Best Business Podcasts | Donald Trump’s 10 Rules for Success + Discover 73 Successful Entrepreneurs That Achieved Massive Success Without a College Degree + Join Eric Trump & Kiyosaki At Clay Clark’s March 6-7 Workshop!

Audio Transcription

It may seem like you have no chance, it may seem like it’s over, never ever quit. If you’re a quitter, I hope you quit right now and stop watching immediately. And people that can handle pressure

can be entrepreneurs, can be successful.

What would be one word of advice you would have

for an upcoming businessman, for a future businessman?

Knowledge, knowledge, but if it’s one word, one word is very hard for that, but the word is knowledge. But you get knowledge through experience. One of the things people talk about is luck, and I do believe that people are lucky, and some people are luckier than others, I do believe that. But there’s also an expression, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

And I can tell you ten instances where I didn’t quit. It was 1990, the world was coming down, the debt markets were down, everybody, all of my friends and enemies were going bankrupt. I never did. But the times were actually just terrible. And even today you look at times and you see what happens and you have to learn.

But the word luck is very interesting, but if I didn’t work really hard, I probably would not, almost definitely would not be here today. And unless you had me up as a man who, at one point, was successful, but let’s see what a loser looks like. So you have to work hard, because it is true,

you can develop luck through hard work.

Your first book, The Art of the Deal, begins with a simple sentence that many people might find hard to understand. You say, I don’t do it for the money. Can you explain that?

Well, I do it because I love it. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. I have bad days, I have good days, I have days somewhere in the middle, but the end result is I love what I’m doing and I don’t do it for the money.

And I make money because probably I’m not doing it for the money. I do it and I do it well. I’m the biggest developer in New York. I love building buildings. I have a lot of fun building buildings.

The fact is, I do it for fun, I do it for game, I do it for sport, I happen to make a lot of money doing it. If I didn’t enjoy it, if I didn’t really love what I’m doing, I wouldn’t be successful, I wouldn’t be sitting with you today.

What’s the implication of that for someone watching this who wants to create greater wealth?

What’s the message in that, do you think? Well, the message is you have to love what you do. If you do it for the money alone, it’s probably not going to work. I have friends where I tell them, get out of this business, which is a good business,

and go into another business, which isn’t as good a business, because they like the other business better. They’ll do better in a less good business, so to speak, than they will in the better business, because they like it. Going against the tide is great if it works.

Now, it doesn’t always work, and you really have to be smart to go against the tide, because you’re going against a lot of smart people. But when you get it right, you’ll end up better, whether it’s Microsoft or Google. I mean, so many people that have really hit big

have gone against the tide. But you have to have great confidence in yourself. You have to be the right person. There are very few people that can pull it off, but when you pull it off, it’s great. Same thing in real estate.

You go against the tide. People are selling, you’re buying, the tide changes. Never, ever give up. Just keep going forward. Never stop. It may seem like you have no chance.

It may seem like it’s over. Never, ever quit. If you’re a quitter, I hope you quit right now and stop watching immediately because you’ll never make it. Now you own these incredible casinos and hotels and the towers in New York City are going to build this world’s tallest building now in Television City. When is enough enough or will Donald Trump never be satisfied with the deal making and the acquisitions?

Well, I’m like a lot of my friends from Houston. I just keep chugging. I mean, all you can do is just keep going. Life is sort of a pretty short experience and you have to maintain some kind of an equilibrium and and the way I maintain that is to work and I enjoy what I do I love what I do, and I hope I do it well And so I just keep going forward Dan and it’s so far. It’s paid off Are you smarter than most people who would call themselves entrepreneurs? Do you work harder? Well? What is the deal with you anyway? Well, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked me the question am I smarter than other people.

I think that without a certain innate intelligence and without a certain drive, you’re not gonna be successful. I have a friend who was not successful at all, but was really up and coming. And he had a thing.

He would only fly first class. I’m not saying do this, because for somebody it won’t work, but he needed that mentally. He wanted to fly first class because mentally, he wanted to think he was the best and that’s it. And even though he didn’t have much money at the time,

this is years ago, he would always fly. I used to criticize him, but it put him in a good state of mind and he became a very, very successful guy. Very, very successful. And I’ve always remembered that.

He would never fly coach. He would always fly first class even though he didn’t have the means to fly. So, look, it’s complicated, but whatever it takes to train that. I’ve always believed in positive thinking.

At the same time, I don’t want to mislead. I also believe in aspiring, in terms of what you’re doing, aspiring to protect against the downside. You can’t just be this wonderful guy walking around, everything’s positive, because unfortunately, that’s not the way the world is.

I love to tell people to think about the challenges so that when they do come along, you’re ready.

Let’s suppose that I have a job, but I have the feeling that I want to start my own business. How would I know that I’m the right kind of person for the entrepreneurial life?

To me, that’s the best question you’ve asked, and it’s also the toughest. Somebody has a family, has a job, they have a nice job, they get X dollars a week, they don’t have to worry about very much, it’s not going to be great, they’re not going to live

in Palm Beach, but you know what, they have a job and it’s income coming in. The hardest thing to do, in my opinion, in business, is to leave that job and become an entrepreneur because you’re risking your wealth, you’re risking your family, your health,

your family’s health, you’re really risking a lot. You have to know in your gut whether or not you have it to be an entrepreneur. Can you handle pressure? Can you handle all of the problems that you’re going to be confronted with?

And there’ll be many, many problems. But the toughest job that somebody has, in my opinion, in business, is to know when to get out of something and when to go in something. Because that’s a very, very risky proposition. You know, when people ask me about success,

I’ve just started thinking about it over the last couple years, because I’ve seen a lot of it. You have to have an ability to handle pressure, because you, no matter how successful you are, I have many, many friends and enemies,

a lot of enemies too, I don’t care, but they’re smart. I have a lot of enemies, and I’ve watched people, and I’ve seen it. And people that can handle pressure can be entrepreneurs, can be successful. Now I have some friends that are really, really smart, but they can’t handle pressure. In which case they should work for somebody too great and have a good life.

There’s nothing wrong with it. Because I almost think that’s an instinctive thing, the ability to handle pressure. Now one of the things I tell people about pressure is, you know what, they said, how do you handle pressure? Who’s had more pressure than me? Aye, aye, aye, have I had pressure over the years?

And you know, I mean I get criticized in my hair, but it’s not so bad and it’s real, it’s mine. You know it is my real hair. I mean, I get killed. I had an article recently that was so good. It was such a great article.

And then it had one line, but he wears the worst hairpiece I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t show the article to anybody, and it’s not even true. But you have to have the ability to handle pressure. And if you can’t handle pressure, you have to know that about yourself. You have to know that about yourself. So, handle pressure if you can’t, that’s okay. But one of the things I tell people about handling pressure is,

remember, because they ask me the question, how do you handle the stress? And you know, somebody actually said, Donald, you’re so handsome. Do you believe this? I love this person.

You’re so handsome. How have you stayed so handsome under all this pressure? And I actually thought of it to myself, you have to remember, it doesn’t matter God matters your family matters It doesn’t matter and if you say it that I have some people they say I’ve got to be successful I’ve got to be they’ll never be successful. It’s too crazy. They they can’t think straight. Does that make sense?

Does that make sense to you that was going crazy standing up about your success, right? so You’ve got a handle now. He’s a little bit more low-key. That’s very good. I like that we’ve calmed him down

So you’ve got to be able

You’ve got to be able to sort of say to yourself nothing Matters that much other than the real big deals with family with your faith, etc People settle for mediocrity for one reason they’re lazy. I’ve seen it so often people go into something. They don’t want to go that extra step They know it’s not going to be great. It might be good. It might be okay. It’s not going to be great They settle for mediocrity. They’re lazy

I have five children but the three they’re in business and a lot of it’s because of the success of the apprentice where they go on and people get to know Ivanka and Don and Eric But a lot of that was early upbringing. I’d always say to them, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.

And now I add for Baron, and I’d just drive them crazy. I’d say every time they’d leave, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Repeat after me, and I’d have to repeat. They’d go, Ivanka would go, Dad, will you leave me alone?

But I’d drum it into their heads. And you know, you have to get back, you have to get through those artificial barriers. I call them artificial barriers, because you can do something about it until it’s too late. Once it’s in your system, it’s very hard to stop.

Like, I don’t drink, and it’s very easy for me not to drink. I tell people, what are you drinking for? What are you drinking for? And they don’t even understand what I’m saying

because it’s so hard. So how did you, it’s amazing when people see you, they can’t imagine. No, no, no alcohol.

Oh, would I be in trouble if I was a drinker? No, no, no, no, no smoking. Yeah, no smoking. And no drugs? Well, I had a brother, Fred, who was sadly an alcoholic, a serious alcoholic. And he was the best looking guy you’ve ever seen.

And he was much older than you.

He was much older. He was 10 years older than me, 11 years older than me. And he was as good looking a guy as you’ve ever seen. He had everything going. The best personality. I have like a bad personality compared to Fred.

But he started drinking, and he also smoked a lot, but he started drinking, and I think it started in college, frankly, but it got progressively worse, and he was really unable to stop, and he’d always tell me, don’t you ever drink.

So he was much older than me, and it really has an impact, you know, when you have that kind of an age difference, but he’d point, don’t you ever drink, and don’t you ever smoke. He’d add the smoke in it because he smoked and he drank. And it hugely affected his health and hugely affected

even his look and his, you know, the whole bearing. And every time he’d see me, he’d say, don’t you ever drink and don’t you ever, so I never drank. I mean, I really, when you talk about my father, I learned a lot from my father, but I learned a lot from my brother Fred.

And he set an example. It wasn’t maybe the example that people would think, but it really was, in its own way, an example.

We met an adorable 10-year-old girl named Megan.

Now, Megan was born with brittle bone disease.

Hi, Megan, my name’s Donald, and you probably don’t know me, but I was watching Maury’s show the other day, and I must tell you, you really hit me right here. I think you are so beautiful, and both inside and out, I had a little something, a little gift

that I gave to Maury, who’s a friend of mine, and a very good golfer. Don’t ever play him in golf. He’s a very, very good believer. And I gave a little gift for you, and I hope you and your mother have a good time with it,

and you’re very special, and you just keep it up and keep up that attitude. So good luck, and you stay in touch.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

So.

Unbelievable.

So, Donald Trump, he has his name on more buildings in New York City than any other person and besides that, he is one of the most generous people I know. And he wants you and your mom to have a very special check. And when we talk about Donald Trump, when he gives out checks, we’re not talking chump change here.

We’re talking big time money.

So, look at that.

Do you know how much that’s for?

Did you get all those zeros right?

Unbelievable.

Hi Donald.

Good. I really wanted to say thank you very much. Bye. I told him that I thanked him, and he said, well, you’re very welcome, and he told me to keep up the good work.

Thank you guys so much for watching.

I’d love to know what did you think of this video, and in general, what do you think of the Volume 2 series? Leave it down in the comments below. Also, I’d love to know what did you learn from this video that had the biggest impact on you? What did he say that resonated with you the most

that you’re going to immediately apply somehow to your life or to your business? Leave it down in the comments below. I’m super curious to find out. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Kelly Quintin.

Kelly, thank you so much for picking up 10 copies of my book and sharing it with your friends. I really, really, really appreciate the support and I hope you all enjoy the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you.

I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is, much love.

I’ll see you soon.

You have an enormous skill with branding and marketing and rebranding.

What would you give as advice to small and medium-sized business owners?

For branding and marketing well the first thing is you have to have a good product if you don’t have the product forget But assuming they have a really good product you have to get the word out You know I know people that are better singers more talented than Frank Sinatra. You’ll never hear about him I know one in particular a person who really is talented always practicing always rehearsing, and yet if the New York Times calls for an interview,

no, no, I’m not ready yet, I’m not ready yet. They’re never ready. You got to get out and do it. Also, you have to sort of let the press know that you exist, getting good ratings on things, like I have golf courses that have high ratings,

and then once you get the ratings, you got to let people know you have the ratings. It’s a long process, and it takes a long time. It’s really just a wonderful thing if you can have a mentor. Having a mentor makes a big difference in life.

Now, you have to look around who’s somebody that you aspire to be or to be like, but having a mentor is a wonderful thing.

Something I do have to ask you is what’s it like to wake up and be Donald Trump? When you’re shaving in the mirror and you’re looking at yourself, you’re an icon, what is that like?

Well, I’m honored by your question, but I don’t really think about it that way. I mean, I wake up and I do shave and I do use a mirror and all of that stuff. But, you know, I go to work in my office early. I leave late. I work hard. I employ a lot of people. Lots of education, lots of everything.

I supply for people by giving them a check every week. Lots of health care, frankly. And it makes me feel good. I know a lot of people where a couple of my employees, their wives have cancer and they’re being well taken care of because they have a good program under the Trump Organization and I’m happy about that So I just feel I’ve done a really good job I’ve created a lot of quality and I’ve given a lot of people jobs

Do you need a college degree to become successful on today’s show? We discussed the top 73 entrepreneur success stories who achieved their success without a college degree, including the founders of Bank of America, Clear Channel, General Electric, Etsy, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Ford Automotive, and many other leading companies. They all didn’t have a degree, and they all achieved massive success.

Here we go.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. What this show does, two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow.

Now, three, two, one, here we go!

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom,

let me show you how to get here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show we are having an incredible conversation about people who’ve achieved success and who’ve earned a massive amount of compensation without a college degree. Now, now, Jason Beasley, you are a business coach and you have in fact at one point managed all three Elephant in the Room stores and I believe close to 4,000 members.

That is true.

My friend, do you have a college degree?

I have an associate in arts from a culinary institute.

Okay, fine. You are disqualified. You no longer can speak on behalf of Team Dropout. It has nothing to do with my actual career or any other jobs I’ve had. Okay, no, but seriously, you do have an associate’s degree, so you are an educated man.

Somewhat.

Okay, so I’m going to have you read, the show’s going to work, because I’m going to have you read kind of the text that we have prepared that our team has researched. And when I say our team, me. I’ve spent way too long researching this team, researching this group, this list of the top 73 entrepreneurs, the top 73 success stories that don’t have a degree. But I want to start off by asking you this question, kind of the fork in the road. If you’re

listening today, do you need a degree to achieve your goals? Do you need a degree to achieve your goals? So think about this just for a second. If you want to be an ophthalmologist, Jason, an ophthalmologist, do you believe you should

have a degree?

Yeah.

Yep, you can’t watch YouTube videos and show up and go, well, here’s a deal, Darryl. I’ve got this idea. You want to stand right there and I’ll just get that cataract. And you can’t do that, right? Okay. Now, if you want to become an optometrist, Jason, do you need a college degree?

See, I know there’s no surgery involved in that one, but I also don’t know the medical implications. I would say you probably do.

Okay, more make-up points for you. However, if you are listening out there today and you want to become an entrepreneur, or you want to study marketing, or sales, or management, you do not need a degree. So let’s go ahead and let’s just kind of deal with that idea. So first question, if you’re scoring at home, make sure you write down whether you need a degree for what

you want to do, yes or no. Then I want you to think about this for a second. The founders of Bank of America, Clear Channel, General Electric, Etsy, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, they all do not have a college degree. The founder of Dell computers, no degree.

Think about that. Banking. Banking? Banking, yes. The founder of modern banking, A.P. Giannini, no degree. The modern computers we use today.

The personal computer, Apple, Steve Jobs, Wozniak, no degree. Software, Bill Gates, no degree. What? Yeah, the cars we drive, the idea of mass-producing cars, Henry Ford, no degree. Think about modern electricity, modern videography, modern audio, all invented by GE and the founder of GE had no degree.

Think about that. Now, somebody out there might be listening and saying, but you don’t understand, Clay. I can’t even listen to this show about success because I’ve had a lot of failures in the

past.

So I thought we would read a little bit about Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States that we’ve had or one of the most iconic Presidents we’ve ever had so Jason can you read to us about some of the adversity that? Abraham Lincoln President Abraham Lincoln be 16th president of these great United States what he went through So despite not having earned the respect of his peers by obtaining obtaining a college degree, he went on to become a lawyer and president of the

United States. Because he chose to be self-taught, he never did stop learning until the day of his death. In 1832, he lost his job and was defeated for state legislature. So that sounds like a loss, maybe kind of a downer, kind of a uh-oh. So that’s loss number one. Okay, what was the next adversity? Loss number two, a year later, he officially failed in business. Oh, that’s two times. Okay, keep going. In 1843, he lost his attempt to be nominated for Congress. That’s another three losses if you’re scoring at home for Father Abraham. Okay, continue. Then again, in 1848, he lost his renomination for Congress.

Now, real quick, in 1848, he lost again. Was that his fourth or fifth loss? Was that his fifth defeat there? His fifth mega loss? No, it was his fourth mega loss in a row. Okay, now Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809. What time was the last loss you just mentioned? What was the year of the last loss? 1848.

Okay, so we do a little math here. We say 1848 minus 1809. And by the way, we’re trying to fix the urinal here in the Thrive Time Show offices. We’re having a urinal that will not stop running. So if at any point a member of the custodial engineering team

should call me or should show up, I’m gonna have to break normal form and go make the urinal work properly. Oh, yeah. I think it might be a deal we’ll keep recording and then maybe you will work with the custodial engineer team to explain the situation. Oh, yeah. That way the latest listeners can know in real time the status of our urinal flow. And let them know that toilets flush backwards in Australia. You told me that in the meeting and I’ve still been grappling with that.

So now, Abraham Lincoln, he’s 39 years old here. So the last defeat you just mentioned was in 1843, right? 1848. 1848. So he’s, right here, he’s age 39. He’s 39 years old in 1848 when he lost his renomination for Congress.

And then in 1843, because I’m a good math guy, that means he’s 33 years old when he lost his attempt to be nominated. And then he failed in business, and I’m just a math wizard today, I’m on fire. If that was in 1833, and he was born in 1809, that means he was 24 years old the first time he bombed in business. So age 24. And then, when he lost his job and was defeated for state legislator.

He was only 23. So, Homeskillet was losing a lot, but he was a young guy. I mean, would you beat up a friend of yours mentally and go, oh, you’re a loser? Have they lost in business when they’re 24?

Not at all.

Yeah, you gotta try. You gotta take some shots, baby.

It’s the best time to lose.

It is when you’re younger. I have five little whippersnappers to feed right now. It’s not a good time to lose. Unbelievable. By the way, I had Craig Rochelle with Life Church the other day, had an incredible sermon he did talking about adoption and foster parenting, and I secretly listened to that thing, and

it has impacted my thinking. I woke up this morning going, maybe I should adopt all the kids in America. And then I thought, no, no, no, I’ve got to go record that show and fix that urinal. But a big shout out to Craig Rochelle. Great, great show. And that’s a guy who fought through a lot of adversity to build America’s largest evangelical

church and a guy who’s been on the podcast now for two shows. Craig Rochelle, look that guy up. He’s the founder of Life Church. Back to you, Jason. Tell us more about Abraham Lincoln. So the following year in 1849, he was rejected in his attempt to become a land officer.

Oh, whenever you get rejected to be a land officer, you know it’s not going good. All right, continue. In 1854, he was defeated for U.S. Senate. Okay, so he was 40 years old when he lost the land officer gig. Now he’s 1854, so let me get that math out again here. Wow, age 45, yet another loss for Father Abraham.

Alright, continue my friend.

In 1856, he was defeated for nomination for vice president. Now it’s not even fun anymore. I don’t even like hitting this button. I feel bad for him. Father Abraham. That was age 47. Okay. And then what happened next? Oh, actually, so I jumped forward.

Oh.

So, right after he lost his renomination, he was defeated for U.S. Senate. Oh, and that was age 45. Okay. That’s a mega point for you for catching that. You are a man of detail, a man of precision. Okay, continue.

That’s all of them.

Okay, so Abraham Lincoln, a lot of losses, a lot of losses, but he ended up becoming our president. I think that’s so important that if you’re out there listening today, that you don’t get all worked up if you’ve had some losses, if you’ve had some lack of success in your career, because we all have. Now, what we’re going to do is I’m going to have you, Jason, one by one, read off these

individuals. Now, I want you to read it nice and slow, like the pros, and then I’m going to pontificate with added detail that I happen to know about, because this is the kind of stuff that I research and read all the time. Some people say, Clay, what do you do with your free time? This is what I do.

I look up the top 73 entrepreneurs who’ve had success without a degree. I put it into an outline form. I then type it to be original so that it adheres to all the Google canonical rules. And then I come up top in Google for various search terms.

For other people’s names. And that’s what I do. So, okay, so Jason, read to us about our first dropout who has done well in the game of business. Oh, here we go. And if I butcher any names, I will not apologize.

Well, let me, this one, this first guy’s AP Giannini.

Oh.

AP.

I was going to read Armadale. Armadale, Armadale, Armadale, Armadale, Armadale, Armadale, Armadale. Okay continue. Alright so the high school dropout who started one of America’s largest banks. After dropping out of high school, AP Giannini founded the Bank of Italy which later became the bank that we all know as the Bank of America. Giannini is credited as being the father of the or of the creator of many of today’s modern banking practices including being one of the first bankers to intentionally offer

banking services to middle-class Americans and not just to upper-class people. At the young age of just 34 Giannini started the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. The original bank was located in a former bar slash saloon and was created to be an institution for the everyman and for the little fellow. I like it.

He created his bank to be a bank for the hardworking immigrants whom other banks at the time simply would not serve. His philosophy was to judge his clients not based upon their wealth, but based upon their character.

So you’re saying that a guy without a degree noticed that people that didn’t come from wealth needed a place to do their banking. Right, because nobody was offering that. And so he decided to start the Bank of Italy. And you’re saying that our… Again, Bank of America.

Think about how big Bank of America is. Think about the idea of all these different branches. Think about a bank that’s designed to serve the everyman. Sounds a lot like the banks we have today. The guy who made the banking system that we have today did not have a degree.

He didn’t finish high school.

He didn’t finish high school. Are you kidding me? Jason, how many people do you know that feel like, because how old are you, Jason? I just turned 26 this year. And so you went to school, where’d you go to high school?

Edison. Tell me about how much going to college was preached or wasn’t preached from the high school counselors, from the high school teachers. I just want to hear how much pro-college talk you had or how much anti-college talk you had while going to school. And then, after you share with us about that, share with us as to whether you were ever

taught about the banking system being created by a high school dropout. Back to you, sir. So, on the point of college, the courses that I did, because I just decided I wanted to be a smart kid. I’m gonna take all the AP programs. Every single class that you had, they would preach. So at the end of it,

we’ll make sure you’re ready for your final because this is gonna be on your SAT and your ACT, depending on whatever you’re going into. We had mandatory trips to OSU and OU, just to walk around. Mandatory, mandatory trips.

Like we wasted a whole day. And we’d walk around this place, and then it was all just up to your test scores at the end, but the test scores were all based off of things that had nothing to do with what they were teaching us. And then back to, did we learn about anybody

being a high school dropout

creating the modern day banking system? No.

