The Brutal Truth About Partnerships That Costs Entrepreneurs Millions with Scott Clary

Every single person who is successful has an internal locus of control. They believe with 100% certainty if they put enough energy and force and willpower towards anything, the world will bend to their will.

Hello, everybody. I'm talking with Scott Clary. And Scott, welcome to the Big Hitter podcast.

Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I'm excited for this one.

I mean, you hit the nail on the head right from the beginning. It's better when you hit the. You aim at the bullseye right from the beginning, but you aimed at the bullseye of what people are looking for, which is they want to be a success, they want to hear about success, they want to copy success. You know, if I'm a little kid and I want to learn how to walk, I'm not going to be looking at the guy sitting in the chair. I'm going to look at the people walking around the room. You know, I want to see the success story. So, anyway, congratulations to you on that. And right off the bat, and then I looked at. I'm going to shut up here in a minute. But then I looked to see what your last episode was, some of your episodes, because I immediately subscribed and it's like, you know, you have. You have on there, your last episode. I can't wait to hear. It's like why experts give bad advice. You know, I can't wait to get into that. So, anyway, you're doing great work, man. Congratulations. Glad to have you on.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Success story. It's a. It's a good name, I guess. You know, it's funny because when I started the. When I started the podcast, I thought, what would be a great name that would attract a whole bunch of really cool guests? And that was. That was a. That was it. You know, everybody wants to tell their success story. But it evolved, I think, actually didn't just evolve. I thought about this from the beginning. Of course, people want to listen to, you know, the famous entrepreneur success story, but I also wanted to really tell people's story. Not just the wins, but all the struggles and the shit that they went through to build an incredible company and to be successful. I wanted to show that, yeah, okay, you talk to the founder of Netflix or the founder of Reebok or the Gary versus or the Grant Cardone or the billionaires, and there's a whole bunch of other types of interviews that I've done. But every story, there's a. There's a very tough, difficult, dark period that people have to go through to achieve excellence. And quote, unquote, success. And I think that that's a story that I wanted to tell because that's a story that I think younger Scott would find valuable and would make the, the big audacious goal that I'm going after a little bit in my mind, a little bit easier to achieve if I know that everybody who's built anything meaningful has struggled through it and gone through shit at some point, which is the truth. A universal truth.

Yeah. And the thing is that it's kind of the reason when I started, when I started this podcast three years ago, I called it Million Dollar Mastermind. But I wanted to spotlight real world success stories just like yours, and show people, let people hear the reality behind the climb and the lifestyle and the rewards and problem solving and the fact that it's complex and it's mainly get people past the easy success descriptions that come from people that really never built anything. Almost the fact of their ignorance, almost is directly proportional to how easy they make it sound. You know what I'm saying? Because in the outside, they've never done it. And so they're looking at how you did your life. And they say, well, I had an hour interview with Scott, so I know. Let me tell you what Scott did. He said, no, you know, I've always said, scott, you dumbbell, if you had fed the gorillas at the zoo for 30 years, that still doesn't let you know how the gorillas think.

It's true. Well, I think this is because of social media, right? Everybody is pretending to be an overnight success and a lot of social media is fake. But the issue is that it's. It's fake, but it's very convincing. So you have a young entrepreneur that's, you know, whatever, 17, 18, 19, 20, and they're just looking at all the options. And entrepreneurship is sexy and flashy and it seems it can make a lot of money overnight. And they look at their, you know, their, their favorite influencer online, they think it's going to be easy and they jump into it, which is fine. I've. I love entrepreneurship. I love that. I love that spirit in somebody. But I think that setting expectations that is going to take a lot out of you is a really good, healthy mindset to have. Going into building anything, even a career, it doesn't matter. Career, business, whatever, it doesn't matter. But setting proper expectations is what sets you up for success. Because I think the main reason people fail at anything doesn't matter if it's losing weight in the gym when they go in January 1st, or building a business or starting a career or getting into a relationship in a marriage, whatever, it's because it's just always harder than you think it is. And when you set the wrong expectations and it doesn't work out the way that you thought it would work out, then it's very easy for you to want to give up because reality doesn't. Your, the expectations don't match reality anymore. But if you go into the gym January 1st thinking this is going to take me two to three years to get to the ideal body I want, or this business can take me five to 10 years to build, or this relationship and marriage is going to take me 30, 40 years, right? Then all of a sudden the expectations are set up properly so you can, you can be in it for the long haul and your chance of success is much higher. And that's why I don't love social media.

