Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Renowned host of the Success Factory podcast, Scott Clary, joins us. We embark on a journey through content creation, influencer marketing, and personal branding. Scott unveils his strategies for maintaining a sustainable content creation process, balancing three podcast episodes a week while avoiding the pitfalls of burnout. Throughout our conversation, we marvel at Sean Kelly's astonishing ability to churn out 23 podcasts in just one day.   Our discussion takes us into the world of entrepreneurship, exploring the transition from traditional employment to owning a business. We reflect on the value of nine-to-five jobs as a springboard for entrepreneurial endeavors and highlight the power of leveraging acquired skills to seize new opportunities. We dive into the lessons learned from industry giants like Coca-Cola, drawing parallels with current events and uncovering strategies for reviving stagnant brands. This episode is packed with advice on how to craft a podcast that resonates with listeners while aligning with business goals, ensuring your content doesn't become just an expensive hobby.   For those seeking to monetize their podcast, we share tips on authentic audience engagement and promoting products or services that truly align with your values. We tackle the challenges of public speaking and offer practical strategies to overcome anxiety, drawing from the experiences of seasoned performers. As we wrap up, we discuss the importance of storytelling and authenticity in building a loyal audience, showcasing how personal anecdotes can captivate and connect. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or an established creator, this episode is a treasure trove of insights to help you navigate the dynamic landscape of entrepreneurship and content creation.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - Conversation With Scott and John (05:08) - Navigating Entrepreneurship in Modern Society (12:56) - Path to Entrepreneurship and Ownership (19:19) - Evolution of Entrepreneurship and Brand Building (28:30) - Strategies for Monetizing a Podcast (32:58) - Monetizing a Podcast With Integrity (42:20) - Content Creation and Audience Engagement (53:06) - Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety (01:03:50) - Building Audiences and Overcoming Challenges (01:16:16) - Boosting Podcast Engagement and Support   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #scottclary #contentcreation #influencermarketing #personalbranding #sustainablecontentcreation #burnout #socialmedia #seankelly #entrepreneurship #traditionalemployment #business #cocacola #brandrevival #podcasting #monetization #authenticaudienceengagement #publicspeakinganxiety #storytelling #authenticity #entrepreneurialopportunities #contentstrategy #authenticendorsements #audienceneeds #intellectualgrowth #publicspeaking #impostersyndrome #buildingaudiences #support

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 knowing Ben Shapiro's and they're saying the election was proof. We don't want commercials 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 episode. The Quiet Storm. No, it's 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 gonna get you from where you are to where you wanna be. Ladies and gents, welcome to the studio.

This is Scott Clary. Scott. 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.

That's why I moved to Miami. Yeah, see, I was gonna move to Tacoma, Tacoma, Washington. I'm kidding. I would say you're not going to get Yeah, that's a joke. I wasn't really going to do that. But also you're in town this weekend speaking at Todd Alts event. Yeah. Risk on 360. By the time you hear this, it will have gone, but you can hopefully check it out next year.

And what, what capacity are you speaking for Todd? Like, what are you talking about? Talking about, so I'm doing a panel with my better half, Gina. Sean Kelly's 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, good 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. They've been doing this for 11 years and they create memes. So she's gonna talk about sort of her structure

and framework for creating culturally relevant viral content. And then 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 hour 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 It's hard enough for me to be interested in anything for like an hour

And so it's like I don't get how he does I wouldn't recommend if you're if you're getting into the game of creating content in anything for like an hour. And so it's like, I just don't get how he does it. I wouldn't recommend 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. Because you're gonna, first of all, for content creators, what Sean does is already fucking crazy. 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 avatar to look up to. I think that you wanna just start with something that's gonna not burn you out in the first month. So 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 too, 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 a week. 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. Yeah. But I'll also test, um, 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 Arnaud 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 one.

But I keep testing them and then I'm looking at listening and I'm looking at how many people like that versus an interview. So yeah, you just keep testing. Dude, I love that. I love that founder series you did. I saw one of these. 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 the series that the History Channel did, The Men That Built America. Yeah. It's fucking great. If you haven't seen that, dude, stop watching this right now and go watch that. Cause that is like, I draw dry it's a jaw dropping America.

Like how you go into the history of it. It's crazy. And also I found that, listen, when, 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 gonna be a level of granularity there

that you just can't get in an hour long interview with somebody who's not Sam Walton or I don't know. No, cause you know, it's funny, cause my art drops here. We do one a guest a week. So I'll do 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.

