Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Scott D. Clary: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Getting Started in Entrepreneurship, and Finding Product Market Fit | Entrepreneurship E221 | Part 1

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

As the son of an ex-policeman turned intelligence (CSIS) officer, Scott D. Clary was a complete novice in the world of entrepreneurship. By leveraging his natural charisma and love for technology, he was able to build up his brand and become a success story. In Part 1 of Scott’s episode, we’ll unpack his career journey and early entrepreneurial endeavors. Scott will share his insight about side hustling and how to build a value-packed, monetizable podcast!  Scott D. Clary is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and venture capitalist. He hosts the popular entrepreneurship podcast “Success Story” and is the CEO of OnMi Patch, a transdermal vitamin patch that delivers naturally derived, science-backed ingredients to support you through life’s ups and downs. Scott is a well-known sales and marketing expert who speaks globally at industry conferences. He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and The Startup, amongst other publications.  In this episode, Hala and Scott will discuss:  - How Scott found himself in the land of leadership  - The importance of “shooting your shot” - Conquering imposter syndrome - Side hustling - Measuring product market fit   - How Scott blew up on social media - How he monetized his podcast - Scott’s guest outreach approach - And other topics… Scott D. Clary is the CEO of OnMi Patch, a transdermal vitamin patch company, and the host of the “Success Story” podcast, where he interviews inspirational people, mentors, and thought leaders. From startups to enterprises, Scott’s worked with individuals to 10x their businesses using his marketing expertise. He’s sold and marketed to the most iconic F500 / F100 brands throughout his career. His work has been featured in over 100+ news sites and publications, and he speaks globally at industry conferences and has had articles and insights featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Hackernoon, The Startup, and others. Resources Mentioned: Scott’s Website: https://www.scottdclary.com/ Scott’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdclary Scott’s Podcast Success Story with Scott D. Clary: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/success-story-with-scott-d-clary/id1484783544 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘masterclass' for 25% off at yapmedia.io/course. Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset.

One of the most important things to know about imposter syndrome is that everybody feels it. And I truly mean everyone. If you scale up to billionaires, there will be billionaires that feel out of place in certain rooms. There's nothing about what you're feeling, which is weird or off or different. The difference is whether or not you take action. Action is always the difference. When you have product market fit, you know. Like, you can't keep up with demand.

Not a lot of people experience that level of product market fit. Usually what you should do is you should test the market to see if there's any demand. And what people do, they usually think of this product and they love it so much and they love it themselves and they take it to the market and no one else cares. A way to find out if this product market fit before spending a lot of money is... What is up Young and Profiters? You're listening to Yap Young and Profiting Podcasts where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life.

I'm your host, Halitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn, and profit. Scott, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you for having me on Hala. I appreciate it. I am super psyched. I love having my friends on the show. So today we're joined by my friend and podcasting peer, Scott Clary.

He's an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, investor, and podcast host. He's the host of the very popular entrepreneurship and business podcast success story. He's also the CEO of Omni Patch, which is a transdermal vitamin patch that delivers naturally derived science-backed ingredients to support you through life's ups and downs. Scott is well known for sales and marketing, and he speaks globally at industry conferences. He's been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the startup, amongst other publications. And in today's episode, we're going to unpack Scott's career story and cover topics like side hustling, how to grow a monetizable podcast, and lastly, we'll go deep on sales strategies.

So Scott, you were born in Canada. You're the son of an ex-policeman turned intelligence officer and a university lab manager, and you really weren't exposed to the world of entrepreneurship growing up, and you were expected to go into some sort of law enforcement field like most of your family. So where does the desire to work for yourself come from, and how did you step into the land of entrepreneurship? It was such a gradual process, and in hindsight, it all makes sense, but nothing makes sense when you're actually doing it.

And it's funny because I was supposed to be going into some sort of law enforcement. I mean, dad was law enforcement, grandpa, uncle, everyone was law enforcement. And then they migrated to different. My dad was CIS, so Canadian CIA for lack of a better reference. And I wanted something safe and secure. And that's kind of what I knew. That's what my parents knew. And nothing wrong with that.

So I actually went into a really large tech company, a telco company in Canada. And then from that company, then I went. into a smaller tech company because I had, I've done, I did very well at that. I was really good. I kept moving up market. I was, I killed it in SMB, the midmarket, the enterprise sales, moved to a smaller tech company, did very well there. And through that tech company, there was an exit. And then I understood, like this is like fast forwarding like 10 plus years of my life. But when I joined a company, saw the founder of that company sell his company to private equity, that's when I realized that I could have a piece of the pie and I could be at the cap table.

or have a seat at the table. I didn't know what a cap table was back then. But I could have a piece of a company. I could take part in that transaction because I saw people that were part of that company taking part in that transaction. So we'll start a turning. And then I'm like, okay, so if I want to have this big payout, because I'm no longer working in, you know, a big, even tech company, I'm not working in government, not working in big tech. I don't have a pension. I don't have security. I have to have X million dollars in the bank when I retire because nobody's going to be paying me until I die. So that was like my benchmark for security. If I'm not going to have a pension, which pensions, for a lot of people listening, don't really exist the way they used to. Pensions, to sort of show what a pension could be like,

I'll give you my dad. He's making 70%, I think, of his five best years of salary till the day he dies. Wow. And I think if I'm not mistaken, he has two pensions because he worked for two different government organizations. So he actually has two pensions compounded till the day he dies, the second he retires, which is wild. So that means, like, guaranteed, 100K plus for a lot of people that does not exist. So when you stop working outside of the investment that you make or maybe the contribution that the company makes, you have nothing in your bank. So I was like, how do I make a lot of money? And it was like, startups are where you make a lot of money. Now, obviously super naive. Most startups fail. This is not like a great strategy

for a lot of people and I wouldn't ever recommend it. But again, hindsight is 2020. So I started working in the world of startups. I did consulting, trading my literally my time for small pieces of equity and funny enough startups that hadn't raised money yet and didn't have any money to pay me. So it wasn't a really a great strategy. And I realized that as opposed to, instead of doing like fractional CXO work, so fractional executive work with a whole bunch of underfunded startups that didn't have product market fit, I should double down on my skills on one company. And I did.

And I was CRO there. And we went through an exit event. That was good. It wasn't like I'm going to retire money, but it was good money. And that's sort of what was my journey through safety and comfort and security and government to big tech to small tech to start up to where I'm at today. I love that. And Scott, as I was learning about your story,

you took a lot of risks and chances and asked for what you wanted to get to where you are. You didn't just stand still and do the same thing over and over. So like you said, you started off in big telco, I think it was Bell Canada. Then you moved to a smaller telco company because you wanted to level up in your career. You thought that there'd be faster growth there.

