Specific Ways Mentors Can Impact Your Life and Career with Ski Legend, John Clendenin

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm here talking with John Clendenin, and we're having a lot of fun talking about my favorite thing along with golf, more than golf, really ski. And it's why I've got a place out in Aspen. It's why I spent about half my year out there.

And.

The main guy that caused me.

To.

Stop traveling the world skiing all these different locations in the center on one spot is who we're talking to today, John Clendenin. So, John, this is a lot of fun. I'm looking forward. Talk to us, John, about right from the beginning. You know, it's interesting. And sometimes it takes us our entire life to realize what caused us to go in the direction we went in and what, what we heard, who we.

Saw.

How we interpreted life, what was important to us early on that caused us to do certain things. And you find out 20, 30, 40 years later where that resulted. You were a young guy in la, no skiing, no mountains in la. And from that, you turned in and developed into this skiing hall of Famer. There was no skiing development programs. I mean, so you had something that motivated you and drove you to find skiing, to take it seriously and to do that. Talk about, can you think of things that were difference makers that allowed you to have this unique life and have a unique approach and take on things?

Well, I've got mentors also, right? I had mentors in my life. And I'll tell you real quickly, there are four of them. And one of them is I was a speed skater when I was a kid. I lived in upstate New York, and I was a speed skater. Me skiing one day when I was 12 years old. And I remember I didn't ski till I was 12 or 13, I think. And they took me skiing. I said, damn, this skiing is great because you don't have to work to go faster. Like in speed skiing. You have to do all the work yourself. And in two years of skiing, I got a scholarship to go to Northwood Prep School. I got a racing scholarship. And at that time, Northwood produced three Olympic skiers. It was the number one training facility for producing United States ski athletes. And I was on the ski team. And our team Our prep school ski team beat St. Lawrence, Middlebury and Dartmouth ski teams. We're that good. And unfortunately, I did lose my scholarship. And that's a story I'll have to share with you some other time. But it wasn't just academic, and it wasn't major. It wasn't a major thing. Basically, I got caught in a girl's dorm at a ski race. And I wasn't even capable of doing anything bad if I wanted to. It's just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I ended up moving to LA with my parents. That's where they were at. So all of a sudden, here I was, a budding ski racer, and I was kind of just wiped out of the world of skiing. And I was in la, and I started college and everything there. And it was in LA when I was wandering down the street, I was actually going to a pool hall to play pool. And I heard this music behind the ski shop across the street. I was walking down Woodland Boulevard, and across the street was a Viking ski shop. And there was this Tijuana Taxi by Herb Albert. I can remember the tune. And this is all lit up down the alleyway. And I walked down the alleyway to see what's going on. And I turned the corner, and turning that corner changed my life, because what I saw blew my mind. And it was this giant revolving carpet with this guy up there dancing to Herb Albert's Tijuana Taxi on skis, with skis on. And he's skiing back and forth, and it's all to the beat of the music. And his poles are going to the music and stuff like that. And I go, oh, what is this? Anyway, long story short, I met my second. My first mentor was prep school was Warren Witherell, who was our coach. And he was probably one of the most famous ski coaches in America. And the second guy is a guy named Phil Gerard. And he really is what I consider to be the father of freestyle, because he brought entertainment to skiing. He was a choreographer. That's what he did before this. And he was a pretty good skier. He. And he choreographed these ski shows that traveled around the country, performing on these revolving carpets. And we did a show in 1966 for the Andy Williams Christmas Special. Now might not understand. That was probably the biggest promotion for skiing that ever happened because we brought one of these big ski decks into his studio. And here's Andy pretending to be skiing down the slope, standing on a bott in front of the ski deck. And they use a blue screen Behind. And they have us skiing behind them, and we're going back and forth skiing. And there's Andy Williams singing to three quarters of America. And I do the very first trick ballet. I do an aerial spin in the air, where I come down and do a 360 in the air and come down and keep skiing. That was, in my opinion, possibly the beginning of freestyle skiing, that particular event. So Phil Girard would be the second one. Okay. And then, I don't know if you knew it, but I became a golf pro. I got my PGA card, and I kind of. Well, I don't want to get too far out of sequence. I end up coming to Aspen, and that's where I met this guy, Cal Cantrel.

