Clay Clark Answers the 10 Most Commonly Asked Questions from the Thrive Nation – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

You have questions. America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business podcast radio show?

Yes, yes, yes.

Andy? Yes. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show business podcast. In specifically, this is another edition of ask me anything, ask clay anything I hate referring to myself in the third person, but it’s the ask me anything in addition to the thrive time show and I’m attempting today to answer the 10 most commonly asked questions that I get asked very, very, very consistent basis. So the first question that I get emailed constantly to [email protected] or that people, people will ask me if they meet me at a workshop or they’ll ask me if they run into me around town. People always ask clay, what books do you recommend? What books do you recommend as a business coach? And so I’m going to go ahead and give you my book recommendations. So Book Recommendation Number One, I would recommend that every single person listening to this show should purchase a copy of think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill.

Napoleon Hill was the personal apprentice of Andrew Carnegie and he sold more copies of his book that any other self help author in the history of America except for Jack Canfield and his a book series called chicken soup for the soul. I mean Napoleon Hill, he, his book is absolutely a game changing mind altering book think and grow rich. I think so much of that book I, I regard that book was so highly that I actually named my son after the author. My son’s name is aubrey, Napoleon Hill, Clark by that book, get it for yourself. Treat yourself. It’s the holiday season. Get yourself a copy of think and grow rich. The second book is how to win friends and influence people how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Now, Dale Carnegie is the, uh, self help expert who many people know obviously because of the book, how to win friends and influence people.

But, but why does the book matter? Why would I recommend it? Well, I, I honestly believe that most people struggled to influence people and to win friends. I think a lot of people just struggled to communicate effectively. If I’m being honest with you, which I think I should be on every show. Um, you know, I was not a very effective communicator before I read this book and how to win friends and influence people is an absolutely life altering book if you actually implement what you’re learning. I mean how frustrating it when you have an awesome product and awesome service, an awesome vision and also anything and you just cannot, for whatever reason communicated effectively. How difficult is it to, uh, run a company if you can’t effectively manage people, you don’t know how to communicate to people? How frustrating could it be to try to have a podcast and just not getting any traction because you don’t know how to communicate with people.

If you’ve ever struggled to win friends and influence people, you got to read that book. How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. The next book, book number three is the ultimate sales machine. By Chet Holmes, Chet Holmes, h o l m e s Chet Holmes, and he actually worked for, uh, worked with Charlie monger and Charlie Munger is the billionaire partner of Warren Buffet that no one seems to know a, again, Charlie monger works with Warren Buffet. He is a billionaire, and Chet Holmes ultimately ended up going into partnership with him and the book, the ultimate sales machine, details of what he learned from his time working with Charlie monger and how to build a, a, a, a sustainably profitable business. He talks about how to create a sustainably. I’m executable, a schedule. He talks about how to build the ultimate sales machine, a business that you can scale once you nail it.

It is awesome. It has, it has, it has a red cover. I’ve encouraged you to purchase the book, the ultimate sales machine. The next book is called Titan. Titan is written by Ron Chernow. Now a lot of people don’t know who, uh, Ron turnout is, um, but ron turnout is a, uh, an author who goes super, super deep into the research before he writes any of his books. And my wife bought this book for me years ago, and I cannot tell you, I can’t express to you. I can explain to you with enough detail how much the book tightened has impacted my life in the way that I think the way that I view business. A John D Rockefeller grew up in a world where his dad was actually married to two women simultaneously. And the only person who knew the only person who knew was John d Dot Rockefeller, John d Dot Rockefeller, was the only person who knew that his dad was married to two women simultaneously.

And so at the young age of 16 John D Rockefeller, he thinks to himself, you know what? I need to be able to support my mom so that she can leave this idiot. So John D Rockefeller left, uh, you know, she dropped at a school. He was a good student. He dropped out of school to support his mother. And with that, a pig headed determination that pigheaded we’ll that, that grit, that, that desire to be able to support his mother so that she could leave for her dead beat husband. And she had no idea by the way that her husband was such a horrible person. Also, John D Rockefeller found out that his father made his income by essentially being a snake oil salesman. He was a con artist. He was a scammer. And so he just decided, you know what, I’m going to not only have some success, but have massive success so that I can support my mother says that she can be independent of this person to book is just phenomenal.

It explains how a guy who grew up poor became, began. The, became the world’s wealthiest man. It explains how he ended up basically starting the oil and gas industry as we know it. It explains how he was able to discover, um, uses for oil that people didn’t know about. I mean, people were just using kerosene at the time. And, uh, he found out that we could use a oil byproduct to create rubber to create gasoline. He not only found it, but he funded the creation of our national parks system. He created the first modern doctorate program. I could go on and on. This book is fascinating. It is phenomenal. It is a book that everybody needs to read. It’s tightened by Ron turnout. Then the next book everyone needs to read is winning by Jack Welch. Winning by Jack Welch is the best management book that I ever read.