My math and finance class, we just watched Dave Ramsey videos which, shout out to Dave, but they didn’t tell us anything about other entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial success throughout history

or anything like that. Interesting. You know, Peter Thiel, one of the first investors in Facebook, Peter Thiel is worth over a billion dollars. He has some interesting things to say about college. And one of the things he says, he says that colleges are the equivalent of four-year parties.

He says, that’s true. Most colleges. You think that’s true?

Yeah, because I mean, I have buddies that graduated from OU and they would always say, hey, come down on the weekend. So I’d go down and they’d be like, what did you guys do? And one was in a fraternity and he’s like, well, this all week. We’ve got solo cups in the living room and we wear polos.

All right.

Okay. So I want to make sure we’re getting this here before we move on. Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, who again is one of the early investors in Facebook worth over a billion dollars. He’s had a lot of success. He also was one of the original members of what they call the PayPal mafia.

They included Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk, the guys who built PayPal. These guys, this guy they call the PayPal Mafia. This is Peter Thiel. He’s also the first, one of the most, he’s just a very interesting cat. He’s one of the first outspoken people to really, really go after college. He just doesn’t care. He says, university administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers, selling you a story that you should go into debt massively. And that it’s not a consumption decision.

It’s an investment decision. Actually no, it’s a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are just four year parties. Think about that for a second. Four year parties. I would say this, Jason have you bought a house yet?

I have not.

I’m still looking. Okay, let’s say you decide to buy a house. When you do buy that house, you’re going to have an appraiser that’s going to come by and make sure that the house appraises for how much you’re buying it for. Why do you think a bank is going to lend you money to buy a house would want to have the houses appraised before you can buy?

Why would a bank want to know the actual value of a house before they give you money, lend you money to buy the house?

One, they’re lending you the money to do so, so they want to make sure that it is an appropriate amount and they’re not overpaying, too, there is a good chance that that’s going to be theirs in the future. Okay, so let’s pretend that you had an appraiser that had to go with potential college students to the college.

That would be great. And say, here’s the deal. You’re going to study history at a private college. You’re going to pay $50,000 a year to go to that college. So you’re going to be $200,000 in debt. Now with $200,000 in debt, what kind of job do you think you’re going to earn with that

history degree? We’re not going to lend you money.

You could become the next Indiana Jones though.

You could be. But I don’t know how much money Indiana Jones made. The movie itself did well. Does that make sense though? No, it makes a lot of sense. So again, I would say maybe before you think about going to college, maybe get like an

appraiser to come with you and just see how much money you’d actually make with that degree. All right, Jason, continue. What is the next successful entrepreneur who does not have a degree? We’re talking about the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. So next up is the great Andrew Carnegie. So the great school dropout who became one of the world’s wealthiest men.

To help his family pay the bills, Andrew Carnegie began working full-time to help support his family for just $1.20 per week, or $36.25 in today’s money, at just the age of 13. Despite being an elementary school dropout, elementary school dropout, not high school, this man went on to become the world’s wealthiest man during his lifetime.” You know, I could do entire shows just about Andrew Carnegie because he is so prolific, so successful.

But I can say, read his book, The Gospel of Wealth. If you’re listening right now, get his book, The Gospel of Wealth. Get the book. It’s not expensive. It’s not super big. You can read it in a weekend.

I promise it’ll change the way you think. Because Carnegie had to work as a kid at that age. He had to work. And again, adjusted for inflation.

We’re talking about in today’s currency, he made $36.25 per week. That’s insane. Yeah.

So what he decided to do was he decided he would get to work early and beat everyone to work. And he worked for a guy, his direct report there for a while, ran the AP wire. Why do you think that Andrew Carnegie, why do you think that he volunteered to work for free and to be taught how to run the machine for the alcoholic operator? Why do you think he agreed to do that?

Oh, because he was gunning for that job. Yes, and so one day when the alcoholic guy called in and said, yeah, I can’t make it or I’m sick or didn’t show up, whatever that looked like, because we’re back in the pre-phone day. Yeah. But Carnegie just stepped right up and ran the machine.

So one day the boss comes by and sees a 13-year-old running that machine. What do you think the boss thought to himself when he saw a 13-year-old running that machine?

It’s a sharp kid.

There’s probably a lot of adults who still don’t know how to use that thing. Right. He put in the time, he put in the grind to expand his mind, to learn new skills, to pay new bills, and he ended up becoming a partner with the owner of the company at the age of 17. That’s impressive.

Now, back to the fun factoids here about college. I just want to make sure we’re giving you fair and balanced information and we’re hitting you with heavy, heavy facts on today’s show, because the facts shall set you free. Forbes writes, Forbes reports, the latest student loan debt crisis for 2019 shows how serious the student loan debt crisis has become for borrowers all demographics and age, across all demographics and age groups.

There are more than 44 million borrowers, more than 10% of the American population, who collectively now owe $1.5 trillion dollars, trillion dollars, in student loan debt in the U.S. alone. Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt, behind only mortgage debts.

Nice.

Now, if you, just think about this for a second. If you default on your mortgage, what can the bank do?

They can take your house.

Okay, so if a student defaults on their loans, what can a bank do?

Take their diploma?

That’s what I’m saying! What are they going to do? We are creating a generation of educated, entitled idiots. People that have gone to school for four years, they have a degree, they spent $200,000 on it, and they want you to pay them more. They’re coming to your workplace, they’re 22, and they’re like, well I need to earn

at least $50,000 starting out according to what my college told me. Screw off, professor! Screw off, college! Just because you sent me a kid with a history degree doesn’t mean that I want to hire him. So Jason, what are a lot of employers doing when it comes to making the decision, should I hire someone with a degree or not a degree?

When you have someone who applies for a job, it just happened this Tuesday. A young lady graduated from a private school, has $200,000 in debt, and she applies for a job. Alright, that’s the deal, right? Right. Okay, so she applies for the job.

She comes to, looks like she wants to work for you because I have student, what Jason? Student loan debt. Right! Do I care? How about this? Do my customers care that she has that much debt? Not at all. Do we want to pay her 50 grand a year just because just because she has a lot of debt? Do we care? No, we want to pay the right person to do that specific job. So who do you think I hired? Someone with a degree or without a degree for that particular entry level position?

For that particular entry level position, I would venture to say you hired the person

without the degree and they probably impressed you more during their shadow day.

Right, there it is. There it is. People care about whether you have the skills to pay the bills, not a degree. And over time, you’re going to see that more and more universities are putting out more and more students with massive amounts of debt. And as an employer, you don’t want to hire somebody who needs an insane amount of money

to start off an entry-level job. Think about this. Oral Roberts University, Oral Roberts University, right now, according to the best research I can find on the internet, that’s where I went to school, Oral Roberts University. I went there before I got kicked out of school. How much do you think it is per year to go there right now?

To be a full-time student, to attend Oral Roberts.

Is Oral Roberts more of a private university? I would assume per year, let’s go upper 60s.

No, okay, it’s $41,054. What a steal of a deal. Now if you wanted to go to Tulsa University, and I know you do. Another private university. Private university where you can study history and humanities and virus and miscellaneous. How much do you think it is to go to TU right now per year?

I’d say fifty-five thousand.

Fifty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-five.

I have three friends that graduated from there.

That’s terrifying.

Oh my gosh. We won’t mention their names or put them on blast, but do they owe some money?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Okay. Read to us the third person who’s had some success. So far, the guy who, if you’re scoring at home, the guy who started the steel industry. Have you ever heard of steel? Yeah, it made the modern construction possible. The guy who started the steel industry, Andrew Carnegie, and the banking industry.

Are we in a building with steel? There’s steel right there. Look, there’s a steel beam. That’s true. Oh! Andrew Carnegie’s here with us!

The modern banking system. You go to a bank? I do. Okay, so the guy who influenced the modern banking industry and the steel industry both did not have a college degree. Nope.

Let’s continue.

But the guy working, by the way, at the local coffee house you’re going to, he probably has a degree. Yeah, in humanities and social services.

Are you being serious?

Okay, good.

Continue, continue. So, number three, the man with no formal education who went on to become a U.S. President. So, Mr. Andrew Jackson went on to become an attorney, a U.S. President, a general, a judge, and a congressman despite being homeschooled and having no formal education at all. Homeschooled?

Homeschooled. No formal education? Nope.

Get out of here.

And yet, I have a highball glass at home with his face and name on it.

Have you ever read a lot about him?

I have not.

Dude, that guy was an incredibly… I should do a whole show about that guy.

Was he the one that always got into duels with people?

He’s a guy who was so hardcore that there are so many stories. Now, we didn’t have social media back then, but he was an American bad ass. I can just say this guy dominated the game of life. Now I have a story. Can I share with you a story real quick, Jason? Absolutely.

Okay, this is a story that was published in Inc. Magazine. You’ve heard of Inc. Magazine there, Jason?

I have.

All right, the story is why your barista probably has a college degree. Now this is interesting. It says, I have two degrees, the author, Suzanne Lucas, writes, I have two degrees, a bachelor’s and a master’s. I wrote lots of papers, did lots of math, sang in choir,

and completely bombed a Hebrew class. What I didn’t learn to do was make coffee or speak Hebrew, but that’s my own fault. In fact, coffee making wasn’t even an offered course at the universities I attended. Now, if you could go through four years of undergrad and obtain a bachelor’s degree without learning how to make coffee Why on earth does tall desk say that they prefer a college degree for a job as a part-time barista?

Here are requirements must be willing to work a part-time schedule one plus years of barista experience maintained confidentiality Excellent inner interpersonal skills team player excited to and it goes on and on to explain that this is crazy. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many baristas all across this country have a degree.

Why?

That’s a great question.

Because if you have a degree in history, in Hebrew, nobody cares. Right. And so you’ve got to find a job, and you need to find some sort of job out there, and so people are like, well, I guess I’ll get a job as a barista. And there you go. That’s what’s going on.

Now, if you, again, had an appraiser go with you to college to evaluate your college weekend, and they say, so what do you want to do? I want to study Hebrew and history. If I was your appraiser, this is what I would say. Let’s pretend, Jason, we’re going to your favorite college. So I’m like, so Jason, you want to go to TU, buddy?

You want to go to TU?

Sure. What do you want to do, man? What do you want to do with the degree?

You’re studying history.

Now I want to dance.

You’re getting a degree in history, in Hebrew, and personal finance, whatever. What do you want to do?

What do you think most college students say, by the way, when they’re asked that question? If they’re going to U, they want to be an engineer or a petroleum engineer. Get out of here. No, that’s like the hot export.

I’m going to argue with you for a second.

This is what I hear a lot, because I used to speak at college. They go, I really don’t know. I’m trying to find myself right now, so I’m just getting my basics. Get out of here! You’re never going to use that general knowledge. It’s completely a waste of time.

So all I’m saying is the appraiser should say, you know what we’re going to do? You’re not going to go to college this year because your degree, your career focus doesn’t appraise. It’s not equal to what you’re spending. It’s not a good investment right now. So you need to go do something else.

Become a barista, dig ditches or something. And while you’re digging ditches, think about what you want to do. And when you have something that makes sense, come on back. It’s irresponsible. It’s irresponsible to give somebody $59,000 of debt.

Hugely. And then to steer them saying, hey, buddy, you’ve got to do this. Your future depends on it. Not teach them how to do it. So then that first year that they want to spend undeclared, $59,000, I really just don’t

know what I want to do.

No, it’s not. Now, Jason, we have a lot. We have a lot to uncover on today’s show. We’re talking about the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. What’s the next? What number are we on? So we are officially on number four. Number four for your scoring at home. Okay,

continue.

So the high school dropout who became the multi-million dollar princess of pretzels. So Anne Beiler? We’ll go with Byler.

Byler?

Byler.

Byler. Went on to star in Aunt Anne’s Pretzels. You’ve seen them in the mall. Oh yeah, I’ve had them a couple times. Beautiful, beautiful. And she became a millionaire.

Despite having dropped out of high school. What? And I figure she’s probably disappointed now that she missed out on the once in a lifetime experience so many graduates with a hundred plus thousand dollars of debt enjoyed. Don’t you hear people say that all the time? It’s a justification for going to college.

They say, it’s the experience. Oh yeah.

It’s the best time to meet people.

I learned about myself.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I meet a lot of people every day. I’m not at college. I meet more people than what I want to know. That’s true. All the time. You know, we have great people at Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge.

Oh yeah. And if you’re out there today and you’re saying, I’m struggling to meet good people, I would encourage you to go to Elephant in the Room.

Let’s hang out there.

Let me tell you why. Because it’s kind of like a country club for men’s hair. It costs a little bit more than the average haircut. It’s not sports clips or great clips. It’s a higher end experience. So the kind of man who’s going to pay for that higher end, that modern rustic decor,

Jason, we have some great members.

We do.

We really do. Haven’t you met a lot of doctors, entrepreneurs, home flippers, real estate investors, bankers, petroleum engineers? Don’t you meet a lot of great people there at Elephant in the Room?

I’ve met more people across vast realms of different jobs just at that place than I would have at college.

So if you’re out there listening right now and you’re trying to meet good people, just sign up to work as an assistant manager for Elephant in the Room. You’re going to get in there, you can make up to $30 an hour if you’re selling memberships properly. You meet a lot of people, and then you give me a two week notice and you peace out and go work for that guy.

I’m just telling you, that’s a great way to meet people. Avoid the college debt. Back to you, Jason, who is the next success story we’re going to talk about today. Who does not have a degree?

All right, so number five is the man who became the world’s best photographer with no formal training.

What?

So, I don’t know if you are into world-famous photographers or not, but if you are, you should know who Ansel Adams is, right? He’s arguably the world’s best photographer despite not graduating from a college of liberal arts and I want to take the lens cap off. Oh With a college degree. I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know

I can’t say though that a guy who was known as being V V Guru to develop modern the modern film Approach we have the modern approach to lighting and photography that guy Did not have a degree.

That’s crazy. Do you know what’s hilarious about Ansel Adams? What’s that? We’re talking about how college is four year parties. So that buddy I was visiting in Norman, the irony was they had, so I got there the day after they had like a crazy party, so the entire living room is in disarray, but hanging

on the wall is this giant black and white Ansel Adams piece. And they were so in love with that thing.

I’m like, you guys are going to come out of here $200,000 in debt and he was not where you are right now. This is a deep thought here. There’s a George Mason University economics professor, okay, who wrote an article. If you get a chance to read, the article is called College is Wasting Time and Money, according to George Mason University who is doing an interview, an article here for the good folks at Business Insider.

And he said, this is crazy. This is, it’s wild. If you read this article, it will blow your mind. It says, I think the main thing that we can do first, this is Brian, Brian says, I think the main thing that we can do is first of all, look at attendance in college. About 40% of the students are not there.

Well students are there, it’s just, if you go look at their face, I mean, they generally look, seem painfully bored. Josh Barrow writes, hello, I’m Josh Barrow, senior editor of Business Insider, and I’m here with Brian Kaplan, who’s an economics professor at George Mason University in Virginia. And he’s the author of The Case Against Education, Why the Education System is a Waste of Money. So Brian Kaplan says, no, it is true that people who finish college get a good deal.

People who drop out, on the other hand, it’s much less clear that it’s worth their while. But the main thing that I talk about in this book is that it’s not really a good investment from a social point of view. Because the main reason why people get this big wage premium isn’t primarily because they’re actually learning a lot of useful skills in school. The main reason, I say, is that they are showing off. They’re jumping through hoops, they’re impressing employers.

Selfishly speaking, it doesn’t really matter why your degree pays, but from the point of view of taxpayers, it means a lot of what… And he goes on and on talking about how going to college is essentially… It’s a waste of time. You’re jumping through a bunch of hoops, you’re looking… You’re trying to impress people by showing up for four years in a row, but at the end of the day, every little student looks bored. They’re not learning practical skills and yeah, they get a sheet of paper. So we charge you a hundred grand for a sheet of paper so that you can impress a future employer that you jump through some

hoops. But they’re not learning anything and they look painfully bored and many of the students don’t actually show up to class. So Jason, back to you. All right. So number six is the man who became the CEO of Paramount and the CEO of Fox without a college degree. Get out of here!

Oh yeah, so his name is Barry Diller, and he became a billionaire and a media mogul known for starting the Fox Broadcasting Company, yet he did not have a college degree. How is it possible? Well, he started working in a mailroom of a Williams-Morris agency.

Real quick, you mean a room filled with mails?

Yes, a mailroom.

Surely you can’t be serious.

I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.

Okay, continue.

Well, yes, he started working there after he dropped out of UCLA.

But to his credit, he did survive three weeks of nonpractical education at UCLA. Nice. So after three weeks, he drops out. Continue. And so throughout Diller’s career at Paramount while serving as the chairman and chief executive officer, the company released hit TV shows including Cheers, Taxi, Laverne & Shirley, hit films including Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost

Ark, Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom, Beverly Hills Cop, etc. Diller is worth an estimated $3.3 billion. Okay, he’s doing well. You know, I always tell people, this guy in particular, he didn’t have a backup plan, but for $3.3 billion, I’m confident you could buy a degree. You could always go back.

Oh, you could buy all the history degrees. Those are kind of life tips for you. Now, back to you, Jason. Who’s our next success story who did not have a college degree? That is the prolific polymath who saved America, helped to create it, and who became world-renowned inventor despite not earning a college degree, and that was

Benjamin Franklin. Are you saying that Benjamin Franklin, the guy who invented the bifocals and lightning rod and the flexible catheter? The guy that helped raise the money needed to beat the Brits?

Yeah.

No degree?

Tiny glasses and all.

Continue reading.

So Ben Franklin invented, I’m sorry, Benjamin Franklin, got to be formal, invented the Franklin stove, lightning rods, bifocals, and other assorted inventions while also serving as one of the founding fathers of the United States and yet did not have a college degree.

OK, we continue, Jace. What number are we on now?

We’re on number eight.

Number eight, the Ocho.

Ooh, the Ocho. So the billionaire boss who founded Clear Channel Media without a college degree, that was?

Wait a minute, so we’re saying that the guy who invented the modern stove technology that was used for the great majority of people during his time in bifocals didn’t have a degree?

Nope.

This changes everything.

Okay, continue.

So, the founder of Clear Channel is Billy Joe McCombs, and apparently he also went by the name Red. He became a billionaire, but did not have a degree. And that is exactly why he does not get invited to any of those fancy alumni gatherings, which he would be too busy to attend anyway, because he is counting his money.

Okay, well, again, if he was counting his money, $1, $2, $3. He’s worth billions of dollars and he didn’t have a college degree. Who is up next on this list of 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree,

Jason? So that is billionaire Billy, the man who started the little company called Microsoft without a college degree.

Are you saying that Bill Gates didn’t have a college degree? Nope.

Get out of here.

He did not. Okay. Yeah. I have a little fun factoid here for you from the good folks at Forbes. Forbes reports that now 43% of college graduates are taking jobs that don’t require a degree. 43%! That’s almost half. Oh yeah. That’s interesting. Okay, back to you. All right, so the next one, number 10, is the powerful perfume powerhouse who does not have

a college degree. That is Coco Chanel. Can we go back and read more about Bill Gates? Yes. I want to read some more about Bill Gates. Okay. So if you’re not familiar with him, if you’ve been living in a cave for the past 20 years, he successfully started Microsoft without a college degree. It says on here, is his estimated net worth really $103.8 billion? That’s true. Holy carp. Oh, Shunda. Shunda. That right there is, you know, I have a sound clip here that I think that could articulate how I feel about that. Let me cue it up here. I hate when the sound clips aren’t readily available, but I have a new

sound effects pack that I’m adding soon. Let me get this going. Here we go.

Ooh, it’s lit.

Glory! Glory! I gotta feel it. Everything’s gonna be all right. This is how Bill’s thinking.

I got a feeling everything’s gonna be alright.

I got a feeling everything’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright. Oh yes.

It’s gonna be alright.

I feel like Bill Gates can sleep well today knowing that everything’s going to be alright. Every single day he just wakes up and goes, I’ve got a feeling everything’s going to be

alright.

Bill, are you okay? I’ve got a feeling.

Bill, wait, are you going to go back and get your degree? Everything’s going to be alright. Okay, so I’m just saying, if you’re out there today and you’re asking yourself, do you need a college degree, I would say the answer is probably no. It could be yes, but probably no. And so, Jason, back to you.

What is the next list, next person on our list of success stories, the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree?

Yeah, so number 10 is Coco Chanel. You know her. You know the name. You see it everywhere. Another example of somebody who did not have to go to college.

Really?

Yeah.

No college at all? Nope. OK, who’s next? So the man without a degree who started his chicken empire based in Kentucky. Oh, nice!

Oh, yeah. So you know him, you’ve seen him, you love him. Colonel Harlan Sanders dropped out of seventh grade and went to live and work on a farm that was located near his home.

Quick time out. Pop quiz. Who was the person who started the modern banking system that

did not have a degree?

A.P. Giannini.

Really?

I know his name. What’s his real name? Armadale? Armadale? Armadale? Let me get it queued up here. I want to get in there. I can’t, I can’t move on. I want to get to the chorus. Come on, get to the chorus. Here we go.

Okay, okay, now back to you. Sorry, sorry, I just had to do that. Now we can move on. No, that made my day.

Okay, now we’re talking about the colonel. Yeah, so Harlan Sanders at the age of 13 left his home and secured a job painting horse carriages in the growing city of Indianapolis. At the age of 14, he decided to move to Indiana to become a farmhand. And at the age of 65, Sanders decided to franchise his secret recipe for that Kentucky fried chicken for the first time to an entrepreneur by the name of Pete Harmon, who was from South

Lake, Utah. Now I have a sound clip here. Some of the listeners at home have their worries about Colonel Sanders. So I’m going to cue up the audio of what one of our listeners called in. And we have a very thoughtful call screening system we have here. Okay. And I can’t verify whether this audio is actually from one of our callers.

Oh. It could be the wrong sound clip. Dr. Z is out of town right now so I don’t know.

I’m just going to cue it up. Let me see if this is… Well, it’s a well-known fact, Sonny Jim, that there’s a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world known as the Pentaverite, who run everything in the world including the newspapers and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado known as the Meadows. So who’s in this penthammer? The Queen, the Vatican, the Getty’s, the Rothschilds and Colonel Sanders before he went tetra. I hated the Colonel with his wee beady eyes

and that smug look on his face. Oh you’re gonna buy my chicken!

Oh!

Oh, gang! So apparently not everyone’s a big fan of the Colonel. How did they know we were going to be talking about him? I don’t know. This is part of the Illuminati. Maybe people are reading my mind.

Okay, back to you. Alright, so on to number 12. Let’s keep reading more about the Colonel. Oh, okay. We need to know more about the Colonel.

Yeah, so after he franchised, within just a year of selling the product, he was able to triple his sales with 75% of sales increasing as a result of Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken. At the age of 73 and in the year of 1964, Colonel Sanders sold his company for $2 million to his partner, and it was based in Kentucky. It was headed by John Y.

