← Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
AI Is Lowering the Cost to Build Wealth—Here’s How to Take Advantage with Scott Clary
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- [00:00]
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- [01:00]
Scott Clary
That reframe of being scared of AI and being scared of getting excited about it is super important one. And you're right, it has been discussed a lot. But I'm just hoping and praying that one person listens to this and it finally clicks. And that's why I say things. I don't think the future is going to be nice to people that don't adopt it. Maybe that's the line they have to hear. Maybe they don't have to hear from the CEO of Anthropic. Maybe they have to realize, like, how this impacts them. And if they do, that's a win for me because hopefully that'll light a fire.
- [01:26]
Ryan Alford (Intro/Outro)
This is Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
- [01:49]
Ryan Alford (Host)
What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. Hey, there's a lot of bad business advice out there. That's why it's right about now. And I actually have a friend on who I consider one of the top podcasters in the us. He's known, but we want a more known because when you hear him talk, you're going to get this soothing effect that I get when I'm listening to him, but then you're going to really listen to the words and go, this motherfucker's intelligent and he knows what's going on and he is right about now. What's up Scott, what's going on, Ryan? How's it going, dude?
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Scott Clary
I appreciate the kind words and thank you for having me on.
- [02:20]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Hey, man, I told you that before you came on and had the pleasure of partnering and working with you, getting to know you a little bit. I wish you lived closer or I got out more. I live in my bubble here with my kids and my family in South Carolina, but not that far, by the way.
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Scott Clary
I'm in Miami. You're not that far.
- [02:38]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Like, you're in. You were in Dubai for a little while, I think.
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Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah. But now I'm an hour away.
- [02:43]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, exactly one flight away, so we'll have to make that happen. I do appreciate you, and I mean it. Scott Clary, he's got multiple shows. We'll hit all those deets. He's a podcaster. He's an entrepreneur, and just a good. Yeah, that's what you'll learn here today. And more than anything, world's full. A lot of people not of Mara. I don't know. I wonder where people are coming from with Scott. I never wonder about that.
- [03:03]
Scott Clary
I appreciate you. Thank you.
- [03:04]
Ryan Alford (Host)
What's happening in Miami these days?
- [03:06]
Scott Clary
Miami is beautiful. So I moved here from Toronto, so a little bit of a change in weather and taxes and basically everything else. A lot of my friends say you couldn't have picked a more different city to move to from Toronto, and I agree. But it's been really good to us. We moved here at the end of COVID and this city and the work that we both do, because both of these things happened almost around the same time, started the podcast success story, which is my show. And that started right before I moved down here. I started it from the second bedroom in a condo that I had in Toronto, and we moved down here, built out a studio, and the podcast has absolutely changed my life. This is what I do for a living now. But I would say that Miami's been very, very good to us. So we were part of that post Covid migration that everybody who's from Miami says caused a whole bunch of traffic and a whole bunch of expensive homes. That here we are.
- [03:52]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, exactly. Happened to South Carolina, too. Had the influx from California, maybe Toronto, may parts of Canada.
- [03:58]
Scott Clary
First of all, it definitely had some from Toronto because all Canadians wanted to move somewhere that wasn't locked down and wasn't cold. And I think, listen, Canadians can deal with the cold. I dealt with it for my whole life, but we were locked down for forever, and we were just over it. And we were. Obviously our situation allowed us the flexibility to switch countries and not worry about too much. We didn't have kids yet. Hopefully that'll be soon. We didn't have a business that required us to walk into an office anywhere in Toronto. So we were very fortunate. But I think you had a huge migration post Covid out of Canada. We have Canadian friends from Toronto. This is funny. In Miami, who we didn't know in Toronto, who we met down here.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
That's my only. It is took. It took the meet up in Florida, in Miami, to bring you Canadians together, you know?
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Scott Clary
Exactly.
- [04:42]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Canada and the US Number one was like on top of each other. You're on top of us, I guess north to south. What's the biggest difference between Canada and the US Mentality? Business? I don't know if I've ever really asked a Canadian that or I don't know. You still Canadian? Are you now? How does that work?
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Scott Clary
I'm still a Canadian. I'm still a Canadian citizen. I have my green card down here.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
Okay. That's all.
- [05:01]
Scott Clary
But I'm still a Canadian citizen. I still have my passport. I think the biggest mentality that I've noticed from a business perspective, this is something that I think a lot of Canadians will agree with. We're more risk adverse. We don't take as many shots and chances as I see American entrepreneurs take. Even in investing in startups, there's this startup incubator like a Y Combinator. And if people don't know what Y Combinator is, it's an incubator out of SF San Francisco, and it's one of the most famous incubators. They've invested in some of the biggest tech companies in the world that have gone through Y Combinator. And they invest in companies knowing that. That probably 9 of the companies they invest in are going to fail. But the one company that's going to do well is going to turn into an Airbnb or a Uber or whatever or the next Facebook. And that takes a certain amount of risk. So whether or not you're the entrepreneur taking risk and betting on yourself or you're the investor betting on a company, Americans are totally okay with risk. And I think that's why you see a lot of really big companies outside of just pure size of the country. Obviously the US Is way bigger than Canada, but outside of just the size of the country, this being okay with risk, I think is a very important entrepreneurial mindset. And I wish more Canadians were okay with taking chances and taking risk because I think it would create some more incredible companies. Coming out of Canada, and there are some, but there's not as many because people are a little bit more hesitant to take bets. That's what I've noticed.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, that's well said. I noticed that in almost me. Even European countries and stuff too, right?
