Celebrating 200 | Episode #447 | Encore Edition #200

Right Thinking with Steve Coplon | Guest: Jim Stovall

This week's show is called "Celebrating 200" with guest Jim Stovall. Tune in and hear Steve and Jim celebrate the 200th episode of Right Thinking with Steve Coplon by discussing Jim’s bestselling book Ultimate Hindsight, Wisdom from 100 Super Achievers. You will be captivated while Steve picks up valuable pointers on how to be a better radio host.

https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
There must be lies burning brider somewhere.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Got to be birds.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Why I hire the sky.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Good morning, everybody, Glad to be with you.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, today is a really special day today because that's
the two hundredth time that I've said good morning, everybody,
Glad to be with you, and I'm so glad to
be able to say it again today. Thank all of
you for being with me for two hundred weeks. Now,
today we're going to do a celebration in the name
of the show is going to be Right Thinking with
Steve Copeland is very pleased to announce that this week's

(01:05):
show is called Celebrating two hundred with guests Jim Stowball.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Tune in in here.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Steve and Jim celebrate the two hundredth episode of Right
Thinking with Steve Copeland by discussing Jim's best selling book
Ultimate Hindsight Wisdom from one hundred super Achievers. You will
be captivated while Steve picks up valuable pointers on how
to be a better radio host. Well, for those of
you who've been listening to me since the beginning. I

(01:30):
got a lot of work to go to get better
at this, and what better thing to do than to
have one of the world's greatest human beings motivational speaker,
Jim Stowball with me again.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Jim's been on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Three other times and he's part of the curriculum that
I have in prisons, and today I've asked him to
be on to celebrate this show with us.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Jim, thanks for being our guest today.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Well, thank you and happy by centennial two hundred shows.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
For you and your audience.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
This is an amazing milestone you have here because you know,
I don't know if you realized that there are over
a half a million podcasts out there, and most of
them get one or two or three episodes, and a
few of them get a couple dozen. But it gets
pretty rarefied when you get to people that have made
two hundred shows. So my congratulations to you and your audience.

(02:21):
They're the ones that make all this possible. So thank
you for allowing me to be a part of your
celebration here.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh Jim, I thank you for being my friend and
supporting it. Well, you know, the show itself, it's a
pretty specialized kind of thing. I don't worry about how
many people listen to it, although I appreciate every single listener.
What the purpose of the show has been, right thinking
with Steve Copeland is to build an archive of shows

(02:47):
that are messages. And I have great guests on there,
like yourself, Don green A, Left for Fate, just a lot,
Robin Consargan.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
My wife, many people.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
But when I travel close to five hundred times into
prisons across the country, and I meet people everywhere that
I just want to want to get to know and
see if I can be their friend and help them
have a better life. When I do that, I always
like to say, well, you might want to listen to
the show that I did, and I don't know the
number of it, but it's about a year and a
half ago, and then I'll tell them the title of

(03:17):
the show. I do my shows as kind of an
archive to be able to send people to a message.
And I get a lot of people that I meet
all over the place that I don't even know are listeners.
They say, hey, Steve, I'm still listening to your show.
I don't listen to all of them they're usually about
a fifty five minute to an hour show. But I'm
honored that people will let me know that. Thank you

(03:38):
for that message. And Jim, you've been on the show
several times now, and we took it all the way
to the curriculum that I have that's got thirty of
my shows as part of the curriculum along with the transcript.
So men and women in prison that have that have
the tablet that they can listen to it on, they
can hear the show and read it at the same time.
And what an honor that is have people that are

(04:01):
spending their time trying to improve their lives listen to
this show. And so I think my claim to fame
is not really that I'm I've got to claim to fame.
It's that I've surrounded myself with people that are worth knowing,
worth listening to, and and so You've introduced me to
people and it's just been wonderful. I'm kind of rambling

(04:21):
on here because I'm just really kind of humble at
what's going on right now.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
What's going on right now is that a couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Ago, I got I got an email from Barbara Jean Crehan,
a person that's a member of the Tlimmer Associate leadership
group and she had met you at one of their
one of their workshop weekends, and her husband's incarcerated, and
she came up to you and introduced herself and started
she started telling you her vision to work with people

(04:49):
in prisons.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
And you sent her to me. And she's one of
the you sent me other people. Dwayne Mallup that.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Was incarcerated up in upstate New York in Attica, Wyoming
prison and for twenty seven years. You sent me him
three years ago, and he and I have developed a
beautiful friendship and I counted as a close friend. He's
just a beautiful person. But Barbara Jean, she introduced me
to Kathy Fairbanks, who you know through Klimmer. And I
want to mention that Kleimer and Associates is one of

(05:16):
the foremost leadership institutes in the world. They're international and
they have a weekly broadcast called The Compassionate Samurai Business
Hour hosted by Kathy Fairbanks. And so when I got
introduced to her, after Barbara Jean did the show with me,
and Barbara Jane forward it to Tlimber. They loved it,
and Kathy Fairbanks met me and I turned into her

(05:40):
radio show, and the very first one that I listened
to was her interview with you going over a book
that you wrote in twenty fifteen called Ultimate Hindsight. And
so in a minute we're going to jump into that.
But before we do that, I think life's all about
connecting the dots, getting a lead and following up and
just you know, growing with what's happening. And so sometimes

(06:03):
you have to self promote. So in my curriculum, I
put my my son Andrew's show his chapter. It's a
show that became a chapter in the book right before
your chapter.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
So I've done a beautiful thing for my son.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
I put him into a direct association with you when
people read my book. From the Lip to the Hip
is a pretty far distance. That's going to be published
in a couple of weeks and there'll be more information
on the show. You wrote a chapter in it, you
gave me an interview, it turned into a chapter, and
so my son's right there.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
In this countdown to the two hundredth show, Leffard Fate
was number one ninety seven. Robin Cassarzan with Barbara Creham
was number one ninety eight and I put my wife
in his one ninety nine right before you.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
So we got a little pattern here.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
If I have a lot more kids, I'll make sure
that they do some kind of a show right before
I ask you to be back on that'll work for them.

