Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Reverse Engineer Your Success Strategies for Sustainable Personal & Career Growth (The Leap Academy)

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Reverse Engineer Your Success Strategies for Sustainable Personal & Career Growth (The Leap Academy) · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Scott Clary, welcome to the show. You are an entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster.
• 0:20
  Everybody wants it. You will do what it takes. Scott, what does it take?
• 0:26
  I appreciate you having me on. What does it take? That's such an important question.
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  In career, in entrepreneurship, it could be fitness, it could be relationship.
• 0:37
  We talk about career and entrepreneurship, but what does it take is the big question
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  to succeed at anything in life. We don't need to be so siloed and myopic in some of
• 0:47
  these lessons, because what it takes is committing to it for an unreasonable amount of time.
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  If you take nothing else away, that is the most important thing. You can apply that again
• 0:59
  to your career. You can apply that to your business. You can apply that to losing weight
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  and looking good. You can apply that to the relationship.
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  It sounds so cliche, but for some reason we forget this fact very quickly. I think that
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  in 2024 and beyond, we're getting programmed to want instant gratification even quicker
• 1:19
  and quicker and quicker in the way that we consume information and the way that we learn
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  and the way that we interact. The world is getting more efficient, which is great in terms
• 1:30
  of the gig economy and how we can get basically anything at our door immediately, or the fact
• 1:36
  that we are now programmed to enjoy 15 to 30 second clips on social media. Everything
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  is quicker and now, but true progress and true quote-unquote success however you want
• 1:48
  to define that. We can define that later. None of it is quick. We have two conflicting
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  ideas. Society is telling us that we can have everything we want immediately, because
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  that's what technology and innovation does. Yet, the most important part of our life,
• 2:05
  which is true fulfillment in health, wellness, career and relationships, that cannot be fast
• 2:11
  track. It cannot be something that can be flip a switch overnight. It's getting harder
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  and harder to understand the amount of work required to get to where you want to go because
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  the rest of the world is not set up to reinforce that mindset.
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  And what you just said Scott, to me, is so, so, so fundamental because we all are looking
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  at all these amazing success stories and thinking about them as an overnight success, right?
• 2:41
  And patience is incredibly hard for high achievers driven because I want that. I want that.
• 2:48
  How do I get that? I mean, you have what? 1.7 million followers. I want that, Mr. Scott.
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  So how do you continue when everybody looks like it's always looking up and it's incredibly
• 3:03
  hard?
• 3:04
  Yeah, because the secret is being able to continue, right? Because nothing's going to be easy.
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  Everything worth having is not going to be easy to the secret. The question that has to
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  be asked is how do you continue, which is a great question. So my version of being able
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  to continue is it would be threefold. The first thing would be I would probably want to
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  say I'll commit 10 years of my life to this thing because if I can commit 10 years of
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  my life to this thing and I can build feedback loops and I can learn from my failures and
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  I can iterate and I can improve and I can pivot. I know that anything worth building
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  usually after doing it for 10 years will be pretty good at that thing. So for me, when
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  I was 20, I was like, I'm going to commit at the beginning 10 years of my life to working
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  in private industry, working in tech. And if that doesn't work, then I'm going to go
• 3:54
  back to law school and that's my safety net. So I commit an extraordinarily, not extraordinarily.
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  I think it's a reasonable amount of time, but for most people, they probably think 10
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  years is a long time, but I think it's a reasonable amount of time given how long we live.
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  So 10 years. The second thing that I do that allows me to keep going is I have become exceptionally
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  good at reverse engineering success. What does that mean? So I look at the person that
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  has achieved what I want to achieve and I will study the shit out of them and reverse
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  engineer every single step they took to get there. I do that when I'm looking towards say
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  a physique that I want in the gym or a relationship that I want to model or the size of my business
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  or the amount of money I want to make, I reverse every step they've taken. And when I first
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  started my career, that was looking at a director or a VPN company and reverse engineering
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  that when I started to build businesses, I would reverse engineer, how do you basically
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  land your first 50 customers? If I want to excel or succeed on social media, I'll look
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  at, for example, say a business influence or on Twitter that's maybe five years ahead
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  of me and reverse engineer, how he creates his content, the type of audience that he's speaking
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  to every little thing. So it's not just at a macro level, at a micro level, our reverse
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  engineer, every single step to get me to where I want to go in that particular short-term
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  goal or long-term goal. And the third thing that I've always thought through is, and I would
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  love to figure out maybe you can even get feedback on this because obviously you've done it in your
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  career as well, I have an unreasonable amount of trust in myself figuring things out. And that
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  gives me the confidence to commit to something for 10 years and to reverse engineer and execute
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  on the steps of someone else has taken. So I've thought about this a lot because I think that
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  the third piece, the unreasonable amount of trust in you executing, I think that intuitively what
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  I've done over my career is I've remembered the wins that I've had, the small wins and the large
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  wins, and I've almost categorized and itemized them so when shit doesn't go right, I still remember
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  all the times when I won. I think if you not just intuitively did it but consciously did it and
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  consciously tracked all the times you win in your life, I think you start to trust yourself a
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  lot more. The reason why it's so important to track them is because the emotional event, the
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  thing sticks in your mind is the massive negative loss and you don't remember all the positive wins.
