Jim Stovall | Don’t Let Your Employees Rob You Blind

Audio Transcription

In today’s world. According to the U S chamber of commerce and CBS news, 75% of United States employees steal from the workplace. Well, that is very encouraging. So on today’s show, we’re talking about the importance of making sure that you don’t let your employees Rob you blind with the bestselling author who is literally blind. Yes, folks, today’s New York times bestselling author, Jim Stovall is blind. You haven’t heard his name. Look him up on Google. That’s Jim S. T. O. V. a. L. L. on today’s show. Jim also breaks down his newest book, 100 worst employees learning from the very worst, how to be your very best.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce a show, but this show dies to man. Eight kids, Koch created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show

prime time show.

Yes, yes, yes. And dr Z on today’s show, we have a fabulous guest.

I mean fabulous is really an understatement. Can I, can I look them up with a better adjective than that? Let me say, this guy has a reverse of an excuse. Let’s just say that there’s a lot of excuses we could have for not starting a company. We could say, I’m too tired, too tired, I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have any money. I can’t find good people. Or you could say, I’m blind. You could, and if you said that, everybody would pretty much say, you know what? Okay, now you’re talking metaphorically or physically, literally and physically. If you use that as an excuse, nobody would judge you. But today’s guest earned his fortune after losing his vision. After losing his vision, he gained a vision for his life. Jim Stovall, welcome onto the throat time show. How are you? Oh, jam.

Yeah, I am great. It is great to be with you guys as always.

Uh, sir. I’m not sure if you’re aware. Are you aware that you’re a bestselling author?

Yes, I am. I get to these little envelopes in the mail periodically that remind me of that.

Now, if you can’t see before we get into your new book, how do you on a, on a daily basis, work away at writing your books cause you haven’t, how many books have you written now, mr Jim Stovall,

this is I think 46

so with that many books, what is your process like for writing a book?

Well to me, and you know, I’m embarrassed to tell you guys as a, as a bestselling author with 10 million books in print, when I could read the way you guys do with my eyes, I don’t know that I ever read a whole book cover to cover. I was nearly 30 years old when I lost my sight completely and I was not a reader. But after that I discovered high-speed digital listening and I read a book every day. There hasn’t been a day in the last, uh, 28 years. I haven’t read a whole book cover to cover. And that changed my life and made me want to be a writer. And then I have some very talented people down the hall here, a lady named Dorothy Thompson. I dictated over 40 of my books to a 25 year period and I write a weekly syndicated column and then we’ve done over a thousand of those. And then eight of my books had been turned into movies and we write the screenplays. For me, everything’s audio. It’s no different than talking to you guys. I just started, you know, once upon a time. And I end with, they live happily ever after. And then in between there, there’s a book and I don’t understand spelling, punctuation, anything like that. And I have very, very talented people that fix all of those things. And I talk just like I’m talking to you.

No, you said, I’m not trying to, to a pinion, kind of paint you against a, an in the corner here, but I think you just said that you read a book every day or you listen to a book every day. Did I get that correctly sir?

Yeah, I, I do. I, I, uh, was a part of an experiment that was done with compressed digital audio when, uh, the digital world first came about and they worked with me and several hundred other people across the country and it to see how fast can you go. And you know, and it just seems like boiling the frog, you just turn it up a little more and a little more and a little more. And uh, you know, depending on the, the, the, the content, I can listen to it to 3.5 or four times normal speed. So, you know, a, a standard audio book that might be eight hours long, I can listen to in two hours, something like that. So, uh, you know, and I like you, I get up early, early every day. I’m up at four and uh, you know, generally I’ve read a book or the better part of a book before I even come to the office.

Cool. Do you have any type of device nearby where you can play us an audio excerpt of what that sounds like? Is that possible?

Let me see what I can.

Yeah. Cause if you did, uh, I, I, you know, I, I just, I don’t want to read a book. I get fixated on these ideas. Um, when someone says something like, that’s why I love interviewing people like Jim Stovall, when somebody throws out, I read one every day, it blows my mind and I almost can’t recover from it.

It’s audio over the phone standing by. Here we go. [inaudible] everything about it. It’s like a [inaudible]. Okay. There you go.

Whoa. Well that was profound. That, that profound Mark on me. Okay. That right there, I might buy frog is not birding as hot as yours. I’ll promise you that. Oh my gosh,

I am glad that is the book. Is that right to a, was written by a gentleman that, uh, I’m, I’m not sure, I’m not sure all of his content is ready for prime time. So, um,

no, as a man who, uh, has earned wealth since, uh, going blind. So listeners out there, cause I want to get into your new book, but I want listeners to know where you came from. Um, how did you earn your fortune? How did you earn your first million dollars to walk the listeners through how you started your first business?

Well, clay, quick story. I, I grew up here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was a poor student. I thought I was going to be an athlete to who my whole goal in life was to be an all American football player and then go into the NFL and make my living doing that and the the Scouts and coaches and people that monitor that felt I had the size and speed to do that. So I thought that was a basically going to be my career. Then one year before going to play a season of football, every year before you go play big time football, you have to get a physical. They want to make sure you’re healthy before they take you out and try to kill you. And so I, during this physical I was diagnosed with a condition that would cause me to lose my sight and a set of circumstances that would be a whole book and movie by itself.

