Clay Clark | Business Coach | The Best Way to Market a Self Published Book – 1. The Best Way To Market A Self-Published Book – Overview Episodes 1-4

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! 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 on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five. That’s what I’m a dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them I see and see up on your radio. And now three, two, one. Here we go. Starting from the bottom. Now we hit it. Starting from the bottom. And that’s what you gotta do. Thrivers, we are here today. And I am pumped to be getting into this specific series. It is awesome. We have John Tucker, Thriver of the Month. He is here to talk about the best way to market a self-published book. Cool. And, Clay, you’re going to help us through this process. But first, John, give us a quick little background on winning the Thriver of the Month. Did you have a specific strategy or what did you do to diligently, like, how did you work it into your schedule to earn all the points to win Thriver of the Month? I got to look at the points system and decided I had to get some people signed up to back it up to get me over the hump because I watched it enough and I said, hey, if I can get this many people signed up, I think I can win this month. So John’s talking about he actually shared the site with a few of his friends and family members and he earned points when they created an account on the site. So if you want to earn 20% off of your subscription, you can share it with a friend and when they sign up, you get 20% off. So you could actually get a free account if you share it with five friends. And you know, one way that I’ve been making some extra money on the side is I’ve been siphoning the gas out of your car. And then I’ll just sell a cup of gas or a quart of gas or a gallon of gas. That’s just a little tip that I have that’s helping me thrive, a little extra income. Okay. Well, Clay, let’s get into the best way to market a self-published book. We’re going to do the overview. We’re going to talk about all the things that you need, and then we’re going to get into each one of them. So the first thing is we’re going to talk about the tools you need before marketing yourself. The second thing, we’re going to talk about blogs, the next is podcasts, the next is online advertisements. We’re talking about Google shopping, Amazon, Facebook ads, retargeting ads. We’re going to do a broad overview of those specific vehicles. And then lastly, we’re going to talk about speaking events and using that as a vehicle to get the book out into the market. I’m excited. Okay, boom. So let’s get into it. Let’s talk about the tools you will need before marketing yourself. Okay, so Clay, you’ve done these super moves for your various books that you’ve published. So why do you need these different things? Walk me through the different specific tools that you need before marketing yourself and self-publishing a book. Well, first thing is I would say if I was a thriver, I’d be asking, have you ever written a best-selling book? That’d be the question I would ask. I have worked with a lot of clients that we’ve actually helped them become best-sellers. Yes, I’ve done that. Me personally, no. Why? Because I don’t sell books as my primary focus in life. Whatever I focus on, I’m always successful at. Focus means focus on core tasks until success. Whatever you focus on, you’ll be successful at. If you focus on TV all the time, you’ll probably be a good TV watcher. If you focus on biking, in your case, you’ll probably get good at fitness and biking. The thing is, it has to become a focus. Right now, I just want to show this picture I drew up here. This is your book. Not necessarily you, but this is just what it’s having. The book is kind of drifting around space. It’s just kind of flying around here. It’s all over. And it’s not necessarily like a focus. This is the planet. This is our day-to-day life right here. This is what we’re doing every day. This is the planet Earth. But over here, this book, it could just kind of drift around. So I’m trying to bring it into focus. Really just, this is how we do it. So if we’re going to focus on it, I know you are. You’re a diligent guy, so I’m getting into it. One, you have to have a website. And I would look at the four hour work week by Tim Ferris as the best case study ever on a book website. The second that I love so much because they do it right is the website, if you just Google Jonah Berger and the book Contagious. He has in my mind the second website, second best website ever made for a book. So I love Contagious by Jonah Berger. He’s a Wharton professor who’s written a New York Times bestselling book called Contagious and also Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Workweek. Both of them were guys who hadn’t been bestsellers and then became bestsellers without becoming famous first. So, that’s a really, a lot of people say, oh, it’d be easy to sell a book if I was famous. So your website has to be world class. And so we’ve committed our Thrive team to help you. We have a, kind of a, you know, have you ever been to In-N-Out Burger before, John? No. It’s a hamburger joint that’s in California, a lot