Jim Bridenstine | Clay Clark Interviews Former Administrator (Head) of NASA + How Jim Bridenstine Managed 17,336 Employees & A Budget of $19 Billion + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s April 9-10 ThrivetimeShow.com Business Conf.

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of NASA. It’s continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Hey, I’m not sure if you got the memo, but we are actually interviewing on today’s show the head administrator for NASA. Right, he runs the whole enterprise. That’s what he does, right?

Sorry to let you down there, buddy, but we’re not interviewing Captain Kirk.

What? I had done so much preparation. I knew everything.

Why do you always do that to me? Clay, this is a real man. A real dude who manages 17 ,336 employees and a budget of over 19 billion dollars. Please. show the man the kind of reverence that he deserves. Well, could we, after the show, could we at least maybe reach out to Spock?

Not a real person. Uh, Lahoura?

Not real. Or Sulu? Also not real. Chewbacca?

Not real.

You know, there’s just so many real space explorers I’d like to interview. I hate to burst your bubble, but probably 99 % of people don’t know what NASA is. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Thrive Time Show.

We have a very special guest. Now, Dr. Zellner, typically when we teach business school without the BS, we’re not really teaching rocket science.

Typically.

Typically.

And we’ve said that on a number of occasions.

It’s not rocket science.

But on today’s show, it is rocket science. We have the head of NASA on the show, Mr. Jim Bridenstine. Welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

I am splendid. Thank you for having me.

Well, Z, can you explain a little bit of the background of how you know this incredible man? Because really, you guys have a connection here.

Yeah, Jim and I overlapped. How many years ago was that, Jim?

Eight now?

Is it eight?

Yeah, it must have been, at least.

Yeah, my brother who was involved, my older brother, Dr. Eric Zellner, George Eric Zellner, heavily involved in politics, loved the game. found a young man that was going to run for, was running for the first congressional district here in the Tulsa area, basically Tulsa County.

Got it.

And was just enthralled by him and said, hey, I want to bring him over to your house and I want you to meet him. And I said, sure, absolutely. So he did. We set my man cave and I have been a huge fan ever since.

And now, Jim, you are you know, you’re you’re elected. You’re the first elected official to serve as the NASA administrator. Was this something that you always wanted to do or how did this come about?

I wouldn’t say I always wanted to be the NASA administrator. I will tell you that I always wanted to be a pilot. I’m not the first. pilot to be the NASA administrator going back to the Apollo era when we went to the moon. James Webb was the NASA administrator and of course he was a Marine Corps pilot so I will tell you flying has always been part of who I am. I grew up wanting to be a pilot and then when I graduated from college I joined the Navy, became a pilot, flew off aircraft carriers for Well, maybe a few too many years, and then I decided to separate from the Navy.

While I was in the Navy, I got married, had children, and then I decided for a more stable lifestyle that included politics, which little did I know that that was not going to be a more stable lifestyle. But no, I was always attracted to aviation, and really when I got to Congress… I served on the Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. What that means is we had oversight over our national security space capabilities, and I also served on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the Subcommittee on Space, which oversees NASA, and I served on the Subcommittee on the Environment. I actually chaired the Subcommittee on the Environment, which oversees NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, and about 40 percent of their budget is space -related activities.

So I get to Congress as a freshman member. I’m serving on committees that are absolutely critical to the space domain. And what I was recognizing is there’s a lot of space activities by a lot of different government agencies. and they weren’t really coordinating, and so I put together a very comprehensive space reform bill. I called it the American Space Renaissance Act, and really that kind of set me on a path to eventually get to get picked as the NASA administrator. But no, it was never on my agenda when I ran for Congress.

It was never on my agenda.

Did you get a call from President Trump letting you know that you would be his selection, his nominee for this position? Or what was the relationship like with President Trump?

So President Trump created what’s called the National Space Council. And what that is, it’s, think of an organization that has the heads of agencies that deal with space. For example, as you can imagine, space is, the State Department is very involved. in space because it’s a domain that every country has access to and we need rules and those kind of things. So the Secretary of State sits on the National Space Council and the Secretary of Transportation, they oversee commercial space launch and reentry. The Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, Of course, they deal a lot with space activities as well, and of course NASA, and there are a number of other agencies.

All the agencies that touch space, President Trump created what’s called the National Space Council so that we will come together about once a quarter and meet to discuss America’s collective space efforts. He put the Vice President as the Chairman of the National Space Council. And so really my first interview for the NASA Administrator position was with the Vice President. And then after that, I had a number of additional meetings with other staffers and other things. And over the course of time, I eventually got the nomination and the confirmation. Now, Vice President – I will tell you, once I became the NAFTA Administrator, of course, I met with the President.

I’ve done that a number of times now, and I’ll tell you, he’s an amazing individual, very engaging.

I want to dive into that there. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, they have a very, you see them on TV typically when they’re defending themselves or they’re in some kind of debate or, you know, it’s typically you see them where there’s a lot of reporters who are asking what you see, I’d call them maybe passive aggressive questions. Yeah. What are those two guys like up close when you’re with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence? What are they like when you’re in the room, one -on -one, talking to those guys?

What kind of men are they? So, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve gotten to know… Vice President probably better than the President because he chairs the National Space Council. The thing that you’ll notice about the Vice President is he is focused like a laser on personal kind of things. When I meet him, he knows the name of my wife and he knows the name of my children.

He asks about them and he’s just very personally engaging, very focused on, you know, how’s your family doing and is this transition working out for you and things like that. He’s just a very sincere gentleman. And of course, the president has a very, I would say, a different kind of personality that’s more focused on, you know, what is getting done, if you know what I mean.

But they’re both, I mean, they work together very, very well. Now, NASA, for those of the listeners out there who are not familiar, I believe you have around approximately 17 ,000 employees and a budget that’s approaching $19 billion. When you were first chosen to run NASA, I mean, a lot of people, Z, you and I have run multi -million dollar companies, but imagine all of a sudden going, hey, by the way, you have 17 ,000 employees and $19 billion to manage.

Talk to me, how did you begin, how did you wrap your mind around managing this?

