Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Scott D. Clary: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Getting Started in Entrepreneurship, and Finding Product Market Fit | E221 | Part 1

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

As the son of an ex-policeman turned intelligence (CSIS) officer, Scott D. Clary was a complete novice in the world of entrepreneurship. By leveraging his natural charisma and love for technology, he ...was able to build up his brand and become a success story. In Part 1 of Scott’s episode, we’ll unpack his career journey and early entrepreneurial endeavors. Scott will share his insight about side hustling and how to build a value-packed, monetizable podcast!  Scott D. Clary is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and venture capitalist. He hosts the popular entrepreneurship podcast “Success Story” and is the CEO of OnMi Patch, a transdermal vitamin patch that delivers naturally derived, science-backed ingredients to support you through life’s ups and downs. Scott is a well-known sales and marketing expert who speaks globally at industry conferences. He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and The Startup, amongst other publications.  In this episode, Hala and Scott will discuss:  - How Scott found himself in the land of leadership  - The importance of “shooting your shot” - Conquering imposter syndrome - Side hustling - Measuring product market fit   - How Scott blew up on social media - How he monetized his podcast - Scott’s guest outreach approach - And other topics… Scott D. Clary is the CEO of OnMi Patch, a transdermal vitamin patch company, and the host of the “Success Story” podcast, where he interviews inspirational people, mentors, and thought leaders. From startups to enterprises, Scott’s worked with individuals to 10x their businesses using his marketing expertise. He’s sold and marketed to the most iconic F500 / F100 brands throughout his career. His work has been featured in over 100+ news sites and publications, and he speaks globally at industry conferences and has had articles and insights featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Hackernoon, The Startup, and others. Resources Mentioned: Scott’s Website: https://www.scottdclary.com/ Scott’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdclary Scott’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottdclary  Scott’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottdclary/ Scott’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scottdclarypage Scott’s Podcast Success Story with Scott D. Clary: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/success-story-with-scott-d-clary/id1484783544 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘masterclass' for 25% off at yapmedia.io/course. Sponsored By:  LMNT - Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order only when you order through DrinkLMNT.com/YAP More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. One of the most important things to know about imposter syndrome is that everybody feels it, and I truly mean everyone. If you scale up to billionaires, there will be billionaires that feel out of place in certain rooms. There's nothing about what you're feeling, which is weird or offer different. The difference is whether or not you take action. Action is always the difference.
Starting point is 00:00:51 When you have product market fit, you know that you can't keep up with demand. Not a lot of people experience that level of product market fit. Usually, what you should do is you should test the market, see if there's any demand. And what people do, they usually think of this product and they and they love it so much and they love it themselves and they take it to the market and no one else cares. A way to find out if this product market fit before spending a lot of money is... What is up, young and profitors? You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting podcasts where we interview the brightest minds
Starting point is 00:01:25 in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Hallitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn, and profit. Scott, welcome to Young & Profiting Podcast. Thank you for having me on Hall, I appreciate it. I am super psyched. I love having my friends on the show. So today we're joined by my friend and podcasting peer Scott Clary.
Starting point is 00:02:01 He's an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, investor, and podcast host. He's the host of the very popular entrepreneurship and business podcast success story. He's also the CEO of OmniPatch, which is a trans-dermal vitamin patch that delivers naturally derived science-backed ingredients to support you through life's ups and downs. Scott is well known for sales and marketing, and he speaks globally at industry conferences. He's been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the startup, amongst other publications. And in today's episode, we're going to unpack Scott's career story and cover topics like side hustling, how to grow a monetizable podcast, and lastly, we'll go deep on sales strategies.
Starting point is 00:02:38 So Scott, you were born in Canada. You're the son of an ex-police man turned intelligence officer and a university lab manager, and you really weren't exposed to the world of entrepreneurship growing up, and you were expected to go into some sort of law enforcement field like most of your family. So where does it desire to work for yourself come from and how did you step into the land of entrepreneurship? It was such a gradual process and everything, nothing, I'm excited, it all makes sense, but nothing makes sense when you're actually doing it. And it's funny because I was supposed to be going
Starting point is 00:03:11 into some sort of law enforcement. I mean, dad was law enforcement, grandpa, uncle, everyone was law enforcement, and then they migrated to different, my dad was CeCis, so Canadian CIA for lack of a better reference. And I wanted something safe and secure. And that's kind of what I knew. That's what my parents knew and nothing wrong with that.
Starting point is 00:03:30 So I actually went into a really large tech company, a telco company in Canada. And then from that company, then I went into a smaller tech company because I had, I've done, I did very well at that. I was really good. I kept moving up market. I was, I killed it in SMB,
Starting point is 00:03:46 the mid market, the enterprise sales, moved to a smaller tech company, did very well there. And through that tech company, there was an exit. And then I understood, like this is like fast forwarding, like 10 plus years of my life. But when I joined a company, saw the founder of that company, sell his company to private equity, that's when I realized that I could have a piece of the pie and I could be at the cap table or have a seat at the table
Starting point is 00:04:09 I didn't know what a cap table was back then But I could have a piece of a company I could take part in that transaction because I saw people They were part of that company taking part in that transaction So we'll start a turning and then I'm like, okay, so if I want to have this big payout because I'm no longer working in a big, even tech company, I'm not working government, not working in big tech, I don't have a pension, I don't have security, I have to have X million dollars in the bank when I retire because nobody's gonna be paying me
Starting point is 00:04:36 till I die. So that was like my benchmark for security. If I'm not going to have a pension, which pensions for a lot of people listening don't really exist the way they used to. Pensions to sort of show what a pension could be like, I'll give you my dad. He's making 70% I think of his five best years of salary till the day he dies. Wow.
Starting point is 00:04:56 And I think if I'm not mistaken, he has two pensions because he worked for two different government organizations. So he actually has two pensions compounded to the day he dies the second he retires, which is wild So that means like guaranteed 100k plus for a lot of people that does not exist So when you stop working outside of the investment that you make or maybe the contribution that the company makes you have nothing in your bank So I was like, how do I make a lot of money? And it was like start-ups or where you make a lot of money now obviously super naive Most startups fail. This is not like a great strategy for a lot of people
Starting point is 00:05:26 and I wouldn't ever recommend it, but again, hindsight's 2020. So I started working in the world of startups. I did consulting, trading my, literally my time for small pieces of equity and funny enough startups that hadn't raised money yet and didn't have any money to pay me. So it wasn't a really a great strategy.
Starting point is 00:05:43 And I realized that as opposed to, instead of doing like fractional CXO work, so fractional executive work with a whole bunch of underfunded startups, it didn't have product market fit. I should double down on my skills on one company and I did and I was CRO there. I mean, went through an exit event that was good. It wasn't like, I'm going to retire money, but it was good money. And that's sort of what was my journey through safety and comfort and security and government to big tech, to small tech, to start up to where I'm at today. I love that.
