[00:00:00] Hala Taha: What's going on, Young and Profiters? Registration for my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass is now live. You guys may know me as the podcast princess, but I'm also the LinkedIn queen. I'm one of the top influencers on the LinkedIn platform, and I've totally hacked the algorithm I know at the back of my hand.

[00:00:16] And I also run YAP Media, which is an award-winning social media agency and the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. I've created Influencers over and over again the last three years. Now you can learn all the strategies that I use for me and my clients and leverage them for yourself. In my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, which has raving reviews, we go over how to develop your personal brand.

[00:00:38] I'm gonna teach you how to target your audience. How to define your audience. How to create a visual compelling brand that actually attracts people and leverages psychology of design in everything that you do. I'm gonna teach you copywriting hacks, the LinkedIn algorithm engagement hacks, and how to convert your following into sales, because at the end of the day, we all want ROI from what we're doing [00:01:00] on LinkedIn.

[00:01:00] If your target audience is on LinkedIn, you need to take my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So whether you're a corporate professional, who wants more job security, a solopreneur, freelancer, or entrepreneur, who wants to grow their small business. You need to understand how to grow your following on LinkedIn, and then how to convert that following into sales.

[00:01:18] I was able to leverage LinkedIn to grow my company to 5 million in revenue with zero paid ads, and I can teach you those same tricks in my LinkedIn Masterclass. Again, my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass registration is now open. If you wanna save your seat, go to yapmedia.io/course and use Code Masterclass for 25% off.

[00:01:37] Again, that's YAP media.io/course, and use Code Masterclass for 25% off and I'll see you in class.

[00:01:59] Scott D. Clary: One of the [00:02:00] 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.

[00:02:18] Action is always the difference. When you have product market fit, 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, 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.

[00:02:38] A way to find out if this product market fit before spending a lot of money is.

[00:02:46] Hala Taha: What is up Young and Profiters. You are listening to YAP, Young and Profiting podcast, where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily [00:03:00] life. I'm your host, Hala Taha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn and profit.

[00:03:18] Scott, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. 

[00:03:21] Scott D. Clary: Thank you for having me on Hala, I appreciate it. 

[00:03:23] Hala Taha: I am super psyched. I love having my friends on the show. So today we're joined by my friend and podcasting Pierce 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.

[00:03:38] He's also the CEO of OnMi 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.

[00:03:58] And in today's episode, we're gonna unpack [00:04:00] Scott's career story and cover topics like side hustling, how to grow a monetizeable podcast. And lastly, we'll go deep on sales strategies.

[00:04:08] So Scott, you were born in Canada. You're the son of an ex-police man turned intelligence officer and a university lab manager.

[00:04:15] 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? 

[00:04:29] Scott D. Clary: It was such a gradual process and everything.

[00:04:33] Nothing 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. Dad was law enforcement, grandpa, uncle, everyone was law enforcement. And then they migrated to different, my dad was ceases, so Canadian, CIA for back, for lack of a better reference.

[00:04:52] And I wanted something safe and secure and that's what I knew. That's what my parents knew. And nothing wrong with that. [00:05:00] 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've done, I did very well at that.

[00:05:10] I was really good. I kept moving up market. I was. I killed it in smb. Then mid-market, then 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, sells 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.

[00:05:37] I didn't know. 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 started turning and then I'm like, okay, so if I want to have this big payout, because I'm no longer working in, a big even tech company. I'm not working in government, not working in big tech.

[00:05:56] I don't have a pension, I don't have security. I have to [00:06:00] have X million dollars in the bank when I retire because nobody's gonna be paying me till 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.

[00:06:13] Pensions to show what a pension could be like. I'll give you my dad's, he's making 70%, I think of his five best years of salary till the day he dies. 

[00:06:22] Hala Taha: Wow. 

[00:06:22] Scott D. Clary: 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.

[00:06:33] So that means like guaranteed a hundred k plus for a lot of people that does not exist. So when you stop working outside of the investments 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.

[00:06:48] 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's 2020. So I started working in the world of startups. I did [00:07:00] consulting, trading, literally my time for small pieces of equity in funny enough startups that hadn't raised money yet and didn't have any money to pay me.

[00:07:08] 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.

[00:07:26] It wasn't like I'm gonna retire money, but it was good money. And that's 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. 

[00:07:38] Hala Taha: 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.

[00:07:45] 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 [00:08:00] leadership role at that company.

