Celebrity as a Marketing Strategy with Clint Arthur

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down celebrity as a marketing strategy. To drop these value bonds, I brought to Clint Arthur in the EO Fire Studios. Clint is a renowned entrepreneur and motivational speaker who specializes in transforming professionals into celebrities. His dynamic approach to personal branding and leadership captivates and empowers audiences. In today's foundation, we will talk about how realistic it is to use celebrity as a marketing strategy, how you can generate revenue from this in realistic timelines to become a celebrity, and so much more.

0:46And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clint and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

1:21NestSuite by Oracle brings accounting, finance, inventory, and HR into one proven platform, helping you reduce costs everywhere. Backed by popular demands, NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program. For a few more weeks, head to netsuite.com slash fire. Clint, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's happening, Fire Nation? Ready to rock and roll? This is Clint Arthur. And what I know to be true that most people disagree with is that you have to do the opposite of what everybody else is doing.

2:00Fire Nation, you're not listening to this because you're a sheep following the herd. We are being that purple cow. We are standing out and we are talking about celebrity as a marketing strategy. So Clint, as I just mentioned, the title of this episode is Celebrity as a Marketing Strategy. And most of us in Fire Nation, our listeners here today, are not currently celebrities. So how realistic is it for us to use celebrity as a marketing strategy? First, you have to understand the difference between celebrity and fame. I'm not talking about being famous. I am talking about creating awareness of you, respect for you, admiration of you, positioning of you as a leader and somebody super special in the eyes of a specific target market.

2:47So once you understand that we're not talking about becoming Kim Kardashian or George Clooney or Kanye or Elon Musk, we're just talking about being a high status, admired person in the eyes of your clients and prospects. And that is very, very doable for anybody, regardless of where you are in your journey as an author, a speaker, a coach, a consultant, advisor, an expert, or any kind of entrepreneur. It doesn't matter where you are. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree today. And if you start today, you can be a celebrity in the eyes of your clients and prospects in as little as six months if you just do what Clint says.

3:30Fire Nation, the best time to launch a podcast was 12 years ago, Entrepreneurs on Fire. The second best time is today. So get your little booty moving if you've got a voice you want to share with the world. And I think Firing Nation's on board, Clint. I think that they're convinced. So share with us the top ways to both create and then build celebrity. I've analyzed this very carefully over many years. I started out as Dan Kennedy's Information Marketer of the Year. And I really thought at the time that I had reached the finish line when I won that award. But it was really just the beginning because it's Dan Kennedy's precepts of being a celebrity that I have been just cleaving on to and focusing on with 100 percent of my attention.

4:18And having studied it now since 2012, that's when I'd say my real earnest study of this science began. I can tell you that there's five and a half things that all celebrities do to position themselves as celebrities in the eyes of the clients and prospects. The first one is they go on TV. You know, one of my clients said that YouTube is the great equalizer and TV is the great separator. Everybody knows all celebrities go on TV. And if you want to be a celebrity, you got to go on TV. yes, it ain't what it used to be, but it's still a very powerful celebritizing tool. The second thing all celebrities do is they speak at very important places.

5:06I was just watching today as Jerry Seinfeld was speaking at the Duke University commencement ceremony. Why do they do that? Do you think they need it? They don't do it because they need it. They do it because they know that all celebrities speak at very important places. That's part of being a celebrity. And you need to be speaking at places other than the Holiday Inn Express in Nowheresville, North Carolina. You've got to get yourself on stages that have some kind of brand value, like NASDAQ or the New York City Bar Association or the New York Academy of Medicine or NASA, all of which are places where I can help you to be a speaker.

5:49The third thing that all celebrities do is they take photos and have stories talking with major celebrities. and some of the celebrities that I've worked with over the years, I've had the great privilege to share the stage with Dr. Oz, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Suzanne Somers, Caitlyn Jenner, five presidents of the United States at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, NASDAQ, New York Academy of Medicine, New York City Bar Association, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And by having these stories with these celebrities, it helps you to be seen as a celebrity in the eyes of your clients and prospects.

6:29For example, I've done three events now with Joel Osteen. I've got another one coming up in a few weeks. And the last time I saw him, I said, Joel, you know, when people say mean things about you, it makes me feel better about myself when they say mean things about me. Because if they could be mean about you and not like you, I don't feel so bad about them not liking me. And he goes, well, you know, not everybody agreed with Jesus. And that was a perfect little Joel Osteen comment and a great little quick celebritizing story and people really identify with it, especially anybody who loves Joel Osteen and there are millions of those people.

