Transcript

The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership

From Home Service Expert · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 6 min · 14,043 words · 204 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership", an episode of Home Service Expert published October 27, 2025 (1 h 6 min, about 14,043 words). It mentions 45 people, works and ideas, including A1, obsession, BoxyCharm, Success Story, Success Story.

What this episode is about

Scott Clary emphasizes the importance of building a personal brand and cultivating an audience as essential strategies for modern entrepreneurs. Drawing from his experience in tech and entrepreneurship, he discusses how creating a media presence through various platforms has opened doors to new opportunities, helped him scale businesses, and fostered valuable connections in the industry.

Key takeaways

  • Building a brand? Echo your younger self's questions—content resonates best when it's personal.
  • TikTok's flashy, but podcast listeners are the loyalists—depth over dance trends wins lasting success.
  • Short-lived fame or slow-burn success? Create content you love, and patience breeds triumph.
  • Don't chase trends; cultivate trust. An audience that trusts you sticks around for the long haul.
  • Smart move: Future-proofing beats short-sighted gains; play the long game in content creation.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Brendan Kane, Scott D. Clary, Success Story, Success Story
  2. – 20:00: School of Hard Knocks, Brendan Kane, Diary of a SEO, Elvis Dan
  3. – 30:00: Ace Hardware, feed drop, Frank Kern, lookalike audience
  4. – 40:00: Blue Fishing, Giftoology, Handwritten, Reebok
  5. – 50:00: obsession, 3 ft from gold, delegating to elevate, Joe Foster
  6. – 1:00:00: Built to Sell
  7. – 1:05:43: ego kills everything, obsession, Play Bigger, Salesforce.com

Notable quotes from "The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership"

  • Cool dude. Our guest today is the host of a global top ranked podcast called Success Story where he interviewed some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs, executives…
    about Success Story · at
  • Yeah. Dan Martell said to me, actually Brennan Kane, too, everybody's you're really lucky because most people grow this massive following and they try to figure out what they want to do with it after they've.
    about Brendan Kane · at
  • I told you I was like he walks up to the car and asks oh a school of hard knocks.
    about School of Hard Knocks · at
  • Now, I'm not I'm not an expert. I'm not his company has a company called Hookpoint. research tons of data points, but from what I've learned from him and probably spoke about this on your show as well, you can find a type of content that.
    about Hookpoint · at
  • Justin Welsh kills it on LinkedIn. Sahil Bloom, he kills it on Twitter. Dan Co, I love his writing style. Hermoszi always kills it on Instagram. for long form podcast, I.
    about Justin Welsh · at
  • Even at a such a large scale, like Richard Branson has a bigger following than Virgin, Elon Musk has a bigger following than any of his companies. Like Mark Cuban, has a bigger following than any of his investment portfolio companies,.
    about Virgin · at
  • They don't have to prove anything anymore. Well, I was with Perry Belchure, Ryan Dice, Frank Kern.
    about Frank Kern · at
  • Yes. You can tell you can tell you can really tell who's real or not because of the level of obsession that they have with the thing that they do. So if you ask anybody about…
    about obsession · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Brendan Kane — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Scott D. Clary — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Today I got Scott Clary. Got to catch us catch up with him last night for dinner.
  • Justin Welsh — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Sahil Bloom — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Justin Welsh kills it on LinkedIn. Sahil Bloom, he kills it on Twitter. Dan Co, I love his writing style. Hermoszi always kills it on Instagram. for long form podcast, I study Diary of a CEO with Steven.
  • Elvis Dan — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Justin Welsh kills it on LinkedIn. Sahil Bloom, he kills it on Twitter. Dan Co, I love his writing style. Hermoszi always kills it on Instagram. for long form podcast, I study Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. Modern Wisdom with Chris.
  • Frank Kern — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Ryan Dice — Person · 1 mention · first at
    They don't have to prove anything anymore. Well, I was with Perry Belchure, Ryan Dice, Frank Kern.
  • Steve Sims — Person · 1 mention · first at
    You did this ring a bell. John Rulen or Steve Sims? John Giftoology.
  • Joe Foster — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Non-stop. And it doesn't matter doesn't matter what business it is. You go speak to you know Joe Foster who's the founder of Reeboki. you'd speak to him about like shoes and…
  • Yseph Martin — Person · 1 mention · first at
    About shoes, but he would just talk about them non-stop. Another good friend of mine is Yseph Martin. He was a founder of Boxy Charm. He sold it for 500 million to Ipsy.
  • Kardashians — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Yako Willing — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Whatever it is, doesn't matter what they have to learn, doesn't matter who they have to speak to. It's all on them. Yako Willing speaks about ownership all the time. Ownership agency, same thing.
  • Guy Kawasaki — Person · 1 mention
  • John Ruhlin — Person · 1 mention
  • John Warrillow — Person · 1 mention
  • Perry Belcher — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

  • Success Story — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    Cool dude. Our guest today is the host of a global top ranked podcast called Success Story where he interviewed some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs, executives…
  • Diary of a SEO — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Hermoszi always kills it on Instagram. for long form podcast, I study Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. I have a person that I study per platform and.
  • Modern Wisdom — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Instagram. for long form podcast, I study Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. I have a person that I study per platform and I study people that are always learning,.
  • Giftoology — Book · 1 mention · first at
    You did this ring a bell. John Rulen or Steve Sims? John Giftoology.
  • Blue Fishing — Book · 1 mention · first at
    And Steve Sims wrote Blue Fishing.
  • Built to Sell — Book · 1 mention · first at
    If you're not building a business to sell, there's a great book by John Warlo, Built to Sell. If you're not building it to sell, it's never run perfectly. You if I said you got…
  • Play Bigger — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Play bigger. Play big. I've read like all the go-tos, the atomic habits of the world, but play bigger is one of my favorites because it speaks about creating something where nothing.

Companies & orgs

  • A1 — Company · 11 mentions
  • BoxyCharm — Company · 3 mentions
  • Success Story — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Hookpoint — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Virgin — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Ace Hardware — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Don't know. He goes, Who's the CEO of Lowe's? And they were just bringing, Who's the CEO of Ace Hardware? They were trying to be home service kind of.
  • Handwritten — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Please. I'll tell you one thing. Now, it won't automate the gifts. but there is a company called Handwritten.
  • Simply Noted — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah, I invested in a company called Simply Noted. Same thing.
  • Reebok — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Know, you just mentioned some. I've had co-founder of Netflix, founder of Reebok, household name brands, right?
  • Salesforce.com — Company · 1 mention · first at
    About creating something where nothing has existed before. It speaks about Mark Beni off creating Salesforce.com when the idea of cloud didn't exist.
  • EXP — Company · 1 mention
  • Ipsy — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • obsession — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
  • School of Hard Knocks — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • R&D (Rip off and duplicate) — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Business and why? And have you guys analyzed it? And then just I call it R&D. Rip off and duplicate.
  • lookalike audience — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    So, you're saying like a lookalike audience and you could pay for the ad to pop up in front of the right people.
  • feed drop — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    My I would say the best growth that I've had that is not just organic is when there's something called a feed drop. So what that means, you take a full episode from your show…
  • success is freedom — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Success is freedom. Success is not just making more money. All the people on my show have made some amount of money.
  • work-life integration — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Again you know they say like there's no such thing as work life balance there's work life integration when you have the right friends and the right spouse the right partner…
  • delegating to elevate — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Eventually you hit that point where there are but that's when you're delegating to elevate you know but that's also a good point. So there's many ways to make money in this…
  • 3 ft from gold — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Company that treats them like [ __ ] I agree. one of the things I thought about real quick is 3 ft from gold. And if you stick in it long enough, you're right near the end zone.
  • ego kills everything — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Good thing. But again, what this idea of ego, I've been thinking about it a lot. Ego kills everything.

