get blank stares. So I love that moment because what that says to me, and I haven’t given up guys, I’m still working on it, but if we excavate down, we’ve got some real bedrock here. If we can measurably strengthen how we respond to and deal with the tough stuff. It affects everything we care about. You know, Dr. Zellner, my partner here, he, when is your birthday? January. Oh, his? No, yours is in January, mine’s October 3rd. So October 3rd, when you, on October 3rd. Happy birthday! Thank you, buddy. How old were you, turn on October 3rd, Dr. Zellner? 54. Okay, so at the age of 54, you obviously grew up without financial resources. Some could even classify it as poor. Correct. You and I share in that same background. My wife, Dr. Paul, actually worked for Dr. Zellner at the age of 1920. So my wife was his front desk lady some 18, 19 years ago. And that’s kind of how we got to meet each other. But you, Z, were rejected by almost every bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma when you wanted to build your optometry clinic, which is now the largest or the most successful In the Tulsa area your auto auction is now very successful you now own a large percentage of a bank and by the way all the banks rejected you you’ve had a lot of success you own a Durable medical equipment company there’s a lot of other businesses. I’m not mentioning, but you’ve had a lot of success and so you have mastered this adversity quotient. Z, why have you been able to push on when most people stopped? And what question would you have for Dr. Paul? Well, I think I pushed on because I didn’t have a choice in my mind. You know, it’s when you grow up the way you do and you don’t want to live like that, then you’ve got to figure out ways to be successful in life. And so obviously being an optometrist, that’s what my degree’s in, Dr. Paul. And so I started that business and grew that and then did other businesses within Tulsa because I’m really kind of an entrepreneur stuck Craft inside an optometrist body, but this adversity quotient. This is this is mind-blowing Stuff you’ve been piddling with I say piddling in a very nice research You’ve been researching and doing and diving into you’ve been owning for almost 40 years And it’s fascinating to think that this could be a bedrock formation of people’s success or not success, right? And I guess my mind is, what do you have left to prove? What do you have left to, in other words, why is this not on everybody’s tongue? I mean, why is this not something commonly, I mean, I go to the coffee shop and sit down at Starbucks and order my, just my black regular coffee and they stare at me like I’m weird. And I sit there and people around me, I don’t hear a lot of, they’re not talking about AQ. Why is that? You know, I think a lot of it has to do with our business model and approach and undergirding values and philosophy. Years ago, we got asked to go really big, but it was gonna be sort of mass commoditized versions of what we have. And you know, there are a lot of assessments out there, and I won’t mention their names because I don’t want to bad mouth them, that have become watered down and they’re kind of meaningless, and methods out there and things like that. We wanted to go for the impact, the depth and duration of human impact. So by doing the work we do the way we do, we’re exposed to fewer people. I mean, I was, as you guys know, the first book I was on Oprah three times, I think it was. And with that kind of exposure, there’s a lot of people and, you know, we had the privilege of hitting all the top media and publications. It got a lot of buzz and I’ve worked all over the world. You know, a lot of the top companies in the world use AQ, not just to measure people, obviously, but to measurably strengthen people to thrive. Your word, I mean, to truly thrive in an adversity-rich world. So we haven’t, that hasn’t been our play to make it sort of the billboard. But I do agree with you. I think, you know, think about even dating sites. Wouldn’t you wanna know how that person responds to adversity? Isn’t that kind of everything? Yeah. And if you were hiring someone, we have a version where you can screen job candidates in about six minutes. We have more and more companies, big ones, who are using AQ to screen their job candidates because if they can’t flourish or thrive with adversity, what good are they? Right. You know, so you’re spot on. I mean, you know, it’s an interesting, we are researchers, you know that, and one of the pieces of research that stuns me all the time is, and we build on this, we’ve asked more than 35,000 employers across all industries around the world this question. If you’re hiring someone today, you had to pick A or B, and A was the person with perfect skills and qualifications, but not so great on AQ. Or B, a person with an exceptional AQ, who’s missing some bits and pieces, who would you pick? B. Well, almost 99, 98.9% of people, of employers pick B. So then we say, how are you getting getting at that now. There’s no, only, honestly, there’s only one way, which is to scientifically assess that by measuring it. Because if you ask people, how good are you with adversity? Or tell me about a time you faced adversity and how you did. It’s like a first date. They’re never going to show up smelling better, looking better, dressing better than in that moment. So you want valid measures. So you’re right. It’s something I think that’s the next level, and I think the forefront of our research in terms of what’s left to prove, I’m gonna give you a statement I say conservatively, guys, and that is I think within five years, peak learning, my company, I think we will be in the business quite literally of upgrading human DNA. And we’re doing research right now around that with genetic code, that in a relationship to adversity that we believe will lead to actually being able to not only predict how people will age and their propensity for cancer and depression and all these other things, but it will also be something we can fortify so that not only does it fortify your life, but literally alters the DNA you pass down to your offspring. And we’re working with the top experts in the world to do that. I love that. That is