Forbes | Zack O’Malley Greenburg | Senior Editor at Forbes Shares the Real Story Behind Jay Z’s $300 Per Bottle Armand de Brignac Brand and the $60 Per Bottle Antique Gold (Featuring Clay Clark Client & Attorney Wes Carter)

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 54)
Forbes senior editor with one of the coolest names ever, Zach O’Malley Greenberg is here.

(Speaker 53)
I love that.

(Speaker 2)
I’ve written Forbes covers on Kanye West, Katy Perry, Ashton Kutcher, Kendrick Lamar, Marshmello, you name it. I’m Zach O’Malley Greenberg. I’m a senior editor at Forbes. I’ve also written for New York Times, Washington Post. Billboard, Vibe, Sports Illustrated, Library of Congress, you name it. My real passion, I’d say, is writing books.

(Speaker 2)
I’ve written several books. The latest one is called A -List Angels, How a Band of Actors, Artists, and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley. You know, I think when I speak, people in the audience maybe at first think, what could I possibly learn from, you know, Diddy? He’s a famous, you know, near billionaire. How could I possibly take something that he’s done and apply it to my own life? But, you know, it may seem that who they are, what they do is kind of inaccessible to the average person.

(Speaker 2)
The reality is that somebody like Diddy got to where he is because he does the little things. I think being in a room with somebody like a Kanye West or a Katy Perry, you know, you just want to take notes. You dig in, you look for the truth. And a lot of times, you know, the truth is not so sexy. But with a lot of entrepreneurs, there is that kind of messy middle of their careers from in between the ideas and the final execution when the entrepreneur is looking around and encountering obstacles and overcoming them.

(Speaker 2)
For example, in my Jay -Z book, some of the best parts of it, the most valuable parts of it for aspiring entrepreneurs are how he encountered and overcame those obstacles as opposed to what he did once he was already a billionaire. Once you’re a billionaire, it gets easier. But how can you respond to the challenges that are thrown in your way to get to that point. My speaking style is very conversational. I’m telling stories, right? I want to, just like with my writing, put the audience there with me in whatever it was that I was doing so that they can be there to absorb the same lessons.

(Speaker 2)
Whether it’s books or giving speeches, I think you should be proud of everything you do. And to me, again, it goes back to the story. Are you telling an engaging story and making people smile? Are you providing value? Are you teaching them something? And is everybody having a good time?

(Speaker 2)
That’s how it should be. I think if I’m an event planner and I look at Zach O’Malley Greenberg, I think here’s a guy who is not going to disappoint me. He’s not going to make me look bad. He’s going to come here and he’s going to translate from these people who he’s interviewed, from these people he’s written stories about and books about, into actionable items for my audience. If you want to learn more about me, potentially book me for an event, check out ZogSpeaking .

(Speaker 33)
com.

(Speaker 2)
If you fill out the form, you will get some of the rarest pieces of the Zog Archive that I can promise you.

(Speaker 3)
Obsessed with this car as a child.

(Speaker 18)
Is there any shoe that that Countach is kind of represented in?

(Speaker 3)
There’s a little bit of Lamborghini in everything I do.

(Speaker 1)
On today’s show, we interview the Forbes senior editor, Zach O’Malley Greenberg, on how Kanye West created the Yeezy brand, what it’s like to interview Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and other super successful entertainers. On today’s show, Zach O’Malley Greenberg shares his path from the campus of Yale to becoming a senior editor at Forbes.

(Speaker 12)
Ready to enter the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
Yes and no. Yes, Dr. Z, my friend, what do we commonly refer to as our business Bible? What do we always say?

(Speaker 7)
We always quote Forbes. Forbes is our business Bible.

(Speaker 11)
That’s what we do.

(Speaker 7)
If it’s in Forbes, book it. Book it, Dan -o.

(Speaker 1)
That’s Oklahoma Man Law 1 .273. always I mean every entrepreneur I mean that if that’s on their bucket list to be on the cover of Forbes I mean and I don’t you know I could be on the cover of Forbes and one of those little bitty like inserts at the corner that’s all you need like this just in you know Clay and Clay and Robert boom they’re boomtastic they’re you know boomerific well this guy uh writes Forbes cover stories so I’m looking at the website it’s zoegreenberg . com and Ken if we could put the camera on it z -o -g -r -e -e -n -b -u -r -g Zo Greenberg you can see here This man is done. the article with Katy Perry, the cover story. Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber just did a sit -down interview with Kanye West. Zach O’Malley Greenberg, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you?

(Speaker 17)
All right, good to be here.

(Speaker 1)
I am so glad you came to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit us, my friend. Have you been overwhelmed, underwhelmed so far? What’s going on as you’re processing all things Tulsa, Oklahoma?

(Speaker 2)
I’ve been very pleasantly whelmed. Well, overwhelmed feels like a bad thing sometimes. You don’t want to be overwhelmed. You want to be underwhelmed. You want to be like pleasantly whelmed.

(Speaker 7)
Well, that’s well said.

(Speaker 1)
I give you a mega point.

(Speaker 7)
OK.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, he does get a mega point for that. Now, you how would you describe what you do for Forbes now?

(Speaker 23)
I think a lot of people don’t know when they hear the phrase senior editor.

(Speaker 25)
What does that mean?

(Speaker 2)
Sure. It means a lot of stuff. And not all of it is editing. For me, the kind of bread and butter of it all, for me at Forbes over the past decade, has been doing these big stories on the biggest figures in media entertainment, particularly music and particularly hip hop, which is kind of my passion over there. So dating back to the very beginning of my time at Forbes, the way I got into it was an editor walked into my cubicle. And this is, you know, 2007.

(Speaker 2)
I just started. She said, hey, you’re under 30. Do you like hip hop? I said, I love hip hop. She said, great. We’re going to put together the first ever list of the top earning rappers in the world.

(Speaker 2)
And let’s go do it. So I did it. We put it out. Jay -Z, Diddy, 50 Cent were in the top three in that order, I believe.

(Speaker 38)
And they were so excited to be recognized by Forbes that they made a song called I Get Money, the Forbes Billion Dollar Remix.

(Speaker 2)
Forbes, one, two, three. Yeah, and then we were off to the races so that editor came back and she said you should make this your thing and

(Speaker 1)
she left got her contacts Started kind of growing this this part of the coverage and kind of brought it up to, you know, all the way through the rest of media and entertainment and music and started writing books on the side.

(Speaker 2)
Previous to working at Forbes, what were you doing before that? I was in college at Yale.

(Speaker 1)
I was writing for the Yale Daily News, not really about rappers, unfortunately.

(Speaker 48)
Did you, did you enjoy your time at Yale?

(Speaker 2)
I did.

(Speaker 1)
You know, I got to say, college newspapers, you know, a lot of times have the kind of the the setup and the resources you know um that a lot of major publications um you know don’t don’t these days especially in smaller towns you know to actually have all these different desks editors people working i mean part of it is that we’re all working for free 40 hours a week so of course you know you can make it work and not have to charge for subscriptions but um but it really was you know a truly functioning news organization um on a you know on a small scale that had a pretty big footprint and you know i got to kind of like kind of grow my, strengthen my writing muscles over there.

(Speaker 2)
Were you into writing a lot as a kid growing up? Yeah, my parents are both writers. They wrote about everything that I didn’t end up writing about. So my dad wrote humor and thrillers, and my mom did kind of true crime stuff.

(Speaker 1)
So, you know, I do business, hip -hop music, you know, immediate entertainment, all the other stuff.

(Speaker 17)
And your wife’s a psychologist?

(Speaker 19)
Yeah, full -on psychiatrist.

(Speaker 1)
Psychiatrist.

(Speaker 2)
Does she…

(Speaker 1)
That’s like probably four extra years you’re talking. She as she Determined why on a deep dark? Psychological level why you write about entirely different things than your parents once wrote about is there is there some thing?

(Speaker 2)
Do we have a label for it? Oh, man You know we’d have to get on the line Have you guys talked about this? You know, we had an idea actually for a blog which was that I would interview people and then she would psychoanalyze them.

(Speaker 50)
but we thought that that might be breaking both some kind of journalistic and Hippocratic oath.

(Speaker 1)
I was going to say, yeah.

(Speaker 7)
OK, so what we’re going to do now is this. But it sounds great, though.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, the concept is pretty cool. This guy went from the cubicle to the top in terms of the top, you know, one of the top of people, writers at Forbes there.

(Speaker 40)
And what I want to do is this is going to be a shameless name drop show.

(Speaker 1)
Let’s do it. So what I’m going to do, and I know when you’re interviewing people there are certain things you can share about the interview, certain things you can’t, but I just want to go, it’s nothing but name drops, okay? So here we go.

(Speaker 2)
So when you’re sitting down with Katy Perry and you’re interviewing her for the cover story of Forbes called America’s Pop Export, did you come up with the title for this?

(Speaker 1)
I believe it was a collaborative process, but certainly I think I suggested at least part of that one, sure.

(Speaker 2)
Who had the idea to interview Katy Perry? That was me. I thought she’d be a great fit for a lot of reasons at the time I did the story. I think it was 2014, 2015. She was one of the top earning, I think top two or three earning musical acts in the world. People like Taylor Swift, maybe Lady Gaga were getting a little more ink. And I thought one of the really cool things about Katy Perry was she sat down with me two hours, no publicist, no handlers, nobody in the room.

(Speaker 2)
And that was just the first interview. And she really dug in to her journey as an entrepreneur. And she wasn’t kind of afraid of talking about money and wealth in the way that a lot of people I interview are. I think a lot of entertainers, they think, oh, if I talk about my wealth, People are going to think I’m a sellout. Not so much with hip -hop. Hip -hop, it’s sort of like, no, we’re going to go get it and we’re going to do it.

