Reverse Engineer Your Success Strategies for Sustainable Personal & Career Growth (The Leap Academy)

Scott Clary, welcome to the show. You are an entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster. Everybody wants it. You will do what it takes. Scott, what does it take? I appreciate you having me on. What does it take? That's such an important question. In career, in entrepreneurship, it could be fitness, it could be relationship. We talk about career and entrepreneurship, but what does it take is the big question to succeed at anything in life. We don't need to be so siloed and myopic in some of these lessons, because what it takes is committing to it for an unreasonable amount of time. If you take nothing else away, that is the most important thing. You can apply that again to your career. You can apply that to your business. You can apply that to losing weight and looking good. You can apply that to the relationship. It sounds so cliche, but for some reason we forget this fact very quickly. I think that in 2024 and beyond, we're getting programmed to want instant gratification even quicker and quicker and quicker in the way that we consume information and the way that we learn and the way that we interact. The world is getting more efficient, which is great in terms of the gig economy and how we can get basically anything at our door immediately, or the fact that we are now programmed to enjoy 15 to 30 second clips on social media. Everything is quicker and now, but true progress and true quote-unquote success however you want to define that. We can define that later. None of it is quick. We have two conflicting ideas. Society is telling us that we can have everything we want immediately, because that's what technology and innovation does. Yet, the most important part of our life, which is true fulfillment in health, wellness, career and relationships, that cannot be fast track. It cannot be something that can be flip a switch overnight. It's getting harder and harder to understand the amount of work required to get to where you want to go because the rest of the world is not set up to reinforce that mindset. And what you just said Scott, to me, is so, so, so fundamental because we all are looking at all these amazing success stories and thinking about them as an overnight success, right? And patience is incredibly hard for high achievers driven because I want that. I want that. How do I get that? I mean, you have what? 1.7 million followers. I want that, Mr. Scott. So how do you continue when everybody looks like it's always looking up and it's incredibly hard? Yeah, because the secret is being able to continue, right? Because nothing's going to be easy. Everything worth having is not going to be easy to the secret. The question that has to be asked is how do you continue, which is a great question. So my version of being able to continue is it would be threefold. The first thing would be I would probably want to say I'll commit 10 years of my life to this thing because if I can commit 10 years of my life to this thing and I can build feedback loops and I can learn from my failures and I can iterate and I can improve and I can pivot. I know that anything worth building usually after doing it for 10 years will be pretty good at that thing. So for me, when I was 20, I was like, I'm going to commit at the beginning 10 years of my life to working in private industry, working in tech. And if that doesn't work, then I'm going to go back to law school and that's my safety net. So I commit an extraordinarily, not extraordinarily. I think it's a reasonable amount of time, but for most people, they probably think 10 years is a long time, but I think it's a reasonable amount of time given how long we live. So 10 years. The second thing that I do that allows me to keep going is I have become exceptionally good at reverse engineering success. What does that mean? So I look at the person that has achieved what I want to achieve and I will study the shit out of them and reverse engineer every single step they took to get there. I do that when I'm looking towards say a physique that I want in the gym or a relationship that I want to model or the size of my business or the amount of money I want to make, I reverse every step they've taken. And when I first started my career, that was looking at a director or a VPN company and reverse engineering that when I started to build businesses, I would reverse engineer, how do you basically land your first 50 customers? If I want to excel or succeed on social media, I'll look at, for example, say a business influence or on Twitter that's maybe five years ahead of me and reverse engineer, how he creates his content, the type of audience that he's speaking to every little thing. So it's not just at a macro level, at a micro level, our reverse engineer, every single step to get me to where I want to go in that particular short-term goal or long-term goal. And the third thing that I've always thought through is, and I would love to figure out maybe you can even get feedback on this because obviously you've done it in your career as well, I have an unreasonable amount of trust in myself figuring things out. And that gives me the confidence to commit to something for 10 years and to reverse engineer and execute on the steps of someone else has taken. So I've thought about this a lot because I think that the third piece, the unreasonable amount of trust in you executing, I think that intuitively what I've done over my career is I've remembered the wins that I've had, the small wins and the large wins, and I've almost categorized and itemized them so when shit doesn't go right, I still remember all the times when I won. I think if you not just intuitively did it but consciously did it and consciously tracked all the times you win in your life, I think you start to trust yourself a lot more. The reason why it's so important to track them is because the emotional event, the thing sticks in your mind is the massive negative loss and you don't remember all the positive wins. So a massive negative loss like a business failure or you get screwed on a deal or whatever, it really can