S2E38 - LIVE Bonfire Session - Making a side hustle, THE HUSTLE

What's up, galen?

What's up.

Brendan?

See a lot of people I recognize.

All right, Travis Matthews. Hello. Good to see you.

Cool.

All right, so thank you, everybody, for joining us for another exciting surf and sales bonfire session. Today, we decided to make sure that there was only one guest with a full head of hair, Mr. Scott Leese, or one host.

Questionable how much longer that's gonna last.

I don't want to hear it. Thank you so much. We're here to talk about the side hustle and how do you make it a real hustle? How do you make it the main hustle and the hustle? A lot of folks are on here that I know. I know. Scott knows a lot of them. I think Justin does as well, where we get asked this question a lot, so we thought it was super important. First thing we love to do whenever we do one of these sessions is by all means, go into the chat and tell us where you're at, where you're dialing in from. It's always fun to see people around the country, around the world. It's super cool.

Yes. This is being recorded. Yes. It will be sent out to folks, and those are the main things. As you have questions, put them in the chat. We'll be monitoring the chat and bringing questions up and letting people raise their hand and ask questions live if you want. And that's the main gig. That's it. So I want to go ahead and jump in, and I'm going to ask Justin, Scott the first question. I'm going to kick it off. Justin and Scott, who? When did you know you wanted to go and make this the main hustle? Right. Like, you both have had real jobs. I have, too. But what made you want to finally just sort of make that leap? And we'll start with Justin.

Yeah, mine was. Mine was maybe less of, like, a particular moment of clarity around. I've been preparing for this for a long time. It was more that I was burning out. I'm sure some folks have heard my story before, but I was burning out in my job, and I knew that I was losing control.

Context is I had never built a huge team, and I built a much bigger team than I ever thought I was going to build. And so I started to lose a little control, and I started to feel a little bit burnt out. And so mine was more forced. I saw that coming. So I started to build an audience online, and then I just kind of burned to a crisp.

What did burnout mean to you? What did that feel like? So that I think Others will be like, yeah, I think I know what that is, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, it's like you don't know how to solve a problem. It's not overwork. I could work, I could work forever. I'm good at working a lot and I can work all day long and solve problems all day long. It's when you're working all day and you can't solve a particular problem and no matter how many times you try, you just don't know the answer and your brain kind of feels like mush and because of that, you start to lose control of the situation. I'm a control freak, so that, that really hurts me. And as I, as things got out of control and out of control. Out of control. I mean, the business was so.

What was out of control? Like, you know, you know me, Justin. I don't do buzzwords.

Yeah, yeah. 40 people coming to you every day with a problem, Right. And like, not knowing how to delegate that problem effectively, not knowing how to solve it, realizing that you're in over your head, not being able to find enough hours in the day to simply solve a problem. And here's the real answer. We built this business up to 50 million in recurring. And the co founders thought I was going to build it to three and they were going to bring someone in who was much older and more experienced and had done this before. And by the time it went really well, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to keep growing the business. I had never. Every day was a new experience. You ever watched Office Space where the guy says, every day is the worst day of my life? That was how I felt every day that I woke up. I hated my job.

So let me ask you this. If you could go back because you're a control freak, right? And you know, you may not ever change that, what advice would you give yourself today to that control freak? Like, maybe there's some control freaks on this show right now who are listening and watching. What advice would you give them to try and be less of a control freak? Delegate more, you know, some of those things that led to your burnout.

Yeah, I don't know how to be less of a control freak, so I have no advice there. But my thing would be ask for help earlier. When being a control freak, I don't like to ask for a lot of help because I like to think I have the answer inside of me somewhere. But I didn't. And so I wish I would have gone to my co founders and said, I don't know how to solve this problem maybe a year prior to me doing that, which I bet.

Were you afraid to ask that, though. Were you afraid to be seen as like, oh, I'm incompetent if I ask that question?

No, no, It's. It's certainly not being afraid. Like, I have no problem admitting when I don't know how to do things. I just always want to do it myself. It's. It's more of a pride thing. It has very little to do with fear. It's like, I think I can do it. I think I can do it. Told myself that every day for 12 months. I was wrong, but I wanted to try.

Got it.

Yeah.

So. So that's what led it to you. So I'm going to switch over to Scott. Scott, you know, what led you to. You know, I know the story because I beat the shit out of you to do this for five years.

You know, and I know you got jealous of me because you're like, I could do this better.

So that's true. That's true. Now.

Similar situation to Justin, except Justin is smarter than me and hit the eject button. You know, after building one sales or to that size and scale, I'm the dumb idiot that did it five times and put myself through all of that.

Stress and burnout. And the. Justin didn't use these words, but he mentioned, like, his founders preparing to parachute somebody in who was older and more experienced above them. It's like that threat, if you will, is just sitting there all the time.

And after I had done it three times, I started to realize, in my opinion here, and I'm sure some people would disagree, that's not always this way. But, like, I started to realize that was always going to happen and I was no longer okay having my fate in somebody else's hands whenever they felt like it. So I needed to start kind of hedging my bets a little bit, and I saw that as well. I need to, you know, make some income on the side. I need to diversify things here. I need to make sure I have a safety net in case somebody decides that, you know, Scott doesn't belong here anymore. And similar to Justin, you know, started building my. I had been building my brand as a recruiting tool more than anything else, but then started to transfer it a little bit as something that could help propel me in some of the assets and endeavors that I would create. And I was a chicken shit. Even after knowing this. It took me almost.

8 more years, 9 more years ish before I finally pulled the trigger. But I'm fiscally pretty conservative and risk adverse. I don't like to take as many chances as some people might think, think that they know me. So, like, here was my income level from my main gig, and here's my income level from side stuff. And I just told myself, well, once these things match, now I've de risked going out on my own. And so I became very focused on that, right? And then once those things kind of matched up, I felt like it was time for me to.

Time for me to go talk about.

That de risk, right? That's a really good question. I think people, you know, how do you define de risk or how did you define it for yourself?