of the West Coast places. You can order items off the menu that they don’t have on the menu. You can walk up and go, I would like a hamburger animal style, bro. They go, oh, wow, you’re in the know. You can order stuff that’s not on the menu. That’s kind of what our web development service is. I own a PR firm called Make Your Life Epic, and we do web development. At Thrive, we actually make websites for Thrivers all the time. So we’re going to give that to you. So what we’ll do is we’ll go in, you do your homework, and we’ll make this for you. So the first off is we need to make a world-class website. We have trainings on what that looks like. We actually have a downloadable. Marshall will make available. People can download that if you email info at thrive15.com. We have a specific checklist of what that needs to include. The second is you need to have a PR kit. I will provide you my PR kit so you can look at that. It’s a downloadable. We’ll make for all the Thrivers available. A PR kit. A PR kit, it basically explains, it’s a very professional head shots of you. It has your bio, has kind of career highlights, it has interesting factoids, it has case studies, examples of proof that you know what you’re talking about. It has to be world-class because if you’re going to do a book signing or you’re going to do a speaking event or you’re going to do a podcast or anything, they always ask you for a PR kit. It’s a public relations kit. The third thing is you need to have a logo. You have a logo. It’s a brand. It can’t be just, here’s my book title. It has to be a logo and a brand and a website, it has to happen that way. Because if not, people just, again, people are skeptical, all of us go to the bookstore, when we go to the bookstore, if a cover doesn’t look credible, we don’t buy it. The final is all the branding materials must be first class. It’s not first class, it’s last. So it has to look as good of a brand, frankly, as Apple, just as good as Tesla, just as good as Nike, just as good as, that’s who you’re competing with. And everything needs to look first class because when it does look first class, people then go, wow, this is what happens subconsciously. I’ll check it out. This is what happens when it’s second class. They go, I wonder why it looks so janky. Why does it look so amateur? I wonder if his brother made it. I mean, is this guy real? So you really don’t score points. It begs the question, why is, the book’s probably not good if the cover’s not good. So everything about it has to be first class. So before you even go out there and market it, you have to do these moves. And so many people get it wrong, they go out there and try to market it before doing these moves. They’re like, oh, I’ll see if it sells, and if it does, then I’ll invest in a website. I mean, no, you literally have to do all four of these. Is there any questions you have about that or creating these items? I mean, is that pretty clear for you? Yeah, that’s, there’s some things I’m going to have to work on, on logo and… And we, just for clarity, we are committed to helping you. So I am not committed to doing the marketing for you, but I am committed to helping you. So we will make your logo for you. We will make your PR kit for you. And that’s something we are committing here to do We’ll do it for you. But the content that goes on it the ideas that’s you, you know So we’ll help you do that. So it’s not and for thrivers just so you know, we You probably need to hire either a a graphic designer to do this or be reach out to us there we have a team that does a lot of these things very affordably for thrivers, we just You just want to get it, right? And all I can say is look at the four-hour work week. I would buy that book. I’d have that tangible book with you. I’d go to his website. I would look at how he does it. I would also buy the book Contagious by Jonah Berger and go to his website because that’s who you’re competing with. It’s got to be world class. We talked about some of the other things that we’re going to get into in the next episodes here. Why is it so important to have a website and a PR kit when reaching out to these blogs and podcasts, Clay? Why is that such a crucial component to nail down before you begin marketing yourself? There’s a thing called the curse of knowledge that the Heath brothers have written about their Stanford professors. What it is is that as you become more successful at anything, you forget what you didn’t know. You forgot what you used to not know. And so when I say things sometimes, you do an awesome job of asking the question behind the question. But the thing is, is that for me, I just now I’m like if someone’s not going to build a world-class brand, they’re not going to be successful because I’ve seen it over and over and over and over. But I’ll tell you why. It’s just if you and I go to the bookstore tomorrow and your book’s on the shelf and it’s a better written book than… Can you do me a favor? Can you do something kind of weird? Can you walk over there to the bookshelf real quick and grab Winning by Jack Welch? And then grab the Trump book over there, right there next to the horse. Let’s see if we can grab the Trump book here. And then, yeah, that’ll be good. Let’s do