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The Mello Millionaire with Tommy Mello
The Truth About Success: Scott Clary on Building Brands and Taking Ownership
00:27:28
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- [00:00]
Scott Clary
There's multiple areas that you have to excel in to feel successful. So relationships, physical, mental health, some version of spirituality. But if you just make money and you're deficient in everything else and I see people that wake up one day and they realize that all they have is money.
- [00:19]
Tommy Mello
Successful, candid, tactical. Our guest today is the host of Success Story, a global top ranked podcast that features interviews with some of the world's most influential leaders and executives.
- [00:31]
Scott Clary
Write out the stuff you do in a day to day and figure out how to teach it.
- [00:35]
Tommy Mello
Scott Clary is an entrepreneur, investor and educator who has built and scaled multiple businesses including Fortune 500 companies.
- [00:41]
Scott Clary
What you have to do is you have to keep track of your wins.
- [00:44]
Tommy Mello
He's been featured in outlets like Forbes, Wall Street Journal and Inc. You only.
- [00:48]
Scott Clary
Have to win once to make more money than you ever know what to do with.
- [00:51]
Tommy Mello
Get ready. This conversation will give you the strategies, stories and mindset shifts to forge towards success both in business and in life. Welcome back to the Mellow Millionaire. I'm our guest today is the host.
- [01:03]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Of a global top ranked podcast called Success Story where he interviews some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs, executives and media personalities.
- [01:12]
Tommy Mello
Scott is also an entrepreneur and inventor.
- [01:14]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Who has built and scaled multiple businesses, advised Fortune 500 companies and now shares his own business insights on Instagram and YouTube to millions. Tell the audience a little bit about you brother.
- [01:27]
Scott Clary
So my background's in tech. That's where I started. I've always loved it. I've always loved working on stuff that was sort of bleeding edge and at one point in my career this is sort of what's led to what I do right now. With the podcast I realized that I have to future proof myself as an entrepreneur and I started a podcast really because at the time I was building a company. It was acquired at the end of COVID and I didn't know what I wanted to do after. So I was a student of the Gary Vees of the world and I realized that if I want to do anything, it's easier when you have an audience already. So I started building that audience and that's one of the most valuable assets I think anybody could ever build. I mean this is what you're doing, what you're doing with your show. But I've started that now and built the audience, the podcast, the media brand, the newsletter, the Instagram, the socials for about six and a half years and that's opened doors, led, led to opportunities, led to me speaking on stage, working on a book right now Led to, you know, great relationships like, like yourself and, you know, about a thousand other guests. So that's really been my life I.
- [02:28]
Tommy Mello
Want to dive into.
- [02:29]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
A lot of people don't understand the power of building a personal brand and building followers. You know, what were someone getting started, where would you start?
- [02:39]
Scott Clary
I would say the easiest place to start for most people is to teach their younger self what they found useful in their career. So if you want to start creating content, say you have a business, your content should be what your younger self was trying to figure out when they got into that business. Also, if they have a customer, they should figure out what the customer's trying to solve for as well. It doesn't have to be much more complicated than that. Good content is educational. Don't just jump on TikTok because you see somebody on TikTok. If you love creating short video, you do TikTok. You do reels. Great. If you love chatting with somebody for an hour and a half, do a long form podcast. But whatever you do, enjoy it. Because the beauty of content is it compounds over time. You build an audience over time, so you're not going to get a short win, which means you got to stick with it. And you're only going to stick with it if you enjoy it. And that's why I started with podcasts, so I enjoyed it. So it's easy to do it for 10 years when you enjoy it. Right?
- [03:39]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
You know what's interesting is most people don't make it past three months with a podcast. So you're right. You got to pick the right.
- [03:46]
Scott Clary
But that's not what people do, right? They jump on the, oh, I'm going to create content. Let me figure out how to dance on TikTok.
- [03:52]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [03:52]
Scott Clary
Bad followers anyway, that's even besides yes. So there's like a whole bunch of different nuances between platforms and which ones have high trust and low trust. Then you have to understand what platform attracts, what kind of follower and what that means for your business. But you just mentioned, like, how to start off as a creator. Just pick one platform you love and just run with it.