awesome. And you know, the idea of making generations that follow you better off is incredibly stimulating. Now when you do an AQ test on someone, what is the parameters? Is it like 0 to 100? And if so, whatever the parameters are, what is good, what is bad, what do you say, okay, this is awesome? What are your numbers? Well, you know, the statisticians almost cry with joy because it’s got this big, beautiful fat bell curve. And all our studies are independent studies, so we never analyze our own data. We always hand it off to experts, psychometricians who do the data and tell us what we found. And so it’s got this big beautiful bell curve, the range on AQ, and this won’t mean a lot until you actually take the AQ profile, ranges from 40 to 200, but it’s the kind of thing you can’t game, because we’ve put a lot of tripwires in the assessment because of our work with MIT and people that smart, so that if you try to game it you get kind of tripped up so we get really it’s the most valid robust reliable assessment of how people respond to adversity in the world and Honestly guys you talked about resilience. We’ve been doing this so long that when we started I literally had to spell the word resilience Or for our clients because they had never heard the word it didn’t exist in common conversation. And then it became a thing like 10, 15 years later. Can you believe that? And look at where we are today. That’s crazy. Now, so 40 to 200, so you would advise someone to hire, when you said employee A, employee B, so when you said they have a high AQ score, what and above is high in your opinion? Yeah, you know, it’s all broken down statistically. There’s low, below average, average, above average, and high, and not just on AQ, but what we call the four core dimensions of AQ, which are C is control, which is your perceived ability to influence whatever happens next. O is ownership, which is like the accountability factor. It’s the step-up factor, and those who score higher step up more naturally, and those who score lower don’t. And R is a huge one, because it’s reach, and the people who score lower tend to catastrophize. You know, when adversity hits, it reaches into everything. But people who score high contain it. And then E is endurance, which is how long it lasts or endures in your mind. So your core response to adversity is what we’re really measuring with AQ. Wow, that is so cool. I’m fascinated. He’s blown away. Yeah, hey, Paul, Eric Chep here. I had a question as far as kind of transitioning from we were talking about when you’re looking at those job candidates. Well, a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs and all of our clients, in fact, at the Thrive Time Show are business owners, and they already have a team. And so in your mind, do you have an action step for all those business owners out there who need to coach up their current team on how to overcome that adversity, something they can then train them up on or coach them up on how to better overcome adversity to help the business succeed? You bet, Eric. I’m so glad you asked that. You know, there’s a couple things. Number one is, it’s not about overcoming and it’s not about getting past or surpassing or surmounting or conquering adversity. We have this adversity continuum. If you can imagine at the bottom, there’s avoiding, trying to get away from it, then surviving to the next level, then coping, which is my least favorite word. It’s the one most popular in the world of psychology, which is how do you cope with hardship, loss, you know, all these things. The next level up is managing, which is what they teach in business school. But the top, when we measure AQ in a million people, these people do something different. They’re like alchemists. And so they fundamentally harness the adversity, which means, think about this, think about this, being able to tap the adversity and convert it into the fuel, this high-octane fuel that propels you to a place you never, here’s the key part, you never would get to without that adversity. Oh, yes. So now it becomes like you, Dr. Z, the fuel of your life. Yeah. And you’re just kind of going, gosh, I can explain to people how important this is and I can try to talk them and motivate them and all these things. But what we found, for business leaders going to your question, Eric, is that if we don’t measure this as a baseline and then teach them some of the AQ tools, which I’m not on the show to promote a book, but in my AQ books, we teach AQ tools that have been honed and vetted. I want to cut you off real quick. I am on the show to promote your book because your books are awesome, Dr. Paul. Oh, you’re so nice, guys. I mean this. Your book is so filled with research, 39 years of research, and if you’re out there and you’re struggling to push through adversity, you don’t know Dr. Z. You don’t know me. You don’t understand the level of rejections that we get. You have no idea. We’ve been recording this podcast forever, and to get somebody of your caliber on the show, I’m not going to be weak sauce about this, and I’m not saying you’re being weak. I’m saying it’s not polite to promote yourself. I’m going to promote you, though. If you don’t buy your book, you’ve got a psychological problem that cannot be fixed. There’s something wrong with you out there. You’ve got to buy Dr. Paul Stoltz’s book. I’m serious. I’m saying because if you can’t buy the book. I’m going to have to capture that quote for our website. I mean this. Buy the book. Because I have been rejected so many times, and I hear so many people say, I just don’t deal well with rejection. And if you’ve ever watched Back to the Future, I just, Lorraine, I just don’t deal with that kind of rejection. I mean, it’s tough. You’re out there and you are dealing with rejection that’s keeping you from that ultimate manifestation of your dreams and goals, you need to buy this book. Paul, if you had to recommend one book for our listeners, what’s one book you’ve written where you say, this is the book that I think I’ve most succinctly discussed the adversity quotient. You know, really there’s two. One is the original adversity quotient book, but of course, all the examples and stories in there are a bit, you