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Scott Clary
I think so.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
I don't know. I'm probably painting with too wide of a brush. But whether I'm successful or not or whatever you want to strike it up as I am probably the least risk tolerant.
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Scott Clary
You take chances, you bet on your chances.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
Even think about it, it's innate in me. I think it's some of us, you know, nature, nurture. I don't know which one it is. I think I'm fully aware I've got one life to live and that no failure is going to kill me. I'm not jumping out of airplanes with no parachute. That's different. This life or death. But I don't know. I think everybody thinks there's a boogeyman behind the curtain. Yeah.
- [06:55]
Scott Clary
But US was built on taking chances. US was built on fighting for your beliefs. Like US was built on no one's coming to save us. We got to figure out our shit. That's like the mentality of the whole country. I think it creates a culture that is super conducive to a success entrepreneur. When you think that no one's coming to save you, aversion to risk is something you see in Europe. There's always outliers, great entrepreneurs in every country. But I think in general, if the average person feels someone else can support you and come take care of you and protect you, and some countries depend on the government more than the average person does. In the US I think that you don't feel like you have to take as much risk to live a good life. Whereas in the US Your health care system is. So if you, God forbid, have anything negative happen to you, I can't remember the actor's name. There was a post on Instagram about this famous actor. Basically, he's coming back to acting after. After spending about $540,000 to beat cancer. That was the post. And I'm just looking at that thinking. The average person does not have $540,000 to beat cancer.
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Ryan Alford (Host)
No.
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Scott Clary
When that's a potential reality that you face, you're like, you know what? Maybe I just got to take a shot on myself and find a way to make money because the government's not coming to save me and my W2. 9 to 5. Making 80, $90,000 a year before tax is definitely not going to come and save me. That's what I think pushes people to take chances, which allows them the ones that are successful because are but the ones that are successful to eventually build something big. That's what I see anyways.
- [08:16]
Ryan Alford (Host)
You see the positives and negatives of both. The health care system being a prime example of a negative. And then. But you have the American spirit that drives innovation, that drives like it's hard. Nothing is perfect. You know, it's like you can't have everything. If we had perfect healthcare and everything else, we wouldn't probably have the American engine and belief system. You talk to people all the time that are successful. One of the first thing I want to say is like, okay, you've done this show, you've got a super popular show. Even more popular as I keep talking about it, because it really is that good. What's that formula? It's like A squared plus B squared. I know it's different and we can do all that. But you have to your practitioner. You're the Canadian risk taker. I know, but that's your new. That's your new title, the Canadian risk taker. Oh, crt. There's got to be two, three, four, five traits. Things that are starting to just totally manifest through all those talks you've had.
- [09:12]
Scott Clary
Definitely. And you mentioned that there's some differences in person, person A, person B. There's not that many differences in the personality traits that make somebody successful. I've had the pleasure of sitting down with some really incredible entrepreneurs. I'll drop names not to do anything, but just help you understand the level that some of these people play at. Like I've had co founder of Netflix, founder of Reebok, on a few billionaires, Gary Vee and Ryan Sirhant. So some people that have figured shit out in life, they may call these things different, whatever the personality traits they embody, but they're all very similar in how they act. So I'd say the first thing is almost a delusional amount of self belief. You have to be able to believe that you can actually do the thing that you're going out to do. And I think that more often than not, what trips people up is not knowing the strategy or not having the resources or not having the connections because we can find all that stuff if we're ambitious entrepreneurs. I can go figure out how to run Facebook ads or I can go figure out how to raise money, or I can if I talk to a hundred people and ask them for connection to somebody who can help Me start my business. I'm going to get an answer because people like helping you. I think that it's the belief that we can actually do it. And you mentioned before, you take risks and you take bets on yourself. I do too. So do probably a lot of people that are listening to this. And you may, that's overly simple advice. But the majority of people on this earth do not believe they can do anything outside of what they're doing right now. That's the truth. This is the ceiling in their life. And I think that that belief system, it usually comes from all these external factors, these outside voices. And it comes from a very early age to what we believe we can accomplish. Say we want to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. It comes from when we're very young, all these ideas and these limitations that are placed on us by like very well meaning people. You're influenced very early from your parents, your pe, your teachers, whatever. A lot of that influence is meant to protect us. So we'll say like, hey, don't go start a business, go get a job, because that's safe and that's secure. I don't think we realize how powerful those ideas are and how ingrained in our subconscious those ideas are. And those ideas are