Best Business Podcast | BLIND BEST-SELLING Author Jim Stovall | How to Achieve Success + Why Having No Vision Is Worth Than Being Blind + Join Trump & Kiyosaki At Clay Clark’s March 6-7 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

Music

Two men, one message. Let’s just talk about how this book actually got started.

Mr. Trump, can you tell me why you suggested writing this book together? Well, I’ve been a big fan of Roberts and of Rich Dad for so long. I’ve seen it, I’ve read it, everybody I know has read it, and he’s just a very special speech together and I listened to a speech I liked it he listened to my speech I assume he liked it you have to ask him but I assume he liked it and one day after one of our speeches in front of a tremendous crowd of people sixty

one thousand five hundred people he came up to me and he said we ought to do something together and I’ve had lots of number one bestsellers and he’s had lots of number one bestsellers and we’re just putting it all together

Mr.. Kiyosaki, how did you feel when mr.. Trump asked you to write this book with him?

Well, he’s right when I listen to his talk he always talks about think big mm-hmm And when we said let’s write a book together. I had to think big and that’s what I had it was beyond Reality at that moment, so I thank him for you know sharing his celebrity with me beyond reality television

Mr.. Trump are you afraid of failing

i’m not afraid of failing you know life you look at you turn on the newscasts every night and you see thousands of people killed in in earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes and all of the problems and wars and wars that we shouldn’t even be and and lots of different things and when you see all of the problems in the world is that what is it to be afraid of

it doesn’t matter but to a certain extent it all doesn’t and i tell people that because it takes pressure off of it matters too much they’re going to be like basket cases it really doesn’t matter you want to enjoy what you do you want to do a great job for yourself and your family

but ultimately in the scope of things what really matters and that does take a certain amount of pressure off and i’m not sure that robert agrees with my statement but i see people there’s so intent on doing something and it’s so scary and they can’t even function properly because it’s so important to

and sometimes you say to yourself it doesn’t matter if it works if it doesn’t

work

and that takes that real big high level of pressure off and you can perform better

my answer to that is i think what we have in common also is we both went to military schools and military schools about discipline about being bigger, about following orders, about leading. But what else we have in common is that we both failed. And he lost nearly a billion.

I lost a lot of money.

A lot of money.

But it was paper.

Yeah, and I lost only a million. And I think what makes us better is when you wrote your book, The Art of the Deal, I was so impressed. But when you wrote the art of the comeback, and what it meant to come back from being down so far.

And most people are terrified of losing $100, and here you’re down a billion.

Billions.

And you come back. And I think that’s what we have in common, is once you’ve faced that much, what everybody’s afraid of, you’re not as afraid anymore. I think that’s really the difference in for me personally it was the best

education i could have gotten

was to find out where i made all my mistakes and rebuild my company you

would want to do it again but i don’t read education of the other one of the

other comeback as of this is a big man that’s what my respect for him grew because art of the deal you know he’s talking about his successes but when it was part of the comeback that’s when you grew in my uh… my eyes is because most people will not admit their mistakes.

Is that true?

Well, and also, things happen. The markets change. We had a real estate catastrophe in the early 90s, and a lot of very smart people that did a very good job got wiped out. And I was a very hard fighter. Many of my friends went bankrupt.

I never did, but they went bankrupt and out of business. And literally, some of them I’ve never heard from again. I’ve tried contacting them. They don’t even want to contact me because the fact is they feel horrible. And that was many years ago. But I fought very hard, never went bankrupt,

made deals with banks, made all sorts of things. And in a certain way, I had a great time doing it, as crazy as it sounds. But you learn a lot about yourself through adversity.

A lot of the book is defining moments. Yeah. And then, you know, what did you learn in military school? Because we have so many men and women in the service today

and what did you say military school military training is great for business

well i loved it i’d also found out it probably wasn’t for me but i loved it and i did well in that system i had to adjust to that system i had a drill sergeant named major dubious who was a really tough guy and you couldn’t get away with the wise guy cracks that you can make to other people this guy used to come at you and

it wasn’t like it is today where somebody wax in the face they end up being thrown in jail for the rest of the union those guys were rough they would really punch you around and i’m not advocating it but i’ll tell you something you’ll learn a lot better than you do nowadays with the teachers are afraid to raise their voice to the

students because of the x will be thrown out of school they get thrown in the school is even the students gets not so we agree a lot of interesting things i think robert and i learned at a military academy i but i did i learned the military wasn’t necessarily for me but i have great respect for the military

the military did things my parents were not willing to do i think that’s the biggest difference and i’m a six years and six years of marine corps after that because it took me a long to get the lesson but i learned the biggest lesson of all is how to overcome fear. So all these guys in Iraq and all this,

they’re going to come back. It’s a terrible experience. But I think all of them will come back stronger and better for it if they don’t let the experience beat them. Because a lot of my Vietnam guys, a lot of them, the experience beat them.

But for me, it was I beat this. I beat the terribleness of it. And I think that’s what gives us the strength in business today.

And that’s a defining moment in my life. Well, let’s talk about money a little bit. There are those who say that money doesn’t bring happiness or that money doesn’t make you happy. I mean, is that true?

Well, I think it’s true, but it certainly makes life a lot easier. If you can educate your children, if you can not have to worry about being able to afford a doctor when somebody’s not feeling well in the family. It certainly makes life a lot easier.

And I don’t use the word happy, I use the word content. I think you’re more content. And money ultimately beyond a certain point is just a scorecard. But you sort of love it. I mean, it’s what we do.

It’s a game, isn’t it?

It is a game. It’s a game, ultimately. It’s a game. You play the game. You want to play the game well. You don’t like to lose.

You score.

It’s a scorecard. Is it easier to become rich today than it was 30 years

ago? I’d say so. The internet and the communications are easier, the leverage is easier, there’s more ways of making money. But let me say this about people who say that money doesn’t make you happy. I’ve been without money and anybody who says money doesn’t make you happy obviously hasn’t been broke yet. Or that somebody gave them the money because when I didn’t have money I mean Kim and I we saw 20th anniversary this year and when we didn’t have money we fought more and we’re a lot happier a lot you know it’s a game we keep score

we enjoy it and as Donald says if you’re doing what you love that’s it if you’re working at something you don’t love for money that’s misery I mean that’s as

good as going to hell for us I’m concerned mr. Trump do you think anybody can be rich

no i don’t think anybody can get rich i think unfortunately the world is not a fair place i think you have to be born with a certain intelligence and is that to be a super intelligence and has to be a certain intelligence you can take somebody that’s not a smart person and say by the way this is what you do

and here’s your little card and you’re gonna follow these rules and regulations and you can become a rich person the world is not for you know they come with a statement all men are created equal. Well, it sounds beautiful, and it was written by some very wonderful people and brilliant people, but it’s not true, because all people and all men aren’t created. Now, today, they’d say all men and women.

Of course, they would have changed that statement that was made many years ago. But the fact is, you have to be born and blessed with something up here. On the assumption you are, you can become very rich

uh… but and it’s what the book’s about is that if you can’t get rich in america you can’t get rich anywhere i would say this is the easiest country it’s not that it’s easier but as a country is really designed for capitalists is designed for people who

want to be rich and that’s our concern right now is that i think life has gotten somewhat too easy for some people and our country you know to me people have the entitlement mentality, rich or poor. They expect the government to take care of them. And our concern is that I think our problems today is globalization.

Our government cannot protect us from the world today. I mean, the government cannot stop higher oil prices, or they cannot stop China from getting stronger and all this. So now today, the average person is competing for a job with somebody in india or the philippines or ireland so it is a different world today although it is easier to get rich but if you have a complacent attitude i think it’s a tough world right now i probably

disagree with robert on one thing i think the government can do a lot about oil prices i think they can really drive the prices down a lot and i think the oil producing states are getting away with murder and i think oil companies are getting away with murder and lots of people having to do with energy are getting away with murder. So I really feel our government could be much more proactive in that. But

there are many things that the government cannot do well.

Well, Donald and I were very blessed that we both had rich dads. You know, my best friend’s father was my rich dad. And financial education is more important than ever before. So I thank you for viewing this, and I wish you all the best of luck.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use?

Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an

optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses.

We started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here.

Jigsaw started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks. I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi.

It’s the CNC up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go.

Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Hello, Thrive Nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. And for those of you who are discovering our podcast for the first time, two things I want to, two housekeeping notes I want to share with you. One, as of July 2nd, 2018, we are number one in the world of all podcasts.

It doesn’t mean we’re going to stay there. It doesn’t mean that we couldn’t move down or up. I want to say thank you to you, Thrive Nation, for listening to these conversations and for sharing these podcasts with your friends. And we hope this show provides you the mentorship that you really can’t get anywhere else. And one of the things I pride myself on doing is trying to bring on guests onto the show

that know the millionaire map. People that don’t just talk about success, but people who aren’t just charlatans, but people that have actually done it, who live it. People who have gone through the struggle and the adversity that you’ve gone through. On today’s show, we have a multi-millionaire, a best-selling author, and a man who’s written a book with Steve Forbes, shared the stage with Tony Robbins, General Colin Powell, Zig Ziglar, and more. And this just in Thrive Nation.

He’s done this all after having gone blind. Think about that. After having gone blind. Jim Stovall, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you doing? I am good, Clay.