It allows you to make smarter decisions. Right from the beginning, I remember not knowing why, but somehow when I made my move up to North Carolina to open the expansion business, I, you know, when I chose the location up in North Carolina, I said, I want to go somewhere where I can be and feel like I'm at home because I was moving out of Atlanta, you know, I was debating other places around the country, but I said I've got to probably stay in the Southeast, so I'll feel at home for at least five years, you know, because it's got to be at least a five year commitment if I'm going to build a business. It turned into like a 25 year commitment, but you got to, it's easier to do that rather than get up there and say, you know, I don't really like it up here, whatever, how long is this going to take? And when you know the reality, you can sort through things. Scott, for example, like, being mediocre is not all that great either. Giving up is not all that great either. And you could be paying a price, son. Whatever you do, it's either the price of being underneath somebody else's thumb or, you know, the, you know, fighting for your freedom. And at least, you know, it may be tough now, but you're working for a time where it's not going to be that tough and you're going to have some margins in your life and some freedoms and some resources and skills that you don't have, and those are worth fighting for. As Tom Petty said, everybody's got to fight to be free. And it's just a matter of when you're going to start your fight, you know. So where did you get. You know, you obviously have a lot of drive to launch a podcast, launch a newsletter, do it. The other thing, before you did the podcast, where did this. Coming up, as a young man, where do you think that drives showed up? Where can you trace it back to?

It's a really good question. Because that drive has been. Because before the podcast, I've helped build businesses. I've worked for people before, but it doesn't matter what role I had. It was always. It was always the same amount of enthusiasm and drive. I think. I think I've always been very competitive. I think you can trace it back a little bit to, you know, I had great parents. They. They gave me the okay to really try and do anything. I think that it could be a little bit. Played a lot of sports growing up, so I was very competitive, too. I think that has a huge, huge impact on your drive and. And your willingness to sort of outwork everybody else. And I also think that, I mean, people believe different things. I believe you have one shot at life. Like, just go all out, go a hundred percent, go full tilt. Like, you get one shot at this thing. And it didn't really matter if I was building a podcast or building a business or like, working in a company. I still want it to be the best out of whatever it is I was doing at the time, because I didn't want to. I didn't. Like, I never understood why I would commit such a significant portion of my life to something and not at least attempt to be the best at it. It didn't make any sense to me. Mediocre just seemed like a. A very painful existence. And I also believe that, and I guess it's been proven sort of through trial and error, that nobody who has actually done anything meaningful, it could be the. The CEO of a company. It could be the. The founder that built the company. It could be the, you know, the pro athlete. Whatever it is, nobody's done anything meaningful is actually that special. They just put in more hours, more time, worked harder than everybody else, maybe. And, you know, I think that if you apply that mindset to anything, it doesn't mean we all start at the same place. But if you apply that mindset over a period of time, you'll find a way to figure it out. I haven't found too many examples of the opposite. If somebody actually applies themselves over 10, 20, 30 years and they actually want to do. And they're aggressive about it, they'll figure it out.

Now, from your Interview and your, you know, the years of doing this, what have you found? What I've found, or what I've always thought is that lots of opinions, differing opinions on everything. But it's amazing how winners in all walks of life, how many commonalities they have in the way they approach things. And, you know, like. And I, I started, you know, what's always encouraged me, Scott, is like, I heard this idea, like, ideas are a dime a dozen, but the people who use them are priceless, you know, and then, and then, and then ideas. You know, I read there was a little pamphlet or something, I got that early in my career, but also that, like, great ideas don't care who use them, you know, and so the ideas are out there that kind of formulated in my mind that, like, you know, I had enough confidence and enough success in different areas of my life where I was not intimidated by other people's success. But I always looked at it like they know something. I don't know, they're looking at something in a way, I'm not seeing it the way they see it. And so that's why I've always been very inquisitive about people who are in front of me. It is like, peel that onion. You know, it's like, get to, like when you find, you know, when you give the key to the lock, for the rest of your life, you can unlock that lock. You know, you got that key. And so that's the way it is with ideas. And where do you think you got your first ideas? Concepts that other than sports and competition, which we learned, you know, thousands of lessons about, you know, being successful in life from sports? Well, some of us do, some of us don't learn the lessons. But, you know, if you're paying attention while you go through that, you can learn how to get along with other people. The value of teamwork that you can't explode at people. You're going to have a teammate that could do this thing and everything else he's terrible at, but he's worthwhile because he can do this. And so you learn all of these lessons. How to deal with coaches, how to be a coach. But where did you start getting the ideas that are at the core of unlocking the mysteries of how you solve problems and move forward in life? Where did you start getting some of those keys?