that. And then, okay. And then grab the starting lineup of David Robinson. Just I need to have it near me for a minute. To the left under by the chalice, you got the down there right there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I can’t believe you didn’t know where that was. That’s like, okay, let me just put that here. That’s here. So let me just, it’s kind of like QVC almost where Trump was selling his stakes. All right, so if we can pull the camera up on the Trump book that you have there in your hand. That book is called Think Big and Kick Back. And it says that, you know, there’s a lot of people who are like, I’m not going to buy this book. I’m not going to buy this book. I’m not going to buy this book. I’m not going to buy this book. That book is called Think Big and Kick That. And it says there, Trump. Everybody look at that. Show that over. Show it to our good friend here. Show it to John. Show it to the Thrivers. Okay? So it says Trump. What do you see at the top? Trump. Trump. And Bill Zanker. And Bill Zanker. The entire book is written by Bill Zanker. But only one small part, literally, is an intro by Trump. But it sold millions of copies. Now look at the book, Winning, over there by Jack Welch. It looks world class. It’s gold embossed. You see how the text jumps out? It just looks world class. And if you and I, as authors, can’t see the difference between those two covers and what most self published covers look like, we are missing it. And so this starting lineup is still in the box. Is that worth some money now? To me it’s priceless bro, but I’m saying it’s in the container. It’s got my commemorative coin here. It’s got the basketball card. I mean, so if you’re a collector, you’re like, it’s still in the box. Wow, that’s a good, this is a good, you know. For non-collectors, it wouldn’t matter, but if I took it out of the box, the value goes down because it’s already opened. If you think about, branding is such a big part of our lives we don’t even realize it. The water on your desk right there, if we look at that, what brand is that? I don’t even know what it is. Smart Water, Smart Water, so smart. But look, it’s like a big bottle. It’s, it’s, it’s, somebody thought about every element of it and it’s probably, you probably wouldn’t even take a sip of water that I poured into an ambiguous bottle with no logo on it. You’d be like, hey, would you like some water? Ah, I don’t think so, because it just looks sketchy. Think about a restaurant you go to. This happened to me the other day. I went to a restaurant. I’m old enough now where I keep referring to things the other day that happened like a year ago. Has that ever happened to you? Do you realize that’s when you get older? That and I keep developing nasal hair. I’m not happy about that. Has that happened to you yet? I don’t want to get into that. I could literally weave a rug with my nasal hair. I could make my own rug. I’m going to rug. But anyway, so I go into this Thai food restaurant and I go in there and the place just looks sketchy. I mean, everything, I mean, and I went there because a client was like, hey, let’s meet up for some Thai food. I Google the place. Let’s go. And we walk in and you’re just like, that tile looks disgusting. The tile just looks so gross. Then you kind of look up and the ceiling tiles have watermarks on them, like brown watermarks. Before we even sat down to order, the guy I’m with is like, I can’t do it, let’s go. Because poor branding. That’s how books are. When reaching out to these next people that we’re going to talk about, they’re going to do their due diligence. They’re going to go to the website. They’re going to see immediately the logo. They’re going to want to review some information about you. And if what you’re putting out is not world class, then they’re going to be like, I just don’t want anything to do with this at all. I don’t want to touch it. That’s the whole thing. We live in a very transparent society now. People can Google anything. So it’s a deal where you just have to get the… You have to get… We had a speaking event and the guy said, could you prove that you did win Oklahoma’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award? I’m like, sure. So I sent him a picture of the actual letter that was sent to me by the SBA because he wanted to prove that I am who I say I am. That’s why people Google me a lot of times and find my Wikipedia. It’s just how it is. So stuff I want to help you with, we’ll help you make a Wikipedia. Those are things we can do. You’re a thriver, we’re here to help you, and we’re going to knock it out. So we’ll help you with these tools. But other thrivers, I don’t want you to leave feeling discouraged. We can make these tools for you as well. Okay? So we can do that. Now, we have to, you know, keep the lights on, so we can’t make everything for free, but we have packages we can do. Or I recommend you find a world-class designer, but it has to be world-class. If it’s not world-class, it’s, John, you’re just going to, people won’t be able to read your book. So it has to be world-class, or we can’t. And so if my designers make a design for you, and you don’t worry about hurting our feelings. If it doesn’t look world class, go, nope, let’s make