E03: Legendary Leaders: Clint Arthur

Thanks for joining us today on Street Smarts with Harvey Mackay, where the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. And now here's your host, managing partner and co founder of harveymckayacademy.com, cliff Jones.

Hello, everybody, Cliff Jones, co founder and managing partner at Harvey McKay Academy. And I'm thrilled to have with us today, Clint. Arthur. Clint, how you doing today?

Phenomenal. Aloha. I'm actually in Hawaii and it's great to be with you here today.

Yes, you've been in Hawaii. Tell, tell the thousands of people who are following the Harvey McKay Academy and Harvey, what. What you've been doing in Hawaii the last month, because it sounds fabulous.

My wife and I spend lots and lots of money on our American Express card. So we come to Oahu, to Waikiki, to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for two months a year as our summer residency here. We've been doing this for a few years and it really is something that we look forward to quite a lot.

Okay, so if everybody caught that, Clint and his wife are hanging out in Hawaii, beautiful resort for two months. Okay. So of course everybody's gonna wanna know who you are if they don't know you yet, why you're here with us at the academy. We're gonna fill everybody in on that in the next 20 minutes or so. So give everybody a little sense for who you are, what you're all about, before I start bragging about you.

My relationship with Harvey McKay started back in 1987 when I was a senior graduating from the Wharton Business School. And I heard about this very famous business author, the guy who made millions of envelopes, who wrote a book called Swim with the Sharks without getting Eaten Alive. And everybody was reading this book, like this was a hot book. And he was a celebrity business expert, a celebrity entrepreneur, even though there really wasn't a word for that at that time. There was no celebrity entrepreneurs at that time, but I read that book because everybody was reading that book. Harvey McKay was somebody special. And he remained somebody special in my eyes for many, many years. To the point where the first opportunity that I had to pay Harvey McKay $10,000 to attend a two and a half day training with him, where I had to fly all the way to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I made that investment just on a snap, like without even thinking about it. Holy cow, I get to go hang out with Harvey McKay for two and a half days for only $10,000. That was like a no brainer for me. And that illustrates what has been the focus of my entire really, my entire life. It's bigger than my career. See, right after I graduated from Wharton, I went home to get the attaboys. I had earned a 4.0 GPA in entrepreneurship. And I thought for sure that by becoming somebody special, somebody who had graduated from the best business school in the world, that maybe my parents would stop arguing. This was the original conception in my mind. I swear to God. When I was 14 years old, I made up my mind I was going to go to Wharton. I was going to become somebody special. And that would get my parents to stop arguing so much, because for us, they were arguing all the time. So what happens? I graduate, I go home, I'm sitting in the living room. They get in the biggest argument of all time. My dad literally storms out of the house. And I turned to my mom, I said, mom, you know the way he resents you all these years? Have you been cheating on dad? I'm sitting there in the living room where I grew up and I'm thinking to myself, what have I become? What kind of smart ass kid asks a question like that to his own mother? And then I'm thinking, well, why isn't she answering the question? And then she says, he's not your real father. Your real father was a doctor at the fertility clinic. And he looked just like him.

Wow. Wow, that's a biggie bomb.

