Clay Clark | Business Podcast | “Steve Was the Most Remarkably Focused Person I’ve Ever Met In My Life.” – Jony Ive (Senior Vice President of Industrial Design & Chief Design Offer Under Steve Jobs) + Interview With the First Boss of Steve Jobs

Audio Transcription

This sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practise this. And it’s a struggle to practise. But is this issue of focus? Steve was the most remarkably focused person I’ve ever met in my life. And the thing with focus is it’s not sort of like this thing you aspire to or you decide on Monday, you know what, I’m going to be focused. It is a every minute, a why are we talking about this? This is what we’re working on. You can achieve so much when you truly focus. And one of the things that Steve would say, because I think he was concerned that I wasn’t, he would say, how many things have you said no to? And I would, honestly, I would have these sacrificial things, because I wanted to be very honest about it, and so I’d say, I said no to this, and no to that, but he knew that I wasn’t vaguely interested in doing those things anyway, so there was no real sacrifice. What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else. And then the third one is an interesting one which actually reflects a little bit poorly on myself. But I remember having a conversation with him and was asking why it could have been perceived in his critique of a piece of work and we’d been working on this, we’d put our heart and soul into this, and I was saying couldn’t we be a little bit more, could we not moderate the things we said a little bit? And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which he said was, no, Johnny, you’re just really vain. And he said, no, you just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed that you were perceived by other people. And I was terribly cross, because I knew he was right. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilmer. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. I’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching me the systems to give what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks. I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and T up on your radio. And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! I could have owned a third of Apple computer for $50,000 and I turned it down. I’ve got a wonderful family, I’ve got a great wife, my life is wonderful. I’m not sure that if I’d have been uber, uber, uber, uber rich that I’d have had all that. And so I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players. And I found something. I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find, you know, five of these A players, they really like working with each other because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. Andrew, occasionally we have a show where we feature a guest that’s so big, so huge, that we have to shamelessly use the echo effect. And so on today’s show, we’re interviewing Nolan Bushnell. Now who’s Nolan Bushnell? Nolan Bushnell was Steve Jobs’ first boss. You know the guy who started Apple? That guy? This was Steve Jobs’ first boss. godfather of video gaming. This guy’s the former owner who scaled and grew Chuck E. Cheese. The Chuck E. Cheese? Yes! And on today’s show he shares why uninformed decisions are toxic, why you always have to be a little bit paranoid to be a successful entrepreneur, how he founded the video game industry, why Steve Jobs was the hardest working employee on the planet, and how he went from repairing TVs to starting Atari to growing Chuck E. Cheese, and why you must work to learn and not just to earn if you want to become super successful. All this and more on today’s edition of the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it We started from the bottom, now we hit it We started from the bottom, now we hit it We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I bring down the books He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them Everywhere and I mean this sincerely from the bottom and the side of my heart I have never been more excited than for today’s show. This show today, let me tell you folks, many of you grew up playing Atari. You played Atari, many of you played video games, many of you have been to Chuck E. Cheese. This guy here, Nolan Bushnell, he is the founder of Atari. He’s the godfather of video gaming. He was Steve Jobs’ first real boss, the great Steve Jobs. This guy was his first real boss. Nolan, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? My pleasure to be here. So, Nolan, I’ve got to ask you here. Atari, such a big company. Massive success you’ve had in so many different industries, and we’re going to get into that. But where did you come from? Were you beamed here, or what was your life like growing up? You’ve done so much. How did you grow up? I basically was born and raised in Utah and went to the University of Utah. And I’ve often said that life is more serendipity than planning. I think I was the only electrical engineer in the world that had managed a games department of an amusement park while pursuing an engineering degree. One serendipity. Two serendipity. Dr. Evans was the only tenured professor that was focused on connecting video screens to big computers and founded Evans & Sutherland Computers and he basically was responsible for what they call the nine Utah Brats, which are Alan Kay, Bob Warnick, Jim Clark, basically sort of the center of gravity of graphics. The head of Pixar came out of Utah. And I was the guy who did the games, based on some of the technology that we learned at the university, which is cutting edge. You worked at the Lagoon Amusement Park while attending college. What job did you have there? I started out on the midway selling balls to knock over milk bottles for a quarter. Were you a taunter? Did you taunt people? What was your strategy? Well, taunt is not the right word. It’s swayed, perhaps. But the real trick was human psychology. So, for example, you could… you’re supposed to run your game at 33 and a third percent. So that says that for every dollar you came in, you gave away 33 cents of prizes. And you could control that by how you set the bottles. Like if I wanted you to win one, I could make it so that a hard breeze would knock the bottles down. If I didn’t want you to win, I can set the bottles so where it would take a nuclear blast or a major earthquake. We had a place where we’d have Johnny Cash, even Elvis, what have you, come in and put on a concert. And so that would be date night. was if the captain of the football team and the head cheerleader came to play the game, he generally have as part of his entourage the water boy and the librarian. I would give an animal to the, or I would make sure that the water boy and the librarian won the animal. That meant that I had the captain of the football team every penny that he had. That’s the move. That’s the move. And you know, the thing is, you at a very young age, you learn these skills, you take these skills. Every one of these skills you learned built upon itself. And at some point, you had the thought, okay, I’m going to start a video game company. Where did you start? Did you start actually just physically building an apparatus of some kind? Were you tinkering? Was it in a garage? How did you start Atari? Where did you start Atari? I started Atari in my daughter’s bedroom. It was really about… What had happened is is MSI chips in the space of six months went from $2 a piece to $0.15 a piece. And all of a sudden I said, hey, I believe I can hit the price points to make a video game. Got it. And so I started doing it, building an artifice. In probably two and a half weeks, I got a rocket ship flying on the screen. I showed it to a, I mean I had no money, I was an associate engineer at Ampex at the time making $880 a month. Wow. I showed the prototype to a company called Nutting Associates and they licensed it. And I came and went to work with them after signing a royalty agreement and put Computer Space into the market. What year was this? This was 1970. So when did the first Atari game come out? The first game that was your Atari brand? June 72. And what was that first game? Pong. Pong was the first. Okay. So good. Now, when you came out with your first game, 1972, a lot of things had to happen. How did you get the capital needed to build this first company? Where did you get the… So many entrepreneurs reach out to us and they say, man, you guys have had success in different industries. Where did you get the capital? We just had a listener today, actually, that we emailed in about this. I always tell people, one, get three jobs, two, live super cheap. These are moves. But there is other ways to raise capital. But how did you raise your initial capital? Basically, my initial capital came from my back pocket. We were capitalized the company at $500. I put in $250. My partner put in $250,000, and that was all the money that we raised until we were at about $30 million in sales. This was kind of before venture capital had been invented. Did you ever meet Bill Draper, the kind of the godfather of venture capital? Did you ever meet Bill? I did. In fact, I had an opportunity to… He didn’t invest in Atari, but he kind of could have, but didn’t. You’re doing $30 million a year. Now, again, people aren’t maybe aware of inflation, but inflation is the gradual decrease in the value of money as government continues to print money they don’t have. And so the $30 million in 1970, when were you doing $30 million a year of sales? What year would that have been? Seventy-four. Seventy-four. So in today’s dollars, Aaron, you can look that up on the Inflation Calendar. I’m working on it right now. That, I mean, that would be hundreds, maybe $150 million today of revenue. It’s a large, right? I mean, that’s a large number. At what point did you hire Steve Jobs? Actually, 1974. And Al actually hired him, but he and I became subsequently good friends. Al hired him. Who was Al? Al Alcorn was my head of