Clint Arthur Talks Communication

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You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that one of the biggest fears all humans have is called glossophobia. It's also known as fear of public speaking. This is something that about 75% of people fear fear and is split evenly between men and women. But it turns out that there are some things you can do to fix that problem and actually to be good at it. And that's something that I actually had the first time I gave a talk in front of a thousand people. I was maybe 24 years old, and I don't remember a word I said because I was so terror, just full of terror. You guys wouldn't believe that I've been on stage in front of tens of thousands of people at Tony Robbins type events and, and I don't have any fear anymore. But it was not always my natural state, and it doesn't have to be your state. And we're going to talk with an expert on that field on fear of public speaking and what it does for you. A lot of people have asked me throughout the podcast, hey, Dave, I want to create a blog or I want to help influence people. So I thought I'd invite someone on who could help you do that for whatever you want to do in the world. So this isn't a podcast just for entrepreneurs or people want to be public experts or something like that, but just for people who want to communicate better. Because one of the things that does lead you to being a higher performance human is being able to communicate well with other people. So we're going to dig deep with one of the world's top experts on that. And today's guest is none other than Clint Arthur. And Clint's an entrepreneur, very well known guy. He's a branding expert. He, he went to the Wharton School of Business, which is the only business school that doesn't have an integrated ethics program. And I say that because I also went to Wharton. So I can only say that because I was like, guys, maybe doing a case study on glyphosate. It's an unethical case study. We can't do that. But they didn't listen. Clint's also a best selling author. He's written about a dozen books and his first one is what they teach you at the Wharton Business School. And I also, I publish what they don't teach you at the Ward Business School. So if you combine those two books, you have the sum of all Knowledge. Okay, I didn't write that book, but I should. And Clint's latest book is called the Speaking Seven Figure Speaker Secrets Revealed. And I just, I've got to stress this to you. It doesn't matter if you want to be a major big public speaker on stage. Knowing how to communicate will change your life. It'll change your relationships, it'll change your friendships, it'll change everything you do. And that's why this, I think, is a core skill to being a good friend, being a good member of your community. Whether it's in front of a classroom, it's in front of a small group, it doesn't really matter. The stuff we're going to talk about applies to all of us. And Clint, welcome to the show today.

Fantastic to be here, sir. Oh, my goodness, I am so excited about this interview because, man, Wharton guy to Wharton guy. It's going to be awesome. And you know, you were talking about glossophobia. One of my clients starred in a movie with Elvis Presley and it was called Double Trouble. And she and her sister were twins in the movie and they were twins in real life too. Imagine that. And she said to Elvis, when they were getting ready to do the first scene, she said, elvis, I have to admit to you, I am nervous. And he said, honey, every time I go on stage, I get them butterflies in my stomach. That just means you're alive. And I feel like if Elvis could get butterflies. And you know, Bruce Springsteen famously said he's gonna quit performing if he ever stops getting butterflies in his stomach. If these kinds of major international celebrity performers can feel nervous about getting in front of an audience and doing their thing, then I believe anybody has a right to feel nerves, butterflies, performance anxiety, stage fright, whatever you wanna call it. And you should really anticipate it and just expect that that could be a portion of your experience when you're presenting or speaking in front of an audience. So that's really the first step in becoming a great communicator, is understanding that even Elvis had issues. And it's cool.

Clint, you didn't like me. You didn't always start out this way. You spent a huge amount of time doing personal development work, transformational work. You talk about how in 2008 you were with a shaman at a retreat who told you. You don't know it yet, but you're already dead. You've done some really deep kind of out there work. You've run a grass fed butter company for five star hotels for 17 years. You're not just this entrepreneur Celebrity guy. That's one aspect of you. I want to talk about the personal development work you did to be comfortable showing up the way you do in the world today. What did you do and why did you start doing it?

Really, what didn't I do? Really? I was driving a taxi in Los Angeles and that came out of a shock in my personal life. Like, after I graduated from Wharton, I went home to get the accolades for my parents. And what happens? They get into the biggest argument of all time. My dad storms out of the house. I turned to my mom and I said, you know, mom, the way he resents you all these years, the way you've been fighting constantly for decades. Have you been cheating on dad? And she's. She just sits there. And as she's sitting there, I'm thinking to myself, I can't believe I just asked my mother that question. What kind of smart ass kid asks his mom a question like that? And then I'm thinking, why ain't she answering the question? And then finally she looks at me in the eyes and says, he's not your real father. Your real father was a doctor at the fertility clinic we went to for six years. And you look just like him.

Whoa.