it world class. And you just gotta keep comparing yourself to something exceptional, which frustrates a lot of people, and it’ll start to label you as a narcissist. That’ll happen a lot. So for our elephant in the room, our men’s grooming lounge, I was working with some builders, and the guy was like, is it good enough? He said, is it good enough? And I said, no. And he said, what do you mean? I was like, it’s not good enough. I’m putting the agreement. I need to have this done world class before I pay you the final balance. I’m not paying you. Well, I’m done. No, you’re not. We’ve talked about it. This is what I want. It’s world class or nothing. I mean, that’s the whole mindset you got to have with this book. Three quarters of the success of this will deal with all these branding things. What’s crazy is a lot of people buy books now and don’t even read, just be honest, not you, not you, but someone you know is buying books and not reading the whole thing. If that’s you, just look ahead, don’t look around, but so the person next to you is doing this. The majority of people who buy a book only read the first chapter or the first part of the book. So we gotta make it a best-selling book. Cool? Cool. So as a recap, before you even start marketing yourself, you need a world-class website, world-class PR kit, and world-class logo. We have all of these as downloadable templates, so you can have an example to look at. The next thing that we are going to get into is the value of blogs as a vehicle to market your self-published book. Okay, so Clay, begin breaking this down. What is the value of blogs? Why are blogs a good thing to reach out to, and why do we need them? I personally can’t stand blogs. So it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m just trying to say that because there’s somebody here watching right now who’s like, I don’t like blogs. Bro, lady, friend, person, I hate blogs. Why? Because I like to read deep knowledge. The way my mind works is I’m like a thick skull and I’ve got to drill in. And once I know that I know it, then I know it. But if it’s just a peripheral, like a quick little article, I can’t get it. I don’t remember it. I don’t interact with it. But that book, if you open that book there, that Trump book, and you flip through it, that’s how I learn. So if you just show the Thrivers, like just crazy amounts of notes, I dog ear everything. When I’m done with my books, I actually type a summary of them for myself too, and I write down all the action items. I mean, when I’m done with a book, people don’t want that book anymore. That’s how I chew through books. I knock them out. So I’m saying that, but a blog, we’re in a culture where people want quick information. If you reach out to all of the blogs that are out there that review books about bikes or biking or fitness, there’s a lot of sites that that’s what they do. They write reviews of books. They write blogs about fitness. They write blogs about biking. You want to get featured in all of those. So what if we had today on the Yada Yada blog, we have a guest blogger, Yada Yada, the author of the book, Yada Yada. Does that help the blogs get more people on it? Does it help them increase their viewership when they have experts on the blog? Yes. So a lot of blogs are looking for expert contributors. Now the reality is that nobody wants you to be on their blog unless you’re an expert contributor. So how are you going to be an expert contributor if you haven’t been an expert contributor before? When you write a book, now it’s like the author of yada yada will be featured on our blog. So just writing the book will give you a little credibility. What you want to do is you want to start off with the small blogs. Make a list of the top 100 small blogs. I say small blogs. Don’t go for life hacks or a big blog to start. Don’t try to get on Tim Ferriss’ blog to start. Start with the small guys. Screw up. Do everything wrong. Get beat up. Have a few successes. Now you’re ready for the big leaks. Quoting the CEO of Thrive15.com, Dr. Zellner, if you’re going to harpoon a whale, don’t bring a dinghy. Yeah. He’s just saying, if you’re floating around this little boat, and you’re in a little boat, he’s like, don’t try to harpoon a whale. It will take you under. If you’re going to take out a whale, you’ve got to be in a big old ocean liner or something. The main thing is you just don’t want to have a horrible… I see this all the time. I remember one guy, a buddy of mine, I feel horrible for the guy. It’s kind of funny now because enough time has passed, but he tried to get his book featured on a website and his cover looked like just dung. It was awful. And he didn’t have a PR kit. And I’m like, dude, you have to have a PR kit. You have to have a book cover. You’ve got to. So he starts sending out emails to top blogs and doing all this. He wants to skip the step. And he got somewhere between the worst and most hateful responses ever, where people were like, come back when you’ve written a real book. Hey, why don’t you try again? Hey, you know what? I am going to blacklist you. I mean, it was just over and over because these, remember bloggers, their job is to put real content on their site and there’s so many scammers that just make