Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Guest Podcast: Reverse Engineering Success (Journey to Master)

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Guest Podcast: Reverse Engineering Success (Journey to Master) · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  What's Upworld? Welcome to another episode of The Journey to Mastery Podcast. I'm super
• 0:19
  excited I have with me, Scott Clary, and we're going to talk about mindset, we're going
• 0:22
  to talk about, we're going to talk about a lot of things, but that's where we're going
• 0:25
  to focus because I know, as I suppose I'm an experienced entrepreneur at this point,
• 0:31
  my mindset has literally been the thing that took me from here to here. It's the differentiator,
• 0:37
  it's the thing that when you wake up in the morning, even if you're starting off at the
• 0:41
  same spot, it's going to determine how far you go, who you go with, and how you go. So
• 0:47
  mindset is super important. Scott, I'm super excited to talk with you for a number of
• 0:53
  reasons, but the main reason is because you are, like myself, just an entrepreneur who
• 0:59
  loves the game of business and loves helping folks. But before we get into any of the
• 1:05
  good stuff, can I get it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. I try my best not to put too much pressure
• 1:13
  on you before we hit record, but it's kind of a thing. You know, every time you say, oh,
• 1:19
  yeah, I don't hear the Randy Savage. Oh, yeah, I hear the Kool-Aid guy breaking into the
• 1:23
  courthouse and family guy. And that's the only, oh, yeah, that I can think of in my head.
• 1:28
  So that's the only one that I can try and do. But as an entrepreneur, right, isn't it so
• 1:33
  fitting, right? The Kool-Aid man burst through the wall because you have to burst through
• 1:38
  the wall, right? Because nobody's going to, all the time, open the door for you. You don't
• 1:43
  often know where the door is. So sometimes you just got to go in, make yourself, self-known,
• 1:48
  and just say, I'm here. I'm here to change the world. This is, this is what we're doing.
• 1:52
  The difference is with entrepreneurs. Anyone knows what scene we're talking about. You're
• 1:58
  immediately my friend. But with entrepreneurs, when we burst through that door, I don't think
• 2:03
  many of them burst through that. Well, I don't think many entrepreneurs are as happy as
• 2:07
  that Kool-Aid guy is because most people are stressed out and burnt out and not knowing
• 2:11
  what's going on and you're bursting through walls and you don't even realize you've burst
• 2:14
  through a wall because there's 10 other walls ahead of you. So I think that that is an
• 2:18
  overly optimistic representation of what an entrepreneur's life is. However, that should
• 2:22
  be what an entrepreneur's life looks like being that happy bursting through walls, but
• 2:26
  that's what we're here to fix.
• 2:27
  Yeah. It's more like you burst through the wall and you're like, oh, yeah, and immediately
• 2:32
  followed by, oh, no, what did I get myself into? Is this the thing that I really want to
• 2:36
  do? Oh, my gosh. Am I going to be able to eat this month? So let's talk about the journey
• 2:42
  a little bit, right? We spent a lot of time as entrepreneurs talking about the peaks,
• 2:47
  the good parts about entrepreneurship, the freedom and the expression, the creativity, the relationships
• 2:53
  and all the stuff. We don't spend a ton of time talking about the valleys. What are some
• 2:58
  of the valley moments, right, that you've experienced in your career that you can share
• 3:03
  with us?
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  Damn. I mean, there's valleys every single day. I think one of the first valleys that
• 3:11
  you get hit in the face with is when whatever you're building, and when people first go into
• 3:16
  entrepreneurship, I think they feel like they are God's gift to business. That's why they
• 3:22
  have an initial courage. And there's going to be a second where that courage exists. And
• 3:28
  that's great. And then life's going to slap you in the face. And then your customer's
• 3:31
  not going to buy it from you. And then you're going to wonder how you're going to pay rent
• 3:34
  next month. And you get humbled so down. Entrepreneurship is the most humbling thing that you can
• 3:39
  partake in in your entire life. It's tough. It's like very, very tough. So I think one of
• 3:44
  the first valleys was the first time I moved out of corporate, which was after a company
• 3:50
  that I was working at. And I was leading sales and marketing at this company. They're required
• 3:55
  by private equity. And I just did the first version of entrepreneurship that everybody knows,
• 3:59
  which is I think I know business. I think I'm amazing. I'm going to go consult. And you realize
• 4:05
  no one gives a excuse me about what you know. And you have to build a brand and you have to
• 4:09
  sort of prove your worth. And you have to figure out how to value yourself. And because you haven't
• 4:14
  been consulting for 20 years, your value is insignificant. And you have your billable hours.