Imagine how you would feel if suddenly everything you thought you knew about who you were. Poof. That was the beginning of my transformation. Because the first thing I did was I called the investment bank on the 87th floor of number one World Trade center and said, no, thanks, guys. I really don't want to be an investment banker anymore. I'm moving out to Hollywood to start going on auditions and writing screenplays and trying to discover who am I? And that's the big question. In every work of art, every movie, every book is really about who are you? Who am I? And that put me behind the wheel of a taxi for six years. I drove a yellow cab in Los Angeles. And on New Year's Eve of the millennium, maybe you were getting Y2K money out of an ATM. I was driving a cab in LA, and in the backseat that night were these two guys who were MBA interns at Goldman Sachs. And I was overhearing their conversation. Did you hear about Mr. Carrera? They made him a partner right before the Goldman ipo. He cashed out a gazillion dollars. I turned around, I'm like, are you guys talking about Chris Carrera? They go, how do you know Mr. Carrera? Chris Carrera was a pledge in my fraternity. When I was the pledge master, I used to make those little punks dance around the living room in the fraternity house with their tighty whities on top of their heads. And now this K just cashed out a gazillion bucks and I'm driving a cab on New Year's Eve of the millennium. I made $513 that night and I went back to my little boat in Marina Del Rey. Climbed into my bunk with all my clothes on under my heavy down comforter. Cause it's freezing on the boat and there's no heat or electricity or water on the boat. And I'm thinking, where's Chris Carrera tonight? Partying at the Rainbow Room. How long can I keep throwing away my life like this? How am I going to get out of this? I mean, my resume, Dave, my resume at that point had one line item, Yellow Cab company. And you know, my dad's friends were mercilessly making fun of the fact that I was the Wharton taxi driver. And I didn't know how I was going to do it. But that's the night I swore an oath that I was going to quit writing forever. That I was going to transform who I was and how I was showing up in this world so that I could try to dig myself out of this ditch. And if I could do that, then truly anything in the world is possible. And I did it with personal self help work. The first thing I did was I took a class out of the Learning Annex catalog. And that evolved into another six month class called Life Transformation. While I was in the Life transformation class, I took the Sterling Men's Weekend. Do you know about that?

No.

Okay, that's 200 guys in a room for a weekend. An intense primal experience that gave me personal power again. Because, you know, 13 years of being told no by Hollywood. You suck. You're a jerk. Your writing is terrible. No one wants to hire you. You know, people not calling you back, there's nothing. This was the big lesson of my 13 year odyssey. Following the Hollywood dream was who you are is way more important than what you actually do. Especially in Hollywood where, you know, if you're not Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise or whoever the flavor of the day is, you're nobody. You're really, really nobody. And if you're a taxi driver, you're below nobody. And I had to learn that lesson the hard way. But I started rebuilding who I was. And that Sterling Men's Weekend was majorly powerful. And then out of that, I went to Tony Robbins. Unleash the power within. I walked on fire with Tony Ro himself standing right next to me. And that's how my life began to change. I got out of taxi driving, got into gourmet food, got into selling butter. And that all came out of my need. I was on the raw primal diet.

Let's talk about that part of it for a minute. It's funny how personal growth and transformation oftentimes includes nutritional stuff. So you had, like, me, I've had three knee surgeries. I had arthritis in my knee since I was 14. And I had my second one where they put a screw in. It was all screwed up. And for 18 months, I worked out really hard. I was all like, I'm fit. I'm gonna go do something dangerous. I'm gonna go play laser tag. And I squatted, twisted, and blew my knee out again. And I was like, God, I can't win. And that was part of my own path. It was about five years before you, because you hit yours in 1999. But you went on this crazy ass diet. And by the way, I've tried it too. Tell me about what you did and why you ended up doing raw butter. Cause it's kind of cool.

I went to my chiropractor, who also lived on a boat in Marina del Rey, and he said, hey, you know, have you tried healing your body with raw nutrition? And I said, I don't know anything about that. And he hands me this book called We Want to Live Free From Disease by Algenus Vanderplanitz. And I'm like, well, can I borrow this book? He goes, no, you have to buy it. It's 30 bucks. Okay? I bought the book for 30 bucks. I go home and I read the book. Amazing story. Amazing. And there's all these recipes about raw meat, raw milk, raw eggs, raw honey, and raw butter. And I call the chiropractor. I'm like, hey, man, everything I can get at the supermarket except for the raw butter. What are we supposed to do? He goes, do the best you can. I said, what do you mean, do the best you can? He goes, well, you could do almond butter or coconut butter, but it's not the same. So I gave the book to my girlfriend. She read it and she's like, we need the butter, we need the butter. And I'm like, but there is no butter. And you know, sex is a powerful force, isn't it, Dave? And so I went on a quest to find raw butter. I called 152 farms, creameries, dairies, butter manufacturers, anything associated with milk. I was calling them around the country, and everybody was slamming the Phone down. What are you crazy? Raw butter. It's illegal. It's dangerous. And finally, I convinced some lady to make me 40 pounds of raw butter. And there were two conditions. I had to pay for it in advance, and I had to have FedEx come and pick it up from her farm the same day it was ready because she didn't want it on her farm because she'd get in trouble. And one day I come back from the gym and there's this box on the back of my boat. And I'm like, what is that box? Because I had forgotten all about it. And I open it up, and sure enough, there's raw butter in there. And I'm like, call up the chiropractor. I'm like, hey, man, guess What? I got 40 pounds of raw butter on my boat. He goes, bring me some. So I bring him a pound of the raw butter, and he puts his finger in it. Yep, that's raw butter all right. What does he know? But I'm like, well, what am I going to do with this raw butter? He goes, well, you could call my friend who runs the raw milk distribution company here in LA and maybe he'd be interested in it. And I call him up, and that became my first customer. And that was a famous thing. It was called Rossum in Venice.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Remember the blue butter at Rossum? That was mine for many, many, many years. That was my butter. You know, Rossum unfortunately became a victim of bureaucratic tyranny, I believe, in California. And they put them out of business. But that's how I got into the butter business. A couple months into that, I got a call from a chef in Chicago named Charlie Trotter. And he said, hey, man, I hear you got some great raw butter. And I said, yeah. And he goes, well, I have a raw menu and I'd like to try it. That was in 2001. He was a client until he closed that restaurant in 2012. I had the table butter at Charlie Travis for 12 years, and that was the beginning of my entree into the butter industry. It has since evolved. Now I no longer sell raw butter. I only sell pasteurized gourmet butter. And some of it is grass fed, some of it is not. I have found, interestingly enough, and I'll be interested in your take on this, that the lower the quality of the product that I've been selling in terms of butter, the more I'm able to penetrate. It's very fascinating. I thought having the best quality butter would be the best thing in the world. But unfortunately I found, like, when I have regular butter, I can make more sales. It's very interesting.

