Guy Kawasaki | The Legendary Apple (Macintosh Division) Product Evangelist, Silicon-Valley Based-Author, Speaker & Entrepreneur Shares + “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” – Guy Kawasaki

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The former chief evangelist of Apple and social media experts, Guy Kawasaki.

I’m not a big consumer of social media. I’m a producer of social media.

I don’t think my high school English teacher would think I wrote 13 books in my career.

Empower people.

It’s what I do. The ultimate bottom line is positioning, branding, powerful marketing platform, and you get that not by self -promotion. A book is an end in itself. It’s not a means to an end.

Folks, on today’s show, we are interviewing the legendary, the iconic, the man, the myth, the legend, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and product evangelist, Guy Kawasaki.

Welcome onto The Thrive Time Show.

How are you, sir?

Well, that’s quite an introduction.

Now, I have to ask you here real quick. You have been known as this guy who was a product evangelist or product marketer, sales guy, who started off with Apple, or at least that’s when most people heard your name for the first time. Could you help us sort myth versus reality? What exactly did you do with Team Apple to help them introduce their game -changing product, sir?

Yeah.

So I was what’s known as a Macintosh software evangelist. And evangelism comes from a Greek word that means bringing the good news. So I brought the good news of Macintosh, how we would increase people’s creativity and productivity. And my specific role was to convince software companies and hardware companies to create Macintosh software and Macintosh hardware. So my job was to go and evangelize Macintosh as a platform for all these third -party developers, hardware and software.

Now, when you worked at Apple, so much has been written about Steve Jobs after his passing. How closely did you work with Steve Jobs during those early years, and what was he like?

Well, back in those days, this is the Macintosh division, circa mid 1980s. The Macintosh division was, you know, 50, 100, 150 people. So I was not his direct report. Let’s see. It was Steve to Mike Murray to my, I was three or four levels away. I can’t tell you, I was, you know, his BFF and was hanging out with him all day.

But, uh, let me just be subtle and say that Steve jobs has a, has a such a strong personality, you can be three to four levels away and still feel the heat. Trust me, you’re still in the impact zone.

So when you were working at Apple, and then we’ll get into some new things you’re working on now, but when you’re at Apple, I mean, you had to have been learning at an incredible rate. And for any entrepreneurs out there that watch this show, and maybe they want to become the next Apple, or maybe they just want their company to grow. Can you talk about the level of intensity that you experienced when working at Apple, or the level of focus that you encountered on a daily basis? Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs want to become successful. And they want to become the next Steve Jobs or the next Apple or the next, but they don’t really, they don’t have that experience that you have. What kind of things did you learn while working in that proximity of Steve Jobs and team Apple?

If you want to be the next Apple or the next Steve Jobs, that is a very, very aspirational goal. It’s a very, very tough bar, tough fence to climb over. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but I’m telling you, you know, don’t think that it’s just a matter of showing up in a black mock turtleneck and jeans and New Balance running shoes and driving a Mercedes without a license plate and parking in the handicapped spot. You know, I mean, some people tried to do that. They ended up in jail. I mean, you know, don’t, don’t cry.

causation and correlation. Now, the Macintosh division, I mean, that was just the most honorable, well, not honorable, the most, it was the biggest honor I’ve ever had in working for a company. You know, I didn’t know it at the time, but when I look back now, I say, my God, guy, you know, You’re so lucky to have worked for the Macintosh division, to work for Steve. I can’t tell you it was easy. I can’t tell you it was pleasant. But looking back, I mean, that was amazing.

To use a sports analogy, it would be like if you played for the Green Bay Packers and Vince Lombardi or you played for Indiana and Bobby Knight, you know, it’s that kind of experience. When you’re in it, you’re suffering. But when you look back, you say, my God, that was an honor.

So when you left Apple, when you moved on to your next thing, you became known as a Silicon Valley product evangelist and slash venture capitalist. And there’s a lot of ists that have been used to describe you over the years. How would you describe what you did after you left Apple?

I left Apple the first time to start a software company. So in a sense, I started believing my own, you know, BS because I was evangelizing Macintosh as a viable platform. So I started believing that or I believed it the whole time. So I left to start a Macintosh software company, which, you know, it’s kind of like, uh, It’s proof of the pudding. I mean, you know, it’s eating what you cook. If you’re asking people to, you know, bet their companies on Macintosh, you should be able to bet your own company on Macintosh.

