How To Scale Up a Start Up. (Tips For Early Stage Growth) w/ Zack Rego & Zero to a Million Podcast #scottsthoughts

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary and today you are going to hear Zach Rigo and myself Shoot the shit on the zero to a million podcast. It's put on by Unstack We speak about scaling start-ups start-up growth start-up marketing start-up sales everything. I love and Zach is an incredible sales leader and we really get quite tactical. I really hope you enjoy Welcome to this week's episode of zero to a million brought to you by Unstack. I'm your host Zach Rigo and today I'm joined by Scott Clary Senior director of VisDev for Grass Valley and host of the success story podcast Scott. Thank you so much for joining me today Thanks for having me on Zach. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm excited. We had a good, you know, brief conversation before we jumped on here but the We were talking about names of podcasts. You actually mentioned the success story podcast and a lot of thought that went into that. We have a lot of clients and listeners that actually message me about starting a podcast. Give me the background that you just told me on why you knew that and kind of the theory behind it. Well, the podcast actually started off. It was actually originally called sales versus marketing and I did that because that's kind of my background And that's what I've sort of done for my entire career But I wanted to open it up a little bit and I wanted to bring in some other perspectives because I love listening to Can Ferris and I like how he brings in other ideas on how to live your best life, you know, productivity Habits and whatnot that can allow you and help you to succeed But I knew that I didn't want to just get those from VPs of sales or directors of sales or VPs of marketing So I wanted to open it up and that's why I named it success story and I also named it I named it success story Like I mentioned before Correctly or incorrectly because I thought that it would bring on guests that wanted to speak about themselves and Paint the podcast in a positive light because what are people like speaking about they like speaking about themselves? And you can tell their own story I thought that would make them more apt to want to come on a chat with me So that's that's how that's how it got loaded I love it. I know I was I was mentioned in the Nathan Locke of these where he mentioned, you know, he named it the top podcast because people were searching the top podcast Those strategies are so smart. We are actually not a great strategy zero to a million was something that actually one of our customers said in their review It's like hey unstacks the first platform I bought that actually helped me go from zero to a million in revenue and less than a year. Cool. That's what we're going to name it. I like it. You have to look up and see if it brings any traffic It does I actually actually I like it's a catchy name. It's a catchy name. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where I got it from you know the city thing is when people do like the top podcast like we were ranked You know, one of the top part podcast for startups. They didn't they didn't actually like number them. They did it in alphabetical order. So we were dead last which things. So I just that's I'm used I'm used to it. My name is Zach like I'm always I've historically been last I think it's a chip on my shoulder But something to something to think about for the listeners is maybe don't start your podcast name would see because it tends to be the last one that people run that's a whole hilarious. That's really really fun. I'm sorry man. Well, you can always be. Yeah, but I really do like whatever there's some therapists somewhere down the line in my love it's going to get paid a bunch because of that. So now let's we get into the background of the podcast. Let's let's go into your story a bit. I think it's interesting you talked a lot about you know small companies big companies today. I want to focus on you know leading sales and marketing and you've been a sales and marketing leader for a long time for various size organizations. So want to get your perspective on that. But taking through a video career before we jump into kind of the topic for the day. Sure. So started off as as most people do in sales as an individual contributor. Throughout university as working for a large telco bell canada and work my way from the stores when I was still selling cell phones and internet packages in the stores through to working in a call center and want SMB you know mid enterprise so working for progressively larger markets. I spent about seven half eight years with bell and that's really where I got my my chops and that's where I started to learn how to sell and how much money you could make in sales and in tech sales background has nothing to do with tech or sales family is not even in private industry like you know father was a cop and then moved into like government work and whatnot. I'm actually most of my family is they're all police pretty much so going into private and tech was I was a little bit outside the box of what my family thought I would be but I I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was good at it. I'm a nerd at heart so that really did help me sort of acclimate to that sort of career choice. And realistically I was either going to you know sort of the plan was when I was younger either make money in tech and make money like you know in private industry moving through the ranks and being a director VP you know CXO or go back to school and go to law school now sort of the two career paths and you know tech has worked out well for me sales worked out well for me. I did made a lot of money as an individual