It was first introduced to me, a recommended to me by a chet. Chet is the, the president and the CEO of a billion dollar company known as quick trip, be quick trip chain of convenient stores that are found all across America. In fact, they have over 750 locations right now. I believe the official number is 758 locations. You need to check out quick trip. That’s q u I k t r I p quick trip and uh, I got a chance to meet the president and CEO of this company. And I said, hey, what books would you recommend that I would read? And he said, you got to read winning by Jack Welch is just a phenomenal book. The next book, I’d recommend that all of our listeners check out his start here. Now I know that seems self serving that I would recommend a book that I have written, but I’m telling you the book that I’ve written, I’m giving it to you for free ebook.

You can download the ebook version of the start here, book today for free. Just go to thrive time show.com. You can find it right there. Just download the start of your book for free download. I’m telling you, this book is a compilation of all of the world’s best business books. It’s designed to be very actionable, very practical, and it is free to download. The ebook version is free. It’s an Amazon bestseller, I promise you you will love start here, and two other books that were recommended to me by Chet Kgo are the again, Chet Cadieux, the man who is the CEO and president of the 758 location billion dollar convenience store chain known as quick trip recommended. The following two additional books to me, and those would be the service profit chain and devalue profit chain, the service profit chain and the value profit chain. These are books that were produced by the Harvard business school that explained to you the specific steps you need to take to create repeatable processes and systems that will allow your company to grow and to scale to the next level.

Are they best sellers? Know why? Because bestselling selling books are written to what appealed to the masses. These books are designed to appeal to who the leaders in. It turns out that a lot of people who are leading America’s top companies don’t go to target to buy bestselling books. They’re looking for books filled with case studies, a data research that are going to show them how to take their company to the next level, and it might not be of interest to the average person, but you as an entrepreneur, as an aspiring entrepreneur, need to pick up a copy of the service profit chain and the value profit chain. Now the next question that I get asked a lot is what do the first three hours of your day look like? Okay, well, basically I wake up between 3:00 AM and 3:30 AM every morning. Well, that’s true.

I wake up at between 3:00 AM and 3:30 AM every morning and I designed my day while focusing on setting goals for the six key aspects of my life, so I get up every morning between three and 3:30 and I asked myself what are my primary goals today for my faith? What are my goals for my family? What are my goals for my finances, what are my goals for my fitness, what are my goals for my friendships, and what are my goals for my fun, and then I scheduled them onto my to do list onto my calendar and I get them done and that is what I do every single day. They believe that that is my superpower. What does it seem like a super power at all? It’s just that I do it every single day. I’m of the belief that success achieving success, that said that achieving success is really not that complicated.

I believe it just requires getting up every day at whatever time you decide on today. Just decide today, what time are you gonna? Wake up everyday. Okay, now set your alarm for that time. Wake up and every single day scheduled on look, look at your schedule, get your schedule in front of you, get your to do list in front of you. I don’t have a to do list or a schedule. We’ll get both of those things, get it to do list and get a calendar. Get it in front of you and ask yourself what do I need to do today and the areas of my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendship and my phone, and then just schedule time for what matters and then, but a bing Bada boom. You’ll be off to the races and if you do it every single day for years, if you’re, if you live intentionally day by day, four years in a row, you can’t not have success.

It’s almost impossible to drift at that point. Okay. The next question is, clay. Why do you believe that it’s so hard to find good people? Well, the breakdown of the family is a huge problem. The breakdown of the modern family, in my opinion, is the problem. Essentially. We’re now raising generations of people who don’t have a solid moral compass and, and, and people who live by the motto, if it feels good, then we should do it. So if you have the mindset of if it, if it feels good, we should do it, then you’re going to have a morally bankrupt society. Right? So, uh, the Washington Post now reports, I put all this on the show notes. Seventy eight percent of the men I interviewed had cheated on their current partner. Yes, 78 percent of men interviewed, had cheated on their current partner. That’s urging these 22 percent of men are being faithful, right?

Right. A fun fact, when 75 percent of employees are now stealing from the workplace and most are doing so repeatedly, 75 percent of employees are stealing from the workplace. According to CBS News and the US Chamber, a nine point four percent of the population is now using an illicit drug at least once a month. Nine point four percent of the population, a four to 6 million Americans now say they have a daily gambling addiction, one in eight Americans, according to the Washington Post, one in eight Americans are now alcoholics. The average American is now watching five hours of TV per day. According to Nielsen, what the average American is now using facebook 50 minutes a day during the work day, 50 minutes a day. What? What, what? I mean, it’s like people hang out and have a, a, a part time job known as facebook. I mean, people are just spending huge amounts of time on facebook now.