- [04:12]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
What about this idea? This was about seven years ago when I just started out in podcasting and I interviewed a guy that helps people start podcasts. Then he said, what do you do for a living? And I told him, home service. He said, who's your avatar? Who's one client that could give you $10 million a year?
- [04:29]
Tommy Mello
How do you get them on?
- [04:30]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
How do you learn about them? How do you ask them Questions, find out what they look for, Be genuinely interested in them.
- [04:35]
Tommy Mello
Because if you could get clients like.
- [04:37]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
That and learn about their, their brains and how they think and continue to get people on all the time, you could actually use that to build your business.
- [04:46]
Scott Clary
Correct. So that's a great point. When you first asked me, how do you start as a creator? And I said, create content for your younger self, that's a slightly different strategy than if you are a business owner and you're starting to create content. So I guess the actual answer is, figure out why you're creating content in the first place. If you are just creating content and you want to turn yourself into a personal brand, then creating content for your younger self is a great way to start. If you are a business owner and you know your avatar or your ideal customer profile and you can bring them on to interview them, and not only do you get a chance to build rapport with them, which could then lead to them becoming an actual customer. You ask them questions that your top customers are asking, and then that conversation turns into great content that's going to be for all your marketing material, your socials. And of course, if you're talking to your main customer avatar, then all the content that you pull out of that is going to attract similar avatars, which means your content's aligned with your. Your customer.
- [05:44]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I told you last night, this gal, I read about her, or I might have seen Instagram about her, she's like, I only have 990 followers and she makes 150 grand a year just selling to that loyal audience. And we both get trapped in the idea of how many likes, how many shares, how did it grow? And quantity is definitely doesn't always mean.
- [06:03]
Scott Clary
Quality a thousand percent. But this is why people chase vanity metrics, because they, they, they, their ego is driving their decision when it comes to their personal brand and their content. For most business owners, you're right, they have the luxury of having a product that they can actually sell. So why would you be building the biggest possible audience with the content that goes the most viral when that's not actually content? That's going to attract the audience that's going to convert into leads, convert into customers. But I mean, humans are humans. Yeah. And they want the biggest audience. They want the most following. And this is actually a trap that sometimes creators fall into, too, myself included. You create content that goes viral, but it attracts the wrong audience, but you get that dopamine hit, which is why you really have to have an understanding of why you're creating content. In the first place, you could have 10% of that audience convert into customers. Oh, yeah, that's way more useful than going on some huge motivation mindset podcast. It has a million listeners, a Tony Robbins, but nobody really gives a shit. Nobody's your customer.
- [07:06]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Right?
- [07:07]
Scott Clary
So you're right. I don't think people do that research, but you're right. But this is also a trap that business owners fall into when they. When they start paying influencers. So they start paying the biggest possible influencer with the biggest possible audience. I found that niche and smaller micro influencers do much better with targeted audiences. I think that most business owners, they learn the hard way by blowing a lot of money, then realizing that, like, the biggest name is not the most effective name. So Brendan Cain. Brendan Cain's a very smart marketer, and I've had him on the show twice now. And he speaks about all the different formats that just work. School of Hard Knocks, like you mentioned, is one of them. There's a million other formats that sort of predictably work. Now, I'm not. I'm not an expert. I'm not. His company has a company called Hook Point. They research tons of data points. But from what I've learned from him, and probably spoke about this on your show as well, you can find a type of content that works like interview style or. I mean, right now, there's a lot of podcast content where you see Talking head that works really, really well, and then you find a way to, you know, you find a way to interpret your message through that style of content, and then you just triple down on it. But my content has gone through five or six or seven evolutions over the past six years. I see. Because I'm a podcaster, so I study a lot of podcasters, but I study people on every platform. I study people that are always learning, always evolving, growing the fastest right now. Not people that grew fast 10, 15 years ago, or even three years. Or even three years ago. Because I know that whatever it is they're figuring out, it's like hitting the algorithm, right? It's hitting whatever the audience's expectations are right now. So they had some success, they had some luck, right time, right place, but they haven't evolved ever since. So you gotta. You gotta keep evolving. You gotta keep studying. It's like, I don't know why people treat content any different than their business, right? Your business, when you start a business, you don't start it, and 10 years later, it's the same business when you started. Like, that's insane. Any Business owner be like, no, I'd be out of business.
