The Greatest Mind Hacks in Marketing History (Craig Clemens Interview)
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All right, you're about to hear a podcast with a guy who does over a billion dollars a year in sales, and yet 99.9% of you have never heard of him. It's my friend Craig. He is the smartest marketing mind I know, period. And in this podcast, he talks about the three greatest lines in marketing history, and he breaks down why they work. He breaks down the ads that he used in his business and how he took one business from zero to 127 million in sales in year one. Enjoy this episode with Craig Clemens.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know, I know I could be what I want to. And it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

And I had to put the finger up to your lips. Like, we got to record this. And so we came in here, emergency podcast. Before you tell me the lines, I'll tell people who you are. So Craig Clemens, he created, he's done many things, but one of the things he created is Golden Hippo. It's a company you've never heard of, but it just crushes it. It's a e-commerce company. You guys have done over a billion dollars of sales online. So whenever I'm- A billion a year. A billion a year. Yeah.

Billion a year. That's an important correction. Every time I talk to you, the marketing part of my brain just explodes. I just get so much smarter. And so you're one of my favorite people to talk to. Because every time I learn from you, I can go do something in my business right away that's going to make more money. So I always appreciate that. You gave me the teaser. The three greatest lines in marketing. What are they? Okay, so the greatest line in marketing history, if you Google or chat GPT it, is going to say...

A line different than what I was going to tell you. Okay. What would they say? I'm going to tell you what they're going to say in a minute. Teaser, teaser. Marketing is a lot about teasers. Because it is a very strong line and it's worthy of discussion. But I'm going to start with my favorite headline of all time. And that was written by a copywriter named Gary Halbert.

And the way it came about, he was contracted by a woman named Tova Borgnine, who was the wife of movie star Ernest Borgnine. Before our time, but apparently if we went to our parents and grandparents and we said Ernest Borgnine, they would be like, oh, yes, he was a Brad Pitt type of the time.

So his wife wanted to come up with a perfume and she asked Gary to figure it out for her. So Gary doesn't know the first thing about perfume, but he knows a ton about marketing. At the time, he was a legendary copywriter, had many, many successes. And so he

he's brainstorming on what to do as he's walking through the mall one day and he sees a kiosk where there's these little oils and things like that. Did you ever walk by that kiosk? Of course, there's always like a very smooth talker right there. Yeah, make your own perfume, right? And so he goes up and he's like, hey, what are these creations of perfume? Do you make them yourself or whatever? And they say, oh yes, the...

essential oils are put together to make your own perfume. And he says, is there one of them that outsells all the rest? And they're like, oh, yes, China Musk. China Musk is the bestseller by far. He says, why doesn't someone take China Musk, put it in a fancy bottle and call it XYZ perfume? And they're like, well, that's a great idea. No one's ever done that. He says, OK, give me some China Musk. So he takes the China Musk and he walks over to the jeweler that he knows. And he says, Mr. Jeweler, I would like you to put this in a fancy glass and gold bottle that is shaped like a T.

puts it in the bottle, and then he sits on it for like three months, calls Tova Borgnine and he goes, Tova, I have spent the last three months traveling the world in search of the finest perfume. And I think finally, after sampling literally thousands, I've discovered it.

I want to bring it over to your house right now and have you smell it. He brings it over. She's just in awe of how great the China musk smells. And she decides she wants to launch it. And she wants to do the launch party at her friend Candy Spelling's boutique on Roteo Drive. Candy is a wife of Aaron Spelling, the big producer. And Gary says, that is far too small. We are going to rent out the entire bottom floor of the Century Plaza Hotel.

And she's hemming and hawing. She's like, how are we going to fill that with people and this and that? And he says, you know, trust me. So she actually strokes the check, rents out the entire bottom floor of the Century Plaza Hotel. And Gary takes it a full page ad in the LA Times. And the headline is this. Wife of famous movie star swears under oath. Her new perfume does not contain an illegal sexual stimulant.

That was the headline in big letters. And then the subhead said, and she is so confident in this, she's willing to prove it by giving away 10,000 sample bottles on this day at this time at the Century Plaza Hotel. So they put up the ad and, you know, will it work? Who knows? And the phones at the Century Plaza Hotel just start ringing and ringing by people wanting to know about this event. And

This kept going and going and they realized it was going to be chaotic. So the fire department comes the day of and they like shut down the street and they figure out this way to get all the cars in and thousands and thousands and thousands of people show up and crowd into the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel with this big reveal. He has two in shape gentlemen with tuxedos get a briefcase, handcuff it to their wrist and walk it in through the crowd, bring it onto the stage and

Opens it up. And in there are the 12 sapphires representing all 12 ingredients in Tova perfume.

And Tova auctions off each Sapphire for charity, brings in a few hundred thousand dollars. The next day, the phone rang with unsolicited offers from, you know, Macy's, Robinson's May, all the department stores at the time, Barney Sacks, et cetera, et cetera. It was the best selling perfume in the world that year and went on for many, many years. I think now you'll find it like at CVS behind, you know, photo counter or something like that. But it still, I think, exists. Wow. Yeah. So look for the tea, Tova Perfume.

