Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Guest Podcast: Guide to Thriving in a Risk Averse World (Seek Your Summit)

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Guest Podcast: Guide to Thriving in a Risk Averse World (Seek Your Summit) · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Hi, I'm Jen Drummond. Welcome to Seeker Summit. As a mom, a business owner, and the first
• 0:06
  female to climb the seven-second summit, I realize that the mountains we climb are a part
• 0:10
  of our success. And it is up to us to go beyond that success into a life of significance.
• 0:17
  All right. I have Scott, Cleary, on the podcast today, and I am so excited. We have mutual
• 0:24
  friends. Scott Miller. So thank you, Scott Miller, for introducing us. Scott, thank you
• 0:28
  for having me. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. One day, one
• 0:33
  day, we'll do a little bit of the show. We'll swap. Yeah, perfect. I'm already because I have
• 0:36
  a podcast too. Yeah, I'm manifesting that prematurely. So there you go. Okay, so introducing
• 0:41
  you to my audience, you grew up in Canada with non-entrepreneurship type parents, like
• 0:49
  very risk-adverse people. And I look at who you are, and I'm like, apple tree, it just
• 0:54
  doesn't make sense. You're right. So I always make a joke how I don't have this origin story
• 1:01
  where I came from nothing, or I was homeless for some point. I was very comfortable, very
• 1:05
  privileged growing up. But I think safety is a facade that a lot of people don't understand
• 1:13
  how to escape. And I think that the lives that our parents had and our grandparents had
• 1:18
  and the safety and security of a nine to five or a w two, I think a lot of people still
• 1:23
  chase that. And I did for a moment until you start to realize that safety is a facade.
• 1:31
  If we look at cost of living, if we look at buying a detached home, our first home, our
• 1:37
  first condo, if we look at our, the buying power of the dollar that we make, if we look
• 1:42
  at the fact that we no longer have pensions like our parents, all of a sudden, we look
• 1:45
  at the fact that especially during COVID, obviously, this didn't impact my upbringing in
• 1:51
  my decision, but I think it was very, it made very prevalent during COVID, when people
• 1:55
  who worked for companies for 30 years were laid off overnight, we realized that maybe
• 2:00
  the things that we thought were safe, that our parents that are grandparents that are
• 2:03
  not that safe. And I think I had that realization very young because even just looking at the
• 2:08
  job market, I was trying to do the math. I'm like, listen, if I just work a w two, that's
• 2:14
  what it's called down here. It wasn't called that in Canada about just working nine to five
• 2:18
  I make X amount of dollars. I don't even have a pension. Then how much do I have to save
• 2:22
  up so that I can retire at some point? Like most of our parents would want to retire at
• 2:27
  65 or seven years, something like that. And on top of that, we're living longer too.
• 2:32
  So how am I going to find this nest egg of 10 to 15 or 20 million so I can make X amount
• 2:39
  of dollars per year until I retire if I live to 100 and whatever. So that's very scary
• 2:44
  because then you start doing the math and you're like, okay, so I got a good investing
• 2:47
  because if I'm making what people think is a great salary 100k, which is not that much in a country
• 2:52
  that taxes you 50 plus percent and you do that for your whole life and then homes are more expensive
• 2:58
  and cost the living more expensive. You're doing the math and you're like, shit, like I'm not going
• 3:01
  to be able to retire at any point to draw a picture for what it looked like for my parents and
• 3:09
  for a lot of people's parents and grandparents. They had these pensions that they would work for
• 3:13
  30 years and they get 70 percent of their best years until the day that they died. And this
• 3:18
  doesn't exist in 99 percent of industry anymore. So that means if you made 100k, your whole career
• 3:23
  for 30 years, you would make 70 percent of that $70,000 without working without doing anything
• 3:28
  until the day that you die. That really doesn't exist for the majority of people anymore. Now you
• 3:33
  have pension contributions and whatnot and you have investment contributions or 401k contributions
• 3:37
  but it's not the same. Not the same at all. Never the same. Right. So that was the light bulb,
• 3:43
  Scott, wake up. You got to get your shit together. You got to figure out how to make a ton of money
• 3:47
  and what does that look like? And I was like, well, let me take more risk early on in my career and
• 3:52
  that the idea of wanting to take risk pushed me down this not immediately entrepreneurial rabbit hole
• 3:58
  but working in more of an entrepreneurial environment. So working with startups where I felt like I
• 4:04
  had even more opportunity to move up the ranks quicker than in Fortune 500, for example. And that
• 4:09
  was really where sort of the push away from safety and air quotes, security, nine to five
• 4:16
  government moved into entrepreneurship and working in smaller companies. One small company I worked
• 4:22
  out was acquired by a private equity firm. That was the light bulb moment for ownership
• 4:26
  and the opportunity there and multiples. And then that sort of kicked off everything else.
• 4:31
  And then I consulted with a whole bunch of startups. I joined startups, some works, some didn't.
• 4:37
  I joined one that was actually acquired where I led sales and marketing. So I bolted myself onto
• 4:42
  an existing company that was about 10 years old. I really helped them scale out exit. That was about
• 4:47
  five years ago now. Okay. And I've just been involved in the entrepreneur startup ecosystem ever since.
• 4:52
  That was what led me to create content around it. The podcast, all of that was all focused on
• 4:57
  entrepreneurship startups. And I've loved it. I've invested in startups. I've done the whole,
• 5:01
  the gamut of things, building them, joining them, talking about them, investing in them. So I think
• 5:06
  it's, I think it's a smart way to look at potential career opportunity. What brought you down
• 5:12
  to Miami Fort Lauderdale area? I mean, that's a mix of different things. That's not just
• 5:18
  me wanting to further my career, even though I think that the US is a great place to further
• 5:23
  any career because there's so much opportunity. It was more just we were done with the weather,
• 5:28
  we were done with the cold. I think that if you are an ambitious driven person,
• 5:34
  I think you can build a business anywhere. But for me, in my opinion, I wanted to give myself
• 5:39
  the best chance of doing anything. And for me, that was, that was the US. There's opportunity
• 5:45
  in Canada for sure, but there's just less opportunity than the US. There's just less money to
• 5:50
  flows. Investors are a little bit more risk adverse. If I have a podcast, I have less access to
• 5:55
  people in Canada than I would in New York LA or Miami. So that was the goal. It was really just to put
• 6:00
  myself in a position to win a higher likelihood of winning than not. I like that. Yeah. Depends
• 6:07
  where you swim, right? It's true. Depends where you swim and just being conscious of what that
• 6:11
  environment looks like and what it can provide. I think that's actually, that's how I've always
• 6:15
  sort of positioned myself. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into being successful. But I
• 6:21
  also think that you don't have to make it harder on yourself than it has to be. And if you have
• 6:26
  the means or the opportunity to make these bold, audacious moves at a particular season of your
• 6:31
  life where you were able to do it, meaning it's not maybe adversely affecting your relationship
• 6:37
  or your kids or whatever. If you can do that, then I think that it's good to take those risks
• 6:43
  early on because then it actually makes all the other risks like building a business, building
• 6:48
  an audience, getting on more stages, interviewing cool people. It removes a little bit of that risk
• 6:54
  by taking that one big risk to switch countries, basically. No, I like that.
• 6:59
  Mm-hmm, helpful. When you came here, did you already have an audience built or did you do that
• 7:05
  pretty much here? I started the podcast in Toronto. Okay. I started all virtual because I started
• 7:13
  just before COVID and then obviously during COVID, everything was over, over Zoom. I started building
• 7:18
  it out, but I think it really took off when I moved down to South Florida to Miami.