No wonder people can’t get anything done. So why do I think it’s so hard to find good people? It’s because we now have a culture that says if it feels good, you should do it instead of. If it feels good, you probably shouldn’t do it all. It’s probably bad for you. It’s probably be out. So, uh, what are we to do as employers? Well, I believe that to. We just have to interview more people. So I do. I faithfully hosty interview every single Wednesday at five. We interview candidates for all the different companies and we have great people, but I live by the motto higher character and train skill, hire character and trained skill because according to Dr Zoellner and from own experience, people change. Seldom so what? So summarize this clay, what am I? What am I supposed to do with this, my friend we were supposed to do as a result of this interview and she didn’t never stop recruiting people, never stop recruiting people and then always higher character and train skill.

Question number four, clay. Where do you think drive comes from up? I believe that drive comes from deciding to be an outspoken enemy of average and having a deep dark hatred for media, for, for mediocrity. At least that’s where my drive comes from. It’s. It’s being an outspoken enemy of average and having a deep dark hatred for mediocrity. I can’t stand when people walk slow. When things are inefficient, when things are are dirty, when I just can’t stand. Going into like a gas station where you’re not greeted properly. I don’t know what it is. I love quick trip. I’m, I’m, I’m in awe of quick trip convenience stores. I’m in awe of, of a chick filet. I just love, love chick, filet other chicken places. Not so much, but I love Chick Fil A. I’m in awe of their business podcast excellence. I am in awe of the excellence of quick trip and I’m an all of the excellence of a chick fil a.

I am an Oh, I am loud. I am wowed by the excellence of starbucks and I am a underwhelmed by virtually every other coffee place. I love the consistency in the excellence of starbucks. I don’t like going to Disney world. I like, I like to go into Disney land, but I love the way it’s run. It’s so efficient. It’s so awesome. It’s so excellent. So I think, again, going back to this question, where do you think drive, what do you think drive comes from? Where do I think my drive comes from? My drive comes from having been an outspoken enemy of average and having a deep dark hatred for mediocrity. I, I just as a kid, I stuttered a lot. I got made fun of a lot. We didn’t have a lot of money and so I just had this deep, dark drive to just go out there and to prove everybody wrong and to just go in your face and your face.

That’s what I wanted to do in your face on. Now, my drive has changed from that to wanting to mentor millions. So I just want to be the mentor that I wish I would have had at a younger age. I want to be able to, uh, be there for you guys when you have questions. I want to answer them for you. I want to be able to teach you what you need to know to take your life and your business to the next level. There’s no reason that you can’t have both time and financial freedom in this great land of opportunity. You just have to learn the practical skills needed to create that time freedom and financial freedom in sadly, uh, the modern school system does a poor does a terrible, does an awful job of teaching you how to become an entrepreneur.

Because if the teachers on the college campuses are in the high school, were very good at being entrepreneurs, they certainly wouldn’t be working in the public school system for very little money. Right? So there’s a steve jobs interview that he did. It’s called the last interview. You can youtube it, Steve Jobs, the last interview and explains that, that the reason why public education in colleges colleges don’t teach entrepreneurship, it’s because the kind of people that are entrepreneurs are not going to teach the classes. They’re just not going to because they’re out there running a successful company. If they’re very, very good at and marketing, they’ll probably be out there doing marketing. So I just feel called now too, to help people like you. I don’t feel it’s a calling. Um, and again, the word vocation comes from the Latin word, meaning calling and vacation means to retreat from.

And I have zero desire to go on vacation anymore and I have 100 percent desire to help you learn what you need to know to start and grow a successful company. The next question, what would someone do once they reach their financial goals? And don’t know what to do at their time. What should someone. Let me. Let me read it again. What should someone do once they reach their financial goals and don’t know what to do with their time? Well, I have run into this problem as well so I can relate to it. Sounds like just such a terrible problem. You guys have all the money you want. You don’t know what to do at that. Oh, okay. Now, but this is. This is really a thing. Most of my clients get to this place in their life where they have more money than they ever thought they would have because they’ve implemented the proven systems and now they’re where they want to be financially, but now it’s like, what do I do with all my time?

That’s what. That’s why I think it’s important every single day to ask yourself, what are your goals in the areas of faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship, and fun. I think it’s so important to ask yourself this every single morning and ask yourself this on paper. Write it down, put it on your to do list, put it on your calendar. Ask yourself one of my goals today, today for faith. What are my goals today for my family? Uh, just as an example, as I’m recording this today, my goal is to, for family is to make sure that we have a great thanksgiving. So I made a list of some people we wanted to invite over on Friday after thanksgiving. I made a list of the activities that I want to do as a family that I think we would all enjoy doing together. I ordered a barbecued or smoked Turkey, or I ordered a smoked Turkey from Oklahoma Joe’s, etc.