It'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 gonna hit on some sort of a subject at some point. We'll figure it out eventually. Yeah, that I'm gonna think eventually. We'll figure out what the fuck we're talking about.

But we're gonna hit a subject that I think deserves a little bit more delving into. Yeah. 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 will 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 cause I talk, okay, cause you're going to appreciate this cause you love to go granular with like founders, right? If you just, as soon as I saw it, it reminded me of something instantly held to you. 34. 34, you're not going to remember this.

I'll mean what it is. In 1985, Coca-Cola had a genius idea. They were doing taste tests all around the United States. Coca-Cola was. 34 you're not gonna 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 or choosing Pepsi, but they're being put on by Coca-Cola. No, no, no, no Pepsi was doing this Okay, so so 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 a hundred years or whatever

It was we're gonna add more well, I guess I took the cocaine at some point at some point before 1985. Well, it is real wild time. I don't know. I don't have to tell you. But since they took out, so they took the cocaine out at some point earlier than that, but they were going to add more sugar to it. Right. So they had 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 could 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 in this disaster ad came out, who was talking about Jaguar? No one who's talking about him now? Everyone. Everyone. So now you have this opportunity for Jaguar to ride this disaster of, cause you know, they say it 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'd be super smart. And when it happens, and when it happens, I don't know this is happening. Maybe they're just idiots. But you know what you gotta 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 a hundred percent certainty and then it comes back. 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, you just delete it. Okay, so here we are. Gary V does this all the time. For sure, 100% of the time.

I respect Gary V 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, those gambling hotlines back in the day where you would pay like a hundred dollars as you would call it, half the callers would get this game, half the callers would get the other, other way. So 50% of the time, you're always like $100 as you would call it half the callers would get this game yeah half the colors would get the other other way yeah so 50% time you're always right yeah just keep working look like a

fucking genius dude yeah that was dude that was the hustle so yeah anyway so that's what's gonna happen is you're gonna see Jaguar use this negative press they're gonna revert back to the classic Jaguar everything and and they're gonna be sort of relevant again. That's what I would do because they had to do something. Right now everyone hates them. Fuck, it was stupid. And Porsche, 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 one big celebrity. But basically you're saying like, if I was gonna direct a Porsche commercial, this is what I would do. And that's the commercial. It's her just basically reinforcing

all the Porsche 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 him five days ago. And now everybody's talking about them, which I think is funny.

I think it's, you know, when Ben Shapiro's and they're saying the election was proof, we don't want 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 before. It'll be forgotten soon, I think, but I mean, it's more impressions and it's more eyeballs than it's gotten again, like you mentioned in the past 10 years. Well, let's back up dude, because obviously, you know, I like to, I like to get the origin story on everybody that's highly successful that comes through here. Cause I like to know, you know, it's a science experiment. Is it nature? Is it nurture? What, 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 CESA 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, 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, parents and grandparents that found a lot of comfort in a nine to five W-2. And I think that our generation is realizing very quickly, and as did I, that W-2s 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. It doesn't exist. Yeah, you don't see big pensions being flown around. No, exactly. I've set a government employees and who knows how long that's gonna last now with the new dose. 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 wanna retire at 65? Because I'm not gonna 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 at 95 in this company, that's really not gonna get that bucket of money that I really want to live a good life until I die at 100, 120, God 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 Acquire. That sort of opened my eyes to acquisition and private equity, because it was a good exit. The guy made a lot of money. The guy made a lot of money. The 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 was acquired by Grass Valley. I've done the fractional CRO stuff, I've worked full time as co-founder CRO. So I just stuck 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 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 head 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 that 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 W-2 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, you know, all the college is stupid guys.

College is a scam, all that stuff. I don't subscribe to that. No, I don't either to that because I don't either. Cause I genuinely believe that, that number one colleges of 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 accounting degree. You're, you're learning the language of business. There, there, there's something to that. You get a school for a finance or accounting degree. You're learning the language of business. There's something to that. You go get a law degree, 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, if anything else. It's where you really learn to be an adult. And I think it's so funny, because I was talking 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 Red was up there who was a professional basketball player and he was with Meta 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 gonna be out of your league soon because there was a bunch of athletes there and 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 stop growing as a person. So if that was 13, you're 13 right now with millions of dollars, which is why you're all gonna be fucking broke. And I think we're seeing that a little bit

in the new economy, the modern economy, the crypto 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 entrepreneurs. Gambling. 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, uh, 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. 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 build something that is of 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'll be a ceiling on it

or you'll be made redundant. And that's all I'm saying. So I don't think that. Well, 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 you for the 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, I fast forwarded through my entire sort of origin story, but there was like about how many years at 12, 10 ish years of like working for companies before then starting to figure out how to do my own thing. And like, even like the, even like the podcast I create now in the newsletter and how I monetize that,

that's a business in and of itself, right? That is a full business that I've started from scratch. So 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 that I could launch businesses against in the future once you have the audience.