[00:08:01] 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. 

[00:08:12] Scott D. Clary: So the director that hired me at that smaller telco, he took a job at Salesforce almost immediately after he hired me.

[00:08:19] 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 closed large deals as an individual contributor. I'd 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.

[00:08:35] There was people that had 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 just gone for things. Put together a presentation, pitched it to the director that was exiting and the CEO and got the position.

[00:08:52] 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. [00:09:00] A 1, 3, 5, 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 in-depth proposal as to why I should have that job.

[00:09:09] And that initiative was enough to actually get that job because again, like hiring's 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 listen, I'm throwing my hat into the ring.

[00:09:27] 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. You'll hear the sayings like, if you don't ask, you won't get.

[00:09:45] 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 and building something from scratch, and that's a whole other conversation. We could talk about side hustles and everything. But if they just took more risk in, I want [00:10:00] to, in my job, I want to push myself and I want to push my manager to allow me to accelerate in my career.

[00:10:07] 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. 

[00:10:20] Hala Taha: Totally. 

[00:10:21] It just goes to show you like you've gotta shoot your shot.

[00:10:24] 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 ask for, what I didn't actually deserve, just because I put my hat in the ring, like you mentioned. 

[00:10:36] Scott D. Clary: Ask for what you want. 

[00:10:37] Hala Taha: Just shoot your shot. So let's talk about imposter syndrome for a minute.

[00:10:41] 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 they would never put their hat in a ring if they feel underqualified because they just have such significant imposter [00:11:00] syndrome.

[00:11:00] 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 imposter syndrome? 

[00:11:09] Scott D. Clary: So one of the most important things to know about imposter syndrome is that everybody feels it at whatever stage they're at and I truly mean everyone.

[00:11:16] 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 60 K a year, but it's very true. So everybody feels uncomfortable in certain situations like they don't belong. And this is why, 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.

[00:11:46] 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 US. There's always times, when people will not feel like they fit in a room and that scales up and it [00:12:00] never ends. So know that first, that's very important.

[00:12:02] There's nothing about what you're feeling. Which is weird or offer different. The difference is whether or not you take 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.

[00:12:27] 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. If you look at studies, like if people are applying for a job and a man has six of 10 requirements, he'll still apply where a woman will not apply unless she has nine of 10 or 10 of 10.

[00:12:43] 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 reduce the stress, something that I've found is reverse engineering the path to get to where I want to be.

[00:12:58] So I've taken [00:13:00] 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 wanna take my company. It could be who I'd like to bring on my podcast similar to you.

[00:13:16] 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.

[00:13:34] Two things will happen when you do that. You'll understand the path you have to take and 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.

[00:13:49] Hala Taha: That is incredible advice. I learned something from Safi Bahcall years ago that I always remembered, and he says, imposter syndrome is really a language issue. You [00:14:00] don't understand the key terms that people are using in a room or the breath, the acronyms that people are using. And a lot of the times it's a matter of let's say you feel like an imposter in a new industry or a new company.

[00:14:11] 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. 

[00:14:23] Scott D. Clary: I've never heard that definition, but that makes a ton of sense.

[00:14:25] 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. 

[00:14:30] Hala Taha: 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 telco company throughout college, like right after high school, is that right?

[00:14:42] So you've had 20 years of sales experience or so, right? 

[00:14:46] Scott D. Clary: Enough!

[00:14:46] Hala Taha: Maybe not quite that. I don't know how old we 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?[00:15:00] 

[00:15:00] Scott D. Clary: That's a tough one. That's a loaded question. 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 it was like, I'm gonna kill it.

[00:15:15] When I got into sales, I knew that it made a lot of money and it was like that, or bartending, and those were 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 into sales. I was always very technical as a kid and I doubled down on loving the product that I was selling.

[00:15:31] So I just loved the product. I loved 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 that somebody is really apathetic.

[00:15:50] So if you don't believe in what you're selling, I found this to be a common thread through 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 [00:16:00] 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.

[00:16:04] And other things help, 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. 

[00:16:18] Hala Taha: I love that.

[00:16:18] 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 hustle. So you started out doing consulting on the side. What made you realize that you wanted to start a side hustle or that you were, there was a market out there for you to have a side hustle?

[00:16:41] Scott D. Clary: 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 started side hustle and side hustles were not as popular then, and they weren't like a thing which caused a little bit of friction with the job.

