Guest Podcast: Interviewing 650 Entrepreneurs, Here is What The Most Successful Had In Common (That One Time)

People that build billion dollar companies, they're not level-headed people. Today, on that one time, I'm joined by Scott D. Cleary. Scott is a seasoned entrepreneur, content creator, and the host of Success Stories podcast, one of the premier entrepreneur and business podcasts in the world. In my mind, if someone else has figured it out, I can figure it out. It's not complicated. It's just, it just requires patience. What for you would you say emotion plays in business? The most useful asset in sales would be empathy, because that allows you to give a shit about the person that you're selling to, which is really how you sell. I've worked with content creators. I've worked with business people. I've worked with people that do a lot of like spiritual work. How they frame the stories is how people begin to change their behaviour. If I was going to put all my energy into one channel, I'd put it into YouTube. Like, I don't think TikTok is good for content. What's the line do you think that you need to tow between being hard and being graceful? It's a good question. I mean, that makes still some of these questions. Go for it, I'll send you the list, bro. It's a very good question. With millions of followers across his various social media and marketing platforms, Scott has made a name for himself as a thought leader in business, entrepreneurship, decision making, and personal growth. In this episode, you'll learn how to create content that resonates, navigate business challenges with the level head and leverage storytelling to build trust with your audience. So I think you'll really enjoy this conversation with Scott D. Clare. If you do enjoy this episode, please give us a follow on YouTube or Spotify. Give the podcast a rating. Let us know what you're thinking as we are on a mission to get a thousand subscribers and every bit helps. Scott, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm excited to do this. Same here, same here. I want to get started by just saying like it's an honor to have you here. You have an amazing podcast. You do some amazing work in multiple fields and being able to take the time to speak with me on something that is a lot smaller than what you do. It goes a long way. Stop it. I think we can have some very impactful conversations and I'm really, really excited to chat to you. So yeah, thank you. No, my pleasure. I'm excited. I'm excited for your podcast, journey, too. You already had me. You're already had me. When I was starting out, I did not have the equipment set up for you had. So I'm very impressed. I'm 60 episodes in. We've done a bit now, so good. Good. No, I'm excited to do that. Awesome. Well, so if you could give us an elevator picture of who you are, what you're doing and how you're contributing to the world, what would that look like? So the elevator pitch is, in my past life, I was an entrepreneur. I built businesses. I tried to figure out how to create great products that people liked. I sold a lot. I marketed a lot. But in my current life, I guess I'm a content creator, a podcaster, still a entrepreneur because this is a business at the end of the day. And I still definitely still build things. So my better half, she has a massive company that I help out in. I have a couple of investments and a small portfolio. But ultimately, the focus is on building out a massive podcast, building out a large personal brand. And I would say the way that I try and give back to the world without sounding too pretentious is to interview people that have figured life out and business out and whatever the domain of expertise is. And unpack those lessons because I truly believe that life isn't actually as difficult as it seems like it is for a lot of people, especially young people who are just trying to figure out where they want to end up and what they want to build and what they want to do. So I guess in a way, I'm creating content for my younger self. I'm creating content for someone else who's out there who, again, just wants to learn from people who have figured it out. And I think that the highest calling of most people on this earth is to actually teach and educate. I think that unfortunately, just a lot of us get stuck in a routine and stressed about money and bills and health and finances and relationships. But ultimately, I think that is actually the calling that I'm trying to serve as a calling that I think most people would actually be the most happy as trying to serve if everything else was taken care of. So I feel very grateful for that. Great. I like the idea of you're doing content for your younger self because very, you know, throughout this journey, there's been not many mentors and I've really leaned into creators, leaned into podcasts. Like, my understanding of the world amplified in so many different ways. The moment I came across him, Ferris' podcast. And that's where it all began. And I probably spent thousands and thousands of hours just in this consuming business podcast, consuming like mindset podcast, like spiritual, just all of these things. And it's framed my thought process in a way that I couldn't have done, you know, with my local network. So yeah, the younger self thing is extremely interesting. So that's why I think that the younger self thing or the creating something for yourself, it may not even be your younger self. I think that's just the best way to build a business. I think, again, a podcast is a business. And the product is the interviews. And I have to make sure the product is the best. So how do I figure out the product? Well, I have to make sure that the audience that wants a product. So I'm creating something for an audience that I know exists. But I'm creating the most successful entrepreneurs on this planet are people not that are stands for dropouts. But they're people who work in an industry for 20 or 30 years. And they see a problem in this industry that only they know because they've lived in this industry their whole professional life. And then they build something to solve that problem and they go sell it back into the industry. So that is how you win. That is how you, you know, when you talk about entrepreneurs having a 95% failure rate. Well, that's when they're trying to solve a problem for a cohort of people that they've never been a part of. But when you try and solve a problem for a cohort that you are a part of, I would say, I don't know if it's an exact inverse percentage. But I would assume that there's a much higher chance of success than failure because you now know that the market needs your problem because nobody else is facing it. And is the pain point that you've had to deal with time and time again. So I think that's just a smart way to build. Build something that you use, consume, whatever. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny. You said that because I have spent pretty much most of my successes in the past have come from scratching my own itch. So the things that have worked are just like, I want this. I don't have this first for I will make this. It's not even that complicated. Like comment, but common sense isn't common. And a lot of people, they get enamored with whatever version of entrepreneurship they see online. And then they try and create something that is disruptive and going to change the world and and and going to be a billion dollar unicorn. I'm like, bro, why don't you just solve a problem that's going to make you five million dollars a year? I mean, you know how happy you would be with five million dollars a year with a business that you don't have to worry about IPOing or going public or 3000 employees, like just build a business that makes you five, whatever, your ambitious 10 million dollars a year. By the way, the multiple on that exit would still be phenomenal in the right industry. So it doesn't even matter. It still makes just out of money. But yeah, I think that people just have to understand what entrepreneurship should be rather than like this Hollywood highlight real Silicon Valley bullshit version of entrepreneurship that's going to left. Like it's going to it's going to leave people broke and stressed out and burnt out and not saying that you won't go through failures because you will. But I'm just saying at least try to have the best possible chance of success by not building something that's going to change humanity because you really don't have to do that. That's not what entrepreneurship is for most people. So yes, vertically integrated solutions are a very smart way to build business. The idea around just building something that gives you a good quality of life is quite interesting. I think people say this romanticizing of these big accesses, these big businesses. But a lot of the people that are successful in these massive, massive businesses tend to do it because they are so driven by the mission alone that they couldn't not let it grow to its maximum completion. Like there's something inside of them that just will not let them stop. And they probably will be tortured at that level. I think at that level, like so people that build billion dollar companies, not that there's anything wrong with it, but they're not. They're not level headed people. It takes it takes it. I mean, there's definitely an infusion of craziness at some point that makes you think that you are going to commit your life to building this one thing that creates wealth far beyond where you can ever personally spend. And I'm not like I'm I'm a die hard capitalist. Like don't get me right. I have no issue with making money. But I mean, would I want, yeah, maybe be fun to build a billion dollar business. But I've made a lot of money. And okay, so maybe the house would be upgraded. But there's like, and by the way, outside of the money that I've made myself, because of the work that you and me both do with this podcast, we get exposed to a lot of cool people. Yeah. And I know people that have had significant exits. And it's not like their life changes dramatically. Like I would say the difference between somebody having a 50 million dollar exit and a 100 million dollar. I mean, their lives aren't that different. Really, on the day to day, their lives are not that different. Like their house is a little bit different. I mean, even like somebody who's made a 5 million dollar per year business, you're still a nice house. I mean, maybe you have like a couple less cars and people that you drive on. Yeah. People that have that wealth, they don't all use it the same either. Some of them don't need to have that much like in your face luxury all the time. Some people do. Some people that make a lot less money look a lot more wealthy than people that make a lot more money. You go to Miami. I mean, I'm in Miami right now. Like it looks like everybody's killing it. But I know most people in New York that are rich probably are worth 10 X as much. And they look like they're way more conservative. They're way more low key. Everybody in Miami's flaunting this that driving all these ridiculous cars, wearing 500,000 dollar watches. And they're probably worth a fraction of the wealth of some of the people I know in New York that don't wear any of that shit or do any of that stuff. So I mean, it's not like it's just what are you really chasing and what are you really hoping to accomplish? And I think that you should figure that shit out first. Yeah. Before you start to worry about how much money you're making or if you're going to buy a $500,000 RM. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It sounds like you seem very level headed. And in our initial you seem like very clear thinking level headed. Maybe it comes from all the conversations you've had over the years. It just frames your thinking in a really interesting way. I have no doubt it's impacted me. Yeah. For sure. The thought that pops into my mind in our rapid fire, we you spoke briefly about being in a very stable home. So what are the context of your kind of early years that allow us to understand yours a human and how you operate in the world now? So it's interesting because I did come from a very stable home. So my dad worked for the government, which is pretty much as stable a career as you can possibly get. I mean, it's the government. Yeah, that's true. That is very true. So he had a cool job, but it was still for the government. So he worked in counterterrorism. So he worked for CCCIS, which is like kind of like an amalgamation of CIA and FBI because we don't have as many organizations as the US has. So he worked for CCCIS retired now. So he had a cool job, but very stable. I mean, yes, the work is interesting, but you don't switch companies every couple of years, you kind of start when you're like 20, 20 years old and then you retire when you're 70. So very stable. Good salary, you know, good house. Mom work had myself, had my brother took time off and went back to work after she worked at a university. She was as close to like a scientist as you could probably get professionally. She worked in labs at university. So the super, super stable upbringing, which was great and afforded me tons of opportunities. No issues there, but I think that that was good because I didn't have like a lot of like trauma at all at really any growing up, which is always good because that early life, the early stage trauma can really negatively impact you when you're, you know, much older trying to get a job, trying to build a stable relationship. So all good role models, all good shit. But what it did do is I looked at my dad looked at my mom, looked at the pensions they were getting and looked at the environment they grew up in and very quickly realized that that environment of safety and security and pensions and because when you work for the government, basically you get 70% of your best years, right? So that means that you make 150K for a couple years in a row. When you retire, you're going to get 70% of that till you die. And no one really offered that kind of unless you wanted to go work for the government, nobody really offered that. So I was like, okay, so how much money if I'm working for companies, do I have to make and save up? That's going to be 70% of like $150,000 from say 65 until 100. And I'm like, shit, that's a lot of money. So I'm like, okay, so that sort of informed my career decision, which was either go work in tech or be a lawyer. There's kind of the two pathways and I'm like, if I can't figure it out in tech and I can't make a lot of money in tech, then I'm going to go back to law school because I need to make this bulk sum. But the path of going down and being in tech and again, when I started out, I was in sales and I was killing it, I was making a ton of money, probably more than most other careers when you were like, whatever. But when I started, I was like, yeah, like 1920, very young. So I was doing fine. I'm like, okay, let me just see where I can take this. And then tech, it was a it was a telco. I went through sort of like the different markets. I kept moving up to larger markets, selling to bigger clients, switched to another private company that was eventually acquired by private equity. And I'm like, oh, shit, light bulb moment, now I understand ownership and now I understand private equity and now I understand startup. Now, and then this is sort of like the the the the origin story for how I got really into entrepreneurship and building companies and investing and trying to get ownership in companies because it all that was just sort of career path that I followed. Okay, so there's a lot in that that I think we'll dig into in a moment. I just had a side note that's interesting about the the stable healthy two-parent home because from some context, you know, I was a complete opposite. So I divorced by eight, mom was pregnant when the divorce happened, went into like hopping around no money for a number like a long time and that fuels now this really, really insatiable drive to never be in that situation again. But it comes with its lists of downsides that I have to like genuinely work out. And we also, you know, mentioned in the rapid fire talking about like being effective men and being good men in society to, you know, provide the framework of support for the next generation of children that will be lost otherwise if not for like a really good quality, you know, family. What was it about your parents and the way they raised you that was a positive, you know, way of being raised? Well, so I think that, I think that positive, listen, it's not like there's, I mean, they definitely, definitely, we went on some vacations and something like that, which is beautiful. But that's not the point. The point is you're not exposed to any sort of traumatic events. So I think that's the biggest positive because I think that's safety. Just like it's just fundamentally comfortable like fucking hug whenever you go home that's you're just not stressed. Like your stress levels at an all time low all the time. So and the, just to make it very clear, obviously, it's not that you have to become, come from that environment to be any sort of successful. But what trauma does and trauma impacts everyone differently. But what trauma usually does is it just gets implanted into your subconscious. And then it just runs on this like feedback loop. And when you get older, if you have all these traumatic events and these unsafe events, I'm a guy who you should actually go listen to as Dr. Don Wood, I learned all of this from, yeah, he had them on the show, but he's not, he's another Canadian actually, but he, he does a lot of trauma work. So how trauma manifests is when you are young and you experience traumatic events and it could be it could be moving around no money whatever. All those events get implanted into your subconscious and they just keep running like this operating system on a feedback loop and what that can actually manifest as can manifest as it can manifest autoimmune disease later on in life. You're always getting sick, you're scared or you make bad decisions based like financial decisions because you never want to be broke ever again. Or you can't commit to somebody and you cheat on your girlfriend all the time because for whatever reason, you don't feel like you don't have faith in like a committed relationship. So you sort of self sabotage. So it shows up in different people differently, but I'm definitely not a doctor by any means, but he showed a lot of cases where early childhood trauma had a significant negative impact that the person wasn't even aware of. And when you saw for that trauma, then all of a sudden that particular part of their life gets much better. So I think that I'm very fortunate where I'm sure there's some traumatic events in every person's life, but I didn't have constant exposure to these things. So I think that there's less opportunity for those subconsciously implanted traumatic events to negatively impact my day to day, which allows me to make decisions that are just void of any sort of negative input that I'm not even negative subconscious input that I'm not even aware of. Just making clear decisions. I don't have all this baggage that causes me to self sabotage. And again, some people may be fully functioning no problem, but I think that also I think that a lot of people could benefit from trying to get that trauma out of their system because I'm sure that it manifests in one way or another. And I mean, this is obviously, don't go into it because it's obviously very personal, but I'm sure that you've noticed things that probably come from that upbringing that impact you in one way or another. I was just very fortunate that I didn't have as much of those events. So I have less that impacts me in a negative way. I have my fair share of problems for sure, but I think that that's what I mean by positive environment. Yeah, no, for sure. Look, I'm pretty open book like I talk about these stuff quite a lot on the podcast side. I don't really mind, but it does show up and it's been 10 years of work just to one uncover the patterns and then two even begin to scratch the surface on how to resolve them. It's like it's a long, slow, hard, hard route, but the alternative is so much worse, you know? I agree. So much worse. I agree. No, I was going to say I think that also I was looking at some stats the other day because I made a stupid joke on threads about like men would rather... I think it was on thread for us to give you like one of the first threads that I put out when Zuck released it. I threaded or whatever the hell it's called when you write on threads. Like men would rather like start posting on like a new social platform than go to therapy or some shit like that. And some guy, I know like one viral and some guy was like I'm so sick and tired of people saying that men don't go to therapy. Like I go to therapies like show me receipts and men don't go to therapy and I'm like, okay, valid, fine, I'll go look it up. I was just talking out of my ass, let me go research. So I research and it's like significantly less men go to therapy than women and it's like statistically like it's like something like 7% of men go to therapy where like I'm just making up numbers, but like it was like 7% men like 18% women or something like that. Anyways, the point is, so you say you have all this trauma in your life growing up and you need therapy or you need some sort of solution to solve for this. So it doesn't manifest in all the different areas of your life. God forbid it manifests physically, but hopefully for most people it's just not hopefully, but hopefully it doesn't make you sick or physically. Maybe it's just something that impacts your decision making process. But you still have to go and get it fixed to some degree or at least you have to understand that it's even there and be self-aware enough to know that it's there. So I think that a lot of, I think that a lot of men who maybe went through traumatic experiences growing up just statistically will not figure out why those things are impact and not much leads to just as fucked up person because they're not going and getting the work done. So I think that, you know, less than learned is as a child, you don't have, you don't have the agency or the opportunity to really decide how you're raised. But going forward as an adult, you definitely have the decision and the opportunity to decide how your child is raised. So architect that environment, architect that home. So I think it has such a huge impact on the health and wellness of the kit. And that's where, you know, just bringing this full circle. That's where I was very happy that very happy. I didn't have a choice. I was very fortunate that I didn't have a lot of these traumatic events growing up because it just, well, in my developmental years, my most informative years as a kid, it was just a very safe, comforting space. What does that allow you to do in business? Well, you said it. I think that it allows me to make decisions from a more level added perspective because I don't have this subconscious influence or this stress that impacts everything. So I think that I'm very pragmatic and logical about my decision making, which allows me to remove a lot of emotion. Because again, I think emotion, I mean, emotions have no place in most decisions for business. Most of the stresses that you encounter on a day to day are not half as bad as you actually think they are. So when you can remove yourself from the emotional component and sort of like the shock and off component, whether or not it's, you know, think of the worst things that can happen in business. You get sued, an employee quits, you lose the deal, whatever it is. If somebody, somebody scams you, whatever it is, those are the things that can elicit an emotional reaction that can cause you to make a bad decision, right? So I think that that, fortunately, I'm probably, I don't know if I'm better than most, I think that I'm very good at making really pragmatic level headed decisions as much as I can, which I think has allowed me to sort of avoid the chance of screwing up again and again and again with these emotional heated, really weighted decisions, which probably are not a net positive when you're trying to build a business. And also, again, having a good partner at home, so when I do get stressed out, she can sort of bring me back and remind me how good life is and how I shouldn't be as stressed as sometimes I am, I think that also helps. So it's a combination of everything, but I think that the more you can remove the emotion from the business, the more you have a support system that allows you to sort of remember who you are and what you've been able to accomplish and how good your life actually is. In the most stressful times, I think that's a very important thing and I think it's part nature, part nature for sure. What value would you say emotion plays in business? Is there a positive value that you can have from being emotional? So I think I think to answer that question, you have to define emotion. So I'm very passionate. I'm very