Full transcript with timestamps

Today I got Scott Clary. Got to catch us catch up with him last night for dinner. Cool dude. Our guest today is the host of a global top ranked podcast called Success Story where he interviewed some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs, executives, and media personalities. Scott is also an entrepreneur and inventor who has built and scaled multiple businesses, advised Fortune 500 companies, and now shares his own business insights on Instagram and YouTube to millions worldwide. tell the audience a little bit about you, brother.

Well, you got a good you got a good little introduction going. Um, so my background is in tech. That's where I started. I've always loved it. I've always loved working on stuff that was sort of bleeding edge. Um, and at one point in my career, this is sort of what's led to what I do right now with the podcast. I realized that, um, I have to futureproof myself as an entrepreneur. Um, and I started a podcast really because at the time I was building a company. Um, it was acquired at the end of COVID and uh, I didn't know what I wanted to do after. So, I was a student of the Gary Ves of the world and I realized that if I want to do anything, it's easier when you have an audience already. So, I started building that audience and that's one of the most valuable assets I think anybody could ever build. I mean, this is what you're doing what you're doing with your show. But, I've started that now and

built the audience, the podcast, the media brand, the newsletter, the Instagram, the socials for about six and a half years. And that's opened doors, led led to opportunities, led to me speaking on stage, working on a book right now, led to, you know, great uh relationships like uh like yourself and, you know, about a thousand other guests. So that's really been my life building, building brand.

I want to dive into a lot of people don't understand the power of building a personal brand and building followers and the right followers. We talked about this last night at dinner.

You know, what were someone getting started? Where would you start? I would say the easiest place to start for most people is to teach their younger self what they found useful in their career. So if you want to start creating content, say you have a business, your content should be what your younger self was trying to figure out when they got into that business. Also, if they have a customer, they should figure out what the customer is trying to solve for as well. But um it doesn't have to be much more complicated than that. Uh good content is educational. It's it's again teaching what you are trying to figure out or what your younger version of yourself is trying to figure out or what your customer is trying to figure out. Uh and then once you understand what your content is meant to accomplish, then you have to find a way to make it relevant for the platform that you want to create content on. I also think that for an

early creator, somebody who's just starting out, uh don't just jump on the platform that is the most relevant right now. Don't just jump on Tik Tok because you see somebody on Tik Tok. Don't just jump on a podcast cuz you love podcasts or you don't just jump on a newsletter because you found somebody who has a huge substack or newsletter audience or email list. To be successful as a creator, you have to stay in the game for a long period of time. like this isn't this is an idea that like you you know this because it's this is not just a creator idea. This is an entrepreneur idea. If you're going to build anything meaningful, there's no such thing as overnight success. You got to stay in the game for an unreasonable amount of time to win. Being a creator is no different. What that means is when you start as a creator, you should pick a platform that you actually enjoy creating content on. Because whatever

platform you pick, at one point you can make it successful. You can build an email list that drives leads to your business. Or if you don't have a business and you just want to be a creator, you can build an email list and you can monetize it through ads with advertisers. If you love creating short video, you do Tik Tok, you do reals, great. If you love chatting with somebody for an hour and a half, do a long form podcast. But whatever you do, enjoy it. Because the beauty of content is it compounds over time. You build an audience over time.

So, you're not going to get a short win, which means you got to stick with it. And you're only going to stick with it if you enjoy it. So, every creator that's just starting right there, every business owner that get wants to get into content, if you don't know where to start, start with what you actually enjoy because that's going to let you stick with it for the long term. And that's what's going to lead to you actually being successful on that platform. And that's why I started with podcasts cuz I enjoyed it.

Yeah. So, it's easy to do it for 10 years when you enjoy it, right? Yeah. You know what's interesting is most people don't make it past three months with a podcast. They they get busy. It gets and and so you're right. You got to pick the right.

But that's not what people do, right? They jump on the Oh, I'm going to create content. Let me figure out how to dance on TikTok.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Let me figure out bad followers anyway. That that's even besides Yes. So there's like a whole bunch of different nuances between platforms and which ones have high trust and low trust. That's a whole other conversation. I agree with you. Tik Tok is actually not a great platform because the people that follow you on Tik Tok for some reason they're they're not as loyal as if well not for some reason there's very specific reasons but on Tik Tok your follower base you can grow a big follower base and a follower count but they're not going to be as loyal as somebody that listens to an hour and a half podcast

right so also eventually you're gonna have to understand what kind of audience you're building on what platform once you expand past that first thing that you do but that's for not beginner creators. When you are a more advanced creator or you're a business owner that has resources that wants to show up everywhere and have podcast, newsletter, Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, all of it. Yes. Then you have to understand what platform attracts what kind of follower and what that means for your business. But you just mentioned like how to start off as a creator. Just pick one platform you love and just run with it.

What about this idea? This was about 7 years ago when I just started out in podcasting. And I interviewed a guy that helps people start podcasts. And he said, "What do you do for a living?" And I told him home service, you know, specifically garage. He said, "Who's your avatar? Who's one client that could give you $10 million a year? How do you get them on? How do you learn about them? How do you ask them questions, find out what they look for, be genuinely interested in them? Because if you could get clients like that and learn about their their brains and how they think

and continue to get people on all the time, you could actually use that to build your business. Correct. So that's a great point. When you first asked me how do you start as a creator and I said create content for your younger self, that's a slightly different strategy than if you are a business owner and you're starting to create content. So I guess the actual answer is figure out why you're creating content in the first place. If you are just creating content and you want to turn yourself into a personal brand, then creating content for your younger self is a great way to start. If you are a business owner and you know your avatar or your ideal customer profile and you can bring them on to interview them and not only do you get a chance to build rapport with them, which could then lead to them becoming an actual customer, you ask them questions that your top customers are asking and then that conversation turns

into great content that's going to be for all your marketing material, your socials. And of course, if you're talking to your main customer avatar, then all the content that you pull out of that is going to attract similar avatars, which means your content's aligned with your your customer. But it depends. Again, not everybody starts a podcast or content just to uh build a personal brand. Some people want to build use it for a business. It depends what your objectives are, right?

Yeah. Dan Martell said to me, actually Brennan Kane, too, everybody's like, you're really lucky because most people grow this massive following and they try to figure out what they want to do with it after they've

Yeah. So now they got all these followers and they're like, and then you you and I spoke about that last night. I I know who my clients are and actually it's not just one business. It's business owners, you know, we're probably going to start rolling companies up. So there there's a bunch of different audience. What what's weird about what I do now is I could go to like the Dairy Queen and and learn a little lesson there for some type of business cuz I'm involved with a lot of things, but A1's still my main business.

But I think that the main thing is is you got to stick to it. That's the best advice is if you're going to do it, don't quit. Don't expect in a year

I told you last night this gal I read about her or I might have seen a Instagram about her. She's like, "I only have 990 followers." And she makes 150 grand a year just selling to that loyal audience.

And we both get trapped in the idea of how many likes, how many shares, how did it grow?

And quantity is definitely doesn't always mean quality a thousand%. But this is why people chase vanity metrics because they they they their ego is driving their decision when it comes to their personal brand and their content. For most business owners, you're right, they have the luxury of having a product that they can actually sell. So why would you be building the biggest possible audience with the content that goes the most viral when that's not actually content that's going to attract the audience that's going to convert into leads, convert into customers. But I mean, humans are humans.

Yeah. And and they want the biggest audience. They want the most following. But and this is actually a trap that sometimes creators fall into too, myself included. You you create content that goes viral, but it attracts the wrong audience, but you get that dopamine hit, which is why you really have to have an understanding of why you're creating content in the first place. I can put I can put out motivational content. I can put out relationship content. I can put out stuff that just like speaks to the human condition and like gets people riled up and arguing and having opinions on it.

