Overcoming Racism, Poverty, & Abuse to Achieve Your Dream w/ Founder of Scribemedia.com JT McCormick

Audio Transcription

We have done well over 1300 podcasts and I believe that today’s podcast, today’s interview with the founder of scribe media about overcoming racism, poverty, abuse, and any possible excuse you could ever make in route to achieving the American dream may just be the hottest show we’ve done so far. Do you agree? I do agree. It was incredible that what he had to say and how he said it in his story and his background and his drive. It was all just so incredible. Now his company scribe a media has helped authors to now produce over a thousand over a thousand books and he’s done books for huge people like the renowned comedian tiffany Haddish, the navy seal, turned speaker, David Goggins, and a thousand authors. He says he’s a successful author, a successful entrepreneur. His entire journey to success is epic, but at times it does get a little bit rough, so we have done some editing, but I’m just warning you. There’s no curse words, but his life was rough. His story was rough. Historic is real, and I think that this may just be the reality check that somebody needs today.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. On today’s show, we have yet another incredible guest on today’s show. We’re interviewing a guest who really should not have succeeded. This guy was born as the son of a drug dealing father, who also, you know, he was dually employed as a pimp. He was then orphaned and was raised by a single mother on welfare and he grew up in these super rough areas of Dayton, Ohio and had multiple stays in the juvenile justice system and not for tourist reasons. He was. He had to go there. He almost didn’t graduate high school and he never graduated from college. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you JT McCormick. Jt, welcome onto the show. And how are you sir?

My man, clay. I am always excellent, man. If you wake up in the morning, your feet hit the ground better, be excellent.

Oh, put that on a shirt. I’ll put that on a shirt. Okay. Okay. Now my understanding is that you’re now the father of four children. Uh, you’ve, you’ve achieved a high-income goals you always had or CEO of scribe media. But for the listeners out there who aren’t familiar with scribe media, I’d love for you to share with our roughly 500,000 listeners out there. What is scribe? Media?

Subscribe media. We created a new way for people to write their book and you heard me say earlier, everyone has a story, and with traditional publishing going by the wayside, now, we’ve created a model where everyone can write their book and we do it through a series of interviews and it’s been proven time and time again. One of the hardest things to do is to think and write at the same time. So we don’t want you to do any of the writing. We don’t want you to put your fingers on the keyboard. We want you to sit back, grab your beverage of choice, and let us take you through a series of interviews where we pull that information from you. Where we grabbed those details, the story that make for a great book. Then we do the edits, the revisions, the cover design, the interior layout, all everything from a to z over the course of seven months. We publish your book and when I say we publish your book, this isn’t like you’re running down to Kinko’s and stapling some papers together and you’ve got some self-published, a garbage. We’ve worked with David Goggins, we’ve worked with tiffany haddish. We have worked with a series of authors. What Lucy, we’re, we’re over a thousand authors we’ve worked with now. So yeah, this is, we’ve created a new way to, for people to publish the book.

Um, what, what does it, what does it cost? I know we have a lot of entrepreneurial listeners out there and they’re going, okay, here, here’s the catch, jt, this is going to cost some money. This justin, it might cost some money. How much money is it going to cost?

It is definitely going to cost some money. So it’s $36,000, but you don’t have to stroke that check all at once. You can pay it over the course of eight months and make it $4,500 a month.

You said $36,000? Thirty $6,000. Now we have one listener out there who had something he wanted to say. Now let me go there. Cook. We had Elizabeth wanted to Bu, but I just want to. I just want to tee up this idea. I have spent more money than this writing my own book. Like I paid somebody more. I’m not going to slam on Andrew. I’m not going to slam somebody on the show here. No, but I have paid somebody more money than this and I book never got done. Jt. That’s true. Exactly.

I cannot tell you how many people I. I received that story from and here, here’s the biggest thing. You know, many people out there have said, I’ve been wanting to write my book three, five, seven years. Well now here’s the opportunity and with most of our authors, if not all, every one of them, when they hear the price, they’re like, oh, okay. I’ll just chalk that up to my marketing budget. I’ll go ahead and write that off on my taxes or they realize, oh, I just need to sign one client or I just need to have one speaking engagement and I can make this thing pay for itself. So when you look at the Roi behind the book, it’s not the $36,000 is expensive. It all. And I say that with a, it’s all because God knows when I was a kid, $36,000 was a lot of money.

Well for my ear fringe at jt, I wanna make sure I’m not coming across as a, a charlatan huckster who was absolutely in love with a guy who, uh, no, I’m saying this is an objectively speaking. Andrew, you know this, we have a lot of people ask me, clay, could you help me write a book? It’s true and I don’t know a lot of our listeners that have a full time graphic design team, like I have a full time type setting team a full time. I mean I. Before I had a team, 36,000, I would say yes please, let’s do that twice. So jt, I read an article that appeared in entrepreneur magazine where it said what you can learn from some of the best company cultures in America, and uh, Lo and behold, there was you, your, your quote, and they quoted you as saying funerals are a dumb custom. People say all these nice things about someone, but in most cases that person never heard those nice things when they were alive, my friend. What are some of the processes that you have in place that have allowed you to create such a healthy company culture where you actually are appraising people while they’re alive?

Well, so, so let, let me, let me dive deeper into that. And you, you lead off the show with this. I work on a common sense so I don’t have a deep academic background and it’s just never made sense to me that people go to funerals, they stand up there. Everyone says all these nice things and literally, probably 75 percent of the things that people say, the person that’s dead, they can’t hear now. I never knew anyone felt that way. So I’ve always just thought funerals were really dumb and so what we’ve gone in done with our culture is twice a year we have summit and we sit around and we list out our strengths and obstacles and people weigh in on, oh, you know, plays this clays that he’s super great, he’s helpful, he is humble. So on and so forth in every time. Every Sunday people were like, wow, I never knew you all felt that way about me.

So what we want to do is have people bring their whole self to work. We don’t believe there’s a work self and a life self. If you have challenges at home too, to the best of our ability and your willingness, we want to help you with those challenges that you may be facing. If you have challenges at work, we want to be straightforward with you and tell you how ways you could improve and how we can help you there so that the culture itself is, is based on the whole person, not the the work life balance that you hear people say, which is complete bs.

Okay. Just to give you a context, I don’t expect you to do copious amounts of research about me because I’m the one interviewing you, but just for the, just for you to know, our listeners already know this, my partner and I, Dr Robert Zellner, we have 13 multimillion dollar companies that we’ve built, so there’s an auto auction called disease 66 auto auction. There’s an optometry clinic, there’s a chain of men’s grooming lounge is, it’s a country club haircuts called the elephant in the room and there’s a lot of companies and Andrew at the Christmas party this year. How many people roughly were at the Mayo Hotel for our party? Oh Man. There’s probably like 400 people there. There’s a lot of people eat, a lot of employees, will their wives or spouses, their husbands and it’s a, it’s a neat culture. Um, but we’re very intentional about grooming it. And I 100 percent agree with what you just said.

