Guest Podcast: Mastering Content Creation (Escaping The Drift)

Today, you're going to hear me on escaping the drift with John Gafford. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube or go listen wherever you get your podcasts. Nobody was talking about him five days ago. Yeah. And now everybody's talking about him, which I think is funny. I think it's no one Ben Shapiro's on there saying the election was proof we know a commercial's like that. That might be a little bit of a stretch. But dude, everybody's talking about this, which is wild. And now escaping the drift. The show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another. The quiet, not the quiet storm, it's the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. It's escaping the drift. And today people in the studio, you know, again, awesome when you have a big event here in town. One of the advantages of living in Vegas is I can get these big speakers man that go to these big events and they come in here. So drop knowledge on you for like an hour and in studio today, we got a cat. Kind of a big deal, kind of a big deal, I'll say. He is the host of the success factory podcast. Has a massive newsletter, massive online following, has done incredible things in the world of business from having large exits to continue to be an investor of things. And this is a dude that definitely has some tips that's going to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Ladies and gents, welcome to studio. This is Scott Clary. Let's go on. How's it going John? Dude, how are you man? Yeah, Vegas is a fun city to live in because then you get everybody coming through for events. That's smart. Easy city to live in. Very so that's why I moved to Miami. Is it? Yeah. See, I was going to move to to come to come a washing up. Getting with them. I would say you're not going to get. No, I'm not going to go on. Yeah, that's a joke. I wasn't really going to do that. But no, so you're in town this weekend speaking at Todd Alts event. Yeah, that's gone 360. By the time you hear this, it will have gone. But you can hopefully check it out next year. And what capacity are you speaking for Todd? What are you talking about? So I'm doing a panel with my better half, Gina. Sean Kelly is on that panel. He's a mutual friend too. We're speaking about content, influencer marketing, building a personal brand, sort of the playbook that we've deployed because I have a good following. I have a good podcast. But newsletter, like you mentioned, my better half, she built a company called My Therapist says. So different demo than me. But they have about 8.2 million on their main account. Whoa, they've been doing this for 11 years and they create memes. So she's going to talk about sort of her structure and framework for creating culturally relevant viral content. And Sean built a massive podcast too. Yeah, it's funny. Sean, we talked about this before we came on. Sean's podcast. If you haven't checked it out, digital social, I will great. And Sean's just a machine. Like the dude, yeah, I talked to him the other night. And he did 23 podcasts in one day. I don't understand it. I was just like, I mean, look, I mean, it's hard enough for me to be interested in anything for like a hour. And so it's like, I just don't get how he does. I wouldn't recommend if you're if you're getting into the game of creating content. I wouldn't look at Sean as this is what I have to do to start. Yeah, because you're going to, first of all, or content creators, what Sean does is already fucking crazy. Yeah. Like nobody does it at that level with that many shows. And I think that if you're just getting started, I mean, that's not a good, that's not a good avatar to look up to. I think that you want to just start with something that's going to, you know, not burn you out in the first month. Yeah. So, you know, props to Sean for doing that. I love his work ethic and his hustle, but that's not reality for most creators. Most creators should figure out a process that they can do repeatedly for the next 10 years and keep in mind to like Sean's main thing is his podcast. My main thing is my podcast too. And I do three episodes a week. You do three drops. So yeah, are they all guest drops? No, sometimes they are. But I do for sure two guest drops. And then sometimes I'll do a solo. And I think this is also a good lesson in terms of like content creation. Like I always test new things. So yeah, sure, guest drops are great. And interviews are a lot of fun. And I love them probably the same reason you love them. But I'll also test sort of like 10 to 15 minute pick a topic that I know is going to resonate and I have a process for testing which topics resonate with my audience and then do like a 10 to 15 minute or even like a 30 minute episode, solo episode on that. I've also done solo episodes on founder stories. So I mean, I've done episodes on like Bernard Arno from LVMH and shit like that. I saw one of your founder stories. I saw, you know, now that I think about it, I saw, I saw you did, but I keep testing them. And then I'm looking at listening to everything. And then I'm looking at how many people like that versus an interview. So yeah, you just keep testing. I do. I love that. I love that founder series you did. I saw one is now that you say that. I saw one because like to me, the greatest media thing that's been created in the last 20 years was a series that the history channel did. The men that built America. Yeah, fucking great. If you haven't seen that dude, stop watching this right now and go watch that. Cause that is like, I try. It's a jaw dropping America. Like how you go into the history of it's crazy. And also I found that, listen, when you do like a soul, when you do an interview, there's an art to an interview. And there's an art to pulling out lessons and wisdom from somebody. But when you can do like an insane amount of research ahead of time on, pick a big historical figure. And really like go into the weeds of what they did. There's going to be a level of granularity there that you just can't get in a, in a hour long interview with somebody. Yeah. You know, not Sam Walton there. Yeah, I don't know. No, cause you know, it's funny. Cause our drops here, we do what a guest a week. So I'll do it. The guest comes out on Tuesday. And on Thursday, we do the weekly drop is what it's called. It's like a sub podcast of this, which is exactly that's me. It's me 10 or 15 minutes. And normally what it winds up being is through the course of doing this interview today. You and I are going to hit on some sort of a subject at some point, we'll figure it out eventually. Yeah, then I'm going to think if it's, well, fuck with time, but we're going to get some check that I think deserves a little bit more delving into. Or something will happen in the media cycle this week. Like I got to tell you, we'll talk about this because I love this. And this is probably be irrelevant because the media cycle is so fast by the time that comes up, but I'll probably use these clips at a time. I'm definitely talking about the Jaguar thing this week. But not for the reason you think, not for the reason you think. I think it's fucking brilliant. Everybody's hating on it. And because you're going to appreciate this because you'd love to go granular with light founders, right? If you just, as soon as I saw it, it reminded me of something instantly. How do you? 34, 34, you're not going to remember this. Tell me what it is. In 1985, Coca-Cola had a genius idea. They were doing taste tests all around the United States. Coca-Cola was. And they were losing taste test to Pepsi. So they said, okay. And Pepsi was advertising this like crazy that liked all these blind taste tests. People were choosing Pepsi. They were choosing Pepsi. They were choosing Pepsi. But they're being put on by Coca-Cola. No, no, no, no, no. Pepsi was doing this. So Coca-Cola comes out and says, here's what we're doing. We're coming out with new Coke. We're changing our formulation for the first time in 100 years or whatever it was. We're going to add more, well, I guess I took the cocaine out at some point. It's not before 1985. Well, the indies were a wild time. I don't know what to tell you, but they took the cocaine out at some point earlier than that. But they were going to add more sugar to it, right? So add more sugar. And then they came out with new Coke. And everybody hated it. They fucking hated it. But everybody was talking about it. And then after about six months of this disaster of new Coke, they formulated and came back out with Coke classic. Yeah. So now you can get the old stuff again. And dude, the sales went through the roof. So think about it. Before two days ago, or three days ago, whenever it was and this disaster ad came out, who was talking about Jaguar? No one. No one. Who's talking about him now? Everyone. Everyone. So now you have this opportunity for Jaguar to write this disaster of, because you know, they say, doesn't matter if you're talking good or talking bad, is when they stop talking, you got a problem. And they had stopped talking about Jaguar, but they got to find a way to capitalize on it. Because or else what's going to happen is you're going to get a lot of buzz and people aren't going to convert. But I think you're going to start seeing now. Now if I'm Jaguar, what I do is I take this disaster of a campaign and this new thing and I start bringing back the classic stuff. I think within within a year, you're going to start to see, let's go back to the XK. Let's bring out a new XK to celebrate our heritage. Not that would be smart. It would be super smart. And when it happens and when it happens, I don't know this is sad. Maybe they're just, you know what you got to do, by the way. What's that? When you do a podcast and you talk about like the future, you have to be like super, you have to, you have to just have these like super prolific ideas and thoughts and you say them with 100% certainty. And then you can clip it in a year from now. But then all the shit that you say that doesn't work, you just, you just delete it. Okay, so here we are. RV does this all the time. For sure, I respect RV a lot. But he says a lot of shit. And then he'll clip the stuff that went right. It's like what is this gambling, this gambling hotlines back in the day where you would pay like a hundred dollars as you would call it. Half the colors would get this game. Half the colors would get the other other way. Yeah, so 50% time we're always right. Yeah, just keep working. It looks like a fucking genius, dude. Yeah, that was dude, that was the hustle. So yeah, but anyway, so that's what's going to happen is you're going to see Jaguar use this negative press. They're going to revert back to the classic Jaguar. Everything and