How did you begin, where did you start being the administrator of 17 ,000 employees and $19 billion?

Where it starts is the idea that I am not personally managing 17 ,000 people by any stretch of the imagination.

That’s good.

We were worried.

That’s a long day, Jim. That’s a long day. The way to think about it is there is a small team at the top. Of course, each member of that small team has their own teams. Then, ultimately, it trickles down. The National Space Council, which I just

talked about, chaired by the vice president, we have discussions over what is going to be the space policy for the United States of America and what direction is that going to go. And then the vice president and these different heads of, I should say, cabinet members or heads of agencies We come to an agreement, and the vice president makes a decision. He forwards it to the president, who signs what’s called a space policy directive, and then it comes to me to implement that space policy directive, the parts of it, of course, that NASA deals with. Now, once that happens, we turn to the group of leaders here at the headquarters building. We start divvying up responsibilities. Who is going to be responsible for what?

For example, The president’s very first space policy directive was that we’re going to go back to the moon. But he said, we’re going to go sustainably. In other words, and this was not written down, but in other words, we’re not going to go to the moon and leave flags and footprints and then not go back for another 50 years. We’re going to go to the moon sustainably. This time when we go, we’re going to stay. He said, we’re going to take, we’re going to utilize our international partners in a more robust way and we’re going to take advantage of the commercial capabilities in space that currently exists, and you can think about who some of those folks are, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and some other entrepreneurs.

We’re going to take advantage of commercial. We’re going to take and grow our international partnerships, and we’re going to develop an architecture to go to the moon to stay. We’re going to retire risk, and then we’re going to take those capabilities on to Mars. Now, that is all in Space Policy Directive 1. Well, there’s a lot of things that go into that. How do we create a sustainable architecture?

So we turn to the head of what we call the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and we say, what are the things that we need to do to drive down costs and increase efficiency? to space? And of course, one of those things is we need to turn to commercial partnerships. Why is commercial industry interested in accessing space? What are they trying to achieve? And how is it synergistic with what we’re trying to achieve?

So it comes from the top. A policy directive comes from the very tippy -top of government.

signed by the president and then it comes to me and then again I’m managing a small team of leaders. I’m again not managing, a small team of leaders getting all of them on the same sheet of music with the same messaging, the same direction and then they take it to their organizations and then those organizations take it on down and eventually we get to the part where we’re actually building hardware and putting things that are, building things that are going to be put on the moon.

Hey Jim, two questions here, two parts actually. One, how big is that leadership team? So it’s really not very big. We’re talking about we have an Associate Administrator for Human Explorations. We have a Science Mission Directorate, a Technology, a Space Technology Mission Directorate. We have a Mission Support Directorate.

So those are all your, you know, IT and human resources kind of capabilities there. And then we have a Deputy Administrator of NASA. and an associate administrator of the entire organization. The associate administrator is not a political appointee, and really nobody that I have mentioned is a political appointee. They’re all civil servants at the highest level of government. But that’s about it.

Those are the key players that ultimately have to carry out the president’s policy directive. That’s where it starts. That’s where it starts. Don’t get me wrong.

Like I said, like you said, there’s 17 ,000 people involved after that. And oh, by the way, we have contract support that is pretty robust as well, which includes probably another 30 ,000.

I should have asked a better question.

I should have said, what’s it like to manage a team of six people and a budget of $7? Yeah, that’s it. that’s 17 ,000 Jim how many of you met would you guess oh so we have a lot of opportunity that I that I take advantage of to communicate agency -wide if you’re asking me how many personally have I met I would say probably on the order of hmm maybe 10 ,000 Yeah, maybe more than that. We have 10 centers nationwide, and I’ve visited all of the centers, a number of them, many times. And every time I go to a center, I’m doing a town hall, and I open it up to let people ask any question they want to ask.

Sometimes it’s not terribly fun because people have very serious issues that they want to get addressed from the very top, but I think it’s important to put everything on the table.

Well, Jim, I have an idea that you definitely don’t want to implement, but this is just something I’ll give to you here.

I went to the New Kids on the Block reunion tour with my wife, and their entire strategy was to touch as many people as possible during the concert. It was amazing. Jim, that might be your move. That might be the best way for you to connect with all the members of NASA, the best way to meet all these elite scientists, rocket scientists, and engineers. Maybe it’s your move. Maybe you should just hire new kids on the block to perform at some sort of large venue.

And you just run around just high -fiving people and saying, hey, if you care about NASA, put your hands in the air.

And I think the Wahlberg guy probably touched 1 ,000 people. That’s a more effective way.

That’s a plan B. You might think about it. Did he catch a cold? I don’t know, but he probably did. A lot of viral, a lot of viral, a lot of dangerous, a lot of uncleanliness going on there. He was not fit to go to space. Now, here’s my question for you.

This is a show, we have about a half a million folks that listen to our show on a monthly basis, and so this is going to be the confidential question.

know at NASA you’re working on confidential stuff and some incredible innovations.

But are there any innovations you’re working on right now that you could share privately with our 500 ,000 listeners? Something you could privately share between us and our listeners. So here, this is absolutely true, and it’s been true throughout time. And that is this. Whoever controls technology controls the balance of power on Earth. That’s not a new concept.

It is absolutely as true today as it ever has been. Of course, NASA is advancing technology as far as we can possibly advance technology. And of course, we’re working on things that are critically important to that balance of power on Earth. Now, you’re right, we do have classified programs. The reason our, when we have classified programs, the reason we have it is very simple. We want to make sure that the technology that we’re using is for peaceful purposes.

There are people out there who would like to get their hands on it for maybe nefarious purposes, but what NASA is and what NASA does, we are a civil agency. We’re not national security, we’re not defense, and we don’t do national security or defense. In fact, we have a partnership with Russia. And that’s very difficult these days for any agency in the federal government to have a partnership with Russia, given the challenges that our two geopolitical nations are facing. That being the case, when you think about the International Space Station, we are working hand in hand with our Russian counterparts all the time. We’ve got Russians and Americans living on the International Space Station now for 18 years in a row.