I think somebody out there is thinking this is what they’re thinking they’re going. You mean I’m supposed to compliment my employees, you, Andrew, with very thick thing. I’ve always liked you a lot. They go, oh, this is too weird. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to come on. No, but seriously, people, I think when they hear compliment, they almost go, this is a romanticized fictitious charlatan idea. There’s somebody out there saying that. You know what I mean? There’s somebody out there going, this is bs. There’s no way you do this. They’re going to know which money it costs to have this. Kind of. So Andrew, tell me if I’m wrong, but do we not have an all staff meeting every week for one hour every single Monday? Why? Because it’s a. it’s a great time to get everyone together to update everyone, update everybody about where the company’s going, where we could do better, what we need to work on, and it’s just a way for you to be able to interact with everybody because we’re, you know, you’re always so busy throughout the week that you have to have a scheduled time where you are interacting with the team and with 50 people who are an average making 30 bucks an hour, let’s say, you know, that meeting costs me $1,500 a week and people say, clay, is that actually a good use of your money?

So I would like for you to, uh, help the listener out there who says, jt, come on now, just going to cost a lot of money to have a summit. Where do you have it? How much does it cost? Talked to us about the facts and figures. How much does it cost to have the summit? Where do you have this summit? Help our listeners out there.

So, so roughly. Well, first of all, I compliment you both because we do the same thing. All of our meetings are on Mondays, I believe you come in, you do your meetings, you update everyone and then the rest of the week is left for execution and so with this summits and we pride ourselves on being fully transparent. This summit that we’re going to have here coming up in January is going to cost us a lot about $40,000 and our company is 70 percent here in Austin and 30 percent remote. So we fly all these people and we put them up for four days and we get together and this is what we do twice a year and do it in January. We do it again in late July, early August. But yeah, it’s 30, $35,000. And the culture is the foundation of the company. I believe you put people first. People process and profits in so many companies get that out of order. They put profits first. So you know people are last. Some places put process first and people second. My belief is you can have a flawless process, but if you put bad people in it, they will wreck your process. So I believe if you give me great people, we can build great processes and we can equal profit, profit, profit, profit.

Andrew, I’m, I’m in the process right now. Is JC was talking. I was in the process of registering. Go Daddy, a new cult that I’m starting. And so if it’s okay, I’d like to repeat to you the mantra that I just want to start our cult with here. Okay, here we go. People processes,

profit. Andrew push them people, people,

processes, processes, profit. One more time. Okay.

People, people. More of an echo, sound, police, people. Profit processes. Now I got it wrong. People process, profit.

Why does it have to happen in that order? Why does it have to happen in the order? Jt? I agree with you, but someone out there saying, I don’t agree. Why? Why does it have to happen? People processes.

It’s like anything. There’s going to be a ton of people that don’t agree. I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything that comes out of my mouth because they’re wrong because they’re wrong. Nobody think of it this way. Clay here. Here’s A. I’ll take it back to my childhood, if you don’t mind a reason. The reason why I’m okay with that being mixed race, half white, half black as a kid, one of the greatest gifts I was ever given is I learned early in life, four or five years old. Everyone’s not going to like you. Black people didn’t like me because I was half white. White people didn’t like me because I was half black, so when I execute in business or my thought process, I never do it in a. In a situation where, oh, but I want people to like me. I’m okay. People are not, are not going to like me. They’re not going to agree with me. If you don’t put people first, in my opinion, why are you in business? If it’s all about profits, I just believe your business is to serve and to serve people.

Okay. I have A. I have a racially divisive question for you and if you don’t like it, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll pick up on the subtle clue when you hang up on me. So here’s this. This is my. I am a Caucasian person. Andrea. I can verify no pigment at all. I never got signed, but I. I refuse to go to white church, quote unquote white church because I don’t like it that no one could clap on beat and everyone needs rhythm therapy, so I always go to an African American churches. That’s where I go up. Growing up. Did you ever. Whenever you went to church, did you go to the African American church? Did you go to cut the Caucasian church? What kind of shirt?

So unfortunately I was not introduced to church as a child. There was so much chaos going on. Church was would have been a very welcome place for me, but I wasn’t introduced to church, religion, God until I was in my mid teens and it’s. It’s funny you said that when you were doing your chance of people process and profits, there was a part of me that was sitting here that wanted to go.

This is interesting though, but I love the African American church because a, there’s a church called the Metropolitan Baptist Church and I love to go to Tulsa and the pastor will say something. He’ll say, we’re going to talk about, we’re gonna, talk about faithfulness and right away there’ll be a person in the front row go faithfulness. What does that mean? And the guy in the back go preach it and I will, I will, I will, I will do this. I will. I was okay. And all of a sudden it’s. And it’s like they’re hyping him up and pretty soon, pretty soon, about 15 minutes and they start passing out the fan. The Caucasian church doing passes out of famous people are sweating, people are beginning to sweat and everyone can clap on the Caucasian church. Nobody. Jt is like, people are swatting at bees on able to find the bed. I don’t know. I’ve heard the beat is field and I was a disc jockey before I sold the company. It was America’s largest wedding entertainment company called Dj Connection Dot Com. So I’ve gone through extensive rhythm therapy. I just want to ask you a being that you’re, you’re, you’re mixed race. Do you identify more with RNB music? Are You more into rock music? Talk to us.

It’s interesting. I, I’ve had the ultimate luxury that I, I’ll straightforward. I love George Strait. One of my favorite songs

is I can still make Cheyenne am, but when I’m in the gym, I’ll be the first one to tell you. It’s Kendrick Lamar. DMX. I’m, I’m an older guy. I liked some of the older stuff opened up here. Yeah, exactly. So

you know, I don’t fall in one particular genre. Especially. It depends on what I’m doing. If I’m in the gym, you gotta go hardcore hip hop, rap music. You just can’t do country in the gym. But if I’m in the car, if it, if it’s not an audio book. Yeah, I prefer country or classical piano.

I’ll say this because I want to, I want to just let my racism get out there real quick here as the, as white chocolate. I, I can tell you this, I as a leading member of the white chocolate band, I only do R and B and rap and I don’t understand other genres and I appreciate you if you do appreciate genres, but you are, you know, George Strait I would say to you really. And I respect that. I just, I, but RNB just R and B and rap. Oh, that’s so good. Okay. So now we move on. You, um, the very beginning. You did not graduate from high school or you did graduate, but barely you were kind of on that precipice of should we give them a diploma or not? What was going on in high school?

So I, I technically did not graduate. I didn’t walk this, do all of it. Yeah. So I, I had to go to summer school, take remedial courses to get my high school. Some people would call that a ged, high school diploma. When I first was reunited with my at the age of 15 when I moved to Texas with her, they enrolled me or my mother enrolled me in in high school and I was a sophomore and we went in and clay the the counselor. She says, okay, you’re in salt. You’re a sophomore if 15, okay, you should be in geometry. That was the first time in 15 years I’d ever heard the word, and I didn’t say a word, but I just went to the class. Six weeks later, obviously my grades came in and everyone realized, okay, this kid is not too bright. My mother had me tested and I was testing on the fifth and sixth grade level, so again, graduation rolled around and obviously I didn’t have enough credits to graduate. I had to go to summer school to get my high school diploma and as you said, never graduated college. So here am.