Imagine how you would feel. Not only don't you know who you are anymore, but you sure as hell don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life anymore, I assure you. Because the next thing I did was I picked up the phone, I called up the investment bank on the 87th floor of number one World Trade Center. I said, guys, I appreciate the offer, but I don't want to be an investment banker anymore. Naturally, what did I do? I moved out to Hollywood and I started writing screenplays. Chasing the Hollywood dream that fast forwards us 13 years throughout so many episodes of Giving Blood, Sweat and Tears to try to become somebody in Hollywood, where being somebody is more important than anything. If you're not Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hollywood, you're nobody. And where were you on December 31, 1999? Were you getting Y2K cash out of an ATM? That night I was driving a taxi in Los Angeles. It was my sixth year of being a taxi driver. And in the backseat of my cab were these two guys who were MBA interns at Goldman Sachs. And I'm listening in. I hear him say, hey, did you hear about Mr. Carrera? They made him the last partner before the IPO, and he cashed out a gazillion dollars. I'm like, hey, you guys talking about Chris Carrera? How do you know Mr. Carrera? Chris Carrera was a pledge of my fraternity at Wharton. When I was a pledge master, I used to make those little punks dance around the living room with their underpants on top of their heads. And now he just cashed out a gazillion bucks. And I'm making $513 driving a taxi on New Year's Eve of the millennium. That was it, man. That was the end of my 13 year odyssey. Chasing the Hollywood dream. I said, I can't do this anymore. I can't throw away my life like this anymore. And I just focused on transformation, like how I knew that the problem was me. I had one line item on my resume, Yellow Taxi company, you know, and it's hard to recover from that. And I knew I was going to have to transform. So I started doing all kinds of personal self help work. I walked on fire with Tony Robbins. I did men's self help ceremonies and circles, and I did Toltec wisdom studies. I did everything you could do. And sure enough, my life began to change. And I got out of selling, I got out of driving taxes, I got into selling butter and many. Yeah, butter. It's a very unusual item, but it's a big world out there and it's full of little niches. And as an entrepreneur, my niche was unwrapped portion control butter pieces, which I sold to basically every casino in Las Vegas. There was a point in the 2000s when every casino in Vegas was my client, including every outlet at Bellagio and all the major outlets at the Wynn and the Encore and Caesar's palace and Mandalay Bay, etc. Etc. And I was making a lot of money and doing really great. And as the years went by, I wrote a book called what they Teach you at the Wharton Business School. And in my mind, I swear to God, Cliff, in my mind, I was going to be the guy who got rich and famous with butter. And his book about selling butter the way Harvey McKay was the guy who got rich and famous selling his book about envelopes. This was the exact idea in my mind. So I self published this book, what they Teach you at the Wharton business school, on CreateSpace, on Amazon. And I wait for the sales to roll in. And this is in 2009. And in 2009, man, did those sales ever roll in. All eight of them.

Big success. Boom.

I was lucky. I got Face to face with a mentor named Jack Canfield, creator of Chicken.

Soup for the Soul.

I said, jack, how do you sell half a billion books? He goes, hey man, nobody buys books from people who are nobodies. You got to be somebody, you got to become somebody by going on tv. So I hired a publicist. I said, hey, I don't care what it costs. Get me on Today show. She laughed at me. That's hysterical. They're never gonna put you on today's show. You're a middle aged guy nobody's ever heard of. You got a self published book nobody's ever bought, no TV experience. Why would they put you on the number one show on tv? You got to start on local tv. Okay, well get me on NBC New York. I'm a native New Yorker. When she stopped laughing at me the second time, she said, I think I've really got you figured out. You're not really a business author, you're a freaking comedian. Because that's the second hysterical funny thing you said to me in 30 seconds. You're a middle aged guy nobody's never heard of. You got a self published book nobody's ever bought, no TV experience. They're never going to put you on the number one market in America. That's like national television. You got to start on little cities. I said, what are you talking about? Like Salt Lake City. She goes, perfect. And next thing I know, I get an email from this publicist that says, congratulations, you're booked to appear on TV in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 29, 2010. And don't forget to bring your long underwear because it's freezing. Right? So I'm looking at this email, I'm thinking, are they really going to put me on television in Salt Lake City, Utah? I mean, why would they do that? I'm a middle aged guy nobody's ever heard of. I got a self published book nobody's ever bought, no TV experience. Are they really going to put me on there? And they did. And I really thought in my mind it was going to be Salt Lake City on Tuesday and the Today show would call me by Thursday. But the reality was is that I sucked on TV in Salt Lake City. So I had her book me on three more shows. And I did those three more appearances. Two of them in Sacramento, one of them in Phoenix. And I'm watching the clips of my wife in the living room of our house. I said, honey, what do you think? And she goes, I think you suck. I said, yeah, you know, if I'm ever going to get good enough to get on the Today Show. I'm going to have to do a lot more TV appearances to get good at this. Because it's not. You know, everybody thinks, oh, I've watched a lot of tv. How hard could it be? Well, it's not as easy as you think. There's a lot of things that you do on tv, or even that I'm doing right now in this zoom interview. I've been using all of these techniques that I've written about in my new book, the Speaking Game, and that I have learned through the process of doing 100 television appearances, including my 32nd appearance on NBC New York, my 57th appearance on the Today Show. And all of these appearances since the first four have been booked by me. I figured out, what does a producer want? Because I was gonna hire that publicist to book me on 10 more shows, and that was gonna cost me a fortune. And my wife said, whoa, whoa, whoa, why don't you just try to book yourself on these shows? Why do you keep paying that lady all this money? And I'm always a guy who's up for a challenge. And if you want to figure that out for yourself, I'm sure as a viewer of this program, you're probably a pretty smart person, and eventually you could figure it out. However, I have learned through investing in mentors. And that's why when I got the opportunity to Invest with Harvey McKay for $10,000, I snapped at it. Because I have learned that investing with mentors accelerates your learning and saves you years of wasted time and frustration and efforts that may or may not pay off. There's a lot of blind alleys in life, and this whole process has evolved into a system where I have really focused on how do you really become somebody special in the eyes of customers and prospects. Going on TV is great. As I said, I've done more than 100 television appearances. My students have booked themselves using my mathematical formulas for how to get on TV anytime you want on more than 3,800 television appearances. But there's more to it. Television is not the only thing that you can or should use in order to appear to be a celebrity entrepreneur in the eyes of your customers and prospects and in the work that we're going to be doing together here inside the Academy, I'm going to be focusing on two areas, and the first one is the presentation skills. If you've enjoyed my storytelling or the video that you're watching, there's a lot of elements and techniques and tricks and Skills that I have learned that I call the lowest Hanging fruit of how to be a Seven Figure Speaker. I earn seven figures a year just from flapping my lips today as a speaker. And according to one of my many mentors, Joel Weldon, who was an original founding member of the National Speakers association, who is in the National Speakers association hall of Fame, he says that my earning seven figures a year as a speaker makes me in the top 1% of all money earners in the National Speakers Association. And what I have come up with is what I wrote about in that book, which is the low hanging fruit of how do you become a seven figure speaker? What are the things you need to do with your voice, with your business body, with your performance, with your content, your storytelling? That makes you a person who people will pay a lot of money to as a speaker. And then there's also issues of marketing in there as well.

