JT McCormick | Why You Need to Get the Hell Out of the Hood and How to Write a Book Why Writing a Book Can Change the Game for Your Business

Audio Transcription

On today’s show. The founder of scribe media joins us to talk about the importance of being intentional about who you spend your time with and why. Napoleon Hill was absolutely right when he wants famously wrote, you are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.

They said, Oh, you forgot where you came from, you, you forgot, and I go, Hey, first of all, that is the point is to get the hell out of the mind to forget where I came from. I keep mentally where I came from because I can never forget it, but the Goldman is not to represent the foot. The goal is to get out of this and you surround yourself with those same people who have the small minded mentality. You will stay right there with those individuals. You will never rise above

Today’s guest and the founder of scribe media shares. Why you need to write that book and how to write that book and why writing a book can change the game for your business. This guy’s the founder of the publishing company who has put together books for the famous comedian Tiffany Haddish and the New York times bestselling author, David Coggins. Today’s guest, JT McCormick, grew up in poverty and he was abused repeatedly as a kid. If this guy was looking for excuses or reasons or justifications to not be successful, let me tell you, he could find them. But in the game of life, there are winners and there are winners. And today’s guest, Jay T McCormack is the ultimate winner. When he could’ve chosen to become bitter, he chose to become better. If you’ve ever wanted to write a book, if you’ve ever wanted to upgrade your surroundings and to upgrade your social circle, this is the show for you.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity in a writer to introduce the show, but this show does to may eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 Moke time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome

To the thrive time show.

Yes, yes, yes.

The nation. On today’s show, we are interviewing JT McCormick, the founder of scribe media for part two of our thrive time show Aronda view boo. How are you sir?

Well, I mean, clay, you know how I am. I’m always excellent. If you wake up in the morning and your feet hit the ground, you gotta be excellent.

And for the listeners that are not familiar with your story everybody needs to do a Google search for thrive time show JT McCormick because your story is incredible. But for those who might not have heard the show yet, can you kind of, I mean, now you’re at the top, scribe media is growing very, very well, but talk to us, share with us the bottom of the bottom. Take the listeners to the very bottom. How, what was the lowest of the low for you growing up?

Well, lowest of the low for me was it had to be when I got left alone with my three half brothers and sisters. And we got left in the house for three weeks. Their heroin addict. Mother left us in a house for three weeks in Dayton, Ohio in the middle of February and no one knew we were there. That was, that had to be the lowest of the low. And then to give some more I guess context around that, you know, you know the story, my father was a black pimp and drug dealer. He father 23 children. My mother was an orphan. I don’t know where my last name comes from. And I was in and out of juvenile three different times and I to this day still have no college degree and I barely graduated high school.

So you have all of the reasons to be bitter, but you have chosen to be better. And I mentioned that because I mean you’ve gone through every kind of abuse imaginable and, but now you’re the president and CEO of scribe media, which is now a huge full service publishing company that has put together, I believe four New York times bestselling authors. People like David Goggins, Tiffany Haddish. I mean you, you have some huge authors that you’ve worked with. Tell us how scribe media started. In what scribe media is.

So our two cofounders actually started it. So you’ve got Tucker max who’s one of three people in the history of the world that have had three New York times bestselling books on the list simultaneously, a Tucker max, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Lewis are the only three people who have ever done that. So talking to max and Zach Oberon are the two cofounders and yet you’ve nailed it. We’ve grown, gosh, we’ve worked with over 1600 authors now. Most recently we just published the book for the Nobel Institute is in the Nobel peace prize. So that was a big win for us. We can feel like, okay, credibility went through the roof on that one. If Nobel can work with us, anybody can work with this. But what it’s really set up for clay is what I call ease of use. So many people want to do a book, but they don’t know where to start.

They don’t know where to put fingers on the keyboard in the paper. And so what our system is set up to do is to allow you to speak your book, sit back, grab your beverage of choice, let us pull that content from you. But the key is that when the book is done, it’s in your tone, your voice, your content, your book. So that’s the big win for us. We just want you to sit back, grab your beverage of choice, speak to your book, and has been proven time and time again. One of the hardest things to do is to think and write at the same time. They just want to take the thinking part out of it. Then you don’t have to do any of the writing. And so you just speak your book to us.