(Speaker 2)
you to enjoy this journey with us but but a lot of pop acts in particular are afraid that they’ll be seen as sellouts and and Katie really owned it. She was like, you know No, I want to be a role model to all those young women out there and you know to know that that you can be your own boss you can go get the thing that you want and you know build a business be an entrepreneur and You know, I really want to own that as opposed to sort of shying away from it. So I really I really respected that a lot, and I think it really made the story come alive. Also, we did a second interview in Italy, which was the beginning of the story. In Italy? In Italy, in Rome.

(Speaker 2)
And that really made the story pop, I thought.

(Speaker 1)
That became the intro of the story.

(Speaker 17)
and where a lot of the color and the drama came from.

(Speaker 1)
Who pays for you to go out there?

(Speaker 5)
Oh, that’s Forbes, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
So Forbes, so you fly out there and you’re interviewing, do you use a… And coach, you know, but yeah, fly out there. Do you use a pen? Are you using a pen?

(Speaker 2)
Are you typing?

(Speaker 27)
Do you record the interviews?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, recorder and then usually notes as well.

(Speaker 1)
Notes, okay. Sometimes two recorders just to be safe.

(Speaker 2)
And you go in with all the pre -written questions. What do you bring to the table before you interview the person? I usually bring, you know, let’s say a dozen or so questions depending on how long… the story’s gonna be, but I find the best kind of interviews are the ones where you’re not just kind of ticking through a list, right? You’re having a conversation with this person, and you kind of just ask follow -up questions, see where it goes, you follow the flow, and I think, in a way, it almost stops feeling like an interview anymore, it stops feeling like a chore. Instead, you’re just having an interesting conversation with an interesting person. I usually bring, let’s say a dozen or so questions, depending on how long the story’s gonna be, You know, I find the best kind of interviews are the ones where you’re not just kind of ticking through a list, right?

(Speaker 2)
You’re having a conversation with this person and you kind of just ask follow -up questions, see where it goes. You follow the flow and I think, you know, in a way it almost stops feeling like an interview anymore.

(Speaker 1)
It stops feeling like a choice. Instead, you’re just having an interesting conversation with an interesting person. And so you end up after four hours with Katy Perry.

(Speaker 2)
How much material do you have at this point? How many pages of transcripts are we talking about? Probably dozens of pages. But then there are the notes, right? So, I mean, the notes, I think, really made this story come alive, like I was alluding to earlier.

(Speaker 7)
The beginning of the story, You find me in a Mercedes van roaming the streets of Rome.

(Speaker 38)
That would get edited into something a little more descriptive.

(Speaker 2)
When in Rome, I ate Italian food. Okay, there we go. And on, you know, the phone, my phone rings. It’s like, all right, you know, you need to stay in the, you need to stay in the van for one more mile.

(Speaker 22)
And then at the end of that, you know, journey, you’re going to get out of the light and you’re going to walk down the street for 200 feet until you see the red arch.

(Speaker 2)
And it’s like out of a spy novel. Oh, wow. I get out of the car, I walk the mile, and I turn and I look. I’m like, which arch? It’s Rome. There’s going to be a lot of arches.

(Speaker 2)
And it’s like, OK, you’re going to look for a lady in a big white hat, lady in a big white hat. And I look down, and there’s a lady in a big white hat and sunglasses. And you wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t had her security team on the phone, but it was Katy Perry. And so they had to look for her.

(Speaker 12)
do this whole charade because she was being stalked by a paparazzi.

(Speaker 2)
So they had two Mercedes vans and she was in one and I was in the other and I didn’t realize I was the decoy. Oh, wow. To kind of get them off my back. And so, you know, the door open and out pops some American guy and they’re like, all right, whatever. Off they go. And then I go meet up and we do we do a tour of the Coliseum.

(Speaker 2)
And the whole story was about, you know, it’s here’s Katy Perry, this beautiful woman.

(Speaker 1)
giant arena act, but here we are in the original arena, the Colosseum in Rome.

(Speaker 52)
that was kind of from there we jump into the business.

(Speaker 1)
Do you get nervous when interview when you’re interviewing Katy Perry, I mean if you ever find yourself saying. Katie?

(Speaker 44)
You know, what was your name?

(Speaker 2)
I mean, sir, I mean, can I, you know, do you ever get, do you ever get nervous at all? Have you ever gotten nervous? Um, you know, maybe in my first year doing this a little bit, I’d get butterflies and stuff, but, you know, at some point people are just people and, um, you know, and it’s, it’s fun to interest, uh, I’d say it’s fun to interview interesting people, whether they’re famous or not. And you just kind of get used to it.

(Speaker 28)
It’s like, if you interview somebody who’s really, really tall, you know, you’re like, Dang, you’re really tall.

(Speaker 2)
But if you’re only interviewing basketball players, it just sort of stops being a thing. Is Katy Perry funny? Yeah, she’s funny and she’s very earnest.

(Speaker 18)
I think people don’t maybe realize that.

(Speaker 7)
She doesn’t put on airs.

(Speaker 51)
She’s very direct.

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, she seems like a down -to -earth kind of girl. Yeah, 100%. Just off the top of my head, I’m gonna ask you this question, just like, first thing that comes to your mind.

(Speaker 2)
Here we go.

(Speaker 7)
Of all the interviews you’ve done of celebrities, A -list celebrities, which one has surprised you the most?

(Speaker 2)
First thing to mind.

(Speaker 7)
You know, the name that pops into my head is Ludacris.

(Speaker 42)
Okay, explain.

(Speaker 41)
Yeah, you know, I mean, he has this kind of outrageous persona, right in his music.

(Speaker 2)
Outrageous name. I mean, yeah, exactly. What do you expect? Yeah. But, you know, I was interviewing him and he was kind of getting into, you know, his portfolio and these businesses that he owns and this and that. And he’s creating this company that he wants to hand off to his daughter when she gets old enough and, you know, this kind of stuff.

(Speaker 22)
And I was like, you know, So how do you kind of justify that side of you with, you know, Luda?

(Speaker 18)
And he said, well, you know, if you think about it, like if you have a buddy, you’re like, he’s like, think about, think about your best friend. And it’s like, what’s your best friend? name?

(Speaker 2)
Julian. OK, well, what’s his nickname? It’s like, Chops. You never know. You never know. So just like that, you got Chris Bridges on the weekday, but he’s Luda in the club.

(Speaker 1)
And he really kind of bounces back and forth between these two different personas as needed.

(Speaker 18)
But I think he kind of inhabits both of them.

(Speaker 1)
you know, pretty well, I’d say, and to great financial advantage. When you’re sitting in the room with Kanye West, you went to Kanye’s home, correct?

(Speaker 2)
Indeed. And people could look up the article. What’s the name of the article people can look up right now?

(Speaker 1)
It’s called Kanye’s Second Coming.

(Speaker 2)
It’s on Forbes . com or there’s magazines floating around with it, too. So when you fly out to his home and you arrive there, how would you describe the interior of Kanye West’s home? It’s almost like a monastery.

(Speaker 46)
It’s a it’s just very simple kind of alabaster color Everything is you know, it’s high ceilings And in fact, it’s it’s made from all the floors made from the special paste that you can only get in Belgium Or you can only have the crew that makes is based in Belgium.

(Speaker 50)
And so if you if you so much as scuff the floor They have to fly in all these guys in Belgium to fix it.

(Speaker 2)
So, you know, I walked into this interview wearing my Air Jordans because I thought it would be an interesting conversation piece, you know, because Yeezy. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and the minute I walk in, they’re like, oh, you have to put these little booties on your on your on your Jordans, you know, but it wasn’t because of Any, you know, hatred for Air Jordan, it was because he didn’t want his floor scuffed. So, you know, did that.

(Speaker 17)
And that was kind of like a nice little twist.

(Speaker 1)
But then Kanye walks in, you know, in his own easy with with no with no little cloth booties on. He’s like, whatever. It’s my place. What is he like? What is his personality type like? I mean, I know you’re you’re with him in a room for a long time doing the interview.

(Speaker 1)
People can see the actual video.

(Speaker 2)
some of the video of you interviewing him on Forbes. What was it like, you know, sitting down with the guy?

(Speaker 3)
How would you describe the aura he puts off, the energy?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I think, you know, he will just sink his teeth into whatever idea is on his mind, you know, at the moment. And he won’t let go. I’ll be working on home designs and looking at references from 3 ,000 years ago and reading the Old Testament at the same time, so it’s like a soundtrack to the visuals of the shapes and the ideas and ideals of what we’re creating. And, you know, he can’t really I think he can’t let himself give it up until he’s, you know, kind of like perfected it to his specifications. And you can tell he has so much passion for each individual thing that he’s doing. So, you know, for me, when I was interviewing him, I think the thing that he was the most fixated on was this housing concept.

(Speaker 2)
Like he was building, he wanted to build these, you know, these special you know, specially designed homes that were done in the style of his own home, but for, you know, low -income folks to try to scale, you know, scale up something that could help people in the local community in L . A. And he was talking to me about this in the interview. And we finished up around midnight, and he goes, all right, well, I want to show you something. I said, okay. He takes me outside and you follow him back.

(Speaker 2)
I’m like, maybe he’s got a workshop, whatever. And no, instead he ushers me into his Lamborghini SUV and he cranks up the JS Bach and off we go, barreling down the hill in the middle of the night. And after about 15 minutes, we come to a little pub. in the woods. I’m like, all right, we get out. Inside, there are three guys mashing away on laptops.

(Speaker 2)
And on these laptops are these presentations that they’re about to give on this housing concept.

(Speaker 37)
And he’s like, I’ve changed the font there, changed the color of that.

(Speaker 2)
And after about a half an hour, he seems satisfied. And he says, I want to show something else.

(Speaker 1)
Come on.

(Speaker 40)
So he opens the back door.

(Speaker 23)
off we go into the woods and now it’s one in the morning and we’re you know somewhere in in the Santa Monica mountains the foothills of Santa Monica mountains you know pitch black middle of the night By the lights of our iPhones, we’re going up this trail deeper and deeper into the woods.

(Speaker 2)
Does he own this land?

(Speaker 17)
Yes.

(Speaker 49)
Okay.

(Speaker 2)
Or at least that’s what I had been led to believe in.