• 4:20
  But then you have to go build a business after your 40 hours of billable hours for the week.
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  Basically, the first version of entrepreneurship is always a cluster. And you're trying to figure
• 4:28
  how to navigate it. And there's always that, okay, did I do the right thing? Maybe I should just
• 4:33
  get a job. Like why am I causing so much stress in my life? I'm doing this to myself. So I think
• 4:37
  it's a pretty normal one. I think the other big ones that our valleys are when you get sued or
• 4:44
  when you have to fire people, which will happen to every entrepreneur. And these are things that we
• 4:48
  have this like bright eyed bushy tailed rainbow version of entrepreneurship. And when we get
• 4:55
  big enough, there will be points where we have to let people go. I mean, these are all problems
• 5:00
  that come with scale, right? So there will be points when you have to let people go. And it sucks.
• 5:04
  And it's painful. And you're friends with these people. And that's something that is very hard
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  for people to overcome that that psychological hurdle of firing because most people are decent
• 5:13
  human beings. They don't like doing it. But it can be a massive. It could be it could really hurt
• 5:19
  your business if you don't let the right people go as well as not hiring the right people. But I
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  think a lot of people have more problems firing. And the second thing is when you get sued, I mean,
• 5:27
  the first time I got sued was because we didn't have an ADA compliant website, which I didn't know
• 5:33
  that was a thing until somebody came along and said, Hey, I'm representing a client and we're going
• 5:39
  to take you to court because you don't have disability access on your brand new on your brand new
• 5:44
  website. So it's it's not even like you meant to do anything wrong. It's just like life slaps
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  you in the face when you put yourself out there. So these are things you can all navigate and they
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  all become the norm, hopefully not too much of the norm, but they all become a little bit easier to
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  deal with. But these are things that everybody will go through at some point. Hopefully not, but
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  realistically speaking, this is part of the game of life and business. And I think that these are
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  just things that are just tough things. And again, you speak about mindset. This hardens you. This
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  makes you aware of sort of the type of personality that you need to have and the conviction of what
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  you're building to get through all of these values. It's a lot of good things too, but you ask for
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  values. So those are some. Yeah, the thing that I've learned is that the sun comes up in the
• 6:27
  morning. Like literally it literally whatever happens on today tomorrow, the sun's still going to
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  come up. Talk talk a little bit about guys that you have that you've had along the way because a
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  lot of this this this game is understanding the need or having the ability to be coachable.
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  Knowing that you don't know all the things that you don't know. Who are some of those people or
• 6:53
  some of those organizations that have helped you along the way? So it's it's funny because
• 7:00
  one of the main things that I speak about now and what I what I attribute a lot of my success to
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  is reverse engineering what has worked for other people. So that blip that I mentioned where I
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  thought I was the best of the best and I'm moving from corporate to building my own consulting firm
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  and I'm going to kill it and the ego that ego actually didn't exist in a lot of my career before
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  or after that moment because in my career, I actually I actually was very coachable and I started
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  to develop the concept of reverse engineering success in my career meaning I would look at I mean
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  there's there's countless people because when you think about reverse engineering success there's
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  people that are direct mentors and there's people that you're also just studying from afar that
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  don't even know you exist but you're seeing for example VP or director or team leader manager
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  how do they get to where they are and how can you emulate those steps I mean how will you level up
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  and take new courses maybe this particular company doesn't move people along and give them
• 7:59
  promotions as quickly as you'd like so you have to maybe go to another company but the point is
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  you're reverse engineering success and that is a coachability piece so it's humbling yourself to
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  know that you don't know what you don't know and always reverse engineering success and everything
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  that you do in your life so you mentioned specific coaches I mean I've had managers and directors that
• 8:16
  have helped me and sat down with me and mapped out my career I've had people as an entrepreneur who