But those are goals for my family. Faith, previous [inaudible] recording right now. I just finished listening to td jakes. Why? Because every single day I want to spiritually feed myself every single day I want to do it. I want to make sure that I am not drifting. Finances every single week. My wife looks at the numbers, we look at the budget every single, so we’re not drifting, right? So faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship, fun. You get the point. But if you don’t do that for, let’s say like a year in a row, uh, what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna find yourself in a weird place because of this thing that napoleon hill discovered years ago. It’s called that a drifting, drifting. It’s where you know where you’re supposed to go, right? You’re on a boat. Let’s say you’re on a pontoon boat, you’re headed out to the destination and then you look down and you get involved in a long conversation with somebody next to you know, you look up and you’re almost running a ground because you haven’t paid attention and haven’t made those small corrections along the way. Now you find yourself on the verge of running right into the shoreline and that’s not a positive thing. It’s not a positive thing to be running into a line while you’re on a pontoon boat filled with your friends and family and napoleon hill calls it drifting. He said, driFting without aim or purpose is the first cause of failure. Question number six. This just didn’t. Question number six, six

average. What time do you wake up? The question is, what time do you wake up? Well, my friend, on average, I wake up at 3:00 AM or 3:30 AM, but I always wake up at whatever time I need to in order to get things done. Again, I on average, I wake up at 3:00 AM or 3:30, but I always wake up at whatever time I need to in order to get things done. A Benjamin Franklin once famously wrote, he said early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. I really didn’t get into my voice until like halfway through that reads. Let me try it again. Here. Here we go. Let me get the epic music going.

This comes to us. Benjamin franklin, the american polymath, one of the founding fathers, the United States, a man who was a leading author, printer, political theorist, I politician, a free mason, a post master scientist. We didn’t vinton civil civic activist statesman, a diplomat, a man who invented the bifocals, the lightening rod, franklin franklin stove, diverse, flexible catheter. I don’t know why I know that, but he also started filling in philadelphia. Philadelphia’s first fire department and the university of Pennsylvania and he says early to bed early to rise. Makes some adult healthy, wealthy and wise. Yeah, I mean, so I went to bed last night, like at 9:00.

All right. He’s going to bed at 9:00 and I don’t watch tv so I don’t have like I don’t need to finish watching my show, you know, if there’s an nfl game on that I’m watching because I like to watch the patriots. That’s probably the only time I’ll stay up past my bedtime and I might stay up till like 9:15. I’ll usually go to bed then I’ll watch the highlights of it, the highlights of the game because you know, this just didn’t. They put the highlights of the game on youtube. I can watch it there but I’m not going to have like a crappy day because I wanted to stay up the night before watching something. I just don’t do it every single night. I go to bed at 9:00 and so go to bed at nine, you know, and sleep for six hours. Six and a half hours.

That’s three, 3:30. Boom. There I am. Play. Next question. What is the biggest thing you learned about starting a business? Oh, well, this is what I have learned. Starting a business is very easy. The actual, um, you know, finding a problem that people have and that they’re willing to pay you to solve in my, in my opinion, this is from my experience, I believe starting a business is very easy. I believe the step by step process you need to take to grow a business that’s really easy for me to teach as well. Very easy for me to teach. And if you’re a diligent person, it’ll be very easy for you to implement the system as well. So if you come to a workshop, by the way, you’ll find this. I mean, the systems I will teach are very doable. It just works. You can do it right, but the problem is, is the people thing. See the people problem is the, is the issue, the actual technical step by step. This is what you do to grow a church. That’s easy. This is the step by step process of growing a business that is easy. That is, that is, that is just so easy. It is. It is super easy to grow a business.

Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious, and don’t call me shirley, right?

Don’t call me surely. But here’s the big problem. The problem is the people you see nearly nearly 100 percent of the people, nearly 100 percent of the people that work with you when you start the business will not be there with you within 24 months because betrayal, backstabbing, and entitlement are normal. It’s going to happen. You’re going to be screwed over by virtually everyone you know, so heaven help you if you go out there and start a company, um, you know, with a friend, because if you do that, I mean your friend is probably going to betray you at some point. People, I’m just telling you how it is. People, this is what they do and it’s not. The money doesn’t make people weird. By the way, money’s just a magnifier. Money just magnifies who people are. So you have someone on your team who, uh, you know, seems like a good guy, but you know, occasionally freaks out and goes out on a bender and wakes up drunk as a skunk and a bush somewhere.

But now with money, a lot of money, uh, this person will become almost entirely a drunk all the time. You almost can’t count on them for anything because money just magnified their alcoholism or you’ll find somebody who gambles a little bit and now with money they just gamble all the time. Right. People just get weird. I’ve been backstabbed and betrayed by family members, by cousins, by so called friends, people from college. I’ve had a, one of my good friends from college, I thought@thetimeihiredhimtodjforaweddingforoneofmyfirstbusinessventureiscalleddjconnection.com. And this would be like in 2000, 2000, one, 2000 and he’s straight up, just skipped somebodies wedding. He just skipped it. So I went through like a personal hell scrambling, trying to find a backup dj, trying to find backup equipment, renting backup equipment, rushing around town to get somebody over there while I was personally already deejaying whom only had like four disc jockeys at the time.