jeopardize the trust that you place in yourself, which I think can throw people off. So to have constant belief in what you can accomplish and to trust yourself to figure it out, you need to have those positive wins and those positive reinforcement thoughts is I don't want to make it sound corny, but it really does help. So when something doesn't work out or when you're dealing with shit right now, like you can't make payroll or you're getting sued or whatever negative event, you're like, listen, I've won like 10,000 times in the past year. Fine, I'll take an L here, but it doesn't really matter because I just need to win another 10,000 times to get to the next level. And those three things I think really allow me to keep going and pursue these super audacious goals. I think there was some really incredible insights here that I want to make sure everybody's listening to it because first of all, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year. So we always have this little bit of a, I didn't make it, I didn't make it, a little bit of a disappointment, but then we underestimate what we can do in a decade. So we never get started, right? And I think most humans just never really get started because they see these visions of success and they're like, that's not going to be me. So I love the fact that you said a lot of it is just continuing in success does leaves clues. And I think that's the big thing that people don't even look back. You are reversing engineering and seeing all these things, success leaves clues. If you actually going to watch them, you can have a lot more clarity to continue moving, right? So I think these were really incredible distinctions. I appreciate that it's got. No, I think that it's less scary when you start to go down this rabbit hole. And for example, start with something small. So if you want to, for example, learn how to create better content on social, a lot of creators, they'll walk through their creative process. And like a lot of entrepreneurs will walk through how they did X or accomplish why people are not that opaque. Very few people are that guarded about what they do to achieve their success. So if you want to figure out and create better content, pick a platform, you want to be better on Twitter or Instagram, doesn't matter. Say you're a business person will look at somebody else's creating content in your niche, look at the person's creating the best content in your niche, maybe study a hundred of their posts just by scrolling through understanding everything from the type of stuff they speak about the format. Is it real? Is it carousel? Is it in feed static image? What type of copy to put in the comments? Who are the people that are interacting with the post and then go on YouTube and type in prolific creator? How do they create content? And there's going to be like five podcasts with them talking about how they create their content and their thought process. Maybe they'll say, Hey, when I first started, I was using this website for inspiration or maybe I was using something like answer the public, which is a great tool that allows you to see certain phrases that are high volume search terms. And I was finding high volume search terms that I knew were going to really hit home and not create content around those because I knew people were super inquisitive about these topics. Whatever it is, they're going to talk about their process. And I've done that stuff too. Like what I just what I just mentioned. And I got that from Neil Patel, who's a massive business influencer marketer, really focused on SEO. So yeah, successfully tons of clues. You just got to do the research. A lot of people just don't want to do the research. And you need to trust yourself. So I think that's another really, really good piece because I think Brandon Dawson was a person that asked me at some point. And he's been mentored by John Maxwell and other really incredible people. And he's like, do you trust yourself? And the truth is I do. So everything becomes easier when you're reflecting back and you're saying, you know what? I know I'm going to make it happen. Now the only question is how far? How high? How fast? These are the questions. And when you change the questions, everything shifts because it's not, will it work for me? But how far can I go? And I think that commitment of 10 years that you're doing to yourself. I think it's brilliant because you have to change the questions. And the other thing that you should find a way to do is find a way to do the thing for 10 years. What does that mean? It means that maybe the first version of it isn't quitting your job. Maybe the first version of it is finding your first two, three, four, five customers while you're still working full time. So understand the time horizon that it would take. The amount of time it'll take and architect your life so that you can do that. It's not as complicated as people think it is. The version of entrepreneur that people first think of if they're going to start their own thing is, well, I'm not a Stanford dropout and I'm not building a multi trillion dollar company. So what am I doing trying to build my own thing? The most successful version of entrepreneurship, the one that is not really talked about and is not really sexy and is not covered in anchor, fortune or Forbes is statistically the person who has worked in industry for 30 years and they see a problem in that industry that no one else would ever know about and they build a solution to that problem and it's so niche. Riches are in the niches, right? But that is a version of entrepreneurship that actually has a very high success rate versus the shoot from the hip build a SaaS startup. You know, I'm 25. I know nothing about basically anything. I'm just a developer and I'm going to try and build something from scratch. Yeah, sure. It can work. That's your 99 plus percent failure rate, right? So people have to redefine entrepreneurship as well. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. It doesn't have to be when you're 25. It doesn't have to be quit your job and hope you make it and figure it out in three months. It has to be building something that's your own that has the ability to make a massive amount of wealth. And by a massive amount could be a million, a million five a year which is going to set you up and also help you think differently than somebody who's just worked at W295. So you can understand how to leverage how to create scale, how to invest. All these different things that just set you up for, in my opinion, a better life because you're forced to learn these things. That's a version of entrepreneurship that anybody can get behind eventually. So it doesn't have to be an all or nothing and it doesn't have to be an IPO or even a hundred million dollar company. It can be something much much more comfortable. And I think that it should be something much more comfortable because I also don't think the version of entrepreneurship where you're working 80 hours a week for five hundred thousand dollars a year is fun and what most people want. But also the version of entrepreneurship where you're running a billion dollar company is also what funny enough most people would not want. So you have to also know as an individual what your North Star is and what your life looks like and what balance you want and you want more time with your kids. What is your life? So don't just chase after like this cliche version of entrepreneurship and it's also very important. I think that is such a great point to really understand. And we put a lot of focus and leap academy about what is your clarity? What are you even trying to achieve? Right? It's not just a paycheck. What is the life that you're creating with it? And for me the big distinction is also I believe people will start creating more portfolio careers which is somewhat of what you're describing, right? It's like I might have this thing incorporate right now but I'm going to start advising and mentoring and getting some equity here and there and now I see a problem and I'm going to start creating that too and that and you started to create this incredible life of diversity and that is also aligned with what you want to achieve in life and your level of success. But you also touched something and I have to go back to that because you mentioned massive loss and as much as I want to paint the vision of everything is pink and roses it never is there's a lot more. Of course I'm talking about doing something for 10 years. It's not like that's fun. It's not like it's easy for 10 years. So share a massive loss. Can you share something personal that you felt like shaped you or something that was really challenging? Well a couple things I've started a fair amount of companies that you will never hear about because they're not successful. Those are all losses like if if you don't see me actively talking and not not everything that I've done in the past there have been obviously some wins but if I don't talk about it on the podcast and you don't see it on my LinkedIn there's a good chance. I lost a lot of money trying to figure something out. I would say that my massive losses usually come from being naive and having an ego. So outside of trying to build a business it didn't work. It's funny. If you achieve success in one arena as humans we have this fallacy we have this incorrect thought that we'll be good in another arena. So what is most recent in my mind is moving from operator to investor. So a lot of people think because they can build a good company they can also become great angel investors and that is not the case. So I won't name some of the companies that failed but I've lost a fair amount of money thinking that I know how to invest just because I built a good business and I thought that I could translate those skills that are putting in the reps and basically without doing all the steps and aligning with the right people and learning from the people that have done it before that allowed me to be successful in building businesses which is silly. So I think that there's never a point when you're quote unquote done and it's very easy to get humbled very quickly doesn't matter what level you play at. So I think that this is a long way of saying you're never too old to basically have this learning mindset. There's never a point in your career when you can just say I figured it out I'm going to easily translate those skills into something else and I'm sure I'm going to be fine because you could be but there's a big chance that you won't be. So a lot of it is putting your ego aside regardless of what you've accomplished before. I think that's probably one of the most relevant lessons that I've learned over my career. And to me what you just said I think really hit home and I wish I heard that about a decade ago because one of the big things again I already collected wins did some amazing things vice president oh if I know how to do this I can totally do entrepreneurship right no because the thing is what got you here is not what's going to take you forward right and I had the same thing with investment because in fact the fact that I was a really good operator actually created a problem because instead of looking at what's not good enough and where the holes and why did the team not figure this out I would run immediately into the solutions oh you can do this and this and this and this and this that's exactly not what I was supposed to do. So I think really opening your eyes to that humble you know getting rid of ego being let you know a little more humble and really understanding that you know if you're not there and there's a set of skills and that leadership led that you're going to need to move otherwise you are not getting there and I think that is a realization I wish I had. I would say one more thing to this than I think this is maybe a little bit contrarian but a lot of people when it comes to investing for example they say to diversify immediately it's fine to diversify if you have other people who know what they're doing helping you diversify but if you are at the level where you can start to invest I would say niche down with the thing that you'd know better than anyone else and you have an unfair advantage in understanding how that asset can perform. So what I mean by that is if you are a SaaS founder