It's the same with grass fed beef. Someone who's never had a good grass fed ribeye. And they're used to a corn fed, fattened on estrogen sort of thing. Like, oh, it's so soft and marbly and it's like, yeah, so are you, right? But then you get into this different thing where you're like, oh, this meat has a flavor. And people who get used to how they feel when they eat grass fed are like, oh, my God, I love this. I wouldn't eat the other stuff, but it's about the food high you get afterwards. It's really funny that you're taking me back to the raw butter thing. I was a raw vegan for a while and I've tried almost every diet out there, and I was a really dedicated raw vegan for probably about six months. And I became really good at the chef stuff. Giant bowls of greens and all this. And I started cracking teeth and getting cold and I got thinner. But I didn't get healthier by a long shot. I started getting way more autoimmune problems. And eventually I'm like, this doesn't work. So I started doing raw primal stuff. So I would eat raw meat, I'd eat raw egg yolks, raw anything, especially raw butter, which I could get at the farmer's market under the table transaction in the Bay Area back then. And eating that was really useful. The only reason I quit, I can tell you, for people listening, if you do this, you got to do it safely, but you can actually. It's very filling. Like an ounce of raw meat just fills you up in a very different way if it's good quality meat. But the problem is, I went to Tibet and Nepal and, like, I'm not eating raw yak that's been hanging from a pole for like six months in the wind. Like, no. So since then, butter is still central to what I do because those fatty acids do something pretty incredible. And one more thing, if you take raw butter, which is a precious rare commodity, and you put it in hot coffee, it's not raw anymore. Don't waste your raw butter in your coffee. Eat the raw butter, put it on food, and put butter that's pasteurized and grass fed in your bulletproof coffee, and then you're not wasting the super premium raw stuff, would you agree? I mean, you're a butter expert. You've done this at least as long as I Have.

Well, I believe that anything that occurs in natural human life without raising the temperature above what you would get on a hot day, still raw. So if your coffee is not more than 110 degrees, then it's not ruining the rawness of the butter. But if your coffee is 168 degrees, then yeah, that's going to be taking away the raw, the amino acids, the alive elements of the butter.

And especially what we're talking about here is cultured butter, which means it's actually been fermented and it's got special bacteria in it and all which is, which is really cool. So let's. So you went down this nutrition path, you went down personal development path. You did unleash the power within, which is a powerful event. And you basically learned how to eat, to turn off pain in your knees and to basically turn your brain on all the way and started a butter company. And now you walk around wearing a bright pink tie on like every interview you ever do, you're wearing a bright pink shirt now and you have this big name. We're missing some pieces of the transition here before you tell us how to do it ourselves.

It came out of the celebrity chef movement in Las Vegas. Most of my clients were in Vegas. And all of a sudden all these celebrity chefs started coming in. Bobby Flay, Emeril Gordon Ramsay, and that guy who just closed his restaurants, that big red headed guy, you know who I'm talking about, he just got in a lot of me too trouble. So anyway, I wanted celebrity chefs and I thought to myself, how am I going to get to be the vendor for these celebrity chefs? And I talked to my coach about it, that guy from the life transformation thing, I took another class with him called Conversation Design. And he said, you have to go to New York and Las Vegas and get the top chefs to be your clients. And I said, who am I to get the top chefs in America to be my clients? He goes, I'll tell you who you are. You're Clint Arthur. You're the president of Five Star Butter Company. You sell the best butter on earth to the top restaurants and chefs in the world and you want to come in and let them taste the best butter. He basically wrote me that script. And I was smart enough to execute that script and started making the calls and getting these meetings with these top chefs. And I wanted to add to my impact. I wanted to add to who I was. And I came up with this idea because once I started making money, I met an amazing person named Ali. And Ali believed in me more than I even believed in myself. And 18 months after I met her, I asked her to become my wife. And even though we had issues, eventually I was able to convince her to do that. And we had a favorite TV show that we would watch all the time. It was called Iron Chef. And I called up the producers of Iron Chef America, and I said, hey, guys, you have overlooked the most important ingredient of them all. It's called butter.

Every chef loves to hear that, and.

