Entrepreneur | Part 1 – Raising Venture Capital: The 14 Points You Need To Know

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Clay. Good to see you. Hey, good to see you, my friend. I’m excited to be here in the new studio. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, well, I appreciate it. I tried to make it plush, so it looks how you look. Oh, wow. That’s wonderful. Yeah. So today we are going to be talking about raising venture capital, specifically talking about the 14 points that you need to know. I’m excited because I feel like this is something most entrepreneurs are completely lost about. They know how to talk to their family and hope that the family will invest maybe, but when it comes to approaching strangers, that’s a whole different ballgame. I honestly believe that like 1 tenth of 1% of all entrepreneurs know how to do this. Hmm. So I’m excited to teach it This is gonna be big. Yeah. All right So Jeffrey glass of Bain Capital says a man without a plan is not a man Hmm, and so we are going to outline exactly what that plan should be, right? Yeah. Well, I will say as you go to raise Venture capital there are 14 points that you have to know. I just want to show you real quick here. Basically, you have to go step one, then step two, then step three, then step four, all the way to 14 for it to work. Now, why am I belaboring this point? Because it’s like a recipe. If you make a cake and let’s say you forget to add flour or whatever a key ingredient is it comes out weird And you can’t just add flour at the end after it comes out of the oven, right? So I’m going to teach you the specific Sequence and all the things you have to do all the ingredients that go in in order to get In Vince venture capital people to say yes and to invest in your big idea in your big dreams So what we’re going to do is I’m going to just go through the 14 points that we’re going to touch on We’ll put them all up on the screen for you so you see what exactly we’re going to be tackling in this episode. So one, what is venture capital? Two, the definition of an introduction. Three, the definition of middlemen. Four, why you need to focus your attention on middlemen to get an introduction. Five, the definition of an elevator pitch. Six, the definition of a high concept pitch. Seven, the definition of a pitch deck or a ten slide. Eight, why you don’t need a business plan. Nine, why your presentation skills and team building skills matter more than the merits of your business plan. Ten, why you don’t ever want to use the word NDA when working with investors. Eleven, why you need an introduction, two investors, 12. Who does the best introductions to investors, 13. Who does the worst introductions to investors, 14. How can you get a middleman to introduce me? Okay. So that’s a lot. It’s gonna be an intense few episodes here, but I think this is gonna really equip us. I know that for Thrive, before you had raised the capital, you had identified this as an area that you didn’t have a super ton, you know, a huge amount of experience in. You had a little bit, but I love that you went out and read a ton of books. You spoke with different mentors who had experience in this, and you have now compiled this wealth of knowledge. You’ve gone out and done it successfully, and now you’re saving us the time from having to read a ton of these books, right? It took me about 20 months to figure out how to raise capital properly. And that was spending time with a lot of mentors and even kind of learning little steps from each one. But there’s a great book called Pitching Hacks. And if anybody is looking to raise capital, get that book called Pitching Hacks. And it’s written by the guys who started theangellist.com. And I highly recommend everybody would read that so you have a baseline level of knowledge, kind of a guidebook to have with you. And so a lot of the notable quotables that we’re going to be talking about today coming from this book. Yeah. Tell us about AngelList real quick. AngelList is a website where if you want to secure angel funding for your technology company, as a general rule, it’s a technology company. You can go up there onto AngelList, put a description of your company up there, of your key players, of certain components, and then angel investors, accredited investors, investors with a net worth of over a million dollars or who make in excess of, I think it’s $300,000 a year, they can go up there and they can look at the different opportunities and then you might get a call from them. Point number one, what is venture capital? Is it Ventura Capital? Not Ventura. It’s not, okay. Ventura? But then that would be wrong. Okay. Well, what is it? I don’t understand. Actually, before we get too deep, let’s just look at Webster, main man Webster. He describes it as funds invested or available for investment at considerable risk of loss in potentially highly profitable enterprises, risk capital. Basically like if I’m a venture capitalist, what I’m going to do is I’m going to invest in your business, your business, your business and 20 others and I expect really only three of those 20 to survive. But of the three that make it I should be able to make enough of a return to make up for all the losses on the other 17 and then make a lot more. And so really, venture capitalists, they have enough money to invest, to spread the risk amongst 10 businesses and to lose on nine out of those 10. That’s essentially how venture capital works. Now, Peter Thiel, he’s the guy who helped fund Facebook and PayPal. He’s a very, very successful venture capitalist. He is known to hit on about 40% of his investments. So he’s a genius, and he invests in 40%. So I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to invest in something, I want it to hit 100% of the time. I don’t know if I can afford it to lose 60% of the time