(Speaker 24)
But my main concern at this point is, you know, I’m going to get eaten by a mountain lion.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, yeah.

(Speaker 2)
And Kanye will too, and I’m just going to be a footnote. The dude that Kanye died with. Right, right, exactly. So after about 5, 10 minutes, we come to a clearing. And in the clearing, you know, so he stops, wordless.

(Speaker 23)
And we look up, and in the clearing are these like 30 -foot tall structures.

(Speaker 2)
And, you know, kind of like oblong, oval -type shape things. And he leads me inside, and they are the physical embodiment of these structures. The prototypes. The prototypes that he’s been trying to create.

(Speaker 48)
Yeah.

(Speaker 18)
And I’m like, well, hey, Kanye, can I turn my recorder on so you can explain, you know, what we’re looking at here?

(Speaker 23)
And he goes, no, I want you to paint a picture with your words.

(Speaker 17)
So I’m like, all right, well, I’m just going to have to get out my little notebook here. Sure.

(Speaker 2)
Sure.

(Speaker 47)
Scribbling away.

(Speaker 17)
Get some words down. Five minutes later, he’s like, are you good? Yeah, I’m good. Back down the hill into the Lamborghini and back to my rental car and, you know, in bed by by 3 a .

(Speaker 10)
m.

(Speaker 7)
So how did you start your interview with him?

(Speaker 46)
8 p .

(Speaker 24)
m.

(Speaker 2)
Really?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, on a Sunday night.

(Speaker 7)
8 to 3 with Kanye? Yeah.

(Speaker 2)
Yep, yep, yep. Okay. Where’s wife? Was his wife around?

(Speaker 7)
Oh, she was around. She, you know, offered us water, stuff like that. Did she have anything to do with the interview? Did she sit down and be part of it at all?

(Speaker 2)
Or was it just she talked to me separately for the story, you know, she talked about how they bounce business ideas off of each other. And, you know, some of the ways that his sensibility for design, um, you know, has helped some of the projects she’s worked on. But, but yeah, I mean, that’s what really stuck with me. You know, I mean, the story was about his Yeezy empire, but And he was definitely, you know, that was clearly like a huge consideration for him, but he was so focused on this housing concept that, you know, he just couldn’t, he couldn’t move away from it.

(Speaker 28)
It’s his next thing.

(Speaker 17)
Yeah, it’s always the next thing with an entrepreneur.

(Speaker 2)
Did he talk about the easies?

(Speaker 45)
How did he, what was the, how did he get into the, how did he get into that?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, you know, he always loved to draw. He always loved to design. And when he was a kid growing up in Chicago, he would, you know, be sketching sneaker. He would be sketching Jordan 1s, actually. Oh, really? Wow.

(Speaker 3)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just drawings that he’d, because he liked them. Yeah. And he would get in trouble with his teachers because he was doing that instead of his, you know, math equations or what have you. And, you know, and I think it took a backseat to the music for a while. But once he gained, you know, a certain stature, he started being able to do these collaborations.

(Speaker 3)
So Yeezy began. with Nike. He did a few different designs there. You get marginalized by the corporations and what your messaging can be. Now, this is one thing where the conversation changes when you have a child. Because, oh, it’s cool that they marginalized me, and I asked them when the Yeezy Red October’s coming out.

(Speaker 3)
I asked them, me, Kanye West asked Nike, when’s it coming out? They told, they said, we’re not sure yet. You know, they let me design two shoes over five years, and I’m happy I could design them, but they ain’t do me no favor, because Eminem designed a shoe, and Pharrell designed a shoe. I just designed the Yeezy. I turned up. Because I was in fourth grade, designing Jordans, and I brought back that feeling.

(Speaker 3)
You ain’t never felt about a shoe since the Jordans, the way people feel about the Yeezys. I put that feeling, and the same feeling I put in college dropout, and graduation, and 808s, all that feeling, I put that feeling there. So then, I started turning up in a BBC interview. And they came, they said, okay, cool. We’re gonna give you a bigger sample. It’s not even like I even got a joint venture.

(Speaker 44)
I’m like, at least give me some royalty.

(Speaker 42)
Like, Michael Jordan got 5%.

(Speaker 3)
That business is $2 billion.

(Speaker 43)
He makes $100 million a year off of 5 % royalty.

(Speaker 3)
I said, I need some type of royalty. Nike told me, we can’t give you a royalty because you’re not a professional athlete. I told them, I go to the guard and play one on no one.

(Speaker 19)
I’m a performance athlete.

(Speaker 12)
And also, I’m a thinker.

(Speaker 3)
Did you say that in the meeting? Did you really say that in the meeting?

(Speaker 42)
Did I really anything? Yes.

(Speaker 2)
Did I really everything?

(Speaker 1)
100 ,000%. I’m 100 ,000 % at all times. I would love to go on the meeting tour.

(Speaker 16)
I want to go to the meeting tour. Because the thing is, it’s people that work in offices trying to tell me how to think when I got a better perspective. I live in Paris.

(Speaker 2)
I love, I love, and I was there last night. In New York and LA. I was there last night and I was, I was moved by your, by your rant last night. And then you know several years ago pulled it over to adidas and You know it’s because he insisted on ownership even when he was with Nike. I mean they weren’t really paying him, but he owned The concept he owned the Yeezy brand and he took it over to adidas where he continues to own it But you know because he insisted on that on that 100 % outright ownership You know it enabled him to make that move rapid fire we have time for three final we have four minutes three three questions four minutes three questions here we go west carter what question would you like to ask senior editor from forbes who made a series of four life choices and has ended up in tulsa oklahoma he’s not in manhattan We’ve got him inside the studio here. What question do you have for him?

(Speaker 2)
I’m wondering, out of all these interviews, I know a lot of them talk about their side projects going on. Have any of them really opened up about their thoughts on wanting to transform the music business itself, with all the new things coming out with streaming and Spotify and Apple Music? Gravitate towards their own business in the music industry or do you see they really focus on some other?

(Speaker 22)
Their side projects that they’re trying to get other stuff going on, you know I think it’s a mix of both but if you want to talk about changing the music industry I think one of the most fascinating cases to look at the three kings of hip -hop Jay -z Diddy dr. Dre I say three kings that was the I wrote a book the same title in 2018 and in that book and also my new book a list angels I talked about how Those three guys were like, you know what?

(Speaker 1)
We became entrepreneurs by necessity in the late 80s, early 90s because people weren’t interested in hip hop. We created our own record labels. We created our own clothing lines. Now, we’re gonna create our own streaming services, or we’re going to invest in existing ones. So Diddy invested in Spotify, Jay -Z bought Tidal, and Dr. Dre had Beats Music, which then became Apple Music. So they each found a way to not only create the music, to create the stuff that comes out of that, but to own pieces of the next platforms that would deliver the music as well.

(Speaker 1)
And I think that’s the kind of change, that’s the kind of vision that the best of the best have. It’s not just how to create the next big product. It’s how do I create the next big category. I will say this. If you’re out there today and you’ve not yet purchased a copy of Three Kings, Diddy, Dre, and Jay -Z, and Hip Hop’s Multi -Billion Dollar Rise, that is an incredible book. In my hands, I have an early edition here of the new book here, A -List.

(Speaker 1)
Angels, How a Band of Actors, Artists, and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley. And I’m so fired up to read this book because, Zach, you write with such detail that if you’re somebody who’s remotely interested at all in business, you’re going to love these books. But if you’re somebody who likes music, which I do, you’re going to love these books. Now, if you’re somebody who likes entertainment, You’re going to love these books. It puts them all together.

(Speaker 26)
So many books, they’re just drivel about, you know, we’re just sort of talking about how successful somebody is.

(Speaker 7)
But his book deals with the messy middle. It tells you how they did it, how they got there. It’s really the detail in here. A -List Angels, check out this book.

(Speaker 2)
I’m excited to read this book. Thank you for hand -delivering it, by the way. Dr. Z, we have time for one more question before we hit up our next guest on the phone line. And Cory Mincher with Trinity Employment stepped in. It’s a laser show.

(Speaker 7)
I know, it’s a laser show.

(Speaker 2)
Zach, what’s next?

(Speaker 7)
What’s next for you?

(Speaker 2)
What’s next for you, man? Well, you know, I think the next thing I really want to do is bring more of the storytelling to people in person. And so, you know, if you check out ZogSpeaking . com, there’s more details on, you know, sort of some of the speeches that I give. But the idea of, like, telling these stories, bringing actionable advice to people, you know, From having sat down with a lot of the leading figures in show business, what are the things that I can bring to the average entrepreneur, to the average person, that they can use in their careers, in their journeys?

(Speaker 1)
I think it’s actually kind of surprising how much overlap there is. Do you like speaking or writing better? Man, I think it depends on the day, you know? Depends on how much you’ve been riding last week. The grass is greener. You know, you do a few big travel gigs in a row and you’re like, I just want to sit and write.

(Speaker 1)
But then, you know, if you’re if a lot of times when I’m really in crunch time on the books, I’ll take a week or two off from Forbes and I’ll just kind of go hard on the on the on the book writing.

(Speaker 27)
And man, it you know, you just after a couple of weeks, it’s like you really

(Speaker 7)
love to be out speaking to human beings again.

(Speaker 1)
If you guys go to zogspeaking .

(Speaker 12)
com, zogspeaking . com, that stands for Zach O’Malley Greenberg, so zogspeaking . com, you can see samples of him speaking. I’m just telling you, if you’re listening out there today and you own a company, a lot of times when your employees get a chance to hear stories about Justin Bieber and Kanye West, it actually practically can be related back to your business.

(Speaker 11)
That’s fun. It’s entertainment. It’s education. We call that edutainment.

(Speaker 1)
That’s what we call it. And now, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! Two men, 13 multimillion dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the Thrivetime Business Coach Radio Show. Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show. That’s it.

(Speaker 1)
Arms away.

(Speaker 41)
We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here.