[00:16:59] But, It ended up [00:17:00] working out for the better in the long run. But I wanted to start it cause 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 gotta build something and I gotta find a way entrepreneurship is sexy. 

[00:17:15] And I look at, the whatever the Zuckerberg 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.

[00:17:33] 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.

[00:17:53] I started it with two other partners. We killed that company after a while cause it was very stressful. And we weren't really great at consulting. We didn't have [00:18:00] experience doing it. And it was 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.

[00:18:08] So even though I didn't do it for the right reasons, cuz 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.

[00:18:23] 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 runaway 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.

[00:18:50] 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 [00:19:00] something, find product market fit. Find your first 50, a hundred, 150 customers. Wait until you make the same salary or even double the salary that you're making at your job.

[00:19:09] 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 a hundred K. You can totally build a side hustle to 200 K on part-time. Let's be real. Like it's very doable, right?

[00:19:23] And now you're talking about we have AI. I didn't have AI, I couldn't copyright. I couldn't write all this shit with AI. I couldn't create grafted 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.

[00:19:38] So I would say start it 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.

[00:19:53] You're not cutting off your main source of income. And when you're not stressed financially. You make much smarter decisions. 

[00:19:59] Hala Taha: [00:20:00] Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. 

[00:20:03] What's up Young and Profiters? This episode of YAP is sponsored by lMNT.

[00:20:09] YAP fam. Let's talk about electrolytes for a minute.

[00:20:12] Electrolyte deficiency or imbalances can cause things like headaches, cramps, fatigue, and weakness. Everybody needs electrolytes, especially those of us that are on a low carb diet, keto diet, especially those of us that are extremely active. Chances are we have an electrolyte deficiency and we're not getting enough sodium, and that's really important.

[00:20:31] In terms of staying hydrated, everybody needs electrolytes and LMNT is the electrolyte of today. It's not like the old school sports strengths that we grew up on. There's no sugar, there's no artificial ingredients, no coloring, just all of the good stuff. There's even no gluten. And the hard truth is that most electrolyte products, that we have in the grocery store, the deli, they're really bad for you.

[00:20:53] But LMNT is not. It's all the good stuff. Without the sugar is your enemy, not salt. And a [00:21:00] lot of people get that wrong. In fact, I recently learned that a growing body of research reveals that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. So our beliefs around sodium and salt need to be reevaluated.

[00:21:14] And also, not to mention, this stuff tastes great. My favorite flavor is watermelon salt, and I also like raspberry, and it comes in these really cool packets. I stick them in my purse, I take them everywhere. I travel with them, I take 'em to the gym and you put 'em in 32 ounces of water or 16 ounces of water depending on how salty and fruity you like your drinks.

[00:21:35] And my favorite way to use almond is actually right before I work out, and I find that it gives me like a really big energy boost. And then I have less cramping and things after I work out. I haven't had a leg cramp or anything after working out. In a really long time, ever since I started on LMNT.

[00:21:50] And then another side benefit is it also cures hangover. So I actually love to take LMNT if I want drinking. I always make sure that I have LMNT the next day to make sure that I [00:22:00] knock that hangover right outta my system. So I highly recommend you guys check out LMNT. If you guys have an active life, if you are on a keto diet, low-carb diet, intermittent fasting element is definitely gonna be a great product for you.

[00:22:13] And you guys can receive a free LMNT sample pack with any order, when you order through DrinkLMNT.com/YAP. And that's DrinkLMNT.com/YAP. Try totally risk free if you don't like it, share it with one of your salty friends, give it to them instead. And LMNT will give you your money right back.

[00:22:30] So there's literally no risk. Just give it a try. I think you're gonna love it. Go to DrinkLMNT.com/YAP. Again, that's DrinkLMNT.com/YAP and let's get salty Young and Profiters.

[00:22:41] You hear that sound Young and Profiters? You should probably know that sound by now, but in case you don't, in case you're a new listener, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify.

[00:22:50] Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform, revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. You can use Shopify for any business, whether you're selling homemade jewelry, [00:23:00] cookbooks, or masterclass like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business.

[00:23:08] Shopify is packed with all these industry leading tools and integrations to ignite your growth. They have everything from on-demand printing to accounting, to even chatbots. They have everything you need to totally revolutionize your business. And running a business means that you need to get all the insights you need wherever you are.

[00:23:24] Shopify has a dashboard that you can log into and you can see all your analytics. You can manage orders, shipping payments from anywhere, no matter where you are. Shopify covers every sales channel as well, so whether it's an in-person POS system and you're selling something in person or an e-commerce platform. They even sell across social media like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.