not meant to hurt us. More often than not, unless we have an entrepreneurial parent or uncle or some other influence. Most of us, our parents are working a 9 to 5, which is nothing wrong with that. But they're telling us what we should do based on their reality, based on the fact that they never took risks and they never built businesses themselves. They work nine to fives. This is what they knew, this is what afforded them a good life. They want you to have a good life and they want you to feel safe and secure. So they're not telling you to do that much more than what they did because they don't really know how it's going to end up. Or maybe they do want you to go above and beyond what they did. But above and beyond is never start a business and figure it out. It's go become a lawyer, go become a doctor, go become an engineer. Because these again are like safe and secure. So all these ideas that are taught to us at a young age, they stick with us and we don't even understand. But all these ideas in our subconscious, they're running on repeat in the background without us even thinking of them almost our entire lives. And how that plays out when you're older is the job you take, the city you live in, the risk you take the person you marry, the friends you have, all these parts of your life are basically chosen because of someone else's belief system that has been implanted into you. And I think that sometimes we don't even realize that we didn't really consciously choose the job that we're doing, the person we're with, the hobbies that we have, we've just sort of understood that these are the things that we should do. All people, bringing it back to your question, who are successful, they have belief in themselves, but they also make sure that the dream that they're chasing is truly theirs. Not like a dream that their parents put into their head when they were very young. And when they realize that the dream that they actually want to go after is theirs and theirs alone, and they have this delusional self belief and they can pursue this dream with just 100% conviction, does that make sense?
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Ryan Alford (Host)
100%.
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Scott Clary
They almost like reprogram themselves to remove any kind of limitations which allows them to do whatever the hell they want to do. Because nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to build Netflix. I feel like I know with a hundred percent certainty I can go build Netflix. Nobody. That's absurd. It's never existed before. How would you know how to build it? So it's not about knowing everything. In fact, more often than not, the people that are successful that you listen to on podcasts, they definitely didn't know anything when they first started. They just understood that it was possible. They didn't have these limiting beliefs that were sort of given over to them by all these well meaning people in their life. They understood that a life way beyond what anybody who influenced Slum had ever known was possible. And then they pursue that thing and they have this delusional self belief that they will be able to figure it out. So it's not just like one idea, it's removing limiting beliefs, it's reframing what's possible. And it's also believing that you can actually go after it and get it done. And when that all aligns and you not only have the mindset dialed in, but then you go after the thing for an unreasonable amount of time, 10, 15 plus years, that's when you see the success story. Like the guy I'm referring to is Mark Randolph, who was one of the co founders, founder of Netflix. So it's the mindset plus it's the time in the game equals the result.
- [14:08]
Ryan Alford (Host)
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- [16:43]
Scott Clary
Off off.
- [16:43]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Finals are coming up. Build your teen study plan now. It only takes minutes. Go to brainly.com backslash Ryan to get 50 off your first Brainly subscription with my code Ryan. That's B R A I n l y.com Ryan. Yeah, and I'm gonna say this. I've been way more successful than my gpa. I'll just say that like in college is a joke sometimes. My income per GPA, I graduated with a 2.01 like skin in my teeth. But lifet earnings are probably greater than anyone in my college class. But I'll say this, Scott. I'm a reasonably successful entrepreneur and the limiting beliefs thing and everything you said there. My parents were really good parents, but I think some of it was accidental, to be honest, because here's where I'm going to go with this. They were great and they provided for me and they did good counsel, good human beings, but they didn't interfere in my life. They let me play anything I wanted to do. I was a good kid, but they didn't force me or create these limitations either purposely or unpurposely by like, okay, you're expected to have, have this exact grade and this exact sport at this level and dad's got a company that you're going to run one day. My dad had like seven jobs that my mom and my dad were both quasi entrepreneurs, side hustles. Plus my mom was a secretary. My dad, they both worked, but they had lives and they stayed out of mine other than being good. They set an expectation, but they didn't have to. What I think that actually did for me and I think what you're talking about, like the success thing is it didn't create these false or limiting beliefs because they had their own lives and they didn't try to live through me or set expectations in some way. It allowed me to sort of blossom with good counsel of just being a good human being and good morals into the creative person that I became. I wasn't delusional. I wasn't like, oh, I'm going to be fucking Superman or I'm going to win the sweepstakes or whatever. But I really had in my mind I both knew and didn't know what it would take. I didn't ever feel like I was hitting my head when you were just talking. We all apply things to ourselves and we're. When you're, thinking about it, unlocked for me something I was going, that's really interesting. Interesting.