And actually, you got your first sales leadership role at that company. It was a director role that opened up, and you just pitched yourself for it. You were totally unqualified, which I love, and you just went for it. So tell us that story. I think it really showcases your grit. So the director that hired me at that smaller telco, he took a job at Salesforce almost immediately after you hired me. So there was a big opening in that company for a sales leader.

And I had no qualification. I'd never managed a sales team. I'd close large deals as an individual contributor. I never managed a sales team before. So I put together a presentation. And I said, these are the reasons why I'm fit for this job. There was people that have been in this company, by the way, for years. So, like, I had no business doing this at all.

But I don't really know why I took that initiative. It's definitely a common thread throughout my life that I've always sort of just gone for things, put together a presentation, pitched it to the director that was exiting and the CEO and got the position. It was really just putting together a plan of where I see us now, lessons that I've learned in my career that I can incorporate into this organization, a one, three, five, 10-year plan for where I want to take the sales team, scaling out the outside team, scaling out the inside team. And I really put together like a really, really in-depth proposal as to why I should have that job. And that initiative was enough to actually get that job because, again, like hiring is expensive. So you can go outside. You can look for other people. But nobody else internally was looking to really take it. And I was the one who had good experience, didn't have manager, but had good experience. that was actually saying like, listen, I'm throwing my hat into the ring. I'm the man in the arena. I really want this. And it was just a great learning opportunity because it showed that not always,

but when you ask for things and you put effort and showing that you want it, sometimes things do work out. Sometimes things really do work out. And if you adopt that attitude in literally everything, I mean, you'll hear the sayings like if you don't ask, you won't get. It is very true. So I think a lot of people, if they took a little bit more risk, not significant, not quitting their job tomorrow, when building something from scratch. And that's a whole other conversation. We can talk about side hustles and everything. But if they just took more risk in,

I want to, in my job, I want to push myself and I want to push my manager to allow me to accelerate in my career and you do the work that's required before it's required, you put together some sort of reasoning as to why you should be in that role and you constantly fight for it, I would be very surprised if over a period of time

people did not get what they're looking to get. Totally. It just goes to show you. Like, you've got to show you. shoot your shot. I feel like I'm very similar. I always shoot my shot. Even if I feel like there's really little chance, half the time I get what I want, what I asked for, what I didn't actually deserve just because I put my hat in the ring, like you mentioned. Ask for what you want, yeah. Just shoot your shot. So let's talk about imposter syndrome for a minute. I know you interview

a ton of people. I'm sure you've talked about imposter syndrome on your podcast. And a lot of women, especially, have a problem with imposter syndrome and women in particular. But basically, but basically, they would never put their hat in a ring if they feel underqualified because they just have such significant imposter syndrome. So what would you say to somebody who feels like they're just never good enough, that they're not smart enough? How do you think they can overcome an imposter syndrome? So one of the most important things to know about imposter syndrome is that everybody feels it at at whatever stage they're at. And I truly mean everyone. So if you scale up to billionaires, there will be billionaires that feel out of place in certain rooms. And it sounds crazy to us and

somebody who's making 60K a year, but it's very true. So everybody feels uncomfortable in certain situations like they don't belong. And this is why, you know, when you see even at a very high level, billionaires, and they bring kings and queens and monarchs to dinners because they feel like they don't fit into European high society or so on and so forth. Or you have very rich people whining and dining princes and whatnot in Saudi and the Emirates and looking to get their money and bring it back to the U.S. There's always times when people will not feel like they fit in a room and that scales up and it never ends.

So know that first. That's very important. There's nothing about what you're feeling, which is weird or off or different. The difference is whether or not you take action. Action is always the difference. So when you look at something that you feel you're not qualified to do and I don't know the psychological reason why this plagues women more than men. But I do know that men, like literally the case study that you just outlined, are more likely to take the step and to do the thing,

even if they're underqualified, than women. I don't know why that is, and that's something that we have to solve for, but that actually allows men to get the thing. Like, if you look at studies, like, if people are applying for a job and a man has six of ten requirements, he'll still apply, where a woman will not apply unless she has nine of ten or ten of ten. And I don't have data points to back that up, but I'm sure it's very easy to find these types of studies. So I think that you have to know that everybody feels it. You have to take action. And then to sort of like reduce the stress, something that I've found is reverse engineering the path to get to where I want to be. So I've taken this sort of strategy of reverse engineering in quite literally everything I do in my

health goals, in my mental health, physical health, focus goals. It could be my business goals, my investment goals. It could be where I want to take my company. It could be who I'd like to bring on my podcast similar to you. I look at who's done it before and I literally reverse engineer every single step because everybody has a path and success leaves clues and they're usually quite loud. And if you actually do enough research on the item that you're trying to achieve, you can probably quite reasonably come to a level of certainty as to what you actually have to do to get there. And you'll, two things will happen when you do that. You'll understand the path you have to take in the steps you have to take to get there and anything in life. But you'll also

realize that you're actually not as far as you actually are as you think you are before you reverse engineer that. And that starts to mitigate some of the stress of imposter syndrome, which then allows action. That is incredible advice. I learned something from Safi Bacall years ago that I always remembered. And he says, imposter syndrome is really a language issue. You don't understand the key terms that people are using in a room or the acronyms that people are using. the times it's a matter of, like, let's say you feel like an imposter in a new industry or a new company. A lot of the times it means you don't understand what everybody is saying and that's why you feel like you're an imposter, you don't belong here, when it's just really like maybe 10

words you need to learn to really understand what's going on. I've never heard that definition, but that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. The level that you have to reach to get to the thing that you want is really not as far as you think it is. Totally. Okay, so let's talk about sales, a little bit in terms of your early career with sales. So you actually started working at a teleco company throughout college, like right after high school, is that right? So you've had like 20 years of sales experience or so, right? Enough, yeah.

Maybe not quite that. I don't know how old they are yet, but like a lot of sales experience because most people start after college. You started throughout college. So you were naturally good at sales. What do you think about you made you naturally good at sales? Oh, that's a tough one. It's a load of question.

And so I think that what allowed me to be good at sales was, again, this is me understanding in hindsight. So I want people to make sure that they know that if they're in sales right now, this is not something that I jumped into sales and was like, oh, shit, yeah, I'm going to kill it. When I got into sales, I knew that it made a lot of money. And it was like that or bartending. And those are the jobs that made the most money. You have to get commission or you have to bartend.