You just speak the book. Now I’m on the website right now. I’m on a a scribe, writing.com I went to scribe media.com and then you can click where you can kind of see the, the, the services that you provide. And you have packages. One package starts at $10,000. It’s describe a publishing package. One is $15,000 for the scribe guided author package, $36,000 for the scribe professional. And I believe it’s $1 million to get a high five from JT McCormick. Let’s, let’s talk about your packages here. What separates a $10,000 packet from a $15,000 from a $36,000 package?

So real quick, so if you did the $10,000 package with this, what that is, is basically publishing only, let’s say clay, you went out and you wrote your manuscript yourself. You said, Hey, great GT, I’ve got all my words, I’ve got my content, I just need to flip my manuscript over the wall to you. And you all can do the proofreading. And then from there we help you with your cover design, the interior layout layout. We published the book, we get it up on Amazon, Barnes and noble, I book, so on and so forth. So that’s $10,000. Now we’ve got a lot of people who truly want to sit down and be earnest any way or write the book. So we have a two day workshop here in Austin. People come into town and we help you structure the outline. We put a writing schedule in place for you to where you can have your book written within about six months. And then we do the also the publishing part on the backend as well. Again, cover design, interior layout, so on and so forth. So that’s 15,000 and then the $36,000 package is the one I walk you through in the beginning where you don’t actually do any of the writing. You sit back, speak your book a book out to us and let us do the heavy lifting.

So you pay $36,000 or you pay 15 or you pay $10,000 that night. Now you have a book. What is the best way to market a book and how can an author monetize the book in terms of like speaking or additional revenue stream. So again, if you have the book written now, how do you market the book and how can an author leverage the book and monetize it?

So a couple, a couple of things there. I’ll, I’ll dive into one very important. When we work with our altars, we want to find out, okay, what’s the purpose of writing the book? You know, if someone says that, you know, I want to grow my business, I want to do more speaking, I, you know, I’m a consultant, I want to hire more clients, lead generation, credibility, thought leadership. That’s who the individuals that we help mainly to be told, we turned down about 35% of the people that come to us. Then number the top two reasons we turn people away. Number one, they don’t have enough content for a book. We’re just, we’re not going to sacrifice our reputation and quality on just slapping some stuff together for someone’s book. So that’s number one. If you don’t have enough content, we’ll turn you away. Number two, if you lead with, I want to be a New York times best selling writer and sell a million copies, those individuals are looking for fame. So we kindly refer them over to the Kardashians cause that’s,

Oh, the famous [inaudible].

Yeah, but the people we’re looking to help are people who have a purpose for the book. Maybe have a memoir and they want to pass their book down to their family. A legacy T’s. That’s why I did my book. Maybe you want to grow your business. So the great majority of our authors are CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs. Those are the individuals we help. And I’ll give you a few stories here. We went through all of our published authors and we’ve got about 50 to a hundred authors who have never sold more than 150 copies of their book, but they’ve landed multiple six and seven figure contracts for their business. So their book did exactly what they wanted it to do, which was raised the visibility for them and their business.

So a, a book, let’s just say that I, you know, work with you to have you write a book or, or maybe somebody out there already has a book and they do want to not make me say a million copies, but say they want to sell 50,000 copies, 50,000 what would you say are like move number one, move number two, move number three. What are just a couple moves that you would say. All right, thrive time. Show listeners. If you have a book and you’re sitting on it, what are the best moves to get the books into the hands of their ideal and likely buyers?

So, you know, with, without going into a sales pitch, we actually do have our author marketing package as well. We the book launch package where we help authors market their books. We get, given how many authors we’ve worked with, we’ve got a long list of media connections that we work with and we’ll help authors get on podcasts, do contributed articles, help them with their social media. So we have, it’s not just the book, we have a whole supply chain. If you will of we’ll do the book for you, then we’ll help you market the book. Then we’ll do continue to market the book for you. Hope to get on podcasts. So, and currently we’re working on helping authors craft their speech and speaking performance so they can get on stage as well.

