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At a time when our nation is becoming increasingly polarized, media often ignore viewpoints and stories that are worthy of attention. American Thought Leaders, hosted by The Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek and his reporting team, features in-depth discussions with important thought leaders on key issues facing America—and Canada, the world—today.

American Thought Leaders

Here’s What They Hid in Wuhan | Matt Ridley

Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders” and co-host of “FALLOUT” with Dr. Robert Malone and “Kash’s Corner” with Kash Patel. Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

Jan Jekielek

The CCP Wants to Subjugate Taiwan—She’s Standing in the Way | An Exclusive With Hsiao Bi-Khim

Beijing Wants to Wipe Taiwan Off the Map—This Man Is Making Sure Its People Can Survive | Enoch Wu

How Classical Arts Training Helps Kids Unlock Their Full Potential | Sherry Zhang

How Cartel Mega-Tunnels Move Hundreds of Millions in Narcotics Into America | Sara Carter

Why Women Can’t Find Good Husbands | Timothy Goeglein

The Machinery Behind Modern Mass Manipulation | Jacob Siegel

What the End of the Orban Era Means for Hungary and Its Constitution | Marton Sulyok

One Key Fact About America’s Founding That Isn’t Taught Anymore | Eric Metaxas

Is Canada Becoming the CCP’s Backdoor into America? | Former Canadian Intel Analyst Scott McGregor

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The Associated Press

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World News

Americas

Helicopter With Singer Oliver Tree on Passenger List Collides With Another in Brazil, Killing 6

NTD Newsroom comprises teams of reporters, editors, and producers assigned to cover breaking news and other stories.


NTD Newsroom

News you can trust from the U.S. and around the world. Critical information and insight. We cover the stories that others don’t. NTD News Today airs Monday–Friday at 11 a.m. ET.

NTD News Today

Iran's Football Team Leaves Note of Friendship

Melanie is a reporter and editor covering world news. She has a background in environmental research.

Melanie Sun

US News

State News

California

California Governor, LA Mayor Declare Emergency Over Warehouse Fire

News with integrity, from the United States and around the world. Focused reports and analyses that shed light on major issues the world deserves to know. NTD Evening News airs daily at 6 p.m. ET.

NTD Evening News

Up to 900 Planes Grounded Worldwide Amid Engine Shortage, United CEO Says

Reuters is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages.

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Andrew Thomas is a reporter for NTD News primarily covering business, the economy, and technology. 

Andrew Thomas

Science &amp; Tech

NASA Reverses Evacuation Alert Order for Astronauts Aboard Space Station

Rudy Blalock is a Southern California-based daily news reporter for NTD. Originally from Michigan, he moved to California in 2017 and the sunshine and ocean have kept him here since. In his free time, he may be found underwater scuba diving, on top of a mountain hiking or snowboarding, or at home meditating—which helps fuel his active lifestyle.

Rudy Blalock

8 Dead After B-52 Bomber Crashes at Edwards Air Force Base in California

Ohio

At Least 12 People Shot at Ohio Festival, Search for Suspects Ongoing: Police

Mary Man is a writer for NTD. She has traveled around the world covering China, international news, and arts and culture.

Mary Man

Daniel Monaghan is a reporter for NTD News covering culture, social issues, and education. He holds a BA in Political Science and Government.

Daniel Monaghan

China News

Epoch Times Obtains Over 2,000 Unseen Tiananmen Square Photos on 37th Anniversary of the June 4th Massacre

US Embassy in Israel Issues Travel Alert for Much of Middle East

Los Angeles Warehouse Fire Prompts Shelter-in-Place Orders

Gordon Chang Breaks Down Trump-Xi Summit and What’s Next

The CCP’s Greatest Insecurity—and America’s Greatest Weapon | Sam Brownback

Why a Taiwan Invasion Would Trigger Trillions in Global Losses | Amb. Alexander Yui

Over 1,000 CCP-Linked Groups in America: Exposing United Front Operations | Peter Mattis

Why 28- and 29-Year-Olds Are Disappearing From China’s Uyghur Concentration Camps | Ethan Gutmann

Texas AG Ken Paxton Breaks Down Wave of Lawsuits Targeting CCP Surveillance

The Charter School Principal Turning Children Toward Plato, Virtue, and the Eternal | Caylan Ford