they're going to be sort of relevant again. That's what I would do because they had to do something. Right now everyone ate some. Fuck it. And porous porous is they just put out an ad not calling out Jaguar, but saying like, if we were, I think it was, I can't do a lippa. It was with one big celebrity, but basically you're saying like, if I was going to direct a porous commercial, this is what I would do. And it's that's the commercial. It's heard just basically reinforcing all the porous of values. Like that's what they're doing in the commercial and basically taking like a subtle stab at like, don't fuck with a good thing. Yeah, don't fuck with the classic. If they do that, what you're talking about to be smart, though. Nobody was talking about them five days ago. Yeah. And now everybody's talking about them, which I think is funny. I think it's, no one benched Shapiro's and they're saying the election was proof we know in commercials like that. That might be a little bit of a stretch. But dude, everybody's talking about this, which is wild. I mean, it'll be interesting to see how long it dominates the news cycle, because I mean, nothing dominates the news cycle very long. It'll be forgotten soon. Yeah, I think. But I mean, it's more impressions and it's more eyeballs in the garden again, like you mentioned in the past. Well, let's back out, dude, because obviously, you know, I like to get the origin story on everybody that's highly successful that comes through here. Because I like to know, you know, it's a science experiment. Is it nature? Is it nurture? What happened to you? So tell me about early you, dude. Like give me the early you. The early me grew up in a family of like sort of comfort and predictability. My dad worked for the government in Canada. I worked for Ceasus, so he was doing counterterrorism and intelligence, which is a very cool job. But I mean, it was still a nine to five government job. So entrepreneurship working with, I mean, tech startup, that wasn't really where I came from. But I think that so your podcast is called Escaping the Drift. I think that you're obviously very entrepreneurial, but there's a lot of people that were, you know, parents and grandparents that found a lot of comfort in a nine to five W2. And I think that our generation is realizing very quickly and as did I, that W2s are not going to be the way that we're going to really secure our freedom. And we're not going to be able to retire. We're not going to be able to live like the life that we really want to live. And this sounds a little bit like a talk track that you share quite a bit. But if you actually think about what our parents and grandparents went through and the pensions that they were receiving and the comfort and the security that they had from their jobs, I don't think many people can get that kind of comfort and security anymore. Doesn't exist. Yeah, you don't see big pensions being flown around. No, exactly. Well, I've said a government employees and how long that's going to last now. Exactly. So early age, I was like, shit, how much money do I have to have in a bucket? And now my views of retirement have changed. But early stage was like, how much money do I have to have in a bucket if I want to retire at 65? Because I'm not going to be getting a pension from wherever I'm working. And it was a lot of money. You start to do the math and you're like, well, if I'm only making X amount of dollars working in 95 in this company, that's really not going to get that bucket of money that I really want to live a good life until I die at 100, 120 got willing, right? So it was really a very logical decision to move away from traditional nine to five as quickly as possible. I started working in tech. One of the companies I was working at was acquired. That sort of opened my eyes to acquisition and private equity because of a good exit. The guy made a lot of money to founder, made a lot of money. And then it was a light bulb moment. I just need to, I need to find a way to get a piece of a company or to build something that can eventually be acquired. And that was sort of the rabbit hole that I went down. And then since then, I've worked in a variety of different startups. One was acquired five years ago. It was a broadcast software startup as acquired by Crafts Valley. I've done the fractional CRO stuff. I've worked full time as co-founder CRO. So I just duck around the startup universe and that sort of led me into what my content is right now, which is speaking to entrepreneurs, talking to entrepreneurs. Anything that is about entrepreneurship, building from zero, that stuff really interests me. Because I think that is, I think that is people's path to freedom. It's finding a way to build something from scratch, build something that you own. And I think that that's something that everybody should at least. If it's not something they jump into at first, which I don't think is smart, they should at least start to understand that the future proof themselves from being laid off, from not having a pension, from understanding the companies don't really give a shit about you at the end of the day. So I sort of just champion entrepreneurship as much as possible. No, I agree. I think my views of the W2 employee and all of that stuff are very similar though to my views on college, right? I don't give this blanket like this is a bad thing. I don't give it a blank. Like people say, oh, all the college is stupid guys. College is a scam, all that stuff. I don't subscribe to that because I don't know either. Is that genuinely believed that number one, college is a scam. If you go get a liberal arts degree in indigenous people studies on the impact it has on theater. Okay, yeah, you're an idiot. You got scammed. You're going to be a barista. I get that. You get a school for a finance or a county degree. You're learning the language of business. There's something to that. You go get a lot of agree. There's something to that. You become a doctor or something to that. It depends on what you get there. But more than that, I think it's a great place to teach you how to grow up. It's where you learn to be an adult. Yeah. If anything else, it's where you really learn to be an adult. And I think it's so funny because I was talking to the other day about this where I went to an event in Orange County and it was a bunch of pro athletes and a bunch of money managers and private office people. And Eric Redd was up there who was a professional basketball player and he was with Metta World Peace and they were doing a panel and he said, how many of you guys are getting ready to retire from whatever league you're in? Or you think you're going to be out of your league soon because there was a bunch of athletes there, a bunch of hands went up and he's like, the first thing you need to get is a fucking shrink. He's like, because from the day that somebody first told you you were special, whatever you do sports wise, you stopped growing as a person. So if that was 13, you're 13 right now with millions of dollars, which is why you're all going to be fucking broke. And I think we're seeing that a little bit in the new economy, the modern economy, the crypto, you know, slot machine that is running all the time, but none of that shit is entrepreneurship in my mind. Like I mean, like there's like, bullshit entrepreneurship, yeah, it's gambling. But then there's like real like, okay, so you went to you went to college, you went to university, you got your degree, yeah, smart. Now you've grown up a little bit and now you go into the, because keep in mind, we can't assume that everybody just jumps into building their own thing or jumps into startup land right away. Because it's not what the majority of people do, the majority of people go out after college and get a job. Yeah. What I'm saying is great now figure out how to future proof yourself so that not only does your earning power increase exponentially, if you find a way to productize your skill set or you built, I mean, is a value to the world and you take that to market at some point in your career. I'm saying that eventually the thing that you're doing right now, there will be a ceiling on it or you'll be made redundant. And that's all I'm saying. So I don't think that, I think the point that I'm trying to make is, if you're going into a job looking at it to take care of your rest of your life, probably not, but you need to look at that as a continuation of your education. Correct. What is this company doing right that I can learn that I can apply to something else? And I fast forwarded through my entire sort of origin story, but there was like about how many years at what, 10, this years of like working for companies before then starting to figure out how to do my own thing. And like even like the, the podcast I create now in the newsletter and how I monetize that, that's a business ended up itself, right? That is a full business that I've started from scratch. So I think that, I think that the goal is, and there's a strategy behind why I started the podcast as opposed to starting just a business. I wanted to build a media asset like a launch business is against in the future once you have the audience. But yes, I think, and there's other versions of entrepreneurship, you'd be working a nine to five and then find a way to take the skill set that you've learned in your nine to five and then do it freelance or side hustle. So you have your nine to five and then you, you know, you take on clients five to nine and all of a sudden, you have so many clients that you can now turn yourself into an agency or some sort of service provider doing that thing that you're actually doing in your nine to five as a full-time entrepreneurship. I agree with you. I think the difference is people all get lumped into entrepreneurship. Saying you're an entrepreneur is the new I'm a rock star, which is it is. Yes, right. These guys that are running the, you know, the shit coin, the meme coin casinos. My differential, my line is, if you're not creating something, if you're playing a zero of some game work, the only way for you to win is somebody else to lose, which all of that is. You can't, you can't rake hard on a crypto and somebody loses that's not our entrepreneurship. That's speculating. Yeah. That's pure, you're gambling that point. You're not building anything. Which I get. And I think that, yeah, having those jobs to learn how to build something is effective. But I also think that people make the mistake of thinking that I love when people are like, ah, I want an entrepreneurship, I want a company so I can make my own hours. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. I've never worked more. Yeah. I've never worked more than when you build your own thing. You won't. So I think that you should define what entrepreneurship is and what it isn't. It's not, it's not just extracting value from the world. It's giving as much value as possible. I think that a great version of entrepreneurship is to take the thing that you know better than anything anyone else. Maybe it's because you've worked in a company for 10, 15, 20 years. You find a pain point that you've discovered through working in that industry for the past 15 or 20 years and then you build a product or service around that that solves that pain point. Statistically, that's going to be the highest chance of you succeeding as a quote unquote entrepreneur. Ultimately, the definition of an entrepreneur has to be, you are finding ways to solve pain points while simultaneously giving value to the world. Yeah. If you're not giving value, if you're just extracting, like you said, a zero sum game, you're not, first of all, there's going to be a ceiling because you cannot just extract from the world unlimited value you have to do, you do have to give value. And secondly, it's going to have a very short life, whatever thing you're building. I don't deal with a lot of crypto entrepreneurs. I deal with people that are trying to build like real companies that are solving. Well, let's move into the brand building. Let's talk about that because obviously it's so important. When you started your podcast, was that the first thing you really started on brand? Was that the hinge point? Was that the first thing? Yeah. All right. So when you first started it, what were your goals for it? What did you think it was going to entail? So it's funny because when I started it, I didn't really know where it was going to go. When I started it, I was still building a company and I was CRO at a company that was a broadcast software company. It was acquired. And my day-to-day was building out a sales team, building out a marketing team, helping take this product to market. So a lot of the first conversations I had were just following my passion of building up sales and marketing organizations within companies. And I would speak to CROs and CMOs and talk about sales and marketing strategy. So the first version of the podcast was really just me having conversations with people that were teaching me things about what I was doing in my day-to-day. And it was at that point in my life, it was my interest. And then as it grows and expands, then after the acquisition, I realized that there's a lot of other things that I'm interested in. So I started to have a lot of other people on the podcast. Now I start talking about raising money, mindset, mental health, physical health, all the things that I think are now important to me. So the journey of the podcast and the topics that I've brought onto the podcast really emulate where I'm at in my life and what I'm curious about. And I think that having some curiosity, some almost selfish curiosity in the topics you cover is key to creating content long-term. Because if you are creating content that you're not interested in, I feel like eventually you will burn out. Now you asked me what was the purpose of it. So after the acquisition, I realized that okay, I started to build just a little bit of momentum with this audience. I have a couple listeners now. So what am I going to do with it? And I could have launched a product or service immediately against that audience. I was fortunate that I didn't really have to worry too much about money at that point. And in my mind, I thought, let's, you know, copy paste the GaryVee model. The GaryVee model is give everything away for free. Yeah, a bunch. Exactly. Build an audience. And then in the future, you can use that audience for whatever you'd like to use them for. If I want to sell a product or service, now I have a million eyeballs that are ready and waiting for whatever I talk to them about. If I want to just monetize with ads, I can do that. If I want to, I thought about this a lot. I think this is the future of content creation. I think that creators should find startups whose product aligns with their audience and then start to take small equity positions in those startups and then use their channel, their audience as sort of a take to market strategy for that early stage startups product. If there's that alignment between the product and the audience avatar, and the reason I think that's smart is because then the creator can focus on creating and not becoming an operator in a business. They can just find a way to, again, leverage other assets. Yeah. So, answer your question at around the two, because I started the podcast before the company was acquired. So I started about two years before at the point of the acquisition. That's when the style of content shifted slightly away from just your sales and marketing topics. And then I thought, yes, jab, jab punch, put out a ton of value, great content that I'm interested in, speak to people that would teach me something because I know there's a lot of me's in the world that would love to learn from incredible entrepreneurs. And then when I have critical mass of the audience, then I can figure out what I'd like to do with it. And that was really, that was the goal. And the goal is to do something also that I can do for the next 100 years of my life. So when I look at a podcast, I'm not building it to be acquired. I'm building it because it's something that I enjoy and it's something that I can launch a product against it today in 10 years and 20 years from now, but I'll always keep building that audience. Yeah, it's funny. We started this show as it was me and two of my buddies that, you know, we got the bar hangout, whatever it was. People like you shoot the shit. You guys were like, like the people around us was like, you guys were fucking hilarious. And so one day it was like, dude, we should just do a podcast and then it just started as a good, you know, reason to get together with my buddies in here and just shoot shit about nonsense. And I missed those days because those shows were really fun. Yeah. And then you start to evolve. So then you have to figure out, okay, now this is becoming a little bit more serious. I'm putting some money into it. It was a energy into it. Okay. So now I got to figure out how do I bring the most value to the audience? Who is the avatar that's actually listening to my show? What do they care about? How do I structure an interview so I can sort of break down the site, you know, break down the stress of meeting somebody for the first time where they have their guard up and they really don't want to get too personal. How do I break that down and then find a way to really pull some, like, you know, great insights that can help the audience that whoever's listening, who's, and I create my podcast, like I really create my podcast for me 10 years ago, kind of like how you're writing your book. So I create my podcast because I know that there's people in the audience that are struggling to figure out what to do with their life, are wondering if they're on the right path, the right journey. And the goal of my show now is to find some awesome entrepreneur, some great founder, some great CEO and say, hey, listen, I want you to teach the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the bullshit that you've gone through. So whoever's listening feels that sense of comfort that whatever they're doing or whatever they're trying to figure out, they don't have to reinvent the wheel. People have already been through all this bullshit before. So just like sort of keep on keeping on and keep on going. I think that's probably how my shows evolve. So it wasn't this structured, perfectly architected thing. It was just, by the way, I think most content and the best creators don't have this perfectly structured plan at the beginning. They just enjoy what they're doing, which is why they can do it for an extended period of time. Well, it's funny. What do they say? Nine out of 10 podcasts never get past episode two or something. It's why I don't even know the numbers anymore. It's insane. But yeah, if you've released 10 episodes, you're in like the top one percent. Yeah. So, okay. So rule number one, I tell people it's all the time. If you're going to do a podcast, don't tell anyone about it until you have seven episodes in the can. Because if you, because too, if you don't have seven episodes done, ready to go, chances of getting to the eighth one are very slim, because a lot of people do this once or twice and then they're like, I wonder a podcast and the lights come on, they're like, well, they don't realize that you just have to gotta be yourself. People fuck up a lot of content creation because they get excited about it. And this is not just podcasting. We could be posting on Instagram, posting on YouTube, writing, you know, tweets, you know, three times a day, but whatever it is, people get super excited about it. They start and then real life hits, it's kind of like the gym in January, real life hits, and then they get distracted and then they don't, they realize it, shit, I'm not making a lot of money on this thing in the first week, which is, bro, you should have figured, you should have had the force. I think for that out before you press, press, publish, but then all of a sudden, that motivation and that reason why they started fizzles out and then they, are you good? I'm going to sneeze. Yeah. Look at the light. Do I look at the light? Yeah. That's not adding that out. That's going to stay there. Joe Rogan, man, we keep it real. That's a trick to get you to, yeah, I was trying not to sneeze, not like in, in do sit more like when you know, but when you have it, like, you started to get like pepper in here. Just got to get rid of it, dude. This makes me, but I think that's the biggest issue. I think the people, I think the people at the wrong expectations going into content creation, they expect too much to quit. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. So let's say I'm, I'm, I'm Bill in Indiana. Yeah. Sorry, Bill. I do create a podcast. So what should bills? I'm curious what your expectations are for timeline to being able to make anything out of this. Yeah. Well, first of all, you can't eat. So I want you to, I want you to listen to what I'm saying. I would do if I needed to monetize this as quickly as possible because when I started doing it, it was a lot of fun for me, but I wasn't focused on the quickest path to revenue, which is not, it's not necessarily smart. It is what it is. I had my set of circumstances when I started my show, not everybody's circumstances. Sure. So let's make the assumption that you don't just want to because you should find a way to monetize it and take it as seriously as possible as quickly as possible. I think that's very important because most people don't have, most people don't have the will to keep it going for a long period of time without making money or having some sort of business outcome from this podcast. Well, it's worse as people don't understand. There's a marketing budget that goes with this. Like these things don't grow, these things don't grow organically like you think they would. You're not going to throw it up there and think that your mom's going to share it with her knitting group and everybody's podcast is probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to grow. Yeah, you've got to promote. Yes. Cost money to make this go. And this is also why I mean, you do video, I do video as well. I just built out a studio because I wanted to, I wanted to index on and rank on YouTube, which is, I mean, that's the second largest search engine in the world outside of Google. But outside of that, if you just do audio, nobody sees it. There's no organic reach. Yes. So answer your question. To start, figure out your objective, your north star for the podcast. So if you're just podcasting the podcast, unless you have the financial means to do it, it's going to turn into a very expensive hobby very quickly and a very time consuming hobby. So I would say that you should figure out how the podcast helps your business objectives, whatever that may be. Or the business trip. Yes. Correct. So I started a podcast outside of the business that I was in for most people. That's not smart. People, they should start a podcast that supports the business that they're in, meaning that the interviews that you have or the subject matter that you capture or the questions that you ask are questions that your customers are asking. Because that means that the content that you're creating is going to turn into content that is actually going to be actively answering questions that your customers care about. More importantly, I'll take one step further like is, you know, we're in the real estate business here. It's what we do. And I tell realtors all the time, all the time, if you're going to start a podcast, go after your clients, your existing clients that have businesses and have them on to promote their businesses. Because so often, you know, I mean, you can walk out the front door of any business and hit a real tour with the seven iron and just about a direction. There's millions of us, right? But at the same time, if you're bringing someone on and trying to help their business, you're not going to have to ask for their business when they, when it comes down. So this is the second, this is the second part of it. So not only is the content answering questions for your target customer, that if you do interview style, which I think is also a smart play, if you're using it for a business objective, that hour where you're sitting with somebody, that hour is a relationship building, report, building hour. For sure. So not only is it, is it, are you using it strategically to create content? You are also actively building rapport with somebody who could be a customer. So I think that's also a very smart strategy to use, I mean, I laugh because, yes, I mean, one of the main reasons for me doing this is to build the network, right? And there are times, and here's a fun fact for the old podcast, there's times when you sit with people for an hour, and in an hour, you're like, I don't really like this person. I'm just like, you were doing great, we're doing great Scott, I'm not on your time, but I'm no shit. I mean, can you honestly not say that's not true? No, it's very true. It's very true. I mean, just funny because sometimes, because now I, now I guess like my brand is podcast, that's my brand right now. That's all I really fucking do. So everybody knows me as a podcaster, which means like, even when I get asked to speak, it's not keynote anymore. You know, it is. It's like moderate a panel on stage. Yeah. You're a fucking good moderate. You're a great moderator. Scott, this one wants you to go moderator. But yeah, it's funny. So sometimes when I get asked to go into the people shows, they always ask me like, who's your worst interview? I'll never answer. But damn straight, I have like a couple of people that pop up in my head and I'm like, well, the worst man, like, here's the thing. So back to monetizing, like the way you monetize a podcast in my view, if there's other ways you tell me, but obviously in building that, you want to capture the audience, best you can through a mailing list and all of those things, which is why we ask you guys to subscribe to the nut newsletters and all of those things. But then there's also, you know, if you're listening to this now on any of our great podcast partners, you're hearing ads. Obviously we get paid for those as they come up, you're hearing that right now. And then there's of course, when guests come on, there's something to sell, there's affiliate stuff. Sometimes we can make money that way. And then there's the paid guest, which is the, the infotainment, which is part of this, right? Because you'll have people who call up that really want to come on, that want to, want to leverage your audience and you've got to charge them sometimes. Come on. Scott did not pay to be heard. By the way, like Scott's business, he's, he paid nothing to be heard today. Just want to clarify that. But it happens occasionally, but the problem with the paid guests and I'm guessing you have paid guests sometimes to us. I've, I've probably done about five or six rarely. Okay. Because I hate them. I hate them too. Because here's why because it turns into an infomercial. Yeah. And there was a dude one time that my booker booked me and he was selling some really complicated water system by some crazy water system for some state municipalities and he paid to come on and I'm like, going through this and I'm like, dude, this is reading like a science manual. This is terrible. I'm saying, hey, man, I'm going to give you your money back because I'm not hearing this at all. Yeah. Because it just would be terrible. Yeah. And it hurts, it hurts the show. Yeah. I'll give you all the footage you want and you can, you can have that. And there you go. Yeah. I think that. So that's why that's why I think that tying the podcast back to your business and having a product that you sell is the smartest reason why you should start a podcast. Yeah. So have a product or service that's lined up with the audience. This is some of that, but is this some of the like what Alex Jones was selling like the violence or whatever he was selling on well, Joe Rogan was selling, uh, uh, uh, what was it on it? Or the trope. Yeah, but how you got Joe Rogan's like with it and in shape and like a UFC, dude. Oh, well, that's okay. So Alex Jones is going to share some sufferance too. So yeah. So it doesn't go with the brand. You got it. You got to figure out. You got to figure out what actually makes sense. You want to sell a chunky bar? I might buy one. You look like you don't read through that bullshit. Yeah. It's so new. When you actually like my best advertisers, yeah. And again, I don't have my own product, but if I did, I'd have to make sure that it fits, right? It actually fits. I'm thinking about different things that I can launch, I'm thinking about like, like products like how to build a podcast that fits. I've done it. It fits. Right. If I was promoting something that I've never used before, people smell through that BS all day and it's really not going to make a quick buck, but then it ruins the trust with the audience. So all the advertisers that work long term with me, they're all products I use. Yeah. So like I mean, like I've worked with HubSpot for three years now, I've worked with in great affiliate program with HubSpot, I mean, these are tools, it doesn't matter that they're software. They're tools that I actually use on a day-to-day for my actual business. So it makes a lot of sense because I can talk about why they actually help me and why they didn't make my life less stressful on a day-to-day. But yeah, I mean, if you're going to pick a product, if you're going to build a podcast, tie it back to whatever you're selling, make sure that it just syncs up because if you don't, you're going to run trust. I would never promote a product I don't use in this next segment brought to you by Vagia Cell. Absolutely. Just kidding. No, not to it. No, but you have to. And I think that's the issue is I think about a lot that's seen from the social network when they're trying to sell ads on the early Facebook and I'm like, no, we can't sell ads. We don't know what it is yet. Like there's such a fine line of when and how you monetize. So yes, correct. If you have a product that is aligned with your audience, then I don't see an issue with monetizing early on. If it's actually something that helps your audience and solves the problem your audience has. So for example, if I'm starting a podcast on real estate and I am a real estate agent and somebody reaches out to me and say, hey, can you list my house? Okay. Go for it. That's kind of what I'm doing yet. I'm starting a podcast on the creator economy and I have a course teaching people how to get their first thousand followers on Instagram. No problem because I've done it. Hopefully, hopefully you've actually done it yourself. It's a precursor for selling it. But then the content aligns with that. But if you are, for example, trying to monetize through ads for not completely off products but like adjacent products, say like, for example, you start a podcast and you get an option to sell athletic greens and it's a business podcast. There's a place for it. But it's not right. Let's say, don't worry about monetizing too quickly. Don't inundate your audience with ads. A.G.1 now. No longer. A.G.1. That's true. I know the CEO actually rebranded to A.G.1. They do a lot of podcasts as... Did you know what's crazy? The CEO of now A.G.1. Do you know where I know her from? No. She's a hooters girl. Actually? Oh shit. Did you know her? I did not. Wait back a million years ago. Yes, I did. I don't know her story. I haven't had her on a show yet. Yeah, yeah. She's great. She's great. But she built an incredible... No, well, she was... No, no, no, no, no. She was... She was the CEO at Cinebon. Cinebon got bought by private equity. And then I thought a green's just hired her as CEO. She not found her there. She just took it over as CEO. Okay. I don't know the rebrand. I don't know the story. Yeah. It means catch. She's great. So, there you go. See? Yeah. Now that I say that out loud, I probably should. Yeah. Right? That's very cool. That's very cool. Yeah. I mean, it's the same as like somebody starting their career as like a bottle service girl or like... Well, you start somewhere. Well, you know, bottle service girls have