I switched over and became an Olympic weightlifting champion, finished my athletic career that way. And then by age 29 I did lose all of my sites and I moved into this little nine by 12 foot room in the back of my house. I thought I’d never leave again. I had my radio and telephone, my tape recording. That was my whole world and the thought of running a television network with over a thousand stations or writing books or speaking to millions of people in arena events would have been as foreign to me, is going to the moon. And I had one great asset before I had lost my sight. That little room had been our television room in the back of our house and it had our TV and the video player with all my classic movies. I love Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart and all those guys.

And one day out of just sheer boredom, I put on an old movie, it actually called the big sleep Phillip Marlow story with Humphrey Bogart. And I thought, you know, I have seen this so many times, even though I’m totally blind, I’ll be able to sit here and follow along. And it worked for a little while, you know, and then I was kinda following along in my head, but then I forgot what happened. And somebody shot somebody and somebody screamed in the car, sped away and I forgot what happened. And I said the magic words. I said, somebody ought to do something about that. And you know, the whole world is looking for a great idea and they trip over one about three times a week. The only thing you got to do to have a great idea is go through your daily routine, wait for something bad to happen and ask yourself, how could I have avoided that?

And the only thing you got to do to take that great idea and turn it into a business is ask yourself, how can I help other people avoid that? The world will give you fame and fortune and riches and everything you ever wanted in your life if you’ll just care about them and solve their problem. Because as in most things, clay, it ain’t about us. It’s about them. And that was the beginning of my core business, the narrative television network. And we make movies and television and educational programming accessible for 13 million blind or visually impaired people here in the United States and millions more around the world. If you put them all together in one place, it would be the largest television market in America, larger than you know, New York or LA. And um, it has been a tremendous business. And out of that came speaking in books and movies in the columns and everything else we do.

No, you have written books with Steve Forbes. Uh, the ultimate ultimate productivity is a great book. That book, that book talks about how you have to have enough insurance to have like a bad day and not a bad life. That was powerful for me. When you’re reading the book of the green cover and you’re hammering home buying insurance and see up to that point, I was trying to get that chief insurance Doja that insurance, it doesn’t pay out. Sure. Right. And then I read the book and I’m going, I’m an idiot. And I went in and I tell, told Vanessa, we need a lot of insurance. Oh yeah. Well why? Because you’re the insurance guy sold us know Jim Stovall just sold me a huge insurance policy and I’ve just told you that’s where it kind of, that’s where I started diving into the Jim Stovall books. And, and so Jim, every time we release a new book, I just want to have you on this show. It is kind of a standing invite, but this new book is called the a hundred worst employees learning from the very worst, how you can be your very best, my friend. What inspired you first to write this book?

Well, about five or six years ago, I did a book with express personnel, the largest employment agency in the world called the 100 worst bosses. And people from all over the world wrote these stories of their worst bosses and you can imagine how errific it was. And so the publishers came back to me and said, let’s do worst employees. And I thought about it a lot. And, um, I kind of combined with my friend and colleague from the national speakers association, uh, Christine Sexter and she works a lot in HR and, uh, with the companies around the country. And through that we were able to get, uh, several hundred stories and the of the worst employees out there. And you can imagine they’re sad, they’re funny, they’re humorous, but they’re all instructive. And, um, you know, clay, there are people listening to us all across the country and around the world right now.

And they are good, honorable, honest people in their own mind. And they wouldn’t steal a pad of paper or ink pens from their office, but they’ll, they’ll constantly Horsch around for two or three hours a day on the job. And you know, a lot of people right now are saying, well, my job’s not that important. I have an entry level job, you know, I could buy into that except for the irrefutable fact that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. You don’t get to halfway do this and then do that with excellence. So if you’re horsing around on your job right now and giving your boss anything less than the best thinking, someday I’ll get a better job, then I’ll get serious or better yet, someday I’ll have my own company, then I’ll get serious. It doesn’t work that way. That’s like the guy standing in front of the say he’d give me some heat and then I’ll throw in some wood. It doesn’t work that way too. I’m sorry to give you the bad news, but the universe was set up quite differently than that. And the way you do anything is the way you’re going to do everything. So, you know, if you find somebody that’s making $1 million a month and they’re running their own hedge fund or, or great conglomerate somewhere, chances are at someday, uh, many, many years ago, they wash dishes or through papers and they did that with excellence. And then that led to the next thing. And the next thing and the next thing,

Z, uh, before I start, uh, bombarding mr Jim Stovall here with questions about his book, I have some hard facts. Z, are you ready for some hard facts? I love hair. I don’t want any soft facts. Oh, here we go. One of the CBS news. These are all things you can verify. You can look them up. And Devin, let’s see if we can put these on the show notes. Uh, CBS news, uh, and teamed up with the U S chamber to discover that 75% of employees steal from the workplace. Inc magazine shows that 85% of job applicants lie on resumes to hammer home. Jim’s point, the Ken Blanchard Institute there, uh, the New York times bestselling author, they interviewed people at 1300 private sector companies audited them, and they discovered that 41% of the average employee’s day was spent wasting time. Horsing around. 41% of the time was spent wasting time.