And when we launch right now to the International Space Station, we’re launching on Russian Soyuz rockets. So this is a partnership, and so we don’t get involved in national security and defense. I will tell you that when you talk about technologies that could shift the balance of power on Earth, again, no secret here. but quantum capabilities are among them, and NASA, we’re interested in quantum communications especially. And of course, China has been very active in developing quantum communications. that you can take a subatomic particle, think of an electron, and entangle it with another electron, and then you separate those two electrons from one side of the galaxy to the other side of the galaxy, and if you spin one electron to the left, the other one automatically spins to the right without any time delay between them.

There’s no communication between them. They are just entangled together, whatever you do to one, the other one does the opposite. Einstein called that concept spooky. But what we’re trying to do is figure out how to utilize that for communication. So when I do communicate to Mars, one day, God willing, we will communicate Earth to Mars with humans in both places. That communication will be instantaneous.

It’s not going to be a seven or nine minute delay or whatever it takes for the signal to get to Earth from Mars. It’ll be an instantaneous communication. And guess what? Eventually, one day, if we fly humans even beyond Mars, we want instantaneous communication. So that’s a capability that we’re interested in, that we’re developing. We’re very premature right now, but at the end of the day, it will change.

Imagine being able to communicate. without the ability of the enemy to hack or spoof or jam. The enemy wouldn’t even know that a communication took place, let alone be able to do anything about it, because there is no transmission of a signal. It is just entanglement of subatomic particles that enable the communication to happen. So that is one example I think that people might be interested in. Look up quantum communication, quantum entanglement.

Again, Einstein called it spooky.

I don’t pretend to understand it. I can only accept it as a reality.

You know, quantum communications, Ze, you talk about Russia and America, the people up there in space working together. I want to ask Jim a really deep question here.

Jim, are you prepared for the deep question?

Oh, I’m very prepared. How often do you think that the Russian cosmonauts and the American astronauts are watching Rocky IV together? So I was in South Korea for an exercise back in 2001. And when I was there, they have, you know, they have in South Korea, they have Russians and others. And what was fascinating is the bar that I was at. And by the way, I don’t drink.

I was at a bar because my friends were there. But the bar that I was at, literally they had all these Russians there and Americans and everything else. And they’re all watching Rocky IV, and I found it so fascinating. And I’m talking to a guy, I’m like, you’re Russian, why are you watching Rocky IV?

And he’s like, oh, we’ve all seen it. I guess after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they’re all cool with it, I guess, I don’t know. Okay, now I want to ask you about the Muskie one.

Elon Musk, SpaceX.

What are your thoughts as the head of NASA about these reusable rockets? What are your thoughts about the reusable rockets and how they may potentially benefit or not benefit NASA’s space exploration? A wonderful question.

It’s absolutely critical.

Remember at the beginning, I talked about the President’s Space Policy Directive 1. Yes. He said, we’re going to go to the moon, we’re going to go sustainably, we’re going to take advantage of our commercial partners and our international partners. The word sustainable, what does that mean? That means that when we go to the moon, we want to stay. We want to be able to get back and forth to the moon over and over again, just like you drive downtown wherever you might live.

Now, of course, it’s never going to be that easy. but that’s the endgame that we’re trying to achieve. Sustainability means reusability.

I’ll put it this way.

Imagine you’re going to fly from New York to L . A. on a 737, and then once you land, you have to throw away the airplane. Like, that’s a very expensive plane ticket if every time you fly you have to throw away the airplane. In fact, it would be so expensive that the market wouldn’t exist. It would be prohibitive.

Nobody would fly because it would be too expensive. Well, that’s what we’ve been doing in space for all of these years. So NASA made a decision. NASA said. People say, what did Elon Musk do? The question is, what did NASA do?

NASA made a decision. we’re going to commercialize access to the International Space Station. We, NASA, own and operate the International Space Station. We’re going to turn it to commercial industry, and we’re going to say, we’re no longer going to own and operate rockets that go to the ISS, the International Space Station. Instead, we’re going to say to commercial, you tell us. I want you to tell us how you’re going to get us to the International Space Station, and we’ll give you money to develop that capability and that concept.

And of course, NASA gets these proposals back. Elon Musk is out there with SpaceX saying, we want to use rockets to go to the International Space Station, and we want to reuse those rockets. And all of a sudden, when you think about reusability, the cost goes down, and the access goes up. And all of a sudden, because NASA was willing to give itself up, again, NASA used to purchase, own, and operate its own rockets. Now NASA is saying, we’re going to buy a service And whoever can provide that service at the best cost and the most efficient manner, those are the people we’re going to buy the service from. Elon Musk steps up to the plate, and Boeing steps up to the plate, and now they’re both going to provide services to the International Space Station with what we call commercial crew.

They’re going to be this year, as a matter of fact, 2019. American rockets, American astronauts from American soil to the International Space Station, and we’re doing it commercially. In other words, we’re buying the service. So here’s the thing. If you allow people to compete in a private free market, the innovation will go off the charts. And that’s what’s happened here.

And because of that, the cost of access to space is going down, and we’re getting more access to space than ever before. Now, that’s just for the International Space Station, which is in low Earth orbit. The question is, how do we take what we’ve learned there and take it all the way to the moon. And what we’re going to do is, no kidding, we’re going to have reusability built into every piece of the architecture between the earth and the moon. So we’re going to have launch reusable. Well, guess what?

We’re almost already there. Number two, we’re going to have tugs that are reusable. In other words, how do we get what is put into Earth orbit? How do we get it to lunar orbit? In lunar orbit, we’re going to have a reusable command and service module. What that means, think of a small space station in orbit around the moon there permanently.

And so that is going to enable our human activity to be around the moon all the time, and then reusable landers that can go back and forth to the surface of the moon. So what we have learned, given NASA’s ability to turn to commercial capabilities to service the ISS with both supplies and humans, we have now learned how to commercialize our activities all the way to the moon, and that’s going to be what enables us to follow the President’s Space Policy Directive 1, which is Go to the moon and go sustainably with commercial partners. It really is. It’s a beautiful model and we’re making it happen.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’ll be a beautiful model. when we have an international coalition of partners going to the moon sustainably with our commercial partners as well. Jim, that is, that is, that is fantastic. That puts a big smile on my face.