7:05The fourth thing that all celebrities do is they not only write books, but they promote those books to be best-selling books. It's very important. Now, it used to be the only option was to be a New York Times bestseller or Wall Street Journal or USA Today, but now we have this beautiful thing called the Amazon And if you're a number one bestselling author on Amazon, you're a number one bestselling author. And it's a beautiful thing. And all celebrities are bestselling authors. And if you have a book and you have not made it a bestselling book yet, you haven't worked hard enough and you need to do that.

7:40And then the fifth thing is to win awards. I started off this whole diatribe talking about being Dan Kennedy's Info Marketer of the Year. And all celebrities win awards. I've got some of them I'm looking at on my mantelpiece right now. Greatest Coach, Ambassadors of Hope 2020 Summit, Featured Speaker. You've got to have awards. And I recently was honored with an award from Success Magazine and from the New York Review. And you have to win awards. You have to go after awards. You have to apply for awards. And you have to use them and deploy them as marketing assets on your customers and prospects.

8:28And I said there were five and a half things that celebrities do. The half thing is one of my favorites. My most favorite thing of all is meeting the celebrities. I really enjoy meeting these unicorns. They're always outstanding and fascinating people. But my second favorite thing to do is the fifth and a half thing. It's not a whole thing on its own because if you only do this thing, then you come off with the wrong positioning. This thing is celebrity lifestyle marketing assets. That's pictures of you, videos of you, stories of you, enjoying the celebrity lifestyle at luxurious resorts, international travel destinations, fancy restaurants, eating beautiful food, going to beautiful places, hanging out with beautiful people in beautiful places.

9:18That's the celebrity lifestyle that everyone aspires to. And one of the main reasons why your clients and prospects want to give you money is because they want to be you. You have to get them to that point where they want to be you. Like a lot of people, they read about and they see John Lee Dumas hanging out in Puerto Rico, and they want that for themselves. That's celebrity lifestyle marketing. And that's the fifth and a half thing. But you've got to be careful. As I said, you have to use that type of marketing in conjunction with all the rest. Otherwise, you just come off as the wife of a rich guy or a trust fund baby.

9:57It's not good positioning. You've got to have the authority and credibility of the first five celebrity marketing strategies to implement the final half strategy successfully. Then you put all of that together. That is a celebrity marketing strategy. Fire Nation, that was just value bomb after value bomb. I mean, just to run through a couple, I mean, going on TV, speaking at important events, writing important books, winning awards. I mean, these are things that, listen, these are the separators. These are the unique identifiers. Because guess what? Anybody can start a podcast tomorrow. Anybody can flip on YouTube and record a YouTube show tomorrow.

10:38Those aren't differentiators. You have to look at places that still have gatekeepers. I'm not saying that we love gatekeepers and we're going to bow at their doorstep, but that is the unique differentiator that can really have you have that extra step, that separation. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful.

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14:23And it was just a completely different world back then than it is now. They were wrong then. And a lot of times people are wrong now when they say things about certain areas and ways and shapes and forms. So is there too much noise for a non-celebrity to decide they're going to become a celebrity? It's the noise that should make you decide that celebrity is really the most important decision you can make for your marketing of what you do. and really your job is not doing what you do your job is doing the marketing of what you do what you do is something that you do because you love doing it or because it's easy for you or because you're great at it which will also make you love it but what your real job is is the marketing of what you do you're not really you could be the greatest brain surgeon in the world but your main job is not to be a brain surgeon it's to make sure that people who need brain operations know that you're the guy.

15:21Otherwise, you can't help them. You can't save their lives. You've got to focus on the marketing. One of my earliest business coaches, he goes, Clint, how do you feel about selling? And I said, I don't really like selling. And he goes, you've got to learn to love selling. And I'm here to tell you, you've got to learn to love doing the marketing. And one of the great things about celebrity as a marketing strategy is that all the things that I talk about should be fun. I mean, I know that going on TV can be a little unnerving, can be a little scary. I know when I was on the Today Show with Brooke Shields, it was scary.

15:56There was a thousand lights in the ceiling and 10 cameras in the studio and 150 people watching in this little tiny Studio 1A, which, you know, maybe it was like 2000 square a feed. But I was scared. But once you go through these things, there are a lot of there are certain things in life that can and do change you. And going on TV shows will change, make you become more of the person that you always wanted to be. And ultimately, that's what this is all about. I mean, the competition, you know, they they say that competition is good for the marketplace. It makes the marketplace stronger. It makes the product stronger.

16:37It makes the company stronger. It brings down pricing for the consumers in general. There's a lot of value to competition. And one of the values of competition is that it should be forcing you to understand that you need to be a celebrity. Otherwise, all of this crowded marketplace is going to drown you out. You are going to be the greatest brain surgeon in the world and nobody's going to know about you. and the ones who are not the best brain surgeons are the ones who are gonna be operating on your patients and just because you see a doctor on Dr. Oz doesn't mean they're the best doctor. It just means they're probably the best at being on TV talking about being a doctor but at the very least, they're the best at getting on TV and that means they're the best at being a celebrity in the eyes of their clients and prospects and that's what you need to figure out how you're gonna do it.