know, from the past, right? We’re doing an updated version right now in Chinese, but that doesn’t help you. The newest book, grit, is really the one that kind of captures some of the newest stuff that we have. So we have a Q and grit. It’s like, you know, offense and defense, right? AQ is how you respond to whatever comes at you. And which is sort of like defense and has a huge effect on everything. Grit, our version of grit, which is an upgraded version of grit, we call grit 2.0, and I can explain why, is about offense. It’s sort of like, how do you dig deep and do whatever it takes to effectively go after your most worthy goals and make them happen? And so those two pieces, I guess any coach, go into your twins and Vikings, who I saw the other day in Los Angeles, by the way, you know, any coach would tell you, you need both, right, to win. I want to ask this because in your book, Grit, on your website you talk about, could you share how our business coaching has impacted your ministry? It has very much impacted it. It has helped our ministry very much grow on all of our platforms. Carter and I happen to share a love of German Shepherds because he had one growing up that was dear to him and I have Cyrus, so we connect on that level as well. But it has the fact that they are tracking everything, and they are every week going over that with me, and they’re tracking the sponsorships too, and they’re going over that and they’re saying, okay, this is what you could do this week, or can you do this, or can you put together a text to put this out? And they start doing that with you, I have to tell you, the results are very much real and it is an enormous blessing the way they do work with you on this. And it has very much grown our platforms tremendously. It has grown our reach. It has helped us with special events like the Nights of Prayer, which take an entire village to put together and Clay and his team are very much a part of that. And it reawakened America, Clay inviting me into that in 2021 and going through that process with me, him and his team. It very much has helped in every way to to grow us and to grow us in a way and teach us how to handle it. That’s the most important part, too. Not only are we growing, but they are teaching us how to handle the growth. You have to be able to handle the growth. Part of being successful in life is being able to handle the pressure. Clay does that very well, and his team does that very well. Then they teach you how to do that, so as you grow, you can handle the pressure and thrive. Well, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have an opportunity to interview a longtime client of mine, a friend of mine, and someone we’ve had the honor to serve and to Help her to expand her Reach she has a ministry and the purpose of the ministry is to lead people into a life-changing Relationship with Jesus and we’ve had the opportunity to help her reach more people And I’m super excited for you to meet her if you haven’t met her before Amanda grace welcome onto the Thrived Time show. How are you? How are you Clay? Clay’s like my spiritual little brother. There we go. So I gotta ask you here because we work with Pastor Brian Gibson behind the scenes, Pastor Jack Swalmeyer behind the scenes, and I’ve described to other people, they say, you know, Clay and his team, they kind of help me deal with some of the details and some of the dumb stuff so I can focus on ministry, or some of the tedious stuff so I can focus on ministry. How would you describe some of the work that we have been able to do for you kind of behind the scenes over the last few years? Well, your team, well, first of all, your team is amazing. And Clay is a workhorse. I want everybody to know this. He really is. And when he says he’s going to do something, he does everything in his power to do it. And so behind the scenes, when it comes to especially social media as well, keeping track of social media, right? Sponsorships, setting up special events, things that take many people to put together. Clay’s team has been a big part of helping us with that and expanding our reach publicly and also helping us through Reawaken America, helping us with other events as well, be able to put forth what God has told us to do and the commission that God has given us at Ark of Grace Ministries and your team and you are very supportive of that. Now I want to ask you this real quick, connections and pushing, pushing and connections. Let me give an example. One of my longtime clients, he sells automotive repair parts, automotive repair parts. Another client of mine is an ophthalmologist that people are going to hear their stories on part two of today’s show. I’m not a spiritual advisor for them, but they both say, Clay, you guys have really pushed me and you’ve connected me to a lot of people or a lot of connections they would not have had previously. But I try to never put my vision on their vision. So I never talk to Mr. Muffler, repair shop, and tell him, this is God’s vision for your life. I never tell the alchemist, this is God’s vision for your life. I just try to push people to get things done and then connect them to the right people. Can you maybe talk about how the pushing and the connections have maybe been able to impact the ministry? It absolutely does. And you know, Clay is very good at making suggestions and telling you why you should implement them. So he not only makes them, but he tells you why, which helps to push you in the direction you need to go. But Clay has done a lot for us in introducing us to people we had never met before. You know, if we want to give a few examples, you know, Mr. Eric and Ms. Lara Trump, Alina Haba, other people in ministry, and he has a Pastor Phil Hodson pillar, and he’s introduced us and connected us in ways that actually helps open up other avenues of opportunity when you are tasked, say, with doing an event like we do the nights of prayer. Perfect example. Clay’s team is an integral part of rounding up the troops, as I would say when I call him. I call, Clay, I go, time to round up the troops, Clay, for the night of prayer. part of that, but then making the connections and bringing the two of us or the three of us or the five