And that stuff will go viral, but and that'll get me a lot of followers. But that doesn't mean that that's the kind of content and the type of audience that I want to attract. If it is, great. But a lot of people fall into that trap.

Have you ever been with maybe someone you wanted to be a guest and their media team reaches out and says they we only work with people with this many followers?

Like doesn't it seem contrary to like wouldn't you if you were an influencer, a Gary Vee, say this is my audience. These are the people that I want. Wouldn't you want to take a deep dive into their audience and say this might be not as big? But it seems like a trap even for people trying to get on podcast that only look at the audience. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense. I think because there's so many creators and so many podcasts out there that it becomes very difficult to audit them properly.

Right. So I agree with you. I think that if you're trying to, you know, guest on podcast and get some more exposure, just because you go on the biggest possible show, it doesn't really actually mean anything if you're trying to get the right audience for your business. I agree with you. I think that people should do a deep dive and look at like how aligned is that audience with the actual product that I'm selling. But I think that most people they don't put that much energy or effort into it and they just go for the biggest following and they say, "Well, if this podcast has a huge following, I want to get on his or her show." I think that's wrong. I think that's a mistake, but you know, not everybody's doing social, right? Not not everybody knows this world. But that's a really smart that's a really smart move because you can get into some niche shows and get on in front of some niche audiences that if you if you speak

to that audience and you're in like any particular industry, my goodness, you could have 10% of that audience convert into customers. That's way more useful than going on some huge motivation mindset podcast that has a million listeners, a Tony Robbins, but nobody really gives a [ __ ] Nobody's your customer,

right? So, you're right. I don't think people do that research, but you're right. But this is also a trap that business owners fall into when they uh uh when they start paying influencers. So they start paying the biggest possible influencer with the biggest possible audience and influencer are asking for you know tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to run these campaigns and it's just like a spray and prey appro approach. Hopefully if somebody in the audience is my customer they're going to convert into a follower, convert into a lead, converting convert into revenue. But really, at least from what I found when I've been on the other side and I've been like when I've been launching products and paying influencers, I found that niche and smaller micro influencers do much better with targeted audiences.

I think that most business owners um they learned the hard way by blowing a lot of money than realizing that like the biggest name is not the most effective name. You know, Brandon Kaine talks about finding and you know him. Uh he talks about like the guy that you know uh

I told you I was like he walks up to the car um and asks oh uh a school of hard knocks.

School of heart knocks. Yeah. Brain fart. He literally walks up and he does that every time. It's the same thing different people.

And he says once you find that that hook, use the same one every time. Yeah. like the audience knows it, it expects it, it likes it. What are your thoughts on making content? Find He calls it the right format. Once you find your format, you stick to it. If you're walking, you're on a walk every time. Selfie, that one works, too. If you find something that's, you know, you have a dish of food and that that like it's an inspir, it's kind of the hook and the picture and the thumbnail that Mr. Beast talks about that gets people to come in.

So Brendan Kaine, Brendan Kane's a very smart marketer and I've had him on the show twice now and he speaks about all the different formats that just work. School of Hard Knocks, like you mentioned, is one of them. There's a million other formats that sort of predictably work. Now, I'm not I'm not an expert. I'm not his company has a company called Hookpoint. research tons of data points, but um from what I've learned from him and and probably spoke about this on your show as well,

uh you can find a type of content that works like interview style or I mean right now there's a lot of podcast content where you see talking head that works really really well. Um and then you find a way to, you know, you find a way to interpret your message through that style of content and then you just triple down on it. So yes, to your point, yes, that's exactly what you should do. I think the trap that people fall into when it comes to content is two traps. One, they are again their content is ego-driven and they don't want to learn from anybody else and they just think because they're smart people should give a [ __ ] about what they're saying, which never works out.

No, it never works out. or two, they find a style of content that works once and then they never change it and then 5 years later they're doing the same kind of content.

Right? If you look at even my content and my socials, you'll see over the past 6 years, the content has evolved and it's changed styles. And it used to be like I used to do content that looked a little bit more like a Gary Vee style, which had like the the white header and the colorful text. And then for a while my captions were like funky and multicolored because that's what like the Grant Cardones and the Alex Hermosies of the world were doing. And then I started doing more motivational quotes. Those were super sharable. And I found that those really hit. They were sharable. They weren't too complex.

People could read it. Be like, "Yes, I want to share it to my stories on Instagram." And it did really well. And now uh I do a mix of like podcast clipping. So I do a long form podcast clip out a cool guest, one of their, you know, most uh prolific points of view. So, I'll do a podcast clip, but I'll also do a lot of solo content as well. So, me talking head, having a point of view on whatever it is I care about. That works for me now. But my content has gone through five or six or seven evolutions over the past 6 years. I see cuz I'm a podcaster, so I study a lot of podcasters, but I study people on every platform. And I actually have somebody that I we were talking about this last night. I have somebody per platform that I study. Yep.

So, like when I I'll just list some off. Justin Welsh kills it on LinkedIn. Uh Sahil Bloom, he kills it on Twitter. Uh Dan Co, I love his writing style. Um Hermoszi always kills it on on Instagram. Uh for long form podcast, I study Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. Uh Modern Wisdom with uh Chris Williamson. I have a person that I study per platform and I study people that are always learning, always evolving, growing the fastest right now. Not people that grew fast 10, 15 years ago

or even 3 years ago or even 3 years ago. People that are growing now because I know that whatever it is they're figuring out, it's like hitting the algorithm, right? It's hitting whatever the audience's expectations are right now. There are people that have massive audiences that are big names and you would know the names and they built an audience a certain way 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and they haven't changed things up. And I know for a fact that if they tried to build an audience from scratch using the same style of content as what they're still doing now, 5 years later, they would not grow the same way they did.

Yep. So, they had some success, they had some luck, right time, right place, but they haven't evolved ever since. So, you got to you got to keep evolving. You got to keep studying. It's like I don't know why people treat content any different than their business, right?

Your business. When you start a business, you don't start it and 10 years later it's the same business as when you started. Like that's insane. Any business owner be like, "No, I'd be out of business. You didn't change your product. You didn't change your pitch, your positioning, didn't update your website, didn't understand how your customers needs evolved." Yeah, there's some similarities for sure, but things evolve over time. If you don't take the same approach to your content, it's a marketing channel. The marketing channel becomes less effective over time. So, you always have to be studying. And if you don't want to do it, somebody on your team should be if you're hiring a marketer, you should have somebody that can list off the the influencers that influence them and their content style. They should have somebody. If you're like, "Listen, I want to grow my Instagram. Who's your favorite who's your favorite

Instagrammer?" That's really good. I love that. And if they don't have an answer, then they don't study it.

Every person who's good at social studies, it's not a me thing. Ask any of those people on that list.

They got a team like Martell. I mean, he's got a whole team that does it. I would say that Martell grew very quickly and he's so obsessed with content. And yes, he has a team for sure. And he has Sam, I don't know if you met Sam. He works out with him every day and they get along. It took years for that to come together. It didn't happen overnight. Dan would still know which content creators he looks up to even though his team's doing the research.

100%. You know what's interesting is um PayPal just hired a a guy to be the CEO of content.

I saw that. Yeah. So $200,000 a year and basically they say the founder is just important as the business. And here's the worst comp. It wasn't even a compliment. It was advice for me. I've had so many people that are like who's bigger, A1 or Tommy Melo? because I see you all over the place on social. I don't see A1.

So now I'm really taking A1 built me and I'm going to try to build the same thing for A1 now because maybe it was vanity but to to be completely transparent is I never really realized a garage door company but I didn't realize I could be a recruiting mechanism. Clients see me

and like highlight the company doing the charity and all the things we do. We give we we do so much with the community and so I'm going to start every other post will probably be about A1.

