Happiness | How to Optimize Your Happiness with Best-Selling Author Gretchen Rubin + Learn What Donald J. Trump Has to Say About How to Optimize Your Happiness & the Potential Dangers of Working w/ Your Spouse

Audio Transcription

Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing. I mean, we’ll do an educational program here, OK? If you’re in business for yourself, I really think it’s a bad idea to put your wife working for you. I think it’s a really bad idea. I think that was the single greatest cause of what happened to my marriage with Ivana. The trouble started, he claims, after he suggested that Ivana run the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City.

And you never thought of asking her to quit when you saw it wasn’t working? Well, I’ll give you an example. I didn’t think of it that way. See, you tend not to think of it that way. Ivana would get angry at somebody over the telephone all of a sudden who was at the casino, and she’d start shouting. And I’d say, I don’t want my wife shouting at somebody like that.

I really don’t want that. And a softness disappeared. It was a great softness to Ivana. And she still has that softness. But during this period of time, she became an executive, not a wife. And I’ve often said the happiest people and the most contented people that I’ve seen,

and I know the very wealthy, I know the moderately wealthy, and I guess I know people a lot less than that, but the happiest people tend to be the people that are making a nice income, that really enjoy their life and their family life, and not the people of tremendous wealth

that are constantly driven to achieve more and more success. I like the reputation of a solid, married man. That’s what I’d like for me. Well, I go on really because I enjoy it. I really enjoy when I when I think about my business I think about it literally 24 hours a day, and I really enjoy it. If I didn’t I will stop. There’s no question in my mind that I’ll stop because I do understand. It’s all basically a game.

We’re all here to play the game, and we’re all hopefully going to play it well. But some people obviously can’t play it well because if everyone played it well you’d have a pretty unusual situation but the game is being played now by me and by plenty of other people and the people that enjoy it are the people that are going to win it, in my opinion well Ron, I think I was probably brought up

in a very normal fashion, we did have a house, I do have brothers and sisters, I have wonderful parents, wonderful family, really very wonderful family, I think we’re a very highly motivated family. Well you do get many doors closed. There’s no question about that, Rana. That’s something that’s happened in in many cases and I guess I guess you just have to keep going. I guess you really just have to keep pushing and just get

going and a funny thing is once you open the first door it becomes a lot easier to open the second door. I mean for instance today it’s much easier for me to have things happen that it would have been five years ago before any of these conceptions or conceptual ideas really came into fruition. Today, it’s much easier for me to make a phone call and try and have something happen than it was five years ago. You’re always going to be criticized no matter what you do, and you have to realize it,

and you really have to develop a little bit of a tough skin, and if you don’t, you really cannot survive, I suspect, doing anything of any great importance. Well, I think it’s easier to develop friendships, but I’m not so sure when you get back down to the traditional sense and that would mean the friends that are here in good times and bad, I’m not so sure necessarily how many of those friends would be around if things

did take a turn for the worse. I’ve often times thought that I’d like to test some people and find out and just play the little game of doing the testing and which has been done on occasion. But it’s very easy to develop friends but it’s very hard to see whether or not they’re real friends.

Again my business is so all encompassing I don’t really get the pleasure of being with friends that much frankly. In 30 years from now your son will be approximately the age that you are today. Would you like to see the same kind of headline as was written about you, father-like son? Well, I think that’d be fine,

but I think more important to me would be that my son would be happy, that my family would be happy. I mean, I really don’t care that much whether or not he decides to go into this business or go into another business. I find this business very exciting.

I find this business to be show business, frankly, you know, in terms of what we’ve done, I’d like to make it a little bit show business. Because I don’t like show business that much. I do like the real estate business, but I like the concept of show business as it relates to the real estate business.

But I would like my son mostly to be happy. And if he’s happy, then I’m really satisfied. And if he’d be happy doing what I’m doing, then I’d be probably a little bit more satisfied. I think my philosophy basically is there has to be something to this. I mean, we just can’t be put here for the sake of living our 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years, whatever it might be, and just end up with nothing at the end of that time after all the combat.

And I really look at life to a certain extent as combat. There has to be something. I mean, we have to be in a test period or there has to be something after this. Otherwise, it just seems so futile. Would you like to be the president of the United States? I really don’t believe I would, but I would like to see somebody as the president who could do the job. And there are very capable people in this country.

Most people who are capable are not running for office. Most men are frightened of politics today. It is a shame, isn’t it? Yes. It is a shame. The most capable people are not necessarily running for political office and that is a very sad commentary on the country. They had major corporations and they had this and that but they are not running for political

office. Why wouldn’t someone like yourself run for political office? You have all the money that you possibly need, you’ve accomplished a great deal even though you are only 34. I know there’s a lot of things that you possibly can do in the years ahead. Why wouldn’t you dedicate yourself to public service? Because I think it’s a very mean life. I would love and I would dedicate

my life to this country, but I see it as being a mean life. And I also see it that somebody with strong views and somebody with the kind of views that are maybe a little bit unpopular, which may be right, but may be unpopular, wouldn’t necessarily have a chance of getting elected against somebody with no great brain, but a big smile. And that’s a sad commentary for the political process. Television in a strange way has ruined that process, hasn’t it? It’s hurt the process very much. I mean the Abraham Lincolns of the world.

Abraham Lincoln would probably not be electable today because of television. He was not a handsome man and he did not smile at all. He would not be considered to be a prime candidate for the presidency and that’s a shame, isn’t it? I think I just basically I thrive on what I do. I enjoy what I do, I like what I do.

And it’s not that I’m looking for anything, I just enjoy it. When I get up in the morning, I’m excited about the day. I enjoy so much my work, and I think that’s probably the key to anybody’s success. Is there anything you can’t have? Well, I believe if you think that you can’t have it, you probably won’t have it. You have to go into everything with a positive attitude. You know they say that,

I was telling somebody a little bit before, they say that the human mind is only using one percent of its potential and that if the human mind could use three percent you could do literally anything, you could cure the major diseases, you could do anything, just one mind in this world, if it could get up to three percent of its maximum potential. So let’s say you don’t get up to three percent, but if you can get a little bit more out of it than the one percent, I think you’re going to be able to do pretty much whatever you want to do

if you have the basic ingredients going in. You got to shift at some point, right? Because when you’re coming up, you say yes to everything. You know opportunity is going to work. And then when you get successful, you have too many opportunities. You got to learn to say no. There’s paradigm shifts along the journey. And so that was one of them. That’s the logical part. And then the illogical part, or the spiritual part, is realizing what true wealth or abundance or success is. To me, it’s my

definition, true success or wealth is health. It’s the ability to have joy in a present moment. That’s, if you can do that, you’re a wealthy person. And if you’re grateful, if you’re grateful for what you have, you’re wealthy. I don’t want a life that is hyper successful in the vertical of work and finance

and a desert wasteland in the areas of passionate intimacy, faith, spiritual growth, friendships, fun, physical health, giving back. Right, so I believe, the way I look at my life, and I do measure this, is work and mission is but one vertical. And the thing I screwed up in my 20s

is I thought if I crushed it so hard in this vertical, meaning I got all the fame, all the money that I thought the points would carry over. I thought, yeah, I can not show up, you know, to Thanksgiving and not return my mother’s phone call because she knows I’m busy. I’m pop star Mike Posner. My smiles don’t result from good things. They result in good things. Being the joy in life, not waiting for something good to happen so you can feel happy.

Being happy so something good will happen. Not waiting for someone to do something nice for you so you can feel good. Doing something nice for someone else and make them feel good and then you feel good. You know, by default. So I’ve been told in recording studios so many times, the lyric that I’m trying to write isn’t relatable. Hey, Mike, don’t you can’t put that in a song cuz no it no one will relate to it

Yeah, nobody else took a pill and a visa to show Avicii. They were cool. That was just me But everybody’s done something That wasn’t true to themselves to try to gain the attention of someone else And so Wow Yeah, no one the lyric on the surface is unrelatable the emotion underneath the lyric is universal.

I was a shy kid and I was really into my music, so I’d always stay in and then my friends would come back, they’d stumble into my room drunk, interrupt my song, and push them out and this whole thing. And one day I go to this kid’s room down the hall, his name’s Andrew, he was a really cool kid, you know,

and seemed to have a more robust social life than I did. It was only cool Xanders. I never met a not cool Xander. Yeah, exactly. And so he said to me, Hey Posner, at the party last night, they played your song and all the sorority girls knew the words.

I said, what, really? Yeah, that’s my job and making music 12 years now. That’s never happened. He goes, Yeah, and do they played it twice? They played twice in a row and everyone’s saying the words. So then I said, Wow, okay, the next day, my mom calls.

