Business Pig | Doctor Zoellner Shares His 10 Rules for Success + How Did Clay Clark & Dr. Z Launch 14+ Successful Businesses Between the 2 of Them (Auto, Banking, DJ Service, Dog Training, Haircuts, Photography, Optometry, etc.)

Audio Transcription

You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. 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 multimillion 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. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here.

Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We took class, started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive

So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the CNC up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there We started from the bottom, now we here

We started from the bottom, now we’re here. It started from the bottom, now we’re here. It started from the bottom, now we’re here. You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive

Time Show. And on today’s show, we are answering the question, what would Z do? And we are going to be breaking down 10 knowledge bombs that I know are going to bless you. But what I want to do, I want to ask all the listeners for a quick ask, a quick favor before we get started here. I think it’s only fair. Everybody out there, I want you to get a piece of paper or a notepad, maybe an Etch-A-Sketch.

Get something that will allow you to take notes because what you are teaching now… Zee, how old are you right now? I’m 54. Or I was going to say if you’re a millennial, you could use a note section on your smartphone. Talk to text. Yes.

Right. Okay. So just clarify. You’re 54 right now? Correct. For the people out there that maybe won’t have an appreciation for what we’re going

to teach you in just a second, I want to tee it up here. Throughout your career, Dr. Z, you first built a what kind of business? Optometry clinic. Where are your two locations now? Approximately 31st and Harvard and 71st and Memorial. How would you describe the size of these compared to the average optometrist?

They’re above average. Okay. Successful. Humble. Yeah. I mean, you know.

What was the second business that you started? The second business was a diagnostic sleep center. Okay. And what is that called? Dr. Z’s Sleep Center. Get it.

I see what you did there. Get it. Now, nine out of ten startups fail, according to Forbes. That’s true. And Z, did any of those fail, the first two? Did they fail?

No. They became, in fact, the largest in the region. Okay, so what was your third business that you started? I started a auto auction. What’s that called? Z66 auto auction. Okay, and does it do well? Is it okay? Yeah, it’s the largest in the state currently. Okay, and what was your next business you started? A DME company, which stands for Durable Medical Equipment Company, and we do

several things, but the main thing we do are the CPAP machines that for people that have sleep apnea that we diagnose in the Dr. Z Sleep Center. Did you not invest early on in Regent Bank, you and Sean Copeland? It was funny because Sean, actually a good friend of mine, approached me to use their bank and I said, well, I’m tired of switching banks, let’s go buy a bank. He said, great idea, let’s go buy one.

So Sean, did you know Sean previous to him approaching you? I was doing a lecture or I was speaking at one of those organizations, one of those lunch groupings I think could have been, I’m not sure if it’s fellowship of Christian businessmen or you know business Dudes that are you know really serious dudes. I mean, I forget the name of it, okay, but I was speaking when maybe there’s a one of those luncheon

Like like red cars I was speaking at that he came up to me afterwards and handed me his card and introduced himself. From that point on, we became friends and built a relationship. Then he was trying to woo me to start using the bank he was working currently at. I said, forget that.

Let’s go buy one. My little back story with Sean is, if you’re out there and you don’t know who Sean Copeland is, one, Google the guy. It’s Sean, S-E-A-N, Copeland, K-O-U-P-L-E-N. He is a guy who’s kind of like the Joel Osteen of banking. No doubt about it.

He’s an author, he’s a lecturer, he’s a great guy. He’s one of the nicest guys ever. He also gives you a bro hug when he meets you. Does he not? Yes, it’s certified. One of the only bankers I know that gives a basketball-style handshake-hug combo.

Well, he was a basketball player back in the day. It’s true. It’s an amazing combination. So Sean Copeland, I knew him when he was at Citizen Security Bank. He’s one of the youngest people at that bank. Rose to the top.

He became the president of the Bixby Chamber of Commerce. I knew him when he moved to Grand Bank and then now Region Bank. So you said, hey buddy, I know you’re going to move to different banks and try to drum up deposits. You’re always going to be a top performer, but why don’t we just buy a bank? The thing about a bank is this.

I’ve said on different shows that I don’t get involved in a business unless I can control it. But a bank is so controlled by the federal government, by the organization that they’re under, that I felt comfortable owning a minority piece of a bank. Because we decided when we went to buy it, Sean and I set up a format that nobody would have a controlling interest.

Everybody would have, say, 10 guys each own 10% kind of thing. And as part of the Illuminati, don’t you control the government? Can I tell a funny Sean Copeland story? Yeah, please do it out there. Well, his grandfather was a cattle farmer out by where I have my horse ranch. There are actually neighbors of mine out there.

Really? Yeah. Anyway, he was telling me a story that some land came up for sale next to their ranch, and the grandfather said, we’ve got to go buy that. We don’t want your mobile home parks moving in. It would be the worst.

We’ve got to watch our flanks. We’ve got to protect our flanks. They’re coming to get us. We’ve got to protect our flanks, family. And they looked at him at the dinner table and said, Grandpa, you know that’s three miles now from where we live?

We’ve protected it pretty well. That’s seven layers deep. That’s across a moat. It’s kind of far away. So the reason why I say all that is because, yes, you’re my friend, yes, in many respects I consider you to be kind of like my business dad.

You’ve been there for me. You’ve been more than a brother, more than a friend. It’s awesome what you’ve done for my wife and I and our family. First hiring my wife, and it’s just little things, but my wife worked for your optometry clinic and I didn’t know you super well, but the standard of excellence that you guys created there was inspiring to me. So I would go in the lobby and I would spy on the business and look at the checklists.

And I didn’t have a, we didn’t have smartphones yet where I could take pictures, but I would actually draw. Mentally. I’m serious. I would draw pictures of the checklists. I would go in there.

I would, I could, why does he set up retail this way, that way? I just, I studied your company and it created a source of inspiration for me to see a guy killing the game in optometry. Then at a time in our life where we didn’t have a lot of money, we were starting DJConnection.com. I worked at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, a time where you probably should not have said yes. You agreed to meet with me for lunch and taught me a lot of things about the game of business.

One of the first guys who was adamant about advertising. And I can say, Chuck, this is the easiest part of business, is marketing and branding so easy. Fun stuff. Sales so easy. No, just be good.

Isn’t marketing and branding so easy? It’s fun. Sales is easy. But then you get into managing people and you have to get to a place where you have core principles that you adhere to pretty much 100% of the time. You have core principles that you adhere to.

And Dr. Z said, well, you know, Clay, I have these 10 rules for success I want to teach you. 10 business pig rules. Z, when did you come up with these rules? This has been, I formulated them over the years of business. But when did you get down to ten?

I’m going to go back to one thing you said. First of all, thank you for all the kind words. No, I mean it though. And I do see you as a business younger little brother or son. I like both of those. And when your father passed from ALS a few years ago, it was a really bonding moment

for the two of us in time we spent together, getting you through the grieving motion of that. But I will give hats off to your wife, Vanessa. That used to work for me. Yep. And that’s how we met was through her.

Yeah. The fact that she could see the inner man that you were, because the dude that you were when you came to pick her up was a dude that we all, we all sat around the break room and thought, what on earth is she with him? The combination of both dumb and aggressive made it tough.

I mean, really, I mean, the fact that she could see through your crusty outer shell, into a soft little inner jelly goodness that you are. Jason talked about this morning in one of our meetings, but if you’re Kanye West and you’re known as having the Kanye scowl, that’s cool because you’re Kanye West. If you’re Eminem and you’re known as being like intense, but in your Eminem that’s cool. But if you’ve got nothing, and you’re just dumb and aggressive, that’s not a move.

You pull up in your car and the walls would rattle. You had that thing cranked up so loud. He’s like a clam, right? There was a pearl in his side. You’d come in all snooky-eyed and pick a fight. I’ve got to ask you this, though.

When did you finally distill your observations from years of experience running companies into these ten rules? Well, what happened was I got, like you, except I didn’t get paid. Okay. I got asked to speak at an event.

And so, you know, you speak and then you keep your notes and the next time you work on it, you keep your notes. People love, you know, hey, I’m going to teach on my 10 points today. Oh, they just light up. They’re like, oh, I have 10 points. I don’t want to miss one of these, you know.

They’re writing them down and they’re focusing on it. And it kind of helps direct your, you know, your conversation. And then you get a theme. I got a, I themed it up. I got one that’s a little unusual. It’s not unusual to have a pig as your theme.

Whoa, let me get a wood block. It’s not unusual. Okay, back to you. But so I kind of, through speech writing, I formulated these ten, this was a speech that I gave. Okay.

And so it kind of forced me to sit down and go, what are my, what are my, okay, here’s what it looks like, how can I put that into this format? And so. And all of this goes under the title of what would Z do in my mind. So I’m going to read the principle,

and then the business pig principle. I’m calling these, these are Dr. Z’s 10 business pig principles for success. Right, exactly, and I would tell everybody out there that owns a business, if I walked up to one of your employees and said,

hey, how would you handle this situation? One of the things that should go through their mind is, how would my owner slash boss handle this situation? And if you haven’t taught them or given them the ability or the action steps in order to do that, I would encourage you to do that. And I got inspired by those little bracelets years ago that came out, those little rubber band bracelets. The WWE and JD. Yeah, what would Jesus do? And that’s a really good way to kind of

think through it. You’re at a fork in the road and which way would he go? What would he do? What would he do? And so that’s just a real kind of principle that I’ve always enjoyed having because a lot of times I’ll have an employee come to me with a problem and I look at them and I’d say, well, what would I do? And they go, oh, well, you do this. Just to demonstrate the mastery of how locked in you and I are now, we’re going to teach a principle and then I’m going to play a song on the cowbell and you can guess what song

it is. Perfect. See if you can see how locked in we are. Oh, this is one of my favorite songs. This is one of my favorite games, I mean. Here we go. So, principle number one.

Name the tune. Pigs get fat, hogs get butchered. What does that mean? What does that mean? I was taught by that from a judge that I met from Racing Pigeons, which is a whole other show.

We’ll get into that. You’re making this up. No, no, no, no, no. It’s a thing. Google it. It’s a thing.

Racing Pigeons. I did that for years. His name was Dick Ott, and anyway, he taught… Pigeons? No, no, no. He taught me that saying, and as soon as he said it, it was just like a light bulb went

off in me. It’s just like my blood started to boil. I just thought it was one of the coolest things ever, because what it deals with is greed. It deals with greed, and there’s a lot of ways business owners can be greedy. One of the ways business owners can be greedy is pricing their product or their services. So high.

So high. Hey, how much does your smoker cost? $1.2 billion. What do you think about the philosophy that has been taught by many consultants all around the world? If people are willing to pay for it and not complain about the price, you should just keep raising it. Well, there is something about that. But then the point is that the pig raises it until

he gets one or two complaints and then goes, okay, I know I’m probably there. The hog continues to raise it until he stops selling it. You see the difference? So, the pig goes, you know what, hey, I raised it five bucks, no one complained. Hey, I’m going to raise it another five bucks, no one complained. And then when he starts to get a little bit of pushback and some complaints, he probably

knows they were kind of wanting to complain before, but they just didn’t know how to verbalize it. I want to stay alive. Now he’s at the, you know. But my philosophy was this, is why raise the price when you can expand the building, when you can hire more doctors, when you can do more, when you can just expand that I mean you’re there’s always

A limiting membrane don’t let the price of the greed be your limiting membrane and and the other thing too is with employees I know so many people that just beat up their employees on price Yeah Listen if you don’t take good care of your employees, especially your good ones somebody else will move and that’s another component of greed. The third area that I see so many times is people that own a business just want to beat their vendors up.

They want to get in there and that sales rep comes in the door and pretty soon they come in every two weeks and now they’re every month and now they’re every six weeks and now you don’t even see them anymore because they’re tired of getting beat up on price. Come in and go, well, you need to knock that thing down another two points, two percentage points. Thinking about making a switch. I mean, I’m thinking about sending this back up for negotiations.

The thing about it, it’s got to be a win-win. Let me give some specifics to this that I’ve asked Dr. Z about over the years that I think Chep will be helpful to add to the show notes. One, as you just said, we need to make a win-win in all scenarios. It needs to be a win for the customer, a win for the employee. Right.

We call it the three Ps. You want to have a business that’s profitable. Yes. You want to have a product that you’re proud of. Yes. And you want to have people that you like working with.

Absolutely. The three Ps. Also, you want to make a profit of about, what, Z, 20%, 25%? It’s sort of that target. Some industries are higher, some are lower, like home building. Somewhere between 20 and 30 is…

Pretty healthy margin. If you’re shooting for more than 30, you’re kind of getting the hug. You see guys are like, I made a 70% margin on this new home remodel. It’s the only one I’ve ever gotten though, but I swear I crushed it. The Johnson’s are good suckas. Now Z, I’m going to cue up our first song on our show, Name That Tune.

I want you to think about the song. I’m going to play it, and as I play it on the cowbell, I want you to ask yourself, yourself to see what song is this on this edition of Name That Tune. I’m a former DJ. I know a catalog of hundreds of thousands of songs. And I’m not.

It could be any song. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a genre. That way we narrow it down. No, no, no. Don’t even. I don’t keep in this moment.

No, I just want to get a song that was sang by a male artist. Okay, got it. I think I already know this. I already gave it away. Here we go. Oh, that’s easy.

