John Lee Dumas: Entrepreneur on Fire, 766, who’s ready to rock today, Fire Nation? John Lee Dumas here. And I am fired up to bring you our featured guest today, Clay Clark. Clay, are you prepared to ignite?

Clay: I am prepared to ignite.

John Lee Dumas: Yes!

Clay: I’m almost worried.

John Lee Dumas: Clay’s life thus far has been nothing short of epic. He started his first business out of his Oral Roberts’ University College dorm room at the age of 18. He was named the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year at age 20, and the Small Business Administration named in Oklahoma’s Entrepreneur of the Year at age 27. Clay, I’ve given Fire Nation just a little insight. So, share more about you personally, then expand upon the biz.

Clay: Well, in a nutshell I’m a father of five, and I grew up with very limited financial resources, and I had this big goal to hire my dad someday. And so, I hired my dad, and then I said, I basically built a company called DJ Connection, and we did about 4,000 weddings and receptions, if you can imagine that, every year, 4,000 parties and corporate events. And that business did really well; and I sold that company and then I got involved in dentistry, and orthodontics and neurology, and all different, a lot of medical things.

And then I started working as a consultant in different industries. And so, today basically I’m a consultant and I travel around the country helping people grow their businesses when they feel stuck and they need to build a scalable and duplicable business model with very specific processes to help them grow on a daily basis.

John Lee Dumas: Well, Clay, I love your energy, I love your passion for you do, I love the fact that you’re a father of five, and you know, we’re gonna dive into your journey specifically in a minute here. But before we do all that jazz, Clay, we always start with a success quote. And why specifically you chose it.

Clay: Well, my success quote that I tell all my clients, and I try to live by, is “GOAT plus BOOM equals POD.” And I know on the outset that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but GOAT stands for Greatest of All Time, plus BOOM, stands for Big Overwhelming Optimistic Momentum equals your Possibilities, Options and Dreams. And so, I always tell people, “If you find yourself stuck in your business, find somebody who’s the greatest of all time in that business, or one of the greats, and study them, because goats can climb mountains easily and they’re able to – they’ve already been to the top.

So find the greatest of all-time, study a mountain goat, and then you gotta bring the boom. You gotta bring that Big Overwhelming Optimistic Momentum,” that kind of passion that you bring on your show every time, “You have to bring that or nothing will happen. And if you do all of that, then you can start to achieve your big possibilities and have more options, and really start to achieve your dreams.” And that’s how I tell clients to do it.

John Lee Dumas: GOAT plus BOOM equals POD, Fire Nation. I love that, Clay. So, let’s now kind of shift a little bit, Clay. Because what we do here at Fire Nation’s a little unique, because we really focus on the stories. You know, right now people are like, “Wow, Clay, like he was entrepreneur of the year at age 20.” You know, “Oklahoma’s entrepreneur of the year at age 27,” you know, “He’s starting businesses at age 18, like this guy’s a rock star.” And there’s a little bit of a chasm that happens sometimes, when you know listeners, you know, hear someone like yourself, Clay, who just seems to have been on fire, literally for your whole life.

But you know we have our ups, we have our downs. And I want to talk now about one of your downs, a failure, a story, Clay, of a time that you failed. Take us to that moment. What happened?

Clay: Well, what happened was I was dating a girl who I tricked into marrying me, and so we’ve been married now for 13 years, but she was a really attractive cheerleader, and I kind of got one of my roommates to convince her that I was dating material. You know, so he kind of did the whole referral move. But I was dating her, and my roommate, who I’d been friends with since I was a little kid; he just died in a car accident. And I also got kicked out of college at the same time.

So, I’m getting kicked out of college, I’m trying to get married, you know, I got all these things that are going on. My best friend just passed away. This all happened within like a two and a half month period of time. And so, I found myself living in an apartment in Oklahoma without air conditioning. So, without exaggeration, it was probably 95 degrees, and I’m on the second story of a two-story apartment complex that was in a pretty, not rough area, but just wasn’t you know the nicest. And I basically had to figure out a way how to live off my fiancé’s meal plan.