But yes, I think, and there's other versions of entrepreneurship. You could be working in nine to five and then find a way to take the skillset 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 entrepreneur. I agree with you. I think the difference is people all get lumped into entrepreneur saying you're an entrepreneur is the new I'm a rock star, which is it is. Yes.

Right. But these guys that are running the, the, the, you know, the shit coin, the meme coin casinos, my differential, my line, if you're not creating something, if you're playing a zero sum game where the only way for you to win is somebody else to lose, which all of that is. You can't rake hard in crypto and somebody loses.

That's not entrepreneurship. That's speculating. Yeah. That's pure, you're gambling at that point. You're not building anything. Yeah. 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, oh, I want entrepreneurship, I want my own company so I can make my own hours. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, okay.

Good fucking luck. Okay, yeah. I've never worked more. Yeah, you won't. 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 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.

But ultimately, the definition of an entrepreneur has to be you are finding ways to solve pain points while simultaneously giving value to the world. If you're not giving value, if you're just extracting, like you said, a zero sum game, first of all, there's gonna be a ceiling because you cannot just extract from the world unlimited value. You do have to give value. And secondly, it's gonna 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 real companies that are solving. Well, let's move into the brand building. Let's talk about that because obviously it's so important. And when you started your podcast, was that the first thing you really started

when you started your own brand? Was that the hinge point? Was that the first thing? Yeah, yeah. All right, so when you first started it, what were your goals for it? What did you think it was gonna entail? So it's funny because when I started it,

I didn't really know where it was gonna 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 out 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 my, at that point in my life, it was my interest. And then as it grows and expands, then I'll, 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 are 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, OK, I've started to build a little bit of momentum with this audience. I have a couple of 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 Gary V model. The Gary V model is give everything away for free. Jab, jab, punch. 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've 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 why 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 their assets.

So to answer your question, at around the two, cause 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, the, the, the style of content shifted slightly away from just pure sales and marketing topics. And then I thought, yes, jab, jab, punch, put out a ton of value, create content that I'm interested in, speak to people that would teach me something.

Cause 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 hundred 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 would go to the bar, hang out, whatever it was, people are like, you guys were like, the people around us was like, you guys are fucking hilarious. And so one day it was like, dude,

we should just do a podcast. And then it just started as a good reason to get together with two of my buddies in here and just shoot shit about nonsense. And I miss those days because those shows were really funny. So 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 lot of energy into it. OK, 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 the the site, the, 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 great insights that can

help the audience that whoever is 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 entrepreneurs, 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, 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. They just like 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? Like nine out of 10 podcasts never get past episode two

or something? It's like- Well, I don't even know the numbers anymore. It's insane. But yeah, if you've, if you've released 10 episodes, you're in like the top 1%. So, okay. So rule number one, I tell people 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. Cause if you, cause dude, if you don't have seven, all episodes done, ready to go, chances of getting to the eighth one are very slim.

Yeah. Because a lot of people do this once or twice. And then they're like, I want to do a podcast. And the lights come on. They're like, they don't realize that you just have to gotta be yourself. People fuck up a lot of content creation because they, they get excited about it.

And it's not just podcasting, like it could be posting on Instagram, posting on YouTube, writing tweets three times a day, 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 that, 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 foresight to figure that out before you pressed press publish yeah but then all of a sudden that motivation and that reason why they started fizzles out and then they are you gonna look at the light yeah that's not? Yeah, that's. Not adding that out. That's gonna stay there. Just like Joe Rogan, man. We keep it real. That's a trick to get you to.

That is, yeah. You have that. I was trying not to sneeze, not like induce it more. Like when you're. I know, but when you have it, like you just gotta get. Start snorting pepper in here.

You just gotta get rid of it, dude. Just make. But I think that's the biggest issue. I think the people, I think the people have the wrong expectations going into content creation. They expect too much too quick. Well, let's talk about that.

Let's talk about that. So let's say I'm Bill in Indiana. Yeah. Sorry, Bill. And Bill wants to create a podcast. So what should Bill's, 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.

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's, it's, it is what it is. I mean, I had my set of circumstances when I started my show, not everybody's not necessarily smart. It's it's, it is what it is. I mean, 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, cause 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, what's worse is people don't understand.