[00:23:45] And thanks to 24/7 help and an extensive business library course. Shopify is there to support your success every step of the way. So I actually personally used Shopify. I love Shopify. I've been using it for over six months now, and I launched my LinkedIn Secrets [00:24:00] Masterclass using the Shopify platform, and it was super easy to use.

[00:24:04] It took up just a couple days to turn out my website. We have a backend and a really nice looking front end. It was very easy to do, and we've already made $200,000 and I credit that to Shopify because Shopify enables me to focus on my business, to focus on making sure I have the best course possible to focus on my marketing plan to focus on generating leads for my funnel.

[00:24:25] I just focus on the marketing and getting people to the Shopify site, and Shopify does halt the rest. I don't have to worry about tracking anything. I don't have to worry about fulfillment. I don't have to worry about conversion data and analytics. Shopify does that all for me, and by the way, they've got plug and play websites that make it look really nice and really easy to set up too.

[00:24:45] So I've really loved the fact that it just took me a couple days to set up and I was good to go and we haven't really looked back. Shopify lets me focus on what I'm good at and Shopify does what it's good at and damn Shopify is really good at what it does. Shopify [00:25:00] and logging onto Shopify is always the highlight of my day.

[00:25:03] I'm really not lying when I say this. I mean it a hundred percent. I'm addicted to going onto the Shopify platform because it's just so much fun. It's really easy to use. I can go in there. They have got like a chat bot. I can answer any messages. If somebody chatted us, I can go see who signed up, how many orders I got.

[00:25:19] I can go see our conversion rates, how we're doing. I can see where the leads are coming from and what marketing channels need more help. I can also see a global view of where everybody's logged in from. All the potential customers, where they're logging in from, what part of the world, what stage of the buying journey they're in.

[00:25:36] And I can actually see when people are about to check out. It is such a dopamine rush to see four or five people checking out at one time. And Shopify is so cool because if people don't end up closing out and not purchasing and they just abandon their cart. Shopify will actually notify you and suggest that you send an abandoned cart email.

[00:25:54] Shopify gives you all these little tools and tricks to close more sales and they're really by your side. I love [00:26:00] Shopify. If you wanna start your small business, if you wanna start the side hustle, this is your sign. It is your turn to get serious about selling and try Shopify today. This is possibility powered by Shopify.

[00:26:12] Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting. And that's all lowercase, Young and Profiters. Go to shopify.com/profiting, all lowercase to take your business to the next level. Again, that's shopify.com/profiting.

[00:26:31] This is like incredible advice and I agree with all of it. I always say if you're gonna 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 save with no commute. Now, for me, that was the big game changer.

[00:26:46] 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. In unproductive time, we're all wasting our time. Mindless tv, social media, those are hours that you can work towards your dream. One [00:27:00] thing that I wanna touch on and then I wanna keep talking about side hustles.

[00:27:03] 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? 

[00:27:09] Scott D. Clary: Because at the time I only trusted myself, so I didn't wanna find a co-founder that was a technical co-founder. Cause I didn't know how to read code. I didn't know how to, and now I know how to buy a business.

[00:27:19] You can buy cheap businesses on micro acquire or biz buy, sell or flip a 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.

[00:27:36] I think that the version of entrepreneurship, that I knew of was just commoditizing and productizing the skillset 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 cuz when you consult. You really trade your time for hours invested in the company, right?

[00:27:57] It's not an efficient form of [00:28:00] 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 could outsource work. But my version of entrepreneurship is trusting myself.

[00:28:14] 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 gonna 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?

[00:28:27] So we were like working our 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.

[00:28:43] 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 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 [00:29:00] clients.

[00:29:00] 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 gonna consult, you're gonna 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.

[00:29:19] There's lots of other versions you can try and maybe think outside the box, when it comes to what you wanna take to the market and how to do it in a scalable way. 

[00:29:27] Hala Taha: Fun fact. I've never had a gray hair. I'm truly Young and Profiting. 

[00:29:32] Scott D. Clary: Good. Damn straight. Let's go. 

[00:29:35] Hala Taha: In terms of side hustles and thinking about, a lot of people are like, I don't know where to start.

[00:29:40] I get this question a lot because. Like you, I'm known for building side hustles and that's how I came up. And people are always like 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.