And I'm like, okay, so like thinking strategically, it makes more sense for me to go to sales. I was always very technical as a kid, and I doubled down on loving the product that I was selling. So I just loved the product. I love the nuance of the product. I knew the product inside and out, and it did help that I worked for a company that had a great product and had a great brand. But I think that actually loving the product and loving what you're actually selling and being able to evangelize that to a customer is a major differentiator than somebody is really apathetic. So if you don't believe in what you're selling, I found this to be a common thread to everything I've ever sold to anybody, including selling a company to an investor, which is a

sale or selling a company to a hire, which is also a sale, when you're selling something, if you don't believe in what you're selling, you will not be able to sell it, 11 out of 10 times. And other things help like, yeah, maybe a little bit charismatic, but ultimately loving the product, communicating that. People feel it and they feel the authenticity and they feel that you're truly believing what you're saying and you're not full of shit. That will close more deals than anything. I love that. So I learned that you actually started consulting on the side at some point during your career, and you started your podcast as a side hustle. So I'd love to get your input on side hustles. So you started out doing consulting on the side. What made you realize that you wanted

to start a side hustle or that there was a market out there for you to have a side hustle? Yeah. So when I started consulting, it was actually during the second, the company where I actually got that first sales leadership role, that's when I started doing a little bit of consulting. And I wanted to consult and start a side hustle. And side hustle, we were not as popular then, and they weren't like a thing, which caused a little bit of friction with the job. But it ended up working out for the better in the long run. But I wanted to start because I was very entrepreneurial.

And I thought that entrepreneurship meant you had to build something from scratch. And I think that's what a lot of people feel. They're like, I got to build something. And I got to find a way entrepreneurship is sexy. And I look at, you know, the whatever, the Zuckerbergs and whatever other entrepreneur, you love and you're like, I want to be like that. And then I'm not a technical person. I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineer. So I'm like, what can I actually sell to the market? And it was the skills that I had accumulated over my years of sales and then years of marketing. So I think that

was what I thought entrepreneurship should be. And it was founding a company. And this was the only product that I knew how to sell, which was myself. And the reason why I started as a side hustle was, again, it was imposter syndrome. I didn't actually feel like I committed to trusting and betting on myself at that point, which actually, funny enough, it turned into a side hustle. I started it with two other partners. We killed that company after a while because it was very stressful and we weren't really great at consulting. We didn't have experience doing it and there's our first foray into this. We all came from companies to try and consult. But actually, the way that I approached it, I think I would recommend to everyone. So even though I didn't do it for the right reasons, because I was

very shy and nervous about starting something, I would recommend that if somebody wants to start something, they actually do as a side hustle, but for the right reasons. So have confidence in yourself, have faith in what you're building, but start it as a side hustle, and I'm a strong advocate for not quitting your job immediately. I'm not about the quit your job, have six months or 12 months of runway and go all in. I'm about you work your job, you give your hours to the person who's paying you, you don't bite the hand that feeds you, but with the amount of time that you have in a week, plus the amount of tools that we have access to now, there is zero excuse to not be able to

scale something, to start something, to find some semblance of product market fit to even, we can talk about buying companies, buy a company and test and see if you're good at that for very low prices, for smaller companies without having any technical background, finding a technical co-founder. But start something, find product market fit, find your first 50, 100, 150 customers, wait until you make the same salary or even double the salary that you're making at your job very similar to your story. I remember your story. And then you leave. And that's when you can take your side hustle and go full time. And you can build a company, like, let's think of a salary. Say 100K. You can totally build a side hustle to 200k

on part-time. Like, let's be real. Like, it's very doable, right? And now you're talking about we have AI. Shit, I didn't have AI. I couldn't copyright. I couldn't write all this shit with AI. I couldn't create graft with AI for my social for a side hustle brand. Now, the tools that we have are like incredible in terms of the efficiency that we can be as human beings when creating stuff. So I would say start it as started as a part-time thing. Find ways to leverage your time, leverage resources, leverage. You can leverage Upwork for talent in different geographies. It's relatively cheap to help you scale out. You can leverage a whole bunch of different things, but then you're not risking at all. You're not cutting off your main source of income. And when

you're not stressed financially, you make much smarter decisions. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky, because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsor jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones,

according to Indeed data worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring you so much easier now. In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need.

Hello, young improfitters. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, but I won't lie to you. In those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on a cliff with no parachute. I'm not really good at that kind of stuff. I'm really good at marketing, sales, growing a business, offers, but I had so many questions and zero idea where to find the answers when it came to starting an official business. I would, I wish I had known about Northwest Registered Agent back when I was starting Yap Media. And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to know what Northwest Registered Agent is. They've been helping small business owners launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years.

They literally make life easy for entrepreneurs. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And guys, it can get really complicated. but Northwest Registered Agent just makes it all easy and breaks it down for you. So when you want more for your business, more privacy, more guidance, more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go.

Don't wait and protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yapfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwestregisteredagent.com slash Yapfrey. This is like incredible advice. And I agree with all of it. I always say if you're going to start a new business, do it as a side hustle. And like you said, we're in 2023 now.

Everybody, first of all, is working from home. So talk about all the time we say with no commute now. For me, that was a big game changer. As soon as I had no commute, I started yet media. We blew up. But I did it as a side hustle. Also cut out TV and unproductive time. We're all wasting our time, mindless TV, social media.

Those are hours that you can work towards your job. dream. One thing that I want to touch on, and then I want to keep talking about side hustles, you mentioned that you thought there was only one way to be an entrepreneur, and I feel like there's more behind that. So what did you mean by that? Because at the time, I only trusted myself. So I didn't want to find a co-founder that was a technical co-founder because I didn't know how to read code. I didn't know how to, and now I know how to buy a business. You can buy cheap businesses on microacquire or biz buy sell or flippa, and you can scale those up, meaning that the core bones and the cornerstone and the foundation of the business has already been built, you buy it, and then you can

scale it up. So I think that entrepreneurship can have a variety of different meanings. I think that the version of entrepreneurship that I knew of was just commoditizing and productizing the skill set that I'd done my entire career, which is, by the way, not a bad thing, but it's just that was the only version that I knew. And the reason there was an issue with that, the reason there was an issue with consulting is because when you consult, you really trade your time for hours, in the company, right? It's not an efficient form of entrepreneurship to conduct as a side hustle. It's not a leverageable form of entrepreneurship. There's even different ways to consult that could be better. Like retainers are a great way. Even outsourcing work. If the work is a quality, you can

outsource work. But my version of entrepreneurship was trusting myself. So it was like, I'm a consultant. I can help you with your marketing campaign, your sales campaign. I can build out processes. I can train your sales reps, whatever. And I'm going to do that myself. So we made a lot of errors. That's why I meant we didn't know how to consult. We didn't know how to do it right. So we were like working our, well, actually, when I started, I was working a 40-hour week in an office plus X amount of hours on the weekend at night, finding clients, doing work, closing deals.