What does the marketing package cost for your peer books book marketing service?

It is $12,000 and it’s $4,000 a month over three months.

Got it, got it. Now, now let’s talk, let’s talk about this. Let’s say that I got, I have my book. Why is a book more powerful than a business card? Why is a book more powerful than a business card? If you’re sitting on an airplane and you’re talking to the guy next to you, your new airplane friend, and you know, they, he says, Hey, you know, what do you do for a living? And you busted. He said, let me, let me go. Let me, let me show you. And you open up your duffel bag or your briefcase and you hand them a book and you give to them. Why is that more powerful than, than a business card?

So, so I’m actually gonna steal a story here from one of our wealth advisors. We did a book for, so we, we, and this is a very high profile wealth advisor, one of the top 10 in the country, in fact. And so he told me, he goes, Hey man, when I would sit with a potential clients or clients, I’d wrap up my meeting and say, Hey, here’s two of my business cards. If you know anybody, please refer them over. Let them know that I’d be happy to work with him. And he said, I knew before they left my office, they threw my business cards in the trash. He said, I already knew that. He said, but then I started giving them two copies of my book and I said, Hey, if you know anyone, please give them a free copy of my book, refer them over to me, I’d be happy to help them. He said, his business took off. And the reason being is now his prospective clients were incentivized because it made them look good. They were like, Hey, you know, use my guy. He wrote the book on X, Y, Z. He said his business went through the roof or credibility because now he wrote the book on his niche in retirement.

This is all very, very true. Now, what, what excites me about your service is that I have, you know, I have a team in house and you know, graphic designers, photographers, web developers, proofreaders, all that kind of stuff. So for me, you know, I can just sit down and bang out a book, but I also have a massive payroll. You know, I have people, this is what they do for a living, you know, and the average person does not have them. If you want to make my payroll for a month, you could do that and then you’ll discover, wow, all those people get paid. So it’s a steal of a deal for 36 grand to have somebody like you if you don’t have somebody like me doing it for you. I mean, this is a great deal. I’ve heard of other services that make you pre-buy like 10,000 copies of a book, 5,000 copies of a book. I’ve heard of services that charge 50 grand, some that charge 70 grand, some that take years to get it done. How long does the process take? So suppose one of our show sponsors here, Mr. Paul, who had reached out to you and said, Hey, I want to hire you to write a book. How long does the process take?

So a couple of things. It takes nine months and that 36,000 you don’t have to stroke that check all it’s all at once is $4,500 a month, over eight months and it’ll take us seven and nine months to have your book completed.

Paul Hood, you’re a show sponsor. Therefore you get to take a look under the hood and you get to ask JT McCormick any questions that you want. Now J T just so you know, Paul Hood has multiple accounting practices. He has clients all over the country hood, CPA’s dot com is his site. Paul Hood meet Jay T McCormick. Yeah. JT, I don’t know if you remember me, but I met you when you came up here and spoke. You know I’m the guy that

I remember Paul MedInsight. Let me, let me make sure I’ve got this tray. Paul, you want the gentleman that told the story about when your dad would drive down the street? You all were so poor, you had to pull over and pick up the road kill to eat dinner. Am I right?

That would be me, ma. Wow. Still tasting that stuff. I’ll tell you teeth

Get tough when you eat that kind of stuff, but no doubt. Shunda yeah. Hey J T I just, you know, we, I, clay helped me write a book and I’ve got that bug. So [inaudible] are there certain areas that, that you guys specialize in? Do you that or do you two think NGOs go better? For instance, in my case, I, you know, we’ve gone one direction, written a book that’s more technical, none. There’s a technical, but how do people, you avoiding potholes in business and in life financially, but also, you know, I think I’ve got a story detail that, you know, basically coming from, from a, you know, a mom that was on a, you know, alcoholic dad and a mom that was on welfare to, you know, I, I’ve just, we just bought a 25,000 square foot house. So we do, okay. So you know that, that progression and what I’ve learned and how I’ve got there with the American dream. So, you know, in your opinion is there a direction that, that a guy like me that you would recommend, which, which path you should take?