[00:29:57] But a lot of people feel like they don't have monetizable [00:30:00] 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? 

[00:30:10] Scott D. Clary: First of all, I think everyone has monetizable skills. Straight up. Everyone has monetizable skills.

[00:30:14] 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.

[00:30:32] 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 you're a cfo, you're an accountant, you have a monetizable skill. You're a marketer in as a generalist or as somebody who's more specific in social media or seo.

[00:30:49] 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 Fiber and [00:31:00] Toptal to find great deal flow without busting your ass for new clients. You nurture those relationships and eventually they morph into something bigger.

[00:31:06] And again, I 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.

[00:31:22] 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.

[00:31:38] Hala Taha: Same. 

[00:31:39] Scott D. Clary: So they kill it. And he went after university and he went to the Philippines because he cared. He was a copywriter. 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 re relationships with great writers in the [00:32:00] Philippines.

[00:32:00] 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 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.

[00:32:24] That's not how these companies work. And he doesn't pretend that's how he's creating this 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.

[00:32:40] 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 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 [00:33:00] side hustle and you could turn it into a full-time thing.

[00:33:02] Hala Taha: And by the way, just so you know, like this is like 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.

[00:33:17] So really interesting. Let's talk about product market fit. So as I launched a new LinkedIn masterclass 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 gonna work.

[00:33:40] 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?

[00:33:59] Scott D. Clary: The easiest [00:34:00] answer I can give you is when you have product market fit. 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 exceptional product market fit means, you can't keep up with orders. You have trouble with fulfilling.

[00:34:20] 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 so much money coming into the bank account that is like blowing your mind like it is insane. Like true product market fit, founder of Bite, I had her on, she launched the product and I think she CNBC featured a TikTok clip.

[00:34:44] I'm gonna get my numbers wrong cause I did not prep for this. But anyway, I'll give you the context of the story and it'll paint a picture of what product market fit could be. Founder of Bite, which is a sustainable company that gives you like tooth care, like oral care and tooth products and whatnot.

[00:34:57] She put out a viral TikTok clip and that TikTok clip [00:35:00] 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 500k in orders in 24 hours or something wild like that. 

[00:35:11] Hala Taha: Oh my God. 

[00:35:11] Scott D. Clary: And she could not fulfill she had to reach out to all these people saying stick with me.

[00:35:16] It's gonna be like three months till I can fulfill because I'm operating out of my garage or 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, see if there's any demand.

[00:35:33] 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? The most likely chance of having product market fit for an entrepreneur is the entrepreneur that actually has the highest success rate, is somebody that's actually worked in an industry for a long period of time.

[00:35:55] They identify a problem in that industry, and then they launch a product or a piece of tech or a [00:36:00] 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.

[00:36:12] Other ways that people have successfully launched products, they take something that's working in one country and they transplant it and launch it into 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.

[00:36:25] So Buffer is like the, the social media posting tool, obviously a tech platform and it would've 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 they'd paid for it, and that was it. There was no actual product built and they ran ads against that form.

[00:36:44] So they ran ads to that landing page and then people signed up and I, 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.

[00:36:59] There's a [00:37:00] 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 a hundred 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.

[00:37:22] And that's a great first step. If people, 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, Fiverr or whatever, you can put yourself out there, see if people start to buy your product, see if you're differentiated enough.

[00:37:38] So what you don't wanna do is you don't wanna spend a lot of money in taking a product to market before you test some level of product market fit. And this is a, there's more complex ways of testing if you have resources, but without resources, it's a great way to test. 

[00:37:51] Hala Taha: I really hope you guys take heed to Scott's advice.

[00:37:53] 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 [00:38:00] really exist, and they're investing in products. And I have a friend who's like starting a clothing line and she's investing all this money and I'm like, do you have product market fit?

[00:38:08] Have you tested it? Everybody needs to learn on their own. 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. 

[00:38:21] Scott D. Clary: Competition.

[00:38:21] Hala Taha: I know we collab over a competition all abundance.

[00:38:24] Exactly. But technically we are like, 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 and is that true? There's only 250 podcasts that are like monetizing at our level, like able to go through all these agencies that we work through.

[00:38:45] Scott D. Clary: That's why I see all the same ads on every podcast. 

[00:38:47] Hala Taha: 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? 

[00:38:57] Scott D. Clary: So I started it just over four years [00:39:00] now. So before and a half years.

[00:39:01] Hala Taha: Oh my God. We started at the same time. 