of us or the six of us together in order to get done and accomplish what the Lord has set out for us to do. done in a way where it is explained to you why this is a good idea, why Clay feels this is a good idea from his perspective of what he’s seeing, but he’ll never make you, but he will explain it to you and that’s huge because a lot of people won’t explain it to you. He will take the time to do that. Now tracking and accountability. One of the things that we have, and I’m just gonna I’m not gonna get into your numbers of your ministry, I just want to give people an example. You look at Ark of Grace Ministries, people can see public-facing, there’s 247,000 people subscribing on YouTube. People can go over to Rumble.com, let’s go to Rumble.com, folks, we’re going to Rumble.com, and people can go to Rumble and they can see, okay, Amanda Grace, Ark of Grace Ministries, they can see, okay, 74,000 followers here, okay, they can see the followers here, 247,000 on YouTube, but what they can’t see, and I’m not going to show on today’s show, is every client I work with, we have a tracking sheet where we focus on these little metrics that really move the needle over time. These little metrics, you know. And so you talk about some of the instructions in the Bible, you know, let’s say Moses. God asked Moses to do tasks that might have seemed odd or tedious, but they led to a bigger thing. I think a lot of growing an organization or a business or a ministry is doing these little tedious things and then it produces big results when you do it over time. Or the word I might use is diligence. It means the consistent application of effort. I want to get your thoughts on that because I know in my life, until I had some coaching or some behind the scenes mentorship, I didn’t maybe see the compound impact of focusing on tracking these little details over time. Could you talk about the importance of tracking these little details over time? It’s important because then you discover and it gives you a broader range of information on where the needle is being moved, where you’re growing, and other areas where you may need to work on where you’re not growing. And the only way for you to grow is to examine in detail what is happening within your business, your ministry, what you’re doing in life. That’s the only way. If you don’t pay attention to any of these things, you really don’t have a compass or a clue of where you are. So it’s so important to pay attention to the details of these because it actually gives you a good idea too of what you need to do, right, to get to say the next area, the next milestone, right, the next goal. How are you going to know that unless you really pay attention to what’s going on? So the little things, I even check them. Clay’s team checks them and I make it a habit to check them. So I know where I’m at I know what our audience Really, you know is ministering to them What what really is, you know drawing them into that relationship with the Lord? And it helps me it helps me to buckle down with the Lord and then focus on what he wants me to say Which in turn because that’s the most important thing then clay and his team go to work and then everything else from there is examined and looked at in order to understand how you need to grow and where you need to grow. Now, my final two questions I have for you would be, you know, with business, there’s got to be an urgency to it, you know, so we have business conferences and like this next one we have taking place in roughly 64 days. And so when we get to that day, the event’s going to happen, whether it’s full or empty. Every event we do is always sold out, but whether it’s full or empty, it’s still going to happen. And I think a lot of times we have a dream, but we don’t have a deadline. And so the dream can kind of drift into just another idea. It goes into the junk drawer. It goes into the I am going to get back to that column. It goes into the attic of our minds. It goes into the junk drawer of our mind. It works its way into the glove compartment of our brain. And when you work every week with a Carter and my teammates, one thing I tell my team is listen, we’ve got to deliver results to those clients within 24 hours. So if we meet with you and you have a burning fire, if it’s an email issue or a text message issue or a website platform issue or anything at all that you need, we want to knock that thing out very quickly. Can you talk about the importance of having a responsive team that charges you a flat monthly fee to help your ministry? Because I know you want to be a good steward of every dime that’s donated to your ministry. Can you talk about the importance of having a flat rate and a team you can count on behind the scenes that operates with urgency? It’s really crucial because the longer you let a problem go on, the more it can snowball, and the more a small problem can turn into an enormous problem very fast when it’s procrastinated upon or ignored or pushed to the side and not dealt with. And Clay and his team are highly responsive when you have an issue. So if you have an issue, say I have an issue, I can text Carter, I can text Clay, I can tell them what’s going on. They call me very fast. I will say that. Their, you know, return on phone calls is really great. And they deal with that problem immediately. They go to work immediately dealing with that problem, or they will give me a timeline and say, I am starting first thing tomorrow on this, and I’ll have an answer for you in the next 24 hours. And they do that a lot. And they have done that a lot for me with things that have come up, things that have come up on our websites, things that have come up with the ministry, with social media, with special events that we have to do. And there are things that happen, and I can count on Clay and his team and I can text them, I can call them and they really do rapidly respond to that and that’s so important because if you let it pile up, you’re going to try to find yourself fighting through a field of weeds, of problems that are going to slow you down, distract you and keep you from moving forward in what you have to do. Now my final question for you, you know, as we have business workshops and