• 8:20
  been mentors to me but the mindset means that I'm always my heads on a swivel all the time for the right
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  people so built a life in corporate had some success moved to move to entrepreneurship first version
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  of entrepreneurship for a brief second believe my own hype always a mistake quickly reverted to
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  that same mindset that had me success in corporate where it was I don't know shit I have to go learn
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  and then I started doing this reverse engineering success process again and again and again and again
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  and what that means is everything I take on it could be a podcast it could be growing a Twitter
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  audience go raise money if we building a sales campaign it could be figuring out an SEO strategy
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  for my site it could be figuring out what subject lines work to have the highest open rates whether
• 9:04
  or not these people know it because this is the best thing about the internet YouTube podcasts or
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  whether they do know it and I've reached out to them sat down with them and I coffee with them I
• 9:13
  unpack everything they've done at the stage of business that I've done that I'm at and I will map
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  out those steps and I will incorporate it as a first try at what I'm building so I will go to
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  YouTube or I'll talk to somebody and I'll figure out for example I'm running an email campaign or an
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  email sequence to get my first customers okay what tools did they use where's the database of
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  contacts how do they get open rates how did they get click through rates what is a copy in their
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  emails for example what's their ICP ideal customer profile slash avatar what's the buyer persona
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  and I will map out these things that other people have already figured out incorporate them and
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  I'll do that across the spectrum of like business activities that I'm taking on and that's worked
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  out very well and I think that that bridges the gap from where you're at to where you want to be
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  it makes it so it's less opaque it makes it so that you have at least again the first version
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  of what you're trying to build you have a good thesis as to what will work because you're modeling
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  it after someone else's experience and insight so I think that that's you ask for specific mentors
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  but I think that that mindset is more important because it doesn't force somebody to get a coffee
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  meeting with somebody who sold a company for a hundred million dollars. I love that and it's
• 10:22
  almost like you're reading my notes that's a gray segue into I'm not talking about the great
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  minds right like this is yeah yeah yeah so valleys right we we've talked a little bit about valleys
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  let's talk talk about peaks right so you're talking about how your reverse engineering to get to
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  success so what are some of those successes that you've had as an entrepreneur so far so I mean
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  right now I'm building a podcast too which is done quite well I learned from people like
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  John Lee Doomass with entrepreneurs on fire I've there's there's a great book I'm blanking on
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  the name of it now and I read it a couple years ago on how to on how to structure great interview
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  questions I'm trying to think my my social strategy so for example the podcast growth which is I
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  consider this like a big success of mine that's why I'm sort of giving you the rundown the podcast
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  growth has all been focused on okay how do I create great Twitter content that gets shared great
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  threads content great YouTube content I'm studying for example maybe I'm studying diary of a CEO
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  and seeing how he structures his videos on YouTube or how he puts together his thumbnails so I mean
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  the podcast and what I've built which is a very large business podcast is the most recent that's
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  the most recent sort of outcome of reverse engineering other people's successes and applying it to
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  the thing that I'm building myself my last company it was called Swift was a broadcast software
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  company that was acquired now almost five years ago and that was a B2B enterprise software
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  company and we focused on selling software to broadcasters and that was a massive success so I mean
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  a lot of the sales strategies a lot of the product strategy a lot of the positioning a lot of
