Clay Clark | Business Coach | Life Design 101 | How to Develop Life-Changing Habits + How to Build a Business & Life You Love + Life Design 101 + Why Your Ideal Life (Silkie Chickens & Box Trucks) Is Not the Same As Everybody Else

Audio Transcription

Or a little That’s it. Oh wait, hold on there I Like the little okay, so take that There’s the sound of the glass, but if you pitch it down You got reverb Too much, okay, so that’s one layer and I can add a little rhythm to it. Again, that’s the cup sound. Okay, and then we need like a bass or something. Oh, I’m not done. Okay, so that’s looping. Again, these are all just cut sounds pitched down. If I put a kick drum, then you have a completed… What? Wow. And there you go. That’s how you do it right there! Hey, my name’s Dr. Timothy Johnson from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I first heard about Clay and his team from their podcast, the one he hosts with Dr. Robert Zellner. I was really impressed with what he had to say and reached out to them for business coaching. I went to a business conference and kind of became hooked. I’ve learned a lot in the process. The main thing I’ve learned is about search engine domination. I’ve learned the importance of being at the top of search engines such as Google and YouTube and Amazon. And it’s really changed our business. Another thing that’s helped that he’s taught us is systemization and processes in terms of just making sure to do the small things every day. And so I would definitely check out his new book search engine domination thank you are you good at setting goals but poor at achieving them I mean are you really really good at setting goals but do you struggle to turn your big ideas into big results well on today’s show we’re interviewing the best-selling author of the book atomic habits by James clear an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. In his remarkable book, James Clear teaches tiny changes that will produce remarkable results. Right, like almost by definition, your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. Right, like, and maybe we could even say like, whatever habits you’ve been using or following for the last say six months are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. That’s your system. Whatever system you’ve been running recently, that leads to the outcome that you have. On today’s show, the bestselling author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, is here to teach you the specific moves that you can use to become habitually successful. The kind of person who becomes successful as a result of the habits you have. You know, maybe 90% of the time, let’s say, should be spent on your habits and building a better system, and maybe 10% of the time on checking in on your goals and making sure you’re moving in the right direction. Whereas a lot of the time, it seems like the conversation is reversed, that we’re spending all this time talking about building a bigger vision or getting more motivated or whatever. And in reality, it’s the system that drives the outcome. You know, it’s like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show. Yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation, it is a very special occasion because he is here. It is James Clear on the microphone. James, how are you, sir? Hello, good to talk to you. Hey, you are kind of a living legend And one of my longtime clients and a great entrepreneur by the name of Brett Dittin is the owner of Cavell fit Com with three different locations in Boise, Idaho. So big shout out to Brett Dittin He’s the one who first told me about your book Right away. Do you have any life life tips. Sounds like he’s reading my book, which is the best that I could hope for. Just thankful and sharing some gratitude. I appreciate the kind words. Now he has told me that your book, Atomic Habits, is a life-changing book. I want to ask you, what inspired you first to write this book? Well, I came to the topic in a couple of different ways, but my first exposure, long before I really knew that I was being exposed to habits or learning about the topic, was through an injury. Before I was born, my dad played professional baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals. He played in the minor leagues. Sports played a big part of my childhood, and I wanted to be an athlete as well. I played a variety of things growing up until my sophomore year of high school when I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. Oh. And it was this very serious injury. I broke my nose, broke the bone behind your nose, which is called your ethmoid bone, shattered both eye sockets, taking a stretcher to the hospital, ended up being more serious than that. I kind of lost the ability to breathe on my own, and I had multiple seizures. I had to be air-cared to a larger facility. And the fallout from that injury was significant. It took me, you know, I couldn’t drive a car for the next nine months. I was practicing basic motor patterns like walking in a straight line at my first physical therapy session. And so that was the first time in my life when I was forced to start small. You know, like I didn’t really have a choice. I had to focus on these little behaviors, things that almost seemed like insignificant, but going for, you know, going to bed at the same time each night This was the first time in my life that once physical therapy was done I started strength training at first once or twice a week and then going to the gym three or four times and All of these things whether it was going to sleep at the same time or preparing for class for an hour each day they were tiny, but they gave me a sense of control over my life again, and And so that was kind of my first exposure to small habits and building them and gradually they they helped me recover Eventually make it back onto the baseball field. I ended up having a good career myself as a college athlete And made the academic all-america team my senior year Wow, and so I never played professionally but that was sort of my first exposure to small habits being a method for overcoming challenges, maximizing your potential and sort of making the most of things. Yeah. And it was only in the five or 10 years that followed that, after my playing career was done, that I started studying the science of habits more, writing about them and now doing all the work that I do at JamesClear.com where I write about it and ultimately which led to the publishing of Atomic Habits. Now you had that five-year window after college where you began writing about it and researching about it. What jobs did you have along the way? Did you have some odd jobs? How did you support yourself as you were sort of becoming the habit guru? Well, so I went straight from undergrad to graduate school. While I was in graduate school getting my MBA, I studied in the Center for entrepreneurship. So the only real normal job that I’ve had Aside from like summer jobs and stuff in high school and whatnot was an internship that I had a medical practice between my first and second year of grad school and I was considering medical school at the time and was interested in the field and so it made sense and then I finished I went back for my second year graduated and I had an internship in the or sorry a graduate assistantship in the Center for entrepreneurship while I was in graduate school and I saw these people starting their own companies, and so I kind of got the itch to start my own thing, too Yeah, so I graduated in June and in September. I had a project I was working on and I finished that and in September. I started my business, so that was September 2010 2010 For the first two years I kind of flopped around tried a bunch of different ideas. It didn’t really work very well and then eventually stumbled my way into writing about habits and behavior change and I Was more interested in being an entrepreneur So I was doing mostly I was mostly interested in like growing the business building an email list building out the web platform etc list, building out the web platform, etc. And along the way, I kind of discovered that I liked writing. I didn’t set out to be a writer. I sort of found it as I was writing to try to market the business. For those first two years, to answer your question, I was paying the bills by doing just like odd jobs, web design gigs, occasionally some consulting stuff or something. But you know, who’s going to hire a consultant who’s 24 and just out of graduate school. So I did a few things to pay the bills and get by. And then once I started writing at JamesClear.com, my first article went up November 12, 2012. And it took me about a year to make a full-time income from it, but after that first year, I was kind of off to the races. Now for people out there that don’t understand how search engines work, you have to be consistent with the search engine content. I mean, you have to write that content, and you have to make sure your website is compliant to all of Google’s standards. But once your website is built and it’s a search engine friendly, you’ve got to keep writing. How many articles have you written? I don’t know the exact number. It’s in the hundreds. I haven’t written 1,000, but it’s in the hundreds. I wrote a kind of writing habit that launched my career, so to speak, was I published that first article November 12, 2012. And starting at that date, I said, all right, I’m going to try to write a new article every Monday and Thursday. And I didn’t hit it perfectly, but for those first three years, I was pretty close. Almost every, twice a week, almost every week, I was writing new articles. And so it was really that consistent writing habit that led to the growth of the site. Some of those ideas made their way into atomic habits in one form or another. The book was largely either brand new or a total rewrite, but I would say maybe 10% of the content came from that. And ultimately that writing habit led to the growth of my platform and getting the attention of publishers and book agents as well. I would not have had the book deal if I hadn’t done that writing up front. How many articles did you write, and how long was it before you had landed your first customer from your website? That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought about it. So I was gaining traction pretty quickly, but it was not in sales. And what I mean is that I was writing articles, and I would say within like five articles or so, I was able to get a news outlet to republish one of them. And so that drove even more people back. And so I tried to do that a lot over the first year. I would say I probably had written somewhere between 50 and 75 articles before I got my first sale. And those articles usually took me about 10 to 20 hours a piece. So I was doing, two a week was basically a full-time job and then I had all the other stuff that was kinda going on with the business. So yeah, it was probably, it’s a little bit hard to answer because if I had optimized for that, if I had optimized for trying to get a sale as fast as possible. It could have been earlier, but instead, I had tried that in previous projects and I thought it was a mistake. So this time around, I optimized for, let me try to provide as much value as possible and build the audience, build the platform. And then I know once I have readers, I’ll have options for driving revenue. So I was focused more on growth than on sales in the beginning. Now if it’s okay, Josh, you can hold me accountable here. I’m going to be kind of bro-mantic for a second. James, I have heard that your emails are hot. Now I’ve heard they’re hot. I’ve heard they’re hot, and when I hear hot, this is why right away I think of Kenny G’s Songbird. I think about the song that probably led to my conception. That’s why I’m, Brett said these emails are hot, and I’m going, how hot are they Bradios these are good And I just want to ask you because right there on your website James clear comm people can download the free chapter We would it’s it’s irrefutable and undisputable that your emails are hot. They’re good. They’re valuable But how important is it for all the listeners out there who want to grow a platform like you? How important is it to have an opportunity to gather email addresses from website visitors? How critical is that or how critical is it not? Well, I mean, this is true of any advice, I think, which is that does it apply to your context? So I think the first question is what kind of business are you trying to build? But assuming that you’re interested in building a business that’s somewhat of a similar structure to mine that revolves around having an online platform, my personal opinion is that email is the most important platform. Now I’ve started to change my tune a little bit in the last couple of years in the sense that I think social media is more important now than it was before. Still not nearly as important as email, but I do think it can be powerful. And having a website, and that website is its own platform and like ranking in Google, as you had mentioned and whatnot, that also can be powerful. But all of those outlets, the people who follow me on Twitter or follow me on Instagram or visit my website, I consider those readers, but only the people who are on my email list do I consider to be part of my audience, part of my community. And so that’s really where you develop a repeated relationship, I think, with somebody. You could, I will say, I do think that there is one other platform that’s like that, which is podcasting. I think if you have people who are consistent listeners and they hear you talk every week, that feels very personal too, but more personal than email in some ways. Although, even though the connection is stronger, it’s harder, I think, to drive behavior through that. You don’t, it’s not quite as easy to get somebody to like click on a link in an email to get somebody to do something in a podcast as it is to click on a link in an email but yeah anyway the answer to your question is I think it’s essential and I consider the email list to be the backbone of my business and can you explain what problems you solve I mean what when people hire you what do you what do you do well to use the word hire is interesting because I don’t do any coaching or consulting. I do get hired to deliver keynote speeches, but I more broadly think that that’s kind of like a one-off from the book. Like people liked the book, they read it, they found it useful, and so they’re like, oh, I’d really like you to talk to our business or our department about that. So, so I consider that to be an extension from the writing. So really, I would say the people who are hiring me, so to speak, is any reader who is giving some of their time and attention to read the work. And in the case of articles or in the case of my books, the reason that people do that is because it provides practical value for daily life. So I am, you know, there are many, many ways to do that, of course, like people who write about personal finance, help you learn how to invest your money or how to save more how to pay off debt or whatever in my case the practical Application is how do I take better behaviors? How do I? How do I build better habits maintain consistency be more productive show up as the person I want to be and so that’s kind of where my focus is and So in that sense, it’s one part Very broad philosophy. Well, how should I look at life? How should I think about life? How do I consider effective paths to follow? And then it’s another part, practical application. All right, cool, I’m buying into this philosophy that you’re talking about, but what do I actually do? And I think that’s probably where I provide the most value. If you read Atomic Habits, for example, in a lot of the chapters, I’ll lay out a philosophy or a big idea, but then the bulk of the chapter talks about how to execute it. It’s examples for how to apply it to exercise habits, and writing habits, and relationship habits, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s really the granular examples, the let me spoon feed it to the reader to show them how to make this actionable. I think that’s where a lot of the value comes for many of the readers and listeners. You know what I’m going to do, James? I’m going to go into rapid fire mode. And then Josh Wilson, one of our incredible show sponsors, is here. And he has some questions for you, too. So get ready for the questions coming in fast and furious. Here we go. In your book, you teach super practical laws on how to make tiny changes that will produce real remarkable results, results that Brent Dittin thinks are amazing. Could you break down just a few of the game-changing super moves in your book? So broadly speaking, if you want a new habit to stick, you want roughly four things to happen and not all four of these need to happen at the same time, but the more of them that you have working for you, the better of a position you’re in. So those four laws of behavior change are, number one, make it obvious. So you want your habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see. This is like put the healthy foods on the counter and the junk food tucked away in the bottom of the pantry. Or if you want to read more, like when I wanted to build a reading habit, I moved Audible to the home screen of my phone, so it was the first thing I saw. And I put books on my desk and by my bed and just kind of like populated the environment with that. So the first law is make it obvious. The second law is make it attractive the more attractive or appealing a habit is the more motivating it is The more likely you’re gonna feel like you want to do it and part of that is tied directly to the third law Which is to make it easy. So making your habits easy is about scaling them down I recommend what I call the two-minute rule to the rule the two-minute rule says take whatever habit You’re trying to build and scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So read 40 books