Starting point is 00:06:12 And Scott, as I was learning about your story, you took a lot of risks and chances and asked for what you wanted to get to where you are. You didn't just like stand still and do the same thing over and over. So like you said, you started off in big telco, I think it was Bel Canada. Then you moved to a smaller telco company because you wanted to level up in your career. You thought that there'd be faster growth there.
Starting point is 00:06:31 And actually, you got your first sales leadership role at that company. It was a director role that opened up and you just pitched yourself for it. You were totally unqualified, which I love. And you, you just went for it. So tell us that story. I think it really showcases your grit. So the director that hired me at that smaller telco, he took a job at Salesforce almost immediately after you hired me. So there was a big opening in that company for a sales leader, and I had no qualification. I'd never managed a sales team.
Starting point is 00:07:00 I'd closed large deals as an individual contributor. I never managed a sales team before. So I put together a presentation. And I said, these are the reasons why I'm fit for this job. There was people that have been in this company by the way for years. So like I had no business doing this at all, but I don't really know why I took that initiative. It's definitely a common thread throughout my life that I've always sort of just gone for things, put together a presentation, pitched it to the director that was exiting and the CEO and got the position. It was really just putting together a plan of where I see us now,
Starting point is 00:07:31 lessons that I've learned in my career that I can incorporate into this organization, a 1, 3, 5, 10-year plan for where I want to take the sales team, scaling out the outside team, scaling out the inside team. And I really put together a really, really in-depth proposal as to why I should have that job. And that initiative was enough to actually get that job because again, like hiring is expensive. So you can go outside, you can look for other people, but nobody else internally was looking to really take it. And I was the one who had good experience, didn't have manager, but had good experience. There was actually you saying like, listen, I'm throwing my hand to the ring. I'm the man in the arena.
Starting point is 00:08:05 I really want this. And it was just a great learning opportunity because it showed that not always, but when you ask for things and you put effort and showing that you want it, sometimes things do work out. Sometimes things really do work out. And if you adopt that attitude and literally everything,
Starting point is 00:08:20 I mean, you'll hear the saying's like, if you don't ask, you won won't get it is very true. So I think a lot of people, if they took a little bit more risk, not significant, not quitting their job tomorrow and building something from scratch and not the whole of their conversation, we can talk about side hustles and everything. But if they just took more risk in, I want to in my job, I want to push myself and I want to push my manager to allow me to accelerate in my career and you do the work that's required before it's required. You put together some sort of reasoning as to why you should be in that role and you constantly
Starting point is 00:08:53 fight for it. I would be very surprised if over a period of time people did not get what they're looking to get. Totally. It just goes to show you, like, you've got to shoot your shot. I feel like I'm very similar. I always shoot my shot. Even if I feel like there's really little chance. Half the time I get what I want, what I ask for, what I didn't actually deserve just because I put my hat in the ring like you mentioned.
Starting point is 00:09:14 Ask for what you want. Yeah. Just shoot your shot. So let's talk about imposter syndrome for a minute. I know you interview a ton of people. I'm sure you've talked about impostor syndrome on your podcast. And a lot of women especially have a problem with impostor syndrome and women in particular, but basically they would never put their hat in a ring if they feel underqualified because they just have such significant impostor syndrome. So what would you say to somebody who feels like they're just never good enough that they're not smart enough, how do you think they can overcome imposter syndrome? So one of the most important things to know about imposter syndrome
Starting point is 00:09:50 is that everybody feels it at whatever stage they're at. And I truly mean everyone. So if you scale up to billionaires, there will be billionaires that feel out of place in certain rooms. And it sounds crazy to us and somebody who's making 60K a year, but it's very true. So everybody feels uncomfortable in certain situations
Starting point is 00:10:11 like they don't belong. And this is why, you know, when you see even at a very high level, billionaires and they bring kings and queens and monarchs to dinners because they feel like they don't fit into European high society or so on and so forth. Or you have very rich people whining and dining princes and whatnot in Saudi and the Emirates and looking to get their money and bring it back to the US. There's always times when people will not feel like they fit in a room and that scales up and it never ends.
Starting point is 00:10:40 So know that first. That's very important. There's nothing about what you're feeling, which is weird or offer different. The difference is whether or not you take action. Action is always the difference. So when you look at something that you feel you're not qualified to do, and I don't know the psychological reason why this plegs women more than men,
Starting point is 00:10:58 but I do know that men, like literally the case study that you just outlined, are more likely to take the step and to do the thing even if they're underqualified than women. I don't know why that is and that's something that we have to solve for, but that actually allows men to get the thing. Like if you look at studies, like if people are applying for a job and a man has six of 10 requirements, he'll still apply, where a woman will not apply unless she has nine of 10 or 10 of 10. And I don't have data points to back that up,
Starting point is 00:11:25 but I'm sure it's very easy to find these types of studies. So I think that you have to know that everybody feels it. You have to take action. And then to sort of like reduce the stress, something that I've found is reverse engineering the path to get to where I want to be. So I've taken this sort of strategy of reverse engineering in quite literally everything I do in my health goals, in my mental health,
Starting point is 00:11:47 physical health, focus goals, it could be my business goals, my investment goals, it could be where I wanna take my company, it could be who I'd like to bring on my podcast, similar to you, I look at who's done it before and I literally reverse engineer every single step because everybody has a path and success leaves clues and they're usually quite loud.
Starting point is 00:12:05 And if you actually do enough research on the item that you're trying to achieve, you can probably quite reasonably come to a level of certainty as to what you actually have to do to get there. And you'll, two things will happen when you do that. You'll understand the path you have to take and the steps you have to take to get there in anything in life, but you'll also realize
Starting point is 00:12:21 that you're actually not as far as you actually are. As you think you are before you reverse engineer that, and that starts to mitigate some of the stress of imposter syndrome, which then allows action. That is incredible advice. I learned something from Safi Bakal years ago that I always remembered, and he says, imposter syndrome is really a language issue. You don't understand the key terms that people are using in a room or the acronyms that people are using. And a lot of the times, it's a matter of, like, let's say you feel like an imposter in a new industry or a new company. A lot of the times it means you don't understand what everybody is saying. And that's why you feel like you're
Starting point is 00:12:58 an imposter. You don't belong here. When it's just really like maybe 10 words you need to learn to really understand what's going on. I've never heard that definition, but that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. The level that you have to reach to get to the thing that you want is really not as far as you think it is. Totally. Okay. So let's talk about sales a little bit in terms of your early career with sales.
Starting point is 00:13:19 So you actually started working at a telco company throughout college, like right after high school is that right? So you've had like 20 years of sales experience or so, right? Enough, yeah. Yeah, maybe not quite that. I don't know how old they are yet, but like a lot of sales experience because most people start after college, you started throughout college. So you were naturally good at sales. What do you think about you made you naturally good at sales?