• 7:27
  And I think it was a mix of being around the right people, but also I don't want to equate the
• 7:34
  success entirely to South Florida and making a move to the U.S. I think it's also because I stuck
• 7:39
  with it for an unreasonable amount of time too. Right. So keep in mind when I moved down from Toronto
• 7:45
  to Miami, I was already four years into building, or whatever, three years, three and a half years
• 7:49
  into building this thing. So you can say, okay, you moved down to the U.S., you had access to
• 7:55
  great guests or whatever, or you went out for lunch with that one person who introduced you to this
• 8:00
  one individual that was a degree of separation away from an individual that you wouldn't have
• 8:07
  had access to if you stayed in Canada. But I think that it's, again, putting yourself in the right
• 8:13
  place, right opportunity. That almost architects a little bit of luck. And then sticking with it for
• 8:20
  an unreasonable amount of time also adds to that potential luck that you're creating for yourself.
• 8:26
  So it's a mixture of everything. It's time, it's the moving yourself to the right spot, it's the
• 8:33
  connecting with the right people. All of it contributes to the overall outcome.
• 8:37
  And it could be successful without any one of those individual pieces. But again, like my belief
• 8:45
  in life is that you just want to stack the odds in your favor. Right. So if I do it for another
• 8:51
  10 years, and if I stay in a major U.S. coastal city that has asked the people when that city is
• 8:56
  growing, if I upskill myself, all these things impact the potential likelihood of a positive outcome
• 9:02
  or success. So I think that that's really the lesson. It's stacking the odds in your favor again
• 9:08
  and again and again in any way that you can reasonably do it. Given your resources, your band with
• 9:12
  your connections, your ability to move, your ability to learn new things, your ability to invest in
• 9:17
  people or processes or ideas that can help you take it to the next level. Yeah. And I think the
• 9:21
  through thread here is the persistence, right? Yes, definitely. Like it's just one step, one step,
• 9:28
  getting in the right room. And like you said, a lot of times it's that one random relationship for
• 9:34
  that one random person that maybe wasn't so random. If you look at all the steps you took before
• 9:39
  that allowed you to meet them, it feels random. It feels random. And this is actually so
• 9:45
  if I had just just just stayed in Toronto and just podcasted and wasn't able to sit down
• 9:54
  with people in the same room and shake their hand and build rapport with them that way. And I
• 9:58
  could only email and jump on zooms with people. If I had just done that, it would still be successful
• 10:05
  at some point. And I believe that. But maybe I shorten the time that it takes to be successful
• 10:11
  by a factor of 10 or 20. Who knows, right? You can only assume. But I still think that I don't want
• 10:16
  to take away from this to be I got to move to the US or I got to be in the right rooms of the
• 10:21
  right people. Like you said, the through line of thing that is the most important out of any
• 10:27
  advice you'll ever get from anyone is you have to stick with it for an unreasonable amount of time.
• 10:32
  And that's when you'll become successful at it. It may be in your five, it may be in your 10,
• 10:36
  it may be in your 15. But there's there's a tipping point because when you start the thing,
• 10:42
  there's a higher likelihood that you'll fail or you'll give up than you will succeed. But there
• 10:46
  is a tipping point when after doing it for so long and learning what works and what doesn't,
• 10:51
  there's a higher likelihood of you succeeding than failing. So the goal is to stay in the game
• 10:56
  long enough to get to that tipping point where things start to move in your favor where that
• 11:00
  incremental growth turns into this hockey stick parabolic growth curve. So I think that that's
• 11:06
  what people have to look for. And that's how they have to set themselves up with their systems,
• 11:12
  their processes, their financials so that they can stay in the game long enough. And I speak
• 11:17
  about this a few times, it's like a 10 year rule that I have. You want to stay in the game for 10
• 11:21
  years minimum or at least position yourself in your head to think I'm going to, if I'm going to do
• 11:26
  this thing, I'm going to stick with it for 10 years. Because what that does is it forces you to
• 11:30
  think long term. It forces you to say, okay, if I'm going to do this for 10 years, what is the
• 11:35
  systems and processes that I have to put in place that allow me to do for 10 years? I mentioned
• 11:39
  finances. How much money am I making? Do I have to keep my nine to five while I work on my
• 11:45
  side hustle from five to nine? Because I only have six months of runway. If I quit my job, six months
• 11:50
  is not 10 years. So how do I find a way to structure my life? So I continue to do this thing for 10
• 11:57
  years, an unreasonable amount of time. That's when I know that at some point in that 10 year journey,
• 12:01
  there will be that tipping point, the higher likelihood that I will succeed than fail. That's what I'm
• 12:06
  trying to get to. And that's what I've done in my own life, in my own podcast, in my own career,
• 12:10
  in my own relationship, everything, right? It's about not giving up too soon.
• 12:15
  Yeah, no, definitely. And it's like you said, being smart about, okay, if I commit to this
• 12:22
  commitment, like I talk about it in my book, if I'm going to climb the mountain, and I know that
• 12:26
  I'm climbing the mountain, then I don't have any energy being wasted on whether I'm going to
• 12:31
  climb it or not. So if you set up something, it's like, hey, I'm going to do this for 10 years.
• 12:35
  Now there's no energy being wasted on whether it's going to do go for 10 years or not.
• 12:40
  That's already decisions been made. Sorry, did you're doing it? Yes. You've got to figure out
• 12:43
  how now. Now you figure out how and now you get creative. And now like when it's miserable,
• 12:47
  you're like, okay, well, this is miserable. How do I make it fun? It's not, do I quit?
• 12:51
  Yeah. That's it. That decision's been taken off the table. So I think it's very important
• 12:55
  that we take certain decisions off the table so that we have this energy to deploy to make it successful.
• 13:00
  Because I mean, climbing a mountain, there's like a physical component to a very real physical
• 13:06
  component. So I think that climbing a mountain forces you to think about this stuff before you
• 13:13
  take it on. Because if you are not physically prepped for it, you're not even going to get,
• 13:16
  I don't know, the mountain climbing terms, but to whatever elevation or whatever first base camp
• 13:21
  or whatever, you're not even going to get there. Right. The beautiful thing about, and also,
• 13:28
  the potential issue with accomplishing anything in life like not physical, but building a business
• 13:37
  is that we can trick ourselves into believing that it's going to take way less effort than it
• 13:42
  actually will be because it doesn't feel painful immediately. It doesn't feel painful in the
• 13:47
  first week, usually. It feels painful in year three when we still haven't made a lot of money
• 13:55
  and a customer sues us. That's when it feels painful. You will figure out way quicker than three
• 14:02
  years, whether or not you can climb a mountain, but and that's when you're going to be tested and
• 14:07
  you're going to be tested early. When you've been beat down over three years and trying to build
• 14:11
  this business and you don't have the right mindset or you can barely make rent and you're taking
• 14:15
  consulting gigs on the side to pay you, you know, put food on the table, pay your mortgage, pay your
• 14:19
  rent, and then you're still not making money and then you get sued and three years into it,
• 14:24
  you're beaten again and again and again and again. There's a very high likelihood you're going
• 14:28
  to give up and go take another job because you have not set yourself up for success and you have
• 14:33
  not set yourself up to be able to do it for 10 years or even understand that 10 years is the
• 14:38
  goal that you're aiming for when you first started out because there's so much misinformation about
• 14:43
  overnight success and the Stanford dropout that builds a business, you know, and it goes to
• 14:49
  $100 million in three or four years. I think that there's more, as we're talking about this,
• 14:56
  I think that hopefully nobody confuses the fact that climbing a mountain is hard. So probably
• 15:01
  scares people away much quicker. I think there's a lot of confusion about how hard it is to build a
• 15:06
  business. True. Because there are probably not many videos on YouTube telling you climbing a
• 15:11
  mountain is easy. There are a lot of videos on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram saying, you know,
• 15:17
  follow my course and you're going to be running at $50,000 a month with your dropshipping
• 15:22
  business in a month or two months. So when you're inundated with that information, you start to
• 15:26
  believe it. And like, I think my goal in life, at least at this point is just to tell you like
• 15:32
  ignore all that because it's not real. Commit 10 years and you will find a way to be successful,
• 15:37
  but you are being like brainwashed into thinking that building businesses is easy. It's not
• 15:43
  confusing. It's not complicated, but it's not easy. It's going to be hard work for a long period
• 15:47
  of time. And the second you figure that out, and the second you figure that there is no such thing as
• 15:52
  passive income without active effort, and there's no settings overnight success, that's when I think
• 15:57
  that you will start to understand what you're getting yourself into. And that's when I think you
• 16:00
  have a higher likelihood of being successful. Yeah, when you keep saying yes, and you have all that
• 16:05
  information. Yes. Because then when you start out, and you're through that scenario, just
• 16:09
  describe where you're getting sued and you're barely making any money, but you're making incremental
• 16:15
  progress. Well, all of a sudden, you realize it's like a blip as opposed to the end of it because
• 16:19
  you again, going into it, realize that you have to commit to this thing for 10 years. If you benchmark
• 16:25
  against that, the three year blip is no longer an issue. If you benchmark six months, the three year
• 16:30
  blip is a big issue because you didn't even expect to be going this long and not having the money
• 16:35
  coming in that you wanted to have. So I think that setting expectations is probably one of the most
• 16:40
  important things to do when you're trying to take anything on. I also believe it's the same as
• 16:44
  working out a relationship. I mean, you have to set expectations with yourself. How long are you
• 16:50
  going to commit to this thing? Because a lot of people just want overnight success in anything. It's
• 16:55
  not just business. It could be overnight success and weight loss, overnight success and finding the
• 16:59
  perfect mate or spouse or partner. And it's not like no relationship that survived past three years
• 17:05
  has been like what's what's the honeymoon period like six months or a year psychologically or
• 17:10
  something, right? And then it turns into real and then it turns into we have to figure out how we're
• 17:14
  going to live together and we're going to grow together and are we going to have kids and are we
• 17:18
  going to get married and all these things, which is all beautiful and it's good. But there's no
• 17:21
  relationship to void of those conversations, right? So if you only expect to go into it for six
• 17:26
  months or a year and you expect that that's always going to be the case and it's always going to be
• 17:30
  honeymoon and it's always going to be infatuation as opposed to like true love and commitment,
• 17:36
  then you're always going to fail. Right. Because you don't know how to repair the rupture. Exactly.
