How I’ve Sold $1 Billion In Products Online (A Marketing Masterclass w/ Craig Clemens)

Shaan Puri

Alright I'm not jealous of any people on earth and I think I'm jealous of craig clements because not only has he built a successful $1,000,000,000 company with no outside investors but he has made hit after hit after hit and I asked him to come on the podcast and he thought it was just gonna be a normal episode but then when we started talking I realized that I wanted him to give me a master class and when he's given it to me he's given it to you which is to teach us the 7 ways that he as a marketer has sold over a $1,000,000,000 of products online he calls these the 7 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 hip 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 gotta 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 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 he's 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 them to us and I don't know about you but I've had professors in school who have took marketing classes but those were not people who have actually been in the game done it people who have actually created categories sold 100 of 1,000,000 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 if 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 7 human hijacks how marketers have hijacked your brain with craig clements what's up do you I have this theory now of guests who come on the podcast the more their video setup looks like they were either taken 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 setup like he was not in his home video setup and like the higher your iq the worse your video setup and the opposite is true unfortunately for me which is the more hd and beautiful your video setup the less interesting things you usually have to say

Craig Clemens

yes yes

Shaan Puri

And the cool thing is, you're like the real-life bad man. You're an ad guy and a copywriter who translated those skills into **$1,000,000,000** of sales. This is why, when you were coming on this time, we started talking and we kind of realized that you have a master class in you. Normally, we hang out and just shoot the shit about business ideas, but occasionally we drop a knowledge bomb. The knowledge bomb is what we call a master class, which is just letting somebody do their thing for 30 minutes. The cool thing about this is you said you had given a talk internally to your team, to your company, to pump them up. It sounded so dope that I just said, "Can you please do that on the pod?" And you agreed. 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 Clemens do this master class. So, take it away! So, Sean, did you brush your teeth this morning?

Craig Clemens

Did you take an elevator, or are you wearing sneakers right now? Any guesses?

Shaan Puri

for us ain't bad 1 of 3 ain't bad

Craig Clemens

One out of three ain't bad. Okay, well, marketers created all of that. Marketers created so much of our daily behavior that people I tell these stories to don't even want to accept it. And you know, it's okay though. I mean, that's the case for everyone. You're not alone. So, do you know who this guy is on the left here?

Shaan Puri

I do not but he looks very sophisticated who is that this is

Craig Clemens

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.

Shaan Puri

I do not

Craig Clemens

Okay, well, this guy has changed your life. This man is named Edward Bernays. He is often called the **father of public relations** and he is actually **Sigmund Freud's** nephew. So, I don't know what exactly kind of shirt you're wearing over there, Sean, or if you put some style into it, but this guy has his hands in so much stuff that he literally created consumerism. Quick example: before Bernays, people would buy clothes, as you know, unless you were in the upper classes. People would buy clothes to go to work. He is the one who got together with a bunch of other people and said, "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. 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.

Shaan Puri

now it's people who don't have the means that buy buy buy more clothing than they they can afford right

Craig Clemens

Well, let me just get into some of the examples here. You'll see that this guy was operating on a level that is unfathomable. In this presentation, I'm going to share with you what I've discovered while studying and creating marketing campaigns that have caused world change. I call them the **7 Human Hijacks**. When you use these seven things, you are hijacking the limbic system of the brain. 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. Maybe they respond the next time. I'm going to share each of these hijacks after I present these marketing campaigns. You'll see how they repeat. Not every campaign uses all seven, but you'll see that some of them are extremely powerful. 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 possibly changing the world forever, this is the recipe. Let's go!

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Craig Clemens

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 Pepsodent. They said, "Claude, we want to sell more of our toothpaste." He looked at the lay of the land and realized there was a problem. He said to Pepsodent, "Look, only 5% of people brush their teeth on a daily basis. So why are you even in this business? 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." Claude tells the founders of Pepsodent, "Look, if you guys really want to sell some toothpaste, you're going to have to get people brushing their teeth." So, he created this masterful ad campaign that built Pepsodent into the dominating toothpaste brand for decades. This is the ad: "The film that discolors the whitest teeth." Then he has you do a demonstration. So, do this with me, Sean. Take the tip of your tongue and put it over the fronts—put it over these gold fronts you got under there. Mhmm. Okay, do you feel that film there on your teeth?

Shaan Puri

kinda do kinda do

Craig Clemens

so the ad goes on to say that brushing with pepcidin is gonna 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 5 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 pepcid it is the way to get rid of that film so the result of this ad within a decade 85% of americans didn't brush their teeth on a daily basis and pepcidant is still around today they ran this ad campaign for I don't know 50 years something like that and I'll tell you something interesting is about 10 years in there was other companies trying to compete with pepsodent 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 loved pepcidip because it had this like minty flavor that made their mouth tingle after they brushed with it and then the toothpaste companies the other ones started knocking that off and when people felt the tingle then they would stick with the 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 pepcidet so they they owned it for like 10 years and then it got actually competitive because then people were not only stealing their ads they were stealing you know their their secret of the tingle so what are the the human hijacks that claude hopkins used mulaney sold the dream of the movie star smile and you're gonna see this theme reoccurring throughout this presentation second he created a powerful demonstration that anyone could do and that's just rubbing your tongue over the the front of your teeth and and then the next thing he did is he made it about them he made it about the potential user and this is a 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 gonna be exciting for the user and claude did a really great job of that sharing how it's gonna give them that movie star smile

Shaan Puri

So, that's like... there's this diagram that I love. 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 it originally. It's little Mario, you know? When he's small, then he gets the fire flower. When Mario gets the fire flower, he's able to shoot fireballs out of his hands. He's running around, he's huge, and he can shoot fireballs. Basically, it says, "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 can shoot fireballs. That's what you want to sell: how the user will be more badass rather than all the features and facets about your product.