More employees today quit than are fired. According to the Harvard business review, 18% of people at the workplace are viewed to be as insane. According to the Harvard health publication in February, and 25% of employees now look at adult content at least once per day, 25%, according to the Newsweek article called I crazy. What does that mean? Well, it means that there is a problem in the workplace. Jim Stovall, your new book helps to help us vaccinate ourselves against the Jack Ansary of the workplace. So let’s talk about chapter one, the sloths. What is the sloths chapter all about?

Well, these are people that just are lazy. They’re hiding, they’re avoiding words. You know, everybody’s looking for a work and then they quit looking. And as soon as they get a job and they’re, they’re trying to avoid work. And it’s just amazing to me. Um, you know, people who they, they came, they applied, they dressed up, they wanted to get a job. And then as soon as they get this job, they ask, what’s the least I can do? I do a lot of work now with oral Roberts university at the Stovall center for entrepreneurship. And we, you know, I tell the kids all the time, you and your parents or somebody cared enough about you to spend a lot of time and money to apply and come to school here. And then as soon as you get in, you spend so much time asking, do I have to go to class and do we have to read this and is this going to be on the test?

And all of that stuff. And you know, it’s all about doing everything in your life with excellence. And you know, when I started my career with the New York stock exchange and I had an investment office and there was a guy in the next town that I worked with, he just, he couldn’t get to work before 10 in the morning. He’d fall asleep in meetings. He was the lowest energy guy I’d ever seen. And I was trying to, you know, uh, talk up this guy and getting going and, you know, so I tried to find something he was interested in and I, and I said, what do you like to do when you’re not working? He said, I love to go fishing. I said, well, you know, let’s do that. And I could still see a little bit then, and I thought, you know, I’m probably won’t get killed.

Let’s try this. And he said, great. I’ll be by on Saturday. Pick him up. I said, what time? He said four 30 I sit in the morning. He said, yeah, yeah, four 30 in the morning. Well at four 30 in the morning, this is the guy who can’t get to work by ten four 30 on Saturday morning. He’s out there. He is foaming at the mouth to get going. He is energized. He is serious. He is ready to go. I mean, we’re standing out there in a frozen stream and he is ecstatic all day. You know? So for a lot of people, it’s not just that you’re lazy, it’s not that you, you’re, you’re not engaged. It’s you’re in the wrong place. You know, cause success in business comes when we get the right people in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing for the right reason.

And once we get all those things to happen, we start to succeed. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was arguably one of the best basketball players to ever play the game, but you put him out a point guard, you got a heck of a problem. I mean, it’s just not going to work for you. Right? So great coaches get people in the right place doing the right thing. And you know, when we run a company, that’s our job to do. But then, you know, some people, my mentor and friend, the late great coach, John wouldn’t had a sign over the locker room door that said, we coach everything here except effort and attitude. And you should be able to go into any job with maximum effort and great attitude and succeeded that job. They’ll teach you how to do everything else. The problem is all the information in the world, all the training in the world will not work if you don’t show up with effort and attitude.

Z, you have managed, at this point, probably thousands of employees in your businesses ranging from the auto auction to the optometry, to the investment in the bank to the durable medical, uh, sleep equipment companies. That’s like the guy, the Fisher guy may need a sleep study. By the way, it sounds like he might need a sleep study. But you’ve been, you’ve been involved in a lot of different businesses. Yes, yes, yes. And, um, I would like for you to ask any questions that you have for Jim or, cause because you, you guys have both managed a lot of people andZ , you see it, um, as, as an owner you see a lot of people that just don’t seem to want to do it. And you’ve got a great team now, but it’s taken you years to build that team. What questions would you have for Jim about building a team? Hiring a team, motivating a team? Well, I kind of wanted to go back to, uh, kind of the beginning when he was 30 years old and you, and you lost your vision. What was the biggest thing that you had to overcome with that? W what was the biggest thing you thought you’d have to overcome and then what was the biggest thing that you had to overcome when the lights went out?

You know, doc, that’s a great question. I thought the biggest thing I would have to overcome was I couldn’t read or drive. I taught, you know, I didn’t know any blind people. I’d never even met a blind person. So I saw, well, I can’t read, I can’t drive. And well, here I am today. I’ve read more books than anybody I’ve ever met. And the airlines told me I have over 2 million miles, which is one airline. So I mean, I get everywhere I want to go and I read all the books I want to read. The biggest hurdle I had to overcome then and now is lack of expectation. You know, if you guys went home and sat in a little room and played your radio all day and didn’t do anything else in your life, eventually your friends, your family, your loved ones who’d come over and say, you know, Z, you got to get out, do something. I mean, you’re better than this. Let’s get going. If I did that, no one would ever say, Oh, isn’t it great? He can play the radio all by himself? And so you have to be totally internally motivated. And so as a blind person, that that’s one of the most important because nobody expects you to do anything. Now in certain negotiating situations, in certain competitive situations, it comes in very handy because, uh, nothing more powerful than being underestimated by your competition.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. Well that’s kind of a fuddle side. Jim, I had a thought for you. A little employment tip. If the whole bestselling author, movie writer career thing doesn’t work out, the Miami dolphins no longer require football players who can see to be on the team. Yeah. So I wanted you to know that and live your dream. Have you wanted an NFL team? This is your year.