I should be the judge of Battle Butter. And they said, wow, that's interesting. Why don't you come in for a meeting? And I came in for a meeting, and I convinced those guys to do Battle Butter on Iron Chef America. It was a battle between Cat Cora and a chef from Chicago named Corin Grieveson. And I was the judge of Battle Butter with Isaac Mizrahi and Elizabeth Blau, who created all the restaurants at Bellagio and the Wynn and Encore. That was the beginning of this whole thing is, like, I talked my way into being the judge of Battle Butter. And, man, more people saw me on that. Like, that was like, I still get people saying, oh, yeah, I saw you on Iron Chef and that. I took a frame out of that appearance, and it had a picture of me and the Iron Chef logo and my butter, and it said, clint Arthur, butter expert. And I took that frame grab and I made it my business card. That opened a lot of doors, man, you know, and from then on, I started saying, hey, this is Clint Arthur, and I'm the president of Five Star Butter Company. You might have seen me as the judge of Battle Butter on Iron Chef America, and I'd like to come into your kitchen and let you taste the best butter on earth. And what kind of chef in his right mind is going to say no to that? And that's when I really started to understand the power of using media and repurposing media assets and politely, correctly bragging about your media experiences to achieve high status, positioning, expert authority, and becoming somebody in the eyes of customers and prospects.

So, Clint, did you ever come across Shep Gordon in your Celebrity Chef stuff?

I've heard the name Shep Gordon.

So Shep was on the show, and he's this amazing music manager for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame people, but also was one of the guys who really started the Celebrity Chef movement. And a lot of the name you mentioned have worked with Shep, and he's just this shockingly amazing human being. I loved interviewing him, and I was imagining you guys might have crossed paths. But I gotta hand it to you, your little trick there of taking a screen grab. In the early days of bulletproof, I was getting known for bulletproof coffee. But I've written a lot about nootropics and smart drugs and how I use them to get through business school and fuel my career in Silicon Valley. Specifically Modafinil. And I got the attention with a blog post called why you are suffering from a modafinil deficiency. Little in your face, right? And I wrote that and I got a call from Nightline and they actually came up to my house and filmed for a whole day with Dan Harris, actually, who now runs a meditation company called 10% Happier. But they came up and they filmed me. And so I'm like on air as this crazy Silicon Valley guy who took smart drugs to help himself get through school and everything. So I took that screen grab and it was my Facebook profile for a long time. And like you said, I was kind of a blogging nobody. And I was a cloud computer or somebody. I was a tech entrepreneur. And then all of a sudden, that little hint, which I think I can say came from your influence, really helped people go, oh, wait, this guy knows something about smart drugs. It turns out I really did. But it's one thing to know it, it's another thing to tell people that you know it without like saying, hey, everybody, look at me. And just being an egotistical schmuck. And how do you avoid that line of being the ego driven schmuck, Everybody look at me. Self promotion. Because when you do that, it's really repellent. How do you use your tool set to promote and not just be a jerk about it?

It's a very interesting question, and it's definitely something that I've been coming up against a lot lately because I've gotten to the point where I really have to be careful about it because I have so much credibility stacks. I've spoken at Harvard multiple times. I've spoken at West Point, I've spoken at NASDAQ. I've been on 100 television appearances, including the Today show. And I have to be really careful when I start, quote, unquote, bragging on that stuff. And I have to be really, really low key. But most people don't have that issue. Most people have the reverse issue in that they're too humble, they're too shy, they're not enough self promotional in their presentations and marketing. And so I'd say probably for most of the listeners in your audience, that's not their problem. Their problem is going the other way and not letting people know what they can do to help them. And that's really the whole purpose of self promotion is to. And the purpose of marketing is to let people know how you can make their lives better and make the world a better place for them. So it's a very interesting question, and I've really come up against the fact that I have evolved as a person to the point where I really need to be careful and low key about my bragging about what I've done. So you probably understand that very well.

You said something really powerful that you said to tell people how you can help them. And I think you might have answered your own question in your thought process there as I listened to it. And it's because if you're saying that stuff in the service of the person you're talking to so that they understand that listening to you is worth their time, that's one set of behavior. And if you say it, hey, everybody, look at me, look at me. And what you're telling them is all about you. Without a what's in it for them, the message lands very, very differently. And it is a fine line. Like if someone who doesn't know who you are, you walk in and they say, what do you do? What do you tell them?

What do I tell them?

Yeah, what's your answer? So, hey, Clint, you're wearing a pink shirt. What do you do?

Most of the time what I do is I help my clients raise their status in the eyes of their customers and prospects. That's mostly what I do. But I heard Jim Kwik say a really smart thing about this one time. He goes, if I'm in an elevator and a person says, what do you do? I usually ask them, well, I do a lot of things. So tell me what you do so that I can more target my response to what you know that's going to be something appropriate that could be of interest to you. That's a very interesting way to do it.

Leave it to Jim Quick to have like a ninja introduction move like that if you're a longtime listener. Jim's been on the show two or three times. He's a great friend. It trains shocking numbers of Fortune 500 CEOs and most of Hollywood on how to remember stuff like truly unusual human. So that's a fantastic piece of advice. I'm actually going to start using that because who really cares what I do if there's nothing in it for you, right?

Yeah. And I do a lot of stuff. I Do lots and lots of stuff. I can help people with speaking. I can help them get on tv. I can arrange speaking events for them. I can train them. I could get you butter, I could build you a house. I do lots of things. So really it's more important. What do you do?

Why are you so motivated to help other people?

Well, you know, the great Zig Ziglar says, if you get anything you want, as long as you help enough people to get what they want. And that's true. That is true. But really, when you get into a groove in your life and you get good with something and you can really deliver results, it feels great to be able to be of true service to people and to be able to say, hey, look, I know that I can do this for you. There's not a doubt in my mind I can achieve this result for you. And I'm particularly great at it. And I would love to deliver it for you if you want it and if you can use it. And when someone appreciates you for your own specialness, for your own being a unique snowflake, and they say, wow, what a great snowflake you are, that's a really great feeling to be appreciated. And I think that's why I want to help people with my own unique brand of being able to help them.