Michael Jackson, beat it. Yes. That was impressive. Well, thank you. I don’t know how you do that every time. It’s crazy.

It’s crazy good to demonstrate how out of sync Chup and I are now. Chup, I’m going to tee up a song here. This song was sang by a male artist. And I’m going to play it. I want you to see if you can guess what it is. I’m ready.

I know it. On top of Old Smokies. Purple Rain. Purple Rain. Purple Rain. It’s so obvious. We haven’t spent enough time together. We need to get more in a flow. Principle number two from Dr. Z’s Business Pig Principles for Success.

Principle number two. Be the pig at breakfast, not the chicken. What does that mean? What does it mean? Well, let’s look at the rolls at breakfast. I love rolls. Oh, yeah. What’s that place where you throw them at each other? I went there this weekend. Yeah, yeah. Lambert. Lambert. Lambert. Oh, shout out to Lambert. Hey, you know what? Are you serious? I went there on Friday night. Let me celebrate this moment. You went to Lambert’s!

I went to Lambert’s! Touch of the throne! Of all the restaurants in the world he could have possibly gone to! How did that happen? Z and I are in sync here. We can’t make this up.

So being the pig means you gave your life for bacon, ham, sausage. That means fully committed. In other words, you were all in. The chicken lays an egg and you know it’s kind of like maybe I’ll lay an egg tomorrow if I feel like it. Let me go off for a second. Let me go off for a second. This is something I hear all the time. I see people say all the time. I’m going to try

out this idea and see if it works. Because if this idea works, then I’ll go ahead and keep pursuing it. I’m just going to try this, but my fallback position is this other job. I’m going to put a little bit of money into this coffee shop, but if it requires work and I don’t get traction, I am going to stop. See, why is that such jackassery to not be the pig at breakfast? I’m going to tell you an example. I was mentoring a young man who wanted to open up a swanky clothing store. You know, that kind of swank that they have, those pants with the… Swagalicious. The kind of stuff that Kayla would buy that’s yeah

Yeah, exactly you know you know the kind of cool you know very stylish, you know crazy socks and all that stuff and Few months later. You know we have another meeting he comes by to kind of Commiserate and I’m like what’s that because I think I have to shut it down Down bro, and I’m like what’s going on. He goes well. It’s hard to find good help I’ve got this dude on Saturdays who just keeps stealing

from me I think. You know man, just giving free stuff away to his friends, robbing the kitty, all that kind of stuff. I’m like, why don’t you just get in there and work on Saturdays? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Bro, that’s leg day.

Hey, I have audio of what this person said to you. I know it’s kind of unethical for me to have mic’d a private conversation between you and a man that you were mentoring to start this clothing company. I want to make sure it was a clothing company because I mic all conversations. This is what he said to you. You said to him, you said, buddy, you got to be willing to do whatever it takes.

And this is what he said to you. Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. I don’t quite understand the exchange, but that’s what happened. Well that’s the thing about it is that when you…

In Napoleon Dynamite’s book, he talks about burning the boat. Burning the boat. And what that means is that from one island, they would go and attack the next island. Yes. And the idea was that there was no retreat, there was no plan B. We’re either going to take this island or die.

I mean, that’s a huge… Think about that. Think about that. The mindset of that. Think about this. After reading that book, I read that book 2000-ish.

Then I had a lunch with you teed up by Kylie, our manager, who’s still there. By the way, super excited for the holiday party. Christmas party is coming up very soon. Clay, I just want to point one thing out. When you pulled up for lunch and you lit your car on fire, it’s not the same thing, okay? You don’t have to burn your car.

Bro, I took that to be literal. Burn the Buick. That’s not the same thing. I was also one of the early jihadi recruits, and so I just went ahead and pulled out the manual for car bombs. Okay, now the point is, though, seriously, I had just finished reading that book, and

I met with you, and I remember this. You said, Clay, can I be frank with you? And I go, okay. I thought you were Robert, but okay. But you said this. You said, you have got to advertise.

You eventually have to buy an ad. And I remember kind of like having, well, yeah, but I can’t afford it You’re like listen, I’m not a paid consultant just buy an ad I had you were just very direct on that and I remember going This guy’s a jerk You got up and went to the salad bar and I remember going I wrote that down like this guy Cuz this and I were in a spot where I’ve worked at Applebee’s Target and DirecTV three jobs

Vanessa had a job at Office Depot and Oral Roberts University. And I remember going, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. And so I went and talked to Vanessa. I’m like, burn the boats, Dr. Z. It’s like an hour-long windup. And I’m like, we’re going to have

to turn off the air conditioning or the heat. We’ve got to do something. I don’t know. It was a powerful moment in your life. No, seriously. And we actually sold.

We had a white car. I cannot remember. It was like a, I want to say it was it was American model like a Buick or something my parents Had sold for me That my parents sold to me for like nothing. It was very low Cost but I sold that and we just had the Mazda MPV and she started walking to work

And she would drop me off at my jobs, and we decided to buy a yellow page ad From Sally who is Lewis Lewis that’s right who is the mother of one of your clients, Kevin Lewis. Kevin Lewis Riffing. And it was like two grand a month, is it? See, has there ever been a better time in American history? I mean, right now, you can turn on your YouTube ads or your Facebook ads month to month, man,

week to week. See, do you remember the times when you had to commit to an agreement for like a year to buy a Yellow Page ad? I know. I tell you what, business owners starting today have got that part of it much easier. Oh, it’s so easy.

I mean, it’s so much easier than we had it back in the day. But I remember, I’ll tell you what, you put that picture in there and you made sure you had the big ones up front. I mean, come on now. I was like, I’m something now. I’m so hot.

It’s like fishing for fish in a barrel. Jeff Ramsey was my first inbound call ever. Remember, Jeff Ramsey. Oh, yeah. It’s crazy. You were saying the other day on the show, Clay, you had to commit to whatever marketing

strategy you were going for for a year. There was no A-B testing. There was no trying things out. It’s like- Let me tell you how I did it. Dr. Z said, if your ad doesn’t grab somebody by the throat-

Z, can you explain what kind of ad you want… If you’re going to launch an ad, what your ad has to do in terms of getting the attention of your ideal and likely buyers? Well, you’ve got to have a call to action. The ad has to inspire you. How many times right now you’re listening right now, you’ve heard an ad on the radio,

you’ve seen an ad in a magazine or newspaper, you’ve watched an ad on TV and you go, huh, yeah, I don’t know. And then the ad comes along that makes you laugh, makes you remember it, makes you go, I’ve got to have that thing. If I don’t have that thing, I may not make it. I might not.

I might not. I do. My quality of life would be horrible without that. I do need a ham from the Hamlet. I need a ham from the Hamlet. Honeycutt ham.

I mean. Honeycutt ham from the Hamlet. That’s what I need now. You have to have a call to action, and in order to do that, you have to have some kind of component of a deal that just is so awesome, so incredible. So back in the day, you see now, it’s like you want to drive them to a website, you want to drive

them to something else. But back in the day, my whole goal was to get them to pick up the phone and call me. I thought, I’m going to have something so crazy, so outlandish, so over the top, call to action, they have no choice but to pick up the phone and call. Because that was the move back in the day. And so all I did was I looked at my competition and they had an ad that said something like

started in 1984, founded in 1984. So I’m going, well, conceive the 1980s. Yeah, that was you. So I’m like, okay, I got that. And then it said, we have over 100,000 songs. And I thought to myself, talking to Z, I mean, I could conceivably get up to a million

songs. So I wrote something like, we can get up to 110,000 songs, or something just more than that. And I just one-upped them, and I said, we’ll be any competitor’s price. And my ad was smoking hot, dude. It worked.

It got attention. I put my head- That’s what advertising does. If done correctly, it makes the phone drink. Literally, all the ads were kind of conservative. I took my head and put it on a body of a person in a suit using Photoshop.

So it was like a caricature head, like a bobble head on a normal-sized man body, but like a five times larger head. And it worked, dude. Clay, I don’t want to be mean, and I don’t want to be disrespectful. You know, I’ve got a lot of man love for you. I mean, you know that, right?

Yep. But your head is really, really big. No, I’ve got to be honest with you. I did not enlarge the photo at all. No, thank you. It’s me in your picture.

But I mean, when I went out there and launched the ad, though, I had to be the pig. Breakfast had to commit to it. And that’s one of the things that I think, you know, why we have such a high fail rate on businesses, according to Forbes, which is kind of our business Bible. We like to quote Forbes a lot because they’ve done a lot of the research. And it’s the easy button.

We don’t have to go do it. Let’s be honest with you. They’ve already done it. And 90% of businesses fail up to 80%… 90% of startups and then 80% of businesses fail. And that rate is way too high. That’s one of the things that started us down this pathway of building a business school online, doing in-person

workshops, doing the radio show, which is now a podcast, having one-on-one, now even one-on-one coaching, business coaching. A quick clarification. A lot of people might have misunderstood what you just said. When you said Forbes, you weren’t saying F-orbs. No.

No, I was saying Forbes. No. Spherical bodies or globes, you have no problem with those. When I meet an entrepreneur that has that fire in their eye and says, you know, I’m going to do this no matter what. Studies show that people that say, I have a plan B, I might fall back, I’m not going to burn my boat, I have an escape door, I have a parachute.

You think, well, that’s wisdom. That just sounds wise. That’s a prudent man. Wouldn’t be prudent. No. Be the pig.

Fully commit. Get your mindset wrapped around because 67% of you out there, according to Forbes again, want to start a business. We want to help you start it and grow it. Be committed to saying, you know what, I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. We’ve talked about this in the past on the show, but the thought of a founder’s mentality,

that means there’s urgency within your actions. If you’ve only dipping a toe in the jacuzzi, if you’re only trying out the waters. Oh, in the jacuzzi? Yeah, if you’re only testing out the waters you put out Z the game over today show the entire foot the entire focus of today’s show is what would Z do? Yeah, I get the jacuzzi do the business pigs ten business principles for success all right so Z

The Business Pig’s 10 Business Principles for Success. All right, so Z, I’m going to cue up my next song from Name That Tune here. I’m going to play the song. Here it goes. This song is a male artist from the 80s. A male artist, think about it for a second.

Think about it. Okay, hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I transmit the signal to you. Is it an individual or is it a boy band? I couldn’t give that much information.

Okay, okay, okay. I got you. I got you. I got you. This is magical. So I’m going to go ahead and play the beat and you can tell me what it is.

Here we go. Name that tune with Dr. Z. Demonstrate how in sync we are mentally. Here we go. Oh, that’s easy. Bobby Brown, Don’t Be Cruel.

I don’t be cruel. I would never be that cruel to you. It’s so simple. No, no, no. You’ve got to give me a harder one. I’m sorry.

I’m trying. I’m trying over here. Okay, so principle number three, business pig principle number three that has allowed Dr. Z to build multiple multi-million dollar businesses. It’s know when to cook the pig. What does that mean? What does it mean? Z, audio, quick audio. Let’s do quick audio. Okay. You’re saying it weird.

Saying what’s weird? All of it. Where do you get off? I just don’t get why you’re saying it that way. Why I’m saying what way? Okay, now we’ve clarified what you’re saying, Z.

Talk to us about what you mean when we say, when to cook the pig. Well, I always loved those scenes in Hawaii. Of course, he doesn’t love Hawaii. I mean, you know, come on. Mickey, Malick, and Mickey Mouse

are meant to be under the same roof as you. So they have the luau. And in the luau, one of the standards in the luau is a pig. You know, with an apple in its mouth. I mean, the whole pig being cooked, right?

And it’s always a celebration. They’re always a big family celebration. It’s a wedding. It’s a… There we go. There we go.

There we go. Uh-huh. Keep going, Steve. That’s supposed to be good. So the idea that you’re going to cook a pig means you’re partying. Oh, means you’re having fun.

Means you’re celebrating. Means you are having a good time. Oh, nice. Nice. Tis the season. And so for me, it’s very important.

Send you from the land where palm trees sway. OK, sorry. So, for example, this this December 8th. Yes. We are going to have a problem with what i’m five hundred people are christmas party it’s going to be a sick

employee christmas party is going to be a bit of the famous mail hotel iconic iconic in the christian or a yes in the crystal ball room all while where they actually have original it’s like original old-school marble crown molding the detail there i mean you talk to the big they don’t make hotels like that anymore they don’t the history so i’m going to be a business center out there and your team has some wins,

go celebrate it. Hey, take them to a pizza joint. Go bowling. Go to a billiards. You took my wife and I to Magoo’s. Yes, which is a billiards.

You took all your employees to Magoo’s. Shovelboard and billiards. We had a great time. Great time. A fabulous time. Dude, and I’m just telling you, at the time, though, when you did it, Vanessa and I couldn’t

afford to go on dates. It was a huge highlight for us, man. It’s a win-win. One, selfishly as the employer, I get my team bonding together, even tighter, better friends, fired up. And they also know that if they work hard and they hit the numbers and we have a successful

month, guess what? Chicken butt. Exactly. No, it was huge. They had a great night out. It was exciting.

It was, very fun. Also, I remember the Christmas party. It was the first time we had a formal event since we got married. It’s so much fun. And the casino theme going on, Z? Remember back in the day?

I know, it was so much fun. I’m telling you out there, business owners, if you’re not celebrating the victories with your staff, you’re missing an opportunity to not only bond with them, but to also show them that they’re in the boat with you. I have a question on behalf of the listener who couldn’t be here today. And Shep, I’ll kind of tee it up here.