So I'll tell you what the idea is first, and then I'll tell you where I think I got it from. So the idea, one of the most powerful ideas, and you mentioned that there's so many commonalities between all the people that have been successful. The main idea that I see with everybody who has been successful and I, I believe this as well, is it's the idea of agency, of, of sort of belief in yourself. I know it sounds cliche, but bear with me. Agency really just means that you believe that you can accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish in this world. There's another idea that's tied into this called the locus of control. There's an internal locus of control and there's an external locus of control. This is not my concept. This is a concept that is well studied. Internal locus of control L O C U S means that I believe that I can control the outcomes in my life. That is really what it means. It means that you are the center of your own story. External locus of control means that you believe that you are sort of the victim of the world. Anything that happens in your life, it's not your responsibility. It's just bad luck, good or bad luck. But it's the world that sort of pushes itself onto you. Every single person who is successful has an internal locus of control. They believe, they believe with a hundred percent certainty. If they put enough energy and force and willpower towards anything, the world will bend to their will. Whatever they want to accomplish, they can achieve because they are the only ones that are responsible for the outcome, good or bad. It's a very powerful concept because when things go bad in your life, if you believe that, if you have an external locus of control, if you believe the world, it was just bad luck. And the world sort of imbued negativity and bad on you. It's very easy to give up because you're like, I, I, I, There was nothing I could have done. If you have an internal locus of control, you believe, well, whatever happened, that was negative. In my life, there's probably something that I did that led to that outcome. And even if it's the worst possible thing, the only way out of this negative situation is something that I can do. It's my action that's going to get me out of this situation because I believe that I influence the world. This is not an idea that's unique to me. There's even a Marc Andreessen quote and it goes something along the lines of this. It's if you put enough energy and time and attention and willpower towards anything, you'll find that the world is very malleable, meaning it bends to your will. Very powerful idea. Now, where does this idea come from? I think. I think for better or worse, a lot of it does come from your upbringing. A lot of it does come from the people that at a very early age are either telling you that you can do everything and anything and giving you that confidence and making you believe that you can impact the world versus if your influences when you're young, they're telling you that they are. You're a victim. This, we're a victim. This family's a victim. Everybody's out to get us. We've just been dealt a bad hand. Those words will craft this narrative in a young person's life that everything that happens to them, it's not their fault. They're just a victim of a. Of a bad. A bad hand they've been dealt. And I think that's very dangerous language now. So for me personally, I was very fortunate to have parents, to have peers, managers, bosses that were all speaking the same language. They're all saying that if you want it, you can go get it and you can do it. Now, growing up, if somebody's listening to this and they say, listen, I didn't have those influences around me, fine, it sucks. It's difficult. But you have to go find people that believe this and you got to surround yourself with them. Because when you start. When you start surrounding yourself with people, with entrepreneurs, with founders, there's a. There is definitely a type of person that believes this for sure. They're the people that are doing things that nobody else has ever done before. They're the people that are taking risks or the people that are taking their lives into their own hands. When you surround yourself with people like this, you start seeing that it's true, this idea is true, and then you start to believe it yourself and you start to take more action that will benefit your life. This is the best and most powerful idea that I think anybody can really internalize.

If I could add, it's something you can learn and there's. It's something you can develop. And it's. I just want to throw my energy behind the idea that it's what you stand on. Because if you're going to go out and do anything, great, you're going to make decisions, you're going to take responsibility, you're going to call shots, and you're going to get in. Into. So you're going to get into territories that you've never been before and you got to have. You can't stand up if you're in quicksand. So you've got to know what principles you're standing on and you can't be a victim. You know, I used to, my son, my nephew was training for the, to get on the mini tour and we'd go out and play golf. And of course I can't play golf. You know, I'm, you know, double digit handicap, you know, and I'm, I'm out coaching him, but I coached the mind and I said, okay, you know, the tournament's on the line. What's going to go through your head? You got a two foot putt to win and to get on the PGA Tour. You know what, what's on that thing? You know, you can, you can test yourself like that. But again, knowing that you can improve.

You know, there's another, there's another one too, right? You know, the other, I was going to say the other person speaks about this a lot, a lot of different words for it. That's why it's so important to understand, so agency, locus of control. If you follow Jaco Willing, he writes a book about extreme ownership. Just, yeah. Owning everything in your life.

Yeah, he's the seal, right?

He speaks about like, this is how you get through. Doesn't matter if it's, you know, I mean, he's talking about extreme situations. I'm talking about nothing compared to what he's been through. I'm talking about building a business. He's talking about like there is hell raining down on you in some foreign part of the world and you're trying to, you know, get these, these group of men back to their families. You cannot say this sucks. I wish this didn't happen to me. This is not my fault. Because the world doesn't care. The world doesn't care. The only way out of that situation is good or bad. Doesn't matter the circumstances. You take ownership over that and you take action.