And she says in passing, by the way, I really like that song you make cooler than me I don’t know how she heard it her you know friend sent her my myspace at the time so I said okay that’s kind of peculiar it’s on the hip-hop blogs sorority girls like it and my mom likes it the next day my friend Big Sean calls who I came up with in Detroit and he had got a record deal with Kanye he’s a rapper from Detroit and dear friend of mine he said I love cool to me

I he goes I think that could be a hit song I Said hold on if Sean Mom and the sorority girls all like the same song Something’s going on here that never happened before Because I’ve been making music 12 years and nobody seemed to particularly give a fuck besides me

Including my mom right always supportive and loving. She, you know, paid for music lessons. Supportive, but never told me she liked one of my songs. I’m 20 years old. Wow. So, I realized the way these hip-hop blogs work was you’d go on the site, there’d be a blog entry with your song, some kind of right-clicking and there was always these weird links that would throw you off into some sketchy websites and you had to click the right thing and then save, you know, file as and that’s how you download the song.

It was really convoluted and hidden behind advertisements and I just realized that these sorority girls were never going to do that. They were never going to go to these hip hop blogs and if snowball chance in hell they would. They wouldn’t ever be able to download the song. So I realized iTunes was just starting to come out and it was this safe place you could get music. And so I knew I needed to get my music there. But then I had this other rub that I alluded to earlier which is no one’s going to pay for it. So I need it to be free like it is on the blogs, but I need to be on iTunes. And then I saw iTunes U. So iTunes U was this section of iTunes that was set up for professors

to post their lectures. And if you weren’t there, you went to a different school, you could listen to this professor’s lecture and it was purely educational and the cost was free for everything on iTunes U. There was no charge. It was an educational arm of iTunes. So I said, I gotta get my music there. Now this is where life capital L comes in. I’m from Southfield, Michigan. It’s a suburb of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. I moved to Southfield when I was two years old. I grew up there. I lived there until I’m 18 and I go to Duke University. I do some searching and I find out who’s in charge of iTunes U for Duke. So if you’re

a Duke professor and you want to post your lecture, how do you get up there? I find out it’s a man named Todd Stabley. I cold email Todd. Remember you could type in any name and the director could get the email. So I get Todd’s email. I cold email him and we do a phone call. He gives me his number and his number is the same area code as mine. Hey man, you got a 248 area? Yeah, he goes, I’m from Southfield, Michigan.

Where are you from? I said, come on. No, so I get the goosebumps still to this day. I said, look, this is what I’m trying to do. I’m a student, artist, and I want to share my album, you know, and I want to put on iTunes U. He goes, oh yeah man, from Southfield, you’re a student, we can put it on iTunes U. No problem. Life set that up for me, man. So, I got my music

on to iTunes. And you just search on iTunes like any other thing, but when my album came up, the price was free. Any other music out cost $1, $99, whatever it was, mine was free. And so, then I got busy on Facebook. I created a Facebook event, and there was a link to that album.

And I activated all my communities. So I was from Michigan, and a lot of my friends went to different colleges across the country, including Michigan, Michigan State. Gosh, friends at Northwestern, friends at Marquette, just wherever they went. And then my friend, I was in fraternity, and there were these, we had pledges, so these

older guys would do mean things, these pledges, make them do a thousand pushups or whatever. I said, look, you guys are going to do something for me. You’re going to send the invitation to this Facebook event to everyone in your Facebook network, every single person. There’s a way, I had a protocol, five steps, and you could send it out. All of you are going to change your profile picture to my album cover.

All my friends, they all changed their profile picture to my album cover. My friends did the same thing. My fraternity brothers, they all did the same thing. So all their friends that were at different schools, they sent it out and then here’s that. The last thing is the music was good.

Right? So if the music wasn’t good, none of this shit matters. But and my music wasn’t always good. Like I said, I’m 20. I started when I was 8. So it’s 12 years making songs, a lot of songs, to get to that one song where my mom likes it, right? And Sean likes it. So this iTunes U thing, yeah,

was a thing that was pivotal for me. Pivotal. And so from there, every, pretty much every college in the US was listening to Mike Posner that year. And it started off small, it’d be, you know, 50 people, and I’d get a show at Dayton, Ohio, right? Go to Dayton, Ohio, I’d be booked to play at some bar. You know, at colleges, there’s always a hustler guy that throws the parties, and you know? So those guys would book me.

And are you even getting paid to do these at the time, or? At the start, 500 bucks. So I’d go, my boy Pat Klein became my manager later. He booked me at Dayton, Ohio, and I go there, and there’s 25 to 50 people. I’d do my set, and they know every word to my song.

A month later, he booked me to come back and there’d be 300 people there, every word to my song. And so I just started to expand like that. And yeah, the iTunes U was a really great hack. I’ve never heard that story. That’s an amazing story.

At that time in my career, I was in a cold spot. So I said, hey, let me use this time to get better at my skills. And if I’m being honest, yeah, I don’t know how to play. Like, I had a hit song, but I didn’t know how to play guitar. I didn’t know how to really sing.

I was a rapper who had started singing. I didn’t know how to play piano. So why don’t I learn some of those things? And I remember I was at a, it was kind of like a campfire kind of situation, and that guy, Psy, was there. You’re him. Yeah open gong. Oh, yeah, and Tori Kelly was there and

They were passing the guitar on the fire and Tori Kelly sang this song It was so beautiful and then I had just written a song that day I wanted to sing it and I was at I said could you play the guitar these course a thing and she’s trying to do It for me because I couldn’t play the guitar and I really wanted to sing my song, but I couldn’t do it and it didn’t really work And I remember leaving I thought that’s stupid that I can’t do that. That’s never gonna happen again I’m gonna learn to play a guitar and you’d be able to sing a song at a campfire, you know

So that’s one part of it. You know, it’s just less than go. Hey, you know Being an artist is about It’s similar to being a human. It’s about growing. It’s about being a better artist than you were a year ago. And you can always, your relationship to the music deepens, or the art, any art form, deepens your whole life. Art is not like the NBA, you know? It’s not like you peak at 30 and you know, you can’t jump as high anymore. No, this is a

always get deeper. So that’s part A. But then part B was, yeah, I realized kind of to the point right before this point was I’m in a singing class. I took Berklee School of Music online. There’s these great singers in there. And yeah, I was like, you know, in the bottom quartile of that class, but I was a successful recording artist and those people all wanted my job. And I realized I had some that most people don’t, which is my writing. But I have a way of connecting the music I make

whether it doesn’t matter. Music is not about hitting the highest like life. It’s not about hitting the perfect note in the run. It’s about does it? Does this part of my humanity speak to that part of your humanity. I’m raising my hand and I’m taking my clothes off out here and it’s vulnerable and going this is what it’s like for me to be a human. Anyone else? And if I do a good job, someone else hears it and I’m so glad

you said it because that’s how I’ve been feeling for years and I didn’t know how to articulate it. I got, I’m in the yoga class headband now. People say I’m off-brand, how? I am the brand, therefore anything I do is on-brand now. I’m on-brand now. Yo, it’s like, I look at my heroes

and that’s what I am now. People got attached to a version of me because it hurts when they see a person who’s free and I’m so grateful for all these lessons twice as much money half the possessions no drugs now the vision’s clear all my gold jewelry just disappeared that’s the universe telling me to start switching gears the deeper the human the deeper

the songs I saw all of this three years ago it’s almost like it was me reading palm. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Conversation. It is the Thrive Time show on your radio and on today’s show. This show might be short if our next guest does not pick up the phone. Her name is Gretchen Rubin.

She’s a New York Times best-selling author. She is one of Oprah’s favorite people. Oprah has interviewed her. And, Jep, it always gets a little bit nerve-wracking when we actually call her. Especially the bigger the name is, the bigger the guest. Should we call her?

I think we should. Okay, let’s go. I’m going to do it. Here we go. Okay. Chip, why don’t you just pick up?

It’s possible. Chip, if usually, if somebody wants to pick up the call, they’ll pick it up on the first ring. There she is. Hello? Gretchen, how are you?

This is Clay. Hey, Clay. How are you? Well, you are an answer to prayer. I have read your stuff. I love what you do. I love your maniacal obsession in the research.

And so I am super excited. I’ve been praying to have you on the show. So hopefully there was some divine intervention that made that happen. Excellent. I’m so happy to have the chance to talk to you. So this is great.

All right, Thrive Nation, and welcome back to the Thrive Time show on your radio and podcast download. And I can honestly say that on today’s show I am the most excited that I’ve ever been thus far to interview a guest. Today’s guest is the New York Times best-selling author of the four tendencies, better than before

and the happiness project. Having sold over 3 million copies of her books she has developed a massive following and is now the host of the top-ranked and award-winning weekly podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where she discusses how to create a happier life and how to implement good habits with her sister, Elizabeth Kraft. Fast Company named Gretchen Rubin as one of America’s most creative people in business and she is a member, Chup, of Oprah’s Super Soul 100. She’s been interviewed by Oprah

and she’s one of the few authors to ever have two books on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time. What can you say? Happier at Home and The Happiness Project. She’s walked arm in arm with the Dalai Lama and she’s even been the answer on the game show Jeopardy.