individual contributor always progressively a little bit more than like my peers at that level so I'm like you know this can't be that bad. So after Bell I went to another company that's where I sort of moved into my first leadership role managing and leading sales also having more of a hand in the marketing component of building out an organization. I had to learn some things there realizing that in a large company when you're working in a sales and the sales business unit you don't really have access to marketing. You don't really understand what position or what impact it has on you know your number or your customers in a company size of Bell and you move into a smaller company and small company I'm talking about 50 people 10 million dollars in revenue plus minus. You start to see the direct correlation and the need for congruence across those two different business units and understanding that and knowing where my angle where I want my angle to be to be you know CXO at fortune 100 fortune 500 I realize that if I didn't figure out marketing and marketing components I don't come from a university background marketing. I would be I wouldn't be as effective as I could be in building out sales and commercial and revenue strategy. So sort of just dive into marketing as much as I could and just understanding and consuming the word I like to use that I actually learned from an individual in my podcast is auto auto direct somebody who just like obsessed learning everything. So you're just going to podcast YouTube whatever consume as much as you possibly can and after that role in that in that sales leadership role I actually went into consulting for a long time acting as fractional CXO for companies some of them were tech companies some of them are not tech companies I was working with some partners at the time. It was traditional consulting but it was really building out like take the market strategy for companies or just improving their existing marketing strategy I found out that a lot of companies don't like being told they can't sell but they're okay being told they can't market I don't know why that just seemed to be. So we focus on marketing strategies more than true sales strategies but of course my sales background definitely helped a lot worked with a whole bunch of startups at the University of Toronto in Canada where I I'm from was working with incredible founders working you know very disruptive technologies very I would say product focused founders PhDs developers and helping them understand how to position their product and how to sell their product or market the product to the average consumer. We're talking like you know space technology blockchain AI machine learning health tech like stuff that was really revolution or it was actually an incubator at creative destruction labs which is similar to like a Canadian white combinator for like the refreshments point so that was a lot of fun. And then I went back to working for somebody mostly because I realized that what we were doing and the amount we were working wasn't truly sustainable so we built a nice consulting practice we brought a whole bunch of executives together and we're doing good work but none of us had ever really scaled the consulting practice before and it was a lot of work. Like we're talking like you put in your 40 hours for your client and then you're putting in another 40 hours actually build your own consulting brand so it was it was a ton of work I felt that I could do a little bit more working in software tech again so I went back to work for somebody which is sort of the you know the working for that person excited is what's leading me or has led me to where I'm at now so when I went back to work for somebody and wasn't just doing consulting. I was hired on to basically help a smaller company excitum bring their SaaS products to market through much larger company grass Valley so at the time two separate entities but we they grass Valley had exclusivity on excitums IP so but but not being said. Exciting was a dev shot more or less and grass Valley had only ever really sold hardware or infrastructure solutions they never really had somebody who had sold or marketed tech or SaaS products or software products so that was sort of my role it was to bring these products to market help grass Valley understand how to sell software products even like recurring revenue products versus like a one time PO it's a much different mentality and much different sale different decision makers different things you have to consider when you're actually. Pitching a product and marketing a product that's a recurring revenue product versus like a 20 million dollar 10 million dollar sale on on expensive hardware which grass Valley was used to selling. So that went quite well been doing that for about two years and a bit now proved significant like we proved product market fit we scaled the revenue of the SaaS and the software coming from excitum grass Valley both you know a month ago now based on when we're recording this. Executed on the agreement to actually purchase excitums because we proved out that we could sell our software through grass Valley and that's more or less what i've been working on and that's what i'm still working on so we're just doubling down on you know grass Valley is a big company obviously coming in as a as a small little software almost like that you said it before i can't remember the word you use like that there was a word you innovation and innovation team almost like we're like a fraction of the revenue. But we're growing and they want to double down on bringing in new ideas new products and that's sort of that sort of us and that's what i'm that's what i'm responsible for right now that's sort of my background. No that's amazing i think the the