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  So a massive negative loss like a business failure or you get screwed on a deal or whatever,
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  it really can jeopardize the trust that you place in yourself, which I think can throw people off.
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  So to have constant belief in what you can accomplish and to trust yourself to figure it out,
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  you need to have those positive wins and those positive reinforcement thoughts is I don't want
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  to make it sound corny, but it really does help. So when something doesn't work out or when you're
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  dealing with shit right now, like you can't make payroll or you're getting sued or whatever negative
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  event, you're like, listen, I've won like 10,000 times in the past year. Fine, I'll take an L here,
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  but it doesn't really matter because I just need to win another 10,000 times to get to the next level.
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  And those three things I think really allow me to keep going and pursue these super audacious goals.
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  I think there was some really incredible insights here that I want to make sure everybody's
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  listening to it because first of all, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year. So we
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  always have this little bit of a, I didn't make it, I didn't make it, a little bit of a disappointment,
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  but then we underestimate what we can do in a decade. So we never get started, right? And I think
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  most humans just never really get started because they see these visions of success and they're like,
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  that's not going to be me. So I love the fact that you said a lot of it is just continuing in success
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  does leaves clues. And I think that's the big thing that people don't even look back. You are
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  reversing engineering and seeing all these things, success leaves clues. If you actually going to
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  watch them, you can have a lot more clarity to continue moving, right? So I think these were
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  really incredible distinctions. I appreciate that it's got.
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  No, I think that it's less scary when you start to go down this rabbit hole. And for example,
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  start with something small. So if you want to, for example, learn how to create better content
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  on social, a lot of creators, they'll walk through their creative process. And like a lot of
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  entrepreneurs will walk through how they did X or accomplish why people are not that opaque.
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  Very few people are that guarded about what they do to achieve their success. So if you want to
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  figure out and create better content, pick a platform, you want to be better on Twitter or
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  Instagram, doesn't matter. Say you're a business person will look at somebody else's creating
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  content in your niche, look at the person's creating the best content in your niche,
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  maybe study a hundred of their posts just by scrolling through understanding everything from
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  the type of stuff they speak about the format. Is it real? Is it carousel? Is it in feed static
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  image? What type of copy to put in the comments? Who are the people that are interacting with the
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  post and then go on YouTube and type in prolific creator? How do they create content? And there's
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  going to be like five podcasts with them talking about how they create their content and their
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  thought process. Maybe they'll say, Hey, when I first started, I was using this website for
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  inspiration or maybe I was using something like answer the public, which is a great tool that
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  allows you to see certain phrases that are high volume search terms. And I was finding high volume
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  search terms that I knew were going to really hit home and not create content around those because
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  I knew people were super inquisitive about these topics. Whatever it is, they're going to talk
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  about their process. And I've done that stuff too. Like what I just what I just mentioned.
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  And I got that from Neil Patel, who's a massive business influencer marketer, really focused on
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  SEO. So yeah, successfully tons of clues. You just got to do the research. A lot of people just
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  don't want to do the research. And you need to trust yourself. So I think that's another really,
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  really good piece because I think Brandon Dawson was a person that asked me at some point. And he's
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  been mentored by John Maxwell and other really incredible people. And he's like, do you trust
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  yourself? And the truth is I do. So everything becomes easier when you're reflecting back and you're
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  saying, you know what? I know I'm going to make it happen. Now the only question is how far? How
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  high? How fast? These are the questions. And when you change the questions, everything shifts
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  because it's not, will it work for me? But how far can I go? And I think that commitment of 10
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  years that you're doing to yourself. I think it's brilliant because you have to change the questions.
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  And the other thing that you should find a way to do is find a way to do the thing for 10 years.
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  What does that mean? It means that maybe the first version of it isn't quitting your job.
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  Maybe the first version of it is finding your first two, three, four, five customers while you're
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  still working full time. So understand the time horizon that it would take. The amount of time
• 11:00
  it'll take and architect your life so that you can do that. It's not as complicated as people
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  think it is. The version of entrepreneur that people first think of if they're going to start
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  their own thing is, well, I'm not a Stanford dropout and I'm not building a multi trillion dollar
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  company. So what am I doing trying to build my own thing? The most successful version of entrepreneurship,
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  the one that is not really talked about and is not really sexy and is not covered in anchor,
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  fortune or Forbes is statistically the person who has worked in industry for 30 years and they see
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  a problem in that industry that no one else would ever know about and they build a solution to
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  that problem and it's so niche. Riches are in the niches, right? But that is a version of entrepreneurship
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  that actually has a very high success rate versus the shoot from the hip build a SaaS startup.
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  You know, I'm 25. I know nothing about basically anything. I'm just a developer and I'm going to
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  try and build something from scratch. Yeah, sure. It can work. That's your 99 plus percent failure rate,
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  right? So people have to redefine entrepreneurship as well. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
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  It doesn't have to be when you're 25. It doesn't have to be quit your job and hope you make it and
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  figure it out in three months. It has to be building something that's your own that has the ability to
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  make a massive amount of wealth. And by a massive amount could be a million, a million five a year
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  which is going to set you up and also help you think differently than somebody who's just
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  worked at W295. So you can understand how to leverage how to create scale, how to invest.