There's a marketing budget that goes with this. These things don't grow. These things don't grow organically like you think they would. They don't. You're not going to fill 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 got to promote.

It costs 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 want it 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.

Anyways, so to 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 gonna 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 you're in. Yes, correct. So I started a podcast outside of the business that I was in. For most people, that's not smart. For most 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 gonna be actively answering questions that your customers care about. But more importantly, I'll take it one step further, because we're in the real estate business here, it's what we do. And I tell realtors all the time, if you're gonna 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 realtor with a seven iron in just about any 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 to. So this is, 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 hours. For sure. So not only is it, is, 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. Um, I mean, I laugh cause cause 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, here's a fun fact for the old podcast. There's times when you sit with people for an hour and then an hour you're like, I really like this person. I'm just like, not you, we're doing great.

We're doing great, Scott. I know how funny you are, just, but no shit. I mean, can you honestly not say that's not true? No, it's very true. It's very true. I mean, so it's funny because sometimes, because 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 keynotes anymore. You know what it is? It's like moderate a panel on stage. You're a great moderator, Scott. That's what we want you to come to. A moderator. But yeah, it's funny. So sometimes when I get asked to go into the people's 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, fuck.

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 asked you guys to subscribe to the newsletter 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 bad for those. Um, 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, the paid guest, which is the, the infotainment, which is part of this, right? Cause you'll have people 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. So we like Scott's business.

He's paid nothing to be here today. I 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 too, yes? 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. Like some crazy water system for, I mean, state municipalities, and he paid to come on and I'm going through this and I'm like, dude, this is reading like a science manual. This is terrible. At the end of it, I ended up saying, Hey man, I'm going to give you your money back because I'm not hearing

this at all. It's just would be terrible. And it hurts. It hurts to show. 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. But isn't some of that, but isn't some of that like when Alex Jones was selling like the vitamins

or whatever he was selling on. Well, Joe Rogan was selling, uh, uh, uh, what was it on it or the. But hell yeah. Joe Rogan's like with it and in shape and like a UFC dude. Oh, that's what Alex Jones was selling. I'm sure some stuff from his team doesn't go with the brand. 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 read through that bullshit. Yeah, it's so true. If people know 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 of thinking about, like, like products like how to build a podcast that that fits. I've done it. It fits right. If I was, if I was promoting something that I've never used before, people smell through 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. So like, I mean, like I've worked with HubSpot for three years now. I've worked with indeed for two years. Great affiliate program.

We do have a great affiliate program, but these are, these are tools. Doesn't that matter? 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. Cause I can talk about why they actually helped 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 sinks up. Because if you don't, you're going to ruin trust. No, I, yeah, I would never promote a product you don't, you're gonna ruin trust. And yeah. I would never promote a product I don't use. And this next segment is brought to you by Vagisil. So I'm just kidding, no, we're not doing that. 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 early Facebook. And they're 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. Um, 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, uh, 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, like go for it. That's kind of why I'm doing it. If 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. That'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 you, 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. I would say, don't worry about monetizing too quickly. Don't inundate your audience with ads.

AG1 now, no longer AG1. That's true. Rebrand. I know the CEO actually rebranded to AG1. They do a lot of podcasts. Did you know what's crazy? The CEO of now AG1. Do you know where I know her from?

No. She's a hooters girl. Actually? Oh shit. Did you know what's crazy? The CEO of now AG one. Do you know where I know her from? No, she's be a Hooters girl. Actually. Oh shit. Did you know her? I did. Way back a million years ago. Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

I don't know her story. I haven't had her on the show. Yeah. Yeah. She's great. She's good. I'm not gonna throw a name out. She doesn't want to have that out there, but. But she built an incredible company.

She was a Cinnabon. No, well she was, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She was, she was the CEO at Cinnabon. Cinnabon got bought by private equity and then I thought it greens just hired her as CEO. She's not founder there. She just took it over to CEO. Okay. I don't know the rebrand. I don't know the story. Yeah. His cat, she's great. So there you go. Uh, yeah. See, yeah. Now that I say that out loud, I probably should. Yeah. Right.

