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Writer's pictureChristopher H. Loo, MD-PhD

Financial Freedom Does Not Come From Your Job

Updated: Oct 24, 2022

 



 

Note: transcription provided by Otter.AI, which is a technology company that develops speech-to text transcription and translation applications using artificial intelligence and machine learning.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: So welcome, everybody to this week's podcast episode for the Financial Freedom for Physicians Podcast. And I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Loo. And as you know, we talk about four different types of freedom, financial time, location, and emotional freedom. This podcast started out as a niche for physicians, and now it's grown to have the audience from high income earners, high net worth individuals, and guests that are doing things on the fringe, cutting edge entrepreneurship, business owners, digital nomads.


So it's my pleasure today to introduce to you, Clint Arthur, and Clint is actually calling to us from Mexico. And what's interesting is he has a very diverse background, he's a storyteller. He has an extreme background in finance, business, entrepreneurship, and I think it's gonna be an amazing conversation. You can see the beautiful backgrounds in the video. So Clint, welcome,


Clint Arthur: Hey, great to be with you, really, because doctors, physicians, healers, experts of all kinds, but especially doctors, I work with a lot of them. And if you're wanting more freedom as a medical professional, as a practice owner, I have exactly what you need. And it's really gratifying to do this kind of work with people who make such a big impact on the world, and to be able to have so much success. So you definitely want to get comfortable and pay close attention to what we're going to talk about today.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, absolutely. And what's interesting is, it looks like you've shared the stage with Martha Stewart, Dr. Oz, and all of these thought leaders, influencers. And what's interesting is, income can only take you so far. But after that, it's all about meaning, purpose, passion and impact. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got started, and we'll go from there.


Clint Arthur: Well, I always wanted to be somebody special. I think that’s because my parents always were arguing when I was growing up. As a kid, did your parents ever argue when you were growing up?


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Oh, my number one driver is significance and influence because I grew up with a dysfunction and bullied and you know, underdogs, so I know what you're talking about.


Clint Arthur: Well, I thought it was my fault. And I was kind of right. I went off on a little bit of a wild idea. I thought if I could graduate from someplace special, like the Wharton Business School, the best business school in the world, that maybe they would stop arguing. So naturally, I graduated from the best business school in the world. I go home, and what happens? They get into the biggest argument of all time. And my dad storms out of the house, slams the door, I turns to my mom, I say, you know, Mom, the way he resents you all these years, have you been cheating on Dad? And I'm thinking, holy cow. Where did that question come from? I never even thought about that question in my entire life.


And then I'm thinking, Wow, what a rude thing to ask your mom, that's like the rudest thing I've ever said. And then I'm thinking, How come she ain't answering the question? And then she says, He's not your real father. Your real father was a doctor at the fertility clinic we went to for six years, trying to have you and you look just like that guy. Now imagine how you would feel if everything you thought you knew about who you were, suddenly, poof.


So I didn't know who I was anymore. I certainly didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up anymore. So I called up the investment bank on the 87th floor of One World Trade Center and said, Mr. Vice President, I appreciate the offer. I don't want to be an investment banker anymore, even though I've been working for this my whole life. And what did I do? Naturally, I ran out to Hollywood. And most people go to Hollywood to lose themselves. I went there to actually find myself, and I found myself becoming a very special person, after all. I became the Wharton Business School taxi driver.


Yeah, for many years, I was behind the wheel of Yellow Cab number 6087. And on New Year's Eve of the millennium, you were probably getting some y2k cabs while partying with family and friends. I was behind the wheel of that cap and I made $513 On New Year's Eve in the millennium. While all my friends from Wharton were partying at the Rainbow Room becoming millionaires and billionaires, that's the night I swore an oath to myself that I was going to do everything I could to change how I was showing up in this world.