research, or head of design. Now I am not going to disrespect a dead man, I’m just kind of quoting some things from Walter Isaacson’s book he did with Steve Jobs, which I believe to be accurate because he and Steve worked together on the book. But Steve kind of described himself as being an unusual character at the time he was working for you. Could you maybe explain the character? How old was Steve Jobs and what was he like as a young man? 20 I think, maybe 21 at the end. He actually worked for me two times. He started out and then he took a hiatus and went to India to study with a guru and then he came back and worked for Atari again. He was disheveled, not well-kemped, and a little bit obnoxious. Steve tended to not abide fools gladly. If he thought you were a dumb s**t, he would tell you so. That’s not a good way to make friends. My understanding with Steve is that Steve and his book he talks about, he really came to get something done. He loved working with A players and he just couldn’t stand B players or C players. He had a real hard time with it. I want to make sure the listeners get something they can apply as a result of this. Are there any character traits that you would say, okay, that’s why Steve Jobs did well. If somebody out there is listening and they’re at that young age where they have to decide, you know, am I going to go this path or that path? Is there any character traits that you observed from Steve Jobs where you maybe thought, well, that guy’s going to go on to be successful? He was the hardest worker I’ve ever had work for me. He was one of the few guys that I’d come in on a Monday morning and he’d be asleep on a futon under his desk. He basically had one speed, full on, get it done, make it happen. I think that that is a characteristic. You can’t be smarter than anybody, but you can outwork everybody. So good. That’s powerful. Now, there’s somebody out there that is wondering in the background where you are. Do you live in California? Where exactly do you live? Yeah, in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles? And can you describe the room you’re in? For people out there that maybe can’t, a lot of people just listen to the show, some people watch it. What are we seeing behind you? This is a lab that I have all kinds of little cubbies that are full of things like resistors and capacitors and Arduinos. Basically I solder here. How many screens do you have in front of you? How many screens do you have? Seven. Seven. Okay. Seven screens. And why do you have seven screens? I think the visual bandwidth is an important thing for efficiency. So when you’re on a desktop, you’re really not looking at pictures like this. You really want it to be like this so that you can scan things with your eyes. So like I have one screen that is strictly email. I have another one that is all my calendar information and my work day stuff. And then there’s one that’s a news feed. Now, Randy Pausch wrote the book called The Last Lecture, and he was basically oddly healthy, but he knew he was going to die. And he wrote this lecture, and he talked about how having multiple screens is really… He’s a Carnegie Mellon professor. He talked about how multiple screens allows you to be much more efficient. I am right now working, I have four screens in front of me, and I think just even going to two screens is so powerful. Yeah, how big are your screens? My first screen in front of me, the one I’m looking at you at now, is I would say 40 inches. The one to the right where I keep extra notes if I need to pull in data or citations, that one’s about 30 inches. The one to the left of the one I’m looking at right now, that’s about 35 inches. And then I have a Mac that’s, again, about 30 inches. So 30, 30, 35, 40. So you’ve got some good bandwidth. Now, another question. Are they all the same resolution? They’re not all the same resolution. Okay. Because what I find is that there are certain things that I want a lot of clarity. If I’m reading something, I want it in my…it’s basically a screen that amplifies the size of everything. I like to have that flexibility of choosing quickly and easily the resolution that I’m looking at. What I’d like to do, if I could, and this will be probably the most unusual interview of all time, but I have so much I want to ask you, and I want to try to go big and then kind of get into some of the habits and details and routines you do, because I think there’s a lot to learn there. Can you maybe share with the listeners, because you didn’t just build Atari. It wasn’t like, okay, that was it. You went on to then be the Chuck E. Cheese guy, and then you went on to, can you kind of just give us, if you were sitting there giving us a recap of your career, could you maybe share with us all the things you’ve been able to do, because it’s truly fascinating, and I’d love to hear it direct from you. Okay, my first big entrepreneurial thing was I was a TV repairman when I was 10 and 11. And I set up a TV repair out in the days when you know everything was a house call because the TVs were big and bulky and heavy. And so I always got used to having a lot of money even though I was a poor boy from Utah. But compared to my friends I always had more cash. Then I did a… am I going back too far? No, no, this is this is great. This is great. This is your world I’m just invading your space and then I started a thing called the campus company which created a water that had the calendar events for the university and sold advertising around the edge and and that And that, the economics there were I could sell about $3,000 worth of ads and it cost me $500 to print and I’d give them away at the beginning of every quarter. And it was really a good business. I mean, in college I was putting myself through school and driving a 190SL Mercedes. And so that was how I came to work at Lagoon. And my theory was I was making so much money, the worst thing I could do is have summer nights free in Utah because I would spend it all on girls and fun. So I said, I’m just going to get a fun job that just keeps me occupied and out of harm’s way. So therefore I ended up at Lagoon, which was a minimum wage job. But then I found out that you got commission if you went over quota. I found that I was pretty good, so I basically was doubling my salary based on quota. There’s a teaching moment there that I want to make sure the listeners get. People always ask me, they’ll say, Clay, why are you volunteering? There was a church back in the day, I volunteered and I would do the voices for the puppets. And people would say, why are you, in your late 20s, financially successful, why are you doing voices for puppets at a church service when no one knows it’s you? And I’m going, I just feel like in the future that is a skill I want to learn, is how to switch voices. Not really knowing how that would work. And then people say, you’re a disc jockey. Why are you, why did you go from disc jockey to dentistry? Why did you invest in dentistry? And I’m going, well, I had some teeth that needed to be fixed, you know, I wanted to get myself, and I figured if I’m going to get veneers, I might as well figure out a way to pay for them. So I worked with a dentist, scaled his business, did a little dentistry on my own face. They paid him to do so. And I realized, wow, now I can go into medical, disc jockey, voices, and then they say, how do you have a podcast with a half a million listeners? And you’re like, well, the ability to do different voices and to know how to scale different industries and mix music, it all comes together. But a lot of people won’t take a job working at Lagoon Amusement Park for a low pay when they already have a lot of money. You were already making a lot of money and you said I’m gonna go work at this job for minimum wage not knowing there’s even commission and had a good attitude about it. Do you think that’s a principle that people need to work to learn and not so much to earn? Is that something that’s a a principle you believe in or what are your thoughts on that? Absolutely, in fact my advice right now is if you’re a high school senior, take a gap year, maybe without COVID, but move to Las Vegas and attend every trade show. I believe that that would be the best first year education you could possibly get. My mind is blown. That is so powerful. That is such an amazing idea. Real quick, mind blown, just a second. That is a great idea. I love that. Well, I think that uninformed decisions are toxic. And if you, I mean, when the kid’s going to college and they say, what do you want to be? He has no clue. She has no clue about what the actuality of what’s going on. And I just think that that’s wrong. You’ve got to get out and make it up. This is something, certainly you don’t need someone to pile on and be your hype man, but I just want to point this out. My wife went to college to do broadcast journalism because she’s a beautiful lady, she’s well-spoken, people are like, oh you should do, oh you should do, you’re the make and model, you should do broadcast journalism. They forgot, she doesn’t want to. So she became a freshman, scored well, sophomore scored well, junior scored well, senior, the senior year is the first year you get to hop up on the screen as an intern at a local TV station. And she found that every morning, these people wake up, literally, I’m not exaggerating, this is not me ripping mainstream media, this is just the reality, I’m ripping humanity. Humans want to hear about death, gossip, destruction, racism, violence, economic turmoil, bad weather, they just want to. So my wife wakes up every morning in her day, starts with, we need someone to go find information about that homicide about the tornado about the economy falling up This is back in 99 and she realizes these people then fight each other Over who can get the scoop who can get the story and they go tonight at 6 After the break we’ll be talking about the homicide And all of a sudden you’re like out you’re what one-upping each other about who has the worst Thing that happened