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That's amazing. So you love that headline. If we break it down. So it was wife of famous movie star. Yes. Social proof right there. Social proof. Not using her name. Yes. Some curiosity. Yeah. Which famous movie star is it? Exactly. So curiosity and social proof. Then it was swears under oath, which is like stakes drama, right? Or how would you describe it? Is that what you would call it? Yes. And then.

new perfume does not contain sexual stimulants, which is like kind of a, an inversion, right? It's like, that implies this shit must be amazing. Okay. So I need to come up with a name for this because my favorite part of the headline is the last part. And it's like the secret marketing embed or some shit like that. You know, it's like the hidden secret message that even the reader doesn't know they're receiving. But when you read that, you're like, wait,

okay, it doesn't contain an illegal sexual stimulant. Does it contain a legal one? Like what is in this fucking thing, you know? And I always wanted to rip that headline and do it for like a new taco stand or something. You know, I think it's universal that you could be like, you know,

new restaurant owner swears on her oath his tacos do not contain an illegal addictive stimulant. You know, as he's willing to give away a thousand free tacos to prove that there's nothing weird in here and they're just that good. They're just that good. Actually, that's a great ending to it too. Yeah. And then it had actually the sort of the offer or the call to action, which was,

giving away so many samples at this time at this place. Exactly. It's proof that this is going to work, you know, a risk-free offer. You're going to get this for free. Right. And if you don't like it, who cares? You know, so it's removing all the risk. It's making it really easy to go get it. Have you ever done a remix of that headline? Have you? I haven't. I had a roommate who was going to open a taco stand. She didn't end up doing it. I came up with a name too. It was going to be in San Diego. It was going to be called Burro Borrachos. So like drunken donkeys. Yeah.

I think it would kill it, man. If anyone out there, if you're watching this, you want to start a taco stand together, you got to have a good recipe, but I'm in, man. I'll do all the marketing for your taco stand. And you have to name it Burra Barrage. And I get free tacos for life. That could be amazing. No, I haven't. But, you know, ever since I heard about this, which was very early in my marketing career, I've been obsessed with like marketing embeds. And about the same time, this came out, I think, in the 90s or something like that before I was in marketing. But about the same time I learned about this,

Another marketing embed hit the world. And I think this is another of the greatest lines in marketing history. And that is, Sean, I'm sure something you can personally relate to.

If you get an erection lasting longer than four hours, call a physician immediately. So we've all heard it. We've all heard it. It's the end of every Viagra ad. And if you're a guy that's having trouble getting it up, you're thinking about this and you're like, fuck, this could actually give me a four hour erection. I'll be happy with four minutes, man. You know?

And it's such a great line. So you think that, so I always heard that as at the end of any info, you know, pharma commercial. Yes. Like you may, side effects may include nausea, vomiting, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I kind of thought it was like that, but actually you're right. I don't think that was the mandated, the mandated side effects of,

I think that was an embed. Maybe. I mean, it could have been true also. It shows a way to workshop things in a way that could be a positive. Like the nausea thing for something else, it could be like, you know, if you're, oh, here's something. I literally got stem cell treatments last week. And the doctor, after he shoots me up, tells me, hey, you're going to have swelling tonight and extreme pain. And that's great. That means it's working.

I was like, oh, interesting. Changed the meaning. You know? Yeah. And when it started swelling and I was fucking howling, man, it was like the most pain I've ever been. And actually I was literally howling. I was like, well, at least it's fucking working. You know, my knee's going to heal. So, uh, yeah, there, uh,

is a lot of value in being able to turn positives into negatives. Joe Sugarman was a master of this too. He used to sell a lot of devices. Do you know who Joe Sugarman is? I've heard the name, but yeah. Blue Blocker Sunglasses. So we can talk about Joe Sugarman for a hot minute because he is one of the- Is that a real name, by the way, or is that kind of like an ad man name? That's his real name. And he was one of the greatest legends in marketing history. Everyone should read Sugarman and study what he did. But before he did Blue Blocker Infomercial, which was one of the biggest infomercials at the time, he would do these devices and

And he had one of the early air purifiers. And back then, the way the technology... You think of an air purifier now, what do you think of? A slick box in the corner of the room. Yeah. This one was in the 90s or something like that. And it had to have this crazy weird wire coil on top of it to grab all the negative shit out of the air. And it was very ugly. And his ad...

attacked that head on. He said like, you know, the coil that removes the toxins. And so instead of having this ugly ass thing in your house, you're like, oh, that's that you see that coil in your life. That's the coil pulling the toxins out of the air. You know, I forget what his exact headline was on that, but it was turning these negatives into into positive. OK, so are we on number two or that was number two? No, that was number two. OK,

Oh, okay. Okay. So maybe there's going to be five, four. I don't know how many we said there was going to be. Okay. A shout out to another one. I just remembered that's really big. When infomercials first aired, the call to action was, please call now. Operators are standing by. Do you remember? Yes. I've heard these infomercials. Yes. There was a woman, a man, I wish I could remember her name, but it was a female copywriter that created this and it changed the entire world of infomercials. And I think the entire world of selling.

