The Make Your Life Epic Success Institute proudly presents: From the Dorm Room to the Boardroom An Entrepreneur’s Guidebook on How You Can Build a Successful Small Business (With a Relatively Small Brain) Disclaimer: This book has been written in the entrepreneur’s spirit of “ready, fire, aim.” Please excuse any grammatical errors. I’m sure version 2.0 of this book will have less errors when it comes out. Make Your Life Epic By Clay Clark © Copyright 2010, Clay Clark All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. ISBN: 978-0-88144-027-0 About Clay lay Clark is the husband of the beautiful Vanessa Lynn Clark, and C the father of Angelina-Lynn Leuba Clark, Aubrey Napoleon-Hill Clark, and Havana Ann Clark. He is the founder of DJ Connection Tulsa, Inc., one of America’s largest disk jockey and mobile entertainment companies. Clay is the cofounder of Tulsa Bridal Association, the cofounder of the Tulsa Bridal Association Wedding Show, the founder of Cherished Traditions videography, the founder of Thompson Photography, the cofounder of Fears & Clark Realty Group, the founder of the Make Your Life Epic Institute and numerous other small-to-medium-sized businesses. Clay serves as the active president of the Tulsa Bridal Association, and he is a member of various chambers of commerce. Always hyper-competitive, Clay believes that his home church (Christian Chapel in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is the best church on the planet. When Clay isn’t managing his business ventures, he serves as a volunteer with Junior AchievementTM, an organization dedicated to educating and inspiring young people by bringing business people to the public-school classroom. Clay has been honored as Oklahoma’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. He has also received recognition from the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce as the Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Oklahoma magazine has called Clay one of Oklahoma’s “Forty Under 40” for being one of Oklahoma’s top forty business people under the age of forty years old. DJ Connection has been described in Modern Bride magazine as being one of the 150 hottest bands and DJs in the nation and “Tulsa’s number-one disk jockeys.” DJ Connection has also been named v nationally as the “Best of the Best” by WeddingMBA.com. Clay helped found one of Oklahoma’s largest wedding shows, and he has been featured numerous times on Good Morning, Oklahoma for the active role he plays in the Tulsa Bridal Association. At age twenty, Clay was featured on the front page of the Tulsa World business section for his early business successes. Although Clay did not graduate from Oral Roberts University, he does take pride in his co- creation of the infamous “ORU Slim Shady” parody song which led to his dismissal from the college that Richard Roberts himself later was (allegedly) dismissed from. A serial entrepreneur since high school, Clay has created and/or run several successful (and unsuccessful) businesses including: • A consulting business • A chocolate fountain business • An event rentals company • A landscaping business • A t-shirt and graphic design business • A mobile entertainment and disk jockey empire • A professional photography business • A professional videography business • (Although not business related, in 2007, Clay also founded a C-League basketball dream team called the DJ Connection Redbulls. This team managed to astoundingly lose every game before the league went belly up.) Born to Thomas and Mary Clark at St. Francis hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on November 5th, 1980, amidst the Ronald Reagan election. He went on to attend school in the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, public-school system until the age of twelve. The Clark family migrated north to Minnesota in 1992. It was in Minnesota at the age of sixteen that Clay’s “DJ Clayvis” persona was born. “DJ Clayvicle” graduated from Dassel-Cokato high school with honors and received the prestigious Brown Book award for his excellence in the communication arts, along with a multitude of other scholarships. vi At the age of twenty-eight, Clay has now become a much-sought- after motivational speaker where he showcases his ability to combine education and entertainment. Clay’s passion is empowering entrepreneurs and writing rap parody songs that have been written about in the New York Times. Clay attributes much of his success to his never-ending pursuit of knowledge, the willingness of mentors to share their knowledge (through their books), and his unrelenting optimism. Listed below is a short list of influences on his young business career up to this point. Without their books, their teachings, and their examples, he would certainly