Bet on Yourself: Lessons from 1,000+ Interviews on Success | Scott D. Clary
Kazuki Nakayashiki
Jul 24, 2025 6:41 PM
Summary
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Introduction to Scott D. Clary (00:08 - 00:26): Scott is a seasoned entrepreneur, content creator, and host of the Success Story Podcast with over 50 million downloads. He shares conversations with various leaders on their journeys.
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Background and Journey (00:57 - 05:57): Scott grew up in a risk-averse family and initially pursued a career in tech and sales. His exposure to entrepreneurship sparked when a company he worked for was acquired, leading him to embrace building something of his own.
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The Shift to Entrepreneurship (05:57 - 07:55): Scott discusses how changes in job security and benefit structures influenced his decision to pursue entrepreneurship, seeing it as a way to create security for his future.
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Starting the Podcast and Newsletter (08:46 - 12:31): Scott launched the podcast to document his journey, leverage media for future opportunities, and create a platform for distributing content across various social channels. This goal also transitioned into writing a newsletter.
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Evolution of Content Focus (15:30 - 20:35): His content evolved from tactical business advice on sales and marketing to encompass broader themes like mindset, wellness, and mental health crucial for entrepreneurs.
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Defining Success (19:23 - 26:04): Scott believes success is subjective, emphasizing that it encompasses freedom and value creation across various life domains, not just financial success. He encourages a holistic view of success that includes personal well-being and relationships.
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Future Aspirations and Ideas (1:10:31 - 1:17:09): Scott is open to future business opportunities focusing on consumer goods or service-based businesses. He emphasizes the importance of choosing a venture that aligns with personal passions and that he must fully commit to the idea before launching it.
Transcript
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Glasp Talk. Today, we are excited to have Scott D. Clary with us. So Scott is a seasoned entrepreneur, storyteller, and a content creator. So he's the founder and host of the Success Story Podcast, the number one entrepreneur podcast with over 50 million downloads, and where he shares candid conversations with executives, celebrities, and visionaries about their journeys through wins and losses. In
addition to hosting his podcast, Scott writes a weekly newsletter led by over 330,000 people and offering insights on mental models, business, performance, and entrepreneurship. With an educational background spanning law, business, and computer science, and a career dedicated to unpacking the lessons of success, Scott empowers professionals and entrepreneurs with actionable strategies and deep insights. Today, we will dive into Scott's journey,
the stories behind his success, and his vision for helping others build their own path to create greatness. And thank you for joining us, Scott, today. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I'm excited and I appreciate what you've built. I think that a lot of the content we create is trying to accomplish the same thing, right? Life doesn't have to be so complicated and difficult. So let's find a way to tell some stories and teach others from our wins and our
losses. And if we can do that, then I think that's success. Thank you so much. So first of all, we are a huge fan of you and your podcast and newsletter, and you've had a lot of success now. But could you tell us a little bit about your background and career journey for the audience who don't know you yet? And were you always entrepreneurial even as a kid? No, I was not. So I came from a family that was actually very not entrepreneurial,
very risk averse. So my dad worked in government, my mom worked for universities. I had a very, very comfortable upbringing. But I think that what pushed me towards entrepreneurship and for context, I mean, I started my career in tech, I started my career in sales, and then I moved into leadership roles within companies. And then I led sales and marketing at companies. One of the first sort of exposures to entrepreneurship was when a company that I was
leading sales and marketing at was acquired by private equity. And that was like a light bulb moment for me, because like, wow, my goodness, like ownership, equity, exit potential, right? If you can, if you can do this, right. And I saw, I saw the the culmination of the journey of the founder of that company. It was a very successful exit. And that was really my first, my first exposure to entrepreneurship. Growing up, I didn't really get exposed to it at all.
Even moving away from like law and moving into tech, and moving into what would be considered like, I guess, compared to my parents that worked in very safe, secure roles and jobs, moving into private industry and tech was already a little bit of a 180 from what I experienced growing up, right? Like working for a private company, working in something that, you know, doesn't have a pension, doesn't have the security that
a government job has. But I think that what pushed me to do things differently than my parents was something that I think a lot of us experience, especially in 2025 and beyond, the same work and security that a lot of our parents had, if say they weren't entrepreneurial, because a lot of people's parents are not, they just they work their nine to five job for, you know, 30, 40 years. And you have to realize that that's that job security and that
life. That's not reality for many people anymore, whether or not it's because of cost of living has increased significantly. So we don't have the same buying powers with our parents had, or there's not the same amount of pension and retirement option that our parents had. I mean, to give you context, my dad, he worked, you know, his whole life, and he had a pension that was set up for him. So whenever he was retired, now, whenever he retired, he'd have 70% of his best
years as his salary, basically, until the day that he dies. We don't have that anymore. We don't have these options, right? So cost of living is increased. Salary did not increase to match it. Pensions don't exist the way they used to. Also, I mean, we saw during COVID, people that had worked with companies for 20 plus years were laid off overnight. So job security doesn't even, you know, exist the way it used to. So I guess, for me, a lot of my journey away from what would be
traditionally deemed safe and secure, and more towards betting on myself and entrepreneurship was just me understanding that, and I still believe this to this day, entrepreneurship, building something yourself is the most secure and safe thing that you can do in your life to make sure that you will always find a way to put food on the table, and always find a way to really survive and not worry and stress about, is this company going to lay me off? What do I do
if, you know, I get replaced by AI tomorrow? I think that that's why, for me, entrepreneurship, as I understood what it was, which is really just you learning skills, betting on yourself, and building something, that to me was like the safest way to live my life. And I didn't know that when I was young, but I think that more people should be entrepreneurs, if not entrepreneurial, even if they have a job, because I think that the old way of career, I don't think works out
well for a lot of people. And I think that that's really what pushed me towards working in private, working in tech, working with startups, taking equity positions in startups. I've worked with a variety of different startups. I worked with one that was sort of like the one that I worked with most recently, before I started my podcast, where I was CRO, I joined the co-founding team, grew that, that was sold at the end of COVID. And then the podcast and the personal brand
is another startup that I 100% own. And that's sort of been my little media company that I've built over the past six and a bit years. And all of my focus right now is building things that I own, never working for anybody ever again, building a skill set that whatever happens to me in the future, even if the podcast, I don't know how it would happen, but say the podcast doesn't exist anymore. Say my income doesn't exist anymore.
Say some of the consulting I do doesn't exist anymore. With a skill set that I've built up over my journey, I could find a way to make money in a million different ways. So I never have to really stress about my future. It's all about sort of future-proofing myself. Anyway, so very long answer to your question, but I went through private tech, saw a company that was acquired, tried to do a whole bunch of consulting, worked with a whole bunch of different startups,
joined one permanently, that one was acquired. And then most recently I built my own sort of media empire, which is the podcast, the newsletter, all the content I put out. And that's sort of been a business that I've built, but also leverage that I've created for, again, future-proofing myself and making anything that I do in the future a little bit easier because you have this audience that you've already built. So that was sort of my career in a nutshell.
And my progression through all these different, because I did it all, right? I worked for people, built Zipf myself. I've done every version of work. Yeah, really impressive. And yeah, thank you for sharing that. And so then like almost six, seven years ago, you started the podcast, the Success Story podcast. It's a number one entrepreneur podcast and over 15 million downloads. And why did you start that? Like, what inspired
you to start the podcast in like six years, seven years ago? What was the trigger or, you know, what happened to you? Well, a few things. So a common theme is future-proofing myself, is making sure that whatever happens in the future, I'm going to be safe. I'm going to find a way to take care of myself and my family. And building the podcast, which is a business, but also I mentioned it is a form of leverage, right? There's, you know, according to the famous
Naval Ravikant tweet thread, there's four forms of leverage, right? There's technical, like technical, like, you know, coding software, there's financial, there's people, and then there's media. These are the four kinds of leverage. And you really, at some point, if you're going to build anything worth building, you have to take advantage of all these kinds of leverage. But the podcast was a business that I could build that I 100% owned. It was a form of leverage, meaning that
if I put an hour into my podcast, that the same hour that I put into recording, that could mean people could listen to that episode, that could mean, you know, 10 million people could listen to that episode. And then also, once you build this media leverage, then you can use it to launch other businesses. You look at what Gary Vee did, building his media empire and then launching, you know, VaynerMedia, VaynerSports, Empathy Wines, his NFT project.
Once you have the audience, which is media leverage, then you can launch other companies quite easily without the friction of getting them off the ground. So, you know, future-proofing myself, building up media leverage. I would also say that I fully believe that attention is the new oil. It has been for a while. And finding a way to not just build an audience, but to create, you know, this group of people
that consume your content, that trust you, to create a community of people that are all like-minded that want to learn from your experiences or learn from the people that you have access to, that's an incredibly powerful asset to own. And that's really why I started. There wasn't, there was no exit plan. It was sort of a launchpad for whatever I wanted to do in the future. That was really the goal. And I think that that's why a lot of people build personal brands.
Some of them, it's to make money directly from the brand. But at least for me, it was just safety and security, knowing that if I had this asset and I had, you know, a million people that listened to what I had to say, or listened to the podcast or read the newsletter, whatever I chose to work on in the future would just be easier to launch that thing. I see. Did you start the podcast and newsletter at the same time, or did you start?
No, actually I started on, I started posting content on LinkedIn first. And then after I started posting content on LinkedIn, that's when I, because at the time I was like my day to day, this is something that's interesting too. I think that a lot of people are always focusing for like the latest hack on how to grow on social media or grow in their content, whether or not it's growing on social or growing a
newsletter or growing a podcast. But I think that more people should just focus on documenting the struggles that they're dealing with in their day to day. Because if you just document the stuff that you're working on in your day to day, in your content, it's real, it's authentic. And there's going to be people out there that are in your position dealing with the same problems and the content you create is going to resonate with them.