I think it should be but it's also good that you're putting yourself out there. Every every CEO should build a brand, be the celebrity CEO, put themselves front and center because as much as we like to say like I want to market the business, all business at the end of the day is is not being a person. It's human to human. It's always human to human. That's all business ever. Even it doesn't I don't care if you're selling enterprise you're selling uh you know lawn care services it's all human to human

and the consumer the customer has a really hard time building any kind of real connection with a brand

right doesn't matter how% great you are and how much you give to chair it's very hard for them to look at A1 as anything more than just just a company that does the work now if they know Tommy and they see all his content and they see who what he is and what he stands before. Well, now all of a sudden, if I'm picking between five different competitors in your industry, I'm going to pick the one where I know the CEO and I like who he is or I like who she is.

Oh, 100%. It's it's such a like if you look at, you know, even at a such a large scale, like Richard Branson has a bigger following than Virgin, Elon Musk has a bigger following than any of his companies. Like Mark Cuban, you know, has a bigger following than any of his investment portfolio companies, right? like they're all personalities.

What are your thoughts? You know, there's a lot of buddies of mine that uh they show the lifestyle mostly. And one of my buddies,

well, one of my buddies lives in Miami and um shows the cars, shows the boats, shows the house, not very good content, but has an unbelievable amount of followers. And I think a lot of people want that lifestyle. and they listen because he's successful. So, what are your thoughts on that? Because I've stayed away from that, but I just did a tour of the house like a quick one and it murdered it. And the question is like I never really want I always wanted to be humble and not like be like this vanity like look what I have

cuz I want to be careful about what people view me. View me as a success for a business.

I was with Damon John and he's like I don't care when people come up to me like a singer. They don't tell me to sing a song, they tell me their entrepreneurial dream.

Yeah. But what are your thoughts on that? that kind of play of like the planes I get on and the stuff the private stuff,

you know, the people that I see doing that the most, they're they're usually fake.

Yeah. So, they're usually fake. They're usually selling something, right? They're usually selling the lifestyle and they usually have a product that sort of alludes to the fact that if you take their course, follow these steps, you're going to get the same outcome as them. So if somebody is genuinely successful, do you if you want to post your house and all that stuff, but the the richest and most successful and wealthiest and smartest people I know, they don't post content like that.

Yep. They really don't. They they because what they've accomplished speaks for itself,

right? You can go Google the company they sold. They don't have to prove anything anymore. Well, you know, I was with uh Perry Belchure, Ryan Dice, Frank Kern. This is years ago.

These are old school marketers, by the way. Yeah. We were in Vegas and uh I said, "I want to be like you guys. Talk on stages, do that." And they said, "Why?" They said, "We got to come with new gimmick products to sell." I mean, this is a long time ago. I'm not trying to say, but they're like, "Now we sell like ties, soup ties, and we do these studies and the audience loves it and we are good marketers." But back then, I was still doing a lot in garage doors. They said, "Who's the CEO of Home Depot?" I don't know. He goes, "Who's the CEO of Lowe's?" And they were just bringing, "Who's the CEO of Ace Hardware?" They were trying to be home service kind of.

And I don't know. They're like, "Exactly." And now you now it's different. Like you said, you got to evolve. They need to know who you are. But these guys kind of fade into the sunset and they live their best life. And some people some people want to get known and then when you get known, like Tom Cruz, that dude can't go anywhere for privacy.

Yeah. I think I can't remember who who said this quote, but it was like it was something along the lines of I wish everybody would be uh rich and famous at one point just to realize that you don't really need the the fame, you just need the money.

It's some famous actor. or it's like a I can't remember who it is exactly, but I think I think that listen if you if you if you're just building an audience again just for your ego um you're in the wrong game. I think I think building an audience should be a means to an end. I think it should be to build a business, sell a product, like there should be some commercial activity attached to it. Like I don't I love podcasting, but you know, if you're going to ask me like, "Hey, would I be marketing the [ __ ] out of my podcast until I'm 90 years old if I could retire on a beach somewhere?"

Maybe not. Maybe I just do it for fun. Maybe I just do it for fun now as opposed to doing it as a business, right?

There's a difference, right? When you're building a business, you have to be obsessed with the thing. You have to do it non-stop. You have to build systems and processes around it. Great. Don't mind it. I love playing entrepreneur. this is what I've been doing my whole life. This is what you do your whole life. This is what a lot of people listen to this do. But um it's not relaxing. It's not like it's not like uh it's not chill. It's still a business at the end of the day.

So if you have a a viable business that's making money, that's doing well. Look at content. And this is why I'm so trying to get people just to understand like create the content that drives revenue for the business. Not just create content to become famous. Being famous doesn't benefit anybody. It just is serving your own ego. That's all it is. But if you create content, you build an audience, it drives revenue. Great. That's how you use content. That's how you use social media. So, I think people have to get over themselves. You know what I just thought of? I'm going to go to uh there's tools out there. I'm going to go to the biggest home service, whether they're plumbers or whatever. And then I'm going to say I'm going to call them and they will pick up my call because somehow now I've got that ability. And um I'm going to say forget about your top liked and shared post or your favorite most

comments. Which one drove the most business and why? And have you guys analyzed it? And then just I call it R&D. Rip off and duplicate.

Yeah. And them telling me will not make them any less successful. That's what's so cool about it. They doesn't mean I'm going to beat them at something. They're glad to share.

Exactly. What do you think about uh sponsored ads? I mean, if you're trying to grow a following and you're going to do sp not giveaway stuff,

but do you think using the sponsored stuff makes sense if you're trying to grow fast?

So, you're saying like a lookalike audience and you could pay for the ad to pop up in front of the right people.

So, but it's not I'm not selling not for selling a product to get them to follow you and trust you.

No. So, um it's got to be organic. It has to be organic. This is why it's very important to understand how to drive organic growth on every single platform. A couple thoughts on there's sort of three ways to grow anything, any business. But again, content is a business,

right? So, if you grow a business, you can use ads like you just mentioned. Uh you can use collaborations with other creators or in business it would be like a JV or you can grow organically. So if you are building a podcast, a newsletter, an Instagram,

organic growth just looks like content that hits with an audience. That's all it is. If the content resonates, if it's sharable, if people subscribe to you on YouTube without you spending a dollar, if people subscribe to your email list without spending a dollar just because they love the way you think and the way you write, that's organic growth. This is also why uh honestly if you were going to ever run any paid ads, you should only use the content that resonates organically.

Stuff that went organic. That's your use that for paid if you want to do that. Now the other way to grow, especially with a podcast, is to do collaborations with other creators. So my I would say the the best growth that I've had that is not just organic is when uh there's something called a feed drop. So what that means, you take a full episode from your show and I put it on your podcast and I take a full episode of your show and I put it on my podcast and we record a little intro. Hey, if you like this show, here's a full episode. Uh if the content hits with you, go subscribe wherever you get your podcast and then listen to, you know, Tommy's show. So what I'm doing there is I'm not just collaborating with another creator. I'm collaborating with another podcaster, right?

Which is huge. Sometimes people try and do collaborations and they say like, "Well, you know, I have this podcast. Can you share it on your Instagram story after I bring you on the show?" Yeah, it can work. But you also have to understand that if I'm sharing a podcast on someone else's Instagram, it's a different kind of audience,

right? That's true. So, I'm trying to get somebody who's scrolling on Instagram to listen to an hour, hour and a half long piece of content.