And then when I went full-time consulting, it was like 40 hours and we were actually consulting in a client's office. You can't mess around when you're in a client's office. Your perceived value goes way down when you just become part of their workforce. But they were paying us on a big monthly retainer. They wanted us in office. So like eight hours a day, I can't be working on other stuff for the consulting company. I can't be posting on social.

I can't be having calls with new potential clients. I'm on retainer. I'm in their physical office. So there's better ways to consult. That was just my version. Not a great version. Sucked. Don't do it.

If you're going to consult, you're going to be an agency, whatever it is. Follow what Hala's doing. She's killing it. She's not like growing that many gray hairs. So the point is it doesn't matter if you screw up your first version of entrepreneurship. There's lots of other versions you can try. and maybe like think outside the box when it comes to what you want to take to the market and how to do it in a scalable way.

Fun fact, I've never had a gray hair. I'm truly young and profiting. Good, damn straight. Let's go. In terms of side hustles and thinking about a lot of people are like, I don't know where to start. I get this question a lot because like you, I'm known for like building side hustles and that's how I came up. And people always like, well, I don't know what side hustle to start.

And my favorite answer is the one that you gave. Start off with your skills and talents. What you get paid for in your day job, you can then do as a service. But a lot of people feel like they don't have monetizable skills, which is a huge problem. But what would you say is a great way to decide what to do as your side hustle? What was your thinking process around that? First of all, I think everyone has monetizable skills. Straight up, everyone has monetizable skills.

Any business unit you work in, you can productize that. And if you are the evangelist and CEO and founder of a brand that does that thing, that means that you can create trust with your clients because you've done that thing for X amount of years. But it also means that you should find ways to scale yourself. So that means you should hire talent underneath you that can fulfill some of the work that is up to par with your standard and your quality. So I think that everybody, like I mean, you're a CFO, you're an accountant, you have a

monetizable skill. You're a marketer as a generalist or as somebody who's more specific in social media or SEO. I mean, you have a monetizable skill. I think it's just how you take it to market and how you commoditize that skill. So meaning that you use tools like Upwork and Fiverr and TopTal to find great deal flow without busting your ass for new clients. You nurture those relationships and eventually they morph into something bigger, right? And again, I sort of alluded to it before.

Like you can do the work yourself day one. but after a while you're building a side hustle should turn into a business, not just a job. So you leverage. Leverage as much as you can. So you leverage other people's time. You leverage. I'll give you a very clear example.

I have a copywriter that works for me. He's a Canadian and he took the initiative to go overseas to the Philippines and the Philippines is a great place for talent. Incredible talent in the Philippines. Very smart. Very educated. Like I've had better people from the Philippines than I found in North America sometimes.

Same. So they kill it. And he went after university, and he went to the Philippines because he cared, he was a copyrighter. He cared so much about his quality of work that he knew that if he just maybe hired online, maybe it wouldn't be as good. So he went to the Philippines and he interviewed people face to face and he built relationships with great writers in the Philippines.

So obviously there's a little bit of an arbitrage of cost there. He saves a little bit of money. And then he can still deliver high quality work to a North American market. and he can charge North American prices, and he can pay great Philippine wages as well. So, I mean, he set up a great copywriting business for himself, leveraging tools that he has access to and making sure that even though he's the point man for the company, he's the CEO and the founder of the copywriting company, nobody expects him to be writing every single blog post.

That's not how these companies work. And he doesn't pretend that that's how he's creating his company. So he built this more or less in like his spare time, to be quite honest. and he built systems and processes that allow a team in the Philippines to fulfill client work without him overseeing everything. He has checks and balances on every single piece that's written. So there's like a rigorous quality test that has to pass. And there's multiple writers and they actually share work between each other and they sort of like

critique each other's work. So the end, the output is exceptional. It's a relatively cheap, low cost business considering they are outsourced talent. And he's built this as a side hustle. and you could turn it into a full-time thing. And by the way, just so you know, like this is like sort of what I did with Yap. Most of my talent was in the Philippines,

and then it was like labor cost arbitrage with my personal brand being able to charge super high and all my training that I gave my team, right? And then it started being more of a global company. So really interesting. Let's talk about product market fits. So as you know, I launched a new LinkedIn master class, and I teach content strategies and sales strategies.

And some people are crushing with what I taught. but I'm finding that a lot of people who don't have product market fit, my stuff doesn't work for them because if you don't have a product that the market wants, no matter what I teach you for sales, it's not going to work. And so I feel really bad for these people because they're so stuck on their idea, but they have no product market fit. And like I said, unless they change their offer, there's not much that I can do for them.

So how can you tell us something as product market fit or doesn't? And what's your advice in terms of ensuring that if you start something, you do it with product market fit? the easiest answer I can give you is when you have product market fit, you know. And I know that's like the most ambiguous answer, but, and I'll go into details. But the point is, when you have product market fit, like, you can't keep up with demand. That is true product market fit. And we're not just talking okay product market fit.

Like, like exceptional product market fit means you can't keep up with orders. You have trouble with fulfilling. So things are selling out all the time. Your servers are like over bandwidth. You're having to spin up new AWS. instances all the time. You have like so much money coming into the bank account that it is like blowing your mind. Like it is insane. Like true product market fit. Founder of Byte. I had her on. She launched a product and I think CNBC featured a TikTok clip. I'm going to get my numbers

wrong because I did not prep for this. But anyway, I'll give you the context of the story and it'll sort of like paint a picture of what product market fit could be. Founder of Byte, which is like a sustainable company that gives you like tooth care. like oral care and tooth products and whatnot, she put out a viral TikTok clip and that TikTok click got picked up by CNBC, like went viral, like to the tunes of millions of people watching it. And she went from zero orders to like 500K in orders in like 24 hours or something wild like that. Oh my God. And she could not fulfill. Like she had to like reach out to all these people saying like, stick with me. It's going to be like three months so I can fulfill because I'm operating out of my

garage or, you know, my living room, whatever. So that is when you find product market fit. You cannot keep up, which is a great problem to have. Not a lot of people experience that level of product market fit. Usually what you should do is you should test the market to see if there's any demand. And what people do is they usually think of this product and they love it so much and they love it themselves and they take it to the market and no one else cares. That's a big problem with a lot of entrepreneurs. So how do you guarantee that there's product market fit? Well, the most likely chance of having product market fit for an entrepreneur is the entrepreneur that actually has the highest success rate. It's somebody that's actually worked in an industry for a long period of time.

