Scott Clary
Appearances
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
What I'm saying is, great, now figure out how to future-proof yourself so that not only does your earning power increase exponentially if you find a way to productize your skill set or you build something that is of value to the world and you take that to market at some point in your career.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I'm saying that eventually, the thing that you're doing right now, there will be a ceiling on it or you'll be made redundant. And that's all I'm saying.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And I fast forwarded through my entire sort of origin story, but there was like about how many years, 10-ish years of working for companies before then starting to figure out how to do my own thing. And even like the podcast I create now and the newsletter and how I monetize that, that's a business in and of itself, right? That is a full business that I've started from scratch.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I would say you're not going to get many people going to go to Washington.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So I think that the goal is, and there's a strategy behind why I started the podcast as opposed to starting just a business. I wanted to build a media asset that I could launch businesses against in the future once you have the audience. But yes, I think, and there's other versions of entrepreneurship.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You could be working a nine to five and then find a way to take the skillset that you've learned in your nine to five and then do it freelance or side hustle.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So you have your nine to five and then you, you know, you take on clients five to nine and all of a sudden you have so many clients that you can now turn yourself into an agency or some sort of service provider doing that thing that you're actually doing in your nine to five as a full-time employee.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, good luck. Good fucking luck. I've never worked more. I've never worked more than when you build your own thing. So I think that you should define what entrepreneurship is and what it isn't. It's not just extracting value from the world. It's giving as much value as possible. I think that a great version of entrepreneurship is to take the thing that you know better than anyone else.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Maybe it's because you've worked in a company for 10, 15, 20 years. You find a pain point that you've discovered through working in that industry for the past 15 or 20 years, and then you build a product or service around that that solves that pain point. Statistically, that's going to be the highest chance of you succeeding as a quote-unquote entrepreneur.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But ultimately, the definition of an entrepreneur has to be you are finding ways to solve pain points while simultaneously giving value to the world. If you're not giving value, if you're just extracting, like you said, a zero-sum game, first of all, there's going to be a ceiling because you cannot just extract from the world unlimited value. You do have to give value.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And secondly, it's going to have a very short life, whatever thing you're building. I don't deal with a lot of crypto entrepreneurs. I deal with people that are trying to build like real companies that are solving.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So we're talking about, so I'm doing a panel with my better half, Gina. Sean Kelly's on that panel. He's a mutual friend too. We're speaking about content, influencer marketing, building a personal brand, sort of the playbook that we've deployed because I have a good following. I have a good podcast, good newsletter, like you mentioned. My better half, she built a company called My Therapist Says.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So it's funny because when I started it, I didn't really know where it was going to go. When I started it, I was still building a company and I was CRO at a company that was a broadcast software company. It was acquired and my day-to-day was building out a sales team, building out a marketing team, helping take this product to market.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So a lot of the first conversations I had were just following my passion of building out sales and marketing organizations within companies. And I would speak to CROs and CMOs and talk about sales and marketing strategy. So the first version of the podcast was really just me having conversations with people that were teaching me things about what I was doing in my day-to-day.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And at that point in my life, it was my interest. And then as it grows and expands, then after the acquisition, I realized that there's a lot of other things that I'm interested in. So I started to have a lot of other people on the podcast. Now I start talking about raising money, mindset, mental health, physical health, all the things that I think are now important to me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So the journey of the podcast and the topics that I've brought onto the podcast really emulate where I'm at in my life and what I'm curious about. And I think that having some curiosity Some almost selfish curiosity in the topics you cover is key to creating content long term, because if you are creating content that you are not interested in, I feel like eventually you will burn out.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Now, you asked me what was the purpose of it. So after the acquisition, I realized that, OK, I've started to build a little bit of momentum with this audience. I have a couple of listeners now. So what am I going to do with it? And I could have launched a product or service immediately against that audience. I was fortunate that I didn't really have to worry too much about money at that point.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And in my mind, I thought, let's, you know, copy paste the Gary V model. The Gary V model is give everything away for free. Jab, jab, punch. Exactly. Build an audience. And then in the future, you can use that audience. for whatever you'd like to use them for. If I want to sell a product or service, now I have a million eyeballs that are ready and waiting for whatever I talk to them about.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If I want to just monetize with ads, I can do that. If I want to, I've thought about this a lot. I think this is the future of content creation. I think that creators should