Brown Jr., who was at the time 29 years old and who would later become the governor of Kentucky. 1964 would have been 16 billion, 525 million, 354 thousand. And I’m sorry I’m throwing a large number at you there. I believe it would be 16 million. No way, it looks like billion.

Let’s look at it. You got the, oh, that’s a, someone look that up. 16 million, 525 thousand. I think you’re looking at this, that could be 16, yeah, 16 million. Good job, Colonel. So the Colonel did all right.

He did pretty great. I got a feeling everything’s going to be all right, freaking Colonel. Okay, Jason, back to you. Who is our next super successful success story? Who did not have a college degree? So that would be the wonderful Wendy’s founder.

So Dave Thomas was born in 1932, and as of 1969, and yet as of 1969, he believed that he could still not find a good hamburger in Columbus, Ohio.

Really? Yeah. So despite not having a college degree at the age of 37, Dave Thomas started his now legendary Wendy’s franchise. Dave decided to name his business after his daughter, Wendy, who was at the time just eight years old.

Due to his quick growth into 1,000 plus store franchise, in 1989, the same year that San Francisco Giants competed against the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball.

They had the earthquake that year. It was an unbelievable World Series. Giants versus the Oakland Athletics. The earthquake shaked the Bay Area, destroyed a lot of buildings. It was wild, wild time. So Dave Thomas then decided to become the company’s spokesperson at the age of 57.

So again, did you know that Dave Thomas didn’t have a degree? I did not I didn’t know who Dave was for the longest time did you ever been to Wendy’s I have you ever thought about Not going there because the owner doesn’t have a degree never crossed my mind Have you ever been to a Kentucky Fried Chicken? I have not a long time has it ever occurred to you that the owner didn’t have a degree probably no assume He didn’t if you’re going to KFC, okay

Next one what he got so number 12 is the man who co-founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg? Now, Rokit, go ahead. We had 12 or 13? Oh, 13. OK, 13.

Some folks are scoring at home. I’m scoring. I’m right here. I’m just keeping track of. We have 73 entrepreneur success stories without a degree, and I want to make sure we keep track here.

Continue.

So David Geffen dropped out of college after completing only one year, and yet went on to co-found one of the most successful Hollywood content creation companies of all time. And again, that was DreamWorks.

Really? Yeah.

With no degree?

No degree. With no degree, how could he even know how to take the lens cap off, as you pointed out earlier?

That is a great question.

How’d they teach that in like your freshman year?

I guess he just figured it out.

Oh, frick.

Okay, continue. Oh, also, he’s worth an estimated $8.4 billion.

Do you say billion? That time it was billion. This time it was written out, so I didn’t mess it up. You know, I think Carlton Pearson, the former evangelist, has something he’d like to say about that. A little encouragement for David Geffen, who doesn’t have a degree.

I think he wants to…

Glory!

Here we go.

Glory! Oh yeah.

Because David’s wondering, what’s my…

I?

He’s wondering, what’s my fallback position?

What’s David Geffen’s fallback position?

Oh.

Gotta be that.

Everything’s gonna be alright.

Come on Tribe Nation, sing with me now. Everything’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright. You know David Geffen’s pulling an all-nighter right now, staying up wondering, how am I gonna support myself if my career doesn’t work out?

Okay, continue. Alright, so on to 14, the man whose passion was more than just a hobby. Despite not having a college degree, another David, David Green, has gone on to experience tremendous success. David took his initial $600 investment and famously turned that into billions as the

founder of Hobby Lobby.

Have you ever been to Hobby Lobby?

I’ve been there so many times.

Really?

What kind of stuff are you buying at Hobby Lobby? Well I go because the fiance loves to decorate, so I just kind of tag along. Really?

Yarn. Get out of here.

Don’t you go in there and buy something?

I used to go there and get all of my sketchbooks and my pens back when I was a doodler do you go in there and buy a you know glue glue I don’t you’re going there and buy corn dog I wish no no no no guess how much he’s worth as a today all fun fact for you as a today so you agree the matter hobby lobby

started with six hundred dollars and no college degree how much is he worth today if you had to guess just move just wow. I’m going to go with a precise decimal 3.7 billion. 8.3 billion.

Oh in my face.

In your face! David Green says in your face! That’s impressive.

Okay continue. All right so on to 15. Mr. David Karp. Without a college degree, David Karp went on to form and found the short form blogging platform, excuse me, that went on to be named Tumblr. At the age of 15, David decided to drop out of school in 2007. And at the age of 21, David launched Tumblr

in February of 2007. In May of 2013, when David was just 27 years old, Yahoo, is what the text says. Or sorry, Yahoo, the company, there we go. Yahoo announced that it was acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

I love that you thought that I wrote Yahoo.

Well, sometimes you throw curveballs at me, so I’m like, I gotta go with it.

I love that you think that I write that. That’s pretty funny. That just shows you how unpredictable my writing style is.

Or how dead Yahoo is.

Right, okay.

Continue. All right, so 16, David Oreck? Yeah, Oreck.

This is the Oreck vacuum guy.

Ooh.

Yeah. So David Oreck is a college dropout and a multi-millionaire founder of the Oreck vacuum company. He created vacuums that have sucked the dirt out of carpets for years

The company now employs more than 1,500 people at its retail stores and is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee Good job, David Oreck with no degree. He continues to have success. How is it possible for these top? 73 entrepreneur success stories to not have a degree think about Hobby Lobby That’s a big company. A lot of us go there every week, maybe once a month. No degree. The modern banking system, no degree.

DreamWorks, so many of us have seen DreamWorks movies, no degree. Wendy’s, no degree. Colonel Sanders, no degree. There are just so many things. Coco Chanel, no degree. The bifocals, no degree.

There’s so many things that have impacted us on a daily basis that have been created by people without a college degree. So I ask you, do you need a degree? And perhaps you might say, you know, I don’t know. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.

Maybe I need to hear 73 entrepreneur success stories about people who don’t have a degree but do have success before I can make that decision. And I say, I agree.

Let’s continue.

All right. So on to 17. Debbie Fields, despite not having a college degree, little Debbie created a huge company

by the name of Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery. That is huge. Think about that. Debbie Fields, no degree. It’s unbelievable to me how this false truth has been created, this narrative, this overwhelming cultural momentum that says, thou shalt go to college.

You’re almost considered to be a heretic if you tell someone not to go to college. Oh, 100%. When I tell people they should drop out, they think that I’m a madman.

Every time in the office when somebody drops out of college, what do I do, Jay? You’ve watched this process. Oh, you celebrate. Right!

People look at me like, ha ha ha ha.

Like whenever I joke, someone will say, should I go to college? I say, no, drop out. I convinced Ben and his wife Amelia to drop out of college recently.

Now they’re winning the game of life.

They are, but so many people are like, are you kidding me? Are you encouraging someone to drop out of college? I encouraged Andrew to drop out of college.

Now he has a rental house.

True.

He’s a married guy. He’s got his first rental house. He and his wife are saving like half of their income. At 21, he is far past everybody who is twice as old as him that got a degree or two degrees. We have so many clients that will come in here who are earning significantly less money than Andrew who is 21 years old. I mean it’s unbelievable how non-essential a

degree is. Now Jason, what’s the next entrepreneur success story who had success without a college degree? Number 18, DeWitt Wallace. DeWitt founded Reader’s Digest despite not having

earned his college degree.

You’re saying the guy who started Reader’s Digest didn’t have a college degree?

No, and then you even add a little note in here that it took you three weeks to authorize this because you dropped out of college as well.

So if you’re listening here, I just wanna make sure you’re getting this idea. This list of 73 top entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. Didn’t come about out of nowhere. I had to create this list, I had to research the list, I had to put the list together,

but the reason why this podcast ranks highly in Google, the reason why all my businesses rank highly in Google, the reason why you’re gonna find this podcast highly ranked in Google, this particular show, is because I know how Google works. I found out the practical skills needed to pay

the bills. I found out how search engine optimization and domination is possible. And in my newest book, Search Engine Domination, that I did with Jonathan Kelly, you can learn all the skills needed to pay the bills as well. But the guy who started Reader’s Digest wrote good content that people wanted to read. It was interesting, which is why he did well. He found a problem that the world wanted to pay for the solution for. He found a problem that the world had that they were willing to pay to solve.

That’s what David Orrick did with the vacuum. That’s what he did. That’s what Debbie Fields did with her cookies. That’s what David Green did with Hobby Lobby. He found a problem that the world was willing to pay to solve. If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, Jason, all we have to do is find a problem that the world is willing to pay us to solve and solve

it. So let’s think about Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge that you have managed and you’ve worked with for years or the clients you work with. With Elephant in the Room, what’s the core problem that we are solving for men? Haircuts because it’s incredibly hard to do it yourself. And why are we succeeding with that?

How do we cut hair differently than, because there’s other people that cut hair. How do we beat other businesses with our haircut experience? Well, we train our staff every single week, so that way they’re never stuck.

We make sure that you have a booked appointment time, so you know exactly what hour, what day. Paraffin hand dip, hot towel treatment, the music, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the free beverages, the whole ambiance is better than the average haircut,

therefore people are willing to pay. Wendy’s, they’re making a superior food than what was previously available in the fast food realm, that’s why it worked. You just gotta find a problem that the world is willing to pay you to solve. Now let’s move on, who’s our next success story, our next successful entrepreneur without a college degree? So number 19 is Dustin Moskowitz. Okay, and this guy,

tell us about this beautiful man. He is credited as being one of the founders of a little company called Facebook. The Facebook. The Facebook. The Facebook. I think if it sounds more exciting if it’s a kind of an Italian theme. Yeah. Keep going. So on here I mean it’s got everybody uses his or they use the platform Facebook so last number there was I bet he wishes he would have stayed in school at Harvard and got that degree. Now is that name the… what’s the name again?

Dustin Moskovitz. To me, it sounds like he’s Russian or something. I know, right? Moskovitz? Moskovitch? Let me read it again and let’s see if this feels more like him.

Read again.

Dustin Moskovitz.

Yeah, it feels like it fits kind of the Russian theme. I don’t know. Somebody out there can educate me as to the origin of that name. Let’s continue. Let’s continue. By the way, Dustin, one of the original founders of Facebook, do you want to guess net worth

wise how much he’s worth today? If you had to just guess the net worth of this guy right now, and again, a lot of people

don’t know his name, how much do you think he’s worth right now? I’ll answer that with a quote from the Facebook movie, The Social Network. Justin Timberlake, when he says, you know what’s cooler than a million dollars?

A billion dollars.

How much do you think he’s worth?

I would say four billion.

Thirteen point four.

In my face, every time. That is insane.

He’s doing well.

He’s doing well. Okay, let’s move on to number twenty. Number twenty, yet another successful entrepreneur without a college degree. So that is Frank Lloyd Wright what Frank became one of the most prolific architects of all time Frank the tank Frank the tank. Oh, you’re right really he had two first names. I know I researched this but think about that that guy’s a Claimed what what does he do for a living so he is without a doubt the most prolific architect of all time in human history

there it is and he has a No, he doesn’t have a degree. OK, we’re moving on to 21. Who do we have up next for number 21?

Such a fancy sounding name, Frederick Henry Royce.

Oh, Joyce Royce. Oh, and no wonder, because the man who created one of the most precision-focused engines in automotive manufacturing companies of all time, a.k.a. Rolls-Royce, dropped out of elementary school. So he does not have any knowledge.

So think about this again. The man who created one of the most precision-focused engine and automotive manufacturing companies. Rolls-Royce. You’ve heard of the engines. You’ve heard of the vehicles. You’ve seen them.

Rolls-Royce. The guy who found that it dropped out of elementary school. Unbelievable. Jason, who do we have up next here?

Who do we have up next?

Up next, we’ve got George Eastman. Number 22 is George Eastman. George was the man who developed a worldwide brand and was known as being the pioneer of popular photography and motion picture despite not having a degree.

Okay, let’s continue. Let’s continue.

Who else do you have next here, my friend?

H. Wayne Huizenga?

Oh, this is Wayne Huizenga.

Huizenga. Yeah, Wayne Huizenga. Yeah, okay, continue. So, Wayne is the man who created Waste Management Inc. Auto Nation and was famous for being a co-owner of Blockbuster Video Throughout his career Wayne has also been a co-owner of the National Football League Miami Dolphins the Florida Panthers and the National Hockey League the Florida Marlins of the Major League Baseball

And has also helped launch a national video rental chain Blockbuster. Do you remember Blockbuster? I fondly remember Blockbuster What was your favorite Blockbuster. What was your favorite Blockbuster memory?

The fact that there were certain days you could go in and get like two PlayStation games for the price of one. So that way my mom didn’t get mad at me when I wanted to get choosy. But they always had like really awesome snacks to go to the movies.

Let’s listen to this.

Imagine the perfect video store.

It would have a great selection, right?

Right. Over 10,000 videos three evening rounds so no rush no hassle 24-hour quick-drop return opens late every night. Well the perfect video store Is popping up all over the country yes Wow, what a difference! Blockbuster video, wow, what a difference!

That was the hook, man, back in the day. When they were hot, they were hot. They were so hot.

Now not so hot. Okay, continue. Who are we talking about next? Number 24 is Henry Ford, the legendary founder of Ford Motor Company, transformed the way American automobiles are produced. Yet, because he didn’t have a college degree, you can be sure that his father-in-law never

respected him. I’m pretty positive that Henry Ford didn’t get any respect from him. You know, it is a lot of people say, how often do people ask you, Jason, do you have a degree?

So often.

How often?

Like, when it comes to like consulting clients, they’ll ask me immediately.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

They do?

They do. Every time? Man, I tell them in an unrelated field that has helped me in no way, shape, or form.

That’s really, people ask you all the time?

One because of my age and then two because of I guess the title. So they’re just curious, it’s part of the vetting process. But more than I would like to admit.

Ah, it’s crazy, I didn’t know they did that to you. So you tell them, well actually I went to culinary school.

Yeah, and they’re like, oh wow. I’m like, well guys, I’m not cooking.

As you can see, I got nowhere with that mmm okay I still love to cook but I have a Henry Ford quote for you I want to give up here this is a Henry Ford he says anyone who stops learning is old whether at 20 or 80 anyone who keeps learning stays young I agree with that I think a lot of people get a degree and then we just

kinda stop learning after the getting the degree and that all the successful entrepreneurs that I hang out with these people are they they learn man. They’re always learning. They’re thinkers and they’re doers. They’re not just thinkers, they’re thinkers and they’re doers. And so I want to read a notable

quotable to the listeners out there from the late great Steven Jobs. Steve Jobs, the man who was a legendary co-founder of Apple, he writes here, he says, the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. One person. One person.

You’ve got to be a thinker and a doer. You’ve got to continue to learn. I’m not advocating not learning. I’m advocating not going to college to learn things that you don’t need to learn. In college, we had a big crop of great people attend our most recent group interview on Wednesday and I asked them I said how many of you were taught how search engines work at college by

show of hands. These are people with marketing degrees applying for a marketing position. Now Jason what percentage of people on the planet start their search for products and services using the internet? 100%. Almost everyone I know searches on Google for everything right but they don’t teach it. Nope. It’s the most effective kind of marketing possible, but they don’t teach it on the college

campus. And why not?

Well, actually, one of my clients asked me that yesterday. They’re like, well, you guys have taught me a lot about SEO. And he goes, funny, I had never heard the term SEO until I started working with you guys. He goes, I’ve got a degree. I’ve took marketing classes in being top in Google, articles, podcasts.

None of this ever came up.

I’m like, yeah.

Right, and what’s crazy, here’s what’s crazy. The book we just released called Search Engine Domination. It hit number two on the Amazon bestsellers list for those categories. Hit number two overall on the Amazon bestsellers list. Again, the book called Search Engine Domination. Hit number two.

Why do you think that book was well received? Why do you think people are willing to pay you to solve. People want to know how to do it and they don’t teach you on the college campuses. And you guys make it so easy. They don’t teach on the college campuses how to sell anything either. Why? Why don’t they teach how to sell anything at college campuses? I have no idea. Because they don’t know how. So I’m telling you, if you’re out there today and you feel stuck, I would encourage you

right now, today, go out there and purchase the Search Engine Optimization Domination book. Search Engine Optimization Domination. Get that book. That book is a powerful tool. That thing will help you become a marketing wizard.

Jason, who’s the next entrepreneur that we’re covering here? Who’s the next entrepreneur who is a success story without a college degree? That would be number 25, Henry J. Kaiser. So Henry Kaiser never graduated from high school, he never got a diploma, yet he became the founder of Kaiser Aluminum. It turns out a lot of people use aluminum.

Turns out, right?

Yes, or as Andy would say, aluminum.

Aluminum?

Is that what he says?

Ask Andy to say aluminum.

Aluminum. Andy, one of our good time, long time friends and one of my first employees at DJ Connection is now a consultant in the medical industry. And we’re going to call up Dr. Tim Johnson because we’re talking about 73 successful entrepreneurs without a degree, but he is an ophthalmologist and has a degree. So I thought we’d get one guy on the show who has a degree, who has a success story

because he needed a degree. Let’s see if we can get him on the phone here. We’re calling him via Skype. Is he going to answer?

Hello?

answer. Hello. Go ahead, caller. First time, long time, Tim Johnson, how are you, sir?

Good. Hey, I’m excited.

We’re doing a show about the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. And I thought, you know, let’s get the top entrepreneur success story I could think of who has a degree, the ophthalmologist Dr. Timothy Johnson from Tuscaloosa. Sir, how long do we have you before you have to get back to dad duties? 10 or 20 minutes, however long you need. Did he say an hour and a half? 10 or 20 minutes. Okay, yeah, okay, here you go. Now let’s get into the next one, next entrepreneur success story, Jason. You can read about the

entrepreneur success story and then Dr. Timothy Johnson can tell you as to whether he’s ever heard of the company. All right, so Hyman Golden is a college degree-free founder of the billion-dollar Snapple Beverage

Company.

Mmm, Dr. Timothy Johnson, what say you? Have you ever heard of Snapple?

I have.

Have you ever consumed a Snapple? You like Snapple?

I don’t.

I’ve never had it before.

Really? But you’re aware of Snapple, right? I am aware of Snapple, yeah. Snapple is what made Rush Limbaugh famous. A lot of people don’t realize this. Rush was on a few select markets, and Snapple was the first big endorsement deal he got

that was willing to invest in him in every market. Oh. And now Rush Limbaugh is pulling in like 85 million bucks a year right now. Good job, Rush Limbaugh. Good job, Snapple. Dr. Timothy Johnson, from your perspective, you have a degree.

What kinds of things did they not teach you in ophthalmology school when you’re becoming an ophthalmologist that maybe you wish they would have covered?

Anything outside the eye. Business, how to deal with angry patients, how to deal with staff, how to get Google

reviews, who Clay Clark is, a lot of these things that they don’t.

They don’t teach any of that though. I mean seriously the hardest part of managing your Ophthalmology clinic is what what’s the hardest part of it now that we’ve teamed up together here the last few months And so now marketing is not a problem anymore And hopefully a lot of the systems are getting easier, but what’s the toughest part of managing an ophthalmology clinic? I? Think the emotions of the staff like trying to go eat

You know everybody’s human and you got the more humans you add the more complicated the system gets and so it’s harder to Juggle those emotions and help keep people motivated and then you have patient emotions Surgery is not perfect and medicine is not perfect. And so it’s just

What a lot of complex, why do you feel like they don’t know it. That’s what I think too. I think if they did know it they wouldn’t be teaching those classes. That’s my take. I think there’s a lot of great people who mean well who are teaching but I think if you can’t compete in the world of capitalism you hide behind the industrial complex known as college. It’s an industrial complex, that’s true. I know a lot of people that cannot hack it as entrepreneurs, so they went back to college

and now they are teaching marketing. I’ve seen that so many times, Jason. I’ve seen so many people that are highly educated who tried to start their own business and it failed, and then they go back onto the college campus and teach the things I learned while failing my business. Jason, you went to two years of college?

So yeah, so two years combined. So a full semester at Tulsa Community College,

and then a year and a half. I want to ask you first this question. I want to ask Dr. Timothy next, so he can one up you. What was the most esoteric? That means it’s intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people.

What was the most esoteric, the most vague, the most non-applicable, most worthless class that you had while attending college. Jason, what was the class where you thought, really?

Why am I learning this? So Tim, I don’t know if you know this, but I went to culinary school, so you asked me what the most esoteric class was. How it doesn’t apply to the field of culinary? Philosophy. Really?

We had a mandatory philosophy class, which I loved, because I love that stuff. But at the same time, I thought, there’s no freaking way this

is ever going to apply to this field. Excuse me, Chef, I’d like to hire you guys to get some burritos delivered to my office. Well, have you ever thought about what Plato would think of that? I mean, get out of here. Okay, so Dr. Timothy Johnson here from Tuscaloosa. Tell us, what was the most vague esoteric class and or classes that you experienced while attending school?

Probably two. I had to take a feminist studies of Latin American women.

So your wife is Hispanic.

And then I actually enjoyed this. I took a class on quantum mechanics. Yes. And so I don’t, nobody knows what that is.

Can you explain that in lightness?

I think the guy who founded quantum mechanics said, if you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.

It’s interesting.

Oh my gosh, that is so funny.

Okay, so what is the next one, Jason?

That is Ingvar Kamprad. Yeah.

Awesome. Ingvar Kamprad.

He’s the billionaire founder of Ikea. He did not go to college and he’s also dyslexic. I think if I think the listeners won’t know you’re talking about unless you say Ingva come fried try that and shake Ingva come from You try this it’s a scheisse. It’s a it’s a it’s a you know it’s a sauerkraut It’s David Hasselhoff try to disavow the Ingva. I can do it deeper is

Ingva no go higher no higher try it it’s liberating. It’s like streaking. It’s the second time you’ve painted me into a corner with that accent.

I feel like I’m having a stroke right now.

Dr. Timothy Johnson, have you ever been to Ikea?

I have. They have great meatballs.

And $1 ice cream cones.

Hey, don’t rip.

I’ll put this on the show notes. This is true. Enlighten the listeners out there who don’t know about the meatballs. Because remember, Ingvar is Swedish, and he started IKEA, and he brought the Swedish meatballs to the table. Can you explain to listeners, Dr. Johnson,

kind of the workflow or the layout of IKEA and the meatballs and what makes it successful in your mind?

I think, didn’t they say that they basically, all the food that that costs? And it’s such a long maze of furniture that they want to make sure you’re nourished and you can stay there all day.

Well, here’s what they do.

I’ve done an entire show about this guy. Way too much research on it, but here’s what happens is they make you follow like a maze. Everyone has to go to the store the same way. So at other stores, you’re free to kind of go here or there. They sort of force you, the flow of traffic is to go through this maze, so you have to see everything.

