Forbes Senior Editor Zack O’Malley Greenburg on How Kanye West Created the Yeezy Brand, Interviewing Katy Perry and Working with Super Successful Entertainers

Audio Transcription

ThrivClay Clark:
On today’s show, we interview the Forbes senior editor, Zack O’Malley Greenburg on how Kanye West created the Yeezy brand, what it’s like to interview Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and other super successful entertainers.

Clay Clark:
On today’s show, Zack O’Malley Greenburg shares his path from the campus of Yale to becoming a senior editor at Forbes.

Speaker 2:
Get ready to enter the ThriveTime Show.

Speaker 2:
(singing)

Clay Clark:
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Dr. Z, my friend, what do we commonly refer to as our business Bible? We always say-

Dr. Z:
We always quote Forbes.

Clay Clark:
Forbes.

Dr. Z:
Forbes is our business Bible.

Clay Clark:
That’s what we do.

Dr. Z:
I mean, if it’s in Forbes, book it. Book it, Danno.

Clay Clark:
That’s Oklahomy man law, 1.273. Always quote Forbes.

Dr. Z:
I mean, every entrepreneur, I mean, if that’s on their bucket list to be on the cover of Forbes. I mean, and I can be on the cover of Forbes in one of those little bitty inserts in the corner.

Clay Clark:
That’s all you need.

Dr. Z:
Like, this just in, Clay and Robert, they’re boomtastic, they’re boomarific. In just a little insert.

Clay Clark:
Well, this guy writes Forbes cover stories. So I’m looking at the website, it’s zogreenburg.com and if we could put the camera on it, Z-O-G-R-E-E-N-B-U-R-G, Zo Greenburg. You can see here, this man has done the article with Katie Perry, the cover article, the cover story, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber, just did a sit down interview with Kanye West. Zack O’Malley Greenburg, welcome onto the ThriveTime Show. How are you?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
All right, good to be here.

Clay Clark:
I am so glad you came to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit us, my friend. Have you been overwhelmed? Underwhelmed so far? What’s going on and as you’re processing all things, Tulsa, Oklahoma?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I’ve been very pleasantly whelmed.

Clay Clark:
Whelmed?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. Overwhelmed feels like a bad thing sometimes, you don’t want to be overwhelmed. You don’t want to be underwhelmed. You want to be like pleasantly whelmed.

Dr. Z:
Wow, that’s wow, well said.

Clay Clark:
I’ll give you a mega point. Okay.

Dr. Z:
He does get a mega point for that.

Clay Clark:
Now, how would you describe what you do for Forbes now? I think a lot of people don’t know, when they hear the phrase senior editor, what does that mean?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Sure. It means a lot of stuff and not all of it is editing, for me, the bread and butter of it all, for me at Forbes over the past decade has been doing these big stories on the biggest figures in media entertainment, particularly music and particularly hip hop, which is my passion, over there. So dating back to the very beginning of my time at Forbes, the way I got into it was, an editor walked into my cubicle and this was 2007, I’d just started, she said, “Hey, you’re under 30. Do you like hip hop?” I said, “I love hip hop.” She said, “Great. We’re going to put together the first ever list of the top earning rappers in the world. Let’s go do it.” So I did it, we put it out, Jay Z, Diddy, 50 Cent, were in the top three in that order, I believe. And they were so excited to be recognized by Forbes that they made a song called, I Get Money, the Forbes billion dollar remix. (singing).

Clay Clark:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And then we were off to the races. So the editor came back and she said, “You should make this your thing.” I did. She left, got her contacts, started growing this part of the coverage and brought it up, all the way through the rest of media and entertainment and music and started writing books on the side.

Clay Clark:
Previous to working at Forbes, what were you doing before that?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I was in college at Yale. I was writing for the Yale Daily News. Not really about rappers, unfortunately.

Clay Clark:
Did you enjoy your time at Yale?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I did. I got to say, college newspapers, a lot of times have the setup and the resources, that a lot of major publications don’t these days, especially in these modern times, to actually have all these different desks, editors, people working. I mean, part of it is that we’re all working for free, 40 hours a week. So of course, you can make it work and not have to charge for subscriptions. But it really was a truly functioning news organization on a small scale that had a pretty big footprint. And I got to strengthen my writing muscles over there.