a fake cover. It looks scrappy and they have a fake content and they hop on a blog. They can ruin the reputation of the blog if they’re up there. So you got to understand they’re trying to make great content for their people. So just make sure that you have these steps taken care of. But for the blogs, action item here for you. Go ahead and make a list of the top 100 blogs in the country. Then make a list of the middle 100, the ones that are one step up, as it relates to your niche. And then make a list of the minor leagues, the final 100 that are small. Start with the small guys. And just once we have the cover down and the PR kit, we’ll reach out to them and say, hey, I would love to be a guest contributor on your blog. I enjoy your blog, and I’d love to contribute. I think I can offer a lot of value to your readers. If you look at my name and you type the word podcast after it, I’ve been featured in a lot of podcasts. A lot of them. And why do I do that? Because I do well in those. I get good reviews. I’m knowledgeable about certain subjects. And so I’ve recently been featured in some pretty massive ones. I mean, I’ve been in Entrepreneurs on Fire. It’s one of the top ones in the world. I’ve been in some pretty big ones. But I have done very, very small, where you’re pretty sure the podcast consists of a dude and then every time he records it, his roommate is like, yeah, bro, that was a good podcast. His total subscription group consists of him and his roommate. But I did them because I had to screw up, get things wrong, refine my system. Now we do a lot of bigger ones. Does that make sense? Yep. What questions do you have about that? Do you feel good about that? I’m kind of with you on the whole blogging thing. I’ll be short. My blogs won’t be very long. I’m good with that. Now Clay, what would you say for somebody that’s writing a guest blog or creating their own blog in terms of length of articles? Well what you want to do is you want to look at the best practice of that blog. So if you’re going to be on Lifehack, you’d want to look at how many words their average blog has. So what you do is just literally copy the text off of their blog, paste it onto a Word document or a Google document, and do a word count and see how many words they have on average, and then do that. Because there is long form blogs, which I also don’t understand. My wife reads these. So there’s one, it’s like a prophetic one my wife reads, where it’s like, in the year yada yada, this will be the year of abundance. This is a year for you where we do this and God says this and Proverbs says this and Revelation says this and you can see it all come together and Israel is doing this and America is doing this. I read it and I’m just going, I don’t even know. I’m getting hungry. My wife loves those things. Those are like long form. Then there are blogs written by venture capital people where you have these blogs where they’re super detailed blogs written by people like Paul Graham from Y Combinator that are just massive in their depth. And so you just want to be featured on an in-depth blog and then be the guy who writes four sentences. But you don’t also want to be on one where everyone writes five sentences and then you wrote a three-page dissertation. So just match the needs of the blog. And then specifically, I create that list. Okay. Then I’m ready to reach out. I get their contact information. Don’t email from a Gmail. Don’t email from a Yahoo. Don’t email from clay at yahoo dot com. You gotta email from a domain name that looks legit. That’s why you have to have this website done first. So you’d email from john at the ultimate biker book dot com or whatever that is, email there. And so if you need help setting up a domain email, okay, we’ll have a training on that. Or if you wanna just reach out to us, pick up the phone, give us a call, or email us at info at thrive15.com. We’ll show you how to specifically do that through Gmail, best practice. But then what do I send them? What you’re gonna do is you’re gonna send them your, you say, hi, such and such. You, it says email where it’s the same every time, as few words as possible, because people don’t read long emails. They get overwhelmed with anxiety with the long emails. So you just write, hey, such and such, I love your blog, and I would love to be featured, I would love to be a guest contributor on your blog, as I think I can add a lot of value to your readers. If you’re interested in having me do a guest blog for you, please let me know.” To make your life 2% easier, I’ve attached my PR kit and the first chapter of my book or the e-book version of my book or something. That way if they want to dive into it, they can. And then look for them responding to you by saying, can you send over references? Or how do I know you’re real? Or do you feel comfortable disclosing how many books you’ve sold? Or just awful, horrible things? That’s why you want to do the small ones first, and as you grow them, it will become more and more successful. John, does this make sense? Do you have any questions about this process, reaching out to blogs, making the list, and getting featured on the blogs to help promote your book? No. I think I get it. I think I get it. Okay. I wrote a