And if you really want to change your life, if you really want to change ain't your circumstances. You know, when you're a taxi driver, you've got to work super hard. But I think no matter what you're doing, if you want to change what's going on, what your life is you have to work really hard and you have to change you. And that's what I did. I changed me. I went to every personal development and transformation seminar I could do. I walked on fire with Tony Robbins, Toltec Wisdom Studies with Don Miguel Ruiz, men's power circles and ceremonies. I did everything I could do.


And as I changed on the inside, my life began to change on the outside and I got out of taxi driving and got into the gourmet food business, I started making some money. I met a beautiful woman who believed in me more than I believed in myself. And got into real estate, and I did very well in real estate. And then I realized in October of 2008, I was at a men's self help campfire, and the Shaman was pointing at me across the yellow and orange crackling flames. “You don't know it yet, but you're already dead.”


What are you talking about, man? I'm the most successful guy on this team. Eight years ago, I was driving a taxi. Now I'm a millionaire. I was living on a little boat. Now I live in a mansion. “You're already dead. You just don’t know it.” And I didn't know what this guy was talking about. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wake up in the middle of the night out of a sound sleep for months, I'm already dead, what did he mean? And it came to be New Year's Day of 2009. I woke up, poured myself a mimosa and asked myself a question that changed my entire life.


I said, what if that guy is right? What if I am already dead? Or, I don't even know what that means, because obviously I'm alive. But what if this was going to be the last year of my life? What would I want to accomplish this year, if this was going to be the last year of my life? And that one question was a super powerful motivating force for me. And if you want to have a better life, you have to ask yourself better questions, like that one.


And I realized, like when I wrote down, the first thing I wrote down was, I got to write my book about what I learned at the Wharton Business School that helped me to become successful. Once I stopped trying to be a writer and a movie star in Hollywood, and started trying to be a businessman. And I wrote that book. And that really led me to where I am today. Because I self-published that book on Amazon and waited for the sales to roll in. And boy, all those sales rolled in the first year, all eight of them. [laughs]


And here I have this book about the Wharton Business School and what I learned, it’s the best business school in the world, and no one was buying it. So I sought out a mentor. And you have to have mentors, if you want to accelerate your progress in this world. Mentors have gone where you've gone where you want to go, and they know how to get you there. And I met this man named Jack Canfield, who wrote a little book called Chicken Soup for the Soul. I said, Jack, how do you sell half a billion books? He says, You got to become famous. Nobody wants to buy books from people who are nobodies.


So I started going on TV. And I spent $6,000 to go on my first four TV appearances. And I asked my wife, what do you think about these TV appearances I did honey? She said, I think you suck. So I said, Yeah, you're right. I need a lot more practice if I'm ever going to make my dream come true and get on the Today Show, to promote my message. And I started learning how to book myself on TV. I started figuring it out. And it took me nine and a half weeks to figure out how to book my first TV appearance, myself. And once I did that one, it was like catching a fish. And my first year I did eight appearances that I booked myself. My second year I did 20 appearances that I booked myself. I just did my 115th television appearance last week. And you know, the funny thing is that my 57th TV appearance was my dream.


I was on the Today Show. Brooke Shields and Willie Geist interviewed me and they say, Clint you ask yourself a great question every year. What's that question? And I said, ask yourself, if this was going to be the last year of your life, what would you want to accomplish? That's been the superpower that's helped me to achieve so much in such a brief span of time. And really, it has been pretty quick. I mean, like 10-11 years ago, I was a complete nobody. And now I've shared the stage with Martha Stewart, Dr. Oz, Oprah, and five presidents in the United States. My most recent book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.


I live and do whatever I want, wherever I want, with whom I want. And I mostly work with really smart authors, speakers, coaches, experts of different kinds. And I teach them the secret step. It took me years to figure out how to be somebody special in the eyes of your customers and prospects, so that they want to buy your book, your tickets to your seminars, and events, your coaching, your consulting. And if you're a doctor, that's you, you're a health coach primarily. And trying to consult with people about how to have more health and well being in their lives. And if you really want to make the big money, it's not how much you know, but who you are perceived to be. And that's what I really specialize in, is making people bigger, who's in the eyes of customers and prospects.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: That's great. One thing that I really admire, you talked about your book, and there are some really deep principles in your nominated memoir, Wisdom of the Men. Tell us more about that particular book and some of the key takeaways?