Speaker 4 (06:54):
Well, I will look forward to that, and I am
a honor to follow your bride and be a part
of this special two hundredth And you know, real quick,
just let me turn the tables just for a second.
When you look back over the two hundred episodes and
people have no idea what goes into all of that.

(07:14):
You know, I've hosted interview shows on television. That's where
many of the interviews came from, from ultimate hindsight. But
when you do this, you know what, when you look
back on that body of work, it's a huge comeount.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
What are you the most proud of at this point?

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Thank you, Jim.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
What I'm the most proud of is that I have
an opportunity to give a message to many people that
it's a message of hope, encouragement and love. The shows
geared toward people that are going through hardship and those
that want to help them.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
And so what I'm proud.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Of is that I've been able to do this and
to meet people like yourself that support what we're trying
to do for other people. That's what I'm most proud of,
is that I have a voice and that it just
keeps right on growing. You've taught me, among other things,
to how to eliminate distractions. When I first got started,

(08:07):
I visited you in Tulsa, and I had to sort
of force myself on you. Don Green introduced me, But
when I first met you, I've had so much personal
growth from my associations. I probably get more out of
the show than anybody else. Why every show I put
a minimum of five hours of preparation into. Once I
develop a theme that pops into my head when I'm

(08:28):
meditating or doing whatever I'm doing just pops into my head,
I then start to do as much research as I
can till I get it to a spiritual level. I
do a lot of scripture, but I'll print thirty or
forty pieces of scripture, read them, study them, and distill
it down to one, two, maybe three pieces of scripture.

(08:51):
So this whole show has been an opportunity for me
to get closer to the Lord and to serve him
the way that I've been chosen to do.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
And so that's what's so beautiful. Why am I proud?

Speaker 3 (09:03):
I'm proud that I'm able to thank the Lord every
single day for another day where he's using me, letting
me serve him to help other people.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Well, And I'm curious as you look back over all
these interviews. Early in my career, I was on seeing
in with Larry King after he a worked for narrative
television and me, and one of the things he did
is something you and I did today. You and I
are friends. We talked on the phone just before we

(09:32):
jumped on this video conference, but it was a very
limited conversation because one of the things Larry said was
don't leave your best conversation in the dressing room, which
is something you did. But he told me that something
will happen as you interview movie stars and athletes and politician,
you will find out the interview takes on a life

(09:53):
of its own, and sometimes he goes in a different
direction than you think it's going to. So you know,
you may be inter viewing the world's greatest baseball player
and the next thing you know, the majority of this
interview is about what he learned in the Boy Scouts,
or you know, you're interviewing a movie star and you
think you're going to talk about the movies and they end.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Up talking about their mother and what they learned from
their mother.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
So I'm just curious, out of these, has that been
your experience that sometimes the interview has a mind of
its own and goes in wonderful directions you never thought
it would go.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh. Absolutely. My answer to that is real simple.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Before I go on the air with all my guests,
I meditate and I pray and I want the Holy
Spirit to take over.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
And with every show that I do, I.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Have a basic theme and I always stated in the announcement,
but at that point, I just want it to go
deeper and deeper, and if it doesn't, it's not good.
But fortunately most every one of my shows goes there.
And so I learned this from Jeff Heiser who got
me started. Jeff Heiser had taught Network Great You And
when I talk about connecting the dots, one one of

(11:03):
my one of my trademarks with my life is that
I read a lot. And my wife's talking to me
just this morning about what's the key.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
The key is you know, just reading.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
And a couple of years ago, when I first met you,
I learned that you had listened to over eight thousand
audio books. You listened to a book every single day.
And and I get a great compliment from my wife
because she said, see if you read and listen to
books more than anybody I've ever met. You're constantly in
a book or listened to a book. And so what
I've done for preparation for your show, and all this

(11:35):
preparation is going to go out the window in a second.
And that's what I is answer to your question. Jeff
Heiser taught me my first forty shows or so were live,
and I'm confession here, these are pre recorded, but you
know they're they're air live, but you know they're not edited,
but they're just pre recorded whatever that's called. And so
when I when I went on the air with Jeff Heiser,

(11:56):
I dialed into a number. He put me live on
the air, gave me a count down and said here
we go, and then I had fifty five minutes and
the show stopped at fifty five minutes because commercials came
in and and each show, you know, I was like, wow,
I've never done this before. I've had no training in
professionally or whatever. And so so when the show was over,
he had to go on and do other things. But
he'd give me two or three minutes and I'd ask

(12:17):
him to give me some feedback. He said, you're gonna
get it, Steve, but just keep doing it. You're gonna
get better at it. That's about all he ever told me.
And then he gave me a few pointers. A couple
of them I threw away where he told me to
quit asking so much to be able to say something
like I that's part of my mannerism, and said, hey,
i'd like to I'd like to say something now. He says,
he don't have to ask, Steve. You got the mic,
you say it. But anyway, I always had notes. I

(12:38):
always prepare. That's a boy scout thing. And I don't
get to about two thirds of my show notes. And
he said, hey, Steve, you're a lucky if you do
a third of your notes. He said, once the show starts,
you know, just get started and just let it flow.
And so but I put in about five hours of
anything possible so I can get into my subject, get
my quotes together and get it going. And I've had

(13:00):
a lot of compliments where people go, hey, Steve, when
that person was talking and he brought that up. You
had a couple quotes that were right on target, and
I said, well, I appreciate that because I anticipated, you
know where we're going to go with this. Well, my
normal five hours of preparation for a show, I did
at least fifteen for Today with you, Jim. But I
did it in a special way. I want to tell

(13:21):
you what I did. I listened to the interview that
you did with Kathy Fairbanks. That's how it got started,
and I said, you know what, You've got one hundred
people and we're going to get into that in just
a minute.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
You got one.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Hundred people that you interviewed that are like some they're
all world famous, every single one of them, I mean celebrities.
You know, we will talk about it. I don't even
want to start telling them what the books about until
we do it.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
I did that. I listened to your shows that we've done.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
I read Paul Harvey's America because when I got into
your chapter in your book on Paul Harvey, you said things,
and he said things that interest me. So I bought
the book Paul Harvey's America. And I read that for
the last couple of days. Why because he's the world's
greatest radio personality ever, I think, And so why not
learn more about him?

Speaker 1 (14:08):
And I did?