well before I met you, you know, since 2005, I’ve been doing business workshops every two months and so six a year, I had no idea that I’d be using these in the faith arena. I had no idea those were going to be used. But God did, Clay. God did. I know. And so, you know, it’s sort of most people, you know, in my world know me from business consulting. They know me as the business consulting guy. They’ve been to our conferences. They know that. How would you describe the business conferences or just the energy of the events? Because I’ve been to some conferences in the past as a young man, business guy, where the conference is just dragged on. There wasn’t any urgency. I found myself wanting to staple my forehead because I was just so bored. Could you talk about the in-person workshops? First of all, I will tell you, Clay is highly entertaining. So you will not be bored. I promise you, you will not be bored. And they give you a slew of information. This is not just sprinkles of information. This is one after the other sometimes, rapid fire information on how to successfully move forward in your business. I have sat at these conferences multiple times. They are very filled with knowledge. They are filled with wisdom. Clay is direct, which I appreciate because I’m a New York Italian. So we appreciate directness. And like, we want you to be direct with us. We’re direct. And so he’s very direct about it when he does it. And he does it in a funny way that really gets your attention and gets you to listen. And so the whole point, if you want a business, is not for it to stagnate. And it is worth coming to these business conferences because you will leave with a ton of tools in your toolbox that you didn’t have before you came. Now, Amanda, I’m gonna show this video to my entire staff. This is the kind of stuff they get fired up about when they get to see real results, helping real ministries like yours reach more people. So to Carter and the team and everybody watching, could you share how our business coaching has impacted your ministry? It has very much impacted it. It has helped our ministry very much grow on all of our platforms. Carter and I happen to share a love of German Shepherds because he had one growing up that was dear to him and I have Cyrus, so we connect on that level as well. But it has the fact that they are tracking everything and they are every week going over that with me and they’re tracking the sponsorships too and they’re going over that and they’re saying, okay, this is what you could do this week or can you do this or can you put together a text to put this out? And they start doing that with you. I have to tell you, the results are very much real and it is an enormous blessing the way they do work with you on this. And it has very much grown our platforms tremendously. It has grown our reach. It has helped us with special events like the nights of prayer, which take an entire small village to put together, and Clay and his team are very much a part of that. And it reawakened America, Clay inviting me into that in 2021 and going through that process with me, him and his team. It very much has helped in every way to grow us and to grow us in a way and teach us how to handle it. That’s the most important part too. Not only are we growing, but they are teaching us how to handle the growth. You have to be able to handle the growth. And part of being successful in life is being able to handle the pressure. And Clay does that very well, and his team does that very well. And then they teach you how to do that. So as you grow, you can handle the pressure and thrive. Amanda Grace, thank you so much for carving out time. For anybody out there that’s not familiar with your ministry, I would encourage everybody, go to YouTube today. You can look up Ark of Grace on YouTube. There’s many people that claim to be you, but your active, actual official account has 247,000 subscribers as of today. On Rumble, the actual active account has 74,000. I think there’s probably 75 people that pretend to be you on YouTube, so I would encourage everybody to find the right channel there. And then that website you can go to is arcofgrace.org. Arcofgrace.org. Amanda Grace, thank you so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate you sharing your story with us. And it’s an honor serving you. Well, Clay, thank you. We love you and your team. You guys are amazing. Take care, bye-bye. Bye. Hi, my name is Tim Johnson. I’m the owner of Tuscaloosa Ophthalmology as well as Southern Eye Consultants, two ophthalmology practices in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I’m a client of Clay Clark. He asked me to answer a couple questions. The first question was, how did I hear about Clay Clark? I am a big fan of business podcasts and his podcast popped up as a recommended listening, so I started listening to the podcast. I was a little suspicious or skeptical because I thought there was going to be like an upcharge or an upsell, but the idea of the month-to-month canceling really appealed to me and I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the upsell or for the scam to come in, but it never did. It’s very legitimate. Since working with Clay, I’ve gotten a much firmer grasp on how business works, even in medicine, business is business. I’ve learned a lot about marketing, especially how Google reviews work and how important that is. That’s very important even in medicine. At least once a week, if not every day, I get a new patient because somebody Googled eye doctor in Tuscaloosa or ophthalmologist in Tuscaloosa and you’d be amazed how many patients just look for an eye doctor that way. And so he’s really changed our business. Our business has grown a lot, maybe 15 to 20 percent this year. And so we’re really grateful for the things he’s done for our business. And the last question was, when did I perfect the laugh? I would say that you can never perfect the laugh, you just keep working at it and it just keeps getting better and better each day. But you got to keep working at it. Thanks. 