Clint Arthur: Well, for example, probably the one that most of you are going to be interested in is I asked Dr. Oz, what's the most important thing you ever learned? And he said, to listen to his wife, that's number one. And number two, he said that you can and must have more impact in the world. All of us are living below our potential. And I believe that capacity is really a state of mind. And those people who want to have more impact, it's really a matter of deciding you want to have more impact. And then following through on the decision with commitment. Commitment of your time, of your effort, of your money, all of this stuff falls under the category of marketing.


And I really believe, especially if you don't like selling. If you're a doctor who doesn't like selling, the best and smartest thing you can do is invest in marketing, because what marketing does is it brings people to you who are predisposed to by you. You want to have a patient lying in bed at night, talking to his wife, saying, honey, I'm really excited tomorrow, I'm going to see Doctor XYZ, and I'm going to sign up as a patient, if he'll take me. And then the wife is gonna say, Well, how much does Dr. XYZ cost? And the patient is going to say, I don't know, but whatever it is, I'm going to do it, if he'll take me. That's what you want. And you don't get that by being better. You get that by being perceived as different and superior. And that's really what the focus of all my work is about. It's really a psychological equation more than a finite and, and specific formula that you can game. You have to gain the psychology, not some kind of objective criteria.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, it's all about perception, branding. The more I read into it, it's all about marketing influence and just perception. I actually actually find your story really interesting, because you really brush shoulders with a lot of celebrities. Robert Downey and Brooke Shields. You had some really interesting life changing experiences. So tell us what you learned from going to junior high with Robert Downey, and working with Brooke Shields?


Clint Arthur: Well, I went to eighth grade with Robert Downey Jr. And he was the star of the school play hair. And I was Tony in West Side Story in the other school play. So naturally, we became friends. And one day we went to go see a movie that his father directed. His father was Robert Downey Sr, and the movie was Putney Swope, I don't remember anything about it. But after the movie, we went for a walk through Greenwich Village to go get a Falafel sandwich. And then suddenly he goes, hangs on, and he ducks inside of a candy store and comes out with a pack of Marlboro reds, pulls out one cigarette, likes it, holds up the pack next to his head, crushes it, and throws it in the trash. And I'm looking, I'm like, Huh? And he goes, I just wanted one.


Now that shows you that Robert Downey Jr. had a lot of willpower, but we all know Robert Downey Jr’s willpower wasn’t enough to keep them out of jail, because he had all kinds of drug problems. But when he came out of jail, he was lucky enough to get hired on a movie by a producer named Susan Levine. Now, Susan Levine, this is the fascinating thing. Susan Levine used to work for my wife. She was the girl who would read all the scripts and tell my wife why they sucked, when my wife was the president of a major production studio in Hollywood. And then after she did that, for a long time, she became a producer, and hired Robert Downey. And then they got married. And she turned him into Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man.


And the real lesson of Robert Downey Jr. and also in my own case, because my association with my wife has been tremendous for me. You know, for many years, we kept our business life separate. But now she has started working in my business. And she's really the heart and soul. Like, I'm like the tough daddy, and she's like the cuddly mommy who makes all these clients feel better when I tell them they need to work harder.


And who you are associated with in your life makes a huge, huge difference, especially whoever you're sleeping with, or in bed with night after night after night, is really, probably some of the most important stuff you have. If your spouse or significant other is telling you your ideas suck, that you're no good, that you're that you're a dreamer, and you need to get your feet on the ground. That's not the right person. For you, if you have big dreams, if you have big dreams, you need a person who's going to believe in you and support you and tell you that your ideas are great, and help you to make your dreams come true. And that's really the lesson of Robert Downey Jr.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, it's interesting. I've always seen Robert Downey and his downfalls, his struggles. But then you look at his later life, and he's really flourishing. And he's doing so much great work and he's become a different person. So, yeah. I've always been fascinated with celebrities and the lives of the famous.