It’s great to be with you. Congratulations on being number one and keep it up.

Brother, I will try not to get emotional while interviewing you because just talking to you, I remember hearing you speak years ago, watching you online, watching the videos of you speak. The impact you’ve made on my life in terms of just not making excuses has been profound. I would like for you to share if you can what you were thinking when you first learned that you were going blind? How old were you and when did you first learn that you were going blind? What were you thinking when you discovered that soon I’m not going to see again?

Well, it started as a young man. I grew up here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had no ambition other than to be an All-American football player and go on to make my living in the NFL for the sake of your audience, we’ll say the New England Patriots. Every year before you go play football, you have to get a physical exam. They want to make sure that you’re healthy before they take you out and try to kill you. The exam was taking a lot longer that year than I had ever remembered it, and they poke

you, they prod you, they weigh you, they measure you, they do all this stuff. Then a doctor shined a light in my eye and wrote something on a chart and called another doctor and he did the same. Then a third doctor came in and ran several tests and eventually they took me down a long haul and sat me down at a table. These three doctors told me, Jim, we’re not sure why and we’re not sure when, but we do know someday you’re going to be totally blind and there’s nothing we can do about it. Your whole world just stops right there. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I was not going to make my living in

the NFL. That was the beginning of a 12-year slide from a fully sighted person to a totally blind person. I lost the last remaining scrap of my eyesight at age 29, and that’s where I’ve been for 30 years now. That was the beginning of everything that people know about me, whether it’s the 40 books or the 8 movies or the arena events or anything

people know about me all happened after it went dark.

I remember I was in the parking lot of our Riverwalk offices and my dad called me. I remember like it was yesterday. My dad called and said, son, I’m going to be dead soon. And I thought, what? He says, I have ALS. And the timeline, I don’t know the timeline.

But I’m going to be dead soon. So I’d like if we could plan out some things that I want to do before I pass. And I know that for me, Jim, I took it. I listened to what he said. I went in the office.

I did my day. I didn’t say this to anybody. Then I got in my car. I got on the creek turnpike, headed out east to Broken Arrow. I drove right through the toll there with my pike pass,

and then it just like a flood of tears and emotion, and I couldn’t get it together for a few hours. Did you have that moment? Did you have that moment where you just emotionally were overwhelmed. You battled that for years before you ultimately lost your sight at the age of 29, I believe

you said. Did you ever have that emotional outburst? What was going on emotionally? Did you ever have that emotional outburst?

Sure. I remember waking up several weeks after that diagnosis and I had just been through a total roller coaster and I told God, if you’re real and if there is such a thing as God you better show up today. I’m giving you one day. One day and one day.

If you can imagine the audacity of that statement. I said, God you’ve got until the end of the day today. I need to know that there is some plan for my life, that there is something I can do out there. That a blind guy can do something. That was in the fall of that year and as you well know, every year the state fair comes

to town. Well, I’d always been playing football during that time, so I hadn’t been to the state fair since I was a little kid and I could still see well enough to get around on my own. So I decided I’m just going to go out to the fair and see what transpires. I reminded God, you’ve got until sundown. The first thing I did was I walked into the old IPE building, that big giant building behind the Golden Drill or whatever they’re

calling it this year. They had an exhibition from the previous Olympic Games, and they had the runners and the gymnasts and all those sorts of things. To be real honest with you, I went over to look at the girl gymnast there. I thought that was something that I ought to take in. After they did their thing, they made an announcement and out came the weightlifters.

I thought, wow, that’s something a guy could do even if he was losing his sight. I became the national champion three years later and got to finish my athletic career as an Olympic weightlifter. That was an interesting moment. Then I walked on down the midway to the pavilion, the big arena there on the fairgrounds. They had a giant banner outside, Clay, and it said, �Free Concert.� I didn’t know

who was playing or when it started, but free totally fit my budget. I went in and there was no one there. I sat on the front row and I cried a little and I dreamed a little and I reminded God, ìThis is your one day. You better show me something.î I was so intense on my thoughts and reverie there that the arena filled up around me and I was really not aware of it.

The first thing that was in my conscious mind was a voice I’ll never forget. He said, �Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the Tulsa State Fair, the one, the only, the legend, Ray Charles.� They brought Ray out on stage. He was about 12 feet away from me. Ray Charles was absolute magic. I sat there and said, �Okay, God, I get it.

A blind guy can do something.� I kind of figured, �Ray�s got this music thing covered, so I better go do something else.” And that was kind of the beginning of everything for me. And as I was slowly losing my sight, I was building my way toward the things that I do and know now. And you know, Clay, people think about me as a blind person or the limitations on my

life. I honest to God don’t know anybody I would trade places with today. I am happy, I am fulfilled, I do everything I want to do. I just wish there was twice as many hours in a day to accomplish all the things I want to get out the door. I don’t know anybody I would trade places with.

It’s been a tremendous ride, and I’m just excited every day and more excited now than I was 30 years ago.

This conversation, although you and I have a very similar worldview. It’s not a religious discussion. I think both of us in our time of needs have cried out to God. But I know people that are Christians. I know people that are Buddhists. I know people that are from the Jewish faith, people

from all different religions who lose all hope the first time something terrible happens to them. They lose all sign of hope. But if you look at the lives of, let’s say, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr., or you look at the life of anybody you can think of, Steve Jobs, somebody who achieved massive success, we all remember them because of the struggle they went through.

I mean, if Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t lead the civil rights movement or Abraham Lincoln hadn’t died to end slavery or if these people hadn’t had these adversities, we wouldn’t know them. So it’s like your strength actually comes through the struggle, which Napoleon Hill wrote about in his books. The strength comes through the struggle. How did you keep from feeling sorry for yourself when you went totally blind?

I mean, how did you get off the mat time and time again when most people, the average person, unfortunately, I’m choosing to believe before they hear

this podcast, would quit? Well, I mean, I certainly had all those feelings, you know, and I’m the first one to tell people, if you have those feelings, and you know, my problems are no greater than yours or anyone listening to us now. We’re all only as big as the smallest thing it takes to divert us from where we ought to be. So whether it’s someone’s divorce or bankruptcy or they lost their job or a health crisis

or whatever it may be, we all have those things. For everyone defeated by one of those things, I’ll show you someone else had the same circumstance and used it as a springboard to great success and everything they ever wanted in this life. Well, like you, I went to Oral Roberts University and I was slowly losing my sight. I met my wife there. She was one of my readers who read textbooks to me.

As it was coming close to senior year, all the recruiters were on campus hiring everybody and nobody wanted to hire this blind Olympic weightlifter. I made the only decision that made any sense to me. I went home and told my mom and dad, I’m not going to get a job, I’m going to be an entrepreneur, which you can imagine how much that thrilled them at that point. But dad said, I don’t know anything about that, but I do know one guy I’ll introduce

you to. And his name was Lee Braxton, and Lee Braxton had a third grade education and became a deca-millionaire during the Great Depression, gave nine of his ten million away and lived off of the investment returns on that one million the rest of his life and worked for Oral Roberts University for a dollar a year until his death. He was kind of a grumpy old man and he shoved this book at me and he said, �Either read

this or find somebody to read it to you and come back when you�ve read it.� It was a book called Think and Grow Rich. I read the book and Crystal helped me and I came back a couple of days later and he asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to. He said, �You need to read that again.� I came back a couple of days later and said, �Okay, I read it twice.� He asked me another question and he was not satisfied with my

answer and said, �You’re going to need to read that again, son.� I read it a third time and came back and that was the basis of all his mentorship. He taught me everything I know about success and money and achievement in business. A number of years later, he had long since passed away, I wrote a book called The Millionaire Map. In there, I disclosed my investment account. I didn’t start with nothing. Poor people can’t get that far in debt. We had to work a long way to get up to nothing. Because I don’t believe anybody should ever take advice from anybody that

doesn’t have what you want, I felt I owed my readers an explanation, so I had Bank of America and Merrill Lynch do an audited accounting of my investments, not my books or royalties or movies or my television network or other businesses, just cash equivalent stocks and bonds. They showed I had well in excess of $10 million, and I put that in a book and put it out, and it became a bestseller. I got a call from Don Green, who’s the head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

He said, love your book, love your work. He said, but did you know that your Mr. Braxton, your mentor you mentioned here in this book, was Napoleon Hill’s best friend? I said, I had no idea. He said, yeah. He said, he gave the eulogy at Hill’s funeral.

I’ll send you the transcript. And he did.

All right, Thrive Nation, when we come back, more of our exclusive interview with Jim Stovall. Stay tuned to the Thrivetime Show on your radio. Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show.

the top, teaching you the systems to give what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s what I’mma dive.

So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time

Show on your radio and podcast download, where today we’re interviewing the best-selling author, the multimillionaire, the co-author of a book with Steve Forbes, the man who shared the stage with Tony Robbins, General Colin Powell, and Zig Ziglar. My folks, my friends, this is today’s interview. We’re interviewing today, easy for me to say, we’re interviewing today Jim Stovall.