I don't think you always have to hop on these trends. I think that you just have to speak about the things that you're dealing with and that you're struggling with and that you're overcoming. And if you're a good storyteller, that creates incredible content. So the reason I bring that up is because my day to day back then when I first started was managing a sales team and selling and marketing a product.
So a lot of my content really resonated on LinkedIn. And I started posting about some of the things that I was dealing with on a day to day on LinkedIn that built an audience. And then I also realized that, okay, great, I can build an audience on LinkedIn. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be everywhere. I'm just going to be stuck on one platform. The reason why I wanted to start a podcast was so that I could basically take that podcast
content and distribute it everywhere and show up on every single social platform. A couple things I believe, I think that video is incredibly important when building an audience. I think that also when you're first starting out, you don't have the mental bandwidth to think of net new content for every single social platform. So those are my two beliefs. That's why I started the podcast. I wanted video because it's a really high trust building medium.
And obviously, if you do long form video content, then that can be turned into tweets, it can be turned into shorts, it can be turned into newsletters, it can be turned into anything. And then it's a really easy way to create content once and then distribute it everywhere without much work and much additional effort. So I started on LinkedIn, was getting some traction there, but realized that I really wasn't going to build the trust with the audience that I wanted to.
The video component was missing. And I also wanted to be on all the platforms. And I did not have the energy to think of new content for every single platform because writing a piece on LinkedIn doesn't easily translate into, you know, something that's going to really kill it on Instagram Reels. It's going to be quite dry. So that's why I chose to take the audience that I had on LinkedIn, start the podcast,
and speak about things on the podcast that I was speaking about on LinkedIn. In fact, when I first started the podcast, it wasn't even called Success Story. It was called Sales versus Marketing. And I was only speaking to marketers, CMOs, CROs, again, speaking about the things that we were dealing with in our day to day. And that was my first version of the podcast. And I think those episodes are actually still up.
And that was my first version of taking my LinkedIn audience, moving it into podcast. The first podcast I ever did was audio video. And I took that, I chopped it up, I pushed it everywhere. And then I would transcribe it, and I turn it into a newsletter, and that's when the newsletter started. So that was sort of the evolution of my content. It's changed a lot since then, because I've changed a lot. What I care about, what I speak about daily changes all the time.
And I think that that's also how you should look at your content and how you should evolve it. Your content, again, should be about the things that you're dealing with in your day to day. So if you are like, the company that I was building at the time was acquired at the end of COVID. So now I'm not building a company. So what are the things that I care about? Well, when I started my content, I cared about tactics, very, you know, granular, okay, again,
how do you figure out your ICP, your avatar? How do you get positive ROAS on that Facebook ad set? Awesome, but that's no longer my world post exit. So what am I caring about now? Well, I start to realize that the things that make successful entrepreneurs are not just the tactics, but there's a lot of mindset that's required to be a successful entrepreneur as well. There's a lot of energy management. There's a lot of focus that's required.
There's a lot of things that if you just know how to run a Facebook ad set and get positive ROAS, you're not going to be successful building a company from scratch. There's many other things, and it's usually, it's not the actual tactics that are going to sideline you. It's finding a way to continue to build for 10 years when you don't have the traction, the energy, the focus, the perseverance, the managing your own physical and mental health,
managing the relationships with the people around you. These things start to play a role on your success as an entrepreneur. So this is what I start to research. This is what I'm more interested in. This is what starts to form more of my content. It's not just the tactics. I like to speak to entrepreneurs about what they did to be successful, but also how did they optimize the rest of their life? And then you start to see these topics start to come into the podcast.
I start to interview people that speak about health and wellness. I start to interview people that speak about biohacking and spirituality and relationship and mental model and flow state and all the other things that are very important to a successful entrepreneur, because these are things that I'm interested in, and these are things that I'm researching. And that's really how the podcast and my contents evolved over the past six years.
And that's why now I write about all these different topics in pursuit of success. So not just, I don't want all these ambiguous topics just floating. I want to tap into all these different parts of your life that you have to optimize if you are a high performing individual to be successful at work, to be successful in your business. And that's what I write about. That's what I podcast about. So that was really the evolution of my content.
Wow. So, so amazing. But it's very simple. It shouldn't be. It's so simple. Like if you want to create content, we're all smart people. Most of the people listen to this show, they're researching, they're learning every single day. I don't know a single person that has had any kind of success that is stagnant and doesn't, you know, absorb new ideas, listen to podcasts, read books. Half of your content strategy can just be talking about what you're learning, how you're
applying it, if it works, if it doesn't. And I think that that's very interesting, because a lot of people learn new things every single day. A lot of people have a problem in their life. They're building a business. They're very successful. Their wife or their husband hates them, because they never spend time. What's the lesson there? Because just because it's happening to you, I can guarantee you, it is happening to four
or five or six or 10 million other people in this world that would be very interested in learning how to navigate that. Content isn't so hard. Just speak about what you're dealing with. And you'll find it resonates really, really well with people. I see. Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, like, has the definition of success changed over time inside you? I mean, in your website, on your website? I see you say, you know, success is freedom.
But you know, your LinkedIn posting five years ago, you posted on LinkedIn that success means like you're tied to how much value you recreate for others. I think success can be multiple things, right? I think success can be multiple things. I think that you can, because there is a metric for success in business. There is a metric for success in your own personal life. Now, ultimately, if at the very macro level, I do think success is freedom, but that's
very ambiguous. That's hard for people to really wrap their head around. Because freedom means different things to different people, and that's why that definition is so beautiful. Because freedom doesn't mean not working. For some people, freedom could mean working an incredible amount on the things they actually care about. For other people, it could mean never working again, and maybe you want to be retired and
have FU money at 30, 35. Maybe it means traveling. Maybe it means doing nonprofit work. I don't know what freedom means to you, but it means that you're able to do what you want to do. So that, at a very macro level, I think is what everyone would agree success is. Some people have no interest, after they've made their money, in ever building again. I know entrepreneurs, one of my good friends, he exited for half a billion dollars, and
he's busier than ever. He's still investing quite aggressively. Obviously, he has a lot of interest in still building and partnering on new ventures and new ideas and new businesses. I mean, he doesn't have to. It's not like his lifestyle expenses are so incredible that he'd ever have to work again. If you invested that money with a semi-decent return, you're making a couple million dollars a year. Your life is very good.
I think that success is freedom is a beautiful definition, because you get to define what freedom is. If you can achieve that, and you can live the life that you want to live, then that is true success. Now, that's sort of macro, right? You mentioned another definition of success, which I would tie that closer to business success. What is business success? It's creating value for individuals, because if you find a way to create value for individuals
and value that is not a commodity, value that is rare, value that is hard to find, then that's when your business will be successful. If you create something that is highly valuable, and the recipient or the customer doesn't know where else to get that value from, then your business will become successful. That is traditional sort of business. Now, you could also say that would be like a leading indicator of success.
A more lagging indicator of business success could be the revenue, or if you had an exit or something like that. I think that you should have sort of micro definitions of success across the various components of your life. I think you should have definitions of success in your relationships, in your physical health. Not everybody needs to be 6% body fat, but I also don't think that you should lose your breath walking up a set of stairs, so I think you should have success in your physical health.
I think you should have some sort of success metric in your spirituality. I think that a lot of people have lost their spirituality, and I think that a lot of people are stressed and anxious, and have a significant amount of depression. So whether or not your spirituality is believing in a traditional version of God, or finding peace in meditation, or whatever that is, a place where your mind can go to rest and
be at ease and be calm, I think is incredibly important in a world where we have so much, so much noise and so much just constant bombardment of all these cortisol-inducing messages. I mean, just go on Twitter, we get more bad news in five minutes than even our grandparents got in a year or five years, just because they're so connected. So I think that having some sort of mental health or spiritual health practice and success
metric is very important as well. So yes, success has many definitions, but I think that what we do incorrectly, this is obviously a generality, but what we do incorrectly is we equate the word success to financial success. That's kind of what we all care about when we first start on our journey. How do we make more money? How do we make our business successful? Great, that's very important. You need to make money.
If you want to take care of yourself and your family, and if you want to give back anything, money's incredibly important. But it can't come at the expense of everything else, all those other definitions of success. And I think that not enough people define what success looks like, especially in the sort of high-performance culture. We're very good at defining what success looks like in our career, how much money we want
to make, where we want our business to go, but we don't define success across the board and all the other components of our life. And I think that that's a mistake. And I see it, and it's not something I think, actually. I know it's a mistake, because I see people on the other side of achieving financial success almost weekly, bi-weekly, sometimes almost every single day. I sit down with them. They sit in this chair right here, and they've had exits for $70 million, $80 million, $100
million, $500 million. I've sat with several billionaires, and it's a mixed bag of whether or not those people are actually happy and fulfilled. Some of them, two, three divorces, kids hate them. Some of them, they have the most beautiful relationships with their kids and their family. Some of them, their health is absolute shit. I'm looking at them. I know they're not going to make it another five years, because their health is so bad.
Some of them, they're so tired and stressed and depressed. Some of them, they're 70 years old, and they look in better shape than me. So some people get it. Some people don't. I can tell you with 100% certainty, the people that don't get it, don't define success across all areas of their life, wish they did. The ones that figured it out early on, those are the ones that are happy, fulfilled, content, can sleep well at night, will probably live very long lives.
I think that if I'm going to look at person one who didn't care about defining it versus person two, I think I know exactly who I'd like to be in 30, 40 years from now. So yes, many definitions of success, including, I guess, the one that's updated on my website, but ultimately freedom. But don't just stop at that. Define what it means across all areas of your life. I see. And what is success for you then?