So Dr. Z, why can’t you have a cheap-ass Christmas party? Why can’t you have just the cheapest ass thing, the cheapest, the most unbelievably tacky because for years I’ve been buying my employees, I’ve been regifting. You know what I mean? I regift and it’s been kind of a secret thing, no one really knows, but I’ve been regifting and it’s been working well.

Why do I have to spend all the time and the money to put together a holiday party? Here again, these are one of the things that help you build a culture of the environment of your workplace come on up and when you ever you when your staff knows that there is something There is something at the end of the rainbow I mean it did a suck if you ever get to the end the rainbow, and there’s no pot of gold you’re like oh He’s after me lucky charm after my lucky charms

So the idea is is that you’re team-building at the same time you’re celebrating the victory And so when I went to listen to one of my favorite business gurus of all time, Jack Welch, one of my favorite business books, Winning. He’s so good. I just love that. Winning, because that’s what it’s about.

People are like, well, don’t you think we need a show? No, win. Win. Win. Win. We’re about winning.

When he got up there on stage and basically said the same thing. He said, listen, you’ve got to go out there. Make sure you hire people you want to celebrate things with, because if you don’t want to go out and hang out with them, then you shouldn’t have hired them to begin with. Amen. That was a caveat.

But he said, go out and celebrate victories. And it resonated with me, and I thought, can I come up there and give you a bro hug? But I mean this, though. There’s many hotels we could have chosen, but it’s in a nice place. We could go tacky with the buffet. We could.

But we don’t. We don’t. The whole thing, it’s a really… Jeff, you’ve been there before. Can you describe the energy because for anybody out there who’s listening right now who is attending our December conference December 7th and 8th as a little

Sneak attack kind of a little figure we’re gonna be doing a drawing to see who gets to have lunch with Michael Levine the great The PR consultant for Nike for Michael Jackson for Prince for pizza And we’re gonna be doing drawings to see who wants to attend the Christmas party You’ll get to see it first hand and in person. It’s a game changing event. Chuck, can you explain what the party was like last year?

It’s fun. I saw Dr. Z do the double splits. It’s first class. It’s an amazing experience. I’m still in therapy after that. You should have been back in that contest.

You really brought out the… It’s awesome though. And the thing is, like Dr. Z was saying, it is an awesome bonding experience. I met tons of people that work at other businesses, Z, that you own. And it’s awesome to meet these people that are all bought into the same value and same culture and celebrate together like he was saying.

Yeah, exactly. Celebrate! So that’s a picture of that, cooking the pig, because you know when you cook that pig, you know you’ve got a celebration. It’s delicious. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that in all the celebrations I’ve done with all my employees

over 20, almost 27 years now, I’ve never once cooked a pig. Hey, can we bury a pig in your backyard, Clay, sometime? Can we do that? Can we cook a pig in your backyard I know how to do it the chicken complex Clark I’m committing right now this has to happen oh my gosh I saw the wheels turn and just look at him light up yes

you thrive nation you can’t see this but I he’s freaking out right now just put it on the notes frizz that we have to do this this is this has to happen we have to cook the pig let’s make a pig I’m not sure we have the land you know we could do for for a person conference I bet we could bring one out and cook one for lunch. That’s on there! Put it down! No seriously, you’ve got to get this on the to-do list and we have to activate this idea because when you have ideas, you don’t act upon it, it’s just hallucination.

I’m going to put it on my to-do list. Let’s do it! We should cook the pig, that’s a thing! That’s a thing! Okay, Z, next, next, just to show how locked in we are. This next song was written by an artist. And it’s a song that people know.

People know this song. I’m going to cue it up. Now, again, Chubb, a lot of people are saying you’re making a mockery of this name, that tune. No, I’m not. This is a sincere name, that tune.

Chubb, I’ll tell you this. I’ll play the song first, and you guess. We’ll see if you get it right, and then Z, you get to go second. I like this. I like this. Here we go. I’m set up for success. Here we go, Chup. We already did, if I could turn back time, Clay, in the last show.

By Cher? Yeah. No. Okay. Okay, Z. Here we go. That’s easy. Bruton Mars, Locked Out of Heaven. Locked out of Heaven! Yes! Yes! He even slowed it down a little bit.

Are you at a… Still got it. That’s amazing. See, that’s amazing right there. It’s a gift. What can I say? What can I say? What can I say? I knew you were going to go a little hip-hop on me. I knew you were going that direction. A little R&B, a little bit of hip-hop. I’m going to keep it all over the board, doing old school down new school. I know your actions. Okay, so now the next principle number four. Piggy bank. What is the piggy bank

all about my man? How many people you think I’m gonna offend with this 17.27% that’s fair I think it’s a fair number I’m gonna put it at 20 but I think you’re you know I’m aggressive kind of a godfather kind of a theme here that way it’s more palatable I think that’d be kind of funny I think I think that’d be appropriate Here’s the concept. Everybody out there listening, say to yourself,

how much money am I saving every month? And if you say to yourself, I’m not saving any money because I go paycheck to paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. Every now and then I get a little overtime and guess what? I get to go and blow it on something else. Because that’s what you do, right? I get some research. The average American family has $400 in So I’m believing no payments for 24 months.

Let’s get some research. The average American family is $400 a day. That’s only if you’re crediting the Federal Reserve for looking at the statistics on the banks. That’s a crime! That’s a crime! They only have that at the bank. You’ve got to live below your means. You’ve got to delay gratifications. You’ve got to feed us a family. It’s a piggy bank for a reason. You’ve got to save some money, shove some money in that thing.

Take it off the top. Feed the pig before you feed anything else. Feed the pig before you feed yourself okay do you know what sneaks is what snakes sneaks you I don’t care. Keep one on the wheel. But I know you do. Raise a foot if you’re driving.

Left foot. Left foot up. If you’re getting a paycheck, boom. Now, if you’re saving money, raise the other hand. And there’s not as many hands. I’m looking across the country.

Hey, real quick. Andrew in our office. Yes. Andrew Blumer. Chup, how much of a percentage of his paycheck is he now saving, automated? 25%.

Dude. Sexy. That’s aggressive. I always coach people 5 to 10, 5 minimum. He has been living at the office. Him and his newlywed wife.

Seriously, he has been saving 25%. That’s enough to pay the future rent. What I’m telling you folks is this. What will happen is you may go, I don’t need to save any money right now because I’m making good money. I’m living the dream.

I get it. You can’t take it with you, Z. I get it. But what’ll happen is in about a year and a half to two years, maybe three years, maybe four years down the road, you’re going to say to yourself, you know what, I’m done punching a time clock and I’m going to start my own thing. There you go. Were those guys I used to listen to, you know, the Thrive Time guys, get down to school, get on online business school, and

they have your idea, you’re like, this widget will change the world. This widget will change And then you’ll say, now all I need is money to start it. So what I’m saying for this, save for a rainy day, because rainy days come. I know Southern California, you’re listening to our podcast right now, you do get rain every now and then. Of course, all the fires out there, I’m sorry to hear all the destruction, but you do need

some more rain. But rainy days come, folks. So you need to have a savings, number one. If you own a business, you should be able to not make any money for a month and survive. Alright? Oh, that’s huge.

These are huge things, okay? And by getting a war chest, I call it a war chest because starting a business, if you don’t think of it as going into battle, you really don’t have the right mindset to start it, okay? But having a war chest enables you now to put your own skin in the game, enables you to start your business, enables you to change your life, change your stars.

So I know you may not have the business idea today, but you know what you’ll have it down the road I still love when my DJ competitors who got a business They always put their gear for sale on Craigslist 30 cents on classified Tulsa world I am the classified ads were a thing Craig wasn’t even born yet And I could buy that equipment for 10 cents on the dollar nothing like buying this kind of DJ gear from a former competitor Beautiful beautiful, but saving allows you to buy opportunities.

Now, Z, for this next round of Name That Tune, just to show how locked in step we are, I’m going to just kind of cue it up here. This time I will give a little bit of lyrics. Okay? A little bit of lyrics. Here we go.

Here we go. Here we go. Well, wouldn’t it be nice if I could touch your body? I know not everybody has got a body like you. What song is it? I have no idea.

I know what it is. But I gotta think twice before I give my heart away. I know all the games you play because I play them too. Come on Z. That’s, it’s right said Fred. Oh but I need some time off from that emotion.

Come on Z. Time to pick my heart off the floor. Oh when the love comes down without devotion. Well it takes a strong man baby but I’m showing you the door, I gotta have faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith,

faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, a lily pad thinking, well, even though I have never started a company, here are principles that I want to teach someday. Nor do you make any money in the self-help industry.

You just are a business owner who, by the way, has taken the time to distill the common denominators of the principles you’ve learned over the years. You know what’s sad is I have friends that make $100,000 and they’re broke. I have friends that make $500,000 and they’re broke. And when I say broke, in other words, if you said, hey, can you write me a check for $5,000 or $10,000, they’d be like, no, bro.

Why? It’s a payday. Are you crazy? It’s the end of the month, Steve. Oh, wait. Yeah, you can see my new jacuzzi just over there.

Why would you ask about being given? Anyway, the point is that it goes all across all socioeconomic dividers in the country. And that is that people aren’t saving. And we’re just told not to. Hey, credit cards, this whole culture of America, spend money, spend money, spend money. A lot of that was formed back in the days of, you know, when we have social security

take care of you, we got your back end. So a lot of that has trickled down to every generation. But I’m telling you what, folks, use that piggy bank and the fact that it’s a pig and kind of fits with the old business pig, Tim, business pig concepts. You get it? I do.

Okay, thank you. But if you’re not saving, I would really encourage you to do it. Yeah, you may have to get rid of a third car. You may have to get rid of some other luxury item that you have. Third girlfriend. You may have to get rid of that.

Second girlfriend. Even that. Third party in your marriage. You know, you may have to get rid of cable, or you have to choose between cable or dish. I mean, I know it’s a tough thing. You know I like the party.

But wait, man, there’s things on dish that I can’t get on cable and vice versa, bro. Bro. So, bro. Come on, man. Bro. So here we go.

We have six more principles in six minutes. Here we go. Oh, God. Next principle. Are you kidding me? No.

Principle number five. Showtime blue-ribbon pig. What does that mean? That means that when you’re at work, when you’re doing your thing, the most important thing you can be doing is what you’re doing. What I mean by that is this, is that there’s a lot of things that get in your brain throughout

the day. You know, something going on at the house, the toilet’s plugged up at the business. I wonder if I’ve removed all the bacteria from my hands. I mean, did I wash my hands completely? But what I’m saying is that our society is so far so much about not being there. I mean, I go around and I look at people in restaurants

sitting there across the seat from each other and they’re both sitting there on their phones. They’re like they’re not even around each other. Here’s a picture of my food. So I used to have a little thing I used to do, and I know this sounds silly and corny, but it worked for me.

And that is every time before I’d walk into an exam room, I’d clear my head, and I’d say to myself, showtime, the most important thing in the world, showtime, showtime, showtime, showtime, showtime, the most important thing right then and there

was to walk into that room and to smile, to greet that patient, to connect with that patient, and to solve that patient’s problem, and to answer the age-old question of why are you here and what can I do for you? Without thinking about all the things that are pulling on me, without thinking about the phone call I need to make, without thinking about the guy that just yelled at me because a car was parked in the wrong spot out and just whatever all the stuff that happens all that peripheral stuff

You know and I think that’s what happens a lot of times you see employees do this Will they bring like you tell them that you know leave your family problems at the door when you come in the business? It’s almost impossible to do I realize that I mean things affect us. They’re at the front desk singing last Christmas I gave you The very next day, you turn and apply. Welcome.

What are you doing? Welcome to the business. How are you? How can I help you? You see employees, though, seriously. There was a guy the other day at a local convenience store.

I said, how are you? He goes, I’m good as soon as I get done with my shift. Yeah, exactly. And I go, OK. Inspiring. I mean, seriously.

I said, how are you doing? Just like that. He goes, I’m good as soon as I get done with my shift. And I’m like, OK, well, so I’d like to go ahead and buy an ice drink and some gas. All right, whatever, bro.

Yeah, whatever. Whatever. I mean, wow. Wow. So I wanted to hit him with the stick that I use to beat the cowbell. So if you own a business, say you own a construction business and you’re given a quote, forget

all the negative in your life. When you walk up, when you go, when you go to that family and you’re going to talk about and give them a quote to build a pool in their backyard, you be connected with them and it’s show and the showtime is showtime. It’s show time. And that’s where you connect, that’s where you build your business, that’s where you

make your money are those show time events. And if you sit there and let your phone, your phone’s ringing the whole time, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Real quick, now if you decide not to bring show time every day, this is the motivational, this is what’s going to happen to you. Z, if you decide not to bring show time on a daily basis…

Oh, you have the decision, sure. This is what is going to happen to you. And luckily, Z, we were able to mic somebody who is a former employee for one of my companies. He decided not to bring Showtime on a daily basis. And without his permission, I put a lifetime microphone,

I embedded a chip deep inside his epidermis. He thought it was a flu shot. Right, right. And this is the motivational talk he recently gave to a group of young high school kids who talked to him about how they just didn’t

wanna bring Showtime on a daily basis because they wanted to keep it real. They wanted to be transparent. Now you kids are probably saying to yourselves, hey, I’m going to go out and I’m going to get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket. Well I’m here to tell you that you’re probably going to find out as you go out there that

you’re not going to amount to Jack’s squat. Holy cow! Okay, so you don’t want that to happen to you. No, no. So you have to be purposeful and you also have to understand the important moments. It’s kind of like having a to-do list and there’s maybe one thing on the list that is

a must-do today. It’s kind of the same thing. I mean, when I was getting ready to walk into that exam room, nothing else mattered. Nothing. Nothing else. It was showtime and the show was for me to laser show, give a great eye exam, connect with the person and make them happy.