First and foremost, I always ask potential authors the number one question, what’s the purpose of the book? If we’re at the end of this process, we’ve got all of your content, beautiful book, define success, and I’ll use myself for an example. For me, success was having five copies of my book to be able to pass down to my children to have four legacy piece because I had no legacy. I’ve always been just impressed with the Rockefellers, the Ford family who could trace chips generations. Man, I can’t track 30 minutes. So I wanted my book as a legacy piece. So the number one question I always lead with is define success. If it’s to grow your business, great, then you’re the expert. Let’s dig into your expertise. Make sure we capture those details that make for great book one right off the bat. I got to put this out there. Everything we do is nonfiction. We do, we don’t do not do a fiction.

All nonfiction, nonfiction, okay. Now, Charles Cola you have a, a very large business unit. Your wife has built a colo fitness together and J T these guys started in $115,000 house in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and they trained people from Charles. What? Five in the morning from five in the morning until 10 o’clock at night. I took some four o’clock clients from 4:00 AM until 10 o’clock at night, six days a week. Sometimes he converted his house into a gym. His wife’s cutting hair, doing the accounting, the finances. He’s out there doing the marketing training clients. He’s too just went through hell and back while getting people in great shape. Now they have three locations of colo fitness.com with two more big box gyms. Got ones coming down to Texas to see you guys. They’re getting closer to you down there in Austin. They’re going to be in Dallas. They have another one in Oklahoma city with plans for many, many more. Charles Cola meet mr JT McCormick.

Yes, JT. We met actually at a conference. I was a big guy muscled up guy that had the gyms. I don’t know if you remember that, but yeah, you were awesome. Inspirational story. You, you hit the hearts of many people and I think you did a great job of that, so thank you for doing that.

What question would you have for J T J?

Well, JT, I, I just, I, I, we actually started a book with clay, never finished it and we great to get back in there, you know, for us we’ve kind of achieved, you know, a point of where we can work as much or as little as we want and, but we are wanting to grind and grow our company. Our company is a fitness center that’s focused on making Jesus Christ famous and changing lives through the fitness industry. That’s actually our mission statement is to make Jesus famous and change lives through the platform that we have. And you know, we’ve got to stay 24% profitable to continue to grow. But we would like to finish a book that really does help people make people lose weight, get in shape, also shares our heart that mainly doesn’t have to make a ton of money, but just impacts people in a way that they can basically create spiritual formation about Jesus Christ and also lose weight, get in shape and make a change in their life.

And you know, as I’ve, I’ve done some training programs that have some of that wrapped in it, like some little journals and workout sheets that people follow. We’ve got, if you ever look up like colon fitness testimonials, if you type in core fitness like testimonies or our results, we have thousands of videos of real people losing weight, getting in shape, talking about it online. We actually get one video every day at every location and anyways, just we would like to eventually write a book that we can platform to do that. And you know, I don’t know the correct next steps would probably be to call your company and then go through a questionnaire with them to kind of direct us. But, so I don’t know exactly my question.

I guess what are the next steps if Charles says, Hey, I want to get started maybe now or in the future, maybe he likes the idea of coming down there for two days and then you ask him questions and then bada Bing, bada boom, there comes a book. What’s the next step, bro?

I would say the next steps for each. Email me directly. I’ll just put this, put it out there right now. Email me directly. J [email protected] I’ve got the easiest email in the company and I’m doing this because my man Clay’s got me on the, on the show, so I’m not going to send you off to our author, strategist. She can go to directly to me. We’ll walk through what would be best for you. Would it be the guided author workshop? Would it be us doing the scribe professional? We’ll reach and have you speak your book and then we’ll just walk through what the, the next steps are.

Great. You know what? I’m so passionate about you having a book, whether we help you or he does it. What, by the way, if you have me help you, I don’t make any extra money on the deal. So do you use JT gums? But seriously, but when you, I mean it’s a lot of work but I’m serious. It takes hundreds of hours. But the reason why I think it’s so powerful is this is a true, true story. Awesome story. I travel not as much as you do right now, you and Amber, but whenever I’m on a plane people always ask, what do you do? I have people books. One lady owned a large chicken business in Tulsa. I won’t mention the name of it, but a big fast food chain and she, she, I gave her the book, she reaches out to me a year later and on the phone and is like sobbing is my first book, make your life Epic.