It's a really personal, development oriented question. But the bottom line is, why do you like doing it? And I go to what Dan Sullivan, a friend of both of ours who's also been on the show, so smart, super smart guy, and he said, why do you like something? At the end of the day, he goes, there's a reason why you like something, you like what you like. Why do you like the color red instead of purple? I don't know. You like it. And so if it's what makes you happy and it's what you like, and there's some set of people, I think most people actually, it actually feels good to help other people. And if you acknowledge that and if you're wired that way, then you sort of do it. And the more you do it, the better you feel. And it just kind of works. And it sounds like that's your own motivation, but also you talked about being appreciated. So it's not just the act of helping, it's being acknowledged for helping. Is that kind of part of what pushes your buttons?

One of the things I like most about my wife is that when I do stuff for her, she generally appreciates it. She'll recognize my efforts. And, you know, I think so Much of this world is people who are stuck in jobs where they're just a cog in the wheel and they're just grinding away. And that's a huge problem with this world that we live in today, is that we've siloed ourselves so much and there's so little interaction. Especially today where people won't even answer their phone. They just prefer to get a text message because they don't want to communicate or interact. And when you can interact with another human being and they are recognizing you, well, that's what being a human being is all about. As opposed to being a robot.

Yeah, no one wants to be a robot. Or at least those of us that do are probably not very happy about the whole situation.

Hey, can we go back to Dan Sullivan for a second? Absolutely. He said one of the smartest things ever at a Genius network meeting. And it was every quarter like five of the top 10 things I learned in genius were Dan Sullivanisms. He said every quarter you need to do five things to make your customers and prospects think that you're fascinating. Thought that was a really, really super smart thing. And I honestly spent a lot of my time just really focusing on that one methodology of appearing to be fascinating in the eyes of customers and prospects by doing high status things, unusual things, and taking photos of those things or people and putting them out there in my marketing. And I just want to say thank you, Dan Sullivan, for that super smart thing. Do you do that? Have you heard that?

I've definitely heard that. And I got to draw people's attention to the interview with Dan Sullivan. He's over seven years old, planning to live to 156, I think, and just this on fire intellectual, just an amazing guy who's helped me in my own business as well. But I think I naturally, because I'm a professional biohacker and I'm interested in this, living way longer than mother Nature intended and hacking my brain. And I think I just naturally do things. I didn't realize that they were fascinating. I just think they were odd and I wouldn't want to talk about them. And then when I decided I'm just going to show up all the way, I'll just tell you what I'm doing and if you think I'm a total dork for doing it, that's fine too. But I'm at least going to talk about it because I think it's cool. And apparently some other people do too. But you gotta be yourself, right?

Yeah. Being yourself, but also putting it out there for the people that you see gotta see.

I didn't share it for a long time because I was like, it's just, you know, it's a little too weird. But. No, it wasn't too weird. It was actually just maybe some of it was early. Now, you've also spent a lot of time, Clint, looking at the behaviors that get people to pay attention to your message. At first it was butter, and now it's how do you go out and build your own brand? And you actually have a mathematical formula for how you book people say on TV shows. Not a lot of people think of that. In terms of math, what's your formula for that? How does it work?

Well, I spent many years studying with Brendan Burchard, and I heard him actually say 10 times before I got it that if you want to be successful as an expert, you need to create a formula for how your followers, clients, customers, whatever you want to call them, can replicate your success. And it was the 10th time that I heard him say it. I was at a conference, and I was actually the next speaker on the stage right after him. And I was sitting in the audience listening to him. And he goes, you got to have the formula. And I got it. And I whipped off my name badge, and I literally wrote out the formula. What were the things that I put in a proposal for a TV producer that got them to book me on their show and got my students booked on their shows. And I'm like, wow. It's like, it's this and it's that and it's that and it's that and it's that and it's that and it's that. And I just wrote it out, and what I did was, okay, so the first part of the formula is hooks. Well, how many hooks should you have in a form in a proposal? I don't know. Well, that's an X. So I wrote H to the X. That's the first part of my formula plus celebrities. That's C. How many celebrities should be in a proposal? I don't know. That's X. So it's H to the X plus C to the X plus props. That's P plus D. Is demonstrations plus TAF a takeaway or a formula? A lot of times they like to have bullet points. Like, I've done 25 appearances on TV, and ultimately this is what got me on the Today Show. And I want to go back to, like, bragging and how to brag appropriately if you're bragging in a story. If bragging involves if a Story involves some bragging. It's a lot cooler. So I got on the Today show because I had done so many appearances on the topic of New Year's resolutions. And one day I get a call, my voicemail. Hey, Clint, this is Ali calling from the Today show, and we were wondering if you might be able to join us in studio on New Year's Eve. Please give me a call back on this number. We want to be talking about how to have a strong new year. And I got known for doing New Year's resolution segments, and part of my segment was the Alive Formula, A awareness this could be the last year of your life. L. Let go of your mistakes. We've all made them. Don't beat yourself up. Just move forward and learn. I inspire yourself with great goals, dreams, V visualize how to make them happen, and E energize yourself. And my favorite way to get energy is by reading great quotes. My favorite quote, accept the challenges so you can feel the exhilaration of victory. And that's how you come alive. And that formula was very, very powerful. I want to thank Jonathan Sprinkles, my connection coach, my first platinum coaching mentor, for actually delivering that formula to me. And that's oftentimes the value of having a great mentor is they will give you stuff that will take your career a long, long way. And Jonathan Sprinkles gave me that formula, and I took that formula all the way to the Today Show. So that was my basic formula for how to get on TV hooks H to the X plus C to the X plus P plus D plus TA F equals tv.

