Square | Interview w/ Billionaire Square Co-Founder, Jim McKelvey | Why Anyone Can Become Successful + Old School Footage of Clay Clark’s Son Aubrey Clark Exploring His Passion for Lawn Mowing (During Frozen Winter)

Audio Transcription

What kind of man mows their lawn in the winter? What kind of man would mow their lawn in the winter? That’s my son right there mowing the lawn in Oklahoma State. He’s just working it.

He told me we had to drive right to some rest state on the snowy roads.

Mom had to drive the trailer over to Grandma’s. He insisted on the snowy roads.

We get here. He says the plan is the first day to shovel all the snow off his

yard so the next day he can know it. He doesn’t even know we’re here because he’s so into the moment. Turn around this guy is the landscaping wizard. He just has no idea we’re here. He’s so into it. We just drove by him. He’s too busy going in reverse and back and forward. How many nine-year-olds have landscaping dreams. He does. He’s going to do it. It’s unbelievable.

He’s been out there. All yesterday he was shoveling and he had his sister shoveling.

Fill in your window so you can get that good view.

Look at him working at the earth sauce.

Look at it. Sit here. See how long it takes him to see it. He’s checking his bike, is that them? It’s us!

It’s us!

Hey man!

Hi.

How you doing?

Good.

You loving it?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Looks great buddy.

I’m going to stay for a few more hours and keep them working.

That’s fine, we’re just kidding Charlotte.

You should just keep working. Yeah don’t do the field because you don’t know what’s in the field. He says he’s just mulching leaves right now. He’s about to do the field after. Just don’t do the field because you don’t know what’s in there. It could be rocks and stuff. I love you. We’re just getting the scarlet, okay? Bye.

Have fun. You’re doing a great job. Did you shovel all this yesterday?

Yeah.

Great job.

Can you help me step up, please?

Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we’re interviewing Jim McKelvey, the co-founder of Square, who shares with us how he started Square and why you don’t have to be a genius to become the founder of a billion-dollar company or a successful entrepreneur. On today’s show, Jim McKelvey shares with us

how you can get really good at something real fast if you have to. So I thought, oh well maybe if I make a lot of glasswork I can sell it and then I immediately realized that my work was terrible. But it’s amazing how fast you can learn something if you decide that that’s your career. So I woke up the next morning and I was like, you better get serious and learn how to sell your stuff.

He shares with us how he came up with the idea to start Square.

And that, in fact, was one of the things behind Square, because I was trying to sell one of these silly glass bathroom faucets to a lady in Panama who only had an American Express card, which I don’t take.

He shares with us his definition of the word entrepreneur in contrast that to the description that the world has for what it means to be an entrepreneur

so here’s the way i use the word if you are doing something that has never been done before if you are solving a problem that is unsolved today you’re not prepared and i will

support you in a plot you and pity that is a different process the starting a business

jim was once the boss of the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. And he and Jack Dorsey teamed up together to build Square together. And Jack Dorsey’s background was that of a professional massage therapist. And his background was being that of a glass blower. And he explains why that was a perfect background to start Square.

Jack, like, Jack was no financial expert. He’s running one of the biggest financial companies in the country right now. You know what his professional credential is? He’s a certified massage therapist. He doesn’t even have a college degree. So you’ve got a glass blower and a financial therapist building one of the most notable financial companies

in the country right now. Jim shares with us how to create that fire of desire that is required to build a successful business. When I do something I try to burn the boats. I try to put myself in a situation where me and my team have to survive or We perish now perish in this case is the company dies like no individuals died, but there have been Like that’s that’s great motivation like if you’re committed to solving a problem

I agree. I totally committed then you don’t have to you don’t have to have great tenacity You just have to have a survival instinct. He shares with us why you don’t need a college degree to become successful as an entrepreneur.

You don’t have to have a degree to be an entrepreneur, certainly,

because by definition, the degree is gonna prepare you to do stuff that humanity already knows how to do. So if you wanna be a business person, you wanna be an accountant, you wanna run, you don’t wanna be an attorney, you wanna be a software engineer that works at a company,

like, yeah, go get qualified. And that qualification is typically a degree. He shares with us how Square landed its first 10 customers. Number two was a flower lady who sold flowers literally in the building so we were in Jack’s

apartment building. Learn all this and more on today’s edition of the Thrivetime show where we interview the mind-blowing and glass-blowing co-founder of Square, Jim McKelvey.

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. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Times show.

3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have a very special occasion. We have the mind-blowing and glass-blowing founder of Square, Jim McKelvey. How are you, sir?

Doing well, how are you?

I seriously am fired up here. I don’t know if I’m more fired up about your glass-blowing career or more fired up about the Fed or Square, but let’s start with where you grew up. What was your life like growing up?

Kid from St. Louis, Missouri. Grew up in a little apartment and then a little house. And dad’s a teacher. He was dean of the engineering school at Washington U, so I grew up around scientists and geeks and people who did a lot of math. A relatively boring childhood, but you know, St. Louis is a great city to live in, especially if you have kids. And I know I’m putting an

ad out for my city, but let me just do it. You can have a normal life here, and it is accessible to everybody, and I love it. So that’s what we’re doing.

How many times have you gone up in the arch?

Oh, probably seven or eight. You’ve got to go up in the arch.

Have you met Ozzie Smith?

Yes, I’ve met Ozzie like three or four times. Ozzie Smith’s kid went to my public high school.

No way. Yes. Oh, the Wizard of Oz. So in your mind, who’s a bigger deal, Mark McGuire or Ozzie Smith in terms of Cardinal Ozzie?

Ozzie.

It’s the backflip. Oh, the backflip. I mean, Mark couldn’t do a backflip.

Can you do a backflip?

I cannot do a backflip.

Okay, I still respect you. Okay, so now you live in St. Louis. We haven’t talked that long, have we?

You live in St. Louis, and tell me about the glassblowing.

What was your first real job?

Was it glassblowing?

Was it something else? Tell me how you got started with a career. I don’t know what my first real job was. I don’t know if I’ve even had it yet. I think I worked for IBM for a while, and that was technically a real job, although

I was working out of the L.A. office and living in St. Louis, so there was no adult supervision. But glassblowing was one of these things I got into after I quit my first semi-real job. I worked for a startup that was just not going anywhere and run by a guy that I didn’t really respect. I quit without having another job lined up. I just walked in and quit.