So that’s what I did. I left the start of Macintosh software company.

And what was it like starting your own company? I mean, was that how would you describe that? Was it like eating glass? As Elon Musk talks about, Elon says that starting a company is like eating glass while looking into somebody’s eyes. dark abyss. I think I’m paraphrasing that correctly.

What was it like? How would you describe the process of starting a business?

Well, the process of starting a business, I would not call it eating glass. You know, I mean, that’s a little bit too dramatic and too romantic. And, you know, it’s kind of simple. I mean, you ask yourself, you know, Why does this exist? Why is it done this way? Is there a better way?

Is there a better way to upgrade software? Is there a better way to develop products? Is there a better way? And, you know, you figure out there’s a better way. And then you and your partner, your co -founder, two guys in a garage, two gals in a garage. I mean, you may be eating only ramen and, you know, soy sauce for a few years, but it’s not eating glass.

And you try to create this product. get the prototype out. The first thing is the first two or three customers, the hardest thing in the world. And then if it takes off, it’s a matter of scaling, but, uh, it is a very, very difficult, but it is a very exciting existence. Um, I recommend that everybody try it at least once in your life, or, you know, I don’t want you at the end of your life. Your biggest regret is that you didn’t take the shot.

Uh, that is much more likely to be your biggest regret, then you regret taking the shot and losing.

Now, one of the quotes that you’re legendary for is ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

Could you clarify what you mean or what you meant by that, sir?

Well, I mean, you know, with PowerPoint, you can come up or now with Canva, you can come up with a lot of ideas. You know, you put some text, you draw some diagrams and bada bing, bada bang, your idea is a pitch. But the hard part is actually implementing that. So, you know, if somebody said, yeah, we’re going to have this LLM and this LLM is going to be, you know, universally loved and it’s going to be so intelligent and it’s going to give you accurate answers, it’s not going to hallucinate.

Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

It’ll be able to generate graphics. And then I’m like, yeah, I just described the ultimate LLM. Talk is cheap. You know, I can describe the LLM. You try to build that sucker. That’s the hard part.

And so I think, you know, ideas are easy. They’re dime a dozen. And, you know, I mean, people, as I’ve grown older, I used to believe the idea is the hard part. The implementation is the easy part. Cause once you know what you’re doing, you just implement. I found that to be totally wrong.

It’s the opposite.

You know, you, you have an idea and then implementing it is very, very hard.

Now, I could be wrong here, sir, because I never know when I look something up how much of it’s true, how much of it’s not. But I understand that you’ve been an advisor for Google, for Motorola, for Canva. Why do some of the biggest companies in America choose to hire you? Or why do they hire you? Is there a certain swag, a certain mindset, a certain energy, a certain toolkit?

What is it that you bring to the table that has so many big companies reaching out to you?

I guess I’m living proof that you can fool most of the people most of the time. Yeah, the truth is that Very early in my career, I was affiliated with Apple and Apple has become a darling, even more of a darling now after I left. But it’s got this magic that, oh man, he worked for Steve Jobs, he worked for the Macintosh division. So whether that’s right or wrong, justified or not, people think that have some kind of you know, causative relationship and you have a magic touch. And in my case, I had a very specific and narrow expertise, which is evangelism, which is something we just discussed.

So there’s, I think, a greater intellectual platform there that you say, you know, Guy was at Apple. Apple was very successful. He was responsible for evangelizing Macintosh. That was a big deal. Big big challenge. He pulled it off.

It made apple successful So let’s go get the guy that did that. Um I think that’s the reasoning of many many companies and people i’m not about to burst their bubble and tell them A lot of it is just the right place right time Now you then transitioned into becoming an author and you continue to be an author Um, what is it that inspires you to write the books that you write there, sir? well The hang on, I’m sorry. Sorry about that. So the question is what inspired me to write? Right.

And, you know, I got to tell you, the best answer for that, when you ask an author, if the author is honest, is a big advance. But that’s not all. really, the theme or the perspective you want. What I think, and I would like to give this advice to other potential authors, is that if you think you want to write a book, the test is that you view the book as not a means to an end, but the end in and of itself. In other words, you have something to say, it’s burning a hole in you and you want to get it out, which is very different than saying, Oh, I want to write a book to position myself as a, as a visionary, you know, as a thinker, I want to increase my consulting fees.