17:28Now, Clint, nobody wants to be a broke celebrity. So how does being a celebrity specifically translate into making more money? It's a crazy question that I get asked a lot of times. People don't understand. How does being a celebrity translate into making money? How does that work? And yes, I do understand that it's kind of a little bit of a magic act. There's not a direct a direct science for how you can apply going on TV or speaking at a very important place or meeting a given celebrity and posting pictures of that on your on your social media channels. There's no direct correlation between any one of those events.

18:15But when you start dripping in that bucket of celebrity and you keep drip, drip, dripping. It is amazing how a bucket will get full just by dripping, dripping, dripping. And you can't stop dripping. You got to keep dripping. And people say, well, when do you have enough celebrity marketing assets? Well, when does the shark stop swimming? When it's dead. This is what celebrities do. We go on TV. We speak in very important places. We hang out with other celebrities. We win awards and we promote our bestselling books. Those are the things you do. You tell me anything else that you can do that is going to not cost a lot of money to do it and that is going to be separating you out from the crowds and hordes of people who are all doing basically the same thing as you.

19:09I don't think you can. Facebook ads are just going to evaporate as soon as they're done. They're clicked through and there goes your money and it's all over. But your TV appearances and your photos with celebrities and your videos of you speaking at the very important places, those are going to live on forever and ever and ever in all the places that you deploy them. So just keep dripping and the money will start coming. So let's talk realistic timelines because I know Fire Nation, I mean, once they start, you know, their heads down, they want to keep moving forward and they're willing to put in the work.

19:42So what kind of timeline does it take to become a celebrity? I started going on TV in 2010. And like I said, I really started studying the science of this whole thing in earnest back in 2012. And I would say, let's say by 2015, I was making seven figures a year. So that took me four years to figure it out on my own. Now, I have been studying this and putting together opportunities for myself, which require me to invite others to participate. High status speaking opportunities like I have mentioned at NASA and NASDAQ and New York City Bar Association. I need audience. So what I figured out was that I invite my friends or my mentees or students to come to the events and even speak at the events.

20:38And that's how you can get VIP speaking opportunities. And I have Rudy Giuliani and the Surgeon General and Joel Osteen coming up at some of those events. So those are the celebrity attachment photos. And then I present awards to the speakers afterwards and even include TV appearances that I set up for you. so if you participate in my mentorship that's the real value of having a mentor and i've i said this on the today show with brooke shields and willie geist they said you know we could do we want to do all these things we can want to climb to the top of mount everest but how do you keep from falling off course and i said invest in mentors that has what that's been what has allowed me to make such fast progress in my career.

21:24And the mentorship that I offer allows you to really create a lot of celebrity in six months. Fire Nation, I really hope you're taking notes on all of these value bombs that Clint keeps dropping. I mean, they keep coming one after another. I hope you rewind to that part we talked about, the five different ways to create and build celebrity. I mean, that in and of itself could have been a whole episode was pure gold. So Clint, give us your final takeaway. What is the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? If you are not deliberately, systematically, methodically building and growing your celebrity in the eyes of your clients and prospects, you are asleep at the wheel, ignoring everything that's going on in our society.

22:14You must differentiate yourself as being superior, higher status than all your competition, or else you're going to get caught up in the cacophony of competition and will be drowned out. And unfortunately, your clients and prospects and the people you serve are the ones who are going to be the losers. So don't be a loser and make your clients and prospects be losers. Become a winner and be the celebrity you've always wanted to be, which will help you to be the person that you've always wanted to be. Fire Nation, we know if you're listening to this episode, you are a winner. So keep up that heat.

22:51And Clint, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Go to clint.com. That's clint with three Ts.com. Why three Ts, Clint? Well, I work with all kinds of authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, advisors, experts of every kind. One of them was the creator of the science of namology, which is, what does your name mean? And she said to me, Clint, I wish you could have an extra T at the end of your name because the T's always end up on top. And I looked and I couldn't get Clint with two T's.com, but I did get Clint with three T's.com.

23:27That's why I told this story. Fire Nation, make sure that you understand that you need to take action and follow Clint with three T's.com because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with CA and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Clint in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Clint, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, and we will catch you on the flip side. Amen, brother. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to Clint and our sponsors for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation.

24:05Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I will catch you there or on the flippity-flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

24:46Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business, and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. NetSuite by Oracle brings accounting, finance, inventory, and HR into one proven platform, helping you reduce costs everywhere. Backed by popular demands, NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program. For a few more weeks, head to netsuite.com slash fire.