Welcome back to the Theology of Business podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, author of The Marketplace Christian and Marketing Like Jesus. And this is a show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with God in business to transform the marketplace and make an impact in eternity. Well, today we're going to be discussing the topic of the power of Christian mentors in business. And we're joined by Clay Clark. Clay is a former U.S. Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year for Oklahoma, the founder of Thrive15.com, the owner of nine businesses, father of five kids, and the owner of 38 chickens and six ducks. That's incredible. Yeah. Clay, when I tell my two-year-old that I interviewed old McDonald, he's going to be really upset with me that I didn't get him to come down here and talk to you.
SPEAKER_01Well, at some point they'll have to come out and check out the Camp Clark and Chicken Palace. We just added two Pyrenees puppies as well and four cats. So we're things are things are going well.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. Where are you located, by the way? You're in Tulsa, right?
SPEAKER_01Tulsa, Oklahoma. More known for ag tech than ed tech, but we do we have an educational uh technology company.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Well, Clay's got a lot of energy and a lot of expertise. So I know our listeners are going to enjoy this interview. Welcome to the Theology of Business Podcast, Clay.
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I can't tell you how excited I am to be on your program.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Well, tell us a bit more about your personal business background and how you've personally benefited from mentors in business and particularly from those mentors who share your Christian values.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, basically in business, um, when you go out there and start a business, you're either going to learn from uh mentors or you're gonna learn from mistakes. And uh in so much of the world we're in right now, it's all about financial success, which is great. I mean, there's a place for that. But if you have financial success and you end up um not having success in any other area, I think that it's uh sort of hollow, like like an Easter, uh kind of like the Easter bunny, you know, the big the chocolate Easter bunny you get when it's kind of hollow in the middle. And so a lot of my mentors um that I've had in my life, uh specifically Clifton Talbert, uh, he's the guy who helped introduce the Stairmaster and Lee Cockerell, uh, you know, and and David Robinson. They're they're people who have are people of faith, they're people who uh share the values. And what's great is that they don't give you um the the tips about having success at all costs because it's really not worth it if you lose everything and you no longer have a family. And so my wife plays a big part in the business, and my kids actually come up to the office and help clean, and and it's just kind of a fun family environment. And we we definitely wouldn't take that same approach if it uh uh if if we didn't have those kind of mentors in my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what are maybe some other kind of specific things that that you've noticed would would kind of uh highlight the difference between being mentored by somebody who shares your Christian values and maybe somebody that doesn't?
SPEAKER_01Um well, okay, just as an example. Um, Proverbs, you know, Proverbs 10, 4, it says God blesses the hands of the diligent, right? And he punishes the slacker. I'm paraphrasing, but that's just an example. Um, when you're in in business, um, I don't look at it as, you know, uh I don't sit around looking for um a quick get-rich move, you know, because I know that that wealth gained through folly uh will will quickly disappear, you know? And I understand that God blesses the hand of the diligent. So if I have a customer that I'm working with, I'm not perfect. We make mistakes, and even, you know, even today I was having a hard time connecting with you on Skype because I probably did something weird. And so, you know, the thing is we're not perfect, but you want to treat people the way you want to be treated. And that goes back to, I don't call it the golden rule. That's a that's a teaching of Jesus. Um, that's like mindset that was taught in Proverbs. So I just look at everything as more of an eternal, uh, long-term deal. And a lot of times people take advantage in business, but if you have a long-term mindset, you know, and you're going at things from an eternal, uh, long-term perspective and a long-term goal, you're just gonna do the right thing, even though you might get taken advantage of and you might uh be in a not good situation on a more than uh on a very often basis, unfortunately, in the world of business. People do take advantage of you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, so then our listeners have a bit more background about you. So you've got nine businesses. Yeah. And tell us, tell us a little bit about kind of what your uh typical day looks like and and also a bit about Thrive 15.
