Craig Clemens is a world-renowned copywriter, entrepreneur, and Founder of Golden Hippo.
Here, he shares his story of clipping coupons to afford McDonald’s value meals to building a worldwide brand with a team of almost 1,000 strong.
Craig is also one of the Featured Speakers at Lucrative Speaker, our upcoming 5-day, online summit. He will share what Richard Branson taught him about public speaking and how that changed his trajectory as a speaker.
Free to sign up! Details & registration: https://lucrativespeaker.com
Mindie: Welcome back to another episode of The Lucrative Society. I’m here today with my dear friend, Craig Clemens. I’m really excited for all of you listeners to get to know Craig because he not only has an amazing story, he has some pretty cool things to share with you. So first off, Craig, welcome to the show.
Craig: Thanks, Mindie, great to be here.
Mindie: Yeah, it’s awesome to have you here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on who you are, what you’ve been up to, I would love to begin with just kind of the broad strokes of your career. You’ve done a lot of different things. You had an interesting path. So if you could talk about a little bit of the evolution of your career, I would love that.
Craig: Okay, cool. So start from the beginning or give a high-level overview and then fill in blacks?
Mindie: Let’s start from the beginning because I know that the beginning is really different than where you’re at now. So I’d love to hear the contrast.
Craig: Sure. So yeah, I was one of those kids who didn’t do really well in school. I had a 1.7 GPA in high school. I was barely allowed to graduate. Luckily my mom knew the principal because she was a teacher in the district and pulled a favor. So I got to graduate on the condition that I would go to summer school, etc. Right after school, I entered the lucrative field of pizza delivery, which was a whole lot of fun. I got to drive my convertible 10-year-old four banger Mustang around the city, eating slices of pizza, smoking cigarettes – not proud of that, but that was what I was doing at the time. I remember I was really proud because the car was a stick shift and I could smoke a cigarette, eat a piece of pizza and drive stick at the same time. That was what was on my mind back in those days. So I wasn’t very…
Mindie: Very impressive Craig.
Craig: …Success minded, I was just about having the best time humanly possible. And that was what I did when all my friends went off to college. They went to San Diego State or University of Arizona or all the schools that are popular for California kids, and I went into pizza delivery and junior college at a college called Moorpark. And as I was going there, I would be taking classes, and really the only reason I was there was because my parents wanted me to get a college degree. Actually, I shouldn’t say wanted, I should say they were forcing me to get a college degree. I still wasn’t doing good in school. So I would take a class and I would be failing and then I would figure out the exact day I could drop the class and not have the “F” count on my record. So I had this ratio for about 50% completion ratio of classes I’d sign up for to them actually hitting my report cards. I would have been probably eight years in junior college if I had stuck with that plan, so that wasn’t going that well. Then I got a job doing telemarketing and that was fun because it was the first time I was getting paid to do something skill-based. Now, yeah, if you can deliver the pizzas a little bit faster than someone else, you know, this was before Google Maps, Mindie. I don’t know if you were even around during this time, but you had to pull out this big piece of paper with little lines and street names and stuff on it.
Mindie: You know what, Craig, you are not that much different in age than I am. Let’s just be clear about that.
Craig: Okay, all right, all right. So anyway, you could make a little bit more money if you could know your routes a little bit better. But the telemarketing was pay based on skill, and it was straight commission. So if you didn’t make a sale, you didn’t get paid. And I went in there and I was pretty good at it. I made a sale my first day and within a couple of weeks, I was top 10 in a company of about 35, so I was feeling good about me actually making money with a skill. It wasn’t a lot of money. I was making a couple grand a month or something like that, but it was more than I was making delivering the pizzas. And I heard about some other fellow junior college students of mine that had gotten a job at a credit card merchant account company that helped businesses set up to take credit cards and they were making $5,000 to $6,000 a month and It was also telemarketing. They were just calling businesses and selling them something that had a higher price, whereas I was selling tools and industrial supplies to mechanics and farmers and folks like that.