• 17:40
  Because you have the wrong expectations going into it. Yeah, definitely. No, I like it. There's
• 17:45
  that soapbox. Thank you very much. We're good. So when I look at your path, right? Let's
• 17:53
  because this has been very successful for you. You have the podcast. You have three,
• 17:58
  right? Two. Two. Okay. Well, okay. So depending on how hard you research, you'll find a graveyard
• 18:03
  of broken projects and abandoned stuff that never worked out. But yeah, yes, I do that I'm
• 18:09
  actively building right now. Okay. One's daily. One's daily and one is a more like this
• 18:14
  interviewing style twice. And what made you decide to start the second one?
• 18:19
  So I study what's working and I see if there's a way for me to replicate it. And I
• 18:27
  I reverse engineer other other people success quite often. And I look at not only the main
• 18:33
  podcast that I'm growing, but is there something else that seems to grow faster that fits
• 18:38
  the podcast listener better in terms of the content they like to consume. And after looking at
• 18:45
  like literally hundreds of podcasts, when you create an interview style podcast, you create what's
• 18:53
  I guess the best way to describe it is like a me too product. So it's us interviewing and it's great,
• 18:59
  but ultimately there's like 50 other podcasts where you know, someone's interviewing me and
• 19:05
  someone's interviewing you. And you have to really be in like the point 0.01% to
• 19:11
  capture an audience because people aren't going to come for me if this is your show. They're
• 19:17
  actually going to come for you. So you got to stand out so much as a host that you built a cult
• 19:22
  like following around you. And that's very difficult to do because there's major hosts that have
• 19:27
  huge audiences like a Lewis house or a Tim Ferris or Tom Billy or Alex Friedman or any of these
• 19:33
  guys that are building massive shows or a Mel Robbins like they that there's tons, right?
• 19:37
  So if you're going to create another me too product based on someone else's thought leadership,
• 19:43
  I'm bringing on all these great guests. It's really hard to stand out. And I've been building it
• 19:48
  for six years and it's doing well. But I mean, there's shows that are still bigger than me and there's
• 19:53
  shows that are massive and it'll probably take me another 10 years to get to where some of these
• 19:56
  shows are. So I like it. I use it for a very specific purpose. It gives me access to incredible
• 20:03
  people. It's a great networking tool. It does good numbers. But I also understood that the
• 20:10
  piece of the podcast that people actually come for is the host. It's not the guest. It's the host.
• 20:17
  I compounded that concept that I believe to be true with the fact that people also like listening
• 20:24
  to podcasts in short bursts while they're doing things. So not everyone loves a four hour Joe
• 20:30
  Rogan episode. A lot of people like 10, 20, 30 minutes while they're taking the dog for a walk or
• 20:36
  driving to work or working out, right? And people can love consuming daily short content.
• 20:43
  So the second podcast is really the combination of those two sort of thoughts combined into a show.
• 20:51
  It's it's me every single day for a really short 10 to 15 minute segment teaching on things that I
• 20:57
  know. And it's giving people constant exposure to me and who I am. And they're going to learn from
• 21:03
  my career, my experience and some of my ideas. And it's also just it's it's much easier to scale that
• 21:08
  out. It's very hard to do a daily interview. I know John Lee Doomass with entrepreneurs on fire
• 21:12
  does it. But for me, it's easier to just focus on me creating content every single day,
• 21:16
  removing all the X factors, removing all the booking and really tapping into my audience and
• 21:21
  building a relationship with them and making sure that I'm in their ears every single day. And I
• 21:25
  find that that is a much quicker path to grow a podcast than being another me to interview style.
• 21:31
  And so far, the thesis is working like it's it's growing faster in the two years that I've been
• 21:37
  building this than what success story, which is my interview style podcast was doing at the two-year
• 21:42
  mark. And I look at like I look at Erick Sue and Neil Patel who do marketing school at the daily
• 21:48
  marketing podcast. John Lee Doomass is a daily interview with that grew incredibly quick. So all these
• 21:53
  daily short focusing, in my opinion, more on the host, I think that's what create a really
• 22:00
  not fast, but quicker a quicker podcast, a quicker, you know, quicker podcast growth than doing
• 22:07
  like another me like a copycat me to style interview show. That gives you a lot of content,
• 22:12
  right? Repurpose content gives you tons of content. So every single every single time I do the
• 22:17
  podcast, I mean, I'm a content marketing machine. I probably put out 30 to 50 pieces per day. So
• 22:22
  everything that I do, whether or not it's a podcast or I'm doing a 10 minute because the second
• 22:26
  podcast is called 10 minute MBA. I'm just talking about daily business things that usually it's
• 22:31
  something I dealt with that day. And I'll turn it into like, okay, these are my thoughts and like
• 22:35
  teachings on how to sort of solve for this in your own business. So all that turns into content
• 22:41
  as well. Every time I go on stage as a videographer, records me sometimes as Gina, sometimes as an
• 22:46
  actual videographer, recording me, I turn that into a whole bunch of content. Yeah. So find a way to
• 22:53
  I think the lesson after, you know, just understanding how I think through taking a new product to
• 22:59
  market in the podcast of the product, the lesson is you got to find what resonates with that particular
• 23:05
  medium, the best in the audience that is consuming the content on that medium. And maybe it's doing
• 23:10
  things slightly differently than everyone is doing it or maybe it's maybe it isn't. Maybe it's
• 23:14
  emulating what everyone is doing, but testing different ways of creating content on a particular
• 23:19
  meeting them and seeing if it's growing or not or working or not, I think is very important
• 23:23
  as a content creator. And that's constantly what I'm doing, which is what led to the second show.