- [09:17]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
PayPal just hired a. A guy to be the CEO of content. I saw that $200,000 a year. And basically they say the founder is just as important as the business. And I've had so many people that are like, who's bigger? A1 or Tommy Mello taking A1 built me, and I'm going to try to build the same thing for A one now, because maybe it was vanity, but to be completely transparent is. I never really realized a garage door company, but I didn't realize that could be a. It could be a recruiting mechanism. Clients see me.
- [09:50]
Scott Clary
I think it should be. But it's also good that you're putting yourself out there. Every. Every CEO should build a brand, be the celebrity CEO, put themselves front and center. The customer has a really hard time building any kind of real connection with a brand.
- [10:05]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Right?
- [10:05]
Scott Clary
Doesn't matter how percent great you are and how much you give the chair. It's very hard for them to look at A1 as anything more than just. Just a company that does the work. Now, if they know Tommy and they see all his content and they see who he is and what he stands for, well, now all of a sudden, if I'm picking between five different competitors in your industry, I'm going to pick the one where I know the CEO and I like who he is or, like, who she is. Like, if you look at, you know, even at a such a large scale, like, Richard Branson has a bigger following than Virgin. Elon Musk has a bigger following than any of his companies. Like, they're all personalities. I think building an audience should be a means to an end. I think it should be to build a business, sell a product. Like, there should be some commercial activity attached to it. I don't. I love podcasting. But, you know, if you're going to ask me, like, hey, would I be marketing the shit out of my podcast until I'm 90 years old, if I could retire on a beach somewhere? Maybe not. Maybe I just do it for fun. There's a difference, right? When you're building a business, you have to be obsessed with the thing. You have to do it nonstop. You have to build systems and processes around it. Great. Don't mind it. I love playing entrepreneur. If you have a viable business that's making money, that's doing well, look at content. That's how you use content. That's how you use social media. There's sort of three ways to grow anything. Content is a business, right? So if you grow a business, you can use ads like you just mentioned, you can use collaborations with other creators, or in business it'd be like a jv or you can grow organically. So if you are building a podcast, a newsletter, an Instagram, organic growth just looks like content that hits with an audience. That's all it is. Now the other way to grow, especially with a podcast, is to do collaborations with other creators. I would say the, the best growth that I've had that is not just organic is when there's something called a feed drop. So what that means you take a full episode from your show and I put it on your podcast and I take a full episode of your show and I put it on my podcast and we record a little intro, say, hey, this is, you know, this is the mellow millionaire. If you like this show, here's the full episode. If the content hits with you, go subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and then listen to, you know, Tommy's show. So what I'm doing there is I'm not just collaborating with another creator, I'm collaborating with another podcaster. Sometimes people try and do collaborations and they say, like, well, you know, I have this podcast. Can you share it on your Instagram story after I bring you on the show? Yeah, it can work. But you also have to understand that if I'm sharing a podcast on someone else's Instagram, it's a different kind of audience. So I'm trying to get somebody who's scrolling on Instagram to listen to an hour, hour and a half long piece of content. A percentage will, but not a hundred percent. But if I want to grow a podcast, I say, let's do a feed swap like I just described. That means that everybody who's listening to your podcast loves podcasts. Everyone who's listening to my podcast love loves podcasts. All I'm saying is like, hey, here's another option, go check it out.
- [13:14]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
What have you learned about success and how would you define it? What are some of the biggest takeaways?