passionate about what I'm building. I love what I'm doing and I was doing it before it made money for a significant period of time, which is what allowed me to eventually make money from it. But I think that passion and determination and grit and perseverance and setting up systems to allow you to succeed even when you don't feel like it, I don't really define that as emotion. When I think that if people hear the word emotion in business, it's like anger or stress or even like maybe you're too happy because something worked out well and you have to remember that you still have to keep showing up every single day and not take your foot off the gas. So I think that the things that allow you to continue the thing are important if you want to classify those as emotions, but I think that the emotions that do not help are anything that are like significant highs or significant lows. I think that that can be detrimental and maybe allow us to make incorrect decisions. For example, like maybe a contract that comes through that's like a little bit too good to be true could be fraught, it could be a scam, but we're so excited and happy about it that we're not thinking about because that's the first time we've gotten paid over a thousand bucks for our consultant, our graphic design services and somebody says, hey, I want to do a $25,000, you know, three-month gig. Well, maybe you're not paying attention to the fact that the domain doesn't look 100% and maybe you're clicking the link that you probably shouldn't be clicking in your downloading something because you know, the point is I think you just have to be level headed with most most of the decisions that you make and I think it'll be fine, but I think when people get lost in their emotions, they can't bring themselves back to zero, I think that that's when they make the most mistakes. Yeah, that makes sense. From your experience in sales, what has there ever been any value in, you know, wider ranging of emotions like happiness or anger or you know, elation or you know, pick one. I think the most useful and the most useful asset in sales would be empathy and self-awareness because that allows you to give a shit about the person that you're selling to, which is really how you sell. But no, I don't see any value in most of those. I mean, it doesn't mean you're, it doesn't mean you have no like inflection in your voice when you talk to somebody like you don't sound like, yeah, like don't sound like like a robot, but maybe yeah, maybe you want to celebrate a little bit after a deal is done. That's a, that's good psychologically. But when you're actually doing the work, I don't think that I don't think that emotions will benefit you. Okay, interesting. I, I mean, you feel free to, I feel free to counter if you have a different opinion. I don't know. I don't, I'm just, I'm just curious. You've got a lot about it before to be honest. I'm sort of thinking on the fly on this because I'm trying to think of if, I'm just trying to put myself in all this situations that I went through when I was selling. I mean, you're always selling. But if you get pissed off, again, if you get excited that a deal comes to you before it's closed and you're happy about it, well, that's a massive high. And if you don't win that deal, then you're going to like, you're going to just do this like seesaw and you're going to feel depressed. If you get pissed off at a customer because whatever they, they cancel the contract, I mean, there's a real good chance you're going to say something that's going to ruin your reputation and, and, and ruin the chance of that customer ever coming back to you. Like, I just don't see it when you're in the arena, when you're doing the thing, when you're, when you're negotiating the contract, when you're whatever, I don't think a motion is, it, it, it really helps you become more effective. Um, again, this doesn't mean you're not hot. I guess the only emotion would be passion. If you're passionate about what you do, it means you'll care more, it means you'll, um, learn more about what you're selling, learn more about the customer. Again, that uptails into empathy. Um, but I don't think these like super highs and super lows really benefit you at all. Okay. I wonder with say a difficult situation with a client or a business partner, um, or even a supplier, how do you go about handling those difficult situations with grace even when they're maybe potentially ripping you off or taking advantage of you? What's the line do you think that you need to tar between being hot and being graceful? So I think I'm very, um, so first of all, I, when you're, when you're engaging in business discussions always, I reduce the chance of that particular situation happening by being black and white and deliverables in contractual so I don't do a lot of handshake deals. For me, it's more, this is what we're, this is what the agreed upon deliverables are. Let's sign off on it. Let's get to work. For me, that just eliminates like 90% of the headache. If there is something that even after going through that process, um, they, you know, we get into an argument about something or, or they, or whatever, um, I mean, I, I usually have really hard conversations in person. I think that's one thing that, and I'll, and I'll just, I'll say, listen, these are the outcomes we agreed upon, or these are the, these are the things that you committed to. And if you don't, it'll either be we're never doing business again, or you can speak to a lawyer. Like, it doesn't really impact me emotionally because there's not one particular thing that is really going to change my entire life. It's going to change my entire relationship with the person, probably for the rest of my life, but I also understand there's a lot more supplier, there's a lot more people to sell to, there's a lot more business partners in the world. To not really that stressed, because I believe in my own ability to figure it out, and I've never really cornered myself in a position where there's one paycheck that's coming, it's going to cover rent, or I'm not going to be able to afford my, you know, my, my living expenses for that month. So I don't let myself get to that point. I make it, I diversify myself, and I create enough redundancies in my business, so that one thing is a very pragmatic, it's lawyer, or killing the relationship, and that's it. And if you do something fraudulent, then you make an example, and you take the cord, and you sue them. If it's just something where they can't deliver, and it's really not a big loss, and we just agree to part ways, but it doesn't really matter to me, because I'll have 20 other things lined up, I'll have 20 other deals lined up. I mean, this is also why you have to be careful who you choose to go into business with, but fortunately, they've never had like a negative business partner experience of that degree, where there's been legal involved and whatnot. So yeah, I think that, I think that contractual obligations are super important, black and white, and you set yourself up so that if this one piece of your empire doesn't work out, you have so much else that you can work on, and go after that it's really not going to impact you to the point where it could actually, you know, negatively impact your life. Sure. That makes sense. That makes sense. Out of curiosity, I, you mentioned kind of burning the relationship or going to court. There's, I think maybe I'm playing in a level of games where it kind of doesn't make sense to go to court on a level of stuff, like $10,000, $20,000 and stuff. What do you think the minimum is based on your experience when you should take this further versus just like burning it and living on with your life? I'm usually over for a friend. Yeah, usually over. I mean, well, I would always remind them that if there is some contractual obligation that is not met, technically they can be responsible for legal fees. Sure. So if they have the capital, if they have the capital, if they're a functioning business, then over, over, over, I mean, I've let things go that are $15,000 just because I know the person meant well, and I know that I know that maybe they couldn't fulfill the deliverables for whatever reason. And it really was, it wasn't fraught. It was like something didn't go right. And that's okay. And I don't mind that as much. I would say that if it was over $50,000, I'd be more aggressive about it. And I would say, listen, I'm not going to like ruin your life, but let's develop some sort of payment plan or I'll have to pursue legal action because this is like a significant amount of money. But less than that, I really haven't, I haven't pursued, mostly because it's more headache and bad with and time and stress than it's worth because I can go somewhere else and just, I mean, even if I hire a lawyer, first of all, I have to pay them and there's a chance that they don't win in court. So then I would have to, that would be more money on top of it. But yeah, I don't know. For me, it's very much circumstantial and I haven't really ever been in the situation. I'm very fortunate where something over $50,000 has just not worked out. But that would probably be my litmus test for like, yes, we should probably go after this because this is not a small amount of money. Okay, interesting. Well, on the point of decision-making processes, you mentioned that you make, you feel like you make level-headed good decisions. Could you run us through your decision-making process with potentially an example when it comes to business? Yeah, I'm sure. Well, we just went through one, I guess. Yeah, yeah, isn't worth it to pursue. Yeah, it's worth it to pursue a lawsuit. By the way, I actually think that I think that sort of my less a fair and cost of doing business, mindset is probably more Canadian than American because a lot of Americans, sufer, no reason at all, which is like a new phenomenon to me. Yeah, I'm the same as Australia, don't I? It's like this whole mental battle in myself is to whether to take it to court, but here it's like the concept of the no-win-no-feel lawyer is so fun to me. But that's more a personal injury. That's not usually in business. Yeah, yeah. And unless they feel like you have like a slam dunk case, usually that's like personal injury because if they take on your case, like insurance companies have so much money, like they're going to go settle, right? But like the stuff that we're talking about is working with small vendors and working with solopreneurs and working with contractors. Like we're not talking currencies. Probably not in most cases. I mean, some of the bigger agencies do, but I would assume even some of the bigger agencies don't. So yeah, I mean, you have to pick your battles, right? I have a friend who probably spent, so she had to sue a business partner. And I think it was something like $200 over $200,000 and it was like $400,000 in legal fees. And the guy had all of his money in various trust funds and they're not going to recoup any of it. Because technically, he doesn't have any money to his name. So that's $600,000 gone when it could have been $200,000 gone. And yeah, they're never going to see a dime of the settlement they won, by the way. So like, I mean, in that case, it's $200,000, but if I knew how he was set up and I would do a little bit of research into the person that I was going after, then I probably wouldn't pursue legal action because it would just cost me more money. So I mean, it's hard to have a black and white response because most people would say, hey, somebody screwed you for $200,000, would you go after them? Depends. It really depends. Yeah, it's a really tough one. It's very tough. So I don't want to give people advice on like a hard and fast rule as to when you should go after somebody. But sometimes people are assholes and they commit like tons of fraud and then that's something that you should sort of make an example of. That's sort of my one rule. But yeah, I don't have like a hard and fast answer for that. I try and stay out of as many situations that involve suing people as possible. I mean, it's also sort of making good decisions to begin with, like just not getting yourself in that situation. I just before you go ahead, I've got this relevant concept that's been developing in my mind and like when I was younger, I've been very charismatic and able to get myself out of difficult situations. To the point where I would get myself into difficult situations, very, you know, laxataisically because I knew I could get myself out of those situations. But I know right. Maybe