Raven: I understand from reading your book that you were 23 when you became an entrepreneur. Tell us more about that.

Scott: I kind of believe that rhinos are born rather than made, and I’ll bet you that as a kid you did all sorts of entrepreneurial things. I bet you had paper routes or you collected bottles and sold them.

Raven: I was always doing something.

Scott: That’s the way it is. Kids that are like that that have that rhino spirit, they grow up into rhino adults, and then people come to me and they’ll say, “I’ve been a cow all my life. How can I be a rhino?” There might not be much chance for you. I was definitely an entrepreneur my whole life. I can remember from the earliest days having the paper routes and doing all that stuff, but it’s not until you get out of high school that you really get out there in the jungle, and I guess that’s when I became an official entrepreneur. You think back on high school and they had those career days. There’s the army and all these different occupations, but where’s the booth for the entrepreneurs. They don’t have that. I don’t think I knew what an entrepreneur was when I was in high school. I don’t know if I ever heard the word. My mom had a book called Your Greatest Power that I just picked up and read when I was in high school. It was about the power to choose. You have the power to choose. Do you want to be rich? Do you want to be poor? You can choose. Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be sad? That’s your choice. Everyday, you make the choices for where you’re going to go and what you want to be. That got me started on this hobby of reading all these positive motivational books when I was in high school. I think that’s what really lit the fire for me. I wanted out of school. I was sick of it. I didn’t want to sit around and do school. I wanted to get out and have my own business and make money and change the world. If you’ve got that rhino entrepreneurial spirit, it fans the flame. Now, my first business, I met a girl named Kim. We had just gotten out of high school, and she could bathe and clip dogs. So, being the budding entrepreneur, I made her my girlfriend. I said, “Hey, Kim, let’s start a dog grooming shop. We’ll call it Kim’s Grooming,” that’s where I got into the study of motivation because I couldn’t clip the dogs. I had to do something so my job was to motivate Kim, “Go Kim go. Clip another one.” I’m just kidding actually. We were charging six dollars a dog back then, and we were making eighteen dollars a day between the two of us, but the important thing is when you’re starting, you just get out and do anything. When you’re a kid, what are you going to do? You’re not going to open up some giant factory. You start with what you have. I had a girlfriend that could clip dogs. So, that’s what I started with. My brother and I we would put on wrestling matches, and we’d have my parents come and watch. We’d charge them. I’d love to take credit for all these changed lives, but I really believe it’s just people that have that rhino spirit, and they read the book and they go, “Oh my gosh, this is me!” Then, they have a label to put with how they are. Then, the rhino book just brings it out. Then, they realize, “Oh my gosh, I’m a rhino. This is fantastic!” The very first official business where I went and got a DBA and all that stuff with the little dog grooming thing which only lasted six months because they went broke. 4 I had a little pick-up truck, and I went out and picked up the dogs and brought them back to my girlfriend’s house where she clipped the dogs. How old was I at that point? Like twenty years old. My next business was a mobile auto wash business. I still had my pick- up truck, so I’m using that for my main asset. I’d put tanks of water in a pump and a hose and go wash the executives’ cars down at the airport. People do it all over the place now, but I think I was the very first guy that did it. We had a lot of publicity on it. Eventually, I had three little trucks running around, but then I was still young and stupid, and what I really wanted was a big office. I wanted phones and a secretary. Now, I realize that stuff’s called over head and it doesn’t necessarily make you more successful, but back then, I thought that’s what I needed. So, we got this big warehouse, and then lost all our money again, went broke, and that’s kind of when I came up with the idea for the rhino book, because I don’t know if you’ve ever lost all your money, but it kind of knocks the enthusiasm out of you. When you lose all your money and you start to get all depressed, and yet I was reading all the success books. I was dressing for success, and not sticking knives in toasters, and visualizing. I was doing everything right, but here I was broke. I realized that I wasn’t taking action, and then I realized there’s two kinds of people in the world. There’s cows and there’s rhinos. The rhinos are the people that are making everything happen. They’re the ones that are out there charging. They’re making their dreams come true. They’re changing the world. They’re building businesses, becoming wealthy and just having a great time charging around out in the jungle, and that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be a cow, and cows are everywhere. I know you know them because there’s about 95 cows for every five rhinos, and the cows are the complainers and the rationalizers and “Oh, moo.” They’re always depressed. Everything is going wrong. They just want to rationalize why they’re not successful.