Craig Clemens

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 4000 ads a day and they did a study and it showed that the human brain has the same intelligence span as a goldfish it's like less than you know 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 wanna get back to that demonstration though where did claude get the idea for this demonstration so 18/54 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 braking 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 you hear about a elevator accident where you know people get on and the elevator falls down right so otis creates this great braking system 1st year out he only sells 3 elevators the next year out he sells 7 elevators like no one cares you know he doesn't doesn't have the ability to get the word out and then he meets this guy named pt barnum and so everyone probably now knows pt barnum one of the the greatest marketing and showmen of all time and pt barnum says this is what we're gonna do we're gonna go to the crystal palace in new york city which was this big exhibition hall and we're gonna do a grand demonstration so otis gets up there on this elevator shaft and he has his assistant get up there with an ax and so he's standing out at the the elevator goes up the shaft to just like it normally would at a building and he's like cut the cord jimmy he goes boom but he cuts the first cord the elevator drops like just a little bit and then there's one more chord hanging and everyone's looking out they're like oh shit what's it there he goes this is the chord and then boom it puts actually the second chord in the elevator only 2 feet and it stops and 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 braking system for elevators of worth so over the next decade he sold 2,000 elevators he got all the greatest commissions he did the the elleifel 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 otis is is still crushing elevators

Shaan Puri

All my zippers say YKK, and all my elevators say Otis. That's all. Those are the only two things I know.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, so that's the power of a great demonstration. So what did Otis do? The powerful demonstration stands in people's minds, and he also made it an event. You know, what's greater 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, "Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd"?

Shaan Puri

no but I like that

Craig Clemens

One of my favorite sayings shows that humans cannot resist an event. You know, if you're walking down the street and you see a big crowd of people, and something's going on over there, like a band or whatever, it's just natural to want to see what's happening. So, if you make your advertising an event, then people cannot help but pay attention to it. He also showed **unquestionable proof** using that demonstration. He put his own body on the elevator; he didn't use a dummy or a monkey. He himself was on that elevator while his assistant was cutting the cords. That's the type of unquestionable proof that leads people to take action to buy without questioning it. Of course, he made it about them. He didn't get up there and show his fancy braking system or how it worked. Instead, he addressed the fear in everyone's mind about the safety of getting on an elevator, and he did it with a powerful demonstration. So, oh let...

Shaan Puri

Let me show you something. Hold on... Alright, do you know this brand, Mini Katana? Have you seen them, Craig?

Craig Clemens

I have not

Shaan Puri

Alright, so I am about to YouTube. Don't be alarmed. Inside here is a giant sword. This company, 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 by hiring like 20 YouTubers and TikTokers. They would have them do what you just described: the powerful demonstration. They would take this sword and instead of saying, "You know why you need a sword?" because most people don't need a sword, let's be honest, 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 holding the sword and there's a bullet aimed at him, and he's going to try to split it in half. When he does it, it's a powerful presentation about how badass these swords are. All of their marketing will take a steak, and you just see a steak plopped down on a cutting board, and then a giant sword cutting through it, which is completely unnecessary, but it is a powerful demonstration. You know, I remember seeing those TED Talks where guys take a glass and they say, "Here's dirty water. Would you drink this water?" It's like, "No way!" Then they put it into their filter, with their bottle filter, and then they start to drink it. I don't know who it was—Bill Gates or someone—yeah, it's like he chugs this...

Craig Clemens

in the water first right for for real

Shaan Puri

Exactly. They make it disgusting, and then the whole crowd is gasping. 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. I still remember that; it was like 20 years ago. I still remember that video because it just... you're right, it hijacked my brain.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, the knife company, they're genius. Any knife infomercial will do this where 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 the king of this? Dr. Oz.

Shaan Puri

doctor oz what did he do

Craig Clemens

Every episode of the Dr. Oz show is a marketing masterclass. He advertised products effectively.

Shaan Puri

I'm sleeping on doctor oz

Craig Clemens

yeah he advertised these nutrients and

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I don't know if he had some

Craig Clemens

Type of deal with manufacturers or something like that. But he would advertise, like, resveratrol or garcinia cambogia berries, which were for weight loss. He wouldn't ever advertise a specific brand; he would just talk about garcinia cambogia. If you look, one of the reasons it's hard to advertise supplements online is because Dr. Oz would go and talk about garcinia cambogia or whatever berry. Then all these scammers would create websites selling garcinia cambogia on auto-ship that you could never get out of. You know, you'd sign up on a website, and somebody would disappear, but that thing would be docking your credit card for years later. One of the ones I remember is Dr. Oz would go on there and say, "This is your body," and then he'd have a mannequin with balloons on it. These balloons are the fat cells.