Clay Clark:
Were you into writing a lot as a kid growing up?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. My parents were both writers. They wrote about everything that I didn’t end up writing about. So my dad wrote humor and thrillers and my mom did true crime stuff. So I do business, hip hop, music, immediate entertainment, all the other stuff.

Clay Clark:
And your wife’s a psychologist?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. Full on psychiatrist.

Clay Clark:
Psychiatrist.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yep, yep, yep.

Clay Clark:
Does she-

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
But that’s probably four extra years, you’re talking.

Clay Clark:
Has she determined why on a deep, dark, psychological level, why you write about entirely different things than your parents once wrote about? Is there some thing? Do we have a label for it?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Oh, man. We’d have to get her on the line.

Clay Clark:
Have you guys talked about this?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
You know, we had an idea actually for a blog, which was that I would interview people and then she would psychoanalyze them. But we thought that that might be breaking both journalistic and hippocratic oath.

Dr. Z:
I was going to say, yeah.

Clay Clark:
Okay. So what we’re going to do now, is-

Dr. Z:
But is sounds great though. I mean, the concept’s pretty cool.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah.

Clay Clark:
This guy went from the cubicle to the top in terms of the top, one of the top people, writers at Forbes there. And what I want to do is, this is going to be a shameless namedrop show.

Dr. Z:
Oh, let’s do it.

Clay Clark:
So what I’m going to do, and I know when you’re interviewing people, there’s certain things you can share about the interview. Certain things you can’t. But I would just want to go, nothing but name drops. Okay? So here we go. So when you’re sitting down with Katie Perry and you’re interviewing her for the cover story of Forbes called America’s Pop Export, did you come up with the title for this?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I believe it was a collaborative process, but certainly think I suggested at least part of that one, sure, yeah.

Clay Clark:
Who had the idea to interview Katie Perry?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
That was me. I thought she’d be a great fit for a lot of reasons at the time I did the story. I think it was 2014, 2015. She was the one of the top earning, I think top two or three earning musical acts in the world. But people like Taylor Swift, maybe Lady Gaga were getting a little more ink. And I thought, one of the really cool things about Katie Perry was she sat down with me two hours, no publicist, no handlers, nobody in the room. And that was just the first interview. And she really dug in to her journey as an entrepreneur. And she wasn’t afraid of talking about money and wealth in the way that a lot of people I interview are. I think a lot of entertainers, they think, “Oh, if I talk about my wealth, people are going to think I’m a sellout.” Not so much with hip hop, hip hop, it’s like, “No, we’re going to go get it. And we want you to enjoy this journey with us.”

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
But a lot of pop acts in particular are afraid that they’ll be seen as sellouts and Katie really owned it. She was like, “No, I want to be a role model to all those young women out there. And to know that you can be your own boss, you can go get the thing that you want and build a business, be an entrepreneur. And I really want to own that as opposed to shying away from it.” So I really respected that a lot. And I think it really made the story come alive. Also, we did a second interview in Italy, which was the-

Clay Clark:
In Italy?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
The beginning… In Italy and Rome. And that really made the story pop, I thought. That was the intro of the story and where a lot of the color and the drama came from.

Clay Clark:
Who pays for you to go out there?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Oh, that’s Forbes, yeah.

Clay Clark:
So Forbes, so you fly out there and you’re interviewing, do you use a-

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
In coach, but yeah…

Clay Clark:
Do you use a pen? Are you using a pen or are you typing? Do you record the interviews?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Recorder and then usually notes as well.

Clay Clark:
Notes? Okay.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Sometimes two recorders just to be safe.

Clay Clark:
And do you go in with all the pre-written questions? What do you bring to the table before you interview the person?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I usually bring, let’s say, a dozen or so questions depending on how long the story is going to be. But I find the best interviews are the ones where you’re not just ticking through a list, right? You’re having a conversation with this person and you just ask follow up questions, see where it goes. You follow the flow and I think in a way it almost stops feeling like an interview anymore. It stops feeling like a chore.