The other thing is, tying into your book. Basically, what I did to motivate myself was I wrote my obituary. That got me motivated, because today can be my last day, you never know. And what's interesting is, you realized that you were already dead and we're all going to the same destination. And then you also had a very scary experience at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas a couple years ago. Tell us about that.


Clint Arthur: Well, I said, I got into the gourmet food industry. Well, what I was doing was, I was selling the most expensive best butter in the world to the top restaurants in Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami. And in the process of becoming the vendor of the best butter in the world, to the best chefs in Las Vegas, I got to know a lot of people. And I arranged for myself and a bunch of my clients to get to meet Mike Tyson.


And we went to his show at the MGM Grand. We were supposed to meet Mike after the show and get pictures with him. And at the end of the show, the manager of the theater comes out and he says, ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm. There's an active shooter event going on, further up on the strip at Mandalay Bay. And that's all we know, we don't know anything about what's going on or anything other than that, we just know that the safest place for you to be is right here right now. And I'm like, Oh, my God, are we going to be sitting ducks? What if the shooters come in, and they start shooting up the theater that we're in? I didn't know what to do. But we sat tight. And then in about 30 minutes, the manager came back out and he went, okay. What we know is that the active shooter event has been contained. If you want to leave right now, you can leave right now. Or you can stay whichever you want.


So, knowing Las Vegas like the back of my hand, I said to my clients to follow me. And I led them out through the bowels of the MGM Grand out to the back, to Koval Lane, and we walked down Koval Lane to the Hard Rock. And we ate hamburgers and drank milkshakes until two o'clock in the morning when we could go back to our hotel, because we were doing a big extreme speaker training weekend that weekend in Las Vegas. And, man, that was so freaking intense, like when you are facing death like that. And I think that's what makes my question so powerful. If this is going to be the last year of your life, you can really get into that whole idea that this could really be it. It gives you a whole lot of intensity. Because that speaker training we did that weekend was just off the hook. But then I got to finally meet Mike a couple months later. And I said champ, what's the most important thing you ever learned? He said, stay humble.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. The signature Mike Tyson voice. Yeah, you talk about staying humble. You talk about how you can't always get what you want in life, but somehow, you get what you need. Expand upon that for the audience.


Clint Arthur: Well, look, I used to be part of this mastermind. And think about this, I was a taxi driver making $500 a week, right? My big big night was New Year's Eve, where I made $513, on New Year's Eve in the millennium. Well, I used to be a member of this mastermind. For business owners, it was $25,000 a year just to be a member and to go to three meetings. And then what was the most important thing I learned from that mastermind? Take more vacations. What was the second most important thing I learned? Take longer vacations.


I swear to God, these are the big lessons of the $25,000 mastermind. But you know what? It was 100%, right, because this is my life, right? [references to beach in the background] I basically live on vacation now. And that's added a decade to my lifespan, at least my stress level has gone way down. And my quality of life has gone way up and the food I eat. And it was a really smart thing that a $25,000 A year mastermind learned to take more vacations and longer vacations. I started taking longer vacations. When I did my first 30 day vacation at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in O’ahu. And the next year, we did 40 days, the third year we did 50 days. And on that third year vacation, when you got 50 days of vacation in Hawaii, you can do a lot of stuff. And what was I doing? Well, I was laying out by the pool, and I was adding connections on my LinkedIn. If you notice my LinkedIn, I have more than 21,000 connections and I added them all that summer.


