Clay Clark | Napoleon Hill | Napoleon Hill Shares How to Overcome Poverty (1954) + 12 Clay Clark Client Success Stories + Tebow Joins Clay Clark’s 2-Day Business Workshop (17 Tix Remain) Learn Marketing, SEO, Accounting, Systems, Etc.

Audio Transcription

And now may I request that you forget all your problems and just relax while I bring you the master key with which you may unlock the door to any opportunity that your mind can conceive. Right here at the beginning of our visit I’m going to make you a promise. If you will decide definitely what you want most during your entire lifetime and write it down on paper so that I can read it. I will give you the Master Key with which you may open the door to the attainment of your desires, whatever they may be. The exact moment when I will deliver this Master Key to you will depend entirely upon when you are ready to receive it. This is the first of thirteen messages that I will deliver to you. Now in each message I will describe the Master Key in terms that you will understand if you are ready to understand. And now I shall give you the first cue as to the nature of the great Master Key which has been responsible for all the great successes in every calling in every part of the Master Key in this first visit. You may get your first cue as to the nature of the Great Master Key when I tell you that psychologists have discovered a natural law which is the very foundation of all personal successes. And I can describe it to you in one short sentence so you can understand it. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. Isn’t that a profound statement? You will notice that it says nothing about the need for education, but simply that whatever your mind can conceive and believe your mind can achieve. Now if you want evidence that the mind can achieve whatever the mind can conceive without the benefit of formal education, you only have to remember that Thomas A. Edison conceived the idea of becoming an inventor and lived to become the world’s greatest scientist in the field of invention with only three months of common school education. When I first heard Andrew Carnegie describe this natural law, which makes it possible for you and I and everyone else to write his own price tag in life and attain it, I became so enthused over it that I began to search for the power back of it, and my curiosity led me finally to the discovery of the Master Key, which I shall reveal to you if you are ready to receive it. My search led me to the study of the spiritual forces with which all of us are blessed, and it was in this field that I came upon a clue which has enabled me to help millions of people to find their earthly destinies. I want to describe my discovery in the simplest terms possible because it will reveal to you why it is true that whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve regardless of how many times you may have failed in the past or how lofty your aims and hopes may be. I caught my first fleeting glimpse of the profound law which provides the means by which we may choose our own purpose in life and attain it while I was being coached by Andrew Carnegie during the organization of the science of success philosophy. I had just finished telling Mr. Carnegie that I feared he had chosen the wrong person to give the world the first practical philosophy of personal success because of my youth, my lack of education, and my lack of finances. Well, at this point, Mr. Carnegie delivered a lecture that I shall never forget because it changed my entire life and paved the way for my helping to change the lives of millions of people, some of them not yet born. Let me call your attention to a great power which is under your control, said Mr. Carnegie, a power which is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all of your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire. This profound power, Mr. Carnegie continued, is the gift of the Creator, and it must have been considered the greatest of all of His gifts to man because it is the only thing over which man has the complete and unchallengeable right of control and direction. When you speak of your poverty and lack of education, Mr. Carnegie explained, you are simply directing your mind power to attract these undesirable circumstances because it is true that whatever your mind feeds upon, your mind attracts to you. Now you see why it is important that you recognize that all success begins with definiteness of purpose, with a clear picture in your mind of precisely what you want from life. Then Mr. Carnegie continued his speech with a description of a great universal truth, made such an impact upon my mind that I began then and there to give myself a new outlook on life and set up for myself a goal so far above my previous achievements that it shocked my friends and relatives when they heard about it. Everyone, said Mr. Carnegie, comes to the earth plane blessed with the privilege of controlling his mind power and directing it to whatever ends he may choose. But, he continued, everyone brings over with him at birth the equivalent of two sealed envelopes, one of which is clearly labeled, the riches you may enjoy if you take possession of your own mind and direct it to ends of your own choice. And the other is labeled, the penalties you must pay if you neglect to take possession of your mind and direct it. And now let me reveal to you, said Mr. Carnegie, the contents of those two sealed envelopes. In the one labeled riches is this list of blessings. One, sound health. Two, peace of mind. Three, labor of love of your own choice. Four, freedom from fear and worry. Five, a positive mental attitude. Six, material riches of your own choice and quantity. In the sealed envelope labeled penalties, Mr. Carnegie continued, is this list of the prices one must pay for neglecting to take possession of his own mind. One, ill health. Two, fear and worry. Three, indecision and doubt. Four, frustration and discouragement throughout life. Five, poverty and want. Six, and a whole flock of evils consisting of envy, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, and superstition. Now my mission in life is to help you and everyone who needs my help to open up and use the contents of the sealed envelope labeled riches and the starting point from which you must take off if you wish to write your own ticket from here on out for the remainder of your life I will describe instructions. One, procure a neat pocket-sized notebook or something on the order of this one here, loose leaf affair. And on page one, write down a clear description of your major desire in life, the one circumstance or position or thing which you will be willing to accept as your idea of success. And remember before you begin writing that your only limitations are those which you set up in your own mind or permit others to set up for you. And two, on page two of your notebook, write down a clear statement of precisely what you intend to give in return for that which you desire from life, and then start in right where you stand now to begin giving. And three, memorize both of your statements, what you desire and what you intend to give in return for it, and repeat them at least a dozen times daily. And always end your statements with this expression of gratitude for the blessings with which to accept and use wisely the riches I received at birth in the form of the power to control and direct my mind to whatever ends I desire. If you are not too successful or self-satisfied to accept and express this profound prayer, if you accept it and express it in the same spirit of humble sincerity in which you will see reflected the circumstances and the things which you yourself have created. Next I will give you a description of the second principle of success through the application of which you may make use of the education and experience of other people and get the necessary help you may need in in attaining your definite major purpose in life. And now let me close this, our first visit, with my favorite expression of gratitude. Oh, divine providence, I ask not for more riches, but more wisdom with which to make wiser use of the riches you gave me at birth, consisting in the power to control and direct my own mind to whatever ends I desire. We come now to the second of the 17 principles which lead to the Master Key with which you may open the door to the attainment of your definite major purpose in life. This principle of success is called the Master Mind Principle. I want you to understand the nature of the Master Mind Principle because you must use it before you can take the session of the Master Key. An understandable definition of the Master Mind is this. It consists of two or more people who work in perfect harmony for the attainment of a definite purpose. Now here are some interesting facts about the Master Mind which give you an idea of how important it is and how necessary that you embrace this principle and make use of it in attaining success in your chosen occupation. First of all, it is the principle through which you may borrow and use the education, the experience, the influence, and perhaps the capital of other people in carrying out your own plans in life. It is the principle through which you can accomplish in one year more than you could accomplish without it in a lifetime if you depended entirely upon your own efforts for success. And I have heard well-informed Bible students say that the first known application of the Master Mind was that which existed between the Nazarene and his 12 disciples. Of one fact I am absolutely sure. When you form a true Master Mind alliance with others and work with them in a spirit of perfect harmony, you can draw freely upon the spiritual forces within you in carrying out your plans and desires. I also know that the Master Mind Principle can give you absolute protection against failure, provided always that your purpose in using this principle is beneficial to all whom you influence. In my research, while organizing the Science of Success, I had the collaboration of practically every outstanding, successful man this country has produced during the past 50 years, and I can tell you definitely that their success was due in the main to their knowledge and application of the Master Mind Principle. I wish also to call your attention to the fact that our great American way of life and our unmatchable system of free enterprise have been built upon the Master Mind Principle. principle. The greatest document ever conceived by the mind of man is a perfect example of the Mastermind principle in action. It is the Declaration of Independence, and the best evidence of the importance of maintaining perfect harmony in a Mastermind alliance may be found in the fact that the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew full well that it might turn out to be either a license of freedom for all mankind or a death warrant which would cause each of the signers to be hanged. Now let us see how the Mastermind Principle has brought success to people whom we all know. First, consider when Kate Smith began her career as a singer. She had difficulty in earning enough from her singing to pay her living expenses. And she perhaps never would have made her singing pay if she had not discovered and applied the Mastermind Principle, which gave her access to the Master Key to success when she formed a Mastermind Alliance with Ted Collins. And according to a report I saw in Reader’s Digest, Kate Smith has earned upwards of $30 million, and she is still in the upper brackets of income. Two, I remember when Edgar Bergen and that cute little block of wood known as Charlie McCarthy, used to play anywhere they could get an engagement, and I rather suspect that often all they got for their services was a meal. But Edgar Bergen is a smart man in the field of entertainment, so he formed a mastermind alliance which introduced him and Charlie to millions of people by radio and television, and I suspect he is not concerned about money any longer. And you may be surprised when I tell you that the great Ford Industrial Empire started with the formation of a mastermind alliance between Henry Ford and his wife. At the beginning of his career, Henry Ford was shy and lacking self-confidence. It was Mrs. Ford who inspired Henry Ford with the faith and the courage to go ahead with the perfection of his horseless carriage, although his relatives and neighbors generally tried to discourage him from wasting his time with the contraption, as they called it. 4. The Federation of States, known as the United States of America, is the richest and the most powerful nation civilization has yet produced, and the secret of our strength and riches consists in our form of government through which all our states function in a spirit of harmony based on the mastermind principle through a central federal government located at Washington. And now a word to you personally. If you work for a salary or wages, you have a marvelous opportunity to promote yourself into a higher income and a more responsible position by forming a mastermind alliance with your associate workers, including the management. In my next visit I will give you further instructions on how to apply the Master Mind Principle so as to increase your own income and promote yourself to a higher position with the full cooperation of your management. Yes, that is correct. I will show you how to write your own price tag, fix your own wages, establish your own working hours and give yourself financial independence. But right now I want you to do three things before our next visit. First, decide definitely where you wish to be and what you wish to be doing during the next three years. And second, decide how much money you desire to be making and what you are going to do to earn it. And third, form a mastermind alliance with at least one person in your immediate family and at least one other person among those to whom you are selling your services. By taking these three steps, you will have gone a long way toward appropriating the great master key to success. There is no such thing as something for nothing. Everything including your personal success has a price that must be paid, and the only price you are requested to pay for the present is the effort necessary to do three simple things that I have suggested. Now before you begin to take the three steps I have suggested, there is one important fact I wish you to remember, and it is this. Control your mental attitude and make yourself friendly and agreeable with everyone with whom you are closely associated if you expect friendly cooperation in return. Indifference cannot create a mastermind alliance for you. A negative mental attitude can bring you nothing but failure. Remember always, you are where you are and what you are because of your mental attitude in which you relate yourself to other people. Remember also, your mental attitude is the one and the only thing over which you have complete control. Success is something which has to be planned, and success is something which has to be earned in advance. True, there is such a thing as luck, but just remember that luck is something you can create for yourself if you know the rules and follow them just as I give them to you. Remember too that success in the higher brackets of achievement is something that can be had only by taking others along with you. And the best definition of success which I know is this. Success is the knowledge with which to get whatever you want from life without violating the rights of others and by helping others to acquire it. There is a known formula for the attainment of success, and it is as definite and certain as are the rules of mathematics or the principles of science. My purpose in these visits is to bring you that formula in simple terms that you can understand and apply. But I can never give you that for which you are not ready. If you are ready to advance into the higher brackets of success, you will recognize this fact by your willingness to follow the simple instructions I shall give you as we go along. This thing called success is a very profound and interesting thing because the line of demarcation between success and failure is so slight that it is often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. For example, in my association with the late Henry Ford, I recognized that he had thousands of people working for him who had much more education than he, more magnetic personalities, more ability to make friends, and a much better chance of succeeding than Mr. Ford had when he was working for wages. But Mr. Ford had one simple quality the others who worked for him did not possess, the same quality I will clearly describe for you in my future visits with you. Meanwhile, I would be interested in knowing if you can describe this one simple quality Henry Ford possessed which made him the greatest industrialist this nation has ever produced. In my next visit I will give you a definite clue as to the success quality which helped Henry Ford spread his influence throughout the world and make himself richer than Creusis, despite the fact that he had only a meager common school education. Until then, please be of good cheer, will you? And just remember that your only real limitation is the one you accept and set up in your own mind. Well, this brings us to the success principle which has marked the turning point of every person who has promoted himself or herself from the lower brackets of success to the higher planes of achievement where one acquires everything he desires. This principle is called the habit of going the extra mile, which means the habit of rendering more service and better service than one is expected to render, and doing it in a positive mental attitude. I’m going to tell you all I know about this magic principle of self-advancement, because it is the one rule you must follow if you expect to write your own price tag and be sure of getting it. Let me describe this success principle for you in a brief formula which you can easily remember. I call it the QQMA formula, which means the quality of service you render plus the quantity of service you render plus the mental attitude in which you render service determines the space you occupy in your chosen calling and the compensation you get from your services. If you will examine carefully the people whom you know to be unusually successful, you will discover that they follow the QQMA formula, although they may do so unconsciously. Now, I wish to give you a big advantage over those who follow this formula unconsciously. I wish to show you how to make use of it deliberately with purpose of forethought, so you may make the principle pay off in a big way and do it quickly. Now I shall tell you some of the benefits you will enjoy by following the habit of going the extra mile. 1. This habit will bring you to the favorable attention of those who can and will provide you with opportunities to promote yourself into a better circumstance. 