The following article features Business Coach Clay Clark (US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year) and Caleb Talyor (Thrive15 Correspondent) discussing the principle that “we aren’t elites” as characteristics of the self-made millionaire on Thrive15.com, one of the most engaging business schools in Florida!
Caleb: Characteristic number seven. “We aren’t elites as a business coach.” The quote here [that 00:00:09] we’re going to look at is from the same book and it says, “Only 17 percent of us millionaires or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private high school. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.” Why is this quote important?
Clay: It’s because a lot of people say, “Gosh, I didn’t go to an elite private school for a business coach.” I meet people all the time that say, “I didn’t graduate from an elite high school like you, so I couldn’t be successful.” I didn’t go to an elite … In Tulsa, there is a beautiful school called Holland Hall. It has this awesome campus. You know that movie Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams?
Caleb: Yeah, I need a business coach because I don’t remember.
Clay: It’s how you picture Harvard or an Ivy League school being. It’s beautiful. It’s got its own lake and it has this beautiful history and a lot of people feel like, “Because I didn’t go there, I probably couldn’t be successful.” What we’re finding is only 17 percent of the people that actually did achieve big success …
Caleb: 17 percent.
Clay: … or are achieving did go to these kinds of private schools, so the other group didn’t.
Caleb: Wow, how can you afford a business coach?
Clay: What they’re saying is second generation, they do believe in education and they want to put their kids in private schools.
Clay: Half of them are now coming and say, “Oh, I would like to put my kids, I would like to give my kids a better chance at success” but you don’t have to have that pedigree of private schoolism in order to be successful.
Caleb: That’s something you harp on a lot. You don’t need that formal education to be successful. It’s more important to have the right attitude, mindset and honey badger spirit.
Clay: Yeah, practical education is more valuable than formal education.
Caleb: Right.
Clay: Being able to do something. What can you do is much more important than what degree do you have a business coach.
Caleb: Right. That makes sense. All right. Let’s just go and move on to characteristic number eight. We believe in education. This is perfect to be right on the tail-end of that.
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: You said that you don’t have to have education to reach this level of success to become a millionaire, but often times these millionaires are doing whatever they need to do to put their kids in the best schools possible …
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: … because they believe in education. The quote is, again from Millionaire Next Door, they say, “As a group, we believe that education is extremely important for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. We spend heavily for the educations of our offspring.” What does this mean to you? I know that you are passionate about learning.
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: Even if it’s not [tied to 00:02:32] money, you’re constantly absorbing.
Clay: What I do is, all these books here … This book, we have been talking about a little bit today, The Millionaire Next Door. This book is a phenomenal book and it teaches you a lot of things. What does this cost? I bought this for $7.99 because I live in the US. If I was in Canada, I would have paid $10.99 for this thing but anyway. I bought this book, right? I pay to go to seminars, I pay to go to workshops, I pay to have consultants teach me. I bet you on an annual basis I probably spend $50,000 to $60,000 a year on education. I pay consultants, advisors, people to teach me things …
Caleb: Wow.
Clay: … because I need to know these things, so I place a huge value on education, but yet, the formality of it is what I don’t care about. I don’t care if you give me a certification. Furthermore, I don’t want one. I don’t want a little diploma [that 00:03:29] says, “You know how to do SEO. You know how to do search engine. Here is a diploma” because I don’t care, and all the clients I work with, I know it might freak you out if you’re watching this. I do search engine optimization work for mega Fortune 500 companies and none of them are like, “Hey, do you have a degree in that?” No-one cares.
Caleb: No.
Clay: In fact, the Web developer that I have worked with for years, one of the top Web developers in the country, he doesn’t have a degree in Web design, so the whole idea, but he knows how to do Web design.
Caleb: That’s all you care about. Can he do it?
Clay: He pours tons of money into learning how to do Web design and he goes to seminars and workshops and reads the books, so we value education which is the ability to learn how to do something. We don’t necessarily care about the formality of the education.
Caleb: Yeah, and I think that’s often just rooted in this. You guys are always looking to improve yourself.
Clay: Always.
Caleb: Always, I have seen that in all of the millionaires that I have come in contact with. They don’t have this mindset that they know it all, they’ve got it, “You guys should listen to me now.” They are constantly absorbing any information [that they can 00:04:33].
Clay: That’s why I’m starting major facial reconstruction of my face here. [I’m just going to do 00:04:36] a major overhaul, extensive plastic surgery. Just kidding, I’m just kidding.
Caleb: Okay, all right, okay.
Clay: Yeah, I’m not going to do that, but …
Caleb: Yeah, don’t do that.
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: No.