[00:39:03] Scott D. Clary: I think we 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 want 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 gonna be with me for a period of time and it's going to pay off dividends in the future.

[00:39:21] 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 wanna build something on the side, but I knew that if I built a personal brand, cause I'm looking at the Gary Vs of the world. I could leverage that for whatever I wanted in the future.

[00:39:36] 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 liter, like 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?

[00:39:53] And, 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, [00:40:00] some like a little bit tacky business content, but it really resonated. Built a good audience. But a lot of people were doing it.

[00:40:04] 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 gonna expand it. How do you expand content?

[00:40:18] 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 of content I wanted to put out. I was a noname.

[00:40:33] 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 network networking play too. So that was the inception, and it was like, I need a pillar piece of content.

[00:40:49] That I can continuously make and predictably use to disseminate across all my social again and again and again. And I wanna do that forever. And I wanna build a brand around that. And then I want to get a [00:41:00] 10 million eyeballs, 20 million, a hundred million eyeballs looking at me. And then I can launch products.

[00:41:04] I can do what Gary is doing in, launch Vayner Media and Vayner Sports and Empathy Wines and all the other stuff that he does, Friends and like all the random stuff. Just cuz you have the audience there. And to have that platform is huge. That was the thought process.

[00:41:16] 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 gonna be good. And everywhere they're gonna go, they're gonna provide value and they're not gonna be perfectly optimized for every platform, but they're gonna be like 80 to 90% of the way there.

[00:41:34] And it's a scalable strategy. 

[00:41:36] Hala Taha: Having a personal brand is such a power move in today's age. It just really moves the needle. What I'm curious about with your journey, because it sounds like you did, you started podcasts on LinkedIn around the same time, you're also huge on Instagram and YouTube.

[00:41:50] So which one blew up first, and then did you leverage any of those platforms to then grow the other ones? 

[00:41:56] Scott D. Clary: So LinkedIn blew up first. Same, [00:42:00] LinkedIn was always first. YouTube and Instagram were somewhat simultaneous cuz I was very heavy on video from day one. So I was putting out almost for since I started between three to six pieces of video content per day in various forms.

[00:42:14] It's just been like an onslaught of video content, which fortunately has played into recent algorithms because I, part of my podcast processes, you do the longform content. And then I break it down into every single question that I ask. It's 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 S, before YouTube had their own SEO for videos, it, every single title was SEO.

[00:42:41] So every single smaller clip was also getting ranked on Google. And then I would also take. All the smaller clips and then break them into the 30 to 62nd 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.

[00:42:58] And the reason why I was so bullish on video, [00:43:00] it ties to a thesis that I have around YouTube as a whole. 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.

[00:43:19] 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 if I build a big YouTube audience. I'm gonna be big everywhere else. It, so far the thesis has actually worked out.

[00:43:36] I think it's a trust factor. I think the audience trust score, whatever that is on YouTube, is the highest of any social. 

[00:43:42] Hala Taha: It's really interesting because I'm always of the 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.

[00:43:54] But you are, you're somebody who seems to like have blown up on all channels pretty simultaneously. I think it has to do with maybe [00:44:00] your, that content approach that you were just talking about, how you have a pillar form content, then you distribute it out. Did you focus somewhere first or was it really just all like omnichannel?

[00:44:09] Scott D. Clary: 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 is 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, cause I didn't have a team.

[00:44:25] 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 every podcast is probably like 50 to 60 different pieces of content. And I was doing that myself and I was posting myself and I was scheduling myself and I was using any type of automation tool, like an if this, then that tool.

[00:44:47] 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 a five person team when I started this. Cuz, I [00:45:00] go so deep on the actual text. 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.

[00:45:12] You will start to gain a community and an audience. And then once you have that community and audience, you really do have a higher conversion rate. Cuz 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 t on Twitter.

[00:45:26] Or like a actually better example, somebody has a million followers on Instagram and 20 followers on Twitter. Like you're like what? Who are they really? 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 a fan.

[00:45:41] 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 big fan of showing up half-assed.

[00:45:58] I'll give you another example who's a [00:46:00] 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 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 cuz he's not trying to do something that he doesn't want to do.

[00:46:18] But a lot of people are trying to do things they don't wanna do and they tweet like once a week and it looks really bad. 

[00:46:23] Hala Taha: We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.

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[00:48:11] Hala Taha: Talking about your content strategy really quick. I was on your YouTube channel and I was so impressed and I still see that you do chop up 20 different videos for, 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 gonna have my team do it right away for me.