That's very cool. I should. Yeah. But I mean, that's, yeah. So there you go. Take that. Everybody thinks Hooters waitresses, you Yeah, that's very cool. I should, yeah, but I mean, that's, yeah. So there you go, take that. Everybody thinks Hooters waitresses, you know, never amount to anything. There you go. I mean, it's the same as like somebody starting their career as like a bottle service girl or like, you start somewhere. Well, yeah, bottle service girls

have to end up in real estate. They do end up in real estate. I think when you apply at the, like the clubs, you just have to say on the bottom of it, yes, I agree. To get a real estate license. Like, yeah, I agree. I get a real estate license. Like, 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 bottle of vodka. Yeah. Hey man, you could probably sell a house. I agree. You could probably sell a house. Oh boy, now I forgot what we were talking about. Cause now we're talking about bottle girls. We're talking about, I know it's a distraction, right?

We were talking about, we're in Vegas. Oh yeah, we are. No, we're talking about, we're we're talking about bottle girls. And you're talking about, I know it's a distraction, right? We were talking about, we're in Vegas. Oh yeah, we are. No, we're talking about, we're talking about when to monetize. Yes. And I think it's after you've established credibility in the market. 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 and I run 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. Like 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 the real trust in the real audience. And this in any more, it's so difficult to gauge.

Like who's got a real audience? Like 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. And you look at a real and it's got 800 views. So that's a good signal. 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, you know, 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- Well, what it it, if you are starting, it is, it's just demoralizing

because you were 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, on results that actually means 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, cause 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, podcast, 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 retweets? Find that leading metric, leading indicator that's gonna 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% retention on your video all the way through to the end. Like there's better things to look at. I wanna ask you something I struggle with. I struggle with this in content creation anymore. And have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy?

You seen the movie? No. Idiocracy, it's a Luke, you should watch this movie because it's pretty scary. Okay. It's a movie about Luke Wilson goes into the future, he travels to the future where he's 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 a hundred years in the future and he's the smartest guy on the, on earth. So funny. Because America has gotten so dumbed down. And when you watch this, it's kind of where we're headed,

I think as a society, because here's one of the 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, I'm, I'm, I'm busting this stuff out. I'm doing what I think is very smart, very intelligent content. And then the fucking Hawk to a girl who literally probably can't even spell Hawk to a however you spell it

He's dropping a podcast. It probably gets more hits than I do in the first week doing very well right now So it makes no sense to me. Well, how do you how do you reconcile that? Well, you dumb your shit down or you do. 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 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 highbrow Super super complex because Joe Rogan is not highbrow and super complex and neither are is not highbrow 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 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 conversations. But the most, but like the thing that was trending on Twitter. But you're just asking why there's a standard distribution

of people that love entertainment versus. Okay, but okay, fine. Super Bowl to me is entertainment. You have the best athletes in the world performing at the highest level. How can you tell? But it's not entertainment to you. 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 and all he does is do this. And that's the highest retweeted thing on Twitter two days ago. I understand why you don't understand. Cause I don't, I don't, it's not entertainment to me too.

But it's entertainment to someone. Like I want to slap my kids that they even think like, like, no, you don't understand. I'm like, you're right. I know. To answer your question though, like you got to create content that accomplishes the objective that you set out for that content.

I feel like I'm standing like the old man on the porch yelling at the moon right now. I create the same type of content as you. I create the exact same type that content. I feel like I'm standing like the old man on the porch yelling at the moon right now. I create the same type of content as you. I create the exact same type of content. And you don't think that I've seen people that started podcasts after me that are just pure like culture podcasts, like just shooting this shit on just culture that have gone, grown way faster than, and I, and I look at it and I'm like, fuck, this is, this is really frustrating.

But then again, I'm like, who am I serving? 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. You're extrapolating this from me. 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, being omnipresent, being on all channels. Yeah. I think that the dopamine addiction is a real thing. It is. I think that it's creating ADHD in our kids, it's creating things, which again, which is why I'm trying to actually,

if I'm gonna create content, I actually want it to be valuable to somebody. But can I add one thing, sorry, just really quickly? Yeah, please, yeah'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 can I add one thing? So just really quickly, so you got whatever you want, man. Yeah, no, just because you create content that serves an audience that's trying to like build a business or become better versions of themselves, 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 to, well, it's smart, so I'm not gonna focus on trying to find entertaining, which I think is also incorrect. So you also can't get lazy just because you're targeting a certain niche

that maybe is like a little bit more highbrow. 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 get pissed or experience some emotion, what are you doing? This is why as a podcast host, what your goal is, is to make the person feel safe so they can be real. Because that realness is going to be the X feel safe so they can be real. Because that realness is gonna be the X factor in 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 showed

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 chat, GBT or whatever else, blah, blah, 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 can 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 here's a, and it's the same thing over and over. So I don't do that, but I found the best questions that I do. I, so I like authors, right? Because I can read, 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. So how do you prep for guests? I watched 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 a 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 their 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- Yeah, because you can see when people light up a little bit. Yeah, you can see what gives people energy. And if it doesn't, and by the way, I tell them this before they even start. I say, because every, this is how the conversation goes with every guest. I'll say, um, you know, what would make this a win for you?