And she changed that line to, please call now. If you get a busy signal, please call again. And if you think of the picture in your mind,

You know, of operators just standing there waiting for the phone to ring. No one's buying this fucking thing. To call now, you probably get a busy signal. Please keep calling. Please keep trying. You know, the offer is going to stay around for this many minutes. Please keep trying to call. It just gives the image of the phones flying in the room and everyone's trying to place their orders. And it's like high demand. And, you know, it gets you excited. And when you get through and you hear that person answer, you're relieved. You're like, oh, yeah.

Right. I'm going to get the special offer. Is the special offer still available? Yes. Right. It is still available. Right, right, right. It's like that feeling of relief. So that was a big line. I'll give a shout out to that one. We did a similar one where for my company, we, let's say on a normal day, let's say when we launch a product, it would be awesome if let's say 800 people bought the thing, like right when it launches, like the kind of the first 10 minutes or so.

And so I'm like trying to think about how to drum up excitement or whatever. And so part of the team, you know, first instinct is like, do we discount? No, no, we're not going to discount that. That's going to have the opposite effect. Probably. Do we free gift with purchase or some kind of limited time, like bonus for like the first people through the door? Okay. I think we're on the right track. And we did a similar thing where we were like, I did the founder sent a personal note. It was like an unstyled email and it was basically apologies in advance for

We expect this to go off, you know, to sell so quickly. I know that many of you are going to be upset. And so as a, you know, as a make good, you know, I give you my word that for the next one, we're going to have more. But for this one, it's just going to be...

I know it's going to be chaos. Scarcity. I'm already worried about it. Yes. And immediately we had our biggest day, which we had never had. Like, you know, 800 would have been a great day. And then all of a sudden it was like 2,800 just by apologizing in advance because we embedded the, instead of saying like, come get it. Yes. We were like, we're so sorry. You're probably not going to get it.

And that reversal really worked. Embedded marketing. That's a book, man. It's a book waiting to be written. We've brainstormed three books now in the last 18 months that somebody should write. We want to write these. All right. Yeah. It's happening. Yeah. And actually, you and I have been...

casually talking about writing a book. Yeah. And maybe we need some people out there to pressure us. To pressure us and motivate us. We will read the YouTube comments. One day we should. Yeah, we should do this. So let us know below if you want to see this book. All right, number three. Number three, four, I can't remember which one. Which one? They're Eating the Dogs.

They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people who live there. I have that song in my head now. They're eating the dogs. People of Springfield, please don't eat my dog. Okay. This line was said to have lost Trump the debate and possibly the election. And what happened over the following week, in my opinion, won him the debate and possibly the election.

Because that line of the 20,000 immigrants that had been legally migrated to Springfield, Illinois, town of, was it Springfield, Ohio? Yeah, yeah. Springfield, Ohio, town of 58,000, was torn apart by the fact checkers. Torn apart by every news station in the world.

These 20,000 legal migrants in this town of 60,000 are not eating dogs. They are not eating cats. That is complete BS. Let me say it again. These 20,000 migrants that were moved into this little town of 60,000 people that probably didn't vote to have them moved in, probably didn't know they were coming in. Maybe some of them wanted them. Maybe some of them didn't. They're not eating dogs. They're not eating cats.

But what does it say to the entire world? Yes, large amounts of immigration, migration, whether it's legal or illegal, is happening in small towns and places like Springfield, Ohio. Right. I had never known this was happening. And, you know, some people want that and some people don't.

And Trump's base and a lot of moderates don't want the small town that they live in or their parents live in or, you know, they grew up in to have such a huge change in population, in demographics, in, you know, the style of how businesses are run, etc.,

And it spread that message worldwide that, wow, there really is a lot of immigration happening. And yeah, some people thought it was great and some people didn't, but it got that message out.

Because before that, you hear about, oh, there's, the number was always different, right? There's 8 million people that came in under Biden. There's 20 million people that came in under Biden. And this is a big number. Can you visualize 8 million people? I can't. But I can visualize 20,000. I've been to a football game. It's just 20,000 in the stadium. And I can visualize 58,000. And I can put the simple math together. That's one third of the population. And that is a change.

And so it paints a picture. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with

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Did you read Scott Adams when he was running the first time? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He was one of the first people back in 2016

when Trump first came out. And if you remember, he did the first speech. I didn't follow much of it. And he was like, they're bringing their rapists, they're bringing their killers across the border. And it was like, whoa, whoa. That was like, I mean, this first exposure to like, it's like, I saw this TikTok the other day of like an African tribe drinking a Fanta for the first time. And they're like, you know, they don't even know how to get to it. They're like biting the lid off and then they drink a Fanta. And they're like, oh my, like, what is this? Yes.

That was Trump. That was the reaction to Trump the first time. And Scott Adams came out and he was like, oh, not only is this not a joke, I think he's going to win. And he goes, I've been a trained basically like he's like a hypnotist. He's like, I have looked at how you communicate with people, not sort of overtly, but like the subtext of what's being said and how effective that is at planting messages. And he called them linguistic kill shots.