And this is spitball.

This isn’t like, you know, down to the, down to the nitty gritty numbered, numbered number, but let’s say a trip to the ISS right now with your new system in place that’s going to be launching this year, your per trip, Any idea at all?

$69 .99 is southwest of Dallas right now. How much savings per trip? We have a special for those who sign up today. Again, a couple of things. Number one, what NASA does, we have made investments. into these commercial companies.

So it’s been a public -private partnership. They’ve made their own investments. They’ve raised their own private capital. NASA has invested some of its money. And now we’re to the point where they’re going to be launching our humans to the International Space Station. Now, again, if you take away just the development costs, I would bet that just order of magnitude, a trip to the International Space Station would be on the order of maybe 50, I say, I don’t know, Maybe $50 million, and that would include a capsule with maybe three seats or something.

But again, this is not for NASA to determine. These are commercial enterprises now, and so they would have to negotiate their own deal. I will tell you what has been advertised, not to orbit. Remember, when we launched to the International Space Station, we’re going to orbit. And instead, if you think about suborbital space, in other words, just launching straight up and coming straight down, but crossing what we call the Kármán line, which means that you went into space, Sir Richard Branson has a capability for that called Spaceship Two, and he’s selling seats for on the order, I think it’s like $200 ,000. ,000 a seat.

So it’s a lot less expensive.

If you just want to go into space for a matter of minutes, maybe 10 minutes, 20 minutes, Sir Richard Branson has a solution called Spaceship Two.

It’s called, well, it’s $250 ,000, and if you want to go all the way to orbit, I’m thinking probably closer in tens of millions.

Do you know if he’s given frequent flyer miles for that?

I would imagine that if you’re a good customer, he’ll probably take care of it.

He’ll throw in a free drink ticket, too. A couple of them throw in. Now, does anyone ask you, do you want to go on that?

Would you want to do that?

$250 ,000 to go up there to space? Would you want to do that move?

In a heartbeat.

In a heartbeat.

Are you kidding?

You would do it?

Oh yeah, who wouldn’t? You’d have to convince my wife to spend $250 ,000. Now, Jim, I want to ask you a question. There’s listeners out there who want to know these things. So I’m going to ask. These are kind of like my three or four rude questions in a row.

Rude question number one for the head of NASA.

Here we go.

Do you believe in aliens?

And do you believe that any of them might look like Wookiees? Okay. So let’s start with this.

And this is an important question.

I know you’re joking, but this is an important question.

I’m being serious. I was half serious. So look, I have been the NASA administrator for eight months. Eight months.

Well, actually, gosh dang, nine months now.

Maybe even 10. Time flies. I tell you, the time keeps flying. All right, so here’s the thing. In the time that I’ve been the NASA administrator, we’ve made some absolutely critical discoveries. Number one, we now know that there are complex organic compounds on the surface of Mars.

Now, people say, well, what’s that mean? Well, what that means is that the building blocks of life are on Mars. They’re on the surface of Mars. We’ve discovered that with the Mars Curiosity rover. Now, that’s number one. The other important thing is those complex organic compounds do not exist on the moon.

They’re not on the moon. Of course, they’re all over Earth. but they’re not on the moon, but they exist on Mars. Doesn’t guarantee life, but it increases the probability that life might be on Mars. Number two, just since I’ve been the NASA administrator, we have discovered that the methane cycles on Mars are perfectly commensurate with the seasons of Mars. Again, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s life on Mars, but it increases the probability of life on Mars.

Number three, Since I’ve been the NASA administrator, we have now learned that there is liquid water 10 kilometers under the surface of Mars. Anywhere there’s water on Earth, there is abundant life. It’s just the way it is. On Mars, we now know that there’s liquid water 10 kilometers below the surface. And of course, on the poles, there’s water ice on Mars, like at the surface, on the top. You can see it with a telescope from your backyard if you want.

So this is what’s amazing.

I do believe that as we go about our business, we are eventually going to find life on a world that’s not our own. Aliens?

Depends what you mean by aliens.

I’m talking about I’m talking about microbial life right now.

Look at your life I mean somebody might look just like you or me or like a Wookiee or a green guy But someone who’s just you know, do you believe that that could happen?

Is that a thing?

You know, I I think they look like Ewoks.

That’s what I think Okay, okay now I have a rude rude question listeners want to ask because Pluto recently has been discriminated against it’s been undervalued it’s been Space racism.

Space racism.

They’ve called it a dwarf planet.

Spaceism.

And we would like to know, we as about 500 ,000 listeners, who none of them have asked me to ask you this, but I know they’re thinking it. Is there any way, Mr. Bridenstine, Jim Bridenstine, could you rename the dwarf planet of Pluto, Dagobah, in honor of our good friend Yoda?

No, no, look, look, we’re renaming

it, but it’s going to be Dantooine.

Oh, nice! There we go. Seriously, can you rename planets? Can you do that?

Is that part of your job description? Can you do that? Well, it’s not part of my job description. There is an organization out there that has that authority. I can’t remember. It’s like the International Astronomical something or another.

Yeah, something. I can’t remember. But no, that’s not the NASA administrator’s job.

But I would vote for Dantooine because it got destroyed in episode four, the first Star Wars.

And I think we need to reestablish it in our own solar system. I agree totally. Now, let’s get back into the economics of NASA here. You’ve got Boeing over here, SpaceX over here. And what is your relationship like with these two organizations? And is there maybe a third organization?

You mentioned Sir Richard Branson.

Is there a third or fourth or Jeff Bezos? I mean, how many private organizations are you working with right now to help create sustainable space travel using commercial partners? We have a lot of prime contractors that are large in nature and historically very active and most of Americans are aware of them. Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman. and others, and then of course we have these new players in space that consist of billionaires, and that would include Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, and now there’s other very wealthy individuals that are pooling their resources to create space activities. All of this is tremendously valuable, and I’ll tell you why.