What I’ve seen a lot, Z, is that people just aren’t mentally aware of themselves. Right? So when you’re saying show time, look at yourself. Pay attention to actually how you’re acting, not just how you feel. Absolutely. So those are those moments.

You have them throughout the day. And then when you’re out of the exam room and you’re out in front of that patient, for example, and that’s my example that I have for my optometry clinics, then you go back in your office and then you can do all the stuff you need to do. Throw stuff against the wall. Big pig eats first at the trough.

What is this principle? Principle number six. This is the one, this is the one across the board. Every time I give this speech, every time I talk about my ten principles, this is the one that gives me the most backlash. Boo!

Boo! People can’t stand it. People love to boo this one. They cannot stand it. They cannot stand it. Poor people love to boo this one.

Oh, they do. Oh, they do. They will line up after you speak, and they will sit there and berate you. Their hands, as soon as you ask them a question, the first question after is about this one. Excuse me, how do you hate people? Yeah, why?

Just curious. I don’t understand. I don’t understand your point six. Point six. Big pig eats first at the trough. What do you mean by this?

I’m telling you what, folks. If you’re starting a business, this is going to be a concept. I don’t want this to sound mean, but it should be for you. For you. Come on. It should be for you.

The business exists to serve you. It does. And so many times I hear people say, well, I want to open up a business to, to… Serve the local community. I mean, to, yeah, to, you know, fill in the blanks. To fight homelessness and to feed…

To change, you know, change people’s lives. The life you’re going to change most is yours. Oh, say it again. The life you’re going to change most is yours when you start a business. We’re going to teach you how to grow that thing and then we’re going to figure out how to have time freedom and financial freedom. You know, kind of a segue on that, Jack Welch was giving a speech, was talking about, he

had a bunch of his staff come to him and said they wanted him to create a green light bulb. Yeah, make it green. Make it green, you know, safe for the environment. It was safe for the environment and you know what, let’s change the world with a green light bulb.” And they did all the engineering on it, and it was going to be like 10 times the cost, but not be that much more, you know, it’s not going to last longer.

It’s not going to have those kind of features. I can see one that maybe lasts 10 times longer, but 10 times the cost. But it was just going to be green, environmentally safe, sound, more sound product. Not like green, like green light. Yeah. And Jack Welch says, oh, that’s a great idea.

That’ll put us out of business, and then we can all go find other jobs. Because what we’re going to do is we’re going to make inexpensive light bulbs and do the same thing, and then make a lot of money, and then with that money, we can go change the world. There you go. And then we have a business.

And so, so many times I see business owners really suffering because they have let other people take their business hostage. Principle number seven. I love this principle. Happy as a pig in the mud. I love this principle because it’s so applicable for everybody out there.

If you’re a business owner and you’ve ever had to decide what overhead music will be played or what volume it will be played or what decor you’re going to have or where the decor will be or what the logo is going to look like or what the color of the logo is going to look like or made any decision at all, it is impossible to universally appease every single member of your team. But yet as a culture, we’re taught, you know, if you shouldn’t bring candy to school,

unless you bring enough candy for everybody else. You shouldn’t make a playlist unless everyone approves it. Everyone gets to chime in on a song. Z, talk to me about this idea of making an environment where you are happy as a pig in the mud. Well, here again it goes back to this idea that it’s your business and you have an idea

of what you want for your business. Don’t let anybody take you hostage for it and just a real quick thing that I Gentleman came up to me the last time I speak and gave me this little love nugget I’m a little love nugget and it’s really fun and and the idea goes like something like that There’s a book out there called the Bible people the bib could be a bibble. I think it’s Bible Yeah, and in there it says love your neighbor as you love yourself

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. And that implies that you have to love yourself first. Now, getting on to this point about picking the mud, I mean, I think that when you walk into your place, you should be so happy to be in there. It should have the right smell.

It should have the right sound. The right people. The right people. The right everything about it, because it’s yours, it’s your baby. And you can, you know, you don’t have

to do the gamble of the genetic gamble, right? When you have a kid, you’re like, oh, wow, I just think it could go either way. And guess what? It’s yours. It’s yours. So, when you’re business, think of it as a baby that you can create.

And you need to make sure that you have an atmosphere that you love to be in, just like a pig loves to be in the what? You know, speaking of creating babies, one thing I just love, I just love this segment of the show. OK, now, OK, now, OK. He had to stop himself. Oh, he’s back.

Chum, I just wanted to say that you just look so nice in the light over there. Just something over there that says, me, I just say, I want to email myself. I just emailed myself right now. I said, self, that is nice.

That is nice. OK, so moving on now. Yes. Principle number eight, The O Show. Chum, I don’t know whether I want to move on right now. I just want to recycle it like it’s Al Gore’s birthday.

Over and over. Just recycle. Reuse it. Reuse it. Thank you for the interview. Let’s reduce.

Principle number eight. Ocho. Pig-headed, but don’t be a fool. Pig-headed, don’t be a fool. Steve, what do you mean by be pig-headed, but don’t be a fool? Well, I mean, don’t be pig-headed.

Don’t be a fool. Pig-headed is a term that people give that people that are being foolish, that are being, you know, they don’t have any flexibility. They’re being, pig-headed, they’re being a fool. And I, years ago, I had a- You, you, by the way, you have really worked wonders with me about this because I’m somebody who loves to latch on-

You were pig-headed when I met you. I do love, even to this day, I love to latch on to principles. You know, like, I’ll wear the same thing every day. Right, and that’s okay. And then you’re like, Clay, you’ve got to flow, though. There’s like water going around the rock.

There’s a time and place for rock, but you don’t need to like… And this can happen, if you’re somebody who’s very principled in your religious views or your world views, this can be very tough to learn this. See, this is a very valuable lesson for me and many people out there like me. Talk to me about, don’t be a pig-headed fool, but you also have to be resolved to certain principles.

I mean, give us the balance. Yeah, well, there is a balance, thank you for asking. And so, there’s so many principles and so many things I can talk about. One of the things I really want to encourage everybody out there on a side note, sidebar, is your top five friends around you, if any of them are not encouraging, edifying, and life-giving people, if they are what we call the…

They suck the joy and the bone marrow out of you when you’re around them. Get rid of them. If they’re not… If they’re idiots, you know what I mean by that. I’m not being hateful. I’m just like, if they’re just people that take you down the wrong road over and over,

they’re negative people. What do you say when punting people that are negative perpetually? What do I say to them? What do you say? Well I just I tell them that they’re fired from my life. Do you do this really? Yeah nobody, here’s the thing folks, nobody likes to be ghosted. This whole ghosting concept is just kind of for you to kind of like, you know when I got a new phone lost your number. Who are you?

You know this all this kind of stuff all the jackassery you do. I have purposely sat down with a few men in my life and I said listen I’m just gonna tell you right now that I’m I’m just not gonna spend as much time with you and I’m moving on. And I’m moving on. Eject your seat.

And, you know, so have a nice life, but don’t be offended if I don’t text you back immediately or I don’t call you back or I’m not seeing each other. I’m moving on. I have my time. I’m busy. I’ve got things to do.

And you can kind of soft sell a little bit to them. You don’t want to be mean. But on the flip side, you’re being mean to yourself by being a fool and having those kind of people have access to you. Now in business, you know, you have to make your decisions. What’s best for the business?

And yes, sometimes somebody may be in there to scam you out of whatever, whatever, whatever. But understand this, what’s best for the business? We had a patient come in and the lady came in. She was really upset about her glasses she had picked out. Well they fit her fine. The prescription was fine.

Everything was, everything was good on them. It was very fine. I think what happened was is that she went home and one of her kids or her husband made a comment that they didn’t like the way they looked on her. And that got her all twisted. Oh yeah.

You know? And so she couldn’t just come in. She didn’t think she could come in and say, you know what? I made a mistake in picking out this style or color of frame. She kind of went out there. It was a little edgy.

She kind of went out there. It was kind of fun. Looked good on her. But she came in and she was just… So she thought she had to come in and kind of be demonstrative and be like, I can’t see. I can’t see anything on these glasses.

These glasses are horrible. This could… You know, I need my money back on these glasses. Good Lord, I can’t see anything. These glasses are terrible. Unbelievable.

I can’t even see. I can’t believe you sold these to me. I swear, Robert, you as a therapist. Are you going back in time? I’m calling the BBB. So then you just calm them down.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. So then my staff came in, too, going, they’re fine. She’s just trying to, you know. I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

she could be patient for life. And that’s so many more transactions. Let’s take care of her now. I, we realized we did the right thing on this and she’s not doing the right thing on this. Let’s not be a fool and try to challenge her on it. No, you paid for it.

You picked them out. We spent the 45 minutes helping you pick them out. We were there. No, that’s your deal. Now, if you want to know something else, we’ll do it. No, no, no.

We backed up. We said, you know what? We’re going to have to eat, eat some of this, but that’s okay. We made her happy. You backed that thing up. Yeah, listen, listen, and I looked at her and I said, listen, for whatever reason you want to exchange those for another pair, that’s okay. It’s okay. Just settle down. Okay, that’s all right. We’re here to help you. We want you to be happy. We want you to see clearly, comfortably, and be happy with your choice.

Amen. Final two principles from the business pig. These are again, business pig principles for success that he has used to grow multiple multi-million dollar companies. Principle number nine, three little pigs. What do you mean by that? It’s so awesome. Well, if you show up on December 7th and 8th, which is our next in-person workshop, I think

we have a few tickets left. Do we play or we all sort of? We’re down to the top. We’re down to the final 20. Okay, we’ve got 20 tickets left. So if you’re listening to this, come on out.

One of the things we teach is whenever you’re advertising, marketing, you want to have three three different branches of that we call it the three-legged stool You can call it some other things But in the story the three the three pigs the person that used just one ie straw Form of advertising got his house blown away By the wolf and the wolf denotes your competitors because I know this sounds mean but your competitors Don’t have a lot of love for you

They might they might greet your hand and smile when you’re in Costco with them, or Reesers, or Walmart. They may slap you in the back and ask for help. Good to see you there, Dr. Robertson. I love to see you. I’m so glad you’re here right now.

I hope you’re doing well. Yes, of course. I can’t buy your groceries for you, in fact. Burns, did you cut his brake line? Right, Burns? I mean, just kidding, right?

They are like the wolf in the story. The second one used just sticks, I believe, something like that, or mud. I’m trying to remember now. And so, boom, blown away again. And the third one had a combination. So you didn’t have to make a brick.

You take straw, you take the clay, you take some other components. I’m trying to remember what it was. Two parts, we’ll pass. Smash it with your hooves. Yeah, you big it down, you know. And now, all of a sudden, by having three different areas, you build your house.

It withstood the enemy, which was your business wolf down the road. If you don’t have three ways to market your business all going simultaneously, you will lose. And that’s what we teach in our workshop. And so to me, it was a kind of a, I thought, well, three, three, three, three, three. Very practical.

Elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge, one of my companies. We never, Chuck, you see the ads. We never stop our Facebook ads, never stop our YouTube ads, never stop our retargeting ads. That’s our digital presence Yep, then we never stop getting online reviews ever ever and we never stop putting out our signs and doing our mailers

We just never stop never do that’s how we get in new customers week after week final principle We’re gonna teach you as we’re short for time principle number 10 Dr.. Z let the fun begin here here. We go pig advice Well those fire through these if you can kind of see how you can have some fun with each one of these.

But if you’re a pig, give me another pig advice. What would you say? You’d say, Hey, listen, buddy. Hey, once you eat well, keep your snout clean. Never squeal on your friends. That’s so big.

Don’t be gossiping. Don’t be talking about other people in the workplace. All right, come on now. Be curious. I mean, a pig is curious by nature. And that’s one of the things that I love to see when I see a young person that’s curious,

because that curiosity leads to inventions, leads to businesses, leads to ideas to grow and start businesses. I’m curious, do you know the next song that I’m going to choose for name that tune, the final song I’m going to choose? This is for 4,000 megapoints. Ooh, 4,000.

Now, Chup, if you get it wrong or right, there’s 4,000 megapoints involved here for the right. For the wrong, you lose a total of 5,000 megapoints, which means you’re going to have to wear a Christmas suit at the Christmas party. So, uh, Chup, I’m gonna, I’m gonna play the song and the category is going to be songs that were sang by men. Okay. Here we go, Chup.

Are you ready? I’m ready. Super easy one, by the way. Let me try again here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it.

I got it. I feel like that was a Madonna song, Clay. Nope. First song Madonna’s not a man. I know, I know. She is aggressively…

Listen, listen, listen. Okay, give me one more time. Listen, listen, listen. First off, you need to deal with your whole gender bender confusion thing you have. I thought you said man and it was a Madonna song and it’s… I’m going to go back.