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
find startups whose product aligns with their audience and then start to take small equity positions in those startups and then use their channel, their audience, as sort of a take-to-market strategy for that early-stage startup's product if there's that alignment between the product and the audience avatar.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And the reason why I think that's smart is because then the creator can focus on creating and not becoming an operator in a business. They can just find a way to, again, leverage their assets. So to answer your question... Because I started the podcast before the company was acquired. So I started about two years before.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
At the point of the acquisition, that's when the style of content shifted slightly away from just pure sales and marketing topics. And then I thought... Yes. Jab, jab, punch. Put out a ton of value, create content that I'm interested in, speak to people that would teach me something because I know there's a lot of me's in the world that would love to learn from incredible entrepreneurs.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And then when I have critical mass of the audience, then I can figure out what I'd like to do with it. And that was really, that was the goal. And the goal is to do something also that I can do for the next hundred years of my life. So when I look at a podcast, I'm not building it to be acquired. I'm building it because it's something that I enjoy.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So different demo than me, but they have about 8.2 million on their main account. They've been doing this for 11 years and they create memes. So she's going to talk about sort of her structure and framework for creating culturally relevant viral content. And then Sean built a massive podcast too.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And it's something that I can launch a product against it today in 10 years and 20 years from now, but I'll always keep building that audience.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Now this is becoming a little bit more serious. I'm putting some money into it. I'm putting some energy into it. Okay, so now I've got to figure out how do I bring the most value to the audience? Who is the avatar that's actually listening to my show? What do they care about?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
How do I structure an interview so I can sort of break down the stress of meeting somebody for the first time where they have their guard up and they really don't want to get too personal? How do I break that down and then find a way to really pull some great insights that can help the audience that...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
whoever's listening, who's, and I create my, like I really create my podcast for me 10 years ago, kind of like how you're writing your book, right? So I create my podcast because I know that there's people in the audience that are struggling to figure out what to do with their life, are wondering if they're on the right path, the right journey.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And the goal of my show now is to find some awesome entrepreneur, some great founder, some great CEO and say, hey, listen, I want you to teach the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the bullshit that you've gone through. So whoever's listening feels that sense of comfort that whatever they're doing or whatever they're trying to figure out, they don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
People have already been through all this bullshit before. So just like sort of keep on keeping on and keep on going. I think that's probably how my shows evolve. So it wasn't this structured, perfectly architected thing. It was just... And by the way, I think most content and the best creators don't have this perfectly structured plan at the beginning. They just enjoy what they're doing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Which is why they can do it for an extended period of time.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Well, I don't even know the numbers anymore.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But yeah, if you've, if you've released 10 episodes, you're in like the top 1%.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
They don't realize that you just have to kind of be yourself. People fuck up a lot of content creation because they get excited about it. And this is not just podcasting. It could be posting on Instagram, posting on YouTube, writing tweets three times a day, whatever it is. People get super excited about it. They start and real life hits.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
kind of like the gym in january real life hits and then they get distracted and then they don't they realize that shit i'm not making a lot of money on this thing in the first week which is bro you should have figured you should have had the foresight to figure that out before you pressed uh press publish yeah but then all of a sudden that motivation and that reason why they started fizzles out and then they are you gonna i'm gonna sneeze look at the light do i look at the light yeah that's
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I know, but when you have it, you just got to get fucking pepper in here.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I think that's the biggest issue. I think that people, I think that people have the wrong expectations going into content creation. They expect too much too quick.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, well, first of all, you can't. So I want you to I want you to listen to what I'm saying I would do if I needed to monetize this as quickly as possible, because when I started doing it, it was a lot of fun for me, but I wasn't focused on the quickest path to revenue. which is not necessarily smart. It is what it is. I mean, I had my set of circumstances when I started my show.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Not everybody's circumstances are smart. So let's make the assumption that you don't just want to, because you should find a way to monetize it and take it as seriously as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that's very important because most people don't have the will to keep it going for a long period of time without making money or having some sort of business outcome from this podcast.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I don't understand it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
They don't.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