Most of us aren't really taught to think in formulas, but I found as a computer science guy, I think about almost everything in an algorithmic thing, because that's what, like, when you learn how to do that, that's just how the world works. And it helps you see systems and all. But it turns out some of the leading people out there do it. A friend of mine, Dave Calstein, who was a writer for NCIS LA and Quantico, was on stage at the Bulletproof Conference a couple years ago. He's also like a Sayoc Kali trained a knife fighter, like, very, very high level. And I got to spend an afternoon with him and I said, well, how does all this stuff work? He goes, I could teach you everything you need to know. It's going to take about an hour. And he goes, here's the formula. Exactly like you're saying here, Clint, because here's the formula for taking down someone based on the amount of time it's going to take them to drop from lack of blood. So you go, here, here, here, here, here. He goes, there's a template. He goes, everything we do is based on a template. And same thing as when I'm writing a story, there's a template. And so it's this act of examining what you do to boil out its essence so that you can then make it repeatable for yourself and maybe even teach it to others that I think sets apart people who end up standing out. Because when you have a formula, the amount of effort it takes and the amount of luck it takes goes down really dramatically. Do you agree with that assessment?

A lot of times doing the work of creating a formula or writing a book makes you better at what you do. And for me, you know, I think that at that point I had already been coaching people for about a year and the discipline of coaching people helped me to distill down my recipe for success into an exact formula that has been repeatable and, and has been powerful enough to help my students book themselves on more than 3,724 television appearances with ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox that I'm aware of so far. And it's really that discipline of doing the work and saying, okay, I want to create a formula, what does it take? And examining the self examination involved in creating that formula or writing that book, it even makes you better at what you do. And so it is a very worthy endeavor.

That's why I write. I write about a book every 12 to 14 months because it makes me do the work of organizing it, which just always pays me back because now I can think about it because of the work and writing formulas, writing books, and sometimes even speaking does that. I want to get into some specific things from your book speaking game that that just came out. But before that you talk about practical tips and I'm a big fan of something called Weasel words and I've done a podcast about those a while back. But things that if you say these, they're always lies and they always make you weak. But you have a different things. You have five things you should never say if you want to make money. What are those five things the first.

Thing you should never say and interestingly enough, this came out of a segment that I did for Lisa Sasevich. You know Lisa.

Oh, she's a great friend.

Yeah, Love Lisa. Love, love, love Lisa. And she came to my celebrity launchpad and I called her up and I said, Lisa, I've been looking at your website and I Think I've got a great segment for you. It's called Five Things Single Moms Should Never say if they Want to Make More Money. She goes, oh, I would never say that. I'm not interested in pursuing the single mom market. I never put myself out there as a single mom. I would never, ever say anything like that. And I'm like, oh, man, I just blew it with my first big celebrity client. And then I'm like, thinking for like, three seconds, and I go, okay, how about three things moms Should Never say if they want to make more money? And she goes, hmm, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I could do that. That sounds great. I'm like, okay, what's the first thing moms should never say if they want to make more money? The first thing you should never say if you want to make more money is, let me think about it. Don't think about stuff, you know what you want and what you don't want. And when you say that you want to think about something, what that's doing is opening up a loop that needs to be closed later. And really, what's the loop going to be closed to? It's going to be closed to no, because you already know you want to say no, or else you would have said yes already. So don't say you want to think about it. Just either say yes or no and move on with your life. Be decisive. The second thing you should never say if you want to make more money is you should think about it. When you're a salesperson or when you're trying to get anyone to do anything, don't get them to think about it. Get them to make a decision. That's your job. And either they should say yes or no, but don't open up this loop again, where you have to come back and close the loop in order to get the decision. It's just wasting everybody's time. Then the third thing you should never think about, the third thing you should never say if you want to make more money is I woulda, coulda, shoulda. In life, you're going to win, you're going to lose, or you're going to draw. Sometimes you get all three at the same time. But don't beat yourself up about things that happened to you. Just learn from the experiences and try to move on. Now, those were Lisa's original three things that moms should never think, should never say if they want to make more money. She did a few. She came to Celebrity Launchpad. She was invited to do seven shows. Interestingly, Enough. One of the invitations came from a TV show in San Francisco that had booked her to go on TV on June 16th or 17th with three things moms should never say if they want to make more money. And then all of a sudden, they called her up and they're like, lisa, we can't have you on June 16th for talking about moms. It's Father's Day. And she texts me, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I'm like, well, just change it to three things dad should never say if they want to make more money. And for some reason, that didn't work out for her, and she stopped doing these local TV appearances. And I think that was a mistake. I think everybody should really cut their teeth on local TV and learn how to deliver a message and be a great guest on television, because it's not as easy as you think it is on tv.

It's work. You need to be trained to do that well.