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 proven turnkey 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. I established my practice here in Tulsa in 1985. Well Thrive Nation, we have an opportunity all the time. We have so many wonderful people that go to ThriveTimeShow.com and they reach out to us to schedule a 13-point assessment. We also have a lot of people that go to ThriveTimeShow.com and they schedule a free 13-point assessment and they’re not a good fit because I only work with diligent doers. I only work with people that are willing to actually implement the proven systems that Dr. Zellner and I both teach and implement in our own companies. So people say, I do want to grow my business seven times faster. I do want to reduce my working hours. I do want to increase my time, freedom, and my profits. I think we’re all in agreement that that’s a good thing. However, we can only help people that are willing to put the work in. And on today’s show, we’re joined by a man by the name of Ronnie Morales. His company is MoralesBrothers.net. I hold him in high regard because he and his family-owned business, they actually are growing, I would call it dramatically. You look at this Inc. magazine right now shows that 96% of businesses fail. Inc. magazine says 96% of businesses fail. That’s not good. Whereas this guy’s business isn’t growing by 10%. It isn’t growing by 20%. It is growing dramatically. But again, if Ronnie Morales had filled out the form and had scheduled a consultation and wasn’t willing to actually implement what we were teaching. It would all be for naught. So I’m excited for you to meet somebody who I would consider to be a diligent doer. He’s based in Richmond, Texas. And without any further ado, Ronnie Morales, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, I’m doing great. Thanks, Clay. Hey, so how did you first hear about us? How did you hear about The Thrive Time Show? I listened to your Thrive Time Show podcast for those seven years, and I was learning so much. I was like, man, I got to give this guy a try. So you listened to our podcast seven years ago? Yeah. Really? Seven years. Do you remember the first podcast you listened to seven years ago? I don’t, I don’t remember. I listened to so many of them. Okay, okay. I probably listened to, you know, more than once. Now, when you’re listening to the podcast, I try to feature clients on the show so that you know there’s real people really doing it, really implementing the systems. When did it occur to you that you might want to go ahead and fill out the form at Thrivetimeshow.com and schedule a consultation? I got to the point where I just needed to take the next step. I’ve been in coaching before, like group coaching and different things like that. But I just felt like everybody on your show was making tremendous changes in their business. And coming from you and Dr. Z, I felt like y’all had the experience and it didn’t matter if it was, because I’ve been used to doing construction, like peer groups and construction coaching, where your contract is only, well, I felt like, you know what, I need business, somebody business minded to help me grow this. I don’t necessarily need a group of just contractors. You know, I need somebody that knows the business part of it. And what kind of growth have you had since you began working with us as far as a percentage? Do you know a percentage or what kind of growth? Yeah, so we had about a 57% increase on last year’s first quarter to this year’s first quarter. So that was huge for us. And I’m personally a growth too. I honestly just as a business leader and team member here in my company, I’ve grown a lot to be a better leader, learn how to delegate better, learn how to get these 15-minute hodls started every morning. And it’s been great. I’m just continuing to learn, and I can’t wait to keep moving forward. Well, you know, people always ask me, they say, what’s the most important part of business consulting? That would be to me like asking a baker, what’s the most important ingredient in a cookie? Is it the flour? Is it the sugar? Is it the eggs? I would say if you take out any one of those core ingredients, you’re going to have a weird taste in cookie. In our business consulting, we focus on marketing, branding, sales, hiring, leadership, management, accounting, all of those things. So let’s kind of go through the process. From just a branding perspective and a marketing perspective, how has the business consulting impacted your company? It’s been great. The branding, the marketing, I mean, people around town are telling us, hey, I’ve seen your trucks here and there. I see it all over the place. When people are searching Google or whatever it is, they’re finding our videos and they’re reaching out to us. I think one of the biggest parts with business coaching for me has been the accountability. Like just having somebody to tell me like, hey, get this, this, and this done and have it done by this day. And, you know, we move on to the next step. So it’s been great. Now we have a weekly meeting. The purpose of a weekly meeting is so that you have a week to get your homework done. We have a week to do our homework. I mean, we do photography, videography, web development, search engine optimization. And you and I meet on Saturdays at 6.30 AM. I find a lot of my clients like to meet in the mornings. How important is it to have that weekly meeting? Because again, I’ve done, I’m 42, but when I was 21, I was hiring business consulting programs that would do quarterly meetings or oftentimes even monthly meetings. And I found that nothing got done. How important is it for you to have a weekly meeting? I think it’s very important as a business owner to have that weekly accountability to make sure you’re staying on schedule. Because as a business owner, you wear so many hats, it makes it difficult to get those important things done that you need to get done, but that you want to put on the back burner. But when you know you have somebody to be accountable to, and it’s a weekly thing, and they’re steadily putting in your ear, like, you got to get these things done, get the reviews, get the video testimonials. It just makes it to where you have an assignment and you just get it done. Now at the business conferences, we walk people through the entire system. This is the system we teach from. This