Raven: What are some of the challenges that you met in your early years of being an entrepreneur?

Scott: Well, I think no matter what business you’re in, you’re going to have challenges, usually money or lack of progress or discouragement. I have a different philosophy than a lot of motivational speakers. I’m not really popular as a motivational speaker because I go against the grain. A lot of people say, “Well, it’s easy if you think it’s easy,” but that never made sense to me. If success were easy, if anybody could automatically become a success, it wouldn’t be success. It’d be mediocrity. To be mediocre, you don’t have to do anything, just sit around, watch As the World Turns, eat Danish pastries, step in each other’s manure out in the cow pasture. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to get out there and charge. You have to do things that nobody else wants to do. Succeeding in business is tough. It takes a lot of fortitude and thick skin, putting up with the rejections and set backs. I will say that back then when I was twenty years old, things didn’t bother me as much. I think back, and I look at some of the things I did, and I think, “Wow, I was crazy. Nothing was slowing me down.” I think that’s just one of the benefits of being young and stupid is you don’t realize how hard something is, and that you don’t really have that good of a chance, but you just keep doing it anyway. The good thing is you get older and you become wiser and you get a thicker skin. When you’re out there, the obvious attitude is damn the torpedoes. Excuse the expression, but that’s the expression you have to charge with, “Damn the torpedoes.” Now, the torpedoes are the frustrations, the set backs, the obstacles. We all have these torpedoes being shot at us everyday especially when you’re out there trying to do your own business, and those are the frustrations, the set backs, the rejections, the nos. But, when you’re a rhino, you have the two inch thick skin. You weigh six thousand pounds. You’ve got a hot muggy rhino breath. You have more audacity to go out and do the things that you need to do, to get out there and to just keep charging and keep persisting. Cows give up. Rhinos never ever give up.

Raven: How did you come up with this amazing concept?

Scott: I originally wrote the book for myself because I was in that period in between businesses. I needed motivation, and I’d read all the books. I knew what I needed. I needed just to get out there and make it happen, and there’s really no secret of success. 6 Nike has broadcast it all over the world in their commercials, and that’s “Just do it,” and really that’s all success revolves around, but I was at that point where I wasn’t just doing it. I just needed to just get out there and just do it, but people don’t want to just do it. They want to hear, “There’s got to be some easier way.” I realized I had to get out there and take action. Originally, I wrote this book for myself just to kind of pump myself up, and it was like the standard thing where you take the flying like an eagle. I was taking a trait from all different animals, and I had the thick skin of the rhinoceros, but then as I started writing this thing about the rhino, I realized the rhino has got it all. He’s got the thick skin. They weigh six thousand pounds. They’ve got a lot of mass behind them. They charge. They’re famous for that. Then, the opposite were the cows of the rhinos out in the pasture. So, it all just fit together just beautifully. I realized I only needed the rhino. That’s all you need to do is just be a rhino and get out there and charge, take action. So, I think it was a thousand books I had printed up, and it took me about two years to get rid of the first thousand. A lot of that was giving away. It was really hard. My wife and I were just barely hanging on, but it was just that thing where you’ve got an intense desire and a dream, nothing can slow you down. I don’t really remember being that discouraged although I know we went through very discouraging times. After the second year, one of these big multi-level companies caught on to it, and we sold 200,000 the next year. We’re up to somewhere around three million books now, and it’s been printed in a lot of different languages, and it’s done well. It’s like any business when you’re starting. It’s like pushing a locomotive. It’s really hard to get it going in the beginning. It takes a long time to get the thing even moving, but once you get a little momentum going, it always gets easier and easier. You’ve got to expect that with any business.

Raven: Let’s kind of touch on that a little bit more. The definition of a rhino is thick skin.