The Failures of Multiculturalism in the United Kingdom | Peter McIlvenna

From AI Girlfriends to Brain Implants, How the AI Revolution Is Radically Reshaping Our World | Wynton Hall

Most Americans Agree: You Can’t Change Your Sex | Jonathan Butcher

The Woke Movement Has Peaked. What’s Next? | Andrew Doyle

Rob Schneider: Here’s What’s Wrong With Our Culture Today

Why These 9 Institutions Must Be Reformed Post-COVID | Jeffrey Tucker

Robert Kiyosaki: Why America’s Middle Class Keeps Getting Poorer

The CCP’s Gloves Are Off in Trade War—What’s Next? | Lee Smith

How Tariffs Once Paid America’s Bills–And Why They Could Again | John Gardner

Jeffrey Tucker: Everything You Need to Know About the Fed

Impact of Trump’s Trade, Tax, Energy Policies | Mark Skousen

How Clay Clark Helped Small Businesses Survive—and Thrive—During the Pandemic and Beyond

Eric Trump: How America Can Outcompete China in Manufacturing

EJ Antoni Decodes the Trump Economy and the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Controversy

Homeopathy Cured Her Disease, Now She’s Fighting for More Access | Paola Brown

Here’s What Darwinian Evolution Can’t Explain About the Origins of Species | Stephen Meyer

How ‘Brain Rot’ and the Escapist Virtual World Are Harming Our Youth | Adnan Alkhalili

Treating the Root, Not Just the Symptoms: The Power of Integrative Medicine | Dr. Daniel Monti

Exclusive: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on How the NIH Is Rethinking Autism, DEI, China Ties, and Gain-of-Function

The False Promise of Antidepressants | Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

Why Steak Is at the Top of the New Food Pyramid | Dr. Shawn Baker

A New Approach to Alzheimer’s? | Lou Reese

Dr. Mehmet Oz: Up to $4 Billion in Health Care Fraud in California

The Evidence of Harm: What the Data Really Show About Pediatric Transgender Procedures | Leor Sapir

An Exclusive, Inside Look at Shen Yun Performing Arts | Special Episode

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Jubilee Celebrations, Valentines Day, & Selling to China | A Little Sketchy

Freedom Convoy, Ukraine, & Winter Olympics | A Little Sketchy TV

Mollie Hemingway: The Untold Story of How One Man ‘Reshaped the Supreme Court’

Inside ‘Trump 2.0’ and the Media’s Role in Political Violence | Sean Spicer

He Ran the World’s Biggest Payment Processor; Now He’s Taking on Social Security | Frank Bisignano

Devin Nunes on Ending the Politicization of America’s Intelligence Agencies

Exclusive: Inside SBA’s Crack Down on Loan Fraud Nationwide | Administrator Kelly Loeffler

Exclusive: Kash Patel Talks China Fentanyl, Violent Networks, ‘Burn Bags,’ and More

Andy Ngo: I Was Nearly Killed by Antifa. This is What I Learned.

Eric Trump Opens Up About How Relentless Attacks Impacted Him and His Family

Why Charlie Kirk’s Approach Matters Now More Than Ever | Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer

The Battle Over Alligator Alcatraz, the US Census, and CCP Surveillance | Florida AG James Uthmeier

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Bob Healey was in his 60s battling terminal cancer with only a product prototype when he sought advice from business coach Clay Clark. Now, his company is booming.

It’s never too late to succeed, Clark says.

After building several multi-million dollar businesses, Clark developed a 14-step system to help budding entrepreneurs turbocharge their ideas.

During the pandemic, he helped his clients not just stay afloat but even thrive.

In this episode, we dive into how to grow a small business, what business schools fail to teach, and why America must rebuild its manufacturing and industrial capacity.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:

Clay Clark, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thank you for being here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This current administration is looking to revitalize the economy, to push it to the next level. And for me, small business has always been a centerpiece of this. Some people describe it as the engine of American innovation and growth. But during the COVID years, as we are emerging out of them as we speak, a lot of small businesses were frankly wiped out. You’re the guy who’s actually helping people build those small businesses. Please tell us about what you do.