And they'll say, oh, well, I just want to serve your audience. And then I'll say, what do you have to promote? And like, oh, this book. And then conversation we just had 40, 49 minutes ago. It's the same thing every single time. So I know how it's gonna go and I know they wanna serve my audience and I know that they're not gonna 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 are six other topics that you had planned, go really deep on that one topic because they're gonna have so much emotion and they're gonna bring out so much

about that one particular thing that they've, and they'll be appreciative because they'll recognize too. They're not stupid. They'll recognize when you wanna just sit in a topic 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 out. Yeah, I've had episodes of this show where people come on

or subject matter experts on Vena Jetty. Great example is a friend of mine. Vena's a multi has a billion billion dollars in assets and multifamily under management in her portfolio. And we never, we never talked about multifamily. Yeah, exactly. We just never got to her. She's bored of talking about.

Yeah, we just, we never got to it. We talked about not raising worthless kids for literally an hour or so. 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 because they never had to work for anything in their life.

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 there's people that they have no interest building a billion dollar multifamily portfolio. They've made their money in software or consumer goods and they've just absolutely killed it

and their money's working for them now and they don't wanna fucking deal with starting again. They do a little bit of angel investing here and there but they're not gonna build a billion dollar multifamily 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 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, so much stuff. Too much sometimes, dude. Huh? Too much. Too much sometimes. Tell me about the imposter syndrome. You gotta have it sometimes. I have the imposter syndrome all the time. Yeah.

But you know what? I mean, you put it like anything, if you just want to, if you do it enough, you start to get over it. I don't know how else to describe it. I have imposter syndrome whenever I sit in front of huge guests. I have imposter syndrome when I write a newsletter.

So my list is about 300,000 people. So I get stressed out sometimes when I'm playing. How'd you build the list? A lot of writing. Writing in one person. One email at a time. Can we talk about that? I mean, I want to, we're going to come back to it. I didn't mean to cut you off. Finish your thought and we'll come back to that. No imposter syndrome is tough to deal with. I think that like most people,

my, my imposter syndrome really shows when I step on stage, that always stresses me out. 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, so the first time I step on stage, I'm shitting 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

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. 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, I can talk about the things that I've been doing. I can talk about the things that I've been doing. I can talk about the things that I've been doing. I can talk about the things that I've been doing. I can talk about the things that, 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 obstacles 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, I, it's funny. I was talking to KG last night. I'm a buddy, Kevin Griffin speaking at same time that he is and we were dinner and we're talking about, we were talking about, here's the funny thing, right? Kevin is a lead singer of better than 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 would have to do a speech, not sing with a speech. He goes, man, my throat 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, I had to kind of work through it.

You just work through it. And he's like, now I get it. There's 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. Um, 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, you're 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, as of

last, I spoke at inbound three times so far in my life. And the last one, I think it was 112,000 people. It's a massive conference in Boston. And that was the first time I jumped on stage to do a panel with a couple other people that were on my show. They invited me out because they've sponsored the podcast for the past three years. Now 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 that most people, I think there was like a, uh, uh, like a sweat imprint on the seat behind me. It was, it was very nerd, but the point is, it's like, you're going to lose your virginity to a porn star while we film it.

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. Oh, of course. Everyone was like, great job.

Like, I mean, like, Gina's like sitting in the audience and she says, you fucking killed it. Like, good job. Everybody who I was on the panel with, like, awesome job. Like, it was really well done. And in my mind, I just felt like I wanted to have a heart attack and die. I felt like I was gonna have a heart attack.

I'm like, just do it now, so I don't have to deal with the next 20 minutes. It's like that scene from old school where you're just like, where you just like, it's an out of body experience and the speech goes off, you're like, what happened? Yeah, but I lived, and then after that, I was like, I don't wanna feel like that again.

And I- Reps. Yeah, it was just reps. And then I just jumped into every single speaking opportunity that I, what's the fun cause people, you know, you talk about the newsletter growth too, if you want, but yeah, we're going to get to that. But like most people talk about, about imposter syndrome, like they don't want to turn a camera. Oh,

I look terrible on camera. I sound bad on camera. I don't want to do this. Like just. So my recommendation for somebody who wants to start creating content is imposter syndrome is real. And of course, you'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. We can have a conversation.

