The Cult Your Brand Podcast
The Cult Your Brand Podcast is about the art and science of changing minds, building cultures and nurturing loyalty.
In a time when people care more about reasons to hate one another, we talk with the people who specialize in reasons to love, people with a track record of creativity.
We hear their stories. We learn from the struggles they faced, the obstacles they overcame, the so-called "solutions" they tried that failed, and ultimately the winning behaviors we can emulate.
The Cult Your Brand Podcast
9 - Craig Arthur: from Professional Gambler to Branding Wizard
Have you ever wondered about the psychology of successful brands? Branding wizard Craig Arthur explains.
Craig explains how he got there, from being riveted by the book 'You Don't Have to Be Born Brilliant' to birthing a unique concept and refining it over time. We discuss how emotional connections and psychological triggers are the backbone of successful branding. We discuss the dynamics of family-oriented partnerships and the importance of a robust company culture.
(And we take a brief detour down memory lane to recall our mutual experiences of Wizard Academy.)
Craig shares his insights into the reasons loyalty and aligned incentives are crucial to nurturing strong relationships with clients. He delves into the challenges traditional marketing agencies pose to business owners and introduce the concept of The Uncovery, a powerful tool with the potential to reveal the essence of what it takes to make a business the leader in a category of 1.
We navigate the differences between cults and brands, shedding light on the impact of character flaws on success. We discuss the character diamond, a tool for creating a believable personality for a business. Finally, we touch upon how emotional connections can be both a magnet and a manipulator.
Our conversation winds up with us sharing our favorite fictional heroes and their inspirational qualities.
Connect with Craig Arthur via email.
At Cult Your Brand, we're obsessive about loyalty - how to get it, how to keep it, what to do so you never lose it.
Ready to transform your slightly-better-than-average brand into a lovable, personable powerhouse brand? Let's talk.
Contact information for Jack Heald & Cult Your Brand
- Learn how to Cult Your Brand.
- Who are these Wizard of Ads people and what are they all about?
- Explore the magic which is the Wizard Academy.
Yeah, anyway, I should go to Australia sometime, just so that I can experience the inversion of the seasons, because I get a kick out of screwing with my own mind. Do you know what that means? I do that regularly Jack.
Jack Heald:Yes, hey folks, this is the Kultjebrand podcast. I've got a guy I've really been looking forward to, partly because I just like to hear him talk, but also because this dude is a heavyweight. He doesn't have the heavyweight vibe. He doesn't ever make anybody feel like he's too good for them, but a dude knows what he's doing. My friend and my partner at the Wizard of Ads, craig Arthur, Welcome.
Craig Arthur:Well, thank you, jack, and thanks for the heavyweight intro, and I've been practicing my accent for 62 years, you're really good at it. I've almost got it down pat.
Jack Heald:I would probably be that good if I practiced that long. That's funny. My wife likes to hear me. I lived in Texas for 18 years and when I'm around my Texas friends who have a strong Texas accent, you know what I mean. And the more I spend, the more time I spend around them, the more I tend to pick that little twang or drawl up and she just loves it. Oh, it gets her all hot and bothered when I talk like that. But when I consciously try to do it, I didn't do too bad right there, yeah, you were good. But she'll say to me sometimes talk to me that way. And then it's like, oh God, the pressure's on. What am I going to do?
Craig Arthur:Hey, jack what podcast are we on again? Is this the how to Get Hot and Excited podcast?
Jack Heald:How to Get your Wife Hot and Bothered. Okay, okay, that's what this particular episode is about. So, craig, what are your secrets?
Craig Arthur:I've got no secrets, jack, no secrets.
Jack Heald:Oh so Cult your Brand. I conceived Cult your Brand seven and a half years ago and you'll get this. You'll appreciate this. I attended my very first class at the Wizard Academy in March of 2016 and I attended the right first class.
Jack Heald:I attended Magical Worlds and it was a mind altering, mind blowing, mind expanding experience and for me, it was a catalyst that brought together I've been studying Cult Psychology as it intersected with marketing for 23 years at that point and everything I had both experienced, that I had learned experientially and had learned through research and experiment, all came together the week after Magical Worlds and I woke up one morning in this entire concept of how to leverage the psychological triggers that provoke deep emotional connection. That all just sprang into being and I've been refining it for the last seven and a half years. So, ostensibly, the show is about the people and the techniques that are really good at creating powerful emotional connections what works, what doesn't, who's good at it, and our previous episode with our partner, evan Chance, was just a hoot because he had an agenda when we started the show. He had decided he was going to interview me and by golly he did, so his episode will be released a week before yours.
Jack Heald:So that's actually the future while we're talking, but when people are listening, it will be the past and you just have to experience it for yourself. It was really entertaining and I enjoy it. I got a kick out of it.
Craig Arthur:So Evan's like that, isn't he? And he's just stolen my thunder, so I can't do that. So I got nothing. Now, jack, I can't do Evan, he stole what I was going to do.
Jack Heald:He stole your thunder. Yes, yes, okay. So here's how I try to make this happen. The only thing better than eavesdropping on a great conversation is being in on a great conversation. So you and I are going to have a great conversation, and folks will enjoy listening to it. So, with the rather bizarre and oblique intro that we've created here in our first three minutes, tell us what's your story, craig.
Craig Arthur:Well, very much like you as far as if we just come into the Wizard of ads type world. Well, I was in the other world 62 years ago, but I'm just going to talk about the Wizard of ads world. Like you, I attended the magical worlds Academy, but it was slightly different, because one morning I was laying in bed reading a book you don't have to be born brilliant and it was about a real estate agent who decided he was only young and he said he kept asking every real estate agent how do I become successful? How does this work? How do I make real estate work? And nobody could help him. And they just said well, wait till you get gray hair. And like he was only in his early twenties.
Craig Arthur:So what he decided to do it was so long ago he just sought out the most successful real estate agent that's what they call them in Australia. Is that the same in the States? The selling agent in America who happened to be in New York and he wore the gold jacket. It was the century 21 back in those days. So he sent him a letter and he got a letter back and the letter back said if you're willing to come to New York and spend half a day with me. I'll teach you everything I know, and I'm laying there in bed this Sunday morning reading that. The rest of the book was pretty ordinary, but that was the new book.
Craig Arthur:You don't have to be born brilliant. And he went on to become one of Australia's top real estate agents and companies. I think it was John McGrath, his name. Anyway, I happened to be in radio at the time and really struggling because I found no one could tell me how to make radio work and how to make persuasion work and how to make it work for clients who I was taking their money. And so I got quite depressed one day and literally cried in my calling flakes because I'm sitting there thinking I cannot take money off small business people who they're relying on me to help them get more customers. And I just couldn't work out how it worked and nobody in the room there was no door that said this is how you make advertising work manager. There was the production manager, the promotions manager. My wife was actually the group accountant. That's how I got into radio. She was the group accountant. I just followed her along. I was like the little puppy that trailed.
Jack Heald:It's fantastic.
Craig Arthur:So I ended up in sales, but you couldn't radio Greg. Oh.
Craig Arthur:I just followed my wife Just followed my wife. Literally I did, but I worked in businesses where it was dealing with systems and processes and plans. I was a building estimator for 12 years, so I was used to following a set structure. You can't build a house without a plan. And my father was a professional gambler and I did that for the first four years after I left school, so I was very maths focused up until that point.