Speaker 3 (14:09):
And then I've got your books right here, jim a library.
I got others, but I've got four of your Wisdom
for winter books.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
I've got I've got Top of the Hill, Will to Win,
and one Season of Hope. Those books. I've got four
of your movies. I watched The Ultimate Gift last night
with my wife.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
I watched The Ultimate Life today, the second in the series.
We watched The Lamp a couple days ago. So if
you're a high school student that does cliff notes to
be able to study for exam, I'm guilty because what
did I do. I watched your movies, you know I
watched I watched three of your movies.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
I'm going to watch The Ultimate.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Legacy tonight because your movies are fabulous. And so you
were asking me a question. I'm going to give it
back to you to continue asking me questions if you want.
But I want to take you into something here that's
a complete violation of what I was taught about radio
and that is, you cannot have dead airtime.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
You don't want dead airtime.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
But I want to ask you a question that I
really in doing all this, you know, reading these books,
getting involved in the Compassionate Samurai Organization, through your introduction
of that to me, reading The Ultimate Hindsight, and in the
other couple hours, I think I got five hours. Well no,
I'm going to tell you I've done twenty five hours
in prepar interview and I'll tell you why. All you listeners,

(15:28):
I know you want to hear Jim, but I'm sorry
that he wanted to ask me a question or two
that got me started.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
But here's what I want to tell you. I believe
that if you feed your mind with.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Good stuff the Bible, positive people, you know, people that
can be respected, and you eliminate bad stuff, ugly stuff,
nasty stuff, garbage.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
You know what all that is.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
You don't have to have me explain it. You can
become a person that's a better person. I think that's
just a simple piece of advice that I'm offering you.
And so here's something that I told Jim why we're
doing this show. The Ultimate Hindsight is a compilation of
interviews that Jim did over a twenty five year period,
and there's a whole lot behind and how Jim needed

(16:12):
to do these interviews and how he got his start
and how he started basically.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Nothing, you know.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
And as I've gotten to know Jim, I have tremendous
admiration for him. And not to embarrass Jim, he's used
to this, and that's why I'm going to lead into
my to my.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Question to him, Jim Stowball. A lot of people that
don't know him, I go, well, have you ever heard
of Mother Teresa?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
And everybody's going yet, duh? And I go, well, sure
everybody's heard of Mother Teresa unless you're maybe less than
twenty years old on you and for some reason you've
missed out. And if you're a parent and your child
doesn't know who Mother Teresa is yet, you need to
educate your parents. Your parents need to educate your child.
Mother Teresa gave so much to the world, so much
that in two thousand she was given an honor, the

(16:54):
International Humanitarian of the Year Award. Now it goes without
saying if everybody knows, anybody knows who Mother Teresa is,
and then she got that award.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
They go, well, yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
I mean, of all the people that I've ever heard about,
mother Teresa probably did more or at least as much
as anybody else I've ever heard about. And then I say, well,
Jim Stowball in the year two thousand shared that same
award with her. He got the same International Humanitarian of
the Year award. And it's like, Wow, I just told
my daughter Lindsay last night about the show we're going
to do today, and she just stopped inter tracks and said, Wow,

(17:28):
that's pretty big.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Well, that's just one of his awards. He's got many awards.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
But Jim has been in a position, through persevering, through
a lot of his adversity that we've covered on all
the other shows, to be to where.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
He can meet people.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
He can meet presidents of the United States, he can
meet famous movie stars, and then he has his own platform.
But all this has led me to this question. I
know it's a big build up to the question, but
here's what it is. Jim, being as wonderful a giver
to the world as you are, everybody wants what you
have to give them.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
You're in high demand.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
You're one of the highest paid motivational platform speakers in
the world. And I might say, though, that you've told
me in other shows that you give at least an
hour for every hour that you're paid for to some
contribution or charity. And it's been a blessing to me
that you've bestowed some of your time toward my foundation
and to me personally, you've helped me grow a lot.
I'm not the same person that you met about four

(18:24):
years ago when I called you up crying after I
had read one Season of Hope, and you took time
to get to know me, and here we are four
years later. Here's my question, Jim. You are a person
in demand. You have gone through some of the most
incredible advis hardships that anybody could ever go through, and
you are so used to people honoring you and wanting

(18:47):
to hear you.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
To give us some wisdom, give us some advice.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
I mean, you got five million people a week that
follow your articles that you started writing over twenty years
ago that are compiled some of them in your book.
Given your resume, here's what I want to ask you, Jim,
how do you yourself when you're relaxing, just trying to
trying to get away from it all and have private
time where do you go, Jim in your mind?

Speaker 1 (19:13):
What do you do?

Speaker 3 (19:15):
What's it like for you with all of this fame
and success that you've experienced in being the one of
the most sought after personalities in the world. How do
you spend your time?

Speaker 1 (19:26):
And where do you go to recharge your battery and
to do whatever you do? I'd like to really hear
more about that.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
Well, as you said, I read a book every day,
and that is, you know, in some ways, that's my business.
I've written fifty books and eight of those have been
turned into movies, and that's a big part of who
I am and what I do. But I also reading
can take anywhere and it'll allow you you want to do.

(19:57):
You know, I lived half of my life life with site,
and I've been a blind person for half of my life.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
And you know, I am embarrassed to.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
Tell you and your audience when I could read with
my eyes like you do or many of your audience
people do. I don't know that I ever read a
whole book. But after losing my site and discovering audio books,
and then being a part of a test on compressed
digital audio to see how fast people could listen to books,
I found you know, I could consume a book every day,

(20:31):
and becoming a reader made me become a writer. But
it also made me, you know, realize how big the
world is. And you know, and through books. You know, Steve,
you and I have met Napoleon Hill, and we've had
the opportunity to meet so many people. You know, I've
traveled around the world. I you know, I was visiting

(20:53):
with a group of guys not long ago. They just
come back from Mount Everest. They had that mountain and
I said, oh, did you go up the South Call
or the Hillary Step or which way? And they started
talking and they said, have you climbed that mountain? I said, no,
I've never even been close to that mountain. But I've
read a dozen books about it. And you know, you

(21:15):
can become an expert in anything you want. So books
and people are very much my refuge. And so a
lot of the interviewers you talk about in Ultimate Hindsight
that I put in my book, these are people that
had something in their life I wanted to bring into
my life. And no one's perfect. There was only one
person ever walked on this earth that was perfect.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
But so all the.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
People I've interviewed that they're flawed, just like you are,
just like I am. But what I look for is
the one thing in their life, for two things that
I think can make me better, and therefore I know
it'll make my audience better.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
And it's a Gandhi set it best.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Every man is my superior and that I can learn
something from him.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
So it's a matter of what am I going to
learn here?