And Cal was one of your. He's one of the four.

Yes, he is.

Hey, can I tell you something about Cal? Interrupt you? This is three out of your four mentors. One time we're over there on the side of the hill and where, you know, you're talking to us, and Cal goes by. He's got his group, and he's going down. And you said, that guy's got the best feet on the mountain. And I thought. I have no idea what he just said.

Yeah, well, that's what Cal said. You know, he came over and watched me give a lesson on my ski simulator that I had located here in Aspen. And he listened to me, and the people all left, and he says, john, you don't know what you're doing, do you? He says, you know, you don't know. He said first, and I'll tell you real simply, and don't ever forget this, if it can't be taught from the feet up, then it shouldn't be taught at all. And what he did is he made me realize that people needed to start with what they were doing with their feet in skiing. It's not what you do with your hips, your head, your arms, your hand. It's what you're doing with your feet because your body will naturally adjust to the position of your feet. And I went, wow. Yeah. And everything that I'm talking about could. Could be related to the feet. That's where it really. That's where it really, really starts. You know, that's where it's at. So that's when the Clinton and ski method became feet oriented. We start from feet and then work up. We don't teach you where to put your hip. No, your hip will go wherever your feet tell it to go.

Right.

Anyway, the fourth mentor was in the middle there. That was a guy that taught me basically just how important people are in life and that if, you know, if you don't, you're not going to get treated right unless you treat people right.

And who was that?

That was a guy named Harry Leonard. He's the guy that promoted the ski shows that toured the country. I don't know if you ever might have gone to one, but they were huge.

No, I never went. No, I never did.

Yeah, he did them in. We started in la, then we went to San Francisco, then to Chicago, and then back to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and in the prior. I did that for about four years. And I also learned the value of entertainment, that it, you know, if you're not entertaining people, they're not going to listen to you. Yeah, you got to make it entertaining on the.

That's a big deal. I think we should, we should put a little emphasis on that because that's. You've always not only had fun, made other people have fun, you know, broke down the barriers and let people get comfortable and relax and basically enjoyed people. And I see that, John, as you enjoyed people, you don't let people be sticking the mud, you know, hey, listen.

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You know, like when we do our camps and stuff, everybody has to talk. You know, I'll have someone who wants to take the stage and I'll tell them, wait, wait, wait. Everybody has a turn. And it's really important that everybody gets a chance to speak because it breaks so much ice. Some people are a little timid and afraid to at first, but if they do talk, all of a sudden, they become more part of our camp, more part of our event, and they participate more easily. So. So I have everybody introduce themselves and why they're here and what they want to, what their goals are. And basically that's, you know, can be really simple and concise or people, you know, extrapolate and go on and on a little bit, but that's okay. But everybody has to say something. Yeah. And that's important. I think people forget how important it is to hear other people. It's important to hear those. And I'm sure you know that in your business how important it is to bring other people out.

Yeah, that's the first, first step in relaxing them, really. You know, relaxing them. Not just one on one, but even in the group, you know, they got to be relaxed and comfortable in the room, in the group. And if they're not talking, they've got a barrier up there.

Right, right. And I think it's, that's why one of the first things we do is have people introduce themselves, where they're from, why they're here, what their goals are. And just that simple little stuff is enough to open the door, to keep the door open. And then the key to fun is that when I tell people this is not necessarily going to be really easy, you have to pay some attention. Now, you can't just lolly dag around and get this. You're gonna have to focus. And I mean it. You know, let's get this while we're young. That's one of my statements, you know, let's get it while we're young. But as soon as they get the very first key, you can see a whole change in their, their demeanor. And that's, I would say in my, you know, I've oversold my two camps in December. I told you that. Yeah, I usually limit it to three groups. We're only allowed to have five in a group. Well, now I got, I got five groups with five. Five in them. So it's a. I can only grow, grow as big as my, as I have coaches, you know, I mean, I have five coaches here. And that's. That, that, that's my barometer for how big I can make these things. But everybody, I'd say out of those 25 people, 15 of them are probably returning clients. You know, people coming back, meaning they, they, they're, they're on the train, you know, they, they want to keep getting better. You, you know, when you're a good example, when you came first, came to us, I think you immediately had a transformation in your skin. And you're still here, buddy.