and you build a SaaS company and you exit that it would probably be good to either do an angel play in SaaS in the category that you were building or even like a private equity roll-up situation if that's viable for whatever category industry that you know because when you start to diversify even in slightly adjacent industries there's all these nuances that you really don't know and you can always hire people or you can hope that the people you're investing in know the industry better than you but you'll always be slightly at a disadvantage so the best investors that I know especially when they're first starting out I'll give you an example a good friend he's in real estate and he only does the attached homes fix and flip in Ohio that's how niche he is now living in South Florida he's not investing in South Florida right now he's in he's still doing Ohio and doing Ohio since he probably came down here four years ago because that's what his whole career so he knows the permit process he knows the people in the city is office and he's not a small time investor he probably has 100 doors at this point which is not huge but it's definitely not starting out and he's very successful and he knows his one particular thing better than anybody else so it's funny because I'm telling you that from an investor perspective as an operator in a company if I'm building a company or I'm going to work at a company or I'm starting a company from scratch all I would care about is my unfair unique advantage that no one else knows about which would allow me to be successful especially if I'm an entrepreneur starting a company I think that Peter Thiel calls it an earned advantage or something like that but the point is the concept is you've earned over the course of your career and your knowledge and your experience maybe he's called it earned insight this super specialized unique perspective review that will allow you to be successful in building the thing that you're building that no one else really outside of the industry would ever have so that earned perspective or earned advantage whatever it's called that is so important when I'm building a company why would it not be important when I'm investing in a company why would you want to put yourself at a disadvantage like stack the deck in your favor all the time and that's how you win you'll see that people not very many people some will have one company those switch industries but like my favorite entrepreneurs are the people that build a company and they sell it and they wait for their non compete to expire and they know the company that acquired them is going to screw it up because a lot of acquisitions are screwed up after the required by private equity and they'll just go build the same company again why would you not why would you bother trying to figure out something else so I think that that's something that we always have to think about how can we dominate in this better than anybody else amazing so Scott what do you think are some of those moments and pivots that brought you to become that person that is entrepreneur investor author 300,000 subscribers 1.4 million followers what are the pivots that brought you to be here one very particular pivot was when I had joined the company so my parents very risk adverse think government is little risk as you possibly can have in a career so I didn't understand ownership I didn't really understand that concept growing up I didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs that owns something so I think that a pivot in my life or an awakening was one of the companies that I joined as an employee I was leading sales at this company but I was still like an employee they were acquired by private equity and I didn't have equity but I saw that transaction happened and I saw the payout and I'm like hmm this is interesting because as employees you have to think you got to basically be on the lookout for number one for yourself for whole career the reason why I was so interested in working in tech and so interested by that acquisition or exit event was because I saw the pensions that people used to have that created safety now no one has a pension very few people have pensions anymore the way that our parents or grandparents had pensions meaning that in even private industry they had 70% of their best years paid out to them after they retired until they died or some version of that so we don't have that anymore so I will always thinking okay if I want to retire or if I want to not work until I'm a hundred how much money do I have to have in the bank to basically retire and it was a big amount of money that basically lasted me from 65 until 100 right so how do I make that kind of money and I couldn't figure it out with the salary if I figured it out with the salary living in a major city even if I invested and I was smart about investing like it would still be difficult it'd be not easy I'm okay I got to find a way to make a lot more money so private industry was my first foray into finding some kind of position that allowed me to make enough money to retire comfortably and then I saw entrepreneurship and I saw the opportunity for ownership and that just ownership in terms of equity and company but then ownership and assets and wealth creation versus just making more money and delineating your time versus the amount of money you make which is something that as a w2 that's pretty much how you value your work I put in so many hours I get so many dollars so that being in the environment of entrepreneurship exit event founder made a ton of money when that was acquired I was like hmm this is something that's interesting to me this is something I'd got to figure out that's amazing and sometimes we work with clients and we basically say where do you want to be in the bracket because to make your first million you can have I don't know 10 years of 100k you can have four years of 250k or you can find 10 clients that will pay you 100k or 100 clients that will pay you 10k etc right like where do you want to actually be because nothing is impossible the only question of what's right for you but you also put a lot of focus on personal brand and