Speaker 4 (22:03):
And you know, one of the people I interviewed in
the book was Steve the Tonight Show before even Johnny
Carson did it, and he used to do an interview
show called Voice to the People, and it started out
as a celebrity interview show Coaster and it was.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Live for an hour.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
Well one week, the guests didn't show up and with
a couple of minutes to go, he told his manager
Diet somebody and they ran out and they got a
Lithuanian cab driver pulled him off the street setting down.
Steve did an hour interview with him and he said
it was one of the greatest shows we ever did.
And then I realized everybody has a story. Everybody has
a story, and there's something we can learn from everyone.

(22:41):
So that's what Ultimate Hindsight's about and you know, and
I didn't intend it ever to be a book. It
was a It was a filler, Steve. I mean, I'd
started narrative television. We made movies and television accessible for
blind people, and we added extra soundtrack in between the dialogue,
and I was excited about the format. In a few

(23:04):
weeks before we went on national television, somebody pointed out
to me that we have two hour blocks of programming
we're supposed to be filling via satellite to our stations,
and our shows average an hour and a half long,
and we're going to have a half hour of this
dead air on national television and what are we going
to do about it? And I said, well, I'm going
to interview these movie stars that are in these movies.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
And I didn't have a clue in what I was doing, but.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
I reached out to them and enough of them came
on with me that it filled in all of everything
we needed for narrative television. But when I went back
and looked at those interviews, I thought, wow, that is
a treasure of information with some of the greatest people
in that industry. So we just expanded it and it's

(23:47):
become what you read about in Ultimate Hindsight.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and what a gift. So to come back to
what I'm trying to say about Ultimate Hindsight, that is this.
I've listened to the Ultimate. It's a unique book because
they've the version that I have.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
I have a hard copy of it that I love
hard copy books just to turn pages. But I also
have the E version of it, the Kendle version, and
I paid an extra dollar or two or something, and
it's got an audio that you can cut on and
it reads it. And so for all of you that
aren't sure about audio books or you'd rather read Kendall
or whatever, a book like this you can follow along

(24:23):
and it highlights about five words as the reader is
reading it, and so you can sort of like follow
what the speaker is reading and just listen to it
all you want, then look down and stop the sound
and read it some more. It's a five hour audio
that goes through that book, and the book is a
unique book. You've distilled twenty five years of interviews with
great celebrities, and I know that you're probably going to

(24:45):
do another version because you've got so many more interviews
to draw from. But every one of these is about
two pages. Very few of them go beyond two pages
in a book. And I'm a short story reader. I
love reading short stories. Edgar Hound, oh you name it,
you know, but I love short stories because why I
read every day, every night, and sometimes I don't feel

(25:07):
I get into a story that I'm going to get
too tired of not finish, so I'll read a short story.
And I've always liked short stories. I love to hear
great storytellers. And so here's what I'm saying. And I'm
going to be the guinea pig for this, Jim, and
you get some psychologists to do whatever test they want
on me.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
It's my theory that if.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
A person submerges themselves in good, positive things and gets
all that input coming into their head constantly, they're going
to become a better person. I listen to the five
hours of your book twice so far, and I'm on
my third five hours through. But I read it first,
and then I did the second, and now I'm into

(25:50):
the third listening.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
And I made a comment to you. I believe that
if somebody would listen to this book thirty times once
a day for a month, that they're going to be
a successful positive person in their lives going to be transformed. Why,
Because your interviews are incredible. Every one of these people
I would like to study, read more of each of

(26:13):
these people, learn more about their life. You have selected
some of the most positive, good giving, caring people in
the whole world. And so who are your favorites in
the book?

Speaker 4 (26:24):
Well, I always have to go back to Katherine Heppert.
She was my first big interview. We were starting narrative
television and we had a lot of classic films we
were presenting nationally on TV, and we had a Katherine
Heppern film and I reached out to her. I didn't

(26:44):
have much hope that she would come on top. She
had just turned down Letterman and Leno. She had recently
won her fourth Academy Award. No one had ever done
that before. But I sent her this note and a
letter and chiefs back. A note said, Jim, if you'll
call this number, we can discuss the interview.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well, I called the number.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
I think I'm going to talk to her agent or
major or somebody, and she answers the phone herself in
that classic Katherine Hepburn voice, and I was about to
pass out. I'm just this blind guy from Oklahoma. I'd
never done an interview, and I'm talking to Katherin Hepburn.
So I said the only thing that came to my mind.
I said, Miss Hepburn, I'm surprised you answer your phone.
And she said, Jim, don't you answer your phone? She said,

(27:28):
I always felt when one's phone rings, one should answer it,
and I said, of course they should, and I wish
I hadn't brought that up.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
And she agreed to do the interview with me.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
And it was the beginning of the success of that
because you know, when you would call agents and managers
from great movie stars and asked them to be on
the show, they want to know who else you had,
and that's kind of how they calibrate with her she
should do it or not. And so when after I

(27:57):
was able to tell people we had Katherine Hepper, then
the next week I had Friend Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Michael Douglas,
and then it just took off from there. So I
years later I told Miss Hepbert, I said that I
used you to build my television network. And she said, Jim,
men have used me all my life. At least you're
honest about now. I said, well, I appreciate that great

(28:19):
hindsighter in many many ways. The thing I'll never forget
about Catherine Hepbert is, I said, if you had not
been an actress, if you had done something else, what
do you think you'd have done? And she said, I
would have had to have found another way to support
my habit, because she said, Jim, I do this out
of and in need need to do what I do.