SPEAKER_01Well, um a typical day for me, I'll get up usually around like 4 a.m. is kind of a typical thing for me. Um I'm not sure what time your listeners, I'm not sure what time your listeners get up typically, but I get up around four because I have uh a wife and five kids, and there's no way that I can get paperwork done between the hours of 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. if I'm actually um going to be with my family. And so I have to get up pretty early, and I can I end my work day right around five so I can spend time with the kids. And uh we have uh we're a I'm a I'm a COO of a fitness company called uh Boot Camp Tulsa and another company called thedsd.com. I also work with another business um that's called Epic Photography. It's a photography business. We do wedding photos, we do family photos, that kind of thing. Um, obviously Thrive15, our big online education platform. We have thousands of users all over the planet. I'm also involved with another company um where I have a very active uh role in the business. It's a consulting company called Make Your Life Epic. We're we're one of the largest PR and uh graphic design companies in Oklahoma. And the list goes on. But basically, I get up, I have to get up way early because again, my family is a big part of my life, and that way I can you know be home with the kids and I'm not in the office till 11 o'clock at night.
SPEAKER_00Sure. And then and then Thrive 15. So what you're doing is you're taking all of that experience that you've gleaned from the marketplace, and now you're really pouring into other people to help them kind of grow their own businesses.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And the the thing is about it is um as an example, if any of your listeners wanted to get to the top of Google, I do believe that God wants to bless Christians. I'm not being cynical. I just know that God He could make you to the top of the Google algorithm, even if you don't follow the Google canonical rules. But the chances are you're gonna have to follow those rules. And so it's not that we're a uh a faith-based organization where we teach um biblical principles as a Christian guy and a Christian business owner, but what we do is we teach them from a biblical perspective. So we don't teach you sneaky, dirty moves that that would be a bad uh, we'll call it a black hat or a dishonest way to get to the top of Google. And so we teach people those practical uh items, how to optimize your website, um how to block out your time, how to build a performa, how to build uh ads that generate results, how to do um sales optimization, how to establish a call center, how to, you know, all those kind of things, how to build an online shopping cart, all those specific uh actionable things that uh hopefully if you have the right mindset, you're you're trying to win for the right purposes. And we teach the specific techniques and skills you need to get there.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Well, we're gonna talk a little bit more about Thrive 15 in in just a minute. First, I want to ask uh this question. And I mean, given that you've started, I mean, you probably started more than nine businesses, but you've got nine businesses now. And you know, and what I've learned as an entrepreneur is especially when you're going into new industries that you don't have a background in, if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have people that can give you guidance, you're not gonna move very fast. And and so, so it seems like it's kind of been out of necessity that you found those mentors, but what do you think holds people back from being mentored in business?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I I I in preparation for your program, I really sat down and thought about that. And um, one thing I think it is, is that people have a mindset that says, because I don't know Darren, I mean, we people listen to your podcast to go, wow, Darren is great. His podcast is great, you know. I just don't know if I qualify to get to know him, or I don't know if I qualify to be in the conversation. I don't know, you mean Lee Cockerell, uh, you know, he managed Walt Disney World. I know I grew up as a kid without a lot of financial means, you know. How do I qualify to be a partner with him? How do I partner? I mean, David Robinson's an NBA Hall of Famer, you know, and I grew up cheering for the guy. How do I qualify? I think a lot of us say, I don't think I qualify. And so what I would encourage people to look at, I know it's hard to do a visual via podcast, but if you kind of imagine like a triangle, at the bottom of the triangle is your work ethic, okay? And it says Proverbs 10.4, God blesses the hand of the diligent. Everyone listening to this, you've got to have that that Proverbs 10-4 mentality of diligence and work ethic. Now, if you move up that pyramid, the baseline level is diligence, okay? But the next level is you have to have that Philippians uh 3, 13, 14 mindset where he goes on to write, he says, uh, brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have been taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind me and straight toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me uh heaven heaven word in Christ Jesus. What I'm talking about is that you got to be moving towards the prize. So once you have that work ethic, you've got to have a big goal. You know, you've got to have that prize. You've got to have that mindset of, and you're not trying to get a bunch of earthly possessions so you can go on, you know, a commercial and talk about how much gold you have or be on some midnight infomercial