Craig Arthur:And so to come in now to a world knowing systems and processes, into a world where just sell stuff and sell some more stuff, I got quite depressed because it really went against my values of taking money from people if I didn't give them a result. So that led me to starting to read Roy H Williams books the Wizard of Ads that was the first book I picked up, and then it was secret formulas of the Wizard of Ads that changed my radio days. I read that and my sales doubled more or less in the first couple of months purely from the fact that I now stopped selling and started educating and teaching and helping people. And I was explaining what was in the book to people and they're going wow, this is amazing, they've never heard this before. But I was still at that point where, okay, I've got a book, but I need more.
Craig Arthur:And so when I read that chapter about just go to the most successful real estate agent in the world I thought who's the most successful small business marketing guy in the world that I knew of? And that was Roy H Williams. So I got out of bed, went to my computer, opened an email in the back of the book it was Roy's email address and I typed in the header the ripple effect has begun. And then went on to explain how my sales had doubled. Since I read secret formulas, people were asking what are you doing? How is this? What's the miraculous change from bottom salesperson to top salesperson in a short period of time? And so basically the text was I said Roy, sales have doubled. People are asking Boota where his head office was at that point and where Wizard Academy was then situated in an upstairs loft or a lesser broom cupboard that they moved the brooms.
Jack Heald:That's a Buddha, Texas folks.
Craig Arthur:It is a.
Jack Heald:Buddha Texas.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, home of the Wiener Dog races, the world famous Wiener Dog races, that's another story. But I said look, buddha is my mecca. I want to come there, that is my goal. And I went back to bed and kept reading. The next morning there was an email from Roy saying hey, in the rabbit hole in the next couple of weeks keep a look at there is going to be a free, magical world, a two-day version, to help the people of Guatemala. And so timing is everything. Reading in the right place, marrying the right woman, reading the right book, getting out of bed, those three things changed my life. And so I went to the Monday morning, memo applied, was accepted. In it there was probably about 30 people in this broom closet In our partner group there was Steve Ray, dave Young, brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg, mick Torbay and my wife, because Ange came over with me, and so it was like these early core group, which was back in 2001, probably around June, july, 2001. And so from there.
Craig Arthur:But what Roy said to me was look, bring over some of your radio people. So I sent an email to the CEO of the company, I talked to the manager, general manager of our station and the head of creative for the whole network, australian network. The CEO never responded because I was just purely an underling and the puppy dog that followed the wife into the radio station. So I had no weight whatsoever. I wasn't a heavy weight then, I was a skinny weight. And the station manager said yes, one day. And the creative director said I don't think that'd give me the money to do it. And I said to him well, they're not giving me the money either. I'm paying myself to go there, but the course is free. And this is a course worth $3 and 1 half thousand US, which is at that stage was $7 thousand Australian because the exchange rate was 50 cents. So, anyway, I ended up in the classroom sitting there with these people and my mother said as I left is it a cult? Don't get caught up in a cult.
Jack Heald:Oh look.
Craig Arthur:It's a marketing guy. What could go wrong? I'm going to Texas, to Buddha Texas, home of the Winner Dog races, to learn about marketing by this guy who calls himself a wizard. What could possibly have anything to do with a cult there? I?
Jack Heald:got to get a photo of the sign that I'm assuming Daniel Whittington, the chancellor of the Academy, had painted, and you know which sign I'm talking about. I've got to get a photo of that and just post it along with this episode. Anyway, go on. Yes.
Craig Arthur:So I attended the class and it was mind changing. It was, as I said, it was only the cut down two day version and it was still early days for magical worlds. At that stage it was still part of Williams marketing. It wasn't a non-for-profit entity Wizard Academy. So I did the course. We went out to dinner with Roy and at that stage Roy sort of explained over dinner his vision of what he wanted to do with Wizard of Ads globally partners.
Craig Arthur:And so I left there, went back to Australia and just walked into the office and resigned because I said, now that I know all this stuff, I can no longer work within the moral code of this business because it just went against everything I believed in. I was operating in it, but it was really hard work because I was trying to stick to my values in a company. That that's what causes stress, isn't it? When you have to be something you're, not when you have to compromise values and I don't believe in compromising values I'd prefer to leave and starve temporarily. As they say these days, sugar and fat are cheap, so you're not going to lose weight, you're not going to starve. But I quit and I sent Roy an email and said, look, I've quit. And he went whoa, ok, come back and I'll spend a week with you. I'll teach you everything I know. Then you can go off and do it yourself, or I'd like to get you involved in this new partnership. And I said, yeah, no worries.
Craig Arthur:So four weeks later I'm back there again and we sat down for a week in Roy's office in Buddha and Monica Ballard was there because she was Roy's copy writer at the time, and Penny and Roy's other staff. And for a week Roy verbalized what Wizard of Ads our company, our marketing company, would be. He'd had it in his head all this time but he said he never had the chance to actually verbalize it and by my quitting sort of forced his hand and he sat down and recorded it. We transcribed it. I've got the transcription somewhere in the garage in a book. And, yeah, we sat there and I left that meeting that week with a business card that said Polaris Partners, because that's what we were going to be called, and I'm the only one to ever have that card, because it changed to Wizard of Ads before any other partner joined. So I was the first partner.
Craig Arthur:But I went out with a business card and Roy said that is all I've got to give you. I have nothing else. So when I started, I had a business card of Polaris Partners. There was no videos, no training, no anything, no systems, no process, nothing. And that excited me because it was like, wow, we can actually achieve something starting from scratch here.
Craig Arthur:I agree I was so passionate because the thing I loved about Roy and Wizard Academy was they did what they taught. So a lot of people teach but don't do. Roy teaches and does exactly that for his clients, whereas you get people who are just teachers but don't actually have clients and don't do so. It works in the real world what he teaches, and that's a big difference to what most sort of motivational speakers and those types of people have. So I went back with my business card and then thought, ok, now what am I going to do? But four weeks after that I was back again for the reunion. So I had three trips in eight weeks to Voodoo, texas, the home of that's not a cult of Williams Marketing and Wizard of Ed. So that's technically how I got in the start of where I am now. Wow.
Jack Heald:Wow, so I should let our listeners know. Almost all the names that you have listed so far have either already been or will soon be guests on the podcast as well. Wow, so I had to reschedule Monica Ballard, and then she agreed to reschedule. But yeah, I've got almost everybody has already agreed. Yep, they'll come and be here. So you left a apparently relatively successful radio sales job and started what the Lyris Partners, which was doing what Good question.
Craig Arthur:It was doing what we're doing now, but without any systems, processes, ideas, anything. It was OK. Roy had Williams Marketing. So I was just basically setting up a marketing company. So when I initially started, because I had good relationships with some of the customers that I had, straight away, those people wanted to deal with me. So the initial one, like, I had a nightclub that we went from the smallest to the biggest in town I was dealing with 12 of the franchises blockbuster franchises at that stage, that's when blockbuster was a thing before. And that's another story.
Craig Arthur:How businesses change, dynamics change and that's why I'm no longer a professional gambler, because things changed and all of a sudden there was no profit. Blockbuster, the same thing, and that's a constant. So blockbuster. There was Domino's. I worked with one of the franchises for Domino's Plus. I had another couple of other small companies.