• 23:27
  And do you ever have a problem coming up with content? No. Never. Never. Never. I mean,
• 23:33
  because your lens is always on. Lens is always on. There's like 50 different topics we'll talk
• 23:37
  about today. And I'm sure one of them, it'll be a light bulb. I'm going to just put that and turn
• 23:41
  that into a 10 minute clip. If I have zero ideas, I mean, you can just go to YouTube and type in
• 23:50
  business, I don't know, entrepreneur ideas or entrepreneurship tips. And then you can literally
• 23:56
  rank the videos by most watch, to least watch and then look at some of the topics that they discuss
• 24:01
  and then go record a video on that because you know, it's a high search topic.
• 24:07
  There's so many ways to get inspiration. And I also write down everything that I've already
• 24:11
  spoken about. So I never repeat. So I think that it's actually quite easy. When you live in this
• 24:16
  space and you study it, like all good entrepreneurs do, they live in what they're doing so much
• 24:22
  that the ideas come, you understand the market, you understand what works, what doesn't,
• 24:28
  when you're a content creator or a podcaster. But I think that's just a great way to approach
• 24:33
  building anything worth building as an entrepreneur, like just live in it and focus on it. And don't
• 24:39
  get distracted by all these other shiny objects. Like focus on the one thing you're building and study
• 24:43
  people that are doing it just a little bit more advanced than you and people that have been doing it
• 24:48
  for 20 years and 50 years and just study everything you possibly can and immerse yourself in it.
• 24:53
  And this is what I do with content and podcasting. So the answer your question, ideas come very easy
• 24:58
  because I'm living it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. No, I become, I can get geeked out on things, right?
• 25:03
  Like I'll start watching and studying and then I'll watch it the first time to absorb it. Yeah.
• 25:07
  I'll watch it a second time to like start like putting timestamps in the how, when do they transition
• 25:11
  and how do they do this? What's going on? Right? And then I'll watch it a third time at a different
• 25:16
  moment to see if I pick up different pieces. Yeah. And it's because it's something you love,
• 25:21
  you don't even realize that it's abnormal, right? It is a super abnormal behavior to do that and watch
• 25:26
  something three times, but you're right. I will. So I will go so far as to like to your point,
• 25:35
  like I'll look at how they entered. So for a video podcast, for example, I'll look at in the first
• 25:40
  30 seconds, like what's the hook? What's the line that diary of a CEO includes in their YouTube
• 25:46
  video that hooks people in because I know for a fact that diary of a CEO does, I think something
• 25:50
  stupid, like 20 million downloads a month. Wow. And he is so analytical and there's a lot of good
• 25:56
  examples about, you know, with various creators, you can go study, but diary of a CEO, I'll be looking
• 26:02
  in the first 30 seconds. What's the line that the guest drops in the trailer that he chose to put
• 26:09
  that there because he knows that that's going to hook people. And then if you look at YouTube stats,
• 26:14
  if you can hook people for the first 60 seconds, then they're more likely to stay for the first five
• 26:18
  minutes. And then you know, you see how many people drop off after the first five minutes, they're
• 26:21
  more likely to stay for the 10 minutes, whatever. And you can optimize your video or your podcast.
• 26:27
  But I'll study the trailer most importantly. And then I'll also study, for example, his thumbnails,
• 26:32
  his show notes, I know for a fact that Stephen Bartlett in particular, diary of a CEO,
• 26:37
  tests about 15 different thumbnails on Facebook. So what he does, and you can use, so Facebook
• 26:43
  ad library, you can go check out anyone else's pages, Facebook ads that they're running.
• 26:49
  So what Stephen Bartlett does, if you go to his ad library every time before he drops a show,
• 26:55
  he will run ads against about 15 different versions of thumbnails, YouTube thumbnails,
• 27:02
  that he will then pick a winner based on the click through rate. Obviously, he sees the data on the
• 27:08
  back, on the back end, and he'll pick a winner thumbnail. And then he'll use that for his YouTube
• 27:14
  video. So just by studying that process and by looking at the 15 different thumbnail options
• 27:20
  that he puts in front of an audience and runs ads and pays money to and then seeing which one
• 27:25
  the winner is and then learning from that strategy. So out of all these 15, he picked this particular
• 27:31
  thumbnail with this particular quote from the guest. And that's the one he used on YouTube. Like,
• 27:37
  now I can reverse engineer a little bit so I can understand after testing at scale every single time,
• 27:43
  what a good thumbnail should look like or what a good thumbnail caption or what a good headline is
• 27:48
  so that that gets a click through rate. So yes, I super definitely nerd out on this because
• 27:55
  there's the way that I see it. And this is again, I'm speaking from the lens of a creator,
• 28:02
  but I really want to drive this home. It's as a creator, I'm an entrepreneur. The podcast is my
• 28:09
  product. Okay, so it's no different if you have a software product or a consumer goods product
• 28:15
  or you're a consultant. These are your products, you're an entrepreneur. So I'm talking about reverse
• 28:21
  engineering a competitor, not really a competitor, but yes, quote unquote competitor.
• 28:27
  You can apply this strategy and this mindset to reverse engineer any type of business because
• 28:34
  you're basically just studying what's already in the market and you're applying best practices.
• 28:38
  This is not a novel concept, but I see so many people probably it's a little bit of ego.
• 28:44
  They think they're smarter than they are when they start something new and they want to reinvent
• 28:48
  the wheel and want to they want to just they they assume that what they know and the lens that
• 28:54
  they look at the world through is the correct lens and they'll just push it out there and they're
• 28:58
  confused when the market doesn't receive it. I'm the opposite. I'm like, I don't want to I don't
• 29:03
  want to trust my opinion too much. I think I know a couple things, but I don't really care what I
• 29:08
  know. I want to understand what the market needs. I want to understand what the audience needs.
• 29:13
  And the more I study the audience and the more I study the people that are doing this at scale,
• 29:18
  the more I can see what works and what doesn't. And then that's my initial thesis. That's my initial
• 29:23
  take to market with the podcast. And I just find like that again, it's all about compressing time.
• 29:29
  That's what we call luck. I think a lot of times. I think we call that luck, but it's not luck.
• 29:33
  It's our tech did studying your research and you're living in it. And for me again,
• 29:38
  it's just about increasing the chance of you being lucky. But also it's about reducing the
• 29:44
  amount of time and the friction so that you can start to see success so that you can start to see
• 29:49
  the you know the fruits of your labor when you're building the thing that you're trying to build.
• 29:53
  So I don't see any value and bringing my ego into the equation and assuming that I know what's
• 30:00
  best. I will look at all the things that are out there and then I'll make a judgment call based
• 30:05
  on people that have killed it and that I trust that I think to have massive teams behind them
• 30:10
  supporting them that put a lot of energy and money and time and resources into figuring out
• 30:14
  problems at a scale that I could never figure them out, especially when I'm just starting out.
• 30:19
  And that's the first version of whatever I put out because I know what good looks like. And then
• 30:23
  I'll iterate from there and I'll test and I'll learn, but I know my first version is better than just
• 30:27
  you know throwing it at a wall and hoping it sticks. So yeah, and there's confidence that comes
• 30:32
  with that. There is. Yeah, I think that's important. Yeah, very much so. And so you have a super
• 30:39
  successful newsletter. Yeah, I mean over 300 and 7000 subscribers. How why when did that fit
• 30:47
  into the puzzle and what is that? How the newsletter fits into the puzzle is I'm a big fan of
• 30:53
  if you are creating content, you cannot just assume that people want to consume content
• 31:00
  in the format that you're creating it. So if I'm creating a podcast, I know that there's tons of
• 31:05
  missed opportunity growing a social audience, a YouTube audience, a newsletter. So my job and I
• 31:12
  can't be so entitled to think that I'm going to convert people that just read newsletters into
• 31:17
  podcast listeners because that's not happening. That's I mean, maybe a fraction of a percentage,
• 31:22
  but ultimately I already have this great content. So instead of me trying to convert newsletter
• 31:28
  readers into podcast listeners, why don't I do the inverse? Why don't I find a way to repurpose what
• 31:32
  I already am creating into something that is consumable for that particular cohort of individuals.