Jim Stovall is a successful entrepreneur that didn’t earn the vast majority of his success and accolades until after he went blind. After he went blind, that’s when he had his success. You know, Helen Keller, the acclaimed writer who was both deaf and blind, she once wrote, the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

So if you’re out there today and you’ve made yourself a series of excuses for why you can’t get up early and why you can’t get your to-do list done and why you can’t make your action items and why you can’t save money, my hope and my prayer prayer that today’s is that today’s podcast will provide for you the the

medicine that you need that will provide for you the the anecdote to the wealth repelling cosmic habit force I called Jackassery. Jackassery is where you know what to do but you simply choose not to do it. And Jim Stovall, I don’t know how he felt about it, I don’t know what was going through his mind as he was going through the things he went through, but he is a blind man who has decided to turn his life into

a life of success. And so without any further ado, my exclusive interview with Jim Stovall.

I tell people I didn’t start with nothing. Poor people can’t get that far in debt. We had to work a long way to get up to nothing. And because I don’t believe anybody should ever take advice from anybody that doesn’t have what you want, I felt I owed my readers an explanation, so I had Bank of America and Merrill Lynch do an audited accounting of my investments, not my books or royalties

or movies or my television network or other businesses, just cash equivalent stocks and bonds. They showed I had well in excess of $10 million. I put that in a book and put it out and it became a best seller. I got a call from Don Green, who’s the head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He said, �Love your book. Love your work.� He said, �But did you know that Mr. Braxton, your mentor you mentioned

here in this book, was Napoleon Hill’s best friend. I said, I had no idea. He said, yeah. He said, he gave the eulogy at Hill’s funeral. I’ll send you the transcript. And he did.

And then he sent me a two-inch thick file of letters, exchanged between Braxton and Hill in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and that’s the basis of a book I’m working out that’ll be out the year after next. So all of these things came to me through one of the worst tragedies in my life. Nothing is all good or all bad, Clay. I talk to people who have had horrible divorces and abusive relationships, but I say, �Well,

would you go through it again to get those kids you got?� There’s always something in everyone. As you mentioned, Napoleon Hill said, �Every adversity comes with the seed of a greater good.� What this means is once you believe and understand that principle, when something bad happens, you start looking for the opportunity. The thing I have found in my career that has made me wealthy and healthy and happy and

everything I’ve ever wanted in this life, when something seemingly bad happens to me, I am looking for the opportunity because I know that opportunity comes disguised as a problem and the whole world is praying for a great idea. They just want to have that one big idea, the next Uber or whatever it is. The only thing you’ve got to do to have a great idea, Clay, is go through your daily life and wait for something bad to happen and ask yourself, how could I have avoided

that? The answer to that question is a great idea and the only thing you’ve got to do to turn that great idea into a great business is ask one more question, how could I help other people avoid that? Because the world will give you fame and fortune and wealth and success and everything you ever wanted if you’ll just solve their problems. But everybody goes out there and says, I want to make money.

The only people that make money work at the Mint. They print dollar bills. The rest of us have to earn money and the only way you earn money is by creating value in other people’s lives. There’s nothing else that matters. When you go out there and you worry about yourself and you think it’s all about you, you’re going to be poor your whole life.

But if you go out there and say, �Who needs me today and who needs me the most? Where can I help the most people in the biggest way?� and if you go out every day with that thought in your mind, you’re going to get rich.

You had four or five knowledge bombs there all in a row, and I’d like to break them down one by one because there was so much knowledge you just provided there. So let’s get into knowledge bomb number one that I took note of.

You said that behind every failure or setback, there is an opportunity. And Napoleon Hill writes about that extensively in his book, Think and Grow Rich. That single idea is the only reason that you and I are on this radio show together. I grew up as a kid that stuttered.

Therefore, I had to learn how to become a good listener, which is why I do very well at the business ventures I do, because I’ve learned to become a good listener. And then I wanted to become good at speaking, and I had to practice so much speaking over and over and over that it became sort of a superpower, but I don’t think I would have spent that much time in my life focused on speaking if I was naturally good at it. You are a man with tremendous vision, as a result, I believe, in part, of being totally

blind. You are a man of tremendous vision, as a result of being totally blind. Do you agree with that idea that you have tremendous vision today in part as a result of you having gone blind?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, sight tells us where we are and what’s around us. It’s a very wonderful thing. I had it for the first part of my life. Sight’s a gift, and I hope everyone listening to us now will go out and use their sight and think about the blessing that it is.

Sight’s a wonderful thing, but it pales in comparison to vision. That sight tells you where you are and what’s around you at this moment. Vision tells you where you could be and what’s possible in the world. And given a choice between the two, and I’ve had both, I’ll take vision every time.

Now this concept of looking for a problem that you can solve for others, that’s really all entrepreneurship is. It’s finding a problem that people have and they’re willing to pay for you to solve. That’s all you find a problem people have. Whether it be a product or service that solves the problem. If people are willing to pay for you to solve the problem

then you have a viable business. If you people have lawns that are growing and they don’t want to mow the lawns themselves and they pay you to mow the lawn, then that is a business. How would you what advice would you give to somebody out there? I’m not ripping on every single multi-level marketing business. I’m not ripping on all of them, Jim.

I’m just ripping on 99.64321, carry the 4, percentage of them. Thrive Nation, are you looking to save both time and money on your office supplies? Are you looking to save both time and money with your office supplies? Well, if you are looking to save both time and money with your office and printer supplies, then go to onyximaging.com. That’s O-N-Y-X-imaging.com today.

Three, two, one, boom.

You are now entering the dojo of Mojo and the Thrive Time Show.

Thrive Time Show on the microphone. What is this? Top of the iTunes charts in the category of business. Drilling down on business topics like we are a dentist. Providing you with mentorship like you are an apprentice. And we go so fast that you might get motion sickness.

Grab a pen and pad to the lab, let’s get in this. Time to best some fruit like some Florida oranges. Three, two, one, here come the business ninjas.

I’m a boom.

Ah, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation.

Welcome back to The Conversation, the Thrive Time show on your radio. For anybody just now tuning in, we are interviewing today the multi-millionaire, the best-selling author, the man who’s written books with Steve Forbes and who has shared the stage with Tony Robbins, General Colin Powell, and Zig Ziglar. Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Mr. Jim Stovall, the entrepreneur who became successful after becoming blind. Now, without any further ado, back to our interview with Jim Stovall.

And they’re willing to pay for you to solve. That’s all you find a problem, people have. Whether it be a product or a service that solves the problem, and if people are willing to pay for you to solve the problem, then you have a viable business. People have lawns that are growing and they don’t want to mow the lawns themselves and they pay you to

mow the lawn, then that is a business. How would you what advice would you give to somebody out there? I’m not ripping on every single multi-level marketing business. I’m not ripping on all of them, Jim. I’m just ripping on 99.64321 carry the four percentage of them. Where they’re not actually selling a product that people need, but they’re trying to convince people to get rich quick.

I’m sure you’ve seen that before where somebody has a product that doesn’t actually solve a problem, it doesn’t offer value to the marketplace, but yet they want to become rich as a result of auto shipping something that you don’t need to your home. What advice would you give for somebody out there who’s trying to get rich with their newest get rich quick scheme or scam? What advice would you have for them if they said, Jim, set me straight.

Tell me how life works.

First of all, I’ve never seen anybody get rich long term quickly. I have never seen it happen. And if they have, I’d like to see it happen. And I remember I was working with Willie Nelson on a deal. He did the music, Ian Bobbill and B.B. King, for the first movie based on one of my books. I had done some research about him and I saw this article in Variety Magazine in 1971 that

you were an overnight success. He said, �Yeah, I guess if you look at it the way I became an overnight success, it took me 21 years to get to that night, but then I was an overnight success.� Everybody I�ve ever seen that makes it and succeeds has paid their dues. Something my grandfather told me years ago that’s always stuck with me, he said, �Just figure on earning everything you get out of life.

You’ll be a lot happier and you’ll be a lot wealthier.� It’s happened for me. There are great network marketing companies and there are not great network marketing companies, but if you’re just trying to run through and scam a bunch of people and do something, you know deep down. A lot of these companies, they won’t tell you what they’re in or what they’re doing or what the meeting is about. That’s just the thing. I do five things in my life.

It looks like a four-sided pyramid with a point on the top. Those are the five things I do. I do books, movies, television, speeches and my syndicated columns. I do those five things and I am proud of those five things. I will tell anybody, anywhere, at any time about what I do and how I do and how I’ve opened the world of television to 13 million people here in the United States. I’m very proud of that.

I wish for everyone listening to us right now that you would be just that proud of who you are and what you do. If you have to kind of hedge or hide behind something when you tell people what you do, go do something you’re proud of. Go make a difference for somebody. You can drive down any street in America and look at the houses, and you can pretty much

guess what kind of contribution they make to society. How big a contribution, and how many people do they make a contribution to?

You mentioned your connection now with the Napoleon Hill Foundation, and you mentioned Mr. Braxton. Can you share with us why you decided to donate to build the Jim Stovall Center. There’s a building at Oral Roberts University that has your name on it. For people who aren’t familiar, Oral Roberts University has a Division I basketball team, a Division I volleyball, baseball, big Christian school, and your name’s on the side of it.

Jim Stovall, the Stovall Center. Can you explain why you decided to donate back to Oral Roberts University?