and it was like depressing and all the reporters were depressed and they’re all reading Nolan you know they’re all reading teleprompters. And when you would sit down and ask them in the break room, what are your thoughts on that election? They would go, I don’t know. I just read the teleprompter. No, no, I mean, it was just crazy. But she didn’t have that epiphany until after $100,000 of education was invested. I love the idea of taking that gap year or interning. That’s powerful. Do you have any other pro tips for the young people listening right now that are… Aaron’s got a young man and his family who’s going off to college. So many listeners out there are thinking, do you have any other pro tips out there for the young people, 18, 19, 20, that are thinking about, what should I do after high school? Oh, absolutely. Intern wherever you can get. And, for example, you go to a random office building if you’re in the city, and you knock on every door and say, I would like to intern here. I’ll work for minimum wage and do whatever. I want to learn your business. And just do that. Just get a broad range of experiences, broad range of jobs. Kind of get in and figure it out. Making a life plan with a spreadsheet of what things are going to cost versus what you’re going to be making in whatever you do. You can decide that you don’t need to make a lot of money, but then you get a wife and a house and a kid and a dog and you realize that you probably do need to make some money. Right, right. Now, I don’t want to dig too deep into your personal life there unless you want to go there. I just want to ask you, did you get married as a young guy? Did you stay single a lot? I mean, because you did so much. I was married at 22 to a college sweetheart. That lasted for seven years. And she hated me being an entrepreneur. She wanted me to be in college. She wanted me to be, I was still in college when we got married. We split up and then right after I sold Atari, I met my current wife. She hates to be called my current wife, but sounds too temporary for her. We’ve been married for 42 years. I have eight children, two by my first wife and six by Nancy. We have a great life. It’s great fun. Now Proverbs 13.20 reads, it says, He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. You might say, okay, you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. What I have found, previous to this show, I have been super intentional since the age of, I’d say, 20 years old. I decided I am not going to hang around with people that have consistent, self-inflicted life problems during the day. I’m just not going to. I’m going to surround myself with people that have goals and aspirations, and I’m going to have positive conversations period and I have found that you know when I’m in the room with Maurice Kanbar Who invented sky vodka or I’m in the room with David Robinson the NBA Hall of Famer or I’m in the room with a? Governor of a state the conversations and the opportunities are so much better, and there’s no and they’re just it’s great There’s no gossip. No doom and gloom. It’s positive. Oh, it’s great So who do you who do you spend the most time with? Who are your homies? Who are your buddies? Who do you spend time with? I have a… I’m a member of a group called Metal. It started out sort of as a Saturday morning breakfast club where they’d have a couple of speakers and a bunch of… It’s called… It’s a men’s group. Men’s group? What’s that? It’s a men’s group. Is it like a religious thing? Like a Christian men’s group? Is it a coders group? In fact, we don’t talk religion or politics. It’s all about helping one another and learning about various things. And I’d say that there are several members there that I’m quite close with, that I do things with. That’s my family. I’m finding that my oldest son is 42 now. My kids are really smart. It’s awesome. And they’re a part of my brain trust as well as my wife. Your current wife. My current wife. Now, the thing is, you have touched so many things. You went from Atari to Chuck E. Cheese. When did you feel like it was time to sell Atari? I needed to sell Atari because the 2600 required so much more capital than I could raise at the time. And when you said the 2600, that was a model of… Yeah, the Atari 2600. Yeah, that’s the Atari. Which by the way, that $30 million a year, Clay, was $187 million when you look at inflation today. So Nolan, after you sold the company and you got a check, I’m not going to ask you the amount, I’m not going to ask you how much you sold it for, but when you got the check or the checks, did you set it up where you were getting paid residually or did you get one big check? For tax planning reasons, I got a debenture that gave me a big down stroke and then an amount of money for the next eight years of a pretty good size check. When you finally got a big check, did you have a thing that you wanted to buy? Did you say, now that I have this nice check, I shall get myself a burrito? Whatever kind I want. I don’t care if I get an extra guac. I’m doing the whole thing. Did you have a big goal like that? Did you have a thing you wanted to… I did. I did a thing where during the sale I was spending a lot of time in San Francisco and living in Los Gatos at the time. I said, hey, instead of an hour and a half drive from San Francisco, why don’t I just go from Atari and swing the compass around and get closer to San Francisco? And that came to an area called Woodside or Palo Alto. And I started looking for a house up there. And I found an old turn-of-the-century mansion. It was called the Folger Estate. You know, it was a five-story house with a ballroom and all kinds of stuff on 16 acres, pool, what have you. But it was kind of decrepit. And I said, shit, I could do here. And I bought that. And it was just a wonderful house that I was determined to fill it up with kids. And so you renovated that. So it was like a purchase, but it was also a problem you could solve. You bought the house. When did you decide, hey, it’s time to get into the cheese business, into the Chuck E. Cheese business? It’s time to get into the… When did that happen? It was actually before I sold Atari. Oh, really? I started Chuck E. Cheese inside Atari. Then after Warner bought it, they said, we don’t want to be in the food business. They sold it to me. And so I had the technology in the purchase and one location. I said, okay, I’m just going to replicate it, figure out what the things we did wrong on the first one, fix it. The first one was way too small, it was only 5,000 square feet. The next one was 25,000 square feet, that was too big. And then the third one was 13,000 square feet, and that seemed to be about right and that was the template that we expanded with. Before I open it up to the town hall for the guys here inside the studio to ask you any questions they want to ask, I want to ask you, you are in a different world than I’m in. You’re in California, I’m in Oklahoma. We’ve interviewed the former CEO of Pizza Hut or NBA Hall of Famer David Robinson, a lot of these neat people, but we have not really deep-dived into the tech world because it’s so far west. It seems weird, but geographically we have a lot of Midwest guests and a lot of East Coast. Are there certain people that you’ve rubbed shoulders with over the years where you go, Clay, you’ve got to have that guy on your show? Is there somebody that’s like an unknown, but you’re going, this guy, this guy? Because you’ve employed so many cool people that I’m sure have gone on to do big things. Is there anybody that you would just say that’s, they’re an under, I mean we all know the Zuckerbergs, you know, we all know the big names, but is there somebody out there that you’ve kind of mentored up that you feel like’s gone on to do some big things? Oh boy, several people. I mean, you know, Al Alcorn is a brilliant guy and fun. Al Corn? What is Al Corn? He was my head of research at Atari and he later went to Apple and did a stint with several other things and he’s done some neat stuff. I don’t know, but I think Jim Clark is a brilliant guy. Jim Clark. We share the last name, but I don’t know who he is. Who’s Jim Clark? He did Health MD. He did three, what was the name of his company? Health MD, we’ve all been there. He also did Netscape. And Netscape, a little company called Netscape. You guys are amazing. I’m just, your background, I’ve never seen your office, but I thought it would look like this, so this is confirming. Now Aaron Antus, you run Oklahoma’s largest home building company. What question do you have here for Nolan here, the guy who’s the founder of Atari? Sure, so I mean, first of all, honored to talk to you. A huge fan, grew up on this. I did also want to point out that today, over the last couple days, my son, I have an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old boys, and of course video games are prevalent in my home. My sons are trying to get the new PlayStation 5 right now and it’s sold out and you can’t get it. The games that come out with that are always just so amazing. It’s what we dreamt of when Atari Pong was what we were playing. It was like what we thought video games could become. The funny part is I talk to my sons and I say, now when I was growing up, I played Pong, or I played Tank, and then eventually Pitfall, and so many cool games. So what inspired the game of Pong? How did you go, I’m going to make a game that’s these two little lines and a little, I guess a ball, although it’s a square because there’s like three pixels on the screen. A square ball. Yeah. And, like, what inspired you to do that? Because it’s literally, no, this is not meant to be an insult. It’s the most well-known game that really isn’t any good at all in comparison to what we have today. But my kids are like, oh yeah, I know what pong is. So what inspired that for you? Pong really came, whenever you’re getting into a business, the first thing you do is you list all the sports. You say, we can do sports emulation and things like that. Sure. But, Pong was actually inspired