They identify a problem in that industry and then they launch a product or a piece of tech or a solution against the problem they've witnessed for the past 20 plus years. That is usually who has the highest success rate. It's not the Stanford grad who's building some new innovative tech. So that is a good way to launch a product. Other ways that people have successfully launched products, he takes something that's working in one country and they transplant it and launch it into it. to another country. These are simple ideas, but it does work. A way to find out if this product market fit before spending a lot of money, you could do what Buffer did. So Buffer is like the, you know, the social media posting tool, obviously a tech platform and it would have cost

a significant amount to make an MVP. Their MVP was a landing page with a form asking people if there was any need for this product and how much it paid for it. And that was it. There was no actual product built. And they ran ads against that form. So they ran ads to that landing page. and then people signed up. And they got several thousand people saying, yes, we want that. Yes, this is how much I actually would pay for this product on a monthly basis. Now you found out that there's 5,000 people that would pay for your product at 20 bucks a month. There's a good semblance of product market fit. You've at least tested the market. If you spend 500 bucks on ads and you won't even get 500 people or even 100 people signing up on a form saying they'd use your product,

you don't have product market fit. So you should test your messaging, test the audience that you're targeting, test the pain point that you're trying to solve for until you can at least prove it out with just ad spend and a form. And that's a great first step. If more people did that, then you'd have less unsuccessful entrepreneurs. And you can also test it against marketplaces that already exist. The point is, like Upwork, if you're a service-based business, Upwork, TopTal, five, or whatever. You can put yourself out there, see if people start to buy your product, see if you're differentiated enough. So what you don't want to do is you don't want to spend a lot of money in taking a product to market before you test some level of product market fit.

And this is a, I mean, there's more complex ways of testing if you have resources, but without resources. It's a great way to test. Yeah. I really hope you guys take heed to Scott's advice. This was like excellent advice. And this is the number one mistake that I see people do. They think there's some problem that doesn't really exist and they're investing in products. And I have a friend who's like starting a clothing line and she and she's like investing all this money. And I'm like, do you have product market fit? Have you tested it? Yeah.

But, you know, everybody needs to learn on their own, right? So let's talk about your podcast, Scott. You've got a very successful podcast, success story. You are considered a competitor. Me and you are head to head in the podcast categories. I know. We collab over competition. All abundance.

Exactly. But technically, we are like, you know, we're very similar in terms of our numbers and who we interview and all that kind of stuff. So I really respect you as a podcaster. There's only 250. of us that are really monetizing. Is that true? Yeah, there's only 250 podcasts that are like monetizing at our level, like able to go through all these agencies that we work through. That's why I see all the same ads on every podcast. Yeah, there's not that many of us who figured it out and you really have.

So let's start here. What was the genesis of your podcast? How long ago did you start it? And why did you decide to start it? So I started it just over four years now. So about four and a half years. Oh my God, we started at the same time. Yeah, I think we started at the same time. I started at the same time. I started it because after the first side hustle failed, I wanted to build something. I wanted to build. I had no idea what I wanted to build. I wanted to build something. I didn't know what I wanted to build. I'm like, listen, I have to scratch my entrepreneurial itch and I have to build something that's going to be with me for a period of time and it's going to pay off dividends in the future. But I'm not starting another product because I was CRO at a tech company,

at a SaaS company. That's the one that was actually acquired more recently. I didn't want to build something on the side, but I knew that if I built a personal brand, because I'm looking at the Gary V's of the world, I could leverage that for whatever I wanted in the future. So if I had eyeballs looking at me, I could launch products against that. I could launch against that audience in that community. I could monetize that community in the future. All the things that literally, quite literally, like Gary V speaks about why you should build a personal brand. I was a student of that. And I was like, okay, so how do I build a personal brand around business content? And, you know, you think about all the different mediums. And before we went live, I was talking about how I started

on LinkedIn and I was creating a whole bunch of some good, some like a little bit tacky business content, but it really resonated, built a good audience. But a lot of people were doing it, and I wanted to differentiate and I wanted to expand across different platforms because I knew that eventually, not day one, but eventually you do have to go against different platforms. I'm a big proponent of start with what works for you, but after a while, you know you're going to expand it. How do you expand content? Well, you don't want to always have to create original for every single platform. Sometimes it works, but ultimately you want a more scalable content strategy that can act as like your pillar content, right? And video, audio, podcasting made the most sense for the type

a content I wanted to put out. I was a no name. Nobody knew me. Nobody gave a shit about my opinion, but I did have a good network and I knew that if I could bring other people's opinions on, they would start to care about me eventually. And I'd also get to have good conversation with great people and it's a networking play too. So that was the inception. And it was like, I need a pillar piece of content that I can continuously make and predictably use to disseminate across all my social again and again and again and again. And I want to do that forever and I want to build a brand around that. And then I want to get a 10 million eyeballs, 20 million eyeballs looking at me. And then I can launch products. I can do like what Gary is

doing and, you know, launch Vayner Media and Vayner Sports and empathy wines and all the other stuff that he does, like V friends and all the like all the random stuff just because you have the audience there. And to have that platform is huge. That was sort of the thought process. And this podcasting made the most sense because it created content. And as long as the interview that we're having is good, all the derivatives of that interview are also going to be good. And everywhere they're going to go, they're going to provide value. And they're not going to be perfectly optimized for every platform, but they're going to be like 80 to 90% of the way there. And it's a scalable strategy. Yeah, having a personal brand is such a power move in today's age. It just really, really moves

the needle. What I'm curious about with your journey, because it sounds like you did, you started podcasts and LinkedIn around the same time. You're also huge on Instagram and YouTube. So which one sort of blew up first? And then did you leverage any of those platforms to then grow the other ones? Yeah. So LinkedIn blew up first. Same. LinkedIn was always first.