Here we go. I got it. Can I tell you the song? Okay, Z, let me tell you. I know where I got confused. What was it?

It was Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue. No. No. Okay, Z, here we go. Here we go. This harkens back.

This one’s a special one because it harkens back to Clay’s college days. Ryan Tedder, one of his good friends, now does One Republic. What is it, Jake? Apologize. It’s too late to apologize. It’s too late.

Then you’ve got to weave in the Timbaland beating of the seal. That’s the version. But he’s clicked it up and have another version out next. I think that was more of a gray whale. Okay. So if you’re out there and you’re saying to yourself, you know what, these ten principles

are principles that I need to apply in my own life and business, go to thrivetimeshow.com, click on the podcast button, there you can find two Pig Jokes, every archived broadcast and Z has two final Pig Jokes. This is by George Bernard Shaw. Never wrestle with pigs, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Wait, wait, wait.

There you go. Okay. And this next one’s from the great, I mean the great Winston Churchill. I mean, come on. Really? Really? I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. Oh!

And you know… It tastes great, too. equals. Sidebar, the pig is the animal that has the closest internal organ systems as a human does. That’s a little sidebar there. I think you’ve just got to know that by just looking at it. Have you ever seen a pig’s colon?

Yes, actually. It’s called sausage. Sausage. It’s called sausage. Sausage! and we’ll be able to make your dreams come true.

All right, Z, we’re back. We have 10 bonus questions. And here are the rules, Z, for the final bonus 10 questions, all right? I’m going to ask you the 10 questions, and per question, you have approximately 3 minutes to answer the question. Should you go over, it’s your show, you do what you want. Oh, my.

to answer the question. Should you go over? It’s your show. You do what you want. Oh my. But three minutes would be preferable. So we have enough time to get all the questions. Oh, perfect. Okay, here we go. So question number one coming in hot. What have been the hardest trade-offs that you have had to make in order to become successful? Who the hardest trade-offs that I had to do? I was delaying gratification. Number one. Number two was choosing to spend time with the people I spent time with.

In other words, I had to say no to people I really kind of wanted to spend time with, but I couldn’t do it all. Also too, I remember when I was a dishwasher when I was a teenager. I was a professional dishwasher. You may not know that. Oh, you probably do.

I, my trade-off was- Shaquille O’Briens. Yes, I never went to a high school football game because I was always working because Friday nights were the big money nights. I mean, that’s, you know, hey, date night, and the couple’s out, and I’m bussing, I get tipped out by the waiters at the end of the night.

So you know, you make decisions, you make choices, and you have to then live with them. And so… I think one trade-off that you’ve made that you did not just say, and I’ve looked at it from the outside, so if you disagree with me, it’s fine. Oh, no, no, go ahead. I feel like you’ve held yourself and your businesses to a certain high standard, which has caused you to have

friction that you don’t often talk about on the show. But you’ve held employees and people accountable to a certain standard, right? Right. So eventually, I’m sure you’ve never been screwed over. You’ve never had a key employee leave you. I’m sure you’ve never had someone try to download your database and give it to a competitor.

No, still money, still products. I’m sure you’ve never involved in litigation. I’m sure you’ve never had people that you’d call buddies or friends or even family screw you and get mad at you as a result of you holding yourself and the company to a high standard. Has this ever happened to you, my friend?

Oh, of course it has. And if you’re successful, you’re going to have those challenges and you have to overcome them and then you have to make decisions. And I think that answering your question on what did I say no to, at times there were times I would miss,

when my kids were real little, I would miss time being around them. But then I was purposeful knowing that when they’re one, I don’t think they’re gonna remember too much. I think I’m safe there. But when they’re 10, it’s a whole different game then.

Then they remember, then they get a little fussy if you’re not there. So hopefully you start your business before your kids come around and then you kind of build it while they’re young and then when they get a little older you can actually carve a little time out for them because that’s very important. We just did an interview with Daniel Goldman.

He’s probably the top psychologist on the planet. On the planet. And I asked him a question at the end of the show, my last kind of hitting question. I said, if you could go back in time a couple decades ago, what would you tell yourself? And he paused and he said, spend more time with my kids. I thought that was powerful.

Powerful. These questions are hot, hot, hot questions. Next question, question number two. I give you time to think about this. Here we go. When building your businesses,

did you ever partner with somebody that wanted to grow past your original goals? So you had a goal for, let’s say, the auction or the optometry clinic or some business you’re involved in and somebody who worked for you, somebody you partnered with, you set an original goal, I’m just making it up, to sell 500 cars every Friday.

But they grew, they wanted to grow well beyond that goal. Has that ever happened to you? You know, ironically it hasn’t. I’m a pretty aggressive guy by nature and I set pretty high goals. So my goals were always a tad bit higher than them. And when I say partners, I mean, even like a good general manager, I kind of feel as

and treat as a partner. I mean, I think that that’s, you know, when I introduce some of my general managers, I, you know, sometimes even introduce them as my partner, you know, because you are a partner in the growing of the business. And that term doesn’t have to mean that they have stock or that they’re financially invested. They are financially invested because if the business doesn’t do well, guess what?

Chicken butt. They lose their job. I mean, it is all profit sharing because if there’s no profit, you can’t share anything. Okay, okay. More questions about humans, working with humans. How do you handle insubordination?

Do you move past it or deal with it right then? Now, quick caveat. I’m giving you these questions because people ask these questions. I know how you handle this. I do know. So this is not me asking. I’m just saying, I know now, but when there’s somebody who is just out of their mind, but you can’t fire them, how do you handle it? When there’s somebody out of their mind and you can fire them, how do you handle it? I mean, just when someone’s insubordinate, talk

to us, how do you handle these scenarios? Can I tell you a story? Yeah. And in this story you’ll see how I handle it. Oh, nice. Okay. So I have, at the time, I believe I had five, maybe six doctors working for me.

Yes. And we’re open seven days a week, so there’s a big schedule and people are working hard. And we’re extremely busy. Yes. All that fun stuff. And so I had one of my female doctors, her name will remain nameless, came up to me and

said, my husband got transferred and I’m unfortunately going to have to leave. I don’t want to but I have to to keep my marriage together, that kind of thing. I said well I absolutely respect that. She said our deal was for me to give you 30 day notice, I’m giving you my 30 day notice. That’s very fair. And I said you know, I do we did an appropriate hug, HR would have been happy. Nice side hug. High five. High five. Then a high five. High five is kind of my move anymore. It’s quick. It’s quicker. Or a fist bump anymore.

A fist bump is really good. A fist bump is good. But girls really don’t. Elbow bump from across the room. That’s the new move. That’s another thing too.

And so I was like, okay, well I got to get to work. So I sit at my desk. I’m starting to get online. I’m starting to get a letter started up, you know, to send out. Looking for good people. Looking for, you know, a good person, a good doctor.

And a little while later, I hear a knock on the door. There you go. Open the door. It’s another one of my doctors. Just coincidentally happened to be on the female side. Real quick, I want to clarify. The door, does it sound like this?

Or more like… More like the… The second one? Yeah, the second one. So she comes in and I say, well, hello, how are you? What’s going on?

She says, I’m doing great. I said, well, I’m doing fantastic. That’s fabulous. So we go to our pleasantries and she says, well, can I shut the door? May I shut the door? It never goes well when the door gets shut. It’s just a general rule of thumb.

That’s just a rule. It’s just a rule. Not hurting fans. Unless, you know, it’s a marital discussion and you shut the door. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing.

It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. I’m thinking about breaking it. Why are you doing it? I hate to do it.

Why are you doing it? She said, well, I just heard that so-and-so is putting in her 30-day notice. And well, I just want you to know that I’m going to have to put in my 30-day notice if I don’t get a pay raise and a schedule change. Oh, well, that seems terrible. It seems the way you negotiate those kind of things.

First off, you negotiated your facial expression. I’m sure you negotiated your facial expression. Oh, I was just concerned. You’re the best poker player ever. And I’m listening with deep concern, and I’m nodding, and I’m listening. And then she said, I know it’s going to be hard to replace one, and two, that’s going

to be really tough on you, and I hate to put you in that position, but that’s where I am. And I stopped, it took me about not even half a second. I smiled and I said, you know what? You’ve been such a great employee. I think you deserve a raise. And that schedule, we should have given you that cheesy, sweet schedule a long time ago.

You get both of those things. In fact, let’s make them start today.” And she smiled real big and she said, really? Absolutely, we’d never want to lose you. And what am I really thinking in the back of my mind? You’re fired.

I’ve got to go hire two now. Now, okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want to just break this down. Because there’s somebody out there that right away is struggling with this. I want the people out there to know this.

John Kelly, Marshall. Marshall knew me when I was the other way. So the other way was immediately, and I don’t know if you ever saw me do it, but immediately I would just fire you at the first sign of insubordination, and then I would always, as a penalty, have to DJ. Every weekend I’d DJ. I’m serious.

If someone was insubordinate to me, I’d say, you know what, I don’t appreciate… Because what happens is you come back from the show, and your CDs have to be organized in order. The CDs have to be alphabetized. I’d open up the case, and I would… If you hear that this person I saw, that their CD case was disorganized, I would say, we

need to go ahead and organize them very nicely. And they’d go, whatever, dude. And if they said that to me, I’d say, excuse me, what did you just say? They’d go, whatever, dude. I’d go, whatever, dude, your ass is fired. And I was like, yes!

Woo! Yeah! And then you started to sort out the CD case. And then I had to DJ every night. We had to get those CDs in alphabetical order first. This continued, though, for almost a decade.

Okay? So when you taught me this story, this was like Matrix for me. Immediately I did the move. This is what I shouldn’t have done, but everyone does this. I did it. Remember you struggle to understand a principle, understand how chess is played?

This is the question I asked you. Is that ethical? Yes, of course. I remember Mankave, I said, is that ethical? Absolutely. I’ll tell you what, employees will quit you on their time, and we feel like it’s bad for

us to fire them on our time, and that’s just not the way that it is. It’s your business. You deal with it the way you want to deal with it. So what I did is I went out and hired two new doctors I got them in place and about a month later about a month. I called her up to my room. Hey Could you send so-and-so dr. So-and-so up to my office? Oh nice

She comes be bopping in and she’s in a fantastic. No, absolutely. She’s coming in there be bopping I mean, she’s coming. She’s like, you know, this has been the best month of my life. She’s bopping the beep I got the pay raise I’ve always wanted I got the schedule that allows me to do the this and that. Things are great. I mean, you know. I have audio of what she heard in her mind when you called up the office.

Because last time she came up there, she got a raise, got the schedule she wanted. Things were great. So this is what she was hearing in her mind. Yes! Here it comes! He might be giving me another raise!

Unbelievable! Oh, yes! The great benevolent dictator calls me up. This is how Rodman probably felt every time that Kim Jong-un sent him a text. Absolutely. This is great.

So she walks into my office, and I’m going to save any entrepreneur out there, any business owner hours, hours of your life. Come on now. Hours of your life. I looked at her and I said, Doctor so and so, if things just aren’t working out, you’re fired.

things just aren’t working out you’re fired in fact you were fired thirty days ago just not get the privilege of being able to say it i love that story pack up your stuff

i love that story and hit the road joe i know that that story is not in any way sexual but sexual to me it’s that good it’s that good it’s an orgasmic story for business and i can’t make something up that actually happened. It’s like, are you kidding me? And not only that, but it happens metaphorically daily.

Sure. In all the businesses. So this is the question I’d like to ask you then. So let’s say that you know that that employee is screwing you. The contractors taking advantage, you know, you know, it, you know it, and they know it. And you know that they know it.

Everyone knows it. Everyone knows it. How long do you pretend like everything’s okay? Because you need them to keep doing their job. How long? Until I can replace them. Shunda.

Unless I want to do the work. Now I could have fired her that day and I could have, you know, dusted off my scrubs and picked up a few more days and I could have gone in there and got down in the, you know, the… You know about my punching my brother, don’t you? I told you about this story. Oh gosh, yeah. This is a funny story for all the Thrivers out there.

My dad contracted ALS, came down with ALS, was diagnosed with the disease. And we talked, it was really funny. My dad goes, son, I’m going to be dead soon, so I’ve got a couple of questions, a couple of asks. I said, what’s up? I’m trying to keep it light.

He can still talk fine. He goes, I want to record a video so I can share with you some things I want to share with you on video for you and your brother. And I know you guys don’t get along at all because you never have and I know you don’t like each other and I know But just until I’m dead, could you please? When he when he if he talks to you and antagonizes you because I’ve seen it happen, would you please just

Go with it go with the flow and I’m going okay. That seems like a reasonable request Yeah, so we go to my dad’s house and right away. I parked my Hummer over here, parked my Hummer over there. And my brother says to me, could you move the Hummer? And I think, yeah, I could move the Hummer. So I move the Hummer. And then the whole day is like, hey, is your vehicle, by the way, how much gas miles does

it get? I’m like, it’s like eight. He goes, oh, okay, pretty environmentally responsible of you, right? And I go, okay. And then he’s like, hey, did you vote for Trump? And I said, yeah.

And he’s like, okay, so you, as a Judeo-Christian, you like a guy who’s had multiple affairs his whole life, who really just is morally reprehensible, that’s your guy, right? And I’m like, okay. And then it’s like the entire day is like this. I was just trying to get you to take the bait. And I’m not kidding.