by a competitor. And I’d been in the video game in a hotel room. And so I went up and it was the Magnavox Odyssey. And I looked at it and the stuff was fuzzy and it didn’t have any sound and no score. And I thought, oh yeah, this is really crappy. But I looked around and people were playing this game. It was kind of a pong-like game, but it was silly because you could make the ball move after with a knob and stuff like that. And I thought to myself, okay, but people are kind of having fun with that game. And that happened to be the first day that Al came to work for Atari. And he needed a training project, something that was just butt simple to get through, to learn all the tech. And I described the game to him, and I said, let’s give it a go. And he had it programmed, and he had it developed in about a week, a little less. Wow. And then we started tweaking it, and the more we tweaked it, the funner it got. And it was never, we never thought that it was going to be a marketable product. Then we did it, put it on, it turned out to be so much fun, and then we put it on location and it earned massive amounts of money. How did you market your games? How did you market Pong and the different games that you created? These were coin-operated games, so basically you’d put it out in a bar, you’d collect the money after a week, and that was, you know, they were income generating machines. And if the revenue that they earned got around, then there are these guys called, they’re in every city, major city, there are two distributors. to a guy called an operator. This can be a retired fireman who has 50 machines out in bars and restaurants. They go into a bar and say, let me put my machine in and I’ll give you half the revenue. That’s the business. That’s the move. Also, I wanted to know, where did the name Atari come from? Because it’s like, it sounds like maybe it’s a space thing or something. I’m really curious, like, how did that name come about? It came from the game of Go. And Atari, when you say Atari, it’s like check in chess. It means your opponent is under threat, immediate threat. And I just thought that would be an appropriate name for a company to warn all my competitors that they are under threat. Nice! I love it! Now we have, I want to respect your time, so we have three questions in five minutes. Josh Wilson, this guy runs a company, they do outdoor irrigation systems. This company is called Living Water Irrigation, ok.com. There’s a fly that’s flying right by me. And Josh, what question do you have? I’m sure you grew up playing some Atari. What questions do you have? I had two older brothers, and it was a constant argument and fight. And yeah, it was great. Yeah, so you started a lot of fights in the Wilson household, so my mother is very grateful for that, Nolan. That’s true. In my house, too, Josh. Make you strong. Make you strong. Absolutely. Anything you want, just walk away. I have beat my brother with an Atari controller. That’s a true story. Yeah, I lost one of the paddles. Anyway, we digress. So I thought that advice for young folks was absolutely one of the most powerful things we’ve ever heard on our show, of moving to Vegas for a year and going to all the trade shows. So for a lot of our listeners or entrepreneurs who are actually living it right now, what would you advise them? What would that big piece of advice that you offer for young folks? If somebody is maybe a young folk out there that owns a company? That’s already operating, that’s already doing it. You obviously did it multiple, multiple, multiple times Nolan, so what would you offer? Always be a little paranoid and figure out that if you’re doing something successful, somebody’s going to notice that you’re doing something successful, think they can improve on what you’re doing and take you out. So you have to always be paranoid and say, what kind of company could take me out? And then you have to be that company. And I call it the eat your babies paradox, where you have your baby, you’ve nurtured it in terms of the concept of your company and everything like that, but every once in a while you have to cannibalize that in order to move forward. The failure of Atari was they didn’t allow for, they didn’t move on with new technology. They thought they were a software company and that it would go on forever because Warner put in all record executives. And they didn’t realize that they were also in the record player business. And so when they didn’t up, you know, now we take it as a axiom that there’s a new piece of hardware every three or five years. And at that point in time, I thought that the be replaced in two to three years because there were so many trade-offs and Warner didn’t want to do it and that was one of the reasons why I left. Now, James, you’re an attorney from Manhattan. Yes, I am. You grew up, you were familiar with the Atari growing up as a kid, my friend. Oh, for sure. What question would you have for Nolan, my friend. Hi, Nolan, nice to speak with you, and I agree with Alan, it is certainly an honor to speak with you. The question I have is, was there ever any game or concept that was kind of on the drafting table that you decided to scrap and then later, even decades later, thought about, man, that could have been a great idea, and if so, what was it? Interesting question. I think James is getting ready to launch a new, maybe a new console called Batari. The 2700. The planned version of Batari. things that I kind of put the kibosh on, and this will sound very quaint, is that I wouldn’t allow Atari games to commit violence against a person. That you could shoot down a tank, you could shoot down an airplane, but you couldn’t shoot a person. That’s why it was space invaders instead of face invaders. Yeah, and what I felt, believe it or not, the early days of the video game business it was controversial. There were Senate hearings and various, in some countries, outlawed video games. They thought they were bad for the people, bad for the employee. And not realizing that video games are kind of the training wheels of computer literacy. Like I know no programmer that isn’t a gamer. And so I just didn’t want to add the idea of violence against people to that issue. That’s great. I will say that there are a lot of studies that show that you might have had some wisdom in not wanting to do graphic violence against people. You never know these things until years and years and years of research are done. I appreciate that stance, I do. As a father of kids, I do appreciate that stance. We have time for one more question. This is Pastor Craig Hagan. He runs a church called Rhema Church. It’s a mega church. They have thousands and thousands of members, and they’ve actually launched thousands of churches all across the world. And Craig, you probably grew up playing some Atari, right? Oh, yeah. I had Pong, and I had the Atari 2600. We just called it the Atari. Well what final question would you have for Nolan Bushnell? I love Atari, but I want to ask you a question about Chuck E. Cheese. My wife actually, her very first job was at Chuck E. Cheese and she, you know, sometimes she was Chuck E. Cheese. And it’s just a phenomenal concept. I mean, my granddaughter, it’s her favorite place to go. And I think it’s because of Chuck E. Because, you know, there’s other places that kind of, you know, kind of taken your concept and kind of maybe gone a little bit further, but she still likes Chuck E. Cheese better because of the mouse and all the figures. So what was kind of the idea and the, you know, how’d you get the idea for Chuck E. Cheese franchise? It was really about vertically integrating towards the market. And we were selling video games, coin-operated video games at the time for $1,500 to $2,000. But in their life cycle, they’d take $30,000 to $50,000 in coin drop. So it didn’t take rocket science to say I was on the wrong side of that equation. And so what I wanted to do was to create a chain of massive arcades and disguise it as a pizza parlor. I love it. That’s awesome. Brilliant. that the kids were going to want to be in the game room. I had to keep the parents amused so that they’d stay longer. And so that’s where the robotic animals came. If you listen to the scripts, they were all aimed more at adults than they were at kids. The birthday party, that was all for kids. But really it was to make the waiting time for the parents while they’re sitting at the table less painful, less boring. To give them something to do. Brother, I appreciate you so much for being on the show. I know that you’re a busy guy. You’re always tinkering, working on projects, business deals, always committed to your family. I really do appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to join us. I’d like to ask you, is there a website where you would like to direct our listeners to visit to learn more about you? Or is there an action item you’d like our listeners to take? I know you’re certainly not out there marketing yourself. You’re not out there trying to pitch a book. You’re just doing this out of your own goodness of your heart. No, no. Here comes the commercial. Okay. Do it. Yeah. Bring it. I’m working on a company called Versix, and we are going to have a Kickstarter for a game called Screen Test. We’re building board games, family games, that are enabled by the Amazon Echo and the Google Home. So now we have technology-enhanced board games. These smart speakers, they can throw the dice, they can add sound effects and music, they can time things. More than that, they can provide a synthetic, verbal, non-playing character. Wow. If people want to learn more about that, do they go to Kickstarter? Kickstarter and then look at how to order you know I think it’s gonna be up in December December 2nd December 3rd and they’ll look for screen test you’re gonna screen test Yeah, is that verse 6? How do you spell that? VIR six VIR six Nolan it is a pleasure. I thank you for me. I got one more. No do it. Yeah, don’t do it I’m also on the board of a of a company called Perron Robotics