2. It will place back of you that great natural law of increasing returns through which the service you render will bring back greater than average compensations. And 3. Following this habit will make you indispensable in your chosen occupation or calling. Therefore, it will place you in a position to write your own ticket. And 4. This habit will help you to excel in your line of work, because each time you render service, you endeavor to do a better job than you did previously. And 5. If you work for a salary or wages, this habit will give you preference when work is slack and others are laid off. And 6. It will help you to benefit by the law of contrast, because the others around you will not be going the first mile, let alone the second mile. And 7. Following this habit of doing your very best in all of your efforts and doing it in a pleasing mental attitude, will improve your personality and make you liked by others. And 8. It will also help you to develop a keen, alert imagination because you will be continuously seeking new and better ways of rendering useful service. 9. It will inspire you to move on your own personal initiative instead of waiting to be told what to do, a habit which is the first step in leadership in all callings. The habit of going the extra mile definitely develops greater self-reliance and gives one more courage to move ahead without the fear of criticism from others. And here is one thing it does, which, if it benefited you in no other way, but justify you in adopting it. It helps you to master the destructive habit of procrastination, the one habit which heads the list of causes of failure. Twelve, going the extra mile influences other people to respect your integrity and inspires them to go out of their way to cooperate with you in a friendly spirit. And thirteen, the habit helps you to develop definiteness of purpose, which is the starting point of all personal success, and it stops you from drifting through life without knowing what you want or where you are going. And number 14, and here is the grand payoff which this habit gives you. It provides you with the one and only excuse for asking for a promotion to a better station in life or a higher pay. Obviously if you are doing no more than you are being paid for, then you are receiving pay for all to which you are entitled, and you have not a single excuse for asking for more pay or a better position. You understand this point and appreciate its significance, do you not? 15. Last but not least, the habit of going the extra mile conditions your mind to maintain a mastermind alliance with others. Ever so often I hear people complain about their not receiving favorable breaks in their relations with others. I never hear this sort of complaint from one of my students of the Science of Success, nor from anyone who has ever read any book that I have written, because all of my students have learned the secret of how to create their own favorable breaks. They do it by following the habit of going the extra mile. I can tell you frankly I have never received a major favorable break during my entire life that did not come from having applied the principle of going the extra mile. Sometimes I hear people complain also that their positions are such that they are not permitted to go the extra mile, and my counsel to these people is always the same. Change positions and market your services where it pays to go the extra mile. I am sincere in giving this advice because I know that no one can do better than earn a mere living unless and until he begins going the extra mile. During my business career I suppose I have employed at one time or another at least a score of private secretaries, all of whom followed the habit of going the extra mile. But I have never been able to keep but one of those secretaries for more than a year because invariably they promoted themselves into better paying jobs elsewhere, and they did so with my full blessings. The one exception is my present chief secretary who has been with me for over ten years. I married her to make sure I wouldn’t lose her. Of course, there were other considerations, too. The reason I know definitely that the habit of going the extra mile is a sound procedure is the fact that I have checked this principle, as I did all of the other 16 success principles, to make sure they were in harmony with natural laws. I can give you a fine example of how nature forces man to go the extra mile in order that he may produce the food with which to exist. The farmer, for example, must follow the habit of clearing the ground, fencing it, plowing it, and planting the seed at the right season of the year, all of which he must do in advance without compensation of any kind. If he does his part of the work properly, he then hands the job over to nature, sits down and waits for her to do her part, and within a brief period nature germinates the seed the farmer plants, matures it, and yields back to him the seed he planted, plus, perhaps, an increase of a hundred times that amount to compensate him for having gone the extra mile. Thus we see that the law of increasing returns comes to the aid of the man who goes the extra mile, and this principle applies the same in rendering service in a job as it does in the fields of a farmer. If the farmer did not follow the habit of going the extra mile, the human race would starve to death in one season. And I am sure you will agree that any time we can copy Mother Nature’s habits, we will not go wrong in doing so. You now have a possession of the third principle of personal achievement, which brings you three steps nearer the secret by which you may take possession of the Master Key to Success. In order that you may test the magic power of this third principle, I’m going to offer you a suggestion which may bring you such overwhelming success that you will not need to attend further visits with me. My suggestion is this. First, start tomorrow in whatever occupation you are engaged to render some form of useful service to someone near you, which you are not expected to render and for which you neither expect nor ask for compensation. And two, render this service in a pleasing mental attitude, which will show clearly that you enjoy doing it. And three, follow this practice seven days in succession, and then notice what a changed atmosphere you will enjoy in your association with those nearest you. In carrying out these instructions, do not make known your plan to anyone, but go ahead and do it in the most natural way possible. By the end of the seventh day you will find yourself so much happier and so much better liked by those around you that you will never desire to give up the habit. Then you will be within easy reach of the supreme secret of success, which comes through the Master Key to Success. In my fourth visit with you, I will give you a very definite clue as to the means by which you may appropriate and use the Great Master Key. And in this same clue, I will introduce you to the source of a form of power which does not recognize the word impossible, and helps you to transmute all failures and defeats and all adversities into assets of great benefit to you. And now until our next visit, may I remind you that if you believe it, you can do it. We come now to the fourth success principle where I shall introduce you to your greatest asset. And with this introduction, the master key to success will be within your easy reach. I say this is your greatest asset with which you may tap and draw upon the supreme power which created you and runs this entire universe. The name of this principle is Applied Faith, and I want you to remember it. It is not something I am bringing to you, but it is something you already possess, although you may not have made use of it in the past. And now let me tell you what Applied Faith is and what you can do with it. Applied Faith is the mental attitude wherein you may clear your mind of all fears and doubts and direct it to the attainment of whatever you desire in life. In our first visit, I told you that you and I and every person were blessed with the privilege of complete control over but one thing, and that is the exclusive right to take possession of our own minds and direct them to the attainment of whatever we desire in life. Applied faith is a mental attitude we must cultivate and maintain before we can take complete possession of our minds. It is the means by which we may break the seal of that envelope I mentioned in our first visit and take full possession of the six forms of riches we get in return for taking possession of our minds and using them. Those six riches were, as you may remember, sound health, peace of mind, a labor of love of your own choice, freedom from fear and worry, a positive mental attitude, and material riches of your own choice and quantity. We are now, this very moment, standing in front of the gateway which can be opened only with the great Master Key to Success, and I am giving you the closest clue I have yet mentioned as to how you may take possession of this key. In order that you may condition your mind to embrace and use applied faith, you must understand that there are two ways in which you can use faith. You can put it into reverse gear and use it in a negative way by allowing your mind to dwell upon the circumstances and the things you do not want, such as poverty, ill health, failure, defeat. And this is precisely what the majority of people do, which explains why the majority of people go through life in misery and want. Or, you can take possession of your mind and direct it to think of the six riches which came over with you in that sealed envelope, and you will attract these riches to bless and serve you all through your life. Isn’t it a strange fact that most people make a negative application of their great power of faith by thinking about and bleeding in poverty, ill health, fear, failure, and defeat when it would be so easy for them just to change their thinking over to the circumstances and things they desire. Now let me give you a description of the one thing which represents the main difference between a successful person and a failure. Please listen carefully and think for yourself as I speak, because failure to recognize the truth I am about to give you is the starting point of most failures. Successful people in all occupations, all professions, and all callings have one trait which distinguishes them from the failures. It is their capacity for belief. The failures see the hole in the donut, but do not see the donut around the hole. The successes see the hole also, but they see the donut around the hole. Thomas A. Edison believed that he could perfect an incandescent electric lamp, and despite the fact that he failed over 10,000 times before he was crowned with success, he made his belief uncover the secret for which he was searching. Give one guess as to how many times the average person must fail before he quits. Fails because of the lack of capacity for belief. How many times can you meet with defeat before you give up the ghost and quit? Henry Ford believed he could build a self-propelled vehicle which would take the place of the horse and buggy, and despite the ridicule of relatives and neighbors and the lack of finances, he transmuted his belief into an industrial empire which changed the entire American way of life. Mind you, Ford did this with very little education and no operating capital to begin with. Right here let me ask you a question which may well change your entire life. You perhaps have an idea or a plan which would be useful to other people, but you have done nothing about it because you lack the self-confidence to give you a start. In other words, you are now where Henry Ford was before he built the first model of his world-famous automobile. Mr. Ford broke through that wall of fear which may now be holding you back, and put his idea into operation by making use of the mastermind principle I mentioned in our second visit, through an alliance with his wife. Now the question I wish to ask you is this, why don’t you form a Master-Mind Alliance with someone and begin putting your ideas to work for you? Belief is truly a magic word because it is the beginning of all successes. It is the very foundation of civilization. It is the one quality you must become a person with a great capacity for belief, and the place to start believing is with yourself. You should begin by recognizing that you were born with the privilege of complete control over your own mind. You should also recognize that by the application of the Master Key to Success, which I am passing on to you through these visits, you can take full possession of your mind and make it yield you whatever you demand in life. Observe, I use the word demand, not beg. The Creator never intended for you to beg for anything. If He had, He would not have blessed you with full control over your own mind. If your life is not what you want it to be, you can change it. As a matter of fact, you can do anything within reason that you desire to do if you embrace the principle of applied faith and keep it directed to the attainment of the things you want and off the things you do not want. I should know what I am talking about because I was handicapped at birth by the four horsemen which keep most people in bondage all the days of their lives. Poverty, fear, illiteracy, and superstition. Theoretically, I had not the slightest foundation for hope that I could ever escape the influences of these four curses, but I did escape, and now I am devoting my entire life to helping other people to gain deliverance from these four basic enemies of mankind. I have discovered the Master Key which gives one deliverance from all the evils one does not want, and opens wide the gateway to the riches which the Creator intended every person to enjoy on this earth. Applied faith is the only means by which the Master Key can be appropriated and used, therefore I give you these instructions through which you may create a mental attitude which is favorable for the expression of faith. One, know what you want and believe that you can and will get it. Two, give expressions of gratitude many times daily for having received that which you want, even before you actually get physical possession of it. Possession starts first in the mind. Please remember this. Third, keep your mind open for hunches from within, and when you are inspired to action, do not wait but move on your own personal initiative at once. Remember there can be no application of applied faith without action. Fourth, when overtaken by defeat, as you may be many times, remember that man’s faith is tested many times before he is crowned with final victory, and accept your defeat as nothing more than a challenge to keep on trying. And fifth, a burning desire for the things or circumstances you want is the starting point of all applied faith. Be definite, believe, and act. And keep on acting if at first you meet with defeat. 6. When doubt creeps into your mind, remember that whatsoever a man believeth, that shall he also reap. Remember, faith is not something you get, faith is something you already have. But you may be using it in reverse gear by believing in the circumstances and things you do not want, the things you fear. Remember also that faith is guidance only, it is not a power which will bring you what you want, but a power that can guide you to go after what you want and get it. Remember too that your faith is limited only by your own capacity to believe. You can do whatever you make up your mind to do. I believed I could give the world a practical philosophy of success which would free men and women from their fears and limitations. I stood firmly back of that belief through 20-odd years of effort, and saw my belief give freedom to millions of people. Do the thing, said Emerson, and you shall have the power. May I paraphrase this great truth by saying, Believe and you shall receive. And now, until our next visit, will you please remember that your life is exactly what you make it by your own mental attitude. For our fifth visit, our subject is a pleasing personality. Your personality determines whether people are attracted to you or shy away from you. It is the show window in which you display your character to the world, and it is the one thing which distinguishes you from all other human beings. It is your trademark by which people recognize you, and it is the thing which determines your success or failure in selling yourself through life. Therefore, you should see your personality just as others see it, so you may improve it where it needs improvement. Your personality consists of more than 30 different factors, traits, and characteristics. Because of the limit of time I can devote to this visit with you, I can mention only the more important of your traits of personality. But before I begin to describe these traits, I want you to know that every trait which goes into your personality is under your control, and you can improve it so it will be whatever you want it to be. Let’s start with the most important trait of your personality, your mental attitude. This is a trait with which you attract people to you and cause them to like you or repel them and cause them to dislike you. Your mental attitude must be positive if you attract people to you. How do other people know whether your mental attitude is positive or negative, you may ask? Well, the answer is easy. First of all, other people tune in and pick up your mental attitude by telepathy, without your saying a word or making a move. But there are other ways they can tell whether your mental attitude is negative or positive. You disclose this information by the tone of your voice, whether it is pleasant or harsh, by the expression on your face, whether it is soft and pleasing or harsh and scowling, by the courtesy and consideration you show other people, or the lack of these. So you see, there is no escape from revealing to others the exact nature of your personality. The next most important trait of your personality consists of your flexibility of your mental attitude, or your lack of it. If you have flexibility, you adjust yourself to all the circumstances in your relations with others without losing your composure or allowing yourself to become irritable or angry. Just remember, if you have flexibility of your mental attitude, it will be impossible for anyone to make you angry or to irritate you without your consent or cooperation. Now this is worth knowing, isn’t it? You cannot control the actions of other people which might justify you becoming irritated by them, but you can control your reaction to all such circumstances by exercising your trait of flexibility. And you will observe that all people in the higher brackets of success have this flexibility and they do control their reaction to the influences of other people. The third most important trait of a pleasing personality is the ability to control and direct your emotion of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is one of the means by which you can give forcefulness to your words, but you must be able to turn it on and off at will as definitely as you can turn on and off water at the spigot. Uncontrolled enthusiasm often makes people boresome. It also may open wide the window to one’s mind through which other people may enter and influence one in ways he does not wish to be influenced. The fourth most important trait of a pleasing personality is a sincerity of purpose. The person who is not sincere in all relationships with others is soon detected and rejected because no one is attracted to the person who thus endeavors to deceive others. Sincerity is one quality of character which cannot be successfully faked, not even by the most astute rascal or the most efficient actor, because insincerity evermore carries with it some warning sign which other