that's part of the trauma that I need to figure out. But as I'm getting older, I'm starting to think, you know, realize this idea that there's also a second part of this equation where I can have this skill and I can turn it on when I need to turn it on. But the next level of the skill is to have the foresight and the wisdom to not get into the situations in the first place. Correct. So to just to let's speak about business decisions because this is a pretty common business decision that I make regularly. And this will sort of answer both questions at once. So I try not to do business with anybody, meaning I don't invest with somebody or I don't become business partner with somebody that I have not known for a significant period of time. And I mean like significant. So two, three plus years. And I have enough friends at this point that are experts in whatever field that they become experts in that if I want to invest in SaaS, or I want to build a SaaS company, software company, I want to invest in real estate. If I want to do a fix in flip, I want to do a multi, you know, multi res. I have people that I know that I've been to their wedding and I know their kids and I can trust that if I do something with them, I know that at least they are good people. I mean, doesn't mean the project is going to work out. But I've sort of like at least removed the ethical person dilemma that you have to solve for when you're doing business, right? So I'm that's that's probably one of my most useful decision making frameworks. It's not complicated. It's just it just requires patience. And I think that outside of that, if I do have to work with somebody, hire them, invest with them that I have known for a shorter period of time, I will only do it through the reference or the referral of somebody who I've known for a longer period of time. Sure. So yeah, with the network that I have, I don't think that there's any kind of person that I would have to commit a significant amount of money to hiring that I wouldn't have some sort of referral to any kind of agency, any kind of investment opportunity, any kind of thing that you have to do, even like stupid things like plumber, electrician, like whatever it is, I'm a degree of separation away from somebody who's used somebody for three to five years to complete that service, right? So that's kind of a hard and fast rule that I have and it's worked out very well. So I don't have to get into a lot of situations because when you are just on this, you know, you're kind of like on an island and you don't have a good network. And by the way, networks and mentors and advisors and peers are not just retelling you how to do shit. They're like, they're very useful for stuff like this. So when you want to hire somebody or you want to put money somewhere, it's very nice to have somebody who has worked with somebody or knows somebody very, very well. And I think that that has eliminated probably, you know, a significant amount of times where I've had to worry about, am I going to sue this person over $50,000 because I haven't had to get to that point because fortunately, the people that I work with, they don't end up screaming me over. So, and I see this, and I'm young and I have this, this sort of this little advisory board of friends and peers that I have. I see this to such an extreme degree with people that I look up to that are much older. They have little groups of friends and they only will invest within their circle. Like they'll have like 20 people that are all successful people and they'll only invest in deals that these other 20 people bring to them. And they don't look for outside money. They don't look for outside capital. They don't look for outside deals. They don't jump on Zoom calls with anyone. They're just a group of friends. They don't each other their whole lives and they all trust each other and they all do work and business together. And I think that that is something that is, it's a framework. It's also like a network. It's a huge advantage that helps me to not have to make those shitty decisions and calls on when you work with bad people to screw you over. Just using my personal experience as a side by side to this, I think coming from a very small town in Australia, there is a lot less opportunity or maybe the illusion of potential less opportunity and being like hungry and wanting to make something of yourself. I've noticed I'd get into situations where it might not be ideal but better than nothing but I think in hindsight, nothing is better because once you've got a little bit of a buffer, the headspace that it takes up just dealing with those headaches takes away from the next opportunity where maybe it could be better. I agree. I totally agree. But also, you have to take control of your own future. So you started to create like a media as he's created a podcast. So you can do this from this like, you know, super rural town in Australia and you can create something that will attract people to you. And yeah, maybe the podcast isn't going to make you X amount of dollars overnight but it will give you access to people and those people will again start to form that little cohort of individuals that you can look up to when you can ask questions to it. So I think that you got to you got to create your own circle and you got to optimize your own circumstances. And there's ways to do it. I mean, yeah, maybe before the internet, it was tough to do this in a small town in Australia but we got the internet. There's ways to do this shit, right? And there's ways to do it. Again, doesn't mean you always have to we're internet culture, people go to masterminds, people go to all these different things. Doesn't mean you always have to do that either. Doesn't mean you have to spend $10,000 to get into the room with people. Not saying anything wrong with that, but obviously you have to understand what your goals are and your objectives are. And I selfishly made a podcast because I didn't want to spend $10,000 to never with people. I'm like, $10,000 on show for me content. Exactly. But I knew that at the end of the day, building a brand around me would have longevity whereas if I spent $10,000 to go to a mastermind for a weekend, well, that's great for the weekend. But what happens in six months or 12 months or now, I'm going to have to do it again. So I rather bring people to me than always pay to get into rooms. And that's just a mindset shift that I had. It's not better or worse. I mean, some people don't want to do a podcast. It's a lot of fucking work. But for me, I was like, yeah, you know what? I don't mind doing it. I like building a brand. I like talking to full people. I want to network on steroids. And I'm going to try this out. I'm going to figure it out. And this is what created this incredible network of awesome people that now I, that I have access to and that I can call up if I ever have a problem. Yeah, I love the podcast. I think this is a great media and so good. So much fun. Like I, I've noticed doing this so that my, I'll come into a project or I'll come into an episode essentially tired or just drained or something's in my like on in my head. And then by the end of the podcast, I'm inspired. I'm energized. I'm ready to just go do a bunch of cool things that you're doing. That's a good sign. That's a very good sign. Yeah, that's right. And the more I hear that, and this is something I haven't heard a felt in a while. So it's very interesting to see where this will go. I mean, by the way, also pay attention to that feeling and only surround yourself with people that give you that exact same feeling. If you, if people around you, they give you energy. Like sometimes you'll have a conversation with somebody at, you know, at dinner or whatever and you go home and your head just buzzing with ideas, those are great people to surround yourself with. Yeah, versus somebody who you spend dinner with and you're like, oh my god, I just want to get out of here. I'm so tired. To radic nothing wrong with the person just is, is that person aligned with really what you are as a person and are the conversation topics and the goals and the aspirations of you and the other person are they matched up because when you find those people and you, and you sort of expose, you expose yourself to each other. Um, it'll give you energy. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to say it properly. Um, but you don't say it. Yeah, whatever. I couldn't think of a better way to say it. The dinner. No, no, you get it. Um, no, but like when you expose yourself to each other, like that's where like magic happens. That's where you push each other. You, you, you, there's like an energy that you feel when you hang out with this person. So find people that are like that and spend more time around them. Um, yeah, that, yeah, people give you energy, not people that take energy away. Yeah. I mean, that's a big thing that's definitely being developed and understood as time goes on, which is just how important energy is and everything you do. You know, I agree. And I'm again, I'm not like, woo, woo, whatever, but I can tell you that there are definitely people that I hang out with where I feel like I want to like go home and like tackle life versus people that I hang out with. And I'm like, oh my god, I cannot stand spending another minute with you. I need to leave right now. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You go home and you're tired and like, it's not that the person is a bad person. It's just like, it's just not a person for you. They're just whatever they care about is not synced up with what you care about. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Just quickly though, I want to talk to you about a taboo but very important topic, sperm health. I bet you didn't think I was going there. One day, I want to have kids. And like any future parent, I want to give them the best shot at a healthy life. But let's face it, we're at a war every day with our health in this modern world. Chemicals, microplastics, and artificial environments are wreaking havoc on our internal systems at every turn. And if you know me, you know, I'm obsessed with health. And the health of my swimmers have been on my mind for a number of years. That's why we've partnered with Legacy who are changing the game in at-home sperm testing and freezing in the US. Did you know that globally sperm cancer dropped by 50 percent in the last 40 years? Let that sink in for one moment. This is not just a fertility problem as well because low sperm quality has been linked to a high risk of testicular cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and even early death. And on top of that, your sperm quality begins to decline around age 30 and by your 40s, the risk of infertility and having a chance of a child with neurological disorder begins to go up. So testing and freezing now may be the best decision I make for my future family and potentially you too. Legacy makes it easy. They send a kid straight to your door. You do the business in a comfort of your own home. And in 48 hours, the results are on your phone. Plus, you can freeze your sample at two secure locations for peace of mind. So if you like me and you want to be proactive with your future, as well as support podcasts, head over to givelegacy.com and use the code TOT at checkout for 10 percent off. That's give legacy.com using the code TOT for 10 percent off. Thanks for listening. Now back to the podcast. I want to switch gears a little bit here, but it's in a similar vein. Going back to what you worked on prior to becoming an entrepreneur prior to doing the podcast, you had a good career in sales and marketing. And what value do you think those core skills had in your ability to succeed as an entrepreneur? And if there was somebody listen to this as just getting started at the beginning of their journey and are you talking to your previous self, what would be the three hard slash soft skills that you would focus on to begin? So, the skills that I learned from sales and marketing and a lot of selling, most of my career was like individual contributor. It was understanding people. Again, like a lot of empathy and high EQ. So just understanding people, I think is one of the most useful skills you can ever have in anything you do. The ability to tell a story is a very useful skill, which obviously is huge for marketing and sales. So not just talking about the features of the product or the thing, but like helping the customer understand where they're at right now, what problems they