[00:48:28] Scott D. Clary: It works to an extent. Is it worth the time? 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 as 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, a hundred subscribers and each small video gets you 10 subscribers.

[00:48:47] So fine. If I put out 20 different videos, great. I've made 300 subscribers off of that content. So compounded over 300 plus episodes and four years. Yes, it does make a difference [00:49:00] 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.

[00:49:08] Like the more valuable clips and maybe remove some of the fluff. I look for clues. Like 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.

[00:49:22] No one's really ever adopting my strategy to be quite honest, but what I see, like the large, but then again, 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 five or six clips from an episode they really and then they're gonna do like custom thumbnails and they'll really put a lot of effort into the description and the tags.

[00:49:43] So I actually think I'm gonna move that way and just like gauge is that a better way to go? 

[00:49:47] Hala Taha: That's what I do for YouTube. Yeah. So something that I just wanna 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.

[00:49:58] Is because you [00:50:00] did get your hands dirty and you did figure out how to audio edit and video edit and do it yourself and figure out SEO and I feel like, no matter what niche you are, whether you're a podcaster or not. When you 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.

[00:50:22] So I wanna commend you for getting your hands dirty and learning how to do all that stuff. 

[00:50:27] Scott D. Clary: 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've hired sales teams, I've built out sales teams, built out marketing teams.

[00:50:37] There isn't a single. But other things that you do for the podcast to grow it. 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.

[00:50:51] I've done it myself. So I've figured out, like I coded my own website. You go to scott dcla.com. I coded that myself on a weekend, which is wild. I shouldn't be doing that. But [00:51:00] 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 back links.

[00:51:07] 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.

[00:51:18] Hala Taha: 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?

[00:51:26] Or how were you first monetizing your audio and YouTube channel? 

[00:51:31] Scott D. Clary: This is wild. I was not using it for anything. I was literally not using it for anything. Cause 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. It's just my journey.

[00:51:43] So again, hindsight's 2020. If somebody's gonna 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 in play in mind, right? So when I started it, I was still working as CRO of a tech company.

[00:51:59] I had [00:52:00] no need to use it for any monetization. It would be nice, but I didn't wanna sell a course. I have an aversion of selling courses, not because I was working as a CRO. I was like, I hate scammy gurus that sells shitty courses. I can't stand it. It's grosses me out. And like this whole world, of course selling, and this is actually, I want to pre with this.

[00:52:21] There are very good courses. What you actually have put together, and this is not, cuz 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. 

[00:52:30] Hala Taha: Totally. 

[00:52:32] Scott D. Clary: And I think that you took a long time to create a course.

[00:52:34] You could have created a course.

[00:52:35] Hala Taha: Five years before I put out anything like that. 

[00:52:38] Scott D. Clary: Your exact same thing as me. I'm like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this right. And I did not have the mental bandwidth between editing all these damn videos and everything. Day one to put a course together. It's gonna be half-assed.

[00:52:48] It's not gonna be worth it. Which is funny because candidly with my experience. It probably would've 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 gonna maintain it. I have a firm belief that if you do anything for 10 years. It's gonna be [00:53:00] successful.

[00:53:00] I believe that like wholeheartedly. So I'm like, I just gotta keep doing it. I gotta keep doing it. I gotta trust the process. I gotta learn five mistakes. I gotta test, I gotta find feedback loops in the things that I do and keep improving. But if I keep doing it, it's gonna turn into something.

[00:53:11] 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 advertise on my show, and I'm like that's 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.

[00:53:25] Then I'm like, okay, how do I leverage my time? I'm not gonna be reaching out to people saying, Hey, come and advertise 'em. 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.

[00:53:41] 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.

[00:53:58] And then I was trying to sell it and I [00:54:00] was all stressed about it. I'm like, listen, gonna damage our reputation, build an audience, sell later. 

[00:54:05] Hala Taha: Totally. It 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.

[00:54:17] 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. 

[00:54:30] Scott D. Clary: I hope that intention came through. And you're right I had no, 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.

[00:54:39] 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. My first job when I was like 14 or young, was teaching tennis. It's I love teaching.

[00:54:52] I love like when you start working with somebody, like they're clearly struggling, clearly like drowning in this portion of [00:55:00] 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.

[00:55:09] They're seeing like life for the first time. They're seeing like the, their business for the first time. They're seeing this big problem and then now it's gone away. Like it's such 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.