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oh wow

Craig Clemens

Garcinia Cambogia is a miracle berry that works for any body type. Then you take out a pin, and you'd be like, "This is the berry!" Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop! That's what Garcinia Cambogia does to the fat cells in your body. He'd be afraid of Freeze, man. Like, a billion dollars worth of Garcinia Cambogia he stole over the next few months, mostly to these scammy auto-billing marketers. It was wild! He did this with like five different berries over time, and eventually, he got pulled into Congress to testify about all this stuff.

Shaan Puri

no way

Craig Clemens

Lose a while, he rolled with it because he was getting all these allegations that he was starting. On one episode, he gets a camera crew behind him and goes down to one of the companies that's selling Garcinia Cambogia. He knocks on the door, and the founder comes out. He's like, "Hey, I didn't give you permission to use my name and likeness to sell your Garcinia Cambogia. I'm like your auto-billing customers and this and that." You know, he was pretending that he was the good guy. But I don't know, man. I don't know if like Big Garcia was lining his pockets or something before it happened. But like, dude, this was so many berries for so many years. It's crazy, man. It was like billions of dollars of fraud happened because of his show.

Shaan Puri

Show, you know what I love about this? A lot of the audience who listens to this, and a lot of the people I know who are entrepreneurial or technical—like engineering-type people—are often so rational, logical, and analytical about the way they see the world. So, the idea that, "Hey, we're going to do this event with the axe swinging at the rope," or, "We're going to blow up these balloons," and they'll be like, "Well, that's not what a fat cell looks like. That's way too big. That's not to scale." You know, you have to almost use the other part of your brain if you're going to do this. You have to make something powerful, visual, and dramatic. Those are not skills that typically your kind of operational or technical person is used to flexing. 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...

Craig Clemens

Got the hijacks up here, right? From Otis Elevator. All of these apply to what I just said about Dr. Oz: 1. The **event** is that it's a TV show, you know? So that makes an event already. 2. The **demonstration**, the unquestionable proof, is him. He's a doctor saying that this is gonna work for you. 3. 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.

Shaan Puri

And by the way, you know who else does this amazingly well? Elon Musk. He's the scientist, the hardcore engineer. You know what he's brilliant at? Just yesterday, the news was that they're hyping the Cybertruck right now. Did you see that news that came out? They unloaded a full magazine of some assault rifle at the door, and there are a bunch of holes in the door. You could see where the bullet hit the door but didn't go through. So, he's driving that car around and leaked that kind of tweet rumor that, "Hey, they tested it this way." He did this at their onstage event too, but it messed up. He tried to take a sledgehammer and show how indestructible this was. He swung the sledgehammer, and then they broke through the window. He was like, "Oh shit, that wasn't supposed to happen! This is supposed to be bulletproof." But he was trying to do that. He was trying to, you know, be like P.T. Barnum with their Cybertruck, which is really, really cool to see.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, you know what was another incredible success that I think was complete bullshit? It was the Power Balance bracelet. Do you remember those? It was like, dude...

Shaan Puri

I was thinking about when you did the tongue on the teeth. That's the first thing I thought of. Yeah, where people used to say, "Hey, hold out your arms." Yeah, and now watch how easily I could tip you over if you go on one foot. And then you put this bracelet on. I was just imagining, now you can't.

Craig Clemens

be angle which way you press my arm

Shaan Puri

yeah totally totally

Craig Clemens

Actor recently, and he was doing that with me. I was like, "Uh-oh, oh God, am I getting by this chiropractor?" But yeah, I think Power Balance actually got popped for that, as they deserved.

Shaan Puri

But that was a very effective technique, even though it was, you know, unethical in that case.

Craig Clemens

yeah okay let's get into some so those are those are last 2 are are for good right we want people to brush their teeth we want elevators to be safe now let's talk about some evil campaigns alright 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 lucky strike in particular is who who came to him 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 the 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 because they weren't allowed to do it in public oh and I should add something too women didn't really wanna smoke for the most part you know they they weren't really pushing back against it yes it was illegal but it was also considered unladylike 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 smoking so what was going on at the time was the women's rights movement you know so women were out on the streets marching about you know wanting the right to vote and and bernays capitalized on that so the big social event of the day kind of like the oscars of today was the easter parade which would go down 5th 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 debutantes like the paris hiltons and kim kardashians of the day and he got them all to go on this float and they're cruising down 5th avenue the parade's happening you know when they get to the corner where all the reporters were the women do go into their stocking they pull out cigarettes put them in their mouths and light them up so imagine you know paris and khloe and all the kardashians and even all the jenners on one float they all just start blazing well right and the reporter's 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 the the newspapers ran with that they're like you know women present torches of freedom to show that they are equal of 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 woman's a woman who smokes I think I'm 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 of audrey hepburn you know that famous scene I think it's breakfast at tiffany's where she's puffing that long cigarette you know so yeah completely chase the world there

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! I had never heard that story, but I love that. That's like a combination of... you got the event, you have kind of newsjacking, which is jumping onto an existing narrative. The copywriting of the words there, "These aren't cigarettes; these are torches of freedom," that's really, really powerful.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, the plants... If you like that plant strategy, Ryan Holiday wrote a great book called *Trust Me, I'm Lying*. He talks about all these phrases that he planted in the heads of his reporters when he was promoting things like Tucker Max's books and, you know, wild stuff back then. So there's a new lesson in here, a new hijack, so to speak. That is, help them rebel or feel superior. 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 mainstream pressure or societal standards, things like that. This is a really powerful concept that you're going to see appear throughout some of the other demonstrations here. But that's what Bernays allowed them to do: to rebel and maybe even feel superior to the rest because they're leading the charge, right?