You got to have the experience to really do it. And a few years went by, and finally I wrote my book, the Speaking Game. And I wanted to go out there and promote the Speaking Game. And I dusted off Lisa's segment of three things moms should never say if they want to make more money. And I turned it into five things you should never say not moms, but you should never say if you want to make more money. And, man, I have taken that segment all the way to Fox Los Angeles, the number two market in America. And I'm sure, you know, man, FOX LA is Hollywood. It's the big time. It's really the big time. I took that little segment of Lisa's all the way to the top of Hollywood. And so the fourth thing you should never say if you want to make more money is let me give you a discount. Because really, ballers don't give discounts. People who make a lot of money know the value of their stuff, and they know that they're worth it. And they also know a very interesting fact, which is it's not in the client's best interest to give them a discount. Because people who get discounts on stuff discount the value that they get from that stuff. When you pay full price for something, you really appreciate it. For example, my Rolex watch that I bought at a retail store in Century City in Los Angeles, Man, I wear this thing every single day, and I paid a lot of money for it, and I love it. I don't know anything that gives me as much value as this Rolex watch. Because how much I paid for it at the time in my life when it was really a stretch for me to go for this. And I really appreciate the fact that I was able to step up and make that happen for me, and I did not get a discount, and I get a lot of value out of it. And then the fifth thing that you should never say if you want to make more money is, can you give me a discount?

That's counterintuitive, right?

Yeah, it is. And that all comes back from the fact that. That if a baller wants the Rolls Royce, they walk into the dealership and they say, I want that one. Send it over to my house. They don't even talk about the price. They know that they're worth. They get whatever they want. They're worth getting whatever they want. And it really doesn't matter what the price is because they can afford it. And it really comes down to that attitude that, hey, I don't need to haggle on price. I can just get anything I want. And when you feel like you can have anything that you want, that you deserve anything that you want, that's when the floodgates of money really open up and you can really make all the money.

So you're talking about that more from an energetic perspective, because I guarantee you, when you were driving a taxi, you didn't walk around like that. But a lot of people listening, they don't have the money to walk into a Toyota dealer and say, give me whatever I want. With all the options, it seems like being able to get a discount might be a good thing. What's the mindset shift that happens when you just say, I'm not going to do that.

I have to go back to what I learned from my favorite professor in the entrepreneurship department at Wharton, Miles Bass. Rest in peace. Love that guy. He said there's way better things to negotiate for in a deal than price. Price is the last thing you ever want to negotiate. You want to negotiate terms, you want to negotiate additional benefits. There's so many more powerful things. And for some reason, this money thing, you know, you take a dollar and out of a person's pocket, and they really resent it. And what I like to do when I'm on tv, and I'll do it even right now, is how many cash. Thank you, sweetie. Oh, my hand. My wife hands me a hundred dollar bill. So when you have the $100 bill and you just take a little piece of it away.

Federal crime. Unless you tape it back together.

Yeah, exactly. This doesn't quite work so well anymore.

After you tear a third of it off. Right, right.

In fact, you try to pay for anything with just this piece right here, people are going to say no. Even though it's most of the hundred, even though I've only negotiated away a little piece of it, it still renders the entire thing ineffective. And that's what happens when you're negotiating price. It's a weird psychological thing that people really, really resent. When you take away $3 an hour off their rate or $100 off the price of what they're selling you, they're not going to deliver you the same quality of service. They're not going to give you the same kind of delivery experience. They're not going to give you as good a version. Like, I was in a restaurant the other day at happy hour, they have $1 oysters at Happy hour. And I've been to that restaurant many times for $1 oysters at Happy hour. And the other day I missed the happy hour and they were $3 oysters. I got to tell you something, man, Those oysters for $3 a piece were way better than the ones you get for the $1. They serve you different oysters.

Oh, no kidding. That I believe.

Yeah. They serve you the rejects for $1. They serve you the good oysters for $3. Doesn't it make sense?

I can tell you never go to an all you can eat sushi place. You're not going to like the way you feel that night.

Yeah. You know, ever since seeing those videos on Facebook about the worms in sushi and in salmon, I haven't been eating a lot of sushi. I haven't eaten any since then.

You gotta. You're the guy who used to eat raw meat all the time. That's too funny.

I know, I know, I know.

I assume they freeze the fish the way they're supposed to to kill that stuff.

I hope so.

Now, you also talk about five things people should say to be more successful and make more money, just be happier. What are those five things?