consulting work super interesting i think when we talk you know when we look at our. customer base and our audience is is very much kind of that early stage founder yeah or early stage marketer the marketer's typically the first hire right and i think what's really interesting that you probably got a lot of exposure to as a fractional you know CMO or CRO whatever role you're you were taking on there is. What am i doing day to day and then where should this person i'm consulting for start to fill the gaps with higher and yeah that's really where i'd love to go deep with you is kind of. Understand like how is that hiring process i think about like i got hired by grand steve like how they think it right like that was a. That was a decision they made at some point of like hey we need this kind of person when did you see that those startups were starting to think about okay now it's time to to hire either a sales or marketing leader to come in and and really. Take what Scott's filter the consulting teams built in and run with it so i would say and this you don't need to hire a consulting team to achieve this level or this threshold but i would say that. This is the advice i would give any founder sell 50 of your product self 50 of your widget once you sold 50 and this is not like i this is something i believe in and you'll hear it. Echo amongst other people that work with founder successful founders successful startups so sell 50 of your widget or your product and that's when you can start to map out your customer profiles or your target customer profile is your buyer person is because now you have a. A sample set of people that you sold to and that can sort of lay the groundwork for that sales playbook that you can eventually give over to your first revenue higher and we can also talk about you know who that revenue higher should be but I would say first sell your 50 of anything and then you've proven that there's a need for it don't hire somebody to sell your first thing because if as a founder if you can't sell that first thing. Then don't expect someone else to so that's not that's sort of like my threshold like after you sold 50 of it yourself or say with a consultant. But I would still say even like I would actually argue say like you should sell yourself. Because you're going to have to sell a lot over your careers of founder it doesn't matter if a developer product oriented developer product oriented founders matter you're going to have to sell a lot you have to sell to raise more money on your next round you're going to have to sell your product again and again again again you have to sell your idea and your vision to your employees which is very important early on. Getting to buy into you because there's a good chance you can offer them half as much as what they could get somewhere else in some other company. So you have to sell a lot every single day and by testing your ability to sell your product 50 people it could be people that you're close to your network your peers whatever it may be maybe your peers of your peers whatever it is. I think that's a good test and once you sold 50 of that then you can go and then you can hire a revenue executive and let's talk about that. I also think founders screw this up a lot as well. We can we can agree or disagree I'm curious what your opinion is on this as well but I always say hire marketing first and then once you have that demand then you can hire a sales of EP sales to map out the playbook. I think the issue that a lot of founders have is they think of sales in the old school sales method the pure outbound cold go hard hit the pavement dial for dollars whatever it may be and make sales that way and if they don't want to do that they hire a VP sales to do that. I think you have a backwards I think the founders should be selling first they hire a VP of marketing or somebody to develop the man once that the man is coming in and the founder can no longer handle those sales calls or those or those demos that's when you hire a VP sales to build out a sales process and to hire a sales team. The VP sales is not responsible for understanding how to find product market fit the VP of sales is responsible for building out sales process VP of sales not responsible for developing the man for your product that's marketing. So founder 50 sales VP marketing then VP sales to and that first VP sales can take that overflow because you have all this demand coming in right and the founder can't handle that now that VP sales make some of that overflow so that's how I generally recommend people build out that commercial organization. Yeah no I agree I think I came in. It's funny you mentioned like the the founder running the demos so grant was running demos it's actually how we got connected I actually I always reach out to founders that raise money and I say you know LinkedIn message congrats you know happy to review your demo you're still running them and give you some feedback I've got X number of years doing you know sales demo. Running sales demos and coaching up you know hundreds of reps on sales demos and that's grand actually took me up on he was like yeah please can you listen to my demo it's horrible and then he started a relationship from there right and then and then eight months later I kind of came on board but he wanted to hire me as. VP of sales and I was like yeah like I want to lead marketing also my my vision similar years like I want to be a revenue leader and I as a general manager got to lead sales and marketing and loved loved that like I love doing it together. But you're totally right I think you got to learn to drive demand and and hiring that next you know sales person is it's a game of calculus like you've got it's a calculation that you've got to make based on the demand you've