Well, that's tough. A percentage will, but not 100%. But if I want to grow a podcast, I say, "Let's do a feed swap like I just described." That means that everybody who's listening to your podcast loves podcasts. Everyone who's listening to my podcast love loves podcast. All I'm saying is like, "Hey, here's another option. Go check it out." So, the best collaborations are not just with like another creator that's in your niche that is sort of like in the same category entrepreneurship mindset relationship. You got to pick somebody in your niche for sure. But the medium meaning like podcast to podcast, newsletter to newsletter, Instagram to Instagram. That's why Instagram lives or collab posts are good on Instagram. If you want to grow an Instagram audience, find a creator, similar niche and uh similar platform,

similar medium. That's how you do these collaborations the best. Um and like the last thing is like I mentioned for for uh any type of audience you're building doesn't matter if it's YouTube or podcast or social media organic growth is huge. Um now all social platforms have organic built in like Instagram if you post something people can discover it. Twitter you post something some people can discover it or X whatever. Uh podcast has to be video now because if you just have an audio podcast there's no organic reach. You have to show up on YouTube, second largest search engine in the world. People are going to discover you. If you want to write a newsletter, too. I mean, there's a lot of newsletter platforms. If you are a newsletter writer, I've gone through all of them.

Right now, I use Substack. I use Substack because it has organic reach built in. So, not only can I build an email list, but if I write about whatever topic, Substack, the platform where I host it, is going to recommend it to people that care about that topic. So, you're tapping into the organic reach, and that's how you build and grow anything really. I love it. Last question on social media here. Uh, most people start with YouTube because they get paid the most and if you get good at YouTube, that gives you the funding to get the right stuff and plus you can make the shorts out of it. You can make it kind of work.

What are your thoughts on that? I still don't think that you should start on a PL. Like a lot of people have uh stress about putting themselves on video,

which is crazy. It is, but it's because we've been doing it for so long, so you don't even think about it anymore. But it's the same as when somebody has stress about jumping on stage and speaking in front of an audience. It's the number one fear in the world. But you do it a 100 times, you don't get stressed out anymore.

Not at all. Yeah. So I would ra I would rather somebody stick with it for the long term. Like if somebody's like an introverted writer, that's all they do. They just write

LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Write an email newsletter. Even X Yeah. Like if you're going to if you're going to force yourself to go on YouTube and you hate it and you and you stop after a year, what's the point of YouTube? So yeah, if you if listen, if you have a personality, you don't mind being in front of a camera, go on the platform that's going to pay you the most. And I think YouTube is huge and there's a lot of trust built into YouTube. I mentioned before like at the beginning of this this this podcast, like different platforms have different levels of trust. YouTube is like the highest level of trust. Meaning if I create a video on YouTube and somebody watches me, that is the most amount of trust I can build with somebody in the audience without literally sitting across the table from them or being in front of them at a conference on stage.

So YouTube is super high trust. But two things can be true at the same time. Even though YouTube is great, if you are not going to continue it because you're stressed out about it, that's not where you start as a creator. even if the money opportunity is there. I know people uh uh Lenny, he's a he's a product manager. He does a whole bunch of uh he does podcasts and YouTube now, but he started with a a a newsletter and now he makes like a million dollars a year just on writing a newsletter.

Yep. So, I mean, maybe maybe he's evolved into a creator that can go on video, but when he started, he was just a guy who wanted to write a newsletter. So start there because you can still make a decent amount of money as a creator wherever you wherever you can stick with it the longest

with the newsletters. Is it because I like still I write a newsletter and only 800 people get it but it's a real envelope and it comes the old school like and people like remember I'm blue collar like I got a mailed newsletter all colorful thick. [ __ ] you have a

No, that's Well, well, it it's all colorful. It's got QR codes and videos, but do you think just going and we've got a digital newsletter, too, with a much higher subscription, but what are your thoughts on that?

Like mail versus digital? Yeah. Well, I I know I probably know your thoughts, but

No. Um, I don't think that analog and old school hurts. It's just not the most effective way. Like, I mean,

it's not the most efficient way or not the most scalable way. I have a friend who's a CEO of a large real estate company and he still sends to his top performers. He sends written mail.

Yeah. Because it stands out. I think that I think that the answer is depends on what you're trying to accomplish, right? If you are just trying to reach three, four, 500 a, you know, a million people and you're trying to reach them every single week and you have advertisers that want to get in front of those people and the and for every, you know, for every newsletter subscriber that you add on, you get a dollar or $2 of revenue and you've done the math and it make Yeah. and then you're going to want to just focus on scale and you're going to want to focus on getting people to subscribe to your newsletter from your Instagram and your YouTube and that's a business decision. Now, if I was trying to use a newsletter to close a deal or to get somebody's attention or to show that I actually care about them,

then the the the physical thing still stands out. I mean, in enterprise sales, like you can do outreach when you're reaching out to decision makers, you're trying to sell an expensive product, right? You can reach out on LinkedIn, you can reach out via email, you can cold email people, you can cold call them, but if you really want to get somebody's attention, you send them physical mail or you send them a gift basket or you send them a present, something that you know is going to be put on their desk because just going the extra mile, it honestly, not many people do it. So like your your physical mail that's delivered, you know, that stands out.

People remember your name because of it. You know, you did this ring a bell. John Rulen or Steve Sims? John Giftoology. And um Steve Sims wrote uh Blue Fishing.

I don't know these guys. Uh they both passed away in the last year and a half. Uh but John's rule was you never send a gift with your company name on it. No one wants that [ __ ] Well,

it's a bad if it's a bad gift. Well, here's the thing. He sent me a massive set of Cutco knives. I'm talking and it's in this treasure box and you open up there's a video of him gifting it every and he goes, "Here's the deal. Every time you look at those knives, who you thinking about?"

Yeah, obviously. Yeah. And he sent me this massive welcome mat that you saw last night at the house. It says Tommy and Bri. I think about him every time I see that. That picture of me and Finnegan was from him. Uh same thing as uh Steve was like I was in Italy one day. I've got about a hundred close associates that spend a fortune with me.

Yeah. He goes to the bartender, "Do you have a coaster that we could handw write the recipe of that margarita?" And he said, "Why would I give you a 100 coasters?" And he goes, "I'm going to get a hundred rich people to come in here, including Richard Branson and all my my people I work with." So, they hand wrote this recipe on it and then he sent a piece of mail just with a coaster in it and said, "Next time you're in Italy, check this place out. Make this come here for the real thing, but try this margarita." stands out.

It's just those little things and if you could automate and it's got to be genuine, but I'm trying to figure out ways to more automate the idea to do it to more than just 100. I mean, we got a thousand people here at A1,

but you need to read those books. I'm going to send you those books, please. I'll tell you one thing. Now, it won't automate the gifts. Um, but there is a company called Handwritten.

Yeah, I I invested in a company called Simply Noted. Same thing. Same difference. Yeah. So they that's one way to scale handwritten notes and

and it's my handwriting and it's awesome and it's yeah it's crazy what technology can do but

let me ask you this. So you've had a lot of people on success stories uh Guy Kiasaki Kawasaki uh Patrick but David and more

what have you learned about success and how would you define it? What are some of the biggest takeaways?

Um that success is freedom. Success is freedom. Success is not just making more money. All the people on my show have made some amount of money. I've had billionaires on. I've had people that have exited for eight, nine figures, like some really, really incredible entrepreneurs. I've had, you know, you just mentioned some. I've had co-founder of Netflix, founder of Reebok, household name brands, right?

Uh there's multiple areas that you have to excel in to feel successful. So, relationships, physical, mental health, some version of spirituality, yes, money matters as well. But if you just make money and you're deficient in everything else, and I see people that

exit, have more money than they know what to do. like, you know, yeah, whether or not they're like physically ill, morbidly obese, you know, two ex-wives, kids hate them. Like, that's no one's version of success. But for some reason, probably because that's just the way they they figured it out. They've been so focused on money that all the rest of their life has kind of gone to [ __ ] And then they wake up one day and they realize that all they have is money. Well, that's what happened with Steve Jobs. I mean, he goes, "I got more money than anybody would ever want, but yet I'm sitting here in a hospital with no one here next to me."

And he said, "If you don't take your food as medicine, you'll be taking medicine as food."