And as a result of several recent poor life choices, she is now on the Thrive Time show. Gretchen Rubin, how are you? I’m so happy to be talking to you. Thank you. Well, hey, I want to, the listeners out there that aren’t as familiar with your books as I am,

I want to start at the beginning, before you were a best-selling author, when you were a lawyer. Yeah. When did you decide to become a lawyer and why would you want to do that to yourself?

You know, I went to law school for the same reason a lot of people go, which is I was good at research and writing and I thought I didn’t know what else to do with myself and I thought well it’s a great education, it’ll keep my options open, I can change my mind later, it’s good preparation for a lot of different avenues and so I hadn’t really thought much about whether I wanted to be a lawyer and in fact if

you want to be a lawyer going to law school is a great way to become a lawyer. I know many people who wanted to be lawyers and that’s a great thing to do but it’s not a great thing to do if you just don’t know what else to do with yourself. But I had a great time in law school, I had a great experience, and I was clerking for Justice Andrew A. O’Connor when I realized that I actually wanted to be a writer. I want to just, what you just said is so profound.

I coach businesses all over the world. I’ve worked with UPS and Hewlett Packard and big companies. And what will happen a lot of times, Gretchen, is you’ll meet the CEO of something or the executive of something or the VP of something, and they hate their career, but they don’t have the courage yet or the motivation yet or whatever that is. They don’t have that yet to actually quit and do something else.

And you actually had a law degree from not just any school, but from Yale. I mean, you were working with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor from 95 to 96. I mean, many could say you were a rising star. You already were a star. Where did that courage to quit the career you didn’t love and move on to something else come from?

You know, I was really lucky because I think you’re right. A lot of times people know what they don’t like, but they don’t know what they want. And I was really lucky because I’m kind of a person who I get very, very interested in things and will do a ton of research.

And that’s happened to me my whole life. But while I was clerking, I became obsessed with this idea. I was walking during my lunch hour one day and I was looking up at the Capitol Dome and I thought, what am I interested in that everybody else in the world is interested in?

And I thought, well, power, money, fame, sex. And it was like power, money, fame, sex. It became this idea that I started to research and research and research in my free time. Eventually, it occurred to me, this is what a person would do if they were going to write a book about it. Maybe I should write a book.

At that point, I felt this tremendous pull. It’s like when the Death Star has the Millennium Falcon in the tractor beam. It’s like, you’re going to go. I felt the pull toward me. I think that made it a lot easier for me because it wasn’t like I was so dissatisfied with what I had. It was that all of a sudden there was something I really, really,

really wanted to do. And so that felt very affirmative. And so then it was a question of, well, how do I do that? That was a huge challenge, but I knew what it was that I wanted. I think that makes it easier in a way than people who just know I want something else. I don’t know what that looks like yet. You were hearing in your mind the empire, the empire, the kind of Darth Vader theme song,

that bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And so you’re feeling the tractor being pulling you in here. And I heard you actually say, now you can retract the statement if you want, but I heard you on one of your podcasts,

of which you’ve done hundreds and hundreds, I heard you say that you actually got to a place where you would rather fail as an author than to succeed as an attorney. Is that correct or am I misquoting you? Yeah. No, I just decided I need to give it a shot and if I fail, I fail, but I need to try.

And so you made the jump and a lot of people say, well, what’s the linear path to become an author? What is the step one, step two? So I heard that you basically have to renew your license. I coach a lot of attorneys, work with a lot of lawyers, and you have to keep your license, your certifications current.

I guess that you had something coming up and you decided just not to renew it or not to pay the fee or something, and that was your jumping point. Can you tell the listeners about that? Well, another thing that made it easier for me is that my husband was also going through a big transition, and he had decided to leave law and go into finance. So we both were in legal jobs,

and we moved from Washington, D.C. to New York, and as part of that move, we were gonna get new jobs. He was gonna get a job, I was gonna try to get an agent and get a book contract, and so we were starting in New York in these new paths. And the day came exactly, as you say,

when we got a letter from the New York Bar, one of us did, I forget which one, saying, you owe us bar fees, because you have to pay your bar fees to be in good standing. It’s expensive. This is not like 25 bucks. This is like, you’re really paying. And I said to my husband, gosh, should we pay our bar fees? And he’s like, no. You know, and

I was like, that was the moment when we were like, you know what, we are really, we’re moving on. Now, I found out later that if you like make up your bar fees and like do continuing legal education, you can probably get back in. So it wasn’t as abrupt and definitive as it seemed at the moment, but at the moment it felt like, okay, we’re doing this, you know. But it was helpful to have somebody else with me, you know, like I was doing it. And we were just like, we’re going to start over.

We’re going to give this something else a shot. How long have you two lovebirds been married, by the way, you and your husband? How many years at this point? 24. 24. I appreciate you guys stopping making out to go ahead and do this interview.

I can feel the romance. I can feel the love there. So I want to ask you folks, you guys have been partners. I’ve heard you talk about this, that he’s very supportive of you. You’re very supportive of him. It’s a neat story.

I’ve been married 17 years to the same incredible lady. You’ve got us beat though. 24 years you guys were jumping into this new career together, I’ve heard you say, and other people say, the hardest part of becoming an author, as a career, is finding a literary agent that believes in you and your work. And I’ve heard you brag about, I believe her name is Christy Fletcher.

Can you talk to me about the, talk to us about the struggles of finding a literary agent that actually believes in you and somebody with the kind of character and caliber of Christy Fletcher? Exactly right, and I think this is a big surprise for many people who would like to be published authors is that really I think the most challenging part perhaps, at least in today’s environment, is getting an agent. Because once you have an agent, your agent shepherds you through the process.

Your agent has a lot of information, a lot of contacts, they have a lot of views, they have a lot of experience, they can really be your cheerleader and your guide, so you have that help. And to get an agent, you have to show that you have work that your agent thinks that he or she can successfully represent. So you also just by that stage have something that is in good shape. But it’s very hard to get a literary agent. And what a lot of people don’t understand is like you really don’t have the option, if you

want to be traditionally published, and that’s what I’m talking about, like by a publishing house, you can’t just send it to the publisher. You don’t have that option. They will not look at something that just comes in from a person. It has to come through an agent. So it’s a necessary step. It’s not something where you’re like, well, I don’t care about having an agent. I’ll just negotiate my own contract. It’s like, no, they won’t even look at it. Now, this is if you want to be traditionally published.

Nowadays, lots of people self-publish and that’s becoming more and more possible and there you really are doing it yourself and that’s one of the advantages that you can just when you’re ready, it’s Sunday at midnight, you can start that process if you want. But having an agent is difficult because you have to get the attention of an agent first and they have hundreds and hundreds of people studying themselves and you also have to show them that you can write a book that they think that will appeal to a lot of people and that they can sell

successfully. And so it is a very and it’s weird like it’s a weird thing like there’s no they’re very hard to reach they’re deliberately hard to reach because otherwise everybody would be hounding them all the time. They can be kind of hard to reach it can be kind of hard to figure out well who’s the right agent for someone like me. One of the things you can do is you can literally look in the acknowledgments pages of books that you feel like if you’re writing a book, it’s in the spirit of another

book. You can look because people will usually thank their agents and you can say like, oh, well, I see that this agent is coming up over and over in books that I think my book is sort of similar to. Maybe that would be a good person to approach if you have contacts. This is why a lot of people go to things like writers’ conferences because they hope that they’re going to make connections with agents. I had a connection through college.

I had a very distant connection, but it worked out. Christy and I were both very much starting out at the same time, so we really grew up together. I feel incredibly fortunate because we’re so well-matched in terms of our interests and our tastes and our appetite for innovation and she’s really pushed me very hard and been very supportive of me doing things.

Some very traditional literary agents are like, if you’re not writing a book, you’re wasting your time. And they wouldn’t have wanted me to have a blog when I started my blog 10 years ago, or they might not have understood why I would want to have a podcast. Whereas Christy, she has such an appetite for that kind of thing. She loves experimentation, she loves to see risk and failure, she loves data.

So she’s really pushed me instead of like cautioning me to try new things, which has been great because I’m still a very traditional writer. I feel like that’s my primary identity. It’s like I go to a library in my neighborhood and write on my laptop for three hours.

That’s my favorite thing to do. And that’s the most important thing to me. But I do a lot of other things as well now. You know, Jack London, the famous best-selling author, this guy decorated his office with all the rejection letters. He almost made it like his wallpaper.

Do you remember how many rejection letters you received before you reconnected with your friend from college, or did you connect on the first try? It wasn’t the first try. I don’t remember. There weren’t that many, fortunately. It was a pretty…

Well, you’re a big deal. You’re a unicorn, naturally. No, but one person said something that was really interesting to me. I never forgot it because I thought it was the stupidest observation I’d ever heard. But now, in retrospect, I understand what she was saying. She said, this is from my book, Power of Money, Fame, Sex, a User’s Guide, which was the book

that I went out to get an agent with. And she said, there are too many ideas on a page. And I was like, how can there be too many ideas? Everybody should have as many ideas as they want. Like I was patting myself on the back for having so many ideas.