And then it’s like impossibly cheap, but you have to build it yourself. That’s awesome. And so there’s all sorts of YouTube videos and online jokes about how men trying to put together the furniture they bought at Ikea. And so you’re stuck in this like furniture maze and you know you got to get some cheese. And so Ingvar decided to go ahead and put in the Swedish meatballs.

And anyway they just kill it. That company does very very well. And he Jason he doesn’t have a degree. Nope. Holy crap. How does he know what to sell?

How does he know how to price things? How does he know? I don’t know how he does it. Who’s the next? We’re going through the 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. What’s number 26, Chase?

So let’s see.

Do, ka, do, ka, do. Do, ka, do, ka, do.

Oh, wait, 26.

Do, ka, do, ka, do. And I’m about 26.

We’re on 28.

Ingvar is 27.

Really?

Yeah.

I don’t think so.

I’m positive.

Are you sure? Yeah. I’m tracking right now. I’ll tell you what, right now I’m saying Ingvar is 25, so therefore Singer is 26 and all the listeners are going, you’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. This point, Singer is the new 26.

So Isaac Merritt Singer, the inventor of the sewing machine, dropped right out of high

school and he spent every second of his time sewing.

Have you ever used a Singer sewing machine there, Dr. Tim? I’m not. Really? We don’t really even know so much in ophthalmology. So the human eye shut just for fun? No, no, not for fun. Okay, now real quick, Jason, upon further review, the folks at home are telling me you are in fact right, therefore you get a mega point, and I lose all the mega points I’ve ever accumulated in my life. And so, and T.D. Jakes called in here. I don’t know if it was really T.D. Jakes, but this is what I was trying to explain that

Jason was incorrect, and this is what T.D. Jakes wanted to tell me.

So, so, so Jesus, who is exceptional, is having a conversation with ordinary.

Translation, Jason is having a conversation with ordinary Which is me and it turns out because he has two years of schooling He can do basic math and can follow along in a sequential order so you are right sir so back to you Oh, all right, so 29. Yep, Jack Crawford Taylor Jack Crawford Taylor served honorably in World War two as a fighter pilot for the Navy and Started the car rental company Enterprise all without a college degree.

Dr. Timothy Johnson, have you ever driven and rented a Enterprise rental car?

I think so, yeah, yeah, I have.

And do you like Enterprise, do you prefer Enterprise, do you have a preferred rental car company that you prefer to use when you travel? I don’t, I don’t, I’m…

Really? I’m sorry, I don’t, I just sort of go with whichever.

I gotta tell you this, I gotta tell you this.

I’m not very knowledgeable about them. Well, with a degree, you’re probably handicapped. You probably don’t know this, but Enterprise is an incredible service.

They didn’t teach me that.

No.

Pick one.

Enterprise is really great. I will tell you, there’s a lot of frequent travelers that prefer Enterprise. There was a time in my life where I traveled all the time, and Enterprise is the one that was wife-approved. So, this just in. Now, Jason, who’s our next success story without a college degree?

Also number 30 is the man himself, James Cameron.

Mmm.

And who’s he?

Uh, I don’t know.

I’m just kidding. He wrote and directed Aliens, the sequel to Alien, and The Abyss between 1986 and 1989. He then, without a college degree, solidified his reputation as being one of the best directors on the planet. He directed Terminator 2, Judgment Day, which, come on, that was 91. 94, he created the biggest blockbuster movie of all time,

oh sorry, Terminator, that date’s off, okay, Titanic was 1997, Avatar 2009, despite not having a college degree, he’s now worth over a reported $700 million.

Really?

Oh yeah.

Really, I wanted to say this real quick, James Cameron, I don’t have proof of this, but I believe to make the movie Alien, he based the entire premise of that character based upon my face. And I never got royalties on that, so I just wanted to say… You’ve got to take that up with H.R.

Geiger, but he’s dead.

Do you remember Terminator? What was your favorite Terminator line, Dr. Johnson? Do you have a favorite Terminator line? Did you get really into the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator thing? Yeah, I remember when I was in… how old was I? I remember my dad let me stay up one night and watch it.

91, I think.

Yeah, I was in like elementary or middle school.

That scared the crap out of me. Yeah, that was… I mean, that’s a… that was a great…

Do you have a favorite line, Jason, from that movie?

My favorite line is actually when he’s sinking into the hot metal

after he tackles the liquid Terminator and he just gives the thumbs up. I’m gonna cue up audio real quick, and then, Dr. Tim, you can tell me if this… which scene was your favorite of these. I’ve got one minute of clips here and you can tell me which scene was your favorite scene. Here we go.

Let me get up here.

Listen to me very carefully.

I’m a Terminator.

Sabotage assistance model 101.

Catherine Brewster. I need you close.

That’s one of my mission parameters.

Trust me.

I am a machine.

Your confusion is not rational. She’s a healthy female of breeding age.

You’re close. Give them to me now. She’ll be back. I’ll be back. Hasta la vista, baby. Get out.

Yeah, okay, so what what was your favorite line from Terminator?

Uh, gotta be the hasta la vista, baby. That’s, but it’s all just such great American cinematography.

The dialogue is…

I’ll be back.

He was a sophisticated piece of machinery from the future. Why was he Austrian?

It doesn’t make sense.

No, it makes a ton of sense. I mean, in the future, if all technology is based off of Austrian innovation, yes. But they didn’t tell us that.

Listen here, buddy, you’re out there trying to make that movie make sense and bring the room down. I love that movie so much. Now, did you guys watch Avatar, Dr. Tim, did you watch Avatar?

I did, but I watched it last year. It was pretty great.

Did you like it, or you’re like, get out of here?

It was okay.

It was kind of pretty, but not…

I thought it was weird.

I left that movie going, that’s weird. Did you see it in theaters when it came out? Yeah. See, that was the whole thing, was Cameron being the innovator, that he spent years making a specific camera. 10 years to make that movie.

And so all of it was just the experience. There’s a ride at Disney World now that people are saying it’s changing their lives, because it’s VR, you get to fly around the world of Avatar. But it’s nuts, it’s still just living on.

I feel like, how I felt about that movie would be like, if you’re a man and you go to the urinal and you go there, and the guy next to you pees on you. That’s how I felt. I’m like, I don’t know that I wanted that to happen. And I’m kind of left like jolted, like violated. I kind of felt like I don’t know what to do with these emotions.

I haven’t talked about it for a long time. So Oh, Dr. Tim’s bringing the family on the show. Dr. Tim, we’ll let you go here in just a moment. We’ll do one more. One more. Here we go.

So number 31, Jason, who’s this? That is Jay Van Andel. He may be a billionaire and co-founder of Amway.

Amway, oh!

But what’s not impressive is he doesn’t have a degree. So this guy, Jay Van Andel is the founder of Amway. Dr. Tim, I bet you he wakes up every day thinking, I really screwed up my life and missed out on learning how to learn when I chose not to earn a college degree. Do you buy into that whole thing that college teaches you to learn how to

learn? I think it makes you dumb. It teaches you that you need

credentials. Right, and so for you, why did you go to college? I mean, why couldn’t you just watch YouTube videos and become an ophthalmologist? The law. Okay. If I just

did that, I would go to jail. If they would let me, that might be the way they used to do it, isn’t it? Just apprenticeship. There you go. But all I’m

saying is you needed a degree. You knew you needed a degree, but you knew your ongoing education

wasn’t done, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a specific goal. To me, the college degree is a tool. And so if you know, it’s like a shovel. You wouldn’t just have a shovel. You only buy a

shovel if you need a hole. For the listeners out there that have a degree and have a maybe a tool they’ve purchased and they’re struggling to get their business off or to make it grow what what ongoing education would you encourage the listeners to to check out their Dr. Tim? Don’t you don’t y’all have an online business school? We do that thing is 19 bucks a month and a lot of people love it and then you have, if you are a subscriber for 12 months, you get to come to a workshop for free.

Dr. Tim, do you prefer workshops, do you prefer one-on-one coaching, or do you prefer online videos? It’s like asking which is your favorite child. I don’t, they’re all so wonderful. I like the one-on-one coaching. The workshop was really cool. I’m more of a one-on-one guy. I like the intimacy we share.

Tell me about this young child next to you. Who do we have on the show with us here?

This is Wyatt. He is 12 weeks old, three months today.

Really? Well, tell Wyatt hello from the Thrive Nation and we will hang up on you to make your life easier. I know you’re going to hang up anyway, so we’re just going to hang up on you and that way you don’t have to hang up on us. It’s always embarrassing when a guest hangs up on us. I appreciate you very much, my friend. I hope you have a great day.

No problem. Thanks a lot.

Alright, bye.

And we’re back. Okay, so Jason, we’ve lost Dr. Timothy Johnson, but we continue the show. We’re marching on. Oh yeah. So number 32 is Jerry Yang. Jerry Yang! Jerry Yang dropped out of Sanford’s PhD program to create, and I’ll say it right this time, Yahoo!

Yahoo!

With a PhD, I bet he doesn’t even know where to store his 2.6 billion. But I bet you that I could help him put that money to good use somewhere. So Jerry, if you want to send it to 1100 Riverwalk Terrace, Suite 100, Jenks, Oklahoma, 74037. So Jerry, if you’re trying to figure out a place to store your money, Jerry doesn’t have a degree. So Jerry, if you want to send the money to us, you can mail it to us at 1100 Riverwalk

Terrace, Suite 100, Jenks, Oklahoma, 74037. Or you can just email us today to info at thrivetimeshow.com. Just kind of wire us that banking information, whatever that is. Andrea, we’ll help you figure that out, because I know without a degree, without a PhD from Stanford, you could not possibly know where to store that money. Now, Jason, back to you, my friend.

Who’s next? That is number 33, Jimmy Dean, the Breakfast King. Really? Jimmy Dean, the Breakfast King? The mogul of the meat industry and founder of the multi-million dollar business also dropped out of high school at the age of 16. Wow! Yet he managed to build his business. Yeah, you can’t walk into a

single donut shop in Tulsa without them having a Jimmy Dean product. So he dropped out at the age of what age? 16. But he went on to have success. Oh yeah. Let’s do another one. We have 73 and we’re on number what? 34 now. Okay and I said corrected previously I thought we were a different number, but you educated me I was matriculated. I was coached up. I did my research I added up 21 to

27 whatever I did so now we’re corrected back to number 34 who’s next that is mr. Jimmy I’veeen Okay, who’s this guy? So Jimmy was the son of a longshoreman started out working as a secretary He’s working as a secretary. Mm-hmm, but at the age of 19 his drive had become his mission in life. He was absolutely obsessed with making records, so he started to work at a studio, a professional studio in 1972, when one of his friends got him a job as a janitor at a record studio. And then not long after that, he found himself working with John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen,

and other huge artists. In 1973, he got a full-time job working at the Record Plant recording studio in New York where he worked with Meatloaf on his Bad Outta Hell album. Springsteen’s Born to Run. He helped produce the album. Throughout his career, he’s produced albums that have sold over 250 million copies.

And then he teamed up with Dr. Dre to found Beats, the Beats headphones, which were purchased by Apple for a mere $3 billion. Since he doesn’t have a degree, though, I’m sure that he can only hope he will eventually go out to become successful.

One can only hope.

So, again, we’re talking about super successful people. We have 73 entrepreneur success stories today that don’t have a degree. But I want to talk about the game-changing things that we’ve already covered. So every time you go to where you get the sausage from Jimmy Dean?

IKEA.

If you go, you said that every breakfast place is serving…

Oh yeah.

Like, there’s, like, because most donut shops are franchises, right? But all of them have the same branding, and so every single one of them, there’s hundreds in Tulsa, have some sort of Jimmy Dean product.

So if you’re going out for a lot of these breakfast, uh, breakfasts, you’re going to probably be impacted by Jimmy Dean. Oh yeah.

With no degree.

If you have the Apple headphone technology right now, it’s all powered by Beats. So if you’ve got Apple headphones in your ears, you’ve been touched by someone without a degree. If you’ve ever used Yahoo, I know very few people do now, but if you’ve ever used Yahoo, you’ve been impacted by someone without a degree. If you’ve ever seen Avatar or Titanic, you’ve been impacted by somebody without a degree.

If you’ve ever used a Singer sewing machine or had clothes made by someone who does use a Singer sewing machine, you’ve been impacted by someone without a degree. If you’ve ever gone to Ikea, if you’ve ever had a Snapple, if you’ve ever picked up the average aluminum can,

if you’ve ever been in a Ford automobile or any mass-produced automobile, if you’ve ever been to Blockbuster or remember going to Blockbuster, if you’ve ever taken modern photos today, if you’ve ever seen the architecture all around you,

you’ve been impacted by these people who don’t have a degree. It would seem to me that a lot of the game-changing people, the people that change the world don’t have a college degree. And Jason, why do you think that pattern exists? Well, I think those are the people that did not need that additional, because like we were talking about earlier, that first year of college people are getting forty to fifty thousand dollars in debt and they

don’t even know what they want to do. These people knew what they wanted to do or at least had a, I don’t know, slight example of or as like a small idea then they said I’m gonna go for it. I don’t need you to tell me other things and waste my time. I’m just going to get that knowledge. But you heard Dr. Timothy Johnson just share right there that he said you have to unlearn everything you learn at college. You heard him say that, didn’t you?

Yeah, absolutely, and it’s true. You have to unlearn that stuff. And so it’s interesting to me because I really enjoy working with him, but he has a degree and a lot of things that we’re teaching him, they just weren’t taught at college at all. And I think it’s because college teaches you to follow these rules and these systems that it makes you a great employee.

Yeah, absolutely. But these people were game changing. I mean, changing the way we do things. Forever, people have done the horse and buggy thing and then Henry Ford’s like, why? You know, forever computers were massive.

The mainframes would fill up an entire room. And Steve Jobs is like, why? Forever, the TV screen or the monitor you have today wasn’t attached to the computer unit. It was all done via punch cards. And Steve Jobs is going, why?

Why can’t the average person use a computer? And academia says, because that’s the way we’ve always done it. And so I’m just telling you, if you’re out there and you go to college, as a general rule, it beats the creativity out of you. It turns you into a conformity machine where you just are a cog in the big industrial complex wheel.

I would encourage you today, if you have not yet gone to college to get a degree, think really long and hard before you decide to get one or not. Because you have a 40% chance of getting a job that doesn’t even require a degree after earning the degree, according to Forbes. You’re going to spend $40,000 a year or $25,000 a year getting a degree you probably won’t even use.

So I would just encourage you to think long and hard about that. Now Jason, tell us about the next entrepreneurial success story. Who achieved massive success without a college degree? So that is number 35, Mr. John D. Rockefeller Sr. So John Rockefeller became the world’s wealthiest man after dropping out of high school to support his single mom and family.

Dropping out of what?

Dropped out of high school.

He’s 16. 16 years old. Okay, continue. So Rockefeller went on to fund and create America’s national park system, countless uses for fossil fuels, and the largest net worth in modern American history. However, John D. Rockefeller never did earn a college degree, but he did found two universities,

including the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University. The book Titan is one of my favorite books of all time, which is written about his life. But some things that he did that were just unbelievable. His father was a snake oil salesman, the kind of guy that would scam people. His father would scam people consistently. And so what he did is he decided, you know what, I am not going to allow people to be

scammed the way that my dad scammed people. So what I’m going to do is I am going to create the modern medical training system we know today. Like, the practices used today to become a doctor, those were all Rockefeller working on that. Also, we had such an abundance of fossil fuels back in the day that oil, people don’t know this, that lakes used to be oily because the oil was working its

way through the soil and coming out. It wasn’t being drilled for yet. So, you’d go on lakes and you’d see it looked like an oil spill was on lakes. It was because oil would naturally bubble up. So, he thought, man, there’s a lot of this stuff and people are just using the kerosene. I bet you we could find other uses for this stuff.

So the idea to use it for rubber, or to use petroleum jelly, or to use gasoline, that’s all Rockefeller. The national parks, all Rockefeller. I don’t know if you know this, but he was frustrated that people were deforesting land. So he bought huge amounts of land and gave it to the government to form the national park system we have today. He did so much, but he did not have a degree.

And he started working at the age of 16. No high school diploma. Nope. But he became the world’s wealthiest man. Let’s move on to number 36. We are essentially almost halfway there, if you’re doing the math.

Right. This just in, if you’re doing the math, we’re about halfway through the list of the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree. So that brings us to 36 John Mackey. Yep the millennial hub and house of incredible organic food. Whole Foods market may have been founded by this man and the Whole Foods movement may have been swept or may have swept the nation but he never did earn a college degree

because he dropped out. He enrolled in six different colleges you know that? Wow. But he never got a degree. No but he has the most popular grocery store in all of America. Everybody goes to Whole Foods. True. Whole Foods is a hipster hangout spot. It’s where the women with the yoga pants go.

It’s where my wife goes to get that kale. It’s where you go to get that kombucha. It’s where you go to get that premium beef, baby. Whole Foods is huge.

Huge.

They are. I used to avoid them like the plague just because everybody went there. It’s like, I’m not going to do it. No, no, you’ve been brought in now. I did.

Now I’m not. Now you’re going to Whole Check. It’s a great story. Great story. You can give your whole check to the incredible man without a college degree, John Mackey. Number 37, Jason.

Who’s number 37?

It’s another John. Lots of Johns on this list.

A lot of Johns, yeah.

John Paul… Let’s go with DeGioia. DeGioia. Okay. So, John Paul DeGioia is worth an estimated $2.6 billion.

Wow!

Which is supposed to show you that old college, or the old pro-college adage was, you probably can’t be worth 2.7 billion without a college degree, but you can successfully start Mitchell Systems and Patron Spirits.

I’ve never heard that before.

Yeah, you know, it’s a phrase a lot of times I say, but you say…

You know what they say.

You probably can’t be worth 2.7 billion without a college degree, but you can successfully start Mitchell Systems and Patron Spirits.

Oh, okay.

It sounds a little familiar now.

I hear a lot of people, a lot of times I’ll go out to, my wife and I’ll go out to a nice restaurant and I’ll say, you know Carl, and so it just goes to show you, and Carl’s like,

you’re right.

You know what they say, you probably can’t be worth 2.7 billion without a college degree, but you can successfully start Mitchell Systems and Patron Spirits. He’s worth 2.6 billion!

2.6 billion, Patron, what? Oh, I was reading that patron.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, Patron!

Mitchell Systems, you know, all the hair care products. Sick! It’s sick! Move on to number 38.

38 is Joyce C. Hall. Okay.

So Joyce C. Hall started that little company named Hallmark with a degree.

Do you watch Hallmark movies with your mom?

I used to.

They’re pretty sappy.

They’re very sappy.

You loved them, though. I used to have to watch that in live time, but it was just like, it was family time, so why not? But you loved it.

Yeah, I loved it.

You seriously, do you have a favorite Hallmark movie you remember, or did they all just become

one movie in your mind? It became one movie.

I think every movie is the same movie in my mind.

I couldn’t tell you any of the names.

I kind of do like them. I’m like, this is what I say at the end of every Hallmark movie, yeah. That’s kind of the feeling, it’s like, yeah. I mean, that’s sort of the thing you want to say at the end of

it? I’m never disappointed. It’s not like it’s a bad movie.

Maybe you go in with low expectations. Yeah, and then you’re like, let me get you. I may not know who these actors or actresses are, but they got me. Okay, so let’s move on there. So she doesn’t have a degree. Nope.

And yet started Hallmark. True. Okay, continue, continue. 39 is Kimmons Wilson. So after dropping out of high school, Kimmon started the Holiday Inn.

But the real question is, what degree did he get? Let’s go back real quick to Joyce Hall. I think that Joyce here created a lot of the, I think,

holidays.

True.

I mean, don’t you think that maybe Hallmark and Holiday Inn were working as part of the Illuminati to create false holidays, therefore more vacations and more… That caller earlier said there are five people in the world that run everything. I’m just saying, I mean, aren’t there a lot of holidays where you’re like, really? Is that a holiday?

And they have a card for it? Yeah. Now, the Hall family right now today is worth over two billion dollars. And a holiday in-family is worth, I’m not sure how much they’re worth, but I really do believe that. What are some holidays, Jason, that you think are just ridiculous that people celebrate?

Do you have any holidays at all that you’re going? I think it’s ridiculous.

Leaf Ericsson Day. Do people actually celebrate that?

I think it’s on the Google calendar. I think Earth Day is one that drives me nuts.

Flag Day.

Flag Day.

Earth Day. Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day. And there’s cards for all that stuff. Oh, for sure. There’s a card for anything.

I’m just telling you, the good folks at Hallmark, they’ve done a great job creating fake holidays. Okay, continue telling us about the Holiday Inn. Yes, so, Kimmins Wilson, yes, so let’s see. What clothes did he wear in his 20s and on his days off since he hadn’t been able to spend four years of his life stuffing his closet full of College Logo sportswear?

How did he ever make friends because he didn’t get a chance to meet his lifelong friends on a college campus? Kimmins Wilson again. He drops out of high school, starts holiday inn. But the real question I have, we all have is what the crap was he wearing his twenties you see a lot of people

after college there were in the logo sweatshirts there were in the logo apparel uh… and they’re talking to the friends they met at college i was going to my best friends from college there’s a gap it’s like we can’t make new friends people think

oh yeah

and have you heard that i hear that idea is it is a sales pitch of why to go to college people say what’s cuz the place where you meet your real friends.

Yeah, they tried that. I went to OU’s freshman week thing. No, sorry, it was right before that, so it was this whole recruiting thing. And they were just going to say, you know, guys, you have that one guy in his cargo shorts and his Chacos and his Sooner shirt. And he’s like, you know, the thing about it is, when you come here,

you find your friends for life, OK?

Now I’m going to play my acoustic guitar and walk you around the campus. Unbelievable! That crap they sell! You can’t meet lifelong friends at work or at church or doing anything! On a bus. You’ve got to meet them at college.

Interesting. Okay, let’s continue. Who are we talking about next? So number 40 is Kevin Rose. After dropping out of college, Kevin Rose started Digg, that’s Digg with two Gs, dot com, which was later sold.

Kevin then invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Square, Facebook, and other leading

technology companies. Today, without a degree, he is now worth a reported $30 million.

Mmm! How much is he worth? $30 million. Remember that song, Every Rose Has Its Thorn? Yeah, I love that. Let me, let me, let me kinda…

My mother say every rose has its thorn.

Kevin Rose, come on, this song goes out to Kevin Rose. Just like every night has its dawn.

I just love that song. This makes me love Kevin Rose. Every Kevin Rose has its dawn. Kevin Rose, what’s your thorn bud? Kevin Rose, if you’re out there, I want you to call in and be a guest on this show. Every Kevin Rose has its dawn. We need some more cowbell on the track. I’m gonna tambourine somewhere.

You gotta get that for future shows you have to start ranting.

Boy!

Sings a sad, sad song. Kevin Rose.

Every rose has its thorn.

Yeah!