song about logs. Oh, yeah log log. It’s big. It’s heavy. It’s wood Unfortunately, we don’t have time for verse 2 log log So the next thing that we’re gonna get into is the value of podcasts reaching out to podcasts as a vehicle to market your self-published Book, okay, so clay get into podcasts. Why are podcasts this kind of this buzzword this upcoming trend? And why are we using podcasts to get the word out about the book? You have three converging things that are happening at the same time. So it’s three things that are happening that are changing the game. But I’m going to have our program observer add to the screen right now a link to the Wall Street Journal article that just came out about podcasts. But what happens is, one, everyone has a smartphone now. So everyone’s running around with a smartphone, which is why a lot of people are arguing. People are getting dumber because of the smartphone, they’re distracted. But you have a smartphone, you’re driving to your kids’ baseball game, you’re driving to work, you’re driving home, you don’t want to hear the commercials, you don’t want to hear about the weather report, you don’t want to hear the eye in the sky, I-44 appeared to be full today and back to you, and then there’s a shooting in North Tulsa today and back to you, and you’re just like, well, in election news and you’re like, whoa, whoa, I just want to hear what I want to hear. So one is the smartphone. Two is that people now want to hear what they want to hear. People are all about choice right now. It’s like, we’ve become used to, I mean, if you don’t, anybody right now, if you like Mexican food, you can find 17 Mexican food restaurants in Tulsa right now. If you want to go find a good book on entrepreneurship, you can find 55 authors in the touch of a button. It’s all about choice. The third is we are now in a bite-sized culture where people want bite-sized everything. They want a little fun size. They don’t want to read the whole book. They just want to get the quick overview. They want to get the quick snippet. They want the information quickly. They want quick, quick, instant, quick, fast, boom. What’s happening is podcasts are satisfying all that. People are going, I want to listen to it on my smartphone. Got it. I want to listen to what I want to listen to? Great. I want to be able to fast forward if I’m not interested and get to the good stuff? Great. It matches all that. So podcasts are really becoming the move. So what I would recommend you would do is, again, identify a list of the top 100 podcasts. The ones that if you could be on that one, that’s like a game changer. I mean, these are the ones that are featuring the Tour de France winners. These are the ones who are featuring Olympic athletes. These are the ones who are featuring the best cyclists of all time. Then find your middle 100. And then again, find your minor leagues. Your first, those ones that are just podcasts where you look at their branding and you go, really? That’s the ones you want to be on first. Because they’re going to ask you a question, you’ll be on there and they’ll go, okay, well John, your new book, I’m so excited about it. It’s great to have you on the program today. And I want to talk to you about what are three things that everyone could take at home as an action item from your book?” And you’re like, uh, and they can hear you breathing on the podcast. Um, can you repeat that? And you’re like, yeah. What are three things that people could, and you’re going, you know, I, I mean, basically it’s a good reading, you know, and they’re just, okay, on to the next question. And you’re going to have to work through those kinks because there’s a little bit of anxiety that comes with anything new and so you’ll have a little bit of stress the first time you’re on, second time you’re on a little less, third time. Now I do podcasts, I have a lot of fun with them. I mean the last one I did, I had a funny one I did with this guy and he was kind of messing with me. He goes, hey, I’ve heard some of your podcasts and I really love it. Let’s see if we can weave in this certain buzzword during the entire podcast just for fun. And so I tried to weave it in and just had a lot of fun with it. You know, so the listeners had a great, great, great, great fun with it. So, okay. So using podcasts, same, same type of process as blogs, reaching out to them. You can use the same method. Hey, here is a way that I can provide value to your listeners. There’s one thing we were just on, it was the B school in Australia. Yeah. And it was a deal where like, she felt like we could add a lot of value to her listeners, and she was in Australia. We hopped on a call at some bizarre time. It was a lot of fun. This lady is awesome. What’s crazy is that there are people across the pond who are very similar. I’m just telling you, one of my friends from college, a neat guy, I wish that we were in a tighter fellowship now, but he’s so successful. He’s just rocking that he’s kind of into alpha career mode right now where he’s got very little down time. His name is Ryan Tedder, and he wrote the song, Too Late to Apologize. When they wrote that song, they didn’t have an album. They’ve done Counting Stars and a lot of really inspirational songs, but