Craig Arthur:So basically I stepped out of radio and I had other businesses straight away that wanted to keep dealing with me. So I was like an agency, the same setup that we've got now. I took no money from media, accepted no kickbacks from anybody. My advice, like your advice, like all of our partners, is there's no bias. We just recommend what's the best for the client and if you're taking money off somebody, you can't say that because you naturally have a bias. So I was writing their ads and booking their media and looking after strategy. So I just basically do what I'm doing now, only like with baby, baby steps. And yeah, it was a transition. That was quite easy because I was still dealing with the same people.
Craig Arthur:But then over time more partners started to come on. We changed to Wizard of Ads. There was initially like the 12, like at 12 apostles I guess. We went to one meeting and there was 12 of us. At one point Roy said Craig would never be a partner if he didn't have his lovely wife who the super talented, anxious and accountant bookkeeper. She runs all the management side in the accounting side of Wizard of Ads Australia, which is Roy and Penny's company in Australia. So he said, if it wasn't for Ange, like I probably wouldn't have accepted Craig, because she's the strong one in the family, I'm the creative one, but she keeps me in line. So but yeah, from there it was amazing how, watching the progression of the partnership over the years it's 22 years now since I've been a partner and I try and get over at least once a year. Sometimes it was a couple of years due to COVID and things like that, but initially I've had about 20 odd trips to the States. So that's a lot of upside down seasons, jack, as you mentioned earlier.
Craig Arthur:Yes, it is, but the beauty with Texas is very much like Australia as far as it's just stinking hot in summer and where I come from is like the redneck part of Queens Australia. It's like the Texas of Australia, the Texas of Australia.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, yeah, north Queensland, far North Queensland so. But yeah, it's been really interesting watching how Wizard of Ads has evolved, how Wizard Academy evolved, how that spun off, Going out to the property where Wizard Academy and Williams Marketing now stands. It was really great the first day to go there when it was just nothing, just trees and an old barn, and we stood there and Roy said this is where the chapel's going to be and this is where the tower's going to be. And when Roy told me about the tower the first time, he said I want to have a tower and I thought it was like a big metal tower with a light on the top and I thought, okay, well, what's the point of a big metal tower with a light on the top? He didn't say it was going to be like a castle. So I always wanted a castle. So Roy delivered on the castle. So it was nice standing up the top of the turrets looking down at all the people below.
Craig Arthur:But yeah, so we were there when it was just nothing and it's evolved over time. And then the people that have come on are just amazing and watching Roy's dream, watching Roy and Penny Penny's the quietly in the background, the mover and shaker and the one that keeps Roy on track. She's very much the driver. It Wizard Academy and everything is very much Penny's vision and she really never gets the credit that she's due because she's just in the background just being quiet but driving everything. And Corrine Roy's you know the three of them that have been together since way back. It's been a joint venture.
Jack Heald:Well, I will say this I met Dillon a little over three years ago, married her as fast as she'd let me, and the experience of having a real partner and it's difficult to express this with as much sensitivity as I would like to, but the simple truth is I never really understood what it meant to have a partner, and my wife is that kind of partner. And just in the three short years we've been together, the extraordinary difference it has made in my life is beyond my ability to express and that has allowed me to recognize, ah, Penny Williams. Roy would not be who he is or have accomplished what he's accomplished if he hadn't had Penny in his life from mid teenage years, if I recall correctly. Yes, and that's what an extraordinary partner can do. So she's not entirely unrecognized, maybe not public, but I've looked at that and I told Dillon I said, after we've been together 40 years, we're gonna have something like this.
Craig Arthur:So I wanna build a castle in Texas, but oh no, roy said initially, the whole idea was people that came on board as a partner male, female. They needed a partner who backed them, because it's tough going out being a consultant and when you come home you need that support. And family is really important to me, it's the most important thing. So family first, and I class you and all the other partners as family as well, because, going back to that last partner meeting we just recently had, it's to me I'm like a Tesla that plugs in and charges up once a year or twice a year, and that's my.
Craig Arthur:That was an energizing, wasn't it? It's my yeah, that's how I get excited get to know everybody, the relationships you form with people. So, yeah, family is really, really important and, as Roy said, unless you've got a partner with support at home and a close knit family, it doesn't work very well. And so most of the people you see, yeah, there's that synergy and support, but it's not just with our life partner, it's also with people like you and me. We've only met a couple of times, but the bond that you can form very quickly with like-minded people and there's a lot of like-minded people at Wizard Academy and the Wizard Ads Partner Group, and that's one of the strengths that we have so, yeah, to me it's family and it's a big thing to have a family that lives in Texas.
Jack Heald:One of the things that I learned over the 30 years that I studied this intersection between cult psychology and marketing is that you could really learn something from a spirit that you canrab really deeply. Very briefly, my best friends joined this cult. The cult had made all these promises. It became obvious very early that they couldn't and wouldn't deliver on those promises, and yet my friends didn't leave and that's what drove my what's going on here. It's just all a function of loyalty. Loyalty is not a rational decision. Loyalty is an emotional connection. That led me to okay how are these emotional connections forged? What are the elements of emotional connection? It's fascinating to me to hear you talk about family and values, being values aligned and having that partner in your corner.
Jack Heald:Can you connect those couple of things with how you communicate with the businesses that you help. I'm making a very vague, very broad question here, I know, which means you've got lots of room to take it wherever you want. But very vague, very broad.
Craig Arthur:But in saying that is really important because guess what? Our clients? We need to have that relationship too with our clients. That's what makes it work and one of the things that in sales in media, you just have a lot of clients, then they just churn and you just take money With what we do because it's such a long-term commitment. It's not a one-night stand like a lot of sales are. It is that long-term commitment and it is like a marriage because in the sense that we're there together, we help businesses and we become part of their business and part of their world.
Jack Heald:We should expand on that a little bit. Our incentives are aligned with those of our clients. That makes us utterly unique in the world of marketing consultants. We don't take a slice off all the little pieces of pie that are involved. We only make money if we actually deliver on what we promise. That's how we work.
Craig Arthur:Anyway, keep going. And sometimes it's quite difficult for business owners to understand that. Because what happens with the traditional, the agency? It doesn't look like the client is actually paying them anything, because if they're booking media, if they're doing all this stuff, they don't realize the agency is making a big percentage on their ad spend. So some agencies don't charge but a lot, charge the client and then get a kickback from the media buy. It's just, it's in that field of it's just the accepted norm, like it's not wrong, it's just that's what we all do. That's how it works. That's how it works.
Craig Arthur:We take money from a lot, take money from the client as well as take money from the media. Then they take a big slice of money from production. That's why there's so much money that the client's money by the time it gets to actually going on air, be it radio or TV, a lot of times with an agency there's not much left in airtime because they've taken so much. It's a bit like the old man from the sea he starts off with the swordfish or the you know and he's got it on the boat. That's the advertising, that's the business owner's ad budget by the time it gets to land and by the time he wants to eat it, there's not much left, there's just bones, and so it's all been gobbled up before it gets to where it's supposed to go. And so with us, that doesn't happen, and that's one of the reasons that clients do so well, because the bulk of their money that they have to spend on media gets spent and gets invested properly, as opposed to lining the pockets of a lot of agencies and hangar owners around there. So, basically, getting back to family, I only deal with people I like, businesses I believe in people I like and trust in businesses I believe in, and I only deal with owner operators.