I woke up the next morning and was like, oh my God, what am I going to do for money? At the time, programming wasn’t as popular as it is today, so my computer science degree didn’t mean anything. But I kind of knew how to blow glass, so I thought, oh, well, maybe if I make a lot of glass work, I can sell it. And then I immediately realized that my work was terrible. But it’s amazing how fast you can learn something if you decide that that’s your career. So I woke up the next morning and I was paying the bills.

What kind of stuff did you sell that people liked?

I had no integrity, so I would make anything. Like, pink and blue, lady if you think it matches, I’ll make it for you. I was doing commissions, I was doing chandeliers, I was doing a lot of bowls and vases. Out of sort of sheer craziness, my studio put in a bid to host the World Glass Art Conference. And we got this big studio in St. Louis called Third Degree. And we won the bid to be the hosts for the world’s glass artists.

This is a big deal. It was in Australia the year before. So it came here in 2006, and all of a sudden all the message boards and websites lit up with these people just dissing my city saying, oh there’s nothing in St. Louis, why would I ever go to St. Louis? And I was really pissed. So I thought, well I’m just gonna show them and I’m gonna like turn out the best glass conference they’ve ever seen. Which basically meant tricking out my studio and I was building these all glass

bathrooms. So, you know, glass tiles and glass ceilings and glass sinks. And then I went to buy some faucets to fit with our glass sinks and I couldn’t find any were cool so I said I’ll make some faucets. It took me six months to make a functional faucet that was all glass but when I did that people started coming out of the bathroom saying you know can I buy one of these things and I was like no no

they’re too much of a pain in the neck but one day some some big guy I remember he was from Texas because I remember his belt buckle. His belt buckle, yeah, it looked like he just won a pro wrestling title.

Woo! Wheel of dealing, limousine lights, jet flag, settle the debt, and I’m having a hard time holding these alligators down.

Woo!

He comes up to me and he’s like, son. He’s like, son? Why don’t you just tell me how much I gotta pay?” And I made up this number that I thought was astronomical. I said, $2,000. I’d make one for $2,000.

And he hands me his Visa card and he says, blue. And so I have been in the super luxury bathroom fixture business. And that in fact was one of the things behind Square. Because I was trying to sell one of these silly glass bathroom faucets to a lady in Panama who only had an American Express card, which I don’t take at my studio, and lost the sale. That’s what started Square.

So, how old were you when you couldn’t take, when you couldn’t accept American Express? How old were you at this time? 42. 42. So you’re 42 years old when you had your epiphany that led to Square. Yeah. And do you have a big Texas-sized belt buckle that you wear now.

I should.

Why don’t you? That could be your move.

I don’t because my wife dresses me.

Okay, that’s fair.

And she has impeccable taste. And if you see me looking good, credit my wife. And if you see me in t-shirts with burn holes in them and shoes with extra ventilation, that’s self-directed fashion. So yeah, I’ve subcontracted that part. How old were you when you and your wife got married? 42. I got married and started Square the same year.

No you didn’t. So you got married while you’re building a startup. Tell me about the process of starting Square. How did it start? How did you fund it? Just walk us through this. I think the world’s infinitely curious about the formation and the starting of Square so

Jack Dorsey and I have been friends for years. He used to work for me at another company, which I still ironically own it’s a company called Mira and Jack and I had kept in touch over the ensuing, you know, 15 or 16 years I Was calling him just to catch up and talk about building an electric car because I was Starting to try to build electric cars at the time.

And Jack had started Twitter, and then we agreed to get together that Christmas, and in the ensuing time, they kicked him out of Twitter. So they kicked him out for the first time right between then, and I was like, I felt like somebody had beaten up my little brother. I was really pissed off. And I said to Jack, I said, let’s go out and get even with these guys, right?

Because I was like, I’ve got a lot of free time. I can go out, I can just move out to San Francisco out of pure spite, right? Love it. To get even with the guys that messed with my buddy, right? And Jack, to his credit, said, well, Jim, why don’t we do something more positive and start a new company?

And I was like, okay, what do you want to do? He’s like, I don’t know, what do you want to do? I was like, I don’t know. So we were kicking around for ideas and had already hired our first programmer because we knew we were going to do something

with mobile phones. It was, you know, the iPhone had just come out and we knew it was going to have something to do with mobile technology. So we’d hired a mobile developer who was starting in two weeks.

So we had like two weeks to figure out what the company was going to do. And we really didn’t have any ideas, but then I went home to my studio and had this epiphany where I lost this sale. And I looked down at my iPhone and I said, why does this thing not process credit cards? Like it does everything else, right?

The iPhone is this magic device that, you know, it turns into a book or a TV or a map or a radio or a TV. I mean, it just turns into whatever you need it to turn into. And my attitude is, well, why don’t we make it turn into a credit card machine? And so that was the beginning of Square.

I think that a lot of our listeners, they listen to the show all the time and they always say, you know, Clay, between you and your partner, you guys have started a men’s grooming lounge chain and your partner started a bank and an optometry clinic. And between Dr. Zellner and I, we’ve built 16, you know, multimillion dollar companies and people always say, how do you do it? And you say, well, you find a problem and you solve it.

Imagine you were sitting down right now with a one-on-one coaching session with somebody who’s an aspiring entrepreneur and they’re trying to figure out what kind of business to start what would you

say to them?

So let’s define the word entrepreneur okay you said aspiring entrepreneur and I use the word entrepreneur very very specifically to distinguish entrepreneurship from business okay so business let’s say this young person wants to start a business i.e. they want to start a coffee shop or a brokerage firm or a car

company or do something that has been done before. They want to start an airline, okay, an airline is a business. There are airlines that you can copy, okay. Businesses are really good things to do if you want to make money. My definition of entrepreneurship is an archaic one because the original definition of entrepreneur

was somebody who did crazy stuff and stuff that had not been done before so i’ll give you an example of a entrepreneur right now one of my friends is trying to really cut the cost of launching satellites

so he’s bought a bunch of you know nineteen seventies military surplus fighter jets what? jets, like these old big 23s.

And I don’t know what…

Sure.

Holy cow!

Harry Caray wanted to chime in there.

I love Harry Caray.

Oh my God. He wanted to chime in. My goal is to earn Harry Caray at least once more during this interview. But I mean, this guy, like, so he strips all the radar off these planes so they get really light. Yeah.

Fuels them up and puts a missile on them. And then he flies them up to 70,000 feet, you know, the surface ceiling, puts it into a power drive, like a Mach 2 power drive, so you’ve got all this kinetic energy. Then he points it back up at the atmosphere and launches the missile. And the cool thing about this is if you do the first 70,000 feet and, you know, are going

really fast, now you have a lot of energy. So you don’t need a lot of fuel. So your missile or rocket can be light and it can get the satellite into orbit really cheaply. So now, that’s an entrepreneur because that might not work. That sounds nuts, okay?