a year becomes read one page. Or do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat. So you make it really easy and small. And then the fourth and final law of behavior change is to make it satisfying. And that’s all about associating your habits with some kind of positive emotion. You want your habits to be enjoyable, pleasurable, delightful, satisfying, because that gives your brain a positive signal where it says, hey, that felt good, you should do this again in the future. So one strategy for that is to select the form of a habit that is most enjoyable to you. So exercise, for example, not everybody needs to work out like a bodybuilder. Some people want to rock climb or to kayak or to go hiking or just choose whatever form of exercise brings you the most joy in the moment because that will associate that positive emotion with the behavior and make it more likely to stick. So make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. Make it blow my mind. Make it blow my mind. Now James, what are some, why are systems in your mind, why are systems more important than goals? Well, so let me put a little finer point on what I’m describing here. So your goal is your desired outcome. It’s what you want to achieve. Your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. And if there’s ever a gap between your system and your goal, there’s ever a gap between your desired outcome and your daily habits, your daily habits will always win. Right, like almost by definition, your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results right like and maybe we could even say like Whatever habits you’ve been using or following for the last say six months are perfectly designed to deliver your current results That’s your system whatever system you’ve been running recently that leads to the outcome that you have And so I think we could say that you do not rise to the level of your goals You fall to the level of your systems. And so if you want to change, a lot of the time people say, Oh, you need to be more ambitious. You need to set bigger goals and you think bigger, you need a 10 extra vision or whatever. But you know, having the goal is really the easy part. Like I can set a goal right now. Oh yeah. 10 million books, right? Took me like three seconds or what you see a lot of the time in many domains is that the winners and the losers, so to speak in any given field have the same goals. Like if 20 people are competing for the gold medal, presumably all of the athletes have the goal of winning the gold medal. Or if 100 people apply for a job, presumably every candidate has the goal of getting the job. I want to interject something here. And maybe you disagree. I just want to throw it out, throw it back if you want. You sound like, did you read Mark Manson? Did you read Mark Manson? Yeah, I’m friends with Mark. Okay, well we had Mark on the show recently, and you and Mark Manson, the subtle art of not giving an F, the author Mark Manson, you guys are the future of self-help in my mind, because you guys are that practical, real talk, and I feel like there’s a lot of good things you can get out of Napoleon Hill, and a lot of good things out of Zig Ziglar, but I am so tired of seeing people who are sufficiently motivated going to yet another seminar to set another goal and saying, if I can believe it, I can achieve it. And I’m just, and you’re going, but seriously, in order to get to the top of the search engines, you’re going to need to make your website canonically compliance and your permalinks are wrong. And they go, permalinks are wrong. And then you go, yeah, permalinks is you say your keywords are wrong and your descriptions are wrong and your site’s not built on HTML and your site map is missing and you don’t have an XML site map and they go, I don’t got time for that. I don’t have time, James Clear, I don’t have time for that. I’m talking about believing it and achieving it. Would you agree that you’re kind of like a new form of self-help? I mean, you guys are like self-help 2.0. It’s like that real raw stuff. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to share ideas that are true and useful. You know, like that’s kind of like true useful clear that’s that’s like kind of my the three things that I want things to be when I when I write about them and so The way that I look at this stuff if we’re talking about systems or goals or whatever is like what actually helps me get results you know, like what actually helps move things forward and I’m not saying goals are totally useless like goals are useful for setting a sense of direction They’re also useful as a filter. So if you know what your goals are and people come to you and they say, hey, do you want to, like, I have this opportunity, do you want to join? And you’re like, well, that doesn’t help me achieve my goals. So no. So it helps you like say filter out and say no to things. But my argument is that, you know, maybe 90% of the time, let’s say, should be spent on your habits and building a better system. And maybe 10% of the time on checking in on your goals and making sure you’re moving in the right direction. Whereas a lot of the time, it seems like the conversation is reversed, that we’re spending all this time talking about building a bigger vision or getting more motivated or whatever. In reality, it’s the system that drives the outcome. It’s like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. That is, that was hot. That was hot. Now Josh, do you have a question for the best-selling author of Atomic Habits here, Mr. James Clear. I do, James. Hey, thank you so much for taking my question and taking your time. So I can see why Brett is such a big fan of yours. It’s absolutely fire stuff here that so many of our listeners really need to apply and run out and get your book. My specific question would be, and the two-minute rule, I love that. I love the four points that you brought up. If you were coaching, training, teaching your team, a team of people, and you said, oh, okay, well, we want to form this one habit. We want to go after this one thing. How would you start with a team of, say, 17 people that work for me? How would you start? In an office environment or in a Riot environment? In an office environment. Okay, thanks. So, how would you start to develop a new habit or a new system? Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So, I do think the two-minute rule can be useful Or some version of it for the teams in the sense that we say, all right This is where we’re gonna focus This is what we’ve decided is important for our culture for you know, our new strategic initiative or whatever What’s the smallest unit of that? How can we scale that down and try to focus on mastering the art of showing up and at least doing that each time? This is, I think, a deeper truth about habits that people often overlook, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved. You know, like a lot of the time, especially with strategic planning or talking to teams, we’re so focused on like optimizing, let’s come up with the best plan in theory, let’s come up with the best strategy. And in reality, there’s nothing to improve if you don’t master the art of showing up. And so let’s find a small way that we can get that habit established. So that’s probably the first thing. And then the second piece that came to my mind is there’s a great book. It’s a business book. It’s called The Outsiders, not the book that you read in high school. It’s written by William Thorndike. And he talks about these eight different CEOs that have kind of performed really well over the last hundred years. And one of them is Warren Buffett, but most of the others people haven’t heard of. But anyway, one of the people that he profiles in that book had this very interesting thing where he took over this company, starts out this little office, thing was in Buffalo, New York. And over the next like 30 years, he ends up rising up the ranks to become CEO. But on that first day, he comes in as the manager of this little office. And somebody comes to him and says, Hey, we need to, we’re due to paint the outside of the building. We need to update the facade, like what do you want us to do? And he said, only paint the side that faces the street. And over the next 30 years, cost cutting was like a really big part of his initiative, a really big part of his strategy. And the great thing about that story is it became kind of this almost like legend or folklore that could be passed throughout the company, where in every budget meeting and every time they were discussing cost cutting, it could be like, how much do we care about this? Oh, so much that we only paint the side of the building that faces the street. And so whatever the new habit is that you’re trying to instill in your company, I think that leaders do have a unique position where you can come up with some kind of story, some narrative, some, I call this like controlling the narrative. And it’s some, some story that can represent what that value is so that you can spread that around throughout the team. People need, they need like a heuristic that they can keep top of mind whenever they’re the one making the decisions because you can’t be there looking over their shoulder at every minute. So, some kind of example like that I think is good. A lot of companies actually have used the British cycling example of getting 1% better each day that I kick off atomic habits with. Anybody who’s interested in continuous improvement or we want our sales team to get 1% better or whatever, you can use stories like that to initiate the behavior, get somebody to anchor their behavior on. Now, James, Brett Denton had specific questions he wanted me to ask you. I said, you know what? I’m going to do it because you’re the guy who introduced me to the writing of James Clear. Here are the questions that Brett has for you. He wants to know, what is your research method? It’s a good question. So I kind of broadly speaking, the real quick summary is broad funnel type filter, broad funnel type filter. And so what that usually looks like for me is most of my research, I read a lot. I’m just kind of not in any like real big, meaningful, like planned out way. I just am like kind of surrounded by it a lot. I keep a lot of books by me. I keep books by my bed, in the living room, you know, whatever, just like on my web browser, which is usually where I’m at when I’m somewhere in the browser when I’m on the computer. I usually have 10 to 20 tabs open, and maybe three of those are like Gmail and Asana and like business stuff. And the other 10 ish are usually things that I’m going to read or I’m in the middle of reading. So, uh, I’m reading a lot, so I’m taking a lot of information in and each day I sort of have a block of time from roughly like eight to noon where I don’t have any calls, nothing scheduled. It’s just like thinking and reading and research time. And occasionally when I come across a good idea, I toss that into Evernote or a Google Doc if I’m working on a book manuscript. And I just try to pile as much stuff in there as possible. It starts to take a little bit of shape, and I kind of roughly have some headings or different areas, themes that are kind of going on. But I just put all that in there, and when that grows to a degree that I feel like I kind of got everything I want that’s in there, it’s like I’m, the hard thing about being a writer It’s that it’s kind of like being a sculptor But you also have to build the rock to begin with before you chip it away and turn it into a great example It’s a great explanation into the statue so all the research the broad funnel is the building of the rock and then I in the case of a time in the case of atomic habits the first draft was I think 720 pages and then the final version is 250. So I build out that huge 700 page version and then I spend the next, you know, so that maybe takes a year or two years, however long, and then I spend the next six months or a year whittling it down to the statute of the 250 page version. So broad funnel, tight filter. Final question from Brett Denton here. He wants to know, what’s the best way in your mind to begin building an email list? And again, he owns a gym called Cavell Fit. He’s really doing well. He has three locations. Things are going great for him. What advice would you have for Brett Denton, the owner of Cavell Fit, on how to build an email list? Well, people only sign up for emails if they think they’re going to provide them value. And generally, people think it’ll provide them value if it’s free and there’s some kind of interesting idea or insight or content. Now, again, this depends on the business you’re building. J.Crew is going to be offering people 20% off discount codes to get them on the email list. They’re not going to be writing blog posts. So it does depend. I don’t know exactly what the best strategy is for someone running a gym But for me my strategy is I’m gonna try to write a couple articles a week that are free or maybe It doesn’t have to be two a week. It could be one week it could be a one a month even if it’s if it’s high quality and in-depth just whatever pace you can stick to and so that’s the strategy and then there are some tactics that are important and You know, like where do I put the forms on the page? How often do I ask people to sign up? What does the the copy say on the actual email form to get people to sign up? Some of that is is highly context dependent on the business, but it does matter I will offer this if anybody’s interested Brett included that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that for the way James clear comm is laid out So you’re welcome to look at the site and replicate. You know where the forms are laid out or whatever pieces are useful. But yeah, so I think it’s both strategy and tactics, but ultimately it comes back to the same thing it always comes back to, which is providing great value for your target audience. Okay, into the serious questions and I’ll let you get out of here. Your favorite old school jam, it’s middle school, and we go back to middle, what year were you a high school senior? What year were you a high school senior? 2004. Okay, so 2004, the year could be now 1999, it could be 98, it could be, you know, were your school dances in a gym? Yeah, yes, they were in a gym and anyway, I’m laughing because I don’t know where you’re going with this aside from maybe asking me what song I would pick. I’m just asking, do you remember like First memory of this is that my first dance was sixth grade and I when I was growing up all my parents listened to were oldies and so I did not know that music past say 1975 existed really and so I walked into that gym and everybody was singing TLC no scrubs and Wow I had never heard the song before And like everybody around me knew every word. And so I was introduced very late in life, I feel like, to any kind of pop music or new music. I just had no idea. How often do you listen to No Scrubs now? I mean, is this an atomic habit? Oh, no. Now it’s on repeat all the time, right? I’ve got to make up for lost time. Oh, man. Now, OK, now we’re getting into that deep stuff. Do you have a favorite music artist you like today? A favorite music artist you’re into today? Yeah, I have a lot of people that I like. The first one that came to me is Eminem. I have a lot of hip hop that I like. The thing about him, I don’t necessarily agree with him on everything, and obviously he’s super volatile, but the level of emotion that is in the music, I just, it’s like, I love stuff that feels authentic, and you’re like, when he’s singing, you’re like, yeah, he’s not faking it. Like, it’s not an act, it’s just like, he can’t help but let it out. So I like that. On the totally other side of the spectrum, I really like Maggie Rogers. I’ve been listening to her a lot recently. And there’s actually a great… This ties in actually somewhat well with our conversation. So that question about my research process and what goes into that and how I think about it, I really love hearing from people who are dedicated to their craft and are just obsessed with it. And like they can’t help but do anything except get it right. Like it bothers them if the details are wrong. Amen, amen. And Maggie Rogers is exactly like that. There’s a, I think it was an Instagram post that she put up where one of her songs that has become a hit, she’s breaking it down. She’s showing some of her notes from when it was being recorded and some of the things that she passed back and forth to her producer and editor and stuff and the level of thought that’s going into Each note even to each like when do we come in with this chime? Why is it there? Can we amp this up a little bit? It needs to be 10% higher or whatever like she cares deeply about all that and I just I love that stuff and I think that You when you see something really great It’s almost never an accident. How much of a success it becomes, that might have some luck to it or whatever, but the fact that the quality is great, it’s very rare that someone stumbles into mastery. I love that kind of stuff, so I really like her work a lot, too. Oh, man. I can’t wait for the next two hours of this interview. I appreciate you so much for being on the show. You are just dropping knowledge bombs everywhere. Folks, go to JamesClear.com to get a clear understanding of how to create these atomic habits, these little tiny changes that will create remarkable results. Check out the website, JamesClear.com. Again, James, thank you so much for allowing us to interview you here today on the Thrive Time Show. Of course. Thank you for having me. And now, without any further ado, three, two, one, boom! 3, 2, 1, BOOM! Boom. Boom. Boom. Stop what you’re doing and think about this for a second. What would happen if your company was suddenly able to generate exponentially more quality sales leads? That would be incredible! What would happen if your company came up at the top or near the top of the Google search engine results? Well, I would just feel overwhelmed with all that business. How many thousands of dollars in lost sales or millions of dollars in lost sales are you missing out on simply because your potential customers can’t find you when they go online to search for the products and services that you offer? I refuse to think that thought because I don’t want any more business. Unless you are a dirty communist that hates money, my new book, Search Engine Domination, will help you grow your business. In my new book, Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate the search engine results. What do you mean by dominate? You see, in my new book, Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate search engine results. Download your free e-book copy today at thebestseobook.com I repeat, that’s thebestseobook.com JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the two-day interactive Thrive Time show business growth workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tibo’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes, we’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that, did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell, Oklahoma. It says Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop over 20 hours a business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russelaum. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com again that’s Thrivetimeshow.com Hello I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners 34 Grammy Award winners 43 New York Times bestsellers I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation. Really life changing. And I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops. Because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems, so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars with no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. The definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hours. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing but I thought since you and Eric are close Trump what were you saying about what Trump can’t what Donald who’s my age and I can say or cannot say well I have to first of all I have to honor you sir I want to show you what I did to one of your books here there’s a name of Jeremy Thorne who was my boss at the time I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you, sir, for changing my life. Not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. That’s why I congratulate you on becoming. As you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Octon on Verba watch what a person does not what they say Dr.. Breck and Jason on today’s show We’re asking the question. What if you could live a life the way that Michael Jordan played basketball? If you could live a life the way that Marvin Gaye sang a song If you could live life the way that you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to do it all the time. What if you could have a life that’s perfect? What if you could design the life you want to live? What if you could have a life where you could have a box truck, but I don’t want a box truck, a monkey-themed auto wrap, silky chickens, and no vacations? We’re talking about designing the life that you want to live, not the life that I want to live or the life that somebody else wants to live. We’re talking about how to design the life that you want to live. And I also do passive aggressive pitches for the best American sitcom of all time, Silver Spoons. And we play sound clips from our last conference. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Jason, I’d like to get your take on this. You see a lot of business owners that you’re coaching personally who are having a lot of success. However, there are business owners that build a business model that does not serve them and one where they, as the owner, now always have to respond to emails 24 hours a day. Oh yeah, a lot of people end up getting trapped. They get trapped. I believe a business should, you should build a business to serve you, but if not you’ll be a slave to your business. True. Could you explain how or what it looks like to be trapped if you build a business that does not serve you? Could you explain from your perspective what it looks like to build a business that you don’t own, but a business that owns you? Yeah, so what happens is a lot of people they go in with that entrepreneurial mindset. They want to make the business to better their own life. But what happens is instead of becoming the CEO or owner that has invested all of the time in building systems to get time freedom, they become a full-time manager. And so they are showing up to the shop early every single day and then their phone is just lit up nonstop. They’re answering crisis emails, they’re taking got a minute meetings, they are responding to a never-ending email queue. So it’s like they’re the owner of the men’s grooming lounge, but they personally have to be in the store every day Or they’re the owner of the bakery, but they personally have to make the cupcakes every day, right? They’re the owner of the retail shop, but they personally have to be in the retail shop They own the pizza business and they have to personally be there And why do you feel like the owner feels like they have to always be there for some people? It’s as simple as they just don’t want to give up the control like I’ve worked with a lot of people who have since changed. They’ve realized the error in that way of thinking, but they think that nobody can do it the way that they can. So, they get stuck in that mentality. Another reason is a lot of people don’t go in and make the systems in order to help get them out of there. I want to give the listeners an example. When I built the DJ business, I personally felt like I needed to DJ every party myself. Then I got to a place where I didn’t need to financially, but I still wanted to because I liked what I was doing. And if that’s what you want, that’s fine, but just understand if that’s what you want to do, you really don’t own a business at that point. You are like an artist and you own a job. And it’s a cool job because you own your job and you set your hours and you own your own business, but you just want to be intentional and making sure that that’s what you want to do. That you personally do want to own a job and not own a business. Now if you own a business, once I’d been in the DJ business for about five years, it occurred to me, you know what, I don’t want to personally have to DJ every event, therefore I am going to build systems and processes and teach other people how to DJ. Now those people were never as good as I was. They never got the same quality of reviews and feedback from clients, but I created time freedom. But it was always hard for me whenever we would get a complaint because people would say, hey, your guy DJed, but he wasn’t as good as you. Or hey, could you do my sister’s wedding? You did my wedding. Could you do my sister’s wedding? And I’d have to explain to him, no, I can’t. And they’d say, why? What are you doing? Are you already booked? And I’d say, no, I’m actually not booked up. I just no longer DJ weddings. But everybody wanted me to DJ because that’s what I did. And so I had to get to that place where I had to make that decision very intentionally. Am I going to be the one who personally has to DJ every wedding the rest of my life? And will I make every customer happy by doing that? And is a trade-off make my life unhappy. Again, I could have said, you know what, what I’m gonna do is I will DJ every wedding for the rest of my life. Anytime someone asks, I’ll personally do it. And I’m gonna have an A plus product and a C minus life. I’m gonna have a life where I never am really happy, but my clients are happy. Or you could do the other way around, where you say, I’m happy, and most of our customers are happy too. But some people are still upset that I’m not the one DJing their wedding. So whatever that is, however that relates to you out there listening today, I would encourage you to ask yourself the question, do you want to build a business that serves you, or do you want to serve your business? And now back to the conference audio. So I don’t care about my hair at all, and I never dress up ever for anything. So that’s why I don’t get invited to weddings anymore. So the move is though, is it like, but it’s a nice place. So the guys who go there are usually doctors, lawyers, professionals who do care about their hair. Which is a lot of people, but not everyone. So me, I went to Great Clips, and I think it’s great. The irony of the name is awesome. It’s like mediocre cuts, but it’s cheap. So I go in there and I’m like, can I sit down on a, oh, like a blue, you know those blue plastic chairs? Do you have any blue plastic chairs from like a third grade center? And they’re like, yeah, we do, great. Do you have an old magazine? Sure. Do you have somebody who chain smokes that can cut my hair? Yep, okay, great, sign me up. 10 bucks, I’m out. I’ve never complained, and I don’t care. I didn’t even look at it. People are like, dude, you’re missing a spot. And I’m like, all right, but I wear a hat. I don’t care. But so, Elephant in the Room would not, they would never get me as a client if I was marketing to myself because I just don’t care Another example if I wasn’t married to my wife I would never go on vacation ever so people who are like you want to go on a cruise No, you want to see the ocean? No client recently said we’ll pay for you to come to Florida and see our business No, why that requires seeing the ocean? I don’t care Okay, but if you said I’m selling Moscow mule like the copper the copper cups. I’m in why I don’t know. Silky chickens, I’m in. I don’t know. So by show of hands, who here would buy a silky chicken? Show of hands. Jason, do you like silky chickens? I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what they were until I met you, but now my fiance’s soon-to-be wife wants some so bad. Are you serious? Yeah. She wants silky chickens? Yeah, she spent last week in Durango and the family she was staying with had like one or two and she’s like, they’re like poodles but chickens. Right? She’s all in now. Now I would encourage you if you’re out there listening today though, write down the things that you like and the things that you want out of this life. Maybe you want a house with a spire. A house with a big tower. Looks like kind of like an observation tower. It’s an underused word spire. Maybe you want to live in a castle themed house. Maybe you want to live in a tree house. Maybe you want to live in a van down by the river. Maybe you want to live in a condo that’s been renovated, kind of an urban renewal thing. Maybe you want to live Airbnb style for a year. Maybe you want to own a minivan. Maybe you want to own a box truck. Now for me, my next vehicle I’m going to buy, more than likely, it looks like I’m going to be buying a box truck. Do you know what a box truck is? Is it like that Sprinter thing or is it more of a U-Haul? Here let me show you over here what I’m making. This is a box van. This is what I’m doing. This is a box van. This is what I’m looking at getting, something like this right here, the box truck. And I’m wanting to get a box truck, and I’ll show you the auto wrap I’m working on, is I want to buy a box truck and a, kind of a, almost like a moving billboard would be infinitely funny if it promoted the actual podcast the way I want to. And so I’m working on this box van purchase, this acquisition, here you go. The box, so what I’m going to do is get a big box van and have a monkey on it, a monkey on it, like that. And the monkey is going to be wearing headphones and it’s going to say, stop monkeying around listen to the world’s best podcast and then you’re gonna say featuring such guests as but the monkey do you see that monkey? That’s a chimpanzee but yes. A chimpanzee? See there you go. But it’s gonna say stop monkeying around. That’s awesome. The reason why I want to do that is because if you’re at the zoo everybody when you go to the zoo what animals does everybody want to see? You would think the lion but every time you go over there It’s like laying down and she looks so sad funky and depressed But now most people like let’s go see what the what’s going on in the the primate house They always want to see the monkeys right why? They’re always into something and they kind of smile and they’re kind of gross and they’re funny And they’re just they’re as close to human as possible and such the point is I want to have a box van That says stop monkeying around and listen to the world’s best business podcast. Are you going to record out of it? Are you going to have a secret studio on the inside? I never thought about that, but maybe I should get to. What I’m saying is I think that is awesome. I also think having a silky chicken is awesome. I don’t know what you think is awesome if you’re listening out there today, but I do know that you need to think about it. You need to think about what you want to do with your life. You’ve got to think about that. You have to think about what you want out of this life because if you don’t think about what you want out of this life, Jason, what’s going to happen by default? What’s going to happen by default is, like we talked about earlier, you’re going to get stuck in doing the same thing over and over and then somebody’s going to ask you, well, hey, why are you in business in the first place? And I run into this a lot, like the whole point is to get all of our clients through the path, get them the time and financial freedom that they want and crave to be able to do whatever they want later on in life, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people, hey, what’s your why? Why are you doing this? What do you want to do long-term after this? And they’re like, I don’t know. I’m gonna go to work, and then I’m gonna do accounting on the weekend, and I haven’t really thought about what I wanna do with the copious amounts of money that I have from the system that I built. Box trucks, silky chickens, and no vacations. That’s what I want out of this life. I think it’s so important, though, that you take the time out there today to figure out what it is that you want out of your life. Again, if you don’t do that, Jason, if somebody out there is saying, well, I’m not even going to think about that right now. I’m just going to build the business. Let me explain to you what’s going to happen. Elephant in the room. Approximately how many members do we have? About 4,000? We have just over 4,000. What if I was the owner, there are a lot of owners that do this, who put their phone number on the sign. And they say, if you have a problem, I see a lot of owners do this, if you have a problem, call me directly. What would happen to my life if I put that on the door? It would cease, it would not cease to amaze you on how busy you are. You would get texts from the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep, middle of the night. It would be one non-stop just mess. What if I was the kind of owner that personally responded to every email, as so many marketing gurus say to do. So many leadership gurus, so many marketing experts that have never run a multi-million dollar company, they all say, if you’re the owner, you should personally respond to every single email. What would happen to my life if I did that? You would have no life. Your life would be spent dealing with the burning fires and nonsensical emails. Like everything would be, either this immediately had to get done, somebody wants your attention on this, somebody has some dumb idea that you don’t need to be wasting your time on. You would literally not even be able to focus on the business at that point, you’d be stuck in your inbox. I see a lot of business owners who feel like it’s their mission to motivate their employees and to become everyone’s best friend. Yeah. What if I were to do that with my life? What would happen? You would… your employees would like you, but your family wouldn’t like you. You’d lose all the other connections in your life. You’d literally be surrounded by work 24-7. Have you ever thought about why I asked you to do this podcast with me on occasion as opposed to some other people? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever had that thought? I just thought it was for my in-depth knowledge of the Grinder app. But no, why do you think? Why do you think I have asked you? Because there was a time where I asked Mr. Eric Chup to join me. There was a time where I asked Mr. Morris to join me. There’s been other people. Why do I do that? One, it’s nice to have somebody in the box with you at 4 AM. You seem like a crazy person. But honestly, I don’t know. I did it because I knew that you’re the kind of person that you were very, very, very close to being ready to coach. And I needed to give you the opportunity for more and more shadow time, more opportunity to so you could observe through osmosis some of the processes and systems. And also you’re a guy who earned that right or that access to Jonathan and myself. Because how long have you worked with us at Elephant in the Room? I want to say it was, what, three years into this July. Yeah, and you started off in the call center, and you moved your way up to what? I was the area assistant. I kind of bounced around between the shops while the managers were out, and then eventually managed one shop and then all three. So you got to a place where you managed all three shops, all 4,000 customers, but you earn that right. So again, I’m very intentional in my life about who I allow into my life. I am not going to have someone I just met yesterday who says the right things but hasn’t done them yet. I’m not going to let somebody who hasn’t proven themselves to be diligent and consistent be on the show with me consistently. It’s something that people have to earn. But again, I’ve designed the life that I want. My life is like, this is what I want out of my life. I want box trucks or a box truck, silky chickens, and no vacations. That’s what I want. And you might say, you’re sick. Why would you want a box? I mean, seriously, how many people, if you’re out there today, I want everyone to take a moment to write this down. I want you to write down what do you want out of your life as it relates to a vehicle? That’s not a goal at all. That’s materialistic. Get out of here. Unless you’re going to be Ubering around the rest of your life. Write down what kind of vehicle you want. I don’t think there are very many listeners out there that would have written down a box truck. No. Now, what kind of things do you want to do with your money? Well, yesterday, Jason, you know what I bought myself? What did you buy? Four chickens. Not silky chickens, but verified female chickens. There you go. Because the roosters are crazy. I bought four verifiable female chickens yesterday with my daughter at Outwoods. And I bought some hay, and I bought some chicken food, and a heat lamp, and various things you need to have chickens. And I went to PetSmart and got a cage for $100 for the little new baby chickens, baby chicks. And why, why Jason, do you think I spent my Saturday looking at box trucks online, silky chickens, and not on vacation because I could have gone on vacation. Why? Well, you’re doing all of those activities because that’s what you wanted to do. There it is. You’ve designed your life around being able to hit points A to Z Monday through Friday. That way Saturday and Sunday, that’s your time. Phone goes off, you focus on your goals, your aspirations. Why have we built the office schedule to be one where we are open Monday through Thursday and closed on Friday and Saturday, unless you’re in the call center. Why is our office only open Monday through Thursday? Well it not only is attractive to the people who want to work here and the people who do work here, it’s great for the culture, but at the same time it fits your wants and needs. There it is! If you’re listening out there today, I just encourage you to write this down. What kind of vehicle do you want to have? Second, what do you want to do with your time? Assuming that you have all the money in the world, what do you want to do with your time? That is so incredibly important for you to do that. It is, and it’s often overlooked. People think, oh, that’s the last thing I need to focus on. And that’s not true, because you’re going to end up working for nothing. There it is. And then, right there, where do you want to go? Like, physically, where do you want to go if you have all the money you need? Do you want to go on vacation? Do you want to go to Atwoods. It is so incredibly important that you take the time needed to have these questions. Four, ask yourself, who do you want to spend time with? Because even if you have the great vacation, a great box truck, silky chickens, but you’re around some idiots, you’re not going to like it. And the final thing I’d encourage you to ask yourself, what hours do you want to work? It is so important. Jason, why do we record this show sometimes at four in the morning? Well, those are the hours that we want to work. There it is. I prefer to start my day at four in the morning. Yeah, it’s a great way to start your day. I blew through two red lights today because I could. Whoa. I love to wake up at three in the morning and I love to record it for the morning. I prefer that. Yeah. Why? One, it gets it out of the way, and there’s nobody who’s going to be awake. You always use the joke, you know, you’re awake before God, but seriously, you’re talking about managing your inbox and responding to everybody. Even if you were doing that, I can guarantee you there’s not a single soul who would be bothering you between three and five. That’s why I do it. There’s no interruptions. It’s amazing, but I encourage you, if you’re out there today, write down what kind of vehicle do you want to own? Where do you want to go with all that? Imagine you have all that money. Where do you want to go? Who do you want to spend your time with? Write these things down because you have to design a life that you love. Or by default, you’re gonna live a life filled with obligations. You’ll end up building a business that you don’t like. True. Google search silky chicken. You don’t know what it is? You’re from, come on. What? How many people have no idea what a silky chicken is? All right, so now show of hands, and I want Kevin to look around real quick. How many people here would buy a solar panel that’s a silky chicken? It’s like a fraggle for a pet. They act like a cat, but they’re a chicken. It’s so cool. They are cool. They act like a cat, but they’re a… Right, Havana? That’s my daughter. She’s 14. She raises these things. They act like a cat. They’re very friendly, but they’re a chicken. It’s a chicken cat. Look at them. They’re the best. And they’re like, how much are they being? Like eight bucks? Two dollars a piece. That’s awesome. You know how many of these I can buy? It’s just fun. I love them. Anyway, they’re great. But the problem is the badgers and different animals that eat them. I hate that part. Makes us all cry when we lose one. It’s a constant struggle. Yeah. You’re sick. Now, by show of hands, who here would put a solar panel on your house? Hands up really high though. So Kevin, look around. Hands up high. Hands up high. Keep going. Okay. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to bring Kevin up here. We’re going to bring Kevin. Kevin, come on up here. Let’s bring Kevin. Let’s hear it for Kevin. Yeah, Kevin. All right. I’m going to give you that mic. We’re going to help Kevin here. Okay, so those of you who put your hand up, keep your hands up again. So those of you who would buy a solar panel, I would like to pick on you guys first, your team. Jason, we’ll go with both of you guys. What questions would you have for Kevin if you were thinking about buying a solar panel from Kevin and his great team? So I live in the forest. I don’t know that I would have enough sunlight on my house to actually make it work. It’s not going to work. Okay, so how many of you… Right, you’re going to have to treat the trees. So, what I would do is like a no-brainer is see if your home qualifies. Right. You probably already have that on your site. I’d also say, learn how you can save… My no-brainer at the top would say, learn how you can save $2,000 a year off of utilities and the call to action would be see if you qualify. That’s how we do it. So learn how you can save 2,000 a year, see how you qualify. Now for me, I’m just trying to tell you, for me, unless Obama makes me put a solar panel on my house, I’m not doing it. And then I’d probably break it on purpose so I can use coal. Boo! Boo! Boo! I do have a Hummer though, you know what I’m saying? So it’s different world views, that’s fine. But you guys would do the solar panel. So let’s talk about that. What questions would you have for Kevin about putting one on your house? How long does it take to get it to where you’re at? How long does it take? So you’re thinking return on investment, that’s where I’m thinking. And you said what? Seven to 10 years, but it depends on your electric rate. How much does that cost? Second? What’s the resell value of the house? Oh yeah, it goes up, average about $20,000 on the house. So you’re saying it takes seven to ten years to make your money back knowing that would you do it or not? So how many of you would first care about the price? Those of you who are interested in buying a solar panel, how much the return on investment and the price would be the first question right out the gate? Okay so that would be and again it always comes I would say if I was doing your commercial I’d say my name is Kevin Soak, right? My name is Kevin Soak and I started the name of my what’s it called? Okay, I’m the founder of Cosmos solar and a lot of people ask me questions about return on investment in price So we’ll start with that first off if you’re looking you can make your money back within seven to ten years and Second thing is we want to see if you qualify because if you live in the forest You’re probably not gonna work if you live in a cave won’t work And so we want to see if you qualify and now I can tell you with the third-party lenders we have and the financing we can make it available for everybody as little As blank per month. How much is it per month? So I’d say for as little as $100 a month you can start saving $200 a month on your utility bills And how much down? See so a big the big no-brainer on the home page I put zero money down learn how you can save $200 a month on your utilities for as little as $100 a month. So the problem is all the solar companies, we have about 40 solar companies in Dallas, Fort Worth, they’re saying the same thing. I want to be the purple cow like you. Yep, but they’re not you. So we want to have a video with you sharing your story, and if I can really give you good marketing tips. Where are you from originally? South Korea. That’s a cool story. I love South Korea, by the way. North Korea, not so much South Korea. But anyway, but South Korea, I’m serious. So if you guys ever get a chance to go to South Korea, we had family that goes there. It’s kind of they’re really I mean, they’re leading the leading the free world, really cool people. It’s like going to Utah. Who’s been to Salt Lake City? That’s kind of like going to South Korea. It’s awesome. Awesome people, great culture. But I would share your story. The word history means his story. I know it’s offensive, but his, H-I-S, meaning God, his story, his story, that’s where it comes from, history. So I would share your history or story. So, hey, my name’s Kevin Soak. I actually came over here, immigrated. How old were you? 30. Okay, immigrated here at the age of 30. First generation entrepreneur. And see, I’m gonna buy from you because I like your story, which doesn’t make sense for logical people. How many people here would buy, if everything’s the same, same features, everyone’s saying the same thing, would buy from the guy who’s the first generation immigrant, provide for his family, who has the most reviews. Honestly. There you go. All right, now Jason, I want to take a moment to make sure that we dive into this particular problem that many people have. I would say most business owners that have come through our coaching program at first struggle with figuring out their purple cow. They struggle with how are they going to stand out? He said there’s 40 to 50 solar panel companies in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And he’s saying, how do I stand out? I would say that when I built my DJ company, DJ Connection, there were 40 or 50 DJ companies. How do I stand out? I would say when we started Elephant in the Room, Men’s Grooming Lounge, there’s 40 to 50 places that cut hair. No matter what industry you’re in right now, there are going to be competitors in that industry already. And there is sort of a, this just in, this just in, there are going to be competitors in your industry. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs think that they’re going to start a business with a revolutionary idea that’s going to be so good it’s going to sell itself. Like HVAC. But you have to stand out in the clutter of commerce, do you not? You have to. What happens, Jason, hypothetically, if you have a very nice retail location, but people don’t know it’s there, what happens? Well, you don’t get a lot of sales, and people don’t know who you are. What happens if you have a plumbing company, and people don’t know that your van even exists when it drives by, Jason? Well, they probably book with somebody else. They’re like, hey, look at that cool sprinter. I don’t know what that’s about. What happens if you have a podcast, but nobody can find it on the internet? What happens, Jason? Well, we’re doing this for nothing. Nobody’s listening. But I think a lot of people say, but there’s 40 or 50 other companies out there doing exactly what I do. And I was pointing out to this particular conference attendee the fact that he is a first generation immigrant from South Korea. South Korea, he moved here when he was 30. He immigrated into America at the age of 30 and he started a business. Why is that gonna be a cool story if he decides to go forward with it and move forward and make a video on his website where he shares his story in addition to answering the most frequently asked questions? Why will that resonate with ideal and likely buyers? Well, in that marketplace of what, 40 plus solar people, there’s not a single one that’s telling that story. Right, and you’re going to remember the one. Are you not going to remember that one? Oh, hell yeah. If you were looking for a solar panel for your house, and you’re looking at all these different companies, and they all say about the same thing, and they’re all about the same price, and then one guy comes on there and says, look, set up a free quote today so we can see if you qualify. No money down. We have 100% financing. And here’s my story. And he shares his story about why he’s passionate about solar energy and maybe helping to improve the environment as well as sharing his story. Why is that going to stick in your head? Why? Well, it’s emotionally triggering. A lot of people love an underdog story or they just like something that’s different. Are you trying to tell me that people buy for emotional reasons? 100%. Get out of here. That’s one of the things people are like, oh, that’s not true. Oh, it’s so true. So you’re trying to tell me that people buy ice cream for emotional reasons? Yeah, for breakups. Think about the… I do it all the time. Think about this. Why do we ever have ice cream? I mean, don’t you and I know that ice cream’s not good for us? It’s very not good for us. But why do we have it? It’s one of those things. It’s just… Why? It feels great, but there’s always something attached to it. Like, do you remember the old like bluebell boxes? Yeah. And how they’re like all these different cultural people. My favorite was the construction worker. He looked so happy with it. Yeah, I’m just saying is a lot of people, I see people, you go to a gas station on a Friday after work, why do a lot of people go buy six packs of beer? Why? Is it a logical reason? Are they doing it because it makes sense or is it emotional? It’s emotional. They’re getting ready for the weekend, they just had a hard day or week and they need something to deal with it. There it is. Why do people eat ice cream? Why do people buy six packs? Why do people smoke? Is it emotional? 100%. Why do people gamble? Is that emotional? Yeah. Interesting. Very few people, very few of us out there, though, make all of our decisions based on strictly logic. So if you want to appeal to your ideal and likely buyers and to stand out in the clutter of commerce, you need this thing called a purple cow. And so, Jason, if you’ll read the Seth Godin quote, Seth Godin is the marketing expert who sold his company Yo-Yo Dine to Yahoo back in the day and has now gone on to become a best-selling author. What does Seth Godin say about standing out in the clutter of commerce? So Seth Godin says, in a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. Not standing out is the same as being invisible. Boring is invisible. Remarkable people and products get talked about. So I ask you this question, what can you do today with your business, with your marketing, to stand out in the cluttered world of commerce? So it’s the story. The story’s tough because you might say, I’m not wanting to be on a video. I’m not, right? Yeah, but don’t you like this guy kind of I? Love immigrants. I hate people who are from here. I’m just kidding No, I really do love immigrants Do you know why I like to hire immigrants though cuz anyway can you want to take a guess as to why I like to? hire immigrants seriously Their work ethic they work like an immigrant if I get I can’t stand white people It’s so hard to work with white people. I’m not kidding. I have never had I mean this I’m not just saying this because you’re here, you hear me rant about this. Mormons and Asians, my favorite clients. A Mormon is just a beautiful thing. An Asian, it’s because they’ll just knock out their action items. A lot of white people that are like, I’ve got anxiety. Oh, Dr. Breck, I know you’re thinking, what did I walk into today? It’s a great, I’m sure that’s probably not how you thought today’s show would go, but welcome into the box, my friend. Thank you. Thanks for having me. How have you been doing the last couple of weeks? I’m doing great. I haven’t seen you in about two weeks. I think we had a good conference. I know. I’ve missed you. Yeah. Well, any highlights this weekend so far? Well, since I last saw you, we did go on a vacation. So that was great. Went down to sunny Destin, Florida. Really? And the wife and family, we had a great time. Played in the beach. Got sand in all the wrong places. Uh-oh. But yeah, and then we’ve also been looking to hire a new office manager. So we’ve been going through the group interviews. We were fortunate to have about 250 applicants. And we’re down to a slim five that are getting to shadow. When did you launch the group interview process? Two weeks ago. So in two weeks, you’ve already found five good candidates? We have. And you’re doing what? What process are you doing? The group interviews that you recommended us do that you’ve talked about many times here on the radio. And so we put out a post on Facebook and Indeed and the same post were in both places. And I don’t know if it was how it was written or if there was just, I feel like the job market is really strong but we had a lot of candidates. I love this. This right here is perhaps my favorite story of the week. I’m serious. You know why I’m so excited about this? Why is that? Because you… How many kids do you have? I have three. How many wives do you have? I have one. Okay. It’s just so fun. It’s so fun. I am not