Well, the risk to me was like, you know, I'm making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year working for somebody else. If I quit that and go on my own, I could be making nothing. And that's. That was like, that's like terrifying for me, right? I got a family, I have health problems, I have medical bills, have all these kind of things. And beyond that, like, my ego is such that failing is like, devastating to me. I have a very difficult time, like uncoupling my productivity and my performance from my worth as a human being. So if I went out on my own and failed and had to like, come crawling back with my tail between, that would be like, really, really hard for me emotionally to come back from. And so I just, I was like, I got to do a little better on the side first. I could do a little bit more. I got to do a little bit more. I have these different things, right? So the book comes out, the surfing sales starts, all these kind of things, right? The consulting gigs kind of funnel in. I start asking for more money for some of the consulting gigs. So that's what I mean when I de risk it. So, you know, if I'm making a couple hundred thousand from my W2 and a couple hundred thousand from my side hustles, well, I don't need this W2 anymore because my salary is sort of the same. And so that was how I thought about it. Whereas some people make the leap all at once and go from W2 and, you know, whatever your income level is to instantly nothing. I'm a chicken shit to do that. So I tried to avoid that.

Yeah, I want to. I want to. You know, we forgot to do this at the beginning, but it's just as good now. Quick shout out to our sponsors, Salesforce Revenue, Cloud Lead411 and Gong IO now that we got everybody's attention, maybe, you know, but they can't fast forward past that part anymore.

So here's a question, and I don't know how either of you handle it. And by the way, folks put your questions in or dm, Scott and I, or Justin, and we'll be glad to ask them anonymously.

Scott and Justin, I don't know if you did this as you started your side hustle.

And you started to make income while you still have a full time job.

What kind of fear or feedback were you getting from your executive team about, hey, why are you putting your time into this and not giving us your full time? Right? Did you have that fear before you started doing some stuff on the side? Did you run into that conversation? How did you handle that conversation? And Scott, I'll know you'll answer too, but go back to Justin for a minute.

Yeah, for me, when I got my.

Job.

I was pretty upfront with my, with the co founders that building a brand as an executive was important to me. And so they, I set those expectations because to me, setting, setting appropriate expectations is the key to almost everything in life outside of, you know, a few other things. So I let them know that what I didn't do a good job of was setting the expectations of my team. Right? So like someone has a problem on the floor and they feel like you're the guy who can solve it and they're like, oh, the guy who can solve my problem is online right now. That sucks. And so I had to have a little bit more of a conversation with my team to share why I was doing those things. And so the reason that I gave them was actually a true reason. The same reason that Scott was building his brand, which was not only was it good for me, it was good for the company. Once I had built my brand at Patient Pop and I had Kevin Dorsey as my VP of inside sales, so he was working for me at the time. He had a big brand. I mean, we were getting a ton of applications, we're getting tons of high quality salespeople coming our way. So the company was benefiting from my brand. So there was no problem with my executive team. It was more just explaining it to my team. That was a fear that I had. And you know, we had a good reason that we were doing it. And so we continued to drive that forward. Cool.

What about you, Scott? I know this was a bigger issue for you.

Well, I didn't have.

I didn't have fear about it.

What I ended up having was repercussions a little bit because, you know, when you outshine the master, so to speak, some people don't love that, you know, And Justin, you know, mentioned him and kd. I don't even think it's an argument. Like, Justin and Kevin have a better and bigger brand than patient pop. So somewhere in an ivory tower is a CEO of patient pop. That I don't know. So I will say this, I promise you, that person's ego got affected by these two people working for them, outshining the master. Right? That happened to me multiple times then. A lot of it in my case comes down to, like, what I would talk about. So, you know, if you follow me, you know who I am, you pay attention to, you know, my brand, if you will. Like.

I talk about a lot of things that VCs don't necessarily want you to hear. I talk about a lot of things that founders don't necessarily want you to know and hear. I'm very supportive of VPs and managers and my people. I like to consider myself, you know, a man of the people, so to speak. So I would talk about some of these things and I'd get all this shit raining down on me, like, you know, you gotta silencio, stop some of that stuff. You're making problems, you know, for me, I'm like, no, you know, I'm not. And my, my justification and my defense was, to Justin's point, like, this is benefiting you and your company. We haven't spent a dime in recruiting in 10 years. Anybody who's, you know, been a CEO, that I was a VP Salesforce spent no money in recruiting.

You know, the company brand is growing, which helps our deal flow and things like that. So you're benefiting from it and this is what you get. And, oh, by the way, the part that Justin and I aren't talking about, but matters a ton is we were both doing really good in our regular job. We would have both been fired in 2.5 seconds if we sucked at our regular job while we were doing all this stuff. So I think that's really important to remember.

I think. You know, I think you said one thing that I slightly disagree with, Scott, is that you said you weren't really afraid. And I, you know, you and I had the conversation. You were always afraid of getting fired, right?

That's different, though, than being afraid to, like, do side hustle kind of stuff. I'm always afraid of being fired, just in general. I'm always. I always think the rug is going to be pulled out from under me. My business is doing great right now, and I promise you, five times a day, I think I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to have absolutely nothing.

He texts me three times a day about that fear.

Like, you know, so, yeah, there's a.

There's a half dozen people or more who know me pretty well on this call right now, and all of them are nodding their head yes, like saying, I know this about you, Scott, you fool.

Yeah.

By the way.

So we're going to let Matt come off mute and ask his question, but in the meantime, I'd love for people to put their camera on. It just creates greater community. Not going to require it or force it, but I think it creates stronger engagement and more love in what we do. So, Mac, go ahead and ask your question.

Yeah, basically.

I'm trying to figure out what a good side hustle would be, and I have no idea of how do I figure that out. There's so many different opportunities out there that I just don't know what's right for me. What do I want to be when I grow up?

Could I jump in there, Richard, if you don't mind.

Go for it. Cool.

Great question. This is probably one of the more common questions that I get. And for me, the way that I think about it is pick something that you could talk about. And people have probably seen me write this before, but pick something that you could talk about uninterrupted and unprepared for 30 minutes. Everyone has something like that. A lot of people have 10 things like that. Like, for me, I could sit down, I could talk to you about craft beer in the United States for 30 minutes. I like craft beer.