- [18:49]
Scott Clary
I'm not a psychologist by any means. I just study the people that I have on the show. So this is sort of secondhand observation without any formal training. But I think that there's merit to it because I think about kind of how you listen to what I was just saying. And you were thinking about your own life and your own upbringing. My parents were very similar. They didn't impose anything on me. I always say that the best things that my parents gave me was the ability to be curious and the ability to try anything and the ability to support any dumb idea that I had because that's what allowed me to truly believe that I could do anything and everything. And I say delusional, not in negative way, not like you're going to try something that you obviously can't do, like become Superman. Delusional, meaning that no one who you know has ever done the thing that you want to do before. So for you to logically think that you could get it done, you're not going to get it. That's not going to work for you. If you think like, hey, I come from a family of nine to five W, two people that are making 70 and $80,000 per year each and they afforded everything. But I don't have a single person around me that's ever built a business or made a million dollars a year or even work job that's paying 2, 3, 4, $500,000 per year. You can get trapped in this logic where you're like, well, it's never happened anyone around me, that's not for me. I don't have a role model that's ever done that. I don't know even where to start. Like there's no way I could ever do that. And I think that being too much in your head and trying to rationalize what's possible and what's not, I think that's the wrong way to build an incredible life. I think that's where I say delusional because it's not delusional as in it can't happen. It's delusional because you are breaking out of this false reality that you have pigeonholed yourself into that everyone around lives a certain way. You have to be a little bit delusional to think that you can live a different way than everyone around you. That's what I mean. But then you'll realize very quickly that delusion is actually not delusion. It's actually your reality that you've created for yourself. And like, listen, you can come from any background, any upbringing, you can come from poverty, you can come from no parents, single parents, food stamps. You can come from anywhere and become anything. You just have to have that self belief. A little bit of delusional self belief. People always talk about Privilege. This is going to piss people off, but I don't care. People always talk about privilege, and privilege exists. People always talk about, well, you had this kind of upbringing or you had this, and it's all true. Some people don't start from the same spot as other people. But for every single person that complains and say, hey, listen, I didn't have a supportive family. They had no money, whatever, I can show you somebody who's worse off than you, who accomplished more than most people would ever think possible. So I'm not saying that it's easy. I'm not saying that privilege doesn't exist. But the beautiful thing, especially in the US Is that it's possible. There are some parts of the world where, if you are born here, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, possible to build something to get to over there, to become the first person in your family to make a ton of wealth or a ton of money and whatnot. In the US it is all possible. And that's actually the most beautiful thing about this country. But that's why I say, like, wherever you're at or whatever excuse you have, all the excuses are valid, but nobody cares at the end of the day. And you can still figure it out if you want to figure it out.
- [21:49]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Exactly. Well said. Talking to Scott Clary, he's a success and he talks about success stories. He's a Canadian risk taker. It's going to stick, I think. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. This show isn't about me, but I now own a building about two miles from the track home that I grew up in. And I've made in my lifetime, 100x with either one of my parents ever made. So it isn't about me because, hey, Ryan, done so great. It's more as an influence to exactly what Scott just said. My parents didn't put a belief in me that I could only be as good as them. And I think a lot of people use that as a crutch either. Well, they're from privilege or whatever. Yeah, I'll go show you privilege. We live in a country that enables and gives you the tools. And we're living in a weird fucking time right now. That's amazing and strange and great at the same time with what's happening with AI not to pivot straight into it. We got to build AI into the thumbnail somehow, Scott, so that it's clickbaity.
- [22:43]
Scott Clary
Just turn me into a robot, put me on the thumbnail, then you're good.
- [22:47]
Ryan Alford (Host)
What the hell is going on? I couldn't have even envisioned what's happening two years ago. I feel like I'm bleeding edge as anyone, but it's like, what a time to be alive.
- [22:56]
Scott Clary
It is a time to be alive. There's so much opportunity. There's so, so, so much opportunity. That's why a lot of my messaging is get off and stop getting upset with what's happening in the world.
- [23:07]
Ryan Alford (Host)
I'm so glad you said that. I'll put an asterisk on that. As we're hearing in this conversation with Scott Clary, Entrepreneurship today is really about how fast you can adapt. Whether you're building a business, a brand, or a career, the people who win aren't necessarily the ones following the traditional playbook. They're the ones willing to rethink how value gets created and where opportunities community is actually moving. That same shift is happening in investing. Sharp investors are applying that same entrepreneurial mindset to their retirement. That's where Block Trust IRA comes in. Instead of relying on outdated traditional allocation strategies, you can move your IRA into Animus AI, an advanced system designed to help identify opportunities and navigate changing market conditions. Since 2020, Block Trust IRA's Animus AI has significant outperform Bitcoin as a benchmark. Visit writeaboutcrypto.com to get started and see if you qualify for up to 2, 500 in bonus crypto. Block trust IRA smart crypto investing powered by AI.