But now I understand what she meant is that I have a very dense style and I have to really, it’s too much. It’s not, a reader, it’s not, doesn’t want to go through at that level. And I’ve had to learn how to loosen up my style,

open up my style, not to throw in like every quotation that I’ve ever read in my whole life that I love. Like I really, so in retrospect, I realized that she was very wise. I was just too ignorant to understand what she was getting at.

But fortunately, Christy thought she could work with something that had too many ideas on the page, so it all worked out. So that was a very memorable rejection that I got. But there were others which I’ve blocked out. You can kind of track with your podcast and my podcast, we can kind of track how many

people download our podcast. As we’ve moved into the top five consistently on the business section, there’s a lady, have you ever met Ifat Jindal with Foundry Media? Have you ever met her? I don’t believe so. Her company, Foundry Media, represented Elon Musk’s book.

And there’s a lot of books in the top ten. Oh sure, I know Foundry Media. The thing is, I get rejected by EFOD about every six months to be my agent. And so recently, I actually made cars. Very recently. This morning, I made all of our employees, Gretchen,

I made all of our employees park their cars in the shape of her name. And I’ve sent that to her. And I’m just going to continue. We drone videoed it. I can’t tell you, and for anyone out there, I’ve had over a hundred rejections. I’ve written a lot of books.

And you know how it is, when you self-publish, you go to a conference, people will want to buy a thousand books. You know, you make good money. But to get a good literary agent, there’s a rejection there. And so, if you’re out there and you want to write a book, you’re going to get rejected. It’s just going to happen.

But hopefully, the cars in the shape of EFOT’s name, YFAT, will get her a winner over this time. We did it. That, you get A++ for originality. That is great. We flew a drone video over it and everything.

I’ll send you a link when we hop off today. You’ll enjoy it. Oh my gosh, please do. I’m dying to do that. I will do it. Now, Gretchen, I want to ask you this, because your first book that you wrote, Power, Money,

Fame, Sex, a User’s Guide, that particular book, if you’ve ever read any of your books, if you’re out there listening, if you haven’t read one of her books, listen, if you just want to say, I like your podcast, what should I do? Buy one of her books. I don’t care what book you buy. Buy a Gretchen Rubin book today.

Buy the book. I’m serious. You got to buy a book. You got to buy one of her books and you’re going to see a woman. I mean this in a kind way, not a backhanded compliment. You maniacally obsess and research about a subject to the point that I think anybody out there would have stopped halfway through

or a tenth of the way through and then it’s almost like when you read your book it’s like I now know everything about this subject and I’ve summarized it for you I mean it’s so easy to read right but you’ve done so much research so I just want to ask you I mean what makes you say that that’s like one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said no it’s here’s I think it’s a gift. It’s like you’ve read everything there is to know about John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill

and here it is for you. In obscure books. So I want to ask you, what made you first want to write Power, Money, Fame, Sex, a User’s Guide? It’s an incredible book. What made you first want to read that book?

Or write that book? Research the book? Well, you know, like I said, I just had this moment where it hit me and it was like a linked idea in my mind. It was like Power Money Fame Sex. And I remember I was at a cocktail party in DC and for some reason Walter Isaacson was there who was like way, way, way more important than I was. But somehow I got talking to Walter Isaacson and I was like, oh, I’m thinking about writing this book, Power Money Fame

Sex. And he goes, nope, you can only have three. Red, white and blue. You can only have three. And I’m like, Power Money Fame Sex, which one would you leave out? There’s more. You can’t drop one. Can I interrupt you just for one second? I’m so sorry to interrupt somebody who’s in the Oprah Top 100 here. Walter Isaacson, for anybody out there who doesn’t know, he is one of the best authors

of our generation, and he has been the guy behind books that, it’s like Steve Jobs 2011, it’s unbelievably researched, Leonardo da Vinci, 2017. So when Gretchen throws out Walter Isaacson, I just want to make sure everybody understands, Walter Isaacson is a big deal. I think you’re probably a bigger deal, but he’s a big deal.

Back to you. I’m so sorry. I just want to make sure I get into the context. Yeah, no. He was an incredibly big deal, and I was so scared to talk to him.

I was like this little, you know, I was like that was when I was still clerking. Like, I was just like, this is the book that I wanted to write. And so I was incredibly excited to be talking to him. So then it was like, oh my gosh, Walter Isaacs is telling me to drop one, but I’m like, there isn’t one to drop. I have to have all four. So it was really this idea that just hit me, and I wanted to figure out how

they fit together. I wanted to understand. I’m always a person who loves weird formats of a book. I like things that are told in an unusual way. My earlier books all did that. My later books have been much more traditional narrative because I find that that’s a better way to reach people, actually. And I can do unconventional things like on my blog now.

Like if I want to make a list instead of writing paragraphs, I can do it on my blog. So I get it out of my system that way. But I love the book. If anybody remembers the book called The Preppy Handbook, which is this book in the 80s that

was written like a guide about how to dress like a preppy person. It was kind of part social criticism and part actual how-to guide because it was all very true and accurate and that was part of what made it fun. But then it was also kind of a critique of the whole idea of what it was to be preppy or to be waspy.

This book just enthralled me. I just thought it was so brilliant and so funny. And so I was really trying to, when I was thinking of Power Money, Fame, Sex, I was very much channeling that kind of framework where it was like, if you want to tell people how to use power, like how could I do it in a way that would seem kind of like a joke, but also kind of not like a joke.

Like, I don’t know if anybody in your audience who like works in Washington, DC, one funny thing about Washington, DC is people have flags. If you go into like a big person’s office, they have a flag in their office, and there’s this whole thing about how many flags do you have, what are your flags, do you have a flag, do you not have a flag? And it’s just like, what’s up with the flags? We’re in a government building, you can just assume there’s a flag in the back of everyone’s head. But anyway, so it’s full of little funny

things like that. And so, yeah, so that was a really fun book to write, oh my gosh. It was like the opposite of the Happiness Project. It was really good preparation for a happiness project. Well, here’s the thing. You obsess about ideas, and I’ve been obsessing recently about this concept of the hypothesis. It’s a figure of speech where Donald Trump always says things, and he’ll say, I’m not going to say this, but some people have said this.

So I’m going to practice on our listeners out there. I’m not going to say you’re a bad person if you don’t buy a Gretchen Rubin book right now. But I’m saying some people have said, some people have said, I wouldn’t go as far as to say, I would never, I’ve gone on record of saying, but some could say, so you’ve got to go check out one of her books.

Some could say that some have said. Now Gretchen, you’ve written books with incredible research about JFK, incredible books about Winston Churchill. Can you, JFK, Winston Churchill, why did you decide to deep dive into their lives? Because they’re both, it seemed like Winston Churchill was great at everything, it was like he lived 500 lives, it was crazy. He lived dozens of lives simultaneously, hundreds of lives, it didn’t even make sense.

And JFK was a very complicated human, a lot of yin and a yang there. Can you talk to us about those two books and what made you want to deep dive into their very complicated lives? Well I think you put your finger right on what drew me to them as subjects, which is really when I think about all my books, what I’m really interested in at the fundamental level is human nature. I’m fascinated by human nature. Why are we the way we are? How can we change if we want to change? What

makes somebody the person they are and make the decisions that they make? And what I love is that Churchill and Kennedy, as you point out for both of them, they’re larger than life. These are exaggerated figures. Everything in human nature is blown up to just a gigantic proportion, and there’s just volumes and volumes and volumes of what he said and what he did and what he wrote and what he thought and interviews and observations and Kennedy, as short as a life as he lived, oh my gosh, I’m

like how did the guy do anything but have his picture taken because there’s like so many pictures of the guy and also he has tremendous people writing about him and accounts and his own books and his own writing and his speeches and government documents. But they are these very complicated figures, and I think it’s just fascinating to study them because a lot of times you see in them more clearly things that many people have,

but just not to the same elevated degree, so it’s harder to see. But with these people who are so well-documented and so clearly outlined, it’s easier to see human nature at work. When you researched John F. Kennedy, he was such a complicated person. And for anybody out there who hasn’t read the book yet, can you TF why somebody would want to read your book about John F. Kennedy?

Because I found it to be very fascinating. And again, you read, and I don’t mean this in a backhanded compliment, you read some weird stuff. I mean, you read some obscure things. You’re going to the library. You’re the kind of person where like,

time out Gretchen, we need to come out of the library. Come on out. You just keep diving. I read a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, so why would anybody want to read your book about John F. Kennedy?