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  All these different things that just set you up for, in my opinion, a better life because you're
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  forced to learn these things. That's a version of entrepreneurship that anybody can get behind
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  eventually. So it doesn't have to be an all or nothing and it doesn't have to be an IPO or even
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  a hundred million dollar company. It can be something much much more comfortable. And I think that
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  it should be something much more comfortable because I also don't think the version of entrepreneurship
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  where you're working 80 hours a week for five hundred thousand dollars a year is fun and what most
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  people want. But also the version of entrepreneurship where you're running a billion dollar company is
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  also what funny enough most people would not want. So you have to also know as an individual what
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  your North Star is and what your life looks like and what balance you want and you want more time
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  with your kids. What is your life? So don't just chase after like this cliche version of entrepreneurship
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  and it's also very important. I think that is such a great point to really understand. And we put
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  a lot of focus and leap academy about what is your clarity? What are you even trying to achieve?
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  Right? It's not just a paycheck. What is the life that you're creating with it? And for me the
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  big distinction is also I believe people will start creating more portfolio careers which is
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  somewhat of what you're describing, right? It's like I might have this thing incorporate right now
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  but I'm going to start advising and mentoring and getting some equity here and there and now I see
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  a problem and I'm going to start creating that too and that and you started to create this incredible
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  life of diversity and that is also aligned with what you want to achieve in life and your level of
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  success. But you also touched something and I have to go back to that because you mentioned massive
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  loss and as much as I want to paint the vision of everything is pink and roses it never is
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  there's a lot more. Of course I'm talking about doing something for 10 years. It's not like that's
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  fun. It's not like it's easy for 10 years. So share a massive loss. Can you share something personal
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  that you felt like shaped you or something that was really challenging? Well a couple things
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  I've started a fair amount of companies that you will never hear about because they're not successful.
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  Those are all losses like if if you don't see me actively talking and not not everything that I've
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  done in the past there have been obviously some wins but if I don't talk about it on the podcast
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  and you don't see it on my LinkedIn there's a good chance. I lost a lot of money trying to figure
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  something out. I would say that my massive losses usually come from being naive and having an ego.
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  So outside of trying to build a business it didn't work. It's funny. If you achieve success in one
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  arena as humans we have this fallacy we have this incorrect thought that we'll be good in another
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  arena. So what is most recent in my mind is moving from operator to investor. So a lot of people
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  think because they can build a good company they can also become great angel investors and that
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  is not the case. So I won't name some of the companies that failed but I've lost a fair amount
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  of money thinking that I know how to invest just because I built a good business and I thought
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  that I could translate those skills that are putting in the reps and basically without doing all
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  the steps and aligning with the right people and learning from the people that have done it before
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  that allowed me to be successful in building businesses which is silly. So I think that
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  there's never a point when you're quote unquote done and it's very easy to get humbled very quickly
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  doesn't matter what level you play at. So I think that this is a long way of saying you're never too
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  old to basically have this learning mindset. There's never a point in your career when you can just say
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  I figured it out I'm going to easily translate those skills into something else and I'm sure I'm
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  going to be fine because you could be but there's a big chance that you won't be. So a lot of it is
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  putting your ego aside regardless of what you've accomplished before. I think that's probably one of
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  the most relevant lessons that I've learned over my career. And to me what you just said I think
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  really hit home and I wish I heard that about a decade ago because one of the big things again
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  I already collected wins did some amazing things vice president oh if I know how to do this
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  I can totally do entrepreneurship right no because the thing is what got you here is not what's
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  going to take you forward right and I had the same thing with investment because in fact the fact
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  that I was a really good operator actually created a problem because instead of looking at what's
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  not good enough and where the holes and why did the team not figure this out I would run
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  immediately into the solutions oh you can do this and this and this and this and this that's
• 17:29
  exactly not what I was supposed to do. So I think really opening your eyes to that humble you know
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  getting rid of ego being let you know a little more humble and really understanding that you know
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  if you're not there and there's a set of skills and that leadership led that you're going to need
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  to move otherwise you are not getting there and I think that is a realization I wish I had.