have, how the product that you are going to eventually sell them is going to solve those products and helping them see this journey that they're going to go on. I mean, not that has to be like a huge journey, but the journey that they're going to go on from where they're at now to where they're going to end up and being able to tell that story in a compelling way, which is ultimately just sales 101. I think it's a very useful skill because you're going to use that skill to sell your company to investors and sell your company to people you're going to hire and sell yourself to your spouse and sell the concept of vegetables to your kids and you're going to have to sell a lot of shit over your life. So you got to be able to sell, you got to be able to tell stories, and I think storytelling is really selling. And then, so yeah, understanding people, the ability to tell stories, and I'd say the last thing is the ability to count on yourself. I think that I made a lot of really fast career changes because I always trusted myself to figure out the next thing. I wasn't stressed about it. I'd never... yeah, a little bit of imposter syndrome, but I knew that I'd still figure it out. I have this probably because of the healthy environment that I had growing up. I have this ridiculous self-belief. In my mind, if someone else has figured it out, I can figure it out. And that's ego. That's for sure a little bit of ego. People are going to be like, oh, this fucking guy, things you can figure everything out. I believe it because I genuinely don't believe that anybody is that special. I don't believe that anybody is that I don't believe that there's anybody had any significant advantage that I cannot replicate. So I think that that belief, again, again, I really do believe a lot of that comes from a very healthy environment. I think that if you don't have that belief that you have to, you have to be able to get to the point mentally where you can sort of just trust yourself explicitly to figure this shit out because if you can do that, it's a fucking superpower. Because you're going to go into something and you're going to trust that you can figure it out and you will figure it out. That's like not that complicated. It's not magic. If you pull yourself in the scenario, pull yourself into the arena and you look at people that have done it before in your reverse engineer their success and you understand the path and the steps that they took, you are going to figure it out eventually. Nobody is incapable of figuring this shit out. But I think that we self-sabotage way more than we should. And I don't see that really benefiting anybody playing its safe self-sabotaging, saying like, I'm going to commit five more years in this role before I move on to the next role. Listen, if you're killing your role, move on. Push yourself. Get out of your fucking conversation. All the tropes, all the cliches, they're all true. So I think that the self-belief has been one of, again, the superpowers that has allowed me to do all the different things that I've done, moved in my career, built my own shit, done this podcast. I jumped on this show. I jumped on with Guy Kawasaki in the first 15 episodes. You know how stupid that is? He was like one of the original Apple Fount. I had like Grand Cardone on in like the first 20 or some episodes. I can't remember one exactly. But like the self-belief was wild. It was absolutely wild. But you know what that does? It forces you to level up really quickly. And that's just a net positive. Because yeah, it's going to be stressful and you're going to screw up a little bit. But am I getting those people on in the first six months of the show? Whatever. I mean, I definitely pushed myself harder, faster, quicker than I probably should have. But whatever, it worked out. And I'm still here. So I think that that's just like a very positive finding a way to have an unlimited amount of self-belief, which usually comes from also, I think, is a lot in there. But I think that really just paying attention to your wins is supposed to focusing on all the bad things that have happened in your life. I think that's a quick little hack that allows you to do that. But I think however you do it, I think that's very important. Because I think that will sort of really progress your career much quicker. I mean, even you know, you're starting your podcast now. Like the more ambitious you get, the bigger the guess you get, the more you build up the studio. Like it's not rocket science. If you do this shit and you figure it out and you keep pushing for the next 10 years, you'll have one of the bigger podcasts. Like it's really not that complicated, right? But people get stuck in their own shit and they get scared about how they look on camera and they, and they, and they don't, they don't upscale themselves. They don't learn how to light shit properly or whatever. They don't, or they don't reach out to the guest because they're too nervous because the guests are too big and they don't shoot their shot. I mean, all of it comes back to self-belief. So you have to find a way to have this incredible self-belief. And I think that's something that's really pushing me along with my career. The storytelling element that you spoke about was very, very, very important. I think it's a very important point that I want to elaborate a little bit on. The going down this podcast route, the more podcasts I do, the more storytelling comes up as a common thread between pretty much every industry. Like you've got, I've worked with content creators. I've worked with business people. I've worked with, you know, people that do a lot of like spiritual work and, and how they frame the stories is how people begin to change their behavior. And it's, it's not a very complex thing to understand once you dig into it. It's, it's, when you realize that over, you know, 100,000 years, we as humans have been explaining concepts through stories. You just begin to approach it on a very simple basis in a very image-driven basis. And that basis allows people to understand a potentially complex idea in a very, very succinct way. And I keep coming across it. And the more, you know, this has led down to looking at how to write copy, which is probably one of the most impactful skills you can have. Can you write, can you write effective, clearly, and create visual imagery in people's minds to put an idea to somebody? It's crazy how powerful that is. And it also, by the way, writing copy helps clarify your own thoughts and your own thinking process as well. It is super powerful. And also writing good copy and being able to storytelling, whether or not it's through your words or through the written word, I think it also impacts the stories that you tell yourself and the stories that you believe yourself. I mean, like, I have a story in my head about my podcast and where it started and where it can go. And I fully believe that. And it's real to me. Like, when I, when I sit, she jump on a podcast with, with a guest or I set up the lighting a certain way or I listen to the audio, like, this story is like tactile. Like, I can touch it. I can feel it. I can see where it can go. Because I can, again, look at the people that are there. And then I can reverse. And reverse engineering a lot of this is how I can tell stories to customers, health stories to myself. Because you map out the entire journey. And I think that a lot of blockers, like psychological blockers are when the journey is opaque and not clear. And we can't see from where we are to where we need to go. And we whether or not, well, no, I think it's your reverse engineer that journey and tell a story to connect the dots. And then the journey becomes a lot more clear. And then that's when it's like light bulb moment, aha, it clicks. And whether or not it's talking about my career as a podcaster or I'm trying to sell you this widget that's going to solve this annoyance you have in your life, I still have to reverse engineer from where you want to go to where you're at now and tell a story that paints that picture words are written so that you get it. So you can see it. You can feel it. You can touch it. You can paste it. You can hear it just in that in that little moment. I think that's very important because it makes it real for you. And when it's real for you, then you start to believe that you can do it. So all this shit kind of ties together, you know, all these things side together because you're not going to have self belief if you can't see the journey. If you can't, if you don't have a story that you believe as to where you're at and where you're going to go or if you're customer doesn't have a story they believe as to where they're at right now because their knives are too dull and they want sharper knives that can cook shit for their family better. If you don't have that story cemented and real, you're not going to achieve it and you're not going to make the buying decision. You're not going to spend six years, 10 years, 20 years of your life trying to build the thing. So yeah, and then you're not going to have a self belief. You're not going to you're not going to have the conviction to do it because you don't believe that it can be done. Exactly. Exactly. The the story about getting Grand Cardone on the podcast in the first 20 episodes, it sounds like an interesting thread. I'd love to go down a little bit further. It wasn't that complicated really. So it was just a cold email. That's it. I'm a sales guy. It was a cold email. What do you want? I mean, it was it was like it was a good subject line. So okay. So everything in life is sales. Everything in life is storytelling, right? That's what that let's start with that. But when you're trying to get a guest on a show, it's another sales opportunity. You're selling yourself. You're selling the podcast to the guest. So how do you sell? Well, you have to get their attention. So there was a really good subject line in the game. So first of all, what was it? Sorry. I could find it. But it was something along the line because I don't it was just it was I came over. I think it was like I was getting 5,000 downloads a month at that point. And I think I had had a couple of their big guests on. And then I so it was like it was something like top entrepreneur podcast, which is bullshit, but top entrepreneur podcast. Is that 5,000 downloads a month? Is that top entrepreneur podcast? I think it's like if you do over 10 podcasts, you're like in the 0.01% of all podcasts ever. So in other words, 70, this would be episode 70 film. Yeah, exactly. Top all over one percent of podcasts. That's such a good. That's such a good angle. I love that. Yeah. It's it's slightly. Yeah. So yeah. So you have that. And then I think I put like past guests names in in in brackets. I can't remember who they were. Who I put in that exact subject. I'm do it. I've been the biggest names. And then I also said. So that was a subject line. And then the copy of the email, I think I should probably find it. And I'll send it to you. But it was it was referencing a couple past shows that he did. So the show that I and what he what he's accomplished like in like two sentences just like I saw you in this show that show. But basically every time I send email, this is not just for a grand card on podcast, but just a sales email best practice. I always make it so that it's impossible for it to be automated. Yeah. It's like my goal set of free email. So as long as the person reading it doesn't really, I mean, it does matter a little bit. But ultimately, the goal is you want to make it so that the person reading it knows that it isn't possible that they are part of a sequence that it is personally sent to them. So again, couple past podcasts. He's been on some of the talking points, some of the things about him that obviously I couldn't just automate. And then I also said, I think I said that I would also chop up the episode and create a whole bunch of social clips for him as well. And then I team would do that and send it over. It'd be virtual. Yeah. So basically good subject line. Make sure that it's not automated and make sure that the person receiving no, that's not automated and then solve pain points and basically reduce as much friction as possible. Pain points could be additional content, additional exposure and the reduced friction. It's the fact that it was virtually did not the travel anywhere. So very, very low risk, low effort, kind of like a net positive outcome. All I need for you to do is like literally sit your ass down for an hour on zoom