I made a mental commitment to my wife. I’m like, I am not going to knock him out until his body is in the ground. So that was like my thing and I put up with it for so long. And after the funeral, I knocked him out. But I mean, I had to do a back story at my dad’s funeral. You know, he’s talking about how he’s just not happy about the way he was raised and not happy. And I’m telling you, it was so hard for me. And then the family, it’s hilarious. But the family that that gets me, there’s a few of them. One guy, he was a pastor of a mega church, he texts me and he says, this is the text message,

I’ll never forget it, he goes, what your brother said at the funeral was effed up. And he types it out and hits send. And you know there’s that correction tool? Oh yeah. And he’s like, good job. But the rest of the family is like, why would you hit him?

Why would you do that? And I just hit block, block, block, block, block, and I’ve been the happiest guy since that moment. But I mean, I was delaying gratification for the longest time, and I think, I’m serious, I do that all the time. I remember elephant in the room, we had a person who worked for us, this is at the very

beginning, who I knew was duly employed for us and a company he was starting. Like he literally was starting his own company while working for us. But he was in my brother-in-law’s wedding, and I didn’t have the heart to tell my brother-in-law at that moment, because he’s getting married that day. Hey by the way, in the last week I’ve discovered that your best man is screwing us. I just told him after the wedding.

I don’t regret doing that. I think there’s a lot of timing things. There’s timing, I think there’s time. I think initially I used to feel like I’ve got to tell somebody right away. I feel bad. Well, it’s like that song, Living on Tulsa Time.

You should be living on your time. Living on your time. Timing is a huge thing though, isn’t it? Is the timing huge? Oh, it is. And as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you have to do it what’s best for you.

Always put it through that filter of what’s best for the business. What’s best for the business? And sometimes it’s you eating what you want to say and then smiling and being nice and going with the flow and knowing it’s just a little season. It’s just a little moment. It’s just a little hot minute.

A hot minute you’re getting through, but you’ll get through it and then once you get things in place, then you can drop that. Let’s say that something really irritates you, really makes you mad. How long do you now allow something to make you mad before you get over it? How long does it take you to get over something that’s really just making you mad. I mean, you’re talking about an employee doing something or you’re talking about just anything?

Well, it doesn’t work. It’s like, okay, as an example, John Kelly, you can relate to this. John Kelly wanted an identification badge to get into the Riverwalk office. He asked somebody, can I get an ID badge? The person said, yes, I’ll get it to you tomorrow. This went on.

John, you can yell it out. How many weeks was it? Two weeks, four weeks, three weeks? Was it four and a half weeks? Four and a half weeks. Four and a half weeks.

Every day it’s like, hey, could you get me an ID badge? Yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow. For four and a half weeks. And then finally, I look over there and I watch John having this discussion and then John just went off and I let it, I let it happen to me. I was like, this is awesome.

This is so good. This is a cage fight that has needed to happen for a long time. But for John, it was four and a half weeks of needing an ID card every morning. But then I think he got over it really quick. I think he was mad then and it was good. But again, John does a very good job of recovering real quickly.

How long does it take you? Yeah, the older I get, the less mad I get and the less I stay mad. I mean, I try to do it immediately, you know, because I’m always focused on the positive, focused on the good. And so when something bad happens, and bad is going to happen, you’re already kind of pre-set up for it.

You already know. I mean, the idea that someone’s going through the day thinking, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize something bad might happen today. How do I handle this? I actually think now, why hasn’t something bad happened yet? I wish it would happen earlier in the day.

So I just get it over with. Right. Yeah, get it out of the way. So I think there’s some ways that you can think about things, and you should whenever something comes up that irritates you, you can let it grab a hold of you, and you can be irritated. I’ve seen people be irritated the rest of their lives.

Their lives? I mean, I know people that have held on to grudges for 30, 40, 50 years. People talking about the breakup that happened 10 years ago. Oh my goodness. You know, the divorce that happened 30 years ago. 30 years ago.

I mean, are you kidding me? It’s still fresh. Fresh food. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon.

Stop telling the Whitney jokes. It’s too soon. It’s too soon. Okay, now if you could give advice to your younger self right now. You’re saying, younger self, okay, here we are. You’re now 30, and I am 58, because I am you in the distant future.

No, no, I’m 54, because I’m the current me, but I’m talking to my past self. The point is, you’re 30, I’m 54. This is what I want to tell you. Stop doing this, and life will be better. Or start doing this. What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self now that you are at the ripe old age

of 54? I would have invested in real estate sooner. I would have grown faster. I would have delayed even more. I would have been more aggressive in opening up more businesses sooner. That’s what I would have told myself.

I said, listen, you’ve got a great life ahead of you. You go get them. Just go a little faster. So this is a question that may be a little rough, and if you don’t like it, I’ll pick up on that because you won’t answer probably. For somebody out there who has family, and their family wants, they yearn to be an entrepreneur,

uncles, sisters, cousins, sons, brothers, whatever, they say, I see your success, Dr. Z, and I want it. Sure. Everyone can make that statement, verbally. Sure. But when it is abundantly clear that they do not have the work ethic or the grind needed to do it, how do you handle that?

I tell them not to quit their day job, and if they want to do something on the side, start it really, really, really, really, really small and see how they go and what will happen is, or what’s even better is I say, I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t you get me a, why don’t we, you know what? That’s your best move by the way. Before you jump into it, why don’t you get me, let’s go over a business plan.

Why don’t you make a business plan? And then that just kills it right there. Because you know, they don’t have the work ethic to even make a business plan. So have you ever had to sit down with somebody in your extended family, and again, we can be very vague so it’s very safe. Very safe.

Where you sit down with someone who is just perpetually failing in the game of business and you’ve had to sit down and give them that tough love that wasn’t wanted or do you just like let it go? I mean, if somebody fairly close to you is just bombing time and time again, how do you have that conversation or do you? That’s a very good question and there’s a lot of different categories that that can come into.

Some of it is, is their bombing affecting me financially. If it is, then I feel like I have the open window to talk to them and give them the hard talk, okay? Because now I’m financially involved in the bad decisions that they’re making. And that’s happened, and that’s no fun. And that’s me bringing out the paddle and the black hat and explaining how the cow eat the cabbage.

And then trying to get a plan and then trying to put some guardrails on this deal to where we could turn it around or make it better. The other one is casual friends that you just see they’re just headed for a train wreck. And sometimes I’ll say, would you like some advice? And oftentimes they don’t want advice. They think they have it nailed down.

They think they have it going on. You’ve got to unlock. I think that’s one of the strengths of why we started Thrive15, why we started our online business school, why we started the radio show, the podcast, the in-person workshops, the one-on-one business coaching. It’s because you don’t know what you don’t know.

A lot of times you can see things. Is it mean not to mention it? I think it is. It’s kind of like, sir, you’re getting ready to run over your foot. You can help point things out in a way. Now, some people are receptive to it.

You know, some people listen to our podcast and learn from it. We get a lot of testimonials, you know, emails back and going, Hey, this has been a game changer, a life changer. Thank you so much, guys. And so, you know, those who have ears to listen, I mean, you know, we’re talking and listen and we’re helping and anything we’re not covering that you need to be covered, email us, ask

us. That’s what we’re doing today. This is one of these Ask Us segments. But different categories, Clay. I mean, you’ve had to see some young men that you see were train wrecks. What’s the best and what’s the worst way you’ve handled that over the course of your life?

I did something I regret, and maybe you and I have, maybe we differ in this idea. I used to, every time I saw somebody heading for a train wreck, if they asked me for advice, I would give them candid and honest feedback. I used to always do it. Sure. And it almost universally caused resentment. So as an example, one young man years ago just told me he couldn’t get stuff done. He’s just struggling. Can’t get it done. Oh my gosh, I’m struggling. I said,

well, here’s what time do you wake up every day? And he goes, Oh, I could, you know, seven. Okay. And what time you go to bed? And he’s like, ah, like 2 a.m. I go, well, what are you doing during the day? We make a list of all the things he’s doing. The point is he’s not working very hard. Sure. So I said, here’s the deal. Your business is not doing well because you’re not focused. So you are going to need to not go on any trips, date anybody, or watch TV at night

like you’re doing every night until you’re successful. Once you get there, then you can do whatever you want. But until that time, it’s not going to work for you. It was a car rental kind of business, okay? Sure. And the guy was like, are you trying to tell me that I can’t date somebody, that I can’t

enjoy my weekend? That’s why I started a company. I’m like, I know, but you’re not there yet. So you wanting to enjoy and bask in the ocean view is a lot like me going halfway between Oklahoma and Florida, parking my car in Arkansas and going, let’s stop and enjoy the view. It doesn’t make any sense, man.

Not there yet. You can’t live like that. It’s a good analogy, by the way. Because I’m very passionate. Arkansas isn’t halfway, by the way. Well, because I’m very passionate, though, about this.

I’m going to Google that. Marshall, will you Google that? I’ll pull it up. So you know what I’m saying? When you’re passionate, though, and I’m trying to tell someone, I really, really care about you, man, and I’m telling you, you’re going to lose everything.

Get serious. People don’t like that. No, they don’t, and that’s that hard talk that… But they’re asking me for the feedback. They are. And I tell them and they’re like, yeah, but…

What do you do when you see somebody that doesn’t ask you, but you see them head for a train wreck? I will say, do you want any feedback? And if they say no, then I just have to move on. Sadly, I would say 9 out of 10 people don’t want feedback. No, they…

They want to learn through the minefield. They’re like, I like to discover the mines by myself. I’m just going to run through the minefield and see what’s out there. Hey, look, there’s one over there. I lost him. I mean it’s unbelievable.

It’s just, okay, so I would just say I don’t ever give feedback to someone unless they want it, but I do ask, hey, would you be interested in feedback? And they always go, yeah, but your industry is different. I mean, DJing is different than, or real estate’s different than photography, or photography is different than. Or that’s mean.

You know, I have, a lot of times I’ll have a business owner come up to me and just rail and rail and rail about an employee and then look at me and go, what do you think I should do? And I go, it’s easy, whack them. And it’s just almost like they’re like, oh my God, that’s the meanest thing you could ever do.

I remember we took a guy out to your man cave at your house one time. And you had some hammer laying out there because someone was doing some work by the pool or something and you told this guy, it was the funniest thing ever, you told this guy, you said, listen, you need to fire the person. And they’re like, yeah, but they’re a friend, they’re a family, I can’t do it. I don’t understand, my industry’s different, it’s hard to find good people.”

And you’re like, you’re just telling me they’re costing you more than you’re paying them. They don’t show up to work on time. They never get something done. And you said, can you pick up the hammer? So he picks up the hammer and you said, every day you don’t fire that person, I want you to just hit yourself in the crotch because it will be less painful.

I remember that. You remember that? Oh yeah. And that guy, the next… He was a chiropractor or something. Yeah, and the next Monday he’s like, that…

That hammer hurt. Seriously, he tells me. He was like, that was just the worst, that was the most mean, most cruel, most inhumane advice. Now, true story, probably 90 days later, come back, he goes, that’s the best advice I ever got. Isn’t that true? But he had to like, endure it for 90 days.

I don’t understand. And he got mad, he got mad that we gave him the… He wanted to ask you the question. I’m like, no, no, you don’t want the truth. You can’t handle the truth. You can’t handle the truth.

You don’t want the truth. You can’t handle the truth. Right. And that’s the thing about it, is sometimes that truth and that directness is what you need and you need to just deal with it. And when you know things aren’t right, you’ve got to do the right thing to fix it.

And sometimes that’s the hard thing. So, okay, here we go. What advice would you give to someone who has not yet hit their financial goals, but has to balance a family life, a growing family with a growing business? That’s a tough one. What I always tell them is this, hey, your significant other, they’ll let you know.

Work like heck. Work as hard as you can. And whenever you get that text message from your kid or your spouse that says, what’s your name again? And what do you look like? And what if their significant other is a communist, a socialist, or an unmotivated human? Seriously!

Seriously, what if? I ask this because my wife, as an example, is ambitious to a point. She gets it. She does. She gets it. But my wife, she…

But there were still a day, there was still a day, multiple days, where she says, honey, today was today. Today we had to she said she says, baby, you have to stay up until 9 p.m. every night. There you go. Like what? She can’t go to bed at 830 more. You have to line.

I’m like, why are you so hateful? Because she knows my normal. I love the flow. I see that after the kids are going to cheerleading, I’m going, I can go to sleep right now. And I’ll go to bed like at 7. I love it.

Like at 7.30 and I wake up like at midnight or 1. So today she lays it out and she says, listen here, here’s the deal buddy, you have to stay up until 9 o’clock. And I’m going, you also are forbidden from waking up before 3, which causes you to go to bed before 9. Yes, exactly.

Oh, busted! Double caveat. That just happened today. That’s what I’m saying. Make sure your spouse has permission. Say, listen, I’m doing this for us.

I’m doing this for the family. I’m not always going to work this hard, but it’s startup. It’s like putting that rocket ship up into orbit. I mean, at first it takes a lot of energy, a lot of fuel. I mean, so much fuel that what half the rocket is just the fuel to get it up out of the atmosphere. But then you get to the point where you’re like, I’m going to do this for my family.

I’m going to do this for my wife. I’m going to do this for my kids. I’m going to do this for my wife. I’m going to do this for my kids. I’m going to do this for my wife. I’m going to do this for my kids.