There are absolutely disruptors out there that are changing the paradigm and making us think differently, and some of the more traditional companies are changing their ways of doing business. So when we go to the International Space Station now, it is true SpaceX and Elon Musk, they’re out there taking us now, resupplying the International Space Station. but so is Northrop Grumman resupplying the International Space Station in a way that is very commercial in nature. So what you’re seeing is a lot of the new space companies are starting to behave more like traditional space companies, and a lot of the traditional space companies are starting to behave more like the new space companies, but all of them are, they’re all working towards, you know, our eventual, you know, you know, a good goal, which is to have a sustained presence on the surface of the moon, and then take that technology to Mars. So the moon is a proving ground. That’s what a lot of people, well, we go to the moon or we go to Mars.

We’ve already been to the moon. But no, we need the moon. The moon is a proving ground. Plus, there’s hundreds of billions of tons of water, ice, on the surface of the moon. Water, ice is life support. It’s air to breathe.

It’s water to drink. It also represents rocket fuel. Hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, hydrogen and oxygen, when cracked into its component forms, put into cryogenic, in other words, liquid form, it is rocket fuel. It’s the same rocket fuel that powered the space shuttles. So all of that is tremendously valuable. And if we can learn how to do in -situ resource utilization, how to use the resources of the moon to live and work and even go further, then ultimately we can take that technology to Mars.

Here’s the thing, when you go to Mars, you’re going to be there for 26 months at least, probably longer, because the Earth and Mars, we’re only on the same side of the sun once every 26 months. So that being the case, when you go to Mars, when you go, you’re going to stay. The value of the moon is it’s right in our backyard.

It’s a three -day journey home, and it never leaves the Earth.

So the moon is the best proving ground for what we want to do eventually on Mars. Jim, if you had a choice, would you rather go to Mars or the moon?

Oh, I’d take Mars.

But look, if I get the option, I’ll take either one you want to give me.

Perfect. I love that. I mean, if you go to Mars, you could be the first.

Who wouldn’t? want to be the first? I have a series of questions. There’s Oklahomies that I’ve talked to this week. Jim, they’re clients I work with, real business owners in Tulsa, and they’ve kind of given me some questions. I said, you know what, I’m going to ask Jim Bridenstine these questions.

So one thriver, this is a guy who’s a contractor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, kind of your stomping grounds. He said, why do we have to go to space? What’s the point? Like, how does that impact the average taxpayer? Why do we need to go? How does it benefit me?

I’m a contractor, I’m paying taxes. I think you’re a great guy. This guy actually voted for you, likes you.

He’s going, how does this benefit me? So I would like to ask on his behalf, how does it benefit? I’ll try space. And we’re talking about a multiple hundred billion dollar industry just for communications alone in space. And all of that technology was born from NASA’s exploration endeavors. So the way we communicate, the way we navigate, you think about GPS.

Anybody out there ever used GPS before? But GPS is not just about navigation. It’s about Timing signals, the way we regulate flows of electricity on the power grid is timed with a GPS signal so that we can actually have electricity. Every banking transaction is dependent on a GPS timing signal. The way we manage data flows on terrestrial wireless networks is dependent on a GPS timing signal. GPS has enabled all of these capabilities that has elevated the human condition.

Again, that’s a DOD -managed technology, but it’s also a technology that was developed by NASA. by none other than NASA. So the way we communicate, the way we navigate, the way we produce food.

Next week, I’m going to the International Ag Expo, where there’s going to be 100 ,000 farmers from all over the world in California. And I’m going to be talking about how we’re using NASA technology to increase crop yields, when to plant, when to harvest, what kind of fertilizer you need, when you need to water. Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of NASA. It’s continuing mission to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations.

To boldly go where no one has gone before.

Hey, I’m not sure if you got the memo, but we are actually interviewing on today’s show the head administrator. for NASA.

Right, he runs the whole enterprise.

That’s what he does, right? Sorry to let you down there, buddy, but we’re not interviewing Captain Kirk. What?

I had done so much preparation. I knew everything. Why do you always do that to me? Clay, this is a real man, a real dude, who manages 17 ,336 employees and a budget of over 19 billion dollars.

Please, show the man the kind of reverence that he deserves. Well, could we, after the show, could we at least maybe reach out to Spock? Not a real person.

Uh, Lahoura? Not real. Or Sulu?

Also not real.

Or Chewbacca?

Not real.

You know, there’s just so many real space explorers I’d like to interview. I hate to burst your bubble, but probably 99 % of people don’t know what NASA is. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show.

But this show does.

two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show.

Yes and yes, Thrive Nation on today’s show, we have a very special guest.

Now Dr. Zeller, typically when we teach business school without the BS, we’re not really teaching rocket science.

Typically.

Typically. And we’ve said that on a number of occasions. It’s not rocket science. But on today’s show, it is rocket science. We have the head of NASA on the show, Mr. Jim Bridenstine.

Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

I am splendid. Thank you for having me.

Well, Zeke, can you explain a little bit of the background of how you know this incredible man? Because really, you guys have a connection here. Yeah, Jim and I overlapped.

How many years ago was that, Jim?

Eight now?

Is it eight?

Yeah, it must have been, at least.

Yeah, my brother who was involved, my older brother, Dr. Eric Zellner, George Eric Zellner, heavily involved in politics, loved the game, found a young man that was gonna run for, was running for the first congressional district here in the Tulsa area, basically Tulsa County. Got it. And was just enthralled by him and said, hey, I wanna bring him over to your house and I want you to meet him. And I said, sure, absolutely.

So he did. We sat in my man cave and I have been a huge fan ever since. And now, Jim, you are you know, you’re you’re elected.

You’re the first elected official to serve as the NASA administrator. Was this something that you always wanted to do or how did this come about? I wouldn’t say I always wanted to be the NASA administrator. I will tell you that I always wanted to be a pilot. I’m not the first pilot to be the NASA Administrator. Going back to the Apollo era, when we went to the moon, James Webb was the NASA Administrator.