• 31:37
  So for me, it was more a matter of I just want to be able to create one piece of content that can
• 31:44
  help me post everywhere and have to find a way to turn that content into not just audio but audio
• 31:51
  and video, short form video, social clips, tweets, newsletter. So the newsletter was a derivative
• 31:56
  piece of content from the podcast that was basically just building an audience in a different
• 32:02
  on a different medium tapping into a different group of people and serving them with a type of
• 32:06
  type of content they like to they like to consume. So it was Marty doing these great interviews
• 32:11
  with all these thought leaders. How do I turn these interviews and the topics we speak about
• 32:16
  into newsletter content, which is really not that hard. I mean, we already have a conversation. We
• 32:20
  already have a couple great talking points. I can just summarize these. I can transcribe it with
• 32:25
  I mean, there's a lot of tools we can use, but otter.ai does great transcription. There's a lot
• 32:29
  of Chrome extensions that do YouTube transcriptions and I would turn that into a newsletter
• 32:34
  into a blog post and I wouldn't take the transcription and turn it into it, but the transcription
• 32:38
  guides you guides me and lets me write. And then I also am a firm believer that writing is great
• 32:44
  for organizing your thoughts, for testing your own ideas and assumptions. So for me, I love the
• 32:49
  practice of writing. So it was it was sort of like a win-win. I sort of take the content I already
• 32:55
  have. I turn it into another medium. I build an audience over here that normally would not even
• 33:01
  know about my podcast. If for some reason some of them like podcasts, I'm going to tell them
• 33:05
  that I have a podcast, but ultimately I want to build a whole other audience that I can eventually
• 33:10
  in the future if I want to sell ad space on that newsletter. If I want to build another company,
• 33:15
  I have a whole other set of eyeballs over here that I was missing out on. So I'm not saying it's
• 33:22
  easy, but I think people also... It's in the same lane, right? Yeah, so the goal of the podcast and
• 33:30
  the pillar content or the long form audio video content was to create something that I could
• 33:35
  scale across all my channels because I wanted to show up everywhere. And especially with... Do you
• 33:41
  have a favorite channel? I think the podcast would be the favorite channel because that lets me show
• 33:48
  up on YouTube and then YouTube is video and that's a really high-trust building platform. And it
• 33:53
  also lets me sit down with people and chat with them. So I mean like that's... You're not going to
• 33:57
  get that by recording a dance on TikTok, right? So there's all these like adjacent benefits
• 34:04
  to building a podcast. That's the reason why I love it. But outside of that, I mean, I don't think I
• 34:10
  have a favorite channel. I think channels serve purposes for different reasons. For some reason,
• 34:16
  you'd have to be big on Instagram because people love verifying and validating your worth as a
• 34:23
  creator based on your Instagram following, which is stupid, but this is a social signal out into
• 34:27
  the world. A lot of my audience, I like... They're all super nerdy, they're all on LinkedIn. Those are
• 34:34
  probably the people talk about the same kinds of things that I talk about. Yeah. I like Twitter
• 34:39
  because... I mean, I like everything for different reasons. I like Twitter because what Twitter
• 34:42
  forces you to do is be super clever and witty and a really concise character account, which I think
• 34:48
  is a whole other skill set in and of itself. And I think that I like Twitter because it's a
• 34:52
  version of writing and it's a version of creative writing. And I do actually enjoy writing because
• 34:56
  again, of all the things that I mentioned before. And then newsletter is long form creative writing
• 35:01
  and it allows me to honestly de-stress and just put my thoughts on paper. And I think that also
• 35:06
  it's a great... It's a great medium to... Again, if you have ideas that you can put into a newsletter,
• 35:12
  like why wouldn't you be doing it? So the goal with the podcast originally was to create this
• 35:17
  pillar content that could be distributed everywhere. But I didn't have the capacity, like the energy
• 35:22
  to think about new topics for a new newsletter every single day or a new topic for Instagram every
• 35:27
  single day. So maybe sometimes I want to write a newsletter just based on what's happening in my
• 35:31
  life. But more often than not, I want a predictable repeatable content strategy that I don't have to
• 35:37
  rethink, you know, I can't think of another TikTok today or another Instagram short. I'm just
• 35:44
  going to pull a 30-second clip from the podcast I did two weeks ago. And that to me, it still shows up.
• 35:49
  It's still great. It still features another thought leader. And I don't have to do a lot of
• 35:54
  thinking to put that content out. And I think that that's probably the best way to consistently show up.
• 35:59
  I think that when people try and invent new content for every single platform, every single day,
• 36:03
  if you don't have a team supporting you, it's it's going to lead to burnout. You're going to quit
• 36:07
  immediately. So that's why... Yeah, how do you manage burnout? Well, I enjoy what I do. Yeah.
• 36:14
  Which is very important. I work very hard. I think that the reason why I don't burn out is because
• 36:22
  what I'm doing is in line with my personal North Star. I think that if I was working this hard
• 36:30
  for something that I wasn't enjoying, I would have burnt out a long time ago. I truly do believe...
• 36:36
  I'm sure there's edge cases for sure. But I think that burnout is more often than not correlated with
• 36:42
  somebody doing things they don't actually enjoy doing. Or whether or not they know it, it's not
• 36:46
  aligned with where they want to take themselves in the future. They don't see the thing they're doing
• 36:50
  day in day out, really getting them to where they want to go. And sometimes they don't even know where
• 36:55
  they want to go, but they just know that the nine to five that they're they're working on right now
• 36:59
  is not it. So I work way harder with the podcast with doing my own thing that I've ever worked
• 37:08
  in a corporate environment, like like by a factor of a thousand. I think that's important for
• 37:13
  everybody to listen to that's following today. Like when it's your passion projects, when it is
• 37:17
  your brand, when it is your entrepreneurship journey, it is way harder than if you're working
• 37:24
  for a corporate. I mean, it's just it's just it's all of you. It's a lifestyle. Yeah, it is. But
• 37:31
  I remember working in corporate and I would I would not burn out, but I'd be over it. Yeah,
• 37:37
  but I'm never over it now. Right. Right. And there's we there's weeks where it's hard to turn it off.
• 37:43
  Super hard to turn it off. I bet. Super hard. I struggle with that too. So I think that I think
• 37:48
  that's actually on the other side of entrepreneurship that not enough people speak about it's very hard
• 37:54
  to turn off and it can be toxic for the people around you. I mean, you can you can ask G how much I
• 38:00
  work. It's very toxic. Sometimes how much I put into this not because it's hurting our relationships
• 38:05
  are both entrepreneurs, but I think that sometimes it's important to know like, okay, so if we're
• 38:09
  going to have date night, go out, you're not working. Yeah, we're both learning how to turn that
• 38:14
  off. Learning how to turn it off. So I think that again, a lot of what I spoke about at the
• 38:19
  beginning was getting the right mindset. So you understand what you're getting yourself into
• 38:25
  and understanding what you have to commit and what you have to commit to. And I think that
• 38:32
  part of becoming an entrepreneur is understanding the season of your life that you're going to
• 38:37
  give to this thing. You're trying to build and then setting a deadline. And if it doesn't work by
• 38:42
  then then you have to remove yourself from it and find something else. But when you set yourself
• 38:48
  a deadline to not be working in the business for 24 hours a day, then you are forced to start to
• 38:56
  hire to delegate to build systems to build processes SOPs that will allow you to remove yourself
• 39:02
  from the business eventually so that it can continue on and you can be and you can start to craft
• 39:07
  a lifestyle as opposed to just committing more and more time for the rest of your life really.