(28:40):
And that's a powerful thing. That's what the Napoleon Hill calls,
that burning desire or definiteness of purpose in everybody that
I have seen from the world of movies and television
and sports and politics, and the people at the very
top have an incredible passion for what they do and

(29:01):
it doesn't seem like work to them. I mean, they
just that's what they love to do, and they do it.
And you know, I would encourage everyone listening to us
now pursue that passion, that thing you love to do,
because then you'll really never work another day in your life.
You'll be pursuing the thing you love. And you know,
we succeed in life when we compete with everybody else,

(29:25):
when we outwork other people. And if you're competing with
people and they love what they do, and you don't.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
You have a tough equate because it's hard to.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
Outwork someone that's just having them and they love what
they're doing. So you know, when I talk about my
favorite interview is I always have to start with her
because she made she made all the other things possible.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
You know, your memory is incredible.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
You almost said verbatim what I'm following while I'm looking
at the pages in the book while you're talking about her.
I mean, her quote was, I am thankful that I
can make a living as an actress. If I could not,
I would have to find another way to support myself
as I pursue my passion. You you mentioned the good
thing about the book is you get a little preamble
to who the person is. I mean, Katherine Hepberg between

(30:11):
nineteen thirty three and nineteen eighty one, won four Oscars
and was nominated for eight additional Academy Awards. You know,
these are famous people. I mean, I'm going to read
a less of people in a minute. But you told
me the other day that Frank Sinatra was another one
that you always had to come back to as being
money fighbors. What is it about Frank Sinatra that impressed
impressed you.

Speaker 4 (30:28):
Well, there's yeah, there's probably no one alive today that
is as famous as Frank Sinatra's at that time. You know,
an Academy Award winning act, the top recording art, the
biggest box office straw.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
And you know what I found.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
From mister Sinakra is all the other celebrities were impressed
with Frank Sinatra. I mean they all looked up to
him the same way I looked up to them.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
And I remember sitting down to interview him.

Speaker 4 (30:57):
I interviewed him in Dallas and he was doing a
benefit for the Symphony there and we take it on
top two floors of the high at Regency Hotel for
he and his staff, and that's where we were doing
the interview, and there were helicopters flying around and they
crossed the street and everything. And I asked him, I said, wow,

(31:20):
you've created quite a stir here in Dallas and I
and he said, I have no idea what you're talking about.
And he turned to one of his guys and said
you talking about and the guy got boss, I do,
but you don't.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
And then it dawned on me, he's anywhere. Frank Sinatra
is not there. I mean, so he thinks this is normal.
He just thinks that that's.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
How life is on him all day. But you know,
I remember this star and I asked him, he said,
what do you want to be remembered for one hundred
years from now? And he said, I don't know if
people will remember me or not.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
That you know that. He said, I want to be
a guy that gave people their money's worth. I put
on a good show.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
And he said, I'd like to think people would say,
you know that Sinatra kid from Hope. You know, he
put on a great show. And he said, That's what
I'm here to do and I'll never forget. As I
was leaving, he shook my hand. I was getting on
the elevator and he said, hey kid, I hope you
lived to be one hundred years old and the last
thing you ever hear is bringing in you a song.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
And he was just one of those people. He was
bigger than life. It was really amazing.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, same thing on that one.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
I listened to that one right before he came on
the air, and that's what he said. I hope that
the last thing you ever do in your life is
here a song from me. Yeah, amazing. You know, Jim,
I learned a great deal about you from this book.
As I was starting to say a minute ago. You
give a little introduction to who each of these people are,
what kind of where their fame comes from.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
But then you.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
Distill, you pull out of their interviews some of their
advice that they give, because all books geared on asking
people to share some secrets to success that they want
to pass on to others so people can be successful.
And then at the end you always give a few
words of summary wisdom that brings it all around. And
it's a it's an easy, exciting read because it's just

(33:10):
I mean, it's one hundred You read two pages, and
that's all he might need to read right now now.
Gary Player, the South African golfer, was one of my
all time favorite people. When I was a kid. He
was out there with Jack Nicholas, Arnold Palmer. Actually Jack
Nicholas was a little younger than him. He came along
near the end of his career, I think. But I
followed all those guys. But Arnold Palmer and Gary Player

(33:31):
had some epic matches. And Gary Player was a little guy.
It was only like five six, I think, but he
could hit a golf ball five thousand yards, you know,
and he won the Trump, you know, won the Masters
and all those awards. You know what they call it,
the uh that when you went a little the Grand Slam,
I think it's called the World Series of Golf in
the Grand Slam. But what I learned I didn't know

(33:51):
as much about him. You know, he's he's a man
of faith.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
He gives great advice, but his two pages is as
powerful as anybody.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Else's what he says. He says, put problems in their place,
and then he talks about things. But I learned about you.
I learned about your childhood that you played a lot
of golf with your dad, And I bet when you
used to play golf, you probably could hit the ball
pretty good. Being a world class athlete, that was an
Olympic weightlifting champion, that was a number one recruit in
the country. When you were in high school, you probably

(34:20):
hit the ball three hundred and fifty yards back then,
I would assume three.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
Hundred and fifty yards somewhere. We never knew quite where
it would end up, but it would.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, my son likes the swing as hard as he
can and he hits the ball, but it never lands.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
An affair with you know, that's a good one. But
Gary Player gives he gives some great advice. He says,
everyone has problems as part of our moral experience. We
have troubles to teach us patients humility and long suffering,
and most important, to bring us closer to our faith. However,
it is not the problems they count, but the manner
in which we handle them. Our attitude is one of

(34:56):
the most important fundamental aspects of our lives. We have
the to make the best or the worst of any situation.
Many years ago, I was fortunate to read Norman Vincent
Peale's book The Power Positive Thinking in Dale Carnegho's book
How to Win Friends and Influence People. These excellent books
helped me to achieve a good outlook, a positive approach,
and always to maintain a good sense of humor. Laugh

(35:16):
and the world laughs with you, Cry and you cry alone.
My great Faith is most important in my life and
in that of my family. The faith has given me
courage to endure setbacks. Faith brings an enter piece and
joy that is truly the peace of God that passes
all understanding. We need to keep God's tend commandments. They
can always show us the way we must live. We
need to hold fast to the iron rod, that being