I could probably do that. And they played so far. Still looking for their first victory for all I know they have some blind guys down there.

Well, let’s look at it. I mean, he’s a handsome man. You put him in Aqua Marine. I mean, he sounds going to be a home run. Beautiful man. That’s, I mean, that’s as good all the way around. It’s a blastic blast down there in Miami. Now, Josh, you are a guy who’s a fan of mr Stovall here. And you’re also an entrepreneur who has really found traction with your company, living water, irrigation over the past couple of years. And now you have employees, a not one, not two, not three, but many. Uh, what questions would you have for Jim about managing employees, hiring employees, encouraging employees? Any questions at all about employees? Sure.

So, well the first thing I want to say, Jim is a, I love the story of Christopher a man enough to admit this. It brought me to tears. Um, I think that’s, that’s a wonderful thing that all of our listeners could go back and listen to and really look into. Uh, I appreciate that. I thoroughly appreciated the book, the ultimate productivity. Um, it did a whole lot for me to understand the difference between being busy and being productive cause I was super duper duper busy for a long,

you said the story of Christopher. What, what do you mean to listeners out there that aren’t familiar with the story of Christopher?

Uh, Jim, should I, I’d let you wrap that up cause you can say much story.

I tell it’s a true story based on a young man I worked with at a school for the blind, a four year old is I was losing my sight. You can go to Jim Stovall, S T O V a L L, Jim stovall.com, and you can watch it there or just search on YouTube and it’s all over the place. I do it in a lot of the arena events and it’s become kind of a, a signature part of my, uh, uh, of my arena events.

Okay. Back to you Josh. Um, so what I would ask you and I, I mean obviously you’ve had the cards stacked against you but never made excuses and when did it, so if we have, as far as employees and managing staff and cause there’s always the whole list of 17 billion excuses about my cat did this and my dog that and I had to do this. And what are you, what would you say or what would, how would you encourage your staff to quit making excuses, I guess would that wrap up that question?

I think everybody’s passionate about something. And I always try to find out what my people are passionate about. The young lady at the front desk answered the phone when you called. I talked to her one day and she rescues dogs from lbs and rehabilitate them and get some back out there. And that’s her passion. She does several of these a month. And uh, so we were doing a movie with Academy award winner, Louis Gossett jr based on my book the lamp and we needed a dog. I said, let’s put one of Beth’s dogs in, in the movie. And this dog became famous and revolutionized her rescue efforts and it’s been a huge thing. And uh, you know, and uh, then in the next office there’s a young lady and I said, what if you could do anything in the world you wanted to do? She’s, well, I’m a singer songwriter and I worked on it for years and it turns out she’s really, really good.

And we’ve done, uh, uh, eight movies and seven of them have her songs that she’s either written or recorded in there. And, uh, three years ago with a movie we did called the ultimate legacy, she was nominated for the best original song and emotion picture by the motion picture associated next to her is a lady whose mother wrote poetry and then passed away. And she was so passionate about her mom’s poetry. I said, why don’t I write a book about this and put all of her poems in there? And then downstairs in our studio there are people who use their voices on radio and TV throughout our area. But now they get to use that in a way to help blind people. See. And I mean, it doesn’t get much better than that guys. I mean, you know, we all like to make profit. We all like to make money, but we all like to do good work too.

And I’m on the board and I support a lot of nonprofits, but none of them do as much good as we do making money at narrative television. It’s been an amazing transformation. So all of these people have found a way to fulfill their passion right here, doing what we do. And the way you find this out about your people is you just flat out ask them. You just flat out ask them. And you know, and I, I just don’t think we can take excuses from people. You know, if I left my wallet on my desk here and then as my people came in and out during the day, if they reached in their, on their way out and grabbed a $20 bill, I’d stop him. I said, Hey, that didn’t yours. But you know, but just by not being fully engaged, they can steal many multiples of that every day. And

Oh, wait a second. This right here, Jim, I’m starting to rub too. I want to, I want to have you hammer home on this. This is big because I do personally, this is how my worldview, I view it as theft, theft, just like you’re stealing $20 out of my wallet. If I see you doing nothing, it bothers, it bothers the crap out of me. And I, I mean, in the same way that if I saw someone taking 20 bucks, that’s how I feel when an employee’s not making outbound calls or not answering the phone or not doing the checklists help fix the mind of some entrepreneur that doesn’t view that as theft. Therefore they’re getting robbed, blind there. There’s somebody who says, well, you know, everyone gets distracted 41% of the day. You know, Jim, I mean, helping entrepreneurs sort through that.

Well, I used to struggle with that and then I put in a, an employee stock option thing for our people. I, several of the people that, uh, uh, well you can call our company and the phones answered by a millionaire. I mean, we have had people become very, very successful at these sorts of things. And uh, but, uh, I remember one of the first ladies that came to work for me, she was legally blind single mom. She passed away. Unfortunately it was the breast camper, the cancer tragic story. She made me guardian of her little girl and the little girl inherited the, those stock options. And that made her a very wealthy young lady. Well, when we had people downstairs, they weren’t getting their work done and horsing around and couldn’t get to work on time. He finally got real clear to me when I took a guy out.

