Getting Started in Entrepreneurship and Finding Product Market Fit (Hala Taha & Young and Profiting Podcast)

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 an imposterous syndrome? There's always times when people will not feel like they fit in a room and that scales up and it never ends. Something that I've found is reverse engineering the path to get to where I want to be. And that starts to mitigate some of the stress of an imposterous syndrome, which then allows action. What made you realize that you wanted to start a side hustle? 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 marketing. If you do a 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. 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. 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. 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, and I'm saying 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 into some sort of law enforcement. I mean, that was law enforcement, grandpa, uncle, everyone was law enforcement. And then they migrated to different, you know, 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. 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 done, I did very well at that. I was really good. I kept moving up market. I was, you know, I killed it in SMB, the mid-market and 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 in 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. 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 who 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, you know, 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 going to be paying me 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. 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, startups are 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. And I wouldn't ever recommend it. But again, hindsight is 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. 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, they 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. And that, 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. Yeah, I love that. 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 bell 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. 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 where 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. It was when so the director that hired me at that smaller telco, um, 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. I 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 this guy had no business doing this at all. But I don't know. 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 in the CEO and got the position. And it was really just putting together a plan of where I see us now, lessons that I've learned in my career that I can incorporate into this into this organization, a one, three, five, ten-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 like a really, really in-depth proposal as to why I should have that job. And that was that initiative was enough to actually get that job out 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 saying like, listen, I'm throwing my hand to the ring. I'm the man in the arena. 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, I mean, you'll hear the sayings like if you don't ask, you 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 fight for it. I would be very, I would be very surprised if over a period of time, people did not get what they're looking to get. Totally. And it's, 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. So ask for what you want. Yeah. Shoot your shot. So let's talk about imposter syndrome for a minute. A lot of women especially have a problem with imposter syndrome and women in particular. And by the way, most of my listeners are male, but for any of the females listening, this question is for you and for males who suffer from imposter syndrome. But basically they would never put their hat in a ring if they feel underqualified, right? Because they just have such significant imposter 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 is that everybody feels it at, 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 like they don't belong. And this is why 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, you know, 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. 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 plays women more than men, 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, 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, physical health, focus goals. It could be my business goals, my investment goals. It could be where I want to 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. 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 and anything in life. But you'll also realize 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. Yeah, Pam, registration for my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass is now live. Learning what took me five years and just two days in a live workshop directly with me where I teach you the ins and outs of the LinkedIn platform. You might know me as a podcast princess, but I'm also the LinkedIn queen. I wanted the top influencers on the LinkedIn platform. And I also run Yap Media, which is an award winning social media agency and the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. I've created influencers over and over again the last three years. Now you can learn all the strategies that I use for me and my clients and leverage them for yourself. In my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, I teach you how to develop a personal brand. This is a personal brand that you can take off LinkedIn as well. You actually leave with the voice guide that we do together in class and I'll go over the psychology of design, copywriting hacks, the LinkedIn algorithm, engagement hacks, and how to convert your following into sales. Because at the end of the day, we all want ROI from what we're doing on LinkedIn. If your target audience is on LinkedIn, you need to take my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So whether you're a corporate professional who wants more job security, a solopreneur, freelancer, or entrepreneur who wants to grow their small business, you need to understand how to grow your following on LinkedIn and then how to convert that following into sales. Learn how I grew Yapp Media to $5 million in revenue with zero paid ads all for my organic content on LinkedIn. I credit LinkedIn to all of my success. Honestly, I wouldn't have this top podcast, I wouldn't have my company, and my big team if it wasn't for LinkedIn. So if you want to learn more about my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, you can go to yappmedia.io-course and use code Masterclass for 25% off. Again, that's yappmedia.io-course and use code Masterclass for 25% off. 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 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 so much sense. That makes a ton of sense. It's 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. 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? But maybe not quite that. I don't know how older you 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? 