YouTube and Instagram were somewhat simultaneous because I was very heavy on video from day one. So I was putting out almost for like since I started between three to six pieces of video content per day in various forms. It's just been like an onslaught of video content, which fortunately has played into recent algorithms. because part of my podcast process is you do the long form content, and then I break it down into every single question that I ask is a separate video clip. And every single question that I ask is uploaded on a separate playlist outside of my full podcast on YouTube, which is before YouTube had their own SEO for videos. Every single title was SEOed.

So every single smaller clip was also getting ranked on Google. And then I would also take all the small. smaller clips and then break them into like the 30 to 60 second sound bites. And then I'd use that for TikTok and Instagram and even Snapchat Spotlight and YouTube shorts. So I was always video heavy. And the reason why I was so bullish on video, it sort of ties to a thesis that I have around YouTube as a whole. Like I mean, I'm very bullish on video. I believe that there's a lot of psychological reasons why YouTubers that have large audiences on YouTube have large audiences everywhere. but if you'll notice like a big Instagram influencer, it's siloed on Instagram or a big TikTok

or a big Twitter. It's all siloed. YouTube, I think it's a combination of video plus trust, plus the length of time that somebody consumes your content. The rapport is just insane that you build with the audience. And I've always like, if I build a big YouTube audience, I'm going to be big everywhere else. So far, the thesis has actually worked out.

I think it's a trust factor. I think the audience trust score, whatever that is on YouTube, is the highest of any social. Yeah. It's really interesting because I'm always of this school of thought that you start on one platform, you dominate it. I started like LinkedIn podcast first. I dominated that. And then I moved on to Instagram and YouTube. But you're, you're somebody who seems to like have kind of blown up on all channels pretty simultaneously. I think it has to do with maybe your, that content approach that you were just talking about how you have a pillar form content, then you sort of distributed it out. Did you kind of focus somewhere first, or was it really just all like Omni Channel?

It was omnichannel. Like I was, okay, so candidly, my strategy is nuts. Like, I put a lot of time into this. So I don't recommend this as like a very doable strategy. I would actually recommend that you kill one channel first and you leverage that. Literally exactly what you're saying. Like day one, I would do, because I didn't have a team, it wasn't monetized. So I was cutting every single video myself.

And I was, I would download every piece of tech and every app that I could ever use to find ways. to take all those long-form clips and turn them into, like, every podcast is probably like 50 to 60 different pieces of content. I was doing that myself. I was posting myself and I was scheduling myself and I was using any type of automation tool, like a if this, then that tool. So if it goes up on YouTube, then it goes up on Instagram and it goes up on LinkedIn. And I was just like between the editing and then trying to build like backend systems,

I was probably the equivalent of like a five-person team when I started this because I go so deep on the actual tech. So I don't actually recommend this as a scalable strategy, but I do believe that if you have volume and you maintain volume with a little bit of marketing know-how across platforms for a period of time, you will start to gain a community and an audience. And then once you have that community and audience, you really do have like a higher conversion rate because when somebody discovers you on one platform and they go, you've seen this before. Somebody has a million followers on YouTube and like 20 followers on Twitter. Or like a actually better example. Somebody has a million followers on Instagram and 20 followers on Twitter. Like you're like, who are they really? Like,

obviously they're not that impressive. Maybe they've really dominated on one platform, but I don't know if they're really for me or there's a hesitation to convert into like a fan. Whereas if you have that social proof, which is incredibly hard to build, but once you have that social proof, conversion across all your channels increases, it is about showing up everywhere as much as possible. And I would even say that it's better to not be on a platform than to show up half ass. I'm not a fan of showing up half-ass. I'll give you another example who's a complete 180 of me, like Seth Godin. Seth Godin doesn't do social, but he doesn't pretend to do social. Like he doesn't try to do Twitter. I think he auto-tweets his blogs, but he's like, he does Instagram and he does

his blog, Seth's dot blog. And that's it. And he doesn't do social, which is fine, because he's not trying to do something that he doesn't want to do, but a lot of people are trying to do things they don't want to do and they tweet like once a week and it looks really bad. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hey young improfitters. As an entrepreneur, I know firsthand that getting a huge expense off your books is the best possible feeling. It gives you peace of mind and it lets you focus on the big picture and invest in other things that move your business forward. Now imagine if you got free business internet for life. You never had to pay for business internet again. How good would that feel?

Well, now you don't even have to imagine because spectrum business is doing exactly that. They get it that if you aren't connected, you can't make transactions, you can't move your business They support all types of businesses, from restaurants to dry cleaners to content creators like me and everybody in between. They offer things like internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone TV, and mobile services. Now, for my business-owning friends out there, I want you to listen up. If you want reliable internet connection with no contracts and no added fees, Spectrum is now offering free business internet advantage forever when you simply add four or more mobile lines.

This isn't just a deal. It's a smart way to cut your monthly overhead and stay connected. Yeah, bam, you should definitely take advantage of this offer. It's free business internet forever. Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Young and profitors.

I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character flaw that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout, it's really about the type of work that you're doing.

Some work gives you energy and some work simply drains you. So it's key to understand your six types of working genius. The working genius assessment or the six types of working genius framework was created by Patrick Lensione and he is a business influencer and author. And the working genius framework helps you identify. what you're actually built for and the work that you're not. Now, let me tell you a story. Before I uncovered my working genius, which is galvanizing and invention, so I like to rally

people and I like to invent new things, I used to be really shameful and had a lot of guilt around the fact that I didn't like enablement, which is one of my working frustrations. So I actually don't like to support people one-on-one. I don't like it when people slow me down. I don't like handholding. I like to move fast, invent, rally people, inspire. But what I do need to do is ensure that somebody else can. fill the enablement role, which I do have K on my team. So Working Genius helps you

uncover these genius gaps, helps you work better with your team, helps you reduce friction, helps you collaborate better, understand why people are the way that they are. It's helped me restructure my team, put people in the spots that they're going to really excel, and it's also helped me in hiring. Working Genius is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with this model. So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code profiting, go to working genius.com. Again, that's working genius.com. Stop guessing, start working in your genius. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged.

And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments were set up super easily. And none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses

and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting.

Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Yeah. So talking about your content strategy really quick, I was on your YouTube channel. I was so impressed and I still see that you do like chocolate. up 20 different videos. So does that still work? Every question, I guess, is its own little video

on YouTube. Does it still work? Because if so, I'm going to have my team do it right away for me. Well, it works to an extent. Like, is it worth the time? I mean, I have a process built in, so it's still, it's not that much of a lift. Each video gets a few subscribers. So say that, like, because you can track, like how many subscribers come from every single video you post on YouTube. So say your main podcast gets you, I don't know, just make up a number, 100 subscribers. And each small video gets you 10 subscribers. So fine. If I put out 20 different videos, great. I've made 300 subscribers off of that content. So yeah, compounded over 300 plus episodes and four years. Yes, it does make a difference. On one individual, it will probably not. And I would even say what I'm

thinking about doing right now is actually putting more editing value into the more valuable clips and maybe remove some of like the fluff. I look for clues. I have people that I watch on every single social platform and I just emulate what they do. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. So I look at the biggest podcasters and I see how they do it. And now I see what people are doing. No one's really ever adopted my strategy to be quite honest. But then again, like if you do everything exactly the way someone else has done it, then you'll probably have the same results and maybe take you a little longer. But the podcasters that I see now, they take like five or six clips from an episode they really, really like, and then they're going to do like custom thumbnails and they'll really put a lot of

effort into like the description and the tags. So I actually think I'm going to move that way and just gauge like is, is that a better way to go? That's what I do for YouTube. Yeah. So something that I just want to call out, Scott, is that I think one of the reasons why you're so successful and you're part of this like 250 podcaster club that I was just talking about is because you did get your hands dirty and you did figure out how to audio edit and video edit and do it yourself and figure out a CEO. And I feel like no matter what niche you are, whether you're a podcast or not, when you really really go deep on whatever you're trying to succeed on and you do even the lowest level stuff related to that task, you really learn everything and become like a true expert and thought

leader. So I want to commend you for getting your hands dirty and learning how to do all that stuff. Thank you. It's the only way to do it. That's not just with content. That's with everything. Like literally everything that, I mean, I've hired sales teams. I've built out sales teams, built out marketing teams. There isn't a single, oh, but I mean, like other things that you do for the podcast to grow it. I mean, there's a whole like building newsletter, building email list, SEOing. Like, there's a whole lot of stuff to market a show. But like everything that I've done, it's a marketing activity that I do for my podcast or a business. I've done it myself. So I figured out, like I coded my own website. You go to Scott DeClari.com. I coded that myself on a

weekend, which is wild. I shouldn't be doing that. But I do this stuff to learn and then I'll try and outsource it. Like SEOing blogs. I'll look for how to SEO, how to get backlinks. I look for all the tools and the tech. I figure this stuff out myself. And then I'll train somebody or I'll hire somebody, but at least I'll know if they're telling me they're good. I'll be able to gauge if they're full of it or not. Yeah, totally. So let's talk about monetizing your podcast. So when you first started your podcast, were you using it as like a lead gen tool for your consulting or how were you first monetizing your audio and YouTube channel? So this is wild. I was not using it for anything. I was literally not using it for anything because I was not when I was building it from scratch.

Again, like not all of my advice is the smartest and quickest path to revenue is just, it's just my journey. So again, hindsight's 2020, if somebody's going to build something and put a lot of time into it and they need to make money off of that thing, there's different things that I would suggest. This is my journey. I had the long vision, long game and play in mind, right? So when I started it, I was still working as a CRO of a tech company. I had no need to use it for any monetization. I mean, it would be nice, but I didn't want to sell a course. I have an aversion of selling courses, not because I was working as a CRO.

I was like, I hate scamy gurus that sell shitty courses. I can't stand it. It's like grosses me out. And like this whole world of course selling, and this is actually, I want to premise with this, there are very good courses. I mean, what you actually have put together in this is not because you're You asked me to say this, your course is exceptional with LinkedIn. There's really good content out there.

But there's a lot of bullshit out there too. Totally. And I think that you took a long time to create a course. You could have created a course. Five years before I put out anything like that. Your exact same thing as me. I'm like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this right. And I didn't have the mental bandwidth between editing all these damn videos and everything day one to put a course together.

It's going to be half ass. It's not going to be worth it. Which is funny because, candidly, with my experience, it probably would have been okay. But that's besides the point, I couldn't do it. So I was like, I'm building this for the future. I'm going to maintain it. I have a firm belief that if you do anything for 10 years, it's going to be successful. I believe that wholeheartedly.

So I'm like, I just got to keep doing it. I got to trust the process. I got to learn for my mistakes. I got to test. I got to find feedback loops in the things that I do and keep improving. But if I keep doing it, it's going to turn into something. Then you turn on the ads. And that's pretty much.

And turning on the ads was like people were reaching out to me to get to advertise on my show. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. That's a cool opportunity. And then when you go down that rabbit hole, I never wanted to sell ads myself. So I'm like, then you start to work with brokers. Then I'm like, okay, how do I leverage my time? I'm not going to be reaching out to people saying, hey, come and advertise them. So I'll go on advertise cast and gumball and all these different types of ad brokers when I was first getting started.

And that was it. I never gated content. I never really wanted to do subscriptions, never sold a product, always focused on building a bigger audience. So my call to action was always sign up for my newsletter, subscribe to whatever, go check out my other social. That was my only call to action because I knew that long term, the audience would have more value for me than me putting my name on a crappy product that I wasn't really happy with. And then I was trying to sell it and I was all stressed about it. I'm like, listen, it's going to damage her reputation, build an audience, sell later. Totally. I took me, I think three years before I had

sponsors on the podcast. I just focused on growing my audience. And by the way, there's something to say about just pure intentions. Because I have a feeling that you just wanted to help people. You were also probably really curious for interviewing all. You wanted the opportunity to interview really smart people. And so you came out there with really pure intentions of being of service. And I'm sure that attracted an audience to your show. I hope that intention came through. And you're right.

I was making good enough money at the time that I didn't really care for another couple, like a few bucks from gating content. And funny enough, my passion has actually always been teaching. And I think that's why I wasn't so aggressive about, monetizing because I enjoyed it. Like, I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, my first, my first, first job when I was like 14 or young, young, young, was teaching tennis.

It's like, I love, I love teaching. I love, like, when you start working with somebody, like, they're clearly struggling, clearly, like, drowning in this portion of their life. And then you, like, can just take the things that you've known and you experienced and the insights that you have and, like, small little tweaks. And all of a sudden, like, they're awake again. They're seeing, like, life for the first time. they're seeing like their business for the first time.

They're seeing this big problem and then now it's gone away. Like it's such a great feeling, candidly. It sounds so silly, but it's like I've never not had a good experience teaching. And I feel like podcasting is a way to teach. I feel like when I step up on stage, it's a way to teach. I mean, I literally like, you want to talk about like just doing all the things myself and trying new things and testing new things. I started a second podcast where I was just teaching business.