So I asked them to get me a job, they said, “No”. I think maybe they were intimidated, I don’t know. And so I went over to the competitor of theirs and I saw that they happened to be hiring too. I put in an application, and I got hired, again, straight commission. I wasn’t quite as good at that as I was at the tools because when you’d call people to sell them tools, you have to close the deal in the single phone call. With the credit card accounts, it’s a process. It’s a big decision for the business owners, so you got to follow up with them and yada yada yada and because of my work ethic, I wasn’t the best at following up. That said, I was still doing pretty well. I made $43,000 my first year there and I was only 21 so I was rich, basically. And that was when I told my parents “Hey, Mom and Dad, I think I have a life path figured out that doesn’t require this college thing, and so I’m going to drop out. I’m sorry but I made adult money. There are people at this company making 100 grand a year, the top guy makes 300. I’m going to do this and see where it goes.” They were not pleased, but I did it. And then I was still living in a pretty boring town and most of [my friends] lived in San Diego and they were having a blast living in the dorms or trying to get their own apartments and going to parties and all that fun stuff. And so I decided to move down to San Diego and I thought I would just get another job at a credit card merchant account place down there or some other high ticket phone sales thing. And the first job I got was selling Direct TV. That was about a $3,000 a month thing, but the hours were terrible. It was like 11 am to eight at night, something weird like that. So it just ate up these huge chunks of weird time. And so I only lasted there a month and long story short, Mindie, I could not find another job for years. And that $43,000 I’d made, I was supposed to give half of it to the IRS, but I had to spend it because I wasn’t making any money.
Mindie: Yeah, I’ve been there and done that.
Craig: So yeah, flash forward I’m 23 years old. I’m having a blast still going all the college parties like Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused even though I didn’t go to the college. But broke as a joke, you know, $2 drink night saved my life and even to get food was a challenge at the time. I remember I had to clip through coupons to go to McDonald’s, you know, get the dollar off the two cheeseburger value meal. And it was just one dead-end telemarketing job to another and then I met a gentleman who you know as well named Evan Pagan. Evan told me he was making really good amounts of money selling information online to men that would help them get more dates with women. And it seemed a little confusing at first but he told me he made $4,000 one month and the next month he told me made $17,000, next month he only made $70,000. At that point, I said, “Okay, man, I’m coming to work for you. I’ll shine your shoes, I’ll wash your car, whatever it is man–”
Mindie: Whatever you want.
Craig: This telemarketing thing is not working out and I need to learn something else and that’s a shit ton of money. And he said, “Thanks, but no, thanks.”
Mindie: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Craig: Yeah, he wasn’t really interested.
Mindie: I don’t know why not, Craig.
Craig: So I go back on the phones, at the time, I was working at a company that would help car dealerships sell used cars in a way that was shadier than they normally do. So do this thing called a slasher sale. Do you know what a slasher sale is?
Mindie: I don’t.
Craig: Okay, it’s not really relevant to the story but it’s pretty funny. Would you like to hear?
Mindie: Yes, what the heck is a slasher sale?
Craig: So you’d announce in the newspapers around the dealership that you’re giving away a car for like six bucks and then you get a ton of people showing up the day of and you’ve put a chain-link fence around the dealership so they can’t get in. And then you got a guy on the microphone and he goes, “Ladies, gentlemen, be patient, we’re going to open the gates. There is a $6 car in here but there’s a lot of other cars that have been marked down and are at great prices today and just put your hand on the car you want and our slasher is going to go around and give you the best price on that car.” And so I wasn’t the actual slasher, but I would get the car dealership to take this thing as a marketing promotion. So then they open the gate at 8 am and the people start running into the cars. There are fistfights over the $6 car, and then the slasher will go over and there will be a woman with their hand on the car and it’ll say $12,000. He’ll be like, “Ma’am. You like this car, don’t you?” and she’ll say, “Yes, I do.” He’ll be like, “How would you like to drive this car home today?” and she’s like, “I don’t know if I can afford it. Then he’ll get this big marker and he goes, “Slash slash, how would you like to pay $10,000 for this car?” And she’s like, “Oh!” Then he goes, “Wait, it’s not good enough. Slash slash, how would you like to pay $8,000 for this car?” “Okay, okay, I’ll take the car.” Then he goes to the salesman and says, “Okay, take this nice woman in and write up the deal.” What the people don’t know is that the dealership has taken all the cars and marked up the prices by $4,000 to $6,000 on each car the night before…”
Mindie: So then you can slash them down.