driven. And we actually you know unfortunately let go a sales person when I came on board because it just wasn't enough lead flow for me and him to be doing you know enough demos to scale the business and like long term like that's a little bit of a step back but it was the right move for the business and for him. So that that you know to your question earlier I do agree with you yeah. Yeah I think we both which I think we both signed up for sometimes and you know I think when you think about skill sets so let's talk about kind of the marketing leader because there are a bunch of places you can hire in marketing right and and I'm I'm strong in some pieces of marketing I'm very weak in others and I'm willing to admit that and grants fully aware of that. Where do you see that marketing leader you know needing to be strong for that early stage company where the founder is still typically probably running the demo and and how how would you go about hiring for that. So obviously there's always going to be variables like whether or not your venture back to your bootstrapped and how that's going to impact your your business money money makes a difference but still at the at its core you have to understand I think the personality the person that should be working for sort of and also what you cannot expect the marketing. So that's a good thing to do is to be good at everything because that's another issue in and of itself when you expect the marketing leader to be good at writing copy technical SEO putting together videos strong with graphic and you know creative that's it's a recipe for it is truly a recipe for failure so I think that you have to have somebody who first of all is. I've created about working for a startup so they are the personality type that is extremely curious is tenacious is trying to figure things out and almost prove themselves in a way because they haven't come from a 30 year background in one particular set of marketing actually like people that are. And I hope this isn't a cop out answer but I like people that are just very curious versus coming from a specific stream of marketing because somebody is curious will try their best at everything figure out what works and then double down on it and I think that's the best way to hire for a startup marketer so I think that somebody who doesn't mind trying different things seeing what works. One person who does this what one company does is very well so absumo so they're founder Noah and I'm I'm blanking on his last name I think Kagan right now. He speaks yeah I think it's Kagan so he speaks about quite often about how he brings a product from zero to a thousand users and his general strategy is just try everything go go soup you know go traditional like write some copy post on some social go into see like really niche obscure like blog sites whatever communities start a podcast put out a video go on hacker you know hacker news go on. I'm trying to try everything and see what works and see what doesn't and then double down but you're if you have somebody that's like has his preset ideas of what marketing is what marketing isn't and they're not willing to try new things then I think as a as a startup you're really selling yourself short. So that's why I actually like people that are a little bit more like technically the junior but I don't like using the word junior it just means like they just don't have these preconceived notions that are imprinted and ingrained in them and that's a kind of marketer that I would like to hire somebody who is trying to just do every single thing in the world and seeing what works and I think that's what you have to have. Yeah it's funny you mentioned that a founder the other day posted in a community I'm a part of it's it's a community one of the founders posted like where do I post this job description to find a VP of crows. It's like like LinkedIn you know indeed it's like no like none of those places really like post it and you know go and talk to every VC firm you've ever talked to and ask them to know somebody because you need someone that's been in the trenches before because guess what yeah if they haven't they don't want to be back down like you know it's it's a game. It's tough it's it's a tough job and that's why like even like things like it's silly but when you're when you're when you're interviewing for a startup like if somebody is asking like and this is I don't say this is this is great but this is the reality that's why I actually advise people to not work for startups because I feel like it's a lot more work than they actually expect right but if you have somebody who's like what are the benefits how much vacation do I get like what a like these are the things that somebody who actually is going to see. succeed in a startup will not care about as much and it's not that you shouldn't care about these things you should you should respect your career and you should focus on getting the best possible situation for yourself but I'm saying that if people are thinking that they're going to get big company perks in a startup they're not it's going to be hell and it's going to be it's going to be and you have to have a special kind of like ability to want to go into that it's object yourself to that mostly because you are either going to you think you're going to exit rich with some sort of equity component which you probably aren't to be honest or you just want to learn which is okay if you actually want to learn everything there is about a business and you think that's going to benefit you then fine then you can go into a startup but I would say that it's like a fast track MBA and then some probably more education you ever got an MBA combined with like like just like hellish workload and environments and never knowing what's going to