(Speaker 1)
Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Conversation. It is The Thrive Time Show on your radio. And on today’s show, I could not be more excited to interview today’s guest. Today’s guest, Zach O’Malley Greenberg.

(Speaker 1)
That’s Zach O’Malley Greenberg. He is a senior editor for Forbes magazine, Forbes . com. If you ever see the hip hop’s richest list or any of the lists involving where they’ll actually show the wealth of hip hop entrepreneurs and how they earned their wealth, It’s usually, the article is usually written by Mr. Zach O’Malley Greenberg. And since graduating from Yale with a degree in American Studies, Zach O’Malley Greenberg, today’s guest, has gone on to become not only the Senior Editor of Media and Entertainment at Forbes, but he’s also the author of three best -selling books.

(Speaker 1)
His most recent book, Three Kings, chronicles the lives of Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay -Z, and the rise of the hip -hop multi -million dollar industry, the multi -billion dollar industry. He’s also written Michael Jackson Inc., a Simon & Schuster release, which came out in 2014, which documented the rise and fall and then the return of the Michael Jackson empire. Also, he’s written Jay -Z’s book called Empire State of Mind, and I absolutely love Empire State of Mind.

(Speaker 24)
That book was released by Penguin, and that book is incredible.

(Speaker 41)
It explains to you how Jay -Z essentially went from a street corner to a corner office.

(Speaker 1)
Folks, this guy is filled with knowledge, but you might be saying to yourself, well, why do I care how hip -hop, you know, how rappers made billions of dollars?

(Speaker 23)
Well, what you gotta understand about hip -hop artists, and I’ll start with Diddy, who used to go by the name Puff Daddy, is at his core, I believe him to be, I believe that P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, I believe that he is an entrepreneur.

(Speaker 1)
At his core, I really, really do believe that Jay -Z is an entrepreneur. And at his core, I really do believe that Dr. Dre is just an entrepreneur. Dr. Dre was one of the first turntablists to really make a change in the way music was formatted. He’s one of the first people to make hip -hop music mainstream. He was part of the group N . W .

(Speaker 1)
A. , which stands for, I won’t mention it on the air, but N . W . A. Then you think about Jay -Z. Jay -Z was one of the first rappers to really become a household name.

(Speaker 1)
for everybody. I think everybody knows Jay -Z and his wife Beyonce. These guys have a combined net worth right now of billions of dollars. And as of the time of the recording of today’s talk, estimates are showing it from Forbes that Sean Diddy Combs is now worth $825 million. And Dr. Dre, remember Dr. Dre? He teamed up to build Beats headphones.

(Speaker 1)
He’s worth an estimated $770 million. Think about that. Jay -Z’s worth an estimated $900 million. I mean, these guys are doing well. Jay -Z’s worth $900 million.

(Speaker 2)
Sean P. Diddy Combs is worth $825 million. And Dr. Dre is worth an estimated $770 million.

(Speaker 1)
And so, in his new book, Three Kings, he documents how they did it.

(Speaker 2)
And I’m just telling you, if you look at the books that he’s written that I’ve read, there are notes everywhere and there are action items from cover to cover.

(Speaker 1)
There’s so many practical steps that you can apply in your own life and business. So ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, I know we can’t hear you, but please join me in welcoming the senior editor with Forbes, that’s Zach O’Malley Greenberg, onto the show. Zach, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. I am a massive fan of your work. How are you doing? Very well, thank you.

(Speaker 30)
Thank you for having me on.

(Speaker 1)
Hey, I own two copies of your book, Empire State of Mind, the one where you break down the life and times of Jay -Z.

(Speaker 2)
Two copies. I do. I have one for the man cave, have one for the office. I got to tell you, it’s kind of weird, but one has spent a lot of time with me in the bathtub as I’m taking notes, highlighting.

(Speaker 15)
And what impresses me about your books is that you do exhaustive research. research.

(Speaker 2)
You do exhaustive research and one of the first things I saw you writing about back in the day was this thing called the hip -hop Kings. Can you share with us why, as a writer at Forbes, you decided to start tracking the hip -hop Cash Kings? Yeah, well, it was 2007. I had just graduated from college and started out at Forbes as a newbie reporter. And I was sitting there in my cubicle and all of a sudden an editor came up and she said, hey, you’re under 30.

(Speaker 2)
Do you like hip hop? And I said, I love hip hop. She said, great. Well, I want you to help me put together the first ever package on the top earning rappers. And I said, let’s go. I ended up writing the story about Tupac Shakur, who at the time was making more money dead than most rappers were alive.

(Speaker 2)
And then we ran this sidebar that we called the Hip Hop Cash Kings, and it was the top earning rappers who were alive. And the top three were Jay -Z, Diddy, and 50 Cent. and we chipped off the magazine and I thought that was fun and it didn’t really cross my mind again until I was out in New Mexico for a different story reporting and driving around the desert I heard this song pop on the radio and it went fourths the launch of the Hip Hop Cash Kings list.

(Speaker 1)
And I think it was the first time a major publication had really recognized hip hop in that way. I mean, there had been kind of, you know, one -off stories and a lot of sort of novelty type features. But this was us saying, you know, here’s the definitive accounting of earnings in this legit business. And it became an annual event and shortly after that, the first one came out, the editor left and took a different job. And she said, you should make this your thing.

(Speaker 1)
And I did.

(Speaker 13)
So she gave me a contact.

(Speaker 7)
And I ran with it and kind of developed it into being my baby, really.

(Speaker 40)
And I don’t mean to classify you or anybody who reads copious amounts of books and does a lot of research as a nerd.

(Speaker 2)
I would just classify myself as a nerd. I love reading and research. When you are in your car in New Mexico and you hear, I get money, and you hear it, and you’re going, and at the end, Jay -Z hops on with the verse and talks about Forbes .

(Speaker 1)
com, were you crying? Were you hugging the dashboard? Would you pull over and have a wee bit of fun?

(Speaker 2)
I mean, what was going on? Get to a truck stop and take a shower. Yeah. I mean, I just remember thinking, holy cow, business journalism is a lot cooler than I ever thought it would be. And I think a lot of people at Forbes, they thought about that too. Like, oh my gosh, here’s an audience that we have not been serving and a slice of big business that we have not been covering and that really nobody had been covering in that way.

(Speaker 2)
Now, you are working on this thing called the Forbes 5, where it’s the hip -hop’s wealthiest artists of 2018.

(Speaker 1)
And the hip -hop, they’re kind of the future mogul list. Can you share with us about the Forbes 5 and the hip -hop’s future mogul list? Sure. So I’d say three main hip -hop franchises within Forbes now. There’s that original Cash Kings list, which are the highest paid acts on an annual basis. There’s the Forbes five, which is the five wealthiest rap acts overall in terms of net worth.

(Speaker 1)
And then there’s the future moguls list, which is a qualitative kind of a cousin of our 30 under 30 list. So it’s every year, you know, the, the 10 rappers, producers, et cetera, the hip hop musicians who we feel are the most likely to one day become members of either of those two other lists. And, uh, you know, they’re all rolled out throughout the year, uh, generally, you know, a few months in between each one. And, and those are sort of the three main, um, uh, focal points for, for hip hop coverage at Forbes. Now, you in 2015, you gave a TEDx talk.

(Speaker 2)
You’ve given a lot of talks since then. But you gave a TEDx talk.

(Speaker 12)
And I liked that talk because it was just you rocking the mic for a good half hour of power.

(Speaker 10)
And you were talking about Dr. Dre, Jay -Z, and Diddy, how they had earned at that point a combined $740 million in 2014.

(Speaker 12)
And according to all estimates I can find, now Sean Jay -Z Carter is now worth about $900 million, I believe.

(Speaker 10)
Sean Diddy Combs is worth about $825 million.

(Speaker 1)
and Dr. Dre sitting around 770. My friend, I’d love to have you share your thoughts about how these three men built their fortunes. It’s an astounding number. Can you share with us the, and you go take them in whatever order you want, but Dre, Jay -Z, Diddy, how did these guys go about amassing their fortunes? It’s a fascinating question, and that’s why I wrote my last book about it, Three Kings, and it kind of digs into the story of each one, and then kind of the backdrop of the broader narrative of hip -hop. What these guys all did is they took this thing that had been created in the South Bronx in the 70s and 80s.

(Speaker 1)
Two men. Thirteen multi -million dollar businesses. Eight kids. One business coach radio show. Welcome back to the conversation. It is the thrive time show on your radio.

(Speaker 1)
And on today’s show, I could not be more excited to interview today’s guest. Today’s guest, Zach O’Malley Greenberg. That’s Zach O’Malley Greenberg. He is a senior editor for Forbes magazine, Forbes . com. If you ever see the hip hop’s richest, the richest list or any of the lists involving where they’ll actually show the wealth of hip hop entrepreneurs and how they earned their wealth, It’s usually, the article is usually written by Mr. Zach O’Malley Greenberg.

(Speaker 1)
And since graduating from Yale with a degree in American Studies, Zach O’Malley Greenberg, today’s guest, has gone on to become not only the senior editor, of media and entertainment at Forbes, but he’s also the author of three best -selling books. His most recent book, Three Kings, chronicles the lives of Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay -Z, and the rise of the hip -hop multi -million -dollar industry, the multi -billion -dollar industry. He’s also written Michael Jackson, Inc., a Simon & Schuster release, which came out in 2014, which documented the rise and fall and then the return of the Michael Jackson empire.

(Speaker 24)
Also he’s written Jay -Z’s book called Empire State of Mind and I absolutely love Empire State of Mind.

(Speaker 10)
That book was released by Penguin and that book is incredible.

(Speaker 1)
Explains to you how Jay -Z

(Speaker 23)
essentially went from a street corner to a corner office.

(Speaker 35)
Folks, this guy is filled with knowledge, but you might be saying to yourself, well, why do I care how hip -hop, you know, how rappers made billions of dollars?