Craig: Yeah, it was just a big charade so not my proudest moment but that’s what I was doing when I met Evan and I needed to get the hell out of there because I didn’t feel good about what I was doing and I was broke as a joke, so it was a losing combination. So I looked at what Evan was doing. and he was sending out these newsletters with dating tips and advice on email. And he said every time I’d send an email he’d sell $4,000 worth of his courses. And I look at the emails and I thought, “Hey, I could write this stuff. I could write a dating tip.” So I wrote one and it was called “Two Tips on How to Kiss a Girl.” And I forget what the tips were, but I sent it to him and he wrote back and he was like, “Okay, now we can talk.” And, yeah, I remember thinking, “Wow, if I could write one of these a week, and he’d give me 10% of that 4000 that’d be 400 bucks. That would be life-changing money for me.” So that was my hope, but he actually gave me a job with a salary of $3,000 a month, which was extraordinary at the time. I hadn’t seen that kind of money in a few years. And when I did, I blew through it all and at this point, I was [inaudible 11:59]
So I got the job and I learned that what he was doing, both in these newsletters and with the initial ways of speaking to customers, was giving a lot of information and then asking for a sale at the end in print. So you go on the webpage for his dating advice book and it was like 20 pages, basically just a really long sales pitch for how this book is going to help you get over your ex and meet 10 new girls this weekend and one of them is going to be the woman of your dreams to have as your wife and make a beautiful family and this time you’re not going to fuck it up because you got this book in your corner.” And so that was fascinating to me because it was the same type of pitch, Mindie, that I was saying on the phone, when I would call a car dealer and say, “Hey, we’ve got this unique sales offering that is going to bring a bunch of people in. You’re going to sell a bunch of things. You’re going to make a bunch of money. It’s not going to cost you that much compared to how much you make.” But I was having to call these dealers up and spend all the time getting through to the right person and then getting rejected by them and then having to call back and follow up. Evan was just taking a sales pitch, putting it on a web page and then the people were going and reading that, and he was putting it in front of millions of people on the internet. And sure, a lot less of them would convert than the people would have if you’re having a direct phone conversation, but you could show it to millions. So it was basically salesmanship at scale and that blew my mind. And that is what marketing is, salesmanship at scale.
So I was fascinated and I started reading all the marketing books and Evan would send me to programs by legendary marketers like Gary Bencivenga and John Reese. I stopped listening to music in my car, I only listened to marketing audio tapes for three years, and that became my college education in a way. I worked my way up through the company and I started doing a lot of that writing which is called copywriting. And Evan is a master at it himself, so I had him in my corner training me and I became a pretty proficient copywriter. Within five years, I was making really good money and salary from him and on the side, I started a little marketing company with my two brothers, it was doing lead generation for other businesses using some of the things that I had learned working for him. My brothers were really good at doing the advertising like buying banner ads and things like that and that business started doing a couple million a year or so and a lot of it was profits. So we were making good money and that was kind of my start. That was from 2003 to 2009, about that.
Mindie: So tell me what you’re up to now because you’re a very humble person and in your words “A pretty proficient copywriter”. You have been called by other copywriters, “One of the greatest living copywriters today”, so let’s just be clear about where you’ve come from and where you’re at now. So tell me about your business now.
Craig: Sure. So 2009 the recession hit. I actually got laid off from Evan’s company and the business I started my brothers just poof in like four weeks was making zero money. I moved out of my house in the hills. At that time, I had a nice house with a pool I had to move out into an apartment with my brother. I had to sell my Porsche and I was driving this old Nissan again. Actually, for a minute there, I bought a ‘66 Chevy Nova Wagon because I didn’t want to have a car payment and that was for like $14,000 or something like that and then I was done, I had no car payment. It would break down all the time. And I was like back, you know, it felt like I’d regressed.
Mindie: Yeah.
Craig: The only thing I wasn’t doing was delivering pizzas, but I had the skills now and the skills of copywriting of marketing and mindset that could not be removed no matter what the economy. And that’s why I love what you teach, Mindie. It’s so powerful because you’re teaching people skills that people are going to have no matter what’s going on outside. They’re going to be able to use the skills that they learn from you and these programs to be able to excel in any economy. And that’s really important to think about right now because who knows what’s going to happen the next six months, three years, 10 years.
Mindie: Exactly.