people recognize. You have only to go back into your own experience with insincere people to prove the truth of what I’ve stated. There are 26 other important traits which give one a pleasing personality, but I do not have time to give them to you in this visit. Now let us turn our attention to some of the common habits which destroy a pleasing personality. Please check yourself as I describe these negative habits, and you may make discoveries about yourself sufficient to enable you to rebuild your entire personality so it will become a master salesman in your behalf. One, one of the most destructive habits which make one’s personality objectionable is that of breaking in and running away with the conversation when others are speaking. And two, sarcasm expressed by insinuations and wisecracks which are not so wise, is near the head of the list of habits which give one a negative personality. And third, vanity expressed by either words or actions is sure to make one unpopular. And four, indifference in listening while others are speaking is sure to be noticed and resented. It is more profitable to be a good listener than it is to be a good talker, because one is always apt to learn something while listening to others, but never learns anything from hearing himself talk. 5. The attempt to flatter where flattery is obviously not deserved will bring quick resentment from others. Also, it will put them on notice if they are wise that the flatterer wants something he perhaps should not get. And six, the habit of finding fault with the world at large and the people in general is never a popular habit, and it is no part of a pleasing personality. It is far better to direct conversation to the circumstances and things which are right than to complain of those which one believes to be wrong. And seven, one of the very worst habits which destroy a pleasing personality is that of openly and directly challenging those with whom one may not agree, where there is no obvious reason for doing so, except the desire to be on the opposite side. And 8. The habit of volunteering unsolicited advice to others who have not requested it can make one an intolerable bore. Free advice usually is considered to be worth just what it costs, which is nothing but the patience with which to listen to it. And 9. The habit of speaking of one’s physical ailments, words, and personal problems may be tolerated by others, but this habit will never make one welcome or pleasing. If you wish to make yourself welcome in your relations with others, manage to talk about things which interest and concern those to whom you are speaking. You will never be boresome to the person to whom you are speaking of himself and the things which interest him, a truth which all manager-salesmen understand and respect. And 10. The habit of endeavoring to convey an impression of superiority through the use of words and topics unfamiliar to others is a sure-fire destroyer of popularity. If you wish to sell yourself to others successfully, you must negotiate with them on their own level through terms which they understand. And 11. Envy of those who are successful is a trait which destroys a pleasing personality. The truly great men and women have all been known to be generous, sympathetic, and joyous in connection with the good fortunes of others. And 12. Slevenliness in body, posture, and in clothing never attracts but always repels others. Clothes make not the man, as has been said, but they surely give him in might a good start if they are appropriate and properly worn. Carelessness in body carriage and posture is immediately traceable to a negative mental attitude. If you are free from these 12 common habits which make one unpopular, you probably have a very pleasing personality. There are five other negative habits which make one unpopular which I have not had the time to mention. Remember this please, if you are not liked by other people you may be sure there is a reason which you can detect and correct. It is unnatural for one person to dislike another without a cause. Before you can make full use of the master key to success, you will need to make your personality pleasing. This will require courage on your part and honesty with yourself. A pleasing personality stands near the head of the list of assets which make one truly rich. I was impressed with this truth many years ago when I heard Andrew Carnegie say that he paid his right-hand mastermind ally, Charles M. Schwab, $75,000 a year for the services he rendered directly. But he often gave Mr. Schwab a bonus at the end of the year of a million dollars for the influence he exerted on his associate workers because of his pleasing personality. You see, therefore, Andrew Carnegie, who has been said to have been the greatest judge of men this nation has ever known, placed a value on a pleasing personality of more than ten times as much as he valued the personal services of his right-hand man. Perhaps this will give you a clue that may help you up the market value of your personality. And now, until we meet again, may I wish you health, wealth, and peace of mind. This visit brings us to the sixth principle of success, without which the five principles I have given you previously would be useless. It is the principle of self-discipline. Self-discipline, as I am presenting it to you here, has reference not only to your mastery of negative habits, which stand in the way of your success, but more particularly to your development and enforcement of the positive habits you will need in order to avail yourself of the six assets you brought over with you in that sealed envelope I mentioned in our first visit. Now let me give you a list of the more important things over which you will have to exercise self-discipline before you can embrace and use the great master Keeter Ritchie’s. One, you will have to gain mastery over your tongue by acquiring the habit of thinking first and then speaking, after you are sure that what you say will benefit you and not injure others. A loose tongue often is one’s greatest liability. Two, you will have to exercise self-discipline in mastering the common tendency to strike back at those at whom you have a cause, real or imaginary, for a grievance. You must remember that everything you do to or for another, you do to or for yourself, because your every thought and every act which benefits or injures another person, comes back to you in kind, greatly multiplied. So if you feel that you must slander another person, do not speak it, but write it. Write it in the sands near the water’s edge, then move away from it until the tides have flown. 3. You will have to exercise self-discipline over all of your emotions, particularly your emotions of love, hate, fear, and sex. These are the big four of your emotions, and they can make you or break you according to the extent of discipline you exercise over them. Your mental attitude needs discipline and control at all times. Lacking this discipline, it can, and it often does, drive away friends, destroy opportunities to get ahead, brings on physical and mental illness, develops stomach ulcers, and makes peace of mind impossible. 5. I have reserved the emotion of sex for special mention because failure to exercise self-discipline over this emotion probably heads the list of all the causes of personal failure. The emotion of sex is the most powerful of all emotions, and it is nature’s great creative instrument with which all species of living things are perpetuated. The proper means of self-discipline of the emotion of sex is transmutation, the control and direction of this great emotional feeling toward the attainment of worthy purposes such as the fulfillment of one’s major purpose in life. The great leaders, artists, orators, industrialists, and professional people have learned the art of sex transmutation through the proper system of self-discipline. Because of the delicacy of the subject of sex emotion, I am limited as to the information I can give you about it on this visit, but I have covered the subject much more in detail in some of my books. And 6. Your stomach also needs discipline through the proper habits of dieting and fasting, because information on dieting and fasting should come from your own doctor. I will not go into details concerning them, except to call your attention to the need for knowledge on this subject. Personally I attribute my sound physical health mainly to the habits of dieting and fasting which I have developed through the years. 7. You will need to exercise self-discipline in relation to religion and politics, because our country, which is the most acceptable form of society civilization has yet produced, is made up of people of varying beliefs in connection with both of these subjects. To be happy and prosperous in our country, we must learn to live and to let live, to give others the privileges we ask and demand for ourselves, and this often calls for strict discipline over self. 8. But I have reserved until the last my reference to the most important circumstances over which you must exercise the strictest of self-discipline if you are to embrace and use the great Master Key to Riches. I have reference to your profound privilege of taking possession of your own mind and directing it to whatever ends you may desire. You cannot take possession of your own mind or direct it to definite ends without a practical system. I have devoted the better portion of my past life to the revelation and presentation of such a system, and I know that this system works because it has been successfully used by many millions of people throughout the world. This system is not only practical and workable, but it is so simple that anyone who is ready for it may master it and use it successfully. Its use does not call for a genius nor a great amount of formal education. It calls only for a will to take possession of one’s own mind and a definite purpose to which the mind is to be directed. Self-discipline by Thomas A. Edison made him the world’s greatest inventor who revealed revealed to mankind during the first half of the 20th century more of nature’s secrets than had been uncovered during the entire previous history of civilization. Self-discipline carried Wilbur and Orville Wright through a multitude of failures and enabled them finally to give the world its first practical airplane, an achievement which has made the world smaller and changed the entire trend of civilization. Self-discipline helped Helen Keller to triumph over deafness, blindness, and dumbness, a combination of afflictions such as most people never experience. Self-discipline helped me to carry on through years of heart-aching discouragement and defeat and give the world the first practical philosophy of success based on the know-how gained by hundreds of men and women who spent a lifetime by the trial-and-error method in discovery of the principles which lead to personal success. Self-discipline is among the top-ranking features of all the great religions, including of course the Christian faith. And there are some people who believe that our major purpose on earth is that of developing wisdom through struggle and self-discipline. One thing is certain, no one ever becomes very wise without the aid of self-discipline, and no one ever finds peace of mind and happiness without the strict exercise of self-discipline is the only means of transmuting sorrow into faith. It is the only means by which we may transmute hatred of others into the milder emotion of sympathy for them. It is the only means by which we may reveal and profit by the seed of an equivalent benefit which comes with every adversity and every defeat. It is the only means by which we may shut out of our minds the deadly effects of past experiences of suffering and unpleasantness, and it is the means by which we may discover that other self we carry around with us, that self which has great capacity for belief and does not become influenced by failure and defeat. Self-discipline can give us freedom from the fear of death, the most difficult to master of all of our fears. It can free us from the disease of hypochondria, the fear of imaginary illness with which so many people suffer and sometimes die. Self-discipline is the means by which we may think our own thoughts, live our own lives to live them and remain forever free from the evils of fears and limitations which we have inherited from the dark ages before the dawn of civilization. The Creator never gives one an asset or benefit without passing along with it the means by which it may be embraced and used. Self-discipline, therefore, is the means by which the Creator provided us with a method of embracing and using the only thing over which we have unchallengeable control, the power of our own thoughts. And now, until our next visit, may I remind you that the habit of taking the line of least resistance makes all rivers and some men crooked. Well, this brings us to the seventh visit, and I hope to hand you the Master Key to success before I finish, because my subject will lead you so near to the Master Key that you will be apt to recognize it. As I have suggested in previous visits, a positive mental attitude can clear away all obstacles which stand between you and your major purpose in life. Because of the importance of the subject of our visit, I shall not only tell you that a positive mental attitude heads the entire list of the 12 great riches in life, but I am going to give you explicit instructions as to what you must do to keep your mind positive. In all the success books I have written, I have never suggested to my readers what they should do without clearly telling them how to do it. Are you ready? If you are ready, this visit may bring the most important change in your life you have ever experienced. 1. Learn to adjust yourself to other people’s state of mind and difficulties so as to get along peacefully with them, and to refrain from taking notice of trivial circumstances circumstances in your relations with other people by refusing to allow them to become controversial incidents. Great people always avoid small incidents of controversy when possible. Two, establish for yourself a definite fixed system of conditioning your mind at the beginning of each day so you will keep it positive under all circumstances. Three, learn the art of selling yourself to other people by indirection, such as asking leading questions which will bring out the sort of reactions from others which you desire. And do not permit yourself to be drawn into argument over unimportant subjects. 4. Adopt the habit of having a good hearty laugh every time you become irritated or angry, and it will help you if you begin each day with one minute of hearty laughing. This will change the chemistry of your brain and start you out with a positive mental attitude. However, you had better get out of sight when you take your laughing exercise. Five, start each day with an expression of gratitude for all the adversities, defeats, failures you have experienced in the past. And search for the seed of an equivalent benefit these have yielded you through the passing of time. Then give thanks for the blessings you expect to receive during the day. 6. Learn to concentrate your attention on the can-do portion of all of your problems and desires, and start action where you stand in carrying out this portion. No matter what may be your problem or your desire, there is always something you can do right now that will help you. Find out what this something is and do it. 7. Learn to transmute all unpleasant circumstances into immediate action which calls for a positive mental attitude, and make this a fixed habit. For example, when you are angry, switch your mind to some sort of action in connection with your hobby or your major purpose in life, and keep it busy with that subject for five minutes. 8. Recognize that every circumstance which influences your life, whether it is a pleasant or unpleasant circumstance, is grist for your mill of life, and so use it to make it pay you dividends in one form or another, remembering meanwhile that your strength grows out of your struggles. Follow this instruction and you will soon learn that there is no such thing as an unprofitable experience. 9. Look upon your life as a continuous process of education, of learning from all your experiences, good and bad, and be always on the alert for gains of wisdom which come to you a little at a time in both your pleasant and unpleasant experiences. 10. Make the world over to fit your own pattern if you choose, but begin with yourself in some sort of self-improvement which will make you more open-minded, patient, and generous in your relations with others. 11. Express gratitude twice daily for your recognition of the fact that you have been given complete complete control over your own mind, and ask for guidance in order that you may use this profound gift wisely in all your thoughts and acts. 12. Go out of your way daily to comment enthusiastically on the good qualities of those with whom you live and work, but do not mention their negative qualities. Then observe with benefit to yourself how quickly others will begin to concentrate on your good qualities. Remember, I’m still talking about how to keep your mind positive. And 13, accept all criticism of yourself as an occasion for self-examination to determine how much of it is justified, and you will be sure to make startling discoveries about yourself which will help you to the remainder of your life. 14. Do not accept from life or anyone else anything you do not desire, and remember that Mahatma Gandhi proved himself to be more powerful than the great British military forces by this simple method of passive resistance. 15. Remember always that there are two kinds of circumstances which cause you to worry, those you can do something about and those you can do nothing about. Nothing that is, except to use passive resistance and refuse to permit them to worry you. 16. Keep your mind eternally engaged in thinking of that which you desire most, your major purpose in life, so no time will be left for you to waste on thinking of that which you do not want. And let me digress here while I tell you we are now rubbing elbows with the great Master Key of Success this very moment. And 17, if you should ever be so unfortunate as to feel sorry for yourself, look around until you find someone who is worse off than yourself, and start where you stand to give him help. Make this procedure a habit, and you will witness one of the great miracles of life, because that which you do to or for another, you do to or for yourself. And 18, choose some person whom you consider to be the sort of person you would like to be. Then go to work and emulate that person in every way possible. Great people have always been hero-worshippers, but they picked the right sort of people to emulate. 19. Cultivate your tone of voice so that your words have a pleasing musical sound, and remember that the sound of your voice is an open window through which other people look into your very soul. It will be a profitable investment if you will get a tape recording machine and record samples of your voice daily while you practice the art of expressing yourself through a friendly, sounding voice. If you are engaged in selling, this practice will quickly pay off in monetary dividends. 20. Last, but by no means the least, write out this sentence and paste it in a prominent place where you work and on a mirror where you see yourself in your home. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. The 20 instructions I have just given you have come from my own personal experiences over more than 40 years, and they represent also my observations of more than 500 successful people who helped me to organize the science of success philosophy. I claim no copyright on these great truths, and I want you to possess them because I know they can bless you the remainder of your life if you are ready to accept them and put them into action. Remember also that you are the only person who can provide you with a positive mental attitude. What are you going to do about it? On your answer to this and rest your entire future. Our eighth visit brings us to the subject of enthusiasm, which may be likened to steam in a boiler which, when it is controlled and turned on, starts the wheels of machinery into action. Someone has said that knowledge is power. That is only a half-truth, for knowledge becomes power only when it is put into action for the attainment of a definite objective. Enthusiasm is one of the more powerful means by which we may put into action our education, experience, and knowledge. Spoken words without enthusiasm are often ineffective, and sometimes they can be actually boresome, as you of course know if you have noticed the effect a speaker without enthusiasm has on his listeners. I have known lecturers to hold audiences spellbound for two hours, yet when members of the audience were asked to tell what the speaker had said, they could not remember. But what they did remember was that the speaker got their attention and held it. And now let me explain why enthusiasm has such a powerful impact upon the minds of those who come under its influence. To begin with, I believe you’ll be interested in knowing that your brain and every other person’s brain is both a broadcasting station and a receiving station which sends out thought vibrations and picks up those sent out by other people. When you turn on your enthusiasm, you step up the vibrations of thoughts which go out from your brain so that they reach and affect other people more quickly. As a matter of fact, you can send out thoughts which have been so stepped up with silent enthusiasm that they will reach and influence other people to whom you direct your thoughts. This is a fact which has been known to psychologists for ages, and it is also known to most master salesmen who use this method to condition the minds of their prospective buyers before they ever talk with them. You must have observed that the enthusiasm is very contagious, that it engages the attention of those who come under its influence and causes them to respond in a similar spirit of enthusiasm. I once heard Andrew Carnegie say that if you turn loose one man who thought in terms of intense enthusiasm in an industrial plant employing thousands of people, this man’s enthusiasm would very quickly reach and influence every person in the plant, and he said it made not the slightest difference whether the enthusiasm was negative or positive, constructive or destructive. Then Mr. Carnegie went on to explain that in his selection of employees for promotion to bigger jobs, the first thing he looked for was a man’s capacity to express himself in terms of intense enthusiasm. He said that enthusiasm is one of the most important traits necessary for leadership. The most successful lawyers are not necessarily those who know most about the legal profession, but they are those who know how to influence courts and juries with their belief in their cases and have a great capacity for expressing themselves with enthusiasm. When you are introduced to another person, you have a marvelous opportunity to sell yourself favorably to that person by the extent of the enthusiasm you express in accepting the introduction. When you shake hands with another person, you have also a fine opportunity to make a favorable impression by the warmth of enthusiasm you put into that handshake. If there is anything which leaves me flat and unfavorably impressed when I’m introduced, it’s an extended hand which feels like a piece of cold ham and acknowledges the introduction with a cold, canned, pleased to meet you, with no signs of enthusiasm back of it. Right here let me give you a brief course in salesmanship which may be of value to you the remainder of your life. When you meet anyone on whom you wish to make a favorable impression, when it is a stranger you have not previously met, or someone with whom you are already acquainted, do these things. One, turn on your enthusiasm and so modulate your voice with it that you definitely make the other person feel you are happy to communicate with him. Two, when you shake his hand, take a firm grip on it and give it a quick, firm squeeze at the end of each word you express in your greetings. For example, say, how do you do? I am so very glad to meet you. Do not crush the hand, however, as I have known some people to do. 3. Then, if you begin the conversation, be sure that you direct it to some subject of interest to the other person. And 4. Follow through by eagerly asking questions which will keep attention focused upon the other person. Then, when you are ready to have the other person hear what you have to say about yourself or your interests or your business, he will have been prepared to listen attentively. For many years I taught Master Salesmanship, and the first important thing I endeavored to teach my students was the importance of, one, speaking with enthusiasm, and, two, selling the prospective buyer himself before trying to sell him anything else. I’ve often told my students of salesmanship that the best possible way for one to sell himself to others is to first sell the others to themselves. That counsel was sound when I began training salesmen over 30 years ago, and it is still sound. When I was a youngster in school, I discovered that the teachers from whom I learned most were those who expressed the greatest enthusiasm in their teaching. And I have heard an experienced doctor say that the enthusiasm he carries into the sick room with him has more to do with helping to bring about a cure than all the medicine he can prescribe. And now let me give you another interesting side light on the effects of enthusiasm. I have noticed that enthusiasm not only influences others who come under its effect, but it also very distinctly influences and benefits those who follow the habit of expressing it in their thoughts and deeds. Enthusiasm is an expression of a positive mental attitude, and it has long been known to doctors that a positive mental attitude stands high on the list of influences which give one sound health. I have heard it said, for example, that only one thing causes stomach ulcers, and that is worry or a negative mental attitude, and only one thing can cure stomach ulcers, and that is a positive mental attitude. It seems that disease germs cannot live and thrive in the bloodstream of one whose mind is always positive. I have still another very important observation concerning the power of enthusiasm which I wish to give you. I have observed that prayers expressed with intense enthusiasm bring much quicker and more satisfactory results. Now you can try this for yourself and be convinced. I began experimenting with this idea many years ago, and from my experiences I gathered the information which caused me to change my method of prayer entirely. I now use the prayer I recommended to you on previous visits with the gratifying results that I get quicker and more favorable action from my prayers than I did when I expressed them in a spirit which lacked enthusiasm. I suggest that a very practical way to begin learning to express yourself with enthusiasm will be to follow the habit of reading aloud for 10 minutes daily, putting all the enthusiasm at your command into your reading. You will be surprised in a short while at how much this will help you in speaking with enthusiasm in your ordinary conversations. I would suggest also that you adopt the habit of practicing enthusiasm in your conversations with your family and your business associates. Incidentally, this habit will make you more popular with those who are close to you. You can enjoy the benefits of enthusiasm if you are interested enough to develop a technique by which to acquire this habit so you will follow it in a natural, unaffected tone of voice. If you follow my suggestion that you read for 10 minutes daily as a means of acquiring the habit of enthusiasm, I recommend that you write down a list of ten subjects, things, or circumstances in which you have the keenest interest, and use this list for your practice purposes. You will have no difficulty in reading any tone of enthusiasm in connection with the things that you like best. And finally, if you have not already picked up some useful ideas as to how the habit of enthusiasm can be developed or what causes one to be enthusiastic, let me give you an example which may provide you with an interesting cue. You perhaps remember when you were courting the person of your choice, or being courted as the case may be, you needed no one to tell you how or why to be enthusiastic. Of course not, because the motive of love or affection took care of this without effort on your part. Just remember that enthusiasm is always easily expressed when one is inspired by a burning desire for something or any motive associated with one’s closest interest. Where there is no motive, there is apt to be no enthusiasm. Remember also that the three basic motives which it has been said practically rule the world are 1. the emotion of love, 2. the emotion of sex, 3. the desire for financial gain. A combination of all three of these motives, it has been claimed, can convert a mediocre person into a genius, and I leave the thought with you for consideration. And now, until our next visit, I ask that you try the habit of moving with enthusiasm in all of your daily work and see how much better you will feel. We come now to the ninth visit where we shall analyze the ninth principle of success, which is personal initiative. Personal initiative is the dynamo which starts the faculty of imagination into action in the process of translating one’s definite major purpose into its physical or financial equivalent. If you aim for success above mediocrity, you will need to learn to act on your own personal initiative because your success is something which you must achieve for yourself without someone telling you what to do or how to do it. Incidentally, Cyrus H.K. Curtis, the former owner of the Saturday Evening Post and one of my collaborators in organizing the Science of Success philosophy, was responsible for a motto on personal initiative of such great importance that I want you to have it. Said he, there are two kinds of men who never amount to much, those who cannot do as they are told, and those who can do nothing else. Of course, Mr. Curtis’ implication is very clear. He implied that those who amount to something worthwhile in life are those who move on their own personal initiative without being told what to do or why they should do it. The men who stand out in the minds of the public as the greatest successes from the days of George Washington on to the present are those who chose their own occupation, business, or profession and moved on their own personal initiative in achieving their purpose. And those who are getting ahead most rapidly today, no matter in what position they began, are those who promote themselves to a higher place in life by acting on their own personal initiative. The habit of personal initiative not only inspires one to move on his own responsibility, but it also influences him to carry through until he completes that which he undertakes in a manner pleasing to all concerned, because he knows that a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. And right here is an appropriate place to say something I perhaps should have said before, namely, that a big success is made up of a great number of little circumstances, each of which is so small and seemingly insignificant that most people pass it by as not worthy of notice. Some may think, for example, that the habit of personal initiative is unimportant, but we have only to take a look at the record of some of our greatest successes to recognize that personal initiative was an important factor without which they never would have achieved success. For example, no one told F.W. Woolworth to start a five and ten cent store. The idea was his own. He acted on his own personal initiative in putting his idea into action, and to live to see it yield him a fortune well above $100 million. My distinguished business associate, W. Clement Stone, started his insurance business on his own personal initiative with an operating capital of only $100, but he followed through on that same personal initiative and made his humble beginning yield an annual gross income of many millions of dollars, and it was that same habit of acting on his own personal initiative of doing the thing he wanted to do which inspired Mr. Stone to join forces with me in taking the science of success philosophy to millions of people throughout the world, an undertaking which it is believed may help more people to find their places in the world than has any other influence during the past hundred years. The habit of personal initiative was the chief trait which helped Henry J. Kaiser to build a great industrial empire and raise himself to a high position in the industrial world. It was this trait of personal initiative which inspired Mr. Kaiser to pile up such an enormous record in the building of ships during World War II, despite the fact that he had never built ships before. One day when I was lecturing to one of my classes, I mentioned Henry J. Kaiser’s wonderful record in building ships more cheaply and quickly than experienced shipbuilders had been able to do, when one of my students spoke up and said, Mr. Kaiser, having been a friend of Jesse Jones of the Federal Reserve Bank, did not hurt his chances of success any, did it? Well, for a moment it looked as if that question had placed me on a spot, but I soon recovered my composure and came back with this reply. No, his knowing Mr. Jones did not hurt his chances, but think of the thousands of industrialists, many of whom may also have known Mr. Jones, but did not use their personal initiative in getting his financial help. Personal initiative is one quality which inspires one to form friendships and to make contacts with people who can be of aid to them in times of need. It was my personal initiative which influenced Andrew Carnegie to give me an opportunity to organize the science of success philosophy. I now wish to give you an outline of the more important attributes of the person who has sufficient personal initiative to give him leadership in his chosen occupation. 1. First of all, the person who follows the habit of personal initiative has a definite major purpose in life and a plan for its attainment. 2. And a master-mind alliance with those whose help is essential in achieving his major purpose. 3. He has the necessary persistence and the will to win to carry him along when the going is hard and he meets with obstacles. 4. He makes decisions promptly when he has the necessary facts on which to base them, and changes them slowly, if at all. 5. He follows the habit of doing more than he is paid for, and he does so in a pleasing, positive mental attitude. 6. He accepts full responsibility for everything he undertakes and never passes the book when things go wrong. 7. He can take friendly criticism without resentment because he has learned to profit by it. 8. He knows what the nine basic motives are which inspire all human endeavors and never requests anyone to do anything for him without giving that person an adequate motive for doing so. 9. He never expresses an opinion about anything unless he has thought the subject through and is prepared to state how he came by his opinion. 10. He follows the habit of listening much and talking only when he has something to say which may benefit himself or others. 11. He has a well-developed sense of observation of small details and knows his job from the smallest detail to the greatest. 12. He never tells anyone to do anything without suggesting why it should be done and how it may be done best. 13. He follows the habit of concentrating his full attention on one thing at a time. 14. His mental attitude is positive at all times when he is in communication with other people. If you ask him a question, he will give you a direct answer, even if he has to tell you he does not know the correct answer. Last but perhaps most important of all, he never puts off until tomorrow that which should have been done last week, because he knows that the habit of procrastination is near the top of the list of the causes of failure. If you can rate okay on each of these 16 traits of personal initiative, you are a leader in your field of endeavor. When you come to examine yourself on the subject of personal initiative, just remember that your success or your failure depends very largely on the action you take in connection with your occupation. No one will tell you what you should do, no one will tell you what not to do. The decision must be your own and you must follow through and carry out your decision on your own personal initiative. If you work for wages or a salary, you should decide to promote yourself through your own personal initiative to the top of the scale in your occupation. And remember that your promotion is entirely in your hands. In my previous visits I have given you a blueprint of the steps you should take in promoting yourself to whatever station in life you desire. Now let me give you a brief review of eight principles we have covered previously. 1. Definiteness of Purpose. By now you should know what you want most from life, and you should have a plan for getting it. Here is the most important circumstance of your whole life where you must move on your own personal initiative because no one else can tell you what you should want most. 2. The Master Mind Principle. If you have not already formed a friendly alliance with those who can help you in attaining your major purpose in life, you should move on your own personal initiative and form this alliance at once. 3. Going the extra mile. This is a must if your major purpose is anything above mediocrity. Four, applied faith. This is the principle which gives you power in carrying out your definite major purpose and all minor purposes. Five, a pleasing personality is an asset of priceless value, and it too is something you must acquire through your personal initiative. Six, self-discipline. The sixth principle of success is also something you acquire through your personal initiative. 7. A positive mental attitude, which is the most important of the twelve great riches of life, is also the product of your own personal initiative. 