Craig Arthur:I've dealt with some corporates before, but there was one corporate I dealt with but it was corporate, but the CEO of the company actually owned like 85% of the shares, so he was really the owner. But corporate it's a heartless, soulless thing. It's not family. You couldn't call a corporate family. Managers come and go, values come and go.
Craig Arthur:But my longest client I've had for like 19 years and I kept pushing him away initially he said let's do this, let's do this. He was all excited and I said no, you're not ready. He just wanted me to run some funny ads and I went just do some of those ads, just do a magic ad, do some wizard stuff. And I said, no, that's not how we work. And I really, really pushed him and it took about 18 months and then I bought him on board and we'd been working together for 19 years.
Craig Arthur:That's one of the problems. It has to be that Come on, let's just do it, do it, do it. It's like the one night stand, it's like we've just met. Let's not do it, do it, do it. Let's just one of our strengths, and what we should be doing more often is making it hard for people to come part of the clientele, part of the family, because you need to have a client who cares about people, cares about their staff, cares about customers, cares about their suppliers, so that they can do a really good job, because we can have the greatest advertising marketing in the world, but if they're not looking after people, it all falls over. So that's why I'm really yeah, I have to like someone, trust them and believe in their business.
Craig Arthur:There's a few businesses I've taken on board and after about six months I found out that I didn't like and trust them and because I could not deal with them. It was great money, but I could not morally deal with these people. It wasn't illegal, it was just against the values I have. So one client said to me well, that's great to be able to have that. And I said the thing is, it costs me money to have those values. And we always say a value isn't a value unless it costs something. If you don't stand for something and then just keep moving.
Craig Arthur:In the book I just wrote I talked about sword and the stone or sword and the mud. A young guy I listened to once. He said he worked in radio and he said we have a sword in the mud Come the end of the month the sword moves to wherever they have to move it to make budget. And so they'll just throw out whatever they believe in just to make budget. And we say no sword and the stone, it costs you. And so it costs me money not to deal with people because I don't like and trust them. Now I could take their money, but to me that's not what I got into this business for. It was to really help genuine people that want to help other people. So it's probably not the greatest business plan, business sense, but that's how I work and I think that's how Roy works and how we tend to all work.
Jack Heald:I think it's not sexy is what it is. It's not whiz, bang flashy. You know, put this on one of those digital billboards around run around Times Square. This is really kind of almost. It's so old fashioned. Oh, be a good person who works with good people and align your incentives. So one of the things that I love about working the way we work, is it's so easy to tell the truth with a client and the thought of yeah, I'm making 15% on your every, every dollar you spend with with PPC, I get 15 cents of that. And every dollar you spend over here in this media, I get another 15 cents of that. And I'm getting kickbacks from everybody that I'm telling you to write checks to. I know myself I'd hate myself. I would hate myself because I want to help people succeed. That's what's fun. You love to help people achieve their dreams, make their own dreams come true. We're just we're preaching the choir here.
Craig Arthur:No, but it's true, because I think to new partners, we are on board now and partners that are thinking of coming on board or future partners need to understand that, because sometimes you can come on board and miss that and if you miss that, you bring in the same values as the other agencies and that's not something that we want that filter at the beginning, and I think a lot of the other partners need to help with the filtering as well, because just in our conversations, when we sit and talk to each other over whiskey or red wine or purple coffee, depending on the time, you need to get that out of the new people.
Craig Arthur:And because it's really it's like anything a brand, as it gets bigger, can dilute if it's not careful, because the values that you possess and have and stand for can dilute If more people come on board and bring their baggage with them and do the things that they've always done under a different banner. And that's why it's really important to have partner meetings, partner training, get to know people and everyone to get that same feeling, because, even though we're all independent, we work together. It's something that's unique as well. We all own our own business, but we fly under the one banner so we charge into battle, protect the tower. Yeah, I've just been watching outlander so I'm visualizing charging into me charging into battle with your heart.
Craig Arthur:Bless your heart. That's my wife's guilty pleasure.
Craig Arthur:I just I can't take it Well and you and I watch it together. So we're almost getting to the final before the last season seven. But yeah, it's very much when you build a business and that's, as I said, when it's easy to have good values and everything when it's small. But every business suffers the same problem as you get bigger, more people come on board and unless you can get those values to people and get the culture right so that the new people that come on fit the culture, yeah, it can all fall apart.
Craig Arthur:So you see that with lots of big companies, as they get bigger, they can't give the same service they used to. And we talk about strategy and we talk about the values of the business owner, but after a while he was on the tools or he was in the shop, or he was selling the diamonds, he was fixing the air conditioner, and this is the way he did it. And then, as he gets more and more people and more and more trucks, all of a sudden is that same service going out now that he was delivering or is it diluted? And so that's the problem. I think we find the ones that grow the biggest are the ones that keep that culture and keep that same philosophy and the moral code and the delivery of service throughout as they grow.
Jack Heald:When you meet a prospect, how do you have a heuristic that you use to just quickly determine this is our kind of people or not? And if so, can you? Can you articulate it?
Craig Arthur:I think when it comes to Myers Briggs, I'm an ENFP sort of really really out on the edge of NF, feeling empathy, extreme empathy. I'd make a lousy doctor because I can't. I struggle with separating someone else from me, the pain and the agony that they're going through. When I look at people I just tend to be quite lighthearted to muck around a lot and joke, but I'm actually listening and watching at the same time. When you said I'm going to come across as a heavy hitter, I'm not a heavy hitter and thank you for that compliment, but I like to just read your book. I just well, yeah you got it.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, but I stood on the shoulders of a lot of other partners. If you notice, I've tagged in the book. So but yeah, it's really disarming the other person with, just with openness and generosity, and just to see some of the things they say, it's very much. I met a client once who was buying out one of my. Well, he wasn't a client, my client was selling.
Craig Arthur:And this guy, we went to lunch and he had a hammer and he sold aftermarket products like window tinning and bull bars we call bull bars in Australia and tow bars and all that stuff. So he had a hammer. We go to lunch it was the first time I've met him and he just parks across three car parks in his home and straight away, like some things, just signal arrogance, signal lack of respect for anyone else, signal I'm the top dog, I can do what I want, rules don't apply. And at the restaurant he treated the staff badly. When we went to meet him he made a stand outside and it was such a sterile office in waiting room. And then when we get up to his office, his assistant who took us up there at the knock and then he beeped us in because he had codes on everything. And when I walked in he had a bank of TVs in front of him where he could see every staff member working. He could see us in the waiting room. He was just a camera on us, just well. So he was sitting there. He had a bullet sitting on the top of his computer and that was for people he didn't like, he said, and so that's an extreme of it doesn't take much to think. I don't think I want to work with this guy. That's a really obvious. These were just blatant. I don't want to work with this guy.
Craig Arthur:Others it takes a little bit longer and one of the things I love about this business when we do an uncover you learn a lot. But guess what that uncover is? Going on forever. You're learning new things. You're peeling back that. As donkey says, I'm like an onion. You're peeling back the onion of people like you and I. We've only met a few times and every time we sit down we learn something new and it's like, wow, that's interesting, that's cool.
Craig Arthur:So an uncover is a scratching of. It's like you found gold, but now you got to start digging deeper. And the months and the years with a client, you find more and more of these things. So it's not just hey, we've done it once and that's it. You're constantly learning, and I think with me, it's amazing. I'll listen to somebody and there's always one sentence that sort of sticks out, and that's the sentence that just goes wow, that really sums this person up and so, yeah, is there a system to finding a client? That's good or not? I don't think so. I think it comes from experience, it comes from gut, it comes from heart, it comes from do I want to? Would I be a friend of this person? Would I like to spend more time with this person?