A podcast is probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to grow.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And this is also why, I mean, you do video. I do video as well. I just built out a studio because I wanted to index on and rank on YouTube, which is, I mean, that's the second largest search engine in the world outside of Google. But outside of that, if you just do audio, nobody sees it. There's no organic reach.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Anyways, so to answer your question, to start, figure out your objective, your North Star for the podcast. So if you're just podcasting the podcast, unless you have the financial means to do it, it's going to turn into a very expensive hobby very quickly and a very time-consuming hobby. So I would say that you should figure out how the podcast helps your business objectives, whatever that may be.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yes, correct. So I started a podcast outside of the business that I was in. For most people, that's not smart. For most people, they should start a podcast that supports the business that they're in, meaning that the interviews that you have or the subject matter that you capture or the questions that you ask are questions that your customers are asking.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Because that means that the content that you're creating is going to turn into content that is actually going to be actively answering questions that your customers care about.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I wouldn't recommend if you're, if you're getting into the game of creating content, I wouldn't look at Sean as this is what I have to do to start. Yeah. Cause you're going to, first of all, For content creators, what Sean does is already fucking crazy. Like, nobody does it at that level with that many shows.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So this is the second part of it. So not only is the content answering questions for your target customer, that if you do interview style, which I think is also a smart play if you're using it for a business objective, that hour where you're sitting with somebody that hour is a relationship building, rapport building hour.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So not only are you using it strategically to create content, you are also actively building rapport with somebody who could be a customer. So I think that's also a very smart strategy to use.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
not you we're doing great we're doing great scott but no shit i mean can you honestly not say that's not true no it's very true it's very true i mean so it's funny because sometimes because now i now i i guess uh like my brand is podcaster that's my brand right now that's all i really fucking do so everybody knows me as a podcaster which means like even when i get asked to speak it's not keynotes anymore you know what it is it's like moderate a panel on stage because
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Professional moderator. But, yeah, it's funny. So sometimes when I get asked to go on other people's shows, they always ask me, like, who's your worst interview? I'll never answer. But damn straight, I have, like, a couple people that pop up in my head, and I'm like, fuck.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And I think that if you're just getting started, I mean, that's not a good avatar to look up to. I think that you want to just start with something that's going to, you know, not burn you out in the first month. So...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I've probably done about five or six. Rarely, okay. Because I hate them.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And it hurts. It hurts to show.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, I think that, so that's why I think that tying the podcast back to your business and having a product that you sell is the smartest reason why you should start a podcast. So have a product or service that's lined up with the audience.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Well, Joe Rogan was selling, what was it, Onnit or the nootropic?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Oh, well, that's what, okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So yeah, so.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You got to figure out what actually makes sense.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I might buy one. You look like you're enjoying one. Yeah, but people read through that bullshit. Yeah, it's so nonsense.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
People know when you actually, like my best advertisers. Yeah. And again, I don't have my own product, but if I did, I'd have to make sure that it fits, right? It actually fits. I'm thinking about different things that I can launch. I'm thinking about like products, like how to build a podcast. That, that fits. I've done it. It fits right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
you know props to sean for doing that i i i love his work ethic and his hustle but that's not reality for most creators most creators should figure out a process that they can do repeatedly for the next 10 years and keep in mind too like sean's main thing is his podcast my main thing is my podcast too and i do three episodes a week you do three drops a week are they all guest drops
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If I was, if I was promoting something that I've never used before, people smell through that BS all day and it's really not going to, yeah, you make a quick buck, but then it ruins the trust with the audience. So all the advertisers that work longterm with me, they're all products I use. So like, I mean, like I've worked with HubSpot for three years now.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I've worked with in great, great affiliate program affiliate program. But these are, these are tools. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that their software, their tools that I actually use on a day to day for my actual business. So it makes a lot of sense because I can talk about why they actually helped me and why they didn't make my life less stressful on a day to day.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But yeah, I mean, if you're going to pick a product, if you're going to build a podcast type act, whatever you're selling, Make sure that it just syncs up because if you don't, you're going to ruin trust. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So yes, correct. If you have a product that is aligned with your audience, then I don't see an issue with monetizing early on. If it's actually something that helps your audience and solves a problem your audience has. So for example, if I'm starting a podcast on real estate and I am a real estate agent and somebody reaches out to me and say, hey, can you list my house? Okay, go for it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