• 39:14
  So I think that that's something that is very important for entrepreneurs to consider. How do I,
• 39:19
  what do I want? Do I do I want a billion dollar business and do I never want lifestyle? Do I
• 39:24
  want to make a million dollars a year and do I want lifestyle? Do I want to make 10 million dollars
• 39:28
  a year and have lifestyle? How do I architect that? Am I going to do this for the next 10 years?
• 39:32
  Okay, great. When I'm going to have kids, how much time do I have for kids? It's my spouse
• 39:36
  cool with it. If I can do the next 10 years and that's the most I can commit to this because then I
• 39:41
  want to have kids and be more present in their life and not just be an absent parent, then I have to
• 39:46
  figure out, okay, at the 10 year mark, we have to be doing this amount of revenue and I have to
• 39:51
  have this team supporting me so I can only have to commit 20 hours a week to my business. Like,
• 39:56
  there's so much nuance and context and factors that can impact, but the point is you got to think
• 40:01
  about it. Yeah, how often are you doing a check-in with yourself and saying, hey, this is
• 40:06
  balanced for me or this is working or is this not working? Are you proactive on that or just
• 40:10
  something normally break down and then you have to fix it? Because I used to be the breakdown.
• 40:15
  I used to be the person that I would break down and now I'd fix it. I've gotten better at being
• 40:18
  able to, okay, I'm going to check in quarterly, I'm going to check in more regularly so I don't
• 40:23
  have as many breaks. I think I'm more proactive. I'm just thinking about my own behavior because I'm
• 40:28
  proactively creating systems for things that remove things off my plate and I think that because I do
• 40:36
  that and I do that so much sooner than it has to happen. Can you give an example? Yeah, sure.
• 40:45
  Very basic example. So I just signed a new deal with a network that's going to help distribute
• 40:50
  the podcasts and there has to be some back and forth on the assets that are going to be delivered
• 40:56
  into this drive and the network's going to take the drive and the assets and the drive and the
• 41:01
  mp4s and the videos and they're going to push them out to their own distribution channels.
• 41:07
  So I mean, immediately I'm just finding the person on my team that can take care of that task,
• 41:12
  training them up on it, showing them where the drive is, showing them how to title and how to
• 41:18
  structure all the videos so that the person on the network side can pull the right videos and
• 41:24
  understand who the video is about and a couple different pieces about the video in terms of what
• 41:30
  we spoke about so that they're not confused and they know what to put in the show notes when they
• 41:34
  blast it out to their network. So I mean, train somebody up on that immediately, let them run
• 41:41
  with it a few times, make sure they had no questions, document it SOPs around, it did a screen
• 41:47
  recording and now that person's running with it and that's like a bolt on part of the machine.
• 41:52
  So I mean, I think some entrepreneurs for better, for worse, probably for worse would probably
• 42:01
  just do that thing themselves for a couple months if they felt they didn't trust somebody. It's a
• 42:06
  big deal to big network. That means you're introducing somebody from your team to somebody who's
• 42:10
  very high up and you don't want to disrupt that relationship. So maybe an entrepreneur would think,
• 42:15
  well, I want to manage that relationship and I want to make sure they don't screw it up so I don't
• 42:18
  like an idiot. I don't know, this is not how I think so it's hard for me to understand that but
• 42:23
  I know people that get stuck with two of these, too many of these processes and they don't trust
• 42:26
  somebody else to do it on their team for a variety of reasons. It could be they don't feel like
• 42:30
  they're competent or they don't feel like they have bandwidth or the person could be telling them
• 42:33
  they don't have bandwidth and they have a hard time hiring somebody new. Fortunately, I do not
• 42:38
  overburden my team so I'm constantly checking in to see what kind of bandwidth they have. How many
• 42:43
  hours they're committing in a day and if they if they have free time to do extra things,
• 42:47
  it's a lot of very candid conversation with them about what they're working on and what they're not.
• 42:52
  So when a small little project like this comes up, which probably only takes about an hour
• 42:58
  a day of work, I don't want to throw it on somebody who's going to drop the ball. I'm walking
• 43:02
  them through it. I'm making sure that there's no hiccups or bugs. I'm making sure that they can
• 43:05
  do it properly and then I'm trusting them to do it and I'm not checking in. I'll check in with
• 43:10
  the team meeting later on, you know, once every month or two months, but in this particular process,
• 43:15
  it's handled. It's done. It's on autopilot now. So yeah, and as new things come up,
• 43:23
  that's the mindset I have for that new thing and it'll just be find a way to codify the process,
• 43:29
  screen recording with loom or whatever is a really good way to do it if you have an outsource
• 43:35
  team, which I do. And then trust them to do it and also give them the agency to put up their
• 43:41
  hand and ask questions if they're not comfortable, which I think is probably the biggest issue with
• 43:44
  teams teams are and people are scared for some reason. And it's probably because you feel like
• 43:51
  you're approachable, but you're probably not to say, Hey, I don't understand something or hey,
• 43:56
  this isn't working or hey, this is broken or hey, whatever. And I think that the number one thing
• 44:03
  that has allowed me to effectively communicate is almost every time something doesn't work out
• 44:09
  the way that I want it to. It's like, let's solve this together and please just talk to me about
• 44:14
  what's going on in your life, in your work, in the SLP that I created so that we're trying to
• 44:21
  solve these problems that don't happen again, but it's not your fault. It's not your fault. I don't
• 44:25
  want you to think it's your fault. I don't want you just because something screwed up to never
• 44:29
  bring another problem to me. It's really important to make the person feel comfortable to constantly
• 44:35
  sort of raise their hand. And I think that that's something that's really helped me and allowed for,
• 44:39
  I mean, Kim Scott calls it radical candor, whatever you want to call it. That is the most important
• 44:45
  because nobody knows how your business is running like the people that are actually building your
• 44:49
  business. And you may think you know everything that's happening, but there's always some, there's
• 44:53
  always a mess that hopefully you create a psychologically safe environment for the people to tell
• 45:01
  you about it before it gets too big. Yeah. And what do you do for the person listening today,
• 45:06
  what do you suggest they do to help foster that type of environment and cultivate that type of
• 45:11
  culture within their business? It's a great question. There's a few things that I think I do
• 45:18
  personally that have helped outside of explicitly telling the person like, please don't stress if
• 45:24
  you screw up, please like let's figure it out together. I mean, that already is a step in the
• 45:29
  right direction. I do know where my team wants to go professionally. So I help them and I have a
• 45:34
  small team. So obviously with scale, you have to enable like your level of management to act like
• 45:41
  this for the people that are direct reports to them. But I don't have a level of management. So I
• 45:47
  have one guy that acts like my CMO, which I guess is a level of management, but it's not it's not a
• 45:51
  huge team, right? It's only six people for the podcast and the social stuff. So I know where they
• 45:57
  want to go in their careers. I know where my CMO who manages my editors and my social and my
• 46:03
  copywriting and all that. I know where he wants to go in his career. And I actively help try and
• 46:08
  as best I can help them get there. So like my funny enough, I'll talk about my editor Ali. He's an
• 46:14
  awesome dude. He started off as a solo video editor. He wanted to build a marketing agency. So
• 46:21
  obviously he did all the work, but I was giving him templates on how to run outbound sequences,
• 46:28
  how to struggle, how to figure out who your ICP is, your ideal customer profile, how to figure
• 46:32
  your buyer persona, how to set up a landing page. So we go back and forth on for him and his
• 46:36
  north star. Obviously he helps out me. He manages my team, but he wants to build his own marketing
• 46:42
  agency. And he has. So I've just through like a mentorship relationship, peer relationship,
• 46:47
  helped him get to where he is right now where he has multiple clients. He has not just my team,
• 46:52
  but he has his own internal staff. So I mean, I know where the team wants to go. And when you help
• 46:57
  them get there, first of all, they're super appreciative of you. It's a level of trust and loyalty
• 47:02
  that really I don't think can be replicated outside of you just giving it about what they want
• 47:07
  to accomplish in life and helping them get it. And I think that that's that along with telling
• 47:12
  them that they can bring you problems that that whole that whole level of trust that's built. I think
• 47:18
  I think that that's how you have to build a team. And if it's not, I mean, I helped Ali build a
• 47:23
  marketing agency. I mean, but say you're managing somebody who doesn't want to build an agency. I mean,
• 47:30
  where do they want to go in their career? How much money do they want to make? I mean, do they
• 47:35
  want a promotion? Is it title? Is it what is the thing that that person actually wants? You
• 47:39
  shouldn't know that. And then over time, help them get there and realize that when people are
• 47:46
  working with you, the options for where they can work are truly endless. So if they don't feel like
• 47:51
  they're growing in their own career in their own life, like sooner or later, they're going to leave
• 47:56
  you. So it's better to invest that energy and time into that person's growth, personal professional
• 48:01
  if you can, because again, it creates this environment of trust, which in turn will allow them to
• 48:06
  feel comfortable saying, Hey, Scott is on my team. I trust Scott. It is not going well. We uploaded
• 48:13
  the wrong version of the video. We forgot to edit this part out. Whatever. I'm going to let him
• 48:17
  know because he's not an asshole. He's we're on the same team here. We're trying to win together.