- [24:17]
Scott Clary
Okay, keep going and just focus on you and focus on the opportunity that exists right now and focus on all the incredible tools and technology because you can be mad about a lot in the world. You can be mad about what's going on outside the us you can be mad about or be happy with the government that the US currently has. You can be mad that AI is coming and you're worried about it replacing your job. Or you can look at AI and be like, wow, that's the greatest opportunity ever. The future belongs to people who are optimistic. Your life will be so much better if you ignore things that don't apply to you and that are outside of your control and just focus on what is actually in your control. Now, AI in particular, you could be all upset about it taking your job, or you could understand that now with AI, you have the opportunity to 10x your output. You have the opportunity to build a business from scratch. As we just saw with medv, even though they had some questionable marketing tactics, they built the first ever, I think one or two person, $1.4 billion revenue business. So now with AI agents and all the different tools, that sort of a company, the things that are being built right now, you can do anything, you can build anything with basically no capital and almost no people. And I think that this is a unique time in history. I speak a lot to entrepreneurs. I'm going to talk a little bit about how AI plays into people who don't feel like being an entrepreneur because that's fine. But for entrepreneurs like the barrier to entry has never been lower. There's this really cool chart that you can look up that shows many people historically it would have taken to build a million dollar business and say I'm just going to make up numbers. But say back in like the 40s, say it was like 50 people or 60 people and you fast forward to the 2000s, maybe it was 10 or 15 people to build a million dollar business. Now you Fast forward to 2026. It's one person. One person could build a million dollar business with AI and tools and software. And then you can make the argument that one person can truly build a billion dollar plus business and we'll see what happens with again medv. But outside of that one example there's going to be more and more examples and for people don't know that's a peptide company, his brother plus AI. And I think the revenue was clocking in in 2026 at 1.4 billion. But there was some sketchy affiliate marketing going on. Everyone's wondering what's going to happen to them. But the point is they still had $1.4 billion in real money coming in regardless of how they got it. But the point is, even if that was the first example of a billion dollar one or two person business, there's going to be many more. So the lesson is AI is the greatest tool ever right now. And I think that if you aren't understanding and aren't learning it, you are going to be left in the dust. Obviously you've heard the cliche, you're not going to be rep by AI. You're going to be replaced by somebody using AI. Even if you're not interested in starting a company, you cannot ignore AI. The future employee is somebody who could be and thinks like an entrepreneur. They are just choosing to work for a company. So what does think like an entrepreneur mean? And what does could be an entrepreneur mean? It means that they are learning the latest tech. They're figuring out how to apply it to the job that has to be done. They're figuring out how to make themselves 10x more useful to the company. And they just learn and they stay on the bleeding edge that is the future employee. I'm a big fan of hiring people that could be entrepreneurs because they research and they stay up to date and they know what's going on. They know Claude Cowork and Claude Code, and they know that chat image 2.0 dropped last week and they're already using it like they know all this stuff and they could be entrepreneurs if they wanted to be, but for whatever season of life that they're in right now, they don't want to be an entrepreneur, but that's fine. But they still bring that entrepreneur mindset to the company. Those are the people that I love to hire. And it's not just me that feels this way. I did a live podcast with the CTO of Dropbox and the CMO of Carta last week in Miami. And the CMO of Carta was saying how all the roles that they're hiring for, say, for example, there's a marketing role they're hiring for. They're hiring for a copywriter or a graphic designer. That's how they used to title their roles. The job postings that they're putting out now they're calling them marketing engineers. So marketers that understand marketing, but not engineers in like a computer science degree engineer context, in a. I understand how to code, develop design, right, with AI. And the title is now marketing engineer. And those are the people who they're hiring going forward. So they don't hire anybody who doesn't understand how to use AI. So these are people that are employees that are figuring out AI and they're staying on the bleeding edge. So, I mean, whether or not you're an entrepreneur and now you have access to the greatest tools ever to build something yourself with, basically, again, no help except you and your mind or you're an employee. This is how you have to think. We were talking before about how to use AI in businesses, and this is something that obviously people are thinking about. How do I use it for pick a task, how do I use it to write, copy or create an image or whatnot? What I'm seeing with my company right now is we're using AI to do a couple things. So first of all, it increases the effect effectiveness of every single employee, because now every single employee can become an expert copywriter and an expert graphic designer. And I don't need them all to do everything. But the point is that now my developers can write code in a fraction of the time that it would take because now we can write the code and the developer only has to spend the time debugging it. Or a graphic designer or a copywriter. Well, before I would have to hire for somebody to emulate and to write at the level that I write at, I still do a lot of my own writing. I like writing. I find it very cathartic and relaxing and it helps me organize my thoughts. But to find a copywriter that can write at my level, because I've been writing for a while Now, I'm sure that's 80, $90,000 per year salary. If that person was full time copywriting, we're talking like every single social post, multiple newsletters per week, like everything that I put out. Now I can find a junior copywriter that understands AI, that can now put out content at my caliber. Because now I can train a cloud project on 10,000 hours of me speaking and podcasting and I can give the copywriter access to that cloud project. Now I still need that person to edit and to make sure that all the ideas make sense. Like you can't just use AI and ship it. But if I wanted to find somebody to replace me as a writer for my content, which I don't really yet, but if I ever needed that, I could train a project on me and what I believe and how I write and all the things that make Scott Scott, and then I could probably hire somebody for 30 to $40,000 per year that could manage that project and create really, really, really good content that sounds like me, feels like me, incorporates all my lived experience and my ideas for a fraction of the price. So now my entire copywriting, one leader who's a little bit more experienced, but then you can scale your output with more junior employees that can leverage AI. So that's one example. AI is radically changing everything. And I don't know how you're using it. Obviously you are to some degree, because everybody who's building a business is. But whether or not you use it to increase the the output or increase the ability of yourself or your team, or you outsource certain parts of your day to agents. I'll give you one more example. All this admin work that I would normally hire an admin for, I still have an admin, but she uses a. So now she can do 10x the amount of work in a fraction of the time. So if she needs to plan travel, she's using cloud cowork and she's reviewing everything before it actually books everything. But she's saying, hey, can you find the best flight options across all the Travelocity, Expedia, Google flights, can you find all the best flight options to San Francisco between May 12th and 16th? So now she doesn't have to spend two hours searching. Now she puts that prompt into cloud co work and then she can go do other stuff and then she comes back in 20 minutes and she sees all the options. This is how. How you use AI. This is how I use it, and this is how you should use it. But it's changed my life and my business for sure.