Scott: But, a lot of people would say, “Oh, Scott, so you’re a rhino. You had this idea of thick skin, and you step on your friends to get where you want to go and you’re unfeeling and uncaring.” It’s the total opposite. The rhinos are the most giving people. They’re the friendliest animals out in the jungle in order to be successful, you have to give to get. Most people don’t realize that. The cows, they don’t know. The more successful you want to become, the more you have to give. Cows, they don’t want to give, and cows are the people who want to have things given to them. You know cows because most everybody is a cow. Rhinos are really actually a pretty rare animal when you compare them to all the cows out there. It’s not that we don’t like cows. We love everybody, but we want to be rhinos because it’s more fun to be out in the jungle, and as long as we’re going to be living life. We might as well be having fun, and making an adventure, right? Hi, this is Raven Blair-Davis reporting for Michael Senoff’s

Raven: Okay, so let’s talk about the cows a little bit because we could be a rhino and be in the cow’s world, meaning being around people that are negative and pulling us down. That’s not a good match, is it?

Scott: No, but it’s going to happen because there’s so many cows. It’s very hard to live your life and not get around the cows. You just have to learn to recognize who they are and why they are the way they are, and definitely not let them affect you, and your dreams and what you want to do with your life. That’s why I think it’s so important if you’re going to get married to get married to a rhino. You don’t want to be chained down to a cow. I imagine that causes a lot of trouble when somebody is ambitious and wants to do things, and the other one is, “Moo.” It’s hard enough dealing with all the other cows. If you have a partner who is one, oh, boy, that is tough. I think that a rhino is going to be attracted to other rhinos. I’m sure that it happens. The book is written that anybody can read it. You can basically sit down in an hour and read it. There’s not much to success. Either you’re going to do it – you’re either going to become a rhino and get out there and have fun and make things happen and change the world. Some people have said to me, “Scott, why don’t you write a child’s version of it?” I go, “Have you read the book?” You don’t have to have a college degree to understand this. 8

Raven: I’ve heard that you self-published this book. So, that had to be challenging especially back then.

Scott: You know what happened is the customers that I have from my mobile auto-wash business, I went to them and borrowed money from them to have the first printing done. It was the thing where I used the contacts that I had made from my first business and got the second one going.

Raven: How can we as home based business owners use your model of being a rhino help us move forward in our business?

Scott: Well, the first thing is like you say, don’t fall into the trap with the cows of getting all your head filled with all the negativity. There’s going to be millionaires being created no matter what, and I think the most important thing is just to have the right attitude. If you have the right attitude, you can get through anything and it can be fun. When you go on a safari, when you go out in the jungle, there’s all sorts of bad things that can happen to you. You might get stuck in the quicksand. There are poisonous snakes. You might get bit by a crocodile. That’s what makes it exciting. That’s what makes the safari exciting. If you’re just going to go on a trip and have no problems or no obstacles, what kind of exciting story are you going to have to tell? Right now, we’ve got lots of poisonous snakes and quicksand out there. So, it’s a good time for a rhino to be out charging. When times get touch like this is when people are losing their jobs. People are looking for ways to make extra money. People are leaving the cow pastures, and they’re thinking, “Maybe I can become a rhino.” There’s all this new talent that’s going to be looking for opportunities to get into businesses. It’s a great time actually to be in a home based business to be helping other people if that’s the sort of business that you have where the more money you make by helping other people. My book has been out thirty years now, and it kind of goes on a cycle. When times are tough, my book does good because people are out there looking. They want to get out and do something rather than just work like a cow and have diarrhea on Sunday nights because they’ve got to go to work the next day. What kind of a life is that? Right now is actually an exciting time for rhinos because there’s going to be a lot of new opportunities. As long as you don’t get rubbed down into the manure with the cows, don’t leave yourself any out. I always tell people, just quit, get going. What’s the worse thing that can happen to you? I think the important thing to do right now while all this crud is going down is make sure that you’re hanging around with the rhinos. When you’re in business with other entrepreneurs, it’s easy to forget all the other cows and all their stuff they’re doing because then it starts to get exciting. So, it’s important to start hanging around the rhinos. They’re easy to tell. They’re the people that when you’re with them, you feel encouraged and they encourage you. You’re excited when you’re around them. Then, there’s the cows, and when you’re around the cows, you know how you feel and you start to discourage, as you associate with things to come. So, you want to make sure you’re hanging around the rhinos. Read books. There’s tons of great books out there, and just fill your mind with all the good, positive stuff because you’re going to need it.