Clay Clark:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Instead you’re just having an interesting conversation with an interesting person.

Speaker 2:
Bring it back.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I usually bring, let’s say, a dozen or so questions depending on how long the story is going to be. But I find the best interviews are the ones where you’re not just ticking through a list, right? You’re having a conversation with this person, and you just ask follow up questions, see where it goes. You follow the flow. And I think in a way it almost stops feeling like an interview anymore. It stops feeling like a chore.

Clay Clark:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Instead you’re just having an interesting conversation with an interesting person.

Clay Clark:
And so you end up, after four hours with Katy Perry, how much material do you have at this point? How many pages of transcripts are we talking about?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Oh, probably dozens of pages but-

Clay Clark:
Dozens?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
But then there are the notes, right?

Clay Clark:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I mean, the notes, I think really made this story come alive. Like I was alluding to earlier, at the beginning of the story, you find me in a Mercedes van roaming the streets of Rome.

Speaker 2:
Whoa.

Clay Clark:
Rome.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
That that would get edited into something a little more descriptive.

Clay Clark:
When in Rome, roam.

Dr. Z:
When in Rome, I ate Italian food. Okay. There we go.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And my phone rings, it’s like, “All right, you need to stay in the van for one more mile. And then at the end of that journey, you’re going to get out of the light. And you’re going to walk down the street for 200 feet until you see the red arch.” And it was like out of a spy novel, so-

Clay Clark:
Oh, wow.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I get out of the car. I walked the mile and I turn and I look I’m like, “Which arch? It’s Rome. There’s going to be a lot of arches”

Dr. Z:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And it’s like, “Okay, you’re going to look for a lady in a big white hat, lady in a big white hat.” And I looked down and there’s a lady in a big white hat and sunglasses, and you wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t had her security team on the phone, but it was Katy Perry. And so they had to do this whole charade because she was being stalked by paparazzi. So they had two Mercedes vans and she was in one and I was in the other and I didn’t realize I was the decoy.

Dr. Z:
Oh, wow.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
To get them off my back. And so the door opened and out pops some American guy and they’re like, all right, whatever, off they go. And then I go and meet up and we do a tour of the Colosseum. And the whole story was about, here’s Katy Perry, this giant arena act, but here we are, in the original arena.

Clay Clark:
Oh, that’s cool. Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
The original Colosseum in Rome and that was from there, we jump into the business.

Clay Clark:
Do you get nervous when interview… When you’re interviewing Katie Perry, I mean, have you ever found yourself saying, “Katie… ah…” Do you ever get nervous? Or have you ever gotten nervous?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Maybe in my first year doing this, a little bit, I get butterflies and stuff, but at some point people are just people and it’s fun to interview interesting people. Whether they’re famous or not. And you just get used to it. It’s like, if you interview somebody who’s really, really tall, you’re like, “Dang, you’re really tall.” But if you’re only interviewing basketball players, it just sort of stops being-

Dr. Z:
Yeah, they’re all tall. Yeah, yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
A thing. Right, you’re just like, “Okay”

Clay Clark:
Is Katie Perry funny?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. She’s funny and she’s very earnest. I think people don’t maybe realize that. She doesn’t put on airs. She’s very direct.

Clay Clark:
Yeah. She seems like a down to earth kind of gal.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah, 100%.

Clay Clark:
Just off the top but I’m going to ask you this question-

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Oh, wow.

Clay Clark:
First thing that comes to your mind-

Dr. Z:
Here we go, here we go.

Clay Clark:
Of all the interviews you’ve done of celebrities, A list celebrities, which one has surprised you the most? First thing to mind.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
The name that pops into my head is Ludacris.

Clay Clark:
Okay. Explain.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. I mean, he has this outrageous persona.

Clay Clark:
Right.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
In his music.

Clay Clark:
Outrageous name, I mean…

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah, exactly.