- [13:19]
Scott Clary
That success is freedom. Success is freedom. Success is not just making more money. All the people on my show have made some amount of money. I've had billionaires on. I've had people that have exited for eight, nine figures. Like some really, really incredible entrepreneurs. I've had, you know, you just mentioned some. I've had the co founder of Netflix, the CEO of Reebok, Household name brands, right? There's multiple areas that you have to excel in to feel successful. So relationships, physical, mental, Health, some version of spirituality, yes, money matters as well. But if you just make money and you're deficient in everything else, and I see people that, they've been so focused on money that all the rest of their life has kind of gone to shit. And then they wake up one day and they realize that all they have is money.
- [14:09]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Well, that's what I was Steve Jobs, I mean, he goes, I got more money than anybody would ever want, but yet I'm sitting here in a hospital with no one here next to me.
- [14:19]
Scott Clary
So I think that true success, it doesn't mean that your whole life will always be balanced. Because if you are going to build anything meaningful, you have to be obsessed. And there will be seasons of your life that are not balanced. That's fine. But just understand that there are seasons, meaning that season comes to an end at some point and you have to make sure that you don't let all the other parts of your life fall by the wayside before it's too late. And this is, I mean, one of my favorite stories is Mark Randolph. So he was a co founder of Netflix. And just to show you how important sort of balance is in life, every Tuesday when he was building Netflix, he, at five o' clock, he would shut off from work completely and go on date night with his wife. And that was something that was like he was religious about it. It doesn't matter what fires were going on in Netflix. He shut off Tuesday at 5 o', clock, went on date night with his wife. And it just goes to show you, like a lot of people say, well, I'm in entrepreneur mode. I'm building right now. I don't have time for my family, I don't have time for the gym, I don't have time to eat healthy. I don't have time for any. I'm like the people that built some of the biggest companies in the world found time for was a choice. It's always a choice.
- [15:34]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
It's a hundred percent. You know, you brought up a word earlier that I could say every person I know that's done well financially and, and it's almost a sickness at times, but it's obsessed. You said you got to be obsessed. Is that what you would consider a common denominator when it comes to some of the interviews and some of the people you've met?
- [15:52]
Scott Clary
Yes. You can really tell who's real or not because of the level of obsession that they have with the thing that they do. So if you ask anybody about their business, it's like their Eyes light up and they can talk about it for days. Like they can just talk about it non stop. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what business it is. You go, you go speak to, you know, Joe Foster, he's the founder of Reebok. You'd speak to him about like shoes and, and basically how him and his brother built Reebok from the ground up and all the things they had to figure out with, you know, athletes didn't want this and didn't want that. I don't know anything about shoes, but he would just talk about them nonstop. Another good friend of mine is Yosef Martin. He was the founder of Boxycharm. He sold it for 500 million to Ipsy. He can talk about makeup because that's what the product was like. He's like, you know, he's never been involved in makeup before, but after he built boxycharm, it was basically a product where you put all these different makeup samples in the box. The guy can talk about every single makeup influencer, every single piece of makeup, every single shade, every single, like he just talk about it for days, for days, for days, for days. So this is what, this is what obsession means.
- [17:03]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
You know, it's funny, a 21 year old asked me recently, what's some. What's the number one thing you would do if you were me at 21? I say be careful who you pick as a partner.
- [17:11]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [17:12]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
And probably go to the bars less than I did at 21.
- [17:16]
Scott Clary
I think partner is huge.
- [17:17]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
What's one piece of game changing advice you wish you knew in your early 20s?
- [17:22]
Scott Clary
One idea that always comes up that I think is very, I don't know, it's very comforting. Is that building anything, being an entrepreneur, it's not complicated. It's just, it's just a lot of hard work. Meaning that if you stick with something long enough, you'll figure it out.
- [17:43]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
You know, one of the things I thought about real quick is three feet from gold and if you stick in it long enough, you're right near the end zone and most people spike the ball. If you just stayed in the game a little bit longer, you're one higher away. So I love that idea of just stick it out. If you had $10 million tomorrow, what would you do with it?
- [18:01]
Scott Clary
I'd put it into people that can teach me what I don't know to compress time. I would work with somebody that's built a podcast. Like I'd work with. I'd work with a Steven Bartlett who just built A very big podcast very quickly. So I'd hire the right people that could teach me how to get from where I am to where they are in, you know, a year or two if possible. I'd put the money right back into my team and find the talent that could execute on that vision. I would say that most of my money goes right into like my education or getting access to people that I can't get access to or talent that knows more than me.