So, she brought me bagels, and I ate 96 cents chicken Panini in the Budget Gourmet, which is an oxymoron. But the Budget Gourmet section of the Walmart. So, heavy sodium intake there. And I just struggled. And I really didn’t know what to do, I hadn’t found a GOAT in my life yet, I didn’t really have any big mentors, and I really struggled for a while there.

John Lee Dumas: Now, one thing that I really want to drill in on here, Clay, is what you just ended there with. You didn’t have any mentors, and this comes up time and time again when we start talking about my past guests’ successes and their Aha moments is because they were able to find that right mentor who was able to guide them in the right direction, and just do really powerful things. You know, my launch into outer space, Clay, came directly from my mentor that I locked in day one. And it’s just so important, so critical.

You know, that’s what I’m really taking out, you know, of your struggle stories is that, you know, that was one thing that you were really lacking in life. And so, can you speak to that?

Clay: Yeah. Well, what happened was is I realized that I was not going to get ahead if I didn’t take a different path up the moment so to speak. So, I was looking for my GOAT. I was looking for a guy who had been there. And I reached out to a guy by the name of Clifton Taulbert. And for any of you listeners who want to Google the guy, his name is Clifton Taulbert, T-A-U-L-B-E-R-T. And Clifton was one of the guys who launched the Stairmaster.

John Lee Dumas: Oh, wow.

Clay: But what makes his life really impressive is he always tells people he’s been black his entire life, but basically he’s an African-American guy, who’s – we’re not really sure how old he is, he’s around that Yoda age, but Clifton basically could not go into banks during the time that he was raised in Glen Alan, Mississippi, because if you can believe it or not Segregation was still legal. And today he actually owns a bank.

So, for him, I thought, “Man, this is a guy whose life was made into a major motion picture called Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, he’s a best-selling author, he launched the Stairmaster, he wasn’t allowed to go into banks, but now he owns a bank. Surely, he can teach me how to get out of this rut.” And he systematically taught me what to do and what not to do, and sort of served as my Yoda. And sometimes he would talk in kind of riddles and quotables, and I’d just – I was having a hard time kind of grasping what he was saying.

But the profundity of what he said changed my life, it really gave me a map on how to get from point A to point B.

John Lee Dumas: So, Clay, one thing that I like to say Fire Nation is, you know, my listeners, my lovely Fire Nation, “When you’re looking for that mentor, you need to find people in your industry, in your niche, where you want to find people where they are right now is where you want to be.” And those are the right people that can you the skillsets, that can open up the connections and the doors, and build those relationships for you as you go forward. That’s exactly what my mentor Jaime Tardy did. She was a successful podcaster, so she had the inroads for me to follow in her footsteps to avoid her mistakes, and leverage her connections to become a successful podcaster.

So, without stealing that, Clay, what’s another way that people who are listening right now can get out there and find the right mentor for them?

Clay: Well, one of the things that we’re working on, and I don’t want to advertise this too much, but our website that we’re building, the Thrive 15-dot-com, we travel all around the world and we interview millionaires and every-day-success-stories, so they can kind of be like a virtual mentor for people. But if you didn’t have that or you didn’t like that, or you didn’t want to do that, what I honestly did in my career is I made a big list of people who are very successful. I tried to make a list of about, you know, 10-15 people on my list, and I literally cold-called them, I dialed and smiled, until I called them all.

I basically called them until they cried, buy or die. And I tried to set an appointment up with somebody who’s had admiral amounts of success. So, one of them would be David Greene, the guy who launched Hobby Lobby.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah.

Clay: And he’s a, you know, his company produces billions of dollars, and regardless of what people think about his politics, he’s built success from nothing. And when I sat down with him, or I sat down with George Foreman, or David Robinson or some of these bigger named people, each one of them has – they’ve already gone through the struggles. And so, we just have to be diligent enough in my mind to fail enough to put enough mentors on that list, and I would literally call them, email them, and I would just keep harassing them until they would say yes or no.