I love that. So, I think that I think that true success, it doesn't mean that your whole life will always be balanced because if you are going to build anything meaningful, you have to be obsessed. And there will be seasons of your life that are not balanced. That's fine. But just understand that there are seasons. meaning that season comes to an end at some point and you have to make sure that you don't let all the other parts of your life fall by the wayside before it's too late. And this is I mean one of my favorite stories is Mark Randolph. So he was a co-founder of Netflix and uh just to show you how important sort of balance is in life.

Every Tuesday when he was building Netflix he at 5:00 he would shut off from work completely and go on date night with his wife. And that was something that was like he was religious about it. It doesn't matter what fires were going on in Netflix. He shut off Tuesday at five o'clock, went on date night with his wife. And it just goes to show you like a lot of people say, "Well, I'm in entrepreneur mode. I'm building right now. I don't have time for uh my family. I don't have time for the gym. I don't have time to eat healthy. I don't have time for any." I'm like, the people that built some of the biggest companies in the world found time for it. It was a choice. It's always a choice. And here's what I always say is like, look, every time I took a three-day vacation, man, it was like a reset. I came back, I looked at the business different. I got out of my own way. Like, one of the things I

demand of each and every co-orker I have at this company is you take your PTO. You need the reset

and you'll come back stronger, faster, clearer. And a lot of people just say, "Man, I need to work. I'm trying to get ahead."

I'll tell you something, too. We waste a lot of time working on things that don't matter.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Everybody does it. Again, um we were talking about Leo, my friend last night, uh who he's CEO of EXP. And uh he said that having kids was the best the best thing that ever happened to him. And you know, cuz we were talking, I don't have kids yet. I want to have kids. And um I was saying like how stressed I am. I have no time. Like if I have kids, where am I going to find time for my kids? And he's like, no, no, Scott, you don't get it. When you have kids, you're forced to make time for your kids cuz you don't want to be an [ __ ] absent father. So you you you only can focus on the things that are actually important in your business. Because if you focus on as much [ __ ] as you focused on right now, you wouldn't make time for your family. When you have kids, all of a sudden, like you don't have time after 5:00. You don't have time on the weekends. So what m what does that make

you do? It makes you prioritize more efficient. Makes you way more efficient. He's like, "And I became a better entrepreneur and a more successful entrepreneur when I had kids because I stopped doing the things that felt good to do but didn't really move the needle." It's 100%. You know, you brought up a word earlier that I could say every person I know that's done well financially and and it's almost a sickness at times, but it's obsessed. You said you got to be obsessed.

Yeah. Is that what you would consider a common denominator when it comes to some of the interviews and some of the people you've met?

Yes. You can tell you can tell you can really tell who's real or not because of the level of obsession that they have with the thing that they do. So if you ask anybody about their business, it's like their eyes light up and they can talk about it for days.

Like they can just talk about it non-stop. And it doesn't matter doesn't matter what business it is. You go you go speak to you know Joe Foster who's the founder of Reeboki. uh you'd speak to him about like shoes and and basically how him and his brother built Reeba from the ground up and all the things they had to figure out with, you know, athletes didn't want this and didn't want that. I don't know anything about shoes, but he would just talk about them non-stop. Another good friend of mine um is Yseph Martin. He was a founder of Boxy Charm. He sold it for 500 million to Ipsy.

Like he can talk about makeup because that's what the product was. like he's like a uh you know he's never been involved in makeup before, but after he built Boxy Charm, it was basically a product where you put all these different makeup samples in the box. Like my girlfriend knows this product very well. I think a lot of women do. They work with the Kardashians.

I get the same thing with my dogs. It comes every month. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So he put all these make the guy can talk about every single makeup influencer, every single piece of makeup, every single shade, every single like

he can just talk about it for days, for days, for days, for days. So this is what this is what obsession means. It doesn't mean that you ruin the rest of your life building your business, but it means that you are so in it that all you want to do is just learn more and just research and just dive into it. Like you still have to have other parts of your life. And this is also why I think that if you have the right friends and the right partner or spouse who are also kind of in the same zone as you, they're entrepreneurs. They're building. They I mean like I think it's very hard when you can be obsessed about something and your partner isn't. I think that's very difficult.

Yeah. You were talking about Gina. She's she's obsessed with what she does. So she has a big account. She has a big audience. Obviously different type of content than me, but she studies her content 24/7 365. And then we can bounce ideas off each other. So it's not like again you know they say like there's no such thing as work life balance there's work life integration

when you have the right friends and the right spouse the right partner girlfriend husband wife like your your life becomes about building and you're building together and you're bouncing ideas off each other and you're making each other better entrepreneurs and just better people and it's just you don't have to like hide a part of who you are for the people that are around you,

right? Because again, if you're going to build anything meaningful, you got to be a little bit obsessed about it. Which means that like it's fun to talk about the [ __ ] that you do.

Oh yeah. Because you love it. You know, it's funny. A 21-year-old asked me recently, "What's some What's the number one thing you would do if you were me at 21?" I said, "Be careful who you pick as a partner."

Yeah. And and probably go to the bars less than I did at 21. Um I think partner is huge.

What's one piece of gamechanging advice you wish you knew in your early 20s? game-changing advice when I was early 20s. Um, uh, one idea that always comes up that I I think is very, um, I don't know, it's very comforting is that building anything, being an entrepreneur, it's not complicated. It's just it's just a lot of hard work. Meaning that if you stick with something long enough, you'll figure it out. I spoke about staying in the content game for a long enough period of time where you know you start to become successful. The same idea applies to building any business if and I think that this is a beautiful idea because we didn't really get into this but I think that a lot of people are stressed out right now and there's more people that are interested in entrepreneurship than ever before because they felt their 9 to5 let them down or whatever. there's a reason why they want to build something themselves.

And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that people just are they just have anxiety about, well, if I dive in and build my own business and take my life into my own hands, what if I fail? Right? That's always the question. What if I fail? That's scary. I think that what I've learned from literally everybody I've spoken to is if you find a way to stay in the game long enough, if you learn, if you improve, if you iterate, it's almost impossible to fail. Failure is just when you can't afford to keep going, quit too soon, whatever it is. But if you find a way to stay in the game long enough, meaning if you want to be an entrepreneur, okay, it doesn't mean you quit your job when you have 6 months left of cash in the bank. It means that well, you know what? I'm going to work my 9 to5.

Yeah. You do it as a side for a while or on the weekends, I'm going to start building my business, maybe monetizing the skill that I do in my 9 to5 cuz I know that no company is going to pay me as much for my skill as the market will. And then that's a very safe way to build an additional side income. So I love that idea because it just sort of destresses entrepreneurship.

Well, I I tell people all the time that it's I don't think it's the best advice to always start a business because you see, you know, when you see that picture of a uh an ice

what is the iceberg and then underneath is like all the [ __ ] you got to go through. So, a lot of people want, they see the glory side of it, but man, I'm like, somebody said, "I want to build like you did a $100 million plus business." And I say, "Well, just tell me you don't have any kids."

Yeah. That's the first thing. And they're like, "Well, I have three." I'm like, "Well, you're never going to see them grow up." I said, "Number two, why? Why do you want that?" Like, if you don't have like like what do you want to do with it? If there's a really big old Do you want to retire your parents? Do you want to help out your sister and help out grandma? Like if there's not a big why Well, you proved this possible, but I had a lot of wise.

Yeah. And plus, I it was really hard for me to have a personal relationship with anybody because I decided at 7 years old, I wasn't going to let money tear my family apart like it did for me. So,

but I'll tell you something though. So, I would tell people that that's not a smart thing to do. You don't have to build a hund00 million business, but that's not what entrepreneurship has to be either. Why can't entrepreneurship be I want to make an extra $500,000 a year?