Yeah it does. Gosh, I just freaking you you caught that yet all the time. What was his name that way that group was? Poison okay, just like every Kevin Rose has its own Is that yeah, I just I don’t know what it is. I love that song Do you love that song as well or you kind of not feeling it as much? So I grew up with a lot of classic rock

I spent a lot of time in harmony with my aunt and uncle and that’s all they would play on the radio So it’s like a 40 minute drive. It’s just Poison and White Snake.

What was the White Snake song that you?

I can’t remember. I never got into it.

Really? I feel like the White Snake needs a shout out. White Snake would be, oh, oh, oh, here we go.

Let me see, this is great.

Let’s make it. Let me get it.

♪ She was no better than the lady I met at the bar. ♪

Their hair was so amazing.

It was really good.

Let me get it. So you’re driving to where now? Hominy, Oklahoma. And then your family will listen to this? Oh yeah, my aunt, just all the classic rock stations. What kind of car were you driving? So at one point she had a blue Buick. They

used to call it the big blue boat. I can’t remember the other Buick, but I think It’s like a Grand Am.

Here we go.

Everyone knows the chorus. This is a passion. You said, okay, so you got White Snake. Who else did you have to listen to? That’s great stuff. Oh, man, ACDC.

Oh, not really?

Yeah.

Who else did you listen to? Let’s see.

Pink Floyd, I liked them.

I think you mentioned somebody else though.

I think you mentioned somebody.

Thunder!

Okay, who else did you listen to?

He sounded a little like Cobra Commander.

Cobra!

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

little like Cobra Commander. Destro! Now sound of the dawn

G.I. Joe!

Beating my own heart Cobra! Attack! It’s the same person. That’s amazing. Do you have one more? Come on.

You said Poison? Poison?

You said Poison.

You said White Snake. ACDC we already covered. Poison? We got that. Is there somebody else

though?

There’s gotta be one. There’s Van Halen. What was the Van Halen song you guys would jam out to while driving? Do you remember what that song was? Oh, I’ll do one better. Motley Crue. What was Motley Crue’s song you guys would jam out to? Kickstart My Heart. Really? That’s that song. Kickstart My Heart? The opening line to that song. What is the opening line? When I get high, I get high on speed. Are you serious?

Yeah.

How is this ever music? It was huge.

What?

That’s Cobra Commander 2. Everybody back then. It was like for some reason it was cool to sing up there.

Yeah. Oh, oh, women specifically, because that was a whole thing. Dudes only wanted to be rock stars because, like, oh, we get the chicks. And all the girls at that time loved guys who could sing super high.

Really?

Oh, yeah. D, uh, you know, um, I did the last, this is a great song. Remember Guns N’ Roses?

Yeah.

Lots of Guns N’ Roses.

What’s that?

Everybody if you’re in your car right now, try to sing along. Here we go.

We gotta get to some good lyrics. Let’s look at some…

Let me get some…

Oh, there’s one guy kinda singing lower. He’s kinda down there. Here we go. Oh yeah yeah yeah

Knock knock knocking on heaven’s door Hey hey hey hey hey Oh I’m knocking on heaven’s door Oh listen, how does he do that? Knock knock knocking on heaven’s door

Hey hey hey hey

This road

Knocking on heaven’s door Oh Listen, if you’re out there in your car right now and you’re saying, what the crap am I listening to?

What you’re listening to is some hot stuff, and I want you to sing along right now with us or I’m not moving on. I’m going to get stuck here in this death loop, and I’m not going to move on unless you sing along. So get yourself- Because he will do it.

Get yourself to a place where you’re ready to go. I’m queuing it up. Here we go. I really have a woodblock up in the car play okay fuck I just want to just I just want to go to Hades thank you Kevin Rose yeah the problem is? I don’t want to come back.

I like it here. Let’s move on to number 41 on our epic list of 73 top entrepreneur success stories without a college degree.

So number 41 is Kirk Kerkorian. Kirk doesn’t have a degree, but he was known as the father of the mega resort, having built the world’s largest hotel in Las Vegas on three different occasions. Bam! So despite not having a college degree, we will give him a pass for not having a college

degree after dropping out of school while just in the 8th grade. 8th grade! Think about that for a second.

You’re the father of the mega resort.

This is a… I’m in 8th grade, I’m gonna drop out. This is a teacher.

I got a question.

Two questions. One, how can I get some more cowbells on the track? Second question I have is, what’s the best way to drop out? Because I’m going to build a 3.9 billion dollar net worth. Excuse me, what you’re going to do is you’re going to need to calm down, Bobby.

My name’s not Bobby. My name is Kukakori. I’m Sicilian, and I swear I will be worth 3.9 billion and I will come back and I will taunt you. I will invite you to my casino and let you stay for free to prove out that you don’t need a college degree. I mean, that’s the way you think about that. Eighth grade.

Eighth grade. It’s amazing. Wow. And that’s 2008. Net worth was 3.9 billion.

Billion. Go, brah!

Okay, moving on. Number 42.

42 is Larry Ellison.

Larry has earned an adorable 71.6 billion net worth. Shunned! Despite having dropped out of two different colleges. Get out of here. Larry is most widely known as the co-founder of the Oracle Software Company. That’s an outstanding number right there.

Unbelievable success these people are having. All of these people we’re mentioning on today’s show did not, do not have a college degree. They didn’t get a college degree, they earned their success without a college degree, and you can too. Number 43, what do you got there?

Leandro Rizzuto.

Yep.

Okay, talk to me about this one here. So Leandro, all this guy ever did was spend his time building Conair and nothing else. However, just because he’s a billionaire, I bet he deeply wishes that he’d had a college team to cheer him on.

I see a lot of people say that though. They go, you know, it’s great. I always have a team to cheer for. I can always cheer for OU. I can always cheer for Alabama. I can always cheer for Florida State.

I’m just, I’m so glad I have a degree. Now, Jason, you see that all the time. You see people cheering for Oklahoma State University or University of Minnesota. Because they graduated there 47 years ago, 22 years ago, 5 years ago.

That’s how my whole family is. My mom went to OSU and now all of them, even though nobody else has gone to OSU since, are like, that’s our team.

Those are our people. Do we have anybody in the building right now who’s currently here in the building who has attempted to get a degree? Do we have anybody here?

I think Ben. Ben’s here?

You want me to grab Ben? Let’s grab Ben. I think Ben went to some college classes. I’d like to get Ben’s take on this. And as we’re getting Ben, as we round up Ben, Ben is the search engine optimization director for my business, Make Your Life Epic.

So if you’re a one-on-one coaching client, Ben will manage the team of people that does the search engine optimization. But he does not have a college degree, but he is an expert in the field of search engine optimization. And so if you purchase our new book, Search Engine Optimization Domination on Amazon, you’re going to see case studies and client case studies and success stories in that book

where you can see the fruits of the efforts. And oh, Ben, there he is. Okay, Ben, it’s an impromptu appearance on the Thrive Time Show. Let’s see here. We’ll get Ben all mic’d up here. Ben, I think you’re mic’d up.

Let’s get the headphones on him. And Ben, I wanted to ask you real quick, and you can adjust it. Don’t even worry about the noises it makes. You just got to turn that little thing there. You got to turn that to, oh, now, oh, impressive. Okay.

So, Ben, you’re here today. Can you explain to the listeners what you’re working on right now?

I’m working on the search engine optimization content that we write every single month.

Are you and your wife going to go by house today, or what’s the plan?

We are going to be looking at a house tomorrow.

We’re in the process of just sorting through them, see which one we want.

Nice. Have you narrowed it down to the top 10, or are you still broad, still wide?

We’re still broad and wide. We’ve only seen four houses. We’re a little early bird.

You’re a tenth of the way there. Beautiful. Now, the listeners out there, we’re talking about why you don’t need a college degree to achieve huge success. I know you’re busy, but I just want to grab you for five minutes here. Did you at one point go to college?

I did indeed, yeah.

Tell us about how that first year went and what kind of things that you learned?

Well, so originally I was going for accounting, business administration, that sort of thing. I wasn’t really entirely sure, but what I did learn was nothing useful at all, in the

least bit.

What kind of classes did you take? I know I’m not trying to put you on blast to memorize the specific classes you had,

but what kind of things were on the syllabus? I learned about prehistory to medieval times.

I learned about medieval times up to…

Is there one thing you remember from that class at all? Even if it’s not applicable, but one thing you remember about medieval times where you’re going, I did not know that.

One of the teachers, he said that it’s most likely the pilgrims were quite possibly pirates.

I did not know that. And you use that on a practical level. How can you use that information in the game of life?

You can’t. I can’t imagine being that professor, Vic. Well, kids, today we’re going to be talking about business accounting. We’re going to start with the bubonic plague.

How do they, I’m just asking you, how do they with a straight face teach classes at college? Like how can somebody on a college campus with a straight, again, if it was a joke, I would get it, but how can they go, alright, you’re all here to get a degree in economics and finance. So today we’re going to start off by studying humanities for one solid year. Humanities and social science, we’re going to get quantitative literacy,

and we’re going to be studying truth-false tables and papyrus and Mesopotamia, the Baroque period of artwork, we’re going to be studying the history of literature, we’re going to read the Ketcher and the Rye, we’re going to study Freud and his theories on the electro complex and the Oedipus complex. How could they do that without, I mean seriously, your first year, what other classes did you take the first year?

I took a humanities, like in all honesty, it took me like a solid year to actually get to the courses I was actually wanting to take and for me to figure out that I actually didn’t like the major I was going into. It took me a solid year to realize that before I actually got to take any of those classes.

When you take your wife on a date, what’s a restaurant you guys like to go to?

We like Sushi Train. I love that place. It’s so good.

We like, it’s called Burger Street. We like burgers.

So let me cue up, this would be college, the first one or two years have no relationship to what you want to do. You’ve got to get your basics out of the way, pump the brakes. Now let me go ahead and share with you, this is how it would be like going to the sushi train. If the sushi train, it’s like, let me cue my sushi bar music.

If the sushi train operated like a college, this would be like the vibe. So you’re going into a sushi bar, let me get the vibe. Excuse me sir, would you like a table for two? Or how many people are in your party?

Yeah, just the two, yeah.

OK, well I’m going to get you a table for eight.

Why?

For the first quarter of your time here.

What?

Why?

Because it’s a prerequisite.

Smoking or non-smoking?

Non-smoking.

Why don’t you smoke for a while, just to see if you like it? Now sir, what kind of, what kind of, I’m bringing you inside now, it’s been a quarter of your time outside. Sir, now that you’re inside and you’re in the non-smoking section, did you enjoy the smoking? I did not actually, I hated it. Did you enjoy the outside? I got the black lung. Okay, now what would you like to eat tonight? Sushi. Sushi? What kind of sushi?

We like the California rolls or we like the spicy crab.

Okay, I’m going to get you some catfish.

It’s not what I said, but…

No, no, I’m going to make you… you have to pay for it too because that’s what we do. The first quarter of your visit has been outside smoking, doing what you don’t want to do. The next quarter is spent now having food you don’t want. And now we’re in the third quarter of your meal. Sir, are you full on that catfish?

Unfortunately.

Now it’s time to get to what you want to do. Alright, now we’ll get that sushi for you. You’ve been here for three… This is the third quarter of your meal. You want some of that… You want some sushi now, finally?

Probably just take it home.

Well, instead of giving you that sushi, let me talk to you about sushi for the next quarter of the meal. The history of… Here’s… I want some sushi. I’m going, let me tell you about the history of sushi. You see, back in the day, the Japanese… I mean, and then you’re going, I just want some sushi. Let me tell you about why the word sushi was developed.

Who has named their child sushi? What some people feel about sushi. Why I like sushi. My random pontification is about anything. And now the final quarter of the meal, sir, now that you’ve sat outside for a quarter of the meal,

had catfish for the next quarter, now that you have known the history of sushi, now let’s have some freakin’ sushi. That’s what college is like, is it not? Most definitely, most definitely. Complete waste of freakin’ time.

Ben, will you explain to the listeners out there now what you’re doing as far as your job title or your role up here at the offices?

So right now I am the search engine optimization manager. I think the SEO czar.

I like to kind of…

How many articles is your team pumping out a month for clients.

So this month, we are on track to complete 8,900, a little bit above 8,900, so close to 9,000 articles

this month.

Wow.

There it is.

So Ben, getting it done, writing more content than any other search engine optimization company on the planet. Ben Summers, you’re the man. Thanks for joining us, my friend.

I try.

And we will continue. I just want to call Dr. Tim, because he’s an ophthalmologist. I want to get his take on the college degree. I want to grab members of our team, and I want to go through as we as we work through these top 73 success stories without a college degree, it is absolutely essential that you ask yourself today, do you need a college

degree? Do you actually need a college degree? Because if you don’t, don’t suffer through it, just move on. Now as we continue our discussion about the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a degree, we now move on to entrepreneur number 44. Jason, who is it? That is Leslie Wexner. Leslie Wexner.

What did she do? Let’s see. Oh, I’m reading this in your brain, so I’m just going to read it as if I’m you. Yeah, just read it as if you’re me, because again, I’ve spent way too much time, dozens of hours, researching top entrepreneurs who have had major success without a college degree. And I’ve paraphrased it, I’ve summarized it into the most original hypertext markup language

content on the planet and a podcast. So Jason, read it as though you were me. Although my wife buys things from the L Brands, the worldwide retail empire that owns Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Limited, I am not by any means impressed or endorsing Leslie Wexner’s decision to drop out of law school to start a billion dollar brand with the $5,000 that she could have handed over to a college.

Think about that for a second though. Leslie Wexner started Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works and Limited. How is that possible without a college degree? I have no idea, but at least two of those dominate every mall I’ve ever been to. Have you ever noticed that when you go into the mall, any mall, those stores dominate?

They are huge.

Did you know they were all owned by the same person?

I actually did not know until this very second.

The Illuminati, man. It’s the Victoria’s Secret Illuminati. Let’s move on to entrepreneur number 45, who’s doing well without a college degree. So 45 is Mark Echo, not to be confused with Marky Mark from the Funky Bunch. funky bunch. If you are one of the few people who base success upon whether or not someone has had success, then you may find Mark Ecko impressive. If you base your success on whether

you have a college degree, Mr. Mark Ecko is rather unimpressive. Without earning a college degree, Mark was able to build a billion dollar brand and over 100 million net worth. Now when I think about Victoria’s Secret and I think about Bath & Body Works and Limited, because of the vast conspiracy. They’re all owned by the same people. This is the kind of music that I think of.

This is what I picture. You know, I walk into the store, I’m going, this store is owned by the people that own the store across the hall.

What is that?

And then the store down the way. So down the way, across the hall, they’re all controlled by the same person.

If you zoom out on Google Maps and highlight their area,

yes, it’s a triangle. It’s a pyramid.

Whoa, the Bermuda Triangle.

It’s unbelievable.

It’s a pyramid scheme. It’s a triangle. It is Victoria’s Secret. And then those dirty, dirty sales reps who work there, every time I see them, once a year when I go in there to buy my wife various things

for the holidays, which are actually gifts for myself, but they’re for her, I go in there and they say to me, they say, Sir, can we help you? I hate that. They look at you in the eye. Have you been to Victoria’s Secret? I’ve been there all of one time.

Don’t you always… Okay, so you’ve been there one time? But still, I know exactly what you’re talking about. You go in there and you feel like a sick freak. Yeah, and then they’re like sharks and they just, this is like, you are the fresh blood in the water and they just pinpoint you. Sir, is there something we can help you with? Yeah, you can help me by not looking at me.

And then when I check out, I don’t want them to make eye contact. I just want to put it in a bank where you put in the tube and they just give me out money. I don’t want to have a relationship, okay Victoria’s Secret ladies? I feel dirty enough having gone in there. Now we move on to entrepreneur number 45 who has had massive success without a college

degree.

Who do you have there, Jason? So that was Mr. Mark Echo. And so without a college degree, he helped build a billion dollar brand and his net worth is over 100 million dollars.

Yay! Mark Ecko, you’re doing well. Good job, good job. But does he have a backup plan? No, because he does not have a college degree. Let’s move on to entrepreneur number 46 coming in hot. Who is it, Jason? That is Miss Mary Kay Ash. In all reality, Prince should have been writing songs about Mary Kay and the Pink Cadillacs instead of songs about Pink Cashmere, Purple Rain, and Raspberry Beret. Note Clay wrote this because I would never say that about Prince. But Mary Kay Ash was incredible.

I realize that he failed to realize her greatness because she could not earn his respect without

earning a college degree.

Yeah, I mean, Prince, imagine Prince, he could have been singing songs that mattered like Cadillac, pink Cadillac, instead of like, purple rain, purple rain, you know, it’s pink If he would have hitched up to that MLM and locked in and became a triple diamond. It would have been pretty impressive. Couldn’t he have become a triple diamond? He could have.

I’m not sure what the pyramid looks like over there, Mary Kay and Ant. He was a very pretty man. Imagine all the makeup he could have sold. That’s what I’m saying! He could have said, listen here, ladies, okay, I happen to be on my down line, I have six million people on my down line who are all wearing much less makeup than what I wear.

But I not only believe in the product, I wear the product. I am the product, and I write songs about the product. My name is Prince, I believe in purple and pink Cadillacs, buy this stuff. A lot of people join MLMs, and they’re not even really into it.

True.

Have you been pitched an MLM before?

I have, and it was the weirdest experience ever.

Tell us about the last time you were pitched. We won’t mention specific people’s names, obviously. It’s usually when somebody’s going through a patch in their life where they realize that getting rich slow over time is not something they want to do. And they find themselves at a weak point looking for success, lamenting upon the life they’ve lived thus far, wondering why they have not achieved the success they want yet.

Then they look to an MLM, and even though it typically seems like something a rational person would not do, they now have signed up. And they came in big, they invested big, and now they want you to invest in them too. Thus, you get a call from a friend, and they will invite you out to, they say, hey, I have an opportunity I want to talk to you about real quick.

That’s exactly how it started.

Could we meet at Panera Bread? But I would like to hear how your pitch started and ended, please. So this was one of those companies, much like, I don’t know if it’s like Herbalife.

It wasn’t specifically Herbalife, but what it was-

Was it Melaleuca?

I have no idea.

I didn’t stick around long enough for the name.

Is it Amway? Or was it Arbonne? But it was an all-natural supplement product, so like pills and protein and meal replacement.

All natural.

It’s all natural. So the guy that approached me, I worked with, he was the receptionist of the old customer service job that I worked at. So like you said, most people join it when they don’t know where they’re going in life. So we knew that the company was coming to a close in like four months.

What kind of company was it?

So I worked customer service and accounting for a rental car

company. But that company was shutting down? Yes. Okay, the company was shutting down. Was the company sold? Yeah. Okay, so the company was sold, it’s shutting down, you guys have four months left, 120 days, you’re looking for opportunities. Oh yeah. And the front desk guy’s like, oh man, this is my move. Yeah, like I already had my next one set up, I was going to do accounts payable at another place, but I would go to the gym there, they have this awesome gym on the top floor. So I’d work out there.

There was a gym at your rental car place? Wow, you were living the high life.

I mean, it was pretty cool for a while. OK, kidding. But so workout wraps up. I’m in the locker room, towel on, about to get changed. This guy comes up, also towel on. He’s just like, hey, Jason, I’m glad I caught you.

I want to talk to you about this awesome opportunity. This awesome deal. I’m like, I don’t typically talk to other men in towels. So can this wait until we get changed and are back on the floor?”

He’s like, oh, no, no, no.

He’s like, five minutes.

Does he say, seriously, I want to get your attention here. So he drops the towel.

No, but he kept readjusting it. Like it was going to fall. And I was like, I don’t want to listen to your pitch. I don’t want to see it like this. And it was probably, I was too nice at that point. So like 10 minutes, I had to hear about this whole thing.

What kind of stuff was he pitching? Tell us. I know it’s been a while, but tell us the kind of benefits he was pitching. So the benefit was, OK, so right now, all you have to do is come to this meeting or seminar. It’s a seminar, it’s a meeting. Empowerment session.

So it was at some rented conference room at this hotel. I was like, wait, are you really trying to sell me supplements?

Was it at the Renaissance or Crown Plaza? I can’t remember where it was. You know that the smaller the hotel, the more scammy it is. So it’s like, hey, let’s meet at the Clarion. Hey, let’s meet at Ramada. Was it like that?

Was it like a mid-tier? Was it like a Holiday Inn Express?

Yeah, it was something not impressive whatsoever. OK, but it wasn’t like a renaissance. No, I don’t think so. Let’s continue. So he came in full force. And it’s like, so for $2,500 upfront.

$2,500 upfront?

You’re going in.

Hold on.

$2,500. I mean, this is an opportunity. So for $2,500 upfront, it would get me enough inventory that I would again have to store somewhere. You get that inventory, you get that product. But what I could do with all of that, so he’s like, I know that’s a lot of supplements to move at one time, so you can do like what I’m doing.

If you wanted to come in on my group, I could pay you to sell it for me, and then we could split the commission, and then that could work towards whatever. Each time you hit a different quota, you get a prize. Kind of like with Mary Kay, only you don’t get a Cadillac. Now explain to me, did he get into why this awesome supplement company doesn’t market their business traditionally and why they

chose to market through individual sales reps like yourself?

He did. Because, in his words, where the supplement market is already so saturated, why try to compete with somebody on that level when we could go door to door, face to face? Now did he explain to you about how the product has been independently tested and verified in like Europe or Sweden? I asked him because I’m like, I’m clearly a guy who’s into fitness.

I just finished my post-workout shake. I did my pre-workout beforehand. So, like, can you tell me what’s in it? What’s in it? And he’s like, oh, you know, it’s all natural. It’s proven.

It’s proven. I’m like, by who?

Oh, see, that’s where it always gets fun. That is how you know you’re being pulled in to an MLA.

Yeah, and so I was like, okay, well, you know, not to say I’m buying in, but just to get him to stop talking. Well, hey, do you have any materials that way I can research it before I make up my mind. He said, no, no, you just come out, we’ll show you the product when you get there, we’ll

go through the whole sales pitch, show you how you can grow within the company.

I was like, pass. And when you told him hard pass, did he ask for, well, let me ask this, if it’s not a good fit for you, what five friends would it be a good fit for? Did he do that move?

He did. He was like, you want to make sure you can tell as many people as possible because they can be your ambassadors and help you sell this stuff. Ambassadors?

Yeah. So when you told him no, he asked for references? Mm-hmm. See, that’s another move. And these people, I’m telling you, if we could just redirect their activities towards productive things and real products and real services, they would be animals.

Right? I mean, he had the passion to go after something that got him nowhere.

I feel like the most tenacious people in the world must be like MMA fighters, Israeli, members of the Israeli army, and MLMers.

Right.

Now, if we could get MLMers to join the ranks of the MMA, that would be some crazy fighting you’ve never seen. That would be amazing. The tenacity. If we could get MLMers to join the American Army, it would be unbelievable just how not tenacious they would be.