You've got to take ownership over what you believe about that stuff. Because if you don't believe it, the world's going to crack you. World's going to get you in a situation where you crack. So you've got to get clear on this thing. But a friend of mine said one aspect of it, he said it real well. He said, everybody wonders, am I good enough? We all wonder that. We're all getting new challenges all the time. Like, oh boy, what have I got myself into? But the thing is, here's the great thing to have in your mind. I may not be good enough today, but I may be good enough tomorrow. You know what I'm saying? It's like just because I'm not good at this moment. I could be five minutes away from someone giving me an idea that unlocks the whole thing for like, you know, the dominoes fall. So I'm not, you know, I'm not going to permit myself to say I'm not good enough. I am going to acknowledge I'm not good enough right now. But I just need to keep asking questions, keep moving forward. And I ask a guy who in our company who had moved, made this super successful transition out of Virginia down to Fort Lauderdale and built a big, you know, exploding business and did record breaking things in our company. I said, well, what did you have in your mind when you left? You know, did you have confidence? He said, here's what I knew. He said, I knew whatever I ran into I was gonna figure I could figure out. You know, the thing is this is like. Cause you know, that's the whole thing. You don't know if you're good enough. But you know that, you know, whatever blockade you run into is going to be specific. You can analyze it, you can attack it, you can get other people's insight on, you know, whatever the boulder is in the road that's blocking you. You can find a way to blow that sucker up or to move it out or to dig under it or take a helicopter over it, you know, just because, you know what I'm saying.

Nobody'S good when they start. That's what blows my mind. I'm not good. Of course, nobody is. Nobody's born with these skills. You got to figure it out. Yeah, some people had a leg up, some people got maybe a better education. Doesn't matter. Everybody learned it from someone at some point. Nobody figured this. Nobody was born knowing this.

Yeah. And so it's fun, funny to see, you know, how the similarities in this thing, you know, because you got to get your act together if you're going to be someone who runs things or create things, because you're going to be coming up with problems, looking for answers and bringing, you know, you're going to be the hunter gatherer for your group. You're going to be going out there and get the answers that everybody back home needs, you know, in your company so you can keep growing as a group. Now what Talk about your success leading up to, you know, what was your first big success or what's your biggest success leading up to starting the podcast?

Gee, what's my biggest success? I mean, I've had a lot of different successes, I guess, successes over my career. A lot of failures too, I would say. That the biggest success in my life has been when I'm working on now. I mean that, that, that is a fact.

Before that, the SDC holdings.

No, that's the podcast, the media company, the brand that I built for myself. Yeah, before that, I mean, I've had, I've had career success where I've, I've. I mean I started my career in, in telecom and I did quite well there. I started in sales there and I started in small market and moved to enterprise. That, that was a very successful, I guess, career transition. I started after that moving into a director and, and senior role in sales and marketing, several of them. So I would say that was success from a career perspective. Then I moved into more entrepreneurship because one of the companies I was working at was acquired. And that sort of gave me a sort of like a, a really good lesson, seeing a company go through an exit. A really good lesson on ownership and what a founder can build and what happens when they build something over a period of time and finally gets acquired by a private equity group. That was a great lesson as well. I was successful there because I was leading sales and marketing, so that was success. I'm just listing off the successes, by the way. I'm not mentioning all the things that I failed at, but.

No, we're going to get to that.

We're going to get to that.

Like when you said you led the success, the sales team, you were in charge of that. Give us a pick, give us an idea of how that turned around because those are important. I mean, those are things to celebrate. When you started, what kind of situation was it when you got moved into management and then what kind of challenge that you put out to the team and go out there and pull off. Can you even remember?

It was a couple years ago. Yeah, I mean, we were. So when I, that particular company, that was a company. When I first started my career, I worked for a big company called Bell Canada. I'm Canadian, I'm from Toronto. So that was a great work experience. Moving to a smaller telecom company, leading sales and marketing there. I mean, in any, any managerial sales role, you're responsible for finding the best talent, bringing the best people on board, which is what I was doing right up until that company was acquired by private equity. So that was wonderful. I mean, the day in, day out was dealing with major enterprise clients, making sure that our, you know, the deals that we closed were implemented properly. A mixture of marketing, sales, customer success, the stuff that you do when you're actually leading a sales org after that worked in consulting. So that was difficult work, but that was fun work as well. Worked with a whole bunch of early stage startups. I really enjoyed working with entrepreneurs. I was actually working with a whole bunch of startups out of the University of Toronto and that was just really fulfilling work. Helping them pre revenue with take to market strategy, helping them figure out their positioning. So that was also sort of my first version of, of building a company from scratch, from nothing and that was just consulting.