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  I would say one more thing to this than I think this is maybe a little bit contrarian but a lot of
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  people when it comes to investing for example they say to diversify immediately it's fine to
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  diversify if you have other people who know what they're doing helping you diversify but if you are
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  at the level where you can start to invest I would say niche down with the thing that you'd know
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  better than anyone else and you have an unfair advantage in understanding how that asset can
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  perform. So what I mean by that is if you are a SaaS founder and you build a SaaS company and you
• 18:31
  exit that it would probably be good to either do an angel play in SaaS in the category that you
• 18:36
  were building or even like a private equity roll-up situation if that's viable for whatever category
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  industry that you know because when you start to diversify even in slightly adjacent industries
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  there's all these nuances that you really don't know and you can always hire people or you can
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  hope that the people you're investing in know the industry better than you but you'll always be
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  slightly at a disadvantage so the best investors that I know especially when they're first
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  starting out I'll give you an example a good friend he's in real estate and he only does the
• 19:08
  attached homes fix and flip in Ohio that's how niche he is now living in South Florida he's not
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  investing in South Florida right now he's in he's still doing Ohio and doing Ohio since he probably
• 19:20
  came down here four years ago because that's what his whole career so he knows the permit process he
• 19:24
  knows the people in the city is office and he's not a small time investor he probably has 100
• 19:29
  doors at this point which is not huge but it's definitely not starting out and he's very successful
• 19:35
  and he knows his one particular thing better than anybody else so it's funny because I'm telling
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  you that from an investor perspective as an operator in a company if I'm building a company or I'm
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  going to work at a company or I'm starting a company from scratch all I would care about is my
• 19:49
  unfair unique advantage that no one else knows about which would allow me to be successful especially
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  if I'm an entrepreneur starting a company I think that Peter Thiel calls it an earned advantage
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  or something like that but the point is the concept is you've earned over the course of your
• 20:06
  career and your knowledge and your experience maybe he's called it earned insight this super
• 20:11
  specialized unique perspective review that will allow you to be successful in building the thing
• 20:17
  that you're building that no one else really outside of the industry would ever have so that earned
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  perspective or earned advantage whatever it's called that is so important when I'm building a
• 20:29
  company why would it not be important when I'm investing in a company why would you want to put
• 20:33
  yourself at a disadvantage like stack the deck in your favor all the time and that's how you win
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  you'll see that people not very many people some will have one company those switch industries
• 20:44
  but like my favorite entrepreneurs are the people that build a company and they sell it and they
• 20:49
  wait for their non compete to expire and they know the company that acquired them is going to screw
• 20:54
  it up because a lot of acquisitions are screwed up after the required by private equity and
• 20:57
  they'll just go build the same company again why would you not why would you bother trying to
• 21:02
  figure out something else so I think that that's something that we always have to think about how can
• 21:07
  we dominate in this better than anybody else amazing so Scott what do you think are some of those
• 21:13
  moments and pivots that brought you to become that person that is entrepreneur investor author
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  300,000 subscribers 1.4 million followers what are the pivots that brought you to be here
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  one very particular pivot was when I had joined the company so my parents very risk adverse
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  think government is little risk as you possibly can have in a career so I didn't understand
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  ownership I didn't really understand that concept growing up I didn't come from a family of
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  entrepreneurs that owns something so I think that a pivot in my life or an awakening was one of the
• 21:56
  companies that I joined as an employee I was leading sales at this company but I was still like an
• 22:02
  employee they were acquired by private equity and I didn't have equity but I saw that transaction
• 22:07
  happened and I saw the payout and I'm like hmm this is interesting because as employees you have to
• 22:14
  think you got to basically be on the lookout for number one for yourself for whole career the reason
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  why I was so interested in working in tech and so interested by that acquisition or exit event
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  was because I saw the pensions that people used to have that created safety now no one has a
• 22:32
  pension very few people have pensions anymore the way that our parents or grandparents had pensions
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  meaning that in even private industry they had 70% of their best years paid out to them after
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  they retired until they died or some version of that so we don't have that anymore so I will always
• 22:50
  thinking okay if I want to retire or if I want to not work until I'm a hundred how much money do
• 22:56
  I have to have in the bank to basically retire and it was a big amount of money that basically
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  lasted me from 65 until 100 right so how do I make that kind of money and I couldn't figure it out
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  with the salary if I figured it out with the salary living in a major city even if I invested and
• 23:14