• 48:21
  I'm trying to help him win in his business. He's trying to help me win in my business in my life.
• 48:25
  And I found that's worked very well. Yeah. And do you feel like the economy is more like that
• 48:29
  nowadays with the gigs? Like I'm going to help you with your gig. You're going to help me with
• 48:32
  gig. It's not like this person's dedicated solely to you. Well, I think that with the gig economy
• 48:38
  with how much people switch jobs, I think that companies, employers, managers, founders, CEOs,
• 48:46
  they have to give way more shits about their team and their and the people they hire. I think also
• 48:53
  it's much easier for people to leave. So what does that mean? I think that you have to
• 48:58
  I think you have to create mutually beneficial contracts with the people that work for you.
• 49:04
  What I mean by that is people are not going to stay with you for 10 years anymore or 20 years.
• 49:09
  People are going to jump ship for a variety of reasons. They want more money. They want to
• 49:13
  they want to change. They want to work for a company that allows them to work from home
• 49:17
  all the time or maybe three days a week or four days a week. Whatever. They want to work remote.
• 49:21
  They go live across the world and some companies allow them to do that and yours doesn't.
• 49:25
  So when you hire people, it has to be a reciprocal agreement and you have to say, listen,
• 49:31
  I'm hiring you because I need you to do this thing and I need you to commit say two years of your
• 49:36
  life to my company just two years. And after two years, we can renegotiate. I know you're not going
• 49:41
  to commit five years, but if you commit two years to my company, then I'm going to commit two years
• 49:46
  to getting you to where you want to go. Now, what does that thing look like for you? Is it more money?
• 49:50
  Okay, two years, I will show you how to make from 60,000 to $100,000 in my company or elsewhere.
• 49:56
  If it's just title, if it's more responsibilities or whatever it is, if it fits within the context of
• 50:01
  what I can do as a business owner and a leader, then I'm going to find a way to get you there.
• 50:05
  And that's the agreement. So you're not going to quiet quit and you're not going to f off after one
• 50:09
  year and six months, you're going to give me two years. And after two years, we can decide if you
• 50:15
  want to renew this contract. And I think the issue with hiring people in 2024, what's happening
• 50:21
  is the employee says, I'm not going to, I'm not going to commit five years. I don't know how much
• 50:29
  time I'm going to commit. I'm just going to take this job. I don't feel they're investing in my
• 50:32
  growth. And like after a year and a half, two years, I'm kind of working, but I'm interviewing
• 50:38
  on the side. And the employer is like, I don't want you to do side hustles. I don't really care
• 50:43
  where you're going. If you want to raise, I mean, we were only allowed to give a 5% raise
• 50:48
  to internal candidates, even though we can give a 10% raise to recruiting ahead. I think people
• 50:53
  from the outside bringing them into the company, which are all real things. So now you have this
• 50:58
  misalignment. You have employers. I think they have the power. You have employees. I think they
• 51:01
  have the power. And I think it's actually going to hurt employers more because what's going to
• 51:06
  happen is that employee doesn't feel valued and respected and doesn't have a reason to stay with
• 51:10
  you for any period of time because you don't feel like the employer is investing in the employee's
• 51:14
  growth. They're going to quiet quit. They're not going to care. They're going to be flippant,
• 51:18
  nonchalant about their job. And eventually they will quit. And the employer won't be expecting it.
• 51:25
  And the performance was already lagging because they already checked out six months ago. And then
• 51:29
  they quit. And now you have to go find somebody new and hiring somebody who has a massive cost
• 51:33
  for a business. So I think that being super clear, aligning objectives, understanding commitment
• 51:41
  and locking that in as even a verbal contract is such a win for employer employee relationships
• 51:46
  and hiring that really fits a 2024 modern job market. And even thought process of the average
• 51:56
  employee in 2024, it's they don't want to work the way we did 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago.
• 52:05
  I think that's a good fix. I think that particular framework is not perfect, but it's a decent fix
• 52:09
  that sort of allows this commitment from both ends. Yeah. No, I see that. And I like that. I respect
• 52:16
  that. I think helps everybody succeed when you're working and communicating to each other.
• 52:20
  Well, I think so. I think that the alternative is just is is is people not setting expectations
• 52:26
  on either side. Right. And then when you don't do that. And again, if an employer thinks you're
• 52:30
  going to be with them for 10 years and the employee thinks that the person who just hired me is going
• 52:35
  to help me in my career and help me get to the next level. And neither neither person is fulfilling
• 52:39
  that agreement. Then that's when money's waste at times wasted really awkward career circumstances,
• 52:46
  broken bridge, burned bridges, whatever, all that nasty that comes with lack of clarity, lack of
• 52:51
  clarity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So I'm going to move on us a second. So you have
• 52:56
  the two podcasts. You have the newsletter and you have a community that you're building. Yes.
• 53:02
  Right. So talk about the community a little bit and how that came about and where that's going.
• 53:07
  So communities call the social club. And community is I think the object that should be the
• 53:14
  objective of every creator. So I am trying to and I am building a community of later stage some
• 53:24
  exited entrepreneurs. And we meet four times a year and they're we bring in speakers that are
• 53:30
  some of the X podcast that I've had that I built relationships with. And it's a little bit of
• 53:35
  almost like masterminding a little bit. You bring in some some great business leaders to
• 53:41
  teach over some things that are obviously you know you bring in the founder of Reebok or something
• 53:47
  like that to teach it's it's a wild experience like the level that he's operated at is phenomenal.
• 53:52
  So that's the goal of the social club. But what I'm trying to do with a social club and what I think
• 53:57
  other people should do is they build audiences a lot of creators build audiences. But an audience is
• 54:03
  really just like they just listen to and receive the content. But it's a one way transfer of knowledge.
• 54:12
  So I put out a podcast audience listens to it. There's a level of trust there but and there's a level
• 54:18
  of of there's a level of influence created with an audience but it's it's peaked and it's capped.
• 54:25
  I think that the best way to as a creator monetize build a business leverage whatever word you want to
• 54:33
  call it is a find a way to turn your audience and turn them into a community. And when you turn an
• 54:38
  audience into a community you are no longer the only source of truth for that audience. Now that
• 54:44
  community is activating together. It could be in person. It could be online and they are supporting
• 54:49
  each other's goals and each other's journeys and they're teaching each other's stuff. So it's not
• 54:53
  just a one way anymore. You've created this community of people that are helping each other grow
• 54:58
  in their lives and their business. I mean for our community it could be where to invest after you
• 55:03
  made a little bit of money or it could be I'm starting my second company like I don't want to
• 55:08
  screw it up the way that I did the first one by diluting myself too much when I raise investor money.