In America today, we have approximately 330 million Americans living here, and we have 9.2 million Americans that identify as being self-employed. And so what happens is somebody out there, a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, or a plumber says, I want to start my own business. And when they do, they don’t really know the proven processes to start and grow a company, and that’s what I do. So I basically take somebody with a dream and I align them with my team, and we help them scale. If you sell something to humans on planet Earth in exchange for a profit, that’s what we help people to scale.

You’ve structured your business in such a way that it’s actually impossible for you to do well unless your client does well. And I thought to myself, what a brilliant way, what an ethical way to set up a business because you kind of have no choice.

You know the word shalom.  I go to Sheridan Church, and Pastor Jackson talks about that word from time to time, shalom. But the shalom is like a win-win. It’s a win-win relationship—a mutually beneficial relationship. Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich, calls it the mutually beneficial relationship.

When I coach a client or work with a client, I tell the client, hey look, I’m going to help you grow your business for the smallest monthly fee possible, and I just want to get a small percentage of the growth. Because if I’m getting one percentage point of the growth, theoretically you’re making 100 times more than I am. But if I can scale multiple companies, it turns out to be a great thing for me.

I’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years. I’ll sit down with an electrician, and the electrician will have a business that’s stuck. It’s not thriving; it’s barely surviving. They go, I don’t know how to grow. I don’t know if it’s marketing. I don’t know if it’s human resources. I don’t know if it’s accounting. I don’t know if it’s pricing. I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know if it’s the economy.

How do I grow my company? And I sit down with them and I say, look, we’re going to go through a 14-step plan to rejuvenate, to revive, to bring life into your business. And I’m going to get a small percentage of the growth, and you’re going to be rich, and I’m going to be doing very well if this works.

Please tell us about your background. During the COVID years, when a lot of small businesses were basically closed and many permanently, the companies you worked with actually all stayed open. How did that happen and where do you come from?

I apologize because I speak fast. I used to stutter as a kid. My synapses go really fast, so you might have to watch this in slow-mo. But I knew that the Constitution is not a suggestion, and a Constitution cannot be suspended because of a pandemic. That’s something I knew. I happen to be a Christian. In the Bible, Hebrews 10:25 tells us to not forsake the gathering, even as we draw closer to the end. Theoretically, as we’re getting closer to the end of time, God is the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end. For all the Christians out there, we’re not supposed to stop gathering. So I knew that the pandemic couldn’t temporarily suspend the Constitution. I knew that the Bible tells us to not forsake the gathering. So to me, it was a no-brainer to stay open.

Also, I have this controversial business theory I was telling you off camera a little bit, but it’s hard to be open if your business is closed. And so I really leaned into my clients and I said, clients, listen, doctors, dentists, pizzerias, home remodelers, look, the models that said 2.2 million people would die from COVID, those are false. Those are made by Neil Ferguson, and also the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute. Whether they were wrong intentionally or accidentally, they’re wrong. The PCR tests, the polymerase chain reaction tests, those can be misused, misconstrued to inflate cases. And COVID is 100% treatable with budesonide, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine.

A lot of my clients were asking, how do you know this? And I’m going, a third of my clients are in the medical field. So I’m working with doctors, and Dr. Rashid Buttar, may he rest in peace, was a client of mine. Dr. Zelenko was a friend of mine, may he rest in peace. They knew the models were false and the PCR tests were false. The treatments are real.

However, the media, outside of One American News, The Epoch Times, and a handful of media outlets, were just telling everybody, we need a lockdown. We need to temporarily suspend the Constitution. And to me, that was analogous to laying on the train tracks to see if it was safe while the train’s approaching quickly and will certainly kill us if we don’t move. It’s like a case study of if we lay on the train tracks as the train runs over us, we’ll see if that’ll help. We’ll see if locking down, shutting down, quarantining will help. Will that stop the spread?

I knew that it was going to start the spread of communism, because then people are going to be sitting around looking for government handouts. I told my clients, stay open, be the purple cow in the field of brown cows, to quote Seth Godin, the marketing guru. Stay open. You’ll be the only company that’s open in your market. Shaw Homes is a home building company we’ve worked with for years. We started with them when they were at $14 million in revenue,<a href="http://shawhomes.com"> shawhomes.com</a>. Before they sold the company, we got them up to $150 million in revenue. Not an overnight success kind of growth, but a tremendous amount of growth had to do with the fact they stayed open.