to end up in real estate if there's something they do end up in real estate. I think when you apply at the way it like the clubs, you just have to say on the bottom of it. Yes, I agree. To get a real estate license. Yeah. I agree. I agree right now to get that license later. I mean, look, dude, if you can get somebody to buy a, you know, $3,000 ball of vodka. Yeah. Hey, man. You can probably sell house. Oh, boy, you can now forget what we're talking about because now we're talking about bottle girls. We're talking about... I know it's a distraction, right? We're talking about... We're in Vegas. No. Yeah, we are. No, we're talking about when to monetize. Yes. And I think it's after you've established credibility in the market. I think that it's... I think that when you're talking about ad-based sales, I think you have to establish credibility and trust first. I think it's a little bit different than a product-based sale where you can sell immediately. If I have a product or service on around Facebook ads or if I have a high ticket consulting offer or like a done-for-you service or a physical good or a software, I mean, you have to... You sell it right away to the audience that needs it. But when you are selling ads, you are selling based on trust and trust takes time. If I have a software, if I sell you the software today, it's going to work today. If I'm selling you access to an audience, the audience and the return on that investment is going to increase the longer that I have that relationship with the audience. So day one, it's not going to be as good as day 1,000. See, that brings up such an interesting point, which is that the real trust and the real audience in this, in any more, it's so difficult to gauge like, who's got a real audience? If you look at... I mean, I've had people hit us up to be on the podcast, I have a million followers on Instagram. It's not real and it's got 800 views, so that's a signal like, bro, those are all bots. It's not real. And I think everybody went in this gold rush of followers back in the day to build these artificial audiences that don't resonate with them, that don't engage with them, that they could care less. I know. I mean, there's a lot of it. Yeah. And that concept is so hard to reconcile. So what it does is if you are starting, it's just demoralizing because you are looking at somebody that has this fake audience and you're saying, well, how could I ever get there? Well, meanwhile, they actually don't have any influence. They don't have any audience and you're benchmarking against bullshit. So when you start, I mean, don't... I would say this is another idea. You shouldn't focus on numbers. You should focus on results that actually mean something, right? So if you are building an audience, you don't need a million followers and you shouldn't be benchmarking your success against somebody who does because that's all vanity metrics. Yeah. I think that you should be focusing on, okay, let's figure out how to build a channel, build a platform. Doesn't matter if it's Twitter, Instagram, podcasts, YouTube. And then what is the leading indicator for success? So how do I... Is it retention and watch time on my YouTube videos? Is it shares on Instagram? Is it retweet? Find that leading metric leading indicator that's going to actually convert into an actual business result and that's how you gauge your success. So you can make a lot of money having 10,000 followers on Instagram that are all buying your product or service. You can make a lot of money with 50,000 subscribers on YouTube that have 60 percent retention on your video all the way through to the end. Like there's better things to look at. I want to ask you something I struggle with. Okay. I struggle with this in content creation anymore. And have you seen the movie The Idiocracy? No. All right. You should watch this movie because it's pretty scary. Okay. It's a movie about Luke Wilson goes into the future. Travels to the future was frozen or something. I don't remember how he gets there. But America is so dumbed down. Like everybody is basically a blithering idiot and he just happens... He's a normal dude and happens to go like 100 years in the future and he's the smartest guy on the unearthed. So funny. Because America's gotten so dumbed down and when you watch this, it's kind of... Where we're headed, I think, is a society because here's one of things that I grapple with, right? Which is I just don't understand how certain things become as popular as they are. Because here I am. I'm doing my best to educate, to help, to encourage people to do great. And you're like, fuck. I'm busting this stuff out. I'm doing what I think is very smart, very intelligent content. And then the fucking hock to a girl who literally probably can't even spell hock to a... How have you spell it? He's dropping a podcast. It probably gets more hits than I do in the first place. He's doing very well right now. I do. So it makes no sense to me. Well, how do you reconcile that? Do you dumb your shit down? No, you do stuff. No, you don't. Because again, again, the answer all comes back to the sort of like the basic principles that we're talking about is like, what's your north star? What's your objective for the content? Because if your objective is to become Joe Rogan, then you shouldn't make high brow super, super complex because Joe Rogan is not high brow and super complex. And neither are murder podcasts that also sit in the top five or whatever. Like you have to understand what is your goal? Like what is your goal? Do you just want to, first of all, this isn't new to podcasting, this isn't new to content. How many people, how many people would sit down and watch a Senate hearing versus the Super Bowl? Yeah. Okay. Fair. So I mean, less people will watch a Senate hearing, which are probably pretty important in conversation. But the most, but like the thing that was trending on Twitter, you're just asking why there's a standard distribution of people that love entertainment versus, okay, okay, fine. Super Bowl to me is entertainment. You have the best athletes in the world performing at the highest level. How can you? The highest. That's what you do. That's my point. But the highest retweeted tweet two days ago was some kid. I did not know existed called the Rizzler, who's five years old. That's on a wrestling show in his, all he does is do this. It's, and that's the highest retweeted thing on Twitter two days ago. I understand why you don't understand because I don't, I don't, it's not entertainment to me too. No. But it's entertainment to someone. Like I want to slap my kids that they even think I like like, no, you understand. I'm like, you're right. But no, dance your question though, like you got to create content that accomplishes the objective that you set out for that often. I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm standing like the old man. I'm the porch, the old man. I create the same type of content as you. Yeah. I create the exact same type of content. And you don't think that I've seen people that start a podcast after me that are just pure, like culture podcasts, like just shooting a shit on just culture that have gone growing way faster than you. Right. And I look at it. I'm like, fuck. This is, this is really frustrating. But then again, I'm like, who am I serving? Yeah. Who am I actually serving? When I sit down with yourself, when I sit down with the founder of Netflix, the founder of Reebok, when I sit down with Seth Godin and we have these incredibly intelligent, like just like the forefront of thought leadership, not me, the other guys, they're, they're extrapolated. Yeah. I get it. I'm not benchmarking myself against some of those dudes. I get it. I think, wow, these are ideas that can actually change the world from people that have actually changed the world. If I dumb down my content, then I'm one less voice that is bringing those ideas to the masses. So I'm hoping that, yeah, I mean, my growth is slower than somebody who talks about sports or culture entertainment. But again, it's not who I serve. Because something else I wrestle with, we talk about content creation and being omnipresent and being on all channels. I think that the dopamine addiction is a real thing. It is. It's creating ADHD in our kids. It's creating things, which again, which is why I'm trying to actually, if I'm going to create content, I actually want it to be valuable to somebody. But I can add one thing. Yeah, please do it. So whatever you want, man, just because you create content that serves an audience that's trying to like build a business or become better versions of the self, it doesn't mean you have an excuse to not, not achieve mastery at that content creation, not sort of perfect your craft, not prep, not find ways to make that content still as entertaining and useful as possible. So some people sort of, if they're creating smart content, I find they default too well. It's smart. So I'm not going to focus on trying to find entertaining, which I think is also incorrect. Yeah. So you also can't get lazy just because you're targeting a certain niche that maybe is like a little bit more high brow. No, I think, look, if people don't, if people are watching or listening to something that you do and they don't laugh or pissed or experience some emotion, what are you doing? But this is why as a podcast host, what your goal is is to is to make the person feel safe so they can be real because that realness is going to be the X factor and the entertainment because again, keep in mind the people that you speak to, who I speak to, they've been interviewed by 20, 30 different podcasts hosts and they've been on all the different YouTube channels. So the X factor is doing your prep and then really just finding a way to pull out things that haven't been pulled out before because that alone will create entertainment value. Well, I find when I prep folks, when I do this, like I told you, when you show up, I don't have a list of questions. There's nothing on the desk if you're watching us on YouTube. I don't have questions because I find that when I used to do that, I would go through and even using Chatsy BT or whatever else, Paul, you're pulling the same stuff that everybody pulls and it becomes the same repetitive stuff. And I've seen, I've seen people come through here and then I've seen them on other podcasts and you could just tell, they're on autopilot, like here's question A and it's like here's the answer for A. Here's question B. And it's the same thing over and over. So I don't do that. But I found the best questions that I do. It's why I like authors, right? Because I can, I can power through a book pretty quick and I can find stuff in the book that interests me that nobody else has probably taken the