And I had, I had a personal hell. I had to rent equipment last minute on a saturday, find somebody to dj the show and I get ahold of the guy. Finally he tells me that he, he forgot he had a show. What do you mean you forgot you had a show? I loaded you up that morning with the equipment. He said, oh, I thought it was sunday. I guess I got a information, my path, my paths crossed, you know, fill it out later. He was out there actually a on a date with a girl. Uh, that started kind of early in the day. And I guess that date ended up, uh, turning into a horizontal connection, a horizontal intersection of passion. And uh, he ended up, uh, uh, enjoying a parallel universe while skipping someone else’s wedding on believable unbelief. And it just. And the fact that he didn’t feel bad about it, the fact that he totally made up a story that wasn’t true.

I thought, man, that’s terrible. But then virtually every single disc jockey that I had did that kind of stuff. Every time a years ago, I had one company where we hired a guy, sister and she just became the worst employee ever. Couldn’t show up on time, couldn’t dress professional, can’t hit a deadline, is just terrible. And then when you call the person out on it, they make it like it’s a personal attack. And so you just have to agree to start a business. She had become very comfortable with being alone. But let me, let me tell you this. Um, when you get up to the mountain top, it’s not crowded. Let’s just say that I, I think it’s why a lot of top performers become friends with top performers because success is a universe universal, a habit, a universal. It’s universal systems. And so when you get to the top that the pinnacle to the apex of what you want to achieve in terms of success, you’re going to find that there’s not a whole lot of people up there because, uh, you know, very few people wake up at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM every day, you know, and, and so when you get up at 4:00 AM or 3:00 AM every day, it becomes like a habit, you know, so when you get to the top, uh, you know, you, you get up there and there’s nobody else up there because one, nobody wants to get up at 3:00 or 4:00 AM to get started down the business podcast path.

And so you’re significantly ahead of the average person because you get up earlier. Um, because you actually are aiming for a big mountain top. Most people just aim for small hills. No one’s even on the right path. I mean, not only are they are, they are not waking up early enough. And you have a competitive, unfair advantage everyday because you wake up earlier, but they’re not even aiming for mountains. Most people aren’t aiming for mountain. They’re aiming for for hills and so they’re on the foothills of, of, uh, of poverty and you’re on the mountains of success. You know, you’re, you’re climbing mountains of money and these guys are on this like this, this path of, of poverty, selfimposed, poverty. And so it just becomes a thing where over time, then the people who have the poverty mindset, who are aiming for these pathetic poverty goals on this decretive poverty hill, they look up and they go, wait a minute.

That’s that guy I know from high school, okay, yeah, I’m on, on top of mountain money. Who does he think he has a ah, and then they start throwing rocks up there, you know, because there’s a lot of them and it’s kind of a mob mentality. Most people don’t have success. And so nine and a 10 business owners fail, right? Ninety nine out of 10 startups, according to forbes, nine out of 10 startups fail. Think about that. Eight out of 10 existing businesses fail. So rather than trying to get to the top of the mountain or even asking you for help, they begin to just throw rocks at you. They love it. They go on social media, throwing rocks at cheer, they love to attack you, call you out by name a glare at you in public, you know, and so it just becomes a thing where that’s the hardest part of business.

And that’s why I live behind a wall. That’s why I enjoy my man cave. That’s why I enjoyed reading books, um, behind my, uh, uh, you know, I just like to read books. I like to enjoy the man cave, like to be behind the wall. I like all that. That’s why I’m building a grotto in a, in a waterfall to read my books behind. That’s just, that’s why I don’t like going out very much. Uh, I don’t mind going out and other cities. I’m just not a big fan of going out and cities. I always run into somebody who I’ve competed against in business or someone that I had to fire. It just gets kind of weird. So that’s the hardest part of business for me, is learning how to deal with the endless, backstabbing, a betrayal and the entitlement that’s a norm. And to give you a little encouraging quote, a ben horowitz, ben horowitz, the investor, the author, the guy behind the founding of ops where that’s o p, s where, uh, who ben horowitz actually built opsware and sold the company to hewlett packard in 2007 for one point $6,000,000,000 in cash.

He reads her, he writes in his book here called the hard thing about hard things where he documents essentially the toughest challenges of growing a business and the biggest things that he learned from starting a business. He writes, every time I read a management or self help book, I find myself saying that’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation. The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off. When you miss the goal, the hard thing is hiring great people. The hard thing is when those great people develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding an reasonable things, the hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organizational chart that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare client.

