This transcript records Clay Clark (COO of Thrive15.com) and Tim Redmond (CPA and Tax Consultant) teaching practical steps on how to gain wealth on Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA.
Clay: Tim, I want to ask you this. Steve Jobs, the famous inventor, the co-founder of Apple, the guy was actually the CEO of Pixar. A lot of people don’t know. He was the one who oversaw the creation of the Toy Story movie.
Tim: It was his energy infused in an organization that got them to work inhumane hours to produce something that’s never been created.
Clay: Yeah. Now, Steve Jobs, he says this. He says, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Tim, throughout your career, it seems that you’ve probably noticed some entrepreneurs being a little bit crazy. What you just drew up on the board’s a little bit crazy. Talk to me about this. Have you noticed that the top level entrepreneurs are a little bit delusional in their optimism or with their big vision? Does it come across … ?
Tim: I disagree.
Clay: No? You disagree?
Tim: I disagree. I think they’re very delusional.
Clay: Really? Okay.
Tim: You said a little. No, if you’re going to create an entrepreneur, what they are is they are a creator. So you’re going to create something that doesn’t exist. Well, yeah, but I’m selling pancakes or I’m selling copiers or I’m repro- … but you’re going to create a whole new way of doing that business. For you to think in line with status quo, you put a straight jacket of inactivity, a straight jacket of flat line thinking and it requires energy. It requires, sometimes … One guy said, “It’s painful to be creative.” You got to put something into it. But if you want to make a mark on the world, you got to create something.
I have people in my seminars come up and sometimes the first question I ask is, “People have called you crazy, haven’t they?” “Yeah, how’d you know?” “Because you look crazy. What you’re saying is crazy.” You’re going to create something that may not exist in the world yet.
Thrive15.com can help you create that, because it is one of the top business schools in PA.
Clay: There’s a restaurant that’s in town, they’re all over the country, called Genghis Grill. They have, it’s like a hibachi-style grill. If you ever get a chance to go into one, I highly recommend you check it out. As a general rule, they have a largely Hispanic population that grills the food, right? But it’s an Asian-themed restaurant. One of the things that I think would be crazy, if I explained to you, “Hey, we’re going to have a hibachi-themed restaurant where a large percentage of the people that we have working with us are going to be Hispanic and we’re going to … First off, those two things, I would say, “What?” Because those two ideas don’t go together.
Tim: Or the water.
Clay: Yeah. Then when you start to say, then what we’re going to do is we’re going to tell people when they sit down, we’re going to give them a bowl, and they’re going to go through the buffet and choose the items they want and then bring them to us and they’re going to do the work for us. They’re going to bring the ingredients to us. It’s almost going to be like they’re going to be paying us to make their own food, kind of thing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it works.
When Steve Jobs came up with the whole idea that the music industry would all come together and agree that they would put all their songs on iTunes and make them available for downloaded purchase …
Tim: I remember hearing about that and thinking, “How is he … ? That’s impossible.”
Clay: Yeah. If you’re watching this and you’ve been told you’re crazy or your idea’s a little bit off, you may be in good company. Tim, Brian Tracy, the bestselling author and a business consultant and speaker, he says, “What we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.” Tim, share with us a story about how you’ve actually seen your … In your own life, or the life of a business coaching client you’ve worked with, where you’ve seen their life become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Where they’ve had this big idea, they’ve started to say it’s going to happen, and then it happened.
Tim: I can say it first of all in a negative. I know about a guy that has had this vision. He talked to me about it 20 years ago. It was developing certain technology, a transportation business. He had that half-crazy … to me, it’s an attractive, ‘wow, you’re one of us’ kind of looks. I’m thinking, okay, this is good. Talked to him, saw him about 5 years later. He was still talking about this crazy idea. 20 years later, it’s almost like he’s lost his mind. He’s not just crazy like, “Oh, you’re a little crazy,” but, “you’re a little crazy, let me give you some medicine.”
Clay: He could self-unglue.
Tim: I’m supposed to have a serious conversation here.
Clay: I’m just trying to, you know …
Tim: So, what’s happened here is he had this idea and he didn’t massively act on this with whatever he could. He had the first step, it was so unbelievable. It was over a 100 million dollars he needed for this first step, and so he didn’t get obsessed with taking action on the little. So craziness plus action equals results. Craziness plus staring at that craziness and doing nothing about it makes you crazier to a point where you need to be institutionalized.