Well. Here’s the deal, you, you’re this entire show, Andrew. If we have a guest who’s trying to one up me, because I struggled in school, I took Algebra three times, it’s well documented. I took my act three times. Uh, this guy, you know, he’s drinking, you know, my gpa was lower. Okay, fine. I say I grew up poor. He says I grew up more poor. I’ve just thrown that out there more and more. I say I grew up, I was abused a little bit as a kid. He says I was abused and I dealt with racism. It just the whole, the whole show. Today’s show should be called one upsmanship. My bottom was lower and my hire was higher with jt. Okay. So I want to ask you about racism because I grew up in a town of a broken Arrow, Oklahoma that is primarily Caucasian.

I went to middle school at Sequoia Middle School and because I stuttered, I got beat up a lot, pushed into lockers, you know, just dealing with a lot of people that were, you know, they wouldn’t make fun of the kid that stutters on the bus. Everyone would chant Clayton, Clayton, and I couldn’t say my own name. It was a horrible thing that I went to Minnesota. I moved there and I was 13. It was the whole, the whole town. Everybody there was from like, uh, Sweden, uh, they’re from the Nordic countries. Everyone’s name was spin a Russian dorfer don’t know, spin a leaf. And a lot of my, my, my best friends, her name was leaf. Erin Roush, indoor for these are real names. I’m like, I’m not, I’m not making this up

that you did not grow up in the most diverse community.

No. Check this out. This is a true story. My friend Eugene Willis, we’ll put them on the show notes. Eugene Willis, who I met at Oral Roberts University, I called him black thunder. He called me white lightening. We became very good workout friends and I brought you back to Minnesota and he’s looking for a job. And Eugene was the only African American in Cokato, Minnesota. And people were like, wow, you’re well spoken. You’re articulate. You know how those condescending compliments people say to African Americans like, wow, you’re articulate. Like it’s ridiculous. You know, so anyway, Eugene Willis, black thunder moved with me, went to cocaine. He’s like, dude, there are no other black people at all in Cokato, Minnesota. True Story. Put it on the show notes. There’s 2038 people that live there. Um, my friend. What kind of racism and poverty did you grow up with mean to talk to us about the racism and the poverty? What would take us to the bottom?

Oh Gosh. So you know, it was, I’m 47 so I was born in [inaudible] 71. You look 27. I appreciate that, but it’s back in the seventies. I mean it is what it is. Racism mixed race was not looked upon and it was highly looked down upon and like I said, black people didn’t like me because I was half white. White people didn’t like me because I was half black. I was called Oreos. Zebra chocolate, vanilla swirl, a color confused halfbreed. And so you couple that with poverty. It was just, it was brutal. And I say this all the time, clay, I got past the things that I went through. It was more of what I watched my mother experienced where, you know, people calling her and I, if you guys got to bleep this out, but people calling my mother and her and spending interface or US getting kicked out of a, uh, an apartment because they found out she had a mixed race child and they didn’t want mixed race. People living in the building. All the white and black people live there. They didn’t want mixed race. So it was more of watching what my mother experienced. That bothered me more than what I went through.

You know, if you, if you think about mixed race, you might think about Lenny Kravitz. Yeah. You might think about President Obama. Yep. You might think about Alicia keys. Uh, there’s a lot of people who might think about. But when you were born, that was the absolute worst possible scenario. Yes. I went to church, I won’t mention their names, but I went to a church where there was an African American man who married a Caucasian woman. And I went to college with some of these guys and it was an, this was 1999. And people were still going, what’s the deal with those guys? Why do they, why do they always want to date white women? Now their parents are black and white. Mom was white, dad was black, and they’re going, what’s the deal? Why do they always date white girls? Now, in fairness to these guys, they dated black women and white women, but people always would go, why do they always date white women? What is the deal? I want to ask you this. What is it again? You’re not gonna offend anybody. I just want to know because I can’t relate to that. I just want to get what is the deal? Why do people get so hung up on this idea of race? What is the deal? Even now? I mean it’s 2018. What is the freaking deal?

You know, I’ve said this to so many people that will ask me the same question. I personally don’t believe in. This isn’t me accepting it. I don’t believe racism will ever go away. You can go to Africa and there are black people who were racist against other black pete. True. It’s so. I don’t believe racism is ever going to go anywhere and you’re in, you’re always gonna have people that look at that. I was asked this question by my own family sometimes when I was a kid, which would you rather be white or black if I had a choice? And so I don’t believe it’s going anywhere. Yes. My wife is blonde hair, blue eyed and it’s. I’ve been asked that question as well. Why? Why do you only date a white women? I mean, that’s that. To me, that’s the equivalent of asking someone, well, why do you like women with dark hair? Why do you like women with Green Eyes? I mean there’s, there’s no difference other than that too. You were attracted to. So it’s those types of, that type of mentality and the racism that surrounds it. I don’t believe it’ll ever go anywhere.

I, I agree with you. I think it’s not editing. It’s a discussion that never ends. Have you ever been to Oklahoma before? Jt?

I have been to Oklahoma. Not, not the most, uh, again, racially diverse place in the country.

Why did you come to a club where we were here for a sod farm?

Two or no, so, so, uh, back when early in my career I actually worked for a gentleman who owned payday loans and he had a ton of them in Oklahoma. Ada, Oklahoma. Ms Dot. Yes. So I’ve, I’ve been a few places in, in Oklahoma, but yes, I have been there many a time.

Well, I’m just going to throw this out there for the listeners out there. I went to, I was in Detroit, Detroit one time in Detroit near Tiger stadium back before they built the new one, you know, and I went to a subway and the subway was primarily run by African Americans and the communities obviously African Americans, you know, and I got refused service never happened. It never happened to me before, but the guy at the subway would not serve me. Like he acted like I wasn’t there. He’s like, ghosted me, you know, he’s looking at me but he wouldn’t serve me. That was the only white guy in the line. I’m going, holy crap, what is this guy’s deal? But if I look at it objectively, I’ve seen that so many times in reverse, you know, we’re a Caucasian. People just won’t hire someone because they’re black.

I’ve seen, I’ve seen the same thing. I’ve only experienced it like one time I was in Detroit and I would not do that seriously, would not serve me a sandwich. It the craziest thing ever. And I thought this is terrible, but one of my good friends, Andrew, we talked about on the show a lot. His name is Clifton Taulbert and by the way, jt, I would encourage you to write that name down. Clifton Taulbert t a U L, b e r t, I really think you should reach out to them at some point. You guys have a great relationship. He’s the first African American west of the Mississippi to open up a bank. Oh Wow. And his life was made into a movie called once upon a time when we were colored, a starring Felicia Rashad, and it was a two thumbs up from siskel and Ebert back in the day.

And he helped introduce the Stairmaster into the marketplace, but he was actually not allowed to enter into the front door of a bank when he grew up in Glen Allan, Mississippi. And so he decided to open a bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I really do. If you reach out to him and you shamelessly name drop my name, you guys would become fast friends because he’s, I’m not sure how old he is, Andrew. He could be 60 or a 107. He’s like a business Yoda. But Clifton Taulbert. I promise you this guy was a huge mentor in my life and I think you guys would hit it off because there’s so many parallels between your life and his, his life with your life. When did you hit rock bottom? When did you say this is the worst? When did you say this was the worst part? Jt.