And she goes, I have my husband passed away from a heart attack. Our business barely survives. I’ve read your book cover to cover and I have implemented everything and I just want to tell you thank you. It was like a conversation on a plane. Here’s the book. And her, anyway, it just was like a game changing thing. It was a book. That’s awesome. Then I was speaking at a church about two and a half years ago. A guy came up to me and asked me for some advice. I didn’t have time to speak with him cause it was a big church. A lot of questions. I gave him the book again, I never worked with the guy. He calls me back later and says, your book changed my life. And you guys have, I mean, how many of you, I’m not going to ask you the number, but you have thousands and thousands and thousands of members and your marginal cost per book. If say he said Charles wants to print a book, that’s 200 pages. Okay, J T 200 pages. What’s the hard cost per book to print one of those just per per copy. Let’s say someone you say for every person who signs up, you’re going to get a, the the the Coke Cola fitness book. How much would it cost per book to print a book once he’s gone through the process of making the, you know, the, the book happened

Minimal. We can have the, the per book charges down to anywhere from a dollar 75 to maybe three bucks a copy.

And then people take those books and they read those books and now they’re out having coffee in Dallas and someone says, what are you reading? And they go, Oh, I’m reading this book and then it turns into word of mouth and I guarantee you, Gary Garrett, a hundred percent stone cold lead pipe locked, you will double your revenue if you spent 36 grand, I guarantee you you make 72 grand in the first year for sure off your members referring each other. It is, it is crazy. And Paul, I’ve seen people running around at our workshops who are carrying around a tattered cover. A copy of your book that you gave them an I don’t you see the relationship change it. Hood CPAs when somebody signs up to be a client and you give them your book. Yeah, they do. And the funny thing is is is they’ll come in, they’ll look at me and say, you don’t look like what I thought, or they’ll ask me to sign my book and it’s, that’s just crazy. It works. You have to get a book done. I’m a bad person to put a goal on your list. I’m a bad man. I can’t put goals on your 2020 list, but I’m just saying I agree. If I were asked, I would say it’s a game changer and this, this system is cool cause you, you, you would, you would they fly down to you and Austin, they fly out to you.

They, they, they can come down for the two day business conference and here, here’s the other piece, clay, even if they go with us, scribe the 36,000 profession, you don’t even have to come to us. We do all the interviews over the phone.

Oh boom. Well

We’ll say we schedule this out

Every Tuesday at three o’clock. We do your book calls, 90 minute call and you’ll do it for six weeks. We pull all the content all in. You’re going to invest about 40 hours over the course of seven to nine Oh, preach it

Worth of work over seven to nine months of, of doing your book.

Keep preaching it. I just got, I use, you’re, you’re, you’re, you are closed the deal. We’ve got about 17, 13, kind of like my kinda like a Benny Hinn here. I feel like there’s 22 people, maybe seven people. There’s maybe 80. Somebody here wants to get a book written. So there’s somebody out there, JT preached the good news and why everybody has to write a book. If you’ve been thinking about that book, it’s time to move on and to actually start writing the book. Preach the good news there. J T sell it to us.

So, so I’ll, I’ll even say this, I’m going to steal this from my mother. My mother said this to me when I was a child. She said, never judge anyone because everyone has a story and you don’t know their story. And that’s actually become our motto for the company now is we believe everyone has a story. And so if you don’t share your story, you’re not, you’re not. You’re cheating the world of your story and cheating.

Oh Charles isn’t cheating in the world. Be selfish. Don’t be selfish.

I’ll take it a step further. How many people have sat back two, three, five, seven years wanting to write their book and they’ve never gotten it done.