- [31:32]
Ryan Alford (Host)
It's so many things, it's hard to actually put it into one thing. It's the great exponentiator. I knew that Scott Clary would know what I meant, and I think my audience that knows how. That I like to make up words at this point knows what I mean. If he trained his GPT to write as well as this newsletter has written, I'd be very impressed. But I can almost tell it's coming from him. Even if it is at some level, Scott, it feels and breathes and acts like you. It's really intelligent.
- [31:58]
Scott Clary
It's not there yet. Yeah, I think that soon it will be. It can't capture everything. It can't capture the way that I write yet. But it's getting like, very, very close. Actually, I was actually disappointed because Claude Opus 4.7. I thought that it was going to be this massive upgrade because they hyped this shit up like it's the super bowl when they launch these new models. But I found that it was a little bit meh. Like, I didn't enjoy it that much. I'm like, oh, I'll put in my writing and be like, hey, this is my writing. Go write another piece. And then I read it. I'm like, no, this is shit. My bar is very high. But, like, the point is.
- [32:27]
Ryan Alford (Host)
I know, but I started to worry, Scott. I do the same thing. We're similar. I do things like. Then I go, am I just being too subject? Your own words, your own work. I have to, like, self critique sometimes, but then I don't know if I can remove myself from it.
- [32:39]
Scott Clary
I think that, you know what good is. I think that all creators know what good is. You know when a podcast hits, you know when a piece of content flops. And I think that for good creators, it is more important than ever to hold a high standard for your content, because AI has allowed everybody to create shitty content at scale. The people that write and create good content, there's less and less of them because there's so much slop Online now. And so many creators are just pushing AI slop. I think that if you create well thought out, you put a little bit more effort towards your content. I think you actually stand out even more than before because you're like, oh, my God, there's no way AI could have done this. And that's the reaction you want when you put out content. Oh, my God, there's no way I could have done this. If you can get that reaction, that's what builds trust the most with an audience in 2026 and forever, by the way.
- [33:22]
Ryan Alford (Host)
I can do some things and it can't even do some content. But your core content. Okay, my exact words, the hitting stuff that you want to differentiate. I think of it back to my marketing days where you have. I think it was like a musician. Like, you have a drum beating and that's like the brand and it's beating while you've got the sizzle, the important stuff landing big time. But you got that drum beat over here. I think you can use the AI for the drum beat stuff. The stuff that's not crap, but like, it's keeping some repetitive themes, some different things that aren't like, okay, my exact spoken word, my exact written word. But whether it's visual, whether it's logos, whether it's graphics done right, I think you can drum beat with AI. I don't think you can land the uppercuts necessarily. It's a fine line and I struggle with it every day knowing which one. And sometimes you can cross over and you go, oh, that was just some AI slop. And it was really meant to be an uppercut.
- [34:19]
Scott Clary
I'm a fan of using AI. We've gone super deep on use cases. I wanted to mention one more thing before. There's so many different random use cases, but I'm a big fan of using AI for is helping me brainstorm ideas and helping me figure out things. Research and brainstorming is huge. I never like to just write with AI and post because I can see when somebody else does that and I'm just not a fan of it. But researching and brainstorming is huge. That really helps. Especially at the end of the day when you're tired. You just need like a little bit of help to get going if you're trying to write a post or trying to write anything or trying to do anything. After eight hours of zoom, we don't have as much energy. So I think that AI helps just get the juices flowing a little bit. But my point with all this is you Just have to think in AI. That's the answer because you mentioned there's so many different ways to use it and I'm mentioning a few.