Also, you have interviewed many people, and what is the trait across successful people or achievers? I think that a lot of what we said, I think it's so subjective. Some people have no interest in having families. Mark Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, spoke about how every Tuesday he would shut off at five o'clock while he was still building Netflix and go on date night with his wife. I think that the things that most people value would be being able to sleep well at night
with their decisions, having enough health to not have any pain, being able to, if they have kids or grandkids, being able to play with their kids and their grandkids, obviously not being in and out of the hospital, so just being in general good health, not crazy good health, having enough money so that they don't have to worry about if there's an unexpected expense or somebody needs their support, and God forbid, a medical emergency, really, they
need to have the money to take care of the people they love. And then ultimately, like I said, I think that all people that I sit down with, myself included, and by the way, I'm telling you these things because these are things I see in other people. These are also the same things that I believe. You asked me what my version of success is. These are all things that are important to me. And again, freedom, working on what I want, architecting your life in a way that, yeah,
I love the word or the idea of architecting your life in a way that suits you and makes you happy. I mean, for myself right now, there's a lot of ways that I could make money, there's a lot of things that I could do. And so I've tried some of them, and some of them have been successful, some of them haven't. I mean, I sort of just blew through my whole career, but there's been a lot of businesses that I've tried to start that have not been successful.
I don't put them all on my LinkedIn, but I think that a lot of people, they forget about the failures and they focus on the successes, and I mean, it is what it is. I've had a lot of things that haven't worked out, and I had, like I mentioned, a lot of things that have, but I think that what's really important is whether or not it has or hasn't worked out, like half the things that haven't worked out, it's not because
they couldn't become successful. It's because I saw the life that I was going to have to live for that thing to be successful, meaning is it more travel than I want? Is it more time away from my family than I want? And I was like, you know what? I don't want this thing to be successful. I don't want to build this thing because it's going to cause me to live my life like this. I don't want to build this thing because it's going to cause me to work with that particular
business partner that maybe it wasn't a good fit, and that's what made me kill it. That's what made me want to end it. All the things that weren't successful, I fully believe that there's always a way to make them successful. But if you don't understand how you want to architect your life, then I think you could end up building something that ends up being a a little bit of a prison for you. So all I encourage people to do is be ambitious,
go build stuff, obviously, but just understand what is the life that you want to architect and build and live. And I think that once you understand that, like your personal North Star, then it's a little bit easier to focus on how do you wanna get there? And I sort of started that story by saying, there's a lot of ways for me to make money and I've killed a lot of them off because it wouldn't have created the life
that I wanted, it would have created a life where I'm always traveling or I'm always in an office or I'm always in a different country, nothing wrong with that, that's not really what I want. So right now what I'm working on with the podcast, I have my studio, like a full studio built in a guest house in my backyard. So I walk five minutes to work, I interview like some of the most famous people in the world, again, at my house,
five minutes away from where I sleep. And that was on purpose. There's different ways that I could have built this podcast, I could have been traveling all around, sitting down with people, I have no interest in that. So I'm building it the way that I'd like to build it. And all the business ideas and the things that I want to do in my life and the things that I wanna do in the future, I'm gonna build them in the way that suits me.
And it's not always the most efficient, but I'm very happy with my life. So that's important to me. Maybe if, and I'm doing this because I want a family, I want kids. Now, maybe if my kids are adults and they go off and I'm kind of bored at home, that's a different season of my life. And then I change the way that I architect my life. Maybe I like traveling at that point. Maybe I don't wanna sit down in person
and do a podcast anymore. Maybe I wanna do something else, I have no idea. And maybe that's how I architect my life. So I'm in a different country every single month, who knows? But I think that it's very important to make sure that what you're building is aligned with how you want to live your life. Because I see a lot of people that, some of my closest friends, like so incredibly successful, but they're always stressed.
Their marriages are strained because they're traveling nonstop. There's a lot of other ways that they could make money. They're smart people, right? But they didn't have that conversation with themselves when they first started out. And this is the situation that they're in right now. And now it's very difficult to unwind that. So I think that that's a very important conversation. This is also why I say that,
I guess two ideas can be true at the same time. I said that everybody, the future proof themselves should be an entrepreneur or at least be entrepreneurial. But I think that at the very least, adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. But if you don't want to be an entrepreneur, I completely understand because maybe you value things outside of working a hundred hours a week. Maybe you value things that are more safe and secure.
So I'm not saying that a traditional job is going to be the safe, secure thing that you need, but maybe that's the workload that you're happy with. And that's the balance that you're happy with. And that's the life that you want to live. Be entrepreneurial in case that thing gets pulled out from underneath you and you get fired. But I totally understand why you'd want to work, seven and a half hours Monday to Friday
and then shut off at five o'clock. I get that. I totally get that. All I want people to do is have that conversation with themselves about what their personal North star is. So if they are working for a company and they value that balance, they don't wake up one day and regret it. And on the other side, if they are entrepreneurial and they are building a company and they built something that forces them to work
100 hours plus a week, they don't wake up one day and regret it. You just don't want to have that midlife crisis where you regret the past 30 years of your life. I think that's the most important takeaway. But that's a long ways away from the question you asked. But hopefully that gives a little bit more context as to how I view like what success is and what a good life is. Thank you. And I don't remember who said this,
but you can measure whatever you want, but be careful about to measure because eventually you will be optimizing for that. It's very true. I love that saying. I love that. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. And in that sense, like, but have you gone through the burnout in the past? I mean, if you like aim for something you really want to be, you are working hard. I mean, maybe you're excited maybe, but at some point, some people burn out
and go, I couldn't wake up one day. That happens, I think, to many people. So my burnout happens differently. I think burnout happens differently for every person. I think that also burnout is a signal that you're doing something wrong. I think that if you are excited about what you're working on, I think it's very hard to get burnt out. I don't think it's possible. But for me, I work an insane amount. Like I'd say that I've architected my life a certain way,
but I still work a lot. And for me, burnout manifests as me getting sick. Like I don't shut off. I never shut off. And I think that the body's very smart. And when I push it too hard, it forces me to shut off. And that's sort of, this is not like words of wisdom. I don't recommend anybody ever work themselves to the point where their body's shutting down or getting sick. But that's, I mean, that's me. I mean, I think that's why I have been successful
because I probably have a little bit of delusion that keeps me going past when a lot of other people would have quit. And I think that, listen, I think that if you're gonna build anything worth building, I think that you're gonna have to push yourself past the point when most other people are going to burn out and stop. That is, that's what it takes, right? But understand that there's a season to your life where you can do that.
And just understand the season of your life that you're in. If you're starting a company, when you have kids and a mortgage, and you have to shut off at like 4.30 to go pick them up from school, well, sort of set your expectations. That company's not going to grow as fast as you'd like it, which is fine, because you have a lot of other priorities in life. If you're like 18, 19, 20, and you're not even dating somebody, fine.
You can work from six in the morning till midnight, and nobody's gonna care. Your company's gonna move a little bit quicker. But just know what you're getting yourself into. But yes, I've definitely burnt myself out. When you start getting, you know, there's been years in my life where I'm getting sick like every like three, four weeks, and I'm like, okay, cortisol is very high. Things are not working the way,
things could be working objectively, but this is not the life that I want. I have to pause. I have to understand why it's not, what is the reason why my body is shutting down? And I have to reevaluate if I'm gonna keep doing this thing, or if I'm gonna do it, I have to do it differently. But I mean, if you listen to your, your body tells you everything. Your body is so wise. Your body tells you everything. Your body, I used to,
I still am into like, you know, working out and eating healthy, but I used to be really into sports and whatnot. You're talking about the fact I used to play a lot of hockey, and then I, not just hockey, I mean, like you play summer sports as well, played some soccer. One of my first jobs ever was coaching tennis. I was into a whole bunch of different sports. But when you play sports, or when you're into working out,
or lifting, or bodybuilding, or whatever your, you know, your health and wellness routine is, you have to be really good at paying attention to your body. And you have to be really good at paying attention to the signals that it's telling you. And I think that, I think that the average entrepreneur doesn't have to become like a, you know, a fitness fanatic. I think there's a benefit to working out as an entrepreneur
for stress levels, for hormone optimization, for energy, for a variety of different things, for cognitive benefits. But if you just pay attention to like, okay, I've worked nonstop this week and I'm still waking up full of energy. I just ate this thing and I'm not having a crash at 3.34 in the afternoon. You know, these are signals that you can pay attention to, to understand if you're working in the best possible way.
And if you ignore your body for too long, if you're waking up sluggish, it's taking you a long time to like sort of wake up in the morning. If you are eating food and you feel like just like cognitively foggy, like these are all things that impact entrepreneurs for sure, then you have to understand that signal. Because if you don't listen to those signals for too long a time, that's when your body actually breaks down and gets sick.
So just pay attention to how your body reacts to everything, the work that you do, the sleep you give it, the food you give it, the exercise you give it. And I would say that listening to your body and listening to how it responds to what your day is like is incredibly important to optimize yourself as an entrepreneur so that you can give it your maximum, give it your maximum focus, give it your maximum attention,
give it your maximum creativity and working out, food, sleep, all of these things all play a part. So you can't ignore that piece of it. That's a huge piece of what it takes to be successful. And like I said, Like if you ignore those things for too long, your body has a way of shutting down and forcing you to pay attention, which obviously is not the ideal situation. But yes, pay attention to what your body says.
I think my point was if you come from an athletic background, you're kind of trained to pay attention to your body. But if you don't come from an athletic background, understand that your body will tell you everything you need and give you everything you need to be successful if you pay attention to the signals that it's giving you. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, even when you're trying to be creative, right, you're trying to be creative.