Starting point is 00:13:44 Oh, that's a tough one. It's a load of questions. you were naturally good at sales. What do you think about you made you naturally good at sales? That's a tough one. It's a load of questions. So I think that what allowed me to be good at sales was, again, this is me understanding in hindsight. So I want people to make sure that they know that if they're in sales right now, this is not something that I jumped into sales. And I was like, oh, shit, yeah, I'm going to kill it.
Starting point is 00:14:00 When I got into sales, I knew that it made a lot of money. And it was like that or bartending. And those are the jobs that made the most money. You have to get commission or you have to you have to bartend. And I'm like, okay, so like thinking strategically, it makes more sense for me to go into sales. I was always very technical as a kid and I double down on loving the product that I was selling. So I just loved the product. I love the nuance of the product. I knew the product inside and out. And it did help that I worked for a company that had a great product and had a great brand. But I think that actually loving the product and loving what you're actually selling and being able to evangelize that to a customer is a major differentiator
Starting point is 00:14:34 than somebody is really apathetic. So if you don't believe in what you're selling, I found this to be a common thread to everything I've ever sold to anybody including selling a company to an investor which is a sale or selling a company to a hire, which is a sale, or selling a company to a hire, which is also a sale, when you're selling something, if you don't believe in what you're selling, you will not be able to sell it. 11 out of 10 times. And other things help, like, yeah, maybe a little bit charismatic, but ultimately, loving the product, communicating that, people feel it, and they feel the authenticity, and they feel that you're truly believing what you're saying, and you're not foolish shit, that will close more deals than anything. I love that. So, I learned that you actually started consulting on this side at some point during your career,
Starting point is 00:15:11 and you started your podcast as a side hustle. So I'd love to get your input on side hustles. So you started out doing consulting on this side. What made you realize that you wanted to start a side hustle or that you were, there was a market out there for you to start a side hustle or that there was a market out there for you to have a side hustle? Yeah, so when I started consulting, it was actually during the second,
Starting point is 00:15:32 the company where I actually got that first sales leadership role, that's when I started doing a little bit of consulting. And I wanted to consult and start a side hustle and side hustle is not as popular then, and they weren't like a thing, which caused a little bit of friction with the job, but it ended up working out for the better
Starting point is 00:15:47 in the longer run. But I wanted to start it because I was very entrepreneurial, and I thought that entrepreneurship meant you had to build something from scratch. And I think that's what a lot of people feel. They're like, I gotta build something, and I gotta find a way entrepreneurship is sexy, and I look at, you know, the, whatever,
Starting point is 00:16:04 the Zuckerbergs and whatever other entrepreneur you love, and you look at, you know, the, whatever, the Zuckerbergs and whatever other entrepreneur you love and you're like, I want to be like that. And then I'm not a technical person. I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineer. So I'm like, what can I actually sell to the market? And it was a skills that I had accumulated over my years of sales and then years of marketing. So I think that was what I thought entrepreneurship should be.
Starting point is 00:16:24 And it was founding a company. And this was the only product that I thought entrepreneurship should be and it was founding a company and this was the only product that I knew about a cell which was myself. And the reason why I started this side hustle was again, it was in Poster syndrome. I didn't actually feel like I committed to trusting and betting on myself at that point, which actually funny enough, it turned into a side hustle. I started it with two other partners. We killed that company after a while because it was very stressful and we weren't really great at consulting. We didn't have experience doing it.
Starting point is 00:16:48 There's our first foray into this. We all came from companies to try and consult. But actually, the way that I approached it, I think I would recommend to everyone. So even though I didn't do it for the right reasons, because I was very shy and nervous about starting something, I would recommend that if somebody wants to start something, they actually do it as a side hustle, but for the right reasons. So have confidence in yourself, have faith in what you're building, but start it as a side hustle and I'm a strong advocate for not quitting your job immediately. I'm not about the quit your job, have six months or 12
Starting point is 00:17:18 months of runaway and go all in. I'm about you work your job, you give your hours to the person who's paying you, you don't bite the hand that feeds you, but with the amount of time that you have in a week plus the amount of tools that we have access to now, there is zero excuse to not be able to scale something, to start something, to find some semblance of product market fit to even we can talk about buying companies, buy a company and test and see if you're good at that for very low prices for smaller companies without having any technical background, finding a technical co-founder, but start something, find product market fit, find your first 50, 150 customers, wait until you make the same salary or even double the salary that you're making at your job very
Starting point is 00:17:57 similar to your story. Remember your story, and then you leave. And that's when you can take your side hustle and go full time and you can build a company. Like let's think of a salary, say say 100k you can totally build a side hustle to 200k on part time like that let's be real like it's very doable right and now you're talking about we have AI shit I didn't have AI I couldn't copyright I couldn't write all this shit with AI couldn't create grafted AI for my social for a side hustle brand now the tools that we have are like incredible in terms of the efficiency
Starting point is 00:18:25 that we can be as human beings when creating stuff. So I would say start it as a part-time thing, find ways to leverage your time, leverage resources, leverage. You can leverage upwork for talent and different geographies. It's relatively cheap to help you scale out. You can leverage a whole bunch of different things, but then you're not risking it all. You're not cutting off your main source of income. And when you're not stressed financially, you make much smarter decisions. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it?
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Starting point is 00:21:56 That's trinom.nom.com slash app for 50% off trinom.com slash app. This is like incredible advice. And I agree with all of it. I always say, if you're going to start a new business, do it as a side hustle. And like you said, we're in 2023 now. Everybody, first of all, is working from home. So talk about all the time we save with no commute now. For me, that was a big game changer. As soon as I had no commute, I started the app media. We blew up, but I did it as a side hustle. Also cut out TV and
Starting point is 00:22:28 unproductive time. We're all wasting our time, mindless TV, social media. Those are hours that you can work towards your dream. One thing that I want to touch on, and then I want to keep talking about side hustles, you mentioned that you thought there was only one way to be an entrepreneur, and I feel like there's more behind that. So what did you mean by that? Because at the time, I only trusted myself. So I didn't want to find a co-founder, there was a technical co-founder, because I didn't know how to read code.
Starting point is 00:22:52 I didn't know how to, and now I know how to buy a business. You can buy cheap businesses on micro-acquire or biz-buy cell or flippa, and you can scale those up, meaning that the core bones and the cornerstone and the foundation of the business has already been built, you buy it, and then you can scale those up, meaning that the core bones and the cornerstone and the foundation of the business has already been built, you buy it and then you can scale it up. So I think that
Starting point is 00:23:10 entrepreneurship can have a variety of different meanings. I think that the version of entrepreneurship that I knew of was just commoditizing and productizing the skillset that I've done my entire career, which is by the way not a bad thing, but it's just that was the only version that I knew. And the reason there was an issue with that, the reason there was an issue with consulting is because when you consult, you really trade your time for hours invested in a company, right? It's not an efficient form of entrepreneurship to conduct as a side hustle. It's not a leverageable form of entrepreneurship.