  I was smart about investing like it would still be difficult it'd be not easy I'm okay I got to
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  find a way to make a lot more money so private industry was my first foray into
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  finding some kind of position that allowed me to make enough money to retire comfortably and then
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  I saw entrepreneurship and I saw the opportunity for ownership and that just ownership in terms
• 23:33
  of equity and company but then ownership and assets and wealth creation versus just making more
• 23:39
  money and delineating your time versus the amount of money you make which is something that
• 23:46
  as a w2 that's pretty much how you value your work I put in so many hours I get so many dollars
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  so that being in the environment of entrepreneurship exit event founder made a ton of money when
• 24:01
  that was acquired I was like hmm this is something that's interesting to me this is something I'd
• 24:05
  got to figure out that's amazing and sometimes we work with clients and we basically say where do
• 24:12
  you want to be in the bracket because to make your first million you can have I don't know 10
• 24:18
  years of 100k you can have four years of 250k or you can find 10 clients that will pay you 100k
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  or 100 clients that will pay you 10k etc right like where do you want to actually be because nothing
• 24:31
  is impossible the only question of what's right for you but you also put a lot of focus on personal
• 24:37
  brand and I do want to go there for a little bit I have to believe that that's probably one
• 24:42
  of the most important skills for the future of work what made you focus on it and how do you go about
• 24:49
  it I focused on it because I didn't want to have to start from scratch every time I started a new
• 24:56
  project I'm a marketer right a marketer I'm a salesperson I'm not a technical founder I was always
• 25:03
  on the revenue generating side of a business and when I was building my last company and that was
• 25:08
  acquired at the end of COVID it was a broadcast software company and that's when I started to
• 25:13
  really understand that okay it's going to be like all the other companies that I've helped
• 25:18
  out a lot of mentoring advisory I probably worked with I'm sure about 200 different companies
• 25:23
  over my career today in different capacities paid pro bono all over the map and I was like I'm going
• 25:29
  go in I'm going to help this company scale they're going to be acquired and then I'll have another
• 25:34
  little line on my resume but if I ever want to start something from scratch nobody really knows
• 25:38
  or cares who I am I know the company is not going to IPO it's not going to be like one of those
• 25:43
  entrepreneurs that build a billion dollar company that will give you a little bit of social proof
• 25:48
  so I got to start building my name I got to start building my name so that regardless of if I start
• 25:53
  something new if I decide to do more consulting stuff if I want to go work for another company
• 25:59
  I want to have eyeballs on me so that I can reduce the friction of building anything else
• 26:05
  because if you have eyeballs on you there's already that trust built I'm looking at the Gary V model
• 26:10
  right where he has a massive audience any launches empathy wines and VaynerMedia and VaynerSports
• 26:15
  and his NFC project and whatever the model's already there I'm a good enough marketer to do all
• 26:21
  the things and that's an important point because I didn't spend 20 30 40 50 thousand dollars a
• 26:25
  month on an agency or a team to start I forced myself to learn all the things so at the beginning
• 26:33
  I'm a very big fan of forcing yourself to learn all the things from everything from
• 26:37
  copywriting audio video editing coding up websites graphic design like you pick the marketing to
• 26:43
  SEOing a website like you pick the marketing task I've done it and I always operated like that
• 26:51
  and even when I was managing in running sales teams I was like I'm going to call the customers
• 26:55
  I'm gonna jump on discovery calls I'm gonna listen to what their pain points are and why they don't
• 26:59
  want to buy from us and then after I've listened to all those then I'm gonna tell my sales team
• 27:03
  how I'd like them to function because as a leader I don't believe you can ask somebody to do
• 27:08
  something unless you've done it before which is why I have a big issue with MBAs being transplanted
• 27:12
  in and to see sweet positions I think it's usually more often than not not always a slight miss
• 27:18
  so I'm a big fan of doing the thing first I don't like people that manage from their desk
• 27:23
  I think it's a useless management style that you're completely out of touch and it is a good way
• 27:27
  to piss off good talent in a company so they respect people that do the thing before they do it
• 27:33
  for sure and it also helps you with hiring it helps you tell if somebody's full of shit when
• 27:37
  they're hiring what they've accomplished like you it just is variety reasons a really good way to
• 27:41
  lead so yeah I would do all the things myself and then I would codify them I would build systems
• 27:47
  around them and I have my own system for like how I record my podcast and how I turn that into
• 27:52
  like a hundred pieces of content I spoke about that before I can go through it quickly as well but
• 27:57
  yeah it was really just I want to build an audience and a community and the strategy I deployed
• 28:03
  was a strategy that didn't take up too much time it was a very scalable strategy it allowed
• 28:10
  me to put some thought leadership into the world it allowed me to align some really cool business
• 28:14
  leaders via podcast kind of like what we're doing now and I said I'll do this for 10 years and see
• 28:19
  what happens and I set myself up including the type of content that I create so that I could do it
• 28:25
  for 10 years and I would only do things that I could afford financially to invest in in terms of
• 28:31
  team or whatever or I could do myself that would only take as much time as I could commit because I
• 28:36
  knew again if I'm going to do it which is a issue that a lot of people have they over commit to
• 28:41
  stuff and they overspend on agency they overspend on upwork or five or they over invest 20 hours
• 28:47
  a week of it and then by month two like I can't do this anymore because I'm running out of time
• 28:51
  and I don't have time for working kids I just listen to my own strategy which is I got to find a way
• 28:56
  to build an audience for the next 10 years and the model's already proven I look at the other
• 29:01
  influencers a launch companies against their audiences and if I can effectively do that then
• 29:06
  whenever I start something new I'm going to have an audience I'm going to have trusted eyeballs
• 29:11
  looking at me that I can at least test my new product out and if it works then I can actually