Yup. Amen. Hey real quick, I have a audio clip of what the listeners out there saying to Charles Cola right now, and I’m a cutup. This is, this is what I hear again, Paul. It’s amazing. I’ve been able to, Mike, our listeners, many of our listeners are saying this to Charles right now. Oh, they’re just, they, they just, they just, they just want them. They want them to, you’re the fitness experts, you and your wife and the, there’s so much knowledge there. That’s good. No, you’re right. Oh my gosh. We need to keep pushing me over the edge. We need the book. I’ve known Charles for years. I’ve never seen him speechless. I don’t make any commission. I’ve never seen [inaudible]. I don’t have a backdoor commission deal. I’ll go in yet. Yet I say yet. I really want one, but I, here’s the deal. I mean, seriously, everybody out there, I just, I have it.

Change conversations and perspectives, having a book it, and then let’s talk about the speaking career thing. This is not something that I want to ever do again. Some people out there want to do it, but let me tell you about the sometimes you, you, you, you, you, you think a dog is chasing a car, Paul, and it thinks it wants the car. Right. But once it gets the car to know what to do, I felt myself in June of, I don’t know, 20, I think it was 20, maybe 13. I had 12 speaking events in the same month. Oh. And so my wife would go with me to every one of them and I would bring one kid. So I’m like, okay, here we go. We’re going to drive to Springfield, Missouri to go speak at O’Reilly’s. Oh, Riley’s autoparts. So we go there, nail it, smash it after the event, the event planner wants to follow up. People want to get photos, you want to sign your book, you got to ship the books, ship the books. Back then I did another event in Vegas than another event in San Diego than another one in Vegas than one in Phoenix, then one in Toronto, then one in Florida where there’s a pink hotel, a st Pete beach. And then another one in Fort Lauderdale and then one in Austin. I did one in San Antonio and somewhere along there I did one in Denver for ups and I thought to myself, self, you hate traveling.

But there’s other people who love traveling. But I mean I had that thought like, I mean I get motion sickness, my ears stay popped for like a whole day. I can’t hear almost. So I have to let my ears stay plugged for like a whole day. So Vanessa, I’d have to fly in on Friday morning to speak on Saturday just so I could hear myself. And then I would get nauseated for like a good, you know, four or five hours afterwards. But there’s a lot of people who are normal out there listening, normal people who can chew gum and pop their ears who don’t get motion sickness, who likes seeing beaches, who like staying in nice hotels, who like meeting new people who liked selling books, who likes signing autographs, who liked seeing the world. Those people out there talk to them about the speaking career that can come as a result of having a book. JT,

Not, not to mention, I’ll start with the number one thing as well. Almost every one of our authors who have gotten into this that have wanted to increase their visibility on speaking hands down. As soon as their book is done, their speaking fee goes up five grand just off the book. Just cause you, you have the credibility, you have the book now. But people want to book those individuals on stages who have done the book, who have the expertise, who have something to say, which again, and especially the authors we work with because so many people know that we actually validate these authors and look to make sure that they have actual content for the book, not just a bunch of fluff. So the authors we work with, Oh, their visibility goes through the roof.

David Goggins, Tiffany Haddish, how have those books changed their lives?

Oh gosh. I got to give a lot of credit to David Goggins. David Goggins got offered a traditional publishing deal and if you know anything about David Goggins ex Navy seal, big control guy, he turned it down. He turned down to a large advance to go traditional publishing chose to go with us. And last year or for 2019, he had the most sought after book in America. Second only to Michelle Obama.

How many books did he sell or can you share that total on the show? If you can’t, it’s okay.

Well, well over a million I can tell you that. Well over a million.

And do you make money? Do you make money on phone?

The New York times bestseller? I mean he, he nailed every category you possibly could as far as sales.

Do you make, do you make money when the authors make money? JT?

We do. We do not fly in fee. So when you, when pay us, you keep 100% of your book. Really? Yes.

Now Hey, you’re based in Austin, Texas. When you flew here to attend the conference, did you have to hop on two planes or one plane?

I didn’t want I was [inaudible] no, I didn’t need to. I had to fly to Dallas first.