I do want to go there for a little bit I have to believe that that's probably one of the most important skills for the future of work what made you focus on it and how do you go about it I focused on it because I didn't want to have to start from scratch every time I started a new project I'm a marketer right a marketer I'm a salesperson I'm not a technical founder I was always on the revenue generating side of a business and when I was building my last company and that was acquired at the end of COVID it was a broadcast software company and that's when I started to really understand that okay it's going to be like all the other companies that I've helped out a lot of mentoring advisory I probably worked with I'm sure about 200 different companies over my career today in different capacities paid pro bono all over the map and I was like I'm going go in I'm going to help this company scale they're going to be acquired and then I'll have another little line on my resume but if I ever want to start something from scratch nobody really knows or cares who I am I know the company is not going to IPO it's not going to be like one of those entrepreneurs that build a billion dollar company that will give you a little bit of social proof so I got to start building my name I got to start building my name so that regardless of if I start something new if I decide to do more consulting stuff if I want to go work for another company I want to have eyeballs on me so that I can reduce the friction of building anything else because if you have eyeballs on you there's already that trust built I'm looking at the Gary V model right where he has a massive audience any launches empathy wines and VaynerMedia and VaynerSports and his NFC project and whatever the model's already there I'm a good enough marketer to do all the things and that's an important point because I didn't spend 20 30 40 50 thousand dollars a month on an agency or a team to start I forced myself to learn all the things so at the beginning I'm a very big fan of forcing yourself to learn all the things from everything from copywriting audio video editing coding up websites graphic design like you pick the marketing to SEOing a website like you pick the marketing task I've done it and I always operated like that and even when I was managing in running sales teams I was like I'm going to call the customers I'm gonna jump on discovery calls I'm gonna listen to what their pain points are and why they don't want to buy from us and then after I've listened to all those then I'm gonna tell my sales team how I'd like them to function because as a leader I don't believe you can ask somebody to do something unless you've done it before which is why I have a big issue with MBAs being transplanted in and to see sweet positions I think it's usually more often than not not always a slight miss so I'm a big fan of doing the thing first I don't like people that manage from their desk I think it's a useless management style that you're completely out of touch and it is a good way to piss off good talent in a company so they respect people that do the thing before they do it for sure and it also helps you with hiring it helps you tell if somebody's full of shit when they're hiring what they've accomplished like you it just is variety reasons a really good way to lead so yeah I would do all the things myself and then I would codify them I would build systems around them and I have my own system for like how I record my podcast and how I turn that into like a hundred pieces of content I spoke about that before I can go through it quickly as well but yeah it was really just I want to build an audience and a community and the strategy I deployed was a strategy that didn't take up too much time it was a very scalable strategy it allowed me to put some thought leadership into the world it allowed me to align some really cool business leaders via podcast kind of like what we're doing now and I said I'll do this for 10 years and see what happens and I set myself up including the type of content that I create so that I could do it for 10 years and I would only do things that I could afford financially to invest in in terms of team or whatever or I could do myself that would only take as much time as I could commit because I knew again if I'm going to do it which is a issue that a lot of people have they over commit to stuff and they overspend on agency they overspend on upwork or five or they over invest 20 hours a week of it and then by month two like I can't do this anymore because I'm running out of time and I don't have time for working kids I just listen to my own strategy which is I got to find a way to build an audience for the next 10 years and the model's already proven I look at the other influencers a launch companies against their audiences and if I can effectively do that then whenever I start something new I'm going to have an audience I'm going to have trusted eyeballs looking at me that I can at least test my new product out and if it works then I can actually launch it I can sell it to them and I can save myself probably a couple hundred thousand dollars in advertising costs that was really it that was my thought process for why I started it and to me that's incredible because the truth is people will reinvent themselves and leap again we're actually seeing an accelerated pace that we've never seen before people will change function industry technology responsibility whatever it is they're going to change it every year too if not more so the truth is you can account on instead of starting from scratch again again like you said which I love you're actually reinventing yourself but you're basing this on a brand that already exists and already powerful and that is the easiest way to combat what we see in ageism sometimes in corporate ladders how do you rise above the noise and get out of the people's pile because everybody's trying to sound the same and I do remember also a time when I left corporate my identity was always tied to the title and to the company you know that was my identity and suddenly you're a nobody you don't want to be a nobody you always want to be a somebody