happen never know if you're going to have a job next like it's not a fun environment for a lot of people especially coming from a large organization so again you have to have a certain kind of minds that to go into that if you can find that person and they're probably just as crazy as the founder being like that first you know like two three four five employees if you can find them then that's the person you hire and if they have an attitude and a yearning to learn how to market then they'll they'll do fine but you just have to find those those crazy people that are just want to explore everything and it's tough it is very tough to find those people but that's why it's start up don't succeed like it's that's the reason why it's totally true I've mentored a couple you know former colleagues and reps that work for me that are you know out on the prowl looking for the next job and they're all like oh man you start up just don't pay as much and it's like yeah there's a reason like they don't have as much money like they're a startup right like you're going to get one of two things you're either going to go get money or you're going to get a shitload of experience it's hard to get like if someone's paying you a bunch of money then they've already got a system built and you're just a lot you're plugging into a seat right and if they got nobody then guess what you don't plug into a seat you were flying around by the seat of your parents not knowing what the hell is coming up tomorrow but you're getting a shitload of experience and like tell everyone that it's like a listen you get one or two things with a job money or experience it's hard to really get both and I think that's you know something that I thought a lot about when I was making you know my next move is like do I just want to go get a job that pays me a bunch and I just kind of fit in somewhere or do I want to go get a bunch of experience and see what it does for my career so I think that's a good point you mentioned. You should think about something I love the way you phrase that you should think about something if you join a startup you should have a goal in mind a reason for why you're joining a startup and it can't be to exit it has to be I need to go in here it's like you're going in here to experience every possible scenario that a person would be subjected to and then you're going to take that and you're going to start your own company or you're going to use that knowledge to go into a larger organization and completely change the way that they do business in a very positive way because you're bringing in these experience and these learnings that most people in a large organization that have been there for the past 30 years do not have. You should have a plan like your plan should not be joined startup and become a millionaire because we exited you know in five years with the IPO that's not a realistic plan so have a have a reason and be and love learning and that's that's pretty much it. Yeah you know it's funny I talk to these these folks that are mentoring and I've said this on other podcasts I haven't said on this podcast but an exercise that mentor of mine who's been on the podcast Ralph Fools made me do was write the job you want like write the whole job description go on the internet and look for the job you want take the job description and then like highlight what you don't have yet and figure out how the hell you can get paid to do that right and I do that I've done it three times in my career I did it early when I was a sales rep I quickly realized I do not want to be a VP of sales like I just that that just didn't like to deal to me it is it is you know and I started to rewrite it and rewrite it and I got into general manager role and opened up my eyes whoa here's what I could really do and I did it again before I took the next job and like it's you're exactly right right down the experiences you want think about how you can get paid to learn that stuff yeah might not be as much money as you can get paid but you'll make it back you know two or three fold down the line so I love you talked about going from growth leader to scale leads you know marketing leader to scale leads and then hiring that VP of sales a VP of sales for a startup is not a VP of sales for an organization that has she's even two managers and 25 sales reps so take take me through the the skills that that VP of sales needs to be successful at that early stage you know startup that's really got founders engineer product a marketer and then first sales hire coming in so I think that one skill they don't need which is the big skill that they will have to learn later on is the ability to manage leaders of other individuals that's something they do not need yet which is actually a blessing because that's a very difficult skill and it's very hard to help people lead other people I think that the skills required to be a VP of sales for a startup if you literally just look at the sales process so you're writing great emails you have great subject lines you write great copy you can put together cadences between you know your email your LinkedIn maybe SMS if you use it or phone you know how to do all those components well so that top of funnel and then you know how to do discovery calls you know how to book demos you know get people on discovery then you know get them over to a product demo you know how to do great demos and then you know how to negotiate you know to close you have to know how to like like every sales leader should know how to do all these components some people I think they're non sales moving to like in a large organization they're more like a strategy or high level as opposed to like you know getting very in the weeds but every sales leader should know these but in a in a startup the