That's kind of why I'm doing it. If I'm starting a podcast on the creator economy and I have a course teaching people how to get their first thousand followers on Instagram, no problem because I've done it. Hopefully, you've actually done it yourself. That's a precursor for selling it. But then the content aligns with that. But if you are, for example, trying to monetize through ads for...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
not completely off products, but like adjacent products. Say like, for example, you start a podcast and you get an option to sell athletic greens and it's a business podcast. There's a place for it, but it's not right. I would say, don't worry about monetizing too quickly. Don't inundate your audience with ads.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Did you know her? I did know her way back a million years ago.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I don't know her story. I haven't had her on the show yet.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
There you go. I mean, it's the same as like somebody starting their career as like a bottle service girl or like you start somewhere.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
No, sometimes they are, but I do for sure two guest drops and then sometimes I'll do a solo. And I think this is also a good lesson in terms of like content creation. Like I always test new things. So yeah, sure. Guest drops are great and interviews are a lot of fun and I love them probably the same reason you love them.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I know it's a distraction, right? We're in Vegas. No, we're talking about when to monetize. And I think it's after you've established credibility in the market. I think that when you're talking about ad-based sales, I think you have to establish credibility and trust first. I think it's a little bit different than a product-based sale where you can sell immediately.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If I have a product or service and I run Facebook ads, or if I have a high-ticket consulting offer, or a done-for-you service, or... physical good or a software I mean you have to you sell it right away to the audience that needs it but when you are selling ads you are selling based on trust and trust takes time like if I have a if I have a software
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If I sell you the software today, it's going to work today. If I'm selling you access to an audience, the audience and the return on that investment is going to increase the longer that I have that relationship with the audience. So day one, it's not going to be as good as day 1,000.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I know. I mean, there's a lot of it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
is so hard to reconcile so what it does is it if you are starting it is it's just demoralizing because you are looking at somebody that has this fake audience and you're saying well how could i ever get there well meanwhile they actually don't have any influence they don't have any audience and you're benchmarking against bullshit so when you start i mean don't I would say this is another idea.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You shouldn't focus on numbers. You should focus on results that actually mean something, right? So if you are building an audience, you don't need a million followers and you shouldn't be benchmarking your success against somebody who does because that's all vanity metrics. I think that you should be focusing on, okay, let's figure out how to build a channel, build a platform.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I'll also test, I'll also test sort of like 10 to 15 minute, pick a topic that I know is going to resonate. And I have a process for testing which topics resonate with my audience. and then do like a 10 to 15 minute or even like a 30 minute episode, solo episode on that. I've also done solo episodes on founder stories.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Doesn't matter if it's Twitter, Instagram, podcast, YouTube. And then what is the leading indicator for success? So how do I, is it retention and watch time on my YouTube videos? Is it shares on Instagram? Is it retweet? Find that leading metric, leading indicator that's going to actually convert into an actual business result. And that's how you gauge your success.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So you can make a lot of money having 10,000 followers on Instagram that are all buying your product or service. You can make a lot of money with 50,000 subscribers on YouTube that have 60% retention on your video all the way through to the end. Like there's better things to look at.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's doing very well right now.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Do you dumb your shit down or you just... No, you don't. Because again, again... the answer all comes back to the, the sort of like the basic principles that we're talking about is like, what, what's your North star? What's your objective for the content?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Because if your objective is to become Joe Rogan, then you shouldn't make highbrow super, super complex because Joe Rogan is not highbrow and super complex and neither are murder podcasts that also sit in the top five or, or whatever. Like you, you have to understand what, what is your goal? Like, what is your goal? Do you just want to, first of all, this isn't new to podcasting.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
This isn't new to content. How many people, how many people would sit down and watch a Senate hearing versus the Superbowl? Yeah. Okay. Fair.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So, I mean, less people will watch a Senate hearing, which are probably pretty important conversations, but the most, but like the thing that was trending on Twitter, you're just asking why there's a standard distribution of people that love entertainment versus, but okay, but okay, fine.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So, I mean, I've done episodes on like Bernard Arnault from LVMH and shit like that. I saw one of your founder stories.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
How can you tell? But it's not entertainment to you. That's my point.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And that's the highest retweeted thing on Twitter two days ago. I understand why you don't understand. Because it's not entertainment to me, too. No. But... it's entertainment to someone.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