time to get through. Yeah. So how do you prep for a guest? I watch their interviews and I try and find things that they speak about, but the host doesn't go into. So they'll, they'll speak about a personal story, but the host won't take it the step further and ask how that impacted their life or what they felt going through that story, which leads to a whole other array of sub stories coming out of that one particular thing. But I'll watch a lot of interviews with them. And so I get a basic premise for what they're like domain expert and subject matter expert at, but then I'll just go a level deeper. It's really not that complicated, like a little bit of, you can see when people light up a little bit. Yeah. And you can see what gives people energy. Yeah. And if it doesn't, and by the way, I tell them this before they even start, I say, because this is how the conversation goes with every guest. I'll say, you know, what would make this a win for you? And they'll say, well, I just want to serve your audience. And then I'll say, what do you have to promote? And I'm like, oh, this book and then I'll start the conversation. We just say it for 40, 40 minutes ago. It's the same thing every single time. So I know how it's going to go. And they know they want to serve my audience. And I know that they're not going to say, this is actually what I care about. And this is, so I have to find it. I have to search for it. And when you notice somebody lights up about a topic, I don't care if there's six other topics that you had planned, go really deep on that one topic, because they're going to have so much emotion and they're going to bring out so much about that one particular thing that they've, and they'll be appreciative because they'll, they'll, they'll recognize too. They're not stupid. They'll recognize when you want to just sit in a topic and just, and just bask in it because it's something they care so deeply about. And it's so recent on the top of their mind. And that's when the best content comes up. Yeah. I've, I've had episodes of this show where people come under subject matter experts, Vina Jetty, great example, as a friend of mine, Vina's a multi has a billion, billion dollars in assets and multi-family under management and a portfolio. And we never, we never talked about multi-family, like, yeah, never, we just never got to, because she's bored of talking about, yeah, we, so we never got to, we talked about not raising worthless kids for literally an art, so we talked about that. That's a beautiful subject because a lot of people that have massive amounts of wealth have a really hard time succession planning and figuring out how to not turn their kids into assholes. Yeah. Because they never had to work for anything in their life. Yep. So that's an incredible topic that a lot of people who are listening to this, who have achieved success and have made a lot of money would actually tune into because as people that they have no interest building a billion dollar multi-family portfolio, yeah, they've made their money in software or consumer goods. And they've just, they've just absolutely killed it. And you know, they're, their money's working for them now and they don't want to fucking deal with starting again. They do a little bit of angel investing here and there, but they're not going to build a billion dollar multi-family portfolio. But the second there's this common thread, well, I have money and I have kids and she has money and she has kids. All of a sudden this podcast becomes interesting because now you're speaking to the human element behind the successful person, not just the, the tactical stuff that yeah, she's done it at scale, but I could probably hear the tactical stuff from another 20 people on YouTube. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this because you create so much content. You do so much stuff. So much sometimes, dude. Huh? Too much. Too much sometimes. Tell me about the impostor syndrome. You got to have it sometimes. Have the impostor syndrome all the time. Yeah. Like anything, if you just want to, if you, if you do it enough, you start to get over it. I don't know how else to describe it. I have impostor syndrome whenever I sit in front of huge guests. I have impostor syndrome when I write a newsletter. I have it. So my, my list is about 300,000 people. So I get stressed out sometimes when I'm, how do you build the, how do you build the list? That, that, a lot of writing, writing in one person time, one email at a time. Well, can we talk about that? I mean, I want to, we're going to come back to it. I mean, to cut you off, finish your thought and we'll come back to it. Um, no impostor syndrome is, is tough to deal with. I think that like most people, my, my impostor syndrome really shows when, um, my step on stage, that always stresses me out, um, but that's like the most common fear in the world. So that's not that unusual and the way that I've dealt with it is kind of how I've dealt with everything. I just put myself into that situation again and again and again and again and eventually it becomes less stressful. Yeah. I've never saw my step on stage. I'm shedding myself and then the hundredth time, I'm not, and, and it's, it's really like, it's not rocket science, but what I would do is, uh, in between the big stage gigs where there's like a significant size audience, I would ask anybody and everybody who's putting on an event, can I just please talk for 10 to 15 minutes for free? Just let me talk about, you can tell me what subject I can talk about entrepreneurship marketing, Instagram podcasting, uh, I can talk about software, I can talk about sales, marketing talk, anything like any of those, just let me do like 10 to 15 minutes. Let me just keep exposing myself. It's just like exposure exposure exposure and then over time obstacle is the way exactly that's it. And over time you, you get a little bit less, uh, stressed out and you don't get like a small little panic attack before you jump on stage. And I think that that's how I've dealt with most versions of a posture stream. I've just done it so much. Yeah. It's funny. I was talking to KG last night. Um, I'm a buddy Kevin Griffin speaking to him that he is and we were dinner and we're talking about, we were talking about, here's the funny thing, right? Kevin is, uh, the lead singer of Ben and Ezra, he's been on stage for 40 years, right, 30 years, whatever it is, been on stage. And he told me his first time, he went up to do a speech, not sing with a speech. He goes, man, my throat's sealed up and I was like, holy shit, he goes, I completely fell apart on stage. I was never been that nervous in my life. And this is a guy that has been on stage a million times and he just said, yeah, he kind of worked through it. He's worked through it. And he's like, you know, like certain things, like, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't drink a ton of caffeine before I go on stage because that doesn't help anxiety. You can do something called like box breathing, which is really just inhaling, holding a breath and then letting it out, which also sort of, uh, like there's a biological response with, which, uh, which calms your nerves, uh, prepping, I mean, it sounds stupid, but if you prep the material and you don't have to worry about the material, are you speaking about things that you genuinely know about? Yeah. That also calms the anxiety, but even outside of all those things, just exposing yourself to it more often, I actually, you know, it's so funny. The first time I ever really spoke in public, I don't know why I do this to myself. It was at inbound, which is a conference with, uh, as of last, I spoke at inbound three times so far in my life. And the last one, I think there's 112,000 people. It's massive. That's a big Boston. That was the first time I jumped on stage to do a panel with, uh, a couple other, like people that were on my show invited me out because I've sponsored the podcast for the past three years. And now I said, do you want to speak at inbound? And that was kind of like my first foray into public speaking. And I wouldn't recommend that being the first thing the most people this, I think there was like, uh, uh, like a sweat imprint on the seat behind me. Yeah. It was, it was very nerve, but the point is, it's like you're going to lose your virginity to a porn star while we film it. That's not good at all. That's not good. So, but the point is after that, I'm like, okay, that was stressful. And you always think you're worse than you are, by the way. Yeah. Of course. Everyone was like, great job. Like, I mean, like, Gina's like sitting in the audience and she said, you, you fucking killed it. Like, good job. Everybody who I was on the panel with, uh, you know, like awesome job. Like it was, it was really well done. And in my mind, I would just felt like I wanted to have a heart attack and die. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. Like, just, just do it now. Yeah. So I don't have to deal with the next 20 minutes. It's like that scene from old school where like you're just like the, where you just like, it's an out of body experience and the speech goes off. You're like, what? What happened? Yeah. But, you know, I live. And then after that, I was like, I don't want to feel like that again and I, uh, reps. Yeah. It was just reps. And then I just jumped into every single speaking opportunity that I was like, what's the fun? Because people, you know, you talk about the newsletter growth, too, if you want, like, we're going to get to that. But like most people talk about, about, about the master syndrome, like they don't want to turn a camera. I look terrible on camera. I sound bad on camera. I don't want to. Yes. Like, just, so my recommendation for somebody who wants to start creating content is imposter syndrome is real. And of course, they're going to be stressed out. But you have to find a way to, again, architect the environment so that you forget that you're creating the content. Because most people can just have a conversation, which we can have a conversation doesn't matter. The camera's wrong or off. Yeah. But some people sitting in this chair, when the camera's turned on, they turn into a different person. What you have to do, if you're starting out, is you have to find a way to architect the environment so that you don't know that the cameras are on and you don't feel like you're creating content. So what I recommend when people first start, because videos usually be issues, not usually writing. People don't usually stress out about writing, but videos usually an issue. I say, sit down across from somebody, ask them to print out or on their phone, have a list of questions that you know. They're all topics that you know about. Turn on a