And if you’re doing something like that, you could be a failure. So here’s the way I use the word entrepreneur. If you are doing something that has never been done before, if you are solving a problem that is unsolved today, you’re an entrepreneur and I will support you and applaud you and pity you. But that is a different process than starting a business. Okay, so I got another friend of mine. He’s started a bunch of coffee shops. He’s got the one

of the top coffee shop chains in the Midwest there in Hawaii and Japan and his name is Howard. And Howard started a coffee shop. Now the thing about Howard is he did something that has already been done. Okay? Because coffee shops have been done. Nothing against what you’re doing. As a matter of fact, it’s way smarter to be somebody like Howard. Doing something that has a formula and maybe, let’s say, a trade show. Like you have a problem with your little coffee shop. You know you can do…

go to a convention center where there are a thousand people who know how to do the thing that you don’t know how to do. You can take a seminar on it, right? So here’s my advice to a young person, or to anybody. You don’t have to be young. Well, first of all, get over the age thing.

You can start a business any age, so forget that. If you want to be respected, to be applauded, to have plaques from the city. If you want to be popular on Tinder, be a business person. Start something that people recognize and understand. You’re more fundable, you’re more approachable, people understand it. If you are frustrated with a problem

that humanity has not solved, you may have to become an entrepreneur. And that’s a different path, but it is one where the rules are totally different. And this is the reason I wrote the book. So the Innovation Stack is all about my effort to explain this thing that we don’t even have a word for. And when I say we don’t have a word for, I mean that when you say the word entrepreneur these days, it’s synonymous with a business person. So, you know, you start a car dealership, okay?

That’s a lot of work to start a car dealership. You know what you are? You’re called an entrepreneur. But you’re not really, in my definition, because car dealerships have existed before. So I wanted to discuss what it’s like to do stuff that had not been done before, and that’s why I had to sort of dust off this hundred-year-old definition of the term entrepreneur.

Have you hung out with Ted Turner?

No.

Ted Turner…

I have never met Ted. Ted Turner has this quote where he says, he goes, my son is now an entrepreneur. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job. And that’s what Ted says. And I think that your definition is, I think it’s painful if you want to be an entrepreneur. I just help people grow businesses.

But what you do is that genius level stuff. And in your book, you’re attempting to teach these concepts about being an entrepreneur. Could you speak briefly to the emotional pain of being an entrepreneur? Because I think growing a business, like a coffee shop, is very easy, but can you speak to the emotional pain that you go through if you’re trying to change the world?

Yes, I will talk about pain in a second, but I just want to sort of argue with you for just a second.

No, do it. Yeah.

And you said genius level stuff, okay? And that is precisely why I wrote the book, is to dispel that myth. Like what you just said is the thing that everyone believes, which is if you do something world-changing, you have to be some crazy genius. You have to have some sort of special set of skills. Well listen, listen folks, and I’m telling you this, I ain’t got none, okay?

I am a really mediocre guy in a lot of things, okay? I’m not even a great glassblower. I’m a pretty good glassblower. There are guys who are great. I’m pretty good. Most…

Jack, like, Jack was no financial expert. He’s running one of the biggest financial companies in the country right now. You know what his professional credential is? He’s a certified massage therapist. He doesn’t even have a college degree. So you’ve got a glassblower and a therapist building one of the most notable financial companies in

the country right now. What are we geniuses about? There’s no genius there. There’s no qualification. There’s no expertise. And this is so good.

Clay, this is why I wrote the book. I know people who have tremendous potential, who disqualify themselves because they say, I’m not qualified to do entrepreneurship. And what I say to them, which is a little weird, but I say, look, yeah, you’re unqualified, but everybody’s unqualified to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved before. So I’m a pilot, I fly planes, alright? Now, if I want to get in a plane and fly around,

I have to go get certified. I’ve got to get tested, the FAA gives me eye exams and medicals and all these things I’ve got to do to be qualified to fly a plane today, okay? That’s really smart. You don’t get in a plane and just start flying. But what about the Wright Brothers? Like, how could they be qualified to fly the first airplane? Well, they couldn’t. They just had to figure it out. Don’t disqualify yourself because you think entrepreneurship requires some level of qualification because that’s what killing bright people and I when I wrote

this book I have one person in mind she is so talented she is so good and she constantly stops herself from trying things because she says she feels unqualified and and I just I got to put it into okay So now let’s talk about emotional pain unless you want to

I’m gonna meet you in st. Louis and we’re gonna have a beer and we’ll arm wrestle over this I think you have a freakish level of tenacity because when you think about like Henry Ford who lost it all multiple times Yes, academically. He was not a genius. 10,000 failed experiments with a light bulb. Walt Disney lost it all five times. I think, maybe not your genius, but your gift or whatever that is, is the ability to endure an insane amount of rejection. Don’t you think you have a freakish amount of persistence, much more

than the average human? I may. I may. I think that’s your one superpower. It might be. So, but I have also, I’m really lazy, so I have a trick that supplements my tenacity. So I’ll give you a formula, okay, for supplementing your tenacity. Like if you’re one of these people that gives up easily, do something where you can’t give up. So remember Young Frankenstein from the movie?

Jim Wilder? And he’s got the thing where he says, lock me in the room with a monster, no matter how loudly I scream, don’t let me out.

You know? Yep.

Burn the boats. Yes. So that’s sort of my business plan. Like, when I do something, I try to burn the boats. I try to put myself in a situation where me and my team have to survive or we perish. Now perish in this case is the company dies,

like no individuals die, but there have been,

like that’s great motivation.

Like if you’re committed to solving a problem. I agree. I’m totally committed. Then you don’t have to have great tenacity, you just have to have a survival instinct. And a lot of the entrepreneurs that I profile in the book,

a lot of these guys who are like world-changing, world-class entrepreneurs, they are not necessarily the most tenacious, but they put themselves in situations where if they weren’t tenacious, they would perish. So a great example was Ingvar Kamprad, okay, who, you know, by his own admission, was just forced into inventing and inventing and inventing in…

Ikea.

Yeah, inventing Ikea, building Ikea.

And he’s a dyslexic too, a dyslexic guy. I think a lot of these people, when you look at the success of people like yourself, the tenacity is there, not having a backup plan is there. But in your book, The Innovation Stack, Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, you share funny stories. You kind of have these humorous stories of Square’s early days.