sales leader has to be basically a full cycle sales rep and then be able to understand be self-aware enough understand the process that they have for each component in the sales cycle and then to codify that to write that down and to be able to teach to other people so it's just about being it's about basically being the best at every every piece of the sales sales funnel because you're doing it and then you're teaching it and I think that that's probably one of the most important pieces to be able to be good at all the different components of actually selling so you're not just if you're just a like a closer say you worked like a traditional like insight outside organization and you're just good at demos and closing and negotiating and you're not great at setting appointments or you're not great at full calling or you're you know you have an aversion to getting on the phone with people or whatever it may be I think that you're going to fall short as a sales leader because you're going to be being forced to teach people things that you're not comfortable doing yourself the best VP sales at startups literally just do everything themselves and then they can do it with the reasonable level of proficiency and then that's how people will learn from them because you're going to be hard pressed sell somebody they they you know they're not calling or or leaving the proper voicemail that you'd ever picked up the phone in front of your rep it's hard to do that so you got to lead by example and then again that be able to codify that so not just and another thing too not just like being the best sales rep and just having this like you know almost the best sales rep to turn into the sales leaders and they don't know their own process and you just you just accidentally close everything because you're some charismatic person who just became a really good sales rep that doesn't make a great leader either because you you're not self-aware enough to know the process and the steps so if you're not self-aware and you can't teach somebody then all you're going to be doing is chasing deals and you're not effective you're not scalable so you have to be able to actually codify and write everything down and build out that playbook right that playbook that's what your job is to build out that playbook so those are kind of the things that I think that a sales a VP sales at a startup should be aware of totally what what what titles should the founder be looking for when they're when they're going to hire because I think there is it's easy to go and put I'm looking for a VP of sales so I'm going to look for VP of sales and I don't think that that is the right strategy I love your opinion on that yeah that's a that's an interesting question I've never really thought about that but it shouldn't be a VP of sales they should be looking for right like obviously that's not the person they should be looking for I would say somebody who I would say I would say like a sales manager or a director of sales in a midsize company could be who's ambitious who's again younger in their career not setting their ways wanting to go and work an obscene amount of hours to prove themselves or to prove something or to learn something but if you're looking for a VP of sales and you think like a you know maybe some retired VP of sales from a from an F 500 is in the comment and and be effective they won't and and it's happy I've seen I've seen the VP's of sales that have extensive careers and for whatever reason they're not working at the time and they're going back into the workforce and they and the the startup just think wow we got a great deal we got this person who has like 40 years experience leading sales teams and they had like a they had like you know 12 direct reports and 500 in direct reports with 3000 in direct reports and we're gonna like that's not it and they won't know what to do because they haven't made a phone call in like 30 years 20 years yeah whatever it may be and that's not that's just not it so you can call VP sales if you want but I would definitely be a little bit more explicit because that's going to upset people too and it's going to waste your time waste everybody else's time if you're advertising like you're some you know large organization VP sales and then you actually then you then you have these interviews at these very high-level individuals and it's just wasting their time your time so don't do that I would just say like sales leader head of sales you know startup sales leader like stuff like that like you can call the VP sales if it makes you feel better but I don't think that attracts the right people totally no you're spot on I I actually when I was just going through my interview process not that I have a chip on my shoulder but I do I got turned down for a job with one of the companies that I was like super interested in and grant and and the unstacked thing was kind of like always the job I wanted this one came up through a VC that I was I'm friendly with and they just raised some money and I was like oh this is an interesting one went through the whole process and I lost to this this gentleman that was much more senior than me much better resume probably you know just because he's had more experience yeah but man I bet you they gave him a I bet you they gave him a phone and yeah a keyboard and basically said all right here's the people that have visited our website and he was out of that job within four weeks and grand i started the stack and i was fine oh that's pretty good very I bet you he tried to dial that phone and got hung up on three times and it's like oh man this stinks yeah so but you're you're so spot on I've seen that happen I've seen that happen but I'm not not four weeks I'm talking like six months or or eight months or like after some