Well, so many good things happened to me there. My education, I met my wife Crystal, I connected with Lee Braxton. Clay, many, many years ago I quit measuring my wealth based on how much money I have. I have more money than I’m ever going to spend. We give away vastly more amounts of money than we spend or save or invest for ourselves. 27 years ago I started a scholarship at ORU, the Crusader Scholarship Fund, and we just passed the mark. We’ve sent 500 kids to that university. That

cost more than that building cost. But several years ago, my father worked for 57 years for Oral Roberts. My dad came to Tulsa in 1955 right out of the Navy and started working in the mail room and worked his way up and became the chief financial officer and then took over University Village and ran that until he retired in his early 80s. Mom and Dad still live there in a house, so University Village. My dad was in administration, so I thought I’m going to build the Stovall Administrative Center. Anybody in Tulsa, if you’re ever out there, just walk into the building. It’s a

beautiful atrium and it’s got a big thing that talks about my mom and dad and why Crystal and I wanted to donate a building dedicated to my mom and dad because of that. But the ironic thing is that next Thanksgiving I was over at my mom and dad’s house and I’m standing in the kitchen with mom and she said, �How did you do that?� and I said, �Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.� She said, �Well, when I stand here in my sink and look out the window, the sign lights up on the Stovall building and it’s the only

thing I can see, right here from my window. To this day, my mom thinks I placed that building so that she could stand in her kitchen and see the name on it. But, Clay, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is a whole lot better, but the most fun you’ll ever have with money is giving it away. You think you’re having a bad day or you’re down or whatever, go buy a truckload of bicycles

and go to a poor area in your town and just get ready to have an amazing experience.

What is your role today with the Napoleon Hill Foundation? Because Napoleon Hill, I named my son after Napoleon Hill. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark because the book Think and Grow Rich changed my life. Now listen out there listeners, if you’re listening right now, understand this, I only have one son and I’ve read thousands of books, audio books, and I named my son

Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. I could have named him anything, right? You can do that, freedom of choice, but I named him Aubrey Napoleon Hill. Not Aubrey Russell Simmons, not Aubrey J.Z. Clark, not Aubrey Dave Ramsey Clark, not Aubrey Robert Kiyosaki, a lot of great authors, but I named my son after Napoleon Hill. What is your role with the Napoleon Hill Foundation today, and what are you doing on an ongoing basis with that group?

Well, it started a number of years ago. Oprah actually made the introduction for me. I was at the National Booksellers Convention, and I saw her there, and we’re just having a moment.

All right, Thrive Nation, when we return, Jim Stovall shares with us how Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Winfrey, Oprah, the Oprah Winfrey, introduced him to the Napoleon Hill Foundation. An incredible story from an incredible man. And if you’re out there saying to yourself, I want my spine to feel incredible. Well, if you want your spine to feel as incredible as Jim Stovall is, then go to Sibley Chiropractic. That’s Dr. John Sibley.

DrJohnSibley.com. Schedule your consultation today with the chiropractor of choice for Wayne Gretzky, the NHL Hall of Famer. DrJohnSibley.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download.

Recently, we’ve actually hit the top of the iTunes charts.

What?

We’ve reached the top of the iTunes charts. This just in. In the category of business, as well as in all categories overall, as a result of you subscribing to the podcast and sharing this with your friends and family. So I appreciate you very, very much for doing that. It means a lot to me.

Another thing that means a lot to me is if you get yourself a copy of the book Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich is the number one self-help book of all time, the number one selling self-help book of all time outside of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The Napoleon Hill Foundation and Think and Grow Rich has sold over 100 million copies of the book Think and Grow Rich.

The book had made such a profound impact on me and my life that I actually decided to name my son after the author. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. Now on today’s show, we are interviewing Jim Stovall, who has a very, very close connection to the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author and a man who became a multimillionaire after becoming blind.

And during this next portion, he’s going to explain to you how Oprah Winfrey introduced him to the Napoleon Hill Foundation. And the rest, as they say, is history. Stay tuned. But I named my son after Napoleon Hill. What is your role with the Napoleon Hill Foundation today, and what are you doing on an ongoing

basis with that group? Well, it started a number of years ago. Oprah actually made the introduction for me. I was at the National Booksellers Convention, and I saw her there, and we were just having a moment and I had just gotten on the floor of the convention and I said, �What�s the best thing here?� She said, �There�s all these amazing multi-million dollar booths with lights and videos and fireworks and everything.�

She said, �I was walking around and over in the corner there�s one little old man standing there at a card table and had about 40 people in line waiting to talk to him. No sign, no nothing. So she said, �I couldn�t wait. I had to go over and see who this guy was.� It was Don Green of the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

She talked about what a difference that had made for her. So I didn�t know this guy at all, Clay. I wrote him a letter saying, �Hey, we have a mutual friend and fan and I appreciate what you’re doing and what that book did for me. It was written in 1937, over 100 million copies now, and I wrote this letter to Don Green. Then years later, he made the connection between me and Lee Braxton and they were best friends and sent me the file of letters and everything.

So we were sitting there, he has an office at the University of Virginia, very near where Napoleon Hill was raised and lived, and they have a scholarship there. I said, Don, what can I do for you? He said, well, could you do some books for us that would benefit the Foundation? Well, I write a weekly syndicated column. I’ve written over a thousand of them, and they appear in newspapers, magazines, and

online publications around the world. I have just finished the fifth book of those, and it’s an official publication of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Every penny from every book, everywhere in the world, goes to provide scholarships for Napoleon Hill kids at the University of Virginia. Then two or three years ago, Don came to me and he knew about my experience in television

and movies. We have an Emmy Award, and I’ve done eight major motion pictures based on my books. He said, �We have a group that wants to do a movie about the life of Napoleon Hill, but I don’t know much about it. Would you oversee and help us with this project?� I said, �Sure, I will.� And the movie � you’re going to love this, Clay, a lot of creativity went into this � it’s

called Think and Grow Rich.

Oh, nice, nice!

But we got together about two dozen of the greatest 21st century thought leaders who have been impacted by that book, and we reenacted parts of Napoleon Hill’s life and this book. Basically, Hill was the first one to quantify what’s called the science of success. He was a newspaper reporter. Napoleon Hill was there the day the Wright Brothers flew. He was a young man, and his newspaper sent him out to interview Andrew Carnegie, the

richest man in the world, the founder and president of U.S. Steel. And when Hill got there, he said, what do you have to do to be rich? How do you get rich? And Carnegie told him, he said, young man, no one has ever really quantified that, but if you’ll dedicate the next 20 years of your life to that proposition, you’ll be the one to break that open for the whole world.

Hill agreed, and Carnegie introduced him to Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Helen Keller, and over 500 of the most prominent people of that era. Hill synthesized all of their secrets and put it out in the book, Think and Grow Rich, in 1937. It is credited with helping to end the Great Depression. It has changed the lives of more people. I’m a member

of a group, Clay, that Steve Forbes told me about originally. It’s called Tiger 21. It’s called the Investment Group to Enhance Returns. I had heard a lot about that. There are 238 of us now, Deca Millionaires. You have to have over $10 million to get in the group. But I remember when I was talking to them, and they do surveys of members, and one of the questions they ask is, �When did you first read Think and Grow Rich?� They don�t even ask you if you�ve read it.

They just said, �When did you first read Think and Grow Rich?�

Right! Pardon me as I lose my mind for a second. If you are out there and you want to become successful, read that book three times. If you�re not a reader, get the audiobook. Jim, you’re blind, so reading a book might be tough. You listen to, we have one of our show sponsors,

Paul Hood, who wants to ask you a question here in just a moment, but I want to ask you this question. You listen, do you not listen to an audiobook every day? I mean, what’s your process, now that you’re blind, you could have the excuse of, I can’t see the words, but you instead listen to audiobooks.

So for everybody out there who’s vision impaired or they just struggle with reading, can you talk to me about how you digest audio books? Because I don’t care whether you read it or listen to it, you’ve got to devour, think and grow rich at least three times. How do you consume books now, my friend?

Well, when I first went blind, I woke up that morning at age 29 and I was totally blind. I thought about what I could do and what I couldn’t do. The two things that came to my mind that I couldn’t do were, number one, drive, and number two, read. I can’t read anymore and I can’t drive. I decided I’m not going to be limited in those two areas.

So I found out about audiobooks. At the time, digital electronics was just beginning to happen. A group had contacted me because I’d been researching and they said, �We’re doing this.

Would you like to be in the beta

test?� It was for compressed high-speed audio. I started listening to that a little faster and a little faster and a little faster every day. Now, I can listen, depending on whether it�s high statistics and numbers or whether it�s just narrative, I can listen at 500, 600, even 700 words a minute. Because of that, over the last 30 years. I’ve read a book every day There hasn’t been a day in 30 years. I haven’t read a whole book

You said you listen to a book every single day every you’ve read a book every single day for the past how many years? 30

that right there

Thrive nation listen listen to this I Am a man-bear pig with no discernible talents or skills, and I read a book a week. I’m like, I’m the man. I read a book a week. I’m the man. I’ll tell you what, my mind is like a concrete, it’s tough to get into my skull.

I’ve got to drill down there, really auger down into my brain. I struggle with retaining things. I have to highlight it and tab it. Jim Stovall is listening to a book every single day for how many years?