Wow. So, so I’m going to do. I’m going to show you something here real quick to go. We’re going to go back to the race piece as well. There is something that I noticed that you. You kept doing that. I won’t. I just refuse to get it. You keep referencing African American, but if you notice, I keep saying half white, half black. I just refuse to say African American. Elon Musk is African American. He was born in South Africa. He’s in America. He’s an American citizen. I refused to say I feel like it’s some politically correct word that was put into place and again I had no. I’m probably going to offend a lot of black people or God knows who often, but me personally, I am half white, half black. I’m no more proud to be half black, half white, but we don’t say a European, white people. We. Why do we say African?

Can I, can I, can I, can I real quick queue up a sound clip as I, as I think about what I want to say to you real fast here, just because it’s just a. like, I picked it wrong. We quit smoking, quit drinking.

Like I picked the wrong week. When I’m fit to mention here is the deal as a Caucasian. I walk on eggshells because I have a very diverse workforce. You know, we have Asians, we have African Americans, we have Italians, we have Mormons and there are certain people that love to sue people like comedian you, you know what I mean? Jay, what’d you get to a certain level? They love to sue me for not being politically correct. You know what I, you get the idea. So I have learned to say African American because that’s the move. Now. I played basketball at a very high level in high school and we would not, we would not say that word. You know what I mean? We would just, we would say black, white, we wouldn’t even talk about it really. But if we did it’d be like, dude, white dude can actually jump.

Good job or you know, and they would joke about it because we call it the 10 percent club, but basically 10 percent of white guys could jump in. Ten percent of black guys couldn’t jump. And we would joke about this endlessly, you know, because if you were the guy on the team who couldn’t jump in, you’re a black were like 10 percent and if you were the white guy could jump to person and we had no issues. We weren’t trying to sue each other. But once you earn a little bit of money, people want to take that money. Oh yeah. I feel like I have to say African American just not to get sued. But I do agree with you. It is complete bs.

Yes. Yes. I, I find it to be complete bs. Half White, half black. I referred to to black people. I mean think of it this way. You hear say a first black president, Barack Obama. I struggled with that with that. Here’s why I struggled with it personally. I’m half white, half black, just like he is. Right. And when you say first black president, well I was kind of know wanting to get some recognition for the mixed race people that just got elected president for the first time. So it, it’s, I don’t.

And then there are our people. And here’s the thing that’s crazy to me as well. Uh, uh, President Obama, who do people listen to this show? They know I’m pretty libertarian and I’m like extreme libertarian. I’m Kinda like government get out of the way. But Prison Obama is objective speaking an unbelievable speakers this weekend.

Yes,

nominal speed. Unbelievable. Like the best in the world. So great. But I know a lot of people that voted for him just because he’s quote-unquote black. And I know people that were like, why can’t vote for him? Because he’s quote unquote. It’s ridiculous. I mean, why can’t we, why can’t we judge people based on their mean? We’re never going to move up. We were never going to move on past that, as you said earlier, but both you and President Obama realized, Hey, you know what? I’m starting from the bottom and I want to get here. And you didn’t get stuck on the race thing. You, you moved on past the race things I want to ask you, when did you hit bottom and realize, you know what, I’ve got to get through this.

You know, for me it happened. Let’s go right back, but right before the credit crisis or in the middle, middle of the credit crisis, the recession, I was fortunate that I had amassed and it made a little over a million dollars and then I was unfortunate or dumb and I had lost it all. So then I was broke zero. I even call it negative broke. I had to borrow money from my Stepdad and my best friend to pay my rent at times. And that was when I was at rock bottom and yeah.

What year was that? Approximately what year? Oh, seven. So 2007 years. The bottom.

Very bottom. Okay. And like I said, negative bottom. I remember going to the grocery store or the convenience store with $10 in quarters in my pocket and I said, can I have $10 on number seven? It was about 10, 11:00 at night and I was embarrassed and I remember walking back to the car thinking to myself, how did I allow myself to get here again? And that’s when it really hit me. When I was in my little one bedroom apartment, I remember saying to myself, okay, I’ve been broke before, I know how to get out of that part, but the part that I had to struggle with and really look at myself in the mirror was really say, okay, you’ve got a horrible character. You, you can’t hold a relationship. You’re horrible. You’re a monster with the way you treat women. You’re, you’re disrespectful. So now that you’ve had money and the money’s gone again, now you’re left with nothing but your character. Who Do you want to be going forward? And that was the moment where I decided, okay, we’re going to make some changes in life and no one can change me but me. So what do I want to do? And who do I want to be

that is heavy? So you realized that you were, you’re only, you, you were at your biggest problem. Yes. A, somebody needs to write this down, but self awareness, we’ve interviewed so many millionaires and billionaires on the show and everybody that we’ve interviewed who become successful is very self aware. They realize, you know what, uh, this is my issue, this is what I’m good at, that they’re very self aware. They, they, they look at themselves and kind of a Meta level. And I, I love the cover of your book. It says I got there how I overcame racism, poverty and abuse to achieve the American dream. But you also kind of clarified and you’re very self aware. You said, I’m not a drug dealer. I’m not a rapper. I’m not an athlete, but I’m successful, my friend. What inspired you to first write this book?

So I don’t like to fly.

I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean I’m just not sure. Okay. Take a guess. Well, not for another two hours. You can take a guess for another two hours. Want we can’t land for another two hours for August. Closed down everything. This side of the mountains. We’ve got to get through to Chicago and I hit a lot of turbulence.

I remember thinking to myself, holy, if, if something happened to me, my children would not know where I came from. They wouldn’t know that. We don’t know where our last name came from because my mother was given that name in the orphanage and I wanted them to understand where I came from and have a legacy piece. I’ve always been infatuated with the Kennedys, the Ford family, the Rockefeller where they can trace six, seven generations. Man, I can’t trace 30 minutes, and so I wanted them to have this book as a legacy piece to know, okay, this is where our father came from. This is where we at least have a starting point and that that’s why I did the book. I never wanted that book to go public, but through a lot of support, a lot of encouragement. I decided to make the book public. I mean, there’s some horrific stories in there and in fact, the reason why I did not want the book to go public is because I built an alter ego for myself. My actual name is Giovanni Mccormick, but I knew going back to the race card, I knew that if you solve the name Javan on a resume, I knew you would judge me. So I went by JT McCormick and you know, I, I was articulate and so I knew Pete articulate. There you go.

It’s amazing. Can you give a real quick, I sorry to harass you. How crazy is it? Oh, good. White people constantly say to people who have any pigment at all. Now again, I’ve never seen the sun. I cannot relate to having pigmented. Oh, I love some pigment. By the way, I would love a little bit of mixed race in my life. I have no pigment. I’m, I’m pale. People call me the ghost. They call me Casper. I get so again, but people say, you’re so articulate. Why is that such a stupid, terrible, ridiculous statement that people make to people of color?