I said, let’s step outside here. I said, look, here’s the thing. If you were stealing with me, I’d probably find a way to look the other way and wouldn’t worry about it, but I am not going to stand by and watch you steal money from that little girl. She’s lost her mother, her father and everything. Everything she owns in this world is her percentage of this company and you have the unmitigated gall to do anything less than your best. We’re paying you better than the industry pays anybody anywhere at any time and you’re still stealing from that little girl. I’m not going to stand by and watch it. I’m just not going to stand by and watch it. And you know, if people have legitimate situation, we’ll work around anything here. I mean, I get it. I mean, I mean this company is run by a blind guy. There’s not one person here that has a job that I could do. I don’t know how to do anything. So we will work around any personal situation somebody has. But you got to bring the effort and you got to have the attitude or you don’t get to stay here. That stuff is infectious around and it’s like, wow. It’s like sports guys. You know, you get a cancer in the clubhouse, you get a cancer in the locker room, you just, you just don’t overcome it.

Jim Stovall, I’ve got a feeling though that that wasn’t completely correct. I have a feeling there’s probably a few things you could do around there. I bet you could answer the phone. Let’s just start there. You could. Oh yeah, there you go. Well, it’s, it’s a lot about folk button pusher then maybe you could, but, uh, I have a question for you. You know, you probably get asked this all the time. How would your life be different if you didn’t go blind?

You know, uh, I, I, you know, I’ve, you know, it’s, it’s become such a part of my life. I don’t think about it. You know, having the book out did this Monta, I’ve done over a hundred radio and podcast interviews, so everybody asks about it and I appreciate that. It’d be strange if they didn’t, but, uh, um, you know, I probably, you know, I’d never read a book. I, if I could not have made it as a professional athlete, I would have gone back, probably do the only thing I knew how to do before that, which was I was a construction worker. I shoveled concrete and they, they paid me a little better than the other guys cause I was bigger and stronger. And, uh, that was my career. I’d probably done that until I went totally blind. And then I don’t know what I did done.

I, I mean, uh, but, uh, you know, I had the privilege to come out and, uh, uh, you know, during my last year of college, I knew no one was going to hire me. I knew I had to start my own company. I, I remember going to my dad’s office and I said, look, after graduation, I’m not going to get a job, which is really thrilling for parents to hear. But I said, I’m going to start my own company. And he introduced me to a man who had a third grade education, had made $10 million during the great depression, gave nine of it to charity, lived off the, the, the investments on that 1 million remaining and worked for, or Robert university for a dollar a year for the rest of his life. And, uh, he taught me how to be an entrepreneur and, uh, you know, that was such a big, big thing for me.

And then, you know, years later I wrote a book called the millionaire map about my, uh, my journey from poverty to prosperity. And I talked about Lee Braxton, my mentor, made me read, think and grow rich Napoleon Hill’s book. Maybe read it three times before he even talked to me. He said, we don’t even share a vocabulary until you’ve read this book. And he made me read it three times. And I wrote about that in my book. And then the head of the Napoleon Hill foundation called me and said, do you know that your mentor, Lee Braxton was Phil’s best friend? He said he gave the eulogy Napoleon Hill’s funeral. I had no idea they even knew each other. And now I have a two inch thick file of letters between Napoleon Hill and mr Braxton. There were written throughout the forties and 50s and 60s. And that is becoming a book that will come out soon called Napoleon’s bridge. But you know, the, the, the opportunity, uh, you know, guys, I mean, opportunities come disguised as problems. Every great opportunity you show me somebody getting wealthy in the world today as an entrepreneur, I’ll show you a problem. It all starts with a problem.

[inaudible]

I mean, if nobody ever had any, uh, eye problems, nobody’s nearsighted. Nobody’s farsighted as he’s going to have to go out and get honest work.

Oh, I made deconstruction. I made you construction. I paid to tell you a story that, uh, I, I cannot prove, but let me just tell you, let me tell you that the parts of that I can prove. I’m, I was going to college at oral Roberts university proof and a guy I knew, uh, knew of was dating. Uh, Vanessa, the woman I’m now married to, true story. And so that, that relationship kind of ended and I waited probably, you know, of, you know, like an hour, a good 30 minutes. I moved in there, went pursued her and we started dating and I would drop her off to work at dr Robert Zellner and associates and relationship was kind of Rocky because she could see me now. I had asked her on dates multiple times. I’ve been rejected multiple times. True story. She’d rejected me, shut me down.

These are all things she would verify. And anyway, I noticed our relationship started getting better after she started working at dr Robert zoners because dr Robert zoner, we were not, Vanessa and I were not married before she started working for you. We were married after. Yes. So I believe you gave her the wrong prescription for her vision, which has allowed her to not see, which has caused her to be buried to me all these years. Did you serve with you was the only shot you had? I hate to say it, but it was the only shot you had it that it just, it’s such a such a grievous but beautiful malpractice. It really is. I mean it’s beautiful. It’s like, it’s like mama, when the neighbor asked me, how do I look at these pants, how honest do I honestly answer her mama, you know, twin, those little, little good guy. Such a thank you, but I had to give you a shot because you really had no chance. Other than that, there’s somebody out there that wants to read, thinking, grow rich, but requires work. I remember, I remember my boss, Jeremy thorn at faith highway and impact ministries said, clay, you’re like a ship without a rudder and you have to read this book, think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill. Kind of an older looking book published originally. Jim wasn’t in the 1920s maybe 19 what year?