8. Enthusiasm is a state of mind which only you can generate through your personal initiative. You see, therefore, that personal initiative enters into every one of the success principles. And now, until our next visit, may I remind you that there are two types of people who never amount to anything. Those who will not do what they are told, and those who will do nothing else. Our tenth visit brings us to one of the strangest of the 17 Principles of Success, because it is the Principle which makes it possible for you to convert into an asset every adversity, every disappointment, every defeat, and every failure you meet with from now on the remainder of your life. Yes, the Principle of learning from adversity makes it possible for you to transmute all your past failures and mistakes into an asset which will help you achieve outstanding success in the future. At the very outset of this visit, I wish to call your attention to an important fact which may give you immediate possession of the great Master Keter’s success, namely, that your positive mental attitude is the only means by which you may convert adversities, defeats, and failures into assets. It seems to have been intended that everyone should experience adversities, defeats, and even failures as a part of nature’s method of disciplining people to learn how to take possession of their own minds. But the Creator very wisely provided everyone with the means for converting these experiences into benefits of a priceless value, the means being our privilege of maintaining and directing a positive mental attitude. Despite the benefits which we may get from adversities and unpleasant experiences of every nature, no one desires to meet with these experiences. A failure or defeat is just as unpleasant to me now as it was 30-odd years ago when I was learning about failures and unpleasant experiences in the great University of Hart Knox. Yet I would be something less than fair with you if I neglected to tell you that my greatest blessings came from my greatest adversities. But these blessings never would have been recognized by me if I had not learned the truth that every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit, which is the very hub of this visit with you. Once you learn that adversities can be made to pay a dividend, you will acquire the habit of looking for that seed of an equivalent benefit in each such experience with which you meet. Come with me now and I shall give you some examples which prove conclusively that failures, defeats, unpleasant experiences can be converted into stepping stones on which one may rise to great heights of personal achievement. My first illustration concerns a man of whom you may have heard, and I have no doubt you have eaten some of the food which he produced and marketed throughout the nation as a result of an adversity which would have stopped most men cold. The man was Milo C. Jones, who owned a small farm near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, on which he made only a fair living until he was stricken down with double paralysis which deprived him of every portion of his body except his brain. In this hour of his greatest adversity, Milosey Jones used his mind, took possession of it for the first time in his life, perhaps, and out of that mind came the idea of raising hogs and converting them into little pig sausage. And on that same farm where previous to that adversity he made only a mere living, he found the seed of an equivalent benefit that compensated him for the loss of the use of his body, and lived to see little pig sausage yield him a huge fortune. Isn’t it strange that so often people have to be cut down by failure and defeat before they learn that they have minds capable of mastering all of their problems. Isn’t it strange why my Lucy Jones did not discover the little pig sausage idea while he had a sound body? My next illustration is based on an adversity of a man whom we all know because he was President of the United States and his name was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was stricken in the prime of his life with polio which destroyed the use of his legs. Instead of sitting on a street corner with a tin cup and some lead pencils as many another might have done under similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt transmuted his affliction into a build-up of his self-reliance and lifted himself to the highest position available to mankind anywhere on this earth. Got that position and held it until he passed on. Held it longer than had any previous President. Verily, I tell you with all the enthusiasm at my command that you may find in your adversities the necessary challenge to inspire you on to success such as you never would have known without these experiences. I do not suggest that you look for adversities or expect to meet with them, but if you do so, just remember not to fear them. And instead of brooding over them as most people do, let me suggest that you be different and convert them into stepping stones on which you may rise to whatever place in life you have set for yourself. 3. My next illustration is based on you and all the adversities and failures you have ever experienced. I should not go into details because I do not know the details of any such experiences you may have met with, but this much I do know. I have brought to you in this visit the means by which you can convert all your past disappointments and all of your future adversities and failures into a seed of equivalent benefit. You can do this by the simple process of appropriating and putting to your use the nine success principles I have given you previously. If you do not remember these nine principles, write to me and I will tell you how to get copies of them. Right here, may I remind you of the great importance of following the principle of a positive mental attitude, because this is the principle you will need most in converting unpleasant experiences into assets. 4. My next illustration involves a very intimate personal experience of my own, which began when my mother passed on. I was 8 years of age. I know that the loss of one’s mother at any age usually is regarded as an irreparable loss which offers no possible benefits. But even in the loss of loved ones, we may find that there is a seed of an equivalent benefit. I found that seed in one of the most wonderful persons I have ever known when my father brought home my new mother. It was she who inspired me to prepare myself for the opportunity I was to receive later in life when I met Andrew Carnegie and received from him the commission to organize the world’s first practical philosophy of personal success. Had it not been for the loss of my mother, I would not now be having this visit with you, and my books would not now be serving to help millions of people throughout the world to find their places in life. Just remember this about adversities. Nothing is ever so bad or so unpleasant that it may not yield some benefit if we keep a positive mental attitude toward the experience and make it a habit to look for that seed of an equivalent benefit. This of course involves the application of that important success principle, personal initiative. 5. Now, I come to an illustration which involves our great American way of life and all the personal freedom and opportunities we enjoy under our way of life, and it begins with our defeat of the British in 1778. Probably every Britisher believed that the loss of the American colonists was an irreparable loss which offered no possible benefits. Yet you and I know that if we had not defeated the British and made ourselves rich and powerful, the British Empire probably would have been wiped out in World Wars I or II. We know also that although the British Empire survived those two wars, it was our financial help which saved the British from starvation and bankruptcy. So today every Britisher should give thanks for the defeat of Lord Cornwallis’ armistice because that defeat finally became the means of survival of the British Empire. Six, my next illustration brings us face to face with an adversity which involves you and I and every other person now living, and adversity from which we have not as yet availed ourselves of that seed of an equivalent benefit which is to be found in all adversities. I have reference to the trend in this and all other countries to rob individuals of their rights of personal freedom, a trend which is in direct violation of the obvious purpose of the Creator to give every individual the privilege of freedom of thought and action. There is something definite you and I can do about this common trend to rob us of our rights of personal freedom. We cannot turn it back entirely by our individual efforts, but we can and we should do something about it where it affects us individually and where we know what we can do and how we can do it. Of course you will ask, what can I do to influence a world trend? And I shall answer by saying there is something definite that you can do. You can refuse to accept this common trend and take full possession of your own mind, thus fulfilling your personal responsibility to your Creator. Remember those two sealed envelopes I mentioned in a previous visit. One of them is labeled riches you may enjoy by taking possession of your own mind. Very well, you have a responsibility to yourself, your loved ones, your Creator, to take possession of your own mind and to direct it to ends of your own choice. This responsibility is yours and no one else can rob you of it or fulfill it for you. You also have a responsibility to your country which has given you our great American way of life, our great system of free enterprise which is so designed as to provide one with every possible motive for taking possession of his own mind and writing his own ticket in life. We should remember that our benefits under the American way of life, like every other blessing we have been given at birth is something we can retain and enjoy only by making the fullest and best use of it. It is definitely a part of the overall plan of the universe. To give man the benefit only of those blessings he recognizes, embraces, and uses constructively. Tie your arm to your side and take it out of use, and nature rebels immediately by causing the arm to atrophy, wither, and become useless. Neglect to keep in contact with your friends and to cultivate them, and you lose them. Show indifference to the patrons from whom you earn your living, or the employer who pays your wages, and very soon you find yourself without a market for your services. It is an inevitable law of nature that you lose that which you do not use. And of course, this applies to the use of your own mind the same as to everything else. And we who so often boast that we are citizens of the richest, the greatest, and the most powerful nation civilization has yet produced, will do well to remember this law through which we lose that which we do not properly use. In this visit I have brought you what may be a surprise or even a shock by introducing this great principle of profiting by adversity. If you are ready for this principle, you will embrace it at once, and never again as long as you live will you brood over unpleasant experiences without knowing full well that your efforts could be better employed by searching for that seed of an equivalent benefit which is available in those experiences. Now before I conclude this visit, I shall give you this assignment which, if you carry it out sincerely, may well bring you a new birth of opportunity such as you never dreamed of experiencing. Go back into your past experiences, study each adversity and failure you may have experienced, and look for that seed of an equivalent benefit you had not before discovered, and you may find yourself richer than you believed yourself to be. And now, until our next visit, just remember, nothing can be called failure until you accept it as such. We have now come to our eleventh visit, where I shall present creative vision, the success principle which is responsible for the building of all of our plans, aims, and purposes. It has been said that the imagination is the workshop wherein we fashion the purposes of our brain and the ideas of our soul. I do not know of a better definition of imagination than this. There are two forms of imagination. First, there is synthetic imagination, which consists of organizing and putting together of recognized ideas, concepts, and facts arranged in a new combination. Very seldom does anyone create an idea or anything else absolutely new. Nearly everything known to civilization is but a combination of something that is old. Secondly, there is creative imagination which operates through the sixth sense and has its base in the subconscious section of the brain and serves as the exclusive medium through which basically new ideas or facts are revealed. Let me give you some examples of synthetic imagination in action. 1. Edison’s invention of the incandescent electric lamp was the creation of synthetic imagination because it was created by bringing together in a new combination two old and well-known principles. 2. Clarence Saunders’ idea on which the Piggly Wiggly store system was based was the result of synthetic imagination because he merely borrowed the self-help cafeteria plan and introduced it into the grocery store business, but despite the simplicity of the plan, it is said to have yielded its organizer $4,000,000 during the first four years after it was put to work. 3. Henry Ford’s first automobile was created through synthetic imagination, by the simple procedure of bringing together the well-known method of transportation, the horse and buggy, and the steam-propelled thrashing machine. Both ideas were old, but it remained for Henry Ford to combine them in a new method of use, and he made himself the most distinguished industrialist of his era by his achievement, not to mention a fabulous fortune. 4. The man who dipped a hunk of ice cream in chocolate, placed a stick in it for a handle and called it Eskimo pie, used synthetic imagination and started a new industry which still has a widespread outlet and grosses annually a huge sum. It is safe to assume that the creator of this simple plan of merchandising was well compensated for his use of his synthetic imagination. 5. F.W. Woolworth made use of synthetic imagination by the simple procedure of setting up a retail store in which a large variety of merchandise retailing at 5 and 10 cents per item was offered to the public, and lived to see his merchandising innovation start a series of similar retail stores which grossed annually many millions of dollars in sales and made Woolworth rich in the bargain. Now I shall give you some examples of creative imagination. One, Edison’s invention of the phonograph was the outgrowth of creative imagination because no part of his invention had ever been known or used previously. 2. Signor Marconi’s invention of wireless communication was also the outgrowth of creative imagination because it was based on basically new ideas which never had been used previously. He was the first to discover the means by which the ether could be made to take the place of wires in the transmission of sound. 3. Madame Curie’s discovery of radium was also the outgrowth of creative imagination because no one before her had ever revealed either the actual existence of radium or the method by which it could be recovered or refined. 4. Wilbur and Orville Wright’s perfection of the modern airplane was partly the result of creative imagination and partly the result of synthetic imagination, because others previous to their time had discovered some of the ideas they used successfully, but they were the first to coordinate those ideas so they worked. 5. Robert G. Laterneau made effective use of creative imagination by building heavy dirt-removing machinery which involved ideas never before used, although he was practically unskilled in engineering and had very little schooling of any kind. I worked with Mr. Le Turner for a year and a half, during which I saw him in action many times when he was drawing entirely upon the faculty of creative imagination and receiving his ideas from sources outside of his own immediate education or knowledge. Now let me give you a few suggestions as to how you may be able to make profitable use of your imagination, keeping in mind that the faculty of your imagination, like every other faculty of your mind, becomes stale through disuse and alert through use. One, create a system of merchandising which can be carried on by the operators of gasoline filling stations throughout the nation, and you may make your idea-euge more profit than Clarence Saunders made from his piggly-wiggly store plan. Perhaps the system would consist of items which could be dispensed by coin in the slot machines to create a plan or system which will cause motorists to be as courteous and thoughtful of others on the highway as they are in their own homes, and you may cut down the outrageous death rate by automobile accidents and make yourself both popular and rich. Perhaps you might add to this idea some plan of engineering by which public highways would be so operated as to force motorists to drive with greater care, and you might also create some practical plan by which motorists of good reputation would be deputized as auxiliary traffic officers with two-way radios in their cars and authority to give tickets and make arrests. 3. Create a satisfactory substitute for cigarettes and you may make yourself richer than you need to be. 4. Give me an acceptable method for taking these principles of success to children of the graded school age, and I will tell you how to make yourself rich both in money and in happiness which comes from contributions of service which benefit posterity by improving the youth. Give me a plan which will arouse and alert people to recognize and make use of the potential of their own minds, and I will give you a job for the remainder of your life at pay which perhaps you never dreamed of getting. 