Right.

I could sit down, I could talk to you about LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I like playing around with it. I could talk to you about it unprepared for 30 minutes. And the idea is, once you've figured out what that is, niche down even further. Pick a very small micro niche. Something like, instead of talking about, I talk about LinkedIn. It's like I talk about how to grow your audience from one follower to 5,000 followers. If you're a salesperson in the edtech space on LinkedIn, that is extremely niche, start there, get really good at that. Help people very simply take them from where they are behind you in their journey to where you are today in your journey. Bring them along. Always find the people a few steps behind you, because over time, you can expand your niche. You can start talking about a few more Things and a few more things, and a few more things. It's hard to go the opposite direction. So for me, it's taking something you know very well, finding the folks who are a few steps behind you, starting to educate them. Once you educate them, and you hear the same questions over and over, how do I do X? How do I do Y? How do I do Z? Take those three questions, drop them into a digital product, put that online, and anytime that someone comes your way, say, that's in my digital product. Move your coaching rates up or whatever you're doing right. Get more questions, put in another product, move your coaching rates back up. It's kind of a cyclical nature of starting really small and growing outwards. That's a long journey, but that's how you have to play it, in my opinion.

Yeah, I'd like to add two quick points there. The first point is, it's amazing all the things that we take for granted that are just easy and common sense that other people don't know anything about and would happily pay you for. And that goes for all. I promise. Every single person on this Zoom right now has one or two of those kind of things. And Justin and I have talked about this, and I know he. He's written about it, and so have I. So I think about that, and then I think about, does it pay one bill? That was how I started. Like, does doing this thing pay my cell phone bill? If yes, it's worth it.

Scott, what was the first thing you did then? What was the first thing you did to pay your cell phone?

Like, when you really started charging rental properties?

You know, I. I got advice a long time ago.

Yeah, I don't. I don't talk about. Not that. I mean, in the.

In the sales consulting world, that's a side hustle. Okay. Beyond. Beyond that. Like the book that I wrote, Addicted to the Process, it has consistently made three to $500 a month of royalties for me. That is not a sum that's going to change my life in, like, any kind of meaningful way. I never thought of it in those terms. I did think about it in terms of, like, did it pay my cell phone bill? Did it pay my, you know, electric bill this particular month? So anything that you do that can cover a bill or two of yours in particular, that doesn't require a lot of continuous work and effort. This is what Justin talks about all the time. Build a digital asset. Like, I wrote a book. Not digital asset necessarily, but same thing. Like, I don't have to do anything with it, it just is going to spit this couple hundred dollars in perpetuity, right? That's the passive income component of it. So those, those two things I think are important. Think about it. Can it take away one bill? It doesn't have to be your mortgage, something small. And you all have something that is common sense to you that the rest of us would pay for that we don't know anything about. Go ahead, Justin.

I just wanted to add, it's super true. One thing that's really interesting, and I know this because I'm a buyer, I buy courses like I buy like five or six a year because I think buying knowledge is a shortcut. And so like one thing that's really interesting that people don't think about is a lot of folks will pay for aggregation. So like people, there might be some folks on here who have bought my LinkedIn playbook and like everything that's in that course, you can Google that. Everything that exists inside of that course is Googleable. You can go find it on the Internet if you want to go search for it and do your research. But all I did was make it very simple. I took my journey, I applied it to things you can already google. Instead of making you go out and find it on your own, I put it into a short and concise video so you don't have to go out and Google it and search for it and waste your valuable time. I gave it to you in a much shorter version. And so that's paying for aggregation. And so I realized that when I want to learn something, I can go on YouTube for five hours. But five hours of my time is valuable. I'd rather buy a course from someone that's 30 minutes long that shows me exactly how I want to do something in 30 minutes. And so I always say, brevity is your friend. Teach someone how they can do something that they want to do in 30 minutes that you have experience with and aggregate the information they need and present it to them in an affordable and simple way. To me, that's the easiest way to start a side hustle is just build a 30 minute product like that.

Great idea. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, Lori Dunn has a great question. I'm trying to take you off mute, Lori.

I'm off.

Hi everybody.

Justin, you kind of tapped on bits of this already. But my question, it's all around timing. When you don't have X amount of years or as you mentioned, executive status and you lack experience in one specific area. I come from background of theatrical design. Went into the government, did nonprofit work and now I'm here in energy tech sales. So I have a big network in lots of different areas, but I don't have exactly. My 15 year career isn't in tech energy tech sales. So the side hustle starts smaller, more widespread, AKA I have experience in each of those and do lots of little ones. All my past areas or should I maybe focus on building in this one area, including my branding around now this who I am now and then start the side gigs.

I'll give you my advice and then I'm sure Scott will have some as well. But mine is I don't build. I never built for the job I had because to me, like I was in healthcare technology at Patient Pop. Well, what if a company in edtech or fintech came around one year later and said, we want to make you an offer you can't refuse to be an executive. Now I've built my brand around healthcare technology, now I gotta switch. Now I'm building a brand around fintech or edtech. So for me, like two things. Number one, pick something that you enjoy and that you could talk about for a long time. So my first digital product was not about SaaS coaching healthcare technology. Patient was about LinkedIn. And like I always ask people, like, it's fear. But like, who said that I deserve to be the teacher? When I released that course, I had 20,000 followers. My friend Austin has 700,000. What if I looked at him and said I can't be the expert here because he's more of an expert than me. And for me, it's not really about being an expert. To me, it's just about teaching the people a few steps behind you. Like I always think about our teachers in high school. Our teachers in high school aren't experts. They're not, you know, the best mathematicians in the world. They just knew more about math than I did as a high schooler, right? So they can be a teacher. So think of yourself as a teacher, not as an expert. And that will help you go out and find the right people for your product. Choose something small and very distinct that you like and enjoy. And you could talk about, start there. Don't pivot your brand from industry to industry or else you're left with six different brands and you enter a seventh industry and you're like, boy, this isn't working at all. Just pick something you want to be known for outside of your industry and build that on the side. That to me has been the most beneficial. I don't know about you, Scott.