Craig: So I had the skills and I ended up partnering with another guy who wanted to make courses. A gentleman named Josh and he wanted to make workout courses like P90X, he had dating advice ideas as well. So I partner with him and my brothers. We started making and selling these courses and they did pretty well. I was writing all the copy and Josh was the guru and my brothers were doing the advertising and the split testing and things like that. Then we got into nutritional supplements because Josh and my brother Kurt are really into fitness. They started formulating their own nutritional supplements and eventually we bought a small skincare company as well and we started selling those and that’s how we got into consumer products. One day I was at a party in Las Vegas, I was still single these days, and I ran into an old friend of mine who was a cosmetic surgeon. He had a practice in Beverly Hills, and he said, “Hey, I heard you have a skincare brand now, maybe we could sell some of those in our practice.” I said, “Wait a second, you’re a handsome cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills. Why don’t you have your own skincare line?” He said, “Well, nobody’s ever asked me if I wanted one before.” I said, “Well, we know this skincare thing now, why don’t we partner together and do this?” And they said yes, we’d struck a deal. We didn’t know what a deal should look like but we made something up, launched a brand called Beverly Hills MD which is still around today and doing amazing and that was how we got in the business of partnering with people of expertise and building brands around their passions.
So flash forward today we have a company called Golden Hippo and we partner with some of the world’s top doctors and celebrities and experts and create great consumer products in nutritional supplements, skincare, beauty, a few other categories. Just wants to brand with Randy Jackson from American Idol. It’s about digestive health. He’s had a long journey in that and has lost a bunch of weight and doing amazing now. Just partnered actually with Tony Horton from P90X. We have a sports nutrition brand called Power Life that is shakes and all your things to help you in active aging. Tony is 61 years old, he looks like he’s 40. It’s for people who still want to, no matter what their age, be out on the tennis courts, on the golf course, running marathons, it’s the brand for those people that really want to stay active and maintain muscle mass. So it’s been really exciting to partner with some of the top folks in the world and we never raised any money, but we somehow grew the company and stayed profitable and we have about 900 people across five offices. We just opened our sixth office in Shanghai to go bring some of our brands internationally. So we’re so selling Beverly Hills MD and Gundry MD is another brand of ours, in China. And, man this COVID thing has been wild because we had to convert to a virtual company from our corporate office, but our team has really stepped it up. I’m so proud of everybody. And we also have benefited from all the eyeballs on the internet and the mindset right now. Everyone’s finally realizing, “Hey, this health thing is kind of important.
Mindie: Yeah, I maybe need some supplements.
Craig: Yeah, if you don’t have health, you have nothing else and so this has been good for our business as challenging as it has been. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to keep helping the world get these products that they need to maintain a good level of health and vitality. So that’s what we’re doing now. And always looking for great folks to partner with, and also always looking for great people to join the team. So that’s the lay of the land currently.
Mindie: Craig, I love your story because what it speaks volumes of is potential. You go from like making no money delivering pizza to where you’re at now, which is such an extreme shift. So one of the questions that I ask all of my guests on this show is how do you define wealth?
Craig: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, it may be a biased answer, but as I was saying, and I think everyone is waking up to the fact that as my partner Randy Jackson says, “Health is the new wealth.”
Mindie: Right.
Craig: I mean, it really always has been and I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “A healthy person has 1000 dreams. A person without health only has one.” And so I think first and foremost your health has to be there and that includes your mental health. I know plenty of people who are very financially successful that are miserable because they never did the work on themselves and got out those demons and the fears, frustrations, anger. It’s inside of us all no matter how well our parents did, things get a little sticky along the way because we just inherit things from our parents that they got from their parents and they got from their parents. I just went to an amazing workshop called Hoffman Process you might have heard of.
Mindie: Yeah.