Mormon. Hey, hey, hey, listen here, listen here. Before you throw out that… But I’m not. There are different factions of the Mormon faith. I am not a polygamous mormon the right but also not a mormon of any not yet you know not yet what will get there about earlier, Jason, on the show, and I know Dr. Breck’s just walking into this laser show here. But, did you, did you, but my goals, I was telling Jason, my goals for the year is I’m getting a box van, let me show it to you real quick. This is what I’m buying here. So this is a box van. Let me pull it up here. I’m doing a search for it, let me look for it. It says a box van. This is the one I’m in the process of buying. My next vehicle. This is what I’m going to get, something like this right here. I found it for $4,500. It’s got like 160,000 miles on it. And he’s using it. Is he going mobile? Well, you get this, you get this box van. And if you can picture this, there’s a monkey here. And it’s gonna say, stop monkeying around. Listen to the world’s best business podcast. And then the monkey’s gonna have headphones on. Because what kind of monkey wears headphones? Well, to me, that’s my goal. For my vehicle, that’s my goal, the box van with the monkey. My goal for my- Is this gonna be like your daily driver? Yeah. To take the place of the Hummer? Yeah, I mean the Hummer, that thing is a beautiful vehicle. It is. It’s never going to die. I mean, I don’t drive it fast, I don’t drive it far, and I change the oil. That thing, I mean that thing has hundreds of thousands of miles, I think it’s like 200,000 plus miles on it right now. And the Hummer… Does it have a name? Do you name your vehicles? Oh, that’s Kim Jong-un. But that vehicle, what’s great about it is it’s a fun vehicle to drive and stuff, but it doesn’t, the wrap is starting to wear off, and I need to put another wrap on it, but I feel like I need more canvas. So I’ve got to get… I’m going to do the top for those people that are in high-rise buildings that can just look down on you if you’re down. That’s a great idea. So I’m going to get this vehicle wrapped. That’s my plan. So as far as the vehicle, that’s my plan. Silky chickens are what I like to do with my time freedom. I love. Yesterday I bought four more chickens. Not silkies, but I bought female chickens. Fabulous. It was a lot of fun. I love silky chickens. And I don’t like vacations at all. But that’s what I like. And then you were explaining what you like, but the business exists to serve you. And you could, years ago, you could not have gone on this trip because you would be personally reading the resumes. There were several years that we did not go on any kind of vacation at all. You would have, back in the day though, you would have interviewed every candidate one on one. You know how long that takes? 250 resumes? 250 hours! 250 applicants? Well, we probably would have, yeah, I would have gone through every resume, so 250 resumes, and I would have interviewed, you know, probably 50 of them. And according to Inc. magazine, this just in, 85% of candidates lie on their resumes. So it’s a complete waste of time reading fiction books. I’m looking for an office manager, therefore I’m going to spend my day reading fiction books. But again, you’ve implemented the group interview, and that is so powerful. That is so powerful. Now, I was talking at the conference when we last exited the conference audio. I was talking about why I love to hire people with a good work ethic. Specifically, I was ranting, and it is true, that I love having Mormon employees and I love Asian employees. I’ve never had an Asian employee with a poor work ethic yet, or a Mormon with a poor work ethic yet, and I was joking but I was actually being truthful. I have a hard time with white people. And I am a white person. I hate myself. No, but this is an issue. Because there’s a lot of people who are entitled. So if you’ve grown up middle class, I’m sure you’ve seen this, if you’ve grown up middle class it can be very easy to mail it in at work. Why? Comfort. Yeah, the people don’t have any higher expectations of themselves. I think that’s the difference with the immigrants is they know that they’re coming with a dream and a hope and they want something more. But I actually had a conversation just earlier this week with a patient who employs people and often times those people are Hispanic. Yes. And she was saying that the younger Hispanic people are… Second generation. Second generation, now Americanized and are not as willing to work. I’m just throwing it out there for you. Entitlement kills motivation. So what I do when I interview candidates, whether you’re Mormon or you’re Asian or you’re African American or you’re white, I’m looking for people that have the grind, that have the hustle, that have the mentality, needed to get stuff done. If you don’t, I don’t want you on my team. I think that’s where a lot of people get it wrong, is they hire people based on their skill, but not based on their character. You want to hire for character and then train for skill. And now, without any further ado, we go back into the conference audio, Dojo of Mojo, as we talk about why I don’t like to hire white people. Wow! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. So we just fixed your problem. Have a video that answers all those questions and then tell your story and you’re gonna get sales. If you have the most reviews. Is that helpful? Let’s hear it for Kevin Sok. Yeah! All the way from South Korea. And Kevin, I’m gonna give you a gift. One of my life goals was to have enough money so I could buy new socks every day. And I literally buy new socks every day. And these are my new socks. I bought some extras. Here you go. This is so important that you listen to today’s show and you don’t allow today’s show just to pass you by. Oh, that was a nice idea. No, this needs to be a show where you hit the brakes, you pull on over, you pull on over, you get to the shoulder of the road, and you write down your goals. Because if you’re not careful, life will pass you by. And then you get hit by a bus, and then you’re dead. So it’s so important that you do not let this show pass you by. Box trucks, smoky chickens, no vacations. Listen, if you were married to me, that’s what your life would be. A box truck, smoky chickens, and no vacations, which is why I’m convinced there’s only one person in this whole world who could tolerate me. But I encourage you to figure out what you want to do with your life. So I’m going to share with you by default what’s going to happen. And then Jason, I would like for you to pontificate as to why this happens. And then Dr. Breck, when he starts to get way in the left field, feel free to interrupt him. By default, this is what’s going to happen. You are going to go to college and get an alarming amount of debt. Then you’re going to have probably two kids, one to two kids. A lot of people say you should probably have just two, but maybe one, one or two. And you’re not going to get married now by default. This is the cultural norm. Now you go to college, you don’t get married till after college. You shouldn’t do it till after. So you’re going to have a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend or somebody, and then you’re going to get married after college, about 27 or 28. You’re going to have one or two kids. You’re going to drive a Honda, maybe a Prius. You’re going to have an environmentally eco-friendly hybrid something vehicle. You are going to have a McMansion somewhere, a house that is very nice. Not too nice now, not eccentric. You can’t have a, you got to, you can not, not too small. You don’t want to live in a, in a container house or you don’t want to live in a mansion. You want to be in the middle. You want to do the McMansion. You want to go to college, get some debt, not get married until after college, after you’ve had, you don’t have kids until after you’re 27, 28. And then you’re going to be in debt your whole life. And then when you’re 65 and your body starts to kind of fall apart, then you start to think about retiring, but you got to go and work those extra couple years because you want to retire. And now you’re 67, 68, the prime years of your life, many of them have passed you by, and then you find yourself listening to this podcast and you say to yourself, Frick, I’m 70 years old. That’s what’s going to happen. If you’re not intentional, right? I mean, Jason, talk to me about how most people, because how old are you? 26. So am I correct? Tell me if I’m right on step one. Do most people now feel like you have to go to college? Absolutely. Do most people your age feel like you shouldn’t get married until after college? Yep. Do most people your age have some type of student debt they’ve earned? A majority. Do most people your age feel like you shouldn’t have more than maybe one or two kids? Yeah. Why? Because it’s some weird programming that everybody’s just subscribed to. And so like you said, you know, you go through these motions, you spend four to ten years in college, depending on what you want to do, you’re racking up that debt by the time you get out. Not only have you wasted those years, you’ve got no plan, and now your credit sucks. So everything else that you put on the back burner, like house, car, that’s gonna be affected because you decided to wait because you wanted to go with whatever the new social norm was, as opposed to just putting down what you want your goals to be and then freaking working towards them. At conferences, I just kind of put it out there because I want people to know the idiosyncrasies and I just wanna be real about it. I do buy new socks every day, and I’ll tell you why I like it. It’s true. They feel great. And I’m not really a fan of the second time I wear a sock. It’s not as good. And so I do buy, I don’t know why, I just like it. And you might say, well, Vanessa doesn’t know what she was signing up for? I don’t know. On the new socks? I don’t know. I don’t think we ever had that conversation. I just keep buying them. And then every once in a while, I put them in like a big container, and then we’ll wash them. And Vanessa’s like, we now have 400 pairs of socks in there. What’s going on? Over the last year and a half, I’ve been buying new socks. But I’m saying, the kids like sock puppets. Let’s make some sock puppets. It’s not that expensive of a weird idiosyncrasy. And I like it. Some people get Starbucks every day. I buy a new pair of socks. I don’t buy Starbucks. There’s probably no cost difference. I was about to say, it might be cheaper to get new socks. It might be. Yeah, I’m just saying, that is what I’m into. Box trucks, silky chickens, no vacations, and new socks every day. But Jason, when you put it out there, when you start to explain to your friends that you have an idiosyncrasy, what tends to happen? They look at you weird. Like what’s funny is the past couple years that I’ve been working here, especially this last year that I’ve been doing the podcast and coaching more, we’ll have friends who are still in college, at this point, still in college, 26, mind you, and I see them for their winter break and go to a social gathering, and I’m telling them, yeah, I have to leave by 9.30 so I can go to bed. And they’re like, what? When did you become such an old man? It’s Friday. I’m like, yeah, but Saturday I get up at four so I can record at five, and the look on their face is always priceless. I’m like, why do you do that? I’m like, because it’s my dream to have a podcast and I’m learning a crap ton, so you guys can stay out doing what you’re doing. I’m gonna go and work towards my goals and dreams. Now this is what’s interesting. I was yesterday, Jason, do you know how I spent most of my day yesterday? I observed you with a lot of onboarding and coaching, but I’m not sure what you did after that. See, this is why, if you’re out there listening, I’m just helping you design the life you’re going to love. I’m just trying to give you examples. Yesterday, our first meeting, Jason, when you and I met, our first meeting was at what time? It was at 5 a.m. Right, and we had a client meeting at 5. What kind of man meets his client at 5 a.m.? I do. 5 a.m., then we had a client meeting at 6, client meeting at 7. So at 5 o’clock, we’re talking to a guy about his outdoor living company. This was on a Saturday. On a Saturday. It props to him because he was wide awake. He didn’t give you that whole like. Right, because he’s my people. He’s an entrepreneur. If you’re yawning at 6 in the morning, you’re not my kind of guy. So 5 a.m. though, we’re doing the outdoor living business. Yep. Six o’clock, we’re talking to the ophthalmologist, Dr. Timothy Johnson, who, by the way, this is him laughing. That’s so good. Anyway, so we did a call with him. And then at 7, who did we talk to at 7? We talked to… 7, we talked to… It was an onboarding client. Onboarding. Lewis! No, not Louis. Mario. Mario. We talked to Mario. Is it Mario? Did we talk to Mario? Jason? Bruno. Bruno. Bruno. We talked to Bruno. Yes. Bruno’s the man. That is what we did. But I don’t think that’s what we did. I think it’s seven. Oh, it’s seven. We talked to Morning Glory. Yeah. The breakfast place based in Satellite Beach, Florida. It’s Papa Gallo’s. Their second business. They’ve been a client of ours for years. They opened their second company. Then, oh yes, then we talked to Bruno about his business. So again, then the rest of the day I went home and my kids are swimming, having fun, they had friends over. And so I decided to do the craziest thing yesterday. I looked up everything there is to know about Craig Rochelle. Everything. everything and I wrote it into a document that I’ll show Dr. Breck here for accountability so you know I actually did it. So here it is. This is everything there is to know about Craig Rochelle. It’s how many pages long. Do you see that number? I see 50. Right. You know what’s great? Yesterday you were talking about that. You were like, yeah, you know, after this, because you were explaining how important it is to one of the, no, it was to Morning Glory. You were explaining how important it is to set time aside to do things. And you said verbatim, yes, this weekend I’m going to go home and I’m going to write 20 pages on Craig Rochelle. Yeah, I wrote 20 pages. I went out myself. You get overachiever reward number one. Because I think he’s a very, very interesting man. I agree. But I was reading all the quotes from the book he wrote called Weird. This book is so good. If you’re out there and you’re a Christian, you’re going to love this book. If you’re not a Christian, I think you’ll still have this book, but this is what he says, Pastor Craig Rochelle, the pastor of the largest evangelical church in America with over 100,000 members. He says, normal people live distracted, rarely fully present. Weird people silence the distractions and remain fully in the moment. That is hot! Craig, that’s hot! Craig, I give you a mega point. So let’s talk about that for a second. Dr. Breck, why is it important that you, as the husband, you as the business owner, you as the dad, that you are intentional about where you want to go and grow with your family? Oh, well, I love present time consciousness. And yeah, I think it’s absolutely critical because you’re the leader. You know, where I’m trajectorying, that’s where the family’s going. So if I don’t have a plan for where we’re headed, we’re just going to flounder. We’re going to wander in the wilderness. And so I think it’s highly important. But not only to kind of have that vision and dream, but then you have to put the action steps to it. Think about this for a second, though. What would happen by default if you did not set the standard for what you wanted your life to be like? What would happen by default? Well, I think it would be that idea of the 40-40-40. And that’s, you know, work 40 hours a week for 40 years and then try to live on 40% of what you really couldn’t live on in the first place. And that’s just not enough. I expect more of myself. I hope more for my family. And no, I’ve got big goals, big dreams. And so doing the same thing as everybody else isn’t going to get me there. And now back into the conference audio dojo of Mojo. We’re going to take a brief, brief break. We’re going to answer all the questions on the board in just a minute. We’ll come back at 10, but I want to show you a quick video because we talked about remember, I don’t want anyone to get lost. If you leave here without answers, I’m a bad teacher and I can’t handle that. Okay. So one is the goals. We got that right. Two hours we’re willing to work, right? Three, we got the value proposition for branding. We all get branding. We’re all good. If you find yourself in a room with a marketing guy saying, the color blue represents hope and green represents dictatorship. And so what we wanna do is, do you wanna do dictatorship or hope? You ever been with a marketing guy who’s talked to you like logos, like who’s ever met with a marketing guy who’s talked to you for hours about logos? We should have a rendering by next month. What are you doing here? You etching that at a CUNYA forum on some papyrus there, big shooter? Okay, Dr. Breck, you’ve been in business for how long now at drbreck.com? 16 years. 