Laurie, I want to jump in on this one.

You always have something to say and you always have something to add. We don't always talking, you know, we don't, we don't know each other directly yet, but everybody has something to say and something to add. So I would worry, I would encourage you to worry less around. Well, I don't have the experience or I don't have that. Because you know what you do have, you have the experience of being new at this piece. So other people who might be new might like the advice you have. You can talk about, man, I was really afraid to go and try this, but man, I did it. Now I love it, right? I encourage others to do it or talk about how you, you know, how you got over your fear to make the leap, right? And that's just a start. That doesn't mean it's going to be your side hustle, but that starts to help you find your voice, right? You don't know where your voice is going to go yet. That's. And that's a fair place to be, right? And then you can combine that even, you know, with what Justin said as well, of like, you know, I will figure it out along the way. So anyway, I know, Scott, you wanted to jump into.

That's right. You got it. Let's Bob go to. Thanks, Lori, for your question. I'm going to go to the next question so everybody gets a shot here. Brian Sexton, let me try to get you off mute, my friend.

Scott, Justin, Richard, how you guys doing?

Good to see you, man.

Yeah, you guys had me at the. The dynamic combination of Richard, Justin and Scott. So it's good to be on with you guys.

Question is, and I love what Justin said, we all know something that someone will pay you for. When is that moment internally when you know you have something? How do you know you have something that very few people know and they will pay you for? Because, Justin, you're pretty transparent on Twitter. I love following you, Scott. The same way Richard. You guys are all pretty transparent with things, but how did you know that you knew that you had something that. That very few people had?

Scott, why don't you start, man?

That's an interesting question.

I'm glad I'm going first because I think my answer might be different than these guys. I don't know that I know that even now, to be honest with you.

I think it's a constant battle of imposter syndrome type stuff. And I just have to remind myself, like I said before, things that I think are just like duh or common sense. Other people don't know anything about at all. And I have to remind myself of that. And that is value, right? I mean, I've. Six times I've taken businesses from nothing to, you know, 20ish million dollars. ARR. Like, not that many people have done that six times. I have to sit with that for a minute, you know, and be like, oh, wow, maybe I, maybe I do have something to share. But it's not super easy. There was never some light bulb moment that's like, oh, I know how to sell now. I can teach people something. Oh, I know how to lead. Oh, I know how to write. I can do. I've never had that. So I think for me, like I feel the imposter syndrome and feel the fear and I just say kind of it and do it anyway. And I, I write about this a lot. Like I allow myself to feel it and I just do it anyway and we'll see what happens, right? And what's the worst thing that can happen? Justin releases his course, nobody buys it. Okay, right? Like I just released this, you know, series of video courses and stuff with my friend Glenn, University of Sales. Like, if nobody buys it, okay, I shanked. So what? Life will go on. I'll try again in some other arena. What's the worst thing that can happen.

Right, Justin, I'll give you two interesting stories that I think will resonate here. Number one, I don't know if any of you follow me, but has anyone, if you could raise your hand, seen that I've promoted a new community recently?

Okay, cool.

Got a thousand email addresses of people who are interested in the community. Haven't built it yet. I wouldn't build it if people weren't interested. I pre sell everything. I have an idea for what I want it to be and I know how to do it. I know exactly how to do it. But I'm not going to spend 50 hours building it if no one's going to buy it. So like my last course that I released, Idea Audience Proof product, I went out and I announced it online. 40,000. I made 40,000 bucks on launch. I'd not built the course. The course was not built at all. Zero building blocks. And I was like, oh shit, I guess I better build this now. So like, one of the easy ways to test is to go out and say, I'm doing this thing. And if you make 5,000 bucks, you're like, cool, I better build this thing now. That's like one of the best ways that I motivate myself to get started. But to answer your question, like, I'll position that in with my wife, who my wife's on a coaching call right now in the other room. My wife helped startups build employee experiences programs for over eight years at some of the biggest startups in New York and la. And then she tried to build her own consulting business doing that. She failed, shut it down after two years. And in the beginning of this year, she was like, I'm like, what do you like? And she's like, I love finance. Like, she loves. She massively into the stock market. Her dad's a stock broker. She manages our entire family's wealth. She's just super, like, she reads books that I think are so fucking boring and she just loves finance. And so I was like, why don't you just tell everyone what you know? And she's like, oh, I don't know anything. And I was like, go out and just share what you know. So she shared what she knew. And what we found is that, like, the simplest things, like how to open an E trade account, how to invest in an index fund, things that I just know how to do because I just thought people knew how to do that. A lot of people don't. And so she started talking about it every day online. Eight weeks later, she got 10 of the same question in her inbox on LinkedIn. And she's like, I guess I'll throw up coaching calls. Threw up coaching calls. A couple of people booked and that's the start of a business. And so, like, to me, it's like produce and listen, you know?

One of the most interesting things I've learned in the last couple of months is that for whatever reason. Well, I mean, I think I know the reason, but polls do Fairly well on LinkedIn. They really do. So at least they have for me. So if you are trying to figure some stuff out, it might be an interesting way and sort of to the point of like, if nobody buys it or sees it. Well, you know, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody's there, does it make it sound nobody's going to know? Who gives a shit? The only person is going to know is you. Right. And that's kind of it.

I know we've got another question that.

Was coming forward, so I wanted to go ahead and ask this. I got to pull it up. How do you get away? This is coming from Amanda, which is any advice for someone earlier in their career who wants to get away from a W2 five years in SaaS, three years in sales Ops. I feel like I don't have enough experience to do consulting or something in the space, but struggle with another idea besides that. I'll go ahead and answer that for you, Amanda, again. And it kind of goes back to what I said to Lori. First and foremost, five years in SaaS and three years in sales ops is a lifetime. Three years in sales ops, like, people are like, I mean, this is the time, right? It's moving from sales ops to revenue ops. So I guarantee you, you have value to add there. And, you know, whether you're like me, where I. Everything I do is way more tactical.