That's definitely not monetized. I just started it like on a whim, like just want to. I'm like just wanted to try and start something new. Try a different formats. I'm like, okay, I want to test a different format. Why not let me teach? Business, whatever. And then I started a second job.

So the point is, yes, if you do have passion and what you're doing, it's actually very easy to sustain it for a long enough period of time until money starts to find you. Really, really great advice, Scott. I want to talk about snagging guests, and this is actually a really great transition into sales, because you have an incredible lineup of guests, and I heard on an interview that you just leverage your sales skills to get your guests. You take the same approach that you use in sales.

And so let's talk about sales, cold outreach, and getting people to actually open emails. What is your best advice? So before you even send an email, you have to find their contact information, which is actually quite easy. I mean, you can use a tool called contact out. You can use Rocket Mail.

You can use any of these tools to find email addresses. Like very simple. Like if you're struggling with that, it's not an issue. You can get anybody's email, and like literally anybody's email in the world, very simply. After that, subject line is the first thing they see. So in my subject line, way back when I would actually just leverage like the five past guests that I had or the three past guests that I had and put that in the subject line of the email, like the most high profile

guests. That was really it. Then I would say like podcast invite and that created a little bit of social proof or enough to get somebody interested in to actually open the email because I had like Guy Kawasaki, Anthony Scaramucci and Grant Cardone and I think the first like 20. episodes, which is like, by the way, don't recommend because I was scared shitless and I was not a good interviewer. I mean, I don't think they really mind it, but I was like very stress. So like, it is what it is. So I had them very early on. And it was like if I, if I, I can't remember who I got first, but say I got Guy Kawasaki first. I think I got Guy first, not first interview, but first like bigger name because he was launching a podcast at the same time, which is actually,

I can speak about why that's a strategy now. At the time, I didn't think about it as a strategy. but that's a strategy that you can use. If they're launching a book, you can use that as well. Is there a meaningful event in that guest's life that makes them want to come on your show? Really smart. But Guy was launching a podcast. He's like, sure, whatever. I'll come on your show.

And then I got Guy Kawasaki. And then I put his name in the email to get Anthony Scaramucci. Then I put Anthony and Guy to get, like, Grant. Whatever the order was, doesn't matter. But that's how you get an open email. And then once they open the email, you're reinforcing, of course, the reach that you have and what you're going to do for them as a podcast host, you're setting clear expectations as to what they can expect.

But then if you don't have a large reach, and the social proof isn't enough, I went above and beyond. So I was saying, I'll edit some social clips for you. I'll send them over to you, fully edited. This is what they're going to look like. You can post them on their social. They can just be a view. They don't even need to include me.

I can just create great social content for you out of the podcast. I mean, for them, it's what, 30 minutes, 45 minutes of their time and they're getting free, high quality social content that maybe Grant has a good social team. A lot of people don't have great social teams. You look at a lot of these people, unless you're Grant or Gary V or a few other people that really focus on it. Anthony Scaramucci, I love the guy, but his social is not like crazy, right? So you just leverage what they want, what they have access. What's the problem that they're solving for? Very traditional sales 101. So if they're getting on a podcast, it means they want

exposure. Exposure means they're also kind of focused on social. It means you can also tell them the email list you have access to. means you should also reinforce who else has been on there, social proof, and what you're going to speak about, talk about the things that they're trying to actually announce into the world, podcast book, whatever, speak about the reach of the show, like all the things that are solving for the problem that that person is experiencing in their life. And it doesn't matter who that person is, there's a problem they're solving for. Always, always, always. So that's Sales 101 mixed in with getting podcast guests. It's like incredible advice. This is a podcast prince, guys. You have the podcast

Princess, the podcast friends, he knows all about how to snag guests. Like, all those tips were really good. I'm going to tell my team today, put our best guests in the subject line. It's really good. You can actually do a step more and actually, because you want the email to stand out, don't even put them in this, you can put them in the subject line, but create like a little graphic and put your best guests in like the signature, in your signature in the email. So they can, they can see the people. Because a lot of people may not recognize a name, but if they see the person, be like, oh, I recognize that person. If they're famous, that recognition, it'll make that email stand out. And they'll be like, wow, this person, I mean, for you, you've had like up to Matthew McConaughey. Like, that's a very recognizable face.

So you put that person in the signature saying this and 15 other people were on my show and you put little graphics. That's going to get a high response rate. Guys, I really enjoy having my friends on the show. The chemistry is always on point. And honestly, one of my goals for 2023 is to have an in-pery-reeperned. in studio so that every single conversation has the same type of energy that I have with my friends. I can't wait for that moment, yeah, bam. Here I am putting it out to the universe. Please hear my prayers.

Part one of this episode was really fun because Scott and I had a lot to relate on and his come-up story was inspiring and had lots of lessons for us to learn from him at the same time. I consider Scott to be one of my peers and even my competitors in the podcasting space. And one of my secrets to success is is proactively collaborating with my competitors. Instead of feeling envy or jealousy of somebody who's also rocking it in my industry, I always, and I mean always, try to think of ways that I can meet with them,

work with them, and win together with them instead. So for example, Scott is now in my podcast network, the Yap Media Network, and I'm helping him to grow and monetize his podcast. It's a win-win for both of us. Scott and I got along so well that we ended up talking for well over an hour, so we split up this episode into two parts.

Stay tuned for part two of my interview with Scott Clary coming out next week, where we touch on everything sales, which is Scott's main expertise. We go over how to establish a buyer persona, pricing strategies, and his favorite ways to use psychology and sales. Selling is one of my all-time favorite topics, and this conversation is loaded with takeaways. It is not going to disappoint. I can't wait for all of you to hear it.

Again, part two with Scott Clary is out next week, and I'll see you then. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast. If you listened learned and profited from this episode, share it with your friends and family. I love it when you guys share this podcast by word of mouth. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. That is the number one way to thank us here at Young and Profiting. If you like watching your podcast videos, you can always find us on YouTube.

All of our shows are uploaded to YouTube. And you can also find me on Instagram at Gap With Hala or LinkedIn. by searching my name, it's Hala Taha. And if you want to reach out to me directly via DM, the best way to do it is on Instagram. Again, my handle is at Yap with Hala. My LinkedIn gets pretty flooded with DMs. It's hard for me to keep track,

but if you reach out to me on Instagram, I will definitely respond. Big shout out to my amazing rock star YAP team. Thank you for all your hard work and helping us to put out this show. This is your host, Halitaha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.