Five things you should always say if you want to make more money. The first thing you should always say is, I'm the only one in the world who can do this for you. That's a really key thing to say. If you can't say that, if you don't have unique positioning in the world, then you are going to have a hard time scraping up crumbs left over by everybody else. It's sad but true. It's really the only thing that kept Me in business, in the butter business is that I was selling the only organic portion controlled butter pieces and there was nobody else. If you wanted to have butter that actually tasted good, because unfortunately in the portion control butter market, there was only melted butter. They would melt it into forms and you can tell a piece of butter has been melted if when you look at it, it has a shiny surface. If it's rough or dull, then it probably was not melted. And that is a higher quality piece of butter. And I was the only one who wasn't melting the butter for many, many, many, many years. And that enabled me to have unique positioning in the world of butter. So that kept me alive as an entrepreneur. Now I've also learned that really an even better way to have unique positioning is to have celebrity status. If you want to walk on fire with Tony Robbins, doing it with some shaman in the middle of the Arizona desert is not going to accomplish the same feeling for you. There's only one Tony Robbins that you can go to to have that experience. And that's why Tony Robbins makes more money than any other seminar leader in the world, is because he has created this perception in the seminar industry at least that he is a celebrity. So that's a great way to get the unique positioning. And that's a really powerful way to be able to say, hey, I'm the only one who can do this for you. The second thing you should always say if you want to make more money, is your full name. This is a very subtle thing. I've met a lot of celebrities in my life, and every time I meet one, they introduce themselves with their full name. Even people who are not household names. Like for example, when I was at the St. Regis in Puerto Rico with my wife, we were walking down the beach and along, coming the other way is this old guy with a hot young blonde wife and two little white dogs walking on the beach towards us. And I'm like, well, this guy must be somebody. So we start talking to them and I stick out my hand to shake hands with the guy and he goes, I'm Donald Pleiner, shoe guy. Every woman knows who I'm talking about because he is a celebrity shoe maker. And he introduced himself with his full name. Then another interesting story like that I met Daniel Baldwin. I was at Two Bunch Palms Resort in Rancho Mirage, you know. Ever been there?

Yep.

Okay, that's the one from the movie the Player where they were soaking in the mud and I'm standing at the desk checking out one day and I look to my Right. And there's this guy who looks like a chubbier, more tattoo covered version of Alec Baldwin. So I start chatting him up and I stick out my hand to shake and he goes, how you doing? I'm Daniel Baldwin. Every time a celebrity is going to say their full name, there's a lot of psychology that's involved in that, and this works great. Even if you are just calling up a restaurant to get a reservation, if you say your full name, the person is going to think to themselves, well, I don't know who that is, but they must be somebody since they said their name. As if I should know. Really works great. And I always say, say your full name. You've got to think you're somebody before other people are going to think you're somebody. And saying your full name is a great step to doing that. The third thing you should always say if you want to make more money is give me the money. People cannot read your mind. If you want your kid to clean their room, tell them, clean your room, and you'll get a lot better results than if you just think about it. And it's the same thing about money. If you want people to buy your stuff, you have to ask them for the order and you'll get more orders. If you want them to pay you for what you want to sell, you have to ask them, would you like to buy what I have to sell? And that will increase the amount of money that you make. The fourth thing you should always say if you want to make more money is I don't discount. But I will be happy to give you this bonus. Now, how does that work in real life? Let's say that you are an auto mechanic like my good friend and client, Dave Striegel at Elizabeth Autocare outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I mentioned his name because he's one of my most successful clients. He's come to my celebrity launchpad. And he used his 13 TV appearances, including going on Fox Los Angeles three times, to propel him onto the main stage at the Napa Auto Parts convention in Las Vegas in front of 13,000 prime prospects for his auto mechanic coaching business. And if you're a mechanic like Dave and somebody says, $500 for a brake job, what are you out of your mind? You got to cut me a little slack here. I would advise Dave to say, well, I'm sorry, sir, the brake job is going to cost $500, but I'd be happy to detail your car for you and have it looking shiny and new for you when you Come and pick it up. That's a hundred dollar bonus that I'm giving you and I'm happy to do that for you at no charge. That's way better than cutting your prices. And then the fifth thing you should always say if you want to make more money, is I'm very grateful for whatever you're talking about. I'm very grateful to have a person in my life like my wife Allie, who believes in me more than I even believed in myself, who shares my goals and dreams and aspirations and has supported me and pushed me as far as I've gotten to be, and who's helped me to live a lifestyle that neither of us could have ever imagined. I'm grateful for my clients. I'm grateful for my ability to write. I'm grateful for my mentors, like even going way back to high school. I went to Stuyvesant High School and I had the great privilege to study creative writing with Frank McCourt, the author of Angela's Ashes. Have you read that book?

I haven't, but I've heard of it.

The most beautiful piece of prose in the English language. Dave, you've got to check it out. Angela's Ashes, about his impoverished childhood in Ireland. What an experience to have as a kid, courtesy of the New York City public school system. To be able to be at the feet of somebody who would become a Pulitzer Prize winning author like that. I've been so fortunate and lucky and I'm even grateful to my father, who I've never met. I'm grateful to the man who raised me and put me through the Wharton Business School. He really gave me every opportunity and supported everything. I never thought about money. Money was never an issue. I didn't know we were just lower middle class living in subsidized housing. That didn't go into my mind when I was growing up because we never wanted for anything. And I'm so grateful for that. I'm also grateful to the father I've never met because he allowed me to become my own man. He gave me life and he created a whole interesting chapter for me that I don't even understand yet. And it's created a whole theme for me in my life about having the love of fathers. I'm just a very lucky guy and I'm grateful for that. And if you express gratitude in your life, I think it will not only help you to make more money, but it will also help you to appreciate what you have and the life that you're living right now.

It's so so beautifully put. I love it that you build that into both financial success, but also just happiness that it's powerful stuff. And if everyone listening, if you just come away from this whole interview with one thing, pick that one up. You also talk about some other stuff that is probably well, it's visible, but it's probably. It looks unconscious for most people. And in your books, in your writing, and in speaking game, even, you talk to a certain extent about what you can do with your voice, with your language, with your costume, with your setting. How do you think about setting those things up when you're going to communicate whatever it is you want to communicate?

Being a speaker is something that looks really easy. It's like going on tv. It looks easy because you've seen a lot of people speaking.