talking about, you know, how my you've made billions on real estate. What you're trying to do is you're trying to make money so that you can really focus on the five Fs, which is faith, family, finance, fitness, and friendships. And so what holds people back is one, a lot of people don't have the work ethic. We all want to have, we all want to have responsibility. We all want to be the boss, but you've got to be diligent first. You have that work ethic. Now, for anyone listening to this who already has that work ethic, the next thing is we feel like, oh, I'm not worthy, I'm humble. You know, a lot of people get the Bible confused when it talks about humility and humbleness. We want to be humble. We don't want to run around saying I'm the man, but we want to say our God is the man, therefore the word enthusiasm means God within. You know, that's from the Greek word, right? Enthusiasm is from the Greek word, meaning God within, you know, in Theos. If you have to have enthusiasm, you have to know that God is within you, and therefore you qualify to go to the next level. And that third, that third final step is you have to focus on learning discernible skills. And you have to find the mentors to teach you that. So what's holding you back? I think a lot of people, about a third of the audience, we just don't have that solid work ethic. And I know that I didn't have it when I started out. And the second thing is we don't have that big goal. Some people have a great work ethic, but they don't have that big goal. They just a little bit too humble. And that and that third area is the skill thing. A lot of times we just don't feel like I have the communication skills needed to reach out to a David Robinson, to reach out to a Lee Cocker. I just don't know how to do it. And that's my hope of through today's podcast, we can teach people specifically how to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, you had probably already had a lot of success under your belt at the time when you met David Robinson. I don't, I don't know all the story there, but what was how did that, you know, how did it come about where you just had the the audacity? You know, you were saying that, you know, maybe some people might feel like they they that he would be out of reach for them. Uh but but how did that come about for you in kind of forming that some of those those relationships?
SPEAKER_01Well, back in the day, I was attending Oral Roberts University. So back in the day, you know, so it's back in 1999. I started a business out of my dorm room to pay for school. I mean, so I wanted to find a way to pay for my education. So I uh started this entertainment company. We did entertainment for weddings and that kind of thing. So if you go to DJconnection.com, you can check it out. I've since sold the business, but so the business took off, and then I received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from this U.S. uh, it was a small business administration. And so people go, well, how did you do that? Well, what happened is I realized at some point there, Darren, that I was I was absolutely unable to, my wife and I didn't have air conditioning. We had cats all over the apartment. The place smelled like cat pee, and we had no money to turn on the AC. It was a weird deal. Vanessa was working with me all night, we're helping, you know, mix music for companies, and we're just not getting we're not getting any traction. So I reached out to this guy named Clifton Talbert. And if all your listeners can check him out, he is so much better than I am. But he's a guy who uh grew up in the 60s and he wasn't allowed to go into banks because of the color of his skin, you know, because he's African American and they still had segregation at the time. Well, he went on to start a bank. So I was going, wow, how would how do you I mean, if you get a chance to look up and Google, once upon a time when we were colored, they made a movie about him that Siskel and Ebert gave two thumbs up to. And so I reached out to Clifton because I knew of him. I wasn't, I didn't know him, but I knew of him. And I just kept cold calling, and I just thought, if a guy can start a bank who wasn't allowed to go into a bank and have his life made into a movie and he can introduce the stairmaster into the market, if he can do that, surely he can show me what I need to do. And that guy showed me about making daily diligence and cold calls and overcoming objections and what books to read and you know how to dress. And I was dressing like an idiot. I was always not dressing sharp, I always I didn't have any plans, I didn't have any systems, and so I was not having any success in the world of business or in the game of life. And Clifton really, really um helped me to do that, you know? And so when I reached out to Clifton, I thought I called him, I'm not kidding, Darren. I probably called the guy 50 times before I finally got through. And when I did, I didn't know what to say, but I had some questions. Well, after I built that relationship with Clifton, I realized that Clifton was friends with David Robinson. You know, and he was friends with, I mean, we're talking about Supreme Court justices, we're talking about the heads of Harvard. He he knows everybody. And I'm going, you know, after being around Clifton a lot, you know what? God built made him, he's a pretty not perfect, but God, you know, made him the way he made me. And Clifton just kept saying, Listen, you qualify to have the same level of success that I've had. And so Clifton really encouraged me, and that's how I got a I guess a little bit more bold. And I also credit a lot of it to just being either really dumb or numb. It's like I have Novicaine in my brain. A lot of times I don't process rejection. And so those are probably the two, the two things, just being dumb and numb and that mentorship from Brother Clifton.