I want to increase my, you know, my speeches, I want to increase all this. So this book is a means to an end. Uh, when you, when you’re thinking like that, you’re probably not going to write a very good book. You should write a good book. And the motivation for the book should be, I would write this book, even if it didn’t mean any speeches, any consulting, any visionary positioning, anything like that. It’s because I have something important to say.

That’s the test. So let me ask you this, what is it that you believe is important for you to say right now? Like right now as the world, here we are, 2026, so much is changing, so much is happening.

What is it that is on your heart that you’re wanting to share with the entrepreneurial audience that watches this particular broadcast?

Yeah, well. In particular, if you’re from the outside looking in, you’re thinking, oh my God, all of Silicon Valley, they’re just a bunch of billionaire bros. And these billionaire bros, all they seem to care about is crypto and making long -term capital gains tax as low as possible. And let’s just say that that’s not a higher calling at all. I truly do believe that the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and really tech entrepreneurs everywhere, they are trying to make the world a better place. And if you make the world a better place, you probably will be rewarded for it.

Now, I mean, if your idea is a quick flip and, you know, you’re going to You’re gonna create another meme coin and you’re gonna to make billions of dollars and blah, blah, blah. That kind of is depressing to me. I want you to make great products and services. I want you to think, how does my product or service make life better as opposed to make me rich? So when you start off with the sole goal of making yourself rich, I predict that you won’t be successful as an entrepreneur.

You’ve got to make the world better, and then you will be rewarded for it. Now, my understanding is that you are on a warpath or on a mission, on a quest to make sure that the world remembers that we need to have privacy.

I think that’s what you’ve been talking about.

And I want to not put words in your mouth, but is this something, why is this something you’re passionate about, sir, is privacy? Well, just look around you right now, right? So, you know, a lot of the traditions and the qualities of America are at risk right now. And I believe that the level of privacy is directly related to the democracy of a country. So as privacy declines, so does democracy. So we need to have privacy for everybody.

And one of the most important aspects of privacy is messaging. So can you message privately? Can you email privately? And so I got on this quest and I started using Signal. I learned how to use Signal. I love Signal.

I love the human interface design. And I looked around and then, you know, nobody has written a book about Signal.

So I decided that I would become an unofficial, unpaid evangelists for Signal because I think Signal can foster much greater privacy and that’s just good for society no matter what.

you are. Now you are on this quest to push for privacy because you clearly see that privacy is by default going away. and uh there are people out there uh and this is not a political show so i’m not going to go to the right or the left i’m just going to play down the center if i can today but there’s a lot of people on the right a lot of people on the left calling for we need increased privacy over here privacy over there and it seems like once people get behind that product or service or cryptocurrency or whatever it is, it seems to be like there’s a rug pull where somebody says, oh, by the way, that isn’t actually private or whatever. You’re seeing a lot of that. You know, you see people’s emails they thought they sent in confidence, you know, 10 years ago through some encrypted thing. Now, all of a sudden, they’re becoming front page news on both sides of the aisle.

Just what do you make of the lack of of privacy, email exposure, doxing everybody, culture that’s becoming normal. This is a very difficult subject because, you know, when signal is encrypted and protects people, it also hides people and it shields people, right? So if you’re a criminal and you’re using signal, it is much harder to get the incriminating evidence. Now, the only solution to that is that you just have to take that that is a downside and that’s how it goes because if you were to say well okay so only bad people using signal can we break their encryption and get to it but the good people we don’t hassle them we don’t go after their data Well, the problem is the definition of good people and bad people shift. So somebody who’s good today may not be good tomorrow.

And somebody who’s bad today may not be bad tomorrow. They may be good tomorrow. So who gets to judge whether this privacy is OK for this person and OK for this person, but not OK for these other people. So my take on this is everybody should have privacy, the good people and the bad people, because there is no way you can just say, okay, only the good guys have privacy.