It doesn't matter if the cameras are on or off. But some people sitting in this chair, when the cameras turn on, they turn into a different person. Now, 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 video is usually the issue,

it's not usually writing, people don't usually stress out about writing, but video is 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 like block off two hours, like Sunday afternoon, whatever, when you 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. That's all it is.

So I think- Yeah, I think that, well, that's one point. You don't have to look directly into the camera for it to be good. No, 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 the 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 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 I, the audience knows that I'm not speaking to them.

I'm speaking to you. There's a, 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. Yeah, nobody wants to be told what to do. Nobody wants to be told what to do. 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 the 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 I'm Googling if you can find it. So I have to fucking remember her name. I'll tell you the story of what she did though. 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'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 the higher on on the on the content where it looked like she was in uh 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 with the podcast, when I have a guest, do better on Instagram, the solo pod stuff does better on tech talk. I don't know why. I don't know. Tick tock as well as Instagram. So I'm not a, an SME, not a subject matter expert.

Yeah, it's weird. I just. I don't. Yeah. 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 it. 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, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. If I'm looking at, uh, you know, how to grow a podcast on, on tick-tock. I'm probably looking at Stephen Bartlett with

diary 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. There's 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? Is it this quippy little three point thought or is it more of a a longer block of text, which it usually never is on Twitter? Like what is a formula that really gets a lot of engagement

and speaks to a Twitter audience? And who is the 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. That's it, you know, 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 shit.

You making this up and emulating is not the same as imitating. It's there's two different things. You sort of become a carbon copy imitation of somebody that's doing successful or you're trying to people see through that as a, as I'm not going to use the authentic. Wow, just shit, I said authentic. I hate that word on podcast. It's like the buzzword, it's not genuine. We'll use that, but emulating someone like you said, that's doing it a certain way is the smart way. That's the path. 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, if you're just trying to like pontificate on ideas and you're just trying to keep it very high level, it's never gonna really hit home with people. But if you talk about the stuff that you've dealt with in your life, the problems that you're still dealing with

literally right now, That's the con. And then you structure it through a frame that fits that audience. That's how your content does well. So if you, as a podcast host, if you never bring in your personal experience and your personal life, it's going to be boring. But if you do bring in your personal experience and 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, I mean, even on this, like whatever our podcast, I've spoken about Gina a couple of times. I spoke about what she does 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. 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 other than those garage sales, sports cards and the Jets. Yeah, but I know that his, okay, so to play devil's advocate, I do know that his, he came up with his dad's wine shop and he did like, he did his wine stuff. I mean, he's pretty, he 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 gonna give you, these three things. I think that would be a great extra dimension that would speak to who he is as a person. Yeah, but he's just so great. It's like, he's even said, I'm gonna give you these three things.

This is what you get. You get the jets, you get cards, you get, you get, uh, what is it? Garage sales. Yeah. You know, I think that another thing that's important is to understand that some people built 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. It's red ocean. And I think that, okay, fine.

Maybe 10 years ago. Will work for him. It will not work. Will not work for you. A hundred percent. So I think that's being more authentic. And this is why I think bloggers do so well. Bloggers.

Bloggers 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 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 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.

Which is wild. 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, it turns you into a human, and not just another thing to scroll through on Instagram. It's so funny, 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, it was very crafted and very edited to tell a story that was entertaining and compelling, I get that. But you look at the difference now, you're right. There's people who are like 24 hours a day.

I mean, their house is just, what is it? Like, a guy, Kai, or whatever his name is? He's 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 you didn't have to do that. But now I think, 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, my world is ending and Gina's been like, Scott, shut the fuck up. You're fine. Like, what's a good partnership. I mean, but that, I don't want to, I don't want to exclude that from my content. Cause I think that's actually useful for people.

That's a good, I'm going to ask you this question. Cause a lot of our 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 gotta let it hit me. Like it's gotta hit me. I need it to sting me for like one day, right? I need one day of staying on it. And like, I'll tell my wife like,

ah, this is the fucking sky is falling. Everything is blah, blah, blah. And I can let go of those emotions on a dime. Like I'll just decide as Mikey Searock said, does it go in the tank or the trunk? Yeah. You know, I mean, I'll, I'll make that decision very quickly. It doesn't, you know, become baggage or turn into fuel. Yeah. And it's always fuel for me, but my poor wife will carry shit around,

carry my like purging of this anger for days. It is your wife. Does she dump it off quicker? Does she carry, she gets rid of it very quickly. That's she good for you, but she gets rid of it very quickly. That's she good for you. Yeah. She gets rid of it very quickly. She is, she is about like, she, she's also very entrepreneurial. She built her own business too. And she realizes like, there is no benefit to sitting with this. It doesn't solve anything.