People may not want to admit this, but when I hear the phrase, it’s basically saying that people of color can’t be articulate and you were incredibly surprised that it has some color is articulate. Now, do you want better? Clay? You gotta hear this. I was on a podcast recently and someone said, what does j t stand for? And I said, Javan Thomas and I kid you not this, this is. No, hold on. This happened this year. So this isn’t like, you know, when I was six years old, this happened in 2018. I said, my name is [inaudible] Thomas and I kid you not. He says, oh wow, sounds like an athlete’s name.

Oh, okay. So again, this is. Okay. So we, we, we understand that, that people in our culture are viewing you a certain way, that we are. Our culture puts certain expectations on people. They say, you were raised this way, this is how you should end up. You should be. If you’re born African American, you should be a drug dealer, a rapper, a rapper, and athlete you know, you, you, you, that’s what you do. You basically are a drug dealer, a rapper or an athlete. When did you realize that you could achieve success and not be any of those things?

So, so let me, let me put, put an addition on that as well. For me, the reason why I said those three things is because from the lower economic communities of where I come from, those were the options, athlete, rapper, drug dealer, and I sucked at all three and the piece why I lead with that and why I said that is no one told me about the fourth option. Business entrepreneurship, no one, no one said any of that. Right, and that that became a. When we decided to make the book public, that’s what I wanted to lead with because I want all those kids that are in the communities that I come from to know there’s a fourth option out there. You can be a wealth advisor, you can be a pharmaceutical rep, you can be whatever the hell you want to be at this point. So that’s why I led with those three because it was more of an economic reality that these are your avenues out versus a race thing. It just so happens that yeah, you can attach race to it as well, but it was more of a an economic piece that that. I put those three together.

JT McCormick, this is probably going to get really weird, but that’s our andrew, our entire shows. Weird. Go grab my brown bag off my chiropractic table. I have a chiropractor that comes in each week. Jt, two adjustment, you know, because I’m sort of a diva so he comes in and I have this, this chiropractic table and I’m gonna have Andrew Grab My, uh, grabbed my wallet out of there. And I would like for you, I want you to buy a copy o fJT McCormick book. And Jt, I need you to buy a copy of Clifton Taulbert book real quick. You don’t have to buy it right now, but, but, but when, when we get off, maybe buy it. It’s called who owns the icehouse and it’s work. Clifton Taulbert explains that. Uh, basically, uh, his uncle cleve was the only African American in Glen Allan, Mississippi who had ever owned a business. And so we asked uncle cleve, because remember, you know, there was slavery and human slavery ended.

There was this thing called indentured indentured servants were basically, you were free to quote unquote, but you could work the land, but in order to stay in the house that you’d always grown up in, you had to pay more money per month than what it, what you earned working on the cotton farms. So you were always in debt, you know, so people who are free never even left the cotton farm at this point. And Uncle Cleve Clifton’s, uh, uncle was the only person who’d ever left the, the cotton farm. He’s only person to become an entrepreneur. The only African American entrepreneur in Glen Allan, Mississippi. And in the book who owns the Icehouse, a clifton explains how uncle cleve discovered that white people had ice boxes. You know, they had a bit, back in the day before we had refrigerators and freezers, you would actually buy a block of ice and the block of ice would keep your perishables, uh, you know, a cold and you buy a block of ice. You put it in this, in this container. And that was what you did. And uncle cleve was like, well, I could do that. So he was the first African American entrepreneur in Glen Allan, Mississippi. Um, could you please explain why entrepreneurship has just now become a more common to the black culture, to the quote unquote African American culture? Why is this just now becoming a new option for black people?

So I can only speak on my behalf in. I’m a big believer if someone said, what, what do I still want to accomplish in life? I have this, this deep deep belief that we can change at a, at a minimum, 30 percent of the lower economic communities and to, and to answer your question direct. So much of it is you don’t know what you don’t know. And like I said, that’s why I focused on those three things because those were the only avenues that I knew out well with the Internet, with Youtube, with, with even instagram. Uh, unfortunately it, it’s a double sided sword. But those things have started to expose the communities to realize, oh, okay, there’s another world outside of where we live. Right? But people don’t know how to achieve those things. And so I’ll give you an example of when I’m going to go off on a tangent.

Clay, go off. I, I, I find it offensive that we know in this country is it’s a fact. Forty percent of all high school graduating students, white black, lower economic unit, wherever 40 percent of all students will not go to college, but we don’t send you into the world with as much as a handshake. We don’t teach you how to shake hands. I cannot figure out why we don’t put show Intel into the high school system. And what I mean by that is show me how to shake your hand. Tell me why it’s important. Show me what attention to detail.

Quick. I have to cue this up because you, my friend can go off on a tangent. Preaching seriously praying and break it. My friend. You’ve got pregnant.

Tell me, show me attention to detail. Tell me why it’s important. Show me how to tie a tie. Tell me why it’s important. I don’t understand why we don’t bring. Show Intel back to a high school students. It should be class from your freshman year. Continue to show me a pharmaceutical rep, but you know what the thing is we’re still teaching them to. Well, he didn’t discover America

and it’s true. It’s true. People are still celebrating Columbus Day. We know he did not discover America.

Oh,

oh, thank you, Harry Carey. Think about that for a second though. Why do schools specialize? In your opinion? From your perspective, why does schools specialize exclusively in teaching things that don’t matter?

I, you know, being for me to, to, to speak on the school system and I, I’ve got almost zero academic credentials, but I know the things that have helped me succeed in life, what I call the real world in business. Shaking someone’s hand manners. Yes ma’am. Thank you. Please holding the door for someone. All of these things have led to so much of my success in my career. Asking questions. Not being afraid to say no, ask for everything. The, the, the worst someone can say to you is no. Maybe they say f no, but at the end of the day you still have what you had in the beginning. Nothing. So if from a sales standpoint, think of it this way, I can call the fortune 1000. If the first person says, no, I’ve got 999 more, someone’s going to say yes. I’ve been asked time and time again, jt, how do you get over rejection?

Here’s how. When I was a kid and I would come home at night and I’d asked my mom if we were going to eat dinner. She said no because there was no food in the refrigerator. Okay, that hurt because I couldn’t change my circumstances. If I make a cold call and you say no, okay, I got 999 other people, someone is going to say yes, I can control my effort. I can’t control things when I was a kid. So when I figured this out as an adult, I figured, okay, the one thing that I can do every day, I can control my work ethic. I can control my effort, no one can take that away from me and I don’t need a degree to control it.

This right here, Andrew, is my favorite interview. We’ve done. We’ve had 1500 shows, 1,500 shows. This right here is my favorite interview. I’m going to. Jt, I’m going to cue up a clip for you as a cute. This clip. I want you to think about what it means and I would like for you just stream of consciousness to unleash a knowledge bomb. Okay, so here we go. This is from my. Every morning when I wake up, the listeners know I listened to td jakes every morning, td Jakes, every morning while I get ready to take a shower, every morning I listened to one of his, one of his sermons, and I want to cue this up and I would like to get your take on it. So here we go.

Who is exceptional is having a conversation with ordinary unexceptional and ordinary always have a conflict. Anytime exceptional people dwell in the midst of ordinary things that people have always bought a big conflict.