He goes, Trump has these linguistic kill shots where he just labels something or he brings their attention to it in an extreme way. So like with the eating the dogs or the cats, it's like instead of arguing about the migration, you're arguing now are the migrants eating dogs and cats, which forced you to first accept the migrant point. But if he never said that, you have to debate the migrant point. And so and he was talking about like when Jeb Bush was the favorite at the time because the Bush dynasty, the father, the brother. Now it's going to be Jeb. And he just called him low energy Jeb.

And he labeled him that. And then no matter what Jeb did, if Jeb was...

just being Jeb, he's kind of low energy looking. If he suddenly got vivacious, Trump would be like, good job, Jeb. You're like, you're doing it. And he, and so Jeb couldn't win. He tied him up and neither path was like viable. And he, he just had to like remove this sticker off him. And nobody in politics was doing that to each other. Right. Crooked Hillary. He was just coming up with these linguistic kill shots where visual words, every time you saw the person, that's what you saw. Yes. And Scott called that out pretty early on. And whether, again, whether it's,

natural that's just how he is or it's like strategic i have no idea but i think at this point it's pretty it's pretty clear that that is an effective way of communicating that he does yes yes he's a showman like with the mcdonald's thing right when he went to work at mcdonald's a lot of people didn't know why he was going to work at mcdonald's and then they found out oh kamala has a questionable history it's in debate whether or not she worked at mcdonald's

You know, and he did something else where he was interviewed at a conference and he said, I think Kamala is black now. I thought she was Indian. Everyone's like, Trump's a racist, blah, blah, blah. And it's interesting because not when he says these things, it kind of does make him look bad in a way. It does in a way make him look like a schoolyard bully. Right.

But it's effective. It's weird, right? He creates the frames that then you have to participate in. Yeah. And the garbage truck, he did the same thing when Joe Biden called his supporters garbage. He went and got in a garbage truck. He's like, I'm going to milk this moment and make sure that I dominate the news cycle. That was the really interesting thing I realized in this election is you could feel in the news cycle.

who was winning, and then you could track it on PolyMarket. So like the news cycle, whoever had something positive, their odds would go up on PolyMarket. And then Trump did the rally at MSG and he had Tony Hinchcliffe did the diss on the Puerto Ricans and like the PolyMarket starts going down and like Kamala's owning the news cycle. And then Biden says the garbage thing and it goes back to Trump favor and the garbage truck and Trump's odds go up. It was wild to see these two things tracking.

So let's do another one of the greatest lines. Okay, so now we can go to the chat GPT line. Yeah, what would they say? And it really is. And this is something that everyone knows about, but not a lot of people know where it came from. So you'll know the line instantly when I say this, but, you know, in the 1940s, only about 10% of brides got a diamond engagement ring.

De Beers' diamonds had an interesting run. They were quite popular in the early 1900s as like a flex, not as a wedding ring, but, you know, in other jewelry or on like a lapel or, you know, necklace, earrings, things like that. And then the Depression happened.

And around the same time as diamond mining got really good. So they had an oversupply of diamonds and then they had people losing money. And then we should talk about Joseph Devine to the greatest art dealer of all time because he invented the American art market. So people were spending money on art and things like that, you know, and so taking more away from that luxury sector to go into another one. And it was a female copywriter, Frances Geraghty.

who was at an agency that De Beers hired. And the story goes is like, she was frustrated and she was like, you know, I don't know, at her last, down to her last penny or something. And one night she is working on this campaign and can't think of anything. And then wakes up in the middle of the night with this line, a diamond is forever.

And what is interesting is that was the tie in to engagement. Before that, the engagement ring would be like a plain band, a gold band. You know, sometimes it would be like like an offering, like a cow or like a

land or things like that. And an engagement is temporary anyways. Like by definition, an engagement is like a temporary period of time. So diamonds are forever is like an exact contrast to that. Yes. And it's an embed because

It then shows that if someone doesn't present a diamond, maybe they're not in it forever. Right. Right. And what woman wants a half commitment? Right. Ladies out there, do you want a half commitment from your man? You know, so. And from what I remember reading about this, they went to Hollywood and they basically were giving directors diamonds saying in the key moment, in the climax moment where the man professes his love, he's got to give her a diamond ring.

And they embedded it in Hollywood in movies by literally bribing the directors in order for them to show that. So then you're watching the movie and that's now become that now influences culture that I guess that's how you do it. The big romantic gesture is to literally get down on one knee and hand her a gold, you know, a diamond ring that became used kind of top down influence also to do it. Right. And then scarcity, right. Cause they limit the supply. So all the core marketing things, you know, influence social, social proof, um,

That frame, diamonds are forever. Scarcity, they kind of used all of it. Yes. And now there's this big debate going on between lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds. Have you heard of this? It's fascinating. Because I think they're 10%, 20% of the price or something like that. It's probably price control among the companies. They're basically 50% to 80% cheaper. It's the exact same rock. You could look at them under a microscope. In fact, it could be argued it's more perfect. It's nicer, right? It's a more perfect thing. And so you can get a big rock for this. But then...

The smartest, the thing that I guess De Beers did was that they, so this is a big problem. They're like, okay, if there's lab grown diamonds that don't have these social issues with mining, blood diamond type of stuff. Yes. And it's just as good, if not better.