time but that's pretty bad that's pretty bad and he's just not a fit I reached out to my VC buddy I was like wow that didn't work out huh yeah it's like no it's not the right not the right thing I was like yeah no shit yeah this guy is this guy was sitting in a corner office somewhere looking at the skyline for 10 years which is an amazing job and also that's not you don't want to be like I think that's why startups are misrepresented as these sexy opportunities and everybody just wants to join a startup nobody knows nobody has any context like I would join it I would join a company after like a maybe a series B or C that's exciting okay whatever they have some momentum you know they just raised a hundred million dollars that's pretty exciting that's a fun thing but like to me that's not a startup anymore because you work with startups but if you if you have if you if you if you haven't then you then you think everything from like you know to co-founders on angels list is like something you want to go work for right and that's not really the case exactly or angel list whatever yeah anyways it's funny you say that my buddy my buddy's my buddy's looking for a new job he's in like data security and he's like oh I interview for the startup the other day they've raised five hundred million dollars and I was like do you realize that's not a startup anymore like they have five hundred million dollars thousand employees like they've raised a half a billion dollars like they're they're going to be public in two months they're not startup like so that's a different right you know it's like a culture to start up yeah yeah that's that's a true startup that's a true startup maybe they have like maybe they have like kombucha and ping pong tables or whatever in their office but like they're not anymore yeah they got they got a they got a whole floor of the we work in downtown rally is not making a startup I promise you that's a that's a more expensive lease than any other lease in rally right now yeah yeah Scott this has been a lot of fun thank you thank you for coming on board last year we asked every guest yeah two books you recommend every founder reads sure and I'm you know you mentioned that I can I can give you sales books I'm not gonna give you sales books because I don't think sales books are are the best books for for founders so two books that I'm gonna do three because two probably a lot of people have already heard of on this show so atomic habits by James clear and grit by Angela Duckworth those are two incredible books for how to just be a more productive better person professional that I really believe you have to be to exceed and you know excel and succeed excuse me in a startup environment so those are two great reads and the third one it's co-authored by four individuals and I can't remember their names but it's played bigger and it's about creating categories I think they reference Mark Vendingoff and Salesforce and how we create that's one of the case studies they talk about they talk about other things as well because there I think a group of four consultants that work with a lot of startups but they speak about how Mark Vendingoff and Salesforce created the category of cloud software and then dominated it and I thought that was a very cool concept because a lot of entrepreneurs think how do I build a product in an existing category whereas that book is all about how do I create something a whole industry whole category industry that nobody's ever heard of and then sell a product to that industry that I've literally just created that is brand new and I thought that was a very interesting concept because I think that it's truly everybody who starts a business is by definition an entrepreneur I don't mean to downplay people who create incredible products and just you know competition in in you know in a very crowded environment but people that create a brand new category like for example you know Elon Musk creating private like space like spaceflight or Mark Vendingoff really creating the cloud computing movement when everything was in servers in offices I think those are true innovators so I like the way that it forces you to think about entrepreneurship it's funny timings impeccable I'm reading tools of Titans like I just trying to create a chapter in Dave yeah from Tim Ferris and the chapter I just read last night I don't know who he's talking about with it but he talks about like not where like you don't have to create a new category you can create a subcategory differentiate your product the example he uses is like IBM and digital digital created what they call the mini computer it was roughly the exact same thing as you know IBM's mainframes just slightly smaller but they they named it you know this mini computer which became its own category within the kind of server space and it was like all right so he gave like 10 examples but like you're so spot on it's like Elon Musk didn't invent space travel as a category he invented private space travel as a category and like now it's you know revolutionary you know business and actually scaling quite well so I love that tip in that book I have to read that that's been that's actually recommended yet so I'm in Scott where can everyone finds you connect with you and learn more about what you're doing yeah sure so I guess I'll drop I'll drop three things so first would be website scottie clary.com you can find everything there you can go to successstorypodcast.com or on any social very very fortunate at scottie clary so it's all across every social you can hit me up there yeah yeah not bad there's one of those that all going he's way faster to get everything than me yeah Scott I appreciate you coming on it's going to pleasure catch you up with it no my pleasure man thank you so much