6. Bring me an acceptable storybook, slated to the interest of children from 6 to 12 years of age, based upon the 17 principles of the Science of Success, and I will ensure the publication and distribution of the book on a scale which will make you richer than you need to be. This idea probably can be best refined through the mind of a woman who understands children, loves them, and can speak in terms that will get their attention. And right here, in case you have not already recognized the fact, I am bringing you very near the point where people sometimes tune in on their creative imagination and come up with ideas which benefit great numbers of people and make themselves popular and rich. I am going to give you these suggestions solely as inspiration intended to introduce you to your faculty of creative imagination. All the good ideas have been used up, did I hear you say? Quite to the contrary, the best ideas are yet to be revealed and put into the service of mankind. There are no more opportunities to become rich, did I hear you say? Listen please, for I have an answer for this one. The Napoleon Hill Associates are engaged in the business of helping people with sound ideas to bring them forth and give them to the world in return for riches. If you have an idea you think is good, write me about it and I will give you my opinion of it. If you have a sound idea which you think will benefit those with whom or for whom you work, write me about it and I will tell you what to do with it. If you have discovered a better way of doing anything, write me about it, and I will offer you suggestions for benefiting by your discovery. If you will give me an acceptable plan for influencing married people to adopt and use the master-mind principle in their domestic relations, you may benefit millions of people in homes where harmony does not now prevail, and to make for yourself a reputation worthy of a king’s ransom. If you have a better idea or plan for the use of salesmen in any field of selling, your idea may help millions of salesmen to increase their incomes and bring you a reward worthy of the value of your idea. If you can create an idea which will help retail store owners to display their merchandise to better advantage so as to increase their sales, write me about your idea, and if I believe it sound, I will tell you what to do with it. I am still talking to you about exercising your faculty of imagination, but I am limited. That’s the number of ideas I can give you in so short a time, but I will give you some more useful ideas in my next visit. Imagination is a trait which becomes alert only by constant action based on the success principles I have described in these visits. You are the one who must supply this action. The rules of accurate thinking are so clear and simple that I often wonder why so few people ever take time to learn the rules, since accurate thinking is the very foundation of all successful achievements. In this visit I shall give you a working description of the rules of accurate thinking which all successful people follow. First of all, accurate thinking is based on two simple fundamentals. They are called inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is used when the necessary facts on which to base your thinking are not available. In this case you act on hypotheses or what you assume the facts to be. Deductive reasoning is used when you have the facts or what appear to be the facts on which to base your thinking. The next step in accurate thinking is to separate facts from fiction or hearsay evidence, and determine whether you are dealing with hypotheses or real facts. When you are sure you have dependable facts on which to base your thinking, you take the second step by separating these facts into two classes. One is important facts and the other is unimportant facts. When you do this, you may be surprised at the overwhelmingly greater number of unimportant facts you deal with daily than there are important facts. At this point you are almost sure to want to ask the question, What is an important fact, and how can I distinguish it from an unimportant fact? And I shall give you the answer to this very important question by saying that an important fact is any fact which will aid you to any extent whatsoever in attaining the object of your major purpose in life. And all other facts as far as you are concerned are unimportant and you should waste no time with them. After this visit is over, you can employ the next hour to a great benefit to yourself if you will set down on paper a list of all the facts you dealed with yesterday, separating them into two classes, important and unimportant. As a matter of fact, you will make a profound discovery regarding accurate thinking if you follow the habit of daily taking inventory of all the facts that claimed your attention during the day, putting them down on paper in two separate columns, one labeled IMPORTANT FACTS and the other labeled UNIMPORTANT FACTS. Now let us turn our attention to the subject of opinions and see to what extent loose, unsound opinions are mistaken for accurate thinking. To start with, let us recognize the truth that most opinions are without value because they are based on bias, prejudice, intolerance, guesswork, hearsay evidence, and out-and-out ignorance. These are harsh words I am using, and they represent the source of most of the tragedies of life which people meet with unnecessarily. And I would say that of all the tragedies which cause misery and failure, none is more merciless or destructive than those which grow out of the indifference of people who make no attempt to learn how to think accurately. I shall never forget an experience I had with President Woodrow Wilson while I was working for him during World War I. I asked the President what effect he believed World War I would have on civilization, and his reply was brief, but it was a masterpiece which you should remember as long as you live. I cannot answer your question, said the President, because I have no facts on which to base an opinion. If you will remember Woodrow Wilson’s 15-word speech every time you are about to express an opinion about anything, the chances are that you will soon get out of the habit of expressing or even having opinions not based on something more substantial than biases, prejudices, and emotional feelings which often serve as fathers to facts. You will learn, if you observe carefully, that the more successful a person is, the less he is inclined to express wild, unjustified opinions about anything. Also, you must have observed already that the drifters who are suffering with frustrations because they recognize they are failures, usually have an assortment of opinions on about everything you can imagine. When I hear someone expressing a definite opinion about something of which I have definite reason to believe he knows little or nothing, I think of an experience I had when I stopped a Quaker on the streets of Philadelphia and asked him the time of day. He took out his watch, examined it carefully, and then in a slow, emphatic tone of voice, he said, Well, sir, according to this alleged timepiece, it appears to be approximately one minute and ten seconds past twelve o’clock. I was particularly impressed by the care with which this Quaker identified the source of his information which he was passing on to me, and I often thought afterward how beneficial it would be if all people who express opinions or give out information would take the time to identify the source from which they were able to speak. I cannot influence all people to engage in this sort of safe thinking, but I can suggest that you give it consideration in connection with this visit on the subject of accurate thinking. Now, I shall give you a simple rule which may help you avoid being misled by unsound opinions expressed by other people. When you hear someone make a statement which your reason cannot accept as being sound, or which you question or should for savity’s sake question for any reason whatsoever, ask a simple forward question, How do you know? Then stand firm on that question and either force the speaker to identify the source from which he got the information he is endeavoring to pass on as facts, or reject the statement entirely as if it had not been made. And do this no matter who is speaking or what may be his reputation for truth and veracity. Remember you are given as your richest birthright the privilege of controlling your own thoughts. Therefore treat this divine gift with the profound respect to which it is entitled, and do not allow anyone to do your thinking for you, or to influence your thinking in any manner whatsoever, except by the rules of accurate thinking I am passing on to you. Follow this procedure regardless of what people think or say about your method of thinking. If they wish to call you a cynic or a doubting Thomas, let that be their misfortune. But for your own good, go right on thinking by rules which will save you from many mistakes and tragedies throughout your life. Now I will give you seven rules to follow which, if you memorize them and follow them as a daily habit, may bring you top rating as an accurate thinker. 1. Never accept the opinions of other people as being facts until you have learned the source of those opinions and satisfied yourself of their accuracy. 2. Remember that free advice, no matter from whom it is received, will bear the closest of examination before it is acted upon as safe, and generally speaking this sort of advice is worth exactly what it costs. 3. Alert yourself immediately when you hear anyone speaking of others in a discourteous or slanderous spirit, because this very fact should put you on notice that what you are hearing is biased, to say the very least, about it, and it may be out-and-out misstatement. 4. In asking others for information, do not disclose to them what you wish the information to be, because most people have the bad habit of trying to please under such circumstances. Well measured, tactful questions can be of great benefit to you in thinking accurately. 5. Remember that anything which exists anywhere throughout the universe is capable of proof, and where no such proof is available, it is safer to assume nothing exists. 6. One of the great unexplainable miracles consists in the fact that both truth and falsehood, no matter by what means they may be expressed. Carry with them a silent, invisible means of identifying themselves as such. Therefore remember this truth and begin developing the necessary intuitive faculty to enable you to sense what is false and what is true. 7. Follow the habit of asking, how do you know when anyone makes a statement you cannot identify as true. Follow this habit faithfully and you will see many persons squirm and turn red in the face when you insist upon a direct reply. The most accurate thinkers are the scientists. They investigate with open minds and never allow their wishes to become the fathers of facts, but deal with each fact as it is, not as they would like it to be. Now one final word of warning I feel I should leave with you. Study yourself carefully and you may discover that your own emotions are your greatest handicap in the business of accurate thinking. It is easy for you to believe that which you wish to believe, and unfortunately that is precisely what most people do. This is a method by which many people condemn themselves to eternal failure and defeat. And it is a method which opens wide that sealed envelope which contains the list of penalties they must pay for neglecting to take possession of their minds and use them for constructive ends beneficial to themselves. And now, until our next visit, may I say good-bye. The 13th visit brings us to the analysis of a law of nature which is the basis of all of our habits, both the good habits and the bad. This law is a vital part of the 17 success principles because it is the means by which you and every other person can put into operation an irresistible power by which your aims and purposes are attained almost automatically by the action of your habits. I have named this law Cosmic Habit Force because it is the law which gives definiteness of action to everything which moves throughout the entire universe. It keeps the stars and planets in their accustomed places, and it fixes the life patterns of every living thing, from the smallest insects to the largest animal, excepting only man who has been given the means by which he may use this law to establish his own habits and determine his own desires and movements throughout life. Cosmic habit force binds every living thing lower in the scale of intelligence than man with what we call instinct, but man can rise above these fixed patterns by which lower forms of life live and establish his own pattern. This privilege, as I have mentioned in former visits, is the only thing over which man has complete power of control and direction. And it is interesting to observe that the Creator never gives man any form of riches without sending along with it the means by which man may do whatever he pleases with those riches. In order that you may get the full benefit of this visit on Cosmic Habit Force, it will be necessary for you to review what I have said previously in connection with the 12 Principles of Success I have already described, particularly the Principle of DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE. Like every other natural law, Cosmic Habit Force has both a positive and a negative potential application. The negative application of this law is called Hypnotic Rhythm, which means, among other possible results, it fastens upon individuals that by our neglect to fix our thoughts upon the things we desire in life and thereby gain the power of Cosmic Habit Force in attaining these desires, the law automatically acts through the negative hypnotic rhythm feature and fixes our minds on the things we do not desire, and attracts to us the physical counterpart of these desires. Understand this principle of the law of Cosmic Habit Force, and obviously you will have a better conception as to how essential it is to keep your mind occupied with the life pattern and the things and circumstances you desire until this pattern is taken over and made permanent by Cosmic Habit Force. Cosmic Habit Force is the watchdog, so to speak, which looks over your shoulder all through life, examines every thought you release, every act in which you engage, and forces upon you the penalties or the rewards in those two sealed envelopes I described in a previous visit. When you understand the principle of Cosmic Habit Force, it is clear enough that you cannot go through life without using the power of this law to carry out the circumstances and the desires you voluntarily choose, or by your neglect, allow the same law to force you to pay the penalties I described. You have a power of choice here, the same as in all other things, but your neglect to exercise this power brings certain, if not always swift, retribution upon you. Perhaps you now see why I warned you in a previous visit that the two sealed envelopes were not imaginary but real, and of course you now understand that you must avail yourself of the benefits of one or be forced to accept the penalties of the other. There is no halfway compromise for any human being. Ponder over this profound truth and you will probably get a more impressive understanding of the power which is available to you through the application of the 17 SUCCESS PRINCIPLES of the SCIENCE OF SUCCESS. And you may also acquire a better understanding as to why these 17 principles have spread throughout the world without organized business management behind them, why this science of success philosophy is believed to have brought personal success to more people than has any other philosophy designed to help individuals to take possession of their own minds. The nearest to a description of the law of cosmic habit force I have seen is Emerson’s Law of Compensation, in which he so clearly established the truth that nothing ever just happens by luck, but every effect has its definite cause, albeit we often observe effects, the causes of which we cannot isolate or understand. If you will read Emerson’s essay on Compensation again in view of what I have said about the Law of Cosmic Habit Force, you may get much more from it than you absorbed from it previously. Now I shall give you a variety of illustrations as to how the Law of Cosmic Habit Force operates. One, first of all let me call your attention to the fact that Cosmic Habit Force fixes the habits of the electrons and protons of matter so that their relationship and chemical behavior always follow the same pattern. Thus we see that everything throughout the universe comes under the influence of Cosmic Habit Force, and everything moves and exists by a pattern which is immutable and enduring except man who, as I have said, can break the habits established by Cosmic Habit Force which affect him and set up in their place habits of his own choice. 2. Cosmic Habit Force fixes the pattern of every form of vegetation which grows from the soil of the earth so that each thing reproduces after its own pattern. A grain of wheat always reproduces other grains of wheat, but never makes the mistake of producing oats or some other form of growth. An oak tree always springs from an acorn, but never from any other cause, the pattern having been permanently fixed in the acorn by the law of Cosmic Habit Force. One atom of Hydrogen and two atoms of Oxygen combined always produce water, never anything else because the pattern of their chemical reaction has been fixed by Cosmic Habit Force. 3. When the human mind is focused on a definite major purpose, the law of Cosmic Habit Force goes into action immediately and attracts to the individual the material equivalent of that purpose, and the procedure is inexorable and never varies. However, hypnotic rhythm, the negative application of the law, will just as definitely attract to one all the undesirable things. 4. Cosmic habit force expressing itself through the emotion of sex is the means by which every living thing perpetuates its species. Understand this truth and you will better understand the irresistible forces of the profound emotion of sex, the means by which nature creates all living things. You will also better understand why aims and purposes which are expressed orally under the great creative forces of sex emotion are acted upon so rapidly by cosmic habit force, and you will understand why it is so essential to learn how to transmute the emotion of sex into the carrying out of your aims and purposes. 5. We sometimes hear people speak of successful men as being on the beam, by which they mean that those who enjoy success have established a success thought pattern in their minds which Cosmic Habit Force has picked up and carried out to its logical conclusion. You are on the beam when you take possession of your mind, direct it to definite ends in a spirit of belief in your attainment of those ends, and keep your mind busy in carrying out your purpose instead of allowing it to drift to subjects you wish to avoid. You are on the beam when you can truthfully say, “‘I know precisely what I want from life, and I have faith I shall get it.’ You are not on the beam when you have no definite major purpose and you are drifting aimlessly through life. People who are failures also are on the beam, but they are on the negative side of the beam because they have neglected to use those riches which came over with them in that sealed envelope, and they have placed themselves under the influence of hypnotic rhythm, which is the negative application of cosmic habit force. There is one word which doctors dread, and it is the word fixation, which means that a sick person believes in his sickness as something which cannot be cured. Fixations can become a priceless asset by those who have discovered the great master key to success and have learned how to develop fixations in their minds based on the things they desire most in life. Cosmic habit force is the power which makes fixations permanent. You should have a definite fixation based on your major purpose in life, but you are the only one who can create this fixation. You can do it by taking possession of your own mind and keeping it directed toward the attainment of your major purpose. If you will do this by following all the instructions I have given you in these visits, in a short time you will find yourself on the beam and headed directly toward everything you desire and deserve to receive. Lastly, remember that your mental attitude is something you control outright, and you must use self-discipline until you create a thought pattern or thought habits which keep your mental attitude positive at all times. Your mental attitude is important because it acts as a magnet which attracts to you everything, every circumstance, which makes you what you are and where you are. If you wish to keep on the beam that leads to success, be sure that you give cosmic habit force a thought pattern based on the things you want most in life and it will do the rest. And now let me close this with my favorite expression of gratitude. Oh, divine providence, I ask not for more riches, but more wisdom with which to make wiser use of the riches you gave me at birth, consisting in the power to control and direct my own mind to whatever ends I desire. Oh yeah People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here, we’ve got people playing the drums, we’ve got a fire breather, and man, people are so excited as they come in. Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the grill gun. Hi, I’m Bob Healy. I’m the inventor of the grill gun and the civvy gun. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a hundred million dollar net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some like a real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a hundred million dollar net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind 9 Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk and not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches, so he’s a real teacher he’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers so you got to come learn from him. And now the best-selling author of the carnivore diet and the multiple-time Joe Rogan guest Dr. Sean Baker joins our two-day interactive business growth and life optimization workshop. Also let me tell you this folks I don’t get this wrong because if I get it wrong someone’s gonna say you screwed that up buddy so Michael Levine this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. You say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan. 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now, people say Colton Dixon’s in the house. Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow 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 thrive timeshow.com again. That’s thrive timeshow.com and some people might be saying well How do I do it? I’m gonna do it, but it doesn’t work. You just go to thrive timeshow.com. Let’s go there now We’re feeling the thought we’re going to thrive Again, you just go to thrive timeshow.com you click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th and 28th. Who? You! You’re going to come. Who? I’m talking to you. You can just 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 TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. 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. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… Have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Rico this is John Lee Dumas the host of the chart-topping EO fire.com podcast He’s absolutely a living legend this guy started a podcast after Wrapping up his service in the United States military And he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big-time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk Like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names putting up shows day after day. And now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast. And he’s traveling all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th, primetime show, two day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, if you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to get in, you want to improve your marketing. If you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you wanna come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show business workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas, and countless big-time, super successful entrepreneurs. It’s gonna be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com. James, one more time for the sports enthusiasts. Thrivetimeshow.com moment. We are winning. 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. When 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 cap? 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. They’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t loan. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see you. 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’ve 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 King’s Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, 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 his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts as Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half 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. What was- 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 wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just wanna tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. 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. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. 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. Whoa! Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey, I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. Like we have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the app-stick in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively. He’s pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back, and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop, I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. Biggest takeaways are you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay, and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you’ve got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the road map out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it will be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else can do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition’s going to come eventually, or try to pick up this tactic. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grew us 13 grams for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time Workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere at Clay’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned? The most valuable thing that I’ve learned? Marketing is key. Marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews, and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing, and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me, and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It’s real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody, everybody, everyone, everyone needs to attend the conference because you get opportunity to see that it’s real. Hey, Flyover family, come join us June the 27th and 28th, 2024 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’re gonna be there with Clay Clark, an amazing group of individuals that have made such a difference in so many people’s lives. Do you wanna increase your production in a job? Do you wanna make more sales? Do you wanna own your own business? Do you wanna have breakthroughs financially? The key to that is knowledge. Clay Clark is anointed to help people in business. We’ve watched him over the last couple of years and we’ve been blown away He’s part owner of over 160 businesses 2.4 billion dollars in sales Before politics and the great reset came into Clay’s life He had the number one rated Apple podcast and any interviewed people like Anthony Robbins Seth Godin The top authors top business minds in the world. At this specific event, there was an interesting cast of characters that come from gangs to American Idol. Some of the guests that are going to be there, Michael Levine, Colton Dixon, Peter Taunton, John Lee Dumas, Mondo De La Viga. And Tim Tebow. They’re there to share what they’ve done and their breakthroughs and what their story is. And then Clay lays his map of business success, calls the path for every person to follow. So you may be sitting there thinking, okay, okay, I get it, I get it, what do I have to do? Go to thrivetimeshow.com. When you get there, the tickets are $250 or whatever you can afford. Yes, you got that right. $250 or whatever you can afford. You can name your price. So there are no excuses. You have to join us there. There are only a few VIP tickets left, like David said, special dinner and special time with the speakers. That is $500 why they last. So $500, only a few left if you want a VIP ticket. We wanted to meet these speakers as well, so we got VIP tickets. I wanna meet Tim Tebow. I do too! The date is June the 27th and 28th, 2024 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com to get your ticket. Hey guys, Luke Erickson here with the Thrivetimeshow. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here, we’ve got people playing the drums, we’ve got a fire breather, and man, people are so excited as they come in. Woo! Woo! Woo! You need to implement it. You need to implement it. You want to do the provenance. It’s so exciting. I want to get people going crazy. Michael Levine, writer of many, many PR books, the man who represents people like Michael Jackson, Arbors Streisand, George Bush, Stanley Pond, is speaking to people here at our conference talking about branding. One of the greatest branding experts alive today is here at our conference. He’s the one who’s been talking about branding for the last 20 years. He’s the one who’s been talking about branding for the last 20 years. He’s the one who’s been talking about branding for the last 20 years. One of the greatest branding experts alive today is here at our conference talking to entrepreneurs. We just wrapped up day one. It was incredible. We had some remarkable speakers. Michael Levine. We just finished with a lady named Jill Donovan who owns a company called Rustic Cup, talking about the power of the Dream 100. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow holds. Come on in! Welcome to the 5th National Toto and Mo Mo Pool! That’s right, you’re supposed to make it. Come on in! Hey guys, Luke Harris here with the Thrive Time Show here with you. It is day 2 and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Follow me. Come on. Come on. Come on. I’ll tell you what. People are so excited to be here for day two. It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Come on. Come on. Come on. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, what is that? What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break. And what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes. Then we take approximately a 15 minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break. And also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have. We are outside, you can see a line behind me. What’s going on is that we partner with different companies to help them implement the proven system over and over and over again. And one of those companies is Master Machine. And so what we like to do is partner with these companies to also help them give samples to other people as they come to the conference and truly get their name out. And I just wanted to recap some of the amazing things that have happened today. We’ve had entrepreneurs like Paul Hoods and Hood CPAs. We’ve had Jill Donovan and Michael Levine come up. It just imparts so much wisdom and knowledge. We’ve got an incredible giveaway for one of our TV’s. Hey there Thrive Nation. One of the things that we love most about our business conferences is that we want every entrepreneur to leave with their questions answered. So what we do is we let them put the questions up on the board here so that they can ask their specific questions and Clay will not end the conference until every question is answered. Behind us Clay Clark is answering all the different questions that entrepreneurs have brought to the conference. Whenever someone comes here and starts to hear this information, especially for the first time, it just brings about so much anticipation of wanting to actually implement the proven systems and processes. And so Clay always wants to make sure that he answers all of the questions so that they’re the most set up for the best to be able to go home and start implementing. If you have any questions, email us at info at thrive timeshare.com. Hello, I’m Wes Carter. I’m one of the shareholders at Winters and King. My favorite thing that Thrive has helped me accomplish here in our firm is thinking a little bit outside the box. They do SEO, they do printing, they help us with a lot of things from the day-to-day marketing for the firm, but they also help us think of things that as attorneys we probably wouldn’t normally think of that help us market our services to our clients. One of the things I love about working with Thrive is that they make it enjoyable to actually do work with them. It’s not dry, it’s usually fun, but it’s always very enjoyable and practical. They give me things and ideas that I can put into place. It’s not just some theoretical spiel that they give me. We get practical steps that we work on together to do my job better. So me personally, I would easily recommend Thrive 15 services to my friends, my families. I’d recommend them to my clients. I think they do a good job. They’re passionate. They care about their clients. And I think it’s actually a valuable service they provide to people that are in the business world. My name is Jeff Thomas. I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia. It’s all about getting to the grindstone. It is about putting the… It’s one thing to have a specific vision or a dream, but knowledge without application isn’t knowledge at all. It’s a…that’s nothing. Clay is very upbeat and not tired, not sluggish, not complaining, not whining. They don’t have anything to do with those types of characteristics. It’s all about getting to the grind and having fun while you do it. I haven’t actually been to any conferences in the past, but what I will say from what I’ve seen on YouTube and what from other friends have told me is this isn’t like a motivational kind of thing, such as you know, hoo-hoo, rah-rah, it gets you motivated, but it’s like practical steps that if you do take them, which most people aren’t willing to do, then you will grow and you’ll achieve the specific things that you want. Well, for one thing, I will say that this isn’t necessarily for everyone, so if you’re not willing to work, this isn’t for you. But I will say that if you are willing to work and you’re just getting started, but you have actually taken a step in that direction, then this will actually help you grow further exponentially than you could ever imagine. My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers professional hockey team. Our goal every night here at the BOK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game they want to come back. Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of things that go along and a lot of businesses including ours doesn’t have a staff or a full-time, you know, videographer or graphic designer. But the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover. More sales, more attendance, more successes in business. We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been. So there’s a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there, it’s just not one person, you get the entire team. If you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, your sales people and call scripts, PR, they offer all that. that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it’s been an amazing experience for us. My name is Caitlin. I own a tumbling gym called Justice Tumbling Companies, we call them. Working with Clay is so helpful. Just being diligent with everything and making sure we execute our goals and really make things happen. It’s fun. It’s high. It really gets you energized and going. It makes you really want to work. To get the momentum going, to really just like get that buzz, to really give you the energy to get up and make it happen. I’m Bob Mealy. I’m in the charcoal grilling industry and the name of my business is Grillblazer. How will I apply what I’ve learned so far into my business? I’m actually a client of Tri15 and I learned so much from what I’m learning at this conference and my regular weekly attendance that it’s helping me establish the business and get it off the ground. Clay’s presentation style is just blatant disregard for what anybody wants. He just has fun, it’s him, everything that you see is authentically clay. It’s a great deal of fun. Everybody enjoys it. They know when you walk in, they think they’re coming into a carnival, and frankly they are. It’s just great fun. There’s not another conference like it. You just don’t go to a carnival atmosphere and learn what to do here at a dry pool. It’s great. The reason people should attend at least one of these conferences is because it’s common sense. And everybody’s said an entire line about the way you should run a business, but until you actually experience running a business, which is, candidly, what you learn here, how to run a business, you don’t know what you’re doing. My name is Tyler Hastings, and this is my wife, Rachel, and our company is Delricht Research, out of New Orleans. During our time working with Thrive, we’ve had numerous successes. When we first started, we were working with one physician. We had one research site, and we were seeing, on average, between 10 and 15 patients a week. Since working with Thrive in the last 18 months, we now have four research sites. We work with over five physicians, and on average, we’re now seeing over 60 patients per week. Recently, we’ve been the top enroller worldwide in seven studies, which is just incredible considering where we were two years ago, 18 months ago. Thrive really differs from the other conferences that we’ve been to and the other kind of programs that we’ve been through because they actually really practice what they preach. And they implement the same systems and the processes that they teach you about. And they give you real life examples that really work for them and show you with the training how to implement that yourself. For example, Tyler and I actually got the opportunity to come out to Tolstone. We were fortunate enough that the Thrive team took us out to some of the businesses that they own and we really got to see in real life, real time, some of the systems and processes and it was just incredible. A real life example of some of the businesses and the things that they’re implementing. Having a coach is important to us. They act as not only an accountability factor, but they’re someone we can talk to on a daily basis as we go through the problems of running a business that inevitably come up. They always understand what we’re going through and they’re always there to help us or guide us through the problems that we experience. The best part of our experience working with Thrive has just been seeing our relationship grow. So at each step as our business grows, they have something else to provide us with. They’ve got the resources, whether it be marketing, graphic design, website development, or even in accounting practices, maybe we need a new insurance policy. If they have someone they can connect us with or they have the direct resource we need to speak with for any of the problems we face. If someone’s thinking about signing up for the coaching program, I would highly recommend that they call in for a free 30-minute coaching session and see exactly what the team can do for you. Just speak with someone and let them know what you’re going through, and I think you’ll find that, you know, regardless of what you need, there’s someone there that can help you. Clay’s presentation style is very real and raw. Like, it just gets real down to the bone of it and the real purpose of it. There’s no, like, fluffy vagueness about it, you know? So, he really gets to the point. I’m always reminded about how important it is to be