Next question. Why is it so important to have a to do list? Great question. Uh, my friend, it’s because the pin is for remembering and the mind is for thinking. Again, I repeat. The pin is for remembering and the mind is for thinking. Here’s a notable quotable for you. Uh, an educated man is not necessarily one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has developed the faculties of the mind that he may acquire anything he wants or its equivalent without violating the rights of others. Henry ford comes well within the meaning of this definition. Now again, this is from napoleon hill, napoleon hill, napoleon hill. He wrote, think and grow rich. Oh, the book you recommended earlier, right, so thinking, grow rich by napoleon hill. I would encourage you to pick up that book, enjoy that book, read that book, devour the book, and then maybe name your son after the author of that book because it will change your life.

Think about that. An educated man is not necessarily one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. You and not somebody that who’s memorized the phone book or memorize the encyclopedia or somebody who scores well on tests and educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants or its equivalent without violating the rights of others. Henry ford comes well within the meaning of the definition, so a napoleon hill goes on to write in the book, think and grow rich. The timeless self help classic. He says, during the world war, a chicago newspaper published certain editorials in which among other statements, Henry Ford was called an ignorant pacifist. Mr. Ford objected to the statements and brought suit against the paper for labeling him when the suit was tried in the courts. The attorneys for the paper pleated justification and placed Mr. Ford himself on the witness stand for the purposes of proving to the jury that he was ignorant.

Again, the media is throwing rocks at somebody who’s having success. Somebody is enjoying a peaceful meal on mount awesome is being attacked by the media. They attorneys asked Mr. Ford a great variety of questions. All of them intended to prove by his own evidence that while he might possess considerable specialized knowledge pertaining to the manufacturing of automobiles, he was in the main ignorant Mr. Ford was plead with such questions as the following is applied to such questions as the following or you could say mr. Ford was asked such questions as to following who was benedict arnold and how many soldiers did the british sinned or to America to put down the rebellion in 1776. And answer to the last question, Mr. Ford replied, I do not know the exact number of soldiers the british sent over, but I have heard that it was considerably larger number than it ever went back.

Alright, finally Mr. Ford became tired of this line of questioning and any reply to in reply to it, particularly offensive question. He leaned over, pointed his finger at the lawyer who asked the question and said, if I should really want to answer the foolish question you have just asked or any other questions you’ve been asking me, let me remind you that I now have a row of electronic push buttons on my desk and by pushing the right button I can send it to my aid. Men who can answer any question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me why should it clutter up my mind with general knowledge for the purposes of being able to answer questions when I have men around me who could supply me any knowledge that I require?

There certainly was good logic to that reply. The answer floored lawyer. Every person in the courtroom now realized it was the answer. Not have an ignorant man, but if a man of education, any man is educated, who knows where to get knowledge when he needs it, and how to organize that knowledge into definite plans of action, throw the assistance of the mastermind group can like his big network, right Henry Ford had at his command all the specialized knowledge he needed to enable him to become one of the wealthiest man in America. It was not essential that he had this knowledge in his own mind. Surely no person who has a sufficient inclination and intelligence enough to read a book of this nature can possibly miss the significance of this illustration. Well said, mr napoleon hill. The next question, we have two questions left. What is a time and why is it so vital?

But my friend met a time comes from the greek word meaning above. Meta means above switch. You want to do every day as you want to get up every day before you’re interrupted, before the fires start, before chaos begins, before the backstabbing and betrayal occurs before life happens, right? You want to get up every single day, just like if you were in a battle, it’s say, and I don’t think business should be compared to war and the and the sacrifices that the people who’ve obviously lost their lives fighting for, but it’s just working on this analogy. You want to, if you’re like the leader of an army, you’d want to make your plan previous to being shot at, right? But then you know the moment that you attack the enemy or the enemy attacks you, vast portions, large portions of that plan, uh, immediately are useless because you’re in, you’re engaging with a battle of the enemy, so you don’t just throw up all of your plans, but then you huddle up again and you refine your plans. And this is how this is the rhythm of a business podcast or entrepreneurship. You define what you think is going to work right? Then you act. Then you measure the results and then you refine those plans, but you got to do it daily. You define act, measure, refine. That’s the rhythm of an entrepreneur. Define, act, measure, refine, define,

measure, refine. Here we go. Define,

okay, act, measure and refine

every single day. I get up every single day and I, I, I say to myself self,

what are my goals for my family, you know, and last night or the day before, the week before, maybe there was some drama that occurred in the extended family or something. I don’t know, I just refined my goals. So yeah. What are my goals for my family? What am I, what am I doing this? What are my goals for my friendship pose for my fun? What am I going to my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendship, and my fun. And then as soon as I go out there and hop into my work

day, here

comes the chaos everyday. Everyday there’s chaos. And why is there chaos every day because of the communists? No, it’s not because of the communist. It’s because that’s how life works, right? So you’ve got to get up every single day and plan out your day before you start to try to execute your plan. Because if you don’t do that, you’re gonna. Just get run over each and every day when you get run over every day and you don’t have a fallback position or you don’t have a clearly defined plans. It’s not good. I have like plans and backup plans. You know what? I started a company. I have a plan to start the company to fund the company to grow the company, but if it doesn’t work, I have a backup plan and then if that doesn’t work, I have another backup plan. I usually go into business with plan a, b, c, d.

