My First Million: How I’ve Sold $1 Billion In Products Online (A Marketing Masterclass)

All right, I'm not jealous of many people on earth.

I think I'm jealous of Craig Clements because not only is he built a successful

billion dollar company with no outside investors, but he has made hit after hit after hit.

And I asked him to come on the podcast.

He thought it was just going to be a normal episode.

But then when we started talking, I realized that I wanted him to give me a masterclass.

When he's given it to me, he's given it to you, which is to teach us the seven ways

that he as a marketer has sold over a billion dollars of products online.

He calls these the seven human hijacks.

And he goes through example after example of how great products and things that we take

for granted, like brushing your teeth or how people eat bacon for breakfast.

Those weren't things people did back in the day.

It was guys like him, marketers that use specific tactics in order to make those a thing.

And if you're an entrepreneur who's, you know, wants to be successful, you need to be

good at marketing.

You've got to be able to sell your product and it's very rare to be able to sit with

somebody like Craig, who's actually one of the best to ever do it and ask him, how did you do it?

Let's take a quick break to ask this question.

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All right, let's get back to the pod.

I mean, I feel lucky he's doing this.

He doesn't have to tell us these secrets.

Like, you know, I think he's at that sweet spot where he's been running his company for

15 years, been doing this for a long time.

He's, you know, the company's super successful.

I don't feel like he has to like guard those secrets anymore.

So I told him to give him to us.

And I don't know about you, but I've had professors in school, I've took marketing

classes, but those were not people who have actually been in the game, done it.

People have actually created categories, sold hundreds of millions of dollars of

single products that a year ago nobody had ever heard of.

And so Craig tells the story of how others did it.

And at the end, he tells the story about how he helped create the probiotics category.

You ever had probiotics?

You can thank Craig because he was the one who created that category and made it mainstream.

So enjoy this marketing masterclass on the seven human hijacks.

How marketers have hijacked your brain with Craig Clements.

What's up, dude?

You, I have this theory now of guests who come on the podcast.

The more their video setup looks like they were either taking hostage or are like, you

know, in some motel somewhere, the better the guest is.

And we had Balaji on and he was like, white wall, nothing in the room.

And he was just like, you know, at the time, he didn't have his like video set up.

Like, you know, he was not in his home video set up.

And like the higher your IQ, the worse your video set up.

And the opposite is true, unfortunately, for me, which is the more HD and beautiful

your video set up, the less interesting things you usually have to say.

Yes. Yes.

And the cool thing is you're like the real life bad men.

You you're an ad guy at a copywriter who translated those skills into a billion

dollars of sales, which is why when you were coming on this time, we started talking

and we kind of realized that you have a masterclass in you.

So normally we hang out, we just shoot the shit about business ideas.

But occasionally we just drop a knowledge bomb.

And the knowledge bomb is what we call a masterclass, which is just let somebody

do their thing for 30 minutes.

And the cool thing about this is you said you had given a talk internally to

your team, to your company to pump them up.

And it sounded so dope that I just said, can you just please do that on the pod?

And you you agreed.

And so my friend, the floor is going to be yours.

I'm here when you need me.

I might chime in here and there.

But I'm really going to let you cook during this and let Craig Clemmons do

this masterclass.

So take it away.

So Sean, did you brush your teeth this morning?

Did you take an elevator or are you wearing sneaks right now?

Any one of three ain't bad.

One of three ain't bad.

What a great bad.

Okay.

Well, marketers created all of that.

Marketers created so much of our daily behavior.

That people that I tell these stories to don't even want to accept it.

And, you know, it's it's okay, though.

I mean, that's that's that's the case for everyone.

You're not alone.

So, do you know who this guy is on the left here?

I do not, but he looks very sophisticated.

Who is that?

This is this is a smart motherfucker.

This is Sigmund Freud.

Oh, and this gentleman on the right, do you know who that is?

I'm guessing you don't.

I do not.

Okay.

Well, this guy has changed your life.

This guy is a man named Edward Bernays.

He's often called the father of public relations.

And he is actually Sigmund Freud's nephew.

So I don't know what exactly kind of kind of shirt you're wearing over there,

Sean, or if you put some some style into it.

But this guy is as his hands and so much stuff that he literally created consumerism.

So quick example, before Bernays, people would buy clothes as you know, unless

you were in like the upper classes, people would buy clothes to go to work.

He's the one who got together with a bunch of other people and they're like,

wait a second, these work clothes, people aren't buying enough of them.

If people use clothing for expression, then people would buy more clothes.

And he got the expression vibe to go all the way down the line from anyone who

could afford clothing to be buying more clothing and then buying more things when

they came into season and this and that.

Now, it's people who don't have the means that buy more clothing, they can afford, right?

Well, let me just get into some of the examples here and that you'll see that

this guy was operating on a level that is unfathomable.

So in this presentation, I'm going to share with you what I've discovered studying

and creating marketing campaigns that have caused world change.

And I call them the seven human hijacks because when you use these seven things,

you are hijacking the limbic system of the brain and a human cannot help

themselves but to pay attention and either respond or at least log what you're

going to do or say into their brain and maybe they respond the next time.

But these seven hijacks, I'm going to share each of them after I show these

marketing campaigns that you're going to see how they repeat and not every campaign

uses all seven, but you'll see that some of them are extremely powerful.

And then when you put them all together, that's when you can really do this type

of thing yourself.

So if you're watching this right now and you're excited about you possibly

changing the world forever, this is the recipe.

Let's go.

Okay.

One of the most interesting marketing campaigns of all time was created by a

guy named Claude Hopkins.

So Claude Hopkins was approached by a toothpaste company called Pepsident.

And they said, Claude, we want to sell more of our toothpaste.

And he looked at the lay of the land and he realized there was a problem.

He said to Pepsident, he said, look, only 5% of people brush their teeth on a daily basis.

So why are you even in this business that not a lot of people are taking part?

Do you believe that Sean in the 1920s, 95% of the women that you kiss are going to

have terrible breath.

No one brushed their teeth back then.

And so Claude tells the founders of Pepsident.

And he's like, look, if you guys really want to sell some toothpaste, you're

going to have to get people brushing their teeth.

And so he created this masterful ad campaign that built Pepsident into the

dominating toothpaste brand for decades.

And this is the ad.

The ad says the film that discolors the whitest teeth.

And then he has you do a demonstration.

So do this with me, Sean.

Take the tip of your tongue.

Put it over the, the, the fronts, the gold fronts you got under there.

Mm hmm.

Okay.

Do you feel that film there on your teeth?

I kind of do.

Okay.

It's so the ad goes on to say that brushing with Pepsident is going to remove

that film and behind that film is a movie star smile.

And it's so genius, right?

Because everybody wants that movie star smile.

Everybody has that film.

Whether you just brushed your teeth five minutes ago or not, then you feel that

and you're like, Oh, shoot, I got this film, you know, and then it talks about

how Pepsident is the way to get rid of that film.

So the result of this ad within a decade, 85% of Americans and

brush their teeth on a daily basis.

And Pepsident is still around today.

Um, they ran this ad campaign for, I don't know, 50 years, something like that.

Um, and I'll tell you something interesting is about 10 years in,

there was other companies trying to compete with Pepsident and they were

using a similar ad campaign.

You know, it's very common to steal an ad campaign, but they couldn't get the

repeat orders and they did a, a focus group.

And they found out that people love Pepsident because it had this like

minty flavor that made their mouth tingle after they brushed with it.

And then the toothpaste companies, the other one started knocking that off.

And when people felt the tingle, then they would stick with other companies.

Otherwise they'd try the other one.

They would feel, wouldn't feel the tingle and they'd be like, oh,

it's not actually working, you know, so they'd go right back to Pepsident.

So they, they owned it for like 10 years and then it got actually competitive.

Cause then people were not only stealing their ads, they were stealing, uh, you

know, their, their secret of the tingle.

So the human hijacks that Claude Hopkins used, one, he sold the dream of

the movie star smile and you're going to see this theme reoccurring

throughout this presentation.

Uh, second, he created a powerful demonstration that anyone could do.

And that's just rubbing your tongue over the front of your teeth.

And then the next thing he did is he made it about them.

He made it about the potential user.

And this is a big thing that a lot of companies mess up is they just talk

about their own product and, you know, why they're so excited about it, but

they don't talk about why it's going to be exciting or the user.

And Claude did a really great job of that, sharing how it's going to give

them that movie star smile.

So that's, that's like the, there's this diagram that I love.

That's like, um, I call it the Mario marketing.

I don't know who originally created this.

I saw it from that company buffer, but I don't know if they created originally,

but it's little Mario, um, you know, Mario, when he's small, then it's the

fire flower.

And then when Mario gets the fire flower, he's able to shoot fireballs out of,

you know, out of his hands.

He's running around.

He's huge, he can shoot fireballs.

And basically it says, uh, don't sell this, the fire flower, which is your

product sell this, which is the customer going from little Mario to being big

Mario, who could shoot fireballs, right?

And it's like, that's what you want to sell is how the user will be more bad

ass rather than all the features and facets about your product.

Yes, exactly.

So think about benefits.

What's the benefit?

What's in it for them?

You know, these people are busy right now.

Sean, I think people see something like 4,000 as a day and they did a study and

it showed that the human brain has the, um, uh, same intelligence banner as a

goldfish is like less than, you know, uh, uh, the ability of a goldfish to

pay attention.

So how do you grab their attention?

Well, you have to talk about something that's exciting to them, something

that keeps them up at night or something that they, you know, have a deep

dream, hope and desire for.

So I want to get back to that demonstration.

Where did Claude get the idea for this demonstration?

So 1854, there's a guy named Otis and Otis gets into the elevator business and

he didn't invent the elevator, but he came up with a, a breaking system for the

elevator.

So back then people were afraid to use elevators because every once in a while,

just like today you hear about a car accident and you'd hear about an elevator

accident where, you know, people get on and the elevator falls down, right?

So Otis creates his great breaking system.

First year out, he only sells three elevators.

The next year out, he sells seven elevators.

Like no one cares.

You know, he doesn't, doesn't, uh, have the ability to get the word out.

And then he meets this guy named PT Barnum.

And so everyone probably now knows, uh, PT Barnum, one of the, the greatest, uh,

marketing and showman of all time.

And PT Barnum says, this is what we're going to do.

We're going to go to the Crystal Palace in New York city, which was this big

exhibition hall, and we're going to do a grand demonstration.

So Otis gets up there on this elevator shaft and he has his assistant get up there

with an axe.

And so he's standing out at the, the elevator goes up the shaft just like it

normally would in a building.

And he's like, cut the cord, Jimmie.

He was boom, but he cuts the first cord.

The elevator drops like just a little bit.

And then there's one more cord hanging and everyone's looking out.

They're like, oh, sure.

This is the cord.

And then, oh, it puts actually the second cord and the elevator only two feet and stops.

He's like, all safe here, gentlemen, all safe.

And those are like, like famous words that were published in the newspaper, all

safe here.

And it showed that Otis had invented a breaking system for elevators have worked.

So over the next decade, he sold 2000 elevators.

He got all the greatest commissions.

He did the, the Eleafell Tower, the Empire State Building.

And even today, if you look at your elevator, I've found about half of the

elevators I get into have this little Otis logo that Otis is still crushing.

All my zippers, all my zippers say YKK and all my elevators say Otis.

That's all those are the only two things I know.

Yeah.

So, uh, so that's the power of a great demonstration.

So what did, what did Otis do?

The, the powerful demonstration stands in people's minds.

And he also made it an event, you know, so what's great about an event?

Well, one, people are going to show up and two, it's going to get covered by the newspaper.

But if you think about it on a more primal level, have you ever heard the phrase, Sean,

nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd?

No, but I like that.

One of my favorite, favorite sayings, and it, it just shows that humans can

out resist an event, you know, if you're walking down the street and then you see

like a big crowd of people and something's going on over there, there's a band or

whatever, it's like, you got to see what, what's going on.

It's just, just natural.

And so if you make your advertising an event, then people cannot not pay attention to it.

And then he also showed unquestionable proof using that demonstration and putting

his own body on the elevator.

He didn't use a dummy.

He didn't use a monkey himself was on that elevator while his assistant was,

was cutting the cords.

And so that's the type of unquestionable proof that lead people to go ahead and

take, take a, uh, action to buy without questioning it.

And of course he made it about them.

He didn't get up there and show his fancy breaking system or how it worked.

You know, he addressed the fear in everyone's mind that was about the safety of, of

getting on an elevator and he did it with the powerful demonstration.

So I'll show you, uh, let me show you something.

Hold on.

Hold on.

All right.

Do you know this brand, mini Katana?

Have you seen them Craig?

I have not.

All right.

So I am about to, uh, YouTube, don't be alarmed.

This is inside here is a giant sword.

And, um, this company, so this brand, they sell these, it's called mini Katana, but

it's actually humongous.

So they sell these swords.

Now the problem with selling swords is that Google and Facebook don't let you do it.

You can't advertise weapons.

So how does an e-commerce brand work when you can't advertise weapons?

Well, what they did was they started, they hired like 20 YouTubers and

Tik Tokers and they would have them do what you just described, the powerful

demonstration.

So they would take this, they would take this sword and they would, instead of

saying, you know, why you need a sword, because most people don't need a sword,

let's be honest, uh, instead of talking about how long it is or how sharp it is or

whatever, they would show that the sword could cut through a bullet that was

fired at them.

So this video starts with a guy's holding the sword and there's a bullet aimed

at him and he's going to try to split it in half.

And, uh, and then when he does it, it's a powerful presentation about like how

badass these swords are.

And they, they, all of their marketing, they'll take a steak, you just see a

steak plop down on a cutting board and then a giant sword cutting through it,

which is completely unnecessary.

But it is a powerful demonstration.

Um, and, you know, I remember seeing those TED Talks where guys take a

glass and they, you know, it's like, here's dirty water.

Would you drink this water?

It's like no way.

And then they put it into their filter and then like with their bottle filter

and then they start to drink it.

And I don't know who it was, Bill Gates or something.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, in the water first, right?

For, for, yeah, exactly.

They make it disgusting and then the whole crowd is gasping and like they

could tell you how the filter works or they could show you that they're willing

to drink the water through this filter that was like disgusting water.

And I still remember, that was like 20 years ago.

I still remember that video because it's just, you're right, it hijacked my brain.

Yeah.

The, the knife companies are genius.

Any knife infomercial will do this, they'll be taking a knife and cutting a

penny, you know, or like effortlessly slicing tomatoes through the air.

And you know who was, uh, the king of this was Dr. Oz.

Dr. Oz, what did he do?

Every episode of the Dr. Oz show is a marketing masterclass.

He advertised.

Oh shit, I'm sleeping on Dr. Oz.

Yeah.

He advertised these nutrients and I don't know if he had some type of deal

with manufacturers or something like that, but he would advertise like, um,

like Resveratrol or like, um, Garsinia Cambosia berries, which were like weight loss,

but he wouldn't ever advertise a specific brand.

He would just talk about Garsinia Cambosia.

If you look, one of the reasons it's hard to advertise supplements online is

because Dr. Oz would go and talk about Garsinia Cambosia or whatever, berry.

And then all these scammers would create websites, uh, selling Garsinia Cambosia

on auto ship that you could never get out.

You know, you'd sign up for the website, the company would disappear, but that

thing would be docking your credit card for years later, you know, whatever.

So Dr. Oz, one of the ones I remember is he'd go on there and he'd say,

this is your body and these balloons on it.

And then he'd have like a mannequin with, with balloons on it.

These balloons are the fat cells.

Oh, wow.

Garsinia Cambosia is a miracle berry that works for any body type.

And then he'd take out a pin.

He'd be like, this is the berry.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

That's what Garsinia Cambosia does to the fat cells in your body.

And he'd be like, crazy, man.

Like a billion dollars a Garsinia Cambosia we stole over the next few months,

mostly to these scammy auto billing marketers.

It was, it was wild.

And he did this with like five different berries over time.

And eventually he got pulled into Congress to testify at all this shit.

And like, no way he was wild.

He rolled with it because he was getting all these allegations that he was

starting on one episode, he goes, uh, he gets a camera crew behind him and he

goes down to one of the companies that's selling the Garsinia Cambosia and he

knocks the door and he's got the camera behind him.

The founder comes out.

He's like, Hey, I didn't give you permission to use my name and likeness

to sell your Garsinia Cambosia and like your auto billing customers and this and

that, you know, and he was like pretending that he was the, the good guy.

But I don't know, man.

I don't know if like he was lining his pockets or something before it happened.

But like this was so many berries.

And for so many years, uh, it's crazy, man.

It was like billions of dollars fraud happened because of his show.

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All right, back to MFM.

You know, you know what I love about this is, um, a lot of the audience who

listens to this and a lot of the people I know who are, uh, entrepreneurial or

technical type engineering type people, often so, um, rational and logical and

like sort of analytical about the way that they want to, about the way they

see the world. And so the idea that, Hey, we're going to do this event with the,

the axe swinging at the rope or, you know, we're going to blow up these balloons

and they'll be like, well, that's not what the fat cell looks like.

That's way too big. That's not to scale. Um, you know, like you have to almost,

you have to use the other part of your brain if you're going to do this.

You have to make something powerful, visual, dramatic.

And those are not skills that typically you're kind of, um, operational or

technical person is used to flexing.

And so what I love about this is these examples that give you inspiration to be

able to like go use that other part of your brain.

You know, if you look at these, we got the hijacks up here, right?

From Otis elevator, all of these apply to what I just said about dog draws.

The event is that it says TV show, you know, so that makes an event already.

The demonstration, the unquestionable proof is him.

He's a doctor saying that this is going to work for you.

And then making it about them.

He says, this is the miracle weight loss cure for all body types.

Like those are almost his exact words.

And by the way, you know, who else does this amazingly?

Well, Elon, Elon, who's the, you know, the scientist, the hardcore engineer.

You know what he's brilliant at?

Just yesterday, the news was, um, there's the, they're, you know, they're

hyping Cybertruck right now.

And you do, did you see that news that came out?

Which was that they unloaded a full magazine of some assault rifle at the door.

And so there's a bunch of holes in the door, like you could see

where the bullet hit the door, but didn't go through.

And so he's driving that car around and leaked that kind of the tweet rumor

that, hey, they tested it this way.

And he did this at their on stage event too, but it fucked up.

Like he tried to take a sledgehammer and show how indestructible this was.

He swung the sledgehammer and then they like broke through the window.

And he's like, oh, shit, that wasn't supposed to happen.

Like this is supposed to be bulletproof, but, um, he was trying to do that.

He was trying to, you know, PT Barnum, uh, you know, they're Cybertruck,

which is, which is really, really cool to see.

Yeah.

You know, what was another incredible success that I think was complete bullshit

was the, the power balance bracelet.

Do you remember those?

It was like, dude, I was thinking about it when you did the tongue on the teeth.

That's the first thing I thought of where people used to say, Hey, hold

out your arms.

Yeah.

And now watch how easy I go on one foot and watch how easily I

can tip you over and then you put this bracelet on it and now you can't be

able of which way you press in the arm.

Yeah.

Totally.

Totally.

I cracked it recently and he was doing that with me.

And I was like, oh, God, am I getting by this, this chiropractor?

But, uh, yeah, I think power balance actually got popped, uh, for that

as they deserve.

Um, but that was, that was a, a very effective technique, even though

it was, uh, you know, unethical in that case.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's get into some, uh, so those are

last two are, are for good, right?

We want people to brush their teeth.

We want elevators to be safe.

Uh, now let's talk about some evil campaigns.

Well, okay.

1930s, all the, the men had come back from the war, you know, and they gave

them free cigarettes.

So like so many men were hooked on smoking that there was no room for growth.

So the cigarette company has come to Eddie Bernays, uh, lucky strike in

particular is who, who came to them and they're like, Hey, we need more customers.

He's like, well, you already got all the men.

But at that time, Sean, it was illegal for a woman to smoke in public.

It was literally fucking illegal.

And there was like cafes in New York city where, you know, there's, there's

stories of, of like high society women getting asked to leave.

And then women that could afford it would have like special smoking rooms in

their homes that would, you know, that, that really liked it.

Cause they weren't allowed to do it in public.

Oh, and I should add something too.

Women didn't really want to smoke, uh, mo for the most part, you know, they,

they weren't really pushing back against it.

Yes, it was illegal, but it was also considered a lady like it was a, it was

a man thing, you know, so he says to lucky strike.

He's like, look, you know, you gotta, you gotta get the women's smoking.

So what was going on at the time was the women's rights movement, you know, so

women were out in the streets marching about, you know, wanting the right to vote

and, uh, Bernays capitalized on that.

So the big social event of the day, kind of like the Oscars of today was

the Easter parade, which will go down fifth avenue and all the reporters

would be standing on the sidelines.

And so Bernays organized a float and he called up all of the, the socialites

and debutants, like the Paris Hilton's and Kim Kardashian's of the day, and

they got them all to go on this float and they're cruising down fifth avenue.

The parades happen.

And you know, when they get to the corner where all the reporters were, the women,

do you go into their stocking?

They pull out cigarettes, put them in their mouths and light them up.

So imagine, you know, Paris and, uh, Khloe and all the Kardashians and even

all the Jenner's on one float, they all just are blazed up, right?

And the record is like, what is going on here?

This is, this is obscene.

You know, women aren't supposed to do this.

Bernays and his crew went around to the reporters and they said, oh, no, no, no.

They're not smoking.

They are declaring their rights with these torches of freedom.

Oh, wow.

And so the newspapers ran with that.

They're like, you know, uh, women, uh, present torches of freedom to show

that they are equal with men and they can smoke too.

And so turned it into a movement.

And if you think about smoking to this day, if you think about a women's, uh,

a woman who smokes, um, I think about a bit older than you, Sean, but I think

of like Kate Moss and like the, you know, sexy model smoking.

Now it might be considered gross for a woman to smoke again, you know, or

anyone to smoke.

I don't really know what the kids these days are thinking, but yeah.

We, you know, you think of like some like badass, badass woman.

And you remember that old movies with Audrey Hepburn, you know, that famous

scene, I think it's a breakfast at Tiffany's where she's puffing that

long cigarette, you know.

So yeah, completely changed the world there.

That's amazing.

I had never heard that story, um, uh, but I love that.

That's like a combination of you got the event, you have, uh, kind of news

jacking, which was jumping on, uh, to an existing trend.

But then also, um, the, the, just the copywriting of the words, the words

there of, you know, these aren't cigarettes.

These are torches of freedom.

That's really, really powerful.

Yeah.

The plants, if you like that plant strategy, Ryan Holiday wrote a great

book called trust me, I'm lying.

And he talks about all these phrases that he planted in the heads of these

recorders when he was promoting things like, uh, Tucker max books and, and,

you know, wild stuff back there.

So there's a new lesson in here, uh, new hijack, so to speak.

And that is help them rebels or feel superior.

So people have this tendency in them.

They want to go against the grain.

They want to show that they are not one of the sheep, you know, they want to

show that they are not going to bow down to the, the mainstream pressure or

society standards, things like that, you know.

And this is a really powerful concept that you're going to see appear

throughout, uh, some of the, the other demonstrations here, but that's,

that's what Bernays allowed them to do is, is to rebel and, and maybe even

feel superior to the rest because they're, they're leading the charge.

Right.

Okay.

Keep going.

By the way, I'm loving this.

So keep going.

All right.

So, Bernays had a problem.

Lucky strike, uh, did this big campaign to get women to start smoking.

And they did start smoking, but they didn't smoke lucky strikes because if

you remember, boop, boop, boop, see the lucky strike package there.

Sean, what color is the main color?

It's green.

Well, green was a very undesirable color back in those days.

It was considered an ugly color.

And so Bernays got all these women smoking, but lucky is like, what the fuck

Bernays, they're not smoking lucky strikes.

So he has to come up with something new.

So he goes back to his, his debutantes and, and socialites.

And as they say here, women of prominence, and they create the first

ever Gala green ball at the Waldorf hotel in New York city.

And the magazines started following around the Kardashians of the day to see

what type of outfits they were going to wear that were styled in green.

And women started bringing green decor into their homes.

And it just became a big thing.

And the Gala happens and the women are photographed in their exotic green

outfits and it, it became the most fashionable color within one year going

from the ugliest color, the most fashionable color and lucky strike

without even trying became the number one selling a brand of cigarettes for

women because they subconsciously wanted that green box.

Holy shit.

Wow.

Is one of the hijacks, by the way, using people of prominence or you

didn't, you don't include that in the, in the hijacks.

Unquestionable proof.

That falls under unquestionable proof.

It's a great question.

But yes, when we humans see someone, as they just said in the New York

times article, someone of prominence doing something, we automatically assume

it's been vetted.

We automatically assume it's okay.

And we automatically have something in us that makes us want to do that.

Maybe it's from when we were all in tribes and you know, if the chief is

doing something, then you do it too.

Who knows?

But that's, that's unquestionable proof, you know, so, uh, you know, he made

an event where this unquestionable proof happened.

And also there was this force that, that they wanted to rebel against, you know,

these celebrities are like, Oh, I'm cool enough where I can wear green and it'll

look good, you know, you know, I heard this other, other things Sean today.

So, uh, how old are you?

Are you public with your age?

Yeah, yeah, 35, 35.

Okay.

I'm 44.

So when you think of emojis, what do you think about when I think of emojis?

Yeah.

Like who do you think uses emojis?

I would have said like teenagers, teens and tweens, uh, but I think, but then I

see people in India and like my aunt and my aunts and, and my aunts are crazy

about that emojis.

Yes.

I would have thought the same.

So my, my buddy is a dad of two teenagers.

He said they will not use emojis because they think emojis are something

adults use they do not want to be associated with the adults.

So kids these days, they don't use emojis.

They'll just use like different text characters and things like that.

So you've probably seen these little like one to two or sorry, two to three

character terms that they use like TBH or like, you know, it stands for

to be honest or FR, which means like for real, you know, they use those type

of things to separate themselves from the adults, you know, people want to push

back.

It's a, it's a natural human instinct.

Yeah.

When, when Snapchat came out, it was getting really popular.

One of the things that I remember in Silicon Valley, all the like product genius

blogger guys were like, yeah, it's, you know, what, what Snapchat should do is

make it easier to use.

Cause look at this, like at the time, like, you know, to use those face filters,

you had to like, there was no button on the screen.

You had to just hold down on your face for three seconds, like a magic trick,

like a, like a secret door that you didn't know that nobody else knew about.

Or even just in signing up, there was like all these like funky ways to do it.

And, and then the people, I think one of the guys at Snapchat came out was

like, look, it's intentional that we want, you know, you know, you baby proof

medicine or boomer proofing this app.

Like the way that this is going to become really popular amongst young people

is that we don't make it easy for older people to get in and figure out how

this whole thing works.

And we want to make it easy for one friend to tell another the secret on how

to do something so that they feel like they're in on it with, with them.

And then it's like a word of mouth, the virality of how do you do that?

Exactly.

It's like, once your parents and your grandma got on Facebook, it wasn't cool anymore.

You know, right.

And then everyone went to Instagram.

And now, you know, Uncle Bob's on Instagram and it's just like, at least

they're losing five, you know, so everyone goes over to TikTok, right?

And we'll see if something comes next.

You know, I think the, the moms are, well, moms are definitely a big group

on TikTok now.

Um, I don't know if like, I don't know.

Are you on TikTok?

I'm not.

I, I have like,

yeah, I got it.

I love TikTok, even though, you know, it's my lucky strike.

I know, I know I probably shouldn't be smoking that TikTok every night, but I do.

Well, you know, TikTok is crack.

It is digital crack, very well-designed digital crack.

So don't blame yourself.

People say that, but like when, I think when they say that, they mean avoid it.

And I'm like, wait, cracks, like, isn't crack supposed to be like the greatest

experience when people do it?

And then I open up TikTok and I start swiping.

Yeah.

Well, you know, actually speaking of drugs, funny enough, there's another

rebellion I'm seeing in, in my community against alcohol right now.

And, and I remember in my twenties, there was all about the alcohol, you know,

if you didn't show up, uh, if you should have a party empty-handed, you know,

it's like, not cool.

I've gone to parties now with a bottle and they'd be like, Oh, this is a

non-alcoholic party.

Can you go put that back in your car?

It's like this is just back, you know?

Um, well, I hope you brought some ketamine.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, everyone, a quick break.

So look, here's the deal.

I run this company called Hampton, joinhampton.com.

It's a private vetted peer group for CEOs, startup founders, things like that.

And I wanted to share the story of one of our members with you.

Her name is Defina Smith.

She's the founder of Covet in Maine.

She runs this company that sells hair extensions.

And my prediction is that this company is going to sell for hundreds of

millions of dollars in the next handful of years.

So here's some of Defina's incredible story.

We sell hair extensions to the world's best salons.

And the first year we made over seven figures bootstrapped profitably from year

one, and we didn't even have a website for the first couple of months.

We were just the tax people for their orders.

It was in light only.

And we did over $400,000.

I think our story ends three to four years.

Loria will acquire us for at least $300 million.

I think that there's something to be said for just like putting your head down

and building a brand and doing the work.

Defina is one of the many incredible founders in our community that you can

meet and learn from.

So if you're a founder or CEO looking to join a peer group like Hampton,

check us out at joinhampton.com.

Go ahead and apply.

All right.

Back to MFM.

Okay.

I'll last campaign I'm going to share with you about Eddie Bernays is the

great American breakfast.

So early in the, you know, 19th century, 20th century breakfast was like

some coffee and maybe a roll or some oatmeal or something like that.

Right.

No one actually had like an actual hearty breakfast.

And beach nut bacon comes to Bernays and they're like, Hey,

we want to sell more bacon.

He's like, well, people are eating bacon usually for dinner.

Sometimes for lunch.

There's another meal here we can take advantage of.

And so Bernays goes to his, his on staff doctor.

Or actually no, it was, it was a, it was beach.

That's on staff doctor.

And he says, Hey doc, would you agree that a hearty breakfast containing

bacon would be the best way to start your day?

And the doctor was like, Oh, of course I agree with you.

Do you think some of your doctor friends would agree?

So he has them write 5,000 letters to doctors across the nation.

Dang, I think bacon is the healthiest breakfast and people

should be eating a heartier breakfast.

Do you agree?

45 other doctors wrote back and they're like, yes, I agree.

That makes perfect sense.

They didn't turn this into an ad campaign, but what they did do is

they shared that result with all of the newspapers.

And so newspapers started publishing headlines.

Doctors agree a hearty breakfast containing bacon is the best way to

store energy to last throughout your work day.

And, but that's how people started eating, eating bacon for breakfast.

And, you know, all the, all the bacon companies started going crazy

because it became a breakfast thing.

Wow.

So what are we doing here?

There's, we're selling the dream, you know, of a, of a breakfast that's

going to give you more energy to get throughout your day.

You know, so that's making it about them as well.

The unquestionable proof, 4500 doctors can't be wrong, right?

I mean, there's even a little bit of a, um, feeling superior here because

if your buddy is over there eating a roll, you're like, Hey, Sean,

got something to tell you about that roll, man.

It's not as hearty.

Is this your bacon?

Right.

So it taps into all these, these same psychological hijacks.

You keep seeing them over and over.

Okay.

So let's take a step back now, a couple of decades to the 1910s.

Orange juice.

Now I grew up in the eighties and my mom had to drink orange juice every day

for vitamin C. Was this a thing, Sean, when, when you were a kid?

Totally, totally.

Orange juice is when I was a kid, orange juice is good for you.

It's vitamin C, which is, you know, good for your immunity.

This is what I was told and, uh, drink a lot of sugar because of that.

Yeah.

So orange juice actually has the same amount of sugar as a Coca-Cola.

So orange juice, you know, it's glucose or something.

I don't know.

Maybe it's a different kind of sugar, but it ain't good for you.

So this was all the, the result of a marketing man named Albert Lasker, who was

probably the, uh, the man responsible for more consumer change, um, in the early

1900s than anyone, Claude Hopkins, pepsinette.

Claude actually worked with Albert.

He was this top copywriter.

And prior to Claude coming on board, Albert was contacted by the California

Growers Association.

They're like, Albert, we got so many oranges here in California.

We're having to cut down trees because they overproduce and then we need to get

rid of them and it brings the bugs and all that stuff.

You know, how can we sell more oranges?

And he looked at the lay of land and all these orange growers were competing

against each other, trying to say like, we have the best orange, we have the best

orange or whatever.

He goes, okay, first of all, you guys are all teaming up.

And so he teamed it all up together and he put them under one brand name and he

called it SunKist, which I think is a pretty genius name.

Yes.

And then as he's meeting with them, he notices that what the growers would do

for their kids as a special treat is they'd take that orange and they'd squeeze

it into a cup and they'd give their kids little shots of the juice.

He's like, ah, wait a second.

How many oranges did it take to make that juice?

And they're like, oh, you know, three or four or whatever.

So he thought, what if we could make that mainstream because the juice tasted

really good.

And so he had a engineer invent this device that you could, you know, cheap

plastic device that you can put an orange on.

And then he created this campaign talking about how oranges have all these vitamins

in them and, you know, will help you get more of your nutrients from food tying

orange juice to meals.

So you think about, oh, well, I want to get the nutrients in this food.

So I'm going to drink orange juice with it.

And then he had this campaign where you buy a box of oranges and you send in

your, your proof of purchase and they send you this juicer thing.

So it was like, you get something for free and created orange juice.

And so what does he do?

He's selling the dream of getting the more nutrients from your food.

The unquestionable proof, you know, if you got to go and actually read that

ad, there was like, you know, doctors recommend and things like that.

He made it about them because it's showing them that they can get some benefit here.

And then there's a new hijack that's appearing for the first time.

Um, actually, maybe, I mean, I guess it would apply to toothpaste, but, uh,

change daily behavior.

If you can change someone's daily behavior, you can create something big.

So two moderates example of this bulletproof coffee.

Are you familiar with bulletproof coffee?

Uh, I'm just familiar with it from the surface level, but yeah, tell me, tell me.

You know, do you know what it is?

Uh, it's like the butter coffee or the oil coffee, MCT oil coffee.

Is that what it is?

So you walk into any Starbucks in the country, they don't serve

bulletproof coffee, but they know what it is.

Everyone knows what it is.

And the genius that, that Dave Asprey had was he changed the behavior of these,

of people that were already doing something he kind of like, like intercepted their coffee.

It's an additive to your coffee rather than a new, new behavior.

So, so now he's, he's changing the existing behavior.

Yes.

Changing the existing behavior.

And so there's a, there's a book called the miracle morning.

And it talks, uh, talks about the power of journaling every day.

So you buy this book called the miracle morning and then you do the specific

journal every day, right?

Long after you read the book.

And I met the author of that, Hal Elrod, and he told me something

that, that stuck with me.

I thought it was fascinating.

He said, when was the last time you recommended a book?

And I was like, well, I was just read this book on Genghis Khan, you know,

I've been telling all my friends about it or whatever.

He's like, when were you telling them about it?

I was like, well, I was telling them about it when I was reading it.

He said, okay, well, most people recommend books during the time they're reading

that book.

And then they go and they read the next book.

Right now I'm reading Elon's biography.

It's great.

That's why I just told you about that, Sean.

I'm literally in the middle of it.

You know, I can tell you what book I read last month or last year.

People talk about the things they're doing now.

So if you change their daily behavior, like Hal did with getting people to

journal in the morning, they, they talk about it all the time.

So that book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies or maybe even

millions by now, um, cause this is 10 years ago, when he told me this,

because people are doing this behavior every day.

And so they're talking about it every day.

They're like, Oh, what'd you do today?

Oh, I just did my morning, uh, miracle journaling.

Like, Oh, what's that?

You know, it's a long after the book is through.

So if you change the daily behavior, it has a viral effect that is untouchable

by anything else.

Love that.

Okay.

So let's get to some more modern examples.

The 1970s.

Sean, do you know who this guy is?

Um, no, some, some runner.

I don't know who it is.

Okay.

So this, this guy is before our time, but, uh, gentlemen's name, Steve

pre-fontein and pre-fontein was, uh, best comparison I can give you.

Was, uh, best comparison I can think of is like the Michael Phelps of his time.

You know, no one was really thinking about swimming until Michael Phelps came

around and was such a dominant athlete from the USA.

You know, so everyone wanted to get behind him.

So pre-fontein was that guy for running and pre-fontein had all these great

quotes, like Mahal but LA, he's like, you know, yeah, someone can beat me.

But if you're going to beat me, you're going to have to bleed, you know, and

he's like, if you don't run until you're, you until you feel like you're

going to, you're going to die, you're not honoring your gift.

You know, so you had all these great quotes.

He was a great media figure.

He won every college record from like 500 meter up to 2,000 meter.

Pre-fontein was the man and Nike was just coming up.

They'd actually just started like making their, going from being a

distributor, making their own shoe.

And fortunately pre-fontein was in Oregon.

So were they, and they got him to, to wear their shoes.

And it was a big thing because the unquestionable proof.

Now you've got pre-fontein, the top runner in the country wearing Nike shoes.

Um, tragically pre-fontein passed in a car accident before he could go and

honor his Olympic glory.

But before he did that, he really put Nike on the map because, you know,

running was his thing, running, what's the one accessory that you need.

Shoes.

And so this was such a big deal, um, that it actually changed the entire industry.

So, so prior pre-fontein, pre-fontein was around in like the seventies, right?

Um, if you read Phil Knight's book, he talks about if you went jogging in

like the forties, fifties or sixties, people were like throwing bottles at you

from your car because they're just like mad.

They're like, what is this idiot doing?

You know, he's in the road or whatever.

And it was just like really hated upon.

And pre-fontein comes along and running actually becomes cool again.

And so Nike got to ride that, that tailwind.

And then what also happened is, is back then people were wearing shoes that were

like, uh, you know, kind of like the loafer or work shoe or whatever, like pretty basic

shoes and people wanted to rebel against that, rebel against the shoes that

their dad was wearing.

And so they started wearing these athletic shoes, these running shoes as a

part of their daily attire to make a statement that like, I'm rebelling and

I'm superior.

And it changed the entire shoe market.

Now athletic shoes are probably the best selling shoe and only a tiny

percent of them are worn for athletic activities.

And then all started in the, in the seventies with, with pre-fontein.

And then of course, Nike had the amazing campaign with Jordan, which was

more unquestionable proof, you know, making them feel superior because they

got the best basketball shoe and sell the dream that they're going to be

able to fly like Mike.

So that was a, a world changing campaign that not a lot of people think

about when they put on their kicks every morning, you know?

You know, one of those that I feel like is happening right now in a small way.

Um, so you remember like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that,

those vibram five finger shoes were like getting popular.

Do you remember those?

Yeah.

So like you would see one and you'd be like, what is this person wearing a

foot glove?

Like what is this thing?

And then they would immediately go into the spiel about why this is better

for you and like how they do whatever.

And I think this is like, I've seen this a lot now.

There's a popular YouTuber or Instagram guy called knees over toes guy.

And he's basically like, it's like a rebellion.

He's like, have any of you ever been told when you're working out, like,

don't let your knee go over your toe and you're squatting because it's bad form.

He's like, bullshit.

Like, um, I had all these knee surgeries.

Nobody could tell me how to fix it.

I fixed it myself because I started training that way specifically.

So it's like a rebellion against the fitness industry.

Then he's like a rebellion against Nike, because now Nike's the big bad,

like the incumbent.

And so he's like, Nike shoes, those are like wearing high heels.

You know, you shouldn't have these like huge healed shoes.

You should have low drop flat shoes, basically.

And so he came out with his own shoe, but also there's just like a bunch

of these brands now that are kind of like, uh, flat, more like you're walking bare foot,

bare foot shoes, like you're walking on the ground.

And it's funny that like now Nike is the big kind of status quo that they want

to rebel against and point out why, why you shouldn't be wearing Nike shoes

because of this other reason.

5000 doctors agree that the Nike, you know, cushion is actually bad for you.

So yeah.

So, uh, you know, a big one was a MacBook launched this ad that was called 1984

and aired during the Super Bowl.

And it, it, uh, was a big rebellion against IBM.

Everyone was using these IBMs and MacBook came out and they're like,

we're the new thing, you know, and I think I got the idea from this Volkswagen ad right here.

So Volkswagen, when they came out, I think it was, uh, in the 60s, all those cars were huge.

You know, if you think of like the 60s, uh, seven Chevy's, you know, these huge cars

that you couldn't get into a parking spot and had all this extra stuff on them

that you didn't need, they came out with this think small campaign that absolutely

crushed it.

And it was like the, the hipster statement at the time was to, to drive a VW bug,

you know, made one of the S selling cars.

Um, there's another ad that just came out from someone who's a master.

This is, that's Trump.

So this is another video that, that I would suggest you play if you can,

because it's really fascinating.

And they show Hillary talking about how the Trump people have to be deprogrammed.

Who you seeing this ad?

It just came out like two days ago.

No, I haven't seen it.

So what, what is it with Trump taking a commanding lead and Bidenomics hurting

American families, genius Hillary Clinton has come up with a way for Biden to win.

There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, formal deprogramming

of the cult members, deprogramming, deprogramming, deprogramming of the cult members.

A brilliant plan.

And here's what that would look like.

Pay attention.

Joe Biden will defeat him.

Biden has done an amazing job, an amazing job, but there's one small problem.

The basket of deplorables, deplorables, deplorables, deplorables.

Working Americans aren't idiots, and they know who's on their side.

To American workers watching their take home pay shrink and watching inflation

destroy their family and their lives, to all of you, I have your back.

I'm Donald J.

Trump and I approve this message.

Wow.

That's so well done.

I mean, I love right.

I'm the man is a master marketer and he just rallies his base to rebel against,

you know, the, the, um, incumbents.

What's the word?

The, the elites, the kind of the, the status quo.

Yeah.

And do you think, uh, like in this case, do you think Trump has input on

any of that, or this is just, they hire some ad agency that does these things?

Like, is he the master marketer or is he hiring master marketers?

I mean, he, he, he makes the sound bites, you know, that sound bite, I think was

live from a speech that they plug that at least it looks like it was.

And, you know, a lot of times these speech writers, they think about that.

So there's a famous, uh, um, speech about Obama did.

Yes, we can.

Do you remember that speech?

Yep.

Yep.

Of course.

That was a huge one.

So whenever, when the speech writer first presented Obama with, yes, we can,

Obama didn't like it.

He didn't want to give that speech.

He thought it was too basic.

He's like, I don't want to repeat the same thing over and over.

You know, the, the audience deserves something more intelligent.

And they had to convince them to do this.

Yes, we can speech and presented as a rally cry.

And finally like, okay, fine, you know, it goes out and gives a speech and that's

sound bite, man.

I think it was, uh, a will I am, turn that into that music video that went crazy.

You know, right?

It's just, uh, a really powerful sound bite.

And, and I find it the best politicians end of speaking in sound bites.

You know, what makes Trump so effective at what he's doing.

The blogger Scott Adams, if anybody wants to get a good deeper on this, the blogger

Scott Adams who created Dilbert, he, when Trump was running in 2016 and nobody

thought he would win, Scott Adams was one of the first people I saw that came out

and was like, Oh, not only can he win, he will win in a landslide, which is what

exactly is, which is what happened.

And he explained, he goes, Trump has verbal kill shots.

Um, you know, he has these phrases that he'll say about opponents where he'll be

like, um, low energy Jeb Bush.

And then you can never look at Jeb again and see anything but low energy.

And Jeb's so offended by it that he feeds energy into that, uh, like, you know, he

starts to be flustered by it.

And then he starts to try to up his energy and then Trump will pat him on the head

and be like, well, at least you're trying now, Jeb.

Yeah, that's good.

You're trying to pick up your energy.

I like that.

And he would just destroy candidates with like, you know, crooked Hillary, um, you

know, he would just, just brand people in a one shot kill with, with, with these

phrases and even the one you, that video you just showed the kind of I have your

back, like, you know, he, he's very, very good at just repeating simple messages

and, and branding himself one way and positioning himself against the others

the other way.

All right.

So the eighties, here's a force for good.

So did you know, uh, Sean, the phrase, uh, have one for the road?

Do you know where that came from?

No, but now that I think about it, it's kind of a fucked up phrase, huh?

So I would think that the, the worst use of that phrase would be go and have one

and then go drive, but it actually meant take a beer in your car and drink it while

we're driving away from wherever you're going, right?

So drunk driving was out of control and a can't, uh, uh, campaign was created.

Friends don't let friends drive drunk.

And it had three things to do, drive your friend home, have your friend sleep over

or call a cab, you know, and this cut drunk driving in half.

It, it, it was something like a 40 to 50% drunk driving decrease when this

started going around.

That's like, uh, Craig, if I say the phrase, this is your brain on drugs.

What do you think of?

Yeah, you think of that fried egg, a powerful demonstration, right?

An egg hitting a frying pan sizzling.

Like, yeah, that was how long ago.

That was like, it hadn't been, I was a kid.

Like I was, that was 20 plus years ago and it still has hijacked my brain where

if I, if I see an egg, I think about drugs or if I hear this is your brain on drugs,

I hear the egg, right?

Like, uh, that, that is so powerful.

How that worked.

These powerful demonstrations are unforgettable.

You'll never look at a sword and not think about the sword slicing through the bullet.

Yeah.

There's something about it that really sticks in, in the human mind.

Maybe it's a way we are taught how to learn, you know, uh, I have a, I have a

daughter now and she's learning physics, not the way I think of physics.

And it's not something I thought, but you know, you have kids too.

You see how they learn the way blocks fit together and gravity and all of this, you

know, it teaches you a lot about how the human brain learns.

And if you think about what these demonstrations are, they're, they're

really physics demonstrations.

So it's like, that's how we've been learning since age zero, you know?

And, and, and we need that foundational physics to survive.

And you really notice it in babies.

Like they need to know that if they're crawling and there's something here that

it's going to hurt if they hit it, like it's so basic, but the kids don't know

that they actually have to learn that, you know, and you think about, I always

was like, why don't we remember anything before we're five years old?

And I think it's because the brain is optimizing to learn physics.

I think the physics is just so important that you just like, we don't

need memory right now.

Physics are like fundamentals, man.

If you don't know physics, you're going to fucking die.

Like just, you know, walking down the street, right?

So it's all physics.

No, I think these are like new physics lessons that we find really fascinating.

Um, you know what else people are really interested in?

Is these, uh, they call them ASMR videos where it's like stewing things that are

happening.

We do this as an ad for my e-com brand.

So I was watching TikToks and there's these TikToks that are these soothing ASMR

things, the ones that, uh, I was watching were like a bottle, there's a bottle

filled with sands or mar, sand or marbles.

So I think it was marbles and they would, they would roll the glass bottle down

a set of cement stairs.

So you hear like the clink rolling, like a glass bottle rolling sound.

They need to hear the clink as it hits the stair.

And then by the second or third stair, it cracks.

And then you hear marbles bouncing like in synchronicity, like down the stairs.

And for some reason, these views, these videos always have like 10 million, 10

million views on them, just because they're like oddly satisfying to watch.

And people just love that combination of the visual plus the sound.

And so we took that and we remixed that with our product.

Basically we, we, we've integrated it in with our product so that the video starts

with that rolling thing.

And then we just sort of hijacked the video and show our product upon the

smash and way more people watch that than if we just start with our product, even

though it's a complete bait and switch.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, if you go up to someone on the street and be like, Hey, do you love physics?

Do you want to study physics?

They're like, no, but that's actually not the truth.

Humans love physics.

We all love physics.

We're obsessed with physics.

And it starts at eight zero.

Interesting.

So yeah.

So this, this, uh, had to prevent drunk driving.

Did the, you know, all these, these same things and it worked.

So, okay.

So here's a, a modern story.

So 2010 when we were, we're starting golden hippo, my brother comes to me and he

says, Hey, have you, you heard of probiotics and, and I hadn't.

And it was like, what are those?

And he says, well, you know, you got all these bacteria in you.

And I was like, okay, what do you mean?

He's like, you know, your microbiome.

I'm like, what's that?

You know, he goes on to tell me that, you know, you take these probiotics, which

are good beneficial bacteria, it's supposed to do something.

Right.

So I take them.

And I started having a lot more regular poops.

I don't know who, what I was eating before, but they started working.

And I was like, why, why is this affecting me?

I'm a pretty healthy guy.

I'm in pretty good shape.

Um, this is, this is actually helping me out.

And I started looking into it and I realized that all of these foods I was

eating that I thought were healthy because they said, uh, low fat or whatever on

them had sugars or artificial sweeteners or things like that pumped into them.

From the food companies and they were on the name, on the labels under different

names, so you don't know what they are.

You know, like sucralose or, um, right, you know, agave nectar, things like that.

You know, like, uh, you, you would say zero sugars on the label, but the

ingredients would have these substitutes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's got agave, it's got corn syrup.

It's got like, you know, natural fruit juices, you know, all those things are sugars.

And so I started digging into this and there was some shady stuff, man.

There was some, some experiments done where like, like, you know, the sugar

companies would, would pay a farmer to, uh, uh, you know, live food is very

expensive for livestock and farmers always dream that they could give their

livestock sugar instead of food and they, they'd be able to use that as a

nutrients so they can stop this big food expense and like they do that and they

try it and the cows would all die.

You know, and then they tried it.

Okay.

Well, let's take the food and let's add sugar and see what happens.

And then the cows would still die.

And then they, they bury the studies, right?

And then the, the, uh, artificial sweetener things were even worse.

So there was a company, uh, GD sural that invented, uh, artificial sweetener

called aspartame is now known as neutrosweet.

What a lot of people don't know is when they, he came up with his

artificial sweetener, they knew it'd be a billion dollar product, um, because

the sweetener market had already been built out.

They started testing in a lab animals and the lab animals were growing tumors.

And the scientists got popped to the first time ever that, um, the government

filed criminal charges against a food company for falsifying studies because

the scientists were cutting the tumors out of the animals and sewing them back

up and saying, Oh, no tumors here.

And they got caught doing that.

Wow.

And so I found out about all this and I was just like completely mystified.

And so I wrote this presentation about this and I talked about probiotics and

how a way to combat the artificial sweeteners and sugars that are being

pumped into your foods, that it'd be impossible for you to, uh, discover them

all, you know, is to add good bacteria because those, um, you know, the, the

bad bacteria growth that, that happens because of all this consumption that

makes the bad bacteria get really frothy, um, need to be offset by good bacteria.

And so I put this video together and it went absolutely bananas.

So, uh, it was seen by probably, uh, you know, a hundred million people.

It's hard to track, uh, but, um, the last we checked, there was over a hundred

million and this is in a period of about four months.

Joe Rogan tweeted it out and someone wrote there like, Hey, Joe, do you

realize this is a, uh, actually an advertisement for a probiotic?

And he wrote back, Oh yeah, you know, I didn't see that till the end.

I tweeted out before I got to the end of the video, but you can watch it or

something like that, you know, um, and it, it created the biggest, uh, probiotic

brand in the world at the time.

And it was because of this educational component showing people that your food

supply is messed up and you have something called a microbiome that's

getting affected by your food supply.

And one way to aid that is with, with probiotics.

And so if you look at the Google trends, which we didn't have in the 20s, you

know, I'm sure we could do this for Google for the 20s.

And like, like, you know, uh, cigarettes, right?

You'd see like a big spike after the, the, uh, Easter day parade, right?

Um, or VW bug, you'd see the big spike, uh, after the, uh, the think small campaign.

Well, we have this now.

So if you look at probiotics, you know, probiotics, we're gaining some steam here.

And here's where, um, our ad comes online is, uh, key biotics was our brand.

So look at the general spike in probiotics.

Okay.

So what, what happened there?

Well, you can see basically the day we get kicked off a Google and it goes down.

And, uh, you see the trend line goes down too.

Um, but then you see it, it, it goes back up again.

And, you know, this is what we lost our next probiotic brand, perfect biotics.

Uh, you know, did, did okay.

It, it wasn't the, the huge banger of success that, that key biotics was, but fear

not met a guy named Dr.

Gundry in 2016, we lost a brand with him and look at, look at these spike

lines, look at the probiotics, bike lines compared with, with the term Gundry.

And the reason we were sick or angry at some days is when the campaigns would be

running really strong, you know, read the, the videos running, running a lot.

That's where the, the searches would go crazy.

And that was because Dr.

Gundry is out there with, with our educational presentations, talking about

the microbiome, talking about probiotics and prebiotics and really just

educating the world on this stuff.

And, you know, we didn't bring probiotics to America or anything like that.

Uh, but I like to think we were probably a company that taught more people than

anyone about the microbiome.

And now, you know, the probiotic trends, uh, you know, keeps, keeps going.

And I think it just keeps going up into the right.

If you, if you find the, the current data, you know, and by now the, uh, market has

changed, you know, I talked about, uh, I did a Twitter thread a way back where I

talked about the three stages of a product market.

So there's Clueless, which is when you need to create, uh, the, the, the

marketing wave, cause your, your market knows nothing about the, the product, right?

So back then when I started, no one knew anything about probiotics.

So if I just said like, Hey, here's probiotics, try them out.

No one would have cared, but I started with something they did care about was

those like, Hey, is your digestion messed up?

Are you having irregularity at the bathroom?

Well, here's the reason why.

And then the next stage of the market is, um, is curious where someone's probably

heard the term probiotics and, and you can jump rent.

And so while my ads in 2013, 2014 were starting with digestive health, I had an

ad in 2018, I believe it was.

And the headline was doctor says, throw your probiotics in the trash.

And enough people knew about probiotics by then they were like, Oh, that's

wait, wait, I heard these are good for you.

You know, right.

And then you click on it and it goes on to talk about how most probiotics don't

have enough strains of potency and also, you know, prebiotics are important and

this and that, you know, so that's just knowing the market where it was and,

and, and where you need to jump in.

And then the next level, uh, market is, is saturation.

And that's kind of where the probiotics market is now.

I'm not watching new probiotics.

Uh, you know, I, I, every time I go to conference, someone comes up to me

like, Hey, I'm launching a probiotic.

I mean, good luck.

She, you know, it's, it's pretty commoditized by now, but there's still some

that have broken through with, with strong campaigns.

Amazing.

And so see, these are the seven hijacks.

I'll read them out here.

So number one, make it about them.

So that's making about the customer and the benefits that they're going to get.

Number two, make it an event.

That's the, um, you know, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

Um, then number three is a powerful demonstration.

So that's the PT barnum.

That's the elevator, uh, with the axe.

That's the sword cutting through the bullet.

Um, that's the drinking dirty water.

Um, show unquestionable proof.

So that's using experts like doctors or, uh, influencers, plus, um, you know,

like you said, he was willing to be in the elevator while the thing was cut.

You know, that's a demonstration of proof.

Five, change a daily behavior.

And I think this was changed in existing daily behavior.

Um, is that right?

Or is it change any daily behavior?

I mean, it could, it could be either.

You know, okay.

So this is like bullet proof, getting you to add something into your coffee.

Something you were already doing or like breakfast, uh, having a hearty breakfast

as the start of your day versus, uh, you know, just a coffee in a, in a bread roll.

Yes.

We hijacked David hijacked to the daily behavior.

And what we do with probiotics is we change the daily behavior.

We, uh, encourage them to take something every day.

So then six is sell the dream.

That's the, the movie star smile that's underneath that film.

If only you would start brushing your teeth or this is, uh, Craig pooping regularly

because he's now takes, uh, you know, probiotics, prebiotics, that's the dream.

And then number seven is help them, um, uh, be a rebel or feel superior.

And so that's, you know, be able to, to stick a middle finger to the man,

whoever the man is, whether it's Nike or it's, uh, you know, women not having

equal rights or whatever, um, give them the tools and the badge to, to feel like

they're superior and, uh, in a rebellion, a part of a rebellion.

That's right.

Amazing.

That, well said.

You're, you're, uh, I'm a good student.

Yeah.

Well, this is, I mean, the stuff that's in here is, um, I guess, like,

this is rare in two ways.

Number one, I took marketing classes in college and I had marketing professors.

None of my marketing professors has ever done what you did.

They never created a category.

They never did a billion dollars in sales.

They never sat there and crafted, um, you know, even this presentation, when

we talked three days ago, it was going to be like marketing throughout the decades.

No, and then you were like, no, that's not going to be the title.

I got to think of something good.

And you come back with seven, seven human hijacks, how marketers

have hijacked your brain.

And I'm like, Oh God, just seeing you go from two days ago with no title

or a shitty working title to like a really strong title is seeing somebody

in action or hearing you, what you did with the, the probiotics market.

So number one, the opportunity to have a teacher who's actually a master

of the game is so rare.

So obviously I'm sitting up at my seat.

I'm paying attention.

Number two, any one of these, like I'm thinking, as you were talking, my brain

was like having almost a hard time listening because I'm firing ideas for

any of my companies on like, Oh, a powerful demonstration.

How could we show this in a way that's exaggerated and would, would, which

almost be kind of shocking or add some drama to what we're doing versus just

saying the feature or saying it's good.

Like, you know, how could we like do, do a powerful demonstration that would

give people unquestionable proof, right?

So I couldn't even like, stop my brain from moving while I'm doing this.

Now that's, I don't know, that's the entrepreneur in me, but I think

there's a lot of people who are listening that are like that.

That like, if you paid attention to this, even one of these hijacks could

like literally like change the trajectory of your company.

So anyways, I appreciate you putting this together.

This is kind of a, this is amazing to me.

I don't know how other people are going to feel about this, but like as, as

the only student in the room right now, I was, you know, I pumped about this.

This is, this is great.

I appreciate the kind words.

And, you know, if they said, as they say, if you can change the life of

just one person, right, then your job, please, well, I'll take it.

All right.

Well, you did it.

This has been a masterclass for sure.

So thanks for, thanks everyone for watching.

That's the pod.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.