There’s no way to pull that off. Now, I want to go back to Steve Jobs and kind of tie this in because Steve, and please correct me if what I’ve read is incorrect, but I’ve tried to read as many as I can about Steve Jobs over the years, but Steve would put a lot of heat on getting a product out on time or he put a lot of heat on the product development team to make awesome packaging to make great products to make intuitive design and he put a lot of pressure on people and some of the stories over the years have come out and you know some of these people that were on the receiving end of Steve’s pushing would say yeah he was intense or yeah he said in private some things that maybe You wouldn’t say on stage. But when they came back and they reflected upon it 20 years later, they go, if Steve had not had said that to me in a private one -on -one conversation or over the phone or whatever that relationship was, they would not have developed that product, that packaging, that game -changing something. And so I want to get your thoughts on this.

What do you think would have happened if Steve Jobs and the way he managed to get things done 20 years ago would have been in the world we live in now where everything’s recorded, everything is leaked, everybody is secretly recording every meeting.

Would he have adjusted his style at all, or what do you think Steve would have done? I guarantee you Steve would have done something different. He would adjust his style. Steve is truly a unique person. There’s only been one Steve. You might be able to make the case that Elon Musk is kind of like a Steve Jobs, but Elon Musk, let’s just say, has gone in different directions right now.

Uh, Steve would have definitely risen to the top, even in this situation, he would have figured something out.

Yeah. I have total confidence in that. I want to get really into some specifics. I want to tap it as much your wisdom as I can with the limited time we have, uh, for anybody out there that’s watching this show. And if they go, man, I want to be. the next Guy Kawasaki.

And you say, what does that mean? I want to be a guy who starts off in a jewelry store, working in a jewelry store, and then all of a sudden makes it big with a Silicon Valley company. I want to become an author. What do you say to somebody who’s watching this show right now from Oklahoma, from Florida, from New York, who says, I want to make it big in Silicon Valley.

I want to be the next generation of the Guy Kawasaki.

I want to be the next tech entrepreneur guy. What do you say? I say you should aim higher. So listen, you should not aspire to be me. I mean, maybe not even aspire to be Steve Jobs. What you should aspire to is making people’s lives better. So that’s what Steve did on a much smaller scale.

That’s what I’m trying to do. You know, with this book about signal, I’m trying to make people’s lives better. And I got to get the title in the title of this book is everybody has something to hide. And so, you know, please start using that. and read this book high. So anyway, so you should not want to be another Steve Jobs, another Elon Musk, another, you know, I don’t know, any of these characters, any of these tech bros. I mean, you’re, you’re worshiping a false God.

What you should want to do is make life better for people. If you make life better for people, everything falls into place. Do not try to be another Steve Jobs.

I mean, you know, that really helped Ellen from Terranos. I mean, look where she is now, right? So yeah, focus on the product and service and making people’s lives better. So let me ask you this. You are focused on making people’s lives better. That’s why you wrote this book.

If people get the book, Everybody Has Something to Hide, what are they going to find in that book that you believe could help everybody’s life become a little bit better? Like, what are some of the things in the book that you write about where you say, OK, this right here, if you’re watching the show, get the book because this is something in there that’s going to benefit you? Well, because I think that people As I said, as privacy goes, so goes democracy. So first I explain why you should use Signal. I mean, you may not even be aware of the constant threats to your privacy because everybody’s blowing smoke about end -to -end encryption and you think, oh yeah, we just say it’s end -to -end encrypted and everybody’s happy, check off the box for privacy. That is not at all true.

It is much more subtle and much more complex than that. all the complexities and I explained, this is how you can optimize your privacy. And don’t get me wrong, you could be a criminal and you need to hide your criminal activities, but it’s also for just, as I said, in the title, everybody has something to hide.

So, you know, if you have college age kids and they’re asking you for passwords for Netflix, or, you know, you’re sending them your credit card information, all of those things, you know, the test for privacy is, are you texting things that you would not want to see on a billboard next to the highway. Because if you are, you sure as hell should be using Signal at this point.

There’s people out there that are watching the show that, you know, are not using Signal.

And they’re looking at, you know, they look at the book and they go, you know, if I if I get this book and I read it and I embrace Signal, I mean, isn’t that going to be inconvenient for other people?

to communicate with me if I’m switching over to a new platform? Yes. What do you say to somebody out there that goes, well, I use Apple for everything because it’s convenient because so many people use Apple.

Therefore, that’s why I use Apple because it’s the Apple ecosystem.