(Speaker 1)
Well, what you got to understand about hip -hop artists, and I’ll start with Diddy, who used to go by the name Puff Daddy, is at his core, I believe him to be, I believe that P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, I believe that he is an entrepreneur. At his core, I really, really do believe that Jay -Z is an entrepreneur. And at his core, I really do believe that Dr. Dre is just an entrepreneur. You know, Dr. Dre was one of the first turntablists to really make a change in the way music was formatted. He’s one of the first people to make hip -hop music mainstream. He was part of the group N .

(Speaker 1)
W . A. , which stands for, I won’t mention it on the air, but N . W . A. And then you think about, you know, Jay -Z.

(Speaker 1)
Jay -Z is one of the first rappers to really become a household name for everybody. I think everybody knows Jay -Z and his wife, Beyonce. These guys have a combined net worth right now of billions of dollars. And as of the time of the recording of today’s talk, estimates are showing it from Forbes that Sean Diddy Combs is now worth $825 million. And Dr. Dre, remember Dr. Dre? He teamed up to build Beats headphones.

(Speaker 1)
He’s worth an estimated $770 million. Think about that. Jay -Z is worth an estimated $900 million. These guys are doing well. Jay -Z is worth $900 million.

(Speaker 2)
Sean P. Diddy Combs is worth $825 million. Dr. Dre is worth an estimated $770 million.

(Speaker 1)
In his new book, Three Kings, he documents how they did it. If you look at the books that you written that I’ve read, there are notes everywhere and there are action items from cover to cover. There’s so many practical steps that you can apply in your own life and business. So ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, I know we can’t hear you, but please join me in welcoming the senior editor with Forbes. That’s Zach O’Malley Greenberg onto the show.

(Speaker 1)
Zach, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. I am a massive fan of your work.

(Speaker 2)
How are you doing? Very well, thank you. Thank you for having me on. Hey, I own two copies of your book, Empire State of Mind, the one where you break down the life and times of Jay -Z. Two copies?

(Speaker 15)
I do.

(Speaker 2)
I have one for the man cave, have one for the office. I got to say, it’s kind of weird, but one has spent a lot of time with me in the bathtub as I’m taking notes, highlighting. And what impresses me about your books is that you do exhaustive research. research.

(Speaker 15)
You do exhaustive research, and one of the first things I saw you writing about back in the day was this thing called the hip -hop cash kings.

(Speaker 2)
Can you share with us why, as a writer at Forbes, you decided to start tracking the hip -hop cash kings? Yeah, well, it was 2007. I had just graduated from college and started out at Forbes as a newbie reporter. And I was sitting there in my cubicle and all of a sudden an editor came up and she said, hey, you’re under 30.

(Speaker 38)
Do you like hip hop?

(Speaker 2)
And I said, I love hip hop. She said, great. Well, I want you to help me put together the first ever package on the top earning rappers. And I said, let’s go. So I ended up writing the story about Tupac Shakur, who at the time was making more money dead than most rappers were alive. And then we ran this sidebar that we called the Hip Hop Cash Kings, and it was the top earning rappers

(Speaker 1)
were alive. And the top three were Jay -Z, Diddy, and 50 Cent. And we shipped off the magazine, and I thought that was fun. And it didn’t really cross my mind again until I was out in New Mexico for a different story reporting. And driving around the desert, I heard this song pop on the radio, and it went, Forbes one two three, I get money I get money and I was like what is going on? There you go.

(Speaker 1)
And in fact it was Jay -Z and Diddy and 50 Cent and they had put together this song to celebrate the launch of the Hip Hop Cash Kings list.

(Speaker 5)
I think it was the first time a major publication had had really recognized hip hop in that way.

(Speaker 2)
I mean there had been kind of one -off stories and a lot of novelty type features, but this was us saying, here’s the definitive accounting of earnings in this legit business. It became an annual event, and shortly after the first one came out, the editor left and took a different job, and she said, you should make this your thing. And I did. She gave me a contact and I ran with it and kind of developed it into being my baby, really.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t mean to classify you or anybody who reads copious amounts of books and does a lot of research as a nerd. I would just classify myself as a nerd. I love reading and research.

(Speaker 2)
When you are in your car, in New Mexico and you hear, I get money and you hear it and you’re going and at the end Jay -Z hops on with the verse and talks about Forbes . com. Were you crying? Were you hugging the dashboard? Would you pull over and have a wee bit of fun? What was going on?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I just remember thinking, holy cow, business

(Speaker 1)
journalism is a lot cooler than I ever thought it would be. And I think a lot of people at Forbes, they thought about that too. Like, oh my gosh, here’s an audience that we have not been serving and a slice of big business that we have not been covering and that really nobody had been covering in that way. Now, you are working on this thing called the Forbes 5, where it’s the hip -hop’s wealthiest artists of 2018. And the hip -hop, they’re kind of the future mogul list. Can you share with us about the Forbes 5 and the hip -hop’s future mogul list?

(Speaker 1)
Sure. So I’d say three main hip -hop franchises within Forbes now. There’s that original Cash Kings list, which are the highest paid acts on an annual basis. There’s the Forbes five, which is the five wealthiest rap acts overall in terms of net worth. And then there’s the future moguls list, which is a qualitative kind of a cousin of our 30 under 30 list. So it’s every year, you know, the 10 rappers, producers, et cetera, the hip hop musicians who we feel are the most likely to one day become members of either of those two other lists.

(Speaker 1)
And they’re all rolled out throughout the year, generally a few months in between each one. And those are sort of the three main focal points for hip hop coverage at Forbes.

(Speaker 2)
Now, you in 2015, you gave a TEDx talk. You’ve given a lot of talks since then. But you gave a TEDx talk. And I liked that talk because it was just you rocking the mic for a good half hour of power. And you were talking about Dr. Dre. Jay -Z and Diddy how they had earned at that point a combined $740 million in 2014.

(Speaker 2)
And according to all estimates I can find, now, Sean J .Z. Z. Carter is now worth about $900 million, I believe. Sean Diddy Combs is worth about $825 million. and Dr. Dre sitting around 770.

(Speaker 2)
My friend, I’d love to have you share your thoughts about how these three men built their fortunes. It’s an astounding number. Can you share with us the, and you go take them in whatever order you want, but Dre, Jay -Z, Diddy, how did these guys go about amassing their fortunes? You know, and it’s a fascinating question, and that’s why I wrote my last book about it, Three Kings, and it kind of digs into the story of each one, and then, you know, kind of the backdrop of the broader narrative of hip -hop. And what these guys all did is they took this thing that had been created in the South Bronx in the 70s and 80s and turned it into something that was more than that. That was this worldwide, this empire, this way of life.

(Speaker 2)
They took hip hop and turned it into a monetizable lifestyle brand. And so it all kind of goes back to that one way or the other. Despite having the same job description of hip -hop mogul, all three of them are incredibly different characters. If you want to think about it like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I think Diddy is Michelangelo. He’s the party guy. He’s like Cowabunga, that whole thing.

(Speaker 2)
He’s a consummate salesman. You know, maybe Dr. Dre is Donatello. He’s kind of the handy one. He’s very, you know, focused on technology, you know, kind of what’s next, and maybe a little quieter. And then Jay -Z, I think, is Raphael. You know, he’s sort of the wise guy.

(Speaker 2)
one, kind of sitting in the back, you know, coming, surviving off of his wit. And so they’ve each kind of taken their own traits and made the most of it.

(Speaker 1)
So Diddy, his way of doing everything is this kind of what I like to call shock and awe marketing. He’s in your face. He’s, you know, he’s with the Ciroc vodka. You know, in the YouTube videos, he’s doing commercials, he’s tweeting about it. He’s very much not understated, right? He’s just out there in your face all the time.

(Speaker 12)
Dr. Dre is kind of more quiet, and if you look back at his career, he’s really spent his whole time kind of in the lab crafting things, working for ages.

(Speaker 34)
He’s only put out a few albums in a multi -decade career, and each one he seems to spend a good decade on.

(Speaker 1)
Same with his magnum opus in terms of business, which is Beats. That’s the only major deal he’s done outside of music. Running his own label, that’s also part of the music thing. being that kind of culmination of all those years of working on something. And then you have Jay -Z, who’s kind of in the middle, and he has a bunch of different things. He relies on his cleverness, and he relies on kind of creating cultural cachet for himself by putting out new music, by marrying Beyonce, things like that, that will kind of keep his name out and people being interested in him.

(Speaker 1)
and then wanting to associate with the brand that you’ve involved with as well. Now, when you wrote the book, Three Kings, your newest book, what inspired you? to write this book? Because for people out there who are not familiar with your writing, I’m not just saying this because you’re a guest, you go deep, man. You’re like the submarine.

(Speaker 2)
You’re in the basement. You are going to the Earth’s core. You go deep. The magma. It’s awesome. Like your article about the Wu -Tang Clan and their album, and their one copy of their album, and you go so deep.

(Speaker 2)
It is awesome. So you have to just lose your mind. You go so deep. You go so deep. I’m just telling you, I get worried about you. You’re so deep.

(Speaker 2)
I’m like, is he going to come up for air, this guy? So when you go deep, how did you decide to write this? What inspired you to write this book, Three Kings? Yeah, well, frankly, in all honesty, I had already done a Jay -Z book. My second book was about Michael Jackson. And what I really wanted to do was a book just on Diddy.

(Speaker 2)
In fact, initially, when I got the Jay -Z book deal, This is back in 2009, 2010 when I got the deal. Penguin, the publisher, came to me and said, we want a book on Jay -Z or Diddy. We decided for a number of reasons to go with Jay -Z. By the time I finished the Michael Jackson book, I was ready to do the Diddy book. By that point, they had kind of moved on. The man I sat down with, my agent, I sat down with an editor, and what the editor wanted was another book about Jay -Z.

(Speaker 2)
And I didn’t want to do that because I had already done that.

(Speaker 1)
I wanted to write this Diddy book. My agent wanted a book about Dr. Dre. And I thought, well, you know, I mean, these are the three wealthiest guys in hip -hop. What if we put it all together and call it Three Kings? And I remember this kind of crystallizing in my mind as I was staying at my godmother’s place out on Long Island by the beach, and I was just kind of in this very relaxed frame of mind, and I walked out, and on the table, she had a copy of The Innovators by Walter Isaacson, and I thought, gee, what if we do that, but for hip -hop?