Your mindset is so positive. You just said, I’m going to make a list of a thousand companies, 100 companies and one rejects me. I move onto the next one because it’s better than being told I don’t have food in my cupboard. I don’t have anything to eat tonight. I had the exact same mindset is you. I talk about this every day. Please explain why ordinary like the poverty mentality when it confronts the exceptional mentality, why there’s sometimes conflict.

The biggest thing for me where I feel that there’s sometimes conflict is one you don’t know into. You’re willing to accept, um, the, the crumbs that are thrown your way. And I just refused to accept anything and, and I can only speak on my behalf. So hear me out on this claim. What, what I realized is I refuse to be a victim. We live in a society where people, not everyone, but a lot of us don’t take accountability for things anymore. We want to blame someone else. We’re not. We live in a litigious society where we’re willing to.

A lot of white folks, a lot of white folks are saying right now, a lot of white folks, a lot of white folks are saying to me, they’re going, my dad was just so successful. He set a bar so high I just can’t possibly achieve what he achieved. You hear that a lot.

Well, so here’s the other side. I’ll give you this. I don’t fall to being a victim or a victim mentality in, in. You can edit this out if you want to. To. Foley content is sure, but when I. When I sit back and I think about, okay, my father was a pimp. He fathered 23 children. Okay. My mother was an orphan and I don’t know where my last name comes from. Okay. My mother had an abortion before me when it was illegal and the only reason she gave birth to me is because that a birth abortion was so horrific that she rather have raised a child at a, at a young girl, straight out of the orphanage. Then go through that experience again. So that’s the only reason I’m here and I’ll accept that, but here’s the biggest one of all. One of my father’s prostitutes used to molest me in and forced me to go down on her, and when I didn’t do it right, she was smacking me in the head, smack me in the face until we do it right when I was six, seven, eight years old.

Well, first of all, what does do it right? Because I’m six years old, but here’s the thing. As I got older, I realized and I said to myself, okay, I can sit back and ask, why was my father a pimp? Why was I sexually molested? Why don’t I know where my last name comes from? Why, why, why, why? Nothing changes, but what I realized is I can change the next hour, day, week, month and year, so I’m going to focus on being positive in looking to achieve my goals and dreams rather than be a victim of circumstances that I can’t change anyway. And, and I got challenged on this the other day, clay, a couple of folks in the small town, they were saying, well, yeah, but jt, you make it sound so easy. I never said it was easy. The greatest choices that you make in life usually are the hardest choices that you will make in life. So were they challenged me? It was what they said. Well, there’s no opportunity in our little small town where we’re from. I said, okay, great. I got one word. They said what? I go move, and they looked at me and they go, what? I go move.

Yeah. Okay. Real quick, real quick. This is a huge hot news right there. If you live in a city that is terrible, get out of that town. There is why I don’t go back to Cokato, Minnesota home of every nordic, Swedish, Finnish, epistolic person is because there’s no economic activity, so I moved to a different place. People have to move. Talk about the geography, the poverty of geography, the poverty of geography. Talk to us about moving. Jt.

Move it. You just said it. It’s the same reason why it took me 30 years to go back to Dayton, Ohio. I hadn’t been back to Dayton, Ohio since the age of 15 years old. It took my father passing away for me to even consider going back to Dayton, Ohio. I went back and went to his funeral and but again, like you said, it Dayton’s are horrific place. At least for me it was and I didn’t want to go back to Dayton. So I. I’m in search of opportunity in the only person that can create opportunity for you is you. I got asked this the other day. Someone said, what’s the number one soft skill you would recommend to students? And I said, self love. You cannot expect someone else to love you if you don’t love yourself first and at the end of the day, if you feel that no one else loves you, at least you love yourself.

I, Andrew, I have to hit the button. I have to, I have to devote. And I hope I, I kinda want to marinate for a second. Could you repeat what you just said

real quick? I want to marinate right there. You just said if no one else loves you. What? Jt said that the number one thing that you can do for yourself is self love because you can’t expect someone else to love you if you don’t love yourself first, and at the end of the day, if you feel that no one else loves you, at least you love yourself. It’s the remix. Repeat it one more time. Someone needs to hear it for the third time that you kind of get some others. Go, I, I kinda get it. I’m taking notes. This is hot. Go for it. One more time. Just. Well, what? What are you saying? So the number one thing you can do for yourself is self love. Love yourself first and foremost. You cannot expect someone else to love you

if you don’t love yourself first. And if you do feel that no one else loves you, at least you love yourself.

That right there, Andrew, I’m going to marinate on that. Oh yeah. You don’t want you smoking the meat, jt smoking. It’s like slow rotisserie. I’m going to probably marinate on that for like a month right there. That was, that was. Put that on a shirt, marinade on that. Just notable, quotable. That right there is hot. Okay. So your book in your book, you have many chapters that are just powerful and there’s a, there’s 11 chapters did I could find and I would like to just go through a few of them real quick. Chapter six, cleaning toilets. My friend. What is this chapter all about?

Wow. So my first job after I finally got my high school diploma was cleaning toilets at a place called Po folks at a restaurant called Po folks. And everyday I had to come in and first thing in the morning and I had to clean the toilets from the night before and they always, they were always filthy. Uh, it was, it was dirty. And I remember one day shortly after I got the job, I stood there and I looked. I said, okay, if this is going to be my job, I am going to ensure I had the cleanest toilets in San Antonio. The cleanest toilets in Texas. In everything that I do going forward, I’m going to make sure that I am the very best at it. If this is what I’m going to do, I am going to be the very best at anything it is that I’m doing,

but if you would have complained a, the way to get promoted out of a job is to, is to overdeliver, to exceed the expectations of people, but if you would have complained and done the least amount possible, what would have happened?

Nothing or you or you would have gotten fired. And I, I, you know, the way I look at this is you, you, you made mention to being positive. I have found that negativity does nothing for anyone. It’s never moved the needle. It’s never advanced anyone anywhere. So for me, I’m all about being positive and keep things in perspective. Here’s, here’s the biggest thing. If someone really wants to take a self check right now, there are people walking 2000 miles from Honduras, up through Mexico trying to get into this country for a minimum wage job. Now, I’m not taking a political stance here. What I’m saying is people are walking 2100 miles for a minimum wage opportunity. Huh?

How bad does it have to be in Honduras? I mean honestly, how bad is it?

Not only how bad is it, but here’s the bigger thing for me, clay, on my worst day of being sexually abused, of the things that I went through, I never had to wake up and face. Okay, I got to get across the border. I was born in this country, so for me, if you are here in this country, you were born in this country, you’re a citizen of this country. You should be able to achieve any dream and goal you want, but you got to go make it happen.

I would like for you to repeat that again. I’m gonna have to do a lot of editing. I’m sure at this point that you said if you are, if you’re born in this country,

if you were born in this country, if you are a citizen of this country, you have to go out and create the opportunities for yourself. No one’s going to do it for you. The opportunities are out there. I hate to sound like a 2:00 AM infomercial, but if I can do it, anybody can do it. Oh, I apologize, clay.