1937

30 37

it came out in 37

and uh, it is, can you explain to the listeners what this book entails? Cause my boss told me if I didn’t read the book, I was fired. And I remember coming home and telling my wife, I’m not going to read this book. And she goes, well, you have to read that book. You’re going to get fired them. Okay. I read the book begrudgingly and now I have named my son after the book. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill and I’ve read that book at least a dozen times. Can you explain to listeners out there what that book is all about and how it changed your life because it is awesome.

Well, Napoleon Hill was born in 1880 in the Appalachian poverty in Virginia and as a very young man, he became a newspaper reporter. He was actually there at kitty Hawk, North Carolina when the Wright brothers flew and reported that. And then one of his next assignments was to go out and interview Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world, founder of us steel. And he’ll ask Carnegie the question we would all ask, how do you become the richest man in the world? How do we become successful? And Carnegie said, that has never been quantified. Uh, but if you want to dedicate the next 20 years of your life to it, you can be the one to unlock that. And he’ll agreed. And over the next 20 years, because Carnegie made the introductions. Yup. He’ll interviewed Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham bell, and 500 of the most successful people of that day. It took 20 years.

Oh, so, okay.

And synthesized all that information into the book, think and grow rich. It has sold over a hundred million copies. It is still one of the best selling books. And if you talk to multimillionaires around the world and ask them what number one book, if you only had one book you could read, what would it be more than anyone, any other book, they will say, think and grow rich.

True. And what is your relationship now with the Napoleon Hill foundation? Because Lee Braxton, correct me if I’m wrong, was a pallbearer for Napoleon Hill’s funeral. Am I correct or am I getting that wrong?

The eulogy, it heals service and they were good friends. And um, I have done a movie for them, a think and grow rich. The legacy. I have written several books with them. I have, uh, raised a scholarship money for them to tens of millions of dollars and uh, you know, just making sure that book gets around the world, uh, to people who need it.

I just, I I absolutely love that about you. I’m, I am, I’ve given away, I used to speak at junior achievement for years at broken arrow high school and I’ve given away, I dunno, maybe 500 copies of that book cause I would give away a copy of the book to every student in the class. And every year, every year there’d be like 40 kids in a class and I probably did four, four, four or five classes a year. Um, but you, you, what you’re doing for the Napoleon Hill foundation is, is phenomenal. Um, Devin, I know that you had, has, have a few questions you’d like to ask mr Jim Stovall and Devin is, uh, a web developer on our team and, and Devon, you have the man, the myth, the legend, the guy who might be the newest member of the Miami dolphins. Sam Stovall here. What question do you have for Jim?

Um, Jim first, it’s just an honor to be able to, to talk here with you. And um, you know, everybody that I’ve heard interviewed on our show, they, they all kind of build their day on habits that, that make them successful. What are, what are some of the big habits that, that you’ve been able to, to build kind of your success on?

Well, first off, I, I get up very early in the morning and it’s not, you know, when I say I get up at 4:00 AM, you know, people gasp and, uh, you know, make all kinds of guttural noises. And in reality my alarm doesn’t go. That’s when I wake up. I mean, it just, I am up, I’m ready to, I go into my office in my home. I have some quiet time. I go over my goals. I do a thing I call the golden list, which is a list of a dozen things I’m thankful for every day. And then I start my day, I, I read, I do my thing. Uh, I spend an hour with my bride every morning and then I come to work. I have a very specific pattern we work on here and it’s all designed to keep me productive all day, every day.

Jim, your, your your book here. Now this is your newest book, the a hundred worst employees. I want to, uh, go rapid fire into three chapters real quick. Chapter three, you talk about the scorpion. What’s the scorpion and why do we want to learn more about this employee personality?

Well, these are the people that will actually hurt you. These are the people that will attack you, steal your stuff, steal your ideas, take advantage of you. These people need to be avoided at all costs. And you know, when you find these people in your company, you need to, uh, you know, you need to give them an opportunity to go to work elsewhere. And um, you know, these are people you need to get rid of it. There are habits in there that are not fixable. The, these people are serial criminals and people we need to avoid in the, in the workplace.

So you need to promote them to customer status. Freak me out, man. I’m telling you the kind of people that will come to work and not like you and have the courage to complain about you, but don’t have the courage to quit that, that personality type. That one is, I don’t, I don’t get that one. Now, chapter 16 is called the mosquitoes, the Minnesota state bird, the mosquitoes. Tell us about the mosquitoes, the Minnesota state bird personality. Back to you sir.