Absolutely. Well, you know, you would have seen more of me too, if I didn't have my own batch of injuries, you know. So hopefully this year we're going to be all, no pandemic and all systems go out there. When you talk about your, your Warren, the first one of your mentors.

Yes, sir.

What was his last name?

Warren, witherell and you can Google him. He was probably put. Put more people on a US Olympic team than anybody else.

Now, do you remember about him?

First of all, he was the most incredible English teacher that I've ever had. He was, you know, anybody at all. The coaches at Northwood were also professors at the school. You know, he was a true intellectual. He's the one that got me into reading, you know, bless his heart. I don't know whether you know it, but I'm just short of a master's degree in English Romantic poets.

Okay. I could have gone forever and not guess that.

No. Truth is beauty, beauty, truth. That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know on Earth. John Keats.

Wow.

Anyway, Warren was a world champion water skier. He was the first man to jump over 100ft in water skis. And he was a great slalom skier. And he, he. His primary coaching ability came from water skiing, you know, being the top guy in America. Water skiing. And he took up skiing with the same. And he was almost scientific about it. We, Northwood was hired to test waxes, ski waxes, and he'd have the whole team up there, and we go through electronic gates to see, and all we had to do was just stand on the skis and we were seeing which. Which wax worked the best. We did a lot of testing at the time. But real quick, you want a quick story about Warren or do we have time?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

We would go to Whiteface Mountain two days a week. During the week we got to do that. We'd go take off at noon. Whiteface Mountain is one of the biggest mountains in New York. And you don't hear about it a whole lot because it's owned by the state. But at Whiteface Mountain, there's a run that's three miles long. You have to one chair up, and then you get off, and then you take another steep chair up to the top. And there's this run called Excelsior that goes around the mountain, goes around and then comes down, right down to the bottom. And the bottom half, you can get going up to 50 miles an hour. It's, you know, to get to the bottom and there's these two jumps you have to go over that. We had built that if we didn't pre jump them, you could fly about 100ft off these things. You had to pre jump them in order not to, you know, in order to take the loft out of the jump, right? Well, he would. We would go up there and we would. He Would send us off one at a time on a chair, and he'd mark down the time we left, and we'd have to get off the chair, go up the other chair, get off and ski down Excelsior and ski all around this three mile run, go over these two jumps and come to the bottom. He'd record our time, and then he'd let us put on our other ski, go do it again. In other words, we had to do it on one ski, the whole thing. So when you learn how to ski on one ski, you learn an awful lot about that ski's edges, both edges on that ski. And then you go up and do that again, and I'll tell you, it was hard to do. That's a long way to ski on one ski.

Wow.

And how long did you say that run was?

About three miles from the top. It was. It wasn't fast at top, and then it was really fast at the bottom.

We don't have any three mile runs in Aspen. Snowmass.

No, over in Snowmass. You do.

Yeah.

Okay. You know, it was just a stretch it out, a long, lazy run around the back of the mountain, and then it came around the front. And he did that on purpose, you know, again, we had to ski slow. I mean, you couldn't. You skied as fast as you could. Right. But you weren't going that fast. And we were going around corners and around, and it was a lot of work. You try skiing on one ski for. I mean, it's hard to ski on one, even if you're good. It's hard to ski on one ski for 200 yards. You know, it's tough.

You know, that just kind of shows that just about everything to do with skiing. You've been through it and involved in it forever. For example, when we're over. When we were over in Patilla, Chile, skiing in September, and the national ski teams from all the countries are out there experimenting with their skis and their waxes and their boots right in their gears. This is old news to you, I guess.

Yeah, I've been in that world, you know, I've been in that racing world for sure, by the way, it's just really good news. I'm really excited about it. I. The last five. Five years. Well, seven years ago, I started going to Valdez Air with a group, and the last two years we have not been able to go. And it looks like we're. We're gearing up to go this year again. Bald is there and Portillo.

Unbelievable. That's that's exciting. Thanks so much for sharing.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years. Put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, Go.