Jack Heald:Well, you frame it as this is potentially a long-term commitment. That makes a lot of sense. Do I want to be involved with this person for years?
Craig Arthur:Yeah, because we do. We have clients for years it's not months, it's years. And one of the things, too just recently Roy's talked about it and it happened to me just recently and I wrote an article the other day Roy coined the term twitchy little bastards and we can all be twitchy little bastards in some areas. If you're dealing with we hope we're not. But a twitchy little bastard is someone who. There's the ones who like shiny objects. I like shiny objects. I call that curiosity and I just love new stuff, and sometimes it doesn't have to be new, it's just I love finding out things. And so I'm curious that a twitchy little bastard tends to jump from thing to thing, doesn't have the courage or the guts to stick things out. They want instant gratification. Now, we all want instant gratification these days, but you can't get that if you're a business owner wanting to grow a brand and grow a big business. It just doesn't happen. Roy's to talk about your plant, a seed, and the seed hasn't germinated and you used to put on the accent and he goes back to the seeds and I'm sure this ain't working. It's like this is not working. You must have sold me the wrong seeds. I want some of those seeds that grow really quickly. Send me some new. Get me some new seeds and they'll dig it up and plant some more seeds. And that's what a client does, and I found some of the red flags. You can ask somebody how many consultants or how many agencies or how many advisors have you had? Some people have a lot, and that's a red flag because they're the twitchy little bastards who just keep jumping around from thing to thing. And the thing is, being a twitchy little bastard actually stops you from growing. It's a limiting factor because every time you stop, you go backwards. Then you're going to start again and you stop and go backwards and so you never get out of the ground. So it's something that we need to explain to people up front how hard it is to grow and not be willing to take money too quickly, because we need to tell them the pain and the hurt that they're going to go through. If they're not prepared for that, they shouldn't sign on Now. You might think, well, gee, the money comes in handy, but it's only going to be a lot of work, a short time thing and they'll be twitching go, and so from now moving forward, I'm being really, really strict on that, really telling people no, even if they say yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. That's a danger sign if we just met and they want to do it because that's like, hang on a second, you don't know us, you don't know anything about us, you haven't been to Wizard Academy, you haven't read any books, but you just want to jump on board with this wizard stuff. So, yeah, a twitchy little bastard is dangerous because it's dangerous for them, it's dangerous for us because we'll just be spinning our wheels, taking money and not getting anywhere and there's no satisfaction in that. A client just did it to me and it was like man, after 22 years that we still snuck through the radar.
Craig Arthur:My father told a really good story once. He used to go to the pub or a sports bar, I guess, in the States, but as a pub back in the day, get drunk. Then I'd be sitting outside waiting and taking driving home. This. One day a big dopey guy came up to him and said hey, I want to be a professional footballer, professional rugby league player, that's it. All right, run out to Wellington Point now, which is about is another suburb. So it was about a five-mile run, run out and back and he went what now? Dad said yeah now.
Craig Arthur:Dad just turned back at the bar and had another beer when dad staggered out who's sitting in the gutter, the guy who wants to be a professional football player sitting in the gutter hasn't even left. Dad said, did you go at me? He said no, it's like it's too hard, it's like okay. So he fell at the first hurdle. That's a twitchy little bastard who wants the world but doesn't want to do anything for it. And he probably went to someone else then looking for an answer and I guess motivational speakers. There's a room full of people who are looking for the quick fix, aren't they?
Jack Heald:There's not a lot of excitement with. Do all the small things right every single day and don't quit. That's it. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, yes, that's it. And it's so much easier just to excite people and to give them a sugar fix and send them out into the world and they want another sugar fix. And so I guess twitchy little bastard is just someone who wants the world but doesn't want to do what it takes to get there. They want it for nothing and you don't want those people in your world because you feel bad if you can't help somebody. You know I feel bad if that happens.
Craig Arthur:I think if this guy had a stuck it out, he could achieve amazing results. It could just be, and to me it was just so. It's painful, but it's painful seeing what he could achieve, that he won't because he was a twitchy little bastard. But getting back to cults, and that's the thing cults can promise what people want. They tell people what they want to hear and they offer it to them and they give them lots of attention and take them to the football and this is for your media person. Take them to the football and take them to the opening of the latest shows and give them all this attention and give them, buy them drinks and all of a sudden they go wow, wow, I'm getting all this stuff. I'm really important. These people love me. But no, that's just how they do it and, as you said, so a cult can be-.
Jack Heald:Part of the technique.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, yes, it's a process. They have a process of getting people in and then people are stuck and then I think sometimes people struggle with. This is not right. But if I go against it now, I'm now going against everything. I've told everyone everything that I believe. Do I quit, what will people say about me? So they double down and just keep doing it. It's really quite scary that it. I think there's been cults before. At the end of the world, it's going to come at such and such a time. There was one. I was listening to another podcast and they were all sitting around and the end of the world was going to come. They sold all their worldly possessions, their houses, everything, and they sat there and the clock struck 12 and nothing happened. 10 passed, 15 passed, some got up and left, others doubled down and said oh no, it's because we prayed that we saved the world. So you could just believe what you want to believe. So, but that's the problem with cults, isn't it?
Jack Heald:Well, one of the fascinating things to me is how these powerful emotional connections get built and if there's a way to, what can we learn from cults? That was really where I eventually ended up was are there things that they do that we can use? And I warn people, I say look, what I'm about to tell you can be used for evil. Understand that. And if you're a bad person, I'm gonna be pissed off if you use this for evil. But if you're a good person, if you've got the values where you actually care about the welfare of the people that you're serving, this added set of tools can help everybody. And that makes it just hearing you talk about wanting to only work with people who share those values you have. I realized, intuitively, I just I don't wanna. I operate very intuitively around people and I'm often usually aware I don't like this person, but I don't articulate it that way. There's just this feeling and I end the interaction as quickly as I possibly can and I don't ever question that anymore.
Jack Heald:I just realized my intuition is trustworthy, I'll stick with it. Where was I going with that? Oh, I know. One of the tools, one of the techniques that both cults and brands can use to forge powerful emotional connections is to present a personality. Humans don't create emotional connections with abstractions. We respect businesses, we like ideas, but we love people. And Roy teaches Wizard of Ads teaches that there's a way to present a personality give your business a personality, or find what the personality of your business is. And internally, our shorthand for that is character diamond. And I wanna find out about your character diamond, specifically the Just before I say that actually I'll come back to that.
Craig Arthur:Get on the character diamond. Yeah, I wanna-. Okay, cults, sorry cults. Basically the difference, I think, between a cult and a brand. A lot of cults start off with good intentions but then take it too far. And the leaders it can go to people's heads and then they just take it too far. Some start out sinister. They are just there to take money and a lot of businesses are like that. A lot of schemes, Ponzi schemes, with it's just right from the where go. They treat people well but it was just to take their money. But some start well and just get off the rails. I think that's the secret is how to keep grounded, and I think leaders in that core group, or everyone around, need to keep people on track, keep giving us a little slap just to keep us back on track, because we can get off track. So, yeah, that's the difference. I think it's like the force hey, there's the good and the bad isn't there. There's Luke and-.