It would take one of them to dominate 20 other soldiers. One MLMer in the U.S. Army would be worth 20 traditional members of the Army. Okay, let’s continue. Who is the next super successful entrepreneur as we’re talking about the top 73 success stories without a college degree? That is mr. Michael Dell of Dell computers. Yes, he’s the billionaire who created Dell computers He has a net worth of thirty seven point six billion dollars. Yes, he does

Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy. But here’s the thing I bet you I bet you that if he wanted to throw himself an elaborate drunken college party to reenact the experience of going to college, he could have done that. He could throw like a Bonnaroo-sized party with that money. Hey, you went to school for two years. Were there some crazy parties when you were in school?

No, because I went to more or less a trade school. Trade school? Oh, okay. Yeah, so with culinary, instead of having to spend four years with breaks and parties, It’s you go there from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week with no break. So you get it done like a year and a half.

So we really don’t have time. Well, I think that Dr. Breck is going to be on today’s show. I believe so. And he’s a chiropractor. And if he joins us for the tail end of the show, he did go to a traditional four year college where he was on the campus quite a bit.

So I believe he might have some great college stories for us there about the those once in a lifetime experiences that you’re paying $40,000 a year for? Wow.

Okay. The trade-off is lifelong friends.

There it is, until you quit talking to them. That’s true. All right, let’s move on to the 48th successful entrepreneur who has had success without a college degree.

That would be Mr. Milton Hershey.

Mmm.

I always like to say, if you never finish the fourth grade, you’ll spend all of your life making chocolate. I always say that. Oh, yeah. It’s like that adage you said the other day that I never heard, but then what you said it made more sense. When I’m around my kids, a lot of times I’ll say, you know what they say, if you never

finish the fourth grade, you’ll spend all of your life making chocolate. And my kids go, would you say that? And I said, you know what they say, if you don’t graduate, if you don’t finish fourth grade, you’re going to spend all your life making chocolate. True. And that’s exactly what the founder of Hershey’s milk chocolate ended up doing.

Yeah. As the founder of Hershey’s chocolates, Milton actually sold his first chocolate bars in 1900. 1900. And ended up investing in the building of his own company town. That’s insane. His own town, Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Look it up. This just in, he has his own town. With the education of a third grader. And he doesn’t have a college degree.

That’s a loser. All of the ones that we’ve read so far, it was like, didn’t even complete elementary

school.

Wow.

I see people all the time, they always ask me, man, Clay, you’ve had a lot of success. Where’d you go to school? Did you get your MBA? No! And let me tell you, some of the hardest people to train are the people with the MBAs.

I’ve seen it in accounting.

It’s bad. People just do not. If you have an MBA, it’s like you’re uncoachable now, most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time. Is that the degree that all the accountants are like, hmm, I’ve got my blah, blah, blah? That’d be your CPA, but I see a lot of accountants who do go back for their MBA or

a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs. It’s a thing where when you hire an MBA, it’s almost impossible to teach these people anything. Let me give you a quote from Elon Musk. Elon Musk, who obviously is the guy behind PayPal, the guy behind, let’s go with Tesla.

Oh, that sounds familiar.

He’s done well for himself, okay? This is what he has to say about having an MBA. This is Elon Musk here. He says, as much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. What does he mean by that? As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs.

MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies. Our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.

In spite of.

As in, he views it as a negative thing. So if you say, I have my MBA, he’s kind of going, ah, okay, another example would be, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, writes, MBAs are not necessary at Facebook. I don’t believe they are important

for working in the tech industry. Oh boy! And another example, Guy Kawasaki says, for every full-time engineer, add $500,000 in value. For every MBA, subtract $250,000. That’s Guy Kawasaki.

That’s Guy Kawasaki. That was the legendary marketing guru behind Apple who we’ve had on the show. The whole MBA thing, I just think that it’s hyped up. People believe it means something, but I think it doesn’t. Let’s talk about Mark Cuban. Do you want to hear what Mark Cuban has to say about the MBA?

I would love to hear anything. Mark Cuban says, I think an MBA is a complete waste of money. What? He says, I think an MBA is a complete waste of money. If you have a hole in your knowledge base, there’s a ton of online courses you can take. I don’t give any advantage to someone in hiring because they have an MBA.

That’s Mark Cuban. He owns the Dallas Mavericks. He’s worth a billion dollars. He sold technology to Yahoo back in the day. He’s doing well. Another example.

This is just a… Should I slam the MBAs more or should I just continue… Should we move on?

I can help you slam them real quick. Just for like a real world example, that same accounting job that I had. So my first job in accounting, accounts receivable, before I was getting sold supplements in the men’s locker room, I was in customer service and realized I wasn’t going anywhere. So the one floor up in the accounting department, they posted, because they would send out this like a weekly newsletter.

So I applied, I got an interview with the lady and she’s like, well, I’m looking at your resume and I’m not seeing that you have a bachelor or MBA that has anything to do with accounting. I was like, right. She goes, well, you read the job post that said, you know, not required, but they were looking

for somebody who had that because for some reason that would be the secret sauce.

There we go.

So I told her, I was like, hey,

I’m willing to give it a try. I wanna go somewhere, so give me two weeks just to learn the software, to learn how you guys work. I know how Excel works. I know how to balance a spreadsheet. I know how to send a payment, receive a payment.

As long as I know the system, I think I can do it. How large was this company? So it was Hertz.

Hertz bought out $1.50, who I worked for beforehand. Oh, now we’re spilling the beans. It needed some context here.

So I mean, they were pretty big. When I was working, some of my biggest accounts were like Car Trawler and Travelocity. And we’d get millions of dollars each week for their payments. Wow. And so I learned the system in two weeks, and I was there for a good year and a half

without an MBA, even though on the job posting it was like, somebody with an MBA has to be able to do this. I just sat down for two weeks and said, hey, how does this work?

It didn’t have to go to school for four to six years. It is amazing. It’s amazing how just what a waste of time getting an MBA is. Let me read a few more MBA-related quotes here that I think will blow your mind. This one comes from Peter Thiel, the gentleman we quoted earlier, who was one of the early venture capital investors in Facebook, also part of the PayPal mafia that included Elon

Musk and Reid Hoffman. He writes here, this is Peter Thiel, he says, never hire an NBA. They will ruin your company. I can only speak to the few times in my life that I’ve hired an MBA, and it’s always terrible. Like, it’s never good.

Like, they, it’s just, it’s absolutely awful. And, again, now maybe you’re out there saying, I have an MBA and I didn’t ruin a company. Well, then great, you’re an outlier. I’m just saying, Seth Godin, we’ve had him on the show, too. Seth Godin, we’ve had him on the show, great, great entrepreneur. He says, an MBA has become a two-part, he’s become a two-part time machine.

First the students are taught everything they need to know to manage a company from 1990. And second, they’re taken out of the real world for two years while the rest of us race as fast as we possibly can. That’s a very good way to look at it. So again, I would just encourage you if you’re out there today and you’re getting to a place where you’re saying, I’m thinking about getting my MBA. Don’t do it! This commercial brought to you by Oklahoma

State University MBA program. No, it’s not. All right, let’s continue. Who is the next super successful entrepreneur who did not have a college degree? Number 49 is the most smiley chef you’ll ever meet, Rachel Ray. So Rachel is a genuinely happy person that has a real love for people and food. What really makes so many poor culinary school graduates mad is that she never had informal

culinary training, which is true.

I’ve heard this from many, many people who have a formal culinary education, which you actually went to school for. I’ve never talked to you about this, but I’ve heard people that don’t like her because she does not have formal training.

Have you heard this complaint about her? I have, and I wanted to clarify yesterday that even though I did get my degree and go to school for it, I realized having met multiple chefs and seeing how far people have gone, it’s not necessary. Not necessary.

If you want to do it, that’s fine. There’s a lot of debt that comes with it, though. It’s not cheap. It’s very time consuming. And on top of that, it’s just like with any other degree. As soon as you get out in the world, they’re going to say, oh, you have a degree in this?

Cool. How many, or how many years have you spent in the kitchen? And then that’s the question, because you’re like, wait, I spent the past two years in a prep kitchen, but I don’t know the flow of everything. Every high-end place that I went in Tulsa rejected me because I had the degree. I didn’t have… Repeat that again! You just said what? I want to

hear this. You said that every high-end place that you went to in Tulsa… Yep. What? They rejected me. They said that I could take a job as like a dishwasher… Right. Or busboy so I could get the experience to work my way up to being a line cook to then hopefully spend four to five years doing that until the sous chef was gone and the one reason was because oh we get the fact that you went to a certified program you have a you know two-year degree your associate’s in arts or whatever like you clearly get the it’s like when you learn

Spanish you learn like the textbook version that’s what culinary school was now let me tell you this this is a little little secret here for the listeners out there I have friends who own banks who own large automotive businesses, who own huge companies. I’ve interviewed billionaires, millionaires. I’ve spent literally thousands of hours interviewing some of the world’s most successful people. And one thing that I’ve heard off camera and off mic a lot is that if somebody has too

many degrees, they don’t want to hire them. No, because Because they know It’s going to be very very hard to get that person to be willing to start a job at an entry-level position Yeah, we’re a lot lower position because they have so much student debt and When somebody goes to school that long it generally shows that they can’t do well in an entrepreneurial environment Exactly, so I know that a lot of a lot of people out there have told me, listen, if a guy shows up and has

multiple degrees, I’m probably not going to hire that guy. Did I just see Dr. Breck? Oh, you did. Oh, Dr. Breck, right on time. He’s about ready to join us on the show as we’re talking about the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree.

Jason, move on to entrepreneur number 50. Dr. Breck, welcome into the box, my friend. It is good to see you. You’re looking sharp by the way It is looking grim. He always looks great, but really floral pattern almost too great this morning Okay, so move on to the 50th entrepreneur on our list of 73 entrepreneur success stories who do not have a college degree Number 50 is mr. Ray Kroc

He’s a high school dropout, but he was still able to systemize and franchise the McDonald’s hamburger chain.

Yes.

Nobody was more passionate about saying, would you like fries with that than Ray Kroc. Would you like fries with that? So let’s talk about that for a second. Dr. Ray, have you ever been to McDonald’s? I have. Why do you believe McDonald’s has been so successful?

From your, you know, you’re a consumer, you’re a chiropractor, you’re a guy who’s had success in the world of business. Why do you think that Ray Kroc and McDonald’s have had so much success?

I think the biggest things are the processes and the consistency. That they could bring the same product across the nation regardless of whether you’re in California or North Carolina. You could get the same burger. So you knew what you were getting every time you saw those golden oranges.

Now we called, we previously called on today’s show, we called Dr. Timothy Johnson. He’s an ophthalmologist who has a degree. Right. And I wanted to get his take on this because today’s show is called the Top 73 Entrepreneur Success Stories Without a Degree. Right.

As we’re two and a half, almost three hours into today’s show, I got to ask you this here. You went, what college did you go to?

I went to Oklahoma State for my undergrad. And Oklahoma State for your undergrad, got it. And then I went to Parker University for my chiropractic.

And you learned everything about the spine, adjusting the human body. Talk to us about the things you learned at college that you

use now on a daily basis. So I went from being a biology major to I ended up getting my bachelor’s degree in anatomy. I also had a minor in physics and chemistry. But that’s because you change around a little bit. But yeah, and then in chiropractic we get a lot of nutrition. We get a lot of biomechanics.

So you went to school, just like Dr. Timothy Johnson did, for a practical skill.

Very specific.

Chiropractic. Yeah, doctorate in chiropractic is not going to allow you to do many things other than

chiropractic.

Now, so when you got out of school and you were a chiropractor, talk to me about all of the business related things they didn’t cover at all at college. Some of the things where you go, it would have been nice, I think it was Dr. Johnson brought up, they didn’t really teach search engine optimization or how to manage people. What kind of things did you not learn at chiropractic school or Oklahoma State that you would have wished that you would have been taught?

We did have a couple of classes in chiropractic school, so I think they did make an attempt,

just not a phenomenal one. What did you learn? Search engine optimization was definitely not one of them. Not one of them, okay. No. Okay.

Managing people was not really one of them either.

It was more like some business accounting, some general business practices were shared.

What’s the hardest part about running a chiropractic business that you, I guess, because you’ve had massive success over these past three years, you’ve really grown really well, and it’s well documented and you’ve talked about it on the show, that those first, what, 15 years or so?

The first, we’re at 16, starting 16 now, so the first 13.

First 13 years were kind of rough. They were rough.

Kind of rough. What are the things that you wish they would have taught at college that you would have, wish you would have known, because you kind of struggled in the wilderness for 13 years, now you’re doing great. What are the things that you wish they would have taught you on the college campus?

Marketing. Oh! You know, getting those initial patients to come in the door was a big one that would have been nice as an entrepreneur.

How to make some phone rings. Yes.

Would have been nice to teach you how to get customers. Got that.

Right. Okay. Yeah, you can’t just hang out your shingle and people just start showing up. Okay. Unfortunately. Okay.

It’s not like a beacon that draws people in.

So yeah, marketing would have been nice. Managerial skills.

How to manage humans.

How to manage humans. Turns out it’s a lot harder to manage humans than most people think. That’s where most of my headaches come. It is. People calling in sick. How many sick days do you typically have per year, Dr. Breck?

For myself? Yeah.

None.

See, that’s what I’m saying.

I haven’t had a sick day in, I don’t know, 16 years.

This is what’s interesting. This is why I get along with…

I have great chiropractic.

This is why I get along with entrepreneurs so much. I remember…

What is a sick day?

Yeah.

What is a sick day? Colin, if you know what a sick day is, I would just say this. Years ago, it was probably 2000 and I want to say like 12 or 13 something, a buddy of mine, one of my former employees invited me over to dinner. So I’m at his house and he has steps that are pretty, it’s like the staircase here where there’s no railing.

And I’m walking off the side, walking down the steps, and my wife or somebody said something to me and I turn and I just walk off it. Like four foot drop off. And I just rolled that ink.

I hear a pop.

Bam! Just pshhunda! And I hear that pop. Anyway, so one of my clients who’s a doctor, he sees this, it looks like the elephant man, the next day he sees this unbelievable swelling and he says, hey, you want me to look at that real quick? And I’m like, well, yeah, sure.

Something limping around everywhere. And he says, just feeling around, I think you tore some ligaments or something. I’m going, all right. Well, he says, well, you know, what you need to do is do this, do that, come here, go there. We’ll probably need to get surgery or something scheduled. I can’t treat that.

I’m a family physician. I just know what I’m feeling here. He’s got kind of an emphasis on some sports health stuff. He said, you’re going to need surgery for that, man. And you know what I did what didn’t have surgery No, and you know, you know what I when the weather changes it hurts it hurts

You know what I kept my streak alive it to be a business owner You have to be kind like Brett Favre. Yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs aren’t very impressed by Cal Ripken or Brett Favre They’re like that’s a supposed to you’re supposed to do but the world marvels when they meet people like you they go You’ve never had a sick day. You’re the Iron Man. But every entrepreneur I’ve met at our workshops

who’s super successful.

I kind of feel bad now because about nine years, well, OK, I think it’s about 10 years ago. You broke the streak? Yeah. Now that you tell the story, I had been playing a weekend sport, weekend warrior,

about 10 years ago. Tore my ACL. That was on Sunday. Went to work on Monday, limping around, did get the MRI, did schedule surgery two Fridays later.

So I did miss a Friday to get surgery, but I was back to work on Monday.

You missed a Friday?

I did.

Man, that is, that’s weak.

So, yeah.

I feel like I owe some people an apology.

You should have kept working while having that surgery. That would have been impressive, you know?

That would have been a lot better. Do you mind if I adjust your spine while this guy’s operating on my ACL? It’s like, Doc, is there any way we could set this for eight o’clock? See, I just like to leave everybody with the same quote, because what’s funny is I’ve managed people

for almost two years now.

Two years, yeah. And people ask, well, what do you do when you need to take a sick day? I’m like, I don’t take a sick day. I’m like, well, what do you mean you don’t take a sick day? I’m like, think about it as the great character

Barney Stinson. And this is one of my favorite characters of all time, but he has a line.

Who’s Barney Stinson? Barney Stinson. Are you making this up?

No. So Barney Stinson is the, what is he? He’s like a, he’s like a architect. Well, actually, nobody, so he’s like a Chandler from Friends. Nobody really knows what he does at his job. But he gets paid a bunch of money to just wear a suit and be there.

But he never, like nobody’s ever seen him sick. And so like, Barney, how are you never sick? He’s like, I don’t get sick. Like, what do you mean by that? And he goes, when I start feeling sick, I stop feeling sick and start being awesome instead.

Therefore, I never get sick. So when people ask me that, they’re like, well, how do you not get sick? I mean, I just start being awesome. I choose to not get sick. Exactly.

I’ve just found if you’re an entrepreneur, you just, there’s no other backup plan. You are the plan A. You are the plan B. Let’s go on to entrepreneur number 51, I believe, on our list of top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college.

Three.

So number 51, you know him, you love him. Mike Myers’ character was inspired by him. It is the one and only Richard Branson. Yes, have you seen Austin Powers? Austin Powers and Richard Branson are the same person. Okay, so back to you, James.

So Richard Branson is the founder of many, many companies. To name just a few, he founded Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile, and Virgin Atlantic Airways. In 2007, he made it onto the 100 most influential people in the world list. He was also knighted in 2000 at Buckingham Palace for his entrepreneurial success. He also

dropped out of school when he was 16. He dropped out of school when he was 16 years old. And he’s going to space. Going to space. Can I tell you? And he owns his own private island. That’s one

of those. I’m kind of like, yeah, I can follow that lead. Here’s something. I’ll tell you this. I have a rule. I’ll tell you this. You know what they say. I’m not going to follow you unless you have your own private island. That’s what I say a lot. Oh yeah. I’ve heard you

said that one. It’s a great quote. You know what they say.

I’m not following him unless he has his own private island. Now let me tell you about you guys know a lot about the Richard Branson story there. Dr. Brecht, you know a lot about this. Not a lot. Let me just say a quick story here. Some of me. He’s dyslexic. Okay. Really struggled to read. Teachers told him that he was basically mildly retarded. So he decided to drop

out of school. And guess what his first business was?

Here we go.

DJing. He started a newspaper, but he can’t read. So guess who his first advertiser was? Lloyds of London. Really? Guess who his first interview was with?

Who?

Mick Jagger.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then, I’m just telling you, this guy’s whole career, if you get a chance to read the book Losing My Virginity, it is fascinating. He cold calls alphabetically through the phone book back in the day, and Lloyds of London was under the banks section. They answer the phone, and he pitches, he convinces them that he has this hot student newspaper, he only has room left for one more advertiser, and that in the banking industry

there’s Lloyds of London, and he mentions their competitor’s name. And he’s like, now if you don’t do it, I’ll sell one to these people, either way I gotta close out this issue. And they’re like, okay, we’ll close it out. So then he calls up Mick Jagger’s agent and they said, well, kid, we get a lot of calls. We can’t just do random interviews with random newspapers.

He says, no, no, this is one, it’s created by students, it’s for students, we know what students want. In fact, one of our advertisers we just got today was Lloyd’s of London. And they’re like, oh, that’s huge. That’s the biggest bank in that area. So he gets Mick Jagger booked and his mom’s like, Mick Jagger’s coming to our house?

And he goes, yeah. She’s like, how are you going to pull that off? So he renovates the house in terms of move stuff around, and he gets a bunch of buddies from school to set up desks and to start calling each other. So it seems like there’s a lot of activity going on while he’s interviewing Richard Branson. And then he runs an ad in the paper that says that he has this thing called Virgin Records.

And if you want to get major records, major LPs, vinyls that you love at a fraction of retail costs, just call this number. Just call this number. And so people would call the number and they’d say, hey, I want to get the new Rolling Stones album. He goes, absolutely.

We’re sold out, but thank you. I’ll let you know when we get it in. And he keeps doing that and then he realizes, holy crap, I need to start a record company. And he just continues this sort of resourcefulness his entire career. Read Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson. That’s a fascinating story.

And now we move on to the next entrepreneur success story, number 52, as we discuss the top 73 entrepreneur success stories without a college degree.

So number 52 is Richard Scholes.

Who’s this guy?

Well, have you guys heard of Best Buy?

I have.

Yes.

That’s the guy. From Best Buy.

The guy that started Best Buy. Yeah. OK. But you know what?

He doesn’t have a degree to fall back on.

That’s true. Dr. Brick, I want to ask you this because you said you went to your undergraduate at Oklahoma State University.

I did.

Please explain to me what kind of things you studied your freshman year that you use on a daily basis or a weekly basis or a monthly basis. Tell me anything at all you learned those first two years at OSU that you use on a daily

basis.

Keg stand?

No. No.

No.

Keg stand? Let’s see. You’re pretty hardcore there, Jason. That’s not what he does.

I did take a, what is that, a Comp 1 college English class where I do have to, I still do some writing.

So that was useful.

That’s a mega point. That’s one useful thing. One point for college.

That was useful. I took a math class. I still use math.

Okay, two mega points.

What are the things you… And then the other things were some heavy sciences and things that just were stepping

stones to get me where I wanted to go, but I don’t use them daily today.

Tell me about the things you learned at college, if you can remember it. Some of the classes you took that at no point have you ever used.

No point of ever using.

I do not, on a daily basis at all, use organic chemistry or inorganic chemistry.

Okay, so that’s… We had two points for college. We just lost a point What’s in our class you to get college where you’re going that I mean you take psychology. I did

What about I actually looked into? Psychology as a career. I’m glad you didn’t do that. Yeah, I almost got a minor in that is really almost almost Okay, I really enjoyed it. So I see in psychology. What else did you study at college? You didn’t use it that you don’t use it all I took a honors art appreciation. What kind of stuff did you learn in that class? I learned about the classic artist. You know, different famous paintings and works of art. Which is great. It’s fun, but it’s not that useful. It’s a great show on the Discovery Channel. Turns out the Discovery Channel for what, $100 a month you can get cable or

YouTube TV for $50 a month and you can watch all that stuff and they don’t charge you. $400 a credit hour or whatever. To get that stuff. Tell us about your education again. You have an undergraduate in what?

My bachelor’s degree is in anatomy.

Your bachelor’s is in anatomy.

Bachelor’s of science in anatomy.

Got it.

And what else do you have? And I have the minor in physics and chemistry.

Got it.

And then you are a chiropractor.

Yeah, I’m a chiropractor. That’s truly impressive.

Okay, Jason, we’re moving on here. Jason, we’re moving on. Tell us about the next successful entrepreneur who does not have a college degree. So that is number 53, Mr. Rob Kalin. Rob actually flunked out of high school, but then after flunking out, he started Etsy,

using $50,000 of an investor’s money.

And as of 2010, Etsy’s worth over $300 million.

Now I can tell you this, I know people that buy stuff on Etsy. I’ve never bought anything on Etsy. Breck, have you ever bought anything on Etsy?

I don’t think so, but I’m confident to say my wife has.

I feel like if you’re a man and you try to buy something on Etsy, it immediately kicks

you out.