Starting point is 00:23:41 There's even different ways to consult that could be better. Like retainers are a great way, even outsourcing work. If the work is a quality, you can outsource work. But my version of entrepreneurship was trusting myself. So it was like, I'm a consultant, I can help you with your marketing campaign, your sales campaign, I can build out processes, I can train your sales reps, whatever. And I'm going to do that myself. So we made a lot of errors. That's why I meant we didn't know how to consult. We didn't know how to do it, right? So we were like working our, well, actually, when I started, I was working a 40-hour week in an office plus X amount of hours on the weekend and at night finding clients,
Starting point is 00:24:12 doing work, closing deals. And then when I went full-time consulting, it was like 40 hours and we were actually consulting in a client's office. You can't mess around when you're in a client's office. Your perceived value goes way down. When you just become part of their workforce, but they were paying us on a big monthly retainer, they wanted us in office. So like eight hours a day, I can't be working on other stuff for the consulting company. I can't be posting on social, I can't be having calls with new potential clients. I'm on retainer. I'm in their physical office. So there's better ways to consult. That was just my version, not a grade version. Suck, don't do it. If you're gonna consult, you're gonna be an agency
Starting point is 00:24:47 whatever it is. Follow what Holla's doing. She's killing it. She's not like growing that many gray hairs. So the point is, it doesn't matter if you screw up your first version of entrepreneurship. There's lots of other versions you can try and maybe like think outside the box
Starting point is 00:25:01 when it comes to what you want to take to the market and how to do it in a scalable way. Fun fact, I've never had a gray hair. I'm truly young and profiting. Good, damn straight. Let's go. In terms of side hustles and thinking about, a lot of people are like, I don't know where to start.
Starting point is 00:25:18 I get this question a lot because like you, I'm known for like building side hustles and that's how I came up. And people are like, well, I don't know what side hustle to start. And my favorite answer is the one that you gave, start off with your skills and talents, what you get paid for in your day job, you can then do as a service.
Starting point is 00:25:35 But a lot of people feel like they don't have monetizable skills, which is a huge problem. But what would you say is a great way to decide what to do as your side hustle? What was your thinking process around that? First of all, I think everyone has monetizable skills, straight up everyone has monetizable skills. Any business student you work in, you can productize that. And if you are the evangelist and CEO and founder of a brand that does that thing, that means that you can
Starting point is 00:26:04 create trust with your clients because you've done that thing for X amount of years. But it also means that you should find ways to scale yourself. So that means you should hire talent underneath you that can fulfill some of the work that is up to par with your standard and your quality. So I think that every but like I mean, you're a CFO, you're an accountant, you have a monetizable skill. You're a marketer as a generalist or as somebody who's more specific in social media or SEO. I mean, you have a monetizable skill. I think it's just how you take it to market and how you can monetize that skill.
Starting point is 00:26:36 So meaning that you use tools like Upwork and Fiverr and TopTow to find great deal flow without busting your ass for new clients. You nurture those relationships and eventually they morph into something bigger, right? And again, I sort of alluded to it before. Like you can do the work yourself day one, but after a while you're building a side hustle you should turn into a business, not just a job.
Starting point is 00:26:57 So you leverage, leverage as much as you can. So you leverage other people's time, you leverage. I'll give you a very clear example. I have a copyrighted that works for me. He's a Canadian and he took the initiative to go overseas to the Philippines and the Philippines is a great place for talent. Incredible talent in the Philippines. Very smart, very educated. Like I've had better people from the Philippines than I found in North America sometimes. Same.
Starting point is 00:27:21 So they kill it. And he went after university and he went to the Philippines because he cared, he was a copywriter. He cared so much about his quality of work that he knew that if he just maybe hired online, maybe it wouldn't be as good. So he went to the Philippines and he interviewed people face to face and he built relationships with great writers in the Philippines. So obviously there's a little bit of an arbitrage of cost
Starting point is 00:27:46 there, he saves a little bit of money, and then he can still deliver high quality work to a North American market, and he can charge North American prices, and he can pay great Philippine wages as well. So, I mean, he set up a great copywriting business for himself, leveraging tools that he has access to, and making sure that even though he's the point man
Starting point is 00:28:02 for the company, he's the CEO and the founder of the copywriting company, nobody expects him to be writing every single blog post. That's not how these companies work. And he doesn't pretend that that's how he's creating this company. So he built this more or less in like his spare time to be quite honest. And he built systems and processes that allow a team in the Philippines to fulfill client work without him overseeing everything.
Starting point is 00:28:23 He has checks and balances on every single piece that's written. So there's like a rigorous quality test that has to pass. And there's multiple writers and they actually share work between each other and they sort of like critique each other's work. So the end, the output is exceptional. It's relatively cheap, low cost business considering they are outsourced talent. And he's built this as a side hustle. And you can turn it into a full-time thing.
Starting point is 00:28:47 And by the way, just so you know, this is sort of what I did with Yap. Most of my talent was in the Philippines, and then it was like labor-cost arbitrage, with my personal brand being able to charge super high and all my training that I gave my team, and then it started being more of a global company. So really interesting. Let's talk about product market fits. So as you know, I launched a new LinkedIn master class and I teach content strategies and sales strategies. And some people are crushing with what I taught, but I'm finding that a lot of people who don't have product market
Starting point is 00:29:18 fit, myself doesn't work for them because if you don't have a product that the market wants, no matter what I teach you for sales, it's not going to work. And so I feel really bad for these people because they're so stuck on their idea, but they have no product market fit. And like I said, unless they change their offer, there's not much that I can do for them. So how can you tell us something as product market fit or doesn't and what's your advice in terms of ensuring that if you start something, you do it with product market fit. The easiest answer I can give you is when you have product market fit you know.
Starting point is 00:29:49 And I know that's like the most ambiguous answer, but I'll go into details. But the point is, when you have product market fit, like you can't keep up with demand. That is true product market fit. And we're not just talking okay product market fit, like exceptional product market fit means you can't keep up with orders. have trouble with fulfilling so things are selling out all the time your servers are like overband with you're having to spin up new AWS instances all the time. like true product market fit founder of bite had her on she launched the product and I think she CNBC featured a TikTok clip. I'm gonna get my numbers wrong because I did not prep for this but
Starting point is 00:30:33 anyway I'll give you the context of the story and it'll sort of like paint a picture of what product market could be founder of bite which is like a sustainable company that gives you like tooth care like oral care and and tooth products and whatnot. She put out a viral TikTok clip and that TikTok clip got got picked up by CNBC, like when viral, like to the tunes of millions of people watching it. And she went from zero orders to like 500 K in orders in like 24 hours or something wild like that. Oh my God. And she could not fulfill.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Like she had to like reach out to all these people saying like, stick with me. It's going to be like three months to like and fulfill because I'm operating out of my garage or you know, my living room, whatever. So that is when you find product market fit, you cannot keep up, which is a great problem to have. Not a lot of people experience that level of product market fit. Usually what you should do is you should test the market and see if there's any demand. And what people do is they usually think of this product and they love it so much and they love it themselves and they take it to the market and no one else cares.