Clay Clark:
What are you expecting?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I was interviewing him and he was getting into his portfolio and these businesses that he owns and this and that. And he’s creating this company that he wants to hand off to his daughter when she gets old enough and this kind of stuff. And I was like, “So how do you justify that side of you with, Luda?” And he said, “Well, if you think about it, if you have a buddy…” He’s like, “Think about your best friend.” And it’s like, “What’s your best friend’s name?” And I’m like, “Julian.” “Okay, well, what’s his nickname?” It’s like, “Chops.” You never know. So just like that, you got Chris Bridges on the weekday, but he’s Luda in the club and he really bounces back and forth between these two different personas as needed. But I think he inhabits both of them pretty well, I’d say, into great financial advantage.

Clay Clark:
When you’re sitting in the room with Kanye West, you went to Kanye’s home, correct?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Indeed.

Clay Clark:
And people could look up the article. What’s the name of the article, people can look up right now?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
It’s called, Kanye’s Second Coming it’s on forbes.com or there’s magazines floating around with it too.

Clay Clark:
So when you fly out to his home and you arrive there, how would you describe the interior of Kanye West’s home?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
It’s almost like a monastery. It’s just very simple, alabaster color. Everything is, it’s high ceilings. And in fact, it’s made from… All the floors are made from this special paste that you can only get in Belgium or the crew that makes it is based in Belgium and so if you so much as scuff the floor, they have to fly in all these guys from Belgium to fix it.

Dr. Z:
I love it.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
So I walked into this interview wearing my Air Jordans because I thought it would be an interesting conversation piece because Yeezy-

Dr. Z:
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And the minute I walk in, they’re like, “Oh, you have to put these little booties on your Jordans.” But it wasn’t because of any hatred for Air Jordan, it was because he didn’t want his floor scuffed. So did that, and that was a nice little twist, but then Kanye walks in his own Yeezys with no little cloth booties on. And he’s like, “Whatever, it’s my place, I’ll do what I want.”

Clay Clark:
What is he like? What is his personality type like? I mean, I know you were with him in a room for a long time doing an interview and people can see the actual video. Some of the video of you interviewing him on Forbes. What was it like sitting down with the guy? How would you describe the aura he puts off? The energy?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. I think he will just sink his teeth into whatever idea is on his mind at the moment. And he won’t let go.

Kanye West:
I’ll be working on home designs and looking at references from 3000 years ago and reading the old testament at the same time. So it’s like a soundtrack to the visuals of the shapes and the ideas and ideals of what we’re creating.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I think he can’t let himself give it up until he’s perfected it to his specifications. And you can tell, he has so much passion for each individual thing that he’s doing. So for me, when I was interviewing him, I think the thing that he was the most fixated on was this housing concept. He was building, he wanted to build these especially designed homes that were done in the style of his own home, but for low income folks to try to scale up something that could help people in the local community in LA. And he was talking to me about this in the interview and we finished up around midnight and he goes, “All right, well, I want to show you something.”

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
I said, “Okay.” So he takes me outside and I follow him back. I’m like, maybe he’s got a workshop, whatever. And no, instead he ushers me into his Lamborghini SUV and he cranks up the JS Bach. And off we go barreling down the hill in the middle of the night. And after about 15 minutes, we come to a little bungalow in the woods. I’m like, “All right.” We get out. Inside they’re three guys mashing away on laptops. And on these laptops are these presentations that they’re about to give on this housing concept. And he’s like, “Ah, change the font there, change the color of that.” And after about a half an hour, he seems satisfied and he says, “I want to share something else. Come on.” So he opens the back door.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Off we go into the woods and now it’s one in the morning and we’re somewhere in the Santa Monica mountains, the foothills of Santa Monica mountains, pitch black, middle of the night by the lights of our iPhones, we’re going up this trail, deeper and deeper into the woods.

Clay Clark:
Does he own this land?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yes.

Clay Clark:
Okay.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Or at least that’s what I had been-

Clay Clark:
Okay, sure.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Led to believe so… But my main concern at this point is, I’m going to get eaten-

Dr. Z:
Cougar.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
By a mountain lion, yeah. And Kanye will too, and I’m just going to be a footnote in his [crosstalk 00:18:14].