Shaan Puri

okay keep going yep by the way I'm loving this so keep going

Craig Clemens

Alright, so, Bernays had a problem. Lucky Strike did this big campaign to get women to start smoking, and they did start smoking, but they didn't smoke Lucky Strikes. 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. So, Bernays got all these women smoking, but Lucky's was like, "What the fuck, Bernays? They're not smoking Lucky Strikes!" He had to come up with something new. He goes back to his debutantes and socialites, and as they say here, women of prominence. They created the first-ever Gala Green Ball at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City. 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. Women started bringing green decor into their homes, and it just became a big thing. The gala happens, and the women are photographed in their exotic green outfits. It became the most fashionable color within one year, going from the ugliest color to the most fashionable color. Lucky Strike, without even trying, became the number one selling brand of cigarettes for women because they subconsciously wanted that green box. Holy shit, wow!

Shaan Puri

Is one of the hijacks, by the way, using people of prominence? Or you didn't include that in the hijacks?

Craig Clemens

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...

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us wanna

Craig Clemens

Do that. Maybe it's from when we were all in a tribe. You know, if a chief is doing something, then you do it too. Who knows? But that's **unquestionable proof**. So, he made an event where this unquestionable proof happened. There was also this force 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, I heard this other thing, Sean. So, how old are you? Are you public with your age? Yeah, yeah, I'm 35. 35? Okay, I'm 44. So when you think of emojis, what do you think about?

Shaan Puri

when I think of emojis

Craig Clemens

yeah like who do you think uses emojis

Shaan Puri

I would have said like teenagers, teens, and tweens. But then I see people in India, like my aunts, and my aunts are crazy about those emojis.

Craig Clemens

Yes, I would have thought the same. 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 adults. So, kids these days don’t use emojis; they'll just use different text characters and things like that. You've probably seen these little 1 to 2, or sorry, 2 to 3 character terms that they use, like "tbh," which stands for "to be honest," or "fr," which means "for real." You know, they use those types of things to separate themselves from adults. People want to push back; it's a natural human instinct.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, when Snapchat came out and was getting really popular, one of the things that I remember in Silicon Valley was all the product genius blogger guys saying, "Yeah, what Snapchat should do is make it easier to use." At the time, to use those face filters, you had to hold down on your face for 3 seconds. It was like a magic trick, a secret door that nobody else knew about. Even signing up had all these funky ways to do it. Then, one of the guys at Snapchat came out and said, "Look, it's intentional that we want... you know, you baby-proof medicine. We're boomer-proofing this app." The way this is going to become really popular among young people is that we don't make it easy for older people to get in and figure out how this whole thing works. 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 together. It's like a word-of-mouth virality of how to do that.

Craig Clemens

Exactly! It's like once your parents and your grandma got on Facebook, it wasn't cool anymore. You know, right? Then everyone went to Instagram, and now, you know, Uncle Bob's on Instagram. It's just like... at least it's a...

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little bit

Shaan Puri

of time

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you know

Craig Clemens

So everyone goes over to TikTok, right? And we'll see if something comes next. You know, I think the moms are... well, moms are definitely a big group on TikTok now. I don't know if... like, I don't know, are you on TikTok? I'm not. I have like a...

Shaan Puri

**Strong voice:** I love TikTok, even though, you know, it's my lucky strike. I know I probably shouldn't be smoking that TikTok every night, but I do.

Craig Clemens

Well, you know, TikTok is crack. It is digital crack. Very well designed digital crack. So don't blame yourself.

Shaan Puri

People say that, but... when I think when they say that, they mean avoid it. And I'm like, "Wait, crack? Isn't crack supposed to be like the greatest experience when people do it?" And then I open up TikTok and I start swiping.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, well, you know, actually speaking of drugs... Funny enough, there's another rebellion I'm seeing in my community against alcohol right now. I remember in my twenties that it was all about the alcohol. You know, if you showed up to a party empty-handed, 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."

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can can you

Craig Clemens

go put that back in your car it's like

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this was

Craig Clemens

pushback you know

Ad Roll

well

Craig Clemens

I hope that you brought some ketamine yeah exactly okay I'll last campaign I'm gonna 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 and maybe a roll or some oatmeal or something like that right no one actually had like a actual hearty breakfast and beech nut bacon comes to bernet and they're like hey we wanna 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 so bernays goes to his his on staff doctor or actually no it was it was 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 is like oh of course I agree with you do you think some of your doctor friends would agree so he has him write 5,000 letters to doctors across the nation I think yeah I think bacon is the healthiest breakfast and people should be eating a heartier breakfast do you agree 45 100 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 workday 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 they're we're selling the dream you know of a of a breakfast that's gonna give you more energy to get throughout your day you know so that's making it about them as well the unquestionable proof 45 100 doctors can't be wrong right and then there's even a little bit of 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 so you keep seeing them over and over okay so let's take a step back now a couple decades to the 19 tens orange juice now I grew up in the eighties and my mom had us drink orange juice every day for vitamin c was this a thing sean when when you were a kid

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally. Orange juice is... when I was a kid, I was told 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 I drank a lot of sugar because of that.