Craig: That helped me unwind a lot of that. I’m always doing that type of stuff and so I think health, and then love is next. And, damn right money buys you a lot of happiness too. I definitely think that there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a level of income that allows you to provide well for your family, help out causes you believe in and get yourself some nice things and material possessions too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, either. But without health and love, you’re going to be miserable. So the happiness that you can buy with money, if you don’t have health and love is always going to be short-lived. It’s always going to be exciting to get a brand new car if you’re a man, you know, most men, right? Or some guys are into watches or guns or clothing or whatever. Women have sometimes different interests. It’s always going to be exciting to buy something really cool material, but it’s short-lived. The true depth of happiness comes from love and you can’t really enjoy that if your health isn’t intact. Not to mention, Mindie, as I’m sure you know, when your physical game is strong, when you’re on your game, working out, eating right, doing your meditations and keeping your body in primo operating condition, your mood is just a lot better. So my best friend, his fiance’s son is having some mental health issues. The first thing I asked is what is he eating?
Mindie: Totally.
Craig: “Oh he eats fast food every meal.” And that’s where I’d start. I wouldn’t start with the Prozac or any of these pills and whatever there is out there. Start with the diet because that’s your body’s fuel tank and what you’re putting in is what you’re getting out.
Mindie: Craig, I love everything you’re saying because that is the whole point of this show. It’s like, wealth, happiness, where’s that intersection? So I love that you’re giving people permission to have that material stuff and yeah, that can be fun, but also knowing that that’s not going to solve the problem. So I totally appreciate what you just said. There is a four-part question that I have for you and I’ve asked this to each of our guests also. It’s based on the acronym H.E.R.B. So “H” stands for habits and I would love to know from you, what are some of the habits that allow you to continue to produce at such a high level and also have that happiness, enjoy your life? What are your habits?
Craig: I am still a vivacious reader of marketing books, studier of advertisements, hundred years old or brand new. If I hear something that someone, whether it’s a competitor or not, in any space, if I hear something that’s killing it, I go and dissect the entire advertisement. I watch the trends also. I think if I was going to summarize all that it would be reading. I’m just always reading. I’m trying to make the shift from less articles to more books but I still read a lot of articles and industry newsletters. And then during this time where we’ve been in a downtime, I’ve been crushing about one book a week, and I haven’t figured out this trick that some people do, where they only read like every third page of the book and absorb the whole thing. You hear about these people that can read a book in a day. It takes me a week if I’m really on it, but I’ve been going through about a book a week as we’ve been in this downtime, and that’s been feeding my brain and making me feel really good. It’s just building the knowledge that keeps on giving no matter what the economic conditions. That’s what reading and immersion does for you.
And today, there are so many amazing courses online, that there’s even a way to go about above and beyond books. When you take these courses that people are putting together with expertise that is taught in 90 minutes versus a whole week reading a book, you can get someone’s best stuff in 90 minutes now, thanks to the internet. That wasn’t really around that much when books were invented. I mean, there were classrooms and things like that but I don’t know if there was anyone putting together a 90-minute info product and today there’s such a blooming industry with programs like you’re doing, with Masterclass, which is a little bit less tactical, but you’re also hearing from some people who are best in the world what they do. And then stuff you’re putting together, you’re hearing from people who are best in the world at what they do, and really tactical, getting the nuts and bolts but also the high level like this question you just asked me, habits. So consume content. That is a big one that I still try to do a lot.
Let’s see. I also am a big fan of working out often. I quit running when I moved to LA because I lived on a really steep hill whereas in New York, I live next to the Brooklyn Bridge, so I’d run across it every day. And I didn’t realize this Mindie, this connection, but somehow I started hitting the wall in my days like five or 6 pm I’d hit the wall and I needed to take a nap. And there’s nothing wrong with taking a nap but I would just completely hit the wall. Sometimes even after the nap, I was still groggy and I was just done. Sometimes it would happen as early as three in the afternoon and I couldn’t figure out the reason. I thought it just because maybe I was turning 40 and because I was drinking too much caffeine in the morning. So I was trying to alter the caffeine timing and all that. And then I moved neighborhoods and I started running again. Instantly as soon as I started running three days a week my energy came back. That is what it was.
Mindie: See how that works, right?