Starting point is 00:31:34 That's a big problem with a lot of entrepreneurs. So how do you guarantee that there's product market fit? Well, the most likely chance of having product market fit for an entrepreneur is the entrepreneur that actually has the highest success rate. It's somebody that's actually worked in an industry for a long period of time. They identify a problem in that industry and then they launch a product or a piece of tech or a solution against the problem they've witnessed for the past 20 plus years.
Starting point is 00:31:56 That is usually who has the highest success rate. It's not the Stanford grad who's building some new innovative tech. So that is a good way to launch a product. Other ways that people have successfully launched products, they take something that's working in one country and they transplant it and launch it into another country. These are simple ideas, but it does work. A way to find out if this product market fit before spending a lot of money,
Starting point is 00:32:16 you could do what Buffer did. So Buffer is like the social media posting tool. Obviously a tech platform, and it would have cost a significant amount to make an MVP. Their MVP was a landing page with a form asking people if there was any need for this product and how much they'd pay for it. And that was it. There was no actual product built and they ran ads against that form.
Starting point is 00:32:38 So they ran ads to that landing page and then people signed up and they got several thousand people saying, yes, we want that. Yes, this is how much I actually would pay for this product on a monthly basis. Now you found out that there's 5,000 people that would pay for your product at 20 bucks a month. There's a good semblance of product market fit. You've at least tested the market. If you spend 500 bucks on ads and you won't even get 500 people or even 100 people signing up on a form saying it used your product, you don't have product market fit. So you should test your messaging, test the audience that you're targeting,
Starting point is 00:33:09 test the pain point that you're trying to solve for, until you can at least prove it out with just ad spend and a form. And that's a great first step. If more people did that, then you'd have less unsuccessful entrepreneurs. And you can also test it against marketplaces that already exist. The point is, like upwork, if you're a service-based business, Upwork, TopTile, Fiverr, whatever, you can put yourself out there and see if people start to buy your product, see if you're differentiated enough.
Starting point is 00:33:31 So what you don't want to do is you don't want to spend a lot of money in taking a product to market before you test some level of product market fit. And this is a, I mean, there's more complex ways of testing if you have resources, but without resources. It's a great way to test. Yeah. I really hope you guys take key to Scott's advice. This was like excellent advice, and this is the number one mistake that I see people do.
Starting point is 00:33:52 They think there's some problem that doesn't really exist, and they're investing in products, and I have a friend who's like starting a clothing line, and she's like investing all this money, and I'm like, do you have product market fit? Like have you tested it? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:05 But you know, everybody needs to learn on their own, right? So let's talk about your podcast, Scott. You've got a very successful podcast, success story. You are considered a competitor, me and you are head to head in the podcast categories. I know we collab over competition. All abundance. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:34:23 But technically we are like, we are, we're very similar in terms of our numbers and who we interview and all that kind of stuff. So I really respect you as a podcaster. There's only 250 of us that are really monetizing. And is that true? Yeah, there's only 250 podcasts that are monetizing at our level able to go through all these agencies
Starting point is 00:34:43 that we work through. That's why I see all the same ads on every podcast. Yeah, there's not that many of us who figured it out and you really have. So let's start here. What was the genesis of your podcast? How long ago did you start it? And why did you decide to start it?
Starting point is 00:34:56 So I started it just over four years now. So about four and a half years. And we thought we started at the same time. Yeah, I think we started at the same time. I started it because after the first side hustle failed, I wanted to build as something. I wanted to build, I had no idea what I wanted to build. I want to build something.
Starting point is 00:35:12 I didn't know what I wanted to build. I'm like, listen, I have to scratch my entrepreneurial itch and I have to build something that's going to be with me for a period of time. It's going to pay off dividends in the future. But I'm not starting another product because I was CRO at a tech company, at a SaaS company. That's the one that was actually acquired more recently.
Starting point is 00:35:27 I didn't want to build something on the side, but I knew that if I built a personal brand because I'm looking at the Gary Vs of the world, I could leverage that for whatever I wanted in the future. So if I had eyeballs looking at me, I could launch products against that audience and that community. I could monetize that community in the future. All the things that literally, quite literally, like Gary V. speaks about why you should build
Starting point is 00:35:47 a personal brand, I was a student of that. And I was like, okay, so how do I, how do I build a personal brand around business content? And you know, you think about all the different mediums. And before we went live, I was talking about how I started on LinkedIn and I was creating a whole bunch of some good, some like a little bit tacky business content, but it really resonated, built a good audience.
Starting point is 00:36:04 But a lot of people were doing it, and I wanted to differentiate, and I wanted to expand across different platforms, because I knew that eventually, not day one, but eventually, you do have to go against different platforms. I'm a big proponent of start with what works for you, but after a while, you know you're gonna expand it.
Starting point is 00:36:17 How do you expand content? Well, you don't wanna always have to create a original for every single platform. Sometimes it works, but ultimately you want a more scalable content strategy that can act as like your pillar content, right? And video, audio, podcasting made the most sense for the type of content I wanted to put out. I was a no name, nobody knew me, nobody gave a shit about my opinion, but I did have a good network and I knew that if I could bring other people's opinions on, they would start to care about me eventually. And I'd
Starting point is 00:36:42 also get to have good conversation with great people and networking play too. So that was the inception. And it was like, I need to pillar piece of content that I can continuously make and predictably use to disseminate across all my social again and again and again and again. And I want to do that forever. And I want to build a brand around that. And then I want to get a 10 million eyeballs, 20 million I 100 million eyeballs looking at me. And then I can launch products, like I can do like what Gary is doing, and you know, launch VaynerMedia and VaynerSports and EmpathyWines and all the other stuff that he does,
Starting point is 00:37:11 like V friends and all the random stuff, just because you have the audience there. And to have that platform is huge. That was sort of the thought process. And this podcasting made the most sense because it created content. And as long as the interview that we're having is good, all the derivatives of that interview are also going to be good and everywhere they're going to go, they're going to provide value and they're not going to be perfectly optimized for every platform, but they're going to be
Starting point is 00:37:36 like 80 to 90% of the way there and it's a scalable strategy. Yeah, having a personal brand is such a power move in today's age. It just really, really moves the needle What I'm curious about with your journey because it sounds like you did you started podcasts and LinkedIn around the same time You're also huge on Instagram and YouTube so which one sort of blew up first and then did you leverage any of those platforms to then grow the other ones? Yeah, so LinkedIn blew up first Same LinkedIn blew up first. Same. LinkedIn was always first.