Jack Heald:Yeah.
Craig Arthur:It was the same force, but they just used it in different ways, and that's what you said. You can use it for good or bad, any persuasion techniques, good or bad, and when you know them, then you go and watch somebody do something. You can see what they're doing. It's like an expert who you're a musician. I have got no idea what you're doing, I've got no ear for music, but you can watch someone and can see exactly what they're doing. I've got no concept of it. An ice skater at the Olympics can look so graceful and beautiful, it looks easy, and I can't see what they're doing wrong. But a judge can see the little things and so, yeah, it's the little things that you pick up that make the difference, and I guess that's what we have to keep picking up. Are there little changes happening with partners or with a group, so that it doesn't lose the good intention of where we started out? That's important.
Jack Heald:But yeah, sorry, getting back to character, diamond, well, part of my goal with distilling and delivering this technique, what I call the loyalty sparks, is I want as many people as possible to know what they are, to know how it works, because I lost a bunch of very important people to a cult and there was no amount of reasoning with them, arguing with them, trying to come to a meaning of minds that made any difference. At the end of the day, the weapons the cult deployed were more powerful than the weapons I deployed, and as much as I love the work that I do as a marketing consultant, I've also got kind of this other agenda when I talk about the loyalty sparks. I want the whole world to recognize these techniques. It costs me nothing for other people to know about and use these. It will make brands far more effective. It'll make everything that you do from a marketing and branding standpoint far more effective, and the more people to know about it, the more obvious it will be when somebody is using these techniques and you can say you're presenting this picture, but the actual delivery is this completely different thing.
Jack Heald:Yeah, you're a bullshitter, that's it. Yeah, you look great, but I pass. Yeah.
Craig Arthur:Just quickly on that before we get to character diamonds. A really smart guy wrote an article about faces on logos and it comes back to people love. When I went to Europe the first time was Backpacker I bought a camera over there, took all these photos and it was back in the day when I didn't know how to use it and then I had to wait till eight weeks when I got back and then another week and a half to have them develop to see whether any of them looked any good, because I didn't know you'd take a photo and you wouldn't have a clue. And I quickly found that all the scenic photos that I thought were wonderful didn't. I couldn't capture the scenery and the grandeur, but every photo with a person in it.
Craig Arthur:People like looking at people. With people. Photos and faces were attracted to faces and people. Babies are attracted to faces and people. We see faces in things where they don't really exist. Jesus in toast comes up a lot. It's like man, there's Jesus. Jesus spends a lot of time in the toast and toast is toast, it's just, it's amazing and so. But you see it everywhere and you said that with logos. If you have a face in a logo, because it's that personal connection, isn't it that's coming across and it doesn't have to be a real face and it's not a logical choice.
Jack Heald:It's not a decision that we make. Our brains are wired that way.
Craig Arthur:The connection. And babies, just look at faces. Just stare at faces and especially, too, if it's a happy face, you don't want a logo. That's a sad face. But we see grills of cars with eyes and smiley. We call it the grills, or in the old days it used to be a grill. I guess with Teslas and everything don't have grills anymore, but where they used to suck the air in. But yeah, that was a really good article about how, if you can incorporate that, people like people, an object doesn't attract it doesn't trigger that subconscious reflex.
Jack Heald:It just doesn't do it.
Craig Arthur:Yeah. So getting into a character diamond, I'd like to learn more about it from you, because that is the character diamond is like the face of the person that you're projecting to the world. Sometimes people pick that up, the character diamond of the guy that I mentioned before with the Hummer like he had some really severe ones where he just thought he was a bully. He had some really dark, dark ones and he took the company over that my client had and only took him two and a half years and drove it into the ground and it just disappeared completely from the face of the earth. So the arrogance drove it into the ground. So his character diamond was, whether he was aware of it or not, self-conscious or not, but he was just yeah, so he had some pretty severe ones. So, yeah, what's your interpretation of character diamonds and how do you pick them up in other people?
Jack Heald:Well, in terms of my 30 years of research, the character diamond has, I think, about our senses we see things, we hear things, we touch, taste, and the face is perceived with our eyes. The character diamond is typically perceived through our words, at least when we're creating the character diamond for a client company, it is words that create that impression of a believable personality. And I think, without question, the most anxiety inducing portion of uncovering the character diamond, the personality of this company, is the fears, flaws and failures. Social media has amplified this human tendency, but the human tendency is always to present a better face than we really are. Everything's shiny and perfect and the reality is nobody believes that, but it's so common we just slip into this pretentious mode and present this flawless, completely unrealistic picture and this technique that Roy has taught thousands of people about revealing your biggest fear, flaw or failure to your market and it makes you.
Jack Heald:I was just talking with Matthew Burns yesterday or last week about how do you win trust before the sale and it goes back to the same thing you share your fear, your flaw, your failure. I am really bad at this. One of my overwhelming to me overwhelming flaws is I hate everything associated with the business side of business, the bookkeeping and the writing checks and the keeping track of pluses and minuses and all of that just makes this is the part I love. I love the getting to know people. I love the creative. I love writing persuasive anything. I have a particular love for radio ads because I've loved radio for most of my life. But I just love to use words to persuade people. I hate to keep books. I hate it with an irrational passion and there's consequences to that kind of behavior.
Jack Heald:A little over a decade ago I opened up a love letter from Uncle Sam and he told me I owed him $475,000. And it was such an absurd amount of money that I didn't get upset. If he'd have said $47,000, I probably would have thrown up and not slept for a couple of nights, but half a million dollars. It was just If it was real. You can't get blood out of a turnip and I didn't think it was real. It took I don't know a couple of years to work out that particular mess, but that mess existed because of that particular law.
Jack Heald:I have and I've always wanted to be my own boss. I tried being a corporate employee for a couple of times and it just, it was like scraping my knuckles on cement. I needed to be in charge of my own thing and this particular character quality of mine is not a good thing to have for an owner operator like myself, and I know it. It's reality and it creates problems for me and I've learned to deal with them. But that's me. I suck at that kind of stuff, I just do and that's why I had to marry an accountant.
Craig Arthur:Just got rid of that problem.
Jack Heald:I wasn't looking at that particular set of category of qualities when I was looking for a mate. Okay, so I want to ask you what do you perceive? What is your principle defect? It's a little defect.
Craig Arthur:We all have a lot, but I think the two biggest ones losing interest in things and not finishing things. So I had a client once. Now he had a property and I went there and I looked out and there's all these circles of long grass everywhere and everything else is mowed and it's nice. And then there's just long grass with stuff in it, Old tractors and bits and pieces. And I said to his daughter I said you know what's all that? She said they're all dad's experiments and stuff that he never finished. Now he just out there and just mows around. It not finished. And that sort of summed me up I don't finish a lot of stuff, probably from the fact that I lose interest. And now is that a shiny object chase? There Is that.
Craig Arthur:Am I a twitchy little bastard? I've been a partner for 22 years and I plan on being a partner until you put me in a box. But so, on the things I really value, no, but my parents. Once when I was a kid, I'd start watching a movie with them and after about 10 minutes I just get up and walk away and they what are you doing? And I said well, I'd like to move you and just leaving, I said but you've started at it, so there's was. You watch it, even though to me it was like this is going to be wasting my time sitting here for the next 90 minutes. Why should I bother? I don't, I'm not enjoying it, it's a waste, so I should move on to something else and so that can be a floor, and it's every. I think every floor is a strength as well, Super, you know. But it is a floor of not wanting to finish things. Now, that's bad in business. If you have to finish things, it's like well, that's not good.