Dr. Z:
The dude that Kanye died with.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Right. Right. Exactly. So after about five, ten minutes, we come to a clearing and in the clearing, so he stops, wordless. Then we look up and in the clearing are these 30 foot tall structures and oblong, oval type, shape things. And he leads me inside and they are the physical embodiment of these structures.

Clay Clark:
The prototypes?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
The prototypes that he’s been trying to create.

Clay Clark:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And I’m like, “Well, hey Kanye, can I turn my recorder on? So you can explain what we’re looking at here.” And he goes, he goes, “No, I want you to paint a picture with your words.” So I’m like, “All right, well, I’m just going to have to get out my little notebook here and-”

Dr. Z:
Sure, sure.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Scribbling away.

Dr. Z:
Get some words down.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Five minutes later, he was like, “Are you good?” “Yeah, I’m good.” Back down the hill into the Lamborghini and back to my rental car and in bed by 3AM.

Clay Clark:
What time did you start your interview with him?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
8:00 PM.

Clay Clark:
Really?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Maybe? On a Sunday night.

Clay Clark:
8 to 3 with Kanye?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

Clay Clark:
Okay, Z-

Dr. Z:
Was his wife around?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
She was around, she offered us water, stuff like that.

Dr. Z:
Did she have anything to do with the interview? Did she sit down and be part of it at all? Or was it just…

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
She talked to me separately for the story.

Dr. Z:
Oh, okay. Cool.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
She talked about how they bounce business ideas off of each other. And some of the ways that his sensibility for design has helped some of the projects she’s worked on. But I mean, that’s what really stuck with me. I mean, the story was about his Yeezy empire and he was definitely, that was clearly a huge consideration for him, but he was so focused on this housing concept that he just couldn’t move away from it.

Dr. Z:
It’s his next thing.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah.

Dr. Z:
Yeah, it’s always the next thing with an entrepreneur so… Did he talk about the Yeezys? How did he get into that?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah. He always loved to draw. He always loved to design. And when he was a kid growing up in Chicago, he would be sketching sneaker… He would be sketching Jordan Ones, actually-

Dr. Z:
Oh, really? Wow.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just drawings, because he liked them.

Dr. Z:
Yeah.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And he would get in trouble with his teachers because he was doing that instead of his math equations or what have you. I think it took a back seat to the music for a while. But once he gained certain stature, he started being able to do these collaborations. So Yeezy began with Nike, he did a few different designs there.

Kanye West:
You get marginalized by the corporations in what your messaging can be. Now, this is one thing where the conversation changes when you have a trial, because though it’s cool that they marginalize me and I asked them when the Yeezy Red October’s coming out, I asked them, me, Kanye West asked Nike, “When’s it coming out?” They said, “We’re not sure yet.” They let me design two shoes over five years and I’m happy I could design them, but they didn’t do me no favor because Eminem designed a shoe and Farrell designed a shoe. I just designed the Yeezys. I turned up because I was in fourth grade designing Jordans. And I brought back that feeling you ain’t never felt about a shoe since the Jordans, the way people feel about the Yeezy. I put that feeling and the same feeling I put in college dropout and graduation at all that feeling that day, I put that feeling there.

Kanye West:
So then I start turning up in a BBC interview and they came and said, “Okay, cool. We’re going to get you a bigger sandbox to play in.” It’s not even like I even got a joint venture. I’m like, “At least give me some royalties.” Like Michael Jordan got 5% of that business is 2 billion, he makes a hundred million dollars a year off a 5% royalty. I said, “I need some type of royalty.” Nike told me, “Oh, we can’t give you a royalty because you’re not a professional athlete.” I told them, “I go to the garden and play one on no one. I’m a performance athlete. And also I’m a thinker.”

Speaker 6:
Did you really say that in the meeting?

Kanye West:
Did I really, anything? Yes. Did I really everything. 100000%.

Speaker 6:
Yeah.

Kanye West:
I’m 100000%.

Speaker 6:
I’d love to go on a meeting tour with Kanye. I want to go on the meeting tour.

Kanye West:
Because the thing is, it’s people that work in offices trying to tell me how to think. When I got a better perspective. I live in Paris.

Speaker 6:
I love, I love, I love and I was there last night.