That is phenomenal. Everybody's listening to the Street Smarts podcast. You're not able to see Clint, but he is all suited up. Looks like a million bucks from his suite, I'm presuming, in Hawaii, where he is for two months. Clint Arthur, if you're just tuning in, author of the Speaking Game. So celebrity entrepreneur, new Harvey McKay, Academy faculty member. And I noticed in the beginning of your book Speaking Game, Dan Kennedy says you were the real thing. Why is Dan Kennedy saying that about you? And how does getting on TV and all this great celebrity stuff translate to making money in the real world? Because you're good. You're obviously a butter salesman and now you're like a super duper celebrity guy. So explain that.

When I won Dan Kennedy's Info Marketer of the Year award, the prize was a weekend mastermind, all expenses paid at Disney World with Dan Kennedy and the other winners of the other competitions. And one of the other winners, Dan, has a Titanium coaching group. And the Titanium winner said to Dan, so is what Clint does like what this other guy does, who's another pretty famous person in the GKIC world? And Dan goes, no, Clint does the real thing. There's a lot of people out there who simulate the things that I do. There's a lot of people out there who make their own TV shows and you pay them a lot of money and go on their show and then it gets aired at 2 o' clock in the morning in Des Moines, Iowa, and they tell you that's what they're doing. But this way you could say, as seen on abc, NBC, CBS and Fox. Hey, what I'm really All about is. And when people ask me the question of, how do you make money as a celebrity entrepreneur? I always find that interesting. Because when you look at the celebrity entrepreneurs, do you ever think that they're not making money? Like, when you look at Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian or Kanye west or Bobby Flay or Dr. Phil or. Or Paula Deen even, who has fallen on hard times, or any of these celebrity entrepreneurs, like Tony Robbins, who I don't even believe is a real celebrity, but in his marketplace, Tony Robbins is a celebrity. He's not a real celebrity. How do I know that? Because I made a video one time, and while I was making the video, I walked into a bank and I went to cash my check, and I said to the teller, while I'm making this video, hey, do you know who Tony Robbins is? She's like, who? And you know. But that's my point. My point is to you and me, to anyone watching this video or listening to this podcast, you think Tony Robbins is the biggest thing in the whole entire world. But he's not a real celebrity. He's a celebrity to his customers and prospects. He's a superstar to his customers and prospects. And that's my whole point about celebrity entrepreneurship, is that you don't need to be Kim Kardashian in order to make a huge difference on your career and have way more impact and influence in your marketplace if you utilize the celebrity entrepreneurship methodologies that I'll be teaching here inside the Academy. So there's really two. Like, speaking is one part of it. I say there's five parts of being a celebrity entrepreneur. Going on TV is definitely one, because why, in the words of one of my great students, Veronica Gray, who has become the most televised female surfer in the world using my methodologies, she says YouTube is the great equalizer and television is the great separator. What becoming successful in business is all about is separating yourself out from everybody else in your category who's doing basically the same thing as you and making it appear to be that you are different from them and slightly better. The second aspect is to be what I call a VIP speaker. And that's a person who speaks in prestigious places, like at the Harvard Club in Boston or at NASDAQ or West Point. These are all places that famous people, VIP speakers, get to speak and share their message in front of prestigious audiences. Those types of speaking engagements add a lot of prestige to who you are in the eyes of customers and prospects. My third methodology is what I call celebrity attachment. Here's an example of celebrity attachment. This is my wife's MacBook Pro. We've got custom skins put on here. This is a photo of us with the Rolling Stones from last October a little less than a year ago. And this type of celebrity attachment photograph is magic, super magical to have those kinds of photos. And then the fourth element of celebrity attachment is being a best selling author like Harvey McKay. And that's why I wrote my book what they teach you at the Wharton Business School. That's why I write new books every year. Every year I'm coming out with a new book because it's a great excuse to connect with customers and prospects and say, hey, I've got a new thing. That's what a book is all about. Hey, I got a new book out and you got to check it out.