Craig Clemens

Yeah, so orange juice actually has the same amount of sugar as Coca-Cola. So, orange juice is... yeah, 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 result of a marketing man named Albert Lasker, who was probably the man responsible for more consumer change in the early 1900s than anyone. Claude Hopkins, who worked with Albert, was his top copywriter. Prior to Claude coming on board, Albert was contacted by the California Growers Association. They said, "Albert, we have so many oranges here in California that we're having to cut down trees because they overproduce. We need to get rid of them, and it brings the bugs and all that stuff. How can we sell more oranges?" He looked at the lay of the land, and all these orange growers were competing against each other, trying to say, "We have the best orange!" or whatever. He said, "Okay, first of all, you guys are all teaming up." So, he teamed it all up together and put them under one brand name. He called it **Sunkist**, which I think is a pretty genius name.

Shaan Puri

yes

Craig Clemens

And then, as he's meeting with him, he notices that what the growers would do for their kids as a special treat is take an orange, squeeze it into a cup, and 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, 3 or 4 or whatever." So he thought, what if we could make that mainstream? Because the juice tasted really good. He had an engineer invent this cheap plastic device that you could put an orange on. Then, he created this campaign talking about how oranges have all these vitamins in them and how they will help you get more of your nutrients from food, tying orange juice to meals. You think about it: "Oh, I want to get the nutrients from this food, so I want to drink orange juice with it." Then, you had this campaign where you buy a box of oranges, send in your proof of purchase, and they send you this juicer thing. So it was like you get something for free and create orange juice. What does he do? He's selling the dream of getting more nutrients from your food. The unquestionable proof—if you go and actually read that ad, there was like, "Doctors recommend" and things like that. He made it about them, showing them that they can get some benefit here. Then, here's a new hijack that's appearing for the first time. Actually, maybe it would apply to toothpaste, but if you can change someone's daily behavior, you can create something big. So, a modern example of this is Bulletproof Coffee. Are you familiar with Bulletproof Coffee?

Shaan Puri

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

Craig Clemens

about it do you know what it is

Shaan Puri

it's like the butter cough or the oil coffee mct oil coffee is that what it is

Craig Clemens

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. The genius that Dave Asprey had was he changed the behavior of people that were already doing something. He kind of... intercepted their coffee.

Shaan Puri

additive to your coffee rather than a new new behavior

Craig Clemens

So, now he's changing the existing behavior. Yes, changing the existing behavior. There's a book called *The Miracle Morning*, and it talks about the power of journaling every day. You buy this book, *The Miracle Morning*, and then you do this specific journal every day, right? Long after you read the book, I met the author, Hal Elrod, and he told me something that stuck with me. I thought it was fascinating. He said, "When was the last time you recommended a book?" I was like, "Well, I just read this book on Genghis Khan. You know, I've been telling all my friends about it." He asked, "When were you telling them about it?" I replied, "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 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 talk about it all the time. That book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, or maybe even millions by now, because this was 10 years ago when he told me this. 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 miracle journaling." "Oh, what's that?" You know, so long after the book is through. 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?

Shaan Puri

no some some runner I don't know who it is

Craig Clemens

okay so this this guy's before our time but gentleman's name steve prefontaine mhmm and prefontaine was best comparison I can think of is like the 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 prefontaine was that guy for running and prefontaine had all these great quotes like mahlod ali ali he's like you know yeah someone can beat me but if you're gonna beat me you're gonna have to bleed you know and he was like no if you don't run until you're until you feel like you're gonna you're gonna die you're not honoring your gift you know so he 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 prefontaine was the man and nike was just coming up they'd actually just started like making their going from being at a distributor making their own shoe and fortunately prefontaine was in oregon so were they and they got him to to wear their shoes and it was a a big thing because the unquestionable proof now you've got prefontaine the top runner in the country wearing nike shoes tragically prefontaine passed in a car accident before he could go and 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 that it actually changed the entire industry so so prior to prefontaine prefontaine was around in like the seventies right 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 prefontaine 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 the people were wearing shoes that were like you know kinda like the loafer or work shoe or 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% of them are worn for athletic activities and that all started in the in the seventies with with prefontaine 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 gonna be able to 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

Shaan Puri

You know, one of those things that I feel like is happening right now in a small way. So, you remember like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that, those Vibram FiveFingers shoes were getting popular? Do you remember those?

Craig Clemens

yeah

Shaan Puri

So, like, you would see someone and you'd be like, "What is this person wearing? A foot glove? What is this thing?" Then they would immediately go into the spiel about why this is better for you and how they do whatever. I think this is something I've seen a lot now. There's a popular YouTuber or Instagram guy called "Knees Over Toes Guy." He's basically like a rebellion. He's like, "Have any of you ever been told when you're working out, 'Don't let your knee go over your toe when you're squatting' because it's bad form?" He's like, "Bullshit! I had all these knee surgeries, and 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 also rebelling against Nike because now Nike's the big bad, like the incumbent. Mhm. And so he's like, "Nike shoes? Those are like wearing high heels. You shouldn't have these huge heeled shoes; you should have low drop, flat shoes." Basically, he came out with his own shoe. But also, there are just a bunch of these brands now that are kind of like flat, more like you're walking barefoot—barefoot shoes, like you're walking on the ground. It's funny that now Nike is the big kind of status quo that they want to rebel against.