I mean I go in, I go deep with my plans because I know that the moment that my perfect plan encounters the opposition, the enemy, the competition, whatever I’m going to have to, it’s chaos will ensue. And so I just go back to my plan b. It’s like, it’s like a, I don’t know, flying like an f 16 jet, let’s say, and over enemy territory. And uh, you know, wearing a parachute. Well, somebody had to think about, you know, hey, we probably need a parachute. Someone else had to think about, hey, I got this invention for this thing called a parachute. Somebody else had to think about how are we going to make a parachute? Someone else had to think about, hey, how are we going to get out of the cockpit when we need to? Someone else had to think about there’s all these details.

It’s not just a. It’s not smart to just say, well, if we get attacked, I’m going to be able to just get out of the plane. That’s my plan. How are you going to get out of the plane? Who’s going to make the parachute? Where are you going to procure the materials? Who’s gonna make them? How does it fit? How does it work? Should we test this thing first? I mean, these are all things that I asked myself during med time. It’s just an obsession with building something that’s excellent and thinking about all of the possible worst case scenarios that are probably going to happen and how am I going to overcome those things? That’s just what I do on a daily basis. So at a time from the greek word meaning above, everyday you get up and you’ve asked yourself, what do I want to do with my life today in the areas of my faith, my family, my finance, my fitness, my friendship, and my fun.

Now, um, you know, lee cockerel couldn’t be here today, but lee cockerell is sort of like the godfather of time management in my mind. He’s the guy who used to manage walt disney world resorts and 40,000 employees as the executive vice president of walt disney world resorts. Do you reckon you guys. Did you guys realize that a lee cockerel once managed over 1 million guests per week, a million customers a week at the orlando based walt disney world resorts, a million customers a week and 40,000 employees. And so this is what the godfather of time management has to say about time management and met a time

no pay later. Just about every decision you make about how you spend your time. He says, you either pay now, pay later, but just about every decision you make about where and how you spend your time. Can I get some frigging maples? Can I get some people? He goes on their bodies. Is the quality of your life is directly affected by how and where you spend your time. Hey, that bright sneaks. Snakes, snakes. Come on. Cooperate with me. I write best, so yes, I’ll say it. I need you to say it like you made it. I want you to repeat this. Court stakes. How do I even know if you’re paying attention to the horse? Headed to bed snakes. Frigging attention. Concrete shows later. The light, the quality of your life is directly affected by how you spend your time. Write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, snakes. Sometimes I find myself thinking about she could sleep with the fishes. Okay, boss, I’ll pay. I’ll pay better attention. I will. I will. Stakes. One way to get your priorities accomplished is to schedule them into your account with stakes, right? Last one way to get your priorities accomplished is to schedule them into your calendar sticks. Who scoured? It’s like paying attention best,

my friend. That is a, again, the godfather notable quotables from the godfather of time management, lee cockerel. And the final question, the big 10. Question number 10, where do most business owners get it wrong when trying to grow a business? Well, I believe that your business in and of itself should not be the end all destination. I believe that your business should be viewed as a vehicle to help you achieve your goals and to help you get to help you earn right to help you and to help you earn both time and financial freedom. I think the purpose of a, again, a business is to help you get both time and financial freedom for your family to help you earn both time and financial freedom for your family. I mean, I think that is the purpose of a business. I don’t think the business itself is on the destination.

Imagine that you were wanting to go to Florida to go out to walt disney world resorts and therefore you flew in a seven slash 37, right? So you buy tickets, commercial airline tickets, southwest airlines, probably round trip is probably what, $450 to go to orlando and back on a 7:37 jet from tulsa, Oklahoma. Work with me on this, on this concept of this analogy here. So if you were flying from tulsa to orlando on a 7:37, what, what, what’s the goal? What’s the purpose? Well, the goal is to take the family to disney world, right? Right. But what if instead of flying on a seven, 37, you decided to charter a private jet for just your family. Now the cost to get to orlando would be like, what? $15,000? $20,000? I don’t know. What does it cost for jet fuel? What does it cost to have a private pilot?

What does it cost to have a private charter jet to fly from tulsa to orlando? What? When you get to orlando, you probably won’t have any money to spend on the trip if you dropped $20,000. Just getting there. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs that view their business that way. They spend every single second of their day building a company so that they can leave a legacy. They want to leave a legacy. Well, it’s so hard to, you know, leave a legacy if, if you spit every single waking hour of your life working, you gotta. Enjoy the, the, the, the, the ride. Enjoy the fruits, the enjoy the fruits of your efforts. You want to. The business should just be a vehicle to help you earn time and financial freedom. The business itself should not be the end game. Michael gerber, the bestselling author of the e myth book, series, rights.