Now speaking game is the current book, just to remind everybody correctly and people can order the book on Amazon. How do people learn about you? I mean, you're going to be all over the academy with us, but obviously you have a big, big life beyond what you're contributing here at the academy as a faculty guy. So tell everybody where they can get the book and how they can find out about you. And then we'll tell them when you're coming back to see us.

The fifth part of being a celebrity entrepreneur in the eyes of your customers and prospect having what I call a celebrity positioning website. And you can go visit my celebrity positioning website at ClintArthur TV. Clint, like Clint Eastwood. Arthurliketheking TV because you gotta be on TV.

Wow, you have this wired. We were thrilled to have you at the street smarts event in June in Minneapolis. The next one coming up 11-12-13, 2018. I'm encouraging Harvey to get a panel together as part of our fabulous speaker bench. But Clint, you're part of the faculty here at Harvey McKay Academy teaching, sharing your knowledge. A lot of it's going to be free. Of course. We're going to have some paid training that you're going to do just for Harvey McKay Academy members and followers. So what is the next step with you? We're going to focus on bringing you back on a fairly regular basis.

Right.

We're launching the academy now. So tell everybody your big thing when you're coming back to be with us. Where are they going to pick up from you and really reinforce.

Look, just watching this video today, you've never seen anybody break down what it takes to be a celebrity entrepreneur in the eyes of customers and prospects the way I have. You've already gotten Huge value. And I know that because I'm the only one who talks about this stuff. I'm the only one who breaks it down this way. So clear, so simple. So congratulations on having your eyes open, because this is the key to everything. If you want to really have a career that's recession proof, bulletproof, that's going to not allow you to just survive, but to thrive in the big bad world of entrepreneurship, you got to be celebrity entrepreneur. And you've discovered the fact that it is possible and that there are specific elements used to create that positioning in the mind of your customers and prospects. So congratulations on that. Now, if you want to go to a deeper level of understanding of how to make these things happen, I'm going to be presenting two areas to focus on. Number one is the speaking game. The speaking game is the simplest and most powerful thing that you can do with yourself, just with your own instrument. You are the message and the instrument that's going to deliver the life, the reality that you want into your reality. If it's not coming out of you and your body and your mouth and your mind, it's not going to happen for you. So the speaking game is a game that I have developed that you can play every single day when you talk to anybody to have more fun, make more impact, have more influence, and develop confidence, charisma, poise, skill as a speaker, and become that confident person that you've always known that you could be. That's what the speaking game delivers. And I want to go into that with you as one of the areas that we will work on together here inside the Academy. The other area is based on my new book. My new book is called Celebrity Entrepreneurship, and it's going to break down all of the five elements of how do you position yourself properly as a celebrity entrepreneur? And that is the most important thing you can do. And it sounds very simple. And indeed, each element on its own is a simple thing. But I've been studying this stuff my whole life and there are nuances. Like, you want to get to the point in your life where you have unconscious competence in a sector, in an idea, in an area of study. That's where I'm at with celebrity entrepreneurship. There's nobody who knows more about it than me. And that is the most important element for anyone. To quote Dan Kennedy, your number one job as an entrepreneur is to raise your status in the eyes of your customers and prospects. And there is no higher status in our society than celebrity. And that's what.

That's phenomenal. Clint thanks for being with us. Ladies and gentlemen, Clint Arthur, author of the Speaking Game, faculty member at Harvey K. Academy, and Clint, look forward to having you back really soon. Thanks for being with us today.

Thank you for listening to Street Smarts with Harvey McKay. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you can sync your favorite audio. Don't forget to leave a positive rating and review before you sign up for your free membership@harveymckayacademy.com. to learn more about Harvey McKay, make sure to visit www.harveymichkayacademy.com. thanks for listening and we'll be back soon with a new episode.

Sam.