Pizzerias that I worked with stayed open. Again, if you’re watching today’s show and you say, what can I do with this information? The next pandemic, the next scamdemic, the next plandemic, whatever that is, it cannot temporarily suspend the Constitution, and locking down won’t stop the spread of COVID or some other virus. What it will do is it will start the spread of communism.

Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, also in Tulsa, said the thing that made him realize that there was something amiss with the closing of churches is that right across the street, a Home Depot and a strip club were open, and you had tons of people going in 24/7. He’s thinking to himself, and my church is supposed to be closed here, and I’m only doing this once a week?

Within four or five miles of<a href="http://sheridan.church"> Sheridan Church</a>, which is a Tulsa-based church, there is an adult club, as he mentioned, a strip club. There was a liquor store. These places are all—yeah, that’s right. It was a liquor store that was the other one. They were all open. Dr. Deborah Birx came out and actually said on camera that the models were false and that that number was off by 25 times. My wife is about 5’3″, and you guys have met her. That would be like me telling you my wife is 125 feet tall. Thus, you need to renovate your offices because she’s going to come visit.

The jackassery of being off by 25 times—that should have stopped the pandemic to begin with. Kary Mullis, may he rest in peace, the inventor of the PCR tests, actually said on camera multiple times that a polymerase chain reaction test, a PCR test, should not be used to test something like COVID. And he explained how his tests could be misused and miscalibrated. And the Constitution is the law or it’s not. It’s not a suggestion, and it cannot be temporarily suspended because of a scamdemic.

You say pandemic, but really, we’re talking about the response, the way that we as a society dealt with a pandemic because there was a virus.

Right.

And it did go around.

But how we dealt with it is the whole story. Let’s go back to small business. As you’re tracking the realities of small business as part of your work, how much of an impact did the whole COVID policy thing have on the small businesses, really?

The average small business that I work with, when people come to me and they say, could you help me grow my company? We do what is called a 14-point analysis. Jan, if I was talking to you and you were a business owner, I would go over, okay, what are your goals? What do your finances look like? What does your marketing look like? What does your branding look like? And we go through that sort of business colonoscopy kind of thing.

We discover that the average small business owner has about two and a half weeks of payroll on hand, or two and a half weeks of operating capital on hand, or maybe a little more than half a month of operating capital. This means that if you’re a pizzeria, a doctor, or a dentist, you could afford to be closed for a week and then another week before you would start to have some serious cash flow problems. Cash to a business is like blood to a human, oxygen to a human, water to a fish. It’s essential for survival.

And so by doing two weeks to stop the spread, what you did was verify that every business would be dead. I’m not just saying that because it rhymes, but two weeks to stop the spread was like verifying that every business would be dead. My wife and I, along with a lot of my longtime clients, had built up fortification and cash flow fortification so we could withstand lean times. But most people that I knew couldn’t. Our podcast often has a million listeners a month. I was getting text messages from listeners saying, “I own a business. How am I supposed to feed my family if I’m closed for two weeks?”

Right now, if you go to<a href="http://usdebtclock.org"> usdebtclock.org</a> and you look at it, we have approximately under 3 percent of the American population that is self-employed. According to Inc. Magazine, by default, 96 percent of businesses fail anyway. 96 percent, according to Inc. Magazine, fail within 10 years. So you’ve got a one in a thousand shots of achieving success as a small business owner by default anyway. Add to that lockdowns, quarantines, and curfews. Think about the emotional chaos that creates in a company.

A small business is like a family. Half of my staff at my hair business wanted to stay open. Half of them were saying, let’s stay open. Let’s cut hair. The other staff was saying, let’s stay closed. I want to be safe. You transition to the remodeling company I’m involved in. Half of the employees wanted to stay open. The other half was saying, if we can basically not work for two weeks, I’ll call this a vacation.

It created a division within companies too, where some employees wanted to stay open, and some wanted to stay closed. Some people were very concerned about the effectiveness of the treatments; some were not. It created dissension within organizations. It killed momentum. It killed rapport. It was really destructive for small business.

Even if the businesses did survive, they had to go through this extra chaos.