You go for a walk. You go work out. I mean, there's reasons why ideas come to you in certain situations. When you're trying to focus, you probably pay attention to the food you eat and what it makes you feel. You're not going to eat a heavy carb meal if you don't tolerate carbs well, right before you're trying to do like a creative brainstorming session in the afternoon. Small things, but just people intuitively know, but I'm just saying pay a little bit
more attention to how your body reacts. I think that will be, for me at least, it's a huge hack. Like how I, what I eat, how I sleep, the supplements I take, they're all focused on like sort of peak performance cognitively, so that, and in the gym as well, all that's important to me so that every part of my life, as much as I can, I'm not like Brian Johnson, but I try and optimize as much of my life as possible so that whatever I'm trying to do,
I have the best shot at doing it to the best of my ability. I see. In that sense, do you track your sleep hours, what you eat, or also you schedule what to eat next or something? Yeah. I mean, again, this is again subjective, so it changes based on the person, but my personal routine, like I always try and get eight hours of sleep. I don't do really well without eight hours of sleep. I usually do low carb, almost like keto and or intermittent fasting.
Part of it is just because I don't love food noise, but also because I find that I operate better on like a low carb, you know, moderate fat, high protein diet. I just feel sharper, I feel more alert. I work out, I lift. So my cardio will be just like low steady state cardio, probably do 15, 20 minutes a day. And then I'll do like lifting three, four times a week, and I focus on like compound heavy lifts, do like a pretty traditional like bodybuilder split.
But that to me is like my health and wellness routine. And then on the weekend, I don't pay as much attention to it. On the weekend is more like social, like I'll go out, eat whatever, it doesn't really stress me out. So this has been sort of the nice balance between, you know, cognitive performance, gym performance, ability to focus, and also ability to be social and not be a total recluse. So yes, I sort of don't track everything.
But I've been doing this long enough to know how different things affect me and what I want to put into my body and how I want to sort of go through my day and how I want to feel. And I optimize my food and my sleep and my rest for that. I also like again, I also know which hours like I focus better. Like I'll try, you know, like, there's a saying like eat the frog, like do the hardest, most important thing.
First thing in the morning. I agree with that. I also think that you should block off, like time for focus, and for like the most meaningful creative work when you're most alert. It could be also podcasting. So I don't want to do a podcasting. The first thing I wake up, but I also don't want to do a podcast at like five or six o'clock in the afternoon, because I won't be as sharp, I won't be as on. So I'm trying to do creative writing, I'm trying to do podcasting, I'll try and do that
between like 11, 11, 12, one o'clock. Because I do intermittent fasting, I also don't eat, you know, breakfast or lunch, I'm not too stressed about that, I've become pretty accustomed to that. And then if I'm trying to do like emails, I batch them, I'll do usually a batch of emails around three or four o'clock, because answering emails is really not that difficult. Cognitively compared to having a podcast, or trying to, you know, write a newsletter,
that's probably in terms of like, you want focus, flow state, creativity, that's where you want to be at your peak, answering emails easy, I'll do a batch, three to four, maybe I'll do another batch after dinner at like six to seven. And that's sort of how I structure my day. Now, obviously, you can't get bent out of shape if your day goes to shit and life happens. But I think you should always have a baseline that you fall back to that, you know, works
well for you. Right? Yeah. So I pay attention to all that stuff. Thank you. And so like, regarding like, podcasts, and sorry, thanks for sharing that, but regarding podcasts, and you, according to your podcast, there are about like 1000 episodes that I found. And so I was always curious. How do you choose who to interview with? Do you have some internal like a, like a checklist? Oh, okay. No, no, it's not actually that serious.
It's not as serious as you think. I interview people that I find interesting. How I interview people that I really find interesting. I think that if I find them interesting, I've consumed their content. If they're a good communicator, they're a good storyteller, they've done something and no one else has ever done. That to me is somebody that I want to have a conversation with. If I'm interested in what they who they are as a person, that's sort of my litmus test
for it's going to be a good interview. Because again, it brings me back to what we were chatting about. I think before we press record, like what makes a good podcast, it's when you're genuinely interested in the person. It's when you care about what they've experienced or what they've learned or what they've lived. The worst podcasts in the world are when the host is so full of themselves that they won't
shut up. And it's almost like the guest just accidentally happened to be there. I think that those to me as a podcaster, I don't understand how anybody listens to them. And it's so frustrating because you don't go to a podcast to listen to the host unless it's a solo show. Unless it's a solo show and that's like their thing. But you go to a podcast, especially an interview style podcast, to hear the interview, to hear
the person. So I have less of an issue with the fact that the host likes to talk if they're talking too much. That's not my issue. My issue is that the personality of somebody that speaks that much inherently means that they're actually not that curious about the guest. Because if you were that curious about the guest, you wouldn't want to speak. You just want to ask them questions and learn. So for me, a good guest is somebody that I actually, I don't want to interrupt them.
I don't even want to, you know, if I could, my perfect guest is somebody that I could just say, tell me your story. And I just sit there and listen. Like somebody who I genuinely care, like what they've accomplished in their life. And I mean, every time I find those people, it turned into a good episode because you ask questions that you would think would be interesting to have answers to. And again, when your content is really just, this is what I've done in a day.
Or this is a question that I find interesting. When your content is like actually coming from, like, I don't even, how do I say this? It's just you. Your content is really just an embodiment of you. Then it ends up being good content. Because those questions that I find interesting, those are questions that, again, a couple million people also find interesting. You don't have to over-engineer it. You really don't have to over-engineer it.
There is a little bit more, I guess, packaging that you can do. So you don't want to go all over the place. You still want to try and, when you do a good episode, package it so that there's like a theme around it. But outside of that, I think the most important takeaway would be find somebody who you're genuinely interested in, shut up, ask some great, you know, don't, no, no one's coming to that episode for you.
You can do another episode if you want to talk about your own shit. And just lean into curiosity and lean into exploring everything they've accomplished and just, like, be a student to that person for the hour or whatever, the hour and a half that you choose to do the podcast. And that will create really, really good content. Yeah. Thank you. So in that sense, you are the perfect guest for us. And yeah, thank you for joining.
And so do you have any tips, do you have any tips when you reach out? Because you interviewed many people, but not always they accept it, right? So do you have, yeah. I have a lot of people that haven't, haven't accepted. I mean, like, if I go, sometimes, sometimes I'll forget that I actually reached out to somebody and, and I'll go and I'll DM them. And I realized that like four years ago, I DM them to come on to the show.
I'm like, oh shit. I forgot, forgot. Or sometimes, I think, I think even worse than that, that's not even that embarrassing. I think what's worse than that is when you meet them in real life, and then you, and then you chat at like a party or an event, and then you add them on Instagram, or you add them on LinkedIn, and then you realize that like you also sent that note like four years ago, and you're like, oh,
because you just now that now, you know, this person in real life. But so I've been, I mean, it's probably like three or two, three thousand people that that I've messaged over my podcast that haven't answered me or haven't come on the show. I mean, like it's I've reached out to anybody who I want to bring on the show. I hit them up and come on the show. Now, we're very fortunate because the show has grown.
So most people come to me. But I've always been like when I keep in mind my backgrounds in sales and marketing. Right. So when I started to grow a show, the show is the product. So I have to figure out how do I sell my product? Selling the product is getting people onto the show. That's the product is the podcast. I have to figure out who would be the great, the perfect guest for the audience. I have to find a way to reach out to them.
And that's when you start sending emails. That's when you start DMing. Now, you asked me for advice on how to get people on the show. So I mean, like a lot of people that have said no. But a few things, a few like more tactical things to get people onto your podcast. First, understand that. There has to be some sort of reason as to why they want to come onto your show, so it could be publicity, could be launching a book,
could be to have their own podcast, whatever it is, right. There's a reason why they're going to say yes. When I first started, I understood very quickly that people come on podcasts when they're launching books. That's just part of their PR. So how do you figure out who these people are? You and I did this, went on Amazon, went to business books, up and coming new releases, and then ranked from most popular to least popular.
And I would find the names of the authors. And some of them were like, you know, they'd be like, I don't know, Gary Vee or Grant Cardone or Kevin O'Leary or Mark Cuban or Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin, they'd all be writing books that say somebody's writing a book that released in three months. OK, awesome. I'm going to go find that person's email, use like Apollo or use Rocketreach or use any of these other tools to find
that person's email, hit them up, say, hey, you're writing a book. I have a podcast. And you reduce the friction in them doing it. So when you first start, say it's just Zoom, it's 30 minutes. I have this size audience. I'm going to create social clips for you. I'm going to send them to you after the show. You can use all the footage. It's all yours. And we're going to promote the shit out of your book. So it's like 30 minutes of their time.
They're already doing a whole bunch of them. And you're giving them so much value and giving them free basically editing for social clips they can post on on their social. What you are actually doing in sales lingo is you are looking for people with intent. So when you're selling a product, there's this thing called intent. What is intent? Intent means that they were already planning on doing the thing that you're selling to them
and you're hitting them at the right perfect time. So. In B2B software, which is my world that I came from, I could sell to, you know, a C a CMO. I could sell to a CMO that's never heard of my product or I could sell to a CMO that's actively looking for my product. Who do you think is going to close quicker? It's very it's very obvious. Right. So you have to find a way to find intent whenever you're selling anything to anyone.
What is the intent for my podcast guests? They're writing a book. That means in three months that they are going to have to do podcasts anyways. There's intent to do the thing that I'm selling. I could reach out to anybody right now who's not writing a book. They may say yes, they may say no, but there's no intent. They were not planning on doing a PR tour, which included going on 50 podcasts because they had no reason to.
There's no intent. So you can try to hit those people up, but you're going to have a much higher likelihood of getting a yes when there's somebody who's actively looking for podcasts to go on already that combined with giving them value, combined with removing all the friction, meaning when you first start to get these big names, you're not asking them to fly to Tokyo or even fly to Toronto. When I started, I'm just asking them to hop on a Zoom.