or 90% of the time, but venture capitalists can because they invest in companies that have a potential to grow massively. Right. I feel like when people hear venture capital, they often think Silicon Valley. But you raise capital and most people don’t confuse Tulsa with Silicon Valley and yeah, that’s not limited to that area at all Yeah, well the thing is you can I would say in our country today you have about 500 Venture capital funds that are around that are active That are actually investing and of those you have the overwhelming majority that are in Silicon Valley. You have a massive, massive amount that are there. With that being said, there are people all over the country that raise capital all the time, every day, without going to Silicon Valley. So you can do it wherever you are, but I think people know Silicon Valley because that’s where some of the big, famous startups come from. So if you want to build a business that’s gonna be like a $5 million business, you might need to raise venture capital. You don’t necessarily need to be building a billion dollar business to do that. But as a general rule, a venture capitalist will not invest in your business unless they think it could be a billion dollar business. Right, that makes sense. And to support what you’re saying, National Venture Capital Association estimated that there’s approximately 462 active venture funds in the United States. That was according to 2010. Yeah, so that was pretty close. There we go. And the reason why there’s so few of these, I want to share that, the reason why there’s so few is because you have to have a lot of cash and a lot of wisdom to invest your money in a business and lose it 8 out of 10 times or 9 out of 10 times and be confident that one of the ones that succeeds is going to make you enough money to pay back the losses. Right. Venture capital is very, very risky. It’s not like a bank loan where they’re just lending money and they’re securing the assets. Like if you were to go buy a house, the bank says, we’ll lend you money to buy this house. And should you not pay us, we’ll take the house back. Well, in venture capital, what do you get to take back? If you don’t make money, we’ll take back the company that’s out of business. So it’s a pretty risky deal. OK, so if I’m watching this as an entrepreneur and now you’re redefining venture capital, what are my action steps? Well, one is you really need to ask yourself right now, do I need to watch the next part of this episode? Because if you are not starting a company that has huge growth potential, do not call a venture capitalist. So let me give you an example. If you’re starting an individual restaurant, don’t call a venture capitalist. If you need to borrow $500,000 to start a restaurant that’s going to be locally phenomenal, as a general rule, a venture capitalist is not too interested. Right. If it’s a restaurant that has an ability to scale and become a nationwide phenomenon with hundreds and hundreds of locations, then you want to talk to a venture capitalist. Gotcha. Cool? Well, let’s move on to number two then. Well, the definition of an introduction. Okay. So first off, as we’re defining an introduction, how does this relate to venture capital? Well, I’ll show you on the board here real quick. As a general rule in the world of dating, I always try to go back to dating. In the world of dating, if you are a dude and you want to get to know this dude, so we know, we’ll say his name is Greg. So this is Greg, right? And then this is, we’ll say this is Ashley. This is the lady that you’re going after. If you can call Greg and say, Greg, I want to go out with Ashley. Do you know her? He’s like, oh yeah, she’s my cousin. And you’re like, oh, I wondered why you weren’t trying to date her, Greg, and he’s like, dude, that’s my cousin, that’s wrong. I can’t date my cousin. And I say, okay, well, here’s the deal. I’m glad that’s wrong, and I hope it continues to be wrong your whole life, because I’m gonna date her. Wow. Could you introduce me to her? And he says, sure. You pulled this move. This is a move, this is a dating move. And so Greg now is like your broda. Ooh, broda. It’s Yoda mixed with brother, he’s your broda. Greg says, hey, Ashley, how are you? She says, I’m doing fine he says here’s the thing I know this great guy Mike and Mike man his ex-girlfriend is kind of weird he’s a good guy he’s you know we’re gonna double date this weekend I thought maybe you guys could tag along maybe Mike and you check are you asking me out for Mike no no no I’ll call Mike to see if he’s even interested I’m just saying Mike’s a great dude and you guys should meet each other. Well that little introduction, that little fairy dust, that little magic is what you want to do when you’re doing venture capital. So you want to be Mike, that’s you, you’re wanting to get capital, you are the entrepreneur wanting capital. Greg over here is making the introduction to Ashley who has the capital. So this person here, Greg, is doing the introduction. So why is this so important with venture capital? Because I just make the calls myself, show how assertive I am. Why do I need the introduction? Because there’s almost no documented examples ever of anyone who’s ever raised venture capital who is not introduced by somebody else. So out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of venture capital deals that are done, very few are ever done without an introduction. And it’s just because, and you can say, yeah, but can I go on LinkedIn? Yeah, you can, you probably won’t get connected. Can I go on Facebook? Yeah, you can, but you probably won’t get, you need an introduction. It’s so important. And if you don’t agree with me, read the book, Pitching Hacks. And if you don’t agree with that, read the book called Mastering the Venture Capital Game. And if you don’t agree with