Well, you know, here’s the thing about my books. And I finally, I did not want this to be true, but I found it to be true. I found, I wrote my books thinking, my books are like the starter book. If you don’t know anything about Winston Churchill, if you don’t know anything about Kennedy,

my book is going to be the book that’s going to convince you you want to go read a ton of biographies and histories because you’re going to get so intrigued because my book is going to show you how fascinating this character is. What I’ve learned, because you only know your audience when it’s too late, when the book is already out, is that actually the people who like my approach, like my book, are the people who already know a lot about these characters, who really are very, very knowledgeable.

Because what I do in the book, it’s called 40 Ways to Look at Ornstein Churchill and 40 Ways to Look at JFK, is in 40 ways I look at them through different perspectives. So it’s not a straight narrative that goes from birth to death or goes from the blitz and then the flashbacks or something like that. In each book, the first chapter is the heroic version and it’s completely factually accurate. Everything’s factually accurate.

It’s just like if you were going to give the best possible account, this is what you would say, all true. And then the second chapter is like, if you wanted to paint the worst possible picture, again, completely factually accurate, nothing in there is okay or not true.

Just as an example, what would be something in your chapter or your book where you go, JFK, if you wanted to paint the worst possible picture possible of John F. Kennedy, you know, because that’s a controversial idea. What would be where you’d say, this guy, he could be the worst because, and he could be

the best because? I’d love to get your take on that, because this is very intriguing. I mean, he’s shallow, he’s a philanderer, he’s a daddy’s boy, he’s manipulative, he’s you know, he’s not all he’s cracked up to be. You know, he’s constantly… Can you please explain the word philanderer?

When you say philanderer or manipulative, can you kind of give us just a little detail? Oh, he cheated like crazy. I mean, by today’s standards, it’s astonishing to think the mischief that he got up to, which is extraordinary. On the other hand, he inspired a nation, he lives in memory. My whole book really is like, what does it mean to live in memory?

What does it mean? He represented an ideal to people. That’s almost impossible to do, but somehow he embodied this idea. And he was able to speak truth in a way that resonated with people in a way that we still can quote him and hear his voice in our ears, like he stood for something. And in a way, he didn’t live up to the ideal that he presented, but he was able to somehow

present it. And I think that’s really extraordinary. And to try to understand why and how at that time what he did was he was able to do that is really hard to do. Because I think so many people try to step forward

and articulate an ideal, but people are, they don’t really get it. It doesn’t really resonate. Or they’re like, yeah, you know, you just are making speeches or like, oh, whatever. But then for somehow some people are able to say it

in a way that everybody hears it and is moved and is changed, and that he was able to do. So he had many, many flaws and limitations, but then he also achieved greatness in his own way. Winston Churchill. Same thing with Churchill.

Yeah, Churchill. Can you just kind of tease us about, because there’s somebody out there, you know, they’re just on the verge, Chuck. People say, you know what, I’m going to spend $19 on rando purchases at Starbucks today. I don’t know whether I can spend $19 with Gretchen Rubin. I have to have some traction here.

Orange mocha frappuccino. So Prime Minister Winston Churchill, what would be the best and the worst? What kind of stuff can we find in this book? He held every important office. He was part of every important event during his lifetime. He was completely dedicated to his country.

He was a brilliant writer as well as a brilliant statesman. He had a vision that, in a way, he led the entire West. You read what he said. And again, the thing that I really learned as a writer from Churchill is he could be grandiloquent and he would use these words and these super fancy Latin things and he would talk about, you know, and then when he needed a hammer at home, we shall go on to the end.

Give us the tools and we will finish the job. He would bring it right down to a single syllable. He knew how to communicate to people. And again, you know, and then people sometimes write to me and they’re like, oh, but he’s so tremendously flawed and they recite to me all the evidence that I put in chapter two of my own book. I’m like, I wrote that.

Yes, I get the good and I get the bad. I think it’s fascinating. It’s also, I have to say, even though it sounds very boring, my books are also really about the nature of biography, which is you believe that you understand a version of a person because somebody’s told you that version, but there are choices that are being made and there’s evidence that is not known.

Like a lot of times biographers will talk about motivation. Well, unless somebody tells you their motivation, you don’t know what it is, and they could be lying or they could even be lying to themselves. We don’t really know why people do the things they do. Biographers are incredibly reckless about assuming that they understand why people do what they do.

And we know in life, a lot of times people do things for the weirdest reasons. You don’t know why people do what they do. Anyway, it’s about the problem of trying to tell someone else’s story, a final version of someone’s story. A funny thing that happened with the Churchill book is one of the things I write about is how he had pink silk underwear. Which is just not what you think about Churchill. And so I got this very indignant

letter from some kind of former military person in the UK scolding me for coming up with such a preposterous thing. And I’m like, by the way, look in the memoir from Churchill’s own daughter, Mary, she’s the one who writes about it at great length. So again, you might be like, who’s the last person on earth who would wear pale pink silk underwear, Winston Churchill? Well, he did, you know, and there’s his daughter explaining why.

And so, you know, so that’s what fascinates me about biography is the unexpected and like, how we can tell how we can’t really we don’t we can’t really tell a final version of someone’s story. And I think that’s why people who know a lot about a character are interested in mine, because it’s like, you can look at it this way, or you can look at it this way,

or you can look at it this other way. And they like that because they already know a lot. Well, let me tell you my secret motivation for having you on the show today. I personally am selfishly excited about your books, and I love the process with which you write books.

And I feel like if there was a female version of me, it would be you, and I mean that in a good way. I obsess about topics and my partner and I, that’s how we’ve been able to build these 13 multi-million dollar companies that people know us for is because we just obsess about like dog training

or haircuts for not forever, for about two years and then we build a brand and then we scale it. And so that’s why I know what you ate for breakfast today and I’m just going to ask you for the listeners out there who don’t know, what did you eat for breakfast today? Brambled eggs, which I’m sure you knew.

Right, because you eat the same thing every day. I know this because I’m not healthy. I obsess about one thing and it’s Gretchen Rubin, what makes her tick? So I want to ask you, Gretchen, and I already know the answer, but I just want to, for the listeners out there, because this is, I mean, it’s cathartic for me because I love your process.

I just love the way you do life. It’s awesome. When you’re writing a book, what percentage of your day is spent taking notes? You know, that’s very, it’s hard to say because it ebbs and flows, like depending on, like taking notes, it’s like sometimes I read a book and like I’m going to take hours and hours of notes because the book is so full of information.

And then sometimes I read a book and maybe there’s like one thing that I would write down. But you’re right, I take, that’s a big part of my work process, and it actually takes a lot of time, is note-taking. So I read a lot, because I love to read, but then a lot of times,

especially if I’m doing research for a book, so I’m reading about something specific, there might be just hours of note-taking, because that’s how I kind of start coming to my own conclusions, is I’ll take notes, and that’s how I kind of learn it,

and then I start having questions and thinking, like, well, maybe these two things are associated or, so yeah, and then it’s nice because then when I’m actually starting to write a book, I already have like a bunch of stuff already written because I’ve already started to kind of digest it.

I’m never starting from like total zero. Eric Chupp, you are in, we’re in the Man Cave Studios. Now Gretchen, I know that you live in a very populous area. You live in New York. I live at what I call Camp Clark and Chicken Palace, which if you’re ever looking for a vacation destination, it’s like a 17 acres of woods and trees. We live behind a wall.

We have the silky chickens. Do you have some new ones? I see some new chickens out there. I do. I bought four new chickens here this week. Gretchen, that’s a guilty pleasure. I buy four chickens every time I can. Wow. And so I kind of, we live the opposite in terms of the actual place that we live.

But, Shep, you’ve seen the books there in the studio there. Do I not just destroy books with notes? With notes, with coffee stand, with water dropped in the back. You would not believe what some of these books look like. They’ve definitely been gone through over and over again. So I heard that you take notes like this.

But don’t you find, Clyde, that it helps you later, like if you have to go back, you can find just what you’re looking for because you’ve marked it up. Right. Some people feel like it’s somehow heretical to mark up a book and I’m like no that’s a way to love a book That’s the way to mark it up. Yeah The way to love a book now, okay, so I want to ask you this now

So as far as with your books, do you take notes in the margin? Do you put tabs on them? What’s your move for taking those now? He’s so excited So a lot of times I read library books and so library books I use the sticky note and then I will put the sticky note in and if I need to write a note to myself about why something’s important, I’ll write it on the sticky note so I can not deface a library book. If it’s a book that is mine, then I dog-ear it and write all over the part.

That’s right. Now, the reason why you’re reading library books, I want to make sure the listeners understand this, you’re reading some obscure stuff. I mean, technically speaking, Gretchen, you’re reading some obscure crap. I mean, stuff that nobody else is going to read, right? I mean, do you not read books that nobody else is checking out? I mean, you check out the book and you’re

like, really? Is that the book you want? I mean, you’re reading some stuff that’s not in print. You’re not reading bestselling books. I mean, you really go deep. I do. And I do love the library for that. And I love that you can get things online that are like very, very obscure because I do. And then I do a lot of things to like, if a book is recommended in a book that I like, I will often read that book just because I’m like, well, it was important enough to come up in this other book. Sometimes I go through these book chains.