These are people. Mosquitoes are people that just annoy you. They’re just all over all the time and they just annoy you. They’re always, and you know, one of the things I love about [inaudible] and entrepreneur in my work and professional life, I can eliminate what I call the jerk factor. And one of the things you have to have to work here, particularly directly with me, is I got to like you, why should I, I own this? I started this. Why should I spend my day with anybody? I don’t like to be around. There are some people, you know what I mean? There’s somebody for everybody I guess. But I mean, it, it’s not me. And, uh, if we don’t get along, it’s just not working out. And uh, you know, so, uh, I hire slowly, I fired quickly. And having said that, there is nobody here now that hasn’t been here 20 years.

I mean, we don’t, we don’t bring people in very often. And, uh, and when we do, we’re very careful about it. It’s like getting married. I mean, I spend more time with these people here than I do with my bride. And uh, you know, so it’s, it’s, it’s really important that you have a good fit and the minute you find out it isn’t a good fit, you have to employ a process. I call accelerating your point of failure. Let’s get you out of here. Let’s go find a place that does work for you. And you know, and I have a, a friend, he used to work for me downstairs. It wasn’t working out here. I went and told him, I said, you know, I’m not going to get rid of you today. Let’s find the right place for you. And he is now one of the highest paid people in media in our town here. I mentioned his name here, but I mean, I fired him and we remained great friends to this day. It wasn’t a good fit here, but it’s good somewhere else. And uh, you know, there’s somewhere for everybody, but that doesn’t mean you get to work here.

Now, Jim, uh, in your, in your book, you talk about the chapter 15, you talk about the Howler monkey. Can you tell us what a Howler monkey is?

These are people who, uh, frankly, uh, make a lot of noise. They, they spread gossip, they spread rumors. And I have a dear friend Dave Ramsey, who’s probably one of the leading financial coaches and authors in America, but he runs a huge company in Nashville. Now, 500 employees started with just one. And uh, you know, and it has been voted I think eight years in a row is the best place in Nashville, Tennessee to work. And he has a, you know, with the exception of stealing money or, uh, sexually harassing people, those two things. And you know, that’s not a policy. Those are crimes, you know, call the police, get them outta here. But except for those two things, the one thing that will get you fired every time his gospel, he has a zero gossip policy there. So what he, what he means by this is if you know you have a problem at work, you have two options. You could go talk to your immediate supervisor or you could go talk today. That’s it. If you’re talking to anybody else, it’s gossip. This is when you think about your problem. You either, you either go talk to your immediate supervisor, you go talk to the boss, or you shut up.

Jim. I, I don’t want to gossip. I don’t want to go easy. I don’t want to gossip. I feel, I feel a pull right now to just share a little bit of my Dave Ramsey gossip here. Okay. This is my costume. You shut me down right away. Jim. This is what happened. Dave Ramsey is a man of class. He’s a man with standards. He’s a bestselling author. He’s a good guy. He’s a good, this is true, right? There is no gossip here, right? No, and I, I’d reach out to him consistently to have him on my show and let me tell you something. He has yet to confirm that he will be a guest on my show. So I have scheduling. I have, there’s a rumor I’d like to spread right now that Dave wants to be on my show, but he just doesn’t know how to reach me. So what I’m going to do, Jim, is I’m just going to give this to you and I’m not pressuring you on a, on a podcast to, or a radio broadcast to invite. I’m not going to pressure Jim directly. No, no, no, no. Cause I don’t have the kind of class Claude. I have nothing. I got nothing. I have no skill, no college degree, really nothing really working from my wife’s. My wife could probably get a breakdown right now, but 3.5

times as fast because he could still hear you. So I would like Z’s. Cause is it okay if we kind of spread a rumor that Jim Stovall may ask Dave Ramsey to be on our show? Can we spread that rumor? We can spread

second ultimate gift movie. There’s a scene, uh, the, your listeners who’ve seen that movie, there’s a scene where a, a young guy during the depression has to catch a freight train and there’s old hobo shows him how to do that. We’ll deliver was actually [inaudible]

we could only get to see antique train one day.

It wouldn’t have worked. So we hired this wonderful African American, uh, gentleman, uh, uh, to, uh, to play that

movie star

job. And, and he ran and drummed and caught this train. And after he did that, the director turned to me and says, Ramsey would have never made it,

wouldn’t have made it. Z. yeah. What questions do you have for Jim Stovall about inviting Dave Ramsey on our show? Well, I mean, I tell you what, uh, since he can’t jump and since he is a white man, we’ll have to, we’ll have to change some of the questions that we have for him. And then you can’t go out and do a dunk athon with him. So these are things we had, we had a whole schedule to do a day while he was here. You know, he hit the basketball court and your new pool. You didn’t do a David duo show in the pool somehow. It’s like we’re calling them from the pool. Yeah, it’s Dave and Jim live. Dave and Jim lie from the pool. Like we’re in the pool, but Jim is dunking on him. Right. Cause he’s the athlete. So we need to make this happen. Maybe that could be, that could have potential. If you’ll call, if you’ll call Dave Ramsey and ask him to be on my show, I’ll call the dolphins and see if they’ll let you on the team.

If I’m going to get damaged, we’d be more like the Patriots or somebody like that.