Could you maybe share with the listeners? I think without a little bit of humor, these difficult situations can be unbearable. Could you share with the listeners some of these humorous stories from your book?

Sure, sure. And I need to apologize, you know, first, to let everybody know that the book that you are going to get if you buy the Innovation Stack is different than the one I wrote, okay? Because when I wrote it, it was half graphic novel. So the book, because I thought it would be fun, and look, there are some great stories in the book, and they’re funny, because they

should be funny. I mean, you can look at it and it’s like, wow, that’s tragic. Or it’s like, oh, wow, that’s tragic, and I’m laughing my ass off. So I would prefer to laugh in the face of tragedy, because, look, failure is what makes us interesting, right? Nobody wants to hear about success.

Success is totally boring. But failure, boy, that’s a great story. I wrote the book, I would get a story and I would, you know, here’s some story about like Comprete or what happened to it was at Square and I would immediately start sketching it. So it was pen and ink.

It was a comic book. And then, you know, there’d be the businessy parts where I’d have to explain, you know, sort of the phenomenon and, you know, do some math and stuff like that. And then I’d switch back to comic. And so when I submitted this to Penguin, my publisher, it was this schizophrenic sort of comic book, then business book, then comic book, then business book. And they loved it. They beat out another publishing company.

Like there was a little bidding war for it. I thought, oh, man, this is great. I’ve created a new format, okay? And then, as soon as I signed the contract, and now they own the the book yeah they took me to this windowless conference room in Manhattan and said Jim we got to talk you can’t do the comics I’m booing okay continue my friend I just wanna get the boo out there I feel like we just killed your dream. God, it was, I was crestfallen. So, but they, look, they gave me a really good reason. They said, look, 60% of your book sales are going to be on e-readers and

audio books. Like, do you want to lose 60% of the market right away? Because your stupid comics are not going to look good on a four inch screen and they’re not going to read at all on a e-reader. So forget selling this thing. Forget reaching people. And I was like, oh, okay, you’re right. So I went back and I rewrote it and tried to make the stories funny. But if you buy the book, I will give you the comic, because I kept the comic and I sort of broke it off and I make it…

Chapter 9 is its own… I have this comic about a banking badass named A.P.G. Anini. So there is a comic book that goes with a book. You can’t get it from Penguin, but if you buy the book, I give it to you.

Now, by the way, you’re mentioning people today like the founder of IKEA and APG and E&E, the founder of Bank of America. And a lot of these people don’t have degrees. I mean, when you think about David Orrick, no degrees. You think about the guys who launched the computing industry, Wozniak and Jobs, no degree. You think about the people who launched the aviation industry, the Wright brothers.

It seems to me you’ve read a lot of these stories. What would you say to somebody out there that says, do you have to have a degree to be successful?

No, you don’t. You don’t have to have a degree to be an entrepreneur, certainly, because by definition, the degree is going to prepare you to do stuff that humanity already knows how to do. So if you want to be a business person, you want to be an accountant, you want to run, you want to be an attorney, you want to be a software engineer that works at a company, like, yeah, go get qualified. And that qualification is typically a degree.

But if you’re going to do something that has never been done before, you know, like build the world’s first discount airline or build the world’s biggest bank, you don’t need a degree. No degree will help you. I mean, maybe there’ll be some things you learn on the way to that knowledge, but the specific knowledge itself is almost by definition irrelevant because you’re doing something that hasn’t

been done before. So what instead you need to do, if you choose this path, is just prepare sort of mentally to be in a place where you’re facing a lot of uncertainty. So like if you want to get a degree, get an engineering degree. Like, engineering education is the best preparation I can imagine for entrepreneurship because engineers typically spend most of their time on things that don’t work.

Okay? Like, if it works, you don’t need an engineer. You know? Like, right now I’m sitting in a chair, and the chair is supporting my body weight, it’s reasonably comfortable. Like, I’m not paying any attention to the chair because it’s functioning as it should.

Now, if the chair was about to collapse or it was hurting me or there was some sort of problem well then you know let’s get an engineer and fix that chair or redesign it or do something like that so I I recently gave a big gift to Washington University’s engineering school because I want to open up the doors of engineering to more people in the world because I think

it’s a great problem-solving skill and it’s probably good prep for entrepreneurship, but you don’t necessarily need that piece of sheepskin. What, how did you guys go about getting your first 10 customers

at Square, your first 10 ones?

Well, it was easy. I was the first.

Got it.

Because I wanted it.

Customer number one.

There we go.

There we go.

Yeah. Number two was a flower lady who sold flowers literally in the building. So we were in Jack’s apartment building. We started in a little Jack’s apartment. And there was a lady in the plaza in front of his apartment in San Francisco that sold

flowers. So we went up to her and said, you know, would you like to be able to take credit cards for people who buy your flowers? And she’s like, yeah, but I can’t get a credit card thing. It was like, no problem. We’ll give you one.

You know, so we gave her like the first non-founder Square version. And then the third guy was a stunt pilot, Andrei Afanasyev. Andrei got the third square and he loved it because you know flight instructors are constantly on the move so he needed a mobile way for his clients to pay him. You know he’s out on the field or you know in some airplane. I mean he could literally get paid you know, we continue to just let people who wanted to try it, try it.

And then we listen to their feedback.

Could you say, would you say that you got a few of your first customers just by going door to door? I mean, just talking to people? I mean, didn’t you fear some rejection?

Well, I mean, yeah, there’s rejection, but I mean, there are different types of rejection, first of all. There’s the rejection of, I don’t need this thing. Most people don’t need to accept credit card payments. You have to have a little bit of a business to need that thing. So I don’t take it personally if somebody says, well, not for me.

Now if they sit there and tell me I’m stupid, that I’m an idiot, I take that a little personally, and that happened too. So I got, probably the biggest rejection I got when we started Square was the CEO of this $4 billion payment company, which this guy I thought was a big deal. He takes me out to dinner in New York. He invites me to dinner, downs a martini, okay? And then gesturing with an olive on a skewer tells me what an idiot I am.

Just using the olive to emphasize his points, right? And his points, frankly, were ones I couldn’t refute. He was basically saying, you’re trying to serve people who don’t deserve to accept credit cards. Their credit scores are too low. They’re too small to sue if they steal your money.

They’re unreliable. And he said, you’re going to lose all your money, you’re going to lose all your investors’ money. I mean, he was just ripping into me and into these martinis. And I had to sit there and take it for like two hours.