(Speaker 1)
We take the kind of three greatest wealth creation minds in hip -hop and tell their stories. So that’s what I ended up doing. And I think the book, you know, Three Kings is about three things. There’s the biographical aspect. So you see kind of the details, how each of them came up. You get the background on the history of hip hop, like you said, the very deep dive.

(Speaker 1)
And then lastly, it’s really a blueprint. And it’s a blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to go in and, you know, maybe they’re not as charismatic or as giddy.

(Speaker 2)
or as handy as Dre, but you know maybe there’s a you can follow kind of one of those usually between the three of those guys are so different there are usually things that you can take out of their career path and apply it to your own even if you’re not in anything related to the entertainment business at all. I know that I didn’t ask you to do exhaustive research on me before interviewing you, but the book Life and Death by Russell Simmons. That book is what inspired me to start my first company, DJ Connection, that I sold. And at the time I sold it there, Zach, we were doing about 4 ,000 weddings and events per year. But there’s so many actionable things you can apply to your own life. If you will read biographies and autobiographies and case studies, you can apply them.

(Speaker 2)
And the way you write, you write for Forbes. So the way you’re writing, it’s not a casual, vague understanding. It’s very linear. It’s very specific. It’s very detailed. And in your book about Jay -Z, you talked a lot about

(Speaker 2)
Jay -Z’s, how he generated some serious wealth. And one of the ways he did that was he took the rejection that he received from a company called Iceberg and ultimately led to, it ultimately led to the creation of Rockawear, if I’m getting that correct. Can you share about how Jay -Z’s rejection from Iceberg fueled him to build something big? Jay -Z, early on in his career, was rapping about a lot of different things, like a lot of rappers were at the time, from Cristal Champagne to whatever it was, Gucci or Mercedes -Benz, et cetera, et cetera. Had been rapping about this European brand called Iceberg. He thought, well, we’re giving these guys all this publicity.

(Speaker 2)
Why don’t we try to get something out of it for ourselves? So he and his business partner, Damon Dash, went to have a meeting with the folks at Iceberg. They were basically laughed out of their room. The iceberg people barely even wanted to give them free clothing. And so they kind of figured, well, you know, we can do a lot better. Why don’t we start our own clothing line?

(Speaker 1)
And they actually connected with Russell Simmons at this time. He was at Def Jam and they kind of got his advice. He had already started Fat Farm. So he kind of hooked them up with the people who would actually, you know, companies actually produce the clothing so that they could, you know, get a clothing line out very quickly. And that became Rockawear. And I think actually that became kind of more broadly a strategy that Jay -Z had used throughout his career.

(Speaker 2)
Why would I rap about anything that I’m not getting paid for? So, you know, you go and you look at everything he’s done over the years,

(Speaker 1)
from clothing to liquor to cars.

(Speaker 2)
He’s actually had ventures in all these areas of his own. So, Brock Ware, obviously, with the clothing line.

(Speaker 1)
He’s got D ‘Ussé Cognac now and Armando Brignac Champagne, which is a whole other great story about how that came about. and even had a gvg that was supposed to come together and it has been about a decade ago and it never really quite worked out and this is all in my book empire state of mind but um… you know it uh… it continues through to this day i mean you see him with the budweiser made in america festival and uh… you know there there are coronas in in his Instagram shots with Beyonce and, you know, that all goes back to to Budweiser and Isaac Bush, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, everything happens for a reason with him.

(Speaker 2)
And there’s really no such thing as as a coincidence when any brand is involved with Jay -Z.

(Speaker 1)
Do you? You could dispel if this is not accurate, you tell me. But I believe that I read this is this is many moons ago, but I believe that you did yoga with Jay -Z. with Diddy? I mean, you’re close to these people.

(Speaker 7)
Did you actually do yoga with Diddy? I never did yoga with Diddy.

(Speaker 1)
A colleague of mine did yoga with Russell Simmons. Okay, Russell Simmons, okay. I’ve interviewed both of them, but I’ve never done yoga with either. There was also, I think, a period of time when Russell Simmons was trying to get Diddy to do yoga, and it didn’t really, I think, catch on. So by the way, this is just something I have been Tulsa. Have you been to Tulsa, Oklahoma before?

(Speaker 1)
Zack, have you ever been to Tulsa, Oklahoma?

(Speaker 2)
I have not. I’ve been to Oklahoma City, but well, let me tell you, let me tell you something you’re missing out on the center of the U . and the center of the hip hop, really the undiscovered artists that will probably remain undiscovered is Tulsa, Oklahoma. And if you came to the tourist capital of America, Tulsa, Oklahoma, we are working on something new called Baroga. It’s a combination of brothers and yoga. And so I think if you invited Diddy to do Broga, he would say, yes.

(Speaker 2)
And my favorite position is sleeping bear, by the way. It sounds harder than it is.

(Speaker 1)
These are cutting edge trends that we give to you freely. I’d like for you to share, can you share with us a little bit about the character of Diddy? Russell Simmons, you’ve interviewed the guy, you’ve spent time studying him. Can you share with us a little bit about the character? Because Russell Simmons is one of my favorite authors and he’s been a big inspiration for me.

(Speaker 2)
He’s arguably the father, one of the founders of hip hop music there with co -founding Def Jam. Talk to us about the character of Russell Simmons. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, unfortunately, not so great, right? I mean, if you read some of the stuff that’s come out over the past year or so, In terms of the Me Too movement, he’s been sort of the poster child of what not to do from the music industry side of things. Still, one can’t really tell the story of the business of hip -hop without telling the story of Russell Simmons. and how he, you know, founded Def Jam with Rick Rubin and, you know, helped run DMC and so forth and managed them and did things like setting up the first shoe deal that they had with Adidas.

(Speaker 2)
He invited these executives over from Germany to come watch the show. show at the garden in the eighties and he had them play my ideas and so all of a sudden fifteen thousand people are holding up their uh… shelter sneakers and the executives from germany are looking unlike oh my god this is the best marketing campaign ever i mean it wasn’t even uh… marketing campaign it was all organic so that led to a million dollars you deal with the data is operative c and it really kind of ushered in the era of a lot of the things that Jay -Z, Diddy, and Dr. Dre would later do and you know that now happen also a lot outside of hip -hop. So there’s no discounting his contribution as much as one can you know now question his character. He was certainly you know one of the founding fathers if not the founding father of the business of hip hop. You have interviewed some of the most some of the most prolific names in your book. Three Kings is about three of these guys.

(Speaker 2)
I mean Jay -Z Dr. Dre you know Diddy. I mean you’ve interviewed a lot of these folks, these celebrity hip -hop artists, and actually talk to them up close and personal. Can you share with us maybe some of the highlights or some of the favorite characters that you’ve actually interviewed or spent a little bit of time with, some of the hip -hop artists that you’ve enjoyed meeting the most? from meeting him in real life. He has these kind of very outrageous songs and very over -the -top. And then you meet him in real life.

(Speaker 2)
And he’s talking to you about how he wants to create, you know, storytelling for young women. And, you know, he loves his daughter. And, you know, he’s got all these different business ventures. You know, at the time, I think he was working on a cognac line. You know, he had a whole bunch of different things in the works. And I said to him, like, you know, how do you reconcile these two different sides of yourself?

(Speaker 2)
And he said, well, you know, it’s like You have a friend at work, maybe who during the week they come in, they’re all buttoned up. And then on the weekend, they’re like, well, that’s that’s who I am on on the weekdays. I’m I’m Chris Bridges and I work really hard and I’m a businessman. And then on the weekends, I’m ludicrous. And, you know, the way that he’s able to move in and out of that character, I thought was pretty fascinating. Not everybody is able to do that the same way.

(Speaker 2)
And, you know, you meet some people You know, they’re not at all like that character. Yeah. And you meet other people and they’re that character all the time. I think Snoop Dogg is one who comes to mind. And, you know, he rolls in with his joint and and he’s freestyling and everything is, you know, these Dr. Seuss rhymes. And it’s pretty impressive, honestly.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, I asked him to come up with with the Forbes freestyle. I kind of challenged him to come up with the freestyle relating to Forbes off the top of his head. And, you know, within five seconds, he’d started and he was just going for like a minute, you know, like, so when you make your list at the top of the year, let me make things real simple and clear. I’m number one, not two, not three, not four. And da, da, da, da, da. and he just kept going.

(Speaker 1)
He kept going, and he couldn’t have possibly written it beforehand because I just asked him the question on the spot.

(Speaker 2)
So, you know, I thought that was impressive in a different way. And then you kind of contrast some of that, you know, meeting the guys in hip -hop with you know, billionaires in the broader industry and other musicians in the, in the, uh, you know, throughout the industry that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet. And, um, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, they’re all, they’re all people, right. I mean, and that’s, that’s kind of the unifying thing. It’s the, the way that I find, um, best to relate to them is just treat them like people you treat, you know, celebrities are people too. And I think that they don’t, um, they don’t get a lot of time being treated like human beings, if that makes any sense.

(Speaker 2)
So, you know, kind of shooting the fish with them and says, oh, you know, how’s your kid? How’s your wife? And they, I think, really appreciate that. So you know all these artists. You do a lot of research in the space of hip hop for Forbes. And you also write about a lot of other topics.

(Speaker 2)
But you are the king of the hip hop mogul knowledge for Forbes. So when you decided to write this book, Three Kings, or any book that you’re doing, what’s your process for shutting everything down and writing the book. I mean, do you disappear for a week or two?

(Speaker 7)
What’s your process? Fortunately, I can’t totally disappear. You know, there are the demands of the day job. So, you know, I can’t really go away for six months and just write. The way I try to do it, I guess, is, you know, I don’t really take book leave. I do work a lot on the nights and weekends.