Shaan Puri

Why shouldn't you be wearing Nike shoes? Because of this other reason: 5,000 doctors agree that the Nike cushioning is actually bad for you.

Craig Clemens

So, yeah, a big one was when MacBook launched this ad called "1984." It aired during the Super Bowl and it was a big rebellion against IBM. Everyone was using these IBMs, and MacBook came out saying, "We're the new thing." I think they got the idea from this Volkswagen ad right here. When Volkswagen came out, I think it was in the sixties, all those cars were huge. If you think of the sixties, you know, like the '67 Chevys—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. It was like the hipster statement at the time to drive a VW Bug, and it became one of the best-selling cars. There's another ad that just came out from someone who's a master at this. This is Trump. This is another video that I would suggest you play if you can because it's really fascinating. They show Hillary talking about how the Trump people have to be deprogrammed. Have you seen this ad? It just came out like two days ago.

Shaan Puri

no I haven't seen it so what what is it

Ad Roll

With Trump taking a commanding lead and "Bidenomics" hurting American families, genius Hillary Clinton has come up with a way for Biden to win.

Hillary Clinton

There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. A formal deprogramming of the cult members. Deprogramming.

Ad Roll

of the cult members

Hillary Clinton

deprogramming of

Ad Roll

the cult members

Hillary Clinton

deprogramming of the cult members deprogramming

Ad Roll

a brilliant plan and here's what that would look like

Hillary Clinton

pay attention pay attention joe biden will defeat him feed him is the answer

Ad Roll

this is not happening

Hillary Clinton

biden has done an amazing job amazing job

Ad Roll

but there's one small problem

Hillary Clinton

the basket of deplorables deplorables deplorables deplorables

Ad Roll

Working Americans are idiots, and they know who's on their side.

Craig Clemens

To American workers watching their take-home pay shrink and watching inflation destroy their families and their lives: to all of you, I have your back. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.

Shaan Puri

wow that's so well done

Craig Clemens

I mean, I love Marietta. The man is a master marketer, and he just rallies his base to rebel against, you know, the incumbents. What's the word?

Shaan Puri

The elites, the kind of... the law, the status quo. Yeah, do you think like in this case, do you think Trump has input on any of that or is this just they hire some ad agency that does these things? Like, is he the master marketer or...?

Ad Roll

is he the master marketer

Craig Clemens

Or is he the master marketer? I mean, he makes the sound bites. You know, that sound bite I think was live from a speech that they plugged. At least it looks like it was. A lot of times, these speechwriters think about that. So, there's a famous speech Obama did: "Yes, we can." Do you remember that speech?

Shaan Puri

yep yep of course that was a huge one

Craig Clemens

So, when the speechwriter 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 said, "I don't want to repeat the same thing over and over. The audience deserves something more intelligent." They had to convince him to do this "Yes We Can" speech and present it as a rally cry. Finally, he said, "Okay, fine," and went out to give the speech. That sound bite, man! I think it was will.i.am who turned it into that music video that went crazy. It's just a really powerful sound bite, and I find that the best politicians end up speaking in sound bites. You know, Reagan did it.

Shaan Puri

Trump is so effective at what he's doing. The blogger Scott Adams, if anybody wants to go deeper on this, is the blogger who created "Dilbert." When Trump was running...

Ad Roll

in 2016 and nobody thought he would win Scott adams was one of

Shaan Puri

The first people I saw were 16, 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 exactly what happened. He explained, "Trump has verbal kill shots." You know, he has these phrases that he'll say about opponents, where he'll be like, "Low energy Jeb Bush," and then you can never look at Jeb again and see anything but "low energy." Jeb's so offended by it that he feeds energy into that. He starts to be flustered by it, and then he tries to up his energy. Trump will pat him on the head and say, "Well, at least you're trying now, Jeb. Yeah, that's good. You're trying to pick up your energy. I like that." He would just destroy candidates with phrases like "Crooked Hillary." He would just brand people in a one-shot kill with these phrases. Even the one in that video you just showed, the kind of "I have your back," you know, he's very, very good at just repeating simple messages and branding himself one way while positioning himself against the others.

Craig Clemens

Alright, so the eighties. Here's a force for good. Did you know, Sean, the phrase "have one for the road"? Do you know where that came from?

Shaan Puri

no but now that I think about it it's kind of a fucked up phrase

Craig Clemens

So, I would think that the worst use of that phrase would be "go and have one and then go drive it." It actually meant to take a beer in your car and drink it while you're driving away from wherever you're going, right? Drunk driving was out of control, and a campaign was created: "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." It had three things to do: drive your friend home, have your friend sleep over, or call a cab. You know, this cut drunk driving in half. It was something like a 40 to 50% decrease in drunk driving when this started going around.

Shaan Puri

That's like Craig. If I say the phrase, "This is your brain on drugs," what do you think of?

Craig Clemens

yeah you think of that fried egg a powerful demonstration right

Shaan Puri

An egg hitting a frying pan, sizzling... Yeah, and that was how long ago? That had to have been when I was a kid. That was 20+ years ago, and it still has hijacked my brain. If I see an egg, I think about drugs. Or if I hear "This is your brain on drugs," I hear the egg. Right? That is so powerful how that worked.