is from my newest book called A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich, which everyone can download for free right now at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. You and I, we track the numbers every week. So box number one, we establish those revenue goals, we do that, we know the break-even numbers, we know how many hours you’re willing to work. This is crazy! You’re married, your wife loves you, you love your wife! I’m not ever advocating during our coaching meetings, like, forsake your family and grow your company. Can you talk about that, how important it is to work with maybe a coach that understands that you want to have a healthy family and a healthy company? Oh, I think it’s very important. You know, like yesterday I had a good dinner with my wife, you know, and we had a good evening with live music and we really enjoyed each other’s company. You know, I took my kids camping twice a month already for four days and we’re enjoying the summer. But I think it’s very important that as a business owner, as you put the hours in, put the hard work in, that you also take the time to spend with friends and family. And I mean, it’s important, you know, rising up early to get my meditation time is very important to me too. So I think just again, having somebody that knows the value of these things is important. Yeah, as we go through, I mean, you are knocking it out with the marketing and the branding and all the things we have to do to optimize your website and make the ads work. We’ve determined your unique value proposition. We’ve improved the branding. We have a three-legged marketing stool. We know how to generate leads online and offline and referrals, the sales process. And I’m not picking on you, but I mean this, you’re like a super humble guy. So I feel like that the sales process was something that once you learn the proven process, you kind of took to it right away. But I think a lot of contractors don’t want to come across as too aggressive or too passive or too whatever. And I feel like the sales process of your team really doing a good job of calling all the leads and the calls are recorded for quality assurance. I feel like that’s been a big needle mover for you. Maybe I’m wrong. Let me get your thoughts on that. Yeah, no, it’s been great. I had my own way before I joined the team, had my own way of sales and what I thought was working really wasn’t working. And at first I put up a wall, but once I was opened up to the, why do you do it the certain ways you do it, it really opened up more ways to be more successful. You know, with the call scripts, with the recorded calls, we’re still tweaking scripts and things like that, but it’s like an ongoing process, but it’s been great. And I think that it has helped us a lot. We do have, we call our leads back right away, within hours, a few hours, most of the time. And it’s important. And we’ve gotten a lot of leads and where I needed to hire my first sales employee. And now we’re working on more of the systems, you know, creating these repeatable systems and managing a larger group of people. In that daily huddle, can you talk – I hammer all my clients with the it’s so important to have a daily huddle with your team, to huddle with your team every morning and to have a weekly staff meeting. Could you talk about the importance of implementing these human resource strategies for managing people and what impact that’s had for your company? Yeah, so the impact that Daily Huddles has had for my company is that it brought the team together. All of our employees, which is 17 of us full-time, it’s brought us all together to where we’re good to see each other in the mornings and grow together. We start off with some wins, keep it brief. We go over company updates. Then we go over all our projects and we ask, like, you know, how is that client doing? How is the project on schedule? But what it did, it helped us a lot with the daily interruptions with, hey, so what’s going on here? And these questions that can be answered in the morning. So they learn to answer these important questions in the morning so that there’s less interruptions throughout the day. Now, the final two areas I wanted to cover here is, you know, there’s so much to growing a company and that’s what we talk about on our weekly coaching calls, but building a sustainable and repetitive weekly schedule, you know, like every week we’re doing the group interview. Every week we’re gathering objective reviews from clients. Every week we’re gathering before and after images. Every week you’re gathering testimonials from your happy clients. It’s like you have to do this stuff every week. It’s like a garden. You got to pull the weeds every week. Could you talk about the importance of having these human resource systems in place where you do these systems every week? So it’s you know proactive as opposed to reactive doing these same things over and over Yeah, I think it’s important to do it every week and repeat them so that things won’t fall to the cracks and if you get too relaxed on not doing it or you go two three weeks without listening to recorded calls or or whatever it may be, you start to slack off a little bit. The next thing you know, you’re in trouble. And now you’re putting down another fire that wouldn’t have been there if you had been on track and keeping up with the systems and processes. So just doing it repeatedly helps with building that system. Everybody knows it’s this day at this time. Our morning huddles are every day from 7-07, you know, last 15 minutes. And everybody knows to be there, and it’s just been great. Now, final two questions for you. People out there that maybe wanna do business with you, they’re hearing about you. Again, it’s very hard to gather objective Google reviews if people don’t like you. It’s very hard to gather video testimonials if people don’t like the work you do. What’s your website and how do people, you know, go ahead and get ahold of you if they’re looking to hire you guys for maybe a big project? Yeah, so our website is moralesbrothers.net. And you can definitely just fill out our get in touch form to reach out to us. And I personally will actually be in touch with you