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  identifying the the ideal customer profile we were selling to a lot of that was a first engineering
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  other people who were in the B2B enterprise software space and deploying some of their insights
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  and strategies to to my own business so I mean those are the most recent two business wins
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  I'm trying to think what else like every this is another thing people take for granted too and I'm
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  doing it I'm doing it live like every single thing that we that I've built is a win in it of itself
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  and I think that actually people don't talk about mindset people don't categorize and remember
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  their wins enough they always remember the valleys which is interesting but I mean if I've grown
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  an audience on Instagram that's a win if I post a post that goes viral that's a win so I mean
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  every single day we have like hundreds of wins we just only focus on the big things I've applied
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  this to relationship I mean I have a great relationship with my girlfriend now I've looked at things
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  that have worked and haven't worked and other people's relationships reverse engineered those so that
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  I have a relationship and I'm with the person that I love and care about and cherish I think that's
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  also very important I've applied it to my own health and wellness so I reverse engineered how
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  other people eat and other people work out and tested and iterated so that I can sort of achieve
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  like the the ideal body and look and shape and health that I want so there's been tons of wins
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  across my life that have that I can like seriously attribute to this basically I think almost
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  every win has been some version of reverse engineering something as a first pass and then improving
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  on it yeah it's a couple of things that I want to hit on that you said number one remembering your
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  wins I tell my daughter all the time she's a dance competitive dance and sometimes in her division
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  they'll be you know sometimes there's four teams that they're up against sometimes there's eight
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  sometimes there's two and I always try to tell her that it doesn't matter if you're the only two
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  teams in the division first place this first place celebrate the win like it might not have as
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  much a way to as if there's 25 people but celebrate every single win and don't disqualify
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  don't disqualify your wins so I think that's important from a both a mindset perspective and you
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  know using my sports analogy just saying the ball go through the net you know great great shooters
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  it doesn't matter if it's a layup slam dunk or a three point or a free throw actually see the ball
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  go through the net so you know why it's so important it so I'll tell you just I just want to like
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  just drive this point home it's so important because as humans if you look at the way like CNN
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  and MSNBC and Fox and the way they position news it's always negative right the reason why is
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  negative sticks in your brain and I'm sure there's a there's a science reason or a biological reason
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  or a fight or flight or a reptilian brain reason as to why negative imprints but it does and as
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  humans we're really bad I'm remembering the good and we're really good I'm remembering the bad
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  so when that negative imprints on our brains it demolishes our self confidence and I think that the
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  one thing that entrepreneurs have to have an insane amount of is delusional self confidence because
• 15:11
  when you start something and you build something from scratch especially on day one of course over
• 15:16
  time the odds start to turn in your favor because you evolve as a person you upskill and you iterate
• 15:20
  and you learn through your failures but day one I mean the odds are against you like when they say
• 15:26
  that 90 whatever 5% 99% of entrepreneurs fail these are real stats regardless of how you how you
• 15:34
  hash them out and and look at this source of that source it's not like the majority of entrepreneurs
• 15:40
  win on the first thing they built so if you don't if you don't stack your wins and you don't pay
• 15:46
  attention to them it's it's almost like why would I be building this thing the odds are against
• 15:50
  me and I can remember all the bad stuff that happened to me over my career who am I to try and build
• 15:55
  that thing so it's really important like it's more important than we actually realize to to remember