Right, okay. Okay. Okay. So you had to do two, two flights. Okay. Cause this is the year. My wife doesn’t know this yet. So this, and this show’s not going to come out before Christmas, so she doesn’t know. But this is the year of the, of the travel for us. We’re going to do a little weekend trip. She likes that. And as long as I have no expectations and no specific time to be anywhere, so I’m not going to get frustrated with connecting flights. I might come down to Austin and harass you. I love Lake Travis. I love like travel.

Yeah, make it happen. Maybe you clay, you know, you, you tell me when and where I will make it happen. Sir.

I’m going to put out, you know what? You’re in my phone, but I’m going to put you in my phone as Austin, Texas because we’re going to Denver twice. We’re going to do that. I’m surprised her for Christmas, kind of telling her where we’re going and we love Austin, Texas. It’s very weird, but it’s kinda my kind of weird, I think

Keep Austin weird. That’s how we live.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. There’s a ton of live music down there. Great restaurants. What do you call the thing? Is it called the Oasis? The, the, the resort that looks out over Lake Travis on the cliffs.

Th the, the, the Oasis. So yeah, we’ve got everything down here. We’ve got ACL, which is a huge music festival. We’ve got South by Southwest and we are the only city in America that has the F one formula one track that that’s here. So there’s always something going on here.

Now you again, I want to go back to the very beginning. I want to end today’s show at the beginning because your father was a pimp, you were abused, you were abandoned, you don’t know the origins of your last name, you are not white and you’re not black. How would you describe what you look like?

I am, I am mixed race. I’m half white, half black. So I am no more proud of the one than the other. But I can tell you this, growing up in the 70s mixed race, not a good look. Black people didn’t like me because I was half white, white people didn’t like me because I was half black. So there you have it.

White people don’t like me because I’m so pale. They’re like this guy. Who is this guy? I know. But seriously, you grew up where black people didn’t like it cause you weren’t black enough. White people didn’t like you because you weren’t white enough. I mean you’ve gone through it all. What [inaudible] to end today’s show? What advice would you give somebody out there who’s been making excuses for decades? Saying, the reason why I can’t have success is that I grew up poor. The reason why I can’t be on time is because I’m always a, I never was taught discipline. The reason why I can’t write a book is because of that. The reason why I can’t do the marketing is because of blip. People have all these excuses. They’ve been saying it for so long that they now believe them. What advice would you have for someone who needs to hit the exit ramp on their excuses?

You know, I would play, you’ve always, let me speak freely and so I’m going to unleash on this one. One, I am not a victim. I don’t, you can’t change the past. I don’t. I don’t care how much you think about it. I don’t care how long you lay in your bed for a week, depressed and pull the covers over your head. You cannot change the past, but you can change the next hour. You can change the next day, and I got to say this as well. We live in a country right now where the word a white privilege is becomes so big and I find it very offensive because when we sit back and let’s let’s really call what it is, if you are born in this country, take race off of it. How about just privileged in itself because regardless of where your political zoos stand, I am not going to make it political, but there was a single mom with two children walking 111 hundred miles from Honduras trying to get into this country. Man, on my worst day, I never had to face that. I was born here, so sexual abuse father was a pimp. Put it all out there. I keep it in perspective. I was born in this country, therefore I have a responsibility to be successful in this country.

And you have a, a, a great family now, right? You didn’t know, you didn’t grow up with a family. You’re the one who’s breaking the, the, the cycle of perpetual poverty and family dysfunction. How many kids do you have and how many wives do you have?

I’ve got one wonderful wife. I’ve got four children, ages six, four, two and one.

That is awesome, man. That is absolutely awesome. I I, I was unable to assemble a large audience so I will hit my audience button here. That’s awesome. I mean that is just so exciting. Charles Cola, you had a hot take care of JT McCormick. J T has got [inaudible]

Such an amazing attitude. And you used to talk about, you know, hiring good employees and hiring people with great attitudes over skillsets. Yes. Well, it’s clear to see that JT has been an amazing example, having a great attitude, be an optimistic, he doesn’t come from the best education, the best background, but he’s a personal success story because he has taken on a perspective of a wonderful attitude, positive, upbeat, motivating, encouraging to everybody around him brings energy to the room like no other. He’s a great speaker. Totally touched my heart and I just think people have got to take on his type of personality if they won’t be successful. And you’ve, you’ve kind of, you quoted it in business coaching and hiring attitude over skill, looking for people with positive, upbeat toots. Don’t look for degrees, look for great attitudes, coachability and you know, J T has been a great example of that. Great throws are a great inspiration to so many of us at the, at the thrive conference. So thank you J T for being a great example for me as a business owner and entrepreneur.