Where would you find that you had to exert yourself because things don't run themselves? Get good talent on and we did this, that the other you got to exert yourself. Where would you say the primary places you had to exert yourself? You come out with some knowledge, some experience. You go down to a smaller telecom company maybe and now you know, they hired you as a difference maker, you know, and you made a difference. But where did you find, you know that the normal just can you shed a little spotlight on what the normal things that what you normal to you but the normal things that are not usually done. So where did you make your presence felt like non negotiables? We set some standards here.

You know, as a, as a manager, your job is to bring in and build up talent. That, that's your job in the organization. So I would say that this is what any good manager should do. But one thing, I mean this is going back a while. But one thing that I believe when you hire talent, your job is to make sure that the talent's aspirations are aligned with the organization's aspirations. So what does that mean? I think that too many companies hire talent and they are focused on extracting as much value from them as possible. So how do you close as many deals? How do you make as much money for the company? That's very standard when you hire a salesperson. I think if you want to get 150% out of the people that you hire, you have to give a shit about them and you have to know where they want to go. Do they want to get a promotion? How much money do they want to make? How long do they want to stay with your company? Is there even room for growth, the growth that they want to achieve within the company and if not, where are they going to go in three years? Which is fine as long as you go on that path together and you make commitments to each other. So I think that the one thing that I did very well and that I've still tried to do, but I think that was sort of the first, sort of the first version of me figuring this out was not just finding like a talent, but making sure that I knew what drove them as human beings and making sure that as somebody who was their leader, manager, director, whatever you want to call it, I was not only getting the best out of them for the organization, meaning they were closing deals and actually driving revenue, but I was also making sure that their personal goals and their personal career journey was being fulfilled. And I think that that's something that is actually very important. And it's a little bit. I feel like that should be, like, that should be where you. That, like, that's like the basics for being a good leader. But I don't think that a lot of leaders do that. So you asked me what I think I did differently. I'm proud of that. So I'll say that.

Where did that come to you? I think you're exactly right.

A lot of learning, I mean, like, like it's not like something that's come. I guess, I guess a little bit comes when you're a, like a, an empathetic person and you're not an asshole. You care about people's success. But at the same time, I mean, the reason why I've done well in anything is because I, I learned from people that have figured it out before for. So, I mean, like, I mean my whole career, even before that, my, My spare time is podcasts and reading books that, I mean, like every morning. I mean, that's. When I was back in Toronto. I was driving, you know, like 45 minutes into work. It was just podcasts instead of music. I mean, it sounds super nerdy, but it's not rocket science. You listen to enough you. Like, at that time I was like the, the job was like sales leadership, sales management. And I mean all the stuff I was reading and listening to in my spare time was sales leadership, sales management, how to hire, how to, you know, how to set KPIs, how to. How to, you know, drive revenue, how to set proper incentives, how to. I mean, there's a whole bunch of different things you do as a sales leader and a sales manager, but that was. And part of it was unlocking the talent and the people that you hire because too many in a sales world was very popular, which is the wrong way to. To move into. It doesn't matter if you're a vp, sales or director, sales or sales manage. The wrong way to do that job is to, is to micromanage or to hire people and if they have trouble closing a deal, you step in and you close it. For them, that's very popular in sort of sales leadership world. You know, they'll have like a hundred thousand or one hundred fifty thousand dollar rfp and you don't trust the person to close the deal themselves. So you feel like you're a more competent salesperson and you haven't really, you haven't really got that person to their maximum potential. So you just jump in and you handhold and you try and close a deal yourself. That's not the way to lead any sort of sales organization. So I mean, just knowing that, you know, as I wanted, I wanted to bring people on that were a talent and let them succeed and, and get them to feel like the organization and the company was supporting them, um, this seemed like a very logical way to, to be a leader. And I think it's worked out, but it's like it's worked out across, I mean like at that time, like primary responsibility was, was sales. Uh, but I mean that's worked out. When I've hired anybody, you just gotta make sure that their personal goals are aligned with, with the goals of the company.

How long was that before you, you went really fully independent? Did you go independent when you started your podcast?

Yes. Yeah, so that's when I was like fully on my own. I started the podcast like this, this particular company was four years before that.

Yeah. And so working in the real world before you started the podcast, how many years was that?

I've been working since I was like 15, 16.

But I mean that's like Tiger woods playing golf from the time he was three. I mean those years count. Those years count. So how many years, how many years there in the real world experience up to where you launched your podcast?

Like 13, 14. I'm trying to think. Yeah, something like that. No, like a little. Yeah, yeah, like about 15, 16 years.