I look at my library list. I’m like, I have no idea where I heard about this book, but I’ll give it a shot. Another thing I love about library books is you can be very reckless because you just return it. I’m like, I’ll just stick it in my bag. If I don’t like it after five pages, I’ll just return it. Whereas if you buy it, you feel like you’ve got to

really kind of think about that for a minute. Yeah, but I love reading weird stuff. I love like finding some weird book that nobody’s, or like a book that’s a classic, but that nobody reads. Like I just read Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing. It was like an incredibly important book in like the history of the world, but nobody reads it anymore. So I was like, what if Lawrence Nightingale actually write? And that was kind of interesting. This is an awesome interview, Gretchen. You’re a wealth of information.

I wanted to ask you, you said that you spend three hours a day or something like that at the library. Is that right? If I’m doing like original writing, like I’m not always in that cycle in my process, because like right now I have a book coming out in March. So the book’s done. I’m just like writing the back copy and all that stuff, looking at the first past pages. But when I’m actually writing an original book for the first time, then I spend three

hours in the library every day. Absolutely. I wanted to ask you about that. What does that look like? So you sit down, walk us through, you know, you open up the laptop, is it a mad dash or you just getting all the ideas?

Real quick, let me cue up the music. Gretchen, I know this is inappropriate, but I’ve installed, without you knowing, a microphone in your cranium. And so when you go to the library, this is what she hears right away. She gets in. Oh, good, I like it.

In the library. When you’re in the library, what are you thinking? Walk us through that. Well, I like to go to a desk. In my library, there are desks throughout the stack. And so I go to a desk that’s all surrounded by books, but there’s nobody around because

it’s in a corner. And I have a laptop and a little mouse so I plug in my mouse and I will sit down and I’m never starting from zero because I have all these notes. So usually I have a plate, I will say start here every time I’m done so that I remember where to start and I will go back a couple paragraphs

and get myself back in my mindset and then I’ll start writing again. Very cool. Are you wearing headphones? No. So you’re just taking the aura. I don’t have to check the internet there. You’re taking in the aura.

Smoking it all in. Yeah. Questions have been answered. This is huge. Now, you are somebody who reads these books. You love to read books.

And I recently heard that you loved the book Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. So I, Chup, please share with Gretchen, how does the decor of our office, Gretchen, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does

the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the

decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, how does the decor of our office, Gretchen we have about a 20,000 square foot office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There’s hundreds of employees, and so I have a big old, at some point you’ve got to fly to Tulsa, I want to shake your hand and apologize for not being a better interviewer.

But we have a 20,000 square foot facility, and Chup, how would you describe the patina or the decor or the ambiance of our office so she can mentally picture it. You stole my word. I was going to say lots of patina, lots of swag, you know, old barn wood on the walls everywhere, positive quotes, big wins from big figures in the business world, and just positive encouragement.

Edison bulbs, always overhead music going, the rich smell of pinion wood burning somewhere throughout. So, very, very swagalicious. That’s how I would describe it. I’m very intentional about my ambiance and decor. And so when I heard this book, Pattern Language, you were talking about it on a couple different

podcasts, I immediately was like, I’ve got to get this book. And it is awesome. It’s like the holy grail. Talk to us about Pattern Language. So Pattern Language is this very kind of unconventional book, and it looks at patterns in kind of built environments that people find appealing.

So it’s not about like this is the Baroque style or your office desk should be X feet wide. It’s things like child caves, staircase of stage, terrace overlooking life, waist high shelf. It’s about these patterns about what makes people feel good in an environment and what happens to me and maybe you have the same experience is that when you read it, you start understanding

why some places feel more comfortable and appealing than others. Like one of the things he says is, ceilings at different heights. People tend to feel more comfortable in a place that has ceiling at different heights.

And if you walk into an office and you look and the ceiling is all the same height, you realize it feels like a flatter environment than if there’s an area where it kind of goes up. Or if you go into a restaurant and you see, oh, or like you walk into someone’s home

and that like the hallway is slightly higher or even lower than the rest, you feel it just feels more interesting or like cascade of roofs. You can look at a Japanese temple and a 17th century farmhouse and you know 1970s house in

California and you’ll see, wow, if I see a cascade of roofs, I just feel like that’s a more appealing design to me. So I loved it because it gave me a vocabulary for the things that appealed to me versus places that seemed cold to me. I wish you could come to Tulsa

and see how this book has impacted me. I wish you could see because our- What have you done? Well, our men’s grooming lounge, it’s called Elephant in the Room. If you get a chance to check it out today,

it’s called eitrlounge.com. And my partner and I, we have 400 locations of Oxifresh. It’s our carpet cleaning franchise. It’s the world’s greenest carpet cleaning company. So we use a tenth of the water of anybody else in the world. It’s very organic.

Wow. Eco-friendly. Our second business is called Elephant in the Room. And we did the whole different ceiling heights. And it’s amazing how many people walk in and go, wow, I love that cloud. Or what do you call that thing?

It’s just neat and it’s just amazing how these little moves can really impact. You actually went as far as to… Now, if I’m wrong, you say, Clay, you are the wrongest man ever. But did you not live in a former water tower? Is it my correct here? No, my office.

My office is a former water tower. Can you talk to us about the mojo and the energy that you feel when you walk into the Gretchen’s Palace of incredible best-selling books. When you walk in there, you just… Do you not hear the Rocky theme every day? I mean, it’s got to be awesome.

The Water Tower of Power. Yeah. Oh, I like that. The Tower of Power. I’ve got to use that. Well, if you have a 20,000 square foot office, I have the opposite of that.

It’s teeny, teeny, teeny. It’s at the top of my building. I live in New York City, and a lot of times in New York City, they have water towers, and that’s to create pressure for showers and things like that. For whatever reason, before we moved in, they had taken our water tower out and the person who lived in our apartment before us had asked if she could build a storage unit on the roof

where it had been, and they gave her permission to do that, or she paid or whatever, so she built this little room. So when we moved in the apartment, I thought, �Oh my gosh, this is great. I can turn it into my office.� Because it had three windows in it and it had heat, so I put it in an air conditioner and it’s just this little tiny office but it’s just it’s like my space capsule you know it’s like plenty big for me and it’s

kind of nice because it’s pretty easy to sort of keep it organized and clean because it’s very very small and like if it gets cold it’s easy to heat with a heat in the space here because it’s just tiny but it’s separate from the rest of my apartment which kind of psychologically I like I’m kind of on I’m on I’m on the roof of the building. I love it.

You are, gosh, I want to go to your water tower. I want to see it. It’s so, I want to ask, and I want to ask you what it costs, but I will say for me, my office costs me $27,000 a month. Wow. For 20,000 square feet.

You know, there’s a lot of employees there. Oh, wow. Holy smokes. I don’t know what yours costs, but in Manhattan, I mean, it’s expensive. I mean, it’s expensive. Well, it’s just part of my apartment.

It’s considered part of my apartment, so it’s just part of the cost of my apartment. Even better. So you and your… does he work there too? Do you work there with him? No. No.

No. That was good. So I want to get into your office in a non-weird way. You go there and you have three monitors. And if you’ve changed since then, I apologize for misquoting you, but you have three monitors. I’ve kind of visualized it.

You have three monitors. Can you talk to me about why you have the three monitors and how that helps you? So I have a guy who’s my IT person, who helps me with my computers and my backups and my phone and all that stuff. I’ve worked with him for a long time, so he knows my work style very well. This was years ago.

He said to me, I think you should get a second monitor. I was like, no, because I don’t like the multitask. I don’t want to get distracted. I don’t want two monitors. But then I read an article that said that for information workers, which is what I am, that if they had a second monitor, they actually saw a very noticeable increase in productivity,

that it wasn’t something that was a distraction, but that it actually really helped you save time. So I called up my guy, Charles, and I was like, okay, Charles, you’re right. I’m going to try a second monitor. Literally I’d had the second monitor for one day when I was like, okay, come back please, I need a third monitor.

Because it’s so dramatically affected my productivity because I could have my email up, and if I’m working on a document, but I need to consult an email, they’re both up or if I need to look at something online, that’s easy to do, I can move among documents.

I tend to have a lot like note-taking, like I might be working on a draft, but I also need to have my notes open. Now, I can have them both open simultaneously so it saves me a huge amount of time of like opening and clicking and I can just have everything on and you would think it would be very distracting but in fact I

find that it’s not distracting it’s actually helps me to focus because I’m not distracted by needing to click I can just have what I need up. Have you ever read the last lecture by Randy Pausch? Oh sure of course yeah. My dad died from ALS about two years ago. My dad was a huge fan of Randy Pausch. My dad introduced me to the book in 2008, I believe, 2007, maybe 2008.