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 was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to kill it. When I got into sales, I knew that it made a lot of money and it was like that or bartending. And those were 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 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 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. That will close more deals than anything. Hmm, I love that. So I learned that you actually started consulting on the side at some point during your career 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 the side. What made you realize that you wanted to start a side hustle or that you were, you know, there was a market out there for you to have a side hustle. Yeah. So when I started consulting, it was actually, it was actually during the second, 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 hustles are 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 in the long 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 got to build something and I got to find a way, you know, entrepreneurship is sexy and I look at, you know, the, whatever, the Zuckerbergs and whatever other entrepreneur you, you, you know, 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. And it was founding a company. And this was the only product that I knew how to sell, which was myself. And the reason why I started as a side hustle was, again, it was a 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. And then I, we, 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. And 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 as a, 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, I'm not about the quit your job, have six months or 12 months of runway and go all in. I'm about, you work your job, you, 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, 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, 100, 150 customers, wait until you make the same salary or even double the salary that you're making at your job, very 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, a salary, say 100K, you can totally build a side hustle to 200K on, on part time. Like that, let's be real, like it's very doable, right? And now you're talking about we have AI, I didn't have AI, I couldn't copy, right? I couldn't write all this with AI, I 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 that we can be as human beings when creating stuff. So yeah, I would say start it as, 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, 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. 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 the 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 unproductive time. We're always 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. I didn't know how to, and now I know how to buy a business. I mean, 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 it up. So I think that 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. So if I, 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? So it's really, it's not an efficient form of entrepreneurship to conduct as a side hustle. It's not a leverageable form of entrepreneurship. 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, you know, well, actually, when I started, I was working a 40-hour weekend in office, plus X amount of hours on the weekend and at night, finding clients, 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 great version. Suck, don't do it. If you're going to consult, you're going to be an agency, whatever it is. Follow what Hall is 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 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. 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. I get this question a lot because I'm 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. 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? I think, first of all, I think everyone has monetizable skills. Straight up everyone has monetizable skills. Now, if you, let's, I guess, let's, well, first, any business student you work in, you can, 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 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, your, your CFO, your, your account, you have a monetizable skill. You're a marketer in as a generalist or as somebody who's more specific and social media or SEO, I mean, you have a monetizable skill. I think it's just how you take it to market and how and how you commoditize that skill. So, meaning that you use tools like Upwork and Fiverr and Top Tal 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 to turn into a business, not just a job. 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. Hey, everybody. This is Holly from Young Improving Podcasts and I'm live in Las Vegas at Podcast Evolution. I want to tell you about GoBox Studio. I remember I was at a podcast conference a few months ago and GoBox Studio had a boost at the conference and I see this amazing equipment and I was like, oh my god, I have to get a GoBox Studio. This is exactly what I've been searching for as a content creator. I'm always traveling now, speaking, going to conferences and I need to be able to shoot my podcast as well as my commercials on the go. And I never really had an all-inclusive portable studio or solution. Everything was really piecemeal. I'd be lugging around all this equipment, trying to stuff it in a suitcase and it never really worked, which meant that I wasn't able to shoot interviews or commercials while I was on the go. Now with GoBox Studio, I can do that and more and it always looks professional and GoBox Studio is a complete game changer for me. So GoBox Studio comes in like awesome looking suitcase. You can actually roll it around in the airport. It comes with two professional lights, a professional camera, it comes with two wireless mics and it's everything you need for a professional studio, whether you want to record podcasts, IG reels, TikToks, whatever it is. It's got it all for you. Just hook up your computer and you're ready to go. Now whenever I travel, I'm always going to be bringing my portable studio GoBox Studio. If you guys want your own GoBox Studio, if you want to take your content creation to the next level, if you want to create on the go, go to goboxstudio.com slash app and use promo code yap at checkout. Again, go to goboxstudio.com slash app and use promo code yap at checkout. 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. Love the talent in the Philippines. Very educated. I've had better people from the Philippines than I found in North America sometimes. They kill it. He went after university and he went to the Philippines because 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. He went to the Philippines and he interviewed people face to face and he built relationships with great writers in the Philippines. Obviously, there's a little bit of an arbitrage of costs 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. 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 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. 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. And by the way, just so you know, like this is like sort of what I did with yeah, most of my talent was in the Philippines and then it was like labor cost arbitrage. Yeah, exactly. With my personal brand being able to charge super high and all my training that I gave my team, right? 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 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. And I know that's like the most ambiguous answer, but and 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. You have trouble with fulfilling. So things are selling out all the time. Your servers are like overbanned with you're having to spin up new AWS instances all the time. You have like so much money coming into the bank account that is like blowing your mind, like it is insane. 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 going to get my numbers wrong because I did not prep for this. But anyway, I'll give you the context of the story and it'll sort of like paint a picture of what product market fit 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. And she could not fulfill 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 I'm operating out of my garage or you know my 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 see if there's any demand. And what people do is 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. And that's 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 is somebody that's actually worked in an industry for a long period of time and they identify they identify a problem in that industry and then they launch a product or a piece of tech or solution against the problem they've witnessed for the past 20 plus years. That's 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 you could do what Buffer did. So Buffer is like the you know 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 pay for it. And that was it. There was no actual product built and they ran ads against that form. 