- [35:00]
Ryan Alford (Host)
You got to know how to use it. This is like cutting your grass with scissors or a lawnmower. You got to learn how to use the lawnmower 100%.
- [35:06]
Scott Clary
But when you think in AI is a made up idea. You're making up words and making up ideas. When you think in AI, you always think, how could I improve or expedite this task, this thing I got to do with AI? That's how you go through life. Now. Just go through life like that and you're going to be fine. How do I book this? Travel easier with AI? How do I write this copy or brainstorm this podcast idea or research a guest for the show? It doesn't mean that AI has to be part of everything you do. I think it's important that sometimes you actually do hard work yourself. I don't think that you should outsource all your thinking to AI because that creates a whole other problem. But for the average person who is not using it, start to just think, how do I use this to help with this task? I'll give you an example. My family was in town last week and my mom, she's retired now. She has like all these past generation photo books, like all these like photo albums and stuff like that of all the books and stuff of our child. And she has like 20 of these. It's crazy. Now we just have Instagram, but she has 20 of these photo albums. And she's like, what do I do with all these photo albums? Like, I don't just want to give them to you. Like you're going to sit in like storage or they're going to sit in a bin somewhere in the basement. And I'm like, why don't you turn it into some sort of memoir or something like that. We were brainstorming because I use AI a lot and I'm, I know the possibilities. I'm like, this is what you do. You're going to have all these pictures and eventually, like, maybe we can like scan or upload all these pictures. But you're going to have all these pictures and as you flip through the book, I want you to have a microphone. I want you to record like, what's going on in your life. These pictures are going to jog your memories to be, you know, this is like Scott's like, you know, second birthday, my parents came into town as we did for Scott. So you're going to narrate all this stuff, you're going to just record it and you're going to take this narration and then you're going, going to transcribe it. And then what you're going to do is you can actually use a tool like Manus or Claude Code to take the transcription and say, hey, I like Manus for website building. I want to create a website private of all the memories. These are the transcripts of all the memories. So it's going to code up a website that has like the different years and the different people and the timeline, and then it's going to turn these transcripts into blog posts or articles and it's going to attach it to certain periods of life and then it's going to say, okay, hey, can you upload a picture of Scott on his second birthday? Can you upload a picture, have whatever your mom on her 50th wedding anniversary. And then you're going to have this beautiful keepsake that was entirely enabled with a little bit of transcription, transcription to AI LLM blog writing, plus a website created around all these ideas. One of a trillion different things you can use AI for. But the point is she's trying to figure out how to capture all these beautiful memories. How do you use AI to do that? That's what I mean by think with AI. Like adopt an AI first mindset to the task to be done. That's a fun little family project, but that applies to everything in life and business. Whatever you're trying to do, think, how does AI allow me to do this easier, more efficiently, more effectively, or just better?
- [37:48]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, 100%. Talking with Scott Clary. He is the Canadian AI risk taker. A lot of thoughts that I have when I think about when I'm using AI and I'm cloud coding some big shit, we gotta have another call where we talk about what I'm doing. AI unlocks so much that if you will allow yourself to believe it, because you could do so many things, knowledge is cheap. You can take all of this knowledge, you can apply it in ways that you never imagined possible because you don't know, need to have the skill of all of these things that we did in the past and this knowledge in the past, AI can do that for you. But how can you creatively deploy an unlimited army of knowledge and technology in new ways? And the dreamers and the thinkers and the creative people, I tell people all the time, and I know you are too. Scott and Ryan's in the world are real dangerous, right Now, I'm not saying we're not going to be Jeff Bezos or anything, but if you're creative and you'll adopt these tools and you'll just unleash where you said everyday things, you're thinking about, how could AI and stop doing the things you always did the same way and think more creative. I think creative people that put it to action are going to be the world takers here because knowledge is cheap and average is below average. Now, good is not good, good is average. But it's that creativity with the AI layer that I don't know, people have fully grasped. You and I were in tech and we're in technology and podcasting, so we're immersed in all this stuff, but I don't think the general public has quite wrapped their head around it. I hope that shows like this do
- [39:17]
Scott Clary