Starting point is 00:38:07 YouTube and Instagram were somewhat simultaneous because I was very heavy on video from day one. So I was putting out almost for like, since I started between three to six pieces of video content per day in various forms. It's just been like an onslaught of video content, which fortunately has played into recent algorithms because I part of my podcast processes, you do the long-form content, and then I break it down into
Starting point is 00:38:30 every single question that I ask, the separate video clip, and every single question that I ask is uploaded on a separate playlist outside of my full podcast on YouTube, which is S before YouTube had their own SEO for videos. Every single title was SEOed. So every single smaller clip was also getting ranked on Google. And then I would also take all the smaller clips and then break them into like the 30 to 60 second sound bites. And then I'd use that for TikTok and Instagram and even Snapchat spotlight and YouTube shorts. So I was always video heavy. And the reason why I was so bullish on video is sort of ties to a thesis that I have around YouTube as a whole.
Starting point is 00:39:11 Like I mean, I'm very bullish on video. I believe that there's a lot of psychological reasons why YouTubers that have large audiences on YouTube have large audiences everywhere. But if you'll notice like a big Instagram influencer, it's siloed on Instagram or a big TikTok or a big Instagram influencer, it's siloed on Instagram, or a big TikTok or a big Twitter, it's all siloed. YouTube, I think it's a combination of video, plus trust, plus the length of time that somebody consumes your content. The rapport is just insane
Starting point is 00:39:36 that you build with the audience. And I've always like, if I build a big YouTube audience, I'm going to be big everywhere else. It's so far, the thesis has actually worked out. I think it's a trust factor. I think the audience trust score, whatever that is on YouTube, is the highest of any social. Yeah, it's really interesting because I'm always of the school of thought
Starting point is 00:39:55 that you start on one platform, you dominate it. I started like LinkedIn podcasts first, I dominated that and then I moved on to Instagram and YouTube. But you're somebody who seems to like I've to have blown up on all channels pretty simultaneously. I think it has to do with maybe the content approach that you were just talking about, how you've a pillar form content that you distributed out. Did you focus somewhere first or was it really just all omnichannel?
Starting point is 00:40:20 It was omnichannel. I was, okay, so candidly, my strategy is nuts. I put a lot of time into this So I don't recommend this is like a very doable strategy I would actually recommend that you kill one channel first and you leverage that literally exactly what you're saying like day one I would do I didn't have a team. It wasn't monetized So I was cutting every single video myself and I was I would download every piece of tech and every app that I could ever use to Find ways to take all those long-form clips and turn them into
Starting point is 00:40:47 like every podcast is probably like 50 to 60 different pieces of content. I was doing that myself. I was posting myself and I was scheduling myself and I was using any type of automation tool like a like if this then that tool. So if it goes up on YouTube then it goes up on Instagram and it goes up on LinkedIn. And I was just like between the editing and then trying to build like backend systems. I was probably the equivalent of like a five person team when I started this, because I go so deep on the actual text. So I don't actually recommend this as a scalable strategy, but I do believe that if you have volume and you maintain volume with a little bit of marketing, know how across platforms
Starting point is 00:41:23 for a period of time, you will start to gain a community in an audience. And then once you have that community in audience, you really do have like a higher conversion rate. Because when somebody discovers you on one platform and they go, you've seen this before, somebody has a million followers on YouTube and like 20 followers on Twitter. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:39 Or like a, actually better example. Somebody has a million followers on Instagram and 20 followers on Twitter. Like you're like, hmm, who are they really? Like obviously they're not that impressive. Maybe they've really dominated on one platform, but I don't know if they're really for me or there's a hesitation to convert into like a fan.
Starting point is 00:41:55 Whereas if you have that social proof, which is incredibly hard to build, but once you have that social proof, conversion across all your channels increases. It is about showing up everywhere as much as possible. And I would even say that it's better to not be on a platform than to show up half-ass. I'm not a big fan of showing up half-ass. I'll give you another example who's a complete 180 of me, like Seth Godin. Seth Godin doesn't do social, but he doesn't pretend to do social. Like, he doesn't try to do Twitter. I think he auto-tweets his blogs, but he's like,
Starting point is 00:42:23 he does Instagram, and he does his blog, Seth's.blog. And that's it. And he doesn't try to do Twitter. I think he auto-tweets his blogs, but he's like, he does Instagram, and he does his blog, Seth's.blog. And that's it. And he doesn't do social, which is fine, because he's not trying to do something that he doesn't want to do, but a lot of people are trying to do things they don't want to do and they tweet like once a week,
Starting point is 00:42:36 and it looks really bad. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors. You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling all mine and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business.
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Starting point is 00:43:31 If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just the click of a button even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do.
Starting point is 00:43:55 Like I said, just took a couple of days. And so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be. And I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat and enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly
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Starting point is 00:45:39 It was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately Implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in I-5. And at the same time, she built her eight-figure company as a side hustle and eventually took
Starting point is 00:46:04 it and made her full-time hustle. And her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire, she's earned a life-changing wealth. And on top of all that, she maintains a happy marriage and a healthy home life. On the Kelly Road Show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid,
Starting point is 00:46:37 exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, app fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master
Starting point is 00:47:17 class, tackle the hard conversations with Radical Cander to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework
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Starting point is 00:48:46 Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way, I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now, as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-profiting. Yeah, so talking about your content strategy really quick, I was on your YouTube channel, I was so impressed, and I still see that you do like chop up 20 different videos for it. So does that still work?
Starting point is 00:49:27 Every question I guess is its own little video on YouTube. Does it still work? Because if so, I'm going to have my team do it right away. For me. Well, it works to an extent. Like, is it worth the time? I mean, I have a process built in so it's still, it's not that much of a lift. Each video gets a few subscribers.
Starting point is 00:49:43 So say that like as you can track, like how many subscribers come from every single video you post on YouTube. So say your main podcast gets you, I don't know, just make up a number, 100 subscribers, and each small video gets you 10 subscribers. So fine. If I put out 20 different videos, great. I've made 300 subscribers off of that content. So yeah, compounded over 300 plus episodes and four years,
Starting point is 00:50:06 yes, it does make a difference. On one individual, it will probably not. And I would even say what I'm thinking about doing right now is actually putting more editing value into the more valuable clips and maybe remove some of the fluff. I look for clues. I have people that I watch on every single social platform and I just emulate what they do. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. So I look at the biggest podcasters that I watch on every single social platform and I just emulate what they do. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. So I look at the biggest podcasters and I see how they do it and now I see what people are doing. No one's really ever adopted my strategy to be quite honest.