And of course, he was a Marine Corps pilot. So I will tell you, flying has always been part of who I am. I grew up wanting to be a pilot. And then when I graduated from college, I joined the Navy, became a pilot, flew off aircraft carriers for Well, maybe a few too many years, and then I decided to separate from the Navy. While I was in the Navy, I got married, had children, and then I decided for a more stable lifestyle that included politics, which little did I know that that was not going to be a more stable lifestyle. But no, I was always attracted to aviation.

Really, when I got to Congress, I served on the Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. What that means is we had oversight over our national security space capabilities, and I also served on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the Subcommittee on Space, which oversees NASA, and I served on the Subcommittee on the Environment. I actually chaired the Subcommittee on the Environment, which oversees NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, and about 40 % of their budget is space -related activities. So I get to Congress as a freshman member. I’m serving on committees that are absolutely critical to the space domain. And what I was recognizing is there’s a lot of space activities by a lot of different government agencies.

And they weren’t really coordinating. And so I put together a very comprehensive space reform bill. I called it the American Space Renaissance Act. And really that kind of set the tone. path to eventually get picked as the NASA administrator.

But no, it was never on my agenda when I ran for Congress. It was never on my agenda.

Did you get a call from President Trump letting you know that you would be his selection, his nominee for this position? What was the relationship like with President Trump? So President Trump created what’s called the National Space Council. And what that is, think of an organization that has the heads of agencies that deal with space. For example, as you can imagine, the State Department is very involved in space because it’s a domain that every country has access to and we need rules and those kind of things. So the Secretary of State sits on the National Space Council, and the Secretary of Transportation, they oversee commercial space launch and reentry.

The Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, Of course, they deal a lot with space activities as well, and of course NASA, and there are a number of other agencies. All the agencies that touch space, President Trump created what’s called the National Space Council so that we will come together about once a quarter and meet to discuss America’s collective space efforts. He put the Vice President as the Chairman of the National Space Council, and so really my first interview for the NASA Administrator position was with the Vice President. After that, I had a number of additional meetings with other staffers and other things, and over the course of time, I eventually got the nomination and the confirmation.

Now, I will tell you, once I became the NAFTA administrator, of course, I met with the president. I’ve done that a number of times now, and I’ll tell you, he’s an amazing individual, very engaging. I want to dive into that there. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, they have a very, you see them on TV typically when they’re defending themselves or they’re in some kind of debate or you know, it’s typically you see them where there’s a lot of reporters who are asking what you see, I’d call them maybe passive aggressive questions. What are those two guys like up close when you’re with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence?

What are they like when you’re in the room, one -on -one, talking to those guys? What kind of men are they? It’s interesting. I’ve gotten to know the vice president probably better than the president because he chairs the National Space Council. The thing that you’ll notice about the vice president is he is focused like a laser on personal kind of things. When I meet him, he knows the name of my wife and he knows the name of my children.

He asks about them and he’s just very personally engaging, very focused on how’s your family doing and is this transition working out for you and things like that. He’s just a very sincere gentleman.

Of course, the President has a very, I would say, a different kind of personality that’s more focused on what is getting done, if you know what I mean. They work together very, very well. Now, NASA, for those of the listeners out there who are not familiar, I believe you have around approximately 17 ,000 employees and a budget that’s approaching $19 billion.

When you were first chosen to run NASA, I mean, a lot of people, you see, you and I have run multi -million dollar companies, but imagine all of a sudden going, hey, by the way, you have 17 ,000 employees and $19 billion to manage.

Talk to me, how did you begin, how did you wrap your mind around managing

this?

How did you begin?

Where did you start being the administrator of 17 ,000 employees and $19 billion?

Where it starts is the idea that I am not personally managing 17 ,000 people by any stretch of the imagination.

That’s good.

We were worried. That’s a long day, Jim. That’s a long day. The way to think about it is there is a small team at the top, and of course each member of that small team has their own teams, and then ultimately it trickles down. The National Space Council, which I just talked about, chaired by the vice president, we have discussions over what is going to be the space policy for the United States of America and what direction is that going to go. And then the vice president and these different heads of, I should say, cabinet members or heads of agencies, we come to an agreement and the vice president makes a decision.

He forwards it to the president, who signs what’s called a space policy directive. And then it comes to me to implement that space policy directive, the parts of it, of course, that NASA deals with. Now, once that happens, we turn to the group of leaders here at the headquarters building. We start divvying up responsibilities. Who is going to be responsible for what? For example, the president’s very first space policy directive was that we’re going to go back to the moon.

But he said, we’re going to go sustainably. In other words, and this was not written down, but in other words, we’re not going to go to the moon and leave flags and footprints and then not go back for another 50 years. We’re going to go to the moon sustainably. This time when we go, we’re going to stay. He said, we’re going to take, we’re going to utilize our international partners in a more robust way, and we’re going to take advantage of the commercial capabilities in space that currently exist and utilize them. who some of those folks are, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and some other entrepreneurs.

We’re going to take advantage of commercial. We’re going to take and grow our international partnerships, and we’re going to develop an architecture to go to the moon to stay. We’re going to retire risk, and then we’re going to take those capabilities on to Mars. Now, that is all in Space Policy Directive 1. Well, there’s a lot of things that go into that. How do we create a sustainable architecture?

So we turn to the head of what we call the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and we say, what are the things that we need to do to drive down costs and increase access to space? And of course, you know, One of those things is we need to turn to commercial partnerships. What are the commercial, why is commercial industry interested in accessing space? What are they trying to achieve and how is it synergistic with what we’re trying to achieve?

So it comes from the top, a policy directive comes from the very tippy top of government. signed by the president and then it comes to me and then again I’m managing a small team of leaders.

I’m again not managing, a small team of leaders getting all of them on the same sheet of music with the same messaging, the same direction and then they take it to their organizations and then those organizations take it on down and eventually we get to the part where we’re actually building hardware and putting things that are, building things that are going to be put on the moon. Hey Jim, two questions here, two parts actually. One, how big is that leadership team? So it’s really not very big. We’re talking about we have an Associate Administrator for Human Explorations. We have a Science Mission Directorate, a Technology, a Space Technology Mission Directorate.