What?

Two hours? Well, it was dinner. I mean, look, I don’t turn down free food. Look, at the point, let me get something, let me just get something infinitely clear, Like, up until very, very recently, you could get my total attention just by buying me a burrito.

Okay?

So… Now, how many of you guys were on this team? It’s you and Jack Dorsey, and a programmer.

Is it just three of you? Well, the initial team was me, Jack, this guy named Tristan O’Tearney, and poor Tristan died a couple years ago. So he, he, he, he, it’s a very tragic situation with Tristan. But a dear guy. And he was, that was the original day one team.

And then on day two, we added another engineer named Sam Wynn. And that was the original team.

So five guys, five guys. And a cat.

And a cat.

What was your cat’s name?

Well, it wasn’t my cat. It was Zoe. It was Jack’s cat. What kind of cat?

A little white, long-haired stray.

She was a feral cat. And she’d grown up on the main streets of San Francisco, and Jack rescued her. Was she kind of a heavy-set cat? A skinny cat? Skinny and tough. Skinny and tough.

Okay, so there’s five of you and a cat. And when did you guys sell a million dollars of stuff for the first time? How long did it take you to sell a million dollars of stuff?

I don’t know. I do not… That was not a million dollars.

I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know. of stuff for the first time. How long did it take you to sell a million dollars of stuff? I don’t know. I did, I do not, that was not a metric that…

When did you realize that this thing was actually going to work? Did you ever have a moment where you thought, hey, this might work? Yeah, I was sitting in a cab in New Orleans. The company was about, we’d had our product out for about six months. Yeah. And I was riding in the back of a cab and the cabbie was telling me that he could take credit cards. He’s like, I can take credit cards. like they could never take credit cards.

You always had to have cash. It was really awkward and messy. And this guy was like, I can take your credit card. I can take your credit card. He’s like, I got this thing. It’s like the square.

And so he starts pitching me my own product. Sweet, right?

And he’s pitching me.

And like, you know, like, you know, when you meet somebody for the first time and you forget their name, that there’s like this window where you can ask again, it’s like, oh, what was your name again? Oh, it was Clay.

But if you let that window pass, then you have to sort of bluff and pretend that you still remember them.

That’s called church.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, every Sunday.

There was probably a minute where I could have fessed up and told this guy that, oh yeah, I was one of the guys that invented that. And I let the window close. So I just sit there in the back of the cab listening to this guy pitch me And he got it. He got most of it wrong like he remembered that it was free. He got the free part, right? Yep, he got the part right that there were no contracts

No penalties, and he got the part, right? That that we gave your money the next day which at the time was revolutionary But like he got the rates wrong he got he got all sorts of other stuff wrong. But he was pitching me my product without me having expressed any interest in it. This was just like, I’m just a stranger in the back of a cab. But he was so excited because this was changing his life.

The cabbies, I don’t know if you know how the credit card world works in cabs, but the credit card, the cabbie doesn’t get most of the money for the credit card. The company that owns the medallions sets up this really sort of creepy system with their… So they own the credit cards and they skim like 10% off the cabbie’s take. So that’s…

You want to know why all those credit card machines were broken in the back of the cab? That thing’s not broken. The cabbie breaks it because he doesn’t want to have a credit card sale because he’s losing money. So, yeah, that was the day, that was the moment I was like, wow. I might not have to accept every free meal that’s offered to me for the rest of time.

Holy cow!

Oh, you got two holy cows you’ve earned so far. So now, talk about the actual physical square device. Did you make that yourself? Did you glass blow the prototype? Who made that?

I made it with some help. My wife was in the studio with me. I had her working a Bridgeport milling machine. We built them all by hand at the beginning. I tried to make one out of glass just to see if I could, and it was a disaster.

I made some out of wood. The very first one I made out of metal. I made it out of aluminum, because we had a demo with Steve Jobs, and I thought Steve liked aluminum. So the very first Square Reader was milled out of aluminum. That turned out to be a disaster.

What was Steve like? When you’re pitching aluminum to Steve, what’s Steve’s personality type like? I think a lot of listeners would be fascinated to know what it’s like to pitch something to Steve Jobs.

I wish I had that story. Steve was very sick at the time, and so we had the demo scheduled, and everything was set, and then Steve fell ill. I mean, he had a, yeah, he was fighting for his life, and so we canceled. So never got to meet him.

We never ended up demoing for Steve. We built, we prepared, we had everything ready to go. We had it scheduled, and then he canceled.

You’ve met some people that I just, that I have always, I’ve studied, read about, it’s unbelievable. Peter Thiel, one of the first key investors for Facebook, he endorses your book and he actually says, who can say they went up against Amazon and won? Jim McKelvey can. Peter Thiel, what’s it like to be around Peter Thiel?

Peter Thiel is a complete badass. I have tremendous respect for Peter. He funded my current company, and he was the only guy I wanted to fund my company and The reason I wanted Peter, so I’m doing something called invisibly right now. Which is a I’m trying to essentially give every

Person in the United States control of their online identity so you have so you know what’s in those secret files Yeah, you know represent us And then allow people to exercise control over you know the ads that they see and how their attention is bought and sold, all in an effort to save journalism. So it’s complicated. I don’t want to give a pitch on this, but I will tell you this.

If you go to invisibly.com, you will probably be confused about what we’re doing, but the reason it’s called Invisibly is you don’t need to understand it. It works without you understanding, but we’d be happy to explain it to you if you wanted to because it’s really good.

How about this? Because I grew up really poor, and I’m a shameless sales guy. You built your wealth. Can we do kind of a pitch for Invisibly? Just a little pitch? I mean, we kind of want to be sold something today.

In addition to your new book, The Innovation Stack, can you give us just a little brief

pitch?

So, the pitch with Invisibly is that you, as a consumer, have two big problems. The first is you don’t have any control over how your eyeballs are bought and sold. And if you think the stuff that is free is really free, it ain’t free. You are paying for it with your attention. That’s what advertisements are. You kind of understand this when you’re watching TV and you see an ad, but when you’re online

and when you see an ad, it is the same thing. You are paying for that content. You’re not paying very much, and unfortunately, you’re paying in a way that doesn’t reward quality. And what I mean by this is that if I trick you into watching something for 20 seconds, I make the same amount of money as if I create 20 seconds that you love.