You get a couple of these down and this will work. I mean, this is this is not like a fever is what I did when I started. You got a couple of these. You hit up 200 big names that are writing books. Maybe be hard to find 200 right away, but say 100. You can find on people that are writing books in the next three to six months. You hit those up. You're going to get two to three to five well-known people that will say yes.
And then the next person, you include those people's names in your outreach, saying, I got a list or one, a list or two, a list or three. And you keep in mind, you still do the same strategy, because by the time you record those people, now there's another 20 people that are writing books for Q3. So you say, OK, I got, you know, Mark Cuban and Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell on my podcast. I saw you're writing a book.
We cover we cover business and, you know, thought leaders that write about entrepreneurship and business and startup. This is what we spoke about with these three great thought leaders. We'd love to have you on to promote your book and promote some of your ideas. Again, Zoom, very easy to do. We'll clip out some videos for you. You can use it on social media again. And now you're now your close rate is going to be even higher because now you're
including some social proof that other big authors have already trusted you. You just keep doing this again and again and again. This helps you grow your audience. And eventually. Simon Schuster and Penguin Random House and Harper Collins, they start to reach out to you because when they Google Seth Godin, this is marketing or Seth Godin, this is strategy podcast. They see that yours pops up. Oh, shit. So whenever Seth writes a book, he goes on your show.
OK, we're going to put this podcast in a list of podcasts that whenever we have a business book launching, we're going to email them because all the big business people go on this podcast. And then you're going to fast forward six years. You're going to have what happens to me. It's just about 500 pitches a week from like various publishers and authors trying to get people on shows. That it's very straightforward, very simple.
Now, one more caveat. I don't think that anybody should build a podcast entirely on interviews. I think that it's very important for you to do solo shows because the audience, if you think about a Seth or a Gary, they launch a book. They're going to do 30 shows, right? They're going to do like 30, 40, 50 different podcasts. What is the reason why people come to listen to Gary on your show versus any other show?
And the reason is you. The reason is the style of questions you ask your thoughts, you know, your experience, your vibe, that's why they come to your show versus the other 49, which means that you have to establish who you are. And the best way to do that is to do a mix of solo shows combined with interviews. Interviews. They have big, you know, fancy names, you bring in these big you bring in these big entrepreneurs.
Great. But the reason why people like your podcast over all the other ones is because of you. So give yourself a platform to talk about the ideas that you care about, to talk about the things that, you know, that are meaningful to you. And that's how you build a good podcast. It's a mixture of both. It's a mixture of putting your own personalities on display and then bringing in other great personalities as well for
like the types of podcasts that are not like murder mystery or whatever, like types where you're like teaching stuff. This is a really good strategy. This is what this is what I did. Yeah, thank you. Yes, thank you so much. So we haven't done any sort of show, so we'd like to take it. But yes. And yeah, we will. And so do you have any guests you have reached out but declined or, you know, you have a guest you want to interview
but haven't reached out because they might listen to our podcast, right? I'll reach out to you. Yeah. Well, I think that so I won't I won't name the people that I've reached out to that have declined. That's me. I don't want them to come on the show at some point. Oh, yeah. But but the people that I have not reached out to that I would I mean, I would love to. I like Lex Friedman's show because it's a smart show.
It's technical, but also because he brings on like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Like these are the people that I'd love to have conversations with. And and ironically, I have not reached out to these people yet, which I probably should. That's actually that's actually, you know. Is that because you don't know not shooting my shot more often, but I've been fortunate that we've had some really great guests.
So the show's been busy, but that's those are the types of people, like people that have really and I named like three big entrepreneurs. But anybody that's done something that no one else has ever really done, I think that these stories are very interesting. I would say that there's probably a lot of people who have stories and who have built things that I don't even know they exist, you know, there's and I actually love finding these people.
This is sort of like my this is this is something that I really get excited about, like when I find. A billionaire that nobody's ever heard of before or somebody that is literally trying to cure cancer. Like these are the things that are very interesting to me because, again, they're not everywhere on the Internet. So a mixture of people that have sort of done things that have never been done before. and a mixture of the A-listers that have built, you know, the companies that 95% of the world uses.
Those would be the people that I'd love to get on in the future. Yeah, thanks for sharing. So if we, if we have any opportunity to interview with them, so we will mention you. Listen, you're building, when you, when you, when you build your company and you turn it into a unicorn, and then you have your, your, you know, your billion dollar exit, then maybe some, maybe you'll know some of these people.
So, oh, yeah, yeah. Thanks. And after interviewing on podcast, do you collaborate with them? So in any form, like, you know, asking guest was for your newsletter, or probably investing? No, I haven't. Mostly because I haven't had a product that I'm trying to sell them. How about investing? Yes, some have some have done investment with either me, or I've put money into deals that they're working on. But that but again, I'm not a professional investor. So it's not like I have like, you know, 200 angel investments.
I have a very small portfolio of actual VC or angel, because I'm not a VC firm like angel, a very, very small private equity, meaning like, ownership share, like, I'm an LP in a firm that had ownership share in some companies, and then real estate and then crypto. But I think that when I go into an interview, it's not it's not such a clear cut transition from interview into like investment opportunity, because some of the people do have access to like wild investment opportunities.
But for me, most of my investment opportunities were from people that were guests turned into like friends. And then at some point in the future, they're like, Hey, Scott, you know, what are you working on? Or Hey, Scott, like, this is interesting, you should you should put some money into they're doing like a, you know, a raise, you put $50,000 into this company or something like that. But it's not it's not like, I don't have like a funnel, if that makes sense, for podcast guests into outcome, which I think is actually allowed me to build a really cool sort of circle of friends. And again, when you when you spend enough time around some of these people, you end up just doing business or you end up having an opportunity to invest in something they're working on, because they're all very ambitious, successful people.
So they're always working on something. But yeah, I mean, if there was like, I've never had a product that I would sell to these people. Because I value that I value these relationships a lot. And I think that the second because I've been on the receiving end of that, by the way, the second like you're a podcaster, podcast host, and like you sell something before the interviews even done to the guest.
I don't know, I think that I think that if you're going to do that, you're optimizing for a different outcome. For me, I wasn't optimizing to turn like the podcast was not meant to be the commercial vehicle. The podcast was meant to be the platform that could launch other things. There are some people where which is no issue. I mean, it is what it is. It's a different business model. There's some people where the podcast is how they make their money. So they come on, they interview somebody. And that person is like a customer for their product or service. And then you give them the airtime. And then you can actually try and sell them a solution to whatever, like, this is not a bad idea. It's just not what I was doing. But yes, you can you can totally do that as well. If you have a product or service you want to sell people I already use your I already use your widget. I already use your extension so you don't have to sell me on it.
Yeah, we will give you credit. And you mentioned like podcast, I mean, now like podcast is very crowded and especially like interviewing people and so on. And I think it's the same when you started. And why now but now you are the number one podcast right in entrepreneur entrepreneurship. What's the secret ingredient you mentioned that you focus on authenticity, and you focus on like your core competency and so on.
I think what the secret is doing it for a long enough period of time. I mean, not many not many podcasters have over 1000 episodes. Not like I put out, I put out, I'm sure 2020 to 30 pieces of content per day minimum, like minute like, actually, it's a lot more than that. But I'm just trying to count like podcast content. So across different socials, you do something for 6789 10 years, and you show up every single day, and you market the shit out of it. I mean, it's, and also just by putting in the reps you you intuitively start to get better at your craft, you get better at asking questions you get better at interviewing you get better at editing you get better at finding the right hook that goes into the right social clip, that's going to get some traction.
I think it's a combination of a lot. It's like asking a business owner, you know what allowed you to be successful well it's never one thing. So it's a combination of doing it for an extended period of time consistently getting better marketing it growing it reinvesting the money into it, collaborating with other big names to draw to tap into their audiences. But I think it's a combination of time in the game plus, plus mastery, it's it that's really it's very simple. I don't find that anything, actually that I've ever built is complicated.
It's just a lot of hard work. I mean if you do anything for seven years you're going to get moderately successful at it, especially if you do it as much as I do the show, like we do like, and there's people do more than me I mean like john they do mass I think there's an episode a day I usually do like two to three episodes a week. But I think that yeah, you take the product, you do it for long enough period of time, you find ways to incorporate to understand if it's moving in the right direction so you have feedback loops that sort of signal whether or not it's successful.
And you put everything into it. I haven't really done too much else over the past six and a half years as to the same degree and I haven't obsessed over anything to the same degree as, as what I've put into the show. And I think that that's really the secret. I think that if you put that much energy into anything is going to be moderately successful. So, that's what I would say. Thank you. Thank you. And I think you interview certain people and their success and secret, secret ingredients. And now, haven't you thought about starting your own company because you know, you know you learned a lot from their failures and success and you could technically you could do your startup right and so that they can follow the past, you know, as they do.
Yes, I should start something. But there's a few things that I've thought of. I think that, well, first, I wouldn't be against, I wouldn't be against partnering with somebody who's highly technical, like, and building some sort of AI or SaaS product. But I don't, like, there's nothing that, there's nothing that I'm obsessed about that I want to put 100% of myself into that I want to build just yet. So when that happens, then I'll, then I'll be excited about it. But I don't want to, like, if I'm going to build a company, I don't want to, I don't want to build a company that I'm obsessed about.
Because keep in mind, when you start a business, you have to figure out where you want to take it. Right. So what I mean by that is some people build a business because they want cash flow, and they just want like a nice lifestyle business. Some people build a business because they want to raise money, they want to raise angel or VC, and they want to, you know, scale it, and they want to add value to it. So I don't want to, I don't want to build a business because I don't want to add value to it.