(Speaker 7)
And Forbes does have a fairly liberal

(Speaker 2)
policy, so that’s really helpful. We always get the week off between Christmas and New Year’s, and after you’ve been there for long enough, you get the four additional weeks. So now that I’m a 10 -year vet there, it does afford me a little bit of time to go off and have time to write my book. So yeah, I would say I’ll take a long weekend here, or maybe I’ll do a you know, a week there. And I try to do my writing in spurts. And, you know, somehow at the end of the day, it all gets done.

(Speaker 7)
Even though sometimes it’s rather anxiety provoking as to how and when that’ll happen.

(Speaker 35)
And, you know, just I look down and there’s my 70 ,000 words.

(Speaker 2)
So it keeps happening. Hey Zach, Dr. Z here. When you’re researching these guys, is there anything off limits to you? I mean, do you draw the line somewhere? Have you heard, did you uncover some stuff that you said, oof, oof, I’m not going, I’m not, oof, back up, oof, back up. I’m not going to publish that.

(Speaker 2)
I’m not going to talk about that. I mean, where do you draw the line? Well, you know, I think mainly, and this might sound cliche, but, you know, I mean, that’s kind of the most important part, and I don’t like to traffic in rumors. There have been a lot of rumors that have been very intriguing that I haven’t been able to really confirm, so I don’t publish those.

(Speaker 7)
I do write more about the business side of things, so if I come across somebody and somebody’s personal life that’s not really relevant, I mean, I don’t always do it, but obviously Somebody like Russell Simmons, you know.

(Speaker 19)
you find out that kind of thing, I think there’s also a duty to do the right thing.

(Speaker 7)
I haven’t come across that kind of thing before in my writing.

(Speaker 1)
If I did, I would write about it.

(Speaker 7)
If you can verify, you’re going to write about it. Yeah, exactly. If I can verify it, I’m going to write about it. On the business side, of course, there are a lot of deals that people don’t want you to know about, deals that happened, deals that didn’t happen, things that happen in a way that’s different from the way that they’re commonly understood to have happened. I try to tell those stories when I can, and I think those have been some of the best parts of empire state of mind of the circle jackson book became you know some of the stories that that had been told before uh… and then sometimes you get one that are only kinda like partially confirmed that somebody’s not exactly sure how it happened although it seems like it was a lot different than something so you know and a lot of time history to go back many decades and a lot of people have a lot of different agendas right and i mean i remember with uh… the michael jackson book you know talking about how The Jacksons left their original label, Steeltown Records, in Gary, Indiana to go to Motown. I got that story from three different octogenarian men who had very different ideas about what happened or what should have happened, or how they want to be remembered.

(Speaker 7)
Those being Barry Gordy. the head of Motown, of course, the late Joe Jackson, Michael’s dad, and the guy who ran Steel Town Records. And of course, everybody has a different agenda. So in that case, what I did is I just said what each of them said. and I said, here’s what probably happened, here’s what Joe says, here’s what Barry says, here’s what I think Gordon Keefe said.

(Speaker 2)
And at some point, this stuff happened a half a century ago, you’ve got to leave it to the reader and put it all out there, as long as it doesn’t seem like something that’s pathetically false.

(Speaker 39)
Well, Zach, I’ve got a great idea for your next book.

(Speaker 38)
Oh, wow.

(Speaker 22)
You can title it The Fourth King.

(Speaker 1)
Really?

(Speaker 19)
I don’t know if you…

(Speaker 7)
Fourth King.

(Speaker 28)
Yeah, I don’t know.

(Speaker 1)
And I know you probably haven’t heard many of our radio shows or podcasts, but Clay Clark has been writing intros and wrapping intros for our show that are just phenomenal.

(Speaker 28)
And so I’m thinking he’s probably going to be the next great rapper.

(Speaker 1)
In fact, we’re hoping he doesn’t get signed and leaves the radio show. And then Shep and I have got to do it by ourselves. And here we are. I mean, we don’t have the research and the work that he’s doing. So you might think about that.

(Speaker 24)
The fourth king.

(Speaker 7)
Do a little research on Clark.

(Speaker 2)
I think Drake might, you know, take umbrage at that. Oh, man. Oh, there we go. Maybe the fifth. The 14th king, who’s the back up for the 27th king. The future king.

(Speaker 2)
He could be a king someday. I don’t know. Working on the fief. All right. So, Zach, in your books, I just love the detail you go into. And in the book you wrote, Empire State of Mind, you talked about how Jay -Z was able to turn $60 bottles of antique gold into 300 -hour bottles of Ace of Spades, just poof, using hip -hop magic.

(Speaker 37)
How did it happen, my friend?

(Speaker 1)
Because that’s some serious investigative journalism.

(Speaker 2)
Very cool.

(Speaker 27)
I believe you had to travel to France to really get to the bottom of the story.

(Speaker 2)
Can you explain this story? Merci. Yeah, well, you know, that was really one where you kind of just keep pulling on it. the on the thread and and then the whole sweater unravels. And a lot of times as journalists, that’s what that’s what we have to do.

(Speaker 36)
So when I had started writing this book, the background of it was that the guy who ran the company that made Cristal Champagne made this comment to The Economist.

(Speaker 2)
uh… magazine he said he said something he said what do you think of all these rappers drinking champagne he he basically said we can’t control who drinks our champagne like we don’t want these people drinking our champagne you know but what can we do uh… which jay -z i think rightly took uh… offense to and so he said uh… i’m gonna boycott cristal champagne will not serve it in my club my establishment won’t rap about it anymore and you know jay -z’s you know, as big as it gets in hip hop. And so a lot of people kind of followed his lead. And so he, he steered everyone towards Dom Perignon and Kroeg briefly. But in his mind, I think he had something else planned, because lo and behold, within a matter of months, suddenly he’s rapping about this mysterious gold, these mysterious gold bottles of Ace of Spades. What was Ace of Spades? Armand de Brignac champagne.

(Speaker 2)
It was this thing that debuted in the United States, I think it was fall 2000. I think it was. It’s all in my book. It’s in your book, that’s right. So it comes out, and it’s this $300 bottle, and here I’m reading this book, and I’m thinking, there’s no way that Jay -Z is just doing this out of the goodness of his heart, right? Right.

(Speaker 2)
That’s just not who he is. So I kind of stay on it, and I don’t know. digging around and sitting with this guy named Branson B, who’s a kind of an OG in the hip hop world. And this is in a speakey, this little basement speakey that he used to have in Harlem. And I noticed this gold bottle. And I said, well, what’s that?

(Speaker 2)
He said, no, that’s ND Gold. That’s a $50 bottle of champagne. It’s actually made by Cattier, the same company that makes the champagne that Jay -Z’s been pushing. and and he said you know that i think you got a bottle of champagne that mysteriously disappeared right before armand de brignac champagne uh… came out and and so he basically thought that it was is the same thing so i thought it was interesting i’m gonna try to to get to the bottom of the so i called up the catchy people they invited me to to to visit uh… france and you know and check out what they had going for them so but without a ticket flew over there And they took me on this tour down into the basement and the cellars, these ancient wine cellars that the French used to use to hide people during the Second World War, during the air raids and so forth.

(Speaker 27)
Amazing stuff.

(Speaker 2)
And when I was down there, I noticed that there were these gold bottles, but they were unmarked. And it was like they could have, you know, you could slap one label on them and make them antique gold and sell them for 60 bucks. Or you could slap another on him and call him Armando Brignac and sell it to 300.

(Speaker 1)
And so, you know, I kind of kept at it and, you know, poked around. And when I got back to New York, I looked up the timeline of how this happened. And in fact, Armando Brignac had made his debut in the fall, but it had appeared in Jay -Z’s video in the summer. And I said to them, well, you know, did Jay -Z come across this?

(Speaker 26)
Oh, well, he found it in a mom -and -pop shop and blah, blah, blah, and just promoted it out of the goodness of his heart because he likes it so much.

(Speaker 35)
And I said, well, then how did he manage to get ahold of it before it was available in stores?

(Speaker 2)
And then they started backtracking and said, oh, well, you know, blah, blah, blah. We did have some kind of relationship and sort of came out that, in fact, this was a whole preconstructed thing and that he owned part of the brand and that he was profiting off of it, which, you know, good for him. Like, why shouldn’t he? And I’d rather if I’m buying $300 bottles of champagne. I’d rather give my money to Jay -Z than to some racist French people, which is what the people who ran Cristal seem to be. I think that was the attitude when it came out in my book that Jay -Z, in fact, owned Armand de Brignac.

(Speaker 2)
Some people took notice of it, and then a couple years later jay -z vehemently big announcement like jay -z you know has acquired his favorite champagne brand blah blah blah but you know what he he had had to take it all along uh… and you know that’s jay -z he manages to find a way to control the narrative all the time uh… and then that’s what he did again in this case uh… you know but it but it certainly was i mean if i had a uh… reported on it would be a alternately you know, come out and made that announcement.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll ever know. But, you know, that was that was definitely one of the big scoops of that book. And it was a fun one, too. Now, I watched one of your interviews where you were explaining that apparently you and Jay -Z had a interaction near a port -a -potty. A port -a -potty, yes.

(Speaker 1)
And apparently that’s where the great conversations of hip -hop happened. You say, you and me, let’s meet over there by the port -a -potty. Was he excited by your port -a -potty?

(Speaker 2)
Empire State of Mind? No. He said, I walked out of the Porta Potty, I saw Jay -Z standing next to Beyonce. This is at his Made in America festival in Philly. And I said, oh, Jay, I’m the guy who wrote the book about you. And he pretended not to hear me.

(Speaker 2)
He kind of sauntered off. And then he said, He looked over his shoulder and he goes, that book was horrible. And disappeared around the corner. So are you are you mending the fence with Jay -Z? Are you guys, are you guys, are you starting to kind of mend that relationship there? Are you?

(Speaker 2)
Because you do so much investigative reporting. It’s so detailed what you’re doing. I mean, again, I know Z asked you about where you draw the line. My question for you on this is, is how do you get permission to do this? Or do you not get permission? I mean, do you get when you make a book about Jay -Z?