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  who how we've won every single day how we've won this week last week last month last quarter
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  so that we can keep going so that we can have a little bit of delusion and continuing to go because
• 16:11
  at the end of the day the point is how do you stay in the game long enough to win because if you stay
• 16:15
  in the game long enough you will win but most people do not stay in the game long enough podcast
• 16:19
  that something ridiculous like most podcasts only have like five episodes out of the millions of
• 16:24
  podcasts it's not hard if you stay in the game most people are smart enough if they something
• 16:29
  doesn't work they're gonna change it they're gonna optimize it they're gonna prove it they're
• 16:33
  gonna iterate they're gonna ideate they're gonna figure it out they stay in the game the point is
• 16:37
  you have to stay in the game so how do you do that how do you structure your mindset and your life
• 16:40
  so you can stay in the game as long as possible yeah i love that um you know you're going back to
• 16:45
  the cool eight man analogy it looks really fun from the outside looking games like wow cool eight man
• 16:51
  burst through the brick wall and now he's saying oh yeah but two two things number one i don't know if
• 16:56
  you you had the the pictures back in the back in the day but the the pictures made a glass so that
• 17:02
  that's the first thing so you have to you have to think okay well how is this glass picture breaking
• 17:07
  through the wall in the first place um the the reason is because he's and i'm using this analogy to
• 17:13
  compare entrepreneurship is you've broken it so many times that now you've built up a resistance to
• 17:19
  the bricks and that allows you to be able to break through the wall because you banged your head so
• 17:25
  many different times and so many different ways that now you know how to break through the wall um
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  but i'm curious to know of all the things that you could have built and that you have built
• 17:35
  why build a podcast because a podcast has longevity it has the ability to build trust it has the
• 17:40
  ability to turn yourself into a media channel and that you're you are becoming your own media channel
• 17:46
  so when you try and build a company you will make money quicker building a company selling a product
• 17:51
  then starting a podcast uh which is great but i think that the future belongs to people that own
• 17:57
  media so that's why you see people like Gary Vaynerchuk who built a massive media brand being able
• 18:02
  to launch companies overnight against that media brand so it gives you a ton of leverage when you
• 18:07
  are starting something new that normally you would have to pay for so the goal was start to build
• 18:13
  something now that i enjoy and there's all these incillery benefits i mean the relationships we're
• 18:17
  chatting for an hour we're gonna know a little bit more about each other than if we just consume
• 18:21
  content on social media so not only am i building an immense amount of trust with you and like the 500
• 18:27
  other people that i've done podcasts with and keep in mind these are not small time people so i don't
• 18:31
  know everyone you've had on your show but i'm sure there's some massive entrepreneurs i've
• 18:35
  had some pretty cool people on my show then you're like damn i would not have had access to that
• 18:40
  person if i didn't have this outlet to engage with them chat with them build a relationship with
• 18:45
  them so not only are you getting this first of all we're both selfish you and me are both selfish
• 18:49
  because we are sitting down and learning from the most interesting people on earth for like an hour
• 18:54
  once or twice a week i mean yeah i'm making content i i i get paid to i get paid to put out content
• 19:00
  and i build an audience and in theory to pay for a future product but also i'm getting a masterclass
• 19:05
  straight from the person which is unheard of right what's what's that access worth i mean i for
• 19:10
  example i've interviewed like a co-founder of Netflix could i ask the co-founder like mark Randolph
• 19:16
  to sit down and have a coffee with me he would probably like 300 emails you know every two hours
• 19:21
  asking him to sit down and have a coffee so no i could not so this is a this is a this is a
• 19:27
  an upskilling tool for me it's growing a media channel that pays not enough not enough not as much
• 19:33
  as a business would i mean we're not Joe Rogan but it pays so it does take care of itself it's fine
• 19:40
  it's a nice hobby it allows me to network with cool people and then it builds a community it builds
• 19:44
  a community of people and i do believe that podcasting because it is long form it's not short form
• 19:49
  it's not it's not stripped of all the context it's not whittled down to 30 to 45 seconds
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  i believe it is one of the highest trust building pieces of content that you can put out on social
• 20:00
  and when you can build trust on social that's when i believe you win and that is when you not just
• 20:05
  have a group of followers you have a community that you can actually you can actually galvanize them
• 20:11
  to help you launch a new brand or a new product or literally anything right so i've started my
• 20:16
  first podcast that took six plus years to get it to where it is right now now i'm launching a
• 20:20
  second show i'm launching it my i've launched a second show launched a newsletter i do a
• 20:25
  couple other things but everything already has an audience that i can test ideas against and if
• 20:30
  it works i have an audience that i could inferry sell to so it's just a smart play it like it checks
• 20:35
  all the boxes and it compounds too right so if i do this for 30 years as long as i get better
• 20:42
  i bring in better guess maybe i upgrade my production value i figure out how to market
• 20:47