don't think about the leverage you have over companies because traditionally employees did not have leverage over companies it was the other way around obviously now you can make an argument you're a great c-suite leader but still companies will get rid of you the second you screw something up so I've seen some great sales reps this is kind of the people that I follow and I pay attention to some great sales reps that have become influencers in their own right while working for a company some of them stay with the company some of them go on to do their own thing go on to be thought leaders go on to be asked to speak on whatever topics they can speak on outside of even being affiliated with the company and I bet if you go into the LinkedIn DMs of those people they're probably getting overwhelmed with hey can you help me on x strategy for my company so while you're working in a company you're building a brand for yourself thought leadership based on what your expertise is it's not only helping the company because now they have another voice in the market broadcasting what you're doing it looks good it's also future proofing yourself right so the company's probably not going to want to get rid of you because they're getting like media impressions through you but if they do get rid of you I remember when I first started putting stuff out most of my content was less entrepreneurship and less motivation and less upscaling and it was like very specifically sales and marketing tactical I would probably have a job offer or a consulting offer once every two three days you kind of just set yourself up for success again that's a version of entrepreneurship if you choose to build your own thing you don't need to make it into a hundred million dollar company you can just with less stress migrate from working for a company to I already have a funnel of clients which is the most beautiful thing in the world to start out with as somebody exiting corporate so I think there's a ton of reasons as to why literally everyone should do it and I am of the opinion that if a company does not want you to do it you should go work for a new company that supports your goals because if done properly it's going to support the company and it's going to support your future growth as an employee or professional entrepreneur whatever I completely agree and I think the other point that was feel really strong that I think everybody needs to figure it out is sometimes people don't want to do the minutiae they don't want to do the manual task they don't want to do the day-to-day editing a video figuring out ads like they don't want to do that right but the truth is just like you said if you don't do it initially how will you write a job description how will you hire the initial people how will you write whatever like you're going to get so screwed by agencies if you don't do it yourself first and now you have AI tools honestly if you're complaining about the work now if you complain about the little bit of work required to make you famous get millions of impressions basically radically change your life and you can't even use the five or six AI tools that will let you do this for like five to ten hours a week max max then honestly I don't know how to help you there's a point where you do have to take care of yourself and okay some people have busy lives I get it but very few people and this is not again hard and fast for but very few people are from six in the morning till one at night no downtime very few people have zero leisure in their life so I'm just saying a few hours of leisure just move it somewhere a little bit more productive that's it and then learn about AI tools because it's way easier than even when I started video editing is probably the most time consuming task you can possibly do as a creator I mean it probably takes longer than writing copy graphic design some degree but now they have AI tools like opus.pro you put in a long form video gives you like 20 different short clips okay fine it's not going to be like you're paying somebody $50,000 a month to edit them but it gets you started it gets some exposure and if your thoughts are good and there's a whole strategy behind how do you clarify your thoughts which is why I like writing so much because it allows me to really fix my thought process and my thinking if you have clear thoughts you write you read you record a little bit of content use AI to chop it up all of a sudden you've started to build an audience and a network and a community so it's not like complicated half the stuff that I'm telling you to do is just good for you to do anyways is an individual read write up skill yourself and then take that shit and put into an AI tool and start posting that's it I love that you said that and I think for many many people you know it's like but I don't have the strategy I'm like no you're just scared and that's okay let's fix it but it's all the rest what will people say and how will I be seen and what if I make a mistake and it's not perfect oh my god it's not perfect but who cares because honestly you're going to be forgotten about anyways you would be so lucky so blessed if you make a mistake and anybody notices it in 2024 unless you are a complete asshole or racist POS which yeah you have a whole bunch of other problems if you're just posting real thoughts that you believe in about your work or about a certain topic yeah you're going to have some polarity having a spiky opinion is good don't be an asshole but having a spiky opinion is good you're also going to build a tribe of people that agree with you I don't really need to be liked by everyone you don't need to be liked by everyone again what's the goal right what's the goal your goal is to make a little bit of money on the side you just did the math to make a whatever a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars whatever that math was you broke it down like five or six ways so you don't need that many people because none of those ways of making a million dollars involved to hundred thousand people in fact very few of those ways even involved more than 500 people and 500 people like friends and family everyone has