Craig Arthur:But doing my book was one of my. I pushed through. Just having that finished for the partner meeting was something that was my biggest goal that I've had for ages. I made a commitment to myself and do a few others that I would have a book printed for the partner meeting. Now, it wasn't perfect and there was a couple of areas and I didn't like the fonts. But guess what I could still have? I could still be working on that now, tinkering with it. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough. Yes, good enough got out there, but I actually now have it perfect and I'm happy with it. But to me, that was one of my crowning glories of not so much just finishing it and getting it out, and so because I do a lot, but a lot of times you just lose interest and I move on to something else. So again, am I a twitchy little bastard in that way?
Jack Heald:But the other thing different than it from being a twitchy little bastard. I think that is one of the less pleasant side effects of having a high degree of curiosity.
Craig Arthur:I prefer to think I'm like Leonardo da Vinci.
Jack Heald:He had lots of unfinished work, that's even better.
Craig Arthur:That's it. It's just another day, leonardo da Vinci, if I'm coloring in and you get these new coloring in books to help you with meditation and coloring to help you relax. My wife colors in the whole page. She can't. This is where the opposite. She is a brilliant finisher, she brilliant starter and finisher and she does the whole lot. I'll do you go through and you can see my book, because there's bits that I like that I've done and the rest of it's just left it white because I think, well, that looks good. That's Leonardo coming out in me just doing this little bit. So that is one of the problems, I guess finishing things. I really need to start strong. Do stuff, I can do it. It's just that you know I tend not to put clients. I have to, so I do it for clients, but the things I love I stick with.
Craig Arthur:Like it could have been so easy to leave Wizard of ads lots of times, but no, it's this something I believe in. And I remember Roy saying at the first day now, if someone can't stand up and talk loud and draw a crowd and talk to 2000 people, I'm not having them as a partner. And I'm sitting there almost peeing my pants thinking, oh no, I used to wag school if I had to do an orals, you know, stand up in front of the class. I took me three years from proposing to Ange to get to the church. I didn't want to make a speech. So I am now faced with my greatest fear and Roy in a mood of like an angry bear, telling everyone in the room and I'm going oh my God, this is something that is my kryptonite and this is where normally I would just turn and run. But no, it meant more to me to overcome that and I did do that and I spoke a lot and I spoke in front of 1000 people and I did all these things. But that was my biggest kryptonite and that was I could have just gone. Okay, I don't want to do that and run. But no, a new Wizard of ads was much bigger, and this is the thing that all my life is like. This is what I want to do, but yeah, so that is one.
Craig Arthur:The other failure, I think, is confrontation with failing to. What do you call it when there's anger and confrontation? I don't like confrontation, purely from the fact I come from a father who was a really aggressive, angry man and spent all my life with him. He loved confrontation and just did it. He just had fights everywhere. He went physical fights. So many times I have to break up fights and so I learned a lot of my skills from him what to do and then what not to do, the 80 20 rule 80% of the things that I watched him do, I did the opposite.
Craig Arthur:But confrontation, because I've had so many times I had to confront him and it was just draining. I just find it so emotionally draining. So I think that those two things finishing and doing the hard thing with people that I know it's going to hurt I going back to that. I hate seeing other people hurt. I hate seeing a bird that's falling out of a nest. It's like I'm lying. Now I've got to spend the rest of the day looking after this thing. It's like I just can't walk past Right. So, but yeah, confrontation and finishing things, but, as I said, getting that book out was, to me personally, one of the biggest achievements I've done for a long time.
Jack Heald:So just to stand there and have it.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, it was like man and I guess anyone who's got a book out like you've got books out, you know how hard it is. Most people fail. I'm sure there's lots, I don't know what the percentage of people who actually write a book, who say they're going to actually do it. So for me to do that now all of a sudden now I'm working on the next one, so all of it's like well, gee, that was easy, now I know how to do it. I know the process, I'm just going to get it out there. So that's probably. The two sides Don't like confrontation and finishing things, but a lot of times the things that don't finish, I think they're not really worth finishing. So I don't know whether that's a strength. It's being able to move on to something that's worth finishing. That's why I say there's always a strength and a weakness, your strength is always a positive side to the negative.
Jack Heald:Yeah, it's a really good time to come to grips with, with my this particular weakness, because I felt like I should do this and I finally just said to myself I hate doing this. It is innervating to be involved in doing it. There are people who like to do this. I can pay them and they'll do it and I just hand them. I've got everything's on a credit card. So here, this is my expenses, here's my income. Do your things and I'll write you a check at the end of the month and I'm happy and that works. So, hey, do you have a personal motto? And I want to kind of contextualize it Do you have something that you say to yourself when you need to encourage yourself?
Craig Arthur:It's funny.
Craig Arthur:I suffer from it I, when I say suffer it's a normal thing, I don't think I suffer from it. We all have it depression and anxiety. I get really bad anxiety attacks and I had some earlier this year and that was actually the trigger to start doing stuff, which so I turned it into something good and I've always said I'm self inflating, I'm like a self inflating tire or balloon. What I like to do, I just bury my head in books and read. And that time I cried in my cornflakes when I was in radio.
Craig Arthur:I had the next day off and I was. I was looking for an answer, what should I do? And I just picked up one of my favorite authors, wilbur Smith, who wrote about South Africa and adventure and excitement, and I just sat in red and I found answers there and got enthusiastic again. So I remember once I suffered from really bad anxiety and I just went to a different town when I went to visit my parents and I'm just walking through shops aimlessly and I found a bookstore and I found this book, feel the fear and do it anyway. So I tend to find the answer when I'm just. I know I've got the problem and I just start picking up books randomly and reading them, and I'll have books with. I don't know whether this is going to be a video, but like it's a video.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, yeah, things like that. Look at that, the one thing which I love, which is a Ray Bard. Ray Bard, the same publisher as the Wizard of Eds.
Jack Heald:I didn't realize that was a book. I did not realize that.
Craig Arthur:Thanks, I'll just go and just, I guess it's like I'm not religious, but I can understand now how people can go to the Bible and find the chapter that suits the problem, that will fix the problem or has an answer. So if you're looking for an answer or solution, you'll find it. When the students ready, the teacher will appear. So I always look at books as the teacher and the answer will be there and I'll just start reading and then go. I get enthusiastic again and I get my courage back and find answers. That's why I really like publishing really short, sharp, concise posts a lot and that's why I turn that book into. That book is just summarizing my thoughts. When things happen to me, I just jot it down and if it's and yeah, I sort of put it on paper. But I'm always looking for those little answers. That's why I love books, like the books behind me. It's just there's markings in there, or I'll go through my Kindle and just see where I've highlighted and just so I find answers there when I've got a problem.
Craig Arthur:I guess so, but sometimes the self-inflating mechanism doesn't work all that well and then I need to talk to somebody and visit Wizard Academy and chat to you guys, and then I feel better. As Bridget said Dad, I've never seen you so happy in your whole life as that last year, when she was over there with me. She said I've never seen you that happy, relaxed, and I said yeah. She said you're with your people and so books and people are the things that inspire me and lift me up again. And that's how I do it. It's not a process and it was not intentional, as I guess. That's just how, and I've never thought about it before until you ask that question. Yeah, that's how I do it.