Craig Clemens

These powerful demonstrations are unforgettable. You'll never look at a sword and not think about the sword slicing through the bullet. There's something about it that really sticks in the human mind. Maybe it's a way we are taught how to learn. You know, I have a daughter now, and she's learning physics—not the way I think of physics. It's not something I thought about, but you know, you have kids too. You see how they learn the way blocks fit together, gravity, and all of this. It teaches you a lot about how the human brain learns. If you think about what these demonstrations are, they're really physics demonstrations. It's like that's how we've been learning since age zero. We need that foundational physics to survive. You really notice it in babies. They need to know that if they're crawling and there's something here, it's going to hurt if they hit it. It's so basic, but the kids don't know that. They actually have to learn that. You think about it, and I always wondered, "Why don't we remember anything before we're five years old?" I think it's because the brain is optimizing to learn physics. The physics are just so important that you just... right.

Shaan Puri

we don't need memory right now

Craig Clemens

Physics are like fundamentals, man. If you don't know physics, you're gonna... well, you're gonna struggle, like just walking down the street. Right? So it's all physics. I think these are like new physics lessons that we find really fascinating. You know what else people are really interested in? These... they call them ASMR videos. Oh, 100%! The soothing things that are happening.

Shaan Puri

We did this as an ad for my e-commerce brand. I was watching TikToks, and there are these TikToks that feature soothing ASMR sounds. The ones I was watching involved a bottle filled with marbles. They would roll the glass bottle down a set of cement stairs, so you hear the clink of the rolling glass bottle, then the clink as it hits the stair. By the second or third stair, it cracks, and then you hear the marbles bouncing in synchronicity down the stairs. For some reason, these videos always have around 10,000,000 views on them. They're oddly satisfying to watch, and people love that combination of the visual and the sound. So, we took that concept and remixed it with our product. We integrated it into our video so that it starts with that rolling sound, and then we sort of hijack the video to show our product upon the smash. Way more people watch that than if we just started with our product, even though it's a complete bait and switch.

Craig Clemens

That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, if you go up to someone on the street and say, "Hey, do you love physics? Do you want to study physics?" they're likely to say no. But that's actually not the truth. Humans love physics; we all love physics. We're obsessed with it, and it starts at a young age. That'll be interesting. So, this is how to prevent drunk driving. You know, all these same things, and it worked. Okay, so here's a modern story. In 2010, when we were starting Golden Hippo, my brother came to me and said, "Hey, have you heard of probiotics?" I hadn't, and I was like, "What are those?" He said, "Well, you know, you've got all these bacteria in you." I was like, "Okay, what do you mean?" He explained, "You know, your microbiome." I asked, "What's that?" He went on to tell me that you take these probiotics, which are good beneficial bacteria that are supposed to do something, right? So, I took them, and I started having a lot more regular bowel movements. I don't know what I was eating before, but they started working. I was like, "Why is this affecting me? I'm a pretty healthy guy; I'm in pretty good shape. This is actually helping me out." I started looking into it and realized that all of these foods I was eating, which I thought were healthy because they said "low fat" or whatever on them, had sugars or artificial sweeteners or things like that pumped into them by the food companies. They were listed on the labels under different names, so you don't know what they are. You know, like sucralose or agave nectar, things like that. You would, right?

Shaan Puri

And it could say "0 sugars" on the label, but their ingredients would have these substitutes.

Ad Roll

yeah

Craig Clemens

But it's got agave, it's got corn syrup, and it's got, you know, natural fruit juices. All those things are sugars. So I started digging into this, and there was some shady stuff. Man, there were some experiments done where, like, you know, the sugar companies would pay a farmer to... you know, food is very expensive for livestock. Farmers always dreamed that they could give their livestock sugar instead of food, and they’d be able to use that as a nutrient. This way, they could stop this big food expense. So they did that, and they tried it, and the cows would all die. Then they tried, "Okay, well, let's take the food and let's add sugar and see what happens." And then the cows would still die. I mean, you know, then they buried the studies. The artificial sweetener situation was even worse. There was a company, GD Searle, that invented an artificial sweetener called aspartame, which is now known as NutraSweet. What a lot of people don't know is that when they came up with this artificial sweetener, they knew it would be a $1,000,000,000 product because the sweetener market had already been built out. They started testing it on lab animals, and those lab animals were growing tumors. For the first time ever, 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, saying, "Oh, no tumors here." And they got caught doing that.

Shaan Puri

wow

Craig Clemens

And so, I found out about all this and I was just completely mystified. I wrote this presentation about it, discussing probiotics and how they can combat the artificial sweeteners and sugars that are being pumped into our foods. It would be impossible for you to discover them all, so the solution is to add good bacteria. The bad bacteria growth that occurs due to all this consumption makes the bad bacteria get really frothy, and that needs to be offset by good bacteria. I put this video together, and it went absolutely bananas. It was seen by probably around 100 million people. It's hard to track, but the last we checked, there were over 100 million views in a span of about four months. Joe Rogan tweeted it out, and someone commented, "Hey Joe, do you realize this is actually an advertisement for a probiotic?" He replied, "Oh yeah, I didn’t see that until the end. I tweeted it out before I got to the end of the video, but you can still watch it or something like that." It created the biggest probiotic brand in the world at the time, and it was because of this educational component. We showed people that the food supply is messed up and that you have something called a microbiome that's being affected by your food supply. One way to aid that is with probiotics. If you look at Google Trends, which we didn’t have in the twenties, I’m sure if we could do this for Google in the twenties and look at, you know, cigarettes...