Oh, Oh my gosh. Shutdown. There we go. Okay. Chapter seven of your book is called the seagull. What’s the seagull? Oh, Oh, Oh well,

you know, they, they, they annoy you. They steal. They, they do a lot of these things that, um, unfortunately have become very common place. And you know, I am amazed what has become commonplace in the, in the workforce in America. I was talking to a guy the other day on a plane and he said, man, I had a great experience at this restaurant, is there in San Diego where I was going? I said, well, tell me about it. He said, well, they had my reservation, right? I made the order, the food came out right. The waitress got the order right and the food was actually good and the bill was correct.

The minimal standards. We’ve

gotten to a point where you know, if a Workman promise you do you know that he’ll be here on Thursday and he actually shows up and he does what he says he’s going to do. And he cleans up after himself and on type and he’s polite and correct. I mean that’s like five star. That’s an amazing thing. And you know, you know when did just doing your minimum job become outstanding and that’s what that is what we’re facing here in America today.

Preach that. I’d tell you what and then, and then if it’s an employee now they feel entitled to a raise. I’m like, no, you actually just did the thing. [inaudible] Sanders fill the burn, baby burn, the burn, the burn burn. And it just, I don’t know why that is, but it’s kind of like maybe they look around and see that they are head and shoulders above their coworkers because they’re actually doing their job and they never failed. So I think it didn’t go well. How’s that? I mean, don’t I get a little something for the effort? I’m going, yes. That’s called your pay check and it hasn’t bounced yet. Thank you very much. I’ll see you tomorrow. Well done. And it’s, it’s crazy, right Jim? I mean people are like, like you said, I mean that restaurant that does just what we would think is the baseline.

Now all of a sudden they’re the creme de LA creme because you guys have never really met face to face except for one time. You’re at a restaurant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Let’s get back to that. What was that restaurant called? The mahogany. Mahogany leather. Very nice. Dimly lit. You can’t see each other when looks around like little raccoons are kind of like can’t fly. You man hug each other. You man. Huh? So Jim apparently was a nice guy. He comes up to your table, rich mom introduced himself. This is what happened, right? Jim introduced himself to you and you had a grievance with Jim. Well, he walked up to the table and he was obviously had way too much to drink and uh, Whoa. He was shutting up. Jim, you know, we, we met, we met casually at the restaurant and in passing, I mean I feel like I have all the men in Tulsa that I don’t really know that well. I feel like I know Jim that well. You know, you read a few of his books, you see movies, you know, we have a lot of mutual friends and so I feel like I watched Jim speaking events and I just want to ask Jim this for T there to deflate dr Zelner’s ego or to build it up a little bit. Jim, have you had the misfortune of listening to one of our radio shows and if so, how many do you think? Oh no,

I have probably listened to, uh, 40 of 40 or 50 of your shows and, uh, um, I have downstairs in our building, we have our studios and past that I have a private gym I built in. I’m the only one gets to go in and I have my own little locker room and all the weights and all the stuff. And uh, I go down there and while I’m working out, I listen to the radio. So for uh, a number of years I would catch you guys on the radio and

there it is.

So I really, really enjoyed that

gym

a number of occasions. Well, I’m going to, um, I’m going to ride this bike until you guys get to the news at the top of the hour and sometimes it drug guys, I gotta tell you it’s a little slow here. I’m, can we please get it?

Can we tell the top of the gym? Did you ever, were you ever doing a shoulder press or a bench press? Some kind of press where you

laughed right at the time that the pressing was occurring? You’re like one, two, one, two, and then there’s something funny happened and you may be a pie.

The only time I remember breaking up with you guys was the first time I heard the Morgan Freeman intro and that is one of my all time favorites.

Okay. All right, well, we got up the lab. Well, there we go. Well, Jim Stovall, we appreciate you so much and thrive nation out there. If you have $16 in your pocket, $15 and 99 cents you have access to, if you have a net worth of $15 and 99 cents if you don’t hate your life, if you’re not a communist, if you can go without buying a regrettable burrito. If you’re the kind of person who can delay gratification and not get another regrettable Slurpee at quick trip or some other convenience store, if you care about your family and your future and your legacy, go buy a copy of 100 worst employees learning from the very worst how to be your very best. And I don’t want you to feel any pressure, but if you don’t buy the book, I just sense that you may feel bad about your life for the foreseeable future. Z, do you agree? I totally agree with that. So I mean, and that’s a no pressure threshold to get over. I mean, it’s just a few things that, you know, don’t show your life away. Drivers pick up the book. I mean 16 bucks. I mean really the Starbucks and Oh, Montana theme $17 16 c’mon now pumpkin latte. I mean really Jim Stovall, thank you so much for being on this show. I end, I apologize for my personality and I’m glad you metZ here virtually over the podcast.

No, you guys are great in clay. I’m researching the possibility of, you know, 100 words to talk, show hosts,

save, save the top two spots for us. I just thought, just make sure, make sure you give us like a really cool animal. You know, a Noma. I mean, make sure it’s like we don’t have to be like, no, no, we don’t. We don’t want to be like a squirrel. I’d be like, give me like something like, you know, a cheetah or a honey Badger or the man bear pig, you know? Yeah. Like that. Cool. It’s a really cool, you know?

Yes. Shunda uh, Jim Stovall, have a great day, my friend. We appreciate your time more than we could possibly express.

You are great. Thank you so much. And we will be in touch with my friend. Take care.

And now without any further ed ado.