Yeah. And so what I want to point out is that I think that was. Without that, I don't think you'd be sitting where you are today with over 2, probably almost 3 million. Even though you look at social media and you're not, it seems like you're not thrilled with it. You got about 3 million followers across the board.

No, I mean I've been working, I've been working, figuring shit out since I was young. Since I was very young. I like, I was working full time while I was still going to university. I said I was working in high school. I've always worked. Always. Not, not always like very complex jobs obviously, but I've always, I've always found a lot of value in work.

But I think the reason also, when you get people on your, your podcast, people know that you've got that background of experience because you have convers you can't hide, you know, and people you know, game recognizes game. And so if you have been out there and bled in the battlefield and got the real lessons where you have a perspective.

Well, I've done, I've done most of this stuff in a business before because I've done in corporate. I started my career in sales, so I was selling, I mean, like, like I was doing cold calls, doing all, all of that, figuring out how to set up outbound campaigns, I mean, doing small deals, answering RFPs, hiring people that did that exact work. I've led marketing teams as well. I've also done all the stuff myself. So I mean, when I say that, I mean when you start a podcast and you're looking for advertisers, you're running email campaigns yourself, you are doing audio video editing, you are doing copywriting, you're sending emails, you're doing graphic design, you're coding websites. I mean, I've either done it in corporate, done it myself, hired people to do it, literally just with no budget at all. When you first started on your own, you're just doing it yourself. I mean, there's been multiple, there's been multiple companies that I've started. Some of them have been. Well, actually, I mean, like really, there was consulting, it was podcast. And even now I've, I've done over the past, you know, like five and a half, six years, I've tried to start other companies, not some of them have not been successful, but you still getting the company off the ground, getting your first customers. Even if it doesn't work out, you still go through the motions of figuring everything else, like everything out yourself. So there's not too many tasks in business that I have not done at some point. It doesn't mean I like them all, but I've done a lot of this. And I actually think that this is why everybody, even if they don't want to be an entrepreneur, there's a benefit to either working in a startup environment or a small company environment, or there's a huge benefit to trying to build something from scratch because you just get exposure to everything. Like, when I started my career in corporate, I did not get that much exposure. When you go to a smaller company, you get even more exposure because you're talking to one. I mean, you go from like, I don't even know how many employees Bell has. I'M sure several thousand. If not, you know, 8, 9, 10,000. I'm not sure the exact number, but lots of people, right?

Yeah.

Across the whole country. Like a. A Verizon or an AT&T. And you move into a smaller company with, you know, 40, 50 people, and you get exposure to everything, and then you do it, and then you. And then when you start something yourself, there's nobody. So you got to do it all. You got to do your. Your finances, you got to do your hr, you got your hiring. You got to figure out all of it. So, yeah, it's great experience. And I also think that entrepreneurship makes you much more hireable and employable in the future, because now you can have empathy with every single department, and you can understand exactly how other people function in a business. Whereas if you only ever work in corporate, you don't get that exposure. So you're not as effective. You're not. You're never going to be as effective as if you were an entrepreneur that goes into. You say you want to quit entrepreneurship, Fine, fine, no problem. But you can go into a company and be much more successful because of your experience.

Well, and also the fact that you, you know, you did that, I think that's your real education, you know, about going out there. It's like you. A lot of it, you learn from other people, but then you apply it. Apply this stuff. And what I found in my life was that I had a lot of ideas I didn't know were bad. You know, I thought I understood this is the way you do it. This. You know, I had some assumptions. But the thing is, when you're out there trying things, the world will tell you if you're thinking right or not. And reality's the greatest teacher. You know, you don't. You know, you don't. You don't learn by having an argument with somebody. But if you go out there and try one of your ideas, you do a belly flop. You know, there's no question. That was Dharma and I did it. I can't blame anybody.

Everybody does it. Everybody who takes risks does it. It's. It's. It's not like, will it. Will this idea fail? It's like the first idea you're going to have if you are wanting to be an entrepreneur will most likely fail. It's just like, fail quick, learn, move on. It doesn't mean that you completely switch things. But nobody, like, it doesn't matter if you're like a Facebook or an Airbnb or you're like a podcast or you're, you know, building like a, a, you know, I don't care what kind of business it is. It doesn't matter. Like, the first version of that thing is not going to be the year 5, and the year 5 is not going to be the year 10 version of that thing. And that's that, that is how it's supposed to go. It's not wrong. It's not a bug. It's a feature of entrepreneurship. So the faster you start, the faster you fail, the faster you learn.