and we'll get this done. And you're going to get some social assets out of it. You're going to reach 5,000 people that you've never, maybe you've never heard of you before. So ultimately, it was just a good sales email. And I sent that to him. I sent that to Guy Kawasaki. I sent that to Anthony Scare-Mucci. I sent that to Jack Hanfield, just like a chicken soup for the soul guy. And they all said yes. So I said, and then you just compound that success. So when Guy Kawasaki and Anthony Scare-Mucci comes on and Jack Hanfield, then you use those names to get Grant Cardone. From Grant Cardone comes on, you use that name to get Patrick Bed David. And then you keep using these people to compound because you're showing you, you've had some wins. And then I mean, again, you're telling a story. You're saying like, listen, this is who's been on. This is what I'm going to give you. These are the pain points I'm going to solve. And then you keep sending that out again and again and again. And then there's a certain point where you start to become popular and you don't have to send out that many emails anymore, but it's a good way to get the like a podcast off the ground. I like it. Well, we're definitely, how we have to do it, like deep dive into the podcast business. We'll do that another time. So I want to move on from this. But just before we do, I've got a couple of really interesting examples on a similar vein. There was a guy that called emailed me through his V8. So I know it's like there's a bit of a system here, but the system would have been the VA goes and finds as many podcasts as she can find on the internet, puts it into a spreadsheet, puts some notes. And then he from from the VA's account or from the VA's email had created a custom video. And it was like, hey, Adam, I want to be on that one time. I was like, I don't know this guy. I've never heard of this guy before. And I was like, I'm, yeah, booking an episode with you. That was great. Straight away. Just the fact the pure fact that he did went to that effort. I love it. I mean, it's brilliant. So I think a good, a good, I love that. And by the way, whether or not you're selling a product or trying to pitch podcasts, I have a habit and I really like this a lot. I do not come up with this, but I actually remember who said it, but I've now adopted it. At the end of every day, shoot like two or three shots. Like, like, for example, the end of every day, if you're selling a product, email the CEO of three huge enterprise customers, it could be your target customer. And chances are they're not going to answer. If you're a podcaster, email like Mark Cuban and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg at the end of whatever, you know, you pick huge people like shoot your whale shot. And then over the course of the year, even if you emailed, even if you did one a day, 365, shoot your shots over the course of a year, what if one or two respond back and say yes. So it's like, it's, it's a compounding. There's atomic habits, right? The compounding of small actions creates this massive opportunity. So I think that that's also a really good, sort of like end of the day task for anybody who's trying to build a business or two or two build a podcast. I just shoot your shot on something that probably has a .01% chance of actually turning into anything, but you do it enough. Even one of those could be a radically, you know, business changing podcast changing event. Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, I've got two examples with this podcast that are coming to mind. There's a two upcoming guests, fingers crossed that they all work out. One of them is a health page. They do a bunch of like health related content and have a full business and like a global network around it. They're coming on the podcast. I've got a million followers. I've probably got a six million person network. It's just like really big numbers. And they were like, yeah, cool. We sounds good. And then the second one is a guy called Chris Voss. So never so indifferent. I know why I don't do that is. Yeah, he's coming on as well. And that was cold email, completely cold email. And they replied and they booked in and they're in the calendar now, which is okay to Chris Voss is huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it's a moment where I think to us like, Oh, shit. Okay. So now the next thing is like, I, you know, it's a level up. Like they're doing my beginning to do my research. I've read his book, but beginning to do the research around it, you know, I looked at the past podcast he's done and it's like, human and lab before our episode with like three million views. Lex Friedman, three hour episode with many, you know, two million views. Just all of these big podcasts and then he's got his masterclass and it's like, Oh, I need to put some work into this. Like this is not something that I coached by any means. It's take this extremely serious. And when this opportunity comes along, make sure I hit it out of the park. Because although you will, the next thing will lead. Anyway, just a little side note. I want to dig into some more social media stuff with you as well. You're, you're very social media driven. It's extremely important in success with your business, investing the podcast. I like to get the insights of the people who have, you know, quote unquote, made it and understand how they would think of the world with their expertise and knowledge and wisdom if they were to start again. So if you were to start again with zero followers, what would be the playbook that you'd run to succeed in building an audience as an entrepreneur? If I was going to start again with zero followers, I mean, I would say that a lot of the stuff that I've done was very purposeful and it's not that old. I mean, so the create once then distribute forever, I think is a very useful strategy because it allows you to have a scalable content creation system. That's why that's how the reason why I chose podcasts in the first place. Because I want it to be omnipresent, but I didn't want to think of net new content for every single channel all the time every single day. So in my mind, I was like, okay, so I'm going to follow the you know, the Gary Vee playbook of build pillar content and distribute across all your channels. I think that's a great, it's a great way to constantly show up. I would still do that. I would focus on a lot more lifestyle content, focus on video first, build an in-person setup, vlog, and short form video. So okay, so I'll go through all those things. So I would still create pillar content and distribute. I would vlog more because people care about the person and less about what they're doing. But if you put yourself out there and you create this holistic image of who you are and they that really resonates and it draws people in in a way that talking head podcast content will never because I understand who you are than they care about what you're doing. They care about you first and they care about what you're doing. I would do short form video still because I always optimize for the most recent feature that social media platforms are trying to push because that's where you're going to get the most organic reach. I would optimize for video because YouTube is a second largest search engine in the world after Google. So if you really want to grow anything significant, which is literally why I moved houses built a studio. If you want to build anything significant, you have to be you have to be found on YouTube. And I think that especially for podcasters, there's no organic reach in just audio podcasts. You have to find a way to promote it somewhere else. So that's why I think the biggest podcasters and they are if you look them up, all the big podcasters are YouTube first. So this is where you really have to spend a lot of energy to figure out how to set up a set that looks good and presents well on YouTube. And I think that's really what I would have done from from the get go. Yeah, those are kind of the main ideas that I have about social now. So yeah, YouTube, video, short form, and then put more of yourself out there, not just like your curated professional cell. I'm really loving this approach. We're just about to start it for the podcast once I scale back on some other things I'm doing and get some more space, but decide you have the build with me approach where I'm following a cut like I'm following a coffee brand that is doing it. And they're very early stages, but it's just a very, very interesting concept where for those who don't know, it's this idea of you're just you're taking videos of everything that you're doing and you are talking extremely openly about the ups and the downs and the numbers and all this sort of stuff. With with that in mind, do you see from your experience in this space like a downside in the in the openness of the financials and openness of the numbers and the potential effect that it might have on clients or suppliers because it's very, very sometimes speaking too much is not a good thing. No, I agree. That's tough because the people that have built in public have never built enormous organizations. Sure. So where the numbers are now impacting employee morale, for example, they speak about the financials after they've sold them. But I would I would love to find I haven't seen one because I have. No, I've seen people build in public companies that do a million, two million, five million. But yeah, I don't see because like there are liabilities once you get to a certain point and you have investors and and God forbid if you're a public, you can't do that, obviously. So yeah, I think there's a point where it's a good. I think that the numbers pieces probably the the biggest issue. I think that maybe numbers when you're when you're getting a company off the ground, it could be a good marketing tactic. That could be great just to talk about all the successes that you're having and your wins and whatnot and what's going on. But I think it gets to a certain point where yeah, I think that you may have to be a little bit more conservative speaking about the finances on a day to day. And maybe you speak about more about the operational problems and and things that you're dealing with. But also it'll get to the point where it'll just turn into a founder a founder vlog, right? Because you're going to have so many people working for the company. You can't possibly bring them all into the actual content. So then that's where you're just going to have a founder that's going to build their own personal brand. They're going to probably stop talking less about the day to day of the company and more focused on thought leadership. And then yeah, and then I think that a lot of the content will focus because there'll be and by the way, the reason that will also happen is once a company gets, if it's a founder led company that's over 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, they're not going to be involved in every piece of the business anymore. They can't exactly. So you're going to have C-suite. You're going to have people that are running the business. So you can't speak to everything that's happening all the time like you can in a million dollar business. So I think it's an interesting way to start a company and it's an interesting way to build a personal brand. But ultimately, the goal is for the business to grow and for the founder to have a personal brand and the founder and the content will have a certain season and the business and the content it will have a certain season. And then I think that I mean, the best thing you can do is like kind of like an Elon, like you're still talking a little bit about the business, but you're talking about other stuff too. And obviously you're not going to the day-to-day financials, but you're still putting yourself out there. You're still jumping on stage. You're still going on podcasts and still talking about because at that point, if you build a significant size business, people are interested in more your views on things that are outside your business. Not just internal because you have lived in the space for so long. So now you're going to have commentary on the industry as a whole. And you're going to be talking about things and making predictions and talking about where the whole industry is going because you've lived in it. So I don't know. I think that there will be a point where the content would evolve, but I think to start, it's a really fun experiment. You can still vlog and talk about your day in life and the founder, but