Jack Heald:Basically, that makes sense, I like it All right. Well, I don't want this to drag on and on and on. I'm having a good time. I like to end all of these with. I'm actually starting a little tradition which I completely failed to follow through with my prior guest, evan, but I'm going to blame Evan for that, because he kind of took over and it was really his show at that point. So yeah, there's another question I want to ask you, and this can be a short answer. I just wonder do you have a favorite fictional hero?
Craig Arthur:Yeah, it's well, that's quite like Wilbur Smith. Wilbur Smith wrote books. My brother was really adventurous and he took his own life when he was 36, but he lived like three lifetimes in one. He was six foot six martial artist, he was a stuntman. He was in movies with Jackie Chan, he was in stunt shows at theme parks. He was in the Navy. He just he was wild. I tended to be the more cautious one, the more sensitive one, I guess. And yeah, sir, I forgot where he's going. So I started to think about Brett and my brother. Fictional hero.
Craig Arthur:Fictional heroes. So I guess with me as a kid, because dad was so dominant, I'd bury my head in books and read. That's why I loved Wilbur Smith, because he had a character that you could follow. It was Sean Courtney, and my pronunciation was terrible because S-E-A-N to me was seen as in, not Sean. I spent years reading it as seen until my wife pointed out he was Sean Sean. So seen Courtney, sean Courtney, they're seen being Sean Bean, but it's S-E-A-N-B-E-A-N now. That's just so confusing.
Jack Heald:So he was Sean Bond.
Craig Arthur:right, that's right, it's like it doesn't make sense Anyway. So I guess he was. It's a bit like Jamie and Outlander, that sort of character that's bold, adventurous, doesn't take shit from people but still caring, and as he got that soft side and cares for people around them. It's not like the. So that character is the same. Like as we know, in characters and books you can have the same character. Most successful movies are just a replay of them at the same story, the same character. These days it could be a female, but it's the same character. So that same character. Did you have what? Pol Dark, the series? Pol Dark, it was like Outlander, without the sex, basically.
Jack Heald:It was a period piece, but it was the same character.
Craig Arthur:It was this bold guy who was willing to break the law when the law was not right for people. He was, but stand up for other people and defended people around him. He cared about people but it was still adventure. So to me, getting on a plane is adventurous. Might be adventurous for a lot of people, but I find it like wow, I love going to Texas as an adventure for me.
Craig Arthur:So any character like Jamie in the Pol Dark guy or Sean Courtney, that style of character who cares about people but is willing to stand up to protect other people, is the character that I'm attracted to. Roy's very much like that. He's loud, he can be opinionated, he can be scary, but he's got a heart of gold and cares about people. So for me that's what I was attracted to him. He's like that fictional character, but a non-fictional character, is very much like a tennis player, like Beyond Borg, who was someone who could get out there, and ice man and just you know. So I had. I look at those characters as teachers people I want to aspire to be Well.
Jack Heald:I think our heroes, that's the role of our heroes. Our heroes are those people who embody the qualities we wish we had and may not perceive ourselves as having.
Craig Arthur:That's it. So yeah, so they're the people I'd like to aspire to and they're the ones that I like to watch, and I think a lot of people do. Naturally, that's why I don't like a lot of shows now. There's no one likable in any of the shows or movies. There's no likability whatsoever. We are in violent agreement there.
Jack Heald:my friend, I've kind of lost count of the number of modern new shows where there is literally nobody in there who I care if they're, I don't, I care if they achieve their goals, because they're just, they're nobody I'd want to hang out with or it's fair to be, they're just. They're all just selfish, narcissistic jackasses that we're going to.
Craig Arthur:Yeah, so that's what I like, and I'm going to watch Ted Lasso with Ange. She hasn't seen it, but have you watched Ted Lasso? No, no.
Jack Heald:Now, now, now, on the opposite end of the scale, there is one of the most extraordinarily well written shows and sets of characters I've ever seen. Let me turn you on to something while we're talking about it DeLon, I love to watch this. There is this deeply subversive show from Matt Groenig the guy who created the Simpsons called disenchanted. If you haven't seen disenchanted, trust me, put it on your list. It's brilliantly well written. It's utterly absurd, completely insane. It's a cartoon, but just a smorgasbord of extremely well written characters. If you enjoy well written characters with a story that is driven by the characters themselves rather than than characters shoved into this artificial plot, everything about this particular show it's all because of the strengths and weaknesses and foibles and flaws and fears of the characters that the story happens and it's put in a place where the rules of reality, of the reality that we know, just don't apply. But the types of characters are all completely recognizable. We all know characters like this, even though they're placed in a universe utterly unlike our own. It's extraordinary, all right. So I'm going to wrap it up and ask you that.
Jack Heald:Here's how the game is played. I'm going to give you two different questions. The rule is you have to answer one of them. They're like spin the bottle or something, is it? Well, it's not truth or dare, it's just, but call it the grown up version. Here's the two questions. Question number one what natural gift would you most like to possess? Question number two how would you like to die? Pick one and tell us Natural gift.
Craig Arthur:I think I'll go with natural gift being on the positive side of things. But I always wanted to be a professional tennis player. I trained and trained and I aspired that's something I would have loved to have been. So the natural gift was my tennis ability was. I didn't have that natural gift. Basically I was good, but not anywhere near good enough to be anywhere even close to being professional.
Craig Arthur:So being a professional tennis player professional anything so I love being professional gambler. So you're sort of in a group where you're, it's cool, it's like you. I used to walk onto a racetrack and feel like I was like a gunslinger walking down the street waiting at the high noon. So I love that challenge of stepping onto a tennis court and there's someone at the other end and there's this big challenge and it's exciting. So it's that spirit, that little kid who's the character.
Craig Arthur:I guess being on a tennis court or being like something like that is as close to as adventurous as I get, because I'm not really into bullets or violence. So tennis you can do it in a more civilized way. So yeah, what I've loved to be professional tennis player, especially now because the money is a lot better. When I was young, there wasn't any money really so, but if I wanted to die, I'd want to die with friends around me and sit there and just be laughing. I'd love to be laughing and like, can you imagine at Wizard Academy, just sitting there just drinking wine, telling stories, having a whiskey and just going out? That way would be absolutely brilliant.
Jack Heald:I think yeah, I answered both you answered both to make up for the lack of Evan answering either, because I failed to ask him, so I'll tell him that when I told him we're going to have this conversation where I get to ask you questions, evan and he agreed that that had to be done. Wow, this has been fun. This has really been fun, thank you.
Craig Arthur:It has. Thank you, jack, thank you.
Jack Heald:Do you have a preferred way if somebody's listened to this and says, hey, I want to connect with Craig Arthur, do you have a preferred way that you want people to do? That Email is good Email?
Craig Arthur:I answer yeah, okay, well, I have email.
Jack Heald:This will go in the show notes, so you're okay.
Craig Arthur:Craig Arthur at Wizard of.
Jack Heald:Edscom. All right, I will publish your email as the contact information in the show notes. Yep, all right. My partner, my friend, it's a pleasure to have you in my life. It's really cool to find your tribe. It was pretty late in life that I found my tribe, but once I found them it was undeniable and I'm saying thanks, mate. All right For Craig Arthur I'm Jack Heald. This is the Colt your Brand podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.