Now in a normal economy, if I give you a product that’s crap, you shouldn’t pay for it. You’d say, I don’t want this. And if I give you a product that’s great, you’d want to pay more for it. People actually want to pay more for good stuff because that’s what gives us good stuff. Okay? So, but that economy doesn’t work online because you’re monetized by the amount of time, not by the quality. So we figured out a way to fix this, and it involves something called micropayments, which are these tiny, tiny little payments.

So when you, in an invisibly experience, see an ad, the advertiser is literally paying you. So if I see an ad for Tide Pods, Procter & Gamble is giving me three cents. Now that three cents, I mean, who cares about three cents? Well, the answer is it goes immediately into a little invisible wallet. And then three cents, it turns out, is a lot of money when you’re browsing content because the typical newspaper article or little video costs less than a penny.

So with three cents in your pocket, you could probably view ten things without having to see another ad. And if you make this system efficient, two things happen. One, the individual gets control over their eyeballs because look, if I’m selling you my eyeballs for money, then we can have a conversation about that. So you can sit

there and say, well Jim, what do you want to buy? And the answer is, well I’m currently toilet training my two-year-old, right? And so don’t show me ads for diapers anymore. Like I don’t want diapers.

Like I probably want, you know, disinfectant, mops, and you know.

And burrito ads.

Yeah, yeah, I want, yeah, you know, maybe, you know, maybe some stronger detergent, right? You know, like there’s, there’s, there’s things that I actually want. And so, invisibly, essentially, makes the market for your attention something that you control. And because you control it, it becomes efficient. And because it becomes efficient, then you have to see way fewer stupid ads.

Jim, we’re going to go into lightning round, because I want to respect your time here today. So here we go, lightning round. We have five rapid-fire questions for you.

First off, working at the Fed, the Federal Reserve, what are you doing with the Fed? So I’m a deputy director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And so, for instance, tomorrow we have a Fed meeting. We set interest rates and we do things to maintain maximum employment and stable prices in the United States. And it’s a wonderful system.

So I’ve been there for three years. And the great thing about the Fed, like Americans need to know how great our central bank is. And I know it takes a lot of crap for the politicians, but here’s the deal. It’s independent, okay? It is not political. It’s not a Republican Fed, it’s not a Democratic Fed.

You are politically neutral when you’re on the Fed. And because you’re politically neutral, what you do is you make decisions based on the best information you have for the good of the American people. And that’s what we do. And people whine about it and complain and say, oh, you know, quantitative easing, why’d you do that?

But the fact is, these are really, really smart people who don’t have to play politics. And so it is one of the greatest institutions that I’ve ever been associated with. And I love it.

Now we have two listeners here who they own a machine shop. They make parts that are purchased by Tesla and the U.S. Army. And one of the, they’re two brothers, and Nace Roberts here is in the studio. And Nace has a question for you. So Nace, meet Jim.

Hey, Jim.

How you doing? Hey, actually, we’re not just a fan of the Square. But me and my brother are actually users of the Square. And we’ve been using it for about 10 years now. And we use it on our website daily. And we actually use it at trade shows.

So that little box that you created with no strings attached, literally, has changed the way we sell our products. So we just want to say thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, I’ve heard you talk about how the market demand is a driving force of innovation and how great entrepreneurs and innovators recognize the need in the market to react by creating a customer, a company that our customers can embrace.

So I have two questions with that side note. Is that okay with you? Yeah, go for it. Okay. If you have a new business, how do you vet the new business idea in a market to know if it’s

something consumers will embrace before fully jumping in?

Okay, so I’m going to go back to that sort of riff that I gave you at the beginning, which is if it’s a business, if you’re a business person, then you can study the market. There are, and as a matter of fact, you know who’s really good at this? Bankers. So if you want a free business consultant, don’t hire a consultant, go to a bank and try to get a loan. And what the banker will do is he will look up your business on a statistical chart.

And he’ll say, oh, well, the chances of us getting our money back are this. And they can literally be free consulting. So that’s for a business. That’s if you’re a business person, OK? If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re building something that has not been built before, if you’re solving a problem that is unsolved, you don’t get any of that.

You don’t. You have to guess and go. Right? So when we started Square, which I believe was an entrepreneurial company because we were serving little merchants, we didn’t know if any of them existed. Like when we started Square, we knew we had one customer, and that was me.

Like we literally didn’t know if anybody else would ever want this thing because we couldn’t. And this is the thing that people always make this mistake. They sit there and say, well, I want this guarantee. I want this guarantee that all my work is going to be fruitful. And I say, OK, if you want a guarantee, go into business. And you don’t even get a full guarantee there, but it’s pretty close.

You can pretty much assure that if you do the things that the other businesses who are like yours are doing, then you will be successful to the extent that they are successful and you know the example I use in the book is Restaurants in New York, so I interview you know Randy Garuti Who’s the CEO of Shake Shack and Randy tells me flat-out? He’s like Jim we didn’t invent the hamburger like we just have to make our hamburgers a little bit better and a little bit You know tastier and a little bit faster

And like he’s got this team that’s super dedicated to making the hamburger just a little bit better and he’s kicking ass. But hey man, there are other hamburgers in Manhattan. So if you want a guarantee going to business, if you want to do something that hasn’t been done before, you’re going to have to be an entrepreneur and that is a different journey.

Okay, thank you for that advice. So what advice, for the second question, what advice would you suggest to an existing company to leverage consumer demand more aggressively?

I don’t even know what that means.

Oh wow.

To leverage consumer demand more aggressively?

You’re trying to trick the, are you trying to trick our guests? What’s he doing?

What the heck does that mean?

Unbelievable.

Holy cow.

Where’s Ozzy Smith to translate?

Okay.

What is leveraging demand mean?

So I was just asking for a question for people…

No genius here.

Okay, me either, that’s why I was asking it. So, I was asking for just a company that’s, you know, breaking even monthly. How do they get people to find them more or to get consumers to want to demand their products or services more?

Oh, man.

So, that’s business. That’s the game I don’t play. I’m sorry, I’m just not qualified to answer the question. You need a good manager. You need somebody who comes in and studies it and makes incremental improvements. These are all just platitudes.

I’m not saying anything that’s even worthy of writing down or remembering. Look, duh. Do things a little bit better. Be a little bit more efficient, work harder, not smarter. I’m, or reverse that.

But do that, that’s all a bunch of crap to me because I can’t do that. I’m not a manager, okay? I’m not a guy who takes a business and tweaks it 10%. I can’t do that. I have to work with people who are really good at that because it’s just my thing. What I’ve basically spent my whole life doing

is trying stuff that nobody’s ever tried and failing a lot, but then occasionally when it works, I end up with one of the coolest glassblowing studios in the world. Or, well actually, you’re a machine shop. Okay, so I’ve got a maker space in St. Louis.