So, you know, depending on your mindset of a strategic approach or a tactical approach or both, I think people would absolutely love what you have to say. And to Scott and mine and Justin's point, just start posting shit and see what happens. Like, you know, that doesn't mean you're gonna. It's Gonna become your W2 right away, but start experimenting. I think that's the key piece to figuring this out. Back to even Max question is, just start experimenting with content and see what happens.

The other thing that you could do, Amanda, is just do the work for free. Initially, I did a bunch of consulting work for a year or two without knowing I was doing consulting work, meaning I was just helping people that had questions with stuff. And in helping people who had questions with stuff, I got better at my craft, right? Teaching somebody something helps you get better at it. You got to simplify it. You got to be patient. You got to try different analogies and stories and things like that. Those people that I helped inevitably would funnel somebody else my way. And once I, you know, had a little bit more experience or felt a little bit more confident, then I got the guts to ask somebody, well, you know, I kind of don't have that much time to do this stuff for free anymore. Like, you know, could you pay me, like, 500 bucks a month or something like that? And somebody said, yes. And I'm like, holy shit. I could have been charging 500 bucks a month this whole time, right?

And then you take a couple at that rate, and then all of a sudden you're like, I wonder if I can, you know, get $1,000 a month. Oh, my God, somebody paid me a thousand. Right? You just kind of keep inching it up. So if you. If you have a little bit of imposter syndrome right now, but you want to test out the consulting thing, see if you like it, there's definitely people out there that Will take your advice and you might be able to help them. And that might be the beginning to kind of kick start some paid gigs coming your way. Justin, you want to add anything?

Yeah. Two pieces of advice. Number one, don't go out and be a rev ops consultant. There's a million revops consultants. Find one thing you do really well as somebody in revenue operations and just do that one thing. Whatever it is, whatever you like doing. Right. Maybe it's like I help clean marketo databases or marketing automation, whatever, Right. I don't know the rev ops world as well as you do, but like choose one thing that you like to do. Talk about it every day instead of talking about it. Talk about what happens if you don't do it very well. Like talk to somebody yesterday they didn't hook up their marketo with their salesforce well enough. Cost them $100,000. Deal. Talk to another client. Like just constantly reinforce how shitty life can be if you don't do that thing well, someone will then reach out to you and say, I'm not doing that thing. Well, it sounds like you do that thing. And you're like, I do do that thing. Here's how much I charge to do that thing. And then you make money. It's actually not much more difficult than that if you overcomplicate it to where you lose. And one of the easiest ways to de risk that relationship in the beginning is you say, sounds like you guys have a problem. What would it be worth if I could solve that problem? I don't know. I'll tell you what, I'll do the work for you. It'll take me a day. At the end, if you love the work, you tell me what it was worth to your business and we'll call that our first engagement. Maybe they pay you $500, but at least you learned what the worth was. It might be 10x what you thought it was like. I went out and way underpriced myself when I started. And over time I just bumped my rates up 10x because I just kept pushing them until people said no. So like just do that. It's not that much more complicated than that.

I remember there was a time when Scott was doing all these little things. Then they were 500 bucks a month, 300 bucks a month. And he called me, he's like, I don't have any more bandwidth. And I'm like, dude, raise your rates. Like stop spending time on these things that are worth your time. And it doesn't mean you're an asshole. But Your time is valuable too, and fair is fair. I talk about this all the time when people bring up my price of like, well, can you do something with the price and lower it? My answer is, then, look, I appreciate the ask, but the market sets my rate. This is what the market will bear. And rarely can anybody ever come up with a reason that tells me that I have to lower the price. They say, well, we didn't budget that. And I said, I understand, but this is what the market dictates. And they always find the budget right if they really want it. If they don't, then someone else will come down the road. Scott, I know you had a couple more questions coming in.

I have a bunch of questions. One last thing on that point. I was very scared to ask for larger sums of money when I was getting started because I had a difficult time again, decoupling what I would pay for something versus what other people would pay. It doesn't fucking matter what you would pay for the thing, right? It matters what these other people might pay for it.

Scott hates paying for anything, by the way. Like everything.

Like, he hates it totally.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know who pays for the hosting service of this thing? Richard.

So.

At any rate.

I tried to remember that these companies I'm working with, they have budget and 500 bucks to them is a joke. 5 grand to them is a joke. 15 grand to them is a drop in the bucket every single month when you're delivering literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth of value their way. Right. And it was tough for me at least to get comfortable, you know, with valuing myself and my time like that in the beginning because I wouldn't pay 300 bucks, 500 bucks or whatever. Right. So. Good question. Amanda. Kristen. Kristen Holmes, trying to take you off mute. You had a question?

It's less of a question and more of a ramble.

Oh.

It's kind of how I live my life. It's like I'm an external processor. So I just say everything and then I'm like, okay, wait. So I've been trying to reframe it.

So for me, I followed Justin for a while and everything that he puts online confuses me. So I probably comment like asinine comments on all of his LinkedIn posts and he's like, who the hell is this person?

So I was, I was a. I was a stay at home mom for like 10 years. I was married. And then I left that marriage for various reasons and started to figure out what the hell to do to support myself and Two kids. So it's not even like I have this like career thing. Jumped back into college, got the quickest degree possible.

Fell into sales as a career. And I'm just kind of here in that.

I don't think it's a long term thing. It's not something I suck at. But everything that I do, everything that I learn kind of just goes back into like, how can I take this and be a better person? And then how can I take this and be a better parent?

And I don't know if that's like, you know, a side hustle or a teachable skill in any way.

So what is, so what's your question? What is your question behind.

Yeah, what is my question, Richard?

See, it, it sounds like if I, if I could jump in, like, I don't know. To me, going through a challenge is, is hard, right? We all go through challenges, right? So I'll give you an example of someone you remind me of. I have a buddy who is a counselor at a place for really, really poorly behaved children.