Well, I was taking a break from pressing my iPhone, and adding connections. And I looked at my email and I got this email from a charity saying if you donate $25,000 to our charity, we'll get you VIP front row tickets to a Rolling Stones concert and a special meeting with the band where you can talk to the band, meet them and take pictures with them. And I showed this to my wife and she goes wow, that's really cool. But $25,000 That's crazy. It's crazy. The next day, I got another email from the same charity. And just on a whim, I clicked a button that says buy now and my iPhone auto-populates all the credit card information. And now I'm just one click away. So I just clicked the button. And it said, Congratulations, you're enrolled. And I said to my wife, honey, congratulations. You're gonna go meet Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones. And she goes, you did not pay $25,000. And I said yes, I did. What is all the money for? You know, this is a once in a lifetime thing. We got it. Let's do it.


So we go. It was an incredible experience. And you never know where the real value is going to come from. I mean we met the band and they were amazing. We had to go all the way to a small town outside of Amsterdam to do this thing. And when I come face to face with Mick Jagger, I say Sir Mick, what's the most important thing you ever learned? He says, You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. And I noticed the line from his song. But hey, he's Mick Jagger. He can say whatever he wants, and it's actually true. You know, you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes to get what you need, I didn't think I wanted an eight bedroom 18,000 square foot house in the top resort in Mexico, I didn't think that's what I wanted. But I tell you what, I tried very hard to get the right house, and I got what I needed.


And it really has opened up a whole new world for me because you do. We have such a huge house that we invite clients down, we do our seminars down here. And now that people come to us in Acapulco, to learn how to have more impact and income, they learn how to get on TV, they learn how to tell stories and write books and all the things that you need to do if you really want to have more impact, influence and income. And Mick Jagger is 100% right. But the funniest thing is this. It was going to cost me $4,000 per person to get two one way tickets from Amsterdam to California, where I needed to be to do a speaking engagement for the million dollar roundtable Insurance Group. And I had to be there, and I needed to get there. But I got creative.


And I think creativity is really important, especially when it comes to things about money. If you want to have more money, you have to be more creative. But in this case, I didn't want to spend $8,000 on two one way tickets so instead of searching for the shortest flight from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, I searched for the longest flight. And I found that Aeroflot airlines had three flights, one of which stopped over. It went Amsterdam, Moscow, 18 hour layover in Moscow, and then Moscow, Los Angeles. And that one night that we spent in Moscow, if you asked my wife, what was the best part of the whole Rolling Stones adventure? She's gonna tell you it was the one night in Moscow. Because it was so just out of left field and it wasn't what we wanted, but it was what I needed. Yeah, really awesome. Yeah.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Then, what a fantastic ending. This has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you. And I know a lot of the listeners. They're interested in your book and contacting you, how can they reach out to visit your website or even work with you?


Clint Arthur: The book is available on Amazon, Wisdom of the Men by Clint Arthur. And if you want to find out about learning how to be a celebrity in the eyes of your customers and prospects, if you want to come to one of my seminars in Acapulco, at my deluxe six star villa, then go to clinttt.com. Why three T's Clint? Well, one of my clients was an expert in the Science of Naming. And she said, Clint, I wished you had another T at the end of your name, because the T's end up on top. And I couldn't get Clint with two T's, but I got Clint with three T's dot com. And we'd love to have you join us down here in Acapulco.


Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Awesome. So for all the listeners, Clint’s resources and links will be in the show notes. And it's been a great conversation. I really got so many epiphanies and takeaways.


Many thanks again for being here. If you’re new, you can find me online at Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, where I have links to other episodes or links to online resources that will support you on your financial literacy journey. I’ll see you there in on next week’s show. While I bring you thoroughly vetted information on this show regarding a variety of financial topics, I cannot promise you a one size fits all solution. This is why I caution you to continue to learn. Educate yourself and seek professional advice unique to your situation. If you want to talk to me, I welcome it. Please reach out via my website or email at Chris@drchrisloomdphd.com. I read and personally respond to all of my emails. Talk soon!

 

Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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