We’ve got water jets and embroidery machines and all these people come together and make stuff. And you know what? That model didn’t exist. It kind of existed in a place called Tech Shop,

but then they went bankrupt last year. So I build stuff that I don’t know if it’s going to work. But when it does work, the cool thing is, and I’ll try to sell entrepreneurship a little bit here, because I’ve been dissing it the whole time. If you are successful as an entrepreneur,

Yeah. If you are successful as an entrepreneur, you have basically no competition. You end up with the market to yourself. You end up with this crazy system that cannot be easily attacked. And the reason I know this is because when Square was four years old, Amazon copied our product, undercut our price, added live customer support, which we didn’t have, and everyone thought Square was dead.

And a year later, Amazon quit. They couldn’t take our market from us. And now this is Amazon! This is the most deadly competitor in the planet. Amazon scares Walmart. Amazon scares everybody.

Amazon scares the government. Amazon scares Amazon!

Yes! I mean, they’re… but the reason we beat them is not because we’re great managers or anything like that. It’s that we had this thing called an innovation stack, and we were entrepreneurs. If you read the book, you’ll learn that there’s this different set of math. It’s like a Laplace transform. If you’re trying to solve a differential equation, this is a terrible analogy.

I’m going to lose your whole audience here. I’ve got to go with it. So, in math, there are these hard-ass problems called differential equations, and they’re really, really tough to solve. But then there’s this little trick you can play, where you translate the equation into a different space, and then you just use basic algebra. And it’s so powerful. So you take your problem, which you can’t figure out, and you map it into this new space, solve it using basic algebra and

then you map it back and it solves the problem. And that’s what you want to do. You want to have this other vocabulary. So I’m trying to give the world the Laplace transform, but I promise there’s no math in

the book. Jim, I will say this. We have time for one more question here for you. Because you’ve done so well as an entrepreneur, you have the money needed to buy burritos and what’s exciting is I empower you to go out and get yourself a big belt buckle. You gotta do it and get like an Ozzie Smith tribute on it.

Think about that.

That’s a great idea. Although I would probably make my own belt buckle because I’m a maker at heart. I’m a guy who likes…

You can just wear it when your wife’s not around. We won’t tell.

Surely you can’t be serious.

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

I will see you in public.

Giant belt buckle.

Now Jordan, this is, Jordan is Nace’s brother, and he’s going to one-up him with our final question here. So Jordan, one-up your brother with the best question of all time for Jim McKelvey.

Okay, hey Jim. So as a fellow maker, and believe it or not I have two Bridgeports back in the shop.

Have you ever left the wrench on the top?

That’s a big no-no. I know. Have you done it? I will say probably in my younger days because that is where I learned how to machine.

That will kill you on a mill. Just checking. So I heard a quote from you. It was when you guys were about to do the Steve Jobs demo and you were making that first part out of aluminum and you said sometimes you have to go with what’s good and then be fast to correct the mistakes. Can you can you speak to some of the other makers out here about a product they have and

they’re waiting to pull the trigger because it’s not perfect yet. Yeah you got a ship you got a ship ship ship. We made so my big problem with the aluminum square reader was that aluminum is electrically conductive. And so effectively, it wasn’t a card reader, it was a cardiac reader. It would pick up your heartbeat if you touched it and screw up all the electronics. So I discovered that like too late.

I built the thing, tested it out, and handed it to Jack right before a demo. Actually, he had to go demo it to Mike Bloomberg. And the thing didn’t work because it was electrically conductive. So, here’s the thing. These days, you have so much power as a maker because you have 3D printing, you have CNC machines, you’ve got all these wonderful tools to make stuff quickly.

I really believe that you should, if you can, make it yourself. Because that gives you the power to, first of all, understand what’s going on, to make the little tweaks that need to be made, and you get to move really, really fast. So, you know, all of a sudden we discover that an aluminum reader is a stupid idea, okay? And I’ve got a plastic one ready the next day. I mean, literally, it was just a question of me, you know, getting some plastic and switching.

But imagine if I’d had a supply chain that went all the way through Shenzhen. I mean, God help you if your supply chain goes through China right now. I mean, China’s shut down. Like, you want to get that product out? Man, the fact that you’ve got a couple of bridge ports and some knowledge, like, your company just surpassed everybody else because they’re shut down and you’re not. Why? Because you control it.

And you know so many people feel like they’ve got to find an expert to you know to build something. And look I mean maybe you do if it’s super complicated but I mean it wasn’t like I knew how to build a credit card reader when I built a credit card reader. True. But you can look stuff up. I mean Made Magazine, first issue,

had an article teaching how to build a credit card reader into a cell phone. Like, there was literally an article that taught me how to do all the stuff I needed to do to make Square. I mean, like, you could just look it up. So, if you can make it, make it. And the more you make, the better you get at that.

Jim, not that you need to have Kanye West on your team, but Kanye West said almost the exact same advice in an interview with Forbes, talking about the importance of being able to make your own prototypes.

You have the idea comes to you, you sketch it out and then what? We have a team of incredible

designers. We’ll take the entire design team to Japan, we’ll take the entire design team to zone and talk about, you know, where we’d like to take these ideas. And I mean it’s a painting, it’s a spirit that’s inside of it that’s now translated into these miniature vehicles. Look at all these, look at these designs, look at these ideas all together. The protos, the versions that you’ve seen in actuality and the versions that never quite made it.

To be able to see inside of this, there’s, you know, this is an infinite amount of words in front of you. There’s so many prototypes that go into what you eventually get.

How many prototypes do you think per shoe

you’ll cycle through before you get to the one

that you actually want? It’s hundreds. We work on, we like I said, miniature vehicles. We work on shoes like someone would work on a car.

Your book is just filled with wisdom

and if you’re out there today and you’re thinking about buying a regrettable burrito, you know that bonus burrito that you don’t need, I encourage you to fast for one day to save up the money needed to buy the innovation stack building an unbeatable business one crazy idea at a time. Again, it’s the innovation stack building an unbeatable business one crazy idea at a time.

Jim, thank you so much for joining us today.

Clay, Jordan, Mace, this is super cool, guys, and thank you so much for your time today. This was fun.

Oh, Thrive Nation, that was a mind-expanding look inside the mind of a true American success story. So if you learned something today, share this show with somebody. I’m telling you, just send them a text, send them an email, maybe send them a fax.

Surely you can’t be serious.