And they're generally children who have some sort of difficulty in their family life and things like that. And it amazes me to watch him work with these kids. And he wants to do better, he wants to start a side hustle. And I was thinking to myself, hey man, I know there have got to be at least 10, 10,000 sets of parents in this country that have a child that they wish they could have a better strategy for teaching or getting under control or managing outbursts. And so I was like, you should just put together a very simple 30 minute guide on how to best handle it. This isn't your example, but this is his example, right? And he's just like, how could I do that? Put together a guide, put together a book, a video. Because to him, like, he really believes in helping those people. That's his whole career, his whole journey is about that thing. And so like, if you're passionate about that, being a great parent, like working while also providing incredible, like parental guidance, there have to be a million people who want to do those two things. It just, it's not what you see on LinkedIn. You see a lot of sales, marketing, LinkedIn this and that. Find your niche, talk about that every day. You will find people that gravitate towards what you're talking about. So just the overall message that I would say, and I'm not trying to make it confident, confusing, is like, no matter what you talk about, there is no niche too small if it is yours. That comes from Seth Godin So I would just take that away and think about that. So appreciate the question.

Hi, Travis. Travis Matthews.

Hey, Travis.

Hey, everybody. My question is just how do you narrow focus? And I think a lot of people on this call, including myself, there's a lot of things that I'm passionate about and that I think that I have like a unique skillset in. But it's difficult to narrow focus into just, you know, specializing in one thing and putting that out there to the world. Saying when you're starting off, are you guys just trying multiple different things and seeing what sticks and moving forward with that, or do you just right off the bat, just find something you think that you can run?

I think for it.

Well, I think, I think you heard Justin say before that he pre. Sells things. Think. Right? So he's not. I'm speaking for Justin, but like, he's not going to go just build something and try something if there's no demand and there's. There's no need for it.

Right.

So that's, that's, that's part of his, his approach for, for me. And then I'll kick it back over to Justin. I didn't mean to speak for you, but it's like coming out, coming out of me.

I actually, I actually don't love the question how do you narrow your focus?

I reframe that as why do I need to narrow my focus?

I love sales, leadership, sports, surfing, traveling, tequila.

Community. I have found a way for me to get involved with all of these things, turn all of them into business entities of some sort of monetize all of them and bundle them all under the umbrella of how Scott makes money.

Why do you have to narrow your focus if you're passionate about a bunch of different things? Maybe the narrowing is not the right question. Maybe it's, which one do I start with first? And for me, that becomes, well, which one is the quickest win? Because I need feedback, I need reinforcement that what I'm doing, you know, is working and that success, that quick win compounds for me, builds confidence and energizes me to go do the next thing.

Hey, Scott, I got a question, because I know this from you. Right. But when we, you know, for the folks who don't know, we. The whole surf and sales idea came when we took our families to Thanksgiving in 2017.

Right?

Yeah.

Was. Were you already doing your other side hustle at that point? Were you already doing.

I was, I was doing consulting and I had already released addicted to the process.

Right. Okay. And then, you know, you added this, Right. The event. Then you, you know, last, and then you eventually quit. Then you started Patreon in the last six or eight months, maybe a year.

Then Thursday night sales.

Thursday night sales is on the one year anniversary. I don't know if it's this week or last week. You also had, you know, we did the podcast starting the year. So, you know, you start with one, but don't think that's the only one. I think is what Scott's saying, right?

Yeah.

You know bite size. Right. Start small. If it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. And move on.

Go ahead, Justin.

I think about it as a guy I like to follow online. He coins it good. He calls it a portfolio of small bets. The way that I think about it is not necessarily narrowing focus. I'm trying a lot of stuff. Once I find something that works, I like to narrow my focus in, but I like to also step up to the plate and try and hit a bunch of singles. And every once in a while something sticks out. I'll give you an example of the complication that went into starting Thursday night sales. I texted Scott and said, do you think it would be cool if we did something every Thursday night where we talked to salespeople? And he was like, that would be cool. And I was like, cool, let's do that. And that was it. That was the start of Thursday night sales. And like, it has grown into something much bigger than.

Oh, yeah, we wrote a whole business plan and everything. We were very tactical.

Yeah, we're just like, that's how.

But that's how the surf and sales event started. The exact same thing.

Totally the exact same thing. Here's how the LinkedIn playbook started. I sat down with Kevin Dorsey over lunch and I was like, I'm gonna build sales courses. He's like, you should teach people how to do LinkedIn. I was like, that's a good ide. And that was it. And like that. And I was like, cool, I'll do that. And then I was like, people from LinkedIn came to me and said, I'm building my audience. How to make. How do I make money? And I was like, oh, that. That could be probably an interesting course too. It was like 10 or 15 people. So I'm like, I'll build that. And then I had a bunch of people reach out to me that course and they're like, I wish there were more people to work with so that I could grow my business online. I was like, I'll build a community so like, it's more like signal in the noise, right? Like, you just hear what people ask a lot or you hear the requests they bring your way or, you know, and you say like, cool, I'm going to go solve that or try and solve that and go presell it. If it's a dud, fold it down. No one remembers those shitty singles on the albums. They remember the hits. So just try a bunch of stuff. You're going to have some duds. But once you have a good, you know, once someone says this is really great about one idea, then you can start narrowing focus. But in the beginning, you know, portfolio of small bets.

Cool. Thanks, Charlie. I don't know if it was.

Yeah. Thank you all.

Yeah.

Ben Anderson, are you ready?

Yes, I am. My question's about the tech stack that you use. And I know probably the order of things. You have your idea and the product and then you find the best tool to make that come to life. But do you have any ones that just are your favorites or kind of how you ended up, you know, using a certain tool for one of your products?

I'm going to punt this entire question to Justin and Richard because anyone who knows me knows that this is not my sweet spot whatsoever. And I would use pen and paper and Excel till the day I die if I could.

Cool.

I'm happy to jump in. First of all, what Blake is doing with these quotes from the thing with the fireplace is very cool. I think you should check that out.