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 that you know 20 bucks a month. There's a good semblance of product market fit. You've at least tested the market. If you 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 they'd use your product you don't have product market fit. So you should test your messaging, test the audience that you're targeting, 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 like upwork if you're a service based business, upwork top tile five or whatever you can put yourself out there see if people start to buy your product see if you're differentiated enough right. 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 and I really hope you guys take key discuss advice. This was like excellent advice and this is the number one mistake that I see people do. They think there's some problem that doesn't really exist and they're investing in products and you know I have a friend who's like starting a clothing line and she and she's like investing all this money and I'm like do you have product market fit? Like have you tested it? 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 were considered a competitor me and you are head to head in the podcast category. No competition. No competition. We collab. We collab. All abundance. All abundance. Exactly. But technically we are like you know we're very similar in terms of our you know 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 yeah there's only 250 podcasts that are like monetizing at our level like able to go through all these agencies 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? So I started it just over four years now. So about four and a half years I think. And we started at the same time. Yeah I think we started at the same time. Yeah. I started it because I wanted to so after the first side hustle failed I wanted to build something. I wanted to build I had no idea what I wanted to build. I want to build something. I didn't know what I wanted to build. I'm like listen I have to like 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. And I didn't yeah I didn't know what I didn't want to build something on the side. But I knew that if I built the personal brand because I'm looking at the Gary Veeze 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. I could launch against that audience in that community. I could monetize that community in the future. All the things that literally quite literally like Gary Vee speaks about why you should build 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. 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 going to expand it. How do you expand content? Well you don't want to always have to create original for every single platform. Sometimes it works but ultimately you want a more scalable content strategy that can act as like your your 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 also get to have good conversation with great people and networking and networking play too. So that was the inception and it was like I need I need a pillar piece of content that I can you know 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 you know 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 lunch Vayner Media and Vayner Sports and empathy wines and all the other stuff that he does like lit V friends and all the like all the random stuff just because you have the audience there and have that platform is huge. So that was that was sort of the thought process and this podcasting made the most sense because of 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 like 80 to 90 percent 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 on 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 um LinkedIn blew up first LinkedIn was always first YouTube and Instagram were somewhat simultaneous because I was very heavy on video from day one so I was putting out almost for like well since I started between three to six pieces of video content per day in various forms and it's just been like an onslaught of video content which fortunately has played into recent algorithms because I my part of my podcast process is you do the long form content and then I break it down into every single question that I ask of 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 SEO'd 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 and YouTube shorts so I was always video heavy and the reason why I was still bullish on video it sort of ties to a thesis that I have around YouTube as a whole like I mean I'm very bullish on video I believe that there's a lot of psychological reasons why YouTubers have the YouTubers that have large audiences on YouTube have large audiences everywhere but if you'll notice like a big Instagram influencer it's 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 plus the length of time to somebody consumes your content the rapport is just insane that you build with the audience and I'm always like if I build a big YouTube audience I'm gonna be big everywhere else and like it so far the thesis is actually worked out and I think it's 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 you know I'm always of the school of thought 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 kind of blown up on all channels pretty simultaneously I think it has to do with maybe your content approach that you were just talking about how you've a pillar form content that you sort of distributed out did you kind of focus somewhere first or was it really just all like Omni Channel it was Omni Channel like I was okay so candidly my strategy is nuts like 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 it because 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 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 I go so deep on the actual tech 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 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 or like a you know actually better example somebody has a million followers on Instagram and 20 followers on Twitter like you're like what like who are they really like obviously they're not yeah that impressive maybe you know they've really dominated on one platform but I don't know if they're really for me or there's like a there's a hesitation to convert into like a fan 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 so it is 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 I don't I'm not a big fan of showing up half 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 he does Instagram and he does his blog sets dot 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 and it looks really bad so I just think it's better to yeah yeah so I 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 two different videos so does that still work every question I guess is this own little video on YouTube does it still work it each one I'm gonna have my team do it right away 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 it's not that much of a lift um each video gets a few subscribers 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 hundred subscribers and each small video gets you 10 subscribers so fine I've if I put out if I put out 20 different videos great I've made I've made 300 subscribers off of that content so yeah compounded over 300 plus episodes and four years yes it does make a difference on on one individual it will probably not and and I would even say what I'm thinking about doing right now is actually putting more