This is a problem. And so what they did, the genius of their business strategy was they got into the lab-grown business and just flooded the market with cheap lab-grown diamonds. So they lowered the price intentionally. Like crappy ones? Good lab-grown diamonds, but they just lowered the price so much more that then the consumer's mind, it became a perception like, oh, wow, like,

Yeah. If it was just like 20% less or something like that, it might actually be more competitive. They made it so much cheaper that they like took away the value, the perceived value, the prestige of the diamond doing that. I didn't know that. They were like involved in that process. Pretty crazy. You put me on to an incredible marketer, Gary Benzavanga, who I had never heard of. And he has this

a little example, a little exercise that I love. I want to share, which is like, I don't know if you remember this from, from learning his stuff, but he, he gives this example of kids going fishing. So it's like a lemonade stand type of example. So it's like kids are going fishing. Uh, there are, they go to the fishing area and they want to sell bait. They want to sell worms. So they go V1 is basically like basically worms for sale, 99 cents or whatever. Right. And so they go there.

not much sales, come back home. Luckily, the neighbor is a copywriter. It's like the story. Neighbor's a copywriter. He says, hey, you know, why don't we level this up? And he goes, you know, first lesson of marketing, you don't sell the product, you sell the benefit. So buy these worms, catch more fish. So they go back day two, sell a little bit more with, you know, these worms will help you catch more fish. Now they have a benefit. He goes, okay. They come back, they're like, hey, what else you got? How can we make even more? And then they go to the next level where they were like,

He's like, well, why do they catch more fish? And I think it's Ogilvy who has this great quote that he was all about, like the the reason why marketing. And they go, oh, you seem to be a big fan of this reason why marketing. And he goes, is there any other is there any other way to sell this besides that? It's all you know, it's crazy if you don't use that.

So then the kids go out and they're like, well, why would I, why do our worms catch more fish? Oh, because these are local worms from the local soil. And what you don't know is that fish prefer worms that are from their local soil. And it's more attractive to them. Not these imported things that you find on the shelves. We have the local ones.

selling more, right? And then they go to the next level. It just shows like layering on these like master marketing techniques. I love that example. What's it end with like, you know, buy two cans of local worms, get a free bobber.

Exactly. It's like, there's like an offer. So he's like, you know, juice it with an offer. And I think maybe I'm mixing up two of the stories, but like he did a kind of a sensational headline too, which was like local fishermen accused of cheating because he catches the most fish and

reveals, reveals his simple secret. Right. And it's like, Oh, why we got to know? Cause there's a guy who catches way more fish than everybody else. People accused him of like, you know, using nets and other, other methods. No, no, no. He's just fishing like the rest of us, but he uses the local worms. Right. So he gets to the, to the best of it. Yeah. I love Gary's persuasion formula. He's got this very, very simple thing. And it sounds like when you first read it,

You're like, okay, I didn't get anything revolutionary. Then I go look at my ads. I'm like, okay, I'm not doing any of these things. And then you start doing them and your ROAS starts going up. So he's got the five Ps. And so the first one is problem. So what's the problem that the person has? And he says, no problem, no sale. Like you can't sell someone something that they don't do. Have some Advil. I'm not hurting. Why would I want your Advil? So problem. Then the next one is promise. So what's the promise benefit that this product is going to give you? Proof that it works.

Then there's proposition, which is your offer. And then I call, I call the last P products because he talks about the Cracker Jack secret. And he talks about how in a box of Cracker Jacks, they always had like a gift at the bottom. And he's like, I, you know, even if you give someone the Cracker Jacks and they're not hungry right now or whatever, he's like, I've never seen somebody just throw it away and not get the little gift out of the bottom. And he's like, so you want to have the Cracker Jack secret in your, in your ad, basically that was his thing. And then you can juice them up. Right. So,

Those are the P's and then he's got the U's. And if you stack those together, he literally has a formula where it's like urgent problem and that's 25 points. Unique promise, that's another 25 points. Unquestionable proof, another 25. User-friendly proposition, that's the last 25. And then the Cracker Jack secret is the bonus 20 points. If you stack that whole thing together, you get to 120. Love it. Amazing. Amazing. So good.

New York City founders, if you've listened to My First Million before, you know I've got this company called Hampton. And Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs. A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton. We have this big community of 1,000 plus people and it's amazing. But the main part is this eight-person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business and it's life-changing. Now, if you're a founder,

Now, to the folks in New York City, I'm building an in-real-life core group in New York City. And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does $3 million in revenue, or you've raised $3 million in funding, or you've started and sold a company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply. So go to joinhampton.com and apply. I'm going to be reviewing all of the applications myself. So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love. Now, back to the show. ♪

Who are the other ad men that you liked? Let's do that first. So you were telling me about an ad man that I've never heard of, a marketing legend. Yeah, so I actually study non-ad men now because I think I've gone through all the ad men. So we talked about Edward Bernays the last time I was on your show. But the guy I've been really geeking out on is actually an art dealer. Edward Bernays is a PR guy.