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you've do you feel like, you know, there's this word discipleship that a lot of is kind of been lost on a lot of people. But from like a Christian faith perspective, um, do you feel like he kind of discipled you in a way in business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would I would definitely would say that. Um I would say that he did. And then you mentors, a lot of people get it get it kind of wrong. With mentorship, you don't want to like call someone and go, uh, Darren, can you be my mentor? Because that's like a heavy question. You know, I mean, anybody who who you want to mentor you is probably successful at something. You probably don't want people to mentor you who are not successful, you know? So you know, further down the road, I reached out to a guy named uh Terry Fisher, and along that topic of discipleship, I realized I needed to learn how to be the father of many kids. I have five kids, and I was not doing a very good job. So I reached out to him because he's a father of how many kids does does Terry have? Does he have four? Yeah. Three of my wife's tell me. He had D has so Terry has three daughters, and I reached out to Terry, and Terry's going, you know, he sits down with me and he says, Well, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to block out time for your family, you need to turn your phone off when you get home, you need to schedule time for X, Y, Z. And I'm going, This guy's a wizard. He knows a lot about having multiple kids. Well, the only reason I didn't ask Clifton is at the time I knew he had one child. I did not know that his uh 12-year-old died in her sleep of sickle cell anemia. And so through my lack of ignorance, I didn't know that he'd raised many kids, but I figured I need to reach out to someone who, you know, uh has many kids. So I reached out to Terry, and then Terry pointed out to me that Clifton actually lost uh his daughter through sickle cell anemia. And so I was going through some major adversity when my son was born blind. I reached out to Clifton and asked him about how he did that. And again, that discipleship between Terry and Clifton. And I it's not a mentor, it's a series of mentors. And it's it's also when people today reach out to me who work in my office, I feel that management is mentorship. And so I think you have to disciple the people underneath you.
SPEAKER_00Right. You know, and and that's the thing about having uh an entire body of Christ around us, you know, because it it wasn't necessarily, I don't think, what Jesus intended that you would just have one person that would disciple you and you wouldn't need anybody else. But no, God works through a lot of different people to help us to become more like himself. And so, you know, you're getting discipled from a fatherhood perspective, from a business uh leader perspective, and I'm sure in many other different areas uh of your life.
SPEAKER_01Well, for your audience, what we've done is is with Thrive, the the thing about it is um Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, and uh or 2000 or 12, and but when he before he passed away, he met with President Obama. And President Obama said, What would you change about education? And I believe discipleship is uh is education on a deeper level. But he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but you can look it up and you can find the the text, he actually said this, but he says that education should provide real-time feedback. It should be every all learning materials should be digital and customized for the learner, you know, providing them a custom pathway. And he just expressed this frustration with education being one size fits all. And so what we've done for your listeners is if they do email us, it's free, uh, but at info at thrive15.com, uh, we have two things for them today, which is really fun. It's one, you know, we'll do a search engine optimization audit, and that's a very technical thing. We'll help them and look at their website and show them what they can do better. It doesn't cost them anything, it's very specific. But then also we have one for um actual you you you use the word discipleship, but I'll just call it the the F5. It's the F5 audit. So faith, family, finance, fitness, and friendships. And one of our coaches will do that audit. It doesn't cost them anything, there's no upsell looming, that kind of thing. But we'll help people look at their life in a very holistic perspective. And we have a system that's been proven to work with thousands of people all over the world, and it will really give people a numerical way to look at the level of success they're achieving in those different areas. Because what good is it to have huge success and fitness where you're walking around and you're going, look at me, I'm so powerful, you know, but you're living under a bridge and your wife left you. You know, or what's so what good is it to have all the money in the world and then to have your kids dislike you? So you know, so it's all those things. And so we we have a very holistic um uh uh uh audit that we call it that people can do. It's called the F5 audit. You just email info at thrive15.com and say, I want my F5 audit, and we'll knock it out. And we've had people literally tell us that's changed their lives.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Well, what would be an example of maybe a person who's kind of gone through that F5 process?