that has the best stack of software for automated automobiles. And they’re just doing some wonderful things and they’re going to be doing a refunder, a re-funder. And I think that an investment in there can be extraordinary because it’s one of the things that I’ve chosen, and I’ve got a pretty good hit record of picking winners. The WeFunder will be up probably early December as well. It’s Perone Robotics. How do you spell Perone Robotics? P-E-R-O-N-E. What does Perone mean? It’s this guy’s name. It’s his guy’s name. Nice. So WeFunder, and it’s Perone Robotics. We can learn more about what you’re doing there. We can invest there. And then there’s ScreenTest. You can check that out on Kickstarter as well. Both these are… Our listeners should look forward to this in December. So I’ll make sure that we release this show. When in December will these things come out? It’ll probably be the 5th or 6th, something like that. Okay. And also, our first game from Versix was St. Noir, which was a detective game, and it’s available on Amazon right now as well. Brother, I appreciate you for being here. Thank you so much. You are an American icon, and you’re just a treasure, and we learned so much on today’s show. Thank you so much. It’s great fun being here. Take care. 4,000% from February to February. Now, I can better that. Okay, Clay, I don’t think you know this. I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself and if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February. In the last two and a half days. So and the phone’s blowing up. Everything’s just blowing up. You’re right. It is like a rocket ship. So we’re pinching ourselves, actually. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Devin, we oftentimes at Thrivetimeshow.com, we interact with some really great people. In fact, if anybody goes to Thrivetimeshow.com and they schedule that first free 13-point assessment with me, you’re sort of like the filter. I mean, you talk to people every day. Yep. And certain people are not a good fit. We call these people happy hopers. And certain people are a good fit. We call these people diligent doers. What’s the difference? A diligent doer has an actual product or service that makes sense. They have a prototype or an actual product or service. They have an actual viable plan where they can sell a real product or service to real people. And a happy hoper is somebody that doesn’t have a real product or service. And a while back, these wonderful people, they reached out to us and we scheduled a 13-point assessment. And I knew that they would be successful for two reasons. One, they are diligent doers. And the second is they had an actual product that they could sell to real people on the real planet Earth. And they gave a sample to my wife. They gave a sample of their product to my wife. And my wife, Devin, who doesn’t coach clients, doesn’t mentor clients, doesn’t, you know, she stays out of that. She works on the accounting side. She tells me this stuff is incredible. This is incredible stuff. And so at that point I recognized, oh, we’re going to have a business that’s going to blow up. And so I wanted to get them on the show while the business is actually taken off. Like they’re actually currently joining us from a figurative rocket ship. Their business is taken off next level. I’m excited to have them on. This is the founders of Give a Derm. Ladies, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you? It’s such an honor. Thank you so much for having us on. We’re having so much fun right now. It’s unbelievable. We’re fencing ourselves. So first off, for people out there that don’t know who you two are, I’m gonna let you two introduce yourselves and introduce your products so people can Google you and verify you’re not a hologram. Absolutely so we are a toxin-free skincare company and we’re really trying to bring the words luxury and zero toxicity together and it’s just it’s just been a wild ride honestly my mom had a crazy health scare and I’m sorry I’m Julianna I’m a co-founder and I’m her daughter and so it’s just you know what it’s just been a wild ride. And honestly, we were pretty, we knew we had something. We knew we had something that was incredible. And, but then honestly, we were pretty stagnant. We didn’t really know what direction to go. And then all of a sudden, on one of our super late nights, my mom, my mom looked at me, she goes, you know, I, you know, we’ve heard a lot about clay and I think, yep, I think we’re supposed to call like maybe get that that assessment and I was like, ah within like five seconds I launched that form over you guys. Oh, holy moment actually because I’m a major introvert and she’s like I never thought for a minute you’d do that, but I honestly felt like the Lord said do this so we did we did and I Think we shared yesterday. I’m not yesterday at the conference last weekend that February, in February, this February, from last February, we were up 4,000% in our business. Can you repeat that? How much have you grown as a person? 4,000% from February to February. Now, I can better that. Okay, Clay, I don’t think you know this. I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself and if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February. In the last two and a half days. So, and the phone’s blowing up. Everything’s just blowing up. You’re right, it is like a rocket ship. So, we’re pinching ourselves. Well, and I mean this sincerely, and I wanted to get Devon on the show because she talks to so many wonderful people. We love them. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. And the challenge we have is that we’re sort of like an incubator, and I can only work with 160 clients, you know? So it’s like a football team, and you only have 52 roster spots. We only have 160. And the reason why is, you know, Devon, with your clients, you meet with your clients once a week. Yep. But a client, you might talk to them three times during the week. Right. Because we’re doing the photography, the videography, the web, the search engine, coaching them, guiding them, mentoring them. And I really wanted to drill down into the successes that your business has experienced as a result of you two diligent doers putting in the work there. So first is you guys are doing the Dream 100 is a system that I don’t know why, I don’t know why, and Debra, I’m going to ask you the question, and I don’t know why, and I’m not attacking you, this is not a passive aggressive attack, I don’t know why people are reluctant to do it, I don’t know. So, you know, in my life, any time I want to get, for example, Tim Tebow to speak at our upcoming business conference, I’m going to pick up the phone and I’m going to call. And then if I get rejected, which I often do, I will then email. And if I get rejected via email, I will then text. And if I get rejected… And, Devon, you have worked here for about a year-ish? Almost two. Two years. And on the agenda… Did I not put on the agenda, book Tim Tebow for a June conference? Did I not put it on there for like, it seemed like maybe six consecutive months? Yes, you did have it on there. And I’ve been chasing that reality, turning that into a… that and to have Tim Tebow speak at our events for 10 consecutive years. So from the age of 33 to the age of 43, I’ve had the same action item on my to-do list. And the reason why is because my literary agent, Esther Federkevich, she represents Tim Tebow and myself, and a lot of people in our orbits kept saying, Tim should speak at your conferences. And so, you have to reach out to people you don’t know because this just in, people don’t wake up with a burning desire to pay you and the product is good as it is. It’s not gonna sell itself. So even though my wife is saying, Givaderm is hot sauce. It is the best skincare product I’ve ever seen. Everybody should buy this. That doesn’t mean people are gonna buy it unless they know about you. So I wanna ask you that specifically Deborah, the Dream 100 making a list of a hundred people that you do not know and reaching out to them to offer them free samples. What was the challenging part about doing that? We had to identify our audience first because you have to, your dream 100 can go everywhere, but you have to specifically identify your audience. And then it is work because you’re kind of intimidated and you’re like, is this real? Is this really gonna work? And so you just have to press into that and keep pressing into that. And you just do what you’re told to do. I know that sounds basic, but that’s why we have hired you to tell us what to do. And so that’s, we just had to keep at it and keep at it. Now, Devin, you work with very reasonable clients. None of our clients are unreasonable, of course not. What is the hard part that people have when you tell them to do the Dream 100? Because these two are doing it. This is something that Juliana and Debra, they’re doing it. What is the issue? I’m trying to help somebody out there that’s stuck. Dealing with rejection. There it is. Now, I used to stutter as a kid. I used to stutter as a kid. So let me just walk you through how that works. If you can’t speak well and you get mocked at a young age, at a certain point, you just quit caring what people think. So, you know, you see this, Devin, in our office, we have a lot of employees. There’s gossip, there’s rumors, there’s jackassery, whatever. You know, yesterday I was dealing with a situation, so I just called a person involved, asked them directly, called both people, wrap it up. I don’t know if that upsets people, I don’t know, but I don’t think about it, I just wanna solve the problem, and I think we’ve solved the problem. You know, it could be you, but if you’re avoiding conflict or rejection, you’re just not going to have success. So pro tip number one is you could stutter a lot and then get to a point where you no longer care. That’s option number one. Option number two is you just become numb. You just get to a point where you say, Matthew 5, 10 through 11, blessed are ye who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for ye shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. So you just say, I’m not, I don’t worry about what people think. Or you just run around like you’re dumb. I don’t know if you go dumb or numb. Juliana, I want to ask you, what’s your approach? Do you try to go dumb? Do you try to go numb? Do you try to pray your way through it? How do you push- All of the above. All of it. And I say all of the above. It just depends upon how it hits me. Dumb, numb, and pray through it. All of those are true. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just so we’re clear about what I mean by this, this is some strategic stuff here. Being dumb, it is a move that I use often. So, you know, yesterday I was, and I’ll be very vague, yesterday I was looking at buying a potential property for a thing I’m working on. And you know, I just began breaking all the boundaries. I don’t mind knocking on a door and talking to somebody. I don’t mind calling a property that’s not for sale and asking, will you sell it? I don’t mind talking to the neighbor and saying, what do you know about this property? I don’t mind. And I just sort of go in like I’m dumb, you know, like everybody is this property for sale? I mean, that’s just sort of the mindset and certain people go. I can’t believe you just did that but okay that works Or you can get numb, but you got to do it Okay So you made the dream 100 of these influencers people that have access to the your ideal and likely buyers You’ve given them samples. That’s working second is you have to optimize the pricing now The pricing is a thing Devon and I’m sure you’ve never dealt with this, your clients haven’t either, I’m sure the Give a Nerd folks haven’t either, but I find a lot of people are afraid to charge what something’s worth. So let me start with an example that doesn’t relate to anybody I’ve ever met before. And this would be the entrepreneur that has a great product but is afraid to charge what they should charge because they don’t want to offend, they don’t want to overcharge. They don’t want to take advantage of. And so they actually create an unprofitable business. So the more they sell, the more they create a daily hell. What am I saying? The more they sell, the more they create this perpetual hell because they actually are selling something at a loss or they’re barely breaking even. I talked to, just the other day, I was talking to a home remodeler who was telling me that the busier he gets, the more money he loses. He was at our conference. And I go, how does that work? And he’s like, well, I don’t want to gouge people. And I said, so what? And so this guy, he’s not a client, but he came to our conference and he was telling me that his business, he listens to our show and he’s been implementing the things he can without being a client. And he said, but the problem is the more business I get, the more I lose money. And I go, how is that possible? And he was actually charging people what it costs him to provide the service, or he’s doing it at a loss. I couldn’t understand it. I want to ask you two now, going back to Debra here, on the pricing thing, has that been something that we’ve worked through together? Or maybe what’s your… How have we kind of coached you or worked with you on the pricing? Yeah, well, Andrew, our coach, has worked with us because I am one of those people that as a consumer, I watch the budget. And so at the same time, our products have incredible ingredients and they are all natural. So we have to cover our expenses. And so you guys have worked with us to watch our margins, to be able to make this company available. We won’t make it. And so you guys have been incredible, an incredible asset helping us do that. I want to ask your thoughts here, Juliana. Talk to me about that, the pricing thing. Have we helped you through the pricing or what would be your comments on that? A hundred percent. Actually, it is interesting because when you set your prices where they need to be, that it actually attracts the customers that you want. And although it’s been hard to consider pricing and hard to consider what we need to make, like as far as just covering the costs and then what we need to make on top of that to just continue to be sustainable, you know, it is incredible because it’s been, I feel like, like I said, it’s attracting your ideal and likely buyers. So it’s beautiful. How has coaching, I will get into more details, but how has coaching, Juliana, how has that impacted your business? If you had to describe it to somebody, you’re sitting next to someone at a conference and they’re like, okay, so you’ve worked with, you know, like Florence coaching system or with, you know, you’ve worked with Devin or you’ve worked with Andrew, you’ve, cause you’ve probably interacted with our whole team at this point. I mean, you’ve probably talked to Devin on the phone. You’ve probably been to a conference. You’ve probably interacted with Andrew every week on the phone. You’ve probably interacted with our whole team at this point. And someone says to you, how has it impacted your life? What would you say? I would say, I’ve never seen the show, but I’ve heard of the show Naked and Afraid, where you’re dumped in the middle of God only knows where. And it’s like, you know what, I have this great idea. I want to be dumped in the middle of God only knows where and I have a product that will help people, but I don’t know how to actually make a way. And it’s literally like hiring a guide that is experienced, that knows what they’re doing and that can really just absolutely, even when we literally, there have been times that I’m like, I don’t even know where we are. I feel like I’m totally blind, even, even in the initial coaching process. And it was like, okay, but great news. We’ve got our coach Colin Morrow, it’s going to be great. It’s just this incredible feeling of knowing that somebody has our back and knowing that they know what to do. Then also knowing that, and honestly, I would be a little bit disappointed if I hired a business coach that wasn’t a multi-millionaire. I’m just super grateful that you’re successful. We wanted to go, you know what, he must know if he thinks or doesn’t. That’s right. I think what’s interesting about what we do is, you know, last night, I’ll be very vague because I don’t know when the show is coming out. I don’t want to date the show that way. But, you know, last night my wife and I were talking about some things and she said to me, she goes, I’m so glad that I’m aware of how to achieve success because when our daughter asks, it’s great to be able to tell her the answers. And she was just kind of reflecting because our daughter’s 20 years old and she’s asking questions about buying her first property. And my wife is like, well, you wanna buy low, obviously, buy low, but you wanna think about that. And my wife started talking to her about generating revenue streams. Like you wanna have a property where you could maybe rent out an extra room to someone you can trust, or maybe you can rent it out in the future or maybe you buy it low you add value to it and my wife was really getting into like a home flipping seminar and but it was the thing where we’ve just done it so much that we forgot that that is a question that a 19 year old has or a 20 year old has that people have never bought a house before we didn’t and my wife was putting on this like home flipping seminar of what makes a home more valuable you know the moves you can do that are inexpensive, but add a lot of life to the property. And again, if you’ve never flipped a house before, it can be overwhelming. But in our case, we’ve done so much. The other day, someone was asking us, I think my wife and I have lived in 15 separate houses. It could be 16, because we just were buying, renovating, moving, and we’re just doing it. And so it’s kind of become normal. Growing a business is kind of normal. So if you’re out there watching today and you feel overwhelmed, you feel stuck, these are two great examples of people that are real people we’ve actually worked with, we are working with, they are currently in the figurative rocketeership, the figurative rocketeership, they’re blasting off, sales are happening non-stop, I appreciate them taking some time to talk to us about this. The next is we got to track, we have to track, and people always tell me I’m so busy I don’t have time to track. Now Devin, your clients have never told you that. No. But can you walk me through why other people who don’t listen to our show and are not your clients, why people might not track? They’re scared to look at the numbers. There’s a thing there. The other thing I would say is people like to always delegate to their spouse. What to their partner. So the alpha of it, if it’s a female owned business and the woman is the founder, she will usually delegate the finances to the, to the person that joined. Like, so the founder usually likes to delegate the finances to somebody else. That’s usually what happens. Or if it’s a male, he’ll delegate it to his wife. Or if it’s the wife who started, she’ll delegate it to her husband. Or if it’s a sister, she’ll delegate it to her brother. It seems like in a family-owned business, the founder always delegates the tracking to somebody else. I just see that as a pattern. And it seems like if they’re not related, it just seems like they’ll delegate it to whoever they just hired. So imagine you go to work for someone, you’re 25 years old, you just got hired by a 40-year-old, and they go, hey, by the way, you’re in charge of tracking. And I see that, and the person who’s in charge of tracking, they may be not, they might not be diligent, they might be, they might be disorganized, they might be organized, I don’t know. But what happens is then they sort of now have removed themselves from direct responsibility. I wanted to ask you, Debra, on the tracking, how do you two track? Because it is really depressing when you’re tracking 100% of zero sales this week. I mean, that