- [18:35]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
When I was starting out, I didn't have a pot to piss in. I just needed. The first thing I needed is somebody to answer phones because I couldn't get to them. The next person I had is somebody do payroll. And then the smartest hire I've ever done was an executive assistant that could do $25 an hour stuff.
- [18:49]
Scott Clary
I think that like a talent attracts other A players. Oh yeah. And if you make the mistake of like hiring you know, B talent and they just kind of coast, it sets this expectation in the company that that's okay. And then other A players are turned off because they see that this, this B player, this kind of just half assing it is allowed to exist. So if you have, it's like hiring, hiring is very difficult. Hiring is exceptionally difficult. You know they say like, you know, hire slow fire fast. Like I fully agree with that. Listen, if you're starting a company and you have no money, I don't think it's bad if you can give a little bit of equity vested to people that can really like change, change your company. True A talent. If you have the cash, then just don't be cheap. But not everybody has the cash.
- [19:36]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
It's tough. Yeah, that's what I did. I did equity incentive programs and I got the right people on the bus and they changed everything. A few good hires completely changed a few dials and all of a sudden we started printing money. And that's the deal. Like people ask me what I would do for a cfo. I said I'd go to find the million dollar cfo. Like a million doll. Getting like a good bookkeeper. Now you're understanding tax and write offs and how to do advanced appreciation.
- [19:59]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I agree fully. But that's like if you don't have the money, then you don't, you don't think that way. You're just thinking how do I find the cheapest possible person? And this person's going to cost you 10x.
- [20:09]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Oh, it costs you, you get. And then the IRS is coming after you. Like the CFO for me was the Perfect combo for me because I understand marketing, sales and culture. But the right CFO. The right CFO understands the forward looking of the business. CPAs and bookkeepers don't. They're thinking about how to save taxes and cash versus accrual and audited shit. Like the right CFO is like how do we build this business for a transaction? And it's amazing. And by the way, do you know how much Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos owns of their companies? Elon owns like 12%, Jeff Bezos owns about 8% of Amazon. Like so they take money off, off, off and then bigger people come in and you get these entrepreneurs in there and they're all working hard and I think people are so selfish. They never want to sell but they don't understand the long term vision.
- [21:00]
Scott Clary
Well, I was going to say like when you're first starting out, depends on what you're building. But if you know your skill set and you know what you're really good at, like say you're good at sales, marketing, product, whatever that is. I mean I don't always like I've had bad experiences with co founders but sometimes if you can, if you can set up a proper vesting schedule, you can get a, a foul like a co founder that complements your skill set perfectly. So if you're trying to build a technical product, I would rather you go get a technical co founder, full stack developer, then go raise money and be stressed out because now you have investors right out of the gate. When people have a stake and you know they're vested in the success of the business but that's the only way you're going to get A plus talent when you first start out without, without hiring for it. But yeah, I mean like I think that's a huge point.
- [21:52]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I let my whole C suite VP level, I say this to them, I'm like, I want you to fail more. I used to. A few years ago I'd be like, you got to come to me, I've already been through it. And that gives them no freedom. They don't learn anything. We learn from our failures, not our successes. We can't even reflect. Let me ask you a closing out couple questions. This is a good one. And somebody asked me this not that long ago. I want you to close your eyes for a minute and think about what would need to happen if you were going to 30x your business. Like 30x your following 30x next year. 30x, you want a 30x in 20.