30 years. And I listen to, I get up every day at four in the morning and people always gasp and I’m some kind of deprived. The alarm hasn’t gone off in years. That’s just when I wake up and I go into my office and I start my, I go through my morning routine,

my quiet time and my gratitude and then I read. And then when I have moments at the office, I was reading for you. Call me. I’m going to mess with your sound guy right here. Here is a book at about 600 words a minute that I was reading the moment you called. So here you go. That’s the autobiography of Red Arback, who coached the Boston Celtics for many, many

and that’s a few seconds of him going at about 600-700 words a minute. It’s not like I started listening that fast in the beginning. I just sped it up a little more every day and the next thing you know, there you are. People come into my office and they say, what is that, a flea? What is that? And that is an audio book.

And yeah, that has been a game changer for me.

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info at thrive timeshow dot com.

Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time show on your radio. And today’s show, and every show, is presented by Williams Contracting. These guys, if you’re out there looking to build an office building, you want to build a restaurant, you want to build onto your school or your church, you want to go with an experienced team of builders who have been doing this for a long time. And that’s why, without reservation, I can recommend you check out our good friends at

will-con.com. That’s will-con.com. That’s Williams Contracting. You give them a call today at 918-682-5511. That’s 918-682-5511. And on today’s show, as a result of the generous sponsors at Williams Contracting and our other

Thrive Nation sponsors, we are interviewing today a living legend. And I’m going to give you a little bit of background on this. I’m going to give you a little bit of background on this. I’m going to give you a little bit of background on this. I’m going to give you a little bit of background on this. at Williams Contracting and our other Thrive Nation sponsors.

We are interviewing today a living legend.

His name is Jim Stovall.

Jim what? Jim Stovall. Jim what? Jim Stovall. S-T-O-V-A-L-L. He’s a multimillionaire, a bestselling author, and a man who’s written a book with Steve

Forbes. He shared the stage with Tony Robbins, General Colin Powell, Zig Ziglar, he’s a multimillionaire, and he did not have the majority of his success. The things you would know him for today all happened after he went blind. So whatever excuse that you’re battling with, you’re dealing with, you’re giving yourself, if you’re tired of making excuses for yourself and you want to move beyond just surviving and you want to hold yourself accountable

to operating at a high level of success, I highly recommend that you listen to this exclusive interview with Jim Stovall.

I have 10 million books in print around the world and my various titles and people always ask, how do I become a New York Times bestseller or a nominator for a Pulitzer Prize, everything. I say, if you want to be a writer, be a reader. Be a reader. I mean, the most amazing thing to me, Clay, is people always want to know what’s the secret to success.

The wealthiest and most successful people in the world wrote down everything you have to do. There’s a recipe there. Just open it up and read it.

Oh, okay. Now we have Paul Hood, one of our show sponsors, and a lot of people ask me, “‘Clay, is this really true?’ And I’ll say, yes. There’s this little phrase that says,

your net worth is your net worth. Richard Branson has said that phrase. Other entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss have said that you are the average of the five people you spend your time with the most. Or Jim Rohn, the legendary speaker and author,

he said, you basically become the average of the people you spend the most time with. And so I surround myself with the top optometrist in Oklahoma, Dr. Robert Zellner, and the top CPA in Tulsa. And in terms of clients, I mean, Paul, you have clients, you have thousands of clients. You have clients in Claremore, clients in Bartlesville, clients in Tulsa, and so the

CPAs, and again, just quantifiably, one of the most successful accountants in the region there of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Paul, it’s not often we have Jim Stovall on the show, so I’m going to give you the mic. You can ask the man any question you want. Just say, wealth of knowledge. And I’m just going to try to take notes and see if I can mentally comprehend the answers

he’s giving. So what question would you have for Mr. Jim?

Well thank you, Clay. And Jim, just first, what an honor. What a big honor. By the way, tomorrow I’m telling everybody I’m friends with Jim Stovall. I’m just telling you right now. I am bragging.

I’m going to tell everybody I just got to look under the hood.

Hey, love it. Love it, Jim. Hey, so what I do, I’ve discovered that the average business owner in the country is a good technician. They’re not really business owners. And so I think what I try to teach people is that success is determined by what you

measure and how often you measure. Would you agree with that? And do you have any advice for me to help guide my clients and the people that come to me for advice to help them because everybody wants to do the fun and the marketing and everything that’s exciting, but they’ve got to measure. What comments or wisdom could you give me on that, Jim?

Well, you and your team are probably the most adept at seeing this, but in every business there is one and one specific thing that moves the needle. That’s it. You can count that up and move the needle. You’ve got to count the things that matter and the things that matter you’ve got to count. I know what those things are in my businesses. I have five businesses. As I was telling Clay, I visualize it always like a four-sided pyramid with a point on the top. The thing on the top is what I’m doing at any point in time. I do books, movies, television, arena speeches, and my syndicated columns.

I do those five things. So whatever I’m doing at any given time, that’s the point. That’s the top of the pyramid. It has to support and be supported by the others. People confuse activity with productivity. Just because you’re doing something doesn’t mean you’re moving. You’re like the little hamster on the wheel. You’re going around like crazy and you’re not getting anywhere. In fact, some people and many entrepreneurs, they’re actually going the wrong way. They’re out here on I-44 and they’re going east when they intend to get west.

They would be better off if they just had a flat tire and pulled over to the side. At least they’re not losing ground. But people confuse activity with productivity. In most businesses, there are just a handful, if not one or two things that matter. Years ago I consult with a lot of companies around the country and I had been hired by a group of Yellow Page ad salesmen and they sold the big display ads in the Yellow Page

books.

I sat down with these guys and I asked them all, I said, ìWeíre going to go around the room and tell me your name, whatís your goal and how many hours a week you work.î And they said, ìOh, I want to make $600,000 a year and I’m already working 70 hours a week. I said, I don’t believe there’s a man, woman or child in this room that’s actually working 20 hours a week. I bought a whole gross of those little plastic runner stop watches at Walmart.

I said, you all get one of these free of charge. You put it in your jacket pocket or your purse. When you’re actually sitting in front of a prospect, a new prospect talking about buying one of your ads, you click that on. And when you leave their presence, you click it off. And if you ever get to two hours a day, you’re going to get absolutely rich.

And if you don’t think so, you try it and come back and call me a liar. I had a guy call me three or four months later and he said, �Jim, I just finished a month where I made four times what I’d ever made in a month and I haven’t even gotten up to the two hours a day yet.� And he said, �What should I do?� I said, �Don’t do any of it. Don’t work more than the two hours.

You are a salesman. You get paid for presenting ideas and concepts to new people. Go fish and go play golf. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what you do, but don’t confuse activity with productivity because too many people they’ll come in and horse around with the team and make jokes with the secretary

and read the newspaper and drink coffee and do all these things that don’t make any difference. One of the huge advantages I have. Huge advantage.

You know, one thing that I would say, just to pile on with what Jim’s saying, and to break it down to make it very, very practical for all the listeners. According to Forbes right now, 88% of people read reviews before doing what?

Anything. Before going out to eat, before watching a movie, before buying a book. And so, if you’re an author, if you own a restaurant, if you own a business of any kind, putting your focus on gathering objective reviews

from real clients is a massive needle mover. The second idea, there may be one or two, step one is do a great job. Step two, get reviews. Step one, do a great job. Step two, get reviews.

And a lot of owners, they just, they focus on everything else, but that’s what’s going to create, that’s what’s going to work today in this transparent culture of social media and the internet. That’s how you grow your company. Then you turn your ads on. You turn your billboard on.

You run your radio commercials. It all works when people know that you are the real deal. So I want to get into this, the daily grind and into the mind of the daily grind of Jim Stovall. You mentioned briefly your daily routine. You wake up every day at what time, my friend? You said 4 a.m., is that correct?

Four o’clock, yeah.

What do you do?

Four o’clock, and between four o’clock and six o’clock I have my morning routine, my quiet time and meditation, and I have my gratitude, and then I read, and at six o’clock my wife gets up.

What does the gratitude look like?

That only is a concession to me. Were it not for me, she’d probably get up about 10 o’clock. But a number of years ago, I came home from work and I started telling her about that deal I’ve been working on for months and months, finally came through today and I was so excited.

And I realized she didn’t have a clue what I’m talking about, because we hadn’t sat down and had a serious conversation in I don’t know how long. And I said, that is never happening again. So every morning from 6 to 7, we sit out on the deck or by the fireplace

or whatever, we drink coffee, no devices, no radio, no TV, no newspaper. We talk an hour every morning. Then I get ready and then I come to the office. I’m in the office at 8 and I go around and visit with all my people and I find out what they’re doing today and how can I help you. How can I help you? When I was selected as the National Entrepreneur of the Year by the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Blue Chip people at MassMutual, the Wall Street Journal said, �A guy here to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to shadow me for a whole week.� He stood around while I did my work

and at the end of the week he said, �You know the most amazing thing about you,� and I said, �What’s that?� He said, �If I didn’t know you were in charge, I wouldn’t have had a clue. I would have thought you were everybody’s assistant and I said, �Thank you very much.� So I go around and I find out what everybody is doing, how can I help, and make sure we are all on task.

Then I go through the things I want to do that day and I always try to keep it to no more than five, six, seven, eight things. If I’ve got more things than that I am majoring in minors and I need to get it off my plate and on to somebody else’s. Unless I’m traveling, I don’t work evenings, I don’t work weekends. I honestly believe that if you will go to work and be diligent and be crazy about what you do and maniacal about quality, you don’t have to work a ton of hours.