We have a Mission Support Directorate. So those are all your, you know, IT and human resources kind of capabilities there. And then we have a Deputy Administrator of NASA and an Associate Administrator the entire organization. The Associate Administrator is not a political appointee, and really nobody that I have mentioned is a political appointee. They’re all civil servants at the highest level of government.

But that’s about it. Those are the key players that ultimately have to carry out the President’s policy directive. That’s where it starts.

That’s where it starts. Don’t get me wrong, like I said, like you said, there’s 17 ,000 people involved after that.

And oh, by the way, we have contract support that is pretty robust as well, which includes probably another 30 ,000. You know, I should have asked a better question.

I should have said, what’s it like to manage a team of six people and a budget of $7?

Yeah, that’s it. That’s what 17 ,000, Jim, how many of you met? Would you guess? Oh, so we have a lot of opportunity that I that I take advantage of to communicate agency wide. If you’re asking me how many personally have I met, I would say probably on the order of Maybe 10 ,000. Maybe more than that.

We have 10 centers nationwide, and I’ve visited all of the centers, a number of them, many times.

And every time I go to a center, I’m doing a town hall, and I open it up to let people ask any question they want to ask.

Sometimes it’s not terribly fun because people have very serious issues that they want to get addressed from the very top, but I think it’s important to put everything on the table.

Well, Jim, I have an idea that you definitely don’t want to implement, but this is just something I’ll give to you here. I went to the New Kids on the Block reunion tour with my wife, and their entire strategy was to touch as many people as possible during the concert. It was amazing. Jim, that might be your move. That might be the best way for you to connect with all the members of NASA, the best way to meet all these elite scientists, rocket scientists, and engineers. Maybe it’s your move.

Maybe you should just do it. hire new kids on the block to perform at some sort of large venue and you just run around just high -fiving

people and saying, hey, if you care about NASA, put your hands in the air.

And I think the Wahlberg guy probably touched 1 ,000 people. That’s a more effective way.

That’s kind of a move.

That’s a plan B. That’s a plan B. You might think about it.

Did he catch a cold?

I don’t know, but he probably did. A lot of viral, a lot of viral, a lot of dangerous, a lot of uncleanliness going on there. Maybe a lot of sanitizer. He was not fit to go to space. Now, here’s my question for you. This is a show.

We have about a half a million folks that listen to our show on a monthly basis. And so, Z, this is going to be the confidential question.

No, at NASA, you’re working on confidential stuff.

and some incredible innovations. But are there any innovations you’re working on right now that you could share privately with our 500 ,000 listeners? Something you could privately share between us and our listeners. So here, this is absolutely true, and it’s been true throughout time. And that is this, whoever controls technology controls the balance of power on Earth. That’s not a new concept.

It is absolutely as true today as it ever has been. Of course, NASA is advancing technology as far as we can possibly advance technology. And of course, we’re working on things that are critically important to that balance of power on Earth. Now, you’re right, we do have classified programs. The reason our, when we have classified programs, the reason we have it is very simple. We want to make sure that the technology that we’re using is for peaceful purposes.

There are people out there who would like to get their hands on it for maybe nefarious purposes, but what NASA is and what NASA does, we are a civil agency. We’re not national security, we’re not defense, and we don’t do national security or defense. In fact, we have a partnership with Russia, and that’s very difficult these days for any agency in the federal government to have a partnership with Russia, given the challenges that our two geopolitical nations are facing. That being the case, when you think about the International Space Station, we are working hand in hand with our Russian counterparts all the time. We’ve got Russians and Americans living on the International Space Station now for 18 years in a row.

And when we launch right now to the International Space Station, we’re launching on Russian Soyuz rockets. So this is a partnership. And so we don’t get involved in national security and defense. I will tell you that when you talk about technologies that could shift the balance of power on Earth, again, no secret here, but quantum capabilities are among them. And NASA, we’re interested in quantum communications especially. And of course, China has been very active in developing quantum communications.

that you can take a subatomic particle, think of an electron, and entangle it with another electron, and then you separate those two electrons from one side of the galaxy to the other side of the galaxy, and if you spin one electron to the left, the other one automatically spins to the right without any time delay between them. There’s no communication between them. They are just entangled together, whatever you do to one, the other one does the opposite. Einstein called that concept spooky. But what we’re trying to do is figure out how to utilize that for communication. So when I do communicate to Mars, one day, God willing, we will communicate Earth to Mars with humans in both places.

that communication will be instantaneous. It’s not going to be a seven or nine minute delay or whatever it takes for the signal to get to Earth from Mars. It’ll be an instantaneous communication. And guess what? Eventually, one day, if we fly humans even beyond Mars, we want instantaneous communication. So that’s a capability that we’re interested in, that we’re developing.

We’re very proud right now, but at the end of the day, it will change. Imagine being able to communicate without the ability of the enemy to hack or spoof or jam. The enemy wouldn’t even know that a communication took place, let alone be able to do anything about it, because there is no transmission of a signal. entanglement of subatomic particles that enable the communication to happen. So that is one example, I think, that people might be interested in.

Look up quantum communication, quantum entanglement.

Again, Einstein called it spooky. I don’t pretend to understand it.

I can only accept it as a reality. You know, quantum communications, you talk about Russia and America, the people up there in space working together.

I want to ask Jim a really deep question here.

Jim, are you prepared for the deep question? Oh, I’m very prepared. How often do you think that the Russian cosmonauts, the American astronauts are watching Rocky four together? So I was in South Korea for an exercise back in 2001. And when I was there, they have in South Korea, they have Russians and others. And what was fascinating is the bar that I was at.

And by the way, I don’t drink. I was at a bar because my friends were there. But the bar that I was at, literally they had all these Russians there and Americans and everything else. And they’re all watching Rocky IV. And I found it so fascinating.

And I’m talking to a guy, I’m like, you’re Russian, why are you watching Rocky IV?

And he’s like, oh, we’ve all seen it. I guess after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they’re all cool with it, I guess. I don’t know. OK, now I want to ask you about the Muskie one.

Elon Musk, SpaceX.