- [22:31]
Scott Clary
26, 30x a podcast. 30x a media brand. I think there's a big content play that could 30 exit, but I haven't done it yet. So I, you know, I was telling you how I, I study these guys that grow the quickest, right? Yep. Well, there's, there's people that have a lot of capital behind them. You could just say easily, well, if I had more money. But I don't think that's the answer. That's, that's a cop out answer. Yep. Because with more money. What would you do with more money? Well, maybe you invest in a bigger studio. The guys that I keep looking at that kill it, that I haven't done. This style of content that I am thinking about, it's the school of hard knocks people and the reason why they grew up, they grew so quickly and they basically eclipsed most other business brands is because they did stuff that was uncomfortable. And right now I'm very self aware. I know that my content is comfortable, but I know if I did more uncomfortable content stuff that I wasn't necessarily, you know, I just. You feel like a little bit, I don't know, nervous. You feel like nervous when you go. I don't feel nervous when I go into a podcast anymore. I don't, none of it stresses me out but like approaching strangers on the street and shit, that's stressful as hell. But I know that if I leaned into that, that's one way that you could tap into organic reach. And that would take. That wouldn't just 2 or 3x. I mean you see people like Simon Squibb and School of Hard Knocks and they do this uncomfortable style of content and the algorithm rewards that. And to truly 30x a content business, you have to do things that are hard. You have to do things content wise, that are hard, that are uncomfortable, that very few people are doing because they stand out. And that's what you're, that's the game you're playing. You're playing a game of attention and standing out.
- [24:25]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Two questions. Give me one book that just changed your life.
- [24:29]
Scott Clary
Play Bigger Play. I mean I've read like all the go tos, the atomic habits of the world, but Play Bigger is one of my favorites because it speaks about creating something where nothing has existed before. It speaks about Marc Benioff creating Salesforce.com when the idea of cloud didn't exist. It speaks about the founders of IKEA creating a brand new sort of shopping experience. So all these great entrepreneurs that didn't just copy what already existed, but found a way to create a category. And it Just forces you to think differently. It's outside of most people's comfort zones. If you want a really 30 exit, I think that's a really smart way to think. And that's a book that sort of lays out the framework for all these famous entrepreneurs, how they did it.
- [25:15]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Love it. How do people get a hold of you, Scott?
- [25:18]
Scott Clary
Very easy. Podcast is called Success Story. Do very similar stuff to what we're doing today. All the socials at Scott Declary and close us out.
- [25:27]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Maybe something we didn't talk about, something you want the audience to hear.
- [25:29]
Scott Clary
I think two other things that I love to talk about. You know, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to have a little bit of delusion, too. You have to have, you know, just a little bit of delusion and just agency. Just trust that you can figure it out. Everyone who I spoke to, another thing that they all believe is that they can figure it out. Whatever it is. Doesn't matter what they have to learn, doesn't matter who they have to speak to. It's all on them. Yaako Willing speaks about ownership all the time. Ownership, agency, same thing. You're owning the outcome. And when you sort of drift through life and you just assume that whatever happens to you, oh, you know, bad luck or what, it didn't work out because, you know, I got dealt this bad hand, at the end of the day, nobody gives a shit. You have one life. It's on you to figure it out. Doesn't matter if it's in your career, your relationship, your business, like have agency, have ownership over your life. And you will be surprised at how fast things change.
- [26:26]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I love it. Scott, well done, my friend.
- [26:28]
Scott Clary
Thanks for having me.
- [26:30]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Thanks for being here.
- [26:30]
Scott Clary
My pleasure.
- [26:32]
Tommy Mello
Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Like always, we're going to close it out with the Tommy Truth, which is a little slice of wisdom from me to you that can help guide you in whatever you're striving towards right now.
- [26:43]
Tommy Truth
All right, guys, I'm going to share with you three tips that if I knew in my early 20s, I would be dominating the world.
- [26:47]
Tommy Mello
Number one, if you feel like you're.
- [26:49]
Tommy Truth
Failing Chance, who you're hanging around with, you'll scale so much quicker. The reason that rich get rich are the guys and gals that are getting in shape, get in shape faster so they're around the right people. Number two is time blocking. You got to block your schedule, make sure you're saying no more than you're saying yes. And number three, when your immediate family is pushing you forward. It makes a big difference. So share your dream, reverse engineer with them, and hopefully they help push you forward. I've seen this happen so many times where a technician shares his dreams or a manager shares their dreams with their significant other, and they accomplish them together 10 times as fast.
- [27:21]
Tommy Mello
And that's it, guys. We'll talk to you next week.