So to me, the answer is really simple. Choose the technology you know how to use, because if you don't, you will give yourself an excuse for not getting started. Oh, I gotta learn webflow. Oh, I gotta learn Patreon memberful member stack. There's a million pieces of technology out there. I just stood up my new community with card. It's like a simple $10 a year website builder. I built one page with words on it has nothing else other than words, no pictures, nothing. So I just threw that up in 30 minutes and I'm collecting email addresses using like Mailchimp, super simple technology that I already know how to use. Then once you get a bunch of people buying your thing and you like go and you start doing it and it's like, wow, this thing's at 10k in recurring revenue a month. That's pretty cool. This is neat where this is going and you want to provide a better experience, Take a little bit of that money, go on, find a consultant and say, here are all the things that my audience or my customers Say I need and have them build that custom. But don't spend a dime on technology until you prove out that people are willing to pay for your idea.

So I'm the. I'm the complete opposite of Scott and Justin, where my stack is ridiculous, like, it's silly. I overcomplicate, love toys, oh, my God. And then I get frustrated.

So obviously Zoom is in the stack. Salesforce is my stack. I use Grammarly a lot just because I'm shitty at grammar. Even when I use Grammarly, Scott still corrects me.

The. You know, the first piece of advice is I would worry less about the overall stack. And I would tell you, if you're going to build a side hustle, whatever you can do to collect email addresses is critical. Email addresses is your lifeline. So when you create an asset and you're going to make it free, well, make people download it, right? Make them get that piece. So I use ActiveCampaign to manage all this. I use Zap to make things go back and forth. Between ActiveCampaign, I have two people. I have an amazing woman named Shauna who does all the marketing and these landing pages you guys see and sign up on, I've got Carrie who makes the connections behind the landing pages to get it in, to get the data in. So those are the pieces I have. And we have Kelsey, who helps us on the surf and sales podcast. She helps us, who's here now, but she also helps us upload stuff to the podcast. So, you know, part of your sales stack is not just the stack itself, but where do you get the support and what is your time worth to you? Right? It's worth, you know, 25, 30, 50 bucks an hour for someone to come in and build this landing page. I'd pay 100 bucks for an hour for that to build this landing page, get it set up, have it connect to activecampaign, have it connect to Salesforce so I can go focus on other stuff so I can write more content, so I can drive the attendance. So, you know, I'm, you know, I still refuse to, quote, unquote, hire someone full time because I just don't want to do that. But I definitely have taken a slightly different approach. And I can't remember if we're using mailchimp or it's Active Campaign. So anyway, that's. That's my answer to the stack.

Yeah. And again, I, I use almost no tools whatsoever. I'm just much. I'm very fixated on just like, what's your CRM?

Tell Everybody.

I don't have. I don't have a CRM, right.

How do you track it?

I don't.

But you use Excel, right?

I just use Excel.

I just dropped the website that I just built in 30 minutes in the website that I just copied on the website that I thought looked cool. And I'm like, I'm going to steal that because that's cool looking. And that was. It took me about 15 minutes and I spent $0 on it. So if you're going to use technology, use ch cheap or free technology and do not let it stand in your way. It'll never be perfect.

That's the piece that's the most important to me is like all of these shiny toys to me are distractions and things that slow me down and get in my way. So I'm just the type of person that doesn't care about that kind of stuff. I want to. If I have an idea, I want to get it done. I want to do the thing as fast as I can. If I'm going to get criticized because it doesn't look pretty enough or, you know, I could have done it this way or that way, so be it. I don't care. If you listen to how Justin is talking about things in particular, like, what are things where he can learn very fast, right? What are things where he can produce things very quickly because he's very cognizant of his time and how much his time is worth, right? And if you listen to me talk, I'm talking about how do I just shrink this delta between idea and action. Justin and I have this idea for, you know, Thursday night sales. Boom. We just do it. Richard and I have this idea for circuit sales. We have no fucking idea what we're doing. We have no idea how to run an event. Boom. We just commit and we do it right. I pre sold it, Richard. I don't know if you remember this, but we got back from Costa Rica. I made One post on LinkedIn that was like, I have this idea, would anybody come? And I got, you know, at like 700 hits on the thing, which at the time was like a ton for me. Like, well, I guess that validates it. So within a couple days I plunked down $25,000 on my credit card, booked these places in Costa Rica, and now I'm pot committed. It's like, well, I guess I got to figure it out now, right? So don't let all these. There's a million reasons not to do something and the tech stack could become one of them. Don't let that happen. Don't let that happen. We got a great question from Ryan Johansen. Thanks for that question, Ben. Ryan Johansen, are you there still? I just took you off mute.

Thanks.

Yes, I am. Okay. Yeah, thanks for having me, everyone. So my personal side hustle is I'm glad you talked about stress and burnout, Justin. It's about stress reduction. So I really focus on people who are either CSMs or sales. How they can use actionable tips to reduce the stress they have and increase their productivity. I did a webinar last week. I had about 500 people on it. Drove about 100 to my website, but really got nothing in the way of conversion. So I'm wondering, any practical advice there?

What are you selling on your website?

7 day stress reduction course. So in under 15 minutes a day you will learn different ways to reduce your stress. There's a lot of actions in there.

How much does it cost? $25.

Okay. Could you solve people's stress in less than seven days? Like here's a question that I have, like, I think of like ship 30 for 30 on Twitter, which is like Dickie Bush doing 30 days to writing better. But like writing is a. Writing is a muscle that we know takes time as people. Most folks who want to reduce stress, do you know what they buy? They buy soft drinks that reduce stress. They have like those little five hour energies that say like stress and they do it or they take a vitamin. Because people want, people want quick wins for stress. They don't want to go through a weekly course or a bi weekly course to solve their stress problems. What if you took everything that's in that seven day thing, packaged it into one asset and said, in 30 minutes I'll solve your stress problems, put it up for $25 and I bet that your conversion will increase. Not positive, but I would absolutely want to test that because to me, brevity is the most important thing. If someone's selling a course and it's $99 and they say, learn how to build on Twitter in 45 minutes, I will buy that. If they're like, show up for the next 14 days and read these things every morning, I'm like, that's my personal take on that. I would experiment with that. That's if that's helpful. No, it's really helpful.