  slightly better my clips are better my newsletters about the podcast are slightly better like i'm
• 20:52
  always learning as a marketer too i can take these skills i can apply them to any business i
• 20:55
  launch in the future but the show is just going to keep growing i mean if you're good at what you do
• 21:00
  you're going to just compound over time so it's really like a flywheel of a of a of a of a process
• 21:06
  that you've built around all the marketing everything can keep growing the audience and the benefits
• 21:12
  will never end you're just going to attract more and more people to your community because at the
• 21:17
  end of the day um a lot of people that build companies that are not significant say you build a
• 21:23
  company that's worth ten million dollars it's significant to you but if you sell that company
• 21:28
  and you want to start a new company most people do not know who you are after you sell a ten
• 21:33
  million dollar company or even a five million dollar company i would even say there's some 50
• 21:36
  million dollar companies that no one's ever heard of so what i'm doing i'm preemptively creating
• 21:41
  an audience in a community that can make that next thing a little bit easier yeah i love that i
• 21:46
  couldn't have said that any better myself i happen to believe uh scott that if you are an entrepreneur
• 21:52
  you need a website you don't you need a podcast period you just do um so one thing that you said
• 21:58
  that that stuck that struck me was uh where we're selfish and some most people would hear that
• 22:04
  and say well i'm not selfish but i believe that selfish is the road to selfless because if i don't
• 22:12
  know who i am if i'm not taking care of elzy physically mentally spiritually socially emotionally
• 22:19
  i am literally no good to anyone else so talk about that a little bit how how you've been able to
• 22:25
  master scott and show up as the best possible version of yourself and how that makes you a better
• 22:32
  partner a better entrepreneur and a better person so i say that it's selfish because i'll talk about
• 22:37
  the podcast in particular that we can expand but when i interview somebody i'm selfish because i
• 22:43
  want to learn from that person but i also know that the best businesses are built when the founder
• 22:49
  is the ideal avatar or ideal customer because if you have a problem in your life and you build a
• 22:54
  business to solve it there will be other people that have that problem what that means in a podcast
• 22:59
  context is if i am selfish and i want to extract the most juicy interesting information about the
• 23:05
  people that i interview and i enjoy the conversation and i and i learn something from them and i'm
• 23:10
  the avatar i know that other people are going to also enjoy that content and i know that other people
• 23:15
  are also going to find that useful so the more i care i i love the way you said it i've never heard
• 23:21
  it said like that before but the more selfish you are more selfless you end up being is because you
• 23:27
  actually are understanding how you tick and then you are basically you're you're broadcasting that
• 23:33
  out to a whole bunch of other people that are going to find the same stuff that you find useful useful
• 23:37
  to them now in other areas i think selfish can be misinterpreted and i don't want to say that i
• 23:44
  mean in a relationship i think i'm less focused on so yeah i would say that i'm selfish in the sense
• 23:50
  that i'm self-aware of what i need and i'm being honest about that and me and the partner
• 23:57
  and the girlfriend or the spouse or the wife or the boyfriend or the husband or whatever
• 24:02
  if you if you aren't selfish enough to look inside and understand what you need
• 24:08
  you will always be unhappy and miserable and then you are doing a disservice to someone else
• 24:12
  so i think that you do have to be self-aware and you have to look inside and you have to be honest
• 24:16
  about what you want now i don't think that means that um you aren't serving the other person
• 24:21
  and you aren't also listening to what they're saying but i think that a lot of people don't even
• 24:25
  know what they want in their own life and they're just sort of coasting through life so i think that
• 24:29
  a little bit i think selfish the term gets a bad rap i think probably self-awareness is probably a
• 24:34
  better version but regardless whatever it is like look inside and figure out how you can be happy
• 24:40
  and then architect a life around that i'll give you a very good example like if you if you want
• 24:45
  kids and that's what will make you happy and your partner doesn't want kids and this is not a real
• 24:51
  example so don't don't worry this is not like it this is not what's happening in my life we're both
• 24:55
  very much on the same page but if say that isn't example and i'm sure that's an example for a lot of
• 24:59
  people so is it selfish to want kids i i don't think so but i would say that you probably should have
• 25:05
  been aware of that going into the relationship so that maybe this isn't the person for you
• 25:11
  because now you're both going to have conflict and you're both going to have and i'm not a
• 25:15
  relationship therapist by any means but i just think that this is like a really smart idea at the
• 25:19
  onset i think it is itself is if you want to start a business no i don't think it's selfish but
• 25:25
  i think you're an asshole if you want to start a business and you don't tell the person that
• 25:29
  you're dating how much time you have to commit to that so that they're aware that maybe you're
• 25:34
  going to be putting in 80 hours a week into this business and you're going to be traveling a lot
• 25:38
  and they're not going to see you so like maybe that selfish self-awareness combined with radical
• 25:44
  candor and great communication skills is really the answer so that you're not with somebody because
• 25:49
  kids to somebody will be selfish if they don't want kids kids to another person will be exactly
• 25:53