Kanye West:
And New York and LA.

Speaker 6:
I was there last night and I was moved by your rant, last night.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
And then several years ago, pulled it over to Adidas. And it was because he insisted on ownership. Even when he was with Nike, I mean, they weren’t really paying him, but he owned the concept. He owned the Yeezy brand and he took it over to Adidas where he continues to own it. But because he insisted on that 100% outright ownership, it enabled him to make that move.

Clay Clark:
Rapid fire. We have time for three final… We have four minutes, three questions, four minutes, three questions. Here we go. Wes Carter, what question would you like to ask senior editor from Forbes who made a series of poor life choices and has ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s not in Manhattan today. We’ve got him inside the studio here. What question do you have for him?

Wes Carter:
I’m wondering out of all these interviews, I know a lot of them talk about their side projects going on, have any of them really opened up about their thoughts on wanting to transform the music business itself? With all the new things coming out with streaming and Spotify and Apple music, do they gravitate towards their own business in the music industry? Or do you see that they really focus on some of their side projects that they’re trying to get other stuff going on?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
You know, I think it’s a mix of both, but if you want to talk about changing the music industry, I think one of the most fascinating cases to look at, the 3 kings of hip hop, Jay-Z, Diddy, Dr. Dre. I say 3 kings, that was the… I wrote a book the same title in 2018. And in that book and also in my new book A List Angels, I talk about how those three guys were like, “You know what? We became entrepreneurs by necessity in the late eighties, early nineties, because people weren’t interested in hip hop, we created our own record labels. We created our own clothing lines.”

Wes Carter:
Yep.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
“Now, we’re going to create our own streaming services or we’re going to invest in existing ones.”

Wes Carter:
All right.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
So Diddy invested in Spotify. Jay-Z bought Title and Dr. Dre had Beats Music, which then became Apple Music. So, they each found a way to not only create the music-

Wes Carter:
True.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
To create the stuff that comes out of that, but to own pieces of the next platforms that would deliver the music as well. And I think that’s the kind of change. That’s the kind of vision that the best of the best have. It’s not just, how to create the next big product, it’s how do I create the next big category?

Clay Clark:
Yeah. I will say this, if you’re out there today and you’ve not yet purchased a copy of 3 Kings, Diddy, Dre and Jay-Z and hip hop’s multibillion dollar rise, that is an incredible book and my hands I have an early edition here of the new book here, A List Angels, how a band of actors, artists, and athletes hacked Silicon Valley. And I’m just telling you, I’m so fired up to read this book because Zack, you write with such detail that if you’re somebody who’s remotely interested at all in business, you’re going to love these books.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Yeah.

Clay Clark:
But if you’re somebody who likes music, which I do, you’re going to love these books. Now, if you’re somebody who likes entertainment, you’re going to love these books. It puts them all together. Because so many books, they’re just drivel about… They’re just talking about how successful somebody is but his book deals with the messy middle. It tells you how they did it, how they got there. It’s really, the detail in here, A List Angels, check out this book. I’m excited to read this book. Thank you for hand delivering it by the way. Dr. Z, we have time for one more question before we hit up our next guest on the phone line and Corey Minter with Trinity employment stepped in, it’s a laser show.

Dr. Z:
I know it’s weird, it’s a laser show.

Clay Clark:
Oh, boy.

Dr. Z:
Zack, what’s next for you? What’s next for you, bud?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Well, I think the next thing I really want to do is bring more of the storytelling to people in person. And so if you check out Zogspeaking.com, there’s more details on some of the speeches that I give. But yeah, idea of telling these stories, bringing actionable advice to people, from having sat down with a lot of the leading figures in show business, what are the things that I can bring to the average entrepreneur, to the average person, that they can use in their careers, in their journeys? I think it’s actually surprising how much overlap there is.

Dr. Z:
Do you like speaking or writing better?

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
Man, I think it depends on the day.

Dr. Z:
Depends how much you’ve been writing last week.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg:
The grass is greener, you do a few big travel gigs in a row. And you’re like, “All right, I just want to sit and write.” But then if, and a lot of times when I’m really in crunch time on the books, I’ll take a week or two off from Forbes and I’ll just go hard on the book writing and man, after a couple of weeks, it’s like, you really would love to be out speaking to human beings again.