maybe you just don't expose all the financials all the time when you're making significant revenue. Yeah, exactly. I think you're on the money there. The more I think about it, it's just it's a tool in a toolbox for a time period where a problem from zero to say two million revenue, there's certain problems and one of those problems is lack of budget to market. So it's the most effective way to get the word out in a way that allows you to scale. And it's organic and but organic is tough. So it's like, you know, thinking through those different elements, it makes a lot of sense and they're growing the money. I really like that we work through that because it's cleared my head a little bit on the concept as well. You've spoken about the Omni Channel approach of your marketing. What would if you were to steal me on the other side of just focusing on one channel versus the Omni Channel and putting all of your energy into that? What would you say? If I was going to put all of my energy into one channel. Yeah. Why would that be a benefit than the approach economy using? Because you'll learn that channel much faster. And if I was going to put all of my energy into one channel, I'd put it into YouTube. Because the bet, I mean, if you think about the purpose of content, content is meant to build a relationship with the audience. And I have a data point that will reinforce this, but YouTube is the best way to build a relationship and build trust with an audience, which is ultimately the purpose of putting your content anyways. And how do you know this? How can I verify that what I just said is true? Go to a big YouTuber and look at all their other social. Look at their Instagram, look at their Twitter, look at their follower account, look at their engagement, and then go to a big Twitter influencer and look at all their other social, go to a big Instagrammer and look at all their other social, go to a big TikTokker, and look at all their other social and go to a big Facebook influencer if any of them still exist, and look at all their other socials. Did that exist? I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I don't The point is, if you build anywhere on social media and my thesis is that it's because video is not involved and video is the highest trust building form of content you can create outside of sitting in front of somebody in a coffee shop. If you just post copy or images or even short form video, not even long form video. The trust is not built and the audience is not loyal compared to YouTube because when you go to a big YouTuber and you look at all their other social, more or less, it'll be significantly sized, like they'll have a good size following. If you go to a huge Tik Toker, it could be crickets on Twitter and crickets on Instagram. So I think that that just shows you how loyal the audience is and that's really the goal that you're trying to accomplish. You're trying to build a loyal audience, so that's where I would spend my time because I know that that is going to have like sort of like the biggest bang for my buck, my biggest ROI on my time and money invested on a single channel. So that's why I choose YouTube and you learn it a lot quicker too. Interesting. What I've also noticed is we begin to dig into the analytics as our numbers get bigger. We've had the most success on the views side on YouTube, but we have our retention rate on the videos is, sorry, on the content is so much higher on audio, like through the roof higher. Yes, yes. Now I didn't say yes because I didn't say I would do podcasts on YouTube if that was the only medium. I would build content that was optimized for YouTube. You said I only had one choice, but I would do it now because it's just a general side now. Interesting. You have to learn how to use YouTube and you have to, and if you're trying to just use one channel, again, on the channel approach includes the kind of content that I create. If I was going to use one channel and only one channel, I would learn the content that would do best on that one channel, which is not 60 to 120 minute podcasts, right? Yeah. I was looking at the clock. I'm like, how long are you doing this? No, I'm just kidding. But it's not long form, it's not long form content like this. It's 10 to 12 minutes and there was certain editing style, right? So there is a certain kind of content that works best that we'll have high retention on YouTube. If I had to do one channel, I'd find a way to take my message and find a way to push it out through YouTube in that particular video format. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. I've noted that in the past, you've spoken about using ads to really supercharge your content numbers. I'll be through the strategy around that because it seems like in my head as, you know, not looking into this in some major depth, if you're running ads to content, you're burning, you're not going to be, that's not going to ballast out to zero at any point, you know, to a break-even point. So what's the value there and when? Well, it's like if you're not going to have a positive. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the thought around it if you can't make it sustainable? Maybe talking from your experience. Like what was your thought process? Well, I think so. So I think that when I, I mean, I don't run a ton of ads, so I'll run, so right now, I run promotion ads on YouTube that include that, so there's like a little promotions tab in the content. If you go to like studio content, promotions on the far right, I run promotions tab and I can get about, if I optimize the ad for the right content, I can probably get about 10 cents per subscriber, which is not bad at all. Interesting. So the goal is to, I mean, the goal is to, I don't have a lifetime value on that subscriber. But I do know that if I get enough of those subscribers and they turn into fans and maybe yet I have to trust that my content is good, but it turned into fans and they stick around for the next 10 years. And then those eyeballs turn into CPMs, they turn into things that, those CPMs like itself advertisers, yes, I agree. It is a very convoluted calculation to figure out if I'm going to get a positive row as on that ad spent or how I'm going to get a positive row as if I run an ad campaign to get newsletter subscriber. By the way, I'm sure there's actually a formula I could figure out. But right now what I'd end up doing is I have so many advertisers that end up spending so much money on my show per month. And I test different buckets to see what I can get for that money. So I'll run ads on other shows, I'll run ads on newsletters, I'll run ads on cast box and player FM, I'll run ads on YouTube, I'll run ads, I'll just run regular Facebook ads. I'll run a whole bunch of different types of ads and I'll see what the result for dollar is. And then I'll keep optimizing and improving my budget and I'll reallocate. I am just a big bullet. I use to run ads, try and push you look towards Instagram. I don't do that anymore. It doesn't serve a purpose for me. I've tried to measure how many Instagram followers actually translate into podcast listeners because my actual dollar is attached to my podcast downloads, right? That's where the advertisers go. If I was selling a different product, then maybe I'd be having a different discussion. But I found that not enough Instagram followers care about long form audio video content for it to make sense for me to invest in ads that's going to drive people to my Instagram page. Yes, will you get more likes and shares and engagement and followers on Instagram? Yeah. But if it's not actually paying you and you don't see a clear path, then I kill it. But I've tried that before. Now my current thesis is that YouTube has created some of the largest podcasts in the world. And the Roas might not be immediate, but I think there is a Roas there if you can become the 0.01% of podcasts on YouTube. And I think there's like outsized returns, meaning if I spent 2000 bucks a month on YouTube ads and say, do the math. That's like whatever, 20,000 subscribers, right? If you do the 10 cents per subscriber math. And if I can grow the podcast and if those subscribers actually listen to my shit and then YouTube starts recommending my channel more and then I get more organic and then all of a sudden I don't even have to worry about spending and running ads for YouTube. Well, at that point, I mean, $2,000 a month, that's $24,000 a year, I mean, that could be one, that could be like one advertiser because I know Tim Ferris currently charges $50,000 per mid-roll. So I mean, like the returns could be out, like dramatically outsized if the promotion gets you to the point where you're best in class and you are top 0.01% at what you do in the world. But it's not easy. So you have to find a way to make it sustainable and find a way to, and find a way to commit to it for the long run, really. So I can't, I have to find a way to allocate my ads between my audio and YouTube, which is what I'm focused on right now. I'm really focused on YouTube. I mean, I'm building out a studio. I think that that's really going to be the future of podcasts. So like that's sort of like the bet that I'm hedging right now. And I'm spending in a sustainable way this not going to bankrupt me or kill the show. So I'll give it six months. I'll see what happens. I'll see if I notice that if I continue to promote and invest, are those subscribers good? Do they watch the show over the course of three months as my retention go up? Does my organic subscribers start to go up because YouTube is recommending me in the algorithm? So I'm just paying attention to these signals. And if not, then you kill it. That's fine. But I want to try it at least. And I want to give it like a decent shot. So that's sort of how I think through it. Yeah. That makes sense. It's an interesting approach. Something I'll definitely explore as the podcast gets to that level. I just try, like I'll try, I've tried so many different places to spend money and a lot of them don't work or a lot of them I don't have outside like these potential for outsize returns. I spent, I mentioned cast box and player FM two places where I spend money for basically their like podcast listening apps. They put up banner ads, they cost, I mean, I haven't done player FM in a while. It's about three grand cast box like five five five to ten grand per ad insertion of runs for a month. They they guarantee so many subscribers for that at like a dollar two dollars per subscriber. And then some of those subscribers are loyal, some of them sick around, some of them drop off, but I've tried, I've tried a whole bunch of different places where you can spend their money. Trust. And some of them drop off, some of them are like three dollars per subscriber, but there's no organic reach. So if I spend three dollars per subscriber, it's not going to improve my ranking and algorithm by any degree. It's going to, it's not going to have outsize returns unless I literally can do the math and figure out if I spend like three hundred thousand dollars, how many more subscribers is my podcast going to have and then I have to calculate and like turn and attrition of those subscribers with the point is out of all the different places that I spent money and run ads, I do feel like the biggest opportunity could be YouTube. So that's where I'm just sort of spending my money now. But yeah, you can, you can definitely test out all the things I just mentioned. And if you have different results, let me know because I'll go back to them. Yeah. I haven't to your point, spending money in all those spots, I've, I've found it unsustainable for most small and middle-level creators. Now, the difference would be if I was a corporate sponsored podcast and I didn't have to worry about, you know, really any, like this was like I'm making a hundred million dollars a year. This is like a small little thing that I'm building it on the side. I can afford to burn money just to grow it so that it seems significant. But for smaller creators, like independent creators like us, we have to make sure that if we're going to spend money, it's going to equate to revenue. We just have to build a profitable business. I don't want to raise on debt or equity for my, for my startup, my podcast, right? So I want any dollar invested to return two dollars. So you do have to be careful. But yeah, that's, so I take these small little bets on different channels to see if they can have an potential outsize returns in the future. Yeah. It makes sense. And we'll