Yeah. Like if, if, if shit is going to be bad. Fine. But it's, it's like whatever's created, the bad shit has already happened. There's no time travel here You got it. 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 you give a couple is it a day for you a couple of days?

Like what's the sting? Day or two there too. Yeah, you wallow in it a little bit. No, I I'm vertical. I'm all the way in it for 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, fuck, I'm an idiot. This is so stupid. I don't know.

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 healthy thing. But I definitely throw myself. Better than crack. I think so. It's way better than the crack.

Most doctors have recommended work is better than crack. But. Most. Who's the one that didn't? Who's the one doctor out there that said, you know what, maybe the crack's the way to go. I think I'm following FTC advertising guidelines. I can't say 100% FDA.

Most, most, there's one doctor out there. Dr. J, that's who says the crack is better than anything else. Yeah, I don't think, I think that I throw myself into work and then after like putting in, because every day is always busy, 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. 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 who 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 it's 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 answer to a lot of your problems

is on the other end of a hard phone call. It always is. Always. And by the way, most of your problems, I mean, 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 hard,

so I don't know what you've gone through. No, no, dude, well, here's my thing, bro. I'm always, if you're 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. Like we have no real problems.

Those people got real problems. You know, it just depends on your perspective. I think a lot of the problems that we're fortunate to have and the people who listen to the podcast, the people that listen to this podcast have are very privileged problems. 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 water.

A deal falling through or someone getting sued. I like to be able to be even be in that position means that you figured out life to some degree. It's a blessing. Yes. 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 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 to talk about that. So 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. YouTube can be shut down. All this Instagram can be shut down overnight. Um, YouTube can be shut down. All this stuff can be shut down overnight if you don't own, if you don't own it. Right.

Um, 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 Lincoln bio, the CTA, top of the show notes, every single YouTube video. And I've tried, I've tried to mention that at the 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, uh, 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 subscribe to newsletter.scottdeclery.com. It's CTA for 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

in the show notes and the YouTube description, uh, Lincoln bio is always email capture, and then you deliver value through the newsletter, and then you promote the shit out a YouTube video in the show notes and the YouTube description, link and 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, so hear me out.

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'll- And the summaries are AI generated summaries of- No, it's not. On the podcast, you're writing it? No, no, no, it's not, and I'll. And the summaries are AI generated summaries of. No, it's not. You're writing it? No, no, 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 podcasts. I mean like. And if you have time to listen here, just check it out. Exactly. Here's my biggest takeaways from this.

Exactly, yeah. Smart. I'm behind on that dude, I'm behind. It's fine. I'm gonna get caught up. You're a. I have one more thought on this. So the newsletter, the subject in that, so I have sort of two content flows.

So my first content flow is podcast and then we take the long form podcast and we clip it out into shorts and reels. And like I said, I put out a summary on the weekend about the podcast that dropped that week 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 threads, doesn't matter. Like I'll put out 10 different, I'll tweet like 10 times a day. 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 the one that gets the most engagement, I'll turn it into, if you look on my Instagram, there's little graphics with these tweets. 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 10 ideas on Twitter a 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 people. It's going to have 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 into long form 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 a hundred percent, but some certainty that that content is going to resonate, have a testing ground for your content too. And that's what I use Twitter for.

What are you using to manage your newsletter? Just like MailChimp or using like high level? What are you using? 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 is a really cool guy. He 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 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, um, this is, this is not my products or anything. These are big, large companies that I use. So convert kit is a great newsletter system. Um, I think like James clear is on there who wrote atomic habits.

I think it's the Hill 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 link in Bioservice where you can host your products and you can build community. So it accomplishes a lot of different things for creators as well.

So then anyway, so yeah, ConvertKit is one, Stan is the other, if you're looking for some creator tools. But yeah. There you go. Well, dude, man, just like that, an hour and 15 minutes has flown by. If they want to find you, how do they find you, bro? Easy, all the social is at ScottDClarry.

And then you can go to successstorypodcast.com and do a lot of the same stuff. Well, I appreciate it, man. When I'm Miami, I'll come through your studio. Anytime you're back in Vegas, you're always welcome back here, man. So listen, if you just spent an hour and 15 minutes with us, which hopefully you did,

I can 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 gotta start doing it now.

See you next time. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to EscapingTheDrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw 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 will see you in the next episode.