Yes, I would just say I have a very intimate knowledge of the workings of the business. I’m on the phone with dentists who are saying, my front desk lady will come to work, but my front desk guy won’t. Dentists are telling me, my anesthesiologist, let’s say, for the oral surgeons, he’ll come to work, but the actual oral surgeon won’t. So the anesthesiologist will, but the surgeon won’t.

I work with doctors that do knee replacements, doctors that do cosmetic surgeries of all different kinds. They’re saying, I can’t find a hospital that will let my patient have the knee surgery, but I can find surgeons to work on it. It created this supply chain problem. The home builders I was working with could find framers to frame, but they couldn’t find tile guys to do the tile. It created all sorts of disruption within the marketplace because not only did you have to make a decision as an owner whether to keep your business open, but then you had to educate your employees from a position of weakness.

These doctors, dentists, and lawyers don’t claim to be experts on pandemics; they claim to be experts in their given field. It was probably the most turbulent time to have a business, run a business, or own a business. However, because I have a close-knit relationship with my clients, we were able to keep it going.

To quote John Lee Dumas, a friend of mine, who has a podcast called<a href="http://eofire.com"> eofire.com</a>, he said to me, are you going to go ahead and have your business conference during the pandemic? I’m mangling the quote, but he said something to the effect of,  I don’t think you’ll have a lot of competition. Our business conference was booming. A literary agent who represents some of the biggest authors in the world told me she flew to our conference and was the only person on the plane.

How do you figure out who you’re going to work with? Because with your particular model, it’s not that anybody who wants to work with you can, because you have to make your decisions about who you think has potential, since you’re going to be on the hook for it.

When you have a chance to shadow me a little bit off camera, I do a lot of the video editing myself. I do a lot of the web development myself. I do a lot of the accounting myself, so I’m very much hands-on. I like to keep a group of around 160 clients I work with, and I do these free assessments. The reason why I do a free 13-point assessment is I just want to see, are we going to have a shalom or a win-win relationship?

There are three things I’m looking for: Do you actually solve a problem, or do you provide a product or a service that the marketplace would benefit from? If somebody’s selling something that I think is ethically foul or against my Christian morals, I’m not going to work with them.Thing number one is, do you sell a product or service that I actually think is ethical and legal? You’d be surprised how many people are selling illegal things that won’t help. Step number two is, does the person actually identify with the worldviews that I have?

If I’m going to sit there and debate about the Constitution or capitalism, that’s probably not the thing. So, one is, do we have a product or service that we can actually help you scale? Two, is the person ideologically aligned with me? And then three, is it realistic? We want to be able to set these SMART goals.

I call them SMART goals. They’re S-M-A-R-T. I’m quoting Brian Tracy, bestselling author, but a SMART goal is a specific goal. It’s a measurable goal. It’s something that’s actionable. You can actually take action and do it. It’s realistic and it’s time-sensitive. S-M-A-R-T.

Is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it actionable? Is it realistic? Is it time-sensitive? If I can help somebody grow a company and I can see a clear path to get there, it is exciting, Jan, when you know, wow, this person’s business is struggling and I can help them scale. I think about Papagallo’s Pizza in Florida. We’ve helped this couple grow. They’ve opened three restaurants.Since I started working with them, we’ve opened up restaurant two and three. They’ve grown their business fivefold.

I think about Shaw Homes going from 14 million to 150 million. I think about companies like Oxyfresh, where I’ve had a role in advising them, and they’re now up to 500 locations. Beverly Hills Precious Metals is my precious metals dealer that I’ve worked with for years. To watch him scale his company never gets old to me. It’s infinitely exciting to help someone achieve their goals. That’s really what gets me excited. Growing up poor or without money, I’m sure there’s somebody watching this who grew up poorer, but my dad was working at a gas station, working the night shift. My dad was delivering pizzas for Domino’s. May he rest in peace.