I’m going to do this for my kids. I’m going to do this for my kids. I mean, so much fuel that what half the rocket is just the fuel to get it up out of the atmosphere. But then when it gets up there in the orbit, it’s just a little thruster. What if your wife is a communist, a socialist, or has not very much motivation? One, sorry, you’re a bad picker.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. Hopefully there’s a lot of benefit. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, things are going well in other areas. Well, I don’t know.

Maybe if they really feel that way and they just don’t understand why you’re working and why you’re just not home and collecting your free food stamps and chickens and things that they do in the communist countries. That’s a tough one because when you go into business, you have to understand that your spouse is a partner. Yep.

Also, when you sit down and you say, listen, here’s what I see. Are you on board? Are you on board? Are you on board? Matter of fact, you’ve got to make a sign. Spunk, spunk.

Are you on board? Spunk, spunk. If you think you’re just saying what you want, get out a contract and make them, hey, here’s what’s going to happen. Are you on board? And then have that, and then the next time they fuss at you for working, however, what

you’re working, you pull out your contract. I want to give this encouragement for anybody who’s single. Napoleon Hill did a research of what causes people to fail, the 30 causes of failure. And one of them was being married to a low ambition person. Now if you are married to a low ambition person, I’ve only seen it work in two scenarios. I’ll be very vague so no one can guess who they are.

One person worked for me years ago, comes to me and says, I want to be successful. I go, okay. I’ve lived at the 89th Lynn Lane, 8900 Lynn Lane office, a nice house that they assumed I was doing well, I was doing well. They said, I want to know how can I become successful?

This is a person who’s really struggling in life. And I said, you need to read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and think and grow rich. Basically buy assets, not liabilities, buy assets. Whatever you can, buy an asset, real estate, whatever, with your savings and then read, think and grow rich.

Implement. Well, this guy reads, reads. He grew up poor. He reads the book and see, this is like a renewed mind. This guy’s coming to work like perpetually an oversleeper, getting to work.

He goes, what time do you get to work? I get to work like at six. This guy’s getting there at five. He’s over delivering. He finds out I liked coffee with just a little, a little hot chocolate in there.

He brings that every day. He’s reading books. And this guy’s on fire. Fire. Spouse calls me, true story, boop boop boop boop boop. I just want you to know, I don’t appreciate you changing my husband.

And it’s more of like a redneck-y kind of voice. I don’t appreciate you telling my husband what to do. You ain’t gonna change us. Now, this person was so resentful. Four years later, three years later, it had been a while, at one of the Christmas parties, they came up to me, this person, tears in her eyes.

I’m so sorry. That’s what you know. I love our life. But it seems like the resentment always has to happen first. Always. Every time. Every time.

Every time. It’s like you’re, I hate the analogy, but it’s the best I have. It’s like you’re mentally raping people when you’re forcing them to have success that they don’t want. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

I mean, people don’t want it. I know, it’s crazy. And yet they want the results of it. They just don’t want the work to get there. And that’s the thing I think that this society does. I mean, our news stations, all of our social medias, it just shows the end game.

The end game. It shows the big yacht. It shows the vacationing, the Bora Bora. You know, and the Fiji Fijis. You know, and the Cancun Cancuns. You know, it shows all that.

It shows the end game. It shows what you get for your hard work. It never shows the late night, the struggles up front, the shoveledness, the, I don’t think I showered for two days because I’ve been working so hard. It never shows that part of it. You know, nobody puts on their Instagram, you know, here I’m captain and pulled another

all nighter to get the business going. I saw a cool video this week that a friend of mine showed me. And it was Kanye West in the studio recording an album that is now a Grammy award winning album. And it shows him in the studio Z for three hours. He’s playing the beat and he’s going

ba ba da ba ba da ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba There’s no words. Okay, fair enough. For three hours. And by the way, I’ve worked with other musicians who do this too. And it’s because the rhyme scheme, the rhyming pattern matters not more than the words, but

as much as the words. Then once he nailed down his scheme, he works on the words. But these people had never worked with a Grammy award winning artist. I mean, these guys won 21 Grammys. And they’re going mentally like… Imagine what it’s like to be in a room with someone for three consecutive hours.

Do you mind if we film? No. But for three hours, and he finally found one that worked, and he’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it, okay. What just happened? You recorded gibberish.

That’s hot. Walks out. I don’t think people realize that he’s spending three hours figuring out the rhyming pattern and the syncopation of the words before he even comes up with words. Then he’ll spend a week coming up with the words. That’s work.

That’s dedication. Right. 21 Grammys. 21 Grammys. I don’t think people realize. See, what was the absolute low

point of just overwhelming this stress or maybe the high point of your resiliency, where you were just like, oh. My high watermark was my two-year-old son had fallen and broken his femur. That’s the big bone in your leg. So he was in traction in the hospital. They couldn’t do surgery on that one that young.

My wife was pregnant with our youngest, and she had a kidney stone. She was in the hospital. I had a former employee just sue me for wrongful termination. That was fine. My first lawsuit. Oh nice. Bada boom bada bing. Did you get a poster for that?

Oh yeah. Whenever I… I’m so sorry about my name. Have you seen in the bathroom that I do this sometimes? What? Whenever I win these little wrongful termination things, I frame them and put them in random

places. So the bathroom, next time you go, you can see one. Oh, fine. Fantastic. It’s good. It’s commemorative.

Commemorative. I’ll sign one for you. Yeah. All right. So now, on top of that, it’s the busiest I’ve ever been, and I’m working six days a week at this point.

Yep. Not the fun, the seven days. And so I would go straight from work to the hospital, spend the night with my son, get up, go home, shower, come to work, work all day, see tons of patients and just repeat, repeat. And then my daughter was three or four and she was irate. So now I had to get her watched and now she’s irate because one, where’s her family?

Right. Two of them are in the hospital and I’m working. And so now she’s upset that she has no attention and she is fussy. That was probably one of the hardest times in my business career and it was, ironically, it was right when we were taking a big upswing in business. So I was super busy, super slammed, and I would have to just be very, understand that

being away from my son in the hospital during the day was tough on me because I wanted to be there with him and comfort him because he was laying there in traction for 30 days. 30 days! But I also knew the importance of going to work and keeping the business going, building the business, because I knew the long-term effect of what that was going to be for us. I know Facebook wasn’t around yet at that time.

This would be like 1990, 2001, 2002 at this point when this happened. What year was this? Let’s see. Blake is 26. He was two, so 24 years ago. So, 2018 minus 24.

Okay, 24, that would be… 1992. Ok, so around that time, did you go on Facebook and lament? No. Did you email everyone you know complaining? No.

Did you go to every bar every single night and drink until you couldn’t move? There wasn’t one patient that came in in that time frame that knew anything in my personal life and my employees, some of them knew just because of the, some of them I had to help move around kids and move around stuff. Because you pulled out all your eyebrows as a nervous habit. Okay, now, people getting a hold of you, your family, people that you want to reach you,

how do you decide who to answer the phone for? When a phone call comes in or a text message comes in, how do you decide who to respond to? I have a hierarchy in my mind and there’s some people that even if I’m whatever I’m doing if I see that they’re calling because sometimes I put my phone on silent obviously and I don’t it doesn’t buzz or anything when it’s on silence it’s silent but even then sometimes you’ll you’ll you know you’ll notice your phone light up and curiosity kind of glances over and see

that’s one of my one of my children one of my children gets an immediate answer if I see it I mean unless you know unless I’m in a meeting and my phone’s, I purposely have kept it in my bag or it’s been turned off. But I have a hierarchy of people, and my managers, my children, and there’s a few close friends,

a few close business acquaintances that I’ll always answer the phone. But by default, you don’t respond. Oh, correct. Is that weird? That’s awesome.

It is weird, and it’s also, I think, one of the most rare things that allows you to be successful. Yeah, you know what? You could choose to be. I remember as a kid, you’d be sitting around there watching National Geographic or Disney at Sunday night, the Disney movies.

The original movies. Hi, everybody. Hi, everybody. Yeah, okay. Welcome to the Mickey Mouse Club. And something magical would happen.

You would hear the phone ring. And the old, they were connected to the wall, Marshall. You’re too young to know this. Oh, I don’t have a wall. You’re way too young to know this. Bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling.

And as young kids, we would look into the kitchen where the phone was, and we would, me and maybe two or three of my brothers would get in that, like, sprinter’s pose of getting up and going, you know? And we would literally race into the kitchen. Matrix, time would stop. Because it was, because that phone, it was calling us.

Yes. It was screaming. And, oh my goodness. It could be long distance. It could be long distance. If it was long distance, we went to DEF CON 4.

I mean, it was like a minor emergency. Everybody be quiet! She’s calling long distance! Everybody shh! Shh! She’s in South Dakota!

If you ever got that phone first, you answered it. We had a script. You had to follow the script when you answered the phone. Zellner residence, who my ass is calling. Oh wow! So that was scripted out for us.

How formal. Oh, very formal. Nice. I remember that. And then, you know, if it was long distance, it’d be like, Mom, it’s long distance. It’s at Connie.

Or whoever it was. Right. And I mean, the whole house just shook, you know, because the phone rang. And that’s just being a slave to the phone, you know what I mean? The phone rings out. It’s like, if I don’t know the number, I never answer it.

I’m like, mm-mm, forget it, you know? Because it’s usually, hello, this is Veronica from Card Member Services. Just wanted to make sure you’re happy with your credit cards. Would you want some more? I wanted to pick your brain about a bad idea that I half-baked in my mind this morning. Exactly.

So it’s kind of like, then you get on the phone and then, what’s so funny? You get people to answer those numbers and then they spend ten minutes writing down the phone with these people. Dude, you said one thing in a meeting one time that blew my mind. You said, you waited until everybody left, but you pulled somebody aside. I heard you do it and I was like, oh, that’s good.

You go, I do not appreciate meaningless non-updates, so please don’t call me to update me about non-updates. I don’t want updates that are meaningless. I don’t want non-updates. You said it in a way, and I’m like, I’m just going to let him have his way, because you were having this conversation, there was someone who just kept telling you

mindless data that didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t care about it. I mean, it was a knowledge bomb. I think some people feel like they need to just communicate, like, hey, just so you know. Yeah, just so you know.

Isn’t that a thing, though? People feel like they, isn’t that like a, that’s a thing that, people that usually don’t rise to a huge level of success spend their whole day just sort of, I just want to send out this newsletter to this organization, this community of men that I get together. There’s a lot of people that they get together in these community groups, these networking things, these breakfast groups, these luncheon groups, these community groups, and really

we’re not connecting with anybody at all. We’re just pledging the flag, we’re reciting the pledge. We’re having cheese cubes. We’re talking about something that we can’t control. And then we send out newsletters, and we update the newsletters, and we update our site. You see a lot of unsuccessful people.

Sending out a newsletter, update the site, do the flag, do the pledge, serve the cheese. Next month we’re having this other person come in. Nothing gets done. Well, you’re right. And then going back to the employee sending me updates that were not updates and that I didn’t ask for and that I didn’t really care about.

I think some people do that because they think, you know what, I want to make sure that the boss or the bosses know that I’m working. So if I just flood them with stuff, they know I’m working. And you know when they didn’t do real work, too. You know when somebody says they’re talking in a circle. Yeah.

Basically, I was doing some updates. I was doing some research. Yes. How pissed does it make you when someone says, I’m just doing my research right now. I’m really circling back. I’m trying to really get down to a different understanding.

I’m trying to burn it down. You hear these general phrases. I’m going to burn it down to the ground to build it back up. I’m trying to kind of circle back to it. I’m just trying to dive in. I should have something to show you next week.

I love that. The thing that kind of gets me even more fired up is when you’re talking to someone and you’ve given them an assignment, in other words you’ve said, hey, get this done. Get this done, baby. And then next week you’re in the meeting and you look at them and you say, did you get that done?

And that is a yes or no question. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? Shh, calm down. That’s not a 10 minute oration on why you didn’t get it done. I didn’t ask why you didn’t get it done.

There’s three excuses. I’ll role-play with you here. The three first one is a miscommunication. Yeah I didn’t know what you wanted me to do that or Marshall cuz when you said clay do it I thought you said Marshall when you said clay Clark. I Thought that meant Marshall and I so I was a Marshall. Is it done? I mean That’s a move that’s a move, okay, how do you handle it? If it’s her first time, first time it happened, I’ll say, well, let’s clarify right now.

Okay. Okay. Let’s maybe even put it in writing. Maybe even, you know, send them an email. Send me an email to what, you send me an email right now or a text message right now as to what you’re supposed to get done by next week.

You. You. Right now. And then they, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, emotional But I have a baby And I couldn’t find the locations of my Google map, but I just do that down

What do you do? eat the baby What do you do? Because you know somebody will bring up their baby and their inability to use Google Maps as a reason for not… Like they combine them, or they’ll go, I have a thyroid problem, I saw a specialist, it’s very concerning.

You don’t understand. There are people that can force cry. You know force cryers. Oh, heck yeah. Come on. Don’t doubt about it.

I can in a pinch. Here’s the thing about that, is that they are defining what kind of employee they are. Right. Now, you’re the idiot that doesn’t listen to that. You’re the idiot that keeps thinking that they’re going to show up on time and they’re always late and being upset with them.