  what they want so maybe if your selfish aligns that's okay right i don't know the i don't know if
• 25:59
  that's the best way to say it but i think that's probably i think that people have to have if
• 26:04
  they take away is like be more self-aware a lot of people are i think really lacking that that
• 26:10
  self-awareness and i think that that's why a lot of people end up unhappy or fighting or divorce
• 26:14
  rates are whatever 50 plus percent because they wake up when they're 45 and they're like
• 26:21
  i'm in a job i don't like i'm in a relationship i don't like or it's not bad but i should have been
• 26:26
  more selfish and then what happens then so what's worse being selfish at the beginning or being
• 26:30
  selfish when you're 45 50 55 60 when you already have kids and you're blowing up your marriage
• 26:34
  in your house so right yeah the the way i like to think about a scot is selfish and i'm one of those
• 26:39
  people that i mean i get that at some point some at some point in time somebody said that this is
• 26:45
  the definition of stuff and we call and put it in a book and said okay this is the the definition
• 26:51
  but selfish to me is a is it is an identifier i'll give you an example of what i mean so if i'm
• 26:57
  selfish i wake up in the morning the most important thing is that i wake up in the morning because
• 27:02
  if i wake up in the morning then it nothing else really matters and if i don't wake up brush my
• 27:08
  teeth you know get dressed and have the right mindset about things then i'm literally no good to
• 27:16
  anyone now the the key is is being self-aware of what that what the motivation is now if i'm only
• 27:23
  doing that because i only care about me it doesn't matter what my wife thinks my kids my team members
• 27:30
  then maybe that's the you know the the wrong side of selfishness right but if i'm doing it because
• 27:36
  i want to show up better for them and by doing that now i'm a fantastic husband i'm a fantastic
• 27:42
  entrepreneur and so i become self-liss simply because of the motivation of my selfishness i like that
• 27:47
  a lot but i think that that's where communication comes in because for example i i may need to
• 27:53
  go to the gym every morning and my business partner doesn't get why i don't want to jump on a
• 27:58
  9 a.m. call well it's because that's my time when i have to gym and if i don't gym i'm not going to
• 28:03
  have the same energy levels i'm going to be distracted throughout the day so yeah you're being selfish
• 28:08
  for the right reasons but optics still matter so i think that this is where i think this is where
• 28:13
  that radical candor and that communication sort of finished the loop because selfish for the
• 28:18
  purpose of selflessness if it's misinterpreted serves no one so i think that's where you really
• 28:22
  have to bridge that gap and that's where i mean i mean this is this is like sort of like a cliche
• 28:27
  but yeah you have to be a good communicator in relationships or they're going to fall apart right
• 28:32
  oh yeah yeah and that really speaks to no matter what what area of life right as entrepreneurs as
• 28:40
  as partners we communication is key what what are some of the things that that you've done to
• 28:45
  to get better at communicating because because again i have this this this emit formula or principle
• 28:50
  that i that i teach it's um it's i don't have a formula you're probably better than me you can you
• 28:54
  can teach this part if you want it's called education times motivation times inspiration equals
• 29:02
  your level of transformation in other words if i'm inspired to do something but i don't i'm not
• 29:08
  educated about it i'm not going to get very far but if i'm educated on something and i'm motivated
• 29:13
  but i'm not inspired to do it i'm again i'm not going to get very far but if i'm you know very
• 29:19
  educated don't have the motivation you get the point um and so that's what i but what i'm saying it
• 29:24
  if transformation if selfish or selflessness is the transformation that you want to achieve
• 29:31
  then if you apply that emit formula it gets you there because now you know the motivation piece
• 29:35
  right because if again if your motivation is is only about you then that's the only transformation
• 29:41
  that you're going to going to achieve um maybe that's the outcome you want for some people it is
• 29:46
  all they want is to make as much money as they want to make and they really don't care about
• 29:50
  anybody else all right they still have a level of transformation maybe it's not ideal for somebody
• 29:54
  else but i think it's important to know you know that that motivation piece if the if the motivation
• 29:59
  is to be a transformational leader for example then you have to educate yourself on how do i
• 30:06
  communicate that how do i set boundaries how do i communicate those boundaries how do i keep
• 30:11
  to those boundaries and enforce those boundaries and so i think i think again understanding the
• 30:16
  motivation the outcomes and applying that that framework um that's helped me oh oh over the years
• 30:22
  so i am far less um formulaic and how i communicate with people however i love this i love that
• 30:31
  i love i love framework i'll tell you what works for me so i believe that uh most things in life
• 30:38
  that you want are on the other side of difficult conversations so i apply sort of two concepts so
• 30:44
  i think it's a male robins rule if i'm not mistaken called the five second rule so if i have to have
• 30:49
  a difficult conversation with somebody the biggest issue is getting into the conversation
• 30:55
  because you're going to push it off forever so the male robins rule i could be misquoting this
• 31:00
  is if you wait more than five seconds you will start to manifest all these different reasons as
• 31:06
  to why you shouldn't do it and you'll justify delaying and dragging your feet so it's do it
• 31:10
  immediately and this is not just for tough communications this is for like going for a run or going
• 31:14