that, I don’t know what to do. Maybe you can tase yourself, but that is how it works. OK, so again, if I’m watching this and I don’t even know where to begin when I’m looking for introductions, what do I do? Well, the first thing I would recommend that you do is you want to start to identify the venture capitalists that you want to get in front of. And the best way I know to do that is go on AngelList, and you can see all the venture capitalists, and you can actually see what they have invested in So I can pull up Caleb Taylor and I can see well Caleb Taylor invested in this company that company this company that coming and I can actually see what kinds of companies you invest in right, so if I’m starting a Company that makes some type of technology hardware. I would go well gosh you and this guy invest in a lot of hardware I should maybe reach out to him him. So first is I would make a list of venture capital firms that you think are likely to invest in your kind of business and I would make sure that list is at least a hundred people long. So this is like the dream 100. The dream 100 baby. You got to write them out. Write them out. In your head. I put this piece on the spreadsheet. I would do it. Okay good. Well number three we’ve got the definition of middlemen. Okay so I’m gonna go ahead and read a definition here of the word middlemen and it’s from the book Pitching Hacks we’ve been referring to. A middleman is someone who investors listen to, often another entrepreneur or investor. Find middlemen by picking up the phone and calling everyone you know who knows investors well and who will listen to you. Yeah and I want to just give you a little anecdotal example here. Steve Jobs, People say, gosh, he started a business in his garage. It was such a great idea. He and Wozniak worked in the garage. And it was just this great. If you’ve watched the movie, you can pick up some of this. The one with Ashton Kutcher. If you read his book, you can pick up some of this. If you read any stories about venture capital, you can learn this. That guy was rejected by every venture capital firm he called multiple times. And I think it was the third attempt to the same person. He finally got one investor and that’s what made Apple possible. So that means he got he was shooting roughly one for 300. A hundred people told him no at least three times. That’s ridiculous. And so he’s successful. Yeah. One out of 300. So I want to make sure if you’re watching this again do you need to watch the rest of it? If you’re like I’m afraid to call people and they might hang up on me. Well, then you don’t need to be making, you don’t need to be watching the rest of this because somebody on your team, now in this case, Wozniak was not willing to make those calls, but Steve Jobs was. So you have to have somebody on your team who does not mind calling everyone you know and everyone that you kind of know and calling all these people, getting rejected all the time and shooting one for 300 and then feeling good about it. When you’re calling these people, are you asking for them to invest or asking them for who they know? What you’re wanting to do is after you have your list of your Dream 100, you’re gonna go on to LinkedIn and you’re gonna see who’s connected to them. And if anybody is one connection away, which a lot of people are, you’re called in. Gotcha. Make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So on LinkedIn, you can use the tool on LinkedIn circles, the circles, you can see on the LinkedIn screen if someone is connected to somebody else. Hopefully if you’re watching this, this makes sense to you. If not, we’ll have some cool episodes on LinkedIn coming up here shortly. You can watch those as well. And I know that there’s the five super moves of angel listing. You mentioned LinkedIn trolling. Touch on a couple of those others. Yeah. Well, your super moves you have here, this move number one, okay? And this is, I would call angel listing. And what this is, is you’ll go on angel list and you’re going to look for the people who have invested in the kinds of business that you’re looking to start, like we talked about earlier. AngelListing. Go on AngelList, look for companies that have invested, look for venture capital funds that have invested in your kind of business. Even your stage. You know there’s some venture capital funds that will not invest in startups. Some that will not invest in companies that are not startups. Like I said, they only invest in companies that are already established. Some companies invest in like jet fuel for established companies. So like if it’s a company that’s already doing well, they come in and invest to help them grow nationwide. Gotcha. So I mean, there’s all different kinds of funds. The second is LinkedIn trolling. Go on LinkedIn and look for the people that know those people. That’s how you do it, okay? Now the third move is headline hunting. If you read the Wall Street Journal, there’s a book called Investor’s Business Daily, or if you get the Wall Street Journal, or if you want to go on to Pando Daily, look up the name of the companies that are written about on the news headlines, and then look up and basically research who funded Dropbox. And you can find it and that becomes your list. The fourth move is you want to do relentless networking. And by that I mean you really, really do have to get out of your comfort zone and you have to start networking. B-U-C-K-S, Bucks, possessive Bucks. And at Bucks, that’s where most venture, that’s where a large number of venture capitalists eat breakfast. Really? Yeah. So like, go to Bucks. You need to meet these guys at parties. If you live in the area, seriously, go to where they are. You need to call the people you know. You have to network. You cannot stay in your house and hope they’re going to call you. And I hope this makes