In his late 30s, he’s delivering pizzas. He’s working at a gas station. He has a college degree from Oral Roberts University. That wasn’t a reverse shout-out to ORU, but that’s a fact. Yet he didn’t know how to financially help our family thrive. But he had the work ethic, and I appreciate him being willing to work those two jobs. Whenever I talk to that new potential client, I picture it as if I’m talking to a 37-year-old version of my dad. My dad’s no longer with us; he passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

That’s how I look at it, and I can’t communicate it with enough sincerity or passion. Every person I talk to on the phone who wants to become a client or wants to come to a conference, I pretend in my mind—maybe it’s not healthy, maybe it is—that that’s the 37-year-old version of my father. That’s what I look for. But someone who wants a handout? No, I don’t want to do that. But if this person needs a hand up, that’s who I try to work with.

You built your business to only have the people that want a hand up because it’s just not going to work with the other people. You’re not going to be successful. That’s a great alignment of incentives.

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is a book changed my life, and I encourage everyone to read it. There are three big principles I got out of that. One is the idea that we should only engage in mutually beneficial relationships. We should never leech off our fellow man. We should never be looking for a handout. We should never be looking to the government for help; we should try to have a win-win situation in the marketplace.

The second is that we want to over-deliver. Can we exceed the expectations of our clients, of our buyers? Can we exceed the expectations of our customers? And then the third is that you want to surround yourself with people who have a similar goal and vision for their lives.

Clients of mine also get to come to a workshop every couple of months. That’s where I get to meet people like Eric Trump. Eric Trump comes to our workshops. The average mechanic, doctor, dentist, lawyer, home remodeler, or plumber is in a room with 300 people, and one of them is Eric Trump. This is incredible. They’ll say, wow, there’s 300 people in this room, and one of them is an NBA coach. I’m in a room with 300 people, and Tim Tebow is one of them.

There’s something that happens when you’re in a small, intimate setting, and you’re surrounded by 300 entrepreneurs, some of whom are household names. There’s a whole different level of electricity and learning and interaction that happens. And that’s really the environment we try to create. We want to help people create their own virtual mastermind, their own community of people that have that energy. I’m not Amish, but as I study the Amish, I know they’re very intentional about their community. And I can just tell you, we are very intentional about the community that we’ve built here.

Please tell us about your background. You did grow up in a humble situation, but you had some very interesting pivots along the way.

This is what happened. I’m a kid who stuttered. My dad was working two jobs, working at the gas station, Quick Trip, and delivering pizzas. My mom was doing what she could do. And it occurred to me, and I don’t remember the exact moment, Jan, but I remember that kind of era of my life thinking to myself, we’re poor. Although we didn’t care about money, every decision was somehow impacted based on money.

I thought to myself, my 12-year-old self, I’m going to find a way to make copious amounts of money so that I can focus on other things. Because for anybody who spends any amount of time with me, there are three things I’m always doing. I’m always writing songs. I’m always writing books, and I’m always writing business plans.

I get into that kind of stuff. But you can’t afford to write songs that very few people listen to unless you have the time to do it. So I set out on this quest to create time freedom and financial freedom. So out of my parents’ basement, I started a company called DJ Connection. Back in the day, it was called C&G DJ Service, and it was called G because the youth pastor who mentored me was old enough to drive a car. See, I couldn’t drive a car. And so the guy who drove me to my gigs was my youth pastor, and he lost a bet and shaved a G into his very hairy chest for some reason I don’t understand. So it was C&G DJ Service named after that.

Then I basically started cold calling schools. I’m a 14-year-old kid, a 15-year-old kid, cold calling schools saying, hi, who DJs your school dance? Who’s in charge of organizing the school dance? And they would say, oh, that’s the PTA, or that’s the booster club, or that’s the parent sponsors. And I said, hey, I’d love to DJ your school dance, and I’ll do it for a dollar, and you can just pay me after the event what you think it’s worth.

A lot of schools are infinitely disappointed in their disc jockeys, so I started getting some gigs. I started doing two gigs a month, three gigs a month. I needed equipment. I was selling the gigs, but I didn’t have any equipment. So I found a pothead by the name of Oswald, and I rented equipment from him.

This is a true story, and I thought to myself, I probably don’t want to be renting equipment from potheads. I probably need to have a more viable option, This is my 14, 15-year-old mind. So I got a job pouring concrete, and I got a job working at the Norseman restaurant, and I got a job working as a home health aide. So I had three jobs simultaneously. That was my pro tip for getting rich quick.