like 500 followers exactly it is excuses but I think it is also another layer does fear right you make decisions you take risks what helps you get over the fear and I think some of it is a vision and what we talked about but I would love to hear you I think I really just pay attention to all my wins because what is fear based on fear is based on you screwing up or you losing or you messing something that's what fear is fear is there's this potential adverse reaction that could happen but I think you also have to think about this is going to sound so cliche right like the regret of not trying what is the regret of not trying if you fast forward to when you're a hundred years old if you had a conversation with that person would they tell you that they are so happy that they avoided a negative comment on social or are they going to tell you wouldn't have been cool just to see what if right at the end of the day what is really going to happen that's so bad that you cannot recover from when you've won so many times in your life up until this point and that is incredibly important people forget we can always reinvent ourselves you can always get another job a whole other side point very few times in my career because I've been part of a ton of different companies I've had to let people go I've been part of organizations where there's been huge playoffs very rarely do people not end up and even a slightly better spot than where they are right now very rarely so if you are of the mindset that you're going to learn you're going to teach you're going to educate you're going to give value to the world you're going to upskill yourself by learning all these new skills are you kidding me that you don't think you can get another job the mentality of somebody that would do that anyways is so employable it's ridiculous so I think that people really just get caught up in their head I'm just thinking about it now somebody told me like hey I left my job I tried to build a company I learned every single facet of building a company I'm radically more useful than I was two years ago but the product I tried to bring to market wasn't great I had some unexpected medical bills but in the meantime I know this entire new gamut of things that I didn't know when I left my job I'd be like yes please like like please come work for me and apply like a fraction of that energy to your nine to five because you're going to kill it somebody who's I think that term is auto-died act a self-taught individual somebody who operates like that and things like that they're going to kill anything they do they're just going to demolish everyone else it's a super employable just to be that kind of person I love that and there's never a traffic jam in the extra mile so you want the people that are in the extra mile and you can see that they're going to be in the extra mile but let me ask you something you have a bunch of followers but there's a saying that and I think you said that right it's lonely at the top but crowded at the bottom at least I think I heard it from you yeah that's it and John Maxwell calls it the people pile there's a ton of noise for me it's interesting how do people reach you and how do people rise above the noise how should people rise above the noise yes it's lonely at the top but again you're going to motivate yourself but crowded at the bottom yet it's crowded so what do you do authenticity is thrown around a lot but I think it's sort of like table stakes now so you've got to be honest about what you believe and what you don't believe I think the people can pick up on that pretty quickly I don't think that trying to be polished or trying to be corporate when you put yourself out into the world benefits you I think sticking to it for an unreasonable amount of time you kind of bully your way into being known to a degree because you keep showing up which is like listen it's not the final strategy but it's a strategy to get feedback as to what resonates and what doesn't but if you show for long enough time you will get feedback if you are authentic in your thoughts and what you believe you will stand out and then obviously you have to know where you want to take that brand because you have to have a North Star attached to it so it's not just wandering aimlessly and it can evolve but then you do what good business people do when you look at the numbers so you again table stakes is you talk about stuff that you believe in that is authentic to you and whatever messaging that you're trying to get into the world whether or not it's about I want to be the best pet expert in the world I want to be an authority on sales and marketing or I want to talk about AI tools or whatever it is talk about stuff you care about from a lens that is true to you and then you measure and you're not ignorant some content works and content doesn't just do more of the stuff that works so a strategy that I've used that I've heard other people use as well I don't know who originally came up with it could have been her mosey but I found it works very well it's used Twitter for example is a testing ground so you ask me like how do I create content that stands out well tweet 20 things look at the idea that has the most engagement turn that into a short form podcast turn that into a newsletter turn that into a graphic that you put up on Instagram you've already tested that this idea resonates with the market it's the same way you do a focus group for a new product launch in a company so you just have to have a testing ground and then you consistently first of all you can keep some of the ideas and you can put them out again in six months through a year and you can have a bank of great ideas it really hit but all of your content now it's based on stuff that you care about but you're not putting out content that doesn't resonate with other people so you're focusing on consistently putting out viral pieces of content or at least popular pieces of content so your whole content mix and the engagement that comes from it is just probably I can't put a factor on it but like a factor of 10 or 15 or 20 X if you were just ignoring the noise in the market and putting it whatever you