[00:55:24] I feel like when I step up on stage, it's a way to teach. I literally you wanna 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 wanted to try and start something new, try a different format.

[00:55:41] So I'm like, okay, I wanna test a different format. Why not let me teach business, whatever. And then I started a second. So the point is, yes, if you do have passion in 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. 

[00:55:55] Hala Taha: Really great advice. Scott. I wanna talk about snagging guests. And this is actually a really great [00:56:00] transition into sales because you have an incredible lineup of guests and I heard on an interview that you just leveraged your sales skills to get your guests. You take the same approach that you use on sales. And so let's talk about sales cold outreach and getting people to actually open emails.

[00:56:16] What is your best advice? 

[00:56:18] Scott D. Clary: So before you even send an email, you have to find their contact information, which is actually quite easy. You can use a tool called contact out. You can use rocket mail. You can use like any of these tools to find email address. It's like very simple. Like it's, if you're struggling with that, it's not an issue.

[00:56:33] 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.

[00:56:52] That was really it. Then I would say podcast invite, and that created a little bit of social proof or enough to get somebody interested in, to [00:57:00] actually open the email because I had Guy Kawasaki, Anthony Scaramucci and Grant Cardone, and I think the first like 20 episodes. Which is by the way, don't recommend because I was scared shitless and I was not a good interviewer.

[00:57:11] I don't think they really mind minded, but I was like very stressed. So like it is what it's, so I had them very early on and it was like if 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.

[00:57:29] 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 sure, whatever.

[00:57:43] Go, 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 Grant, whatever the order was. Doesn't matter. But that's how you got them to open the email. And then once they open the email. You're reinforcing, of course the reach that you have and what you're gonna do for [00:58:00] them as a podcast host.

[00:58:01] You're setting like 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 gonna look like. You can post 'em on their social, they can just be a view.

[00:58:16] They don't even need to include me. I can just create great social content for you outta the podcast. 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.

[00:58:30] You look at a lot of these people, unless you're Grant or Gary V or a few other like 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, what's the problem that they're solving for very traditional sales 101.

[00:58:45] So if they're getting on a podcast, it means they want exposure. Exposure means they're also focused on social. It means you can also tell them the email list you have access to. It means you should also reinforce who else has been on there, social proof and what you're gonna speak about. Talk about the things that they're trying to actually [00:59:00] announce into the world.

[00:59:00] Podcast, book, whatever. Speak about the reach of the show. Like all the things that are solving for the problem 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. So that's Sales 101 mixed in with getting podcasts.

[00:59:16] Hala Taha: It's like incredible advice. This is a podcast Prince guys. You have the podcast princess, the podcast prince. He knows all about how to snag guests. Like all those tips were really good. I'm gonna tell my team today, put our best guest in the subject line. 

[00:59:29] It's really good. 

[00:59:30] Scott D. Clary: You can actually do a step more, and actually, because you want the email to stand out. Don't even put them, you can put them in the subject line, but ca create like a little graphic and put your best guess in like the signature, in your signature in the email so they can see the people.

[00:59:44] Cuz a lot of people may not recognize a name, but if they see the person, they'll be like, 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 [01:00:00] recognizable face.

[01:00:01] So you put that person in the signature saying this and 15 other people were on my show and put little graphics that's gonna get a high response rate.

[01:00:12] Hala Taha: 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-person 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. YAP fam, here I am putting it out to the universe.

[01:00:31] 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 proactively collaborating with my competitors instead of feeling envy or jealousy of somebody who's also rocking it.

[01:00:58] In my industry, [01:01:00] I always, and 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.

[01:01:22] 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 in sales. Selling is one of my all-time favorite topics, and this conversation is loaded with takeaways.

[01:01:41] It is not gonna 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. 

[01:01:48] Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast. If you listen, 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.

[01:01:59] And if you [01:02:00] enjoyed this episode, be sure to drop us a five star review on Apple Podcast 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 @yapwithhala or LinkedIn by searching my name.

[01:02:19] It's Hala Taha, and if you wanna reach out to me directly via DM, the best way to do it is on Instagram. Again, my handle is @yapwithhala. My LinkedIn gets pretty flooded with DM's ,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 rockstar YAP team.

[01:02:37] Thank you for all your hard work in helping us to put out this show. This is your host, Hala Taha, a k a, the podcast Princess signing off.[01:03:00] 

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