can be depressing, and it can seem like a waste of time, but now as you’re actually selling it, it becomes increasingly important. So, start with you there, Debra. The tracking thing, how do you guys handle that? Well, we have our tracking sheet that Andrew helped us put together. And you’re right, it’s absolutely mandatory. And because we have a product that has to be manufactured, you have to know how much every item costs down to the packing tape, the fragile stickers, and all this kind of stuff. So it’s imperative that you know what’s happening. And that’s what, like I said, Andrew’s helped. We do that together. We kind of stay in it. I tend to lean into the manufacturing part of it, where I needed to know exactly how much that shipper costs, exactly how much that void fill costs, exactly how much the decoration on our bottles all that has that half You have to know it. Otherwise you wake up one day and and you’re consumed you’re done Give me thoughts on that because again you two are working as a business or you’re doing the marketing the sales the hiring the firing They’re shipping things. You’re how do you how would you describe your tracking process? You know what we before we I mean we had an approximate idea before we started working with you, but then getting the specifics has been incredible. And it’s not hard. It’s just anything that goes out, you track, and then anything that comes in, you track. But it does take effort. You have to put a little bit of effort into it. And so I would just say it’s invaluable. It’s one of those things that if you don’t understand potentially where there’s a leak in the boat, you know, then you just have to. It’s basically constant weekly inspections of the boat, if you will. You know, it’s really good. It is. And again, this is so big, constant inspections. I think that a lot of people struggle with boredom, but the great clients I’ve had, they bore down. So you have to do the same thing every day. Devon, have you ever worked at a restaurant? I haven’t. You haven’t? No. Oh, man. You probably never will then, but have you two ever worked at a restaurant? Julianne, have you ever worked at a restaurant? No. No. Deborah, have you? Well, let me walk you through. Let me just walk you through my experience at Applebee’s. I’ll walk you through Applebee’s. I worked at Applebee’s, and our job is every single day you have, when I worked there 20 something years ago, you have to have out the fresh salad. So you open up that walk-in freezer and a guy from Cisco or whoever delivers the salad, he’s going to deliver the fresh salad and you have to throw away the bad salad every single day. You know, you bring in the fresh meat, you throw out the bad meat. Every single day, then you prepare your, they call it a house salad prep. So you basically make the house salads and you put them in this room. And so when somebody orders it, they’re ready to go, you know, and you just, you have to, there’s like a process. Every day you clean the bathrooms, every single day you wipe off all the tables, every single day you dust every single window, every single day you wipe off the glass, and it’s a checklist every day. And I found that the top waiters, of which I was not one, I had a good attitude, but I wasn’t nearly as skilled as other people who’d been doing it a long time, they would come in to work right away and they would wipe down the windows, mop the floor, get everything ready to go, and they were ready to go before the first customer walked in. But I found that the bad ones would always say things like, all we ever do is do the same thing every day. And then my boss Ian would go, yeah, because it’s a restaurant and all we ever do is serve food to great people. That’s what we do. So, but I think certain people get bored with that monotonous stuff and you guys do a really good job of nailing that. The next is the website creation. We’ve been to the website, it’s not a one and done. It is a process of continual improvement. There’s endless iterations, we’re always updating. I’m never happy with the website, I’m happy today. But if I look at it too long, I go, I kind of want to tweak that. We always want to make a small little enhancement. We always want to add a new testimonial. We always want to add a new endorsement. As I look at it right now, just my pro tip, and I’ll tell Andrew, but maybe you can tell him that I told you this before you talked to Andrew, any of the bigger names that are starting to endorse you, you know, we get the as seen on, like endorsed by. So when you click on testimonials, it’s like endorsed by, and you start to get more and more big names. So I look at one of my clients called Mom’s on a Mission, what a great job she does. And as she’s booking bigger and bigger guests, we keep adding the as seen on. Now you don’t want it to get in the way of the product, but you got to make sure we get, cause you’re starting to have some big time names that endorse your product. Could you share with the listeners, what’s it been like having a consultant that also does the web development? Because we do the photography, the video, the web, the search engine, all of that is all one-stop shop. What’s that been like there, Debra, having just a one-stop shop for everything? It’s, there are really no words because whenever you’re trying to start a business, you’re so overwhelmed, you’re watching everything, you know this is new territory for you, so you’re having to learn everything the best you can. So to have someone come in that is an expert in this field and can say, this is what you need to do, this is what you need to do, this is what you need to do, and this is what you need to do. It’s like done. I mean, also the pricing, as I’ve heard, but thank God we didn’t go there, but to have someone develop your website is astoundingly outrageous. So to be able to have that incorporated in the coaching has been such a blessing. It’s just, there are really few words. Without a website, we’re sunk. Devin, I want to tell you a story that’s going to depress you, okay? Okay. How old are you right now? How old are you? 23. Okay. So when you were not born yet, not yet born, seriously, when you were not born yet, I started this, your mom and dad are probably on a date, you know. I started this company called DJ Connection, right? And I thought, well, I’m gonna do is I’m gonna work at Applebee’s, Target and DirecTV, that’s a true story. So 1998, 1997, I’m growing this business, 1999, I’m growing it and I got this website, I needed a website, needed to have a website. So I went to a web guy, I won’t mention the guy’s name, although I want to, well, I know I will mention it, I will mention the website, cause it’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fact. So I hired a company called Creative State to build my website for me, it’s called Creative State. And Brent Lawless was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is his company, Creative State Web Development. There he is, boom. And I paid him to build my website for me. And it was at that time, I look back and I go, wow. But we’re talking about thousands of dollars was spent to build said website, and thousands and thousands. And so I was paying unbelievable amounts of money. You know, we’re talking thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to build a website. And then every time I wanted to make a change, there were certain costs to it. Now, he’s gone on to build website products and promotion for Taylor Swift. He’s done stuff for Garth Brooks. And he’s really a kind of a household name boutique in the web space. He’s done a great job. But my thought was, if I’m going to build a website, I want to have the guy who built Garth Brooks’ website. Because at that time, Garth Brooks was like the number one music star in the world. I’m going to hire that guy. And I’m glad I did. But if I were to tell you that it was $1,700 a month, we charge our clients $1,700 a month. It’s a flat rate, $1,700 per month. And that includes the coaching, the mentorship, the conferences, everything, all the introductions, all the PR, all the marketing, the video, the photography, the web, the accounting. But this guy, he didn’t apologize for the price. You can imagine because the guy’s built the website for Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks, you can imagine. So it’s more like, well, you know, $15,000, we’ll get a conversation started. And I’m going, yeah. And I just remember him saying to me, I remember people telling me, well, you need to get a video on your website. I thought, I do need to get a video on my website. So all I’ll do is I’ll get a video on my website and I go, so do you guys do the video? He’s no, no, no, we don’t do video. I have a guy I recommend. And the video guy says, true story, for $8,000, I could make you a promotional video. 