And when I got them on the phone I would say this – I would say, “Hey, I realize that such and such is super busy, but I would be happy to donate $500.00 to their favorite charity for 10 minutes of their time. It would just mean the world to me.” You know? And I would sit down with them, and I would sit down with my list of questions, and I found that most of the time they were very generous with their time once they knew that I was serious, and they would sit there and answer questions that I had been struggling with for months or years lot of times.

John Lee Dumas: So, there’s a lot that I want to pull out of there, Fire Nation. Number one, I love that you brought up George Foreman. I mean, that guy, you know, I only knew him as kind of a boxer, and then the guy, the Foreman Grill, but he was recently interviewed on Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad radio podcast. And that interview, Clay, was unbelievable. To hear the words coming out of his mouth, and to hear his journey, and to hear how he got to where he is, that is a must-listen, Fire Nation. You need to check out the George Foreman interview. I would love to get him on this show at some point.

And what I love about your point, Clay, is that listen, I mean, Fire Nation, reach out to people. Even if you are 99.9 percent positive they’re going to say, “No,” guess what? They might be able to give you some amazing suggestions about who would be available to mentor that they know, because of what you’re sharing with them that would be a great mentor fit. I do this all the time. I no longer do a one -on-one mentorship, but when people reach out to me to be a mentor to them, I have to say, “Unfortunately, no, but here’s a list of two or three people that would love to have a 15 minute chat to see if they’d be the right for you and vice versa.”

And that gets off and rolling in the right direction. So, great points, Clay. And let’s shift now; let’s do a little transition to the other end of the spectrum, which is an Aha moment, a light bulb that’s gone off at some point in your journey. And I mean, Clay, you’re a sparkplug, my friend, I mean, you have light bulb moments every day. But I want you to break it down into one story; one light bulb moment that you think will really impact our listener. So, tell us that story, and then walk us through the steps you took to turn it into success.

Clay: Well, one of the bosses I had –it was a time in my life that I was practicing what I call the dark art of jacket. I was just not being very diligent, I was not working very hard, and I worked at a call center where we made largely commission. And my boss, Jeremy Thorn, he pulled me aside and said, “Listen, you got a lot of energy, you got a lot of passion, but it’s not guided, it’s not directed. And you could work here for 10 years and never make any money, or you could make a lot of money quickly, but you need to focus your energy, man.

So, you have to read this book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.”

John Lee Dumas: Napoleon Hill.

Clay: And I said, “Think and Grow what?” He says, “Think and Grow Rich, you have to read this book.” And I just thought it was a stupid title, probably an old, obscure book. Well, as I’ve traveled around the world, I’ve discovered that it seems like more millionaires have read that book than any other book. But I’m reading it, and it talks about the power of the master mind, and how you have to surround yourself with people who you can engage in a mutually beneficial and sustainable relationship with. It talks about your definite chief purpose, and this little concept called “over-deliver.”

And that was my Aha, “over-deliver.” The idea that you should try to exceed the expectations of each and every person that you come in contact with, not for their benefit, actually, but for you. I mean, the most the selfish thing that you could do is to wow every single customer. Because they can’t keep themselves, because of the Law of Reciprocity, just like the Law of Gravity, it has to happen. It’s a law, the Law of Reciprocity it will ignite in them the feeling that they should repay you in some way.

So, it’s bizarre. I started realizing, I used to have this little DJ company, and I realized if I promised the bride I would DJ from 4:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m., or from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., I’m gonna stay an extra two hours late, I’m gonna give them a copy of all their favorite songs we played, and I’m gonna send them a gift certificate after the wedding, because I’m selfish, and I know if I wow them, they can’t keep from telling their friends.