camera. And then block off two hours, like Sunday afternoon, whatever, when they have nothing else going on. And that person, I just want them to sit there and ask you about things that you know about. And you will forget the cameras are there after about 10 to 15 minutes. And you're just going to be having a conversation with somebody talking about things that you care about, that you're passionate about. And if you look back at that recording, that's actually incredible content. Yeah. That's all it is. So I think that's one point. You don't have to look directly into the camera for it to be good. You just have to talk about things that you care about. So and by the way, by the way, by the way, if you actually look at, there's something called a fly on the wall effect. The fly on the wall effect is when people, this is what podcast content does well. People who are scrolling on Instagram or on YouTube or whatever, they like to feel like they are the fly on the wall of a conversation. When somebody is staring at you directly, you do not feel like you're flying the wall. It feels like the person who's staring at the camera directly is directly communicating with me. But when I'm in a conversation like this with a podcast, the camera just off to the side or whatever. And the audience knows that I'm not speaking to them. I'm speaking to you. There's a fly on the wall effect and they actually enjoy that content slightly more than if I was talking directly to them in the camera. Yeah. Because you feel like you're preaching. Yes. Exactly. Nobody wants to be told what to do. No. But if I have a smart thought and it's clipped out and it's in a conversation, very organic conversation with someone else, that's a type of content that people share and people like and people engage with. And that's why if you actually look at, I can't remember her name. There's one woman. I'm sure if you Google this story, you'll be able to find it. She rented out a podcast studio on her own and just spoke off camera and say, I'm Googling. If you can find. I have to fucking remember her name. I'll tell you the story what she did though. Okay. She booked out a podcast studio. We'll call her Mary for today's purposes. We'll call her Mary. She booked out a podcast studio and she tested preaching directly to the camera versus no host there. Just her talking to somebody as if there was a host and she's just talking about the same stuff that she'd be talking to the camera to and the engagement on that was a higher on on the on the content where it looked like she was in a podcast. Do you find that because here's the weird thing. I find that my I find that the clips that we do in the podcast when I have a guest do better on Instagram. The solo pod stuff does better on TikTok. I don't know why. I don't know to talk as well as Instagram. Yeah. So I'm not an SME. Not a subject matter expert. I don't. It's weird. I just I don't know why that is, but that stuff does better over there than that. But I look at so when I'm when I'm trying to figure out a strategy for myself, I look at people that have way more money to invest in marketing and people that are trying to figure out that strategy. So Starbucks effect. Yeah. I mean, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. If I'm looking at, you know, how to grow a podcast on on TikTok and probably looking at Stephen Bartlett with the idea of a CEO, I'm probably looking at Chris Williamson with modern wisdom. I'm seeing what are their strategies that they're trying and emulating them and emulating them as a first step. And then you also, by the way, I'm a big fan of reverse engineering success. So whether or not it's podcasts, newsletter, Twitter, Instagram, find the people that are in your domain that are killing it on that platform. And as a first pass at content creation, look at what they're doing and copy that. Just to start, then you'll make it your own. But don't have to reinvent the wheel. Those people that are growing on Twitter faster and quicker than anyone else. And go find that person and go figure out, okay, how do they structure their tweets? What do they write about? What is the formula? What is it? Is it, you know, is it this quippy little like, you know, three point thought or is it more of like a longer block of text, which it usually never is on Twitter? What is the formula that really gets a lot of engagement and speaks to a Twitter audience? Who is a person that's doing that the best right now and go find them? And then go, and that's how you start your content journey. You just study the people that have been doing it before. Emulate. I love it, man. It's, you know, it's, it's one of those things where we talked about fake it till you make it, which I'm not a fan of, I, you know, I think people see through that chip. You're making it. Emulating is not the same as imitating. It's, it's two different things. You sort, you become a carbon copy imitation of somebody that's doing successful or you're trying to, people say through that is it is, I'm not going to use the authentic, well, just shit. I said authentic. I hate that word on podcast. It's like a buzzer. It's not genuine. We'll use that. But, but emulating someone like you said that's doing it a certain way is the smart way. That's the path. And the, and the reason why you're not copying is because you will eventually learn that the best content, it brings in your lived experience. It brings in the stuff that you've dealt with. That's why if you're talking about, um, if you're just trying to like, pontificate on ideas and you're just trying to keep it very high level, it's never going to really hit home with people. But if you talk about the stuff that you've dealt with in your life, the problems that, that you, you're still dealing with literally right now, that's the, and then you, and then you structure it through a frame that fits that audience. That's how your content does well. So if, if you, as a podcast, so if you'd never bring in your personal experience in your personal life, it's going to be boring. But if you do bring in your personal experience in your personal life and then you figure out how to edit a reel that works really well on TikTok, that's a winning formula. Yeah. Yeah. I did nothing. Unfortunately, sometimes for my wife, nothing has happened. I mean, even on this, like whatever our podcast I've spoken about, Gina, a couple of times I spoke about with you, because it's my life, like it's, it's, it's what I've lived. And, and if we spend even more time, I'd probably talk about all the stuff that hasn't worked out and we, and we, we haven't really gone there, but I think that's really important to bring up. Yeah. So that, because that's what differentiates you too. If not, you're just a talking head. And there's a, and your favorite content creators, there's some big creators that don't include their personal life, but they're like vanilla. It's like they could be subbed out by anyone else talking about the same shit, like the best creators, they bring their whole life into it or a significant portion of it. But is that really true, though, because like, look at Gary Vee, you know, nothing about that, dude, and there's garage sales, sports cards and the jets. Yeah, but I don't know, but I know that his, okay, so to, to play devil's advocate, I do know that his, is, you came up with his dad's wine shop and he did like, uh, he did his wine stuff. Um, I mean, he's pretty, it doesn't talk about his divorce. No, because he puts out, he puts out what he wants you to know. He doesn't talk about his divorce. Here's what I'm going to give you. These three things, I think that would be a great extra dimension that would speak to him, who he is as a person. Yeah, but he's just so, it's like, I mean, he's even said I'm going to give you these three things. This is what you get. Get the jets, you get cards, you get, you get, uh, what is it, garage sales, what you get? You know, I think that another thing that's important is to understand that some people build very large audiences when the market wasn't as crowded. Yeah. And the game that we're playing in right now is red ocean, for sure, is red ocean. And I think that, okay, fine, maybe 10 years ago, we'll work for him. We'll not work. We'll not work for you. 100%. I was being more authentic. And this is why I think, uh, vloggers do so well. Vloggers. Vloggers, like on YouTube, because they include their whole life. I mean, look at the Paul brothers, like there wasn't a bit of their life that they didn't cover. And now they're enormous household names. And, and now even the biggest up and coming stars that your kids like that I don't even understand are streamers that stream nonstop their whole life, stream their whole life. So I'm not saying you have to go to that extreme, but I'm saying that including little bits of your life does help create, uh, it turns you into a human, not just another thing to scroll through an Instagram. It's so funny because, because my success really, the pinnacle of what made it was my parents on reality television. That's what made me, right, being on the apprentice. And even though that was a crafted story, you know, it's, it's very, it was very crafted and very edited to tell a story that was entertaining and compelling. I get that. You look at the difference now, you're right. There's people, it's like 24 hours a day every, I mean, their house is just on, what is it? Like a chiroater? He's just, he's the longest live stream ever. So he just streams in his house, like nonstop. Just nonstop. So this is who you're competing with. So again, maybe 10 years ago, you didn't have to do that. Yeah. But now, like, first of all, I think that it's good because it allows you to like, listen, we can talk about, at any point we talk about relationships and how the right partner can make or break it. And I can give you examples of shit that hasn't worked out when I felt like, you know, my world is ending. And Jean has been like, Scott, shut the fuck up, you're fine, like, what, what's a good partnership? Yeah. I mean, but that, I don't want to, I don't want to exclude that from my context. I think that's actually useful for people. That's a good, I'm going to ask you this question because a lot of eye entrepreneurs, like a lot of high level entrepreneurs are built a certain way when it comes to dealing with failure, stress, everything else. And for me, like, I got to let it hit me, like it's got to hit me. I needed to sting me for like one day, right? I need one day of sting on it. And like, I'll tell my wife, like, oh, this is the fucking sky is falling. Everything is blah, blah. And I can let go of those emotions on a dime. Like I'll just decide, as, as Mikey C. Rock said, does it go in the tank or the trunk? Yeah. I