Joseph Devine is known as the greatest art dealer of all time. Devine's run was around like 1880 or 90. I think he died in 1935. And he came from a family that had a shop that sold like porcelain goods and tapestries in London, England. And they were pretty well established. They sold to the queen and things like that. You know, so they were the go-to place.

But these tapestries and ceramics would sell for like $3,000 to $5,000, which I think in that day's money is maybe like six figures or something around there. And he noticed as a teenager that fine artwork at certain times was selling for like $75,000. And so his uncle and father who owned the shop brought him when he was 15 years old to New York with them to do some business.

And he sneaks out from them, goes to Fifth Avenue and leases a little warehouse with like an upstairs and a downstairs. And he comes back and he's like, dad, uncle, I got us a shop. And actually I should preface this by saying, I don't think 15 years old then was like 15 years old now. I think 15 years old then is when you're going- You're in the real world. Yeah, yeah. You're going to get your shit started. I think, was it George Washington led his first-

caravan of soldiers at like 18 or something. And he'd been a surveyor and a scout since like 15 years old. Duveen was a hustler from an early age. He books this thing in New York because he has this realization when he's there. And that is that Americans for really the first time have tons of money. This was when Rockefeller was coming up and JP Morgan and industrial revolution came

Europeans have tons of art. Americans have tons of money. Europeans have tons of art. So in Europe, you'd go to the Duke's house, right? And the Duke would have his family portraits up. There's no photographers there.

And so you'd have to have a painter catalog grandma or grandma as a baby or whatever. So it would be on the wall and it would be like Raphael painting grandma. Right. Because Raphael was the portrait guy at the time or whatever. I don't know if it was specifically Raphael, but people like that or Gainsborough or, you know, some of the people that are now the biggest artists of human history were just, you know, flooding the walls of the Duke's house.

And these Dukes, like anyone else, would go busto sometimes and they'd be looking for money. So Devine, in his first big deal, he went to this Duke and the Duke was kind of broke. And he's like, yeah, I'll figure out how to get $3 million for your entire art collection. And that at the time was like, you know, $300 million or something. I don't know. But he bought the Duke's entire art collection and it was some of these old masters, Rembrandts and things like that. And he brings it to America. Yeah.

And he starts shilling it. And his sales methods are just like unbelievable. What was he doing? How did he do it? So, I mean, so some of these had some prestige, but like the first thing he does as he gets this painting, I think it was, was Gainsborough's little blue boy. It's been a year since I read the book. Sure. But he,

He acquires this and he makes this huge deal that this great institutional landmark of London is coming to the United States. And when it comes, he arranges to have all the reporters waiting on the deck. You know, there's no airplanes. So you take the cruise liner over. All the reporters are waiting there. It comes in and now it's on American soil and it's going to be presented at this amazing spot, you know, and builds the gravitas around this, this artwork. And then he has a,

pool that he decides is going to be the buyer pool. They don't know yet, but he's talking to people like Henry Frick and Andrew Mellon and John Rockefeller about this thing coming. And they'd be like, you know, oh, is this going to be for sale? The crown jewel of London for sale? Are you kidding me? No, absolutely not at any price. But if you want to make an offer, I could bring it to someone.

But it's not for sale. So he'd bring this thing and then he sold it for like $225,000, which was record shattering at the moment. You know, it's in every newspaper in the world that this painting sold for this much money to this person. And through a couple of these things, he creates the American art market and he has all of these industrial revolution titans. Right. You know, all the names, right? Literally, you know, Rockefeller, Mellon, Morgan,

uh vanderbilt to all these people become his clients and his sales methods are just like next level man like so there's a story of um i think it was uh uh a guy who made a fortune in california in the oil business and he comes to devine's in new york and he wants to buy art and this guy is like a new money guy and he's not really in the new york clique

He brings him to the shop and he has the guy show up at the time, he says, and Devine takes 90 minutes to show up. He's been waiting there for 90 minutes. Finally gets the guy and he's like, okay, come on upstairs with me. And he walks him into this corridor and there's the five paintings there that are stunning. And he walks them past and he's like, I'm going to show you some of the things in the back. And the guy's like, wait, wait, wait, what about these paintings? He's like, sir, those paintings are reserved for Mr. Mellon.

come this way. We need to get you something that will be more suitable for your collection. Tell me again what's in your collection. Oh, I have not heard of any of those artists. That's cute. Let me show you a nice starter work. He's like, well, what about the pieces, you know, how much is Mr. Mellon paying you? Making him feel small, yeah. How much is he paying you? And

you'd think that he would do this as a rift, but he really didn't sell the guy the paintings for Mr. Mellon. He made him buy this starter piece and is like, I can work on one of those. And then he'd call him a few months later and be like, look, you know, I think I might be able to wrangle one of those paintings loose from from Mr. Mellon. But the price is going to be outrageous. And Duveen's saying was when you overpay for the priceless, you're getting it cheap.

That was this quote that he propagated, which is kind of like a diamonds are forever. Yeah, exactly. And so he's got all these inputs that he does in just his everyday behavior, you know, like putting people in tears and things like that and propagating the saying that overpaying for the priceless is like the best financial move you can make, you know? And the things he does is just next level. I mean, then the sell side, it's fucking crazy. He's so relentless.