It’s actually kind of true. My fiance told me to look for the specific ring on Etsy and she could always find it,

but it was like I was blocked. You know why?

Because you’re a dude.

That’s true. It’s a provision they put in there. I’m just telling you, it’s very… I know women that love it. I can’t figure it out.

I haven’t really tried, but I do know my wife has bought stuff on Etsy. Really?

Yeah. And I think my wife has too. And your girlfriend does. Yep. I just, I very rarely find a dude who buys things on Etsy. But Etsy, good job.

Doing well, Etsy. Turns out it’s doing well. Jason, this just in. Who is the next successful entrepreneur who does not have a college degree?

That is Mr. Ron, is it Papil?

Yeah, Ron Papil, baby. Yeah, he invented houseware appliances like the beef jerky machine, the chop-o-matic, and the Showtime rotisserie and barbecue. But wait, there’s more. He did not go to college. Ron Papil, have you guys ever seen the meat dehydrator?

My grandparents had one. I was telling somebody about this just a couple of weeks ago that as a kid, they would dehydrate apples and bananas, you know, perfectly good beef, turn it into beef jerky.

Was it good?

It actually was.

Yeah.

I can tell you this.

I had to get used to some of the fruits being dried up. That was kind of, you know, a lot of apple, I wasn’t used to having apple chips.

I can tell you this. My dad growing up, he’s kind of like Ron Papil. He would just dehydrate me. Just go out there and, you know, any…

You just stand in the sun and work.

I’m just kidding.

He’d go out there and work, no water for you. Just kidding, now he has a great book that he wrote that I have actually read called The Salesman of the Century, and it is awesome. Like, he breaks down what makes things sell, and it’s crazy, that book is Salesman of the Century,

is awesome, it’s a fun read, and you start hearing about, like, remember the spray hair?

You remember the spray?

The canned hair?

The canned hair, Jason, have you ever heard about the spray hair?

Oh, no, it’s making a comeback, like it’s big. I think I have a patient who has this. I found a can of it, like an old can of it, in the product room at the Broken Arrow Elephant. I opened it. I was like, what is this? And I just like, oh, I need to use this.

Are you being serious? Yeah. It’s a spray hair. Let me see if I can find the commercial here. This is… Let me crank it up a little bit here.

If you ever wonder, do you have to have someone else do it for you? I’m going to do mine right now. I’m going to use, so I use dark brown or silver black?

Silver black.

Silver black.

Oh, silver black.

I want to look younger.

I think he would prefer dark brown.

Dark brown, the lady said over there. Silver black.

I want dark brown, ladies.

I think he wanted dark brown.

I want dark brown.

But the point here is, Ron, that you can, anybody can do this themselves. You don’t have to have somebody do it for you.

Oh, wow.

You all see my, I better check my own bald spot back here.

I can see it.

Just like in the TV commercial.

I can see it.

Okay.

It’s there.

Let me, uh, put this on.

Now you see it.

Oh, oh.

You’re about three inches away from the scan.

Now you don’t.

And later on in the show, I’m going to wash it out right in front of you so you can see how it looks after we use the hair cleanser, okay? When we let that dry, I’m going to use my…

It’s the patented GLH system.

…shield here.

Okay, here we go.

It’s going to spray it.

Of course, with this, you really don’t have to look in the mirror.

Oh, wow.

How’s it possible?

Okay.

That’s it.

That’s it.

No more bald spot.

Wait, wait, wait, there’s more. There’s more.

He’s going to brush it out now.

I’m a little impatient.

And so, let me just do a little brushing here. Oh, wow. It can’t hurt the hair. It can’t hurt the scalp. What do you think, folks?

Yes!

I mean, if you can sell canned hair, spray hair.

You’re a salesman.

You are a salesman.

We’re going to get you a hair transplant. You’re going to get a hair transplant.

You’re going to get a hair transplant.

You’re going to get a hair transplant. You’re a salesman.

You are a salesman. Way to go, Ron Papil. Yes. All right, Jase, we’re moving on to entrepreneur number 55, who’s had major success without the benefit of a college degree.

That is Mr. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host that America loves to hate.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

But did you know he’s a college dropout?

I did know he’s a college grad dropout and I did know this he actually made 84 million dollars in 2017 Nice alone. Yeah, this guy. I’m just telling you had a lot of success without a college degree Let’s move on to entrepreneur number 56 there Jason. That is the one and only mr. Hi. I’m Russell Simmons nice Russell Simmons is the man behind introducing the world to hip-hop music, also big sponsor of the Green Dot Card. If you get a chance to look into Russell Simmons life, his book Life and Deaf is unbelievable, but if he introduced the world to basically hip-hop as we

know it today. So you talk about the Beastie Boys, you talk about Run-DMC, he started Deaf Jam Recordings, which ultimately signed Jay-Z and huge artists. He also is the founder of the Fat Farm Company. He’s the co-producer of the hit film, The Nutty Professor. He has an estimated net worth right now of $340 million. Your cat’s named after him.

I did name my largest cat after Russell Simmons.

And Russell’s a sweetheart.

I love that cat. Yeah, he’s a massive… I’ll tell you one little sneaky feature about Russell Simmons the cat. If you don’t pet him, he’ll bite your toes. I’m not kidding. He’s really nice, but if you don’t pet him, he’ll straight up bite your toes.

I’ve never seen a cat like that. That’s his movement. Maybe that’s the human’s secret to success. Have not because you ask not. Have not because you bite not. Russell will just, I mean seriously, my cat Russell, that guy, he’ll look right at me and he says, you know what they say, if you won’t pet me, I’ll bite you. I mean, I look at Russell, look him in his little cat eyes, he’s, you know what they say, if you don’t pet me, I’ll bite you.

Okay, let’s move on now, Jason.

Man, talking cat, that could make you a lot of money.

Yeah, but most of the conversations that I’ve had with the cat, I try not to record. To not freak out our listeners.

All right, nice.

Yeah, so number 57 is S. Daniel Abraham. Yes, Mr. Abraham started SlimFast and is now worth a reported $2.1 billion. Wow. But, no degree what no how is it possible that he doesn’t have a degree in nutrition from the University of The market does not care about whether you have a degree or not. How can you possibly sell slim fat? Dr. Brick, how do you think he could sell slim fast without having a degree in nutrition? I just don’t know

It’s I don’t I mean it’s boggling

All I would say is if you’re out there listening today And you can find a problem that the world is willing to pay you to solve you can make a lot of money. Years ago, I met the guy who invented the red gas can. He’s crushing it. Crushing it. Unbelievable success.

Why? Because it turns out people want a gas can to store some extra gas. He made it red, which is more memorable. And there it is, the red gas can with the yellow top on it. Unbelievable.

Jason Beasley, back to you in the booth there, my friend. Who is the next entrepreneur who’s had massive success without the benefit of a college degree?

That is Samuel Truitt Caffey. Okay. So Truitt attended high school in Atlanta and later served honorably in the United States Army during World War II. Yep. But yet he never found the time to earn a college degree.

True. Truitt started his chicken empire by opening his first chicken-focused restaurant, The Dwarf Grill, at the age of just 25.

Dr. Breck, how often do you go to Chick-fil-a? My kids love Chick-fil-a. We actually have created our own little song about how one of my children is going to turn into a chicken

because she just wants to eat Chick-fil-a. That’s adorable. You know, we had some employees for me back in the day. We had a guy named Roman Johnson and another employee by the name of Cody Aldridge. They teamed up to write a song about Chick-fil-a called See You on Monday. And it’s about how they want it to be open.

Just longing at the window on Sunday.

Right, they go to a Chick-fil-A on a Sunday and they want it to be open, but it’s not. Right. So I’m going to go ahead and crank up the song. I’m going to play this as we take a quick strategy break here. So if you haven’t heard this song, it’s called See You on Monday, Chick-fil-A, by Roman Johnson and Cody Aldridge. Let me hit play on the track here. Let me get this queued up here.

I’ve got something to say. I never wanted something so bad in my lifetime But I can’t have it cuz it’s Sunday, and I want you chick-fil-a It all started. I was driving down the street saw a cow at the sign told me what I should eat more chicken Yo, then I started tripping love at first taste when I look at your face my whole world stands still so does time and space Six whole days at my favorite place

Yeah, I’m love sick today Three little syllables, Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A, you feel so far away Chick-fil-A, I’ll see you on Monday Sandwich, strips, nuggets, oh my I could cry just by thinking about a waffle fry

I’m like a little boy feeling like a million bucks When I open up my char-grilled chicken deluxe Spicy with the medium lemonade, fire meets ice, it’s a flavored grenade Now shake, yeah, cookies and cream, cookies and cream

Chick-fil-A, we’re so far away Chick-fil-A, I’ll see you on Monday

I’m like a pirate, who just found a treasure When you hand me a meal, and you say my pleasure Yeah, I could beige and sweet tea I need you right now, and I know you need me See, we could be a family Little chicken ninnies, what an ice dream

True and Cassie, I could give you a kiss For dreaming so big, now listen to this

Home, Chick-fil-A You feel so far away I know you got my number. I’ll see you on Monday. Number three, value size with a sweet tea. Hold the pick up.

Chick-fil-A.

I’ll see you then. Oh, big shout out to Roman Johnson and Cody Aldridge.

A great, a great gift they gave to Arthur Greeno, the owner of the Chick-fil-A, off of 71st and Garnett.

Dr. Breck, what’s the…

That was a little better than our home version.

It’s a…

Yeah, we made up our own little ditty, but theirs is far better.

They went to the next level?

Quite, yeah, like several levels up.

What’s the most money you’ve spent at Chick-fil-A at one time?

Oh, I have no idea.

$300?

Were you catering something at home?

We have a kid’s birthday party, and so it’s like, OK, let’s get some Chick-fil-A.

I guess my invite got lost in the mail.

I gave, let me tell you this, I gave…

Did you get one?

I didn’t.

Oh, you’re scorned. I gave, listen, it was for the, it was basically their cheer group, you know, it’s all about the cheer girls. They got so much Chick-fil-A that we’re giving away an entire tray of like a 60 piece to people when they’re leaving as like a party gift. Like, hey, you take some.

Because, you know, it’s like people love Chick-fil-A. And I think we might have overestimated how much Chick-fil-A they wanted.

I was at an event where about 100 men were served Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Really? Yeah.

So, I mean, I’ve been in some of those situations where there is lots and lots of Chick-fil-A

being handed out very quickly.

Why do your kids love Chick-fil-A? Because he doesn’t have a college degree, but he was able to solve a problem that the world had. I know the world already, there was already companies serving fried chicken, so he didn’t

do that.

Don’t they claim to have not created fried chicken, but created the chicken sandwich?

They do claim to have done that. However, why do you think your kids go there? I know irrefutably why my kids go there. Maybe I’ll go first, you can one-up me. Maybe. I’ll say this.

The customer service there is ridiculous.

It is phenomenal.

You go in there, you go into Popeye’s Chicken, it’s like you’re dealing with Captain Sarcasmo.

It’d be my pleasure to try to one-up you.

The food at Popeye’s is awesome. It’s great, but Chick-fil-A’s service is next level.

It is.

But the food is great at Popeye’s, too. Then they’ve got that fun zone for the kids to slide the whole deal, you know? Then they’ve got the cow mascot always there. The bathrooms are clean.

I think the cow marketing was genius.

It’s not about just the food. You see, a lot of entrepreneurs get that wrong. They go out there, they get their MBA, they do their market research, they hop into the marketplace after doing their SWOT analysis, they’ve analyzed their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities and their threats. They go out there and they open their business, and the customer service sucks.

Right. Or they don’t have a fun slide for the kids. You’ve got to solve a problem that the world has. I just would say, Truett, Kathy, big shout out to you. Great job, great service. I worry, though, about what your family will fall back on because you do not have a college

degree. Jason, who’s number 59 on our list here?

Oh, yeah. So number 59 is the man himself, Sean John Combs. So Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or as many simply call him Diddy, is a part-time owner in Ciroc Vodka and has an estimated net worth today of $855 million. Now he could have gotten his college degree, but he was spending time discovering people like Mary J. Blige, The Notorious B.I.G., Jodeci, and other hip-hop and R&B artists

that he helped to produce and promote en route to revolutionizing the music industry. Right.

No college degree.

And he might have put out a little music himself.

Oh yeah, just a little bit. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Think about this. P. Diddy, no degree. No degree. How do you do it? What you do is if you’re out there, you look for a problem that you can solve. That’s how you do it. So he realized, look, the music industry is over here, and he was going to college at Howard University, and he realized that the people at the clubs, the people on the campus wanted music over here in this area, but the industry was over in a different area.

He realized there was an unmet niche, an unmet need. And so he showed up and he introduced the world to the Notorious B.I.G. and to Faith Evans and a lot of artists that people know now, but he was able to merge and he took music from like the 80s and the 70s and revamped it with hip-hop over it. It just worked very, very well. Worth $855 million today.

Insane.

Unbelievable. Let’s move on to entrepreneur number 60, who does not have a college degree. So that’s Mr. Sean Parker. So let’s go all the way back to the good old days of 1999. Try to convince Mr. Parker to stop

creating the first peer-to-peer platform, Napster, and focus on his studies. After all, his success depends on it. But without earning a college degree, Sean is now worth a reported $3 billion and is a fan, much like yourself, of autodidactism. Yep, which is about self-education and self-teaching.

If you’ve seen the movie Social Network about the Facebook story, his character was played by Justin Timberlake. Dr. Brecht, do you remember what it was like to be on a college campus when Napster came

out?

I do.

Wouldn’t you pull an all-nighter downloading everything?

It was a free-for-all. It was a great time to be alive. Seriously, when I was in college campus at ORU, everybody downloaded every song. You know the, I don’t know what they’re called, like the portfolio of CDs? Yeah. Everybody had these huge, massive, you know, binders, or what they kind of look like binders. Yep, binders. Or almost like a… A Trapper Keeper. Yeah, like a Trapper Keeper.

I forgot about that one!

Or like an enormous one.

I still have one of those. It looks sort of like a…

I mean, some of them got so large they looked like some kind of a thermal, you know, food

carrying device.

Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And they were just full of blank, you know, like non-store-bought, non-labeled CDs that somebody, you know, with a Sharpie had written on, you know, this is… Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy, I was going to say. Pete Eddy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Depending on what year it was. I remember that.

He had a different name.

Oh yeah, a lot of Third Eye Blind, a lot of Green Day Download.

Oh yeah.

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I remember that, dude. That is. Yeah. But I will just say that I, I think my freshman and sophomore year at Oral Roberts University, people were downloading everything.

Everything.

And you know what? One of the things about being a successful entrepreneur that’s really going to irritate, hopefully, none of our listeners, but some people out

there.

And I’m going to make a note of all of the ones I can think of, just off the top of my head, that broke the law, en route to breaking a system, en route to breaking the bank. So think about this. Airbnb. Have you ever used Airbnb?

I have.

And Airbnb is ruled to be illegal in some places because it allows people to rent their house without a hotel.

Here in Tulsa, you’re not allowed to. Really? Yeah, the city of Tulsa has ordinances that don’t allow you to rent out your extra space or your house while you’re gone.

But I know people that do it.

I know like Broken Arrow, you can do it.

Tulsa, it stinks.

And then Uber.

Yeah.

Uber, you can use. You know, Uber has taken the place of taxis. True. Essentially, Airbnb allows you to rent out unused portions of your house or your house when you’re on vacation. Right.

Airbnb, or Uber allows you to take your car and to turn it into basically a taxi, but without getting a taxi license. Right. Lyft allows you to do the same thing. You think about Napster. Napster was a huge hit that ended up breaking the industry, and then it turned into iTunes.

Right.

But at first, I mean… But he saw a need, like you may, some artist may put out an album that has, you know, 10, 12 songs on it and there are two good ones. Right. And so he’s like, hey, why buy the whole album? I only want the two songs.

Another example would be Apple.

A problem solved.

Apple started in a garage. Right. Turns out if you read the Tulsa City ordinances or your own local city’s ordinances, you can’t build a hardware company out of your garage.

Not allowed.

Another example, another example, these are just ideas. Google, they started out by essentially downloading the internet and organizing it. But I don’t think a lot of people realize this, they started on the campus of Stanford using computers that the school owned

without the permission of the school. They were using unused computers, some would say stole the computers, they would say borrowed.

The Beatles probably broke some sound ordinances practicing in the garage. There you go.

Another one is Hewlett Packard.

Hewlett Packard, that’s a company that was started in a shed. Now I don’t know if you can start a hardware company in a shed. I’m not sure if you can start a hardware company while starting in a shed. But you have to look for a problem that you can solve. And a lot of times, after you’ve spent too much time on a college campus, you can’t think about ideas that work like the purple cow standing out in the cluttered world of commerce with a message, because you think about the risk of it.

You can’t come up with a no-brainer offer that’s hot.

So often you are part of the herd.

I want to ask you, Dr. Breck, what is the no-brainer offer that you offer at drbreck.com, your chiropractic practice that is a hot deal? Because a lot of our listeners out there are saying, well, Clay, give me an example of a no-brainer that’s practical for my business. So we’ll start with your-

We really have two what we consider no-brainers. So the first one is for the high, high price of free. And that is a consultation, an exam, any necessary x-rays, and your first treatment, all at no cost, no obligation. And the second one is that you can have that same service, that first visit, all the exam, the consultation,

the first treatment, and a second treatment,

as well as a massage, and that just cost you $35.

Really?

Really.

Repeat it one more time. Somebody out there is going, holy crap, I’ve got to write this down.

You get the initial visit with all of the diagnostic workup that we need to do. You get a follow-up visit to make sure that we’re taking care of that need, and also a massage with a licensed massage therapist.

And that is $35.

And that’s drbreck.com. If you’re living in the Tulsa area, you can claim that. Or if you’re in town for a workshop, maybe check it out. Now, let’s talk about Purple Cow marketing. You have one of your colleagues, or one of your competitors, that turned a former Kentucky Fried Chicken into a chiropractic office.

They did.

Could you please explain to listeners out there why he did not take down the iconic KFC bucket?

Well, I had the pleasure of covering his clinic while he went on vacation several, several years ago, probably 12, 13 years ago. And so I also had the pleasure of asking, why did you keep the bucket? So he has a very quickly recognizable building as a former KFC. And the bucket that typically sits above the dormer on the front isn’t painted red and white anymore, but it’s painted white and it’s still there. And he said, you know, everybody knows where that bucket is.

That’s hilarious. I mean, it was just one of those things. He could have just as easily with a hacksaw cut it off, been done.

He’s like, but everybody knows I’m the building with the bucket. I’ve met a lot of people who know about the chiropractor who has the bucket in Broken Arrow. And love it, hate it, mock it, whatever, people know who he is.

It may be controversial, but it’s working for him because he’s instantly recognizable.

You know exactly where he’s at.

And I think a lot of people don’t recognize that Colonel Sanders, some have alleged that Colonel Sanders was actually part of the Illuminati. And so he sort of controls the universe by keeping that bucket up there. It’s like a tractor beam that pulls people in. Let me queue up an audio sample where Mike Myers in the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer, his father in the movie is explaining the powers of Colonel Sanders. He’s explaining the Illuminati ties of Colonel Sanders. And

then you’ll understand how the power of the bucket, yeah, it’s memorable, but it’s also serving as a tractor beam. And some would say it’s pulling in patients from all over the broken Arrow area

Sunny-jum that there’s a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world known as the pentavid Who run everything in the world including the newspapers and meet triannually as a secret country mansion in Colorado? No dad’s the meadows The Meadows. So who’s in this Prince Edward?

The Queen, the Vatican, the Gettys, the Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tetza. I hated the Colonel with his wee beady eyes and that smug look on his face. Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken. Oh. Fed, how can you hate the Colonel? Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you cleave it fortnightly,

smartass!

All I would say is that there’s a lot, I mean, if you’re out there struggling for a, looking for a purple cow, maybe find an old, abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken, keep the bucket up there and start adjusting spines. Alright, so we’re moving on to number 61. Yes sir, so number 61 is Mr. Simon Cowell. So in 2019 Forbes reported Simon Cowell earned 49 million dollars Whoa, and he’s the man behind the X Factor American Idol, but can he truly achieve success without a college degree?

Okay, how much did you earn last year? That was 49 million dollars. Think about this for a second He earned 49 million dollars last year. Yeah, just insulting people saying it’s a note for me I want to make sure we’re getting this idea. If you go today to Oklahoma State and you get their MBA, if you go to Oklahoma State and you get a degree in business management, if you get a degree in psychology, what career could you possibly go after, after getting a degree, or what degree could you possibly

get that would equip you to earn a career, to get into a career, to find a path that would say if you’d once you have a degree in a Business administration you can make forty nine million dollars a year You’re not gonna find that so if you’re gonna go out there, and you want epic success You got to break the mold got a minute So you either have you have to decide there’s a fork in the road If you want to become a chiropractor on a welder a dentist a doctor a lawyer

You’re gonna need a degree for those kinds of things. So now you have a skill, a tool. Now once you have your skill and your tool, you have to decide, do you want to be a technician, where you actually well do the welding yourself? You actually do the dentistry yourself?

Or do you want to build an empire? And so I think what you’re seeing here with Dr. Brecht today would be an example of a guy who you have treated patients yourself for years and you love doing it.

I do.

But now you’re in the process of kind of scaling and taking the practice to another level where maybe eventually you’ll

have many other doctors on your team. We’re talking to some now. There you go. Yeah, so we’ve been doing a lot of foundational groundwork, but now that we’ve done that work, we feel like we’re heading into the next phase of actually making some of these things happen.

So you’re willing to put in the work, put in the rebar, you put in the rebar, the foundation of getting that skill, you needed to pay the

bills. Well, and systems. So a lot of things that coaching has helped with me is processes and systems. And so there were a number of things that we needed to correct or do better to allow us to scale. We were initially not in a position to be able to scale.

So I look at it like this. You have laid the foundation. When you get the skill, the degree, the certification, however you get that. You need to get that skill. And you have to get it one of two ways. Either one, you get a degree for a profession where you are required to, but if you want

to become a record producer, you’ve got to intern. The best way to gain the knowledge is by doing it. So again, the fork in the road. How are you going to get that foundation? Are you going to get the degree, because you might need it for certain skills, or are you going to intern?

How are you going to get that hands-on, that skill? Then the second layer is you’ve got to build the systems while delaying gratification. So you got to nail it now. Then you can scale it. And you’re kind of on that scale it phase now, but you’re willing to put in the work needed. So if you’re listening today and you’re going, wow, all these people don’t have a degree and they’re all super successful. Perhaps I don’t need a degree. What I’m saying is I think two thirds of our listeners don’t need a degree, but some of them do.

Yeah.

What I’m saying is that you want to- There’s not any one route that’s going to get you there. Right. You need to be open to what is going to be necessary, what’s really not necessary, and you’ve got to pay for that degree still. So I mean, if you’re getting a degree in psychology or underwater basket weaving, it’s not going

to be very useful to you. Now you watch your mouth. Underwater basket weaving.