And Randy Pausch, he was a guy for the people out there who don’t know, he was terminally ill of cancer, I believe, and he made a list of things that would save you time if you implemented them. One of the things he talked about, and this is a Carnegie Mellon professor, he said, if you had two monitors, it would save you a lot of time because of exactly what you just said.

So I was introduced to the idea of two monitors from my dad. And I know it doesn’t seem like a dramatic thing, but it saves people a Gretchen like an hour a day, if you have two windows. And if you add that up, so my dad got sick with ALS, I would have the time to visit my dad because I didn’t spend eight hours a week minimizing windows. And I just want to encourage everybody out there. It’s powerful. You have come up with ways to make people dramatically happier.

Ways that we can all as listeners become dramatically happier. I’d like to kind of deep dive into that because you have these little simple hacks that you’ve researched and studied and you’ve got to a place where you give people a whole lot of different ways that they can be happier. And one of the things you talked about was having your own commandments. These commandments.

And I heard you talk about your 12 commandments. Maybe you’ve updated, maybe you have 13 now. No, I have 12. 12? 12. So what I would like to do is first, can we talk about commandments and why it’s good

for all of our listeners out there to have? Because a monitor, just having two monitors can save you like an hour a day. But these commandments can make your life exponentially happier. Can you talk about the importance of why all of our listeners need to write down their own set of commandments?

Well, I think to be happier, you really have to think about what do you want from your life, and what are your values, what are your interests, what’s important to you? And the thing about, and it took me months to write my commandments, I don’t think this is something that a

person could just sit down and bang out in an hour. So what I wanted to do with the commandments is to articulate my values, what I really wanted to live, not like make your bed every day, which I do, but deeper, more transcendent values, but also in a pithy way. Because if you have a mission statement that’s a paragraph long, you’re like yada, yada, yada, but I wanted it to be very succinct so it would stick in my mind better, that

I could review them quickly and really have them echoing through my brain as I went through my day every day. And it was interesting to get to 12, because sometimes there would be more and sometimes there would be fewer, and then I would think, well, these two things are actually just different ways of saying the same thing. So part of it was that it was very creative, it was sort of fun to kind of think, like,

well, how would I really distill down what’s most important to me? And I’ve heard of people doing it themselves, because it is a really fun, creative thing. Or they do it in a Bible study group, it’s like a group exercise. Or sometimes people do it for their children, because they want to say, like, I want my children to sort of see what’s important to me. And what’s funny, because people will often send me their personal commandments, is that

you can read someone’s personal commandments, which is like, probably the whole thing is like a hundred words, and you really get a good sense of them. Like what they’re like deep, deep, deep inside. Not what they’re like on the surface, but you’re like, I know where this person is coming from. I know what their struggles are.

I know what they value, because it’s in the personal commandments. What’s funny is that some people’s commandments are the opposite of other people’s. Some people’s it’s like, do it now, and somebody else could say, wait. One year my sister did this too in her own way, and I had the word bigger as a theme and she had the word smaller. These are our personal commandments, but kind of a related endeavor. So it’s not like there’s one size fits all.

Is this Elizabeth, you’re talking about your sister, Elizabeth? Yes, that’s my sister. She’s the co-host of my podcast. Okay, I’m so sorry to cut you off. I just want to make sure the listeners know because you guys do that weekly podcast. I want to make sure. Okay, so you and your sister, I mean, are your commandments very different? Are they very different?

They are different, yeah. Because mine are so specific to me. I mean, literally the first one is be Gretchen. So that people will often say, like, oh, I should use your commandment. Like, no, you have to substitute your own name. But yeah, it’s this idea that it really has to come from what’s most important to you.

And also kind of what your failings are, because several of my commandments are really about reminding me to kind of push myself to expect more from myself. One of mine is no calculation, because my spiritual master is St. Therese of Lisieux, even though I’m not even Catholic, but I love St. Therese, and she said in her memoir, ìWhen one loves, one does not calculate.î And the thing about me is I’m a bean counter. I’m like, I did this for you, so you should do this for me. I took my turn. Now it’s your turn. That’s not a good way to be.

Come on. Come on. That’s a good way. That’s the way I am. That’s the way I close to the bone. I want to be like, no calculation. You know what I mean? Because otherwise, because it sort of like reminds me to like go against that a little bit. Right. Now, I want to, what I want to do is I want to read each one of your commandments. And I’d like for you to give us a quick, you know, summary of what it is. Here we go. Okay. Commandment number one, we talked about it, be Gretchen, which substitute for your name. Commandment number two, let it go.

What does that mean? Which is like, there’s so many things where you’re like, just let it go. You didn’t, this is not my business. This is not my problem. It doesn’t matter if this gets solved. I don’t have to, I don’t, I can leave that comment. Somebody said in a happy marriage, like three things are unsaid each day. I’m like, just let that go. You don’t need to comment.

You don’t need to say, I told you so. You don’t need to say, why didn’t you or why won’t you? Let it go. A quick apology on behalf of all men out there. Basically, what I’ve discovered, my wife is usually right, but not until somebody from the business world tells me.

So my wife will make a very astute, very masterful, very wise recommendation, and I’ll say, oh come on, come on, yeah your tone was so negative, unbelievable, and then I’ll go talk to like Lee Cockerell who managed Walt Disney World for 10 years. He’ll make the exact same statement, then I’ll come back to her Gretchen usually 18 to 24 months later and I’ll say, Vanessa, Lee told me this. Yeah, this brilliant idea. And then she’ll say, I told you that 24

months ago and I’ll say, that’s true, but let’s not talk about the past. So, okay, now the third is, act the way I want to feel. What does that mean? Well, this is a very interesting psychological phenomenon that we can all take advantage of, which is, we feel that we act because of the way we feel. So, like, I’m yelling and slamming doors because I’m angry, but to a very great extent, the brain assumes that we’re feeling something because of the way we’re acting.

So, the brain is really like, wow, people are yelling and slamming doors. I guess there’s a lot of anger in here. And so you can really take advantage of this by acting the way you wish you felt. So if you feel kind of low energy, access more energy, talk with more animation, move more quickly, kind of force yourself to run down the stairs and you will start to feel more energetic.

Or if you’re feeling kind of reserved and you don’t really want to deal with anybody, go out there and really kind of force yourself to be overtly friendly, really go out of your way to meet people’s eyes and have conversation, that will give you that feeling. If you’re feeling angry or resentful to somebody, start thinking like, but I’m grateful for this person.

Why do I feel grateful for this person? And as you begin to like that, I really appreciate that you always get that report in on time. Like that really makes my life easier that I know that I can count on you to always be timely.

You will start to feel yourself, these emotions coming, and they’re authentic. You really are truly feeling them. It’s just that you’ve engendered them in yourself by changing your behavior. It’s hard to change our emotions. It’s much easier to change our behavior, and by changing your behavior, you can change

your emotional state. Hypothetically, not at all happening now, but in a parallel universe, if you were to interview Gretchen Rubin and you would be out of your mind nervous, what you would say is, I am calm. I feel confident. I am not at all nervous. I have not,

I’m not overwhelmed by the gravity of interviewing somebody who’s sold 3 million books. And so I must ask you number four. Okay. So do it now. What would the commandment number four do it now? What does that mean? Do it now means there’s like a lot of times it’s just easier. Go ahead and do it now. Like why? Like getting my flu vaccine last year, I’m I’m embarrassed to say I kept wanting to do it, kept wanting to do it, put it off, there’s a better time, it

would be more convenient, and the whole year went by. And this year I’m like, just do it now. Go there and get the flu vaccine and just get that noise out of your head and get the advantage of getting the flu vaccine. So it’s like, without delay is the best way, almost always. And so it’s like, try to get things done right away.

It’s just easier. Should you want to have a guy on your podcast that would talk about how it took him three attempts to get a vasectomy? I would be happy to talk about that. Because I put it off. We have five kids.

We have five kids. And I’m not kidding. We wanted to have five kids. And my wife said, you have to have a vasectomy. And I put that thing off for the longest. I almost became a celibate monk.

I mean, Chip, I was living on the couch. You didn’t put it off. You fled the scene of the doctor’s office. Gretchen and I would show up for the procedure and the doctor would say, okay, you dropped your pants. And I’m like, I’m going to go to the bathroom and I never came back.

I did it three times. He crawled out the window. True story. I paid full price twice where I never delivered. So that’s a separate conversation. Wow.

Well, I think a doctor should have been a little bit more of like an understanding of how you needed to have to be talked to in a way that would help you with that situation. Yeah, a red dart in the back of the head. Well, I felt mentally violated just by having an appointment.