Craig: I was still weightlifting but I wasn’t doing that steady cardio running. So I know it’s kind of common sense advice but even me who’s been a fan of fitness for a long time, I didn’t even realize the connection to the energy with that extended working out. So that’s a basic one. When I used to hear basic – I like to say basic bitch – advice from people, I would be like, “What the fuck? Where’s the tactic? Where’s the single line or the magic bullet?” And then I had an experience with Richard Branson. I was on Richard Branson’s island with an entrepreneur group and I got up to make a speech actually. This is three years ago when I was just starting to get more into the public speaking game. I got up and he was in the audience and it was a three-minute talk. It was called the 180 and you have to give an that makes someone do a complete 180 in 180 seconds, right? So I got up to do mine and I said, “Okay, everyone, bear with me. I’m trying to improve my public speaking, but I’m going to do this. So timer, go.” So I did my idea. Later we’re on a neighboring island and I met the bar. This was not Richards Island, it was an island open to the public but he walks into this bar and my wife and I are on one side and he walks up to the other side and starts to order a drink and there’s nobody next to him. And I said, “Sarah, wow, this is our chance to go talk to Richard one on one?” Because even though you’re at his island, it’s a lot of the people and he’s busy and all that. So we have this opening but I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to look stupid and so I just thought, “Man, I should have read his biography before he got here.” So I just said, fuck it. I’m not going to talk to him. He looks across the bar, he sees me and Sarah over there. He grabs his drink, he walks over to us, puts his drink down next to me, and says, “So you want to improve your public speaking?” I say, “Yes, I do.” He said, “Okay, well, here’s three things that have worked for me.” And he laid down three things that worked for him in public speaking. The three things he said to me were quite basic and at the summit I’ll say what they are and I will also explain how I decided, even though these are basic, and I was like, “What is this basic advice”, how I was going to dive deep on each of the points and when I dove deep and really started journaling on what he said, I found the magic. And that’s what I found is that sometimes it’s the simplest advice that’s the most important. It just comes down to applying it.
Mindie: It’s so true. I tell my clients that all the time, like my whole job is just to remind them of probably what they already know. It’s like just keep doing this very simple, very basic stuff and then that over time, creates the results. So moving from the “H” to the “E”, the “E” stands for environment. I would love to know what you allow into your environment or do not allow in to your environment to just keep your mindset sharp, keep doing what you’re doing.
Craig: Yeah, so again a basic thing but my wife’s a holistic health practitioner and eating healthy I’ve noticed since I got in my late 30s– I cheated this morning and had a breakfast burrito, I’m feeling that in my stomach right now. If I eat my greens, I’m doing much better. I take like 80 different types of vitamins a day, you know, I’m on that. So I still have my cheat meals. I got pizza basically in my blood as a former pizza delivery guy, so you know that’s going to be on the rotation once every week or two, but negative stuff is out for the most part. Negative food, try to push it out. I try to eat organic healthy food most of the time. Negative people, try to push them out. Downer people that aren’t thinking about growth and thinking about improving their own lives like being the best person they can be for their family, being the best family they can be for the world, don’t want to hang out with those people. So I look for people that have that growth mindset and I love hanging out with outside the box thinkers. So at the same time, I don’t like to have in my environment, people who are closed off, closed-minded. I hate hardcore Democrats. I also hate hardcore Republicans. I hate people who are just really biased and one-sided, that aren’t able to open their mind to different viewpoints, drives me nuts.
Mindie: Yeah, I’m with you on that for sure. I cannot wait to ask you this one because I know that we could probably spend the next hour talking about this, but the “R” stands for resources. So resources could be books, programs, you’ve already mentioned a couple mentors, events, whatever, what are some of the resources that have helped you develop and that you highly recommend to others?
Craig: So community is so big. I love that saying that “Your network is your net worth.”
Mindie: Yeah.
Craig: People think that they need to sometimes have all the growth and community from people who are above them, nut no, it can come from people that are on your level and it can come from people who are the next level down because one of the best ways to learn is by teaching. Every time I do some type of presentation like this, I learn something. I’ll tell you something I learned today in this talk with you.
Mindie: What’s that?
Craig: I have never thought before that marketing is salesmanship at scale. That was the first time I thought of that.
Mindie: Nice.
Craig: If I do say so myself, that’s pretty damn smart.
Mindie: I’ll say.
Craig: That’s a good way of putting it. I’ve heard that copywriting is salesmanship in print. Well, marketing is salesmanship at scale. So I just thought of that because I’m telling other people what I do. So teaching is one of the best ways to learn. When I was first starting off on my own, I would do Marketing Money Mondays, and we would get a few people together the first Monday of every month, we would order Thai food, we would split the bill and two people would share what they were doing that was working well for them.