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business, you have a job, and it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic. I repeat, if your business depends on you, you don’t own a business, you have a job, and it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic. Wow. It was pretty harsh, michael. Okay. This next notable quotable from michael gerber, the bestselling author of the e myth book series is with no clear picture of how you wish your life to be. How on earth are you going to live it? What is your primary aim? What is the script to make your dreams come true? What is the first step to take and how do you measure your progress? How far have you gone, and how close are you to getting to your goals? So the question is, again, where do most business owners get it wrong when trying to grow a business?

I believe they get it wrong by having their own goals. The business should just be a vehicle to help get you where you want to go. With business exists to serve you. You did not exist to serve the business. You do not exist to serve the business because the business exists to serve you. Who you. Who does the business exist to serve you? The whole point of the business is to serve you. The entire reason for starting a business podcast company is so that you can have time, freedom and financial freedom. It is not just a business does not exist to give you a sense of self worth. It does not exist to be the end all be all. A business does not exist for any other reason than to serve you, and so if you want the business to serve, you do it, but I can tell you this. Nobody else out there once the business to serve you, no one else cares about your time, freedom and financial freedom. Nobody else really cares about your. Your schedule. No one cares about your life balance or lack thereof. Very few people care about your life balance except for you, right? So you have to do. I mean, if you want to create a life where you work really hard during the day for between 3:00 AM and noon and you come back home and you hop, hop in the hot tub.

Yes, I just love the hot tub. I get in here every single day at noon. I just can hear my read my book and just marinate.

That’s what you want to do. If that’s what? If that’s what success looks like for you, then do it. If success looks like

after work every day, I like to go to the top of the mountain top to read my books and to play table tennis and I want to have my own indoor racquetball facility place. Somebody else had to head.

If you want to become a cricket rancher, if, if, if, if you define success as raising crickets, that’s fine. If you want to work from three in the morning till noon and then you want to come home and write rap song,

yes, yes, yes. That’s fine. You can do that.

Do whatever you want to do. If you want to be a minefield tester, you said, you know you work all day 3:00 until noon. You say, I love to run out in the minefield to see where the mines are. If that’s what you want to do, do it. I mean, if you want to buy an old school edition of gallagher and you want to come home from work everyday and play gallagher, that’s cool. If you want to travel to the north chicago and look for the restaurants and bars that pay homage to Harry Carey, you can do that.

Hello.

If you want to become a sports psychologist and you want to follow around people on the golf course all day talking to them about why they’re struggling to hit the ball properly and they’re struggling to harness their energy the right way. If you want to become, you know, if you want to work from 3:00 until noon every day, three in the morning until noon and you just say, you know, when I come home, all I want to do is think about golf. It had to become one with the ball.

A lot of pressure. You’ve got to rise above it at a harness and the good energy block out the bad harness energy, block bad. Feel the flow happy. Feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse. It goes up and down and around. Circular circle with the music, the flow, whatever you want to do.

Business exists to serve you. If you want to build a dojo or a series of dojo, joe’s in your back yard, like my main man, johnny g did. Johnny gee, the guy who famously invented the spin class movement, he created a series of dojo, is in the back of his house. He literally has transformed his backyard into like a tropical rain forest in santa barbara, California. It’s believable. If you want to turn your back yard into a dojo, go do it, but you gotta know

what you want to do because no one cares about your success more than you my friend. You must accept the fact that a business exists to solve and if you are stuck in a perpetual hamster race, you go to work, go to church, go home, you go, you got the church, you go home, you go to work, you got to touch your home. If you find yourself stuck in a circle, perhaps you need to look for an exit route,

right? Right. Okay. That my friend is most business owners get it wrong when trying to grow a business. They don’t know where they want to go and they don’t believe that the business exists to serve them and they run around just working in this business every single hour of every single day and never enjoying the fruits of their efforts. My name is clay clark and that’s my answer is to the big 10 questions that great people like you have been asking me consistently. I hope you found this to be beneficial and I would love to see you at our next in person. Thrive time show workshop. You can book your tickets today at thrive time. Show dot comments, thrive time show.com. Uh, at this, at the time of the recording of today’s show, we are now the world’s highest and most reviewed business podcast or business workshop. We have over 925 objective video reviews from real conference attendees.

Over a thousand reviews on itunes, hundreds of reviews on google. I would encourage you to just do some deer research. Go to youtube, type in thrive time, show reviews, look at great people like you, beautiful people just like you. And ask yourself, is this what I need in my life? I believe it is, it’s a two day, 15 hour, very interactive workshop. We do 45 minute educational sprints and then we pause for 15 minutes to take a little stretch break and for you to write down any of your questions and we commit to answer each and every business question that every single entrepreneur asks us. It is interactive, it’s engaging, it’s entertaining, it is life changing and I would love. I’d be honored to serve you at our next in person. Thrive time show workshop, and now that any further I do three, two, one, boom.