And if I switch to Signal, now all of a sudden, I don’t know if people communicate with me. What do you say to somebody who’s kind of a slow adopter? OK, so first of all, Signal has an iOS and Macintosh app. So it’s not like, you know, you’re going to go completely outside. I use iOS and Macintosh all day long, every day. Right.

So there’s. There’s Apple versions of Signal. Now, however, you are correct that the, I think the biggest challenge with Signal is when you join, it’s very unlikely that your family and friends and colleagues are on it already. So you have to get them to join in order to make Signal useful. And I spend two or three chapters explaining how to do that. But you know, so yes, it is inconvenient.

It takes some effort. On the other hand, the effort is very well invested to achieve privacy. I mean, you know, trust me, if your privacy goes away because you did not use Signal and you get in trouble, it is going to be a lot more inconvenient than it would have been if you just got your key people on Signal. So this is like the, I don’t know if you’re old enough, you know, this is, there’s a company called Fram that makes oil filters, right? Fram oil filters.

And they had this ad series just to date myself. And you know, the crux of the ad was Fram oil filters. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later. Which is to say, if you don’t have FRAM oil filters, yeah, you might save a few bucks now, but your engine is going to self -destruct. Same kind of thing. You can pay for signal now, although it’s free.

You can pay for signal with the trouble of getting other people on it. You can do that now, or you can pay much more later. It’s like Fram. And by the way, the book is only 99 cents. This is not about making money for me.

So it’s a 99 cent book. Using Signal is free. I mean, this is the world’s greatest bargain. Now, again, the title of the book is Everybody Has Something to Hide, Why and How to Use Signal to Preserve Privacy, Security and Well -Being. Guy, you know, this conversation is not being privately encrypted.

It’s not being hidden behind a paywall somewhere. So what is the message that you want to share to our hundreds of thousands of subscribers that, you know, are frankly loving hearing your voice and they want to learn from you? What’s the message that you want to communicate today to all of our listeners? Yeah. So the message that I want to communicate to everybody is, especially you entrepreneurs, is that, you know, focus, focus, work backwards from the customer.

What do they need? How do you make their life better? You focus on that. Everything else falls into place. I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be easy because even when you figure out how to make people’s lives better, then you have to implement. Now, along the way, I’m telling you that your privacy is going to be more and more important, communicating with your customers and your vendors and your employees.

So at least take a look at Signal.

And if you take a look at Signal and really want to optimize your Signal, then buy my book.

And it’s only 99 cents.

I’m not trying to make money off of this.

Now, final question I have there for you, sir. Your website we have is GuyKawasaki .

com.

Is that where you prefer for people to follow you? Or do you prefer to people follow you on a certain social media platform? Or where’s the preferred place where you would prefer our listeners to stay in touch with you, sir? Well, the, probably the preferred platform is LinkedIn because that’s the place that’s least likely to have people with false identities. But if you really want to see what I’m doing week to week, the best thing is to listen to my podcast. So I have 52 episodes a year.

It’s called remarkable people. And just as, I’ll tell you some of the big names who have been on it for entrepreneurs. Of course, I’ve had mainstream people like Jane Goodall and Margaret Atwood and Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I’ve also had Steve Wozniak explaining how he started Apple with Steve Jobs. I’ve had the person who did Poopery, believe it or not. It is a great story how she created Poopery. I have people like the Painter Sisters who started a yogurt company.

I have Bob Cialdini that godfather of influence because every entrepreneur is going to have to figure out how to influence people.

I’ve had David Ocker, the father of branding. So, you know, I, I, I, just because of who I am and what I am, I, I kind of gravitate towards, you know, entrepreneurs and also, you know, social psychology and behavioral economics. So I have a lot, a lot of content about how to influence and persuade people, which is what entrepreneurs have to do. I’m going to pull that podcast up right there, folks. If you go to GuyKawasaki . com and you click on the podcast button.

Again, if you go to GuyKawasaki . com and you click on the podcast button there, you can find Guy’s Remarkable Podcast here. It’s Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People Podcast.

And again, folks, you can find it right there.

I’ll put a link on the show notes to everything we referenced on today’s show.

Sir, I really do appreciate you carving out time, and I’ll give you the final word. Guy Kawasaki, what say you? The final word is.. . Keep pushing. Perseverance is the key.

Nobody ever achieved anything great easily.