Mindie: Nice.
Craig: That was transformative to everyone in that group and when you have a group like that, then you can start inviting people who are badasses. I was reaching out to people I saw, for example, John Reese was coming into town who was on a way higher level than any of us and I said, “Hey, John, I got this group, we meet once a month. Can I do it on the Monday that you’re in town and you come hang out with us and talk? You don’t have to do anything we can just chat. You don’t do any presentation or anything.” And he said, “No problem” because people want to share what they know. So think of community on three levels. Think of the teaching community, you’re going to learn something by teaching. Think of putting together peer groups like I was doing. It doesn’t take a lot of money. You don’t have to have a fancy venue or anything like that. You can get a peer group together to meet at a coffee shop or meet and split Thai food or whatever it may be but do it regularly and have a format and be the leader. Then you learn leadership and when you’re the person making the connections, then everyone wants to help you when you have an ask. And then the community can also benefit from people who are where you want to be because when you’re the community creator, you can get the people to come be a part of your community, and then you also get some more one on one time with them than everyone else does. So I would say– Resource was the question right?
Mindie: Yes.
Craig: Make your community a resource and be a community creator, be a community leader. Or if you’re in someone else’s community, step up and be a leader in their community. If you’re a member of The Lucrative Society, be the one that is doing side groups that grabs the people in your town and gets them together once a month to study these principles or practice your speeches to each other on Zoom. Be the organizer, be a leader because you’re going to have some benefit, and it’s also building you skills that are evergreen and will benefit you no matter what you’re doing.
Mindie: Totally. And you know what I’ve asked a lot of people this question and nobody has talked about community so that rocks. That leads us to the “B” which stands for beliefs. What are some of your core beliefs or your worldviews – how you see the world – that help you to create the reality that you have created?”
Craig: That’s a great question. So one of my big beliefs is that society often has it wrong. For example, there is that set path that you’re supposed to go where you go to preschool then kindergarten then grade school then college, then you go and get a corporate job. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s universally wrong, but it’s definitely not universally right. And society also pretends it’s universally right, that makes society wrong. So that’s one example, right? So that’s an important belief. I think beliefs also come down to something I’m learning more about recently, which are mental models. Mental models are ways of looking at different situations but taking the same model and putting it on top of different situations. So an easy one to explain is the 80/20 rule. Have you heard of that? The Pareto principle?
Mindie: I have, yep.
Craig: Okay. So the short of it is that you’re going to get 80% of your results from 20% of your activities. So for me, it’s writing sales copy. And for you, Mindie, do you know what it is?
Mindie: Coaching.
Craig: Coaching, right. So the mental model is the 80/20 rule. Take that 80/20 rule and apply it to every part of your life. Ask yourself, what are you doing at 20% that’s getting you 80% of the results. Applying it to working out is a great example. So, if you’re thinking about working out with weights, the 20% that gets you the 80% would be what are called compound movements, like doing squats, which work basically from your heels up to the middle of your back. That whole area, like half of your freakin’ body’s muscle mass, is being worked by one exercise. Deadlifts are another one that work a lot of muscle mass, pull-ups. The opposite though would be something like calf raises. It takes the same amount of time to do a set of calf raises that work this little circular area, as it does to do set of squats to work half your damn body.
Mindie: Yeah, you know what’s funny about when you brought that immediately to fitness and health, that was the first thing I thought of when you said 80/20. I know for me, I can work out regularly through the week but when I go on a big, huge hike, that’s 20% of the whole week, but it definitely impacts 80% of my health and well-being so I was right there with you. And as we wrap this up, I want to ask you, Craig, if people are interested in learning more about you, if people are like, “This dude’s a rock star, I want to know more about this guy”, where should they go? Where should I send them?
Craig: Yes, so I’m going big on the ‘Gram.
Mindie: I’ve seen that.
Craig: My handle is just @craig. And I have also decided to get more focused on Twitter. It’s different types of content because I like to experiment, see what works on different platforms but Instagram, I have more motivational, inspirational type stuff, Twitter I have more marketing insight, business development type stuff. So my Twitter name is @CraigClemens, just my full name. Hit me up on both platforms. Tell me you found out about me through this interview.