I don't, I already have, I already have a lifestyle business, I already have a business plan. So I don't want to build a business because I don't want to add value to it. So I don't want to build a business because I don't want to, you know, scale it, and I don't want to add value to it. I already have, I already have a lifestyle business, I already have a business that makes me a significant amount of money. So I don't need to build like a second lifestyle business.
It's, again, what are you, why are you, why are you doing this thing? What's the point, right? Are you doing, like, are you doing it because you want freedom from your nine to five? I already have that. Like, are you doing it because you want to pass it on to your kids? Well, I guess I could try and pass the podcast on to my kids. It's a little bit of a strange thing to pass on. So for me, maybe the next business I build, I want to raise money, maybe I don't want to bootstrap it, maybe I want to try and do like the traditional, like, hyper growth playbook.
But if I'm going to do that, that means that, okay, for that season of my life, I'm not going to have balance. So when I'm trying to have kids, and I'm trying to start a family, is it smart for me to start something that's going to take away all my time and energy so that I don't have time for my family? In my opinion, no. So if I do it, I want to be intentional about it. I don't want to be ad hoc. And also, there's other things that I work on as well. Like any of the companies that I've invested in, I could be a little bit more active.
opposed to just being like passive. I just think that what's a good indicator of success is if you can become obsessed with that thing and there's nothing yet that I'm obsessed with that I want to give a hundred and fifty percent of myself to but when that thing finds me and it will eventually that's when I'll start to build and and that's when I mean if anybody if anybody follows me they'll see it because that's all I'll talk about so when that thing happens
and when and there are like I listen I'm being so ominous and ambiguous because there are things that I'm interested in but I just haven't like announced to the world that I'm working on yet because I don't want to announce and sort of tie that thing to my identity until I am truly like comfortable with like saying for the next ten years of my life this is the only thing that I want to work on like I very much I'm an all-or-nothing person I think that's I think that's
probably the best and worst part of my personality but yeah there are a couple things that I'm interested in but what I don't want to just half-ass them and I think that I think that that's probably a smart way to approach entrepreneurship because I think it's impossible to build anything good by half-assing it so yeah it's not like I'm just you know I do a podcast episode then I just like hang out and like sip like a margarita for the rest of the day like I still have a
lot of things that I'm interested in but for me if I'm gonna build something I want it to be big I just don't want it to be a small win yeah would you mind if you if we ask what you are interested in recently like it's like AI well I think that so right now this is this is this is not what sort of I'm known for but sort of my better half she she has a she has a very large audience herself she built a company called my therapist says which is a massive massive account you
have like 8.2 million followers they do something like 90 million impressions a month with like humor content so that's another media asset that has a massive audience and a massive following and there's sort of two two things that I could build that's putting in like there's a lot of things that I'd be interested in but I would love to do a few things I would love to build some sort of consumer goods brand that serves women I think that that is a very smart
business move women spend a lot of money and it can be a lot of fun to be a lot of you can be really creative with the marketing around the products especially for the consumer goods brand you could be a little bit more creative and have a little bit more fun I mean like fun is subjective but for me it's like a little bit more fun to market something that's like like a woman's item versus like an AI tool an AI tool is interesting but it's not as fun for me to market like
you can be a little bit less creative with that but AI would be interesting as well but there's so much I mean like it's the same as like crypto like you know six seven years ago it's like everybody's building AI everybody's building AI so what I have an aversion to is putting AI on a company's name just so that it's trending like if you're gonna use and build an AI company build like a real company and does it need AI or not that's a totally
different question but solve a real problem don't just use AI for AI's sake because what's gonna end up happening is you're gonna attract investor money they're just gonna put money in because you have the word AI in your company name and it's gonna be a bad situation for your investors and for you so if I yeah am I interested in AI of course it's gonna change the world do I have a smart idea about how to use AI that somebody hasn't thought of yet no not
yet so that would be like I don't I don't necessarily need to to build a company just because it's trending I mean consumer goods are not trending but it's fun and there's a good opportunity there other things that are interesting to me I've always wanted to I've always wanted to this is gonna be a longer play but I would like to raise a fund to actually acquire businesses this is interesting to me and have a couple different like investment thesis but my
my when you're raising money and you're gonna invest in by businesses the reason why I haven't moved forward with that significantly is because what I think is the safest business to invest in or to acquire is actually not the sexiest so I like VC because I like working with early-stage entrepreneurs I find it fun I find them very exciting people to work with to brainstorm with the bounce ideas off of like the people that are truly like changing the world that would
be a VC fund what I think would be a safer play would be a private like a private equity fund focused on acquiring service-based businesses so like basically businesses that cannot easily be replaced yet with technology that could be like you know pest control or things like that like things that are very profitable businesses but right now I mean listen if if if there's a company called figure AI the founders Brett Adcock if he if he creates as many
robots as as they're planning on then maybe all these service-based businesses will be be replaced by by robots but the point is the the it's not like it's gonna replace the business need it's gonna replace people to do the job but the point is these are businesses that will always be needed so like any sort of like flood fire disaster recovery sort of pest control like these are boring these are not exciting businesses but I think strategically it would be a
smart acquisition play also because there's a lot of business owners in these sectors that are going to be retiring their family-owned businesses their kids want nothing to do with their businesses and yeah and and I think there's a huge opportunity there so obviously I have a lot of ideas floating around as you can see because I just went from CPG to AI to VC to P with boring service businesses kind of like a Cody Sanchez acquisition model but if I
do any of those things I have to be a hundred percent committed and obsessed with that thing and that's why I haven't pulled the trigger on any of these things yet but these are the things that I'm interested in these are I think exciting opportunities each for its own reason I mean this is also the this is also the the curse of chatting with so many interesting people you get so many ideas but at the end of the day you just have to focus on one because
they could all work right that's the thing like any of these could work any of these could be successful you just got to put all of your time and energy and tension on one and you'll find a way to make it successful so you have to you know be careful about which one you choose because after you choose it you have to like dive dive headfirst and and just put a hundred percent of yourself into it and I was always curious about your creativity and wisdom and the
source of them and since you know I love your newsletter and you recently shared about like you should follow your personal like a delusion I mean if you do things that others are doing and you will be operation you should if people like say you shouldn't do it but you should if you believe in it you should do it and something like that and also like yeah well I think that that's another so that would be an idea that I think is so that particular idea is
basically making sure that the life that you're living is actually your own I think that's a very that's a very important idea so this we can move away from business for a second this is more of like a mental model that I think a lot of people fall victim to if you think about why you took the job why you got the degree why you dated this person why you moved or didn't move from this city a lot of a lot of that conditioning is based on your parents your friends
growing up your guidance counselor your teacher like most of our conditioning and most of our mental model and the way that we view the world is not ours this is this is you know you'll hear different ways to describe this but this is really like the matrix right this is all the conditioning that we've been taught or we've been led to believe is correct and this is why people who don't have entrepreneurial parents it's very hard for them to become entrepreneurs
because they don't have a model their parents are saying it's risky their parents are saying don't do it the parents think you could lose everything but that's the parents fears that they're imprinting on the child now what happens when your parents look at the world a certain way or your teachers look at the world a certain way that becomes your that becomes your reality and then you sort of fall into this reality because it's comfortable it it
makes sense like you know there's you don't have a reason to not believe it so you your parents say well listen you're gonna be you're gonna be miserable if you try and start your own company it's very risky like just please get the degree get the job right and you do that and then you wake up one day and you realize that the life you're living is not even yours like the the the the framework and the lens that you look at the world through is not yours, it's your parents, or it's someone
else's. And that's when midlife crisis hits, because you realize that everything you're doing is actually not for yourself. So the whole point of that newsletter, and a lot of, I think is a very important idea, is not that working a job is wrong, or entrepreneurship is wrong, or listening to your parents is wrong, just you have to step back and you have to evaluate whether or not the life that you're living, or the things that you believe, or the things that you're pursuing,
are they because you believe them, or are they because someone else who is influential in your life implanted those ideas into your head? And I think that a lot of people don't take a moment to have that conversation and ask themselves that question, and I think if people did, they'd be a lot more happy. The second idea that ties, you know, that sort of expands on that, it's the concept of, metaphorically, dying every night, meaning that when you go to bed,
all your obligations die with you. Meaning, metaphorically, obviously, it doesn't mean you don't have obligations, but say, pretend, when you go to bed at night, all your obligations die. They don't exist anymore. You wake up, you're a new person, you're freshly born that morning, right? Now, would you choose to work the job that you have to go work? Would you choose to build the company that you're building right now? Would you choose to date the person? Would you choose to
hang out with those friends that you have plans with later tonight? If you wouldn't choose any of those things that morning, remove the sunk cost fallacy, remove the fact that there might be a social obligation. You have to start to ask yourself, why? Why would I not choose to date my girlfriend? Why would I not choose to go to work? What's the thing that's stopping me from wanting to do that? Because if you don't choose these things every single day, that means you're
out of alignment. That means the life that you're not living is actually yours. It's someone else's version of what your life should be. Now, it doesn't mean you blow up your life, and you, you know, divorce your wife, and you quit your job, but it does mean it's a signal. It's a signal that something is not right, and you have to go investigate that signal. And I think that if more people understand and go through this exercise and wake up and realize,
okay, I hate my job, or I hate my business, or I hate my spouse or my partner. Okay, don't blow up your life, but start to figure out why. And at the end of that why, it could be, it could be you have to do something so that you love this person again, or you have to do something so that your business works better. You have to do something because you hate your boss, and maybe even just moving to a different part of the company, you're excited to go to work again.