• 29:16
  launch it I can sell it to them and I can save myself probably a couple hundred thousand dollars
• 29:22
  in advertising costs that was really it that was my thought process for why I started it
• 29:27
  and to me that's incredible because the truth is people will reinvent themselves and leap again
• 29:33
  we're actually seeing an accelerated pace that we've never seen before people will change
• 29:39
  function industry technology responsibility whatever it is they're going to change it every year too
• 29:45
  if not more so the truth is you can account on instead of starting from scratch again again like
• 29:51
  you said which I love you're actually reinventing yourself but you're basing this on a brand that
• 29:57
  already exists and already powerful and that is the easiest way to combat what we see in ageism
• 30:04
  sometimes in corporate ladders how do you rise above the noise and get out of the people's pile
• 30:10
  because everybody's trying to sound the same and I do remember also a time when I left corporate
• 30:17
  my identity was always tied to the title and to the company you know that was my identity and
• 30:23
  suddenly you're a nobody you don't want to be a nobody you always want to be a somebody
• 30:28
  don't think about the leverage you have over companies because traditionally employees did not
• 30:32
  have leverage over companies it was the other way around obviously now you can make an argument
• 30:37
  you're a great c-suite leader but still companies will get rid of you the second you screw something up
• 30:41
  so I've seen some great sales reps this is kind of the people that I follow and I pay attention to
• 30:46
  some great sales reps that have become influencers in their own right while working for a company
• 30:51
  some of them stay with the company some of them go on to do their own thing go on to be thought
• 30:55
  leaders go on to be asked to speak on whatever topics they can speak on outside of even being
• 31:00
  affiliated with the company and I bet if you go into the LinkedIn DMs of those people they're probably
• 31:06
  getting overwhelmed with hey can you help me on x strategy for my company so while you're working
• 31:12
  in a company you're building a brand for yourself thought leadership based on what your expertise is
• 31:18
  it's not only helping the company because now they have another voice in the market broadcasting
• 31:23
  what you're doing it looks good it's also future proofing yourself right so the company's probably
• 31:28
  not going to want to get rid of you because they're getting like media impressions through you
• 31:33
  but if they do get rid of you I remember when I first started putting stuff out most of my content
• 31:38
  was less entrepreneurship and less motivation and less upscaling and it was like very specifically
• 31:45
  sales and marketing tactical I would probably have a job offer or a consulting offer once every two
• 31:52
  three days you kind of just set yourself up for success again that's a version of entrepreneurship
• 31:57
  if you choose to build your own thing you don't need to make it into a hundred million dollar company
• 32:03
  you can just with less stress migrate from working for a company to I already have a funnel of
• 32:11
  clients which is the most beautiful thing in the world to start out with as somebody exiting corporate
• 32:17
  so I think there's a ton of reasons as to why literally everyone should do it and I am of the opinion
• 32:25
  that if a company does not want you to do it you should go work for a new company that supports
• 32:29
  your goals because if done properly it's going to support the company and it's going to support
• 32:33
  your future growth as an employee or professional entrepreneur whatever I completely agree and I think
• 32:40
  the other point that was feel really strong that I think everybody needs to figure it out is
• 32:46
  sometimes people don't want to do the minutiae they don't want to do the manual task they don't want to
• 32:51
  do the day-to-day editing a video figuring out ads like they don't want to do that right but the
• 32:59
  truth is just like you said if you don't do it initially how will you write a job description how
• 33:04
  will you hire the initial people how will you write whatever like you're going to get so screwed by
• 33:10
  agencies if you don't do it yourself first and now you have AI tools honestly if you're complaining
• 33:15
  about the work now if you complain about the little bit of work required to make you famous
• 33:21
  get millions of impressions basically radically change your life and you can't even use the five or
• 33:27
  six AI tools that will let you do this for like five to ten hours a week max max then honestly
• 33:33
  I don't know how to help you there's a point where you do have to take care of yourself and
• 33:38
  okay some people have busy lives I get it but very few people and this is not again hard and
• 33:44
  fast for but very few people are from six in the morning till one at night no downtime very few
• 33:53
  people have zero leisure in their life so I'm just saying a few hours of leisure just move it
• 34:00
  somewhere a little bit more productive that's it and then learn about AI tools because it's
• 34:05
  way easier than even when I started video editing is probably the most time consuming task you
• 34:09
  can possibly do as a creator I mean it probably takes longer than writing copy graphic design some degree
• 34:15
  but now they have AI tools like opus.pro you put in a long form video gives you like 20 different
• 34:20
  short clips okay fine it's not going to be like you're paying somebody $50,000 a month to edit them
• 34:24
  but it gets you started it gets some exposure and if your thoughts are good and there's a whole
• 34:30
  strategy behind how do you clarify your thoughts which is why I like writing so much because it allows
• 34:35
  me to really fix my thought process and my thinking if you have clear thoughts you write you read
• 34:41
  you record a little bit of content use AI to chop it up all of a sudden you've started to build an
• 34:46
  audience and a network and a community so it's not like complicated half the stuff that I'm telling
• 34:51
  you to do is just good for you to do anyways is an individual read write up skill yourself and then
• 34:55
  take that shit and put into an AI tool and start posting that's it I love that you said that and
• 35:01
  I think for many many people you know it's like but I don't have the strategy I'm like no you're
• 35:05
  just scared and that's okay let's fix it but it's all the rest what will people say and how will
• 35:12
  I be seen and what if I make a mistake and it's not perfect oh my god it's not perfect but who
• 35:18
  cares because honestly you're going to be forgotten about anyways you would be so lucky so blessed
• 35:24
  if you make a mistake and anybody notices it in 2024 unless you are a complete asshole or racist
• 35:32
  POS which yeah you have a whole bunch of other problems if you're just posting real thoughts that
• 35:38
  you believe in about your work or about a certain topic yeah you're going to have some polarity