Mindie: Yeah, and I’ll link to both of those in the show notes on the site so that’s fantastic. And Craig, you are also going to be speaking at Lucrative Speaker.
Craig: Can’t wait.
Mindie: I wonder if you could give just a little hint about what you’re going to be talking about.
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. So I had been in business a long time and kind of needing to make speeches for different things to my company, and I’d be asked to speak at different mastermind groups and things like that. They always kind of sucked and I was afraid to work on it. It was very intimidating for me. And the toughest part for me was learning how to structure a speech. I figured out a way to structure it with the help of a lot of mentors like Sean, like a gentleman named David Nihill and then a guy I saw speak from afar, who is the only speaker I thought could keep up with Sean Stephenson, which is a guy named Jesse Itzler. I figured out this formula that I’m going to be sharing. Once I figured out the formula, I plugged in just episodes from my life and I gave what the crowd said was a great speech. So it’s just a really simple way to take your own life experiences and structure them in a speech that crowds seem to love and I have been just sticking with the same damn thing ever since then and it’s been three years now. I just did this formula at Brendon Burchard influencer event in San Diego to 2,000 people and I got the loudest standing ovation of any of the speakers there so it was super exciting.
Mindie: That is awesome, and a little behind the scenes for our listeners. I love that story so much. And one of the main reasons I asked you, Craig, to be a part of this summit, is that when you came to our event 10K Speeches, Sean was basically like, “Ah, you know, I don’t know about Craig as a presenter, so I’m going to give him like…” I don’t even know what he gave me maybe 15 minutes, something really, really short. You came onto our stage and blew the audience away and Sean was like, “Shit. I should have given that cat more time.”
Craig: Yeah because he had seen me before I figured this out.
Mindie: Exactly.
Craig: Many times. I would speak at Evan’s programs. I was no stranger to speaking. I just wasn’t very good at it until I figured this out. Which the thing about the strategy is it lets you use your natural way of speaking but on stage. You don’t have to go learn to be a performance artist.
Mindie: Yeah, I mean, I have seen the result of that, so I am super excited for The Lucrative Speaker Summit, that you’re going to be a part of it. For those of you that are interested, find out more at LucrativeSpeaker.com. You can learn everything you need to know there. And Craig, I want to finalize this conversation just with a huge thank you. I have shared this story with you but I think it’s a great story, so I wanted to share it with our listeners as well. A number of years ago when Sean had had a very serious accident, then was recovering for a long time at our teensy tiny little apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, you were one of the first people that just came just to be there. And I just remember the feelings of gratitude that I had for you because you were like, “Okay, cool, Sean’s not even eating real food. Mindie, what can I do for you? Cool, you want me to pick up food?” So you went and got Chinese food and you came to our apartment, and we just sat around and talked, and you slept on our couch and just were there. So I have so much gratitude for you, for your friendship and just for everything that you’re putting out into the world, it’s truly been awesome to watch.
Craig: Thank you so much. I mean that night was just so meaningful and so special and it just shows that it’s all about just being with people that are thinking outside the box and coming from a good place inside, that’s what life’s really all about. That was such a special night and you know how instrumental Sean has been to my growth. We’re almost the exact same age and he was one of my first friends that had that mindset. Because when he and I met, I was 24, I think and I was still up in the club every night and hanging out with a bunch of people who just wanted to party, and he was my friend that would be up my ass and be like, “Yo, when are you going to get your shit together and start your own business, man? You’re too smart to be working for someone else anymore. When are you going to really do something big with this copywriting? When’s your book coming out? When are you get to get on stages?” He would always push me and show me that really, anything was possible and so I definitely wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him. And, getting to know you over the last few years has been such a treat and so amazing that you carry the legacy and anything I can do to be a part of it anytime you know I’m only one call away. Okay, I won’t–
Mindie: Oh, God. Well, I’m going to wrap this up now before you go into serenade-style. Thank you so much.
Craig: All right. My pleasure. So good to connect with you as always.
Mindie: Definitely great.
Outtakes
Mindie: Now Craig, how old are you?
Craig: I’m 41 in three weeks.
Mindie: Okay, so I’m older than you.
Craig: Oh, okay, I didn’t know that. You look younger than me.
Mindie: Mr. “I don’t know if you were around for this Mindie, these maps.”
Craig: Little sarcasm but you know.
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