(Speaker 1)
No, you don’t need to be, you don’t need permission to be a journalist, right? You can write about whatever you want to write about. He’s a public figure, and all you can do is write the truth.

(Speaker 34)
It’s better if you can talk to him, usually, but sometimes that comes with conditions, and conditions that might get in the way of journalistic integrity and stuff like that.

(Speaker 6)
His camp’s response when I approached him initially was, what’s in it for us? I said, well, I’m an Orbs writer, and it’s a generally positive outlet, and it’s an empire state of mind. And they were kind of like, well, why don’t you think about ripping up your book deal and maybe we’ll let you ghostwrite a business book later, which, you know, I don’t know that I wanted to write this book. And also, I didn’t really believe them. so I went with it. I was a 20 -year -old kid at the time, and I didn’t think I might be able to do it, especially when they were actively trying to get people to not talk to me, which is something that happened.

(Speaker 6)
I mean, there were people who were definitely You know, I got to them and all of a sudden it’s like, oh, you know, is Jay -Z on board with this?

(Speaker 1)
Oh, well, like now, you know, oh, no. OK, well, I can’t talk to you. So, you know, but but it was sort of that that that shoe leather reporting, you know, like I described with Branson and going to France and that kind of stuff. And if the doors close, you kind of go around the back and see what you can find. And and that’s what I did. I think that’s what happens in hip hop a lot.

(Speaker 1)
You know, a lot of these guys find the doors closed uh… in terms of you know if you want to do uh… you’d be one of the record dealer you want to uh… clothing deal like jv had with uh… you know what i think they didn’t want to give him a deal and um… what do you do you want to turn around so uh… and i kind of tried to take that to take that and apply it to my own life a little bit. My understanding is that you are one of the only people who was able to get a photo of Jay -Z for the cover of that book, and you maybe were the cause of him no longer making photos of himself available. Is that correct? Am I getting that wrong, that you are one of the last people to be able to use his photo on the cover of a book? Yeah, I suspect that’s true. My name is Kevin Thomas, and the name of our company is MultiClean.

(Speaker 1)
We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times. We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place.

(Speaker 33)
I’ve probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences and Amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and show the team about marketing and how to implement.

(Speaker 1)
Okay, Aaron Antis, September 25th and 26th, guess who’s coming back to Tulsa? I will give you a hint. His first name is Eric. And his last name is Trump. And his father is the 47th president of these United States. Yes, Eric Trump is joining us once again here, September 25th and 26th in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the two day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop.

(Speaker 1)
But Eric Trump is bringing friends. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Alina Haba will be joining Eric Trump right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Amanda Grace will be in the place. Dr. Stella Emanuel. will be here in T -Town in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Julie Green will be on the scene.

(Speaker 1)
Mel K will be here to say hey. Dave Scarlett from the His Glory team will be here. It’s going to be a blasty blast right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you want to start or grow a super successful company, if you want to make your wallet great again or make your wallet great for the first time, if you want to learn marketing, systems, scaling, human resources, accounting, social media, branding, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management and more, get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 5)
com.

(Speaker 21)
Once again, that’s Thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 32)
Most

(Speaker 5)
com. Most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States, he needed a competent man to run and execute his business plans. So the man that runs the Trump Organization for Donald J. Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump.

(Speaker 5)
So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages Billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it.

(Speaker 28)
You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint.

(Speaker 24)
I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand?

(Speaker 14)
I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015.

(Speaker 5)
He’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine going into 10 years of him running it.

(Speaker 2)
And we get to tap into that knowledge.

(Speaker 5)
That’s going to be amazing.

(Speaker 32)
Now think about this for a second.

(Speaker 1)
But Clay Clark, man, he is one character. It’s a good word for character. Yeah, that is it. Good, driven, smart. And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good.

(Speaker 1)
And then I met his mother and she just says, She just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, he’s endorsed by his mother and he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he’s working with. himself with. His Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning. Oh, it’s incredible.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah. He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine. He’s a machine, but his, you know, I could, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock. Yes. Hundreds of people showing up at 5 .00 AM in Tulsa, Oklahoma, man. He’s a leader of a leader.

(Speaker 1)
He’s fantastic. Yeah, man. No, he is.

(Speaker 13)
The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 9)
If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody.

(Speaker 31)
I grew up without money.

(Speaker 30)
I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot.

(Speaker 9)
So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket.

(Speaker 1)
Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here, the legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa, and we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom.

(Speaker 1)
No, I’m just kidding. So I thought, you know what? We should probably add on. Play Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Play? Play is the greatest.

(Speaker 1)
I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy.

(Speaker 29)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

(Speaker 21)
So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life.

(Speaker 5)
Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing.

(Speaker 1)
So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow . com. Go to Thrivetimeshow . com. When you go to Thrivetimeshow . com, you’ll go there, you’ll request tickets.

(Speaker 20)
ticket, boom. Or if

(Speaker 1)
Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. Just text my number.

(Speaker 29)
It’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number.

(Speaker 1)
We’ll keep that. private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918 -851 -0102.

(Speaker 1)
918 -851 -0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish -speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918 -851 -0102. Zero two. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying one for a one.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it.

(Speaker 1)
I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here. OK, OK. You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I got to get my brand known out there like the Trump brand.

(Speaker 1)
Right. You want to get that brand. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something.

(Speaker 1)
This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people. throughout your career and thousands of contractors and most people struggle with managing people.

(Speaker 1)
Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it can be a challenge, you know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be challenging. but if you have the right systems, you have the right processes and you’re really good at selecting great ones. And we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable.

(Speaker 1)
they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time?

(Speaker 1)
How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two -day interactive business workshop. Now let me tell you how the format is set up here.

(Speaker 1)
And again, folks, this is a two -day interactive 15. Think about this, folks. It’s two days.

(Speaker 28)
Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 PM.

(Speaker 1)
So from 7 AM to 5 PM, two days.

(Speaker 25)
It’s a two -day interactive workshop.

(Speaker 1)
The way we do it is we do a 30 -minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question -and -answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15 -minute question -and -answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops, because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership.

(Speaker 1)
And you don’t you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we will allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard.

(Speaker 1)
And then we take a 15 -minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. You had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting.

(Speaker 1)
I, I. I should write that down. And I feel sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile. We duct tape its face. So that’s right.

(Speaker 1)
We duct tape.

(Speaker 27)
It was a baby crocodile.

(Speaker 1)
And we duct tape. Yeah, duct tape around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody.

(Speaker 8)
But it was really cool bouncing that thing around. I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great.

(Speaker 5)
And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs.

(Speaker 1)
So there’s not a lot of people in America today.

(Speaker 8)
In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self -employed.

(Speaker 1)
So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3 % of our population that’s even self -employed.

(Speaker 8)
So you only have 3 out of every 100 people in America that are self -employed to begin with. And when Inc.

(Speaker 1)
Magazine reports that 96 % of businesses fail by default, By default, you have a 1 out of 1 ,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business.

(Speaker 26)
But yet, the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this.

(Speaker 1)
No hyperbole, no exaggeration.

(Speaker 25)
I have thousands of testimonials to back this up.

(Speaker 1)
We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. And you say, double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples.

(Speaker 1)
see at thrive timeshow . com. But again, this is the most interactive best business workshop on the planet.

(Speaker 10)
This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet.

(Speaker 1)
I was looking to learn. how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. I make good money. I just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve been a CPA for 33 years.

(Speaker 24)
And what kind of, um, growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say five, six years.

(Speaker 23)
The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing 3 million.

(Speaker 1)
This year we’ll be, we’ll do 24 million. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We have, we cater in the food and because.

(Speaker 1)
I keep it simple. I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home, and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products.

(Speaker 1)
That’s rusticcuff . com. And someone says, I want more.

(Speaker 4)
This is not enough. Give me more. OK. I’m not going to mention their names right now, because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal. to be here and this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of value he’s made a lot of money in the uh what it’s the uh It’s where you rent. It’s short.

(Speaker 4)
It’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns this. What do you call that? The rental?

(Speaker 1)
The storage space? Storage units. This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis. but they’re not, like, customer -facing.

(Speaker 1)
Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars, but this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here, and we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, You want a life changing experience.

(Speaker 22)
You want to learn how to start and grow a company.

(Speaker 1)
Go to Thrivetimeshow . com. Go there right now.

(Speaker 21)
Thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 1)
com. Request a ticket for the two day interactive event.

(Speaker 20)
Hey, how’s it going?

(Speaker 1)
I’m Thomas Croson, owner and founder of Full Package Media in Dallas, Texas. I’ve been a coaching client with Clay Clark since the beginning of our business. We started about a year ago, August of last year. I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue really what was going on. And now we’ve grown to where we’ve got six photographers. We’ve got office space here.

(Speaker 19)
I have an admin sales person that works for us full time, developing an online system.

(Speaker 1)
And a lot of that growth we attribute to Clay helping us. And there’s so many things that, I mean, his stuff is not revolutionary.

(Speaker 10)
It’s not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff. Uh, it’s just real, real stuff. It’s going to be a blasty blast.

(Speaker 1)
There’s no upsells. Uh, Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible.

(Speaker 6)
And there’s somebody out there right now. You’re you’re watching and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called smoke your way to thin. I think that’s going to change your life. I promise you, this will be 10 times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. I mean, it is life -changing.

It is life -changing. If you become a jade smoker, it is life -changing. It’s not your best weight -loss program, though. Right, not really. So if you’re looking to have life -changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow . com.

Again, that’s Aaron Antis. I’m Clay Clark. And reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two -day interactive Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life -changing experience. changing experience. We can’t wait to see you up right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Whoa. What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? 3 .45 million. I got those stats before I got on here. So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million? Yeah, 3 ,450 ,000.

Would that be like if you took the combined revenue, maybe doubled it? Have we gone up by? About almost three, not quite.

Transcribed with Cockatoo