they were huge in Japan. In Japan, if you look up Bleeding Love, Ryan wrote the song Bleeding Love, and he also wrote the song Too Late to Apologize, which I believe in Europe, were the number one and two selling songs of all time. So like Leona Lewis, who did Bleeding Love with him, she was big over there, you know? So that was a good song here, but it was like the hotness. So I’m just telling you, your book, I predict you’re going to sell, you know, 10,000 copies of your book to small pockets of people that live within this country. And then you’ll sell 50,000 more to a different country and 100,000 more. And the way to expose them to what you do is to do those podcasts. Do those podcasts. Do those blogs. It just works. That’s why the blogs, that’s why the podcasts, they’re great vehicles to get international attention because they can immediately spread throughout the internet rather than just sitting at a table at the local bookstore or going on an in-person tour. I want to show you this picture that I’m passionate about drawing here real quick. I want to hop into it here. What you have is you have Walmart and back in the day though, I don’t know if you’re old enough to have related to this story but let’s pretend that people your dad probably was. Kmart was the juggernaut. It was the thing. So Kmart, they were here, they were down here, they were down here. If you had a city block, I mean, these guys were everywhere. You had a Kmart, like boom, boom. Kmarts were the thing. And Sam Walton was like, hey, I want to play in this game. But he was smart and he realized, I can’t open up a Walmart across from you right here because it’d be like, I’m going to get blown up. You’re going to kill me right there.” So he realized, I’m going to have to have a different strategy. So he went out to the far rural communities. So he opened up Wal-Mart’s, frankly, where the Kmart didn’t want to be, in these small underserviced communities. And he was able to win a small battle here in this small town, a small battle in Bentonville, small battle in Arkansas, a small battle in Oklahoma, a small battle in Texas, a small battle in Missouri, a small, small, and he kept winning small battles. Well, pretty soon he went from being 1,400th of the size of Kmart to being able to compete with them. And then he was like, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go head to head with you. I’m going to open up one right across the street. And so I’m just saying for Thrivers, how does this apply? Thrivers, you can’t compete with Donald Trump when it comes to being on CNN. You can’t go out there and get on Fox tomorrow. You can’t. You say, I can’t. Fine. Don’t limit me. Fine. I want you to be successful and then send me an email. It’s right in the community section how you prove me wrong. That’s fine. But what I’m saying is, the more reasonable, the more realistic is to go out there and say, I’m going to dominate all these small podcasts, all these small blogs, and you’ll probably mess around and sell a thousand copies of your book just by going on there pretty quickly. And what you’ll do is you want to make, there has to be a hook when you’re on the podcast and in the blog. So you’ll say, in chapter one of my book, I talk about boom, boom, boom, and then your blog is about that, chapter one. And you say, do you hear the rest of it? Check out my book, yada, yada, to get the rest of it. On your podcast, you do an interview about one part of chapter one of your book and to learn the rest of it read by my book at yada yada. You might talk about one tool that’s available on your in your book and to get the whole thing you just need to buy the book or you know so you’re kind of a little little kernel a little kind of a and I’ll this is a final analogy I hope it makes sense to you with our chickens I’m trying to teach them to let me hold them like a dog. Like I can just walk up to them and they’ll run up to me and I pick them up and they hang out. Like they follow me around. But to do it I had to like put little kernels of their little chicken food out and they’re like 10 feet away from me and then 5 feet away from me and then 1 feet away. Now they will literally eat out of my hands. And my ducks are almost that way. I have one duck that will almost jump into my arms. But I’ve had to like train them this way. I’m trying to train the raccoons in my wife. You’re going to get rabies. Don’t do that. But anyway, I’m saying that’s how you build your trust with your audience. You’re saying, here’s some information. Here’s some information. Here’s some valid information. It’s getting closer and closer to you to eventually when they buy your book. And then once they trust you, they’ll buy your book. Make sense? Yeah. Okay. So value of the blogs, value of the podcast. Next we’re getting into online advertisements. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had, where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth. Wow. Now we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some like real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind 9 Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk, and not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches, so he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers. So you gotta come learn from him. Also, let me tell you this, folks. I don’t wanna get this wrong, because if I get it wrong, someone’s gonna say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s gonna be coming, and you say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t wanna get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like Top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s gonna be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do. How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that, did not get any inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27th and 28th. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office, and so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th and 28th. Who? You! You’re going to come! Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical. It’s actionable. And it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come come to Tulsa because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. That Tim Tebow in that are Michael will be at the have I told you this you have not told me that he’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico this is John Lee Dumas the host of the chart topping deal fire dot com podcast he’s absolutely a living legend this guy started a podcast after a wrapping up his service in the United States military and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names putting up shows day after day and now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast and he’s traveling all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th live time show two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there Two Day Interactive Business Workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, if you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the Two Day Interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, Jodly Dumas, and countless big-time, super successful entrepreneurs. right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? Thrivetimeshow.com. James, one more time for the four enthusiasts. Thrivetimeshow.com. I’m not to be played with because it could get dangerous. See these people I ride with this moment. We are winning. Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops. Because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these Motivational seminars no money down real estate Ponzi scheme get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything It was like you went there, and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it. It was a hollow Nothingness, and I wanted the knowledge you’re like oh But we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. And we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day, interactive, Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news. The tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets, and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. The definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent I’ve done this show before also But very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts as a mr Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend Eric Eric Trump But we’re also talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour So clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorne, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway I had a job at Applebee’s Target and Direct TV and he said have you read this book rich dad poor dad and I said no and My father may he rest in peace He didn’t know these financial principles So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor And I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power so that’s why I congratulate you on becoming because as you know there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored, you’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy, they don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back, and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the roadmap out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the roadmap out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it will be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things, there’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working, and it’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun, super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition’s going to come eventually or try to pick up these tag pins, so you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top Keynight, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? This is life, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grams for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the DriveTime workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere at Clay’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door and it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews completely eliminates that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on, how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It’s real critical if I’m going to grow and change. It’s probably really teaching you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect the business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.