felt was good so I think that feedback loop about what works and what doesn't and whatever your feedback loop is just find one I just think of Twitter as the best testing ground because it's like a really low amount of effort and it's very forgiving versus say for example you too if you're putting out a whole bunch of reels but yeah if you want to put out 50 reels then look at the reels that hit home and then those are the models that you know base your future content off of and you do that for like five or six years you're going to be known incredible so it's still the same we just need to continue when everybody else stops so that you can live a life that most will only dream of right it's basically the same thing but there's also no end to it right people are like oh Scott has some followers cool you know who I'm looking at I'm looking at the podcast that gets 20 million downloads a month I'm trying not to do too many cliches but enjoy the journey for real because it never ends and I'm talking about my little content and influencer and podcast or journey but I have friends who sold companies for half a billion three quarters of a billion over a billion dollars and they have their own next thing they want to work on and they are very well aware that there's another level after that painfully aware because when you start to make that kind of money and you start to have that kind of fame and influence then the people that have sold their companies for several billion they're now in your sphere so you're very cognizant of the fact that yeah okay so I had good success but I'm not flying a seven thirty seven so again there's no end and I love that and again there's a saying that says if you look only up you get dizzy you know you need to look down from 10 to 10 so how do you balance the two I like that saying a lot that's a good saying that's why pacing yourself is so important pacing yourself it's I think the key to success and most things it's not a sprint it's a marathon but if you think about building a business a relationship losing weight even I used to play a lot of sports and I remember one of the most important things I played a lot of hockey obviously it translates into any other sport but one of the most important things is you need to have gas in the tank for the third period and for all of my American friends who don't care about hockey that means like you know fourth quarter or second half whatever it doesn't matter you have to have gas in the tank is why I don't love motivation I hate the concept of motivation because motivation is just like initial flash in the pan initial burst of energy it doesn't stick and it doesn't stay and everything's going to be hard and when hard shit happens motivation is gone so whether or not you find a way to financially support the journey mentally support the journey stick with it for 10 years whether or not you adopt some habits from James clear whether or not you build systems and processes all of it's important the point is longevity the point is spending an unreasonable amount of time doing the thing that you're trying to do because that will separate you from the masses at the bottom and make you one of those lonely at the top people but whatever that's where most of the people are listening this are trying to go right they're trying to break free from the pack and that's where the unreasonable amount of time comes in that it's incredible you mentioned your podcast actually which is fascinating you have some brilliant speakers there who should listen to it I would say the podcast is a lot of what we spoke about today so there's some very tactical business lessons because I've interviewed everyone from founder of Netflix founder of Reebok interview Beyonce's dad I've interviewed some very cool interesting people so very tactical business lessons but also if you notice when I'm talking myself what I believe in is tactics combined with mindset the mindset that lets you do the thing for the long enough period of time so I bring a lot of people to speak about the mindset as well that will hopefully allow you to do the thing you're trying to do for a long enough period of time with energy and enthusiasm clarity whatever it is so that's it it's like a upskilling because I believe that if you want upskilling business it's not just learning how to run a better Facebook ad campaign there's a lot of mindset that is required to be successful I love it and you do talk a lot about you have some hard moments and getting out of rock bottom and I've seen some really really really interesting stories there so absolutely highly recommend it we have a little thing that we do in our podcast which is when you're looking at your younger self what would be some of the advice that you would give yourself in retrospect it's funny because I ask this question too and I'm now to think of an answer it's much easier to ask the questions right then to answer them I would say take more risks and trust yourself because I truly do believe the kind of person that takes risks more often than not we'll find a way to get through the hard times and to become their own version of success I feel like the traditional career path what we think and consider to be safe is not safe at all I think that's a mirage a complete mirage I think we've all seen during COVID but I've seen personally 30-year careers ended because of a number missed so I think that I'm saying take more risks I actually think by taking more risks you're actually playing a safer game because you're going to learn things that no traditionally safe career can ever teach you and I think that if you take those risks meaning you try and do your own thing you build your own business whatever it is do things that are maybe a different style than how your parents were raised whatever doesn't matter I think it'll just make you a more resilient person and I think that those kinds of people win I love that Scott thank you so so so much for showing up giving your authentic self being so fun yeah I feel like we're speaking such the same language so it's just awesome to hear it no yeah we're very much kindred spirit thank you so much for having me on