Starting point is 00:50:33 But what I see like the large but then again, like if you do everything exactly the way someone else has done it, then you'll probably have the same results and maybe they heal a little longer, but the podcasters that I see now, they take like five or six clips from an episode they really, really like and then they're going to do like custom thumbnails and they'll really put a lot of effort into like the description and the tags. So I actually think I'm going to move that way and just like gauge like, is that a better way to go? That's what I do for YouTube. Yeah. So something that I just want to call out, Scott, is that I think one of the reasons why you're so successful on your part of this like 250 podcaster club that I just want to call out, Scott, is that I think one of the reasons why you're so successful on your part of this, like, 250 podcaster club that I was just talking
Starting point is 00:51:08 about is because you did get your hands dirty and you did figure out how to audio edit and video edit and do it yourself and figure out SEO and I feel like, oh, no matter what niche you are, whether you're a podcaster or not, when you really go deep on whatever you're trying to succeed on and you do even the lowest level stuff related to that task, you really learn everything and become like a true expert and thought leader. So I want to commend you for getting your hands dirty and learning how to do all that stuff. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:51:40 It's the only way to do it. That's not just with content. That's with everything. Like literally everything that, I mean, I've hired sales teams, I built out sales teams, built out marketing teams. There isn't a single, oh, but I mean, like other things that you do for the podcast to grow. I mean, there's a whole like building newsletter, building email lists, SEOing, like there's a whole lot of stuff to market a show. But like everything that I've done it's a marketing activity that I do for my podcast or a business, I've done it myself.
Starting point is 00:52:05 So I figured out, like I coded my own website, you go to scottdclarry.com, I coded that myself on a weekend, which is wild, I shouldn't be doing that, but I do this stuff to learn, and then I'll try and outsource it. Like SEO and blogs, I'll look for how to SEO, how to get back links, I look for all the tools and the tech,
Starting point is 00:52:21 I figure this stuff out myself, and then I'll train somebody or I'll hire somebody, but at least I'll know if they're telling me they're good, I'll be able to gauge if they're full of it or not. Yeah, totally. So let's talk about monetizing your podcast. So when you first started your podcast, were you using it as like a lead gen tool for your consulting or how were you first monetizing your audio and YouTube channel? So this is wild. I was not using it for anything. I was literally not using it for anything because I was not when I was building it from scratch. Again, like not all of my advice
Starting point is 00:52:54 is the smartest and quickest path to revenue. It's just my journey. So again, hindsight is 2020. If somebody's going to build something and put a lot of time into it and they need to make money off of that thing, There's different things that I would suggest. This is my journey. I had the long vision, long game and play in mind, right? So when I started it, I was still working as CRO tech company. I had no need to use it for any monetization.
Starting point is 00:53:17 I mean, it would be nice, but I didn't want to sell a course. I have an aversion to selling courses, not because I was working as a CRO. I was like, I hate scammy gurus that sell shitty courses. I can't stand it. It's like grosses me out. And like this whole world of course selling, and this is actually, I wanna prep this with this.
Starting point is 00:53:36 There are very good courses. I mean, well, you actually have put together and this is not because you asked me to say this, your course is exceptional with LinkedIn. There's really good content out there. There's a lot of bullshit out there too. Totally. And I think that you took a long time to create a course.
Starting point is 00:53:49 You could have created a course. Five years before I put out anything like that. Your exact same thing as me. I'm like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this right now. I did not have the mental bandwidth between editing all these damn videos and everything day one to put a course together. It's going to be half-ass. It's not going to be worth it, which is funny because candidly,
Starting point is 00:54:05 with my experience, it probably would have been okay, but that's besides the point, I couldn't do it. So I was like, I'm building this for the future, I'm going to maintain it. I have a firm belief that if you do anything for 10 years, it's going to be successful. I believe that like wholeheartedly. So I'm like, I just got to keep doing it.
Starting point is 00:54:18 I got to keep doing it. I got to trust the process. I got to learn from mistakes. I got to test. I got to find feedback loops and the things that I do and keep improving, but if I keep doing it, it's going to turn into got to, I got to find feedback loops and the things that I do and keep improving. But if I keep doing it, it's going to turn into something. Then you turn on the ads.
Starting point is 00:54:29 And that's pretty much, and turning on the ads was like people were reaching out to me to get to advertise on my show. I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. That's a cool opportunity. And then when you go down that rabbit hole, I never wanted to sell ads myself. So I'm like, then you start to work with brokers. Then I'm like, okay, how do I leverage my time? I'm not going to be reaching out to people saying, hey, come
Starting point is 00:54:47 and advertise them. So I'll go on advertise cast and gumball and all these different types of ad brokers when I was first getting started. And that was it. I never gated content. I never really wanted to do subscriptions. Never sold a product. Always focused on building a bigger audience.
Starting point is 00:55:01 So my call to action was always sign up for my newsletter, subscribe to whatever. Go check out my other social. That was So my call to action was always signed up for my newsletter, subscribe to whatever, go check out my other social. That was my only call to action because I knew that long term, the audience would have more value for me than me putting my name on a crappy product that I wasn't really happy with. And then I was trying to sell it and I was all stressed about it. I'm like, listen, in a diameter reputation, build an audience, sell later. Totally. I took me, I think, three years before I had sponsors on the podcast, I just focused on growing my audience.
Starting point is 00:55:28 And by the way, there's something to say about just pure intentions, because I have a feeling that you just wanted to help people. You were also probably really curious for interviewing all, you wanted the opportunity to interview really smart people. And so you came out there with really pure intentions of being of service,
Starting point is 00:55:44 and I'm sure that attracted an audience to your show. I hope that intention came through and you're right. I had no I was making good enough money at the time that I didn't really care for another couple like a few bucks from from gating content and funny enough my passion has actually always been teaching and I think that's why I wasn't so Aggressive about monetizing because I enjoyed it. Like I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, my first, my first, first, first job when I was like 14 or young, young, young was teaching tennis. It's like, I love, I love teaching. I love like when you start working with somebody, like they're clearly struggling, clearly like drowning in this portion of their life. And then you like can just take the things that you've known and you experienced and the insights that you have and small little tweaks and all of a
Starting point is 00:56:28 sudden, they're awake again. They're seeing life for the first time. They're seeing their business for the first time. They're seeing this big problem and now it's gone away. It's such a great feeling, Candlely. It sounds so silly, but it's like I've never not had a good experience teaching. And I feel like podcasting is a way to teach. I feel like when I step up on stage, it's a way to teach. I mean, I literally like, you want to talk about like just doing all the things myself and trying new things and testing new things. I started a second podcast where I was just teaching business.
Starting point is 00:56:58 That's definitely not monetized. I just started it like on a whim. Like just wanted to try and start something new, try different formats. I'm like, okay, I want to test a different format. Why not let me teach business, whatever. And then I started a second. So the point is, yes, if you do have passion in what you're doing, it's actually very easy to sustain it for a long enough period of time until money starts to find you.