John Lee Dumas: Oh, wow. Over-delivering, Fire Nation. It’s something that so few people do, and that Law of Reciprocity, Clay, is so, so critical. I mean, it’s things that we’re working on Entrepreneur On Fire, in every way, shape, and form, you know, before when people would join Podcaster’s Paradise, you know, they would join our community, which is you know how to create, grow, and monetize your podcast, they get a nice, little welcome email. And then it’d be up to them to go in and enjoy the amazing tutorials, and the Facebook group and whatever it is.

But, you know, where’s the over-delivering there? You know, where’s the wow? And that’s one thing I love talking about, Clay, is how long does it take your clients to get to wow. And so now we’ve implemented a number of things about over-delivering. Now, people get a personalized video from me thanking them for joining, and coming on in. They get the opportunity to sign up for a one-to-two minute phone call with me. It’s just a quick chat, just me saying, “hello,” I mean, there’s a lot of people that join, I can’t have these long conversations.

But I want to just say, “hi,” and just thank them in person. And then we send out a nice welcome card and a brownie, and just say, “Hey, you guys are amazing, thank you for joining. Have this brownie in paradise for us. You know, hopefully you can still fit in your bikini or bathing suit afterwards,” you know, just like a little bit of a joke. And that’s what it’s all about is over-delivering. And I love the fact, Clay; you use the word “focus,” my favorite word, my acronym Follow One Course Until Success.

And, Clay, a quick side note, you love Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, have you read or listened to the book Outwitting the Devil by the same author?

Clay: Yes. And I named my son after Napoleon Hill, just so you know. My son is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. And I actually got a chance to meet the director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation a while back, because he had heard of that story, but I am 100 percent a believer, and Outwitting the Devil to me was such a powerful book, because we all tend to drift if we’re not focused as you said. And I 100 percent agree with what you just said about the importance of focus.

John Lee Dumas: Love it, Clay. And I love the stories that you tell, my friend. So, tell us another one, and this one’s gonna be a moment in time, your proudest entrepreneurial moment.

Clay: Recently when we were building our online website, Thrive 15, I was sitting down with a guy by the name of Dr. Zelner, and I had asked Dr. Zelner – you know, we’ve put millions of dollars into this site, and we, you know, invested – my wife and I have invested in the business as well as our partners, and when he said that he was willing to take the job as the CEO of the business, so that I could focus on the operations, to me that was like the big thing, because I’d always been chasing him as a mentor and trying to pick his brain.

And Dr. Zelner, just so you’ll get an idea, and your listeners get an idea, Luxottica is the company that sells glasses frames, they’re the ones who basically make the frames that, you know, 80 percent of glasses – people who wear eyeglasses, they make those. He is the top Luxottica optometrist, the top-selling Luxottica optometrist in the country. And he has one of the top auto-auctions in the country and he has one of the top sleep centers in the country, and the top chiropractic businesses in the country, very successful guy.

And so for him to say, “I want that job, I want to team up with you, I love your idea, I’m gonna do it,” to me I mean I literally cried when it happened. And this was just like, you know, I’d say eight weeks ago. So, I mean, I think we have those – I think it’s people like yourself that are purposing big goals, and your listeners, anybody listening to this if you’re focused, and you’re following that one course until success, if you’re doing that, you should have those in my mind pretty regularly. You know, every couple of months you should have one of those moments where you have to pinch yourself and go, “Man, this is awesome.”

John Lee Dumas: I absolutely love that. And, you know, Clay, speaking of pinching yourself, I mean, you’ve been delivering so much value, and you know, I actually kind of love to say this is that, Fire Nation, when you create something amazing, it’s actually your obligation to share it with the world. It’s your obligation to really talk about this thing that you’re doing that could change lives, that could change people’s ways of thinking, that can improve lives.

So, Clay, let’s bring things to present times, and let’s talk about Thrive 15. What is the one or two things that you have going on within Thrive 15 that just is really firing you up?

Clay: Well, the thing about Thrive 15 that’s interesting, is that if you want to go to business college, business college takes a ton of money and a ton of time. But I bet you 90 percent of the people listening to this have very little time, because if you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, you’re focused but you’re going. I mean, you got a lot of stuff to do. And a lot of entrepreneurs have very little money. And so we created Thrive so that anybody listening to this right now, anybody on the planet who is a member of the military, retired, active, reserve, it’s free for you.