Shaan Puri

you see

Craig Clemens

Like a big spike after the Easter Day Parade, right? Or the VW Bug, you'd see the big spike after the "Think Small" campaign. But we have this now. If you look at probiotics, you know, probiotics were gaining some steam here. And here's where our ad comes online: Key Biotics was our brand. So, look at the general spike in probiotics. Okay, so what happened there? Well, you can see basically the day we got kicked off of Google, it goes down, and you see the trend line goes down too. But then you see it goes back up again. And you know, this is when we launched our next probiotic brand, Perfect Biotics. It did okay; it wasn't the huge banger of success that Key Biotics was. But fear not! I met a guy named Dr. Gundry in 2016, and we launched a brand with him. Look at these spike lines! Look at the probiotic spike lines compared with the term "Gundry." The reason people synchronized...

Ad Roll

for gundry

Craig Clemens

in some days is when the the campaigns will be running really strong you know rate of the the videos running running a lot that's where the the searches would go crazy and that was because doctor gundry is out there with with our educational presentations talking about the microbiome we're 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 or anything like that 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 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 and by now the market has changed you know I I talked about I did a twitter thread away back where I talked about the 3 stages of a product market so there's clueless which is when you need to create the the the marketing wave because 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 it was 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 is curious where someone's probably heard the term probiotics and and you can jump in 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 eric these are good for you you know right and then you click on it and then it goes on to talk about oh most probiotics don't have enough strains of potency 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 where you need to jump in and then the next level of the market is saturation and that's kinda where the probiotics market is now I'm not launching new probiotics you know I I every time I go to a conference someone comes up to me they're like 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 have broken through with with strong campaigns

Shaan Puri

Amazing! So, see, these are the **7 hijacks**. I'll read them out here: 1. **Make it about them** - This means making it about the customer and the benefits they're going to get. 2. **Make it an event** - You know, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. 3. **Powerful demonstration** - This is the P.T. Barnum approach. Think of the elevator with the axe, the sword cutting through the bullet, or the drinking dirty water show. 4. **Unquestionable proof** - This involves using experts like doctors or influencers. You know, like you said, he was willing to be in the elevator while the thing was cut. That's a demonstration of proof. 5. **Change existing daily behavior** - I think this was about changing existing daily behavior, is that right? Or is it changing any daily behavior?

Craig Clemens

I mean it it could be neither you know okay so and so

Shaan Puri

This is like Bulletproof giving you something to add into your coffee—something you're already doing. Or like breakfast: having a hearty breakfast as the start of your day versus, you know, just a coffee and a bread roll.

Craig Clemens

Yes, we hijack... They hijacked the daily behavior, and what we do with probiotics is we change the daily behavior. We encourage them to take something every day.

Shaan Puri

So then, number 6 is **"Sell the Dream."** That's the movie star smile that's underneath that film. If only you would start brushing your teeth... or this is Craig pooping regularly because he now takes probiotics and prebiotics. That's the dream. Then, number 7 is **"Help Them Be a Rebel"** or feel superior. That's, you know, being able to stick a middle finger to the man—whoever the man is, whether it's Nike or women not having equal rights or whatever. Give them the tools and the badge to feel like they're superior and in a rebellion.

Craig Clemens

a part of a rebellion that's right

Shaan Puri

amazing well

Craig Clemens

said well said you're you're

Shaan Puri

I'm a good student. Yeah, well, this is... I mean, the stuff that's in here is, I guess, rare in two ways. Number one, I took marketing classes in college and I had marketing professors. None of my marketing professors had ever done what you did. They never created a category, they never did a billion dollars in sales, and they never sat there and crafted, 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 gotta think of something good." You come back with "7 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 lousy working title to a really strong title is like seeing somebody in action. Or hearing you talk about what you did with 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 in my seat, I'm paying attention. Number two, as you were talking, my brain was almost having a hard time listening because I was firing ideas for any of my companies. I was thinking, "Oh, a powerful demonstration! How could we show this in a way that's exaggerated and would be kind of shocking or add some drama to what we're doing?" Versus just saying the feature or saying it's good. Like, now how could we do a powerful demonstration that would give people unquestionable proof? Right? So I couldn't even stop my brain from moving while I was doing this. Now, I don't know, that's the entrepreneur in me, but I think there are a lot of people who are listening that are like that. They're like, "If you paid attention to this, even one of these hijacks could literally change the trajectory of your company." So anyways, I appreciate you putting this together. This is kind of... this is amazing to me. I don't know how other people are going to feel about this, but as the only student in the room right now, I was, you know, I’m pumped about this. This is great.

Craig Clemens

Well, I appreciate the kind words. You know, as they say, if you could change the life of just one person, then your job is complete.

Shaan Puri

So, I'll take... alright, well, you did it. This has been a masterclass for sure. So, thanks for... thanks everyone for watching. That's the pod.