Well, why can't you do it as an entrepreneur? Why can't you say, "I don't want the stress, the anxiety, the And listen, if you could get equity in a company and be able to put your work jacket up at home

and be able to be a part of the equity pool, which is a profit units, equity incentive programs, phantom shares. There's a lot of ways to do this.

But you know what it means is you're relentless. You don't when you have a business there are no weekends there are no holidays there are no real like there there are no real vacations and I don't think people know that.

No I agree eventually you hit that point where there are but that's when you're delegating to elevate you know

but that's also a good point. So there's many ways to make money in this world right there's a lot of different ways to make money. Um I think that people we could have a whole other conversation about how to be strategic with your career so you work for companies that give you those opportunities.

Right. I know there's a lot of people that work for companies that treat them like [ __ ] and don't give them any equity and no shares and no opportunities and no rev upside and nothing and they just feel stuck.

I get that. So there's a million different ways. I I fully agree. I think that that's a be when more companies act like A1 does and like how you treat like the people you work with. Y

then they wouldn't have to be worried. But there's people that are making 70 $80,000 a year and they have no retirement, no pension, and they're just trying to figure out what the hell do I do when I'm 60 years old or like there's a medical emergency. So the advice about not building a $100 million company, but not stressing so much about you taking your life into your own hands is for somebody that is working for that company that treats them like [ __ ]

I agree. You know, one of the things I thought about real quick is 3 ft from gold. And if you stick in it long enough, you're right near the end zone. And most people spike the ball. If you just stayed in the game a little bit longer, you're one higher away. So, I love that that idea of just stick it out. If you had $10 million tomorrow

Mhm. what would you do with it? $10 million. $10 million showed up in your account, you got nothing else, you got no real estate, you got nothing. Where are you putting the money?

I'd put a lot of it into uh I'd put it into people that can teach me what I don't know to compress time. I I would work with somebody that's built a podcast. Like I'd work with I'd work with a Steven Bartlett who just built a very big podcast very quickly. So I'd hire the right people that could teach me how to get from where I am to where they are in, you know, a year or two if possible. Um I'd put the money right back into my team and find the talent that could execute on that vision. Um, yeah. I mean, 10 million's 10 million is more than you need to do. 10 million is more than you would need to to do that right away, but I would just rinse and repeat. I mean, yeah, you can put money into passive assets. I've put money into real estate before, but I would say that most of my money goes right into like my education or getting access to people that I can't get access to or talent that knows more

than me. That's really where all my money goes right now. So smart. You know, you asked me yesterday how much I spend. I don't know if it was the question at dinner, how much I spend on personal development, but kind of how many coaches who's coaching me. And I'm like, all I do is learn and extract, but the difference is you could learn a million things, but how much do you implement? And so many people, they take notes, they go to every single show. I mean, I go to a lot of home service shows. I'm a speaker a lot of them. I see the same people there.

And guess what? I'm like, how much has your business grown the last 3 years? Remember what you told me you were going to do 3 years ago? Did you get it done? And it's like they're constant learners, but they never integrate or implement.

Well, this is the thing. So, yes, there's a lot of free information. You can go on YouTube and you can learn

about paying for it. The reason why it's good to pay is because it's an obligation.

It's an obligation. And and you will start to find that people that operate at the highest level, the highest performers, they hold people that they respect accountable. So if you enter not just watching them on YouTube, but if you enter their circle, they know who you are. You're texting back and forth with them. Like they're not going to give this kind of access to everybody. But if you are at that level with them, like they don't want to see you fail.

Well, yeah. You you know, the last thing they want is four years down the road you've been coaching them and there's not a a really successful story. And I've even told people I work with,

uh, I don't know if I want you as a client until you could get this done. Mhm. And I mean, you know, I work with a couple different mentors. One mentor said, "I used to give people I used to meet with them weekly. Now I meet with them monthly because I realized I gave them enough work that takes a month."

Yeah. And then we want to revisit that because most people if I give them too much, it was too much to bite off and it sunk them to the bottom of the ocean.

Yeah. And that's why, but they'll also hold you accountable for getting that [ __ ] done.

Oh yeah. You said you were going to do this. I mean, you're a man of your word, aren't you? That's the best question. You made a commitment to me that you said you were going to come in and do the work. And that's why I like a good trainer, too. somebody that's allowed to have those hard conversations. Yeah.

Like you wanted this. You told me you wanted this and yet here we are today. You're not at the body fat we discussed. You're not proud of yourself

and you've got excuses. You got 168 hours in a week. What's going on? And most people don't like to have those conversations, but a great coach that's successful.

I love the teachers when I got my master's degree, there was two of them that came back to teach that were filthy wealthy.

Yeah. The rest of them taught out of a notebook or, you know, a workbook. And those guys didn't give a [ __ ] They were like, "I'm going to teach you guys how to make real money in life and real relationships." The other ones that had tenure, I was like, "This sucks." We're looking at a case study. You can see the real ones.

I fully agree. And I I How many coaches out there are fake and wannabes and don't really know what they're doing and don't have a pot to piss in, which

I think I think the I think the majority the majority of people that are posting lifestyle content and mansions and rented Lambos on Instagram.

Yeah. like the people that the people that I want to learn from are the people where I can Google their business and see how you know they they built this they exited for x amount of dollars. That's who I want to learn from.

I like that word exit because somebody some people build a business that they never plan on selling. The first thing I say is how many of you plan on exiting in the next 5 years? And I'm like why? And they're like well we're taking enough out of the business to live. I'm like what about the person that's been with you for 15 years? What about the how do they win? And if you don't have a if you're not building a business to sell, there's a great book by John Warlo, Built to Sell. If you're not building it to sell, it's never run perfectly. You if I said you got to sell your business in 6 months, you'd be like, well, I know I'd have to do this.

I know I'd have to get rid of like my uncle still works here, but he's just I want to be able to sit down at Thanksgiving. All of a sudden, you start making all these great changes. It's true. I mean that's that's I like the angle that you took on that because most of the time you talk about exit or not exit, it's only focused on the founder. It's only focused on what they want to do. And I would I would say that if you don't want to exit, it's a personal choice. You should know whether or not you want to exit when you start a business, but it is a very personal choice. Some people want to, you know, pass it over to their kids.

[ __ ] but it Well, here's why it's [ __ ] I had a buddy tell me that this morning. I go, "How old are your kids?" I know how old they are. Five and eight.

I said, "You really think they want this business?" I said, "Let them go where their heart wants." I was with a plumber with five kids from Australia.

Yeah. He said, "I'm passing the business on to my sons. They're all going to run it." I said, "Would you rather have mom and dad have $20 million and give you each three

and go do your own thing or possibly team up with a few of your brothers and watch mom and dad just live their best life ever? Or would you rather take on the business together?" And I said, "Dad, you can't get mad." Each son said, "I want mom and dad to to have that." And we would split off and do our own thing. So what mom and dad want or grandparents want usually aren't what the kids want anyway. I mean, but that's life. That is life. That is always life. Like parents always try and impose and live vicariously through their kids.

It's Yeah, you're not wrong. Um, I also think that listen, if you're a great entrepreneur and and I've seen this with several of my friends, if you're a great entrepreneur and you can build it once, you should be able to build it again

every time, very easily. Well, now you got a stack of cash usually. So, you hire top down versus bottom up. I mean, that's what Richard Branson was saying.

You asked me, "What would I do with 10 million?" It was talent. After after education, it's talent. Yeah, education is I I agree with that. Education then talent and the talent will pick the talent underneath them. When I was starting out, I didn't have a pot to piss in. I just needed the first thing I needed is somebody to answer phones cuz I couldn't get to them. The next person I had is somebody to do payroll. And then the smartest hire I've ever done was an executive assistant that could do $25 an hour stuff. Yeah. Because my time But every time I bought back time and Dan said, "Here's what I'm worried about with you and most of the guys I work with, Martell." He goes, "I will get you back so much time, but you're going to fill it back up." And you got to be careful what you fill it back up with.