I am serious. And don’t call me, surely. Send him a.

Why don’t we all just send our friends and family a fax today. If you still have a fax machine, fax them a link to today’s show. Let’s share this show. Let’s let’s share the show via a smoke signal. Let’s go out of our way to just get this show out here, out into the vast interwebs. And now, without any further ado, let’s end this show with a boom. So here we go. Three, two, one, boom.

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Today is your day, and now is your time. Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Proverbs 10, 4. I’m here to tell you, you can do it if you can just motivate yourself. Twelve the masses had to cut off a few, so on the day D, you and I could rendezvous. A misshapen tree that I had to prune, I had to make cuts to be here daily at noon So, like a tidal wave of knowledge monsoon I could rain on the parades of those who doubt and you

Are you the next Rockefeller or the next guru? Or the next Dr. Keene who’s changing the rules? What walls are in your way would you run right through? Like a running back, just the one that’s up to you I remember my days back in the dorm room Tuned to the gloom like the temple of doom

Overwhelmed with the doubts that try to consume I hoped for the future that I can pursue But from the mountain top now I can conclude That you have what it takes if you want the future

This is your year to thrive Success you will find Today is your day And now is your time It’s your year to thrive Success you will find Today is your day, and now is your time

This moment is profound, cause you’re above the ground Your road might have been rough, but what you got now is now We’re here to pick you up, and to even show you how But you gotta be resourceful with that old plow plow Started from the bottom, but I worked my way up Cause by 4am I always been prayed up

Rise and grind, now’s your time, don’t dare let up You gotta get it, don’t quit it, till your sleeves grow up

See it, see it, it’s your year to thrive.

Come on, come on, come on.

Success you will find.

Yes, yes.

Today is your day.

Today is your day.

Ain’t nobody sayin’. And now is your time.

And now is your time.

It’s your year to thrive.

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It’s your time.

Yeah, yeah.

We all have a wish and we all want to win. But we cannot begin without self-discipline. If you fall on your face, get yourself up again. Teach yourself to close, not fail with a friend. When the storm’s getting rough and it’s scattering thee, you only deal it with yourself and what you believe. We believe in you, but not as much as God does.

If you’re going through hell, he’s got nothing but love. Apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve earned, and in due time you’ll have money to burn.

Apply what you’ve learned. Increase what you’ve earned. And in due time you got money to burn. Sing it. Apply what you’ve learned. Increase what you’ve earned. In due time you got money to burn. Sing it. Apply what you’ve learned. Increase what you’ve earned. In due time you got money to burn.

With this beautiful miracle, I’d like to shout down the doubters. Kill the weeds that be killing your dream flowers. Empower you to devour all the obstacles that make your sweet dreams sour As for me, I used to stut stut stutter But now I’m on the microphone smooth like butter If I can do it, I know you can too

But you must stick to it like postage do And while Merton’s on the chorus, singing what he sings I encourage you to dream big dreams Today is your day, and now is your time This is your year to thrive, success you will find I realize I can’t sing like that, but I can talk and play the woodblock.

Okay, if you guys need me, I’ll just be over here.

Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay is 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.

Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa,

Russia? Oh, Santa Claus?

No, no, that’s March, March 6th and 7th. You’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, probably the best-selling or one of the best-selling business authors of all time, and he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump. So we’ve got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place.

In the same place. Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki? Well, you’ve got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many many millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the

inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit as many other

people. Now since you won’t brag on yourself, I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true. And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Pornhub, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Pornhub, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s going to be here. He’s going to be here. I’m pumped.

And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States and soon to be the 47th president of these United States

He needed someone to run the companies for him. And so the man that runs the Trump Organization For Donald J. Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States And now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. Eric Trump is here to talk about time management promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build.

I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean look at it and this is the man behind the business for the last pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it so

you’re talking we’re into nine going into ten years of him running it and we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s gonna be amazing. Now think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker.

This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker.

The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that, and the reason why we do that, is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody.

I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be in a tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation.

Jim Brewer came here. The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats

in the men’s restroom. Oh, no, I’m just kidding. So I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck or the top shelf. The seats are very close to the presenters, but we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30

attendees or more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com. Go to ThriveTimeShow.com. When you go to ThriveTimeShow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now.

I just texted my number. It’s my cell phone number. My personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody.

That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102. 918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive,

my cell phone number is 918-851-0102. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Juan for a Juan.

It’s not the same thing.

I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show Workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing, and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, okay?

Okay. You’re going to learn marketing. Marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I’ve got to get

my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. Right? You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales.

So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell, so we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career

and thousands of contractors, and most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well because, first of all, you either have great people or you have people who suck. It can be a challenge. Learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge.

But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones, and we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude,

they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re gonna teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re gonna teach you accounting.

We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization?

How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business workshop. Now, let me tell you how the format is set up here. Again folks, this is a two-day interactive 15… think about this folks, it’s two days. Each day it starts at 7am and it goes until 5pm. So from 7am to 5pm, two days. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a

30-minute teaching session and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15 minute question and answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them and you go in there and they talk

in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership and you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person

asks.

And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15 minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. This is a true story.

When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s gonna probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, there’s just, you had a crocodile one time.

That was pretty interesting.

You know, I should write that down.

Sorry for that one guy that we lost.

The crocodile, we duct taped its face. We duct taped it. It was a baby crocodile. It was duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool passing that thing around.

I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to U.S. Debt Clock, that

identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have 3 out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with. And when Inc.

Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default you have a 1 out of 1,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a homebuilder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size

of the company within 24 months. Yeah. And you say double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x, there’s so many examples you can see at ThriveTimeShow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.

You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization. You add to that Sean Baker. Now you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more! Well, OK, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor?

Who’s the guy who manages, who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more! OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story.

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

products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more! This is not enough! Give me more. Okay, I’m not gonna mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s given me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma. And nobody really knows who he is, because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian, that offer a lot of value. He’s made a lot of money in the…

It’s the… It’s where you rent… It’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the… What do you call that? The rental… Storage space? Storage units! This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis. But they’re not like customer-facing. Most people don’t know

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

you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th. We just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author, rich dad, poor dad, he’ll be here. Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible and there’s somebody out

there right now you’re watching and you’re like but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. I think that’s gonna change your life. I promise you this will be ten times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference. That is it. I’ve tried it. Don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable… I mean it is life-changing.

It’s not the best weight loss program, though. Right. Not really. If you’re looking to have life-changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis.

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