Starting point is 00:57:18 Really, really great advice, Scott. I want to talk about snagging guests. And this is actually a really great transition into sales, because you have an incredible lineup of guests, and I heard on an interview that you just leveraged your sales skills to get your guests to you, take the same approach that you use on sales, and so let's talk about sales, cold outreach, and getting people to actually open emails. What is your best advice? So, before you even send an email, you have to find their contact information, which is actually quite easy. I mean, you can use a tool called Contact Out, you can use Rocket Mail, you can use any of these tools to find email.
Starting point is 00:57:54 It's very simple. If you're struggling with that, it's not an issue. You can get anybody's email and literally anybody's email in the world. Very simply. After that, Subject line is the first thing they see. So in my subject line, way back when I would actually just leverage like the five past guests that I had or the three past guests that I had and put that in the subject line of the email, like the most high profile guests. That was really it. Then I would say like podcast invite and that created a little bit of social proof for enough to get somebody interested in to actually open the email. Because I had like Guy Kawasaki, Anthony,
Starting point is 00:58:28 Scare, Mochi, and Grant Cardone. And I think the first like 20 episodes, which is like, by the way, don't recommend because I was scared shitless and I was not a good interviewer. I mean, I don't think they really mind it, but I was like very stressed. So like, it is what it is.
Starting point is 00:58:44 So I had them very early on. And it was like, if I, I can't remember stressed. So like, it is what it is. So I had them very early on, and it was like, if I, I can't remember who I got first, but say I got Guy Kawasaki first. I think I got Guy first, not first interview, but first like bigger name, because he was launching a podcast at the same time, which is actually, I can speak about why that's a strategy now, at the time I didn't think about it as a strategy,
Starting point is 00:59:00 but that's a strategy that you can use, if they're launching a book, you can use that as well. Is there a meaningful event in that guest's life that makes them want to come on your show? Really smart. But guy was launching a podcast. He's like, sure, whatever. Come on your show. And then I got guy Kawasaki and then I put his name in the email to get Anthony Square Mochi, then I put Anthony and guy to get like Grant, whatever the order was,
Starting point is 00:59:23 doesn't matter, but that's that's how you get an open email. And then once they open the email, you're reinforcing of course the reach that you have and what you're going to do for them as a podcast host. You're setting like clear expectations as to what they can expect. But then if you don't have a large reach and the social proof isn't enough, I went above and beyond. So I was saying, I'll edit some social clips for you. I'll send them over to you fully edited.
Starting point is 00:59:44 This is what they're going to look like. You can post them on their social. They can just be of you. They don't even need to include me. I can just create great social content for you out of the podcast. I mean, for them, it's what, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, other time, and they're getting free, high quality social content that maybe Grant has a good social team. A lot of people don't have great social teams. You look at a lot of these people unless you're Grant or Gary Vee or a few other people that really focus on it, Anthony Scaramucci, I love the guy, but his social is not crazy, right?
Starting point is 01:00:11 So, you just leverage what they want, what they have, what's the problem that they're solving for? Very traditional, sales 101. So, if they're getting on a podcast, it means they want exposure. Exposure means they're also kind of focused on social. It means you can also tell them the email list you have access to. It means you should also reinforce who else has been on there, social proof, and what
Starting point is 01:00:29 you're going to speak about, talk about the things that they're trying to actually announce into the world, podcast, book, whatever. Speak about the reach of the show. All the things that are solving for the problem that that person is experiencing in their life and doesn't matter who that person is, there's a problem they're solving for. Always, always, always. So that's sales 101 mixed in with getting podcast guests. It's like incredible advice.
Starting point is 01:00:50 This is a podcast prince, guys. You have the podcast princess, the podcast prince. He knows all about how to snag guests, like all those tips are really good. I'm going to tell my team today, use putter best guests in the subject line. It's really good. You can actually do a step more and actually because you want the email to stand out, don't even put them in this, you can put them in the subject line, but create like a little graphic and put your best guest in like the signature in your signature in the email. So they can, they can see the people because a lot of people may not recognize a name,
Starting point is 01:01:22 but if they see the person, they'll be like, oh, I recognize that person, if they're famous, that recognition, it'll make that email stand out. And they'll be like, wow, this person, I mean, for you, you've had up to Matthew McConaughey. That's a very recognizable face. So you put that person in the signature saying, this and 15 other people were on my show, and you put little graphics,
Starting point is 01:01:43 that's gonna get a high response rate. Guys, I really enjoy having my friends on the show. The chemistry is always on point, and honestly, one of my goals for 2023 is to have an in-person studio so that every single conversation has the same type of energy that I have with my friends. I can't wait for that moment ya bam. Here I am putting it out to the universe. Please hear my prayers. Part one of this episode was really fun because Scott and I had a lot to relate on and his come-up story was inspiring and had lots of lessons for us to learn from him at the same time. I consider Scott to be one of my peers and even my competitors in the podcasting space. And one of my secrets to success is proactively collaborating with my competitors.
Starting point is 01:02:32 Instead of feeling envy or jealousy of somebody who's also rocking it in my industry, I always and I mean always try to think of ways that I could meet with them, work with them and win together with them instead. So for example, Scott is now in my podcast network, the YAP Media Network, and I'm helping him to grow and monetize his podcast. It's a win-win for both of us. Scott and I got along so well that we ended up talking for well over an hour, so we split up this episode into two parts. Stay tuned for part two of my interview with Scott Clary coming out next week, where
Starting point is 01:03:04 we touch on everything sales Which is Scott's main expertise? We go over how to establish a buyer persona pricing strategies and his favorite ways to use psychology and sales Selling is one of my all-time favorite topics and this conversation is loaded with takeaways It is not going to disappoint. I can't wait for all of you to hear it again Part two with Scott Clary is out next week, and I'll see you then. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listen and learn to and profited from this episode, share it with your friends and
Starting point is 01:03:33 family. I love it when you guys share this podcast by word of mouth. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. That is the number one way to thank us here at Young & Profiting. If you like watching your podcast videos, you can always find us on YouTube. All of our shows are uploaded to YouTube. And you can also find me on Instagram at Gap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name.
Starting point is 01:03:57 It's Hala Taha. And if you want to reach out to me directly via DM, the best way to do it is on Instagram. Again, my handle is at Yapakala. My LinkedIn gets pretty flooded with DMs. It's hard for me to keep track, but if you reach out to me on Instagram, I will definitely respond. Big shout out to my amazing rock star, Yap team.
Starting point is 01:04:15 Thank you for all your hard work and helping us to put out this show. This is your host, Halataha, AKA the podcast princess princess signing off. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background. I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and happiness guinea pig
Starting point is 01:04:54 is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as
Starting point is 01:05:16 follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Ruben.

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