not have been named “Entrepreneur of the Year” twice: Andrew Carnegie, Bill O’Reilly, Bishop Carlton Pearson, Brian Tracy, Chester & Chet Cadieux, Clynt Taylor, Clifton Taulbert, Dave Letterman, Glenn Beck, Henry Ford, Herb Kelleher, Jack Welch, Jay Conrad Levinson, Jim Collins, John D. Rockefeller, John Tune, Karl Malone, Lori Montag, Luther Vandross, Michael Gerber, Michael Jackson, John Maxwell, Napoleon Hill, Robert T. Kiyosaki, Russell Simmons, Rush Limbaugh, Sam Walton, Shane Harwell, Steve Martin, Thomas Edison, Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D., William D. Danko, Ph.D., and William “Bill” Cosby. vii Table of Contents Preface: Fun with Prefacing and Outlining: The Overall Purpose and Definite Chief Aim of This Book ...... xxi Chapter 1: The Move “Up North” and the Countdown to Moving “Down South” Again .................................... 1 Life Lesson: Nothing changes until something moves. Chapter 2 S.A.D.D. Dances = Optimistic Opportunities ......... 10 Life Lesson: Areas of poor service = business opportunities Chapter 3 High School: Years Spent Passionately Going Nowhere Quickly (In My Custom, Hand-Painted 1989 Ford Escort)...................................................... 20 Life Lesson: Those who know where they are going tend to get there faster Chapter 4 Oral Roberts University, Russell Simmons, and Learning to Read....................................................... 43 Life Lesson: “If I have seen farther, it is because I have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants.” - SIR ISAAC NEWTON Chapter 5 Big Dudes, Heavy Lifting, and Poured Concrete... 49 Life Lesson: Digging holes, cutting rebar, and pouring concrete is not what I want to do. ix Translation: Where there is a lack of capital, there is always an abundance of manual labor opportunities available Chapter 6 My Best Friend Was Killed, I Got Married and Kicked Out of College All in One Year................... 60 Life Lesson: “Our time will never be just right. We must act now.” - NAPOLEON HILL, Chapter 7 DJ Connection: A Magnificent Obsession .............. 78 Life Lesson: “Put all of your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket.” Chapter 8 Clay Meets Napoleon and the “Hood.”................. 104 Life Lesson: Success is a choice. Study the lives of successful people who are doing what you want to do, and then do what they did to become successful. Chapter 9 Quitting School to Pursue Learning Full Time, and Working Alone With a Little Help From Tony Bruno, Mark Weddell, and the “Money Line”......................................................................... 116 Life Lesson: One definite chief aim, no office space, no budget: no problem. Chapter 10 Montag the Mentor, the Tulsa Bridal Association, and the Power of the Mastermind.... 127 Life Lesson: “Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you need for the creation and carrying out of your plan or plans for the accumulation of money.” Chapter 11 The Typical Day of an American Entrepreneur: Waking Up Each Day With the Odd Sensation That Your Hair Is on Fire...................................... 135 Life Lesson: You can earn more money, but you can’t earn more time. Work fast. We only live once. x Chapter 12 Building My “Dream Team” One Inexperienced DJ at a Time ............................................................ 145 Life Lesson: Learn to go from “me” to “we.” Chapter 13 “Honey, We Can Afford to Build a House, so We’re Going to Build One.”................................... 154 Life Lesson: “Live like no one else so that you can live like no else later.” Chapter 14 Shelves Held Together Using Twine, Mini-Rope, Hope, a Half-Gallon Of “Wup-Ass,” Tenacity, and Love................................................................... 158 Life Lesson: Every successful entrepreneur is MacGyver’s brother from another mother. Chapter 15 Jerry Jones Boards the DJC Mother Ship and Discovering Innovative Ways to Irritate the Homeowners’ Association ...................................... 161 Life Lesson: If you’re not out of your comfort zone, then you are not growing; but if you grow out of your wife’s comfort zone, then you are in the danger zone. Chapter 16 Moving Quickly When Purchasing Real Estate and Other Outstanding Tips I’ve Discovered (Firsthand) to Making Prolifically Terrible Investment Decisions .............................................. 168 Life Lesson: Don’t be an investment idiot. Chapter 17 Growth, the “Law of the Lid,” and Various Other Reasons I Found Myself Herding Cats ...... 188 Life Lesson: “The lower an individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.” - JOHN MAXWELL xi Chapter 18 Enabling Morons Through My Own Weak Management ...........................................................