intentional and to really pay attention to how you schedule your time and really honor it because whatever gets scheduled gets done that’s what he said from Lee Koprel just constantly hearing that and getting reminded helps me to reinforce that in my own life it always helps to get an outside perspective and especially from a guy that’s grown so many multi-million dollar businesses. It doesn’t hurt. My name is Nick Guajardo. I heard about the Thrive Time Show workshop through Andy Mathren. He is my, Andy Mathren and Larry Montgomery. They’re my bosses at Restore Home Health. So I work with a home health company called Restore Home Health. And my role is pretty much to bring in business. So I was hoping to learn kind of the sales process on top of just kind of the responsibilities and help understand what it looks like on the SEO side and just kind of an all around what it looks like to own a business because that’s something I want to do in the future for sure. The atmosphere here at Thrive is high energy, great professionalism, great people. It’s a place you definitely want to visit and be at. Plays delivery style, humorous, professional, hilarious. I haven’t seen someone do it better. So he does a great job. Most valuable thing I’ve learned so far? A lot of it has been extremely valuable. But one thing that has really stuck out to me is learning the SEO stuff. I mean that is, I think, things you don’t really even think about and then you hear it and you think you know it but you don’t know it. So I feel like that was the most valuable. Well, they’re missing out on just coming down to just basic applications to be a business owner. I mean, I feel like it’s like an absolute necessity, you know, to come here and learn the ins and outs and maybe come here once or twice if they take good notes, that kind of thing. Why? To just, it’s the experience here and what you can learn, like absolutely. So, marketing and SEO seemed like something that would be very scary, but then in the way that Clay and his team described it, it became very clear and concise and something that’s very accessible to any business owner. I’ve learned a lot about marketing at this conference and a lot about business management and HR. Really, everything, the key components of anybody’s business, they’re going to give you the best tools to be successful at it. So most workshops or conferences can be really boring, really one note, or they just seem so theatrical that it’s a joke and it’s not even giving you the tools that you need or that you came there for. But here, it’s still high energy, it’s still fun, everything’s to the point, but it’s very professional and, yeah, you’re missing out on easy steps to use in your business that are very accessible and very clear. My name is Abigail McCarter. The best thing I’ve learned so far is definitely like organization, schedule wise, always keeping a to-do list, keeping your calendar organized. I’m kind of all over the place so that’s always good to know. So Clay’s presentation style and the atmosphere is electric. It’s so energetic, it’s so fun, plays hilarious, but also knows a ton, so it’s just really great all around. This conference is much different than any other conference I’ve gone to, again because it’s fun. A lot of other conferences, it’s like really quiet, really cold, and you just kind of get bored, but this one you’re like always engaged, you’re always learning something, and the staff is amazing. They’re always super helpful. So it’s just been really great. My name’s Clint Howard. We’re a personal training and fitness training facility. Oh, wow. I’m learning a ton. Like this morning so far, it’s been search engine optimization. So really just the importance of being at the top of Google, how Google works, and why it’s so important to go out and get video reviews and testimonials and getting Google reviews. And so all those things we can take back and really apply that immediately. So it’s really cool to see not only how to do it, but really the relevance and importance of it in the long-term strategy of your business. It’s amazing, actually, on the way in this morning, and yesterday, I was videoing as I was walking in the front entrance. And actually, me, I go to a lot of seminars. I go to a lot of conferences, massive ones. I’ve been doing that since I was like 22 years old, so gosh, almost 20 years now. And this is by far the most entertaining, not only the content, their content is amazing, but Clay and you guys do a great job of mixing in entertainment where it’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s lively. You never get bored. I heard a study one time that the reason that children learn so much quicker is because it’s fun, learning is fun, and so obviously play is nailed that, where it’s very fun to be here and keeps you awake, keeps you energized, so I’m having a blast. Yeah, I think any business owner or someone that wants to own a business or considering owning and starting a business should definitely come. I know that I was referred here by friends of mine and clients of mine, and I’ve referred other people. Again, just to understand what it takes to make a business successful, to have a good time, obviously, you’re not going to stay and have fun. And that works. There’s a lot of people here you can learn from, and there’s a lot of breaks you can talk to other people. So I think this is a must-attend, greedy, valued, and awesome business. I’m more than willing to start this. My name’s Jamie Fagel. I’m with Jameson Fine Cabinetry. I heard about the conference through Andrew. He’s the coach that I deal with here at The Thrive. The most valuable piece I found even working with Andrew, but it’s been solidified when it came here, was you got to actually do the things that they’re telling you. With no action, you’re not going to get anything from it. I would highly recommend this to almost anybody in business today. I have recommended it to some of my other business partners. It’s phenomenal. It’s really something that if you want to start a business, the old way of doing things is gone. This is what you gotta do. It’s the only way it’ll work. Hey, this is Charles and Amber Kola. We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. The way we’re able to do that is working with Clay for the last three years, he has really readjusted our thinking and taught us that our business is here to serve us. And by doing that, we’re able to live the lifestyle we want and take off on a random vacation last minute. We had totally planned on being at the conference so wish we could be there to meet all of you. We know you’re having a great time. Yes, Clay in the last three years has helped us build all the necessary systems, checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks, audits that are always running and the right capable lieutenants to keep track of all that so that you too can get time freedom, financial freedom. And that’s what we have done. And Clay has helped us do, we’ve got multiple companies in multiple States and they’re all doing very well getting ready to go to more locations in this next year. And Co-op Fitness has a really big future. We’re teaming up with a couple other groups and we should scale the company here shortly. Hopefully we’ll open like 50 locations in the next 10 years. So, but yeah, we’re on the way. We’re going to probably more than double our company, maybe triple our company in the next eight to nine months and it’s just awesome. God is working in our business and we’re making Jesus and changing lives. We’re a strong Christian company that focuses on making Jesus famous and changing lives in the fitness field and this is Charles and Amber Koloff. Thank you Thrive. Hit your action items. We love you guys. We wish we were there. You guys have a wonderful day. Bye-bye. My name is Jennifer Johnson. I’m in the pest control industry and also weed control and fertilization. And my business is Platinum Pest and Lawn. Some of the things that, I’ll be able to apply a lot of the things that I’ve learned in our business because this is not my first conference. And so a lot of the things that we learned, we’ve put into place. And now we’re doing the next level of refining the processes for just a different concept. And so it’s getting better and better. Things that were just big processes before, we have the foundation laid, and now we’re able to make it better and better. And I’m hearing different things now that we’ve implemented things, and so we can just make it even better, implement it in our own business. The presentation and the atmosphere is very exciting and fun. It keeps you awake. It makes it interesting. You have a lot of information, but if it’s not going to be entertaining, your brain is going to tune it out. But play makes it just entertaining enough that you retain what you learn. Lots of rhyming and catchy things so that you remember stuff. What makes this conference different than other workshops or conferences that I’ve been to is that there’s a lot of people here in my same situation. We’re all, most of us are pretty small businesses wanting to improve. And we want real life information and something that will work and that’s attainable. And not just some crazy magic formula, but actual action items that we can implement in our business and actually see a difference. Everyone should attend a drive type business conference, whether you’re a business owner or not. A, if you’re a business owner, it has practical applications that you can apply to so many different parts of your business. And then you need to come back for more, so that you can keep doing more of the wonderful things that you learn. But secondly, I am also a mom of three kids, and a lot of the concepts can actually be applied to home. So I’ve been able to improve our business, but I’ve also been able to improve things at home. And so that’s why everyone should come, no matter what your station is in life. My name is Nolan Kew. I’m originally from San Francisco, California. The industry that I’m in is financial services. I’ve learned a ton so far, but what I could best apply from this conference is the opportunity, that hunger to go out there and make a big difference in my district. Blaise’s presentation style is amazing. He’s got an endless amount of energy. It’s contagious. And yeah, by being here, I really do want to go back and be able to face all the adversity that the industry has. Yeah, this conference, the thing that makes it different is that it’s special because it has a unique set of individuals that all share that same energy. I think you typed it as dragon energy, but yeah, that’s what we do. Everyone should come to a multiple, but their first would be very special. Yeah, you’re welcome with a lot of enthusiasm. That’ll last for a long time. My name is Gabriella Cruz. Our business is HTS Electric. My husband’s the owner, but I’m involved with that, so we’re a electric company. Well, here at the conference, they talk a lot about consistency, and so just staying consistent with different things in the business, and I feel like applying that to our business model will really help us grow. The atmosphere is very positive, uplifting, and it’s very fun and energetic, and so it gets you really excited. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. uplifting and it’s very fun and energetic. And so it gets you pumped and it gets you excited and it encourages you to do big things. I probably how real they are. They tell you up front what you need to do and what’s like a no-go. And some conferences are, they kind of trigger code things. So I like how real they are here. I think it’ll definitely, if you want your business to grow, I think this will be a great experience and then not only that, it’ll encourage you and inform you on so many things you don’t think about on a daily basis. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards, it’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stare at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super… it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak, you know. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So, you’re missing the thought process of someone who’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So, not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches. Getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they upsold… where it was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference. Now I want to like bang my head into a wall. And she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry. So, glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. It’s, the information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to leave with is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live. Here’s the house. This is our old neighborhood. See? This is nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I wanna tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours, where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system of critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. Anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns, because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that. And of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing. And I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s gonna help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day, and literally the rest of the time he’s working. And he can outwork everybody in the room every single day. And he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you, Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys. Bye bye. Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over 800 million dollars in real estate. So honestly I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800 million in sales over a 15 year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of sales people for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. We’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area and that was without Clay. When I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with Clay. I mean the thing is it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us and I know if you give them a shot I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me the thing I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, and my three kids started school, and they were in school full time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing I knew that I Did not have what I needed to make that what it should be so I reached out to clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental and Helping us build our brand Help market our business our agents the homes that we represent everything that we do Is a direct line from clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due, and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started the business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school, I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the way. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Michael LeVine, writer of many many PR books, a man who represents people like Michael Jackson, Robert Streisand, George Bush, and he is standing behind me speaking to people here at our conference talking about branding. One of the greatest branding experts alive today is here at our conference talking to entrepreneurs. We just wrapped up day one, it was incredible. We had some some remarkable speakers, Michael Levine. We just finished with a lady named Jill Donovan, who owns a company called Rustic Cuff, talking about the power of the Dream 100. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow holds. 5,000 dollars, that’s a great deal! Day 2! That’s right, Luke’s birthday! Come over here! Hey guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Time Show here with you. It is day 2 and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for day 2. Follow me! I’ll tell you what, people are so excited to be here for day two. It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, you go, what is that? What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break, and what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes. Then we take approximately a 15-minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them, bathroom break, and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun, melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have. We are outside, you can see a line behind me. What’s going on is that we partner with different companies to help them implement the proven systems over and over and over again, and one of those companies is Master Machine. And so what we like to do is partner with these companies to also help them give samples to other people as they come to the conference and truly get their name out. I just wanted to recap some of the amazing things that have happened today. We’ve had entrepreneurs like Paul Hood with Hood CPAs. We’ve had Jill Donovan and Michael Levine come up. It just imparts so much wisdom and knowledge. We’ve got an incredible giveaway for one of our TV’s. Hey there Thrive Nation. One of the things that we love most about our business conferences is that we want every entrepreneur to leave with their questions answered. So what we do is we let them put the questions up on the board here so that they can ask their specific questions and Clay will not end the conference until every question is answered. Why does Clay Kilar need to be answering all the different questions that entrepreneurs brought to the conference? Whenever someone comes here and starts to hear this information, especially for the first time, it just brings about so much anticipation of wanting to actually implement the proven systems and processes. And so, Clay always wants to make sure that he answers all of those questions so that they are the most set up person to be able to go home and start implementing. If you have any questions, email us at info at thrivetimeshare.com We have come to the end of the 2019 Christmas Conference. It was incredible. These entrepreneurs have gotten so many tangible things that they can go and they can implement. Check us out for more information at thrivetimeshow.com. And as we always like to do, we want to end with a boom. 3, 2, 1, boom. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored, you’re awake, alive the whole time. It’s not pushy, they don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay. And I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you gotta go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you wanna go. He actually gives you the roadmap out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do, and he gave me the road map out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want. They guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do this. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition’s going to come eventually or try to pick up his tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. If you decide to not attend the ThriveCon workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The Atmosphere plays office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door, and it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment, I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. ♪ The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews, and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.