sense to you, but you as an entrepreneur can control your destiny. You can truly decide what your future is going to look like. But if you’re watching this and you have kind of fixed mindset, as Dr. Dwyer, she’s a PhD from Stanford, she calls the fixed mindset where you believe that your future is predetermined and you cannot control it, then you need to not do this. Because this is all about you altering your destiny by being delusional enough to believe that one of these 500 companies in the world is going to invest in you. You have to believe that you’re that awesome. And I believe you’re that awesome, but do you believe you’re that awesome? And then the final is the Dream 100 move. Well on the Dream 100 move, what you’ll want to do is just make a list somewhere where you can see it visually at your house. So if you were the one raising money, I’d say, Caleb, take a dry erase board, make a list on there of the hundred potential venture capitalists that you want to get in touch with and put them up on the board and make sure that all 100 people on that list hear from you five times over the next five months. We have that in our office. We do. That works in almost every industry. Massive board on the wall. You’ve got to have the boards. I’m telling you because what happens is if not, you’ll go, I want to reach out to that fund. Right. Let’s say Sequoia is a fund you want to reach. But then you’re reading the magazine and you go, oh, I should also I should also reach out to this firm. Right. Oh, and then that one. And then you meet a guy at a party and you say, I should call him. And then you all of a sudden, like you forget these people. But if every time you have a lead, you put it on the board, you won’t forget. Now, just so you guys know, he touched on networking. I would highly suggest you go back and watch some of those networking episodes as well, because we really break down how to do that strategically and successfully. Absolutely. And that’s a big part of this, what’d you call it, the relentless networking there. Yeah. But Clay, as somebody who’s not necessarily known for his patience, I don’t think that’s a virtue that’s usually attributed to you. This seems like something that would take a lot of patience, no? Yeah, it’s a weird deal because the word diligence is the one I would think of here. It’s a constant application of consistent effort. So you have to be patient knowing that you’re not going to get the answer tomorrow, but you have to be diligent in continuing to apply effort. And I’ll give you an example. There’s one of the celebrities that you’ve helped drum up for Thrive. We can’t talk about him yet But we will soon But he’s the guys very busy, right and he’s got a lot going on which is why we want him on the show, right? and so I’ve we’ve been pursuing that for probably 40 or 50 Communications, yeah either email or call or text and it will happen over and when it does happen we’ll feel good about it. We’ll be like, that was an overnight success for you guys. So just understand the overnight successes usually happen as a result of a daily application of effort over a year period of time. Okay, so I’m watching this. What action steps do I have right here? Well right now, if you’re watching this, break down these five super moves. One, commit to making a Dream 100 list by the end of this week. Physically write down that Dream 100. By the end of this week. There’s all sorts of studies out there that show that people who do not take action within 72 hours of hearing new information never do it. Right. So I’m just telling you, take action right now to get this done within the next week. You’ve got to get it done. It has to be done by the end of the week. Okay. Good. Two, after you start with, on your Dream 100 list, you might have only 45. Yeah. Then go through our moves. Go on AngelList, fill it up. Find those investors, put them on there. Go on LinkedIn, fill it up. And draw it out like a family tree. Here’s the middleman for this person. So you want to put on there, you say, well, this is the venture capital firm I want. Greg knows this person. Tom knows this person. Ed knows this person. OK, these are your middlemen. So you need to go ahead and make that system. Then the headline hunting. Grab the publications. Get on Pando Daily. Get on Wall Street Journal. Find out who’s funding the companies that are similar to yours. Find them. Okay? And the final is do some relentless networking. I’m talking about some intense networking. I’m talking about you’ve never had more coffee and breakfast in your life. You are meeting people that you’ve never met. You’re stepping out of your comfort zone. There’s not a day you’re not getting rejected. That’s what you have to do. Boom. And that’s just a matter of actually taking the steps and doing it, because we’ve outlined exactly what five things you need to do. Now, you just got to do it. Yeah. All right. Number four, why you need to focus your attention on the middleman to get an introduction. So initially, I feel like when we think about raising venture capital, it’s easy to focus on that person with the money who would be investing. But you’re saying don’t even focus on that right now. Do the family tree like I was talking about. Draw on your board the middlemen that know those people. Now talk to me about the mastermind and how does that relate to the middleman? Well Napoleon Hill, he defines the mastermind as basically the coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. No individual may have great power without availing himself to the mastermind. What happened was Andrew Carnegie, the world’s wealthiest man at the time, discovered that basically wealthy people all have a mastermind. They all have a network of wealthy people they surround themselves with and that’s how they become successful. And so you’re going to have to