16 years. We’re going on, yeah. 16 years you’ve been in business. Have you ever hired a marketing guy that talked to you way too long about logos and what they mean? Yes, that was a little too familiar, too uncomfortable. Ha ha ha! Yes, I have. Marketing jackasses. I knew exactly what you’re talking about when they’re like, blue represents dream. I’m like, yeah. I’ve heard that whole spiel. I gotta tell you this, this is really funny. There was a marketing guy years ago who used to advise churches. And so this pastor comes in, and he’s convinced that his logo is the logo that God wants him to have. Absolutely. Because it’s blue. Right. And some marketing guy has convinced him that the color blue is more tranquil. It represents optimism, hope, peace, all that. You name it. Well, then his wife comes in and says that she believes that needs to be yellow because that represents urgency and awareness and alertness. And like a school bus, it gets your attention when you’re driving by. You can’t not see it. Right. And he’s pitching blue. Oh man, that was quite a battle. Because it’s the marketing guy and the pastor going against the pastor’s wife in a circular argument and then somebody throws in, God told me. Oh wow. And I’m just telling you, if you’re out there building your business today, you don’t have time to sit there and pontificate about logos for hours and hours and hours. You’ve got to define what you want your life to look like. And freak if you if you want your logo to be red because you like red, then do it. Yeah, do it. Do it. The business exists to serve you. You’ve got to get intentional, man. Intentional about designing the life you want a box truck, silky chickens, no vacations, buying new socks every day and red, white and blue. That’s what I’m all about. I once waited for a logo for about a month, and then it came back looking like butterflies in a sense. And I was like, I think you missed it here. I don’t know, there were the tentacle type things going in different directions. And I was like, OK, if you can scrap all the rest of that and it just still has my name, that’d be great. So we’re going to play the game. We’re going to play the game here, Dr. Breck. You get a chance to win Mega Points. All right. So if I say, now again, this is going to be, I say this, you say that. So it’s like I say this and you say, so Jason, we’re going to play the game as well. OK. So this is what happens is I’m going to say box truck, right? And then you’re going to say, you know, what vehicle is perfect for you? Or I’m going to say silky chickens. You’re going to say what kind of pet you want or no pet at all. I’m going to say no vacations. You’re going to say where you’d like to go on vacation or no vacations as well. I’m going to say buy new socks. Buy new socks every day. You’re going to say what you would want to buy every day. I’m going to say red, white, and blue when it comes to logos and colors. You’re going to say whatever you want to say. I’m going to say favorite people. I’m going to say Kanye West and Donald Trump. And you’re going to say whoever you want to say. And we’re going to play this game until our heads explode. All right. All right. So I’m going to say Atwoods. That’s my favorite store, Atwoods and Guitar Center in Hobby Lobby. Atwoods Guitar Center in Hobby Lobby. And then you’re gonna say whatever you, whatever you want to say. I’m gonna say far-right libertarian and you’re gonna say whatever you want to. We’re gonna play this game until our heads explode, but I won’t make you do politics. I’ll do politics, but you don’t have to comment. Wait, we should ramp up because I got invited to the the Beto meet and greet today, so I gotta get as political as possible. What is the Beto meet and greet? Beto O’Rourke, the new Democratic hot shot guy out of Houston. He’s going to be in Tulsa. I got a text yesterday, like, hey, you coming out to the meet? I’m like, I don’t know who you are. For sure. I think I might be handling the marketing now for a mayor candidate. Ooh. He’s- Locally or somewhere else? Yeah, he’s currently the mayor. Okay. And they’ve reached out and they want me to represent him and do all the marketing for him. There you go. So I think it’s going to get political up in here. Yeah. Yeah. People are going to get pissed. But here’s the thing is because the vast majority of our clients understand how capitalism works, I don’t tend to represent. I would never help someone market as a socialist. But anyway, so we’re going to get into it. I’m going to mention, I’ll take off politics. I’m going to add in the Patriots. Patriots are my favorite sports team. You put in whatever team you want. All right. I’m going to go with, I’m going to write down BBC Live Lounge, because that’s my favorite music to listen to. BBC Live Lounge, I’m going to write that down. I’m going to write down BBC Live Lounge. I’m going to say box truck, you say whatever you want to say, vehicle wise. I’m going to say Silky Chickens, you say whatever you want to say, because we’re designing the life that we want to live. I’m going to say no vacations, you’re going to say whatever. I’m going to say I buy new socks every day. I’m going to say red, white, and blue. I’m going to say Kanye and Trump. I’m going to say Atwood’s Guitar Center Hobby Lobby. I’m going to say Patriots. I’m going to say BBC Live Lounge. I’m going to say One Wife. You might say seven. Wow. Wow. That might be something you’re into. I’m going to say Five Kids. I’m going to say Five Kids. I’m going to say Swimming Pool is my idiosyncrasy. I don’t enjoy swimming at all times. Swimming Pool, it’s kind of a fun, materialistic purchase, Swimming Pool. And then so I think we have enough now to have a fun game. So here we go. And if you get it right, you get a mega point. If you get it wrong, again, we’re talking about designing the life that you want. If you get it wrong, if you get it wrong, then you lose 4,000 mega points. So here we go. Jason, I say, no, you know what? I need the right music. Let me get the right music going. Let me get some need some kind of let me get it here This is didn’t get some news Music. Okay. Oh, I think I got it. Here we go. I guess I gotta get the right the right Yes, I guess at the mood, right? Absolutely. So new license, I need it. Um, the news music. Yes news music License free. Okay, we got here Jason’s perfect. Designing the perfect life with Clay Clark for a chance to win 5,000 Mega Points. Jason, I say box truck. I say Chevelle Super Sport. What did you say? Chevelle Super Sport. Um, sorry, but wrong answer. Let’s try again. Jason, I say silky chickens. And you say… Cane Corso. What did you say? Cane Corso. What does that mean? Oh, have you never seen a Cane Corso? It’s like the world’s most perfect dog. Wrong again. Okay, on this episode of Design Your Life, you’re wrong. Okay, I say no vacations, and you say… Also no vacations. Oh, you win a Mega Point. Okay, I say buy new socks every day, and you say… Buy new drum equipment. You’re not good at this game at all. You’re supposed to design your life the way I want it to be. Oh! See, you’re not doing it because I’m asking you about how you want your life to be, right? But you’re not doing it the way I want it to be, therefore it has to be wrong. I misunderstood. Which is why you shouldn’t bring up to your staff what color they think your logo should be. No one’s going to have… two people will agree on everything. Let us continue on this edition of Design Your Life with Clay Clark for 5,000 Mega Points. Jason, I say red, white, and blue and you say black and yellow. You’re getting all these answers wrong. You’re Rocky though. I mean, and Wiz Khalifa. I say people that I admire, people who are getting things done, people that I look up to and say, wow. I say Kanye West, Donald Trump and I raise you Kendrick Lamar all right Atwood’s Guitar Center Hobby Lobby and you say I’ll agree with Guitar Center but I’m gonna go with sprouts and target I’ll give you sprouts now target the they got they got that one weird bathroom in, so… Oh, I’ve never been in the bathroom of a Target. No, you’re upsetting the far-right audience here with that Target choice. I’ve been boycotting Target now for several years. No, I’m just kidding. All right, so now let’s talk about the Patriots. That’s my favorite sport team. What say you? It’s the UFC. Go ahead and hit it. Shout out to Justin Wren. Hey Justin, I love you. I just think there’s maybe a healthier sport we could be playing. But don’t fight me. You mean the pounding people said? Justin Wren, if you come to Tulsa, I promise you when we start debating about whether MMA is a good thing or not, I’ll immediately switch my opinion. But when you leave the room, I’m going back to my hentai MMA. He is at least two, three of me. Okay, I say one wife, Jason, and you say? One wife. I say five kids, and you say? Two. You’re terrible at this game. I say the best music to listen to if you’re having folks over, background music, is, to me, it is the BBC Live Lounge. And you say? No, I love BBC Live Lounge. I 100% agree with that. I say a swimming pool and you say… Also Kendrick Lamar, it’s a great song. That was an inside joke. I suggested a swimming pool as a materialistic purchase that I like, and you responded with Kendrick Lamar, are you going to try to purchase him? No, it’s one of his biggest songs. What? Swimming pools. What? He has a song called Swimming Pools, it’s like one of his biggest singles. Kendrick Lamar, I don’t know who you are. I know he is, but I did not know that. That was one of his biggest songs, because I don’t listen to Kendrick Lamar. So maybe I should educate myself and listen to more Kendrick Lamar. Okay, now, Dr. Brick, we’ll play the game with you now. Sure. I feel very optimistic now. Yeah, we want to design the life that you want to live, because certainly nobody’s going to do it for you. And by the way, no two people agree on everything, so you have to be intentional about designing the life that you want to live. So let’s go with, I say box truck, and you say… Classic Ford Bronco. Well, you know what, I take that back, because a Bronco, a Ford Bronco is kind of like a box truck. It’s kind of boxy. They’re both vehicles. It doesn’t have near as much canvas, though. Look, we found common ground, because they’re both kind of the same, they’re vehicles. This is what people do, though. This is the kind of crap people do. They go, well, let’s find common ground. I disagree with that. Let’s find ground that’s yours and ground that’s mine. Let’s not sit there and… Have you ever seen people that have designed their office while compromising the entire way? Yes. Does anyone like it? No. Everyone’s pissed. But if two people are debating, one person can be right and one can be wrong, and you move on. You don’t have to find get off this Socialistic idea includes inclusive or everybody has to agree on everything all the time get out of here, okay? Silky chickens, and you say what dr. Rick German Shepherd That’s right port But I say no vacations ever and you say what Fiji? No, I can’t I wanted I want to get you make a point. I’m not gonna give you a part of me wanted to go back Pacific yeah I felt so bad this this show is dividing us so much I wanted to make a point but then I pulled back okay here we go let me give you time I think I forget my wife places where she’s a less clue whoa okay here we go on this edition of design your life with clay Clark I asked the tough questions I say socks every day and you say… Oh goodness, that one’s tough. Protein shakes. Okay. I’ll give you that one, although it is a poor life choice you made that one. Okay, now I say red, white, and blue, best colors ever, America. And you say… Business-wise, blue, gray, and orange. Do you have Broncos? No, but I’ve seen everything. But that is my logo. Kanye West, Donald Trump, you say? Um, Oprah Winfrey. Um, that’s all you need. You know what, I hate to hit the button, but I’ll give it to you. But I’m worried about your life choices. Okay, we continue. So I say Atwood’s Guitar Center Hobby Lobby, the best stores in the world and on this edition of design your life with clay Clark you say what? Academy David Robinson owns it I give you a mega point. Yeah Whole Foods Did you say whole check yeah, okay, I’m gonna have to deduct all your mega points Yeah, some good mega points, but you’ve lost several. Hopefully your morale improves here your your focus It’s a negative at this point. You know what you are. You’re like a third grade right fielder Where you’re the kid picking dandelions? That is mom not even mentally participating in this game. You can be winning so easily playing basketball now Jason I’m gonna let’s play the game. Let’s teach dr. Breck how to win this game all right because remember this game It’s called design your life mm-hmm with clay Clark. Yep, okay, so I’m gonna. I’m gonna say my favorite thing, okay? And then you just repeat back to me that it is also your favorite thing, like a mindless drone, and then you win. Because this is what society wants you to do, right? So here we go. Jason, I think the perfect vehicle, the perfect vehicle, the perfect time, the perfect person is a box fan. What say you? Oh, the perfect vehicle is a box fan. Yes! He’s good at this game! That’s what society is wanting you to do. Seriously. If you’re not careful, you’re going to say, I should go to college because everyone says you should. I should have two kids because everyone says you should. I should drive a Prius because everyone says you should. I should go participate in the local Tulsa fun run and stand out there all day and watch people ride bicycles through the city because I should be a part of my local community. I’m asking, should you? Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. I can tell you this, those bicycle races I see around town, I take issue with the seats. And I take issue with the pants the men are wearing. It’s like Thomas Crossan, one of our clients, he started a real estate company, a real estate photography company called Full Package Media. And I think that’s what they should call those bikes. Full Package Media. Those things are just, I mean, those things are dirty. Have you seen those? That’s a purple cow. The next Tulsa Tuff, he should just print those. It’s just right there on the crutch, full package, maybe. Thomas, that’s a free idea, man. OK, so let’s continue, folks. Let’s continue. So we’re talking now about Patriots. What say you? We’re back to Jason or me? Back to you, Dr. Beck. Oh, I’m a college football guy, so I’ve got to go with Oklahoma State Cowboys. Well folks, some people don’t win the game, some people do. BBC Live Lounge, the best music to play when you’re hanging out with friends, you’re just got background music, the right vibe, what say you? Which I actually like, BBC Lounge. Oh yes! Yes! He’s finally getting going with this game, he’s on fire! I say one wife okay five kids you say three kids if you at least try alright now again we’re talking about designing your life the life you want to live I say swimming pool great materialistic purchase you say what I would agree with that but I’d add a theater room as well. You see, folks, the reason why I’m trying to make this show polarizing and hopefully emotionally stimulating and engaging, and I’m trying to throw out extreme examples, is because you are in danger of losing something. It’s called your one life. And this is what I believe, and I call it self-actualization. It’s a Maslow concept. Very important, do you remember in college, Dr. Brecht, talking about Maslow and his hierarchy? Okay, so let’s talk about this. What Maslow talked about is this thing called positive psychology, Abraham Maslow. He’s one of the few people that talked about positive psychology. There’s a lot of Freud where he’s talking about negative psychology, like why you hate your dad or why you’re mad at your mom or why you’re upset or why you can’t be confident or why you look down when you talk or why you don’t set big goals or whatever dysfunction you have. There’s a lot of research into that. But Maslow decided to go a different route. I love this Maslow guy. He decided to study the theory of human motivation, positive psychology, of what you could do to have the best life now, the best life possible. He was like a well-researched, he’d almost be like modern-day Joel Osteen. So he researched the science of it, and he found when you put positive things into your mind, then positive things come out. If you put negative things, negative things come out. Positive in, positive out, negative in, negative out. He studied that, but he also discovered that if you spend your life doing what you were meant to do, you’re really, really gonna be happy. But if you spend your life doing what you were meant not to do, you will not be happy. That is so important. If you’re out there today, I mean, Jason, you’re a very skilled communicator. You’re a very good active listener. You come across as like you’re sincerely listening and you make connections with people and you’ve done that at Elephant in the Room and the call center when you started. You did that as an assistant manager, as a manager, and now as a coach. I mean, don’t you feel like you’re finally singing a song that you were born to sing? I do. Like when people ask me, why do you like coaching? And I tell them it’s because I like to actively listen to what people have to say so I can help them. See, but that’s something I knew about you pretty quickly. There are some people on our team who I would never ask to be in that role because they are clearly passionate about videography and they love making video. They love making the art. So you put them in that position. There are certain people that love rejection. They eat that rejection for breakfast. They love cold calls. That kind of person, you want to get them on the phone if you’re not careful and you die a slow death of a thousand compromises, Dr. Breck, what’s going to happen? What maybe did happen for a while? Because it happened to me when I first built DJConnection.com before I got good at saying no. I found my schedule filled with go to this chamber event, return this guy’s call, respond to this person’s email, go to this chamber event, respond to this guy’s email, return this guy’s call. My entire day was spent reactively. Can you explain what the dangers of not being intentional about your life are? Well, I tried to do several things that other people had just told me to do, kind of lose myself in the process, and that didn’t work at all for me. I just found myself banging my head on the wall and getting nowhere. But now that you’re intentional, how is your life different now that you are doing the group interview, having a schedule that you’re making for yourself, being intentional about getting reviews, you’re being intentional, you’re no longer reactive at all. How is your life different? It’s completely different. It’s night and day. I don’t even know where to begin. We actually have money in the bank. We have a certain amount of time freedom and we’re working towards more. I live in a home that I enjoy. There it is. I’ve got staff around me that I like and enjoy coming to work and seeing each person that’s a part of the team. It’s significantly different. That is why we do what we do. Now without any further ado, let’s go back into the conference audio. Three-legged marketing stool, we got that? But then, I don’t know if we have this part, why are we doing it? But why? Why? Why are we doing it? This is why I’m doing it. I’m going to show you my, this is why I do what I do. I got two reasons why. One, I believe that God gave me a certain series of giftings that’s made it easy for me to grow businesses. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know why I’m singularly interested in that thing? It is so important that you do not move on with your day until you sit down and define why you’re doing what you’re doing. The business just exists to serve you. You don’t want to be a slave to your business. The business needs to be a slave to you. You want to build a business that serves you. You want to define your goals. Define your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun. You want to define your goals for your faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship, and fun. And Dr. Breck, you are a guy who is now proactive, intentional. Can we improve? Yeah, we can all improve. There’s things that you want to do better, I want to do better, we all want to improve. But how healthy is it now that you truly know what you’re doing? Well I’m very visual, so I actually keep the images of the life that I most desire right in front of me. And so it’s maybe a concept people have heard of before, but it’s called a mind movie. And so I just got on Google search for certain images that resonated with me for how I want my day, my life to look like. And now I keep those images in front of me. And it’s truly amazing how many of those images have come to life. Can you share maybe a couple things on that, those images that have come to life? Yeah, absolutely. So, there were some vehicles that I picked out. And yeah, one of the craziest stories was, one of the vehicles was a Mercedes C-Class. This was years ago. But a friend of mine, as oddly as it may sound, had a lease where he had too few miles spent on his lease where he was going to just lose money by turning it in with too few miles. Really? And so he asked me to drive his Mercedes for a couple of different opportunities, a couple of different weekends. And so it didn’t cost me anything, but yet I found myself driving that exact vehicle that I had picked out a picture of. Oh, that is sick. When I got together with Dr. Keeney, I had picked out a couple of pictures of ladies that were in scrubs that looked like they were happy to be at work. Who’s Dr. Keeney? He’s the partner that I bought out. Got it. Years ago now. But his CAs very much like eerily similar in appearance to the ladies that I picked out on the… What are CAs? Chiropractic assistants. Got it. So there was one that was blonde, there was one that was kind of looked Hispanic. There was one that was a kind of a thin, darker haired woman, like Burnett. And his CAs at the time looked just like those ladies that I just picked out pictures of, women in scrubs that looked like they were happy at work. If you’re out there, you need to act on this. Everybody I know who’s successful writes down their goals and puts them where they can see them. Everybody I know who’s successful does this. Very few people do this, because people are worried about, that’s weird. That’s weird. I don’t want to be weird. I’m weird. I think people worry so much about being weird. Hey, I sent my daughter to a private school. I wish she wanted to switch schools. One of those weirdo schools. And I won’t tell you what school it is, but she’s switching back to the other school. She was in there for a couple days, and it just wasn’t her fit. Because she is a kid who likes to have silky chickens, and likes to have a smaller school, and wants to have more of an intimate or personalized relationship with her professors and with her teachers. And then we’ve chosen to homeschool the other kids. And again, you might say, that’s weird! You guys are weird man. You’re crazy. You’re crazy But that right there when you’re eccentric, that’s what that is what success looks like It’s eccentric because centric is not successful. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa, somebody should write that down according to Gallup Gallup take a guess that dr. Brett guess what percentage of people hate their jobs according to Gallup Oh man. What percentage of American people out there today hate their jobs? I don’t know if I want to say 80 or 85 percent. I’m going to say 80. I’m going to have you come over here and look. 8 out of 10. What’s that number? What do you see here? What’s the number? 70 percent. 70 percent of people, according to Forbes, hate their jobs. 70! 70! 70! The people of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, of the state of Florida, 75% of people steal from the workplace and 70% of people hate their jobs. It’s the same 7. Jason, according to Inc. 85% of people what? Lie on their resumes. Yes! What this means is that most people are going the wrong direction. So don’t ask them. Don’t ask them for directions. Don’t pull over and say, hey, man, do you know where you’re going? Hey, man, do you know which way to get to success? Hey, man, do you know? Hey, man, what direction should I go to find success? Well, they’re going to go, I’m going there, I’m going there, just follow me. And they’re not winning. Because before we go to mount success, before we get to the top the apex of success before we get there let’s stop by the casino you see because this is why most people are not successful people are so worried about they want to be centric people want to be centric oh yes people want to be centric they want to be liked that’s what they want people crave being liked more than designing a life they love. That’s what they want. Everybody wants to be liked. And I’m telling you, I’m telling you, this is how it is. I drive a Hummer, and you know why? Because it’s distinctive, it’s big, and it’s America. But I tell you, I pull up my Hummer, I drive my Hummer in, this is before I auto-wrapped it. I pull up my Hummer to pump gas, people have to open their mouth with an opinion. People have to say something. I don’t bring it up, but you’ve got people next to you. You don’t have to. Bro, how many miles a gallon is that kid, bro? Bro, it’s so irresponsible, bro. Okay, as he vapes. So should I say, hey, you vaping, that’s irresponsible. It’s amazing how I’ve had people who are smoking, they’re just smoking. If you smoke out there, I don’t hate you, but if you’re smoking, be smoking a cigarette. While he is pumping gas. Right. Now, do you know the problem with that, Dr. Rick? I do. He might blow up. He could blow up, he could blow you up. But he’s gonna look so cool right before then. So all I’m saying, I define success as this. Success is, Napoleon Hill says this. Napoleon Hill says that an educated man can get what he wants without violating the rights of others. That’s what an educated man is. It’s somebody who can get what he wants out of life without violating the rights of others. So if my goal is to buy a house and you currently own the house and then I force you through shady shenanigans to sell your house, in my opinion that is a dishonest, not good thing to do. Uneducated move. Right. But if I can achieve success without violating your rights, that’s success. But the world, I think the world defines success passively aggressively as being liked. And you know how you get the vote if you want, you know how you get the vote if you want to, if you’re out there thinking about running for office, you want to get that vote? Don’t rock the boat. This is how you get the vote. You say, if you’re a Democrat, this is what you do. My fellow Americans, how many of you, how many of you have come from disadvantage, a place where you have not been able to achieve the success? How many of you feel as though you deserve a livable wage working at minimum wage jobs? You’re in a wage cage and you have found yourself struggling and working and you can’t get ahead. How many of you feel as though Americans deserve a living wage, $15 an hour. Yes. How many of you, how many of you believe that everyone deserves the rights to free college, access to education? How many of you believe we should tear down the wall and remove the doors from our houses, remove the windows from our houses, and let everybody come across the border and let every homeless man live in your living room. How many of you want free crap? How many of you want to sleep in and get paid like a boss? How many of you want free stuff and Santa Claus? Here comes the applause. This guy’s giving us Santa Claus. Now, switch. You want to win the Republican vote. First off, wear a red tie. White shirt, blue suit. There it is, power tie. And you say now, you have kind of a country vibe to it. You want to say, now, my fellow Americans, we are gathered here at this memorial. You always want to be near a memorial where veterans are somehow involved. And there needs to be a big jet behind you, like a military vehicle has to be behind you as you’re talking. My fellow Americans, we are gathered here at such and such Air Force Base, and I’ll tell you, how many of y’all, well, how many of y’all today were reading your Bible? Well, I was reading my Bible this morning, and oddly enough I had two guns on my desk, and I had some gold there, and I was reading my Bible and I was eating meat and the crowds, woo! Now here’s the deal. What we’re going to do, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to eat, right? Right? That’s right, right? Woo! So what I’m going to do is I’m going to get rid of all welfare and I’m going to say, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to lower your taxes. Now I’m going to spend like a wild man. We ain’t going to balance that budget. No, we ain’t. But the Chinese need us and we need the Chinese. It’s a circle of trust. But what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna lower your taxes down to about zero. No state income tax and no federal tax. And we are gonna grow that economy and we’re gonna spin like we’re intoxicated. We’re gonna get a huge deficit and the economy’s gonna be roaring. We ain’t gonna pay that thing off because we owe it to the Chinese and eventually we’re gonna fight them anyway, right? All right. Now, how many of you own a gun? How many of you uh, you know own some gold? How many of you homeschool? private school public school Sorry about that. How many y’all think merit-based pay for teachers? Let’s fire teachers. They’re terrible Let’s hold teachers accountable Guns build a wall huge wall. Let’s build a big wall biggest wall That was built was put a hundred story wall all around our all around our country And I got a new plan called for America from America by from America We’re gonna be like our own island called America and we’re gonna build a wall and won’t even talk about the rest of the world I mean so again you and we need a bigger military I’m talking about huge people in the military big bigger military bigger guns and everyone gets a free AR if you vote for me. All right, George Bush, whoo! That’s what happens. And so, if you want to win, you’ve got to play to that crowd, right? Now, how do you get both parties to vote for you? You can’t. No. So, let’s think about it. How many of you out there voted for Obama? Think about that. All right. Do you like Trump? Okay. How many of you voted for Trump? Do you like Obama? See, if you talk to people in a social setting, don’t they always say, well, I’m kind of moderate. Take someone out to dinner and you’ll be talking about Obama or Trump. Maybe you’re sitting down to have dinner and the TV screen shows Obama on the screen or Trump. So you’re not talking politics, but it’s on the screen. And if you ask them, well, hey, what do you think about that? They’re always going to go to that moderate, safe middle. And they’re going to go, well, you know, I mean, I think Trump does some good things. You know, like you do? I hate Trump. No, no, no. I mean, not a lot of good things. I can see his point. And then people want to find common ground. I’m all about divisiveness. I like the idea that you can go to your rap concert and know that I’m not coming. I love the fact that you can go to your country concert and know that I’m not going to be there. I love the fact that you can choose to go to Starbucks and I won’t be there. I love that I will go to Atwoods and you don’t want to go there. I love that’s how life should be. You should be eccentric. You should choose what you want to do. Have you ever gone to, Dr. Breck, a birthday party for a kid that you don’t know or your kids barely know and you’re somehow fighting yourself eating cheese cubes on a Saturday thinking what life choices have I made to get here? Have you ever had that thought? Yeah, I’ve been there. On more than one occasion. Isn’t that crazy? It is. I’m like, I don’t even know this kid. I’m one of the few people, though, that says, not coming. I’m not going. It’s not that I don’t like the kid. I just don’t want to go. But if you’re not careful, your entire schedule will be filled with obligations, conversations, emails, interruptions, chamber events, mindless networking. Jason, have you not noticed Charles Koloff, super successful guy. Isn’t he eccentric? Very. He’s huge. He’s super eccentric. Which, by the way, right after this I’m going to Sprouts to get a steak bigger than that filet he sent you, and I’m going to one-up him this weekend. That is a dirty… What he ate is the crazy… I cannot alleviate that. But he is eccentric, is he not? He’s very eccentric. He’s huge, he’s muscular, he’s obsessed with his business. He’s obsessed with his wife, he’s obsessed with growing the business and his kids. He has a myopic focus in a good way on the things that matter to him. But most people don’t do that. Why? Dr. Breck, why? They don’t know what they want. They don’t know how to get there. You see a lot of patients, a lot of great patients. Have you started to discover that some patients just maybe want to be liked more than they want to be happy? Absolutely. Have you noticed that some of the patients that come in who are very happy, who know what they want to do with their life? Yes. Oh yeah, there’s definitely a difference in people who know what they want, know where they’re going, and others who are just kind of mindlessly going through drone-like. What would you say to somebody out there if they called you and said, Dr. Brick, you’ve had some success. Can we meet for lunch? So you’re meeting for lunch. You’re sitting down talking to somebody. And they find themselves not having success because they’re afraid of, you know, they want to launch the business, but their wife, or not their wife, let’s say they want to launch the business and their wife is in support, but their dad thinks they maybe shouldn’t launch the business. They want to launch a business, but their dad doesn’t think they should. Or they want to get married, but their best friend says they probably shouldn’t. Or they want to have five kids, but people are saying that’s maybe too many. What would you say to somebody out there who’s not doing what they want to do with their life because they’re listening to everybody else? What would you say? Quit listening to everybody else. Right. I mean, you could take their opinion into account, but it’s their, your life. You know, so yeah, you want advisors, you want wise counsel in your world, but it doesn’t mean that they make the decision. Ultimately, it’s your life to live. And you know, even doing the group interviews, one of the things I told them is I am a benevolent dictator your words there it is I said this is my kingdom and if it’s wrong I’ll burn it down and they all laughed they all chuckled but you know it’s my life and so I’m gonna create it the way that I desire it to be and I think that if I were advising somebody else I would say the same thing your parents probably have your best interest at heart but they may still not know what’s best for you. You can get a lot of well-intentioned bad advice, which I’ve gotten. Even though you take it into account, it does not mean it makes the final decision for you. Listen. Maybe they have a point, maybe they don’t. I think it’s worth listening, but do what you need to do for you. Then you’ve got to live with the results. You make your own decisions. Don’t ask mom or dad who said don’t do it to then rescue you. You’ve gotta put on your big boy, big girl pants and own the decision and own the consequences with it. But you’ll love it. I want to bring this up. If you’re out there, it is incumbent upon you to now go ahead and write it down what you’re gonna do with your life. You need to design it right now. If you don’t design your life as a result of today’s show, I am a horrible teacher, you’re probably a great listener, but my success as a podcast host is based upon how many of you implement what you’re learning. Not me just talking for entertainment’s sake. Are you implementing what you’re learning? Jason, when we have these conferences, and you meet people from all over the world, from Los Angeles, from Canada, who are implementing what they’re learning. How cool is that? It’s super cool. Like, it’s one, it’s a testament to the fact that it actually works, but you get to see somebody who’s not stuck in that doom loop anymore, and like, wow, you know, I was doing this before five, six, 10 years, just