8,000. I’m like, 8,000. Okay. And then the website’s 15, I’m up to 23. I work at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. I’m making like 8.25 an hour plus tips sometimes at Applebee’s. You don’t get tips at Target. So I’m working and then I go, okay, and then I need to hire a PR person to help me do my PR to get in Front of the media to get you know, and the PR people are like well, it’s a retainer And it’ll be you know, five thousand a month for one year. So I’m So I’m out sixty grand for that. I got the website. So then I start thinking I Need to sell something because I’m gonna need to sell something soon. So my yellow page ad was $2,500 a month for my yellow page ad on top of the other things. So I remember it was the craziest thing ever because I’m working at Applebee’s. Can you imagine, Devin, right now at your age, could you imagine you talk to your mom and dad and your mom and dad says, how are you? And you say, I’m doing great. They say, what have you been up to? You said, I agreed to pay $2,500 a month for the next year on an ad that hasn’t been proven to work. And by the way, I’m paying a PR company $4,000 a month. And by the way, Bruce Clay dot com, that’s the search engine company that is probably the highest rated most. He writes the search engine for dummies book. And you’re going to pay about $8,000 a month for a 12 month contract. So you’re 96,000 to teach to have him. Could you imagine explaining that to your mom or your dad? How would that go over? They would just, they would be, they’d think I’m stupid or something. If you guys were building Give a Derm today, and imagine you hopped on your coaching call with Andrew, and Andrew says, what you need to do is you need to go out there and pay $2,500 a month for your advertising, pay four grand a month for PR, 18,000, actually 15,000 for the website, but every time you make a change, it’s like $1,000. And then you also, what would happen there, Juliana, if that was the recommendations he was going to give you? What is it, fight, fly, or freeze, or whatever? I don’t know. I think I would just be like, bye. Good luck with everything. I can’t do it. It’s just not sustainable. This is what I did. I took a photo with the Yellow Page guy. I said, I’m going to pay you $2,500 a month, I need a photo. There he is, Jeremy McCaskill. That’s awesome. That’s amazing. Did a photo on my Yellow Page. And that’s the kind of stuff I would do just to kind of capture. But I always thought to myself, at some point, I’m going to build a… When people started asking me to help them grow their company, I thought, you know what? I’m going to provide the entire coaching system for less money than it would cost to hire an hourly employee. And so now, final thing I want to ask you guys is we help you with the systems, creating the systems, the optimization, turnkey, the entire workflow, marketing, sales, branding, PR, accounting, all of it coming together as one unified song. All the different instruments put together, they make a beautiful orchestra. It all comes together. I want to ask you this, Deborah, what’s that worth to you? I know you pay $1,700 a month. I know that I make a 20% profit on every client. So we make just to be very clear $340 a month per client. What’s that been worth to you? Wait, sincerely everything. I don’t want to use cliche words, but I can’t find words that could adequately describe how you have literally changed our lives. It made it affordable. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’m not saying that, you know, I was $1,700 a month. But then when you saw everything that is included, it’s like, oh, my gosh, it’s only $1,700 a month. But it has changed our life. Our company, I can say hand on heart, our company would not be where it is without you guys. Hand on heart. There’s absolutely no way. You’ve brought us the experience, the connections, the consistency, the kick in the pants when we needed it. We didn’t need it hardly at all, Andrew. And so, sincerely, it’s very hard to express how amazed we are. And we do feel like God was on this from the beginning. And we just, We thank him for introducing us to you guys. And then you guys have just, we’ve literally hitched our wagon to your horses. And that’s what it’s been like. That’s what it’s been. We talk about that a lot and we’re pinching ourselves. I mean, how often can someone say, in two and a half days, we bettered a month’s worth of sales, which was 4,000% higher than the year before. I mean, and the phone’s blowing up. I mean, it’s- Now, obviously, you’re, obviously, Debra is paying us, Devin, to say that. So we’ll go to a more reasonable person. Juliana, how would you describe it? Because there’s somebody out there right now who believes that they don’t qualify for success. That’s what I hear all the time. And I grew up poor, and I’ll never forget what it was like to be poor and so I never want anybody to think they don’t qualify. We have scholarship options to make it work for people. What would you say to somebody on the outside of the website right now listening to this show and they’re like I don’t know if it’ll work for me. What would you say? Don’t be afraid and don’t be afraid to admit where you are now because honestly it was really when we did our assessment with you Clay we were like well we’re doing this much a month and that’s embarrassing and we’re doing this one, you know. And we didn’t think we would qualify. I mean, we did it. And I think to really understand your heart for people and your heart for excellence for people and like mom said, you know, I think I’ve told you this before, but there’s, it was absolutely uncanny to the point that at one point we had just like a connection, an additional connection with you and that morning and then that afternoon, one of our biggest influencers mentioned us in her broadcast. And so literally you carry so much momentum. So I would say to anybody out there that’s considering doing this, to give it a shot, to just go for it. And honestly, just look at your budget and take out the things that are unnecessary so that you can afford to do this business coaching because what you’re getting is absolutely outrageous and for whatever it’s worth, I was even able to text Andrew multiple times where I panicked going, ah, the website’s down or the website’s blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, we’re on it, we’re good, we got it done, handled it. And it was just like, oh my gosh, just to feel like we could trust fall with you guys when it is not my, none of this is my skill set. None of it. It’s all uncomfortable. And to know that you have a well-oiled machine that we can go, oh, can we just come, you know, come into that and just go, yes, I’ll take your assistance. It’s just, it’s incredible. It’s been absolutely outrageous. And we look back and we laugh, but you know, right now we’re, we are in a rocket ship and we’re just going, oh gosh, we’re going to have to… It’s such a beautiful way. It’s like, I think we’re going to have to hire more people, and I think we’re going to actually have to work, like literally have crews work around the clock for fulfillment. And then we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do that, and then we may have to go there, we may have to get more storage units, we may have to do whatever. And it’s just, we’re to that fun part, but it’s also managing growth. But what I love is that we can still even ask you, hey, where we are right now. Is it wise to do this or should we stay here? You know, and it’s incredible. It’s been wonderful. My favorite part, and then I’ll let you guys go. I love it when it’s overwhelming, you’re out of office space and everybody’s selling something. That to me is the most exciting part where people begin to share a desk, they share a chair, it gets socially awkward because you’re desk. You recognize that a box of product has become your desk. You recognize that you’re taking notes on boxes and that’s exciting stuff. That’s where you can’t find your wallet because everything’s being shipped in and out. That’s an exciting place to be. So I encourage everybody, check out the Give a Derm product today for anybody out there. And don’t not do it because I’m endorsing it. Check it out, giveaderm.com. Go there, giveaderm.com, check it out there. And then the final question is, how do we accurately pronounce your last name? Could you spell your last name? It’s G-R-I-M-N-E-S, so someone’s going Grimness, Grimms, Grimes? That’s it, you got it the first time! If you add an S, you will pronounce it correctly. Yeah, so think of it, my dad would say, think of it, it’s like, don’t say this dad, he’s like, think of it as like the grimness. Have a great day. You guys Thank you, it’s been an honor JT you know what time it is 14 it’s It’s Tebow time and total Islam, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and 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, and 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? Mmm, well, they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s gonna 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. 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, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve 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 2-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 have 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 could 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 am 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 gotta go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where’s it gonna be? It’s gonna be in Tulsa, Russell, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. It’s, I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you go to, if you type in Thrive Time Show in 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 of 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 Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russelam. 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 system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to 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 going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to 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, 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 you’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, but 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’ve 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 got to 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 Keough Sox, 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. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this 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, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. 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, 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 guy named Jeremy Thorn, 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 want 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. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. You know more than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because 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. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa!