4-Step Formula To Becoming World Class With Craig Clemens

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Craig Clemens is a direct response copywriter with over one billion dollars in sales. Yes, billion with a B.

Craig is currently the cofounder of Golden Hippo Media, a media company focused on bringing sustainable health and wellness to people all over the world.

Craig got started writing copy for Eben Pagan’s program, Double Your Dating, which grew to over 20 million dollars per year in revenue.

Since then, Craig has cofounded three eight-figure businesses in just the last five years in diverse industries ranging from nutrition, to cosmetics, to dating advice.

In this episode, we get to hear Craig’s unique entrepreneurial journey; from selling reptiles, shells and magazines door-to-door, to starting his own company with a team of some of the best young writers in the world.

We’ll be discussing the value of mentorship. How Craig was able to get a world class education, through a well-known mentor, to launch his copywriting career.

Craig also goes into the four-part formula for what it takes to become the best in class at whatever you want to succeed in.

And if you’re not sure where to begin, Craig lays down a 60-day challenge to help us make a permanent lifestyle change to improve our lives.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Snakes, shells and magazines: Craig’s first taste of entrepreneurship.
• Lessons Craig learnt from door to door selling.
• Find out how Craig got into Google Cash and ebook sales.
• Why Craig fell in love with copywriting despite failing English.
• How Craig received a world class education in marketing.
• The value of good mentorship.
• Impacts of the 2008 crash on Craig’s business and life.
• How Craig picked himself back up after retrenchment.
• Discover how Golden Hippo Media was born.
• Craig’s business ventures in men’s supplements and skin care.
• Challenges in the supplement industry today.
• Copywriting for big books on the market today.
• Why immersion can be the best education.
• The four-part formula to become the best in class.
• Writing great copy and the variables of its success.
• Accepting that sometimes you’re hot and sometimes you’re not.
• The power of the 60-day challenge.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“I remember we spent so much money on Google Adwords in our first year that they sent us a refrigerator.” — @craigclemens

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“If you’re trying to become a copywriter you need that mentor to tell you why your shit sucks.” — @craigclemens

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[0:18:33].1]

“We have created the best team of young copywriters in the world and I get to work with these guys every day.” — @craigclemens

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[0:43:10].1]

“Immerse yourself, do the damn work, have the right mentor and put in the time and you’re guaranteed to become world class.” — @craigclemens

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[0:49:50].1]

“You can be a really strong writer and still just write something that tanks.” — @craigclemens

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[0:53:00].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Golden Hippo Media – http://goldenhippo.com/

Craig Clemens on Twitter – https://twitter.com/craigclemens

Unbound Merino – http://unboundmerino.com Promo Code – FailOn

Craig Clemens on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigclemens/

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson – https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713

The Plant Paradox – https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Paradox-Dangers-Healthy-Disease/dp/006242713X

Power Of The 60-Day Challenge by Craig Clemens – https://medium.com/@craigclemens/how-to-change-your-life-in-60-days-787b71b7249a

Transcript Below

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 033

“JG: I’ve written letters recently that I’ll go back and look at like a year later so let’s say, something I wrote in like 2015. I’ll read it and I’ll be like, you know what? The reason this tanked is tested advertising methods in the 1970’s. It’s so obvious later, you know? You can be a really strong writer and still just get caught up in your own head and write something that tanks and violate basic principles of marketing and never know it. That’s part of the struggle of being a writer, is that you’re going to have your bombs and sometimes you’re hot and sometimes you’re not.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:43.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:01:09.1] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that believes leveraging failure is not only the fastest way to learn but is also the fastest way to start a business, quit your job and live a life of absolute freedom. In a world that only shares successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs.

This is a platform for their stories and today’s story is a good one, it’s of Craig Clemens. Craig is a direct response copywriter with over one billion dollars in sales, yes, with a B. He’s currently the cofounder of Gold Hippo Media. He got started writing copy for Evan Pagan’s program, Double Your Dating which grew to over 20 million dollars per year. Since then, Craig has cofounded three eight figure businesses in just the last five years, in diverse industries ranging from nutrition, to cosmetics, to dating advice.

We’ll be discussing the value of mentorship and how Craig was able to get a world class education through a well-known mentor, to launch his copywriting career. Craig will go into the four-part formula for what it takes to become the best in the class at whatever you want to succeed in. Craig lays down a 60 day challenge to help us make a lifestyle change that can become permanent and improve our lives.

But first, luckily, all I travel with now is a backpack for one reason only, it’s clothing from an innovative Toronto apparel company called Unbound Marino, they have clothes made out of marino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to have it washed.

This means I can travel with less clothes since the clothes apparently clean themselves. Check out the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere else and of course, If you’d like to stay up to date on all the fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:03:03.2] RN: Take us back to the first time that somebody gave you money in exchange for a product or service because that’s usually like a big paradigm shift for people that are coming from like working for other people, to actually creating something and somebody gives you money for it? What was that first time?

[0:03:17.5] CC: Yeah, well, my first time, I didn’t actually make anything. I made my first dollar in the internet doing affiliate marketing which is as you know, just kind of putting the pixels in the right places. This is back in the days when people were using the method called Google Cash to do –

[0:03:40.5] RN: It was before my days.

[0:03:41.4] CC: This is before your time? Okay. let me tell you about how it was when I used to market on internet son. Back in the day it was Google Ad Words, that was like the wild, wild west of internet marketing and you could send visitors direct from Google when they’re searching for how to win the slot machines in Vegas.

If someone had a book on how to beat the slot machines, you could buy the ad on Google and if you could grab search terms that people were typing in better than the business owner, you could send them to business owners site and get the commission from them.

[0:04:20.1] RN: Got it.

[0:04:22.1] CC: People came up with all kinds of tools that would allow you to find like a million little search terms, you know, not just how to win at slots but this would be like, how to win at sloth machine S.

If they forgot the space between the E and the S, you know? You might get one click a year on that but that person would buy that freaking book man, then you get your commission you know? Which is usually 50% of the purchase price or something like that.

That’s a real example, the first thing I ever promoted as an affiliate was a book called Slot Machine Secrets by John Carlo Capucio who is still a friend of mine. John, what’s up if you’re listening to this.

Yeah, that was on Click Bank which you know, was a network where you’d go and find these ebooks that people were putting out and you could just sign up for the commission program where you’d get 50% of the commission or whatever the merchant put out.

[0:05:20.6] RN: how did you hear about that? How did you hear about the affiliate marketing? “I can make money online.” Where did that come from? Did you have somebody else that told you about it or you just searching online for something?

[0:05:29.3] CC: Yeah, at the time I was in the internet marketing space. I was working for Evan Pagan at his company which did dating advice ebooks and we had people who would promote our ebooks as affiliates. I saw that making a little bit of money but then I heard about this Google Cash method and I thought it was total BS.

The weird thing about the internet versus reality, right? You know, growing up. I was the kid who would open up the back of the penny saver. Penny saver, there’s all these get rich quick schemes.

I’d open up the back of the penny saver, there’s all these get rich quick schemes in the back and I thought they would actually work. I would call or write in to get all of them and I bet, one of these things has to work, right?

They were all like MLM’s or like, you know, stuffing envelopes from home, shit like that that was mostly pyramid schemes and bullshit. When the internet came along, there was all these things that were kind of like that, like stuff envelopes at home or like you know, this case was like Google Cash method.

But some of them were not bullshit, some of them actually worked. I had a friend and he’s like “Yeah, my little brother is 16 and he’s doing this Google Cash thing and making like 500 to a thousand bucks a month.”

I was like, “Wait a second, your little brother? I got to be smarter than this guy. I could probably do this too.” I heard what he was doing and I downloaded the same course that he did. I went through it and I started doing this Slot Machine Secrets ebook, just buying search terms in Google, sending them straight to the ebook webpage.

[0:07:18.7] RN: There’s a course you actually took to learn this method?

[0:07:22.8] CC: Correct, yeah, I think that was an ebook itself.

[0:07:26.9] RN: It was how to do this right?

[0:07:28.0] CC: That guy was probably getting rich selling ebooks and how to get rich selling ebooks. Yeah, I did this in my first month. I made $330 and I remember that number because it was the exact amount of my car payment. I was like wow, if I could make this every month, my car payment is done.

Then the next month I made $660 and I doubled my money and I was like, now I can make my car payment and I have enough money left over to eat lunch at Baha Fresh every day. Because Baha Fresh was like the baller ship back then, you know? Like Taco Bell was like what I was used to but now I could step it up and get that like burrito with real meat in it, instead of you know, the mystery stuff.

[0:08:10.6] RN: Who knows what else, yeah.

[0:08:13.1] CC: Does that count?

[0:08:14.7] RN: 100%. You didn’t actually – same with me, I got into it the same way. Going back before that though, were you raised around kind of business people entrepreneurs or was that totally foreign to you as you came up through high school, college?

[0:08:32.8] CC: Yeah, my parents had traditional jobs, my mom was a school teacher, my dad was a rocket scientist, actually designed parts for the space station and rocket engines. They really wanted all of us brothers, I have two brothers, to go to college. I just never felt like it was for me but they were making that hard push.

But I was always getting into entrepreneurial stuff. I remember when I was I think seven or eight, I got all of the neighbor kids to bring their pets over to my yard and we collected reptiles, we had like frogs and toads and snakes.

[0:09:07.1] RN: Nice.

[0:09:08.8] CC: And lizards and like, I wasn’t joking, it’s true though, there was at no point in my childhood where there wasn’t at least one snake lose in our house. My mom became an expert at like catching snakes and putting them back in their cage.

[0:09:25.4] RN: Sounds terrifying.

[0:09:25.9] CC: Yeah. I got all the neighbors to bring up their animals as well and put my front yard and I had a zoo. Then we told all the parents in the neighborhood, would like come through and give a dollar to be a part of the zoo.

[0:09:38.0] RN: That’s awesome.

[0:09:38.6] CC: Everyone came through and walked through and like their golden retriever was there and then there’d be like a turtle and a cat and a snake and the lizards. I was always doing things like that.

My brothers and I went to Hawaii and we saw that there’s all these shells in the beach and then we went to the gift shops and they would have...