going through the motions, and I hated my business, I hated my life. Now that I’m implementing this, I know what I want, I get to do the things that I want, I get to buy the things that I want, and it’s almost like I just took a massive B12 shot. I get energized based off of their success and the fact that they’re now happy in their life and career. It’s awesome. If you’re out there listening today, you’re not gonna be able to wrap up today’s show without figuring out what you want to do with your life and write it down. Be very specific. Write down your goals for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun. And now, without any further ado, back to the audio from the conference. We’re gonna take a break here, it is now 10.02, we’re gonna come back at 10.15, we come back at 10.15, we’re talking about sales, sales, sales, and answering all the questions on the board. Andrew, I guess, back to DJ Aubrey. Pick it, pick it, go for it. Other deep thoughts before we wrap up today’s show, our conference, why is the conference so politically incorrect, Dr. Breck, in your mind? Why? Because it’s your conference. And you like to polarize people. You don’t worry about being politically correct. And because, this is the thing, comedy is the only place where truth is now accepted. Right. I mean, it’s the last place where you can say how it is without someone saying, I’m offended and I’m going to sue you. Comedy is the last place. It’s the last place you can hide truth. Jason, you’re a comedian, you get it. Oh, absolutely. I’ve seen many, many great comedians. Jamie Foxx has talked about this. Jerry Seinfeld has talked about this. It’s the last place where you can hide truth. Yeah, it’s one of the few places where you can be completely 100% honest as well. Because as, you know, people I say, you know, if you’re gonna be honest, you better be funny. But with that, it’s almost kind of sad to think that that’s how it has to be. It’s like, you can’t just be blatantly honest. Like, you have to like wrap it up into a joke, but it makes sense. And it’s like you said, it’s almost kind of sad. And I have, oh, you are on the verge of the iceberg. That’s why most comedians are the most sad. Oh, absolutely. So this is what I have found. And I don’t want you listeners to think I’m gonna go do anything to injure myself today as a result of today’s show. Don’t pull that thread. I just want you to listen, if you’re listening here, I don’t want you to think that this is, that I’m gonna lose my mind, but this is true. Man, I wanted to earn money for a long time. I wanted to earn money for a long time. I grew up, didn’t have money, I wanted to earn money. I thought, man, I’m gonna earn that money. Now here’s what happened, and I’m opening up a bang drink to celebrate this story that’s probably demotivational. But I wanted to earn money, and so Jason and I hired my friends from college. And what do you think happened? It was probably really fun for a while, and then because they were your friends, things didn’t go the way you wanted them to. One of my friends actually skipped someone’s wedding. He was supposed to DJ at someone’s wedding. He did not show up at the wedding. This was back in like 2000. Who got sued? You did. What do you think he was doing instead of DJing? Let’s try this. Who do you think that he was doing? He literally told me that he had a girl he had been getting his eye on, and they went out to a movie in the afternoon, and then they just ended up having sex and not going to the wedding. He skipped the wedding. True story. I guess their family was out of town and they had the opportunity, so that’s what he did. Didn’t feel bad about it. So I had to fire all of my buddies. So then I get a new group of buddies. New hires. This is like round two. Because remember, we’re doing 4,000 events a year. Round two. I won’t mention their names, but if you look up to the top right, you see our team photo there? Every single person in that photo, except for one, screwed me over. And the one guy at the far right in said picture, that particular person, ended up, we had a wedding that we were gonna DJ back in the day, and the bride was his ex-girlfriend. Oh, fun. And so he got there, and those two hooked up before the wedding, and the groom went to check and caught it happening. True story. Tarp Chapel, broken arrow. How did that go over, who got in trouble? Me or him, you think? You. Right. The wedding ended. The guy next to him got fired and came back. It took him five years to apologize for what he did. And now he’s fine. The other guy with the yellow shirt literally stole enough cash from me to buy a vehicle. The guy next to him started a DJ company. By every weekend, he would steal something. So he’d steal a mic stand. It took him about 45 weeks to do it. This is a REMA graduate here. He literally stole a mic stand one week. You financed his startup? And so one day he needed a ride home, and I drove him home, and he said, come on in, dude, and he forgot to check. And all of my gear was there. And I knew it was my gear because of how I label my gear. I saw my labels on it. True story. The guy next to him was a youth pastor. A youth pastor. And one day, he went to Night Trips, a local strip club for lunch, and his wife tried to find him, called my office. I said, I don’t know where he is. And then she saw a receipt from him at night trips. And he told her that I took him there for lunch routinely. And that it was me who took him to him to go. Right. He said he wanted to keep his job. Right. Because you’re his boss. And then his wife shows up at my house. In a long story short, my wife vouched that I was there the entire time. I never go out for lunch. That’s how that ended. The guy next to him was a former military guy. And a nice guy who did a great job for us for a while. Then he started his own company to directly compete with us. So he’d answer the phone like this. Thank you for calling DJ Connection. Oh, June 5th. I’m sorry. We’re all booked out on that date. But I know of another company that does a great job. Let me give you their phone number. And I’ll have them call you. So he would refer himself. The guy next to him left on good terms and is now doing very well. The guy next to him is me. I’m still here. The guy next to him started stealing clients and drinking heavily at the wedding receptions. And then one day on the way home, he got a DUI, so I had to let him go. Then he started his own DJ company, and it didn’t go well, but he used my name to get bookings. Right. So he would say, I was personally trained to buy clay, and this is an offshoot of his business. The guy next to him. I went on vacation. He was supposed to manage our team. Yeah. He told the employees they didn’t have to come to work that day because he wanted to let them have time off. Yeah. I mean you tell that story and the guy next to him. Everything has happened so badly I can’t even mention what it is because it’s so litigious. And yet he’s so happy in that picture. There it is. And so then I thought, okay, okay, okay. So my first goal was to earn a bunch of money. Wave two, I’m like, I’m gonna try to have a happy team. It’ll stick with me forever. That was my goal. At some point, I think I turned 30, I realized I can make a bunch of money. But I can’t make time. And I can’t make people be loyal. But I can be loyal to my wife and my kids. And so now, I am not in the pursuit of making people be loyal to me. If they work with me for a season, I call it a tour of duty. If they decide to move on after three years or four years to start their own thing, most of the time, by the way, to directly compete with me, usually that’s how I get thanked, is I say, thank you so much for teaching me the skills, now I will take some clients with me. It happens virtually every time. But this time, I saw it happen. Didn’t bother me. So recently, it doesn’t bother me at all. No F’s given. No feelings given. I no longer care when people leave and screw me. But man, there was a part of me for a long time that just wanted to build a team of people that would stick with me forever. And I tried paying them so much. There was DJs, Dr. Brex. True story. Disc jockeys. I paid more than $80,000 a year in my attempt to keep them around. I let them design their own schedules, get them standing desks. You just can’t compromise enough to make everybody happy. But I’ve now discovered at the ripe old age of 38, almost 39, that what I can do is I can control where I spend my time and I can decide to be loyal to my wife. But man, that was a painful lesson, dude. I believe it, yeah. It’s painful when you’re chasing money, thinking, man, once I have a bunch of money, it’s going to be awesome. And then that’s when you get screwed. Everything else is supposed to just fall into place. Because the people who are with you at the bottom hate when you’re at the top. Mm-hmm. Because they want to hold you down, because that’s what they had in common with you. Right. But now that you’re moving ahead, they don’t like that. That’s what we would call haters. That’s why I told you guys when we were talking about famous people that I can relate to, that’s why I really have a lot of things in common with Kanye West or Donald Trump. Because Kanye West, love him or hate him, he’s one of the first African Americans to say openly, I am not going to vote straight Democrat just because of the color of my skin. I’ll vote for who I want to vote for. How controversial is it that he hangs out with Donald Trump? I mean, nobody in Hollywood likes that idea. Right, no. Nobody in the music industry likes that idea, but he’s open saying, hey, I want to hang out with Trump. I mean, Jason, didn’t that not freak out people when he’s hanging out with Trump? It did, but it also reminded me of something I heard you say in one of your client meetings was, you know, you’re trying to coach somebody through how to do something, and they were like, well, I’m afraid that people aren’t going to like me. And you’re like, you don’t want people to like you. You want people to love you or you want people to hate you. Because like is disingenuous. And Kanye operates on that same thing. He does not give a crap if you like him. It’s you are all in or you’re all out. And if you’re all out, he doesn’t care. Honestly, he doesn’t really care if you love him, but it’s just a bonus if you do. So him not subscribing to that is the reason why he’s able to do the things that he’s able to do is because he does not, he’s not stuck in that weird middle of, well, I want to please everybody. He’s not compromising. This is Kanye’s mission. This is what Kanye wants to do. Kanye’s gonna do it, love it or hate it. Kanye says this, he says, if you have the opportunity to play this game of life, you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed. And that’s what I’d like to encourage you to do today. I’d encourage you to, again, I’m quoting Kanye West, he says, if you have the opportunity to play this game of life, you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s past. Yep. Kanye West. And then they want it back. I encourage if you’re out there today sit down, get out a sheet of paper, write down your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, and your fitness. Write them out. Write down those goals. Put the goals down. Put them down. Write those goals down. And then after you write those goals down, put it in the calendar. Schedule your goals into your calendar. Schedule the time to work out in your calendar. Schedule the time to take your wife on a date. Schedule your time to go do that…what’s the kind of…the pinot’s palette where you paint while you’re drinking wine? Put that in the schedule, man. Put all those things in the schedule and go out there and live that life knowing that you’re going to have to tell people no to grow. You’re going to have to tell people no to grow. And Dr. Breck, do you have any final word of encouragement for anybody out there who’s just trapped and enslaved in a life they don’t like because they’re trying to appease their father, their neighbor, their cousin, everybody all around them? Somebody out there who’s just trapped. Well, at one point I heard somebody quote or say that being eccentric was a luxury of the wealthy. And what I love what you’re saying is actually being eccentric is how you become one of the wealthy. By not just following the crowd, not being liked, as Jason was just saying with Kanye West. Yes, he’s a wealthy person, and so now financially he doesn’t depend on, you know, having to pander to the audience or the masses. But yeah, I mean, life is ultimately going to be short, even if it’s 100 years. And you don’t wanna look back and have regrets. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to do something that is extraordinary. You can’t be ordinary and live extraordinarily. I personally love Life.Church. I love that. I think what Craig Rochelle does is great. But we know people that don’t love it. Right. I’m sure there are. There’s people out there that don’t love it. And he’s okay with that. Or at least he’s had to learn to be okay with that. You’ve just got to don’t get stuck. I know people that are irate that he puts his services on video. I know other people who are irate that he’s not actually there live when they play the video sometimes. That he only records it once a week as opposed to doing every single show live streaming. Every single sermon live streaming. I know people that are irate about, people who are irate that Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. People who are mad Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday. People who are so mad that Starbucks doesn’t say Christmas anymore. You’re not going to make everybody happy. Mr. Hobby Lobby is not making certain people happy. Mr. David Green is not making everyone happy. Mr. Starbucks, Mr. Schultz, Howard Schultz is not making everybody happy by forbidding Christmas from being said by his employees. But Mr. Starbucks knows what he wants. Mr. Hobby Lobby knows what he wants. And I ask you, do you know what you want? And now, without any further ado, we’d like to end each and every show with a boom. 3, 2, 1, boom! Now, my other goal for my life is to make everybody out there remember what a great show Silver Spoons was. And I want that song to get stuck into your head. So, without any further ado, here it is. Here we are, face to face, a couple of silver spoons everybody now open to find we’re two of a kind making it go make it here we go here we go find our way once more cowbell I’ll give to you together yeah listen to this part Here we go. Learn all about those things you should know. He’s going to take it high. Listen to this beauty. Listen to this. He’s going to take it high. Two silver spoons together. Get ready. You and I together. Oh, wow. Holy cow. Yes. We’re going to work together. Yes. We’re going to find a way. Now, Thrivers, this is a little fun factoid for you. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone loves the show Silver Spoons with Ricky Schroeder, the phenomenal actor, perhaps one of America’s strongest actors of our time. I mean, you think about Daniel Day-Lewis, you think about method actors. You think about a comedian guy, like maybe a Ferrell, you think of Will Ferrell, you maybe think of Meryl Streep, you think about Baldwin, you think about these great actors. You think about Angelina Jolie, no, no, no. You think about Ricky Schroeder. Now, recently, Joe Rogan interviewed Macaulay Culkin, and at the one minute and 25 second mark of the interview, they profess their love for the show, Silver Spoons. So I’m just, I’m going to keep the audio. I want the thrivers to recognize the world’s number one podcast is the Joe Rogan podcast, the most downloaded podcast. And he has the world’s number one podcast host agrees that Ricky Schroeder and Silver Spoons were perhaps the best thing to happen to America. Well, let me cue it up here. I was describing when it was like, I have a friend who, Ricky Schroeder, who is, yeah, obviously he was very famous when he was young as well. And one of my favorite theme songs, TV theme songs. I’m telling you, the world is starting to come around to the idea that Silver Spoons is perhaps one of the best. Do you remember watching Silver Spoons there? I did, yeah. In your mind, was it a B-minus show? Was it an A-plus? Was it better than… How would you… Because Silver Spoons, to me, it’s right up there with… It was an innocent time. It reminds me of a time long ago. So looking back, I probably have a very different view on it than I did at the time. But yeah, I enjoyed watching it. I don’t recall a single episode. You’re a little bit younger than me. And Jason probably has no idea what we’re talking about. Here we are, face to face, a couple of the Silver Spoons. I just, here we are. I just, I’m wondering, like, in the studio, how he looked when he was singing that song. Here we are, face to face. He just seemed so happy. Super happy song. About being here face to face. Let’s look at the years that this show came out. This show, Silver Spoons, it was on a daytime schedule on NBC, September 20th, 1985. So. Is when it started? It looks like it, yeah. Oh, wow. I would have thought it was earlier than that. Let me see, let me see the years it came out. Let’s look it up here. Silver Spoons, I know the listeners out there wanna know this, the synopsis. Okay, the show was aired from 1982, September 25th, 1982. I did it, shall ever live on in infamy. September 25th, 1982 to May 11th of 1986. It was on four years Mm-hmm, so I would have been age two when it came out right somebody in my house Because it is baked into my cranium here. We are Face-to-face so I give that gift to you thrive nation and I encourage you to ask yourself. What’s your favorite show? What’s your favorite? Day, what’s your favorite schedule? What are your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? And if you know Ricky Schroeder, have him call me. I want to have him on the show.