dig into this in a ton more detail and in around two, so I just wanted to get some understanding of some more philosophical questions and some general ideas before we wrap up. So what's the biggest thing out of the last two years that you've changed your mind? I would say that I don't know if it has been in the last two years. I would say that being more of yourself online is considered a positive thing. And I know that may sound cliche, but I think that for a lot of creators, there's so scared about putting their true selves out there. And I think that that's, I think that the world needs more true authenticity and that means, like, I don't think TikTok is good for content because it's like Instagram. It creates this like hyper-chirrated, no contextual version of content that paints this picture that probably is like 5% true and so far from reality. So I think that more people would be successful creators if they did more long form content that includes context, that includes more dimensions of their personality. And that's why I think I love podcasts so much because that's what it does. I mean, you can't really hide who you are after an hour, an hour and a half. It's like, this is you. This is really you. I mean, maybe you can if you're a psychopath, but for most people, it's very hard to hide who you are after this long. But if you do like TikTok or Instagram, people put out these BS curated versions of their lives and I think it's not negative, it's very toxic for people that just consume. So I'm a fan of people that create longer form, real authentic raw who they are content and I think that the world will reward them for that. And that could include going live or it could include doing long form YouTube or whatever it is or even just long form audio, but I'm taking either I want I started a vlog with with Gina and I want to do more like day in the life of stuff because those are the people that I actually like watching, those are the pieces I like again, I create content similar to the type of content that I like to consume. That makes the person real and I think those are that's what that's what influences about it. It's not about being a fake version of you. It's about putting your old self out there. Yeah. And I think from there, people look at you and go, is this person aspirational to who I potentially want to be? Yes. Therefore, you know, I think he about it in a very specific career aspect. Then it's like, do I trust his person's opinion on XYZ? Yes. So I have an audience of people who were interested in what I am interested in and therefore when I bring in appropriate advertisers that are vetted by me and are not sold out by any means, there's a high value to that. There's a huge value to that. Yes, agree. The huge value to that. What's the kind of thing anyone's ever done for you? I mean, I might steal some of these questions. Do I for it? I'll send you the list for it. It's a very good question. What's the kindest thing anyone's ever done or done for me? Can't say your mom, no, that's a cop out that's a cop out. I would say Gina lets me, Gina's your partner, right? Yes. Yeah. I would say that she puts up with a lot of crazy shit. Like I don't think it's like a one-off, but there hasn't been too much that I've tried to take on professionally, including turning a guest house in our backyard into a podcast studio that she hasn't been fully supportive of. It's a very, I think that I think I may take it for granted sometimes because I've been in worse, much worse relationships, which is why I'm not with those people anymore. But to have somebody who is like, trust you to figure it out as much as you trust yourself, I think it's a huge blessing. And I'm just thinking about it as I'm sitting in this room because I literally just set up this room. So actually, I'm sorry, I think even the lights went out half like two or three days ago. Yeah, I struggled to myself, like they got them back on. I don't even know, dude. I set up this room, this has been like a week, it's been a week for sure. But the point is like the move to a new house, yeah, I saw them go off in Mayan, I maxed out yours, so I got to figure out how to keep them on for more than like an hour, but whatever. So yeah, so she said yes to pretty much everything that I've tried to take on or any crazy idea that I've had, and I think that's a huge blessing. So that's again, I'm not going to say parents, obviously there's a lot of wonderful things they did for me too, but most recently she's been pretty good. Nice. There's a, yeah, I'm single at the moment, I'm 31, just moved to New York, so I'm getting settled into whatever my next stage of my life is going to be. But I remember this piece of content that Alex Homozy did that is etched into my brain, and it's just him talking about, I think he was on Diaperceo, he's talking about his wife and how when he was about to blow up, like, he'd go bankrupt, he said to his, did you know this piece of content? Have you seen this piece of content? I do actually, I do, I know what you're talking about. And just for those who haven't, basically, he went to her and said, I am a sinking ship. You should leave me because, you know, how to have a true it is, but like the point it was there, and she's like, you should leave me because if you stay with me, I could take you down with me. And she turns around and goes to him, I'd live under a bridge with you. And just that idea of like having somebody there, on your team able to support you to such a deep level, I think is extremely powerful in your ability to make something of yourself. Oh yeah, that's happened with Gina. There has been a point where I was like, it was like pretty bad, like nothing bad with us, it was bad like professionally, and it was like a major transition point. And I mean, I think I had a similar situation with her, it was like, you can go if you want. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's not going to be a fun couple months, like you could like, you know, I know, I know you have options, like, you don't have to stick her out. And she's like, no, we're good. I mean, so was that was like a huge moment, definitely a huge ball. What did you feel in that moment? I was kind of surprised, actually, I was kind of surprised, but it was like, it was very, it was like, oh shit, like this is what happens and somebody actually loves you. Damn, that was a very unexpected, unexpected feeling because I was like, I was always, I was always very much, I was always very much the self-sufficient. So I was always okay figuring shit out myself. And I never wanted to impose my, like, my stresses on anyone else. So that to me was, that to me was huge because in my mind, it was so, it was so clear, like, if I couldn't provide as a man, if things weren't working out, like nobody has any business being with me, like, let me figure out my shit. And when I'm rich as fuck fine, then I'm going to go marry somebody, but like, I don't want to be impeding someone else's life while I navigate my career and whatnot. So I think that was like, well, that's, that's strange. It was unexpected, to be honest, it was very unexpected, but it was really, it was, it met a lot to me. I was like, you know, to marry this woman, bro, listen, we've been together for five years, six years. So I think I think we will be together for a minute, yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for sharing. No, of course. Couple questions left and we'll call it a day, but what, if you could know the absolute truth to one thing, what would it be? I think I'd want to know, I think I'd want to know what happens after we die. I think I think that would be a truth that I would love to understand because I've always dabbled in spirituality and religion, but I think, like, most people are age. I think that religion has definitely taken like a, sort of like a backseat, so I think it'd be interesting. So I think that, I think that, I think that right now, and it's changing at different points of my life, I think right now in my life, my life is very much optimized towards the things that I can touch and feel on this planet right now, you know, like again, business, relationship, physical health. There probably should be a component of my life that's a little bit more dedicated to religion, spirituality, soul, whatever it got, but that's something that I think that, I think you can improve as you get older and not to say that it's not, there's not there's not a wrong time to contribute part of your life to that, but I think that having a definite understanding of what happens after you pass definitely would allocate priorities differently for not just me, I think for most people, but I think that's, I think again, when I'm in the thick of it right now, time is my most precious resource, so it's about understanding where to put that time, and I'm already quite busy, so it's sometimes hard to allocate towards things that are not, you're not able to touch and feel, you know, yourself. Yeah, so it's challenging, but I think, especially as, you know, we get older, understanding the like philosophical implications of decisions that are being made, and I is really important because I think the latest stages of our lives will be spent probably contributing and giving back to the people in the next generation through being maybe politics or through like mentorship or whatever, and without a really deep philosophical understanding of what's come before us, it's hard to make decisions for the future. You're right, yeah, you are very right. I think that that's why I think that at least I hope that I'm in alignment with what I believe is a good reason to be on this earth, which is to try and improve other people's lives through insight, education. Like I think that that's a noble purpose, so I feel like if I, like what I'm doing, what you're doing can help enough people. I feel like we're not far from the work that we should be doing, and I don't want to make it sound like this is like, this is not a religious conversation, I just think that like, I think that if you do good work and you sort of find a way to take what you know or take what other people know, because you have a special talent of interviewing and creating a media platform around it, and you try and create content that educates and inspires and makes people better versions of themselves. I think that's a good start to contributing to a good life on this planet. So I think that we're not super far from it, hopefully. But I agree with you. I think that as you get older, you do get more perspectives. I'm hoping that when I am 70 or 80 or God willing, 120, I do hope that I'll look back and I'll say like, yeah, you know, I was laying the groundwork for like a really good life that I'm proud of. Definitely. And on that, the final question for the day is, what do you think the meaning of life is? That? You don't make them easy, damn. I think, well, I think I've touched on this. I do believe that the meaning of life is to be the best version of yourself and to help other people become the best versions of themselves. I think that is our mission on this, and I think that if you are not becoming the best version of yourself and you're not passing that wisdom onto other people, then you're very selfish. So that's what I believe the meaning of life is. And I think that it's constant upskilling and development, and then again, passing those lessons on. Becky Scott, is there anything that you're excited about at the moment that you want to let the listeners in on? No, I would say that you can always come check out more of my content. You probably put links in the show notes, but I have a podcast. Yeah, where can we find you? Yeah, I guess. If you haven't figured that out by now, I also have a podcast. What? So yeah, I mean, it's pretty, all the social is at Scott DeClaire podcast is successstorypodcast.com. And I would just say, I hope you enjoy the content because some creating it for people like your audience. Awesome. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate you. Appreciate your energy. Appreciate you coming on. I know you're busy, man. It's been wonderful to chat to you. And yeah, I guess until next time we speak for our hopeful round two. Sounds good. Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you, Mother. And to the listeners who have made it this far, if you can give the podcast a rating, a follow on Spotify, a follow on YouTube, or let us know your thoughts on the Q&A or a comment on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. Till next time.