  to the gym or whatever in your life like tough things do immediately um i try and do them when i'm
• 31:20
  fresh in the morning and i try and have tough conversations uh and radical radically candidate
• 31:25
  conversations live in person over the phone or on zoom i try and not do it by text email because
• 31:32
  i think a lot of nuance is lost so it's do it immediately call the person have a tough conversation
• 31:37
  and then you can schedule follow up but that to me is worked very well um because it just forces you
• 31:42
  to take action in the most humanly empathetic way possible and that's again there's a lot of
• 31:47
  communication points we have throughout the day but i think those ones the this this isn't working
• 31:52
  for whatever reason you screwed up this project we have to let you go um i was i didn't feel respected
• 31:59
  for whatever reason maybe you're talking to a partner maybe it's a breakup whatever it is please
• 32:03
  don't do that over the phone but if you have to do it um as in person as possible and as live as
• 32:08
  possible and as immediately as possible is very important i think that's really the best way to have
• 32:13
  like these really really career changing life changing needle moving conversations yeah yeah so
• 32:20
  as we wrap up Scott what are what are the the couple to take away is that you want to leave with people
• 32:26
  as we think about mindset communication and how to upskill and think about the best way to
• 32:33
  get better as entrepreneurs damn that's uh that's a loaded question you just got like five different
• 32:39
  topics that could all be their own podcast bro you got everything in that question um let's see
• 32:46
  so what to leave the audience with so a couple of things that i really subscribe to that i think
• 32:50
  are very useful when you're going into something find a way to set yourself up mentally and
• 32:56
  financially to stick with it for a long time and my rule is 10 years so psychologically and
• 33:01
  financially find your way to commit to something for 10 years and that could mean financially in
• 33:05
  particular uh not quitting your job when you first start before you find product market fit uh but
• 33:09
  the point is you want to keep that thing going for an unreasonable amount of time so that you can
• 33:14
  learn and you can iterate and you can win because if you can find a way to do it for 10 years i
• 33:17
  guarantee you you'll be some version of successful and that is not a lot of time in the grand scheme
• 33:21
  of life the second thing would be i love i love what we spoke about before about just about paying
• 33:27
  attention to your wins because that gives you the confidence you need to succeed um and that also
• 33:31
  allows you to stick with it for 10 years and lastly there's no there's no thing that you are trying
• 33:38
  to figure out for 99.9999% of entrepreneurs it has not been figured out before unless you're
• 33:43
  putting somebody on Mars and i don't think i'm talking to Elon if you listen to this show that's
• 33:47
  great but there's a lot of things that people over complicate business is very difficult it's hard
• 33:53
  work and it's going to be hard work whether or not you reverse engineer someone else's success
• 33:57
  or you try and figure it out all in your own which is stupid but i get it some of us do it anyways
• 34:01
  but it's going to be a lot of hard work but it's it's not as complicated like it's not as complicated
• 34:06
  as many people make it out to be so anything you want to figure out there's a podcast there's a
• 34:10
  YouTube video there's a book the word that i love uh it's auto-diedact it's a self-taught person
• 34:16
  just dive into being a self-taught person being an auto-diedact and the rest usually takes care
• 34:21
  of itself so i think those would be and also i'll say one last thing on mindset so i just
• 34:25
  wrap this up the reason why i speak about mindset and i think that we're very much on the same page
• 34:29
  is because there are two camps of thought leaders in the world right now there are people that are
• 34:34
  very tactical that will teach you how to optimize uh say a Facebook marketing campaign or
• 34:40
  SEO on your site i won't name names doesn't really matter but there's a tactical business thought
• 34:44
  leader or or or subject matter expert and then there's the mindset person that focuses on mindset
• 34:51
  and doesn't really speak about tactics too much and i think the issue is that we look at these
• 34:56
  two groups we look at the tactical person and we look at the mindset person and as a new entrepreneur
• 35:02
  we subscribe to one or the other and the issue is that you need both you need both of those things
• 35:07
  to be successful because you will not build a good business without learning how to run that
• 35:11
  successful Facebook marketing campaign at a two to three x row as a return on aspen and you also
• 35:16
  will not stay in the game long enough if you don't understand the mindset that allow like the grit
• 35:21
  the perseverance that allows you to stay in the game long enough mentally after the motivation runs out
• 35:27
  so merge the two worlds understand the importance of both because anybody like literally
• 35:33
  anybody you look at look up to think is a a great example of entrepreneurship whoever that person is
• 35:40
  incorporates both into their life they may not know what they may not speak about it but they do
• 35:44
  so hopefully you don't have to learn it's a hard way understand mindset tactics combine them together
• 35:50
  stick with it for long enough period of time that's how you win awesome and well i appreciate the time
• 35:54
  and the insight that sharing the knowledge and experience and hopefully this is the last time
• 36:00
  that that we uh we communicate and talk on on on the show i'm down to Miami man Milwaukee's cold
• 36:07
  i don't know if maybe i'll stop by next time i go visit home but like if you're in Miami we'll do
• 36:10
  another one all right out i'm gonna hold you to that all right talk soon
• 36:24
  can i do that