What are your thoughts as the head of NASA about these reusable rockets? What are your thoughts? about the reusable rockets and how they may potentially benefit or not benefit NASA’s space exploration?

A wonderful question.

It’s absolutely critical. Remember at the beginning, I talked about the President’s Space Policy Directive 1. Yes. He said, we’re going to go to the moon, we’re going to go sustainably, we’re going to take advantage of our commercial partners and our international partners. The word sustainable, what does that mean? That means that when we go to the moon, we want to stay.

We want to be able to get back and forth to the moon over and over again, just like you drive downtown wherever you might live. Now, of course, it’s never going to be that easy, but that’s the end game that we’re trying to achieve. Sustainability means reusability. I’ll put it this way. Imagine you’re going to fly from New York to L . A.

on a 737, and then once you land, you have to throw away the airplane. Like, that’s a very expensive plane ticket if every time you fly you have to throw away the airplane. Right. In fact, it would be so expensive that the market wouldn’t exist. It would be prohibitive. Nobody would fly because it would be too expensive.

Well, that’s what we’ve been doing in space for all of these years. So NASA made a decision. NASA said. People say, what did Elon Musk do? The question is, what did NASA do? NASA made a decision.

we’re going to commercialize access to the International Space Station. We, NASA, own and operate the International Space Station. We’re going to turn it to commercial industry, and we’re going to say, we’re no longer going to own and operate rockets that go to the ISS, the International Space Station. Instead, we’re going to say to commercial, you tell us. I want you to tell us how you’re going to get us to the International Space Station, and we’ll give you money to develop that capability and that concept. And, of course, NASA gets these proposals back.

Elon Musk is out there with SpaceX saying we want to use rockets to go to the International Space Station and we want to reuse those rockets. And all of a sudden, when you think about reusability, the cost goes down and the access goes up. And all of a sudden, because NASA was willing to give itself up, again, NASA used to purchase, own, and operate its own rockets. Now NASA is saying, we’re going to buy a service, and whoever can provide that service at the best cost and the most efficient manner, those are the people we’re going to buy the service from. Elon Musk steps up to the plate. And Boeing steps up to the plate.

And now they’re both going to provide services to the International Space Station with what we call commercial crew. They’re going to be this year, as a matter of fact, 2019. We’re going to launch American rockets with American astronauts from American soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. And we’re doing it with commercial partners. American rockets, American astronauts from American soil to the International Space Station, and we’re doing it commercially. In other words, we’re buying the service.

So here’s the thing. If you allow people to compete in a private free market, the innovation will go off the charts. And that’s what’s happened here. And because of that, the cost of access to space is going down, and we’re getting more access to space than ever before. Now, that’s just for the International Space Station, which is in low Earth orbit. The question is, how do we take what we’ve learned there and take it all the way to the moon?

And what we’re going to do is, no kidding, we’re going to have reusability built into every piece of the architecture between the Earth and the moon. So we’re going to have launch reusable. Well, guess what? We’re almost already there. Number two, we’re going to have tugs that are reusable. In other words, how do we get what is put into Earth orbit?

How do we get it to lunar orbit? In lunar orbit, we’re going to have a reusable command and service module. What that means, think of a small space station in orbit around the moon there permanently. And so that is going to enable our human activity to be

around the moon all the time, and then reusable landers that can go back and forth to the surface of the moon. So what we have learned, given NASA’s ability to turn to commercial capabilities to service the ISS with both supplies and humans, we have now learned how to commercialize our activities all the way to the moon, and that’s going to be what enables us to follow the president’s space policy directive one, which is go to the moon and go sustainably with commercial partners. It really is. It’s a beautiful model, and we’re making it happen. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’ll be a beautiful thing when we have an international coalition of partners going to the moon sustainably with our commercial partners as well.

Jim, that is fantastic.

That puts a big smile on my face.

And this is spitball. This isn’t like, you know, down to the nitty -gritty, number, number, number.

But let’s say a trip to the ISS right now with your new system in place that’s going to be launching this year, your per trip, any idea at all?

$69 .99 is southwest of Dallas right now. How much savings per trip? 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 learned from you. So congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening?

April 9th and 10th, 2026. Uh, we are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. 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 awesome is that? not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time.

It’s almost, it’s 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 2 -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 it here. Also at the 2 -Day Interactive Workshop, Sean, we are 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? 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.

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. 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, branding. 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, 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 got to 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 an 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 recruiting, 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 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 tickets?

Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be 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 it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that 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 get

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 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.

Who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean?

Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in -person two -day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. 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 Lowman.

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.

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. In six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences and a million

each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back 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 have bettered 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. 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 expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. 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. Hi, this is Charles and Amber Kola.

We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. We heard about Clay Clark through Paul Hood, our CPA. We’ve worked with Clay Clark for the last two years. 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. It’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, he’ll have a story to relate to and 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 help 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. And 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 company.

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 they 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 accomplish that stuff.

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. 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 totally ramped our website. We’re topping Google in every one of our markets. We’re just doing, I would say, just 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 to know when I’m working with Clay, I’ve been in business for a while and met with him, even when I already had 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 document 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. It’s very encouraging and gives you a complete mind, freedom, and peace to know that that stuff’s created so you’re easy to duplicate and scale your company.

Right, and then we can spend time doing what we’re really good at. I honestly believe everybody needs a coach. I think we’re all inherently lazy, 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. 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 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’ve got to be coachable. You’ve got to be wanting to get feedback. You’ve got to be wanting to really grow your company. You’ve 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. This is with Shaw Homes. First heard about College Lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And 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. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the United States.

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 Clayclark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about. and I would go straight to Clay and his team.

I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it.

I love people. I love working with people. I love the building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. the processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental 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. 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. We went from expecting maybe $250 ,000 this year to we’re at $400 ,000. Kelsey with K &D’s Wood Refinishing, 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, expecting maybe this year to, we’re at four and C. So we’re pretty excited about that. That’s just listening to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and the, just the accountability of getting up with them weekly.

such good insight, the resources they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I’d recommend it to anybody. 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. Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. 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. 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. 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 until you cry sometimes. That’s just being 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