It doesn't have to be dramatic, but something has to change. It could be external, it could be internal, but something has to change. And I think that if you go through this exercise, you'll be a lot happier. And what will not happen is you will not have regret and resentment that builds up over 15-20 years of you not asking yourself this question, and then one day you blow up, and then you're depressed and sad, and you want, you know, you know, you want a divorce
when you don't even understand how it got so bad, or you want to quit your job when you don't understand how you wasted the past 15-20 years of your life working for this person who you hate. It's really just about having that conversation with yourself about what lights you up, or what excites you, or what you're happy with a little bit earlier on so that you don't resent. I mean, that's, that's, that's the key, right? It's like, are you living the life that you want, or are you
living someone else's life? And if you are, then what are you going to do about it so that you can fix it and live a life that is authentically yours? I think it's a great exercise. And yeah, I totally resonate with that. And also, I love, you know, another newsletter, 10 Minutes MBA, but I mean, you were sharing so many wise saying, and I was always wondering, how do you come up with the idea? And how do you keep the ideas? So you, yeah, I suppose, do you use some tools?
And yeah, I mean, so the ideas to, how I come up with the ideas is usually things that I've thought of or dealt with that week or that day. And then the bigger question is, how do you test whether or not the ideas that you have during that day are going to resonate with an audience? Because again, we're talking about content creation. So every newsletter or every solo podcast starts as a tweet on Twitter or on threads. And I'll tweet out five to 10 different things,
sometimes more. And I just look for the one that has the most engagement. So that particular week, I have no idea what else I tweeted out that week. But that particular week, I probably would have had 20 different ideas. And it could have been phrased a different way. It could have been same idea, but slightly different. It could have been like completely, completely different idea. And it's just about, how do you expose yourself to these ideas? Some of them are things that come up
on calls. Some of them are things that come up with conversations on the podcast. Some are ideas that maybe somebody else wrote a newsletter about another idea. And this was like one line in that newsletter that really inspired me. And I'm like, that's cool. I like that idea. I wonder if I should write a whole newsletter about that one particular line. So it's just about exposing yourself to content that inspires and that you find interesting. And then once you expose...
And I always listen to podcasts. I always read other people's newsletters. I fortunately have a podcast where I can sit down and listen to people, to chat with people. And then once you have 10, 15 ideas, which I mean, these are not long ideas. Once you have 10, 15 ideas, then you take those, you use Twitter or threads, or you can even put them into like a little graphic, throw them up on Facebook, wherever you have a responsive audience, and just see which
one gets the most engagement. Because that will be the market signaling. That are the 15 ideas that you post on Twitter. It's going to be one idea that resonates. There's going to be one idea that just sort of stands out. Going to get 5X the likes or 5X the retweets of any other idea. For whatever reason, that's the idea that resonates with your audience. And you take that idea and you turn it into... You can turn it into a 30 to 45 second reel. You can turn it into
a newsletter. You turn it into a podcast. You can turn it into a YouTube video. That's really like my testing. I don't just hope that a 2,000 word email or newsletter is going to do well. Hope, I mean, sometimes I don't, but I mean, I at least have a shot of it doing well, because I know that that particular idea resonated with my audience. So if I just expand on that idea, there's a really good chance that it's going to do okay. That's really... And how I keep track of
ideas, I mean, sometimes I'll go back and I'll look at my most retweeted tweets, my most viewed reels, my highest engagement Facebook posts. Once in a while, if I'm really, really, really hurting for content and hurting for ideas, and I'm just like, I have nothing. I have no more energy in the tank, and I have no idea what to write about that week. Sometimes I'll just look for my historically highest performing, and I'll just pick one and go with it, because I know that
it's done well before. But more often than not, I just expose myself to so much content that I have fresh ideas every single day. It's just a matter of figuring out which... I have... I don't use fancy tools. I have a Word doc with just a whole bunch of different ideas that I hear every single day or read about or interview. Somebody says a line, I'm like, damn, that's so smart. I'll write it down. And then whenever I need to write a newsletter, okay, here's probably like 300 ideas
at some point that I can just expand on. And then I'll go and I'll research and I'll write about those. Is it Upvotes or what? Microsoft Cloud or Google Docs? You mentioned Google Docs. I mean, there's probably much more sophisticated tools for this. I think Dan Coe, if I'm not mistaken, has some sort of content ideation brainstorming tool, but I don't use it. No hate on Dan Coe, I actually really like his content, but
I just use Google Docs and just keep track of things that happen throughout the day. And that's... you can use... I mean, if you don't use Google Docs, use Notes on your iPad or iPhone. Don't overcomplicate it. Whatever works in your system. I mean, for me, I don't always want to log in and use some sort of grandiose Notion tool or note-taking tool. I just write ideas down on my phone. And then, yeah, that's pretty much it. Sometimes my idea process is sometimes
so rough that if I'm out and I really want to remember something, I will actually just send it to myself in an email and then I'll just write it down the next day, just because I know that sometimes my notes get kind of crazy. So I'll just open up an email, type it as a subject line, and be like, blog for this week, type the idea, send it to myself, and then the next day I'll start writing. But as long as you have something that... I think it's less of which tool helps you
capture, and I think it's more of there's content everywhere. Just start to train yourself to always be... How do I say this? If something interests you, if you're talking to somebody and they say something and it's like, damn, I've never thought, I knew that concept, but I've never heard it that way before. I've never, or it could be a new concept that that one-liner that just like gave you like goosebumps
or made you like question your entire existence. Like there'll always be these like one-liners that people just say ad hoc. And if you just train yourself to say like, when I get that feeling, or it's like, wow, that's really, really smart. I would love to research and go so deep on this because I think this idea is gonna change someone's life and you just find a way to like constantly collect those ideas. I think you're gonna be a great content creator.
Thank you for sharing that. And in that sense, do you have someone who you want to be or who you admire like a professionally or personally like a role model? I don't want to be anybody except myself, but there's a lot of people that I look up to. There's a lot of people that I learned from. I would say look up to is the wrong word because it insinuates that you're not happy with who you are, but there's a lot of people that I learned from.
I mean, the people that I have people across, every area of my life. I mean, I'm trying to think. I like Tim Ferriss because he's a great podcaster. I like one of my best friends because he runs a publicly traded company and he is really good at balancing time between his job and the fact that he still takes care of his kids and still drives his son to jujitsu and his daughter to singing. I love the fact that he has so much perfect balance
and he still runs this massive organization. So I mean, that's a role model in terms of family and balance. Tim Ferriss is a role model in terms of podcast. I mean, Justin Welsh is a great role model if I'm trying to create LinkedIn content. Gary Vee is a great role model if I'm looking at a really smart prolific content creator. Seth Godin is a great role model for writing. I have every, I mean, I'm trying to think who else.
Lane Norton is a great role model in terms of weightlifting and health and wellness. I have so many. I just, I don't just look at people who have achieved success. I look at people who have achieved success but also kind of live the life or adopt a worldview that's similar to mine. So there's a lot of, I mean, we can use the health and wellness example. Like Lane Norton, I love how he approaches diet and bodybuilding and working out
because he's a very science-based, no nonsense guy. He doesn't dabble with stuff that could be harmful to your health, especially in like this whole biohacking movement where there's so much bullshit going around. So I love listening to him. I like to learn from him because I just trust that he's like a very pragmatic, level-headed person when it comes to your health and wellness and your diet. You look good, feel good, eat right.
And he uses a lot of science-based, evidence-based methodology in how he teaches and trains. I love that. Again, my other buddy runs a very large pub co. Like look up to him because there's a lot of publicly traded companies, CEOs that do not have the balance that he has and do not prioritize the family the way that he prioritizes it. There's a role model right there. Yeah, so to answer your question, yes, many.
Some know I exist. Some have never heard my name, but I think that kind of the reason why I did this podcast was because I fully believe that life doesn't have to be complicated. And most of the things that we're trying to figure out, somebody has already figured out. So the same way that I learned from some of the people that I mentioned, that's kind of the content I wanna create. Like I don't want people to have to figure out
how to manage their business or manage their personal life or manage their health and wellness. You don't have to figure it all out yourself. Like, I mean, we have access to unlimited information. We have access to so much wisdom. Just find somebody that's living the life that you want, is what I do, and just learn from them and consume their content. And also another important point is you don't have to consume them in their entirety.
So maybe there is somebody that is great at one particular thing. Maybe they're not so great at other parts of their life. Maybe you don't. Maybe you just have to have discernment and understand. You have to understand like what parts of this person's life do I want to emulate or do I want to learn from? But it doesn't mean that everything they teach is gonna be beneficial to you or that you should learn from.
So I think that that's also important as well, if you are gonna start to seek out people that can influence you or teach you. But yeah, I have, yes, I have lots of people that I look up to and I think, and that's the other thing too, right? Like mentorship doesn't have to be in person. Mentorship doesn't have to mean sitting down for coffee with somebody. I think that any problem that any single person who's listening to this podcast has,
they are kidding themselves and they're lying to themselves if they say they can't find an answer. Because give me, like now with ChatGPT it's just ridiculous how easy information is. But give me like five minutes and YouTube or five minutes and Google or like five minutes in ChatGPT or if it doesn't give you the information, do deep research on Perplexity or ChatGPT and give me like 15 minutes. And I'll have information that's probably more accurate
than I'm gonna be able to figure out on my own. Or I'm gonna compress a whole bunch of time and it's not gonna take me 10 years to figure out this thing on my own through trial and error. So I would just say, we have access to unlimited mentors who use them and there are no excuses. This is why I don't think that building a business, losing weight, having a good relationship, I do not think it's that complicated.
I think it's hard work, but the playbook is there. You listen to this show, you go on YouTube, you listen to my show, the playbook is there for anything you wanna do. You just have to apply yourself, that's it. It's the application, it's the execution, that's hard for people, but that's life. Nothing good is easy, which is fine. I think that's sort of like the whole reason why we're on this earth anyways, to do good, but hard work.