(35:38):
the word of God. Mark twain One said, this is
what you added to it. After he said all that
to you, Mark twain One said, golf is a good
walk spoiled. I think he would have been. He would
have seen the game in a whole new light if
he'd had the chance to tee off with Gary Player.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
That is just so beautiful.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
I mean that gave me a feeling of nostalgia looking
back Gary Player when I was a kid. But the
wisdom in there in the attitude. Every single person in
here has this type of a beautiful attitude. It's laid
out so good. It's a primer for a good life.
It's a masterpiece, Jim, And I'm going to do it
thirty times and I'll get back to you. You know,

(36:18):
I'll take whatever test psychologists want me to take to
see if I've changed. By your book, I could pick
anybody in here. Let me just read a list, and
you tell me to stop and give me some some
some some insights here, Eddie Albert, you've already done. Steve
Allen Dave Anderson, ed Asner, Joseph Barbera, The Cartoon Guy,
Mary T. Barrow, Dave Barry, Ralph Bellamy, Jacqueline Bassett. Okay,

(36:42):
Jacquela Bassett was one of my favorites. I'd like I'd
like you to share your your interview with Jacqueline Bassett please.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Well in the commerce, you know, she got famous for
a scene with a T shirt and a swim suit
in a movie called The dep and nobody really knew
she was before that.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
It's kind of like Raquel Welch.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
Raquel did one of my movies and she got famous
from one photo from one movie and became this word phenomena. Well,
Jacqueline Bassett had very much a similar thing. But the
thing that I told her that impacted me is, you know,
the she is a beautiful.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Person inside and outside.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
It matches up and you know, you know, we've all
been around people that we wish we'd never met because
their image that we've known of them before was much
more impressive than who they are. But she is very
much a person that you know, she she is as
beautiful insight is out and I think she's a fascinating person.

(37:53):
And you know, there are some people that are in
the movies. It comes into that. I did a couple
of movies with James Garner Identigy, and these guys they
lance the script or they hit their martin.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
They do it. It's easy for them.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
Then there are people like Jacqueline Basset, and when you
see her in a movie, you can be assured he
worked extremely hard to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
For whatever reason, it does not come natural. But people
to whom things do.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
Not come naturally appreciate it more. My late great friend
and mentor, John Wooden told me that mediocre players make
the greatest coaches because they appreciate what it takes to
have a good performance, and.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
They're willing to work hard to do that.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
And that's what I think of when I think of
Jacqueline besseet May.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
I read hers real quick, I think, And the reason is,
of all the famous people in the book, she seems
to be the most private, not looking for any kind
of herself. Here it leads in here.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
I think that philosophy of a simpler path is reflected
in her comments to me on success.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
That's what you said, and then she says.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
It is for myself, so very much involved with loyalty
in a quiet mind.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Sometimes loyalty to.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Oneself without the endless barrage of self doubt that we
beat ourselves up with. Induces a feeling of peace and
a realistic assessment of where one really is. To know
that one is a good person, thoughtful to others and
not pity is already a great success. To be responsible
and one's given word to another, To stand up for
good values without trying to control others by force and anger,

(39:25):
To make one's home welcoming to another, learning to listen
openly and to somebody without preparing your response before they
have finished. Taking pleasure in the journey as well as
the arrival. Not living in the future continually or wishing
your life away, then you respond it to that. Success
for most of us has less to do with how
we look and sound and more to do with setting

(39:46):
and achieving goals. But as Misbasset points out, true success
also involves treating others with respect.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
And living in the moment. We can't change yesterday, we
can't see tomorrow. All we have is now. We should
make the most.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Jim, You've been just a wonderful friend, mentor influenced to me.
My wife has benefit from our relationship as well. And
you asked me a question in the beginning of the
show about my proudest moment. I think one of the
proudest things I have other than that so many people
listen to my show to get direction from that you

(40:21):
helped me put out there with others, is that my
wife has done six or seven shows with me, and
she was on last week, and everybody loves my wife.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
They want more of her.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
And she's a little reserved, so to speak. She's a quiet,
quiet spirit, but when she speaks, people listen. And the
show that she did, and I think it's episode fifty seven,
I can't remember for sure, but it's called it's called
The Functional Family, and that's what Donna's message was, and

(40:51):
her message was it all starts with respect, and then
she broke down relationships, all relationships parent to child to parent,
parent to neighbor, employer and employee, whatever, everything. Though in
Donna's initial show that she did The Functional Family said
that it starts with respect, and then she built other

(41:11):
shows after that. The importance of being a good listener
and with Jack Lama.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Said, I said, not.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Not formulating what you want to respond while someone else
is speaking that is so critical. And my wife also
did a show on reflection. My wife is a very
meditative She reflects all the time and she thinks. And
so one of the greatest achievements that I've had through
the two hundredth episode of Right Thinking with Steve Coplan
is that I share it with my wife and that

(41:40):
she's as much a part of the show as I am,
with helping me talk about my theme for the week
or whatever we do. And I've noticed tremendous changes in
my wife, and so I want to I want to
just bring this up and perhaps you can give a
little bit of your wisdom. Five million people a week
or already turned into you, so it might get you
a few hundred more right now.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
And that is this.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
My wife was in a store, a department store, just yesterday,
and she was in line, and there was a young
girl in front of her in her early twenties, and
a guy about thirty, a little rough looking, so to speak.
He came up and he asked my wife and the
woman in front for money, can you give.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Me some money? And it wasn't really very nice or
blight about it, and the young girl responded in a
really harsh way, you know, like no, but you know you.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Shouldn't get you know, don't don't do that. But my
wife just kind of paid attention. And then he walked
down an island and she went and started a conversation
with him, and she said, why do you need money?
What is your situation? And he said, I just got
out of jail. And she said when did you get
out of jail? And he said, just now, I just
got out of jail right now. But the part I

(42:45):
left out was when the young girl was kind of
harsh with him, saying in no way. He got real
kind of angry and said that's the problem with everybody.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Nobody, nobody wants to do anything to help anybody. But
he was angry.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
And so then my wife kind of spoke with him,
and when she foundly been out of jail. Now he
could be in there kind of people all day long,
looking for a handout whatever. But it's obvious that he
hasn't gone through the right changes yet. And so I
asked my wife, I said, so what do you think
he needs? I mean, he went on and on and said,
I don't have anybody. Well, I got a girlfriend, and
she said, well, my husband might be somebody you want

(43:18):
to talk to, because he goes in and out of
prisons and he's got a lot of friends that are
coming in and out of prisons, and so he didn't
pick up on that too much. But she said, well,
let me have your phone number. You go, I'll give
him a girlfriend's phe number. So the question here is this,
how do we reach somebody like that? I mean, I
have my answer to that obviously, but I believe that
people like that can benefit the most from a mentorship relationship.