To answer your question though, like you got to create content that accomplishes the objective that you set out for that content.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I create the same type of content as you. I create the exact same type of content. And you don't think that I've seen people that start a podcast after me that are just pure like culture podcasts. Like just shooting the shit on just culture that have grown way faster than me. And I look at it, I'm like... fuck, this is really frustrating. But then again, I'm like, who am I serving?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Who am I actually serving? When I sit down with yourself, when I sit down with the founder of Netflix, the founder of Reebok, when I sit down with Seth Godin and we have these incredibly intelligent, like just like the forefront of thought leadership, not me, the other guys.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I think, wow, these are ideas that can actually change the world from people that have actually changed the world. If I dumb down my content, then I'm one less voice that is bringing those ideas to the masses. So I'm hoping that, yeah, I mean, my growth is slower than somebody who talks about sports or culture or entertainment. But again, it's not who I serve.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And then I'm looking at, and I'm looking at how many people like that versus an interview. So yeah, you just keep testing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But can I add one thing?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, yeah, no, just because you create content that serves an audience that's trying to build a business or become better versions of themselves, it doesn't mean you have an excuse to not achieve mastery at that content creation, not sort of perfect your craft, not prep, not find ways to make that content still as entertaining and useful as possible. So some people sort of
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If they're creating smart content, I find they default to, well, it's smart, so I'm not going to focus on trying to find entertaining, which I think is also incorrect. So you also can't get lazy just because you're targeting a certain niche that maybe is like a little bit more highbrow.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
think look if if people don't if people are watching or listening to something that you do and they don't laugh or get pissed or experience some emotion what do you what are you doing this is why as a podcast host what your goal is is to is to make the person feel safe so they can be real because that realness is going to be the x factor in the entertainment because again keep in mind the people that you speak to who i speak to they've been interviewed by 20 30 different podcast hosts and they've been on all the different youtube channels
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So the X factor is doing your prep and then really just finding a way to pull out things that haven't been pulled out before, because that alone will create entertainment value.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I watch their interviews and I try and find things that they speak about, but the host doesn't go into. So they'll speak about a personal story, but the host won't take it a step further and ask how that impacted their life or what they felt going through that story, which leads to a whole other array of sub stories coming out of that one particular thing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I'll watch a lot of interviews with them. And so I get a basic premise for what they're like domain expert and subject matter expert at, but then I'll just go a level deeper. It's really not that complicated. Like a little bit.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah. You can see what gives people energy. Yeah. And if it doesn't, and by the way, I tell them this before they even start, I say, because this is how the conversation goes with every guest. I'll say, what would make this a win for you? And they'll say, well, I just want to serve your audience. And then I'll say, what do you have to promote? And they're like, oh, this book.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's the same thing every single time. So I know how it's going to go. And I know they want to serve my audience. And I know that they're not going to say this is actually what I care about. And this is so I have to find it. I have to search for it. And when you notice somebody lights up about a topic, I don't care if there are six other topics that you had planned.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Go really deep on that one topic because they're going to have so much emotion and they're going to bring out so much about that one particular thing that they've. And they'll be appreciative because they'll they'll they'll recognize, too. Yeah, they're not stupid. They'll recognize when you want to just sit in a topic and just and just bask in it because it's something they care so deeply about.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And it's so recent on the top of their mind. And that's when the best content comes out.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, exactly. We just never got to it. Because she's bored of talking about it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
That's a beautiful subject because a lot of people that have massive amounts of wealth have a really hard time succession planning and figuring out how to not turn their kids into assholes because they never had to work for anything in their life.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So that's an incredible topic that a lot of people who are listening to this who have achieved success and have made a lot of money would actually tune into. Because there's people that... they have no interest building a billion dollar multifamily portfolio.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
They've made their money in software or consumer goods and they've just absolutely killed it and their money's working for them now and they don't want to fucking deal with starting again. They do a little bit of angel investing here and there, but they're not going to build a billion dollar multifamily portfolio. But,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