And as you mentioned, we are entering into the AI era. So meaning Chachibiri, we can ask, do deep research on certain things so that we can get 10 minutes, 15 minutes and to do certain things. But in that sense, what do you think the success means in the AI era to us? I mean, since you know AI, it can work in an agent, like we can ask that, like, hey, do X, Y, Z and so that we can get more time. Does that, will that change the meaning of success?
What success is? Yeah. It's a good question. I don't think, no, because if you look at what success means, success is not, success is not strictly out, it's not strictly outcome-based. That's not the way to say it. It is like, yes, there has to be an outcome tied to success. But I think that what AI should allow us to do is focus on, is focus on, hopefully, focus on the bigger, more important missions and goals
in our life and in our business and in our everything. I mean, because the whole point of agentic AI, robotics, all of this, the whole point of it is to free up capacity for us to do what we'd like to do. And right now it's at a very micro level, it's freeing us up from hours of research and graphic design and writing, it's freeing us up from some admin tasks and whatnot. So it's freeing us up to focus on bigger picture items
so we can move our business forward quicker. But it's not like we want to stop building businesses. It's not like we want to stop doing hard things or overcoming obstacles or improving ourselves. Like no one is thinking, you know, now there's AI so we don't have to think for ourselves. In fact, there was just a Harvard study that showed that people that depend too much on AI have decreased cognitive capabilities.
It's incredibly scary. So I think that AI doesn't change the human condition. AI allows us to just focus on more meaningful things. So what I mean by that is, okay, now if we have AI and say robotics and we don't have to work as much, well, maybe that means we can fix bigger problems, fix bigger problems with our community. Or if it's easier for me to make money, then it's easier. me to create wealth that can give back to people that aren't as well off. I think that there's
going to be a long way before everybody is just not working and just living perfect lives. I don't think that's going to be in my generation at all. So I think that we use the time and the energy and the removal from sort of more menial tasks to focus on bigger picture items in our life and in other people's lives, hopefully, if we have more time for that. But I don't think that humans should ever stop trying to push themselves to the next level. I think that constantly learning,
upskilling, doing hard things, I genuinely believe this is what keeps us alive. And I think that if you look at people that are retired, which would be the example of somebody that doesn't have anything to do anymore, they don't have to work anymore, they don't have to learn new things, they don't have to do anything difficult, whatever. These are the people that die the quickest. There's cognitive decline. And if they aren't doing anything significant with
their lives anymore, and not saying that relax isn't significant, but it's like there has to be a balance. So if you're not learning new things, if you're not pushing yourself at least a little bit, this is when your brain starts to go. This is when your body starts to go. If you aren't working out, everything goes. If you don't use it, you lose it. So I think just from a preservation perspective, humans that don't do anything, that don't learn, that don't improve
physically, mentally, spiritually, that's the quickest way to die. So no, I don't think that that's going to free up humans so that we're just lounging around all day. For the majority of people, that's not a fulfilling existence. I think it'll just, again, it'll give us the opportunity to work on things that really matter to us. But I think that if AI took all of our jobs tomorrow, and robotics took all of our jobs tomorrow,
everyone would be on vacation for a month, and then they'd be so incredibly bored that they would go find a way to push themselves and to become better and to become more. Because that's really what I think fulfills people. I don't think that there's ever a point where somebody really wants to shut off. They may say it until they actually do it. And then they always seek more. They always want to do more. That's human condition. And I think that's a beautiful thing. But yeah, I think
that AI is just going to let us work on things that we care about more, which I think is actually a very, very nice thing to have. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And I've watched a documentary that some people retire early, then get bored, then get back to work because they can't live without doing anything. Yes, I agree. I think that, well, listen, my parents are the example of that. They retired. Now they're back doing fun things that they enjoy. Now, I think what AI will allow us to
do are still working. They're still learning new things. They're still physically and cognitively improving themselves every single day as retirees who don't have to work. But I think that what AI and what robotics can let us do is maybe we can get to that state a little bit earlier in our lives where we can focus on jobs or tasks that we actually enjoy versus things that we just have to do to pay rent. Exactly. Yes, I totally agree with that. Sorry for asking a lot
of questions, by the way. It's a podcast. What do you mean? I don't apologize for asking questions on a podcast. So we have two more questions. One is advice for people who are listening to this podcast. And do you have any advice? Already you shared a lot of life lessons and advice already, we know. But do you have any advice to people who are maybe launching a podcast or starting a company or personal brand today or they shouldn't start? They should definitely
start it. They should definitely start it. They should definitely learn. It doesn't mean that they're going to love it. It doesn't mean that it's right for them. But I think that everybody should be at least entrepreneurial and be an entrepreneur or just entrepreneurial and find a way to be an entrepreneur within the company that you're working at. It's a way of thinking. It doesn't matter if you own 100% equity in a startup. Everyone has to be entrepreneurial.
They should understand that building a company will take them longer than they thought it would. It'll be more expensive than they thought it would. But it will be the most fulfilling thing they ever do. And it will also future proof them so that they will never have to worry about employment or money ever again. Even if the first thing doesn't work out, the skills that you'll learn along the way will either make you incredibly competent to do the next one or
so competent that you'll never have an issue finding a job for the rest of your life. Understand that you should define your own personal North Star and what's important to you. But also understand what season of your life you're in and your North Star can change. Meaning that if you're between 20 and 30, take risks, try things, break things. If it doesn't work out, fine. But do it for a season of your life. But it doesn't have to be your whole life either.
So 20 to 30, that's a season. 30 to 40, that's a season. 40 to 50, that's a different season. Understand which season you're in. And I would say don't do it alone. I mean, there's so many people. There's so many people that are willing to help you whether or not you reach out to them or like I mentioned before, you podcast, YouTube, listen to Audible, read a book. There's zero excuse. Every problem that you're dealing with has already been solved. Outside of
Elon Musk putting people on Mars, if there's one of you in the audience, that's great. But for the 99.99% of us that are trying to figure out how to make their first million dollar a year or get their first 50,000 customers or raise their first $500,000 seed check, all that shit's been figured out. It doesn't have to be reinvented. So go Google, go ChatGPT. You're going to get more ideas than you know what to do with. And if you execute against those ideas,
you'll find a way to become successful, especially if you incorporate the other ideas of the fact that it's going to take you longer than you think and you prime yourself for that and you expect that it'll take a significant period of time, and you can find a way to commit to it for a significant period of time, then you'll find a way to become successful. That's really it. I don't think there's much else that I'd advise. I think that if people are just starting out,
these ideas will help. If they're further along, then they already know these ideas are true. And I think other maybe ideas that could help would be you have to bet on yourself. That's been a common thread across everyone I've interviewed. You have to bet on yourself. You have to have almost like a delusional amount of self-belief, but also know that nobody who's figured it out before you is that special. Everybody who's figured it out before you was
in your shoes at some point, asking the same dumb questions that you're asking right now, just as stressed, just as many sleepless nights. So understand that you have to have this delusional amount of self-confidence, but whoever you look up to, whoever your entrepreneurial hero is, they were you at some point. And I think that those ideas are probably the most comforting that can help somebody who's just starting out.
Definitely. Yeah. Thank you. And this is the last question. And since Glasp is a platform where people are sharing what they're reading, learning, as their digital legacy, and we want to ask this question. So what kind of impact or legacy you want to leave behind for future generations? Yeah. Well, legacy is a tough question, because in all reality, people won't remember you after you're dead. I mean, no one talks about the Queen, and she led one of the
largest empires in modern history, and she passed away, and she's not forgotten, but she doesn't come up in news cycles very often anymore. So I think that when you think about legacy, I think you have to understand that your legacy will be lived really through the influence you have and the people closest to you, your kids, your friends, their kids. I think that I think that being a good role model and living the life that
checks all the boxes, provides a ton of value back to the world, lifts other people up. I think that if you can live that life and you imprint those positive ideas on the people that are closest to you and the people that will hopefully carry on those ideals that you hold true and that you hold near and dear to your heart, I think that that's how you should look at legacy. I think that some people try and influence a little bit too hard, and they think they're a little bit more important
than they are. I think that you just have to keep You can try to help as many people as you want, but don't do it at the expense of forgetting who you actually influence, which are the people that love and care about you. And I think that if I was going to say, who do I care about influencing and who do I care about understanding my legacy and what type of life I've lived more, is it the millions of people on social media or is it my kids?
No, it's my kids. If I just set them up for a good life and teach them what being a good person is, then I think I've done my job. And hopefully they'll carry that on because there's a really high likelihood that after you're gone, people will forget about you quite quickly. So I think that that's, I think that just at least impacting one or two or three people's lives in a very meaningful way is like, that's what we should all be on earth to do.
And I don't know. I think that outside of that, hopefully while I'm alive, hopefully while I'm alive, I can make people understand how to live a life worth living, how to architect a life that they're proud of, that they're happy with, that's truly authentically theirs through some of the ideas that we spoke about today. And I think that if I can do that while I'm alive, a lot of those people won't, a lot
of the people listening to this podcast, if they take an idea and they go use it to build a life worth living, they're not going to remember that it came from me and they're not going to remember in two or three generations about this podcast, but it'll have a positive ripple effect. And I think that I'm content with knowing that some of the content I put out or some of the ideas that I spoke about, even if I'm not remembered, had a positive impact
on humanity. I think that's a really important thing. I think that it's less about, I think legacy is less about you and more about the impact you have. And I think people get it twisted. People think that legacy means how do people remember me? Very few people remember you. So just focus on doing the best work you possibly can and know that if you do that, that'll be a beautiful legacy that you'll leave. Yeah, I totally agree.
And yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining today. We learned a lot. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It was my pleasure. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate the questions. They were really, really good. And I appreciate the podcast and I appreciate everything that you're doing for your community. And just want to say thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.
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Bet on Yourself: Lessons from 1,000+ Interviews on Success | Scott D. Clary
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