It's got to be million-dollar things. Million dollar an hour things. If not, and there's some things that don't look like a million dollars, like calling a technician that's doing good. You you you know what? How did that make you a million dollars to tell somebody they're doing great and you love them? But that to me is I'm looking at other things like people focus so much on getting people in the front door, but they lose them the great people out the back door.

I agree. Well, that's why you Yeah. So I think that like A talent attracts other A players as well. And if you make the mistake of like hiring, you know, B talent and they just kind of coast, it sets this expectation in the company that that's okay. And then other A players are turned off because they see that this this B player that's kind of just halfassing it is allowed to exist. So if you have it, it's like hiring hiring is very difficult. Hiring is exceptionally difficult. You know, they say like, you know, hire slow, fire fast. It's like I fully agree with that.

You make like obviously you don't want to make the wrong choice but if you do it's not just that person that it costs it's like the it can impact and influence the whole it's a virus.

So you got to be very careful who you hire which is why if you can listen if you're starting a company and you have no money.

I don't think it's bad if you can give a little bit of equity vested to people that can really like change change your company true a talent. If you have the cash, then just don't be cheap,

right? But not everybody has the cash. It's tough. Yeah, that's what I did. I did equity incentive programs and I got the right people on the bus and they changed everything. A few good hires completely changed a few dials and all of a sudden we started printing money.

Of course. And that's the deal. Like people ask me what I would do for a CFO. I said, I'd go to find the million-dollar CFO, like a million dollars. He cost a million dollars a year, but he's fractional. He's only coming into the business three hours. Mhm.

So that million dollar you're paying him 3 hours a week. He's putting in millionaire systems, like those expensive systems that'll automate itself. There's reconciliation going on.

A and you can find fractional people that will come in and say, "This is a piece of cake. This isn't even a challenge." Instead of getting like a good bookkeeper, now you're understanding tax and write offs and how to do advanced appreciation. And that that's the deal is you get pay for the talent. Even if it's fractional, they'll come in to put the systems in that are enterprise level.

Yeah, I agree fully. But that's like if you don't have the money, then you don't you don't think that way. You're just thinking, how do I find the cheapest possible person? And this person is going to cost you 10x.

Oh, it cost you you get and then the IRS is coming after like the CFO for me was the perfect combo for me cuz I understand marketing, sales, and culture, but the right CFO The right CFO understands the forward looking of the business. CPAs and bookkeepers don't. They're thinking about how to save taxes and cash versus acrruel and audited [ __ ] Like the right CFO is like, "How do we build this business for a transaction?"

And it's amazing. And then you then you you you build to sell at that point. And by the way, do you know how much Elon Musk or uh um Jeff Basos owns of their companies?

Not a lot anymore. Elon owns like 12%. Um Jeff Basos owns about 8% of Amazon. Like so they take money off off off and then bigger people come in and you get these entrepreneurs in there and they're all working hard and I think people are so selfish they they never want to sell but they don't understand the long-term vision.

Well I was going to say like when you're first starting out depends on what you're building but if you know your skill set and you know what you're really good at like say you're good at sales, marketing, product, whatever that is. I mean, I don't always like I've had bad experiences with co-founders, but sometimes if you can if you can set up a proper vesting schedule, you can get a a f like a co-founder that complements your skill set perfectly. So, if you're trying to build a technical product, I would rather you go get a technical co-founder, full stack developer, than go raise money and be stressed out because now you have investors right out of the gate and go pay a dev shop like $500,000 to put together MVP.

I do like when people have a stake and, you know, they're vested in the success of the business, but that's the only way you're going to get A+ talent. So I can tell if it's a good hire if I feel like I'm the idiot when I speak to them. Like I don't want to know more than the person I hired to do the job.

Yeah. So when I feel like uncomfortable because they know so much and I'm trying to keep up with them,

that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's a really good thing. But again, what this this this idea of ego, I've been thinking about it a lot. Ego kills everything.

Ego kills content. Ego kills a business. Because if you want to be the smartest per and don't get me wrong like I'm the I'm the guy when I'm starting a business I like to learn all the stuff

right I do like to learn it like when I started my podcast that's the most recent business I figured out to some level of you know competency audio editing video editing coding up a website I already kind of knew marketing so like writing good subject lines that get high open rates for emails writing good copy like uh graphic like I've done I've messed around with it right But when I hire the first person, I don't want to be better than them at what they do.

No, I want them to say like, "Hey, Scott, okay, you put this together. You you edited this podcast. It sucks. Let me show you what you should actually be doing." I Yes, please. Like, teach me. Like, that's that's really what you pay somebody for. But I know it's obvious to us cuz we I think we think the same way around a lot of stuff, but a lot of a lot of founders like they want to be the last word in the meeting. They want to know more than the people that work for them.

I I let my whole seuite VP level I say this to them. I'm like I want you to fail more. I used to a few years ago I'd be like you got to come to me. I've already been through it.

And that gives them no freedom. They don't learn anything. We learn from our failures, not our successes. We can't even reflect.

Yeah. Let me ask you a closing out couple questions. Go for it. Um give me one book that just changed your life. Um, play bigger. Play big. I mean, I've read like all the the the go-tos, the atomic habits of the world, but play bigger is one of my favorites because it speaks about creating something where nothing has existed before. It speaks about uh Mark Beni off creating Salesforce.com when the idea of cloud didn't exist. Yeah,

it speaks about the founders of IKEA creating a brand new sort of shopping experience. So all these great entrepreneurs that didn't just copy what already existed but found a way to create a category and it just forces you to think differently. So a lot of what we fall into and nothing wrong with this like I mean like podcast existed before.

Yeah, it all kind of existed but you can build a business that way but to 30x you have to do something a little bit different. So I think that you know I even if you're not doing it today fine but always be thinking how do I do something that's never been done before that's outside of my comfort zone that's outside of most people's comfort zones if you want to really 30X it I think that's a really smart way to think and that's a book that sort of lays out the framework for all these famous entrepreneurs how they did it

love it how do people get a hold of you Scott very easy podcast is called success story do very similar stuff to what we're doing today uh all the socials at scott dclary and close us out. The maybe something we didn't talk about, something you want the audience to hear.

Um, we spoke about we spoke about the things that are required to be successful. We spoke about obsession. Uh, I think two other things that I love to talk about, you know, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to have a little bit of delusion, too. You have to have, you know, just a little bit of delusion and just agency. Just trust that you can figure it out. Everyone who I spoke to, another thing that they all believe is that they can figure it out. Whatever it is, doesn't matter what they have to learn, doesn't matter who they have to speak to. It's all on them. Yako Willing speaks about ownership all the time. Ownership agency, same thing.

You're owning the outcome. And when you sort of drift through life and you just assume that whatever happens to you, oh, you know, bad luck or or what it didn't work out because, you know, I got dealt this bad hand. At the end of the day, nobody gives a [ __ ] You have one life. It's on you to figure it out. Doesn't matter if it's in your career, your relationship, your business. Like, have agency, have ownership over your life, and you will be surprised at how fast things change.

I love it, Scott. Well done, my friend. That was Thanks for being here.

Questions about this episode

What is "The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership" about?

Scott Clary emphasizes the importance of building a personal brand and cultivating an audience as essential strategies for modern entrepreneurs. Drawing from his experience in tech and entrepreneurship, he discusses how creating a media presence through various platforms has opened doors to new opportunities, helped him scale businesses, and fostered valuable connections in the industry.

What is mentioned in this Home Service Expert episode?

45 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including A1, obsession, BoxyCharm, Success Story, Success Story, Brendan Kane. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership"?

The episode runs 1 h 6 min; the transcript is about 14,043 words in 204 timestamped sections.

More from Home Service Expert

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 18, 2025.