Thank you.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you very, very much for, for bringing that out. You know, that's, you know, people wonder, you know, should I go? Should I not go? Well, the faster you go, the faster you can start learning and making things happen. And you, you might, you might hit it. You know, you hit a winning streak right from the beginning. You know, who knows? But you got to get, you got to get out there in the field before, you know, if you could throw the ball, you know. And so as you, I'm going to wrap up the public part of this segment and, and give you a chance to give people a peek to some of those lessons. The thing, it's amazing how we learn. Remember the failures more than the successes, it seems like, and give give people a little, a little glimpse of some of the things that you went through that weren't exact, entirely successful. And, and still, you know, the lessons were strong enough that they stay with you today.

There's a few different lessons. So I'd say if, if you look back at a lot of the lessons come from entrepreneurship. Actually, no, there's lessons in career, there's lessons in entrepreneurship. I would say, okay, let's think about career lessons. If you are, if you are banking on a career, understand that you don't mean anything to the company in most cases, like if, if you die, God forbid, they'll replace you by Monday. This is, this is very true. So you got to take your career into your own hands. Not saying I was ever mistreated by a company, but also not an idiot. So when you are banking on a career in a company and a job, make sure that you make your, you future proof yourself, meaning you're learning skills or you're always keeping your eyes open doesn't mean you're not being loyal, but you're always just making sure that you are highly employable. Basically right now, what I'm saying is if you are in a job and you're comfortable in that job, you better be learning about AI, about the things that could eventually replace you so that you can be so valuable. Employment is never a concern because there is a chance that you could be let go. It's not like generations ago where people worked for the Same company for 40 years. It's a very important lesson if you're working, you know, a 9 to 5 in entrepreneurship. Different lessons from different things. I've tried. I mean the consulting, we shut that down mostly because if you are doing consulting, which is a version of entrepreneurship, you know how you have to know how to value your time. And I think that first time consultants, they don't value their time well enough or they don't know how to price themselves. So I mean, why do we shut that down? Because we were billing ourselves at an hourly rate and we were working 40 hours a week. I say weeks. It was me and two other partners and it was like a consulting firm we built from the ground up. And we were just exhausted, we were just burnt out and we weren't making enough money because we were, we were billing good, building a good amount for the hours we were working for the clients. But then keep in mind, you got to go find new clients after you do your 40 hours of deliverable work for your existing clients. So you're working like 80 hours, 100 hours a week and you're not actually per hour making that much money. So you have to know as an entrepreneur how to price yourself properly. This is not just consulting, but it's, it's probably very important if you are trying to be a consultant because, because you, you don't want to just trade dollars for hours. There's a lot of other businesses that you can build where you don't necessarily trade dollars for hours. Meaning like if you had a software product or a consumer good. Like if you build a software product once, you don't have to, you know, commit more of your time to sell it to 2,000 people. Technically, if you build it once, you can sell it for forever. But with consulting, sometimes your hours are related to your dollars. You want to separate those two other lessons. I mean, I've had, I've had bad partners. That's a big lesson. You know, the people that you work with just assume quick did, how quick.

Did it show up that you had a bad partner?

Because you, you know, usually usually under a year, usually like six months in. And I think it's not because they're bad or they mean or they're malicious or they're trying to scam you or it's because it's because if you are A strong worker. You attract people because they feel like you're competent. And sometimes people will not be a hundred percent transparent about how competent they are, meaning that they pitch you a good story, you get excited about working together. But if you don't do test projects together, if you don't spend some time getting to know each other first and you jump into business, you could be doing a lot more work than you expected because maybe the person isn't as good as they said they were at the thing they're supposed to be doing. Usually like a partnership is like, I'm strong over here, you're strong over here. We're going to be a good, we're going to be a good, A mix, right? We're, you know, I'm, I'm a sales guy, you're a programmer. We're going to be great together. If they don't bring equal or more to the table, then it's going to be a really bad, it's not going to be a fun, fun time building with them. So partnerships are huge. What else? I mean, I've. Other things that I've tried to do. Investing. If you make a little bit of money, you're successful. Just because you're good at building a business or you're just strong in your career doesn't mean you're going to be a good investor. Which I've learned. Also learned that the hard way. So I think that the lesson there is again, always, if you're going to do something new, especially if it involves a significant amount of capital and money and time, remove the ego, play dumb, and just treat it like you were just starting. Like treat it with the same respect as if you were just starting a business. You wouldn't go in to start a business or you wouldn't go into the first day at a job and pretend you know everything. But for some reason, if you have success in one field, people have this ego and they think that that success carries over into another field, which can hurt you significantly. So that's a very important lesson. If you ever want to invest, slow down, you don't know anything. Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. You know, there's a lot of free education out there. I think that's also a very painful lesson a lot of people don't have to go through. And I think that also one more, one, one more investing lesson that I've learned is I, I think that people, sometimes they, they throw the word diversification around a lot, meaning you should diversify, you should invest in Bitcoin real estate and, you know, bonds and T bills and Vanguard Index and. And you put money everywhere, but you don't really understand any of the assets.