Because of my scholarship, I talked to hundreds and hundreds of college kids, and they all know, don’t come in here and tell me, oh, I pulled another all-nighter, and I don’t want to hear about that crap. You just put a billboard out front that says, I don’t manage my time well. There should never be a crisis. There should never be anything urgent.

My late great friend and colleague, Stephen Covey, always said, you’ve got to understand the difference between urgent and important. My biggest mentor ever, I lost him four months before he turned 100, was Coach John Wooden. He always told his players, be quick but don’t hurry. Be quick. Quick means you’re ready, you’re prepared, you know where you’re going.

Hurried means you’re out of control and circumstances are leading you. The other thing Coach Wooden always told me, and it goes along with that doing an excellent job that you were mentioning Clay, before every meeting, every phone call, every interview, everything you do, whatever it is throughout your day, every activity, before you go in you ask yourself one question. What would I do right now if I were amazing?

Not adequate, not good, not excellent, what would I do right now if I was amazing? Right now, if I were amazing. If you will treat everything you do like that, you will be amazing. Amazing people in America get very, very wealthy. If you’re getting ready to do something that isn’t worthy of being amazing, don’t do it. Get it off your list. But if you do everything like, what would I do right now if I were amazing? You’re advertising, you’re marketing, you will find the number one thing that happens

to great businesses is everybody will be talking about you. Everybody will be talking about you.

You know, you mentioned John Wooden, so I’m going to peel back the onion with John Wooden a little bit. He has his success pyramid. His team won the NCAA championship a ridiculous amount of time. I believe 10 out of 12 years with players of all heights, all different sizes, top recruits, people that were awesome, people that people had never heard of before. They just won every year. And one of the things he was focused

on was breaking it down to the foundational aspects of the game. So to start every season, he started the first practice every year. All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re interviewing Jim Stovall, the New York Times bestselling author, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur. And we come back from the break, he’s going to be breaking down for us the words of wisdom, the things he learned from being personally mentored by John Wooden, the UCLA head coach. Stay tuned. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast

download. Show on your radio and podcast download on today’s show We’re interviewing the multi-millionaire the best-selling author and a man who’s written a book with Steve Forbes and who shared the stage with Tony Robbins general Colin Powell and Ziglar it is none other than the famous blind entrepreneur Jim Stovall

If you don’t know his name check him out online Google him today Jim Stovall. That’s Jim, S-T-O-V-A-L-L. And during this excerpt, he’s breaking down his personal mentor, John Wooden, the NCAA Hall of Fame basketball coach, and some of the lessons that John Wooden taught him while he was still with us on the planet. Everybody will be talking about it. You know, you mentioned John Wooden, so I’m gonna peel back the onion with John Wooden a little bit. He has his success pyramid. His team won the NCAA championship a ridiculous amount of times.

I believe 10 out of 12 years with players of all heights, all different sizes, top recruits, people that were awesome, people that people had never heard of before. They just won every year. And one of the things he was focused on was breaking it down to the foundational aspects of the game. So to start every season, he started the first practice every year by making the players

put on their shoes the John Wooden way.

Yeah, he taught them how to roll their socks on because he said if you don’t know how to put on your socks, you’ll get a blister. You get a blister, you’re on the bench, you’re on the bench, you’re not doing us any good

here. Then he went on to teaching them layups and basic passing and they nailed the fundamentals. So you said part of your daily routine, part of your daily fundamentals was this word gratitude. And I would just like for you to express in a little bit of detail what you mean by that gratitude portion of your day. And again, recapping, when is that gratitude portion of your day and why do you do the

gratitude? What is the gratitude all about? Explain to us about that meditation, because a lot of people aren’t used to meditation daily or gratitude. Walk us through that meditation gratitude portion of your day.

Well, I get up at four and I go into my office and I start with gratitude. If people are familiar with my work at all, through my books and the movies and the things I’ve done. More people are familiar with the concept I wrote about called the Golden List than anything else. I ripped that off from my grandmother many years ago.

I’m my parents’ third child, the first two died. I had a brother who had cystic fibrosis and I had a sister who died of leukemia. For those of you who have seen The Ultimate Gift and the little girl, Abigail Breslin, that gets sick and dies of leukemia. That was not fiction for me. That was something I had lived through. But while my sister was going all around the country to various specialists and doctors, my parents would take me to Missouri and drop me off at my grandparents’ house when I was three, four, or five years old. I guess I

complained a lot because I didn’t have my friends, my toys, my dog, and everything else. I guess I was complaining a lot and my grandmother said, Jim, we have a rule here at our house that you can complain all you want to once you fill out your golden list. I said, what’s a golden list? She said, well, all you’ve got to do is write down ten things you’re thankful for. She had to write them for me.

I wasn’t old enough to write, but I listed ten things I was thankful for. Clay, that has been well over 50 years ago, I’ve done it every day since and I defy anyone listening to us now. When you’re having a bad day, a bad moment, a bad experience, stop and list ten things you’re thankful for. It is impossible to have fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, bitterness at the same time you’re

having gratitude. The two cannot exist in the same space. So I start every day with that and that’s the beginning of my day because it sets the tone. Then I go into my meditation, my quiet time, and I would ask people to not get all hung up about that.

One of the great thought leaders of the last century was a Catholic priest named Thomas Merton and I read his book on Saturday. He said one of the most profound things I’ve ever read. He said, either everything is spiritual or nothing is spiritual at all. One of those two things has to be true. You can go to an agnostic, an atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist, whatever, and I can’t imagine anybody disagreeing with that statement. Either everything is spiritual or nothing is spiritual

at all. There’s no middle ground. When I have meditation, what this means is I clear my mind and I focus on the things that matter to me that day. And through my books I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people like Coach Wooden and one of them was Jack Nicklaus. He has read all of my more recent books and he’s a great friend. He said the whole key to success, and here’s a guy that won 19 majors and no one has ever

come close, he’s kind of the John Wooden of golf. If Tiger would win 50% more majors than he’s won, he would approach Jack Nicklaus. One of the things Jack Nicklaus said, I never hit a golf shot that I hadn’t seen in my mind before I hit it.

I think that meditation is so powerful, but you said something, and I want to make sure that the listeners are getting this and they understand your intention of the statement because you said, don’t get all hung up on this. And I see a lot of people, now again, I’m a Judeo-Christian, I believe that the Bible is the literal inspired word of God. Some people don’t believe that, but I meditate every day for an hour.

Every single day for an hour I think about where am I now versus where do I want to be in my areas of faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship, and fun. And if there’s 24 hours in a row where I’m not happy with where I’m going, I change. I make a change. I make a little quick correction. But I think a lot of people do get hung up on the phrase meditation. Why, Jim, do so many people get hung up on the phrase meditation?

I don’t know. It’s in your Bible. God would lead us in the meditations of our heart and the things it talks about. One of the great, I read about a 16th century pope, and he wrote about before he was pope, he was meditating and praying four hours a day. But when he became pope, his duties were so pressing and he had so many commitments, he had to move his meditation from four hours a day to six.

Like most great truth in life, that seems counterintuitive, but the reality is if you want to get more done, prepare your spirit and your mind first, and your body and your schedule and all those things will take care of themselves. For our Christian friends, of which I am one like you, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these other things will be added unto you. What this tells me is that I can worry about that one thing I meditate on and what God

wants me to do with my life, or I can worry about every other detail in the whole universe. I don’t have the mentality to do that. So I seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. That’s not something you do at once. It’s seek ye first. So I do that every morning.

Where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to do? God make me an instrument and a light today.

Thrive Nation, to catch the rest of our exclusive interview with Jim Stovall, head on over to ThriveTimeShow.com and click on the podcast button and there you will find the remainder of our interview with Jim Stovall. But our interview today with Jim Stovall and all of our great interviews we have with top-level entrepreneurs would not be possible without the generous sponsorship of some great entrepreneurs and some great sponsors out there.

So if you have a Ford automobile and you want to get that thing repaired, check out one of our show sponsors. Check out rcautospecialist.com. If you have a Ford and it needs to be repaired, check out rcautospecialist.com today. And now, from the center of the universe.

Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Both Dr. Z and I started from the bottom, and we’ve been able to get to the top of the

world of business. We’ve been able to have both time freedom and financial freedom as a result of learning how to execute and implement the 13 proven steps that we teach countless entrepreneurs all over the world. But that’s not what this show’s about. This show’s about helping you get to where you want to go.

And so when possible, we like to interview entrepreneurs who have had massive success and who are willing to take time out of their schedule to come on to the show to teach you how they did it. How did how do they do it? And so, guys, we just interviewed Jim Stovall, the New York Times bestselling author, a guy who was born with sight, but who lost his vision at the age of 29 and became a multimillionaire after having become blind. I want to get your take on this, Darlene.

You heard the interview with Jim Stoball. You probably thought to yourself, whoa, that was, I should write that down, or that was amazing, or wow, that was, what were some of the, as we’re processing the, just trying to grasp all the nuggets of knowledge, all the knowledge bombs that Jim Stoball just gave us there. What did you get the most out of that interview

with Jim Stoball?

Well, I was really taken back by just his grace, first of all. Usually, people are really, you just never know what to expect when people are wildly successful. But he just has a grace about him that I’m always stunned about when I see widely successful people like yourself who just really are still so graceful in a way. But, you know, he just,

you know, his practical wisdom, practical knowledge, one of the things he said that I really, that really kind of hit home for me was when he was talking about just the nuggets that you can put into place that make that kind of set a chain reaction for other things.