• 35:45
  having a spiky opinion is good don't be an asshole but having a spiky opinion is good you're
• 35:50
  also going to build a tribe of people that agree with you I don't really need to be liked by
• 35:56
  everyone you don't need to be liked by everyone again what's the goal right what's the goal your
• 36:01
  goal is to make a little bit of money on the side you just did the math to make a whatever a hundred
• 36:07
  thousand dollars or a million dollars whatever that math was you broke it down like five or six ways
• 36:11
  so you don't need that many people because none of those ways of making a million dollars involved
• 36:16
  to hundred thousand people in fact very few of those ways even involved more than 500 people
• 36:23
  and 500 people like friends and family everyone has like 500 followers exactly it is excuses but I
• 36:29
  think it is also another layer does fear right you make decisions you take risks what helps you
• 36:38
  get over the fear and I think some of it is a vision and what we talked about but I would love to
• 36:42
  hear you I think I really just pay attention to all my wins because what is fear based on fear is
• 36:50
  based on you screwing up or you losing or you messing something that's what fear is fear is there's
• 36:56
  this potential adverse reaction that could happen but I think you also have to think about this is
• 37:03
  going to sound so cliche right like the regret of not trying what is the regret of not trying if
• 37:09
  you fast forward to when you're a hundred years old if you had a conversation with that person
• 37:16
  would they tell you that they are so happy that they avoided a negative comment on social or
• 37:24
  are they going to tell you wouldn't have been cool just to see what if right at the end of the day
• 37:31
  what is really going to happen that's so bad that you cannot recover from when you've won so
• 37:36
  many times in your life up until this point and that is incredibly important people forget we
• 37:43
  can always reinvent ourselves you can always get another job a whole other side point very few times
• 37:49
  in my career because I've been part of a ton of different companies I've had to let people go I've
• 37:55
  been part of organizations where there's been huge playoffs very rarely do people not end up and
• 38:02
  even a slightly better spot than where they are right now very rarely so if you are of the mindset
• 38:10
  that you're going to learn you're going to teach you're going to educate you're going to give
• 38:16
  value to the world you're going to upskill yourself by learning all these new skills are you kidding
• 38:21
  me that you don't think you can get another job the mentality of somebody that would do that
• 38:26
  anyways is so employable it's ridiculous so I think that people really just get caught up in
• 38:32
  their head I'm just thinking about it now somebody told me like hey I left my job I tried to build a
• 38:37
  company I learned every single facet of building a company I'm radically more useful than I was two
• 38:45
  years ago but the product I tried to bring to market wasn't great I had some unexpected medical
• 38:51
  bills but in the meantime I know this entire new gamut of things that I didn't know when I left my
• 38:58
  job I'd be like yes please like like please come work for me and apply like a fraction of that
• 39:04
  energy to your nine to five because you're going to kill it somebody who's I think that term is
• 39:09
  auto-died act a self-taught individual somebody who operates like that and things like that they're
• 39:14
  going to kill anything they do they're just going to demolish everyone else it's a super employable
• 39:20
  just to be that kind of person I love that and there's never a traffic jam in the extra mile so
• 39:25
  you want the people that are in the extra mile and you can see that they're going to be in the extra
• 39:30
  mile but let me ask you something you have a bunch of followers but there's a saying that and I
• 39:38
  think you said that right it's lonely at the top but crowded at the bottom at least I think I
• 39:42
  heard it from you yeah that's it and John Maxwell calls it the people pile there's a ton of noise
• 39:49
  for me it's interesting how do people reach you and how do people rise above the noise how should
• 39:56
  people rise above the noise yes it's lonely at the top but again you're going to motivate yourself but
• 40:02
  crowded at the bottom yet it's crowded so what do you do authenticity is thrown around a lot but I
• 40:08
  think it's sort of like table stakes now so you've got to be honest about what you believe and what
• 40:11
  you don't believe I think the people can pick up on that pretty quickly I don't think that trying
• 40:16
  to be polished or trying to be corporate when you put yourself out into the world benefits you
• 40:22
  I think sticking to it for an unreasonable amount of time you kind of bully your way into being
• 40:27
  known to a degree because you keep showing up which is like listen it's not the final strategy
• 40:34
  but it's a strategy to get feedback as to what resonates and what doesn't but if you show for
• 40:39
  long enough time you will get feedback if you are authentic in your thoughts and what you believe
• 40:45
  you will stand out and then obviously you have to know where you want to take that brand
• 40:50
  because you have to have a North Star attached to it so it's not just wandering aimlessly and it can
• 40:53
  evolve but then you do what good business people do when you look at the numbers so you again table
• 41:00
  stakes is you talk about stuff that you believe in that is authentic to you and whatever messaging that
• 41:05
  you're trying to get into the world whether or not it's about I want to be the best pet expert in
• 41:10
  the world I want to be an authority on sales and marketing or I want to talk about AI tools or
• 41:15
  whatever it is talk about stuff you care about from a lens that is true to you and then you measure
• 41:21
  and you're not ignorant some content works and content doesn't just do more of the stuff that works
• 41:26
  so a strategy that I've used that I've heard other people use as well I don't know who originally
• 41:32
  came up with it could have been her mosey but I found it works very well it's used Twitter for
• 41:37
  example is a testing ground so you ask me like how do I create content that stands out well
• 41:43
  tweet 20 things look at the idea that has the most engagement turn that into a short form podcast
• 41:50
  turn that into a newsletter turn that into a graphic that you put up on Instagram you've
• 41:54
  already tested that this idea resonates with the market it's the same way you do a focus group
• 42:00
  for a new product launch in a company so you just have to have a testing ground and then you
• 42:04
  consistently first of all you can keep some of the ideas and you can put them out again in six
• 42:09
  months through a year and you can have a bank of great ideas it really hit but all of your content
• 42:15
  now it's based on stuff that you care about but you're not putting out content that doesn't resonate