Yeah, the condensed part and the simplicity of everything is really important. And Mac just chimed in on the chat. Make it an ebook. I just did that. So I do a weekly newsletter.

Okay.

And one of the Newsletters was a couple part series of like tips for somebody looking to become a sales manager. I have a guy that I know named ryan Walker through LinkedIn. Never met him before. You know, friendly kind of LinkedIn connection acquaintance. He reaches out to me and is like, dude, this series was like amazing. You should turn it into a book. I'm like, well, I don't, I don't have time for all that. How about you write the other half of it and we make it an ebook and skip the publisher? And he's like, are you serious? I said, yes, absolutely. Two people are better than one. Two brands over, over one. You do some of the listing, I did some of the listing. Boom, bang, ebook. We've sold a couple thousand copies. There's a couple thousand bucks that Ryan and I have made out of the clear blue sky. Right.

Could I add one more thing on there that I was just thinking about? You're getting people to your email, to your website. Do you have email addresses from people that have attended these webinars with you?

Yeah, and I'm getting, I have an email, a newsletter too that I've gotten a bunch of people to subscribe for. So we're doing everything but thanks.

Send a one off email to the entire list and say, hey, I got five questions from people recently that asked how they could solve their stress problems in less than seven days. And so I'm working on putting together a 30 minute guide to solving your special issues, whatever your value prop is, Right? I don't know your value prop. You do. I'm thinking about putting this 30 minute guide together, but want to see if it's interesting first. I'm going to price it at $15. It's on presale today. See if anyone buys it. If like 100 people buy it, build it. If five people buy it, then just send them a note a week from now and say, hey, there wasn't enough interest in this, so I'm not going to build it. That's what I'm, that's how I would think about it.

One other thought that I have about Ryan's situation in particular.

It's entirely possible that you're going for the wallet too fast, potentially meaning you'll hear lots of people talk about. And Justin just wrote about this a couple days ago, actually, I think you hear all of us talk about we're in this kind of side hustle game and have cut the cord now, like give, give, give, give, give, give, give. Justin said give for a year and then ask. So one thing for you to consider potentially Ryan and I don't know your situation enough, but if I read this on the surface level, I'm like, okay, you, you did this thing, you got 500 people to show up, and now you're immediately trying to convert them. There might not be enough of a foundation there. There might not be enough of a relationship there. There might not be enough trust there. And people might think there's a quick bait and switch for like, oh, I did this thing and now this dude's trying to peel me for 25 bucks. Right? So it's possible that you need to do 1, 2, 3, 10, 15, 25 more of these kind of things before you go for the ask. So food, food for thought there.

So I want to. I know we're at time and you know, so. So of course, here's. We want to turn it over to everybody and you can put it in the chat or raise your hand. What are your two action items coming out of this today? What are you going to do.

That will help you determine what you're going to do? Maybe, hey, I'm going to go focus on this. I'm going to focus on that. But I'd love to hear from the crowd because I think that's always really important to see what value you got. Like, I will even say too, Like, I just texted Scott. I'm like, dude, we're running out of time. But you know what we'll do? We'll turn this into an ebook. He's like, that's genius. It's kind of like, so here's an asset, right? Like everything you do. By the way, this is my last piece of advice. Then I want to hear what people are going to do. Everything you do is an asset. If I Write something on LinkedIn that's an asset for me to make a blog post which could turn into an ebook or a bonfire session, right? Like all of think of the things, these little things you do, not just as the one little thing. Yeah, you start somewhere, but eventually it becomes an asset. So anyway, folks, Please put your LinkedIn in there before we go. But here's stuff coming in from. From Ali. She wants to start writing and start posting. Great. Ali, don't worry about anything else. Just start it. Right?

You know, base content on experience and value the work. Start converting a couple of pieces of original content. Great. Focus on building a prospect list. Post and write more. All of these things matter, right? These are great, great things. So I know we need to eventually, please keep putting stuff in there because I Think this is helpful, but by all means, thanks to our supporters of Lead411 Gong IO and Salesforce revenue Cloud. We appreciate their support to let us do these kinds of things to make it worth the time for y'.

All.

As Scott said, don't overthink it. Scott, what? What does Richard overthink all the time? Give him an example.

Everything.

Absolutely everything. A LinkedIn post.

Yes, I do.

How much? How much to charge somebody?

Yes.

I don't want to pick on you too much. No, you can.

I pick on you all the time.

Anyone? Anybody want to come on and share what their action items are? You just happy putting them in chat? That's fine. Feel free to raise your hand. Hand. We'll let you come in and maybe ask one or two more questions and then I know we need to wrap.

The other point about everything becomes an asset. You know, there's a lot of people here who have been on podcasts or host the podcast, these kind of things, or go to webinars, be on a panel. By the way, all of those things are demand gen for you to potentially get noticed to either sell an asset, pick up a consulting gig, start a side hustle, partner with somebody on some kind of side hustle. All of this stuff is worthwhile doing. Richard. Not Richard. Justin posted in there like, please start building your brand. You have to. You absolutely have to. You are doing yourself and your career a massive disservice if you are not actively trying to build your brand, grow the size of your network.

Here's my last question for the group before anybody jumps on. For those of you who put something on here, here's what I'm going to do. These are the things I'm going to do. Now go in and put. When's your deadline for when you're going to start? What day are you going to start doing these things? Commit. Right. Hold yourself accountable.

Yesterday. Good answer, Kel.

I got to bounce, guys.

All right. Yeah.

Let's go, Justin. Everybody appreciate it, but write that down, right? Whether you put it in the chat or not, write down the day you're going to commit. Make sure the first thing happens. You got to do that. Otherwise it's going to be a little bit tougher for you. So I think that's it. I think we're. I think we're ready to go, Scott. And wrap it up.

Appreciate everybody. Appreciate everybody coming out. This will. This recording will go up on YouTube. The audio will go up on, on Spotify and itunes on the Surf and Tales podcast. And feel free to reach out to me, Richard or Justin, privately. And if you got any other questions, want to talk about any of this stuff further. And good luck out there.

Thanks, everybody.