SPEAKER_01Well, without divulging the the dark secrets of their first and last name, I'll give you an example. Um, we have one gentleman who's in town right now in Tulsa. He is uh visiting, it's a free uh we call it a free uh mentorship or free tour. People can spend a day shadowing the team for free, doesn't cost anything. So this guy has flown in on his paid for it himself. He came to Tulsa and we went through the assessment with him, we discovered that he was an absolutely reactive disaster in in the world of finance, but a great, great dad, awesome, but just no clue what he's doing in business. Now his buddy who's with him visiting, he's the opposite. So we're going through this audit, and a couple months ago it occurred to him, he's going, you know, Clay, I'm listening to Lee Cockerell, the the the former executive vice president of Disney World, listening to his trainings, and I'm not doing any of the time management moves. So even though I have a good intentions, I'm not doing it. And so I need you to help me. So we helped the guy build a very specific, linear, actionable system to manage his daily schedule. And he now financially is getting to where he needs to go as a result of his daily, we call them KPIs, but his key performance indicators. And he just wasn't measuring his outputs in those areas. But in the areas of his family, he was on fire. He was great. Like he had a time blocked into his calendar to call his kids awesome. And it's almost the exact same for the other, the exact opposite for the other guy. And we see this all the time. And I would just tell you, said it uh Peter Drucker, the legendary management expert, he says that you measure what you treasure. And we all need to have some sort of you can't go to heaven because you spent 62.7 minutes with your son today. But what you can do is you can make sure you're scheduling the time for what matters and really, really looking at it in an objective way. Sometimes we just need somebody to look at it from a satellite above the earth perspective, globally looking at it and going, what am I doing wrong and what am I doing right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think that's such a key role of mentors to help us define what we need to be measuring because there's so many different, I mean, there's an app for everything, there's uh analytics, analytics for everything. But when it comes down to what do we really need to be measuring? And a mentor coming alongside can really help us to identify what that is, not only in our business, but I I love that you've got this kind of five-fold approach to it, you know, that includes the faith and the family. What were the other three?
SPEAKER_01We have the big F5. You've got faith, family, finance, fitness, and friendships. I call it we're at Oklahoma where you have the F5 tornado is like the craziest kind of tornado. I call it the F5 because it you're really it's the tornado of life. I mean, life just goes fast. There's a lot of chaos. And if I could just be super out of control, candid, probably just maybe uncomfortable, uh candid with your audience, real quick. I just want to tell everybody, you know, this week I had a guy named John, he's an attorney. He really, really wanted to hire me there, Darren. He wants to hire me to work with him as a consultant. And we're we have a very, very high paid, very large consultancy where we do separate from Thrive Fifteen, where we work with wealthy people to help them become wealthier. You know, we help them grow companies. And we So he says, I need you to meet me for dinner. And I say, I don't do dinner. He says, You don't do dinner? I said, No, I don't. I gotta, you know, see my kids and my chickens and chase my wife around for a while. That's the almost exact words I said. And then he says, Well, you gotta meet me for dinner. I mean, that's just how I do it. You gotta meet me up here at the polo grill. It's a fancy place in Tulsa. And I said, I just want to be clear, I don't mean to be rude, but I uh there's not any money in the world. There's not enough money in the world to get me to go out to dinner with anybody. He says, anybody? I said, no, I just I don't. I have like boundaries I've set up. He goes, Well, could you come to my office? I said, Well, I have I have a conference room. I kind of built a Disneyland of entrepreneurship. It's like a 20,000 square foot dojo. And I don't ever leave. And he says, You don't ever leave? I said, No, no, no. He said, Why? I said, Because if I'm with you, I'm not with my wife or with my kids. You can come to my office. I have an hour appointment. And so I lost that deal as a result of being pig headed for fighting for what matters. And then today, the reason why we have a little bit of fun background noise here is that um my father is is uh in the process of dying from uh ALS. It's uh it's the terminal uh illness. He's lost the ability to to breathe on his own without a machine starting about 10 days ago. And so uh it was discovered that his