and I have a conversation with you. And for anybody out there that’s contemplating coming to one of our workshops or scheduling a free 13 point assessment, what word of encouragement or what advice would you have for anybody out there? Well, I would say don’t wait any longer. Jump in because if I would have jumped in seven years ago, I’d have been a whole different place today. So I guarantee you would be. I’ll say this, though, and I’m not prophetic. I’m saying you’re on pace. You’re on pace to have a business that’s going to be about five times larger than what it was when I first met you. And I say that because the first thing you see is the leads coming in, and you start to see new teammates joining your team, and you’re building that foundation for success. And I totally see you guys going to a great place right now. So, I wish I would have met you earlier. That’s my only complaint. But that’s Ronnie Morales. Ronnie, I really appreciate you. I’ll give you the final word. What do you want to say to everybody out there that’s, you know, maybe contemplating taking their business to the next level? Like I said, guys, don’t wait any longer. Reach out to play in the team, do your assessment, and be a diligent doer. Amen to that. Ronnie Morales, take care, sir. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye. 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. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So, 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. Okay, I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminix, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent 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 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, you know, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed pest and worm 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% we’re 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. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process and that has obviously, the 411% shows 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, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the 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. 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. 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% 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 to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are 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’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with 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 Lee Crockrell, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Wendell. 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, graphic designers, and web developers. 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. So I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into 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, 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. 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 of you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was 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. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. 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. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or, you know, 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. 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. Right. This is where we used to live years ago. 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 four to fourteen 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 10 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. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. 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. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. 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 built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Roseland, 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, and the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business growth workshop. Yes folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and 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’s gonna 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 gonna walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym into business It is gonna be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia Folks I’m telling you if you want to learn branding you want to learn marketing you will learn search engine optimization You want to learn social media marketing? That’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop if you want to learn accounting you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of 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 2-Day Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks it’s 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 Thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re gonna see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? 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. 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 could 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 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. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside and 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 going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical. It’s actionable. And it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times Best Sellers. 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, 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, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. 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 I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man. And there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, uh, since you and Eric are close Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age and I can say or cannot say. Well, I have to, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I said, no. My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want 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. Not only that Clay, thank you but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.