I took every dime I had, and I just kept buying more speakers, more sound, more lights. The speakers I bought were called JBL TR-225s, and these were like $500 a piece. And I tell you this because I was making $8 an hour. If you’re making $8 an hour, you’ve got to work 70 hours to buy a speaker before taxes. So you’ve got to work 80 hours per speaker. So I had three jobs. I’m working these three jobs.

Eventually, I decided to go to college early because in Minnesota, if you have enough credits, you can go to college early. So I went to St. Cloud State, and I picked classes, you know, graphic design, language, accounting, things that I thought would help me in my career. And then I transferred to Oral Roberts University.

At that point, I changed the name from C&G DJ Service to DJ Connection. And then over time, I started getting into weddings. And before I sold the company, we were doing 4,000 weddings a year, which is 80 weddings a weekend, by the way. So think about all the vans, the lights, the mic stands, the speaker stands, the lighting equipment, all the people training these people.

Then I started this thing called the Tulsa Bridal Association, which was a big bridal show. I started one of the region’s largest wedding photography companies called <a href="http://epicphotos.com">EpicPhotos.com</a>. What happened was the fathers of the brides would pull me aside and they’d say, hey, I’m a dentist. Could you help me grow my business? Hey, I’m a doctor. Could you help me? Hey, I have a hardware store. Could you help me grow my business? Hey, I’m a doctor. Could you help me? Hey, I have a hardware store. Could you help me?

I won this thing called the SBA Entrepreneur of the Year award, the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the state of Oklahoma. I also won the City of Tulsa Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Chamber of Commerce, and I was the State’s Entrepreneur of the Year when I was 27. I kept winning these awards, and every time I would win awards, people would say, can I pick your brain?

Then my wife, who I credit, said, what if you said yes instead of saying no, and you just charged them a small percentage of the growth? And I’m going, I don’t know. I like DJing quite a bit. So I kind of put that idea on the back burner. And then one by one, more and more people kept being more and more persistent, asking if I could help them.

I first started working with Maytag University, I worked with Hewlett-Packard, and then I worked with some bigger companies that were bringing me in to speak. I kept being asked and asked, and eventually, we found ourselves with 160 clients. And that was almost 20 years ago. So I’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years, and I love it.

They would actually bring you in to speak, but then somehow that would turn into some kind of business relationship as well. Because you were this budding entrepreneur, they wanted you as an inspirational speaker.

The way it would work is like Hewlett-Packard, as an example. There’s a lady by the name of Anitra, a great event planner, by the way. Anitra, if you’re watching, big shout-out to you. Anitra calls me and says, hey, I work with Maytag University, and they’d like a speaker to come in to teach time management and sales. I’ve watched some of your videos online, some of your samples, and I’d love to have you come speak. Could you do it?

Most speakers charge per hour, Jan. They charge per hour. It’s like, $10,000 for 90 minutes. Again, from Napoleon Hill, I can hear in my head: over-deliver, over-deliver. So I would tell these event planners, for me, you get unlimited time for two days. So not just per hour, unlimited time for two days. Any subject that you want me to talk about, I’ll do it. And if anybody bails out, I’ll speak. So if you have a guest speaker that cancels, I’ll fill in.

Well, I’m working for Maytag University. The United States Government Accountability Office brought me in to speak. And I’m at the Anatole Hotel speaking to that group. And I think two of the speakers canceled, so I had three gigs, three speaking slots at the same event. And I kept being known as, this is the guy who’s bringing comedy and entertainment to education. But I was a former disc jockey, which is one level lower than a carny in terms of the entertainment hierarchy. So I was this DJ, entertainer, who’s educating, and I call it edutainment.

What happened was more and more of the attendees would say, hey, I own a Maytag local store, and I love what you talked about. Could you help me grow my business? And I said, well, you just pay me $1,000 a month and a small percentage of your growth, and we’ll do it. And they go, really? And I could usually help somebody double their revenue within 12 months.

Then I’m speaking to Hewlett-Packard and I’m going, this is corporate America. I don’t know that this is my best place here. But the event planner who booked me would call me and say, hey, I love what you’re doing. Could you help me grow my event planning business? And so it just kept happening where I was bumping into caterers, event planners, photographers, farmers Insurance. I did a lot of work with their local agents.

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