editing value into like the more the more valuable clips and maybe remove some of like the fluff because I I look for clues like 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 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 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 take you a little longer but the the 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 custom thumbnails and they'll really put a lot of effort into like the description and the tags so I actually think I'm gonna move that way and just like gauge like is is that a better way to go that's what I do for you 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 was just talking 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 and I feel like no matter what niche you are whether your podcasters are 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 you know getting your hands dirty and and learning how to do all that stuff the only way to do it and that's like 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 know you do for the podcast to grow I mean there's there's a whole like building newsletter building email is SEO and 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 so I figured out like I coded my own website you go to scottdclary.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 attack 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 yeah 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 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 not all of my advice is the smartest and quickest path to revenues just it's just my journey so again hindsight 2020 if somebody's gonna 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 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 sells shit courses I can't stand it it's like it grosses me out and and like this whole world of course selling and this is actually I want to premise with this there are very good courses I mean what you actually put together and this is not a 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 so in my and I think that you took a long time to create a course you could have for years before I put out anything you're the exact same thing you're exact same thing as me I'm like if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this right now I did not have the mental bandwidth between editing all these videos and everything day one to put a course together so it's gonna be half it's not gonna be worth it which is funny because candidly 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 gonna maintain it I have a firm belief that if you do anything for 10 years it's gonna be successful I believe that like wholeheartedly so I'm like I just gotta keep doing it I gotta keep doing it I gotta trust the process I gotta learn from mistakes I gotta test I gotta I gotta find feedback loops and the things that I do and keep improving but if I keep doing it it's gonna it's gonna turn into something and then you turn on the ads 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 like then you start to work with brokers then I'm like okay how do I leverage my time I'm not gonna be reaching out to people saying hey come and advertise them so I'll go on advertise cast and gumball and all these different types of ad brokers that when I was first getting started and that was it I never gated content I never I never really wanted to do subscriptions never sold a product always focused on building a bigger audience so my call to action was always sign 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 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 I love it I'm probably really curious uh 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 and I'm sure that attracted an audience to your show I hope I hope it did I hope that I hope that intention came through I was making 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 um and funny enough my passion has actually always been teaching um 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 when you start working with somebody and and 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 and the insights that you have and like small little tweaks and all of a sudden like it's like you know they're awake again they're seeing like life for the first time they're seeing like the they're business for the first time they're seeing this big problem and then now it's gone away like it's such a it's such a great feeling can't believe it sounds so silly but it's like I've never 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 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 why not let me teach business whatever and then I started a second so the point is yes yes if you if you do have passion and what you're doing it's it's actually very easy to sustain it for a long enough period of time until money starts to find you. Hmm really really great advice Scott I want to talk about snagging guests that you have an incredible lineup of guests and I heard on an interview that you just leverage 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. Hmm okay so when you're I mean before you even send an email you have to find their contact information which is actually quite easy I mean if you you can use a tool called contact out you can use rocket mail you can use like any of these tools to find email addresses like very simple like it's if you're struggling with that it's not an issue you can get anybody's email and like 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 and then I would say like podcasting by and I 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 Scare Mochi and Grant Cardone and I think the first like 20 episodes just like which is like by the way don't recommend because I was scared to list 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 so like it is what it is but um so I had them very early on and and it was like if I 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 but that's a strategy that you can use if they're launching a book you can use that as well is a meaningful event in that guest 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 Scare Mochi then I put Anthony and Guy to get like Grant whatever the order was 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 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 this is what they're going to look like you can post them on their social they can just be a view they don't even need to include me I can just create great social content for you out of the podcast so you're 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 like people that really focus on it Anthony Scare Mochi I love the guy but his social is not like crazy right so yeah you just leverage what they want what they have acts what's the problem that they're solving for very 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 what you're going to speak about talk about the things that they're trying to actually announce to the world podcast book whatever speak about the the reach of the show like 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 always so yeah that's pretty much that sales 101 you know mixed in with getting podcasts it's like incredible advice 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 guest in the subject line totally um you can actually do do a step do a step uh 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 take uh create like a little graphic and put your best guests 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 but if they see the person they'll be like oh I recognize that person if they're famous and and that recognition it'll like it'll make that email stand out and they'll be like wow this person I mean for you you've had like up to Matthew McConaughey like that's a very recognizable face right so you put that person in the signature saying this this and 15 other people were on my show and you you put little graphics that's going to get a high response rate