Right.

The most successful investors that I know, they understand one, you know, private equity, venture capital, angel investing. The most successful investors, they could be successful in any of the things I just mentioned, but they just know the one thing better than anyone else. So I have friends that will, again, have, like, 100 doors in real estate, but they're not putting a lot of money into crypto. I have friends that do angel investing because that's what they know how to do, but they don't put any money into real estate because they're mostly angel investors. I'm not saying that, like, a 10% of their portfolio can't be something else, but it's not like they're trying to learn four or five different things at the same time. They are learning one thing. And when you go so deep on one thing, you become such an expert at it, then that's when you have an outsized unfair advantage. It's the same for business, by the way. It's not just investing. If you're trying to launch five businesses at the same time, versus spending all of your time on one thing, you will learn it so well that it will be very hard for you to fail at that thing. And I think that's a really smart lesson that's come from building businesses or investing. So those are a few.

Yeah, that's. Actually, there's five you just rattled off. And I. You know, the Bible says. The Bible says out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. And I asked Scott for some lessons, and he rattled off five powerful ones, just one right after another. So, folks, that I. I usually ask, you got to go. You got to go to Scott's podcast at Success Story. You gotta go. Not an option. Because what you're hearing from Scott is, you know, he's. He's bringing you some of the energy that he's picked up from being around these dynamos out there in the business. And if you want to become a dynamo, you know, you can pick up same energy, same insight. And then maybe I'm gonna challenge everybo. Get off your butt, do something great, and get on Scott's podcast. You know, do something so big. He wants you on there, and I want you on this one. You know, do something big, folks. And so, Scott, in this part of the podcast, what would you say to wrap this up as a last word? I hate to ask you, because you just gave five great things.

I would say that the beautiful thing about. Let's, let's talk about entrepreneurship just one last time. Because I think that a lot of people that listen to these kinds of shows are very ambitious people. And there's nothing wrong with working a job. And I think that that's very, very novel and noble and I think that that's a great way to spend your life. But I do believe that everybody at some point in their life should have some exposure to entrepreneurship. I truly believe that from the bottom of my heart. Thanks. And I think it just makes you a better, more capable person, more capable human being, even if you don't end up there. I have a friend right now that built two companies, now he's running a publicly traded company. Your career can go in all these zigs and zags like you don't have to always end up, but I think it really helps you become a better person when you, when you trust yourself and dive into it. But I would also say one lesson that I've, we've touched on this and danced around it, but the reason why people are scared about entrepreneurship, because you hear these things, well, 95% of people fail and blah, blah. Okay, I get it. I think that the best way to think about entrepreneurship is a learning experience, an educational experience. But also, also don't be an entrepreneur that quits their job and goes all in and only has six months left of cash in the bank. And then it fails and you're like, scott, why did you tell me to be an entrepreneur? That's a dumbass idea. Now I'm stressed out. I'm saying find a way to test entrepreneurship, to use it as an educational playground for you to upskill, to be a better human being. And don't, don't do it so that you need this hundred million dollar outcome. Do it so that you can learn the skills and that you can do it for an unreasonable amount of time. Find a way, as you're working in your 9 to 5 to take a skill set that you have, turn it into a business. You can sell a skill or a service that you know how to provide on the side, make a little bit of extra money, you're going to learn all the skills. And if you find a way to set yourself up so that you do this on the weekends or on Sunday night or from 7 to 10 o', clock, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you are going to find that if you do this for a while, there's a really likely chance that, that you will actually be successful. Because the one thing that kills an entrepreneur or business is when you can't afford to keep going, when you can't afford to learn the lessons anymore, when you can't afford to keep building it. But if you start, you find a way to do it for the next 10 years, you will find yourself building a little business that probably makes more than any company will ever pay you. And the skills that you learn along the way are just going to be remarkable. And I hope that everybody takes that on themselves.

I don't know if I've heard better advice and better presented that don't hold back from being an entrepreneur because I'm too afraid I don't have the money, this, that, the other. Start it on the side. And it's almost like the same advice you gave about a partner. Go through a trial period, give yourself a trial period. You're going to learn something. You know, it's a win, win situation. And then maybe you'll start making more money from the, you know, your, your side hustle there and then that's the time to make the jump when it's an educated job. And so very good advice, Scott. And that's a no lose, folks. That's a no lose proposition that Scott put in front of you for and I might add, just, just a hint of the kind of insights you can get from the Success Story podcast. So thanks so much, Scott. Appreciate it.

Thank you.