No, no, no problem. This is, this is a, uh, a show that’s Kurt Andrew. We do a lot of editing. We do it. It’s a family friendly shelter. You can hear a lot of in, but the point is you’re being, you’re bringing a reality to the situation that people need to hear. I would like to ask you your daily routines. Every soup, every super successful person we’ve interviewed on the show, we’ve interviewed Michael Levine, the PR consultant for Nike, for Prince, for a Charlton Heston, for President Bush, President Clinton. We’ve had a John Maxwell on this show, had the founder of priceline going to be on the show. We’ve had so many huge names on the shows and everybody see everybody who’s at the, at the level of super success seems to have a very regimented daily routine. I love to talk about the first four hours of your typical day and how you typically spend those, how you typically invest those first four hours of every day.

First four hours everyday. I get up at around 4:00 AM, anywhere between 3:45 AM, 4:15 AM every morning, and the first thing I do, and let me preface this, there are days I’m human where I don’t want to get out of bed that’s just factual. I’m human and I want to hit snooze or wanting to turn off the alarm and I want to go back to sleep, but on those days when I feel that way, I say to myself, okay, right now there’s someone in a room with cancer that’s never going to leave that hospital room there. They would give anything to walk on their own to ps restroom and have the dignity to use the restroom in the restroom, not on themselves in the hospital bed and all I have to do is get out of this beautiful bed and go make my dreams and goals come true. I get out of bed, so my first four hours I get up. I pray first and foremost. Uh, I live by five, five things. God, health, family, business, and investing. If they, if it doesn’t fall within those five, I don’t do it. So my first thing I do, I pray. Then I go to the gym, I come back from the gym, I spend some time with the kids, getting them ready for school, eating breakfast, hanging out, acting stupid. Uh, I do some study on business and leadership. Then I head off to the office.

Oh, that is so profound. What you just said. My Dad passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease almost two years ago. A little more than two years ago. So a nine, five September fifth is when our radio show. We have a radio show version of this podcast. Airs Live Primetime on talk radio. 11 70 opposite of rush limbaugh. And my dad told me, he said, son, what date is your show? Go live. This is what he could still talk. You know, before Lou Gehrig’s disease had robbed him of the ability to speak. I said September fifth, you know, because at first they start you off on the weekends and at nights, you know, and uh, he said I will make it until then. And my dad would literally died on September fifth. That’s awesome. Yeah. He fought like hell the entire way. And so whenever I don’t want to get up, I’m going. My dad fought for freaking breath. I mean, my dad, I’m 38, man, I’ve, I’ve got an abundance of income. Five great kids. I have nothing to worry about. My Dad was delivering pizzas, you know, I always say, Bro, you know, my dad was delivering pizzas. My Dad was working at Quik trip. My Dad was delivering a pizza for Dominos. He’s working at a convenience store.

Your Dad was making it happen?

Yeah, he was. He graduated top of his class from a private college called Oral Roberts University. He did whatever he had to do. Who am I to sleeping? I set my alarm every day. You and I had the same alarm clock by the way I’d, I’d listened to other interviews with you. It’s like 3:45. That’s when I wake up and you know what, every day I probably am not going to try to one up. You’re here. I guess I’m going to one up. You ever want to wake up at that time? When I. Once I do it, I’m happy I did it later.

So you didn’t, you didn’t want up me. Clay there you went down. Me. I actually enjoy getting up that early. There’s this mindset that I have that I feel sick freak. I’m awake before other people that I can accomplish

face yet again. Now, uh, you’re a well read guy. I want to ask you, obviously we, we recommend for all of our listeners to go out there and buy your book. How I got, how I overcame racism, poverty and abuse to achieve the American dream. But what, what, what are maybe one or two other books that really impacted you throughout your life?

The number one at the top of the list. And I know some people don’t like this book, think and grow rich. Especially because I didn’t have, you know, my background was just so chaotic there. There was no real path for me, and so that gave me some insight into maybe how to structure different things. I I straightforward. I’ve sat by myself and pretended that I had this council of people around me. Okay, well we’ll Jeff Bezos do what would a Marc Benioff do and I’ve pretended I’m sitting there with counsel with these people. What would Andrew Carnegie do? Or JP Morgan and I would literally sit there and pretend I had this council of people around me. So thinking grow rich was probably the number one.

Do you know what my son’s name is? What’s her? It’s Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. No kidding. True Story. And you know this, I don’t know if you know this, but my son was actually born blind. And you that story where Napoleon Hill’s son was born without ears. Yes, yes. Yeah. My son can see now

so, so, so. Needless to say, you liked the book as well.

Love the book. Obsessed with the book. I mean, it’s awesome. If you could give us book number two. You say book number two, clay thinking, grow rich. Bam, boom. Get that book

Gimme one more book right now. I’ll give you a recent one that I recently finished that I, that I love it. It’s called I love capitalism. And so for me, coming from where I come from, capitalism was my tool to exit the, the low economic place that I came from. And, and I do love capitalism. I feel the entrepreneurship, capitalism, the ability to make money, free trade. I love it. You know, I’m, I self taught myself how to recompile and understand income statements, balance sheets, cap x, op x, Eva. It’s, I say to some people, they look at me like I’m a fool, but it’s, I’ve taught myself those things and I’m very proud of this country and the free trade and the capitalism that we have.

Is this the, uh, the Co founder of Home Depot? Yes. Okay. Yep. Okay, awesome. We’ll put it on the show notes. There are listeners out there have become huge fans of yours during the last hour. And I would like to ask you, what is a website you’d recommend all of our listeners to visit or what’s. What’s the one action step you want them to to to buy your book, to visit your website? What’s the best way to interact and to learn more about you?

Wow. Learn more about me. Maybe my philosophy, the way I think, the way I do things on linkedin. I do a lot of post on my. My way of thinking, how business should be done, mistakes that I’ve made throughout my career, the big fan. If you could just give me this moment. I’m a big fan of sharing the stakes. I absolutely hate the phrase fail fast. I’ve spent my entire life trying to learn faster so I don’t even understand. Fell fast. The fact of the matter is, in my opinion, you only fail if you stop trying. And for me, I’m never going to stop trying to be the best husband, father, leader in person, in business that I can be. So I’ve made a ton of mistakes as a first time president of a software company. Whoa. God made a ton of mistakes. Hell, I’m still making mistakes as a parent, as a CEO, but you only fell if you stop trying.

Oh, thrive nation. Listen to this show twice. Put It on repeat and then play it back again. This I just, jt, you have been again over 1500 interviews. This is my favorite interview ever. I hope that somebody can eventually over exceed this, but this is the high water mark. Man, I appreciate you being on the show and, and uh, I cannot tell you a thank you enough for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be on the show.

Clay humbled, honored. It was truly a privilege to be on the show. And I, I thank you for, for listening to me. And again, I, I’m a guy who, who worked hard and made the most of what this world in this country has given me.

Well, have a great day my friend. And again, thank you on behalf of the entire thrive nation. Take care of guys. Meanwhile, it’s the thrive time show offices. After today’s recording, the following stuff went down. My man clay. Hey Jt. I know it’s kind of awkward to ask, but I was just hypothetically supposed to, a guy like me wanted to invite a guy like you to attend to the thrive time show workshop on February eighth and ninth and Tulsa that our listeners can attend. At this. Hypothetically, if I were to ask, would you, would you want to attend an event like that?