That’s just the way you have to pay the price. And if anybody tells you different and it’s easy, run from that person. That person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Amen and amen.

Thank you so much, Guy Kawasaki.

Have a great day, sir. Talk to you soon. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. Balance between thinking and doing. I mean, one of the things in the semiconductors was you had risk takers.

I mean, Bob Noyce learns to hang glide at age 40. These people like laying their butts in the line. How important was that in the early days? I mean, we’re going back to 75. Well, again, after seeing my entire life’s been spent only in one industry, which is this one. But I’ve been in it now for about 15 years, and I’ve seen a lot of people make a lot of things, I’ve seen a lot of people fail a lot of things.

And my point of view on this, or my observation is, that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker -doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it? Of course not. Leonardo was the artist, but he also mixed all his own paints. was a fairly good chemist, knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy, and combining all of those skills together, the art and the science, the thinking and the doing, was what resulted in the exceptional result.

And there is no difference in our industry. The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers. A lot of people, of course, it’s very easy to take credit for the thinking. The doing is more concrete, but it’s very easy for somebody to say, oh, I thought of this three years ago. But usually when you dig a little deeper, you find that the people that really did it were also the people that really worked through the hard intellectual problems as well. One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease.

And that disease, I’ve seen other people get it too. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 % of the work. And that if you just tell all these other people, here’s this great idea, then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a bad idea. great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows.

It never comes out like it starts, because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find There’s tremendous trade -offs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do, or glass do, or factories do, or robots do. And as you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping 5 ,000 things in your brain, these concepts, and fitting them all together and continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day, you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic. And so we had a lot of great ideas when we started. But what I’ve always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like when I was a young kid, there was a widowed man that lived up the street. And he was in his 80s. And he’s a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit.

I think he might have paid me to cut his, mow his lawn or something. And one day he said, come on into my garage. I want to show you something. And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. And it was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them. And he said, come on with me.

We went out to the back and we got some, just some rocks, some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and a little bit of grit powder. And we closed the can up, and he turned this motor on. He said, come back tomorrow. And his can was making a racket as the stones went around. And I came back the next day, and we opened the can, and we

out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in through rubbing against each other like this, creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks.

And that’s always been, in my mind, my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they’re passionate about, is that it’s through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people, bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together, they polish each other, and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.

Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show, and thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects, you know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you, so congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening? April 9th and 10th, 2026. We are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa Ruslin.

Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters, June 5th and 6th.

He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur.

Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done?

Every day. How often is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time. It’s almost like maybe 90 % of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive business workshop. And he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self -discipline and getting things done.

Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see this. Also at the two -day interactive workshop, Sean, we are going to be, oh, there it is. We’re going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people?

What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners, and being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers…

You know, being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area.

And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay. You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now, I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here, OK? OK.

All right.

The two -day interactive workshop.

This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here.

So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals.

I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one. Break even numbers.

What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique? from all the different businesses?

In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, Marketing, your three -legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed?

Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle.

And many times, they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more. leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, box number seven, create a sales conversion system.

Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you gotta have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight. What does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer?

Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for real people.

hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, What is the point of even achieving success?

We’re going to go over that. What is the point of even achieving success? How to design a life that you’re excited about. How to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re going to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that, all this and more. Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s April 9th and 10th.

It’s a two -day interactive workshop. And tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available?

if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket?

Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You know, you could be at a startup phase, or you could be, you know, way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And like, it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that, you know, you’re just your average people out there have access to the things that work. Now, 7 a .

m. to 5, Sean, why do we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops? We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question -and -answer session, and then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question -and -answer, then we take a break.

Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions, and that’s really where the the juiciness of the conference comes out is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board and clay will tee off and give you direct advice even without being in our coaching program you can get direct coaching from clay it’s really a very engaging format I enjoyed a lot once again folks this event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at Thrivetimeshow . com.

Once again, that’s Thrivetimeshow . com.

Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards?

P -M -U -R -T -C -I -R -E.

Ooh, that took a long time.

I’ll have to listen to this.

All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman.

I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive workshop. This event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow . com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow .

com.

Right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tim Tebow, baby. It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia.

Clay Clark is here somewhere.

Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound.

He’s like the greatest guy.

I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference, and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here.

We’ve got people playing the drums. We’ve got a fire.