Now what I’m railing against is this idea that everybody, by just virtue of being born, that you need to go get a degree. I disagree with that path. My daughter’s 14 right now, and she was talking with grandma about maybe wanting to be a veterinarian or an orthodontist. If that’s the case, then go to college, get that degree, let’s go do it.

Please don’t practice veterinary medicine without a license.

But if you don’t want to become something that requires a license or a certification, then don’t get in. I just see so many personal trainers in the world of fitness who are super poor and have tons of certifications. Then I see some people in the fitness industry

who have like one certification, but they are bona fide when it comes to building systems and marketing and strategy. You’ve got to learn so much more than just the skill that pays the bills, but you’ve got to get a foundational skill.

If you’re listening today, what is your core skill that will pay the bills? You’ve got to learn those skills. Jason, who’s the success story, the 62nd entrepreneur success story, without a college degree?

Oh, that is the iconic Steve Jobs.

I’ve heard of him.

Oh, here we go.

That sounds familiar. Ride the bull. The company that Steve Jobs co-founded with Steve Wozniak

is currently worth over $1 trillion.

Sick.

But that’s a pretty unimpressive number if you consider how high he could have earned had he had a college degree

now I’m a little quick Steve Jobs I want to cue up a Steve Jobs quote here I want all the listeners to hear what Steve Jobs has to say about the importance of passion if you decide to become an entrepreneur

you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is, is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being successful, unquote, in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t. Oftentimes, the ones that are successful love what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough.

You’ve got to have a passion for something. Dr. Breck, if you did not have a passion for what you were doing, wouldn’t it make sense rationally to have quit years ago? Because you went through the absolute hell of trying to build your own business for 13

years. It got to a point where it was really an exercise in futility.

I mean, I’m not sure if it was so much passion as stupidity at some points.

I feel like that if you don’t have a backup plan…

Yeah, burn the ships.

That’ll create a sustained motivation, don’t you think? I do. There’s no way but forward. Talk to me about how you kept yourself from quitting.

Oh, goodness. One, my background, my ethnicity, I’m German Jew, so I’m just stubborn. So that’s a big part of it. And then, you know, I just believed in being able to continue to work hard, just continue each and every day, working hard, persevering, and that one day that it would pay off. I think it was kind of the work harder, not smarter on many days.

That wasn’t always working out, but at the same time, sometimes you just have to outlast the next guy. The right opportunities started to come along at different points that helped keep me going. I’m going to queue up.

I’ve got a great wife.

You have a great wife. I do.

We’ve been married 18 years.

18 years. Today, actually. Well, congratulations, man. Happy anniversary, honey. Woo! And so, yeah, I mean, between the two of us, she helped immensely in many ways, financially

supporting us, as well as just the emotional side of things, being a partner. But yeah, I mean.

Let me tell you something that is dangerous about college. Steve Jobs is going to share with you his worldview. There was an interview he did in 1995, where he explained the incompetence of most teachers. And it’s pretty direct. And I think if you listen to this, you’re gonna go, whoa.

So let me just kind of cue it up real quick. The question was asked, Steve, why do you donate Apple computers to schools? Are you passionate about teachers? And he said, no, no, no, no, no. Essentially, in spite of teachers, I donate to the school.

So I want the kids to have access to the tools.

The learning device.

But the majority of the people that work at schools could not handle it at Apple. We don’t take fall break, spring break, summer break, Christmas break. We don’t get a study hour, we don’t get tenure, it’s called Apple.

So I want everybody to listen to, this is Steve Jobs, you can find this full interview by doing a Google search or a YouTube search for Steve Jobs lost interview. I’m going to play just a few minutes of it and then we’re going to break it down for the listeners out there. So here we go, this is Steve Jobs talking about the dangers of allowing your kids to be taught by people who are not competent.

You know, I think when you’re young, a little bit of course correction goes a long way. And I think it takes pretty talented people to do that. And I don’t know that enough of them get attracted to go into public education. You can’t even support a family on what you get paid. And if you’re smart, I sort of feel if somebody’s smart enough that you want to turn your kids over to them for the majority of their childhood.

I mean, the majority of their waking hours in their childhood are spent not with your parents but with your teachers. I’d like the people that are teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for making $100,000 a year. Well, why should they work at a school for $35,000, $40,000 a year if they could get a job here at $100,000 a year.

Absolutely.

I mean, is that an intelligence test? I mean, so I think we should basically be hiring them and paying them $100,000 a year. But the problem there, of course, is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education. Because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what’s happened.

And teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired, it’s terrible.

Well, some people say that this…

So you say, and nobody can be fired, it is terrible.

My whole family, like the family business is education. So yeah, this goes against… Sorry Brett, family. No, it’s quite all right. But I totally agree with you. I mean, the teachers union protects bad teachers and you don’t have the merit to be able to pay qualified, better teachers.

So yeah, the system is broken.

If you’re out there listening today, I want to make sure all the listeners know that. A lot of times we have show sponsors, people that invest a lot of money into the show. And today’s show is not sponsored by the Oklahoma Teachers Union. Right. Not. It is not. So, Jason, let’s move on to entrepreneur number 63,

who’s had major success without having a college degree. So I’m sure you guys are familiar with shoes. Oh yeah, I wear shoes most days. So Mr. Steve Madden is an icon worth a reported $120 million, but some would question Steve Madden’s priorities when they discover that he chose to pursue building his $100,000 business $100 million brand rather than earn a college degree.

Some people just don’t know how to prioritize. This guy is worth $100 million and he says, you know what, I don’t have time to go to college, I’m building this brand. He pieces out, builds the brand. Let’s talk about entrepreneur number 64,

who’s at the success. That conversation went with mom and dad.

Hey, Mike.

I don’t know, son.

Real quick though, for Steve Madden, I knew nothing about him before other than the name. Like you’ve mentioned him before, and I’m like, I should look into that. I just listened to this great podcast that he was on. One, I didn’t realize that homeboy went to jail

and then came back and just completely dominated. But his whole mentality comes from, when he was growing up, his dad would actually sit him down every morning and make him read all of the people in the newspaper that were filing for bankruptcy.

And so that’s one of the things that drove him. He was just like, I’m never gonna be on that page.

Tell us about why you went to prison.

Um, that’s, he didn’t get into that too much, but it had something to do with… What podcast did you listen to? So that is on Dak Shepard’s Armchair Expert. Armchair Expert. They do a thing weekly where it’s experts on experts,

so they have all these doctors and politicians and big influencers and everything, but I recommend it because one, he has this deep Bronx accent. He sounds like an old school gangster, but yeah, they even reference him in The Wolf of Wall Street.

I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. They utilized his, I guess not character, but persona. Yeah, because he was big with all of those guys. So that’s partly what got him in trouble. But he came back, reformed himself, and he’s awesome.

He’s got a great backstory.

All right. Well, speaking of a great backstory, Dr. Breck, tell us about your chiropractic facility.

That was a perfect segue.

OK, moving on. Entrepreneur number 64, who’s had massive success.

You have another Steve. Yeah. Steve Wozniak. So he may be a billionaire and co-founder of Apple, but he doesn’t have a fancy degree, so nobody cares. But maybe you should name your kid Steve.

Or John. There’s like half of the students named Steve and John. Wozniak is worth $4.3 billion dollars as of the time of this recording. $4.3 billion. Now we’re moving on to entrepreneur number 66 of 73. We’re covering today, again, 73 entrepreneur success stories that did not earn a college degree. Who’s number 66? So that is Theodore Hoyt. What? Hoyt. Hoyt. So he’s the co-founder of a company called Gateway. What? He sold more

computers in the in the 1990s than he could probably count to compensate for the fact that he did not get a degree. This guy, unbelievable guy, worth billions. 4.3. 4.3 billion. That is unbelievable. If you’re out there listening today, again, you don’t need a degree to go out there and to achieve massive amounts of success.

Whatever happened to the Gateway computer?

Well, it’s kind of a thing where the world has shifted. And he was the first guy to show up with the just-in-time computer, which means that when you place the order online…

I remember it coming in the box.

Yeah. So when you would order online, though, they would make it and order the parts to make it after you ordered it. Okay. Where everybody else had inventory sitting. Yeah.

So he was the first one to do that. Now there’s other competitors. It’s generic, it’s either on a shelf. Yeah, he’s still doing very, very well, but I would just say that…

Parlayed it into other things.

Yeah, it’s unbelievable. And just a quick correction here, just to make sure we get this accurate here. We have Theodore Waite is worth $4.3 billion. However, Steve Wozniak is worth over $100 million, not worth $4.3 billion. And the reason why I got those confused was I just read the wrong order.

So again, Steve Wozniak is worth over $100 million, but it is Theodore Waite who is worth $4.3 billion. And we continue, Jason.

Yep, so number 66 is Nikola Tesla. I’m just kidding. It’s Thomas Edison.

Oh, OK.

So good old Tom invented many things. He was the inventor of the modern light bulb and also the inventor of recorded sound and recorded, sorry, recorded video and recorded audio. He also founded General Electric, but he didn’t invent a way for himself to achieve all of that success while earning a college degree. Oh, so he didn’t invent a way to get a degree while

inventing all these things, and I bet, I bet you if we could could get a look into Thomas Edison’s head, his cranium, yeah, I bet you he spent the vast majority of his time wandering around saying, if I had a college degree, maybe I’d be able to

be successful.

Well, think about it.

How many patented inventions did he have? I will look that up real quick. He has an unbelievable amount of patents credited to his name. I will get the actual number real quick.

I wonder how many universities would like to give him an honorary degree.

1,093. 1,093 patented inventions. You could not have done.

In the US and 512 worldwide.

Jeez.

Wow. Sick. Moving on to number 67. Tom Anderson. Yes. So, worth a reported $60 million, Tom Anderson gave us MySpace, which gave the hit producing

band OneRepublic the platform needed to finally gain their first record deal, yet Tom did not block out the time needed to form a study group to earn that degree, but he was still

everybody’s first friend.

Do you remember MySpace, Dr. Breck?

I do.

That was a…

I always kept Tom as my number one friend. Just that picture of him just like looking over his shoulder, smiling, like he’s a good

guy. Fun story here for you. MySpace in 2009 had 1,600 employees. And as of 2016, obviously it was not as big of a thing. Right.

But in the meantime, in 2011, Justin Timberlake actually purchased MySpace. And he was a big part of that. And he was a big part of that. And he was a big part of that. uh… but in the meantime in two thousand eleven justin timberlake actually purchased my

space and i remember that and he sold it to uh… time media the guys who do time magazine that kind of thing so uh… and we continue to use who’s our next successful top entrepreneur next entrepreneur is ty warner

so tied on college he would have learned about the virus the mesopotamian river valley

Babies.

Beanie Babies!

Yes!

Wow! So, Beanie Babies went on to give him a reported net worth of $2.7 billion.

Dr. Brecht, did you ever collect Beanie Babies?

I did not, but my wife did. She has a massive collection of Beanie Babies.

Does she still to this day?

Yeah, they’re in a box somewhere at her dad’s house. No, we’ve got to put those out! Or sell them.

I haven’t seen them. What’s your incredible wife’s name Brooke Brooke I’m just putting this out there the universe here Brooke put the beanie babies out Brooke put Jason a to Macco

Put the beanie babies

out

Put them out

Sell all of your possessions and collect more beanie babies Beanie Babies become a hoarder of the Beanie Babies. I’ve met people like this, though. Seriously, to this day, as 40-year-old adults, they’re buying them.

Well, and yeah, I mean, even back then, they thought, these are going to be worth more later. I don’t know why they thought they’d become a collector. I don’t know how that works, but I think they weren’t wrong.

I want people to think that about things that I sell. They still have the tag in the ear. I would love it if people would buy books that I write and say, I’m not even going to read it or touch it because it’s going to be worth more in the future. Just put a little name tag on it. If there’s no bend in the binding, it’s worth more. Just name all the books after. Okay, that’s it. That’s what Beanie Baby did. It’s just like the same bear,

a different color, a little heart-shaped tag. This one is Berenstein and this one is Bernard. Now they did get outside of that. You know, Michael Jordan and the Bulls were kind of a big deal. And I remember there was a little red bull after the mascot. They get a Dennis Rodman beanie baby and I’m all there. Oh, that’s where they missed the mark.

I don’t know if they did one. Well, we’ll continue moving on here. Ty, if you’re listening, we need a Dennis Rodman throwback beanie baby.

I’ll look it up here, Jason, while you’re moving on to the next one here to see if there is a Dennis Rodman beanie baby.

Yes.

But, while you’re looking it up, number 69 is Vidal Sassoon. Real quick, I’m finding right now that you can find on Etsy, it looks like here I can find it now, on Target, it is a Dennis Rodman, number 91. Yes. It looks to be a Beanie Baby. Is it made by the Beanie Baby company?

It’s officially licensed. It’s recommended for ages 3 plus. I guess you don’t want one if you’re under the age of 3. You’ve got to pick your role models carefully.

Surface wash only.

It’s handcrafted in China. Says, bring home the worm, one of the NBA’s most eccentric and talented players of all time. This legend is ready to play for you. Bleacher Creatures are officially licensed true-to-life 10-inch plush figures.

So Bleacher Creatures, that’s who did it there. So Beanie Baby’s not the official person with the license for the. I do like the other figure that they brought up

that kind of had a very Dennis Rodman hairstyle

look.

OK, yeah, yeah.

Let me find that. The multicolored bear head there.

Let me find that one there. That is $357.77. The rarest sports beanie ever, Dennis the Worm Rodman. There it is. And we move on there, Jason.

Yes, and number 69 is Vidal Sassoon. Creator of Vidal Sassoon and co-founder of Paul Mitchell Systems is known as one of the most famous and successful hair stylists in history He has products and salons all over the world, but you know his only regret is Doesn’t have a degree. That’s right. Oh, he doesn’t have a degree yeah, but after attending college He would not have been able to provide better hair care products or service his 200 million dollar net worth think about that if he went

to college

Maybe just maybe he would know how to improve his shampoo products.

Maybe.

But Jason Sayers never looked better.

Well, I can tell you, this is a notable quote I have here for Mr. Vidal.

I’ll tell you this.

You know what they say.

You’re not going to be worth over $200 million unless you go to college. You can be worth $200 in the hair industry, but you can’t be worth over $200 because…

You know what they say.

You can’t be worth over $200 million in the hair industry unless you have a college degree. That’s what they say. Okay, we’re moving on to number 70. So W. Clement Stone founded the billion-dollar insurance company called Combined Insurance. He then went on to found the Success Magazine publication and to write numerous self-help books despite not having a college degree.

Look at that! And yet another entrepreneur who’s had massive success without a college degree?

I contributed. I had an insurance policy with Combined at one point.

Did you really? I did. Okay, what we’re going to do now is I’m going to cue up the drum roll here.

You’re welcome.

Cueing it up here as you get ready to read. What number are we on now?

71.

71.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Getting ready. All right, Jason, number 71. Who is entrepreneur with an entrepreneurial success story without a college degree Number 71 so number 71 is Wally Amos aka famous a famous Amos. Oh, yeah No way so famous Amos did not even graduate high school. His cookies are a science man. They are it’s unbelievable What famous Amos has done to those cookies no high school diploma no GED, but still went on to create a cookie

You’re telling me famous Amos doesn’t have a degree? He doesn’t even have a college diploma. Or a high school diploma. He’s like an architect of cookies. He’s like a rocket scientist of the cookies. How is it possible?

You’re telling me that this guy, I thought he was like the MBA of cookies.

Had he gone to college, maybe the packaging would have been a different color.

We move on.

I’m queuing up the next one. Jason, get yourself psychologically ready. Okay, here we go, we’re getting off. The 72nd entrepreneurial success story without a college degree. And the winner, let me, I gotta hit multiple buttons at the same time, let me get ready here, and the winner is, the award goes to Walt Disney.

Really? Yeah, the co-founder of Walt Disney Company didn’t graduate high school.

And yet he turned out alright, he’s still frozen somewhere. So he’s doing okay.

Okay, okay, okay. Now…

What is Disney Corporation worth at this point?

What are these movies you speak of?

I’ve never heard of it.

Okay, let’s move on to number 73. The 73rd entrepreneur. We’ve had this guy on the show as a guest. He’s a culinary guru. Thrive Nation. See if you can guess who he is.

This is our 73rd top entrepreneur success story who’s had success as an entrepreneur without earning a college degree. See if you can guess who it is as we cue it up.

So number 73 is… Wait one second, Lanson, let me get all the sound effects ready.

No, no, not yet, not yet.

I got a lot more sound effects, got a lot more sound effects coming in here. Oh, get yourselves ready.

Oh, it’s too much excitement everywhere, Jason. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, There’s so much excitement everywhere, Jason! La la la, Luke!

Luke! Okay, Jason, who is it?

It is Wolfgang Peck. Wolfgang? Is Wolfgang Peck? Yeah, so despite having dropped out of high school at the age of 14, Wolfgang has opened up 16 restaurants and 80 bistros en route to building an incredible national brand of products that you can find in your local grocery store.

Shhh!

Don’t share the story. Don’t share the story because if we collectively start sharing these stories, these success stories, we may burst the college bubble. Think about this. If people start sharing stories about these 73 top entrepreneurs who had massive success without incurring $100,000 of student debt every two years, pretty soon maybe high school won’t become the minor league system for the college pro

team.

It’s unbelievable how every single high school graduate you’ll run into has just decided it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re going to have to have a degree to have success. Now we have kind of a bonus success story here. A guy by the name of Wyclef Jean, who is the hip-hop artist, who decided to go back and get a degree after having success. And I find that a lot of people want to go back to have a degree so that they can say,

look, I did it. I don’t get that at all. I hear a lot of people that say, well, I just want to be the first person in my family to

earn a degree. I understand.

Larry Fitzgerald, he did it because he promised his mom.

There you go.

She wanted him to have the degree, it didn’t serve him at all as far as his career. And I want to say, Larry, I appreciate you Larry.

He’s a man of his word.

I appreciate Wyclef. I’m just saying, like, I could be the first man in my family to swim across the Arkansas River after we knock out today’s show. Let’s do that.

I think we should do that.

And I could do it, I could say I’m the first man in the Clark family to do it, but the follow-up question I would have is why? And I think a lot of people are getting a degree.

You could also be the first millionaire in your family, or you know, ten million, or

a hundred million. I would just ask you today as a capstone thought, do you need a college degree? Because if you do need a college degree, go get one. But the founder of Bank of America clear channel General Electric Apple Microsoft

Facebook Etsy the beats headphones Ford Automotive, they all don’t have a college degree and it’s Colonel Sanders no college degree Coco Chanel no degree Wendy’s Dave Thomas no degree Debbie Fields no degree the org vacuum no degree. Facebook, as I mentioned, no degree.

Blockbuster Video, no degree. There are so many successful entrepreneurs who don’t have a degree, but what I encourage you to do is to get that practical knowledge, whether that’s on a college campus

or whether that’s just in the, interning, volunteering to work for someone for free, interning somewhere where you just put in the work, put in the effort. Dr. Breck, if a guy came up to you today and said, hey, I want to learn the medical field of chiropractic care,

I want to learn how to be a chiropractor, and I’m willing to work for free because I have another job, I will show up faithfully, you can count on me, I’ll work 40 hours a week for free just so I can see if it’s something I want to do, how could we say no to a guy

like that?

No, I wouldn’t.

And I don’t either.

I would welcome him in.

And that’s how a lot of people have earned jobs with me, is they’ve said, I’m willing to work for free. And I think about our Devon, our lead web developer. He started by working for free. So if you’re out there today, just ask yourself, do you need a degree?

But remember this. Picture this. Get this mental picture. You’ve got to get those skills needed to pay the bills. That’s step one. Then step two, you’ve got to nail it and get those systems

in place. And then step three, you can scale it. Don’t get that order mixed up. You’ve got to get those skills, got to build the systems, and then you can scale it. My name is Clay Clark. That is Dr. Breck.

That is Jason Beasley. And we’re going to wrap up today’s show, as we always do, with a boom. And a boom, boom around here at the Thrive Time Show, stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. That’s big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And that is what you need to become successful.

I’ve got one bonus fun fact about Wyclef Jean before we wrap it up. Give me a bonus bonus bonus about Wyclef Jean. So he was super super famous and successful before he got his degree and then he went back to get it. But do you know how many times he had to go through the education process? I don’t know. One time.

One time. Nice! Wyclef Jean, the guy who introduced the world to the Fugees. Obviously the famous song that was the cover they did of Killing Me Softly with Lauryn Hill, where he said, one time, quite a bit. He also has written songs for Whitney Houston, My Love is Your Love, Shakira, Hips Don’t

Lie, St. Anna.

Didn’t he write for a political office recently?

He did in Haiti. Yeah, I thought. So if you’re out there today, I’m telling you, you can do anything that you set your mind to, as long as you’re willing to get those skills, then build those processes and systems while delaying gratification. Build up your wealth a little bit.

Build up that income. Build up that that moment that the financial momentum that that snowball but let that snowball build that momentum and then go into that Next phase of your life called scaling it and so without any further ado three two one

Plate Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy play? Play is the greatest I met his goats today. I met his dogs. They met his chickens. I saw his compound He’s like the greatest guy ran from his goats his chickens his dog So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen right his entire life clay Clark his entire life is is marketing

Okay, Aaron Antis on March 6th and 7th March 6th and 7th. Guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia? Oh Santa Claus no No, that’s March March 6th. Oh, you’re gonna 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 got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place.

In the same place.

Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki? 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 Porter, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Porter Robert Kiyosaki the guy that kick-started your career he’s gonna be here he’s gonna be here I’m up. 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. So 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 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 going to be amazing. Now, think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. 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 going to be joining us. You’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling 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 Front 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 in a 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. But 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. 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. Oh, 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 Juan.

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 gonna learn here, okay?

Okay.

You’re gonna learn marketing. Marketing and branding. What are we gonna learn about marketing and branding? Oh yeah, we’re gonna dive into, you know, so many people say, Oh, you know, 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. And so it can 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. Now let me tell you how the format is set up here. Again folks, this is a two-day interactive 15 Think about this folks, it’s two days. Each day starts at 7 a.m. and it goes until 5 p.m. So from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. 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, 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, 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. We duct taped it. It was a baby crocodile. Yeah, we duct taped it 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 U.S. 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 3 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 this. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. 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 8x, there’s so many examples you can see at Thrivetimeshow.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 bestselling 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, Clay, is there more? I need more.

Well, OK, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages? 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. OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We cater in food, and because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch.

It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cup. She started that company in her home and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says,

I want more! This is not enough! Give me more. Okay, I’m not gonna mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s given 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, it’s where you rent, it’s short term, it’s where you’re

renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that? The rental, the storage space? Storage units. 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 given 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 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. I think that’s going to change your life. I promise you, this will be ten times better than that.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

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

Thrive Time Show 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.