• 55:13
  A million and different one you know conversations come up but I think that would be the ultimate goal
• 55:18
  because I think that too many people just try and monetize their audience by selling a product or
• 55:22
  a service. I think the most value is created when you find a way to turn an audience into a community.
• 55:27
  That's what I'm doing with the social club. That's what I've seen some of the best creators
• 55:30
  in the world do in different ways but it's finding a way to take people from just a follower on
• 55:36
  Instagram and how am I putting them in a room virtually or physically where they can help and engage
• 55:43
  with and activate together and help each other and that's what the social club is all about.
• 55:47
  So it's sort of taking the audience and moving it one step further into an actual community.
• 55:52
  And also there's more monetization options there too so if I want to sell a product or a service
• 55:59
  I want people that feel more value than just listening to a podcast guest. I want people that
• 56:04
  feel like okay if I listen to Scott interview the founder of Reebok for example I'm going to get
• 56:10
  information based on the founder of Reebok's journey however if I can get into a room with him or
• 56:18
  other business leaders not everybody's wonderful of that but other business leaders.
• 56:23
  Now it's I can talk about my specific problems and I can also help someone else with
• 56:28
  their specific problems and I also am in a room with people that are having similar problems to me
• 56:34
  so it's no longer just one way communication. Now it's again activating together it's camaraderie
• 56:41
  it's peers it's I can get advice contextually relevant to what I'm trying to solve for in my life
• 56:47
  as opposed to just here about Joe Foster the Reebok eyes journey. So I think that that's where that's
• 56:55
  where you create the most value as a creator if you can find a way to turn the people to follow you
• 57:01
  into a true community. And how are you building that and expanding that? It's for us we're doing
• 57:07
  in person because again everything in person is so powerful. In person is so powerful there's a lot
• 57:12
  of ways to do it but for us we're just inviting people out and then it's a very traditional model
• 57:17
  four times a year we charge an amount for people to come out to all four events for the year we
• 57:23
  bring in speakers there's networking there's food we do bespoke like matchmaking so somebody has
• 57:29
  like an issue with their business we'll find somebody who has solved that problem before at a
• 57:33
  high level we'll get them into a conversation with each other but it's really just I mean in terms
• 57:38
  of promoting it it's all the marketing things so throw a story up on Instagram say hey we're having
• 57:41
  an event come out check it out if you like it this is the cost right that's pretty much it
• 57:47
  I mean it's all the traditional marketing things you you tap into your existing audience you let
• 57:51
  them know it exists you invite them out to experience it I run outbound emails outbound on LinkedIn
• 57:58
  with a call to action to come out to an event so all the all the normal marketing stuff because
• 58:02
  at the end of the day the community is a product so how do you market a product I mean you talk
• 58:07
  about it on social and you you know you talk about you build demand for it you can jump on calls
• 58:12
  and talk to people about it on zoom and invite them out you run campaigns you do all you can run ads
• 58:17
  you can do all the all the marketing things and that's actually just one quick thought on this
• 58:23
  whatever you're doing whatever you're building if it's content creator it's newsletter if it's
• 58:29
  community online offline like it's just a product and it's just a business and want to say just
• 58:34
  I mean don't be so myopic like don't put blinders on to all the different things you can potentially
• 58:40
  do to grow it so you ask me how do you grow a community I mean run ads run emails like reach out
• 58:45
  to people like you can call call you do whatever you want it's just every sales and marketing activity
• 58:51
  you have a product figure out which one works the best and then triple down on that it's it's the
• 58:57
  same as if I was building a new software product or a new consumer good or I wanted to be a consultant
• 59:01
  like how do you how do you raise awareness for that everything everything yeah same formula
• 59:05
  yeah avenue yeah what are you most excited that you're working on right now I've been excited about
• 59:10
  the podcast since they want since they went and it's never felt or did all that's awesome because
• 59:17
  and that's why you don't get burnt out that's actually why you don't get burnt out because
• 59:22
  I went into it not caring about the financial component to it yeah because there was so many
• 59:29
  adjacent rewards to building a network and a podcast and sitting down with cool ass people
• 59:34
  that and and I also drink my own coolate I do believe if I do something for 10 years I'll find a
• 59:41
  way to be successful like I have to drink my own coolate right so there's so many immediate rewards
• 59:47
  like like sitting down with some of these people and talking to them my god it's like
• 59:53
  it's just phenomenal right it's like networking on steroids so
• 59:57
  those dopamine hits yeah kind of allowed me to forget about the fact that it was like a lot of hard work
• 1:00:03
  before I got paid and then I mean those dopamine haven't gone away because somebody who is a
• 1:00:10
  highly ambitious person I can't imagine anybody who sits down with some of the people that we do
• 1:00:16
  and you know get excited that I've ever done yeah you don't even you have to like paint yourself
• 1:00:21
  sometimes so no I'm still super excited about that because all this stuff that got me excited
• 1:00:25
  about day one is still happening plus I'm making more money plus it's growing so it's like it's like
• 1:00:30
  it's like all the even more cooler stuff and and better and and more good is happening to the
• 1:00:35
  podcast and I mean you know I just mentioned I didn't name the name because I don't want to name
• 1:00:42
  the name of the distribution partner until it happens and it's all working and yeah yeah
• 1:00:47
  you're feeling confident and other pieces but everything is going in the right direction right so
• 1:00:51
  now distribution partner adds x million more downloads and then I just had a great conversation
• 1:00:56
  with somebody that can get me access to these particular guests that are all like fortune 500 CEOs
• 1:01:01
  and like so it always excited about that because you see you see the path of somebody who's even
• 1:01:07
  done it before you look at Tim Ferris you look at Lewis House you look at Tom Bill you you look at
• 1:01:13
  even people that have not like Tim Ferris gets paid a ton to podcast but also
• 1:01:20
  very smart guy he turns a lot of that money he can do some angel investing into businesses
• 1:01:24
  so I'm like okay that's something I could do with it right Lewis House built a mastermind
• 1:01:29
  courses built a conference around his podcast I'm like okay that's an option to Tom Bill you
• 1:01:34
  as like a full movie set for his show right so like I could even do that or there's a ton of shows
• 1:01:40
  that have sold to Spotify for seven figures and that's an option to not everyone's a Joe Rogan but
• 1:01:46
  I'll take a multiple of 10 million for the show right if you sell if you sell and you grow big
• 1:01:52
  enough and you sell the rights to Spotify so and there's also other people that invest in shows too
• 1:01:58
  so like there's so many avenues for success and there's so many different ways to monetize it and
• 1:02:03
  whether or not it's selling to Spotify or turning it into a conference or just taking the revenue from
• 1:02:09
  it and and throwing it into angel investments like Tim Ferris there's so much opportunity on top
• 1:02:16
  of the fact that you're still sitting down with exceptional people right yeah I mean how do you
• 1:02:21
  not get excited about that oh yeah no it's my favorite thing and then also they look and then
• 1:02:24
  you get other opportunities too so now I get access to bigger and bigger stages I get to actually
• 1:02:29
  not just like podcast stages but get on stage in front of ex thousand of people that's all because
• 1:02:35
  of the podcast there's different ways to create influence and I think that this is a really
• 1:02:41
  I think that if you can stick with it for long enough I think it's a great way to do it because you
• 1:02:45
  can also build you know a billion dollar company you can also you can also stream on Twitch and
• 1:02:52
  TikTok for me as somebody who loves entrepreneurs this was like the best way to create fame and
• 1:02:57
  influence I love it so yeah so good okay so our listeners are all excited about all the things
• 1:03:05
  you're creating they've got a lot of tactical lessons not just the mindset piece that you have to
• 1:03:09
  do today so thank you for both how do we connect with you and follow and become part of some of your
• 1:03:15
  stuff so it's pretty straightforward all the socials the same so it's at Scott D. Clary and then
• 1:03:19
  you can go to successstorepodcast.com and that's the podcast perfect yeah thank you so much thank you
• 1:03:25
  I appreciate it yeah thank you