Excellent. Excellent. I appreciate it, man. I, I am at your event and anything else you need from me, man, shoot me a text and I will do what I can to assist you.

So are you saying that you’re actually going to attend the thrive time show February eighth and ninth event?

This is what I’m going to do. I am going to be the very best at anything. It is that I’m doing

andrew. It’s now time for some action steps. Alright, let’s, let’s just said I love today’s show and I’m looking for some action steps. Uh, I’m going to give everybody a two action steps here. All right? Okay. Action step number one. I want everybody out there today to make a list of all of the excuses that you’ve been telling yourself for why you haven’t been able to achieve your goals. Go ahead and write down all the excuses of racism. Poverty, a location, location, a poor education. There you go. No money, no family or bad family. I don’t know if having a pimp is a father is probably the key to success. There’s, but write down whatever excuse that you’ve been putting in your, in your mind over these years. I took Algebra three times. I can say not good at math. Uh, my best friend died in a car accident so I could say tragedy.

My son was born blind so I could say, uh, I what? My wife had a miscarriage. My Dad died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. That’s, that’s my story. You heard jt story, but these should not be excuses. The, these, these adversities that we go through should not be viewed as setbacks. They need to be viewed as stepping stones to your ultimate achievement. It’s time for us to change the narrative instead of viewing these, these bad situations as excuses that provide us with devastation and provide us with a reasons and justification for not having success. We need to view these adversities as the motivation, as the very fuel that we need to succeed and have any further a new fire it up. Three, two, one. Boom.

What if one awkward, potentially even harsh conversation had the opportunity to serve as the catalyst that would forever change your life. My name is Clay Clark and I’m the father of five kids. I had a goal to be a billionaire before the age of 30 and to hire my dad and after I achieved my goals. I’ve spent the vast majority of my professional career helping people like you because I care enough about you. I’m willing to have that tough conversation with you today because I believe in your future and I know of your dynamic ability to change. Are you tired of chasing your rainbow dreams and being one of the 90 percent of American businesses that fail every single year? Are you tired of feeling stuck and being one of the 70 percent of Americans that hates their jobs? Are you looking to build a real business that will realistically create both time and financial freedom for you and your real family while you’re still on earth and healthy enough to enjoy it?

Are you done with the pyramid schemes? The get rich quick height programs, the no money down real estate scams in those quasi religious feelings focused motivational seminars? Are you looking for the practical and actionable business systems and processes and the strategies that both Dr Zellner and I have used to build 13 multimillion dollar real businesses, my friend. These are real companies. We’re talking about a real multimillion dollar optometry clinic, a real multimillion dollar wedding photography service, a real multimillion dollar durable medical equipment company, a real multimillion dollar bids, grooming franchise, a real multimillion dollar marketing company, a real multimillion dollar auto auction, a bank, a top 10 itunes podcast, and the category of business and an Amazon bestselling book. So are we, do we just know how to pick the right industry or do we know the proven path? My friend? Why did 90 percent of businesses fail?

Yet all of our businesses don’t. What if you knew the proven systems to would you to earn financial freedom, but will the system work for you? Well, I don’t know. Call Rachel and Tyler Hastings with the clinical research in New Orleans. These folks have implemented our systems over the past 22 months and they are now making an incredible monthly profit with Dell Rick clinical research of over $100,000 per month. Will the system work for you? I don’t know. Call Thomas Crossing with full package media in Dallas, Texas and ask him what it feels like to go from being a startup to grossing over $100,000 per month with his real estate photography business within 26 months of joining our program in implementing the proven business strategies, but will the system work for you? I don’t know. Call Rachel and Ryan with tip top canine and asked him what it’s like to grow their dog trading business from just one location to over eight locations within just 24 months.

Implementing our proven business coaching system, but will the system work for you? I don’t know. Call Aaron antice with Shaw homes and asked him what it feels like to be Oklahoma’s largest home built and what it feels like to increase the amount of inbound leads that he receives by over 300 percent within 18 months of implementing our proven system. So what does it cost and what’s included in this system? My friend, the Thrive Time Show business coaching program is now enrolling just 2,500 people out there just like you. And to our exclusive ultimate business coaching program. This program includes one ticket to the two day, 15 hour and the world’s highest and most reviewed business workshop, but the thrive time show world headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This program will allow you to exclusive access to email your questions to info at thrive time, show.com, where they can be answered on the podcast and the live radio show broadcasts.

This program will give you access to over 2,500 business training videos taught by people like the former executive vice president of Walt Disney world resorts who wants managed over 40,000 employees and 1 million customers per week. You can learn leadership taught by the iconic investor in two time NBA champion, two time gold medalist and NBA MVP, David Robinson. You can learn in public relations taught by the PR consultant of choice for Nike, President Bush, President Clinton, Prince Michael Jackson, Nancy Kerrigan, and Charlton Heston and countless other world class mentors and my friend. You will gain exclusive vip to get a behind the scenes look at our businesses, including the elephant in the room. How do the systems work? Dr Robert Zoellner and associates. How do the systems come together in the xe 66 auto auction. Okay, so what does the world’s most effective and practical business school cost you? Well, if you went to the University of Tulsa and studied at a private school, you won’t learn anything that will help you to start or grow a real business and it will cost you $40,221 per year.

Now, if you went to oral Roberts University where I personally went to school and studied business at yet another private school, you still won’t learn anything practical there either. That will help you to grow a successful company, but it will cost you $41,024 per year. So let’s do the math. That means that the thrive time show business school without the BS experience is $39,993 less per year than the University of Tulsa. Again, that means that the Thrive Time Show Business Coaching program is $39,993 less per year than the University of Tulsa. And that’s why we’ve made our program exclusively available for just 2,500 people like you at a cost of just $19 per month, which comes out to old lopping $228 per year. Are you kidding me? No, I’m not kidding. You thrive nation. This is your opportunity to experience the world’s Best Business Coaching Program for $20 a month. So why wouldn’t you do it? Well, according to studies conducted by Nielsen, other people, not you, but the average American is watching TV five point two hours per day and consuming two point three hours per day of social media.

And so they don’t have time to invest $19 per month in a coaching program. Did you know that according to Forbes, 88 percent of the world’s rich people spend 30 minutes per day reading and studying on how to improve their practical business skills. My friends, I’m a father of five kids and I know that my kids get to enjoy the fruits of my financial freedom. Not because I’m a genius, but because I know the proven systems. I took the act three times. I had to take Algebra three times just to pass. I got kicked out of college. Trust me if I can do it, you can too. My friend. You have nothing to lose, but you will lose by default if you do nothing. So are you going to act and take advantage of this exclusive offer before all 2,500 spots are taken? Or are you just going to become yet another sad example of the 90 percent of American businesses that fail and the 70 percent of Americans according to Gallup that hate their jobs, reserve your spot and enroll in the world’s best business school [email protected]. It’s just $19 a month. Reserve your spot and enroll in the world’s best business school today at thrive time. Show.com, my friend. It’s just $19 per month and there’s only 2,500 spots available. Do not miss out on this exclusive opportunity.