mean, I'll make that decision very quickly, it doesn't, you know, become baggage or turn into fuel. And it's always fuel for me. But my poor wife will carry that shit around, carry my, like, purging of this anger for days. Is your wife, does she dump it off quick or does she get sort of a very quickly, does she get for you? Yes, she gets sort of very quickly. My poor wife, she is, she is about, like, she's also very entrepreneurial. She built her own business and she realizes, like, there is no benefit to sitting with this. It doesn't solve anything, like if, if, if shit is going to be bad, fine. But it's, like, whatever's created the bad shit has already happened. There's no time travel here. You got to, you got to fix it. So what are the actions that allow you to fix it? How long do you let it sting you when it hits, give a couple, is it a day for you? A couple of days? Like, what's the sting? A day or two. Day or two? Day or two? Yeah. Do you wallow in it? Well, bet. No. I, oh, I'm vertical. I'm all the way in it. Like a full day. No, I'm trying to think. I've never thought about this before. I'm just all the way in, man, for like, I'm like, I'm an idiot. This is so stupid. Yeah, it's, I don't know. I, I think that what happens is I wake up and I feel like shit and I realize that I'm going to have to deal with this bullshit. And then I'm very good at throwing myself into work. I don't know if that's a, if it, that's a healthy thing, but I definitely throw it better than crack. I think so. It's better than the crackers have recommended work is better than crack. But, um, who's the one doctor that said, maybe the cracks the way to go? I think I'm, I think I'm following FTC advertising guidelines that I can't, I can't say 100% FDA. Most, most, most. There's one doctor out there, Dr. J, that's who said, that's who says, uh, yeah, the crack is that the girls. Yeah, I don't think I, I think that I throw myself into work. And then after like putting in, because every day is always busy. Yeah. After, after my day of busyness and when I'm like, sort of, you know, relaxing at night, which is just usually more emails, but it's relaxing to a degree to me. Um, then I, then I start to map out, okay, what are the action items that I have to do to take care of this thing? Well, still feeling a little bit stressed about it. But I would say first 48 hours is when I'm saying, okay, this is what has to happen. This is what I have to have a hard conversation with. And it is what it is because I don't, I want to get the hard conversations done with ASAP. And by the way, problems are usually not solved, but always include hard conversations. Always. And I want to get those done ASAP, which means that I'm forcing myself to schedule the calls with the people that I have to have to get this problem solved or move forward. And then you just get that flywheel going. And then eventually it will eventually get solved and you will wake up and life will be fine. Yeah. But I've said many times the, the answer to a lot of your problems is on the other end of our phone call. It always is always, you know, and by the way, most of your problems, I mean, this is, this is not 100% true, but most of your problems are not always as bad as you think they are. And when you have those heart, so I don't know what you've got to do, no, no, dude, here's my thing, bro. I'm always remind you, if you're a well travel, if you were a well traveled human, if you're like well traveled, like deep and like, if you've been to like Cairo, like the not so nice parts of Cairo, you and I, we don't have any real problems. Yeah. Like we have no real problems. Those people got real problems, you know, it's, it just depends on your person. I think, I think a lot of the problems that we're fortunate to have and the people who listen to the podcast or have the people that listen to this podcast have are very privileged problems. Yeah. Like they're usually money problems, but it's not about not being able to put food on the table. Not about having to walk seven miles to get fresh, about ideal falling through or someone getting sued. Yeah. But like to be able to even be in that position means that you figured out life to some degree. It's a blessing. It is. And only because I do want to talk about the importance of this because I was talking about it last night with Kevin, like I told you, but I want to talk about the value of that mailing list, how to build it, why there's value, I think it's so important about that. So, um, I also agree with that, which is why I built a very large mailing list because I didn't want to ever just rely on the platforms. Like I know that that Instagram can be shut down overnight. Um, YouTube can be shut down. All this stuff can be shut down overnight. If you don't know, if you don't own it, right? So when I started creating content, it's not a super complicated strategy, but the CTA was always subscribed to the newsletter. So over the past six years, the link in bio, uh, the CTA top of the show notes, every single YouTube video, and I've tried, I've tried to mention this beginning, um, as a creator, I've tried to put out lots of different types of content. I've tried to see what works. Now I have a podcast. I used to put out like to like, uh, like strategy and tutorial videos on YouTube. I've used to do like solo YouTube. So there's about 5,000 YouTube videos where the first line is subscribed to newsletter. Scott, it's right. That's CTA, everything. Um, so just making sure that you cross pollinate your audience repeatedly is very important, meaning if you put out a podcast, you put out a YouTube video and the show notes and the YouTube description, uh, link in bio is always email capture and then you deliver value through the newsletter and then you promote the shit out of the newsletter. How often do you send the newsletter out twice a week, twice a week? So holy shit. Yeah. So I have one newsletter. Then I have one like summary wrap up. So the newsletter is a newsletter and it talks about, and I, uh, in the summaries or AI generated summaries of, no, it's not a summary that way. It's a summary as in these are the podcasts that came out this week. Okay. Links to the podcast. I mean, like, if you're on time to listen here, just check it out. Exactly. Here was it. Here's my biggest takeaways from this. Exactly. Yeah. Smart. Um, time behind on that dude. I'm behind. I'm going to get caught up here. But I have one more thought on this. So the newsletter, the subject and so I have sort of two content flows. So my first content flow is podcast and then we take the long form podcasts and we clip it out into shorts and reels and like I said, I put out a summary on, on, on the weekend about the podcasts that drop that week, um, and turns out the tweets and everything like that. But the second content flow is what leads to my midweek newsletter. So the topic that I choose to discuss in my midweek newsletter is the result of my second content flow. So the first one is podcast, derivative pieces, the second content flow, which I think is a really smart strategy, which works very well for me is I test a whole bunch of ideas on Twitter or threats. Doesn't matter. Like I'll put out 10 different, I'll tweet like 10 times a day. I'll at the end of the day, I'll write out some ideas, I'll tweet them out. I'll see which one gets the most engagement. And then when it gets the most engagement, I'll turn it into, if you look on my Instagram, there's little graphics with these tweets, uh, I'll turn it into, I'll take that thought and I'll turn it into a solo episode on the podcast. I'll take that thought and I'll turn it into a newsletter as well, because I know that if I test an ideas on Twitter day, that's 50 tweets a week or plus, minus. And I take out of all those ideas, one gets the most engagement. I know that that idea for whatever reason resonates with the most value. And then that's a super easy testing ground, sure, all of your content. And then you take that and turn it along for written content. And that's, it does very well. So I mean, you also have to have it. I think that there's a couple ideas there. First, yes, have a newsletter, write a newsletter, but also how do you think through every week the content that there's going to be some certainty? You can't predict 100%, but some certainty that that content is going to resonate. I have a testing ground for your content too. And that's what I used Twitter for. What are you using to manage a newsletter? Just like Mailchimp or using like high level? What are you using? I so, so I'm only pausing because I'm in the middle of transitioning the newsletter. So I was on substack for a long time. Right now I'm moving my main newsletter to Kit, a convert kit. I know Nathan Barry's a really cool guy built a very, built a great platform. And then now I'm actually hiring somebody to write a second newsletter on the creator economy, which I have not started yet. And that's going to be hosted on a platform called Stan and Stan is like, this is not my products or anything. These are big large companies that I use. So convert kit is a great newsletter system. I think like James Clear is on there who brought atomic habits. I think say, he'll bloom if you're a newsletter follower. He writes on there and then Stan is, they also have newsletter sequencing, but they also have all these other tools for creators. They have like a, it's like a Lincoln bio service where you can host your products and you build community. So it accomplishes a lot of different things for creators as well. So then anyway, so yeah, convert kit is one Stan is the other. If you're looking for some creator tools, but cool. Yeah, there you go. Well, dude, man, just like that hour and 15 minutes is flown by. If they, if they want to find you, how do they find you, bro? Easy. All the social is at Scott D. Clary and then you can go to successstorypodcast.com. We'll bring you a lot of the same stuff. Well, I appreciate it, man. When I'm my email come through your studio, anytime you're back in Vegas, you're always welcome. I appreciate you, man. So listen, if you just spent an hour and 15 minutes with us, hopefully you did, I got to understand, dude, your personal brand is so important to everything you do in life. And you have total control over it, whether you choose to share your entire life every second on Twitter, every second on this start a podcast, whatever it is, you got to start doing it now. See you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of escaping the drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over escaping the drift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, though up that five star review, give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we'll see you in the next episode.