The second there's this common thread, well, I have money and I have kids and she has money and she has kids, all of a sudden this podcast becomes interesting because now you're speaking to the human element behind the successful person, not just the tactical stuff that, yeah, she's done it at scale, but I could probably hear the tactical stuff from another 20 people on YouTube. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Because you go into the history of it. It was crazy. And also I found that, listen, when you do an interview, there's an art to an interview and there's an art to pulling out lessons and wisdom from somebody.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah. But you know what? I mean, you put in like anything, if you just want to, if you do it enough, you start to get over it. I don't know how else to describe it. I have imposter syndrome whenever I sit in front of huge guests. I have imposter syndrome when I write a newsletter. So my list is about 300,000 people. So I get stressed out sometimes when I'm- How'd you build the list?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
A lot of writing. Writing and one person at a time. One email at a time.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
No, imposter syndrome is tough to deal with. I think that like most people, my imposter syndrome really shows when I step on stage. That always stresses me out. But that's like the most common fear in the world. So that's not that unusual. And the way that I've dealt with it, is kind of how I've dealt with everything.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I just put myself into that situation again and again and again and again, and eventually it becomes less stressful. So the first time I step on stage, I'm shitting myself. And then the 100th time, I'm not. And it's really, it's not rocket science, but what I would do is in between the big stage gigs, where there's a significant size audience,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I would ask anybody and everybody who's putting on an event, can I just please talk for 10 to 15 minutes for free? Just let me talk about, you can tell me what subject. I can talk about entrepreneurship, marketing, Instagram, podcasting. I can talk about software. I can talk about sales, marketing, anything, like any of those. Just let me do like 10 to 15 minutes. Let me just keep exposing myself.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's just like exposure, exposure, exposure. And then over time. Obstacle is the way. Exactly. That's it. And over time, you get a little bit less stressed out and you don't get like a small little panic attack before you jump on stage. And I think that that's how I've dealt with most versions of imposter syndrome. I've just done it so much.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But when you can do an insane amount of research ahead of time on, pick a big historical figure and really go into the weeds of what they did, there's going to be a level of granularity there that you just can't get. in an hour-long interview with somebody who's not Sam Walton or Bernard Arnault.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You just work through it. There's certain things. I wouldn't drink a ton of caffeine before I go on stage because that doesn't help anxiety. You can do something called box breathing, which is really just inhaling, holding a breath, and then letting it out. There's a biological response which calms your nerves.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Prepping, I mean, it sounds stupid, but if you prep the material and you don't have to worry about the material or you're speaking about things that you genuinely know about, that also calms the anxiety. But even outside of all those things, just exposing yourself to it more often. I actually, you know, it's so funny. The first time I ever really spoke in public,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I don't know why I do this to myself. It was at Inbound, which is a conference with, as of last, I spoke at Inbound three times so far in my life. And the last one, I think it was 112,000 people. It's a massive conference in Boston. And that was the first time I jumped on stage to do a panel with a couple other people that were on my show.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
They invited me out because they've sponsored the podcast for the past three years now. So they said, do you want to speak at Inbound? And that was kind of like my first foray into public speaking. And I wouldn't recommend that being the first thing. I think that most people, this, I think there was like a, uh, uh, like a sweat imprint on the seat behind me. It was, it was very nerve.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
That's not good. So, but the point is after that, I'm like, okay, that was stressful. I,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
and you always think you're worse than you are by the way yeah you always oh of course everyone was like great job like i mean like yeah gina's like sitting in the audience that you you fucking killed it like good job everybody who i was on the panel with uh like awesome job like it was it was really well done and uh in my mind i just felt like i wanted to have a heart attack and die i felt like i was gonna have a heart attack like just just do it now so i don't have to deal with the next uh 20 minutes it's like that scene from old school where like you're just like the where you're just like
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
it's an out-of-body experience and the speech goes off you're like what what happened yeah but you know i lived and then after that i was like i don't want to feel like that again and i uh reps yeah it was just reps and then i just jumped into every single speaking opportunity that i what's the fun because people you know you talk about the newsletter growth too if you want we're gonna get to that but like most people talk about about imposter syndrome like they don't want to turn a camera oh i look terrible on camera i sound bad on camera i don't want to do this like just
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So my recommendation for somebody who wants to start creating content is imposter syndrome is real. And of course, you're going to be stressed out. But you have to find a way to, again, architect the environment so that you forget that you're creating the content. Because most people can just have a conversation. We can have a conversation. It doesn't matter if the camera's on or off.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But some people sitting in this chair, when the cameras turn on, they turn into a different person. What you have to do if you're starting out is you have to find a way to architect the environment so that you don't know that the cameras are on and you don't feel like you're creating content. So what I recommend when people first start, because video is usually the issue. It's not usually writing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