And he was talking about being maniacal about quality.

Right.

You know, just being absolutely obsessed with just, you know, putting out quality.

Can we talk about that for a second? Quality.

Yeah. Quality. And I want to talk about the gift of grace for a second. The word charisma in the English language is spelled C-H-A-R-I-S-M-A. Charisma. Right?

But the original word that was given to the planet was charisma, which is a Greek word with a K. And somebody might be saying to themselves, well, that’s great that you found out that we can spell it differently. No, but the word charisma in the English language means somebody who’s excitable, entertaining. They have that gift of personality. They just really are magnetic.

Wow!

What charisma that person has. But the word charisma means the gift of grace. Somebody who can leave a conversation with the other person feeling whole and not with the other person feeling like they’re full of holes. People who can coach people up and not talk down to them. And Jim Stovall has that ability to do that in a way that I think very few people can

do or choose to do. And Jim was talking about this concept there, Paul, of not making excuses. And again, I mean, he’s blind. He has a lot of excuses that he could make. I mean, he talked about the importance of his daily routine. If a guy who’s a multi-millionaire and a New York Times best-selling author, and a guy

who’s had his books made into movies, and a guy who’s had every kind of… he’s done books with Steve Forbes. If a guy like that, Paul, has a daily routine, why do all of us need a routine? I mean, why does everybody out there, if you want to become successful, why do you need on a foundational level to have a routine?

Well, you know, Clay, what I find is it’s almost comical. Day in and day out, I hear the same thing from your program. There is a pattern for success. There is a path for success. There is a design for success. It’s not luck.

You do these things. And it just seems so simple. And the simplest thing is you have a routine. You decide what you’re going to do before you’re going to do it. And Jim, one of the things he said was, if you want to get more done, prepare your mind and spirit first.

Your body and actions will take care of itself. That is prepare. That’s plan. That’s start your day off knowing where you’re going to go before you actually get out there. And most people, so few people do that. And I’m telling you, Jim had, I wrote down, I was writing as fast as I could, writing

down little things that we could spend days if not weeks discussing. But little nuggets that are just, but you think about it and say, that can’t be right. That is too simple. That’s how you define, that’s how you become successful.

What I want to do is I’m going to play an audio testimonial from one of our clients in Dallas, a company called Full Package Media. I’m going to play it for you guys. I want you to hear the profound simplicity of what Thomas is sharing. This guy went from a startup to generating over a hundred and five thousand dollars a month of gross revenue in less than two years, making over twenty thousand dollars a month of

profit. And how did he do it? It’s with that daily diligence. So without any further ado, an audio testimonial with Thomas and his company Full Package Real Estate Photography and Media based in Dallas, Texas.

Hey, how’s it going? I’m Thomas Crosson, owner and founder of Full Package Media in Dallas, Texas. I’ve been a coaching client with Clay Clark since the beginning of our business. We started about a year ago, August of last year. I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue really what was going on. And now we’ve grown to where we’ve got six photographers, we’ve got office space here, I have an admin sales person that works for us full time, developing an online system and a lot of that growth we attribute to Clay helping us and there’s so many things that,

no, I mean this stuff is not revolutionary, it’s not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff. It’s just real stuff and like group interviews, we were totally against group interviews. We were like, no we’re different and we’re special and we need to do one-on-one interviews so we can find good quality candidates and not just kind of do this group interview thing. We tried that and failed miserably. We did group interviews, now we do them every two weeks.

And it’s awesome. It works good. We always have an influx of new people that we can train, get going. He’s helped us a lot with our website, graphic design, SEO. SEO is another thing that I thought before I started this

business and before Clay, that it was kind of a joke or something that only your apples of the world and Amazon could get to the top of Google. But Clay said, no, just do these things, follow these steps and you’ll get there. And I think now we’ve looked today and we’re number two for Dallas real estate photography. If you don’t believe me, you can look.

So we’re getting to the top of there. That’s really cool. It’s really awesome to get leads that people are calling and say, hey, I found you on Google.

Thrive Nation, if you want to learn how to grow a successful company, you want to stay tuned because we’re going to break down the specific steps you need to take to become a diligent and disciplined successful entrepreneur. But even if you don’t want to become a disciplined and diligent entrepreneur, you’re going to have to pay your taxes. I mean, you’re going to have to pay.

You’re going to have to.

Wow, that’s amazing.

What are you saying? This just in. If you’re looking for a financial planner or an accountant who’s as proactive about your business as you are, go to hoodcpas.com today. It’s hoodcpas.com today.

3, 2, 1, boom! You are now entering the dojo of mojo and the Thrive Time Show.

Thrive Time Show on the microphone, what is this? Top of the iTunes charts in the category of business Drilling down on business topics like we are a dentist Providing you with leadership like you are an apprentice And we go so fast that you might get motion sickness Grab a pen and pad to the lab, let’s get in this

Time to best some fruit like some Florida O’Ninjas 3, 2, 1, here come the business ninjas

Sonic Boom!

I think boom all thrive nature. Welcome back to the Thrive Time show on your radio My name is Clay Clark and today I have a hot take that I want to break down for you Darlan Tucker’s on today’s show Darlan Tucker d a r l o n Tucker He’s been a graphic designer with our team Darlin How long have you and I worked together or how long have you and I known each other? Do you think? It’s probably been about seven years now.

Yeah and I would say it’s about Darlin. Darlin is um in my my circle I have I have a circle of probably uh probably 20 people in my circle and the circle no corner no square there’s a circle somehow in the top 20. He vacillates from number 2 to number 19. No, but Darwin is always a consistent guy, honestly one of my favorite 20 people. I mean that, I love this guy. And he’s very consistent, and let me explain to you our relationship. I am a rainmaker. I bring in hundreds of clients every day. I have, just the other day, Paul, you would enjoy this story.

We had an accountant who’s been looking at what you’re doing, and they’re like, oh, can you guys work with me? Roy’s garage, one of his competitors reaches out, could you work with me? Because everyone kind of figures out what’s happening,

and then they want me to. I had a pool company the other day that asked me if I could, on the DL, work with them while I’m working with the direct competitor. I don’t do that kind of stuff, you know? And so, I can really only work with one person in every industry unless that owner of that

particular business says that they’re okay with me working with two of the same niche. And so as a business coaching program, we’re only going to work with 160 clients at one time. Never going to work with more than that. But here’s the relationship Darlene and I have. I have to bring in clients.

So today I have a person who reached out to us. You say, today? Yeah. And then yesterday and every day. Every day there’s probably two to five people, every day, real business owners of multi-million dollar companies that reach out for coaching, startups, middle of the road companies.

And then Darlan has to do the graphic design. He and the team, they have to do photography, videography, web edits, print pieces, business cards. They have to do that. And I have to trust that Darlan is going to edit the InDesign files for Paul Hood’s newest book, A Look Under the Hood.

So I have to believe that Darlin and the team with Jordan and Johnny, you guys are going to edit the files so when I walk into the meeting with Paul Hood on a Thursday, I have to know that by Tuesday afternoon you guys are finishing the project and by Wednesday it’s being proofed. It is a relationship where you have to trust me to provide the clients, I have to trust you to produce on the back end, and Paul that’s probably as deep as it is.

I mean, if you’re a farmer, you have to trust that somebody’s tilling the soil, somebody’s sowing the seeds, somebody’s watering the seeds, and somebody’s reaping the harvest. You have to, if you’re the farmer’s wife, you have to trust your husband’s out there tilling the soil, sowing the seeds, watering the seeds, getting the harvest. If you’re the farmer, you have to trust that your wife is not out there having an affair, teaching the kids crazy things.

There’s a trust that’s built with daily diligence. So I want to get your take on this, Darlin, and I want to get your take on this, Paul. Darlin, why do you come to work and do what you say you’re going to do every day? Why do you do that?

I mean, I wish I had some revelation, but I was just taught, I was brought up that way, that you do what you say you’re going to do.

Were there other people that were raised the same way you were, that have chosen not to do what they say they’re going to do?

Absolutely, absolutely. But just because you’re raised, I guess I took it to heart, you know, you just you let it in when you’re being taught, you let it in.

But Proverbs 10.4 states, lazy hands make for poverty, here comes the teaching

moment,

but diligent hands bring wealth. Now this is from the Bible. So this is what I believe, and Paul, you and I can argue if you want, this is what I believe. I believe Proverbs was divinely inspired by God, it’s the literal words of God. And it says, lazy hands make for poverty. So I believe that if you’re out there and you’re being lazy, it is God Himself who is punishing you.

I also believe that this next verse is really going to be my favorite verse. I just don’t talk about it a lot because I mention it and people are like, you’re a sick freak, you’re a sick, you’re sick. Proverbs, again, Proverbs 13, 24. Oh, Claig, what’s this going to state? Is it going to be negative?

Hath the rod, hateth his son. Therefore, I believe if you’re out there and you’re a business owner, if you are an employer and you do not let your employees feel the consequences of doing a poor job, you hate your employees. If you’re out there and you have kids and you just let them get away with murder, you hate your kids.