(43:39):
That's my lead end to you. What do you think?

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
Always go back to my late great friend and mentor,
doctor Stephen Covey, who wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
But he said, anytime there's a conflict or a failure
to communicate, he said, you should first seek to understand
before you seek to understood.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
And our first reaction.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Is often that just well, I'm going to tell them
the secrets life, and then they'll know and they'll leave
me alone. Now, people don't care how much you know
until they know how much you care. And so the
first thing with anybody like the guy is, like your
wife said, just listen and then you'll find the situation.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Really is and it's not where we are.

Speaker 4 (44:23):
But it goes back to what Jacqueline Bett said, stay
in the moment. You know, we're thinking about what we
should have said before or what I'm going to say
in the future, and.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
You know, and we're never in this moment.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
I mean, yesterday's to cancel check and tomorrow is a
promisory node. Today's cash. Today it spends and we have
to spend it wisely. So when we have that critical
moment with that person, you know, we have to sit
and ask tell me how you got here, where are you?
And then you'll find out and you'll see that opening

(44:56):
and where you.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Are beautiful, very beautiful. So, Jim, I want to just
tell you I changed a whole lot of my thinking
almost about how I think about you in a very
positive way. In the beginning, I've always viewed.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
You as that guy up on the stage, the guy
that's got all that wisdom, the guy that's got all
those awards, the guy that's gone through all the stuff,
the blind guy that overcame adverse that he stayed in
his room for a year and then then he met
you know, Lee Braxton, and he came out and you know,
in other words, your story of being who you were
and what happened to you and how you overcame it
and became the man, the speaker, the man of wisdom,

(45:33):
the great person that you are. That's your profile pretty
much so. But over the years, as I've gotten to
know you more as a person and more of a friend.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
When I watched the movie last night, The Ultimate Gift,
I just couldn't get over how brilliant. See, I've always
admired authors ever since I was a kid. I've always
just thought that people that can write a book a
good book. You know, anybody can self published these days.
But I've always admired writers, and I've allas wanted to
be one. And It's taken a little while to get

(46:02):
to where I'm becoming a writer. You know, I'm going
to get there someday.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
But what goes on in the mind of a person
like you to write a book like The Ultimate Gift
and the other books in the series.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
It is so all the characters that are there, all
those personalities.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
When you got into the Stevens family and all those ugly,
nasty children, they're spoiled to death.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
The interaction to the people, it.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Is a world of its own, and I guess you're
just drawn from all the thousands of books that you've read,
and you've got the gift of telling a great story.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
But Jim, I see you not.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
As the blind guy that's a great speaker that's gotten
through all that hardship. I see you as a man
that's just so your imagination, your talent, your storytelling, it's incredible.
And so I'm just seeing so much more with you.
And then when I read the ultimate hindsight with your
relationship to pass on things.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, I don't know what to say. I don't know
how to ask that as a question.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
The question is, wow, when you write books that become movies,
what a gift.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
That's not a question. That's my statement. I don't know
what else to say. I'm not going to ask you
a question. I'm just going to make that statement.

Speaker 4 (47:09):
Well, you know, I have written fifty books and ten
million copies in print, and all that together is dwarfed
by the number of people that watch the movies.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
I've had eight of my books turned into movies.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
And you know, I'm convinced that if William Shakespeare or
the Apostle Paul or Mark Twain were alive today.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
In addition to writing books, they'd be making movies because
that is the genre.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
And I am keenly aware of the fact that to
the world, I'm a guy that writes books I can't
read that are turned into movies I can't watch. I
understand the absurdity of that, but it's the matter of
having a story to tell.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
And telling it.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
And I never intended to be here. I invented narrative television.
We won an Emmy Award for our first season. I
got asked to speak someplaces, found myself on an arena
tour with Dennis Walei and Robert Schuler. They encouraged me
to write my first book. I did, I thought I
was done, and they kept selling and selling. So I

(48:10):
wrote several more books, and after my seventh book, I'd
written everything I knew and a few things I only
kind of suspected to be true. So when the publishers
called oneted another book, I figured I'd better make.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Up a story. I'd never written fiction.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
The Ultimate Gifts the first fiction I'd ever written, and
I let.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
The characters tell them the story.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
And you know, when I sent down to dictate that
first book, I don't.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Know how to tie.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
I don't know how to read, I don't know how
to spell anything.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
So I dictate all of my books, my screenplays, my columns.
Every week I dictate those two people in my office.
And that first day, the only thing I had in
my mind was that the book was titled The Ultimate Gift.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
I don't know why.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
And the first line of the book it said, it
was my fifty third year in the practice of the
law and my eightieth year of life on this planet,
that when I was to undertake an odyssey that would
change my existence forever. And Dorothy read that back to me,
and then I just said, now, I wonder who said that,
and what is he talking about? And over the next
five days at the Narrative Television that worked in between

(49:15):
my meetings and calls, I dictated The Ultimate Gift. And
there was never an edit, never a rewrite. That's the
way that book happened.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
And then when you get them turned into a movie,
it changes.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
It's you know, writing a book, as you know from
putting yours together, it's a very solitary thing.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
You sit alone and do a lot of work.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
When you make a movie, my book turns into our
movie and there are hundreds and hundreds of people that
work on this and they bring it to life in
ways you never even thought it would happen. Then they
all put their stamp on it and make it better
than it was going to be. But it is very
surreal to create a character in your mind and then

(49:56):
someone creates that in a movie and.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
You meet them.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
And I mean, I remember when I met James Gardner,
he was going to be Red Stevens, or I met
Lewis Gosa Junior and he was going to be this
guy in the Lamp, or Raquel Welch or Peter Fonda
or all the different people we've worked with in our movies.
And it's a privilege to get to do that, because
I understand, one in a thousand books ever gets published