He would go on cruise liners. And back then, the boat from London to New York was the big thing and it was different levels or whatever. And your deck chair is like your baller spot, right? And so he'd go in there and the way he met Andrew Melanies, he greased the deck

Stafford to seat him next to Mr. Mellon. And then he gets there and he finds out that Mr. Mellon is a recluse and doesn't like going outside and only stays in his room. And he's so mad that he dreased so much to get the deck chair. But what he does is he starts kind of stalking the elevator and he times it to get in the elevator at the same time. Andrew Mellon gets in the elevator and

He's like, how do you do, sir? Literally an elevator pitch. What's the intent of your travels to London? And Mr. Mellon's like, oh, I'm here in this business. You know, how about yourself? And he's like, no, you know, having a brunch in the Duke of Carnegie's home is

Not sure what else, you know, but just drop something like that. And then, you know, where else are you going to be on your travels and things like that? And he's like, oh, you're the person who founded this. I forget what Mellon did, steel or something, you know. Would you like to join me for brunch at the Duke's house? He's like, oh, sure. I would love to meet, because royalty was the thing, you know, and Duveen really did have these connections. So he brings Mellon to brunch at the Duke's house. When you go to a Duke's house,

The dukes have the art on all the walls and it's from all of these old masters. And you're like, oh, if I want to become a dynasty, like these royal families that are dynastic families, I need to do what they do. And that means having these old master paintings on my wall. So he sells melon so well that he becomes a top client of his. And when you became a top client of Duveen's,

You're no longer allowed to use your own architect. As a rule for him getting you the great pictures, you have to use his architect to design your house, to have optimal viewing, to give these pictures justice. Otherwise, I'm sorry, Mr. Mellon, but this picture cannot be in your collection because it does not to be showcased in a side room or something like that. And he would have his architects design their apartments with like very little windows and huge wall space, but way more wall space than they would ever need. And then he ran into an issue.

the people just didn't buy enough real estate to hold all the paintings. And this wasn't like crypto art where you can store it on a wall. You know, you gotta have walls to put it on. And so he started convincing them to open museums. The National Gallery in Washington said,

is founded by Andrew Mellon at the urging of Joseph Devine. And he said, the key to your immortality is building this gallery and having your work live on beyond you in it. And we're going to build it 30,000 square feet. And so he does this. Mellon builds the National Gallery and then Devine's able to sell him way more art, you know, stock up all those walls, plus all of his houses and shit like that. Right. Mellon passes on. And then I think it was Henry Frick

He's his next big client. He's like, you know, Mr. Frick, if you really want to achieve immortality, you could add on to the National Gallery a bigger wing than Mr. Mellon made and stack it with your art. And he did. He fucking did. You know, and bought all this art from Duveen. I mean, the guy was so ruthless. Another of my favorite Duveen tricks he would do is when he'd be at Andrew Mellon's house, there was a couple other competing dealers.

You know, you'd ride the horse and carriage over there, right? It's not like a car. He greased the staff to tell him if they find out that another art dealer is going to their house.

So he'd find out when the competitor's going to Mr. Mellon's house and he would show up at the same day and he'd be like, "Just passing through the Hamptons, you know, happened to be, oh, you know, hello, Mr. Peary, fancy seeing you here." I was just visiting my client and he would go and just sit there all day. And you can't like reschedule the meeting because that person probably traveled several days to get there, you know? He was just relentless, man.

And that's actually, I know you have a lot of young kids in your audience. And I did an experiment recently. I was at a mastermind where everyone paid 250 grand to attend. And I asked them, I said, you know, I'm just curious about this room. You guys are all established people. How many of you in your youth had some sort of sales job that required you to be relentless, like 200 phone calls a day or knocking on doors? And almost all the room raised their hand.

I think it's something that really shapes them. Did you ever have a job like that? I don't think I had that kind of, I've noticed the same thing, but like, you know, so we've talked to people who are a lot of Mormons who go on missions. Oh, that's the best. Dude, you spent two years in complete solitude, isolation, not talking to your family. Yes.

Jesus to, you know, whoever, right? You're selling religion to people who didn't ask for it necessarily. You're knocking on doors. You're facing tons of rejection. And day after day, you carried on. Like that is such a formative experience. My uncle had told me one thing about he used to sell textbooks door to door, like textbooks, textbooks companies. I guess there was a couple of them in America that were really big that way.

And we recently just had another person on the podcast. Like we've had several people on the podcast with this one same job, which is like door-to-door sales, whether it's textbooks or knives or whatever it was. And yeah, the hit rate on those is really high. Brian Johnson, who was going to be here at the event,

I was just watching his documentary. Same thing. His first job was door-to-door credit card processing sales. I was a telemarketer of credit card processing. You were too. Amazing. And so he, rejection, rejection, figured out how to sell, figured out how to carry on in the face of rejection, got numb to rejection, just started to see it. Like my uncle told me, he goes, you know how I, I go, how many did you actually sell? You're selling textbooks. In a day, knock on 100 doors, how many do you actually sell? You're walking through the hot Atlanta, like neighborhoods, sweating, sweating.

And he's like, oh, you know, like one or two or three would be like an amazing day. Yeah. And I wasn't telemarketing too. It's about 200 calls. A shitty day is one. Five sales is an amazing day. Right. Which is just like, even if you hear those numbers, go, go actually do something hard where 97 times out of a hundred, you just get slammed in the face. And he goes, the way I did it was very simple. He goes, I just did the math and I realized, actually, I know I have to knock on a hundred doors to get the two sales. So actually I don't just,

I just count the revenue from the two yeses. I just assigned a price to every no. So he's like, a no is worth 50 bucks for me every time I collect a no. All right, that was a 50. I wasn't just coming up with zero. I wasn't coming up empty every time. It was a psychological trick that allowed me to see the no's still as progression, 'cause I'm just getting closer to that yes, the one out of 100, two out of 100 that are gonna happen. And so I've actually used that in fundraising, for example, where it's like, all right, I'm raising funds for a company,

it's when investors reject your company it's a very personal thing and what ends up happening is people don't raise money and then you ask them well how many calls did you make how many meetings have you had and they just have a funnel problem it's like you guys haven't had enough conversations

Cause you're afraid of rejection or you're avoiding rejection or you tasted some rejection and it scared you off. Yeah. Um, but it's a numbers game and like the way to do it is put a dollar value even on nose. Yes. I like that method. I was going to ask you one last thing, which is what's the best way to get great at writing ads. If I wanted to go from, you know, okay to good or good to great. What do I, what do I do? I do a lot of it. I'm assuming practice is a big part of it, but is there a better way to practice? This is funny, man. You have to be studying ads. So,

Right now, we're at an event. We call it Hoop Group now. Hoop Group, a high-level group. And I meet this guy who's got a 13 million YouTube channel. And I'm like, what's your channel? And I go to type it in. There's like five people behind me. And they type it in and they see the ad pop up. And they're like, come on, Craig, you don't subscribe to YouTube, right? You can't afford the 50 bucks or whatever, you know? And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

An advertising guy is going to turn off the ads. Right. I sometimes load up YouTube topics to get the ads on purpose. Like I would watch the ads all day long if I could, because I need to know what the lay of the land looks like. One of my best friends who's a great marketer and has made probably personally made, I don't know, $200 million and his business is all or just Facebook ads. But like, that's like his take home that he's probably made. And he switched his, um,

gender and age on Facebook. So he's a 45 year old woman. And I was like, why does it say you're a 45 year old woman? And he was like, so I could see the ads, dummy.

Why would I want to see the ads of a 28 year old dude or whatever? You know, like that was that would be terrible. Yeah, I know who I need to sell to. This is the golden customer. And like, I need to I need to have my I need Facebook to be showing me what they're what they're seeing. Absolutely. I was like, wow, that's genius. Yeah. And then I also hang out in a lot of biohacker circles. So I find the things that people are doing at Burning Man and on Venice Beach. And when they catch fire in these little circles, you can tell they're like ready to go mainstream. I like it, you know.

And sometimes I get on the trend and sometimes I don't like, uh, mushrooms was one of them. And, you know, that's a massive category. Now I, I think, um, you know, our, our mushroom supplement with Gundry MDs. Right. Sells okay, but it's not like a category creator. Like the mushroom coffee did really well, really well. Right. Like the mud water type. There's a few that have done it. A four sigmatic is owned by a friend of mine. It's a great brand. I take those products myself. Um, yeah, there's a few mushroom brands that are, that are amazing, um,

Yeah, sometimes you catch it and you can, as I say, like create the wave. Sometimes you're riding the existing wave. And I think too many people start businesses trying to like ride the whitewater. You know, there's a supplement company. I won't say the name, but, you know, they launched with an epic celebrity. And then the product looks like every other product out there. And it's out of business now.

Because they had this great celebrity who was certainly a scroll stopper, as I like to say. But they're offering a product that everyone else has, too, that they could just, you know, learn about from the celebrity. Then they go on Amazon and buy a cheaper one. You know, you got to get things that are unique. And that's why the probiotics was so great in 2014. I don't have a probiotic now that's, you know, doing big numbers like that because probiotics have become commoditized.

Craig, amazing as always. Thank you for doing it. Follow Craig on Twitter. Craig Clement, yeah, this was the impromptu. This is our conversation. We just moved it over here with the microphone. So thanks for doing it, man. I always love chatting with you. All right, let's get back to it. All right, see ya.

Hey, Sean here. A quick break to tell you an Ev Williams story. He started Twitter and before that he sold a company to Google for $100 million. And somebody asked him, they said, Ev, what's the secret, man? How do you create these huge businesses, billion dollar businesses? And he says, well, I think the answer is that you take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for thousands of years, and then you just use modern technology to take out steps. Just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want and

And that is what my partner Mercury does. They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has, managing your money and being able to do your finance or operations. And they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades. No more clunky interfaces, no more 10 tabs to get something done, no more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car just to send a wire transfer. They made it fast. They made it easy. You can actually just get back to running your business. You don't have to worry about the rest of it.

I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now. And it's used by also 200,000 other ambitious founders. So if you want to be like me, head to mercury.com, open up an account in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. All right, back to the episode.