People don't usually stress out about writing. But video is usually an issue. I say sit down across from somebody. Ask them to print out or on their phone have a list of questions that you know. They're all topics that you know about. Turn on a camera and then block off two hours, like Sunday afternoon, whatever, when you have nothing else going on.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And that person, I just want them to sit there and ask you about things that you know about. And you will forget the cameras are there after about 10 to 15 minutes. And you're just going to be having a conversation with somebody talking about things that you care about, that you're passionate about. And if you look back at that recording, that's actually incredible content. That's all it is.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You just have to talk about things that you care about. Yeah. So, and by the way, by the way, by the way, if you actually look at, there's something called a fly on the wall effect. The fly on the wall effect is when people, this is why podcast content does well. People who are scrolling on Instagram or on YouTube or whatever, they like to feel like they are the fly on the wall of a conversation.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
When somebody is staring at you directly, you do not feel like you're a fly on the wall. It feels like the person who's staring at the camera directly is directly communicating with me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But when I'm in a conversation like this with a podcast, the camera just off to the side or whatever, and the audience knows that I'm not speaking to them, I'm speaking to you, there's a fly on the wall effect and they actually enjoy that content slightly more than if I was talking directly to them in the camera.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yes, exactly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Nobody wants to be told what to do. But if I have a smart thought and it's clipped out and it's in a conversation, very organic conversation with someone else, that's the type of content that people share and people like and people engage with. And that's why if you actually look at, I can't remember her name. There's one woman. I'm sure if you Google this story, you'll be able to find it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
She rented out a podcast studio on her own and just spoke off camera Let's see. I'm Googling it. See if you can find it. I have to fucking remember her name. Rent it out. I'll tell you the story of what she did, though. She booked out a podcast studio.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
We'll call her Mary. She booked out a podcast studio, and she tested preaching directly to the camera versus no host there. Just her talking to somebody as if there was a host, and she's just talking about the same stuff that she'd be talking to the camera to. And the engagement was higher on... on the content where it looked like she was in a podcast.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I don't know TikTok as well as Instagram. Yeah. So I'm not an SME, not a subject matter expert at TikTok.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I look at so when I'm when I'm trying to figure out a strategy for myself, I look at people that have way more money to invest in marketing and people that are trying to figure out that strategy. So Starbucks effect. Yeah. I mean, I don't have to reinvent the wheel if I'm looking at, you know, how to grow a podcast on on TikTok. I'm probably looking at Stephen Bartlett with Diary of a CEO.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I'm probably looking at Chris Williamson with Modern Wisdom. I'm seeing what are their strategies that they're trying.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And emulating them as a first step. And then you also, by the way, I'm a big fan of reverse engineering success. So whether or not it's podcast, newsletter, Twitter, Instagram, Find the people that are in your domain that are killing it on that platform. And as a first pass at content creation, look at what they're doing and copy that. Just to start. Then you'll make it your own.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's people that are growing on Twitter faster and quicker than anyone else. And go find that person and go figure out, okay, how do they structure their tweets? What do they write about? What is the formula? Is it this quippy little like... you know, three point thought, or is it more of like a longer block of text, which it usually never is on Twitter?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Like what is, what is the formula that really gets a lot of engagement and speaks to a Twitter audience and who is the person that's doing that the best right now and go find them and then go. And that's how you start your content journey. You just study the people that have been doing it before.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And the reason why you're not copying is because you will eventually learn that the best content it brings in your lived experience. It brings in the stuff that you've dealt with. That's why if you're talking about, if you're just trying to like pontificate on ideas and you're just trying to keep it very high level, it's never gonna really hit home with people.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But if you talk about the stuff that you've dealt with in your life, the problems that you're still dealing with literally right now, and then you structure it through a frame that fits that audience, that's how your content does well. So if you, as a podcast host, if you never bring in your personal experience and your personal life, it's going to be boring.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But if you do bring in your personal experience and your personal life, and then you figure out how to edit a reel that works really well on TikTok, that's a winning formula.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I mean even on this like whatever our podcast I've spoken about Gina a couple times I spoke about what she did because it's my life like it's it's what I've lived and and if we spend even more time I'd probably talk about all the stuff that hasn't worked out and we and we we haven't really gone there but I think that's really important to bring up yeah so that because that's what differentiates you too if not you're just a talking head and there's a and your favorite content creators are
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