Thrive is free for you and your spouse, you just go to Thrive 15-dot-com, and you click there and we teamed with the Chamber, so it’s free, it’s just free for military. And for anybody else, it’s in Beta, so it’s $2.00 a month, but it is fun because David Robinson, a guy who I grew up cheering for.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah.

Clay: An NBA Hall of Famer.

John Lee Dumas: The Admiral.

Clay: David called, he’s now on the team; he’s excited about the military stuff. He teaches leadership up there. A lot of people don’t know, he’s built a $300 million business since retiring from the NBA.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah.

Clay: And, you know, so David, and Lee Cockerell, the guy who managed 43,000 employees as the head of Walt Disney World, he’s teaching management. I mean, these are in-depth course that you would normally have to pay $90,000 a year if you wanted to go to Warden, or $60,000 at Stanford, you can get it for $50 bucks a month, and you can cancel whenever you want. And so, Mike Posner, who writes songs for Justin Bieber and Labyrinth and Snoop Dogg, he’s teaching up on how to do social media marketing.

And then we just got a call yesterday from Michael Levine, and he actually was the publicist for you know P Diddy and Michael Jackson, and all these big people – you know one of the top publicists in the country, and he wants to be on the program. So, this big momentum is happening, and then when I’m talking to the Thrivers, the people who are actually on the site, we have couples who are now telling me they’re turning off TV entirely and they’re listening to programs like yours, and Thrive.

And that’s all they’re doing, they’re basically going, “Hey, the world has such a negative bias and there are so few people who are achieving success –”

John Lee Dumas: That’s so true.

Clay: “The really you know what I’m gonna do, instead of watching the news, I’m gonna log on and watch my courses diligently for 15 minutes a day at Thrive 15-dot-com,” and we tell them, we say, “You need to listen to podcast whether it’s yours” or we just tell them, “You need to – if you’re gonna be successful, so few people are successful, that we really have to have a success bias, and crowd out all the negativity around us and all the doubters, and all the nonbelievers with infinite amounts of positivity, and turn your drive-time into your learning time.”

John Lee Dumas: Yes.

Clay: That’s why I’m so excited about what you’re doing, my friend. I mean, you guys, the energy you bring and the passion, that’s powerful, but the depth of what you’re doing is powerful, too. And that’s really what we’re excited about is seeing people change their lives.

John Lee Dumas: You know, I love that. You know, making your car your learning university. I believe it was Zig Ziglar who said that, and it’s just so true and so powerful. And, you know, I want to thank you, Clay for first off your kind words about Entrepreneur on Fire, thank you for that, but you know, number two, you know, for what you’re doing for the military as well. You know, I am officer, I spent eight years as an army officer, did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq.

So, you know military veterans and the military in general will always be very near and dear to my heart. So, you know, like David Robinson, like I really commend you for doing that. And real quick, just you know the Thrive 15. So, the 15 part of it, that is for a 15 minutes of focused attention per day, is that kind of what the whole premise is?

Clay: Well, as we’ve studied you know – I’ve studied these millionaires and success stories for the better part of the last 15 years, I’ve noticed that all of them take at least 15 minutes a day of focused devoted attention to focus on self-improvement. And so, at Thrive we broken up complicated courses like Search Engine Optimization, or how to do a merit-based pay program, or how to set up an employee stock ownership program, we help the business do that. You can go on there and learn those things in 15 minute bytes, and every five minutes it interrupts the listener, it asks them a question or the viewer, it asks them a question, if they get it right, they get points, instead of grades.

And whoever gets the most points, they can win a minimum of $15,000.00 to grow their business, that’s given away every six months.

John Lee Dumas: Wow.