Dr. Z:
Exactly.

Clay Clark:
If you guys go to Z-O-G speaking.com, Z-O-G speaking.com that stands for Zack O’Malley Greenburg. So Z-O-G speaking.com, you can see samples of him speaking so you can see… But I’m just telling people if you’re listening out there today and you own a company, a lot of times when your employees get a chance to hear stories about Justin Bieber and Kanye West, but it’s practical and it actually practically can be related back to your business. That’s fun. It’s fun. It’s entertainment, it’s education. It’s edutainment.

Dr. Z:
We call that edutainment.

Clay Clark:
That’s what we call it.

Clay Clark:
And now without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom.

Clay Clark:
Stop what you’re doing and think about this for a second. What would happen if your company was suddenly able to generate exponentially more quality sales leads? “That would be incredible.” What would happen if your company came up at the top or near the top of the Google search engine results? “Well, I would just feel overwhelmed with all that business.” How many thousands of dollars in lost sales or millions of dollars in lost sales, are you missing out on simply because your potential customers can’t find you when they go online to search for the products and services that you offer? “I refuse to think that thought because I don’t want any more business.”

Clay Clark:
Unless you are a dirty communist that hates money, my new book Search Engine Domination will help you grow your business. In my new book, Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate the search engine results. “What do you mean by dominate?” You see, in my new book Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate search engine results. Download your free ebook copy today at thebestseobook.com. I repeat, that’s thebestseobook.com.

Amy Baltimore:
My name is Amy Baltimore, and I am a CPA in Covington, Tennessee. I’ve been working with the Thrive team now for about a year. One of the first things that they did was to update my website and my search engine optimization. I prior had a website, but I was not being found on Google. And all of my new business was coming through referrals from friends, family, et cetera. And right away, I started to see results, people were calling and coming in saying that they found me on Google. They just Googled CPA near me and there I was at the top of the page. And so it’s been a great help to my business.

Clay Clark:
Again, you can download your free ebook copy today at thebestseobook.com.

Dustin Huff:
Hey, this is Dustin Huff. I’m with Keystone Harbor Marina. We joined Thrive back in January and have been working with these guys for about seven months. During that time period, we have moved up our Google rank through reviews and SEO processes that we’ve compiled through these guys. Our leads have gone from about four a week to now 165 a week. So the process works. I will tell you from experience, once you begin, you have to stay with it. As long as you continually do this week in and week out, month in and month out, you’ll continually grow.

Clay Clark:
The system works, but nothing works unless you do. You’ve got to take some action. Download the ebook for free today at thebestseobook.com.

Daniel:
Hello, my name is Daniel with Daniel’s Heating and Air here in Amarillo, Texas. The way Google has affected my business, we have got a lot of calls from Google. Right now, it’s July and we’ve had the best month ever. And it took us about eight to ten months to get on top of Google. And I’m glad we did.

Clay Clark:
Remember nothing works, unless you do. You have to go to thebestseobook.com today, download the ebook for free, just download that ebook for free and you’ll be off to the races.

Christina Nemes:
Hi, my name is Christina Nemes, I’m the owner and operator of Angels’ Touch Auto Body and Detailing in Borne, Massachusetts. We have been working with Thrive and their coaching for, I’ll say eight to nine months, and it took us about six months, five to six months to get on the top of Google and with their help with the website and marketing and the SEO and retargeting ads with Google. And it has been phenomenal. We just have night and day business coming in, phone calls coming in, walk ins, referrals. It’s just through the roof and we couldn’t be happier. At the moment we are up 50% this year from the previous year. And not only is that part of our own hard work and diligence, but also with the help of Thrive and what they’ve done for us in getting us on the top of Google and all their knowledge and coaching. And yeah, so super grateful, super pumped to see what the future holds for all of us. Thank you.

Speaker 2:
(singing)

Clay Clark:
I realize I can’t sing like that, but I can talk and play the woodblock. Okay. If you guys need me, I’ll just be over here.