And, man, people are screaming. My name is Kevin Thomas and the name of our company is MultiClean. 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. 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. 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, and show the team. 4 ,000 % from February to February.

Now I can better that. Okay. Clay, I don’t think you know this. I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself. And if I cry, forgive me.

In the last two and a half days, we have better. our entire month of February. in the last two and a half days. I heard about it on the podcast, started listening to the podcast, became a fan and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency, and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently.

The atmosphere is Second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Just something every entrepreneur, I think, would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key.

A lot of business coaches or seminars Maybe you’re high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you could take back and implement, you know, the following Monday, where his does. Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say, like, I came to, this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable.

It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. Man, I think they’re missing out on, you know, expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. You know, that’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am. And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Clay Clark has helped us take our three locations in three different states and create checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks for every employee. He’s helped us with creating systems and audits for every department, quantitative scorecards for each department and every position so that everybody has a number.

It’s been able to give us a lot of time freedom and financial freedom and peace.

of mind to know that everything’s running efficiently, and he’s been helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google, and pretty much every area of the business. He’s been very, very helpful. We would describe the experience of working with Clay as very energetic.

He’s full of energy.

He’s very encouraging.

very motivating, but also accountable.

So he keeps us accountable and we love that accountability. It keeps our drive in the right direction. So we’re not chasing things that aren’t worth spending our time on. He’s a great coach. He helps push us on certain areas, helps coach us in certain areas. You know, we’re all emotional creatures and we go up and down and he actually will tell us kind of where we’re at, how we can get from there, and even like emotionally, like if we’re stressed about something, you’ll have a story to relate to, and it really helps us in every area of our business.

It’s been very, very helpful. I think Clay’s ability to have a whole team behind him that helped him with all of his clients, all his coaching clients, is that it allows Clay to do what he’s really good at and that’s working one -on -one with the client and coaching them and then he can have his amazing staff come in and help you accomplish all these goals that you’re setting. Of course, he has all these resources, whether it’s videographers or whether it’s web developers, that they can quickly jump on your project, knock things out. He can quickly give you the right coaching. He’s just got a whole team of people that whatever area you’re lacking in, in your own company, he’s got resources from like video, web design, search engine guys who are just knowledgeable in that.

Even though he knows a lot of that stuff, He’s got these capable lieutenants that are ready to just take off and help you get that stuff done. More stuff gets done on a weekly basis than you would on, like, probably most individual or some other. We’ve worked with several companies before. It’s just not as many things get done on a weekly basis. It’s been very helpful.

Well, the conferences for me, I’m a slow learner, so I have to learn like over and over again, hear things over and over again. I’ve been to like, I think, eight different conferences, and each time you come, I learn a few new components. Some things are repetitive, but a lot of the stuff just resettles, and I get a little bit more depth into each component. So, I mean, I’ve been to eight of them. They’re all super entertaining.

He’s very funny, very encouraging. You get to kind of self -reflect a lot, and a lot of the stuff is really polarizing. personal inventory of yourself and you’ll think like, hey, I’ve really got to work on this, really got to work on that. So every time you come, I still get a lot of value out of it. And as much as every conference is the same, it’s totally different. So I think we’ll hear stories we haven’t heard before.

They’ll have entertainment or they’ll have speakers you didn’t have before. And like you said, you just always catch a different part of the material that maybe you didn’t catch before. It’s worded differently. And it’s really cool because some people that you’ve seen like a year ago at a conference, now they’re being showcased as a success story. and you get to see their website you get to see how their stats and all their metrics have improved and the revenue improved so it’s really cool to see people that just a year ago that of course we’ve been here two years that just came that I met is now being successful. It’s really encouraging to see other people, you know, accomplish that stuff.

So Clay has helped us optimize our website and helped with really topping the right search engines that we need to make sure that we are very, very competitive with all of our other competitors. He’s done Basically, he outlines exactly what you need to be accomplishing and he creates tasks that we have to accomplish and his team has to accomplish. I would say over the last two years, we’ve re -totally ramped our website. We’re topping Google in every one of our markets. I would say he’s doing really, really good. I feel very, very confident in all of our future locations and making sure that we’re in front of the ideal and likely buyer.