You should be upset with yourself because they are defining the kind of employee they are. So, if you want to continue to give that kind of person high level jobs to get done on a weekly basis, then who’s the fool, right? So every now and then, everybody gets a mulligan in life I mean you’ve hired him you put some time into me well made mistakes you

These are the moves, but you’ve kept them around for a reason at this point So and maybe that was a straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe that’s the 17th time They’ve done that so then yeah whack them move on move three is I forgot Yeah, I just I just Here again, they are defining what kind of employee they are, and that is a move that happens on occasion.

That’s why you have to be purposeful in teaching them on how to make lists, make to-do lists. Put this on the top of your to-do list. Let’s pull it out right now. Let’s make a to-do list. Let’s get a big, big chief tablet and a number two pencil, and let’s just make your list. You’ve obviously achieved many of your financial and time freedom goals.

What’s your big goals now that you care to speak of publicly? Because that is a rule of all super successful people. Almost all super successful people that I know will never share with you their true big goal. They might share little glimpses of their goal, but I could spend a whole podcast about why you should never share your big goals to everyone.

You only just share to your closest, your inner circle. But you’ve achieved a lot of goals so far, financially and time freedom goals. What are a few goals now that you could share on a podcast that hundreds of thousands of people listen to? I’m really excited about this next chapter of my life. I’m going to be in business with my children for the first time.

I’m in business with my daughter. She’s now a doctor in my optometry clinic. By the way, sounds really good on the commercials. She does. She’s always been a rock star on those. And the funniest person, I’m not kidding, the funniest… You might not appreciate how funny she is, but I’m telling you, she is

the funniest conversationalist I have ever been around. At your birthday party a couple years back, she just knows how to, see, she’s got your magic there. She’s so good conversationalist. She’s got that emotional intelligence. It’s off the charts.

It goes so well. I’m so proud of her. So that’s been kind of a fun new chapter. My son, my middle child, my son, he is getting ready to graduate optometry school, and he just gave me my second grandbaby, Matthew. Shout out to Matthew.

Wow. Bo, my youngest, he and I are getting ready to start some new businesses and I’m excited about those. So, I think for me it’s always that entrepreneurial spirit. I think I still have a good 10, 15, 20 years running me to start some businesses and grow businesses.

What I enjoy doing, apparently it’s one of the few things in life I can do well, so I’m going to do it. Now I’m going to do it with my children and that has a new excitement to it. I’ve never done that, and so to help them now get their time, freedom, and financial freedoms and to move forward in their life is going to be very rewarding, I feel. Now the books, final two questions here.

Books. We’ve talked about it on previous shows, but if you had to recommend two books, or more, but let’s just say at least two books to the listeners out there. Again, I know these because we’ve had previous shows on it, but we get these questions asked a lot. What books would Dr. Z recommend for every entrepreneur out there? If you had to recommend, say at least two, what would you recommend?

I would recommend Winning by Jack Welch. I think that is a modern look at how to bootstrap it up and how to old school grow a business. The former CEO of GE, by the way, who grew the company by 4,000%. The company was stagnant before he took over. And at the time of him leaving, I think, was the world’s largest corporation. Yeah, and then by the way, when he left, it’s gone off the rails.

They’re just not able to implement what he… Because he had certain principles and systems and mindsets. He’s probably one of the most effective managers of all time. If you’re struggling to manage people, Winning by Jack Welch, read it once, read it twice. That book is nice. Keep reading.

And I think, one, it’s an old school book and it’s kind of a weird book to recommend in a business mentality, but I think it’s one of the things that’s lacking in so many business owners’ brain power. That is, it’s a book written 3,000 years ago by a Chinese general of war. It’s called The Art of War by Shen Tzu. with his 13 steps and how to prepare and defeat the enemy.

I don’t know why, but it seems like that so many people I talk to, when I talk about business being war, they just kind of pucker up. This new kind of offensive world we live in is like, oh, that’s offensive. That’s just mean. This isn’t war. This is, you know, I just want to teach people, I want to teach dogs how to have better manners.

I want to sell pizzas. You’ve got to understand, if you don’t understand that you’re headed into battle, then you’ve lost. I think that’s why, according to Forbes, our business bible, that 80 to 90% of all businesses out there fail. I think a lot of people don’t have that mindset of, hey, it is war.

I do have competition out there. They don’t want me to succeed. They’re going to do whatever they can do to be more successful. Therefore, it makes me less successful.” Folks, it’s a battle out there. That book really fires you up.

It’s kind of cool. It’s talking about scouting your enemy. We call it mystery shopping. It talks about all these different moves. Appear to be weak when you’re strong. Appear to be strong when you’re weak.

Oh, it’s so fun. There’s so many moves. So many moves. I love the moves. And they’re ageless. I mean, these were back in, you know, 3000 BC, so maybe 5,000 years ago.

I remember one time, a guy, actually it’s funny, but I’d read that book, and there was a competitor of ours, Z, who really was being shady, and he drove from Oklahoma City to Tulsa to meet me, because he said he wanted to sell his company to me. And Z, the idea of appearing to be weak when you’re strong. Oh yeah. Oh, I worked that.

Oh, it’s so fun. So he’s like, how are things? I go, oh, the house is good, the business is good, but I got to be honest with you. Can I share something with you? And I said, it’s getting tight. It’s getting tight.

Now, Z, I didn’t say what that meant. I implied, I didn’t say a specific dollar amount. It’s getting tight. It’s getting tight. He said, why is it? Well, it’s just, and so because I knew that he was disingenuous for coming to Tulsa, he told me he was coming

to Tulsa to sell his company to me, but multiple people that I knew who actually worked there were like, dude, this guy, former employees of mine were like, this guy is trying to spy on you and then come to Tulsa. So he’s like, well, why is it tight? I said, well, you know, right now we raised our prices. You did the second, you did the second.

No, we’re raising our prices to a minimum of $1,000 per wedding because the industry’s gotten too loose. You are not being completely truthful there. Oh no, I’m playing games. Oh yeah. He’s like, so what?

And I said, well you know, we forever, we did $550, $600 for the wedding and it was unlimited time. That was great. We had so much business, I decided, you know what, I need to charge as much as possible. And unless people are just really outrageously complaining, I’m doing the other DJs a disservice like you.

Right. So I’ve raised my prices, but I think we might have gone too much. He said, what are you charging us? Well, I mean, it’s a lot of money. It’s a little higher than I want. He’s like, how much?

I’m like, I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s a lot. I mean, we probably overshot it. He goes, well, are you going to lower your prices? No, I got to, I can’t, you can’t, I’ll lose face. You lose, see, you lose face. You told your whole team we’re going to raise prices.

I can only tell a guy like you. I can’t tell, I can’t tell everybody. Don’t tell anyone. I can’t make a change like this. So please don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,

don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, I can’t tell anybody. I can’t make a change like this, so please don’t tell anyone. Because I know he’s immediately going to go tell. So this jackass comes into Tulsa, prices raised as high as he can go, just a little under

what I told him, and we destroyed him. Thank you, Sun Tzu. Thank you. And it was about 3,000 years ago. It was about 600, 700 BC. Final question I have for you.

You’re very successful because you do things a different way than most people, because most people are not successful, and you are successful. Therefore, you do things differently than most people. What is one thing that you do differently than everybody, every single day? That’s a good question. I mean, something that you’re just swimming upstream, bro.

I have a lot of things I could list off that I see you do, but feel free to, if you want me to give you a few just to kind of… Can I get me started there? Yeah. Because I’m trying to think how deep you want me to go on that. One, you by default do not answer your phone.

Okay. By default you do not answer your phone. That’s profound. Yes. Two, by default you do not feel the need to return a call or to return any correspondence to anyone ever.

Three, you definitely always do what’s best for your business. You always do what’s best for the business. You always do what’s best for the business because that creates all the jobs for all your people. It’s your golden goose. Can you talk about that idea of doing what’s best for the business?

Well, as I said before, I have that filtered. It says, is this what’s best for the business? That’s a hard decision to make sometimes because you may be looking at someone that is a lifelong friend, could be a family member, could be someone who’s worked for you for years, and you know what’s best for the businesses for them to move on for them to be to be labeled customer status and not employees. I’ve just upgraded you to

customer thank you very much. And that’s a difficult thing to do firing people is probably the most difficult to do as a business owner. Yep. Also you know whenever so so that’s the hardest thing so let’s let’s focus on that because everything else is you know typically usually easier than that. Right. Another thing out there that I that I see with business owners is pride. And pride’s a horrible thing,

something I try to beat out of myself every day. It happens before the fall. It does. And pride in this sense, and I went through a little season of it myself, just to be very transparent here.

And that is this pride of, I can do this all on my own. I’m smart and I figured this out. This is my baby, my business. I started this thing up three years ago. By gosh, I’m gonna do this all by myself.

I don’t need to read any of those silly business books. I don’t need to read any of those. I don’t need to go to the in-person workshop. You’re kidding me. They probably just want to upsell me and try to take all my money. Because I’m the man!

Because I’m the man! I’m the man! My name is Aziz and it’s on every business! Listen, the richest man in the world. Well, Bill Gates goes back and forth with Bezos. We’ll check the stock here in a second and let you know.

So either first or second richest man in the world. When asked the advice he would give to a startup business owner, he said… You need to have a coach. Business coach. Yes. A business coach.

A coach can make a lot of difference. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said, you’ve got to have a business coach. The CEO of Google, you think, the guy’s pretty successful, obviously, but these guys have guys behind them. It’s funny, I was telling someone the other day, we were talking about basketball, and we did a series on Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings.

Oh, so good, I love that. And I looked at them and I said, Michael Jordan said, yeah. Kobe Bryant, oh, two of the best. I said, you realize neither one of them won a championship without Phil Jackson as their coach. And they went, what?

Those guys could play a combined 35 years between the both two of them, and they didn’t win a single NBA championship when Phil Jackson wasn’t coaching them. You might say, Kobe and Michael could have said, Phil Jackson, you’re not that good a basketball player. I mean, you’re okay, but you’re not like us. And Kobe actually did one time.

He got Phil Jackson fired, and then he had to apologize and get him back. Eat a little crow. I can’t win without him. I can’t win without him. Exactly. A coach can make all the difference between winning and losing.

I’ll tell you what, if you’re out there and you are struggling to have success, listen to this podcast until your brain explodes. Z, I appreciate you sharing some candid feedback. My pleasure. Absolutely. And as always, we’re going to end every show with a boom.

Three, two, one, boom. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay is 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 is like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Okay Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia? Santa Claus? No, that’s March. March 6th and 7th, we’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, possibly the best-selling or one of the best-selling business authors of all time and he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump.

We’ve got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place. In the same place. Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki? Well, you’ve got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki?

I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit, as many other people. Now, since you won’t brag on yourself, I will.

You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true. And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Porter, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Port, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s going to be here. He’s going to be here. I’m pumped.

And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States and soon to be the 47th president of the United States, he needed someone to run

the companies for him. And so the man that runs the Trump organization for Donald J. Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their

products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand. I mean look at it and this is the man behind the business for the last pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it so you’re talking we’re into nine going into ten years of him running it and we

get to tap into that knowledge. That’s gonna be amazing. Now think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Oh yeah.

Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s going to be joining us. You’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow.

And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events

affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here.

The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa, and we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. Yeah. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats

in the men’s restroom. Oh, no, I’m just kidding. But I felt good. So I thought, you know what? We should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck or the top shelf.

So the seats are very close to the presenters, but we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com.

Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. When you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. I just texted my number.

It’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102.

918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying one for a one. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past

seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing, and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, OK? OK. You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah.

We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. Right. You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name?

You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell, so we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your

career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it could be a challenge.

You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones.

And we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales,

search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time?

How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business workshop.

Now, let me tell you how the format is set up here. Again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15… Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day starts at 7 a.m. and it goes until 5 p.m. So from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. two days, it’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session and

then we break for 15 minutes for a question-answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15-minute question-answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling

you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership. And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks.

And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you, as the attendee, to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch

and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone.

I mean, you had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. You know, I should write that down. And actually, sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face. So we duct taped it.

It was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool passing that thing around. And I should do that.

I should. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 10 million people

today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have 3 out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with.

And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default you have a 1 out of 1,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the size. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up.

But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. And you say, double?

Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples. You can see it thrivetimeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet.

And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization. You add to that Sean Baker. Now you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more. Well, okay, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki.

So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages, who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days.

True story. We cater to food. And because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Escovedo’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen.

And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home. And now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more.

This is not enough give me more okay? I’m not gonna mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here But we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal to be here And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is Because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of value He’s made a lot of money in the with it. It’s the it’s where you’re renting storage spaces.

He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that? The rental, the uh, storage units. This guy owns storage units, he owns railroad cars, he owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns

the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars. But this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start

and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event again today here’s march sixth and seventh march six and seven we just got confirmation robert kiyosaki

best-selling author rich dad poor dad he’ll be here eric trump on the man who leads the trump organization it’s going to be a blasty blast there’s no upsells uh… eric i could not be more excited about this event i think it is incredible and there’s somebody out there right now you’re you’re watching and you’re like but i’ve already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin.

You think that’s going to change your life? I promise you this will be ten times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference. That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable, I mean it is life changing.

It is life changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life changing. It’s not the best weight loss program though. Right. Not really. So if you’re looking to have life changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have

a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again that’s Aaron Antis, I’m Clay Clark reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two day interactive Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you it will be a life changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.