Raven: Let’s kind of move into the personal and the financial part of our life. Is it important to be a rhino in that category as well?

Scott: Well, of course, success is success, and in every area. There’s financial success which is very important to some people, but then I’m sure you’ve met some very rich people that are unhappy, and they’re failing in other areas of their life. Then, there’s people that are very socially active and successful but have no money. We want to have a balance of everything obviously, and success in any area whether it’s physical or social or spiritual or work, it’s the same principle. Just do it. Just get out. Be a rhino, have the thick skin, and set goals. I think that’s the main thing is you ask people, “Well, what are your goals?” Very few people even know what their goals are. People come to me and say, “Well, Scott, how can you help me become a rhino?” I say, “Well, what do you want?” They don’t know. How can you help somebody if they don’t know? The first thing is getting desire. Nobody can help you if you don’t have any desire. That’s a sad thing, and that’s the people that go to work everyday. They hate it, but they just complain. They just keep doing it. 10 Well, this is the way life is. That’s not the way life is. That’s the way life is for the cows. Again, you have your choice, and it’s all it boils down. There’s a switch inside of you, and you’ve just got to either switch it on your rhino side or the cow side. If you think you can be happy being a cow and just doing nothing and just subsisting and eating yucka junk everyday and not having any fun, and be happy, well, then be a cow. Somebody has to take the job. If you want to enjoy life and have a little excitement and have adventure and change the world, then turn the switch to rhino and just get doing it. I say quit your job. Sometimes people try to do these little incremental things. Sometimes you’ve just got to go all the way. It’s got to be full on sometimes, the advice that you gave would apply. Take your job and get something going on the side. Sometimes that might be more smart. I remember in the very beginning when I was starting, I would have jobs. I worked at the mall selling men’s suits. In between businesses, you’ve got to get money somehow, but your job does not become disgusting to you at that point because you know it’s just a tool you’re using to get money to start your next thing. You’ve always got to have that vision of where you want to go, and I think that’s when life becomes discouraging for people is when there’s no vision of what am I going to do with my life. It just becomes the cow rut. What would you do if there was no chance of you failing? That’s a great way to think because theoretically, you can do anything in your life that you want to. Starting today, you could just say, “Okay, as soon as this radio show is over, I’m going to start doing,” whatever it is that you think that would be an exciting thing to do. This is the perfect time to do it because there’s all this raucous going on. You just need any excuse to do this, but no matter what you decide that you want to do, you could do that. You don’t have to have the money. You don’t have to have the connections. All you need is the desire in your mind and then start working towards it. It might take you a year. It might take you ten years. It might take you the rest of your life. You might not even ever get it, but at least you’re out there in the jungle charging it down, and that’s what it all boils down is just being out in the jungle and chasing down your dreams. That’s what makes life fun is having something to charge at, and something that you’re going for. On one hand, I say, “Hey, if you’ve got any cow tendencies, maybe you’re just a cow. Just resign yourself to it.” Now, I don’t tell that to everybody, but that’s what I’m thinking. I sometimes get cow tendencies where I lay around, and you lose a little bit of your steam. I think that happens to everybody. You need to refuel yourself and get yourself reenergized sometimes. You can’t help sometimes falling into the cow pasture. I think the important thing is to keep that dream alive because that’s like the fuel cell that powers you. The minute your vision dies, then you die, and that’s the thing that keeps you going despite all the obstacles, and again, hanging around the cows. Even if you are hanging around the rhinos, even if you are in a low state of energy, you just keep hanging around the rhinos because that way you’re staying plugged in I have a new book that I’m coming out with this summer, and it deals with how to keep charging despite the obstacles because it’s always easy when you first start out. Everybody always starts out with a bang, and there’s lots of excitement and energy, but at things get going, it gets a little tougher, and that’s when people drop out when things get tough. A lot of times when you’re out there in the jungle, sometimes the brush just gets so thick that you can’t charge. You’re knocked out. You can’t get up. You still have the rhino spirit, but the circumstances are such that it’s making it very hard. I say, “Well, sometimes you can’t keep charging, but you’ve just got to keep plotting. You’ve just got to keep moving one pot in front of the other, and you’re making very, very slow progress if any at all, but as long as you have the attitude that you’re still a rhino, it’s still part of the adventure.” Here’s another thing, Raven. This is a great thing I think people need to do. Right after the show is over, they’re going to switch that switch, and they’re going to get out there and they’re going to start charging. Another thing to do is start your success book today, and write your own story of how you made it through the obstacles, how things were so bad, and this is going to be your story. 