That’s what I felt. Okay, so be polite and be fair. What does that mean, number five? So I had a boss early in my career, like she was this incredibly fierce, stern, tiny woman, and I was getting a big promotion and I was nervous

about whether I was going to be able to do it. And I said to her, I’m nervous about whether I’m going to be able to do this, I was going to be managing people who are much older than I was. So it was very intimidating in that way. And she looked at me and she said, be polite and be fair and you will be fine. And I have realized in life that that is very profound.

If you are polite and you are fair, that gets you a long way to doing the right thing. I just always remind myself, be polite and be fair. Enjoy the process. What does that mean? This is something my dad always says. This is his advice for my sister and me, which is, if you enjoy the process, then life is

good. Then you’re enjoying what you’re doing, but if you’re always counting on a result and you’re miserable along the way, then if you don’t get what you want, then it’s all been a huge waste. And then even if you do get what you want, you’ve had all this time that you have not enjoyed or appreciated.

And he’s always like, it’s like, you know, we have really little kids and they’re driving you crazy. Enjoy the process. Or like my sister is a television writer. She’s got, you know, she’s like a showrunner. She’s got a huge demanding job and she has a sign above her office that says, it’s a fun job and I enjoy it.

To remind herself, this is what I wanted, this is what I asked for, this is what I like. Enjoy the process, you know, remember. And so, you know, like when I’m getting criticism from my editor, I think, enjoy the process. This is part of the process. I love this. For anybody out there who wants to read all 12 of your commandments, what’s the best place

where they can find them all? Where would you direct our listeners to go to? Go to my site, GretchenRubin.com, and just search, and you will find it, because I’ve written about it several times. It’s an idea that people are really interested in, so I’ve written about it a lot. And I also have examples of other people’s commandments, because I think sometimes people get ideas for their own commandments by seeing what

other people choose, and that is totally fine. You can look around the world and get ideas from other people, absolutely. Just like many of mine are quotations or inspired by other people. I think that’s a great way to get some of your commandments. Well, out of respect for your time, I have three final questions I want to ask you. And I heard you say during one of your interviews,

you said that you would prefer, and if I’m getting out of context, I apologize. You said you’d prefer for every day to be the same. I feel like I’ve said that to Eric and to all the members of our team, at least thousands of times.

I was going to say at least every day. Really? Oh yes. I literally wear the same exact thing every single day. I wear a hat that says Boom. I wear a jersey on the back of it that says my wife’s name, Vanessa, because I want to

make sure I focus on what matters every single day. And so can you talk to me about what you meant by that statement? Because when I heard you make that statement I thought, we’re the same person. No, right? I love routine. I love habit.

It makes me feel energized. I love feeling like everything’s in the right place. There’s decision fatigue. You don’t have decision fatigue about what to wear, because you wear the same thing every day. You’ve decided what you want to wear and why.

It makes perfect sense for you. You’re doing it. I would love to show the book. I get up at 6 a.m. every day, because it’s pretty easy to set the time that you wake up. I would love to go to the library every day at the same time, or do my email every day at the same time, but I’ve got to do an interview, or I’ve got to record.

Sorry about that, Margo. Sorry. No, it’s just that part of it, but if I could be a Benedictine monk and have that kind of… In a water tower. I love those hours that they have.

It just so appeals to me. Okay, so your newest book, again I know you’re working on another book, but your newest book is called The Four Tendencies. Can you share with the listeners about what this book is all about and why everybody, and I’m not attacking anybody, but I’m saying if you don’t buy this book, one would question what you’re putting, where typically people might put a bull.

People have said. People have said. We wouldn’t say it. We wouldn’t say it. So with The Four Tendencies, why would all the listeners want to check that out? Well, what it does is it’s a personality framework that tells you whether you’re an upholder,

a questioner, an obliger, or a rebel. And there’s a quiz on my site if people want to take the quiz and find out what they are. It’s at GretchenRubin.com. But what’s helpful about knowing your tendency is then you can really set things up. Like if you’re having trouble changing a habit, or you’re feeling frustrated or burned out, or you’re procrastinating on something, knowing your tendency really helps you figure out

exactly what to do differently. It’s not just like throw spaghetti against a wall and it’s not a one size fits all solution because as we all know, the fact that something works really well for somebody else doesn’t necessarily mean that it works well for me.

And a lot of times people blame themselves for that. I’m like, no, no, no, it’s because people are different. So if this doesn’t work for you, here are these other things to try. And the fourth tendency, if you know yourself, then if you know other people.

So you’re working with somebody who you’re like, I don’t understand, like why are they driving me crazy? Like why are they doing this thing that makes no sense? Why aren’t they responding in the way that I would think they would respond? A lot of times if you understand their tendency, it’s much clearer why they see the world the way they do and why they’re behaving the way they do.

And so then you can just reach a place of like harmony and efficiency much more easily because you’re not trying to say like, well, you’re right, I’m wrong, or thinking I’m wrong and you’re right. You’re just like, okay, well, given our different perspectives, how do we come together in a place that works for both of us? And that’s a lot easier when you have a vocabulary and kind of understand the underpinnings of what’s going on. In your book, I mean, you break it down, you talk about how the questioner resists the outer expectations, but meets their inner

expectations. I mean, you get into deep dive about the obliger, the rebel, the upholders. It’s a phenomenal book to understand the way that people think. And I just, your research is so intense and so in-depth. I feel like you’re giving us two years of your life of research and you’re condensing it into, you know, a couple hundred pages, 300 pages. How long did you spend researching the four tendencies before you released that book? My previous book was a book called Better Than Before that’s about the 21 strategies

that people can use to make or break habits. So I actually figured out the existence of the four tendencies as part of studying habits. Because I was like, how do you explain these patterns and how people can and can’t change habits? So that led me to the four tendencies. And so I wrote a chapter in that book, but that was one of 21 chapters

because it was just one of 21 strategies. And after Better Than Before came out, I was just deluged with people who were like asking me questions, like I need to know this, I want to teach a workshop, like I need more, more, more, more.

And finally I thought, oh my gosh, I really need to go. And first I was gonna like write a little PDF, and then I was gonna write a pamphlet. And then I’m like, no, I have to write a whole book because people were asking me such kind of like really thoughtful, deep questions and asking me,

like, how would you approach a different, you know, I’m a doctor and I can’t get my patients to take their medication, or I work with somebody who won’t meet a deadline, even though they’re perfectly capable of it, or, you know, why does this person keep, like, every three years,

suddenly quitting their job with deep resentment, like, what’s going on? And so, it just turned into a book. So, it took me about two years to write the book, but I’ve been thinking about it for much longer because it was part of Better Than Before.

So probably like four years I’ve been thinking about it. But I made it up, so I couldn’t really, I couldn’t like go to the library and look it up. I had to like try to indirectly find stuff. And so I was looking for movies and books where you see the tendencies and looking for like indirect,

you know, like studies of conscientiousness. Like, what does that mean? It was hard. It’s hard to come up with something original because you can’t really do your research. Gretchen, we like to end each and every show with a boom.

For the people who listen to our show, the hundreds of thousands of listeners, boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you be willing to bring the boom? Partake in a boom. We can partake in a boom. We’re going to say three, two, one, and we’ll end with a boom.

Here, Chup, are you ready? I am prepared. Clay Starr, as former school teacher turned millionaire, are you ready to go, sir? I am ready, yes. Okay, and Ms. Gretchen Rubin, are you ready to go? I am ready.

Okay, here we go. 3, 2, 1, boom! Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens, I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy in there. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia? Oh, Santa Claus? No, no, that’s March, March 6th and 7th.

You’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, 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? Well, you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two.

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

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

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

organization for Donald J Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. 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 that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees

is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean look at it and this is the man behind the business for the last pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it so you’re talking we’re into nine going into ten years of him running it and we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s gonna be amazing. Now think about this

for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki 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. So 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 Thrive Time Show.

If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that

is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be 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. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here.

The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. Yeah. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats

in the men’s restroom. No, I’m just kidding. But I felt that. 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

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 going to learn here, OK? OK. You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding.

What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to 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, people are… you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so, it could be a challenge.

You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones, and we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction.

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

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

workshop. But 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 to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re

Stretching and this is a true story when you get up and stretch you’ll be greeted by mariachis There’s gonna probably be alpaca here llamas helicopter rides a coffee bar a Snowcone I mean, there’s just you had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. You know, I Should write that down and I’m sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped his face.

So that’s right, we duct taped. No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool passing that thing around and testing.

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

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

So you only have three out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with. And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default, you have a one out of 1,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the

size. 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. 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 it 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 best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization.

You add to that Sean Baker. Now you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more! Well, okay, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his 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 gonna 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 to 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 Cuff. She started that company in her home. And now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products.

That’s rusticcuff.com. If someone says, I want more! This is not enough! Give me more. Okay, I’m not going to 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… 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 give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now.

Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th. We just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author, rich dad, poor dad, he’ll be here.

Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible and there’s somebody out there right now you’re watching and you’re like but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin.

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