It’s very encouraging. It’s important to me that to know when I’m working with Clay, you know, I’ve been in business for a while and met with him even when I already had three, three businesses in three different states. And to know that what I share with him is staying private. He’s not sending that out to anybody else. to know that when he’s working with me, he’s only working with one other, no other gyms that are in direct competition with me. It’s very encouraging to have somebody you can trust and rely on that he isn’t going to like somehow tell your trade secrets or give information away.

Just really awesome that he’s a trustworthy guy, really cares about you as a client.

For us, it’s been a complete mind freedom, because Clay has helped us create a lot of different documents and one sheets for every department, put quantitative scorecards to each department. And so for us, it’s been very encouraging.

It gives us peace. Like as an entrepreneur, it’s stressful. You go to bed at night, you’re worried, like, did we cover this? Did we cover that? So he helps extract everything out of your brain, everything from your business, put it into traffic. creation, put it into checklists and workflows for every person in each department, and make sure that everything’s getting done every week, every month, and funnel that all into KPIs or key performance indicators as you can see on a weekly basis to make sure you’re moving the needle in the right area of your company.

So very encouraging and give you a complete mind, freedom, and peace to know that that stuff’s created so you’re easy to do and scale your company. Right, and then we can spend time doing what we’re really good at. and just trust in the system. I honestly believe everybody needs a coach. I think we’re all inherently lazy and selfish and carnal. I truly believe that humans are humans.

If we’re standing, we’d rather sit. If we’re sitting, we’d rather lay down. And if we’re laying down, we’d rather be asleep. So to have somebody that challenges you, have real active candor, and be honest with you on every aspect of your company is really, really encouraging to me because I want to know, I want to work on what we’re weak at. I want to see any areas that we’re not doing well in and see his perspective from a third party because you can look at your own business and just see the good. It’s good to have somebody who’s done this with hundreds of companies.

You know, really look at your company, reflect on your company and see like little chinks in the armor to make sure you cover that up so your competition can’t get to you.

and that you’re successful overall in the big picture. So yes, I would recommend Clay Clark because he is a great friend, great encourager. To me, he’s been a wonderful friend. He’s also, you can tell he cares. And he also, he has this wealth of knowledge. He’s worked with so many different companies and different businesses.

He could take a concept that he’s used before in the past with somebody in a totally different industry and see how it would work perfectly for you in whatever niche market you’re in or whatever type of service you’re providing. And so his brain is just a wealth of knowledge and just to have that type of perspective on you know as a part of your team and your own company is huge super valuable so I would definitely encourage people to use him but one thing is you got to be coachable you got to be wanting to get feedback you got to be wanting to really grow your company you got to want to put that extra 10 hours a week to working on your business and not just in your business and so yes I would recommend it to anybody who’s wanting to grow their company and provide great systems, checklists, workflows, great encouragement, and have accountability. I first heard about Clay, a mortgage lender here in town, who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate.

So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And, I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay.

So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually, in a four -month period of time, has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience.

I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things. is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field.

Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do.

I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing.

And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs.

I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800 % increase in our Internet leads going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot.

I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads. and trying to decide what what do I want to do.

My degree and my background is in education. But after being a mom and staying home and all of that I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder. So real estate and home building go hand in hand. And we just rolled with it.

I love people, I love working with people, I love building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time. And he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents. The homes that we represent, everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us.

We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge.

It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient.

I don’t answer insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school.

I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement.

I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan.

He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

He helped me in securing the business loans.

He helped me with web development and search engine optimization.

We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. Thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

You know what I mean? people rave about what they learn from you.

So congratulations.

this year to we’re at 400 ,000. Hi, I’m Kelsey with K &D’s Woodfinishing. I’m a business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K &D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago. Expecting maybe this year to we’re at 4 ,000. So we’re pretty excited about that.

What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system. And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least. I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet.

So I’m going to check my notes here. So in four months my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week, now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day.

Hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses. I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time on… low -quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love.

Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great. Worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it.

Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being me. an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that.

But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful. It’s an absolute because I have all this stuff in the background happening.

And I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success. And I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it just, it’s the best thing ever. And I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long -winded reply, but I just had so much to say, and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are.

But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me. And I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching. My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they You know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach. You know what I mean?

And so my coach pushes me. They’re younger than me. They push harder. They’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important.

My rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach.

Transcribed with Cockatoo