12 I don’t know about you, but when I read success books, motivational books, especially if the stories are ones where somebody has overcome great obstacles. There’s no motivation in reading about somebody that became a millionaire overnight and there was no problems. You want to hear the juiciest horrible details that they overcame, no matter what circumstance you’re in. Everybody has got to start their success journal tonight, and this is going to be their book that they’re going to be on your radio show in a few years telling their story. When you’re writing these books, you want the more details of horrible stuff that you went through the better. That way you have a better attitude of your circumstances because the tougher it is, the more exciting your book is going to be. There’s another analogy I like to us. Mountain climbers, they spend all this money to go mountain climbing, and they plan these trips for years. Then, they’ve got to get a flight to a mountain on the other side of the world. Then, they start climbing this mountain. I always thought, “Why don’t they just take a helicopter to the top, and they could shimmy down a rope. They could have a lunch and take some pictures. Why do they spend all these weeks climbing this mountain?” The reason is because they’re mountain climbers. It’s the climbing of the mountain that is the exciting part. That’s what makes the memories. You don’t have many memories just shimmying down a rope on a helicopter compared to spending weeks or months climbing up a cold mountain and sleeping on the side fighting the elements. That’s what really makes a story. So, starting a business now and keeping it going is the equivalent of mountain climbing, and it’s challenging, but it’s fun, and you’re going to be able to inspire others with what you’ve done. That’s why everybody has got to start documenting all this stuff. I think the first thing is to analyze what is it that you really want because that’s what’s going to turn you into a rhino, if you don’t feel like a rhino now because a rhino has to have something to charge at. Otherwise, you’re just running around in circles creating dust. You have to have something that you’re charging at. Then, of course, that is the most important thing. It’s easy to get started, but you’ve got to persist, and you’ve got to keep charging, and you’ve got to keep going despite getting hit by the torpedoes and knocked down and falling in the quicksand. So, I would say three things basically is number one, know what you want. If you don’t know what you want, there’s no use in any of this stuff. Know what you’re charging at, and then number two is resolve to start hanging around with the rhinos and filling your head with the good positive books, and listening to other people that have done it, and are still doing it, and be encouraged by them, and having the thick skin and having the attitude that life is an adventure, and when it gets touch, that’s part of the adventure, and you’re going to have more stories, and it’s all going to go in your book. Start a first chapter tonight on where you are right now. Start making it happen, and then just do it. That’s all it boils down to, but people get involved in, “I’ve got to dress for success. I’ve got walk across hot coals. I’ve got to read this Neuro Cybernetic programming. I’ve got to visualize.” No, you don’t have to do any of that. All you have to do is get out and do something, take some action, and that’s what people don’t want to do, but I think when your goal is strong enough, and if it’s a goal that excites you, and if it’s a big enough thing that gives you goose bumps, then you’re going to get out and you’re start working on it. It’s got to be a big enough goal that it almost sounds crazy. If it’s just a boring goal, I want to pay off all my bills, that’s not going to do it. It’s got to be something like, “I want to change the world somehow and create some gigantic thing,” that you’re almost embarrassed to tell anybody because it’s so crazy. That’s the kind of goal you want to have, and that’s the kind of goal that will keep you going at night, and keep you awake thinking about what you’re going to do next. I think that if more kids got entrepreneurially addicted, too, there’d be less drug and alcohol abuse. You say to kids, “Why do you take drugs?” Well, there’s a certain amount of daring to taking drugs, but if you think about, having your own business beats taking drugs. With your own business, you can be sued for all your worth. You can go bankrupt. You can be harassed by the government. You can have employees steal from you. You can have customers steal from you. You can develop ulcers. You can be evicted from your office, have your inventory go obsolete, or just be plain wiped out by your competition. Does that sound like enough excitement for you? 14 Drugs and alcohol, the worst thing that can happen to you is an overdose causing your death, and then it’s all over. With your own business, the excitement always continues.