Clay: So, you’re kind of learning. And this month we’re giving away $30,000.00 actually on December 1st, because that’s how much the – it’s kind of an amount that goes up all the time based on the number of people on the site. And so this month it’s actually a $30,000.00 prize.

John Lee Dumas: Wow. So, Clay, a lot of exciting things going on at Thrive 15, Fire Nation. It behooves you to check things like this out. I mean, specifically, working on your own self-improvement 15 minutes a day, it’s that slight edge that Jeff Olsen writes so eloquently about. It’s the compound effect that Daren Hardy writes so eloquently about. These are the small things that you’re doing every single day that are gonna result in massive results down that road. And you know, Clay, what I’d love to say is, “What’s easy to do is easy – is also easy not to do.” And so the sad thing is most people choose not to do it, because it’s easy not to do it.

But guess what? It’s also easy to watch 15 minutes of Thrive 15 a day. And those people that take that easy route to do it, those results that you’ll see could literally be phenomenal. And, Clay, we are about to enter the lightning round. But before we do, let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors.

Clay, welcome to the lightning round, where you get to share incredible resources in mind-blowing answers. That sound like a plan?

Clay: Boom.

John Lee Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Clay: I think it was not having enough faith in myself and not knowing specifically what to do.

John Lee Dumas: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Clay: Rich people have big libraries, poor people have big TVs.

John Lee Dumas: Share one of your personal habits that you believe contributes to your success.

Clay: I spend three hours a day every single day mapping out my day before I see another human.

John Lee Dumas: Do you have an internet resource like an Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Clay: I’m a big Google Doc guy; I love to have a to-do list for all the members of my staff. And I follow-up with all 50 of them through a delegation system that I use on Google Docs.

John Lee Dumas: Love it. If you could recommend just one book for our listeners, Clay, what would it be?

Clay: Think and Grow Rich, and if you are still motivated, read my book Thrive.

John Lee Dumas: Love it. Well, Fire Nation, I know that you love audio, so if you haven’t already you can get an amazing audio book like this one for free at E-O Fire Book-dot-com, that’s E-O Fire Book-dot-com. And, Clay, this next question’s the last of the lightning round, but it’s a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to earth but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have, your food and shelter, taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Clay: I would do three things. First off, I would go out and buy some nice clothing. Now, in San Diego you don’t have to wear a tie, maybe in Tulsa you have to wear a tie, but I would look sharp, dressed how I’d want to be addressed, so people think that I’m not homeless, or at least I can trick them. So, that people would have a high first-impression of me. The second is I would then cold-call a GOAT, a Greatest of All-Time, try to find a mentor, who can guide me, and I would tell them my plight.

And third, is I would go to Thrive 15-dot-com, I would put in my promo code, E-O-F, so I can check out Thrive for 30 days, learn as much as I can, and then realize I’m out of money, but hopefully at that point I’d know enough that I can cancel and move on.

John Lee Dumas: Wow. I mean, Clay, I love how you deliver, my friend. And Fire Nation, I hope you caught that at the end there. If you go to Thrive 15-dot-com and use promo code E-O-F, boom, 30 days for free. And, Clay, let’s end today literally on fire with you sharing just one parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Clay: The piece of guidance I would have for anybody is I would encourage you to wake up every day and contrast where you are versus where you want to be, and write down three proactive steps that you can take each day to get there. If you just do that every day for the rest of your life, you’ll have a happy life and probably a happy wife, too. And then if you want to learn more about me, you can go to Thrive 15-dot-com, and you can check us out there, and you can find us online, and if you want to send some massive quantities of complaints to me you can also email those to Info at Thrive 15-dot-com, and they’ll get to me.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you have been hanging out with Clay and myself today. So, keep up the heat, and head over to E-O Fire-dot-com. And just type Clay in the search bar, his show notes page will pop right up. Again, with his book recommendation, resource and of course so much more. Fire Nation, don’t forget, Thrive 15-dot-com, promo code E-O-F. Check it out for 30 days; it is literally risk-free. And, Clay, thank you for sharing your journey.