No, J T I, I I appreciate that. I wanted to I guess I had one final question for you. I was teaching my staff today, Devin, you were in the meeting today. We were talking about this, but I was telling him that all successful entrepreneurs that I’ve interviewed all have these common denominators and they’re very simple. They’re very easy, but there no one seems to grasp them. One, they all have a to do list. True. All of them carry a to do list. They’re not going, Oh, I wonder what I should do today. They don’t have a calendar. They have a to do list. Talbot County, they keep a calendar in it and to do list. It’s crazy. There’s a lot of other traits, but another one is they don’t suffer fools. They understand their network is their net worth and they will not let toxic ghetto redneck crazy people show up in their life on a daily basis.

So you had to leave the ghetto. But some people leave the ghetto and then they bring the ghetto with them. You know, Jamie Fox has joked about this before on his comedy routine. Somehow some people will make a ton of money, but they bring the ghetto with them. They’ll bring the rednecks with them. What advice would you have for somebody out there who is struggling to comprehend the idea that you become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, that your network is your net worth. What would you say to somebody right now who’s on the precipice of success but they are hanging out with idiots? What advice would you have for them?

It real, real easy. Let it go. So what? Someone joked with me, well actually wasn’t even a joke. They said, Oh you forgot where you came from. You, you forgot the hood. I go, Hey, first of all, that is the point is to get the hell out of it.

Right? And you forget why he came.

And you know I, I keep mentally where I came from because I can never forget it. But the goal is not to represent the hood. The goal is to get out of this. And if you surround yourself with those same people who have those small minded mentalities, you will stay right there with those individuals. You will never rise above.

Get the hell out of the hood. I’m going to put that on a shirt. That is, hang on. I got some clay. That could be the title of my book given that’s my last name. Get a hell out of the hood. I like. I’m stealing at J D that is awesome brother. Thank you so much. If you’re out there listening and you’ve yet to hear part one of our interview with JT McCormick, just do a Google search for JT McCormick and thrive time show and I will say this. I said it then I’ll say it again. I’ll say it again now your interview, you not, not, not the questions I asked, but your responses to our first interview we had together really stands the test of time currently as our favorite and as our best show ever, ever. The first interview we did with you is truly on believable. I mean if you listen to that show and you have a pulse and you’re going the wrong way with your life, you’re going to change directions dramatically. Now, JT, we’ve had, as of today’s recording, we’ve put out 1,817 shows and your show is the best show. Awesome. Show everybody out there. Check it out. JT McCormick. Thank you so much for joining us again on today’s thrive time show.

Hey guys, I appreciate it. Be on humbled and honored and because I’m not the most politically correct person in the world. Merry Christmas.

Oh yes. Merry Christmas. Right there. I tell you what, I just want to say that about 10 times in a row. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Merry Christ. Pause mus. I mean, I just, if you’re out there today and you are offended by Merry Christmas, find a new show. JT McCormick. Thank you my friend. Have a great rest of your day. Yes, take care guys. See you dude. And now without any further ed

[Inaudible],

There have always been people who don’t believe they don’t believe in hard work. They don’t believe in responsibility. Ultimately they don’t believe in themselves. They believe in shortcuts. In luck. They believe that outside circumstances control who succeeds and who doesn’t. It’s just the luck of the draw. But you, you are not one of these people. You believe that no matter what your circumstances tell you, success is still possible and you accept this responsibility because you want to achieve something great in your home reform and you chase it from the moment your eyes open in the early morning. You chase it into all hours of the night and when others have given up, when others have said that it couldn’t be done, you’ve kept pushing because you believe that success is not the game of chance. Success is a choice, a choice that you make every single day. That’s what you believe. Discover the world’s most affordable, effective business school

Today. Thrive time show.com.