All right, Thrive Nation. Welcome back to the conversation. It is the Thrive Times show on your radio. We're talking all about

Lenny Kravitz and his path to success. Doctor Z, do you love some Lenny Kravitz? I do, man. I dig as music. I really do. It's really good. I just, you know, it's still kind of iconically classic. I mean, I kept myself sometimes listening to some of his way came out the 80s, you know, his first album. And so, of course, you know, he's, I found out today. I mean, he's just a few months older than me. We're the same age and kind of, yeah, when he said he graduated high school in 82, so did I. Yeah. When you said he put out his first album in 85, I did not.

When he married Lisa Bonet in Las Vegas, I wasn't there. Think about this. But our lives are very similar. 1989 is when he finally got his album, let love rule released by Virgin Records. Now, I want to ask you, when did you finally make your mark as an optometrist slash entrepreneur? I mean, when did you finally get your own business? What year was that 91? I mean, I graduated 90. Can I could I point out something? He got his album out for I did. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, I think I think the thing is,

he is that that we're not saying that he's better than you. In fact, we're saying that the really great things take time. You know, they take time. Well, I could have, you know, I married, you could have beat him. I could have, I could have skipped college undergraduate. And this guy is out and started doing free exams. I mean, that's the, that's what, that would have been the same equivalent, right? If I'm 82 high school. And I just go into an office and I just said, I'm going to work for free. Yeah. And I just going to start doing I exams. Yes. And for, for nothing. Now, there's a little bit of a difference in playing in a dive bar for free. And then going into doing

medical care for free. If you don't have the license to do it. So I kind of had to get the license. Now, here's the deal with Lenny. Okay. His big break. I want to ask you how you got your big break Z because there's a lot of optometrist out there competing for the business. And you had to find a way to stand out and the marketplace. Okay. So Lenny is a great musician. Now he got connected by Henry Hirsch into the main stream. He gets the record deal with Virgin Records now. Okay. But his music is struggling to get

on the radio. It's struggling to get the airplay that he wants it to have. And so he decides he's going to start writing music for other people.

And he writes a song for Madonna, a song called Justify My Love, which by the way is the most weird, crazy song ever. Don't watch it on YouTube. Weird.

But that song got played on the radio all the time. Justify my love. And they said, you know, this song was written by Lenny Kravitz. They're going to Lenny who?

And then people made their way back to his album and then bam, his album. When did you change his name back to his real name?

I have failed the Thrive Nation. I cannot tell you what year that was. I just know that the whole concept of going by that early stage name.

It took him about four years, they said, Romeo Blue before that war off. So 1989, though, he's finally now. He's finally finally getting some radio play.

And that's really when his success began to happen. I want to ask you Z. I mean, 1991, you start your optometrist.

When did you nail down your note, brainer, your advertisement, your marketing? When did you finally get it to where you're like, man, I'm able to fish with a net, baby.

I'm able to get the people in the door at Dr. Roberts, Dr. Robert Zeldin Associates. It was probably 92, definitely by 93.

92. Yeah. And we were rocking by 94. And then 95, I went to go in the June. I went to go be the president by Mark.

And then June of 96, I came back in the January of 97 was then I had a whole rebranding, a whole new thing that I did.

So I would say it was pretty early. I was bound and determined to set myself apart. And I knew the only way I was going to get that word out.

And so I took a very aggressive stance. I took 10% of my gross income.

10% 10%. So if you paid me $10 for something, I took one dollar off of that. And I put it in an advertising time.

So the business owners listening right now, they're doing a million dollars of revenue.

You were taking the equivalent of $100,000 a year and spinning it on advertisement.

Correct. Which is extremely high, extremely aggressive, but I was delaying my gratification. I didn't have a big house.

...