So I would say that it is God punishing you, poverty is God punishing you, if you’re in a free economic system and you have the ability to decide to get up or not and you choose not to, then you are actually getting in the way of God’s judgment if you try to minimize the consequences. Now, that’s my great epiphany. Now you get into the real world where, Paul, I’ve

hired family, friends, people I know, and people I don’t want to run out there bringing out my rod. Oh, let’s go to work today. Let’s get out my rod and whack people with it. Nobody wants to hit their employees with the rod. So walk me through that balance that you deal with, Paul, managing a team, when someone

doesn’t do their job, you’re not a bad guy. You don’t want to punish people for being lazy. How do you deal with that?

Well, the way I deal with it, Clay, is I try to assess what my staff’s needs and desires are, what their skills and talents are. They tend to use more of the reward side of things and the withholding of rewards. I believe that, now there’s a point when you come and it’s either beat them across the head and shoulders with a stick or fire them. But I believe in compensating based on extra effort.

I don’t believe in just everybody’s going to get a pay raise because it’s this time of the year and it’s been 12 months. We create systems and merit-based pay where if you do extra, I’ll pay you. Clay, I’ve paid for an employee to fly to Ireland because her son was playing in a band because she’s such a great employee. I’ve paid for employees to do all kinds of things.

Just something extra. Maybe they bought a new car and I helped them tag it. Just something out of the ordinary because they’re A players. But I also do believe in public hangings. You’ve got to, if somebody steals from you or whatever, and I counseled my client the other day, you’ve got to have a public hanging.

This is the segue into being an owner. Because if you’re an employee, the boss, it’s their job to discipline you. But if you’re an owner and you don’t do your job, Paul, what happens typically?

If you’re the owner and you don’t do your job, you go broke.

Typically, the customers cancel, they leave, they get upset. Nobody’s out there. Nobody out there is perfect, myself included. But I’m just trying to explain this to you. If you don’t do a good job for the customer, they’re going to just move on to somebody

else.

Right. And so, today, as we’re breaking down the notable quotables from Jim Stovall and just sort of marinating on the post Jim Stovall interview, I would I would ask you this. Jim Stovall went blind and then became a New York Times bestselling author. Jim Stovall started with nothing and ended up writing books with Steve Forbes and has gone on to have massive success, massive success as a multi-million dollar business owner.

But he’s blind. He’s blind. He can’t see. This just in.

When you’re blind, that means you can’t see.

Oh, oh, thank you for clarifying. So if you’re out there, what excuse do you have that’s valid? Unless your brain has been pureed into a salad. There is no excuse that I think out there that is valid. You’ve got to just decide today, are you going to believe in your own excuses or are you

going to be a diligent doer? If you are a diligent doer, I would encourage you to take the first step. Take the first action that shows that you believe in yourself and book your ticket for our next in-person Thrive Time Show two-day workshop. You might be saying to yourself, I can’t afford it, and that might be a great Current reality for you that might be the real reality that might be the profound thing you’re going through

but here’s the deal if you subscribe to the thrive time show on iTunes and you leave us an objective review and Email us proof that you did it by emailing us to info at thrive time Should I come email us your contact information to info at thrive time show calm? We will give you free tickets to the in-person workshop. All you gotta do is buy the workbook for like 27 bucks. So there’s no excuses, my friend.

We’d love to see you at our workshop. And as always, three, two, one, boom!

My name is Kevin Thomas

and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times. We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved

with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences. And amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and show the team about marketing and how to implement, how to help you guys implement the SEO and the coaching is just great because there’s accountability and it’s just a fantastic way to grow your company. Having a relationship with Thrivetime, it’s just been amazing for multiclaim. Oh my goodness, it frees me up because then I don’t

have to take a class on search engine optimization or learn marketing or shoot video, that’s not what we do. What we do is commercial janitorial service. And you guys were the experts on marketing and you teach me and hold my hand and show me how to do it right. And therefore now my company is much, much larger.

Folks on today’s show, we’re joined by a real client. He may look like a male model. He may look like a hologram, but he’s a real person. He’s a long-time client, he’s a man that we consider to be a friend of the Thrive Time Show and a friend of mine. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show, Kevin!

Welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

Clay, I’m doing great. I had a great Christmas holiday and I’m glad to be here.

Okay, so first question, can you tell us, what is your name, first and last name, and what’s the name of your company, sir?

My name is Kevin Thomas and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas.

And how long have we worked with you approximately at this point, sir?

It’s been about six, seven years.

And you know, so many people reach out to me. I mean, literally every day. I just talked to a woman this morning. We get 10 to 20 people a day that reach out wanting to see if we can help them grow their companies and we only work with 160 clients. I do that because I want to only work with people that are super coachable.

And so this woman on the call today was asking me, she said, well, what’s the most important thing that you do that you have to do to grow your company. And I was telling her, I said, that’s kind of like asking a skilled chef, what’s the most important ingredient to make great cookies? Is it flour?

Is it eggs? Is it butter? It’s like asking a home builder, what’s the most important component to building a house? Is it the footings? Is it the frame?

Is it the concrete? You know, that’s like asking, that’s a great, maybe it’s a great question, but really it’s all of it. And so I really wanted to talk to you today about all of it, implementing all of it, growing multi-clean, how we’ve been able to do it.

So first off, could you share what it’s like to have a coach that works with you every week who’s committed to helping you improve your business by one or two percent every

week?

Well, Andrew is my coach, and the great thing about having him as a coach is he keeps me accountable because sometimes when you’re the owner, there’s no one to be accountable to. And he keeps me on track. He keeps me tracking sales, tracking wins. If we have a loss, he helps me figure out what happened. He just keeps me being consistent with our processes, with our systems, which before we got involved with Thrive Time,

we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place.

One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Scully got a very serious disease. And that disease, I’ve seen other people get it too, it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And then if you just tell all these other people, here’s this great idea, then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is, is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.

Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens, I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy.

I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

So this guy is like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing.

Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th. We’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, possibly the best-selling, or one of the best-selling business authors of all time, and he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump. We’ve got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki? Well, you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many

millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit as many other people. Now, since you won’t brag on yourself, I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct?

That is true.

And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Pornhub, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Pornhub, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s going to be here. He’s going to be here. I’m pumped. And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees.

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

talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean everything that you see the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand?

I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015, he’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking we’re into nine going into ten years of him running it and we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s gonna be amazing. Now think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki, Eric Trump? Of course you would. But we’re

also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s gonna be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here

at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay.

And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it.

And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here. The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people that were here.

419 people.

Yeah.

And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple of people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. No, I’m just kidding. So I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck,

or the top shelf. So the seats are very close to the presenters. But we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event,

all you have to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. When you go to thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll go there.

You’ll request a ticket.

Boom.

Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. Just text my number. It’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number, we’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody, we’ll keep that private, and anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody, that’s my private cell phone number, it’s

918-851-0102, 918-851-0102, I know we have a lot of Spanish speaking people that attend these conferences, and so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102.

That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Juan for a 1. It’s not the same thing.

I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years.

So let’s talk about it.

I’ll tee up the thing, and then you

tell me what you’re going to learn here, OK?

OK.

You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? We’re going to dive into, so many people say, oh, I got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. You want to get that brand out there.

It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies

of how you can do that.

You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results.

We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people?

Well, because first of all, you either have great people or you have people who suck. It could be a challenge. You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good

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

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

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

workshop.

Let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15. Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 PM. So from 7 AM to 5 PM, two days.

It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question-and-answer session. So, Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15-minute question-and-answer session

after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops, because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them, and you go in there, and they talk in vague generalities and

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

And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone.

I mean, there’s just… You had a crocodile one time.

That was pretty interesting.

You know, I should write that down.

Sorry for that one guy that we lost.

The crocodile, we duct taped its face. Right? We duct taped… No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody.

But it was really cool to pass that thing around. I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today.

In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have three out of every 100 people in America

that are self-employed to begin with, and when Inc. magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default you have a one out of a thousand chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the size of the business owner. No hyperbole, no exaggeration, and I have thousands of testimonials to back this up.

We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. Double. And you say double. Yeah. There’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown eight X. There’s so many examples. You can see it throughout timeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated

and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization. You add to that Sean Baker. Now you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more. Well, okay, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more!

Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We cater to food and because…

Simple.

I keep it simple. I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Escovedo’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant that’s gonna happen and Jill Donovan our good friend who is the founder of rustic cuff she started that company in her home and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products that’s rustic cuff comments what says I want more this give me more okay I’m not gonna mention their names right now cuz I’m working on it behind

the scenes here but we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal to be here and this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of value he’s made a lot of money in the with it it’s the it’s where you rent it’s short to not it’s where you’re renting storage spaces he’s a storage space guy he owns this what do you call that the rental the storage space storage unit this guy owns storage units, he owns railroad cars, he owns

a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars. But this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn

how to start and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th, we just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author, rich dad, poor dad, he’ll be here. Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells.

Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible, and there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching, and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. You think that’s going to change your life? I promise you, this will be ten times better than that.

It’s like I picked the wrong week for the smoke.

Don’t do the smoke your way to thin conference. That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it.

Chain smoking is not a viable, I mean it is life changing.

It is life changing.

If you become a chain smoker it is life changing. It’s not the best weight loss program though. Right, not really. If you’re looking to have life changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis.

I’m Clay Clark, reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.