(50:23):
and becomes a best seller, and one in a thousand
best sellers he's ever made into a movie, So a
thousand times a thousand, and that's a million. So it's
a one in a million opportunity. And it's happened in
my life eight times. And I have three other books
right now that are optioned for movies. So once we
can get this little corona, the challenge behind us, I

(50:44):
think there'll be more movies, and it is a privilege
when people will spend hours like you have reading your
book or a couple hours with their family watching your movie.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
That's very interesting to me. That's terrific.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
So the other thing that I've learned about your personality.
I learned so much you know about your childhood and
things from reading your books.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
And stuff, is that you're a movie producer.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
You know, you're a TV guy, and so that's another
part of the image. So you're, like I said, you're
not the guy that I knew was the athlete that
had a hard time that became something else as much,
and you're totally involved in financial literacy through certain of
the foundations that you're involved in. I mean, you do
all these things. But as I got into the Tlimmer,
I listened and read The Compassionate Samurai. Chapter three is

(51:30):
one of their qualities on contribution, and this is what
I do. This is a pointer that I want to
give everybody it's listening. If I say, I have this platform,
you're my guest today. But I'm kind of like, wow,
you know, I'm embarrassed to almost say anything about my
advice because because you know, I got Jim Stuboll on
the show today. But I'm going to get past that.
Don't worry. Here's what it is. When I'm reading a book,

(51:51):
and that chapter he talked about in giving contributions, one
of the main things you got to do is give.
You know, it's better to give than it's better to
give than receive. Here's the thing he talked about the
movie from nineteen fifty four, The Magnificent Obsession with Rock
Rock Hudson and Jane Winman.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
And so I stopped while I was reading, I googled it,
I looked at the movie. I found it on YouTube.
I cueued it up.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
I told my wife tomorrow morning, there's a movie that
you're going to want to watch. So at five point
thirty in the morning when we woke up, we watched
The Magnificent Obsession, and that was one of the most
powerful movies.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
But Jim, you're an expert, not justin given wisdom, you're
an expert in movies. And you probably you know about
all these movies, even though you didn't see them. Maybe
you know about them. You know it's great, And so
I want to give this quote. We're going to end
the show in just a second. Now, if that's okay,
I don't want to end it because I'm enjoying talking
to you so much.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
I know other people are.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
But after I went I called it connecting the dots
where I learned something. I read another book, I read
another book, and just the show I've talked about. You
know Paul Harvey because you interviewed him. He's from Oklahoma.
I didn't want to leave out tom Osborne. This is
amazing what tom Osborne had to say. Being a great coach,
tom Osborne draws on the wisdom of others and brings
his own slant to that wisdom. You're both from Tulsa,

(53:08):
Oklahoma's why I'm choosing him here. The benefit I often
pass on to young people does not originate from me.
This is Tom Osborne in your chapter.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Rather, it is a quote from Warren Buffett, who often
tells young people to invest in yourself.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
This type of investment has to do with acquiring as
much education as possible, surrounding oneself with people of wisdom
and sound character, and engaging in activities which produce physical, intellectual,
and spiritual growth. Now I'm filling your head with advice
like that from these hundred people that you've brought to
my in my palm of my hand, here is to

(53:43):
thank you. So I'm going to do two things now,
and then you can say whatever you like to end
the show, and we'll sign off Acts twenty thirty five.
In all things, I have shown you that by working
hard in this way, we must help the week and
remember the works of the Lord. G is how he
himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
I just think that's how we all should live. Jim.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
As a thank you to you, to let you know
that I value our friendship, I want to let everybody
know that. When I first visited you in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
three or four years ago, on my way to prison
in Oregon, I brought you my daughter Lindsay had given
me a birthday gift, a jar of dark chocolate caramel

(54:29):
ice cream sauce and sea salt caramel ice cream sauce.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I figured out, Hey, you're going to like that.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
You know, you're a putty in my hand once I
gave that to you, because you're a big You like
ice cream. Yeah, So I sent you and you gave
me a thank you. Just yesterday, my timing was good.
I sent you a box of four of these. So
I just want to tell you that if you do
things right, everybody listening, things will be multiplied. And look
at Jim Stowall's story. He started off with just.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
One eight ounce, twelve ounce whatever it is, jar of
the this incredible Wormet ice cream topping, and now he
got four just yesterday from me. And so Jim, I
love you, I thank you so much for me and
my friend.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Well, thank you and congratulations again on number two hundred.
And then when you get to four hundred, I'd like
to be on with you again. And then the chocolate
truck will just back up to my house and they'll
unload a whole a whole load, the truckload of chocolate.
But it is as you said from acts, it's a
matter of working hard.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
We talked a minute about Gary Player, you know, and
I remember asking you. I said, what do you think me?
You great? He said, I have hitten more golf balls
than any man that ever lived. He said, there's no
one who's hid more golf balls than I have.

Speaker 4 (55:42):
And later on I interviewed Jack Nicholas and Lee Trevino
and I said, you know, player, says, he said.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
More golf balls than anybody, and they took him and
they said, that's Syrus. So he really has.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
And you know, so you know, perfect your craft, do
the work, believe in yourself, and find way to give
it away.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
That's what the ultimate gift is.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
You know, we find, you know, a meaning in life
when we find our gift. But we create significance when
we give that gift away. So find what you do
well and give it away. And Steve, that's what you're
doing through these podcasts and your work and the prisons
and everything you do. So thank you for allowing me
to be a part of this by centennial show. And

(56:24):
I look forward to many many more to come.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
You're not going to have to wait for two hundred
and more to get some more chocolate sauce. I promise
you that. But with that said, let's get rid of the.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Coronavirus and I can come hand deliver some on my
way to a prison one day.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Look forward to it.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Jim, Thank you again, God bless you everybody. Thanks for listening,
and so we're starting with number one, two hundred and
one next week. I look forward to being with you
again next week. God bless everyone, Thank you, thanks for
listening to right thinking with Steve Coplan.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
I'll look forward to being with you again next week
and remember don't quit, plan ahead, it will get better.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
God bless you and have a great week