• 42:19
  with other people so you're focusing on consistently putting out viral pieces of content or at least
• 42:23
  popular pieces of content so your whole content mix and the engagement that comes from it is just
• 42:28
  probably I can't put a factor on it but like a factor of 10 or 15 or 20 X if you were just
• 42:34
  ignoring the noise in the market and putting it whatever you felt was good so I think that feedback
• 42:39
  loop about what works and what doesn't and whatever your feedback loop is just find one I just
• 42:43
  think of Twitter as the best testing ground because it's like a really low amount of effort and
• 42:48
  it's very forgiving versus say for example you too if you're putting out a whole bunch of reels but
• 42:53
  yeah if you want to put out 50 reels then look at the reels that hit home and then those are the
• 42:58
  models that you know base your future content off of and you do that for like five or six years
• 43:03
  you're going to be known incredible so it's still the same we just need to continue when everybody
• 43:09
  else stops so that you can live a life that most will only dream of right it's basically the same thing
• 43:14
  but there's also no end to it right people are like oh Scott has some followers cool you know who
• 43:20
  I'm looking at I'm looking at the podcast that gets 20 million downloads a month I'm trying
• 43:24
  not to do too many cliches but enjoy the journey for real because it never ends and I'm talking
• 43:30
  about my little content and influencer and podcast or journey but I have friends who sold companies
• 43:36
  for half a billion three quarters of a billion over a billion dollars and they have their own
• 43:42
  next thing they want to work on and they are very well aware that there's another level after that
• 43:49
  painfully aware because when you start to make that kind of money and you start to have that kind
• 43:52
  of fame and influence then the people that have sold their companies for several billion
• 43:58
  they're now in your sphere so you're very cognizant of the fact that yeah okay so I had good success
• 44:04
  but I'm not flying a seven thirty seven so again there's no end and I love that and again there's
• 44:10
  a saying that says if you look only up you get dizzy you know you need to look down from 10
• 44:15
  to 10 so how do you balance the two I like that saying a lot that's a good saying that's why
• 44:23
  pacing yourself is so important pacing yourself it's I think the key to success and most things
• 44:28
  it's not a sprint it's a marathon but if you think about building a business a relationship
• 44:35
  losing weight even I used to play a lot of sports and I remember one of the most important things
• 44:41
  I played a lot of hockey obviously it translates into any other sport but one of the most important
• 44:45
  things is you need to have gas in the tank for the third period and for all of my American friends
• 44:51
  who don't care about hockey that means like you know fourth quarter or second half whatever it
• 44:55
  doesn't matter you have to have gas in the tank is why I don't love motivation I hate the concept
• 45:01
  of motivation because motivation is just like initial flash in the pan initial burst of energy
• 45:07
  it doesn't stick and it doesn't stay and everything's going to be hard and when hard
• 45:12
  shit happens motivation is gone so whether or not you find a way to financially support the
• 45:18
  journey mentally support the journey stick with it for 10 years whether or not you adopt some
• 45:24
  habits from James clear whether or not you build systems and processes all of it's important
• 45:29
  the point is longevity the point is spending an unreasonable amount of time doing the thing
• 45:34
  that you're trying to do because that will separate you from the masses at the bottom and make
• 45:40
  you one of those lonely at the top people but whatever that's where most of the people are listening
• 45:45
  this are trying to go right they're trying to break free from the pack and that's where the
• 45:49
  unreasonable amount of time comes in that it's incredible you mentioned your podcast actually
• 45:55
  which is fascinating you have some brilliant speakers there who should listen to it I would say the
• 46:02
  podcast is a lot of what we spoke about today so there's some very tactical business lessons
• 46:08
  because I've interviewed everyone from founder of Netflix founder of Reebok interview Beyonce's
• 46:13
  dad I've interviewed some very cool interesting people so very tactical business lessons but also
• 46:20
  if you notice when I'm talking myself what I believe in is tactics combined with mindset the
• 46:27
  mindset that lets you do the thing for the long enough period of time so I bring a lot of people
• 46:31
  to speak about the mindset as well that will hopefully allow you to do the thing you're trying to
• 46:36
  do for a long enough period of time with energy and enthusiasm clarity whatever it is so that's
• 46:43
  it it's like a upskilling because I believe that if you want upskilling business it's not just learning
• 46:48
  how to run a better Facebook ad campaign there's a lot of mindset that is required to be successful
• 46:53
  I love it and you do talk a lot about you have some hard moments and getting out of rock bottom
• 47:00
  and I've seen some really really really interesting stories there so absolutely highly recommend it
• 47:06
  we have a little thing that we do in our podcast which is when you're looking at your younger self
• 47:14
  what would be some of the advice that you would give yourself in retrospect
• 47:20
  it's funny because I ask this question too and I'm now to think of an answer it's much easier to
• 47:25
  ask the questions right then to answer them I would say take more risks and trust yourself
• 47:34
  because I truly do believe the kind of person that takes risks more often than not we'll find a way
• 47:41
  to get through the hard times and to become their own version of success I feel like
• 47:47
  the traditional career path what we think and consider to be safe is not safe at all I think
• 47:53
  that's a mirage a complete mirage I think we've all seen during COVID but I've seen personally
• 47:58
  30-year careers ended because of a number missed so I think that I'm saying take more risks I actually
• 48:06
  think by taking more risks you're actually playing a safer game because you're going to learn things
• 48:11
  that no traditionally safe career can ever teach you and I think that if you take those risks
• 48:17
  meaning you try and do your own thing you build your own business whatever it is do things that are
• 48:22
  maybe a different style than how your parents were raised whatever doesn't matter I think it'll
• 48:29
  just make you a more resilient person and I think that those kinds of people win I love that
• 48:34
  Scott thank you so so so much for showing up giving your authentic self being so fun yeah I feel
• 48:43
  like we're speaking such the same language so it's just awesome to hear it no yeah we're very
• 48:51
  much kindred spirit thank you so much for having me on