There's some big creators that don't include their personal life, but they're like vanilla. It's like they could be subbed out by anyone else talking about the same shit. Like the best creators, they bring their whole life into it or a significant portion of it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I know that his, okay, so to play devil's advocate, I do know that he came up with his dad's wine shop and he did his wine stuff. I mean, he's pretty, he doesn't talk about his divorce.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
He doesn't talk about his divorce.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
These three things. I think that would be a great extra dimension that would speak to who he is as a person.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You know, I think that another thing that's important is to understand that Some people built very large audiences when the market wasn't as crowded.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So I think that being more authentic. And this is why I think bloggers do so well. Bloggers. Bloggers like on YouTube. Yeah. Because they include their whole life. I mean, look at the Paul brothers. There wasn't a bit of their life that they didn't cover, and now they're enormous household names.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And now even the biggest up-and-coming stars that your kids like, that I don't even understand, are streamers that stream nonstop their whole life. They stream their whole life. So I'm not saying you have to go to that extreme, but I'm saying that including little bits of your life does help create, it turns you into a human and not just another thing to scroll through on Instagram.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
He's longest live stream ever. So he just streams in his house like nonstop. Just nonstop. So this is who you're competing with. So again... Maybe 10 years ago, you didn't have to do that. But now, first of all, I think that it's good because it allows you to, like, listen, we can talk about, at any point, we talk about relationships and how the right partner can make or break it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And I can give you examples of shit that hasn't worked out when I felt like, you know, my world is ending. And Gina's been like, Scott, shut the fuck up. You're fine.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So, I mean, but that... I don't want to exclude that from my content because I think that's actually useful for people.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
34.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
She gets rid of it very quickly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, she gets rid of it very quickly. My poor wife. She is about like, She, she's also very entrepreneurial. She built her own business too. And she realizes like there is no benefit to sitting with this. It doesn't solve anything.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Like if, if, if shit is going to be bad, fine. But it's, it's like whatever's created, the bad shit has already happened. There's no time travel here. You gotta, you gotta fix it. So what are the actions that allow you to fix it?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I'm very good at throwing myself into work. I don't know if that's a healthy thing, but I definitely throw myself. Better than crack. I think so. It's way better than the crack. Most doctors have recommended work is better than crack. Most? I didn't.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Maybe the crack's the way to go. I think I'm following FTC advertising guidelines. I can't say 100% FDA. Most.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, I think that I throw myself into work. And then after like putting in because every day is always busy. Yeah. After after my day of busyness and when I'm like sort of. You know, relaxing at night and just just usually more emails, but it's relaxing to a degree to me.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Then I start to map out, okay, what are the action items that I have to do to take care of this thing while still feeling a little bit stressed about it. But I would say first 48 hours is when I'm saying, okay, this is what has to happen. This is who I have to have a hard conversation with. And it is what it is because I want to get the hard conversations done with ASAP.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And by the way, problems are usually not solved, but always include hard conversations.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And I want to get those done ASAP, which means that I'm forcing myself to schedule the calls with the people that I have to have to get this problem solved or move forward. And then you just get that flywheel going and then eventually it will eventually get solved and you will wake up and life will be fine.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It always is. Always. And by the way, most of your problems, I mean, this is not 100% true, but most of your problems are not always as bad as you think they are. And when you have those hard, I don't know what you've gone through.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I think a lot of the problems that we're fortunate to have and the people that listen to this podcast have are very privileged problems. They're usually money problems, but it's not about... Not being able to put food on the table.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's about a deal falling through or someone getting sued. But to be able to even be in that position means that you figured out life to some degree.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It is.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So I also agree with that, which is why I built a very large mailing list because I didn't want to ever just rely on the platforms. I know that Instagram can be shut down overnight. YouTube can be shut down. All this stuff can be shut down overnight if you don't own it. So when I started creating content, It's not a super complicated strategy, but the CTA was always subscribed to the newsletter.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So over the past six years, the link in bio, the CTA, top of the show notes, every single YouTube video. And I've tried to mention at the beginning, as a creator, I've tried to put out lots of different types of content. I've tried to see what works. Now I have a podcast. I used to put out like strategy and tutorial videos on YouTube. I've used to do like solo YouTube.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So there's about 5,000 YouTube videos. where the first line is, subscribe to newsletter.scottdclary.com.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's a CTA for everything. So just making sure that you cross-pollinate your audience repeatedly is very important. Meaning if you put out a podcast, you put out a YouTube video in