understand that wealthy people hang out with other well-to-do people. They’re not like snobs. But as a general rule, I mean, if you’re a hard-working person that worked your way up to the top and you live in an exclusive neighborhood in California, you probably have neighbors that also have exclusive houses. Unless you’ve decided to make a lot of money and then stay in the community you grew up in. I’m sure there’s somebody like that, but as a general rule, the higher up people go in the food chain, they start to live in gated communities. They start to go to certain dinners, be a part of certain clubs, and so they only know people who are successful. And you talk about your net worth being determined by your net work, oftentimes. Yeah, so you really have to find a way to get into that world. So you’ve got to figure out what country clubs these people go to. You got to figure out what social circles they’re in. And you need to reach out to all the people within that social circle that you can get in front of. And I’ve heard you say there’s no shortage of capital in the world, but there’s a shortage of good ideas, I think you say. What does that mean? Well, as a general rule, what happens is people who come to me and they say, hey, I’m thinking about raising capital for my company, do you have a suggestion? I said, well, let me see your business plan or your idea or your pitch deck. Let me just see something. And usually the idea is so awful that nobody with their in their right mind would invest in it. And the reason why is not because there’s bad people, but it’s because they don’t think through the process. So what we’re gonna try to do is to teach you the 14 steps that you need to think through. Because I can tell you this, when I tried to raise capital initially for some of my businesses, I had some bad pitch decks. I had some bad business plans. I had some bad. So you understand, people aren’t going to invest in it if it’s a bad idea. Right. But also, you mentioned it earlier, but it’s got to have a high enough ceiling to interest venture capitalists, right? It’s got to be a potentially highly profitable business. Yeah, I mean if you’re a young guy, you’re 25 years old watching this, or say you’re a lady who’s 30 years old watching this, and you have this dream of starting a business, and you’ve never started a business before, well, 9 out of 10 businesses fail anyway. So what’s the probability that you’re going to fail anyway? And then what’s the probability that you’re going to fail with my money? That’s pretty high. So what if you have a great team of people that are advising you and what if you have a lot of experience and what if you have a now all of a sudden the risk factors start to go down. So what you want to do is come up with a great idea and then minimize all the risk. So that’s the action step right there? Yeah, you have a great idea and minimize that risk. Awesome. Number five, the definition of an elevator pitch. Now Finn Barnes of first-round capital says good companies should be able to be described simply in a sketch on a napkin What does that mean? Um, what happens is a lot of times you when you have a great business idea You’re so excited. Yeah that you you talk about it. You think about it. You dream about it You really but what happens is you have a really hard time explaining it to anybody. Hmm. You just ramble on and on So someone says well, you know Clay tell me about your business and you’re like, well what it is is it’s a, and then five minutes later, you still have not finished talking. Right. And what you should be able to do is you say, Clay, tell me what your business is. And you should be able to say, well, Thrive provides entertaining education for entrepreneurs. Right, boom. And then if you ask, well, can you tell me more? You should have your clarifier ready to go. And you can say, well, yeah, Thrive provides mentorship from millionaires and everyday success stories. Well. So you’ve got your elevator pitch and a little clarification. Yeah, so if someone asks you, you can clarify it. But usually we have like a 10 minute word vomit where someone says, well, tell me about your business idea. And you’re, and then 10 minutes later, you’re, and you just, you won’t stop doing that. And it’s kind of gross. But think about this for a second. Have you ever gone out to eat with somebody or talked to somebody where they talked at you the entire time? Yeah. And it just doesn’t feel great. No. So when you’re talking to an investor, they still are, they’re humans. And they don’t want you to sit there and talk at them for 70% of the time. And if I had a taser and I tasered myself for every time I was guilty of not following some of these rules before I learned these things, I would be in some severe pain. I’d probably still be tazering myself right now. All right, well, Pitching Hacks actually defines this, so I just want to go over this real quick. You can find it, well, but here you go. Pitching Hacks says, the major components of an elevator pitch are traction, product, team, and social proof, and investors care about traction over everything else. What do they mean by traction? Traction is, are you producing results so far? Most venture capital firms only invest in companies that are already starting. I don’t know if that makes sense, but most venture capitals only invest in a company that actually exists. So it’s like you already have one prototype. Now, some of you watching this might say yeah but Elon Musk they invested in in Tesla. Well they, Elon Musk, put up a ton of his own cash. He had a track record and that he built PayPal successfully and so now he’s asking for more money. Well he did pretty well the first time. Well I think it’s worth investing in it. But very few people like Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. The company was already a working prototype before he got capital. So if you’re trying to get capital with just an idea, nothing to show anybody, that’s a lot more difficult. It’s tough. That would be an angel investor that you’re looking for. Got it. And you’d want to find a specific venture capital fund that specializes in funding startups from the very beginning, or a program called Y Combinator. Y Combinator is pretty big, and that’s a company that helps incubate people with good ideas who maybe need the infrastructure and some coaching to build a successful company. Y Combinator is great. They’ve produced Dropbox, Airbnb. Quite a few different companies have come out of Y Combinator. Paul Graham is the one who heads up that program and he’s the boss. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, my baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27 and 28. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people, if I follow Tim Tebow’s football career on the field And off the field and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field now The big question is JT. How does he do it? Mmm. Well they’re gonna have to come and find out cuz I don’t know Well, I’m just saying Tim Tebow’s gonna teach us how he organizes his day how he organizes his life How he’s proactive with his faith his family his finances He’s gonna walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a hundred million dollar net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind 9 Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk and not only that he also has he practices what he teaches so he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers so you got to come learn from him. Also let me tell you this folks, I don’t get this wrong because if I get it wrong someone’s gonna say you screwed that up buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. You say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan. 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes! Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it, and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Tong, and I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th to 28th. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop over 20 hours of business training we’re going to give you a copy of my newest book the millionaires guide to becoming sustainably rich you’re going to leave with a workbook you’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company it’s practical it’s actionable and it’s Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russia get those tickets today at thrive timeshow.com again that’s thrive timeshow.com Hello I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation. Really life-changing. And I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military, and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big-time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting out shows day after day and now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast and he’s traveling all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th live time show, two day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today folks, you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas, and countless big-time, super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com James, one more time for the four enthusiasts. ThriveTimeshow.com for We are ready. We are ready. We are ready. the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems, so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you’ve got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point, New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And we have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. As Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, I have to, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, you know, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming, because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards, it’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back, and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. Biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the roadmap out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the roadmap out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference like motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition’s gonna come eventually or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just wanna say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, this is the life, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s been another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team we went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome. But Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that we needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018 the month of October, it’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Drive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The Atmosphere Place office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door and it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business. Bottom line, love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews, and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business, as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before, we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that, because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing, and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me, and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. It’s probably really teaches you how to navigate through those things, and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business, and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone needs to attend the conference Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.