reunion, his reunion, high school reunion from Waco, Texas. Your listeners in Waco, Texas, we're coming. But his reunion is gonna be tomorrow. And I found out that he couldn't go because he couldn't, you know, breathe. He needed this machine, he needed the van, he needs the lift, he needs the people, he needs the he's like he's kind of a diva now, you know. He's in all these demands he needs, you know. And so um my wife and I, we talked about it. Um, I can't say I prayed about it a lot. I feel like I had that burning like this is what you should do. And so I called all of my consulting clients. I've canceled everything for today, except for this with you, because I know your listeners depend on it. And we are in the van, literally right now in a Walmart parking lot. We are driving down to Waco, Texas, um, to be there with my dad because faith, family, finances, and that family is ahead of the finances. So we're gonna take a little bit of a financial mulligan. I'm gonna irritate some customers. I'm not gonna pick up John, our sensational client who wants me. Uh I've got there's a bridal store owner who's super irritated with me that I wouldn't meet her today, but I'm putting that ahead because at the end of the day, when you get to the end of the game, it doesn't matter how much money you make. But at the end of the day, I'm not an idiot, and there's faith, family, finances. I still have to feed the kids, right? So I have to balance that. And you've got to set those boundaries. So my call to action for everyone is today, right now, get out a piece of paper and write down faith, family, finance, fitness, friendships, and write down your goals. You don't have to have a goal to be your entrepreneur playing weight of 196 with 2% body fat because you work out every day, but you also need to take care of yourself. And so you have to find those boundaries, and we all struggle for balance, but take out take the time today. That's my prayer, that's my hope, that's my encouragement for your audience. Just take the time to do it.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, one of the things that I really emphasize on this show is that the marketplace is a prime opportunity for this mentorship and discipleship to happen because I mean we're only in our church maybe you know two hours a week. But you know, what the story that you just shared and the fact that you are sitting in a van in par in Walmart right now doing this interview because because family is first, I mean, what that's demonstrating to us is uh it's a powerful example of of discipleship. And, you know, Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. And, you know, I think that's that's really what you're doing. And out there in the business world where we're rubbing shoulders with people every day, there's such an opportunity for this mentorship and discipleship to happen because people see our lives, you know, they see the good, the bad, the ugly, they see how we treat our family, they see you know how we treat our our coworkers and how we relate, and just our our whole value system is on display every day out in the market.
SPEAKER_01And I'll say this, I'll just rip on myself. People who Google me, research me, get into it, and you know, uh I I know I'm very self-aware. My thing that I'm my superpower, Darren, is I can literally sit down for 12 to 20 hours, literally in a row and focus on doing something. Like I could just sit down and just and just grind on search engine or writing a book. I just have no problem with that. But I struggle with empathy. That's my thing, where I have virtually no empathy unless I'm intentional. And even when I am intentional, I still go, Are you kidding me? But in business, it it's very effective because I'm able to get stuff done. And when people don't perform, I don't struggle with you know being pragmatic. But I've had to learn, you know, at the end of the day, what are we doing? What's our goal here? You know? So, and I'm telling you, somebody else listening to this is like Captain Empathy. And for whatever reason, you know how Jesus flipped over the tables because the homeboys wouldn't quit selling stuff in the church. You know, uh, some of you are listening to this and you're going, I I could understand why they're wanting to sell things, and I would never flip over a table, and I have total appreciation for everybody, and I just so I'm saying is I'm not we're nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect, I'm not saying we are, but what I'm saying is we need to be aware, and that's why everyone needs to be self-aware and do whether it's the F5 uh analysis or do something, but you got to figure out where you're at, and a mentor sometimes can help you point out those blind spots through that business discipleship that you discussed you that you uh discussed earlier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I've I've found, I'm sure you found this to be true, that our wives can help to mentor us in that particular area.