it, you know, they do it too. AI allows you to be super creative, dude, and it allows you to test ideas for nothing. I can build an app. I can build a piece of software. I can brainstorm 20 new podcast formats in a weekend. I can build a full app. A full app that would take like two months to build with a developer team that would probably cost me, you know, $250,000, $300,000. I can build that in a weekend with no one else, and not just build like an mvp, build like a fully functioning Stripe or Apple integration paywalls. I can build marketing emails that can go out to people. I can build an app, scrape a list, send 2000 emails, spin up a social media account, post 50 images that were AI created in 24 hours with a little bit of creativity and prompting. So I can take an idea I have in my head and I can basically ship it and see if there's any feedback at all in no time. The biggest indicator of success, but the biggest, I think the quality of somebody who is truly successful. Of course they have to believe they can do the thing. That's the sort of a prerequisite, but it's to shorten the gap between the idea and the action. The shorten the gap between the idea and the execution of that idea. The shorter the gap, the quicker you can test, the more likely you can figure out if it works or not. And success is really just reps at the end of the day. If you try more businesses, one will work. If you have more ideas and you can test them, eventually you'll get data on which one works, which one doesn't, and you double down on what works. It's just everything in life is like a numbers game. You want to be successful, take more shots. AI allows you to take a hundred times more shots in no time with no money. That's a wild concept. So when people really truly grasp this that anything they think about they can completely launch tomorrow, it just changes the game. Now you mentioned another thing too. The tough thing about AI is the people that get it and the people that are with it and understand it and study it, they're going to move at light speed. Because now Scott or Ryan, I can test, like I said, 15, 20 business ideas simultaneously and then I could even spin up agents to almost run those businesses without too much of my direct involvement if there's actually customers that want to pay for whatever that business is. Not all businesses, you can't like AI, lawn care and whatnot. But I'm talking about like apps and websites and like things that are sort of more digital products. I can test out a lot of stuff very quickly, but the people that don't get it, they're going to be left behind. They're not going to be hirable, they're going to take way too much time and energy and money to build a business if they want to be entrepreneurial. Like I don't see a world where people that don't adopt AI have really great lives, to be quite honest. I think that you have to figure out there's always going to be certain sectors that are not going to be as impacted by AI. But I would even argue that if you're a law lawn care company, the lawn care company that adopts AI in their customer acquisition process and their onboarding and their billing and their op, they're going to be the only lawn care company because they're going to be able to do 100x to work at a fraction of the price. So any industry is going to be impacted by this. And we're not even going to get into robotics, which is a whole other stressful conversation people to go into. But the point is, if you don't understand it and you don't use it to make yourself more effective, I think the future is going to be very difficult for a lot of people who don't get it.
- [42:20]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, what was the book? 10 Habits of Highly Effective People. That needs to be literally rewritten. Maybe Scott needs to write that.
- [42:27]
Scott Clary
Do you get people reaching out to you? Because I've been in this, this limbo of writing books and dealing with agents and publishers for like almost two, three years now.
- [42:34]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Yeah, I get it.
- [42:35]
Scott Clary
Eventually something will hit a shelf.
- [42:37]
Ryan Alford (Host)
I've got a book title called Raising a Brand, which is around this notion of either an athlete or just a personal brand. Nil if it's an athlete type thing, but nil if it's just a personal brand. It's like nature raising a personal brand. And doesn't mean like a. A YouTube sensation necessarily. But I think it's just so important that our voices put some like, emphasis on this topic. It can't be. I know everybody's kind of maybe getting fatigued, but I'm excited. I mean, I literally. I guess it's funny you're talking we're doing the same thing. I mean, I'm up till like 2am because I feel like it's not because I'm scared to get left behind or anything. It's just fun. Like, I'm like, holy shit. Like, I had to rely on so many other people to do certain things that I did when you needed coding and all these other things. I feel like I've got back to the Superman thing. I mean, it's not that I have Superman.
- [43:21]
Scott Clary
You're starting to become Superman.
- [43:22]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Maybe not exactly. Scott, drop some deets on your amazing show newsletter, all that stuff.
- [43:29]
Scott Clary
I appreciate you, first of all, Ryan, for having me on. I'll give you my contact stuff and my podcast and socials in a second. But that reframe of being scared of AI and being scared of getting excited about it is super important one. And you're right that it's been discussed a lot, but I'm just hoping and praying that one person listens to this and it finally clicks. And that's why I say things. I don't think the future is going to be nice to people that don't adopt it. Maybe that's the line they have to hear. Maybe they don't have to hear from the CEO of of Anthropic. Maybe they have to realize, like, how this impacts them. And if they do, that's a win for me because hopefully that'll light a fire. Podcast is called Success Story where we have incredible conversations similar to these. And all my social is at Scott Declary, so you can find me anywhere.
- [44:08]
Ryan Alford (Host)
There's a lot of bad business advice out there. Scott Cleary ain't one of them. Ain't is a word now, I think in the dictionary, as Southerners like to say there, Scott, Scott's the real deal. You felt that here on the show. I know you will. You want to be successful, go listen to Scott, get it on his newsletter. It's real, it's raw. It's direct, it's honest us. But it's right about now. Scott, it's been a pleasure, brother. Can't wait to do it again.
- [44:31]
Scott Clary
Pleasure's on mine, dude. Thank you. Can't wait.
- [44:32]
Ryan Alford (Host)
Ryan is right.com find the highlight clips, the full episode, and links to all of Scott's stuff. We appreciate him for coming on. We appreciate you making us number one. See you next time.
- [44:42]
Ryan Alford (Intro/Outro)
Right about now, this has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.
- [45:03]
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