SPEAKER_01Oh, my wife is beautiful. I'm a man-bear pig, I'm an idiot, and she just points out, she just says things like, Hey, babe, and I'll go, what? You know, and she'll say, um, and she'll point out that like I didn't like introduce somebody at dinner, or I didn't, you know, acknowledge somebody, or that I'm dressed like an idiot, or that, you know, uh, you know, just just things that are a common sense, right? Because we're but in our infinite awesomeness on Mount Awesome, you can't see your blindness. Well, there's no mirrors on Mount Awesome, right? Because we all, as an entrepreneur, you have to think you have a little bit of awesomeness, or you're not crazy enough to start a business. So you've got to have that balance. But definitely, if those of you who are who are married, and uh if you're a woman listening, just kind of mute it. But if you're a dude, you got to understand that the woman is is infinitely right. You are a man-bear pig. And then ladies, just play off us a little bit, just give us that candor. But you know, I apologize on behalf of the man mankind, the man race.
SPEAKER_00Amen. Amen. Well, I know you need to move on uh to Waco, but why don't you share one parting piece of advice and then uh and then we'll kind of sign off here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh my my parting piece of advice, this is something I want to encourage people, is it people a lot of times skip over the book Genesis, you know, they they skip over that a little bit. But in Genesis, you know, it said God created the earth in how many days? Uh Ruben has it six, and I know it's kind of controversial to even use the word Bible anymore, but you know, the sixth day principles, what I what we call it. And the idea is that God made the earth on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday he rested. And a lot of people love to hear that story, like, oh, so he wants us to take Sundays off and you know and observe the Sabbath. That is correct. But also, it means that if you rightly divide the word, it means you're supposed to work six days a week. Six days a week? Yeah, six days. So I'm just throwing it out here for you. If you can't get it all done, consider the six-day principle. It took God allegedly six days to figure it out. I think we should all look at that concept. It's kind of controversial, but I've met with a lot of Christians who are very neat, neat people, a lot of pagans who are neat, neat people, but I introduced them to that idea. Or if those of you who don't for some reason don't like Christ, but you're listening to a Christian podcast, I get it. Um Elon Musk has a quote where he says, work like blank. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hours a week because it improves your odds of success. If other people are working 40 hours and you're putting in more, then even if you do the same thing, you'll achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve. So all I'm saying is sometimes that work ethic we have as Christians, we're we're believing, we're praying, but maybe we're not applying that effort that we really need to. And if you are someone who's already applying the effort, maybe on the other side, rightly divided, you do need to observe that day off and you need to rightly divide it and block off time for family. So that'd be my encouragement. And then also check out uh thrive15.com. Well, we have an absolutely free uh trial for all your listeners. They just go in there to uh thrive15.com, put in the promo code uh Clay, C-L-A-Y, and you take the uh the seven-day challenge. And if it's not the best education thing in the world, you just email me a complaint and I'll probably delete it and get depressed. But if you love it, I promise it's gonna change your life. It'll be absolute, you'll be in a very different spot this year after you do a 30 days with that Thrive15. It's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Clay, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. And I know that you need to move on and go and take care of your family. But uh, and again, thanks for for sharing that resource with us. And and you shared the email address, info at thrive15.com, where people can get that F5 audit as well. But definitely everybody go and check out Thrive15.com. I mean, I've been on there and watched some of the videos, it is first class. I mean, I've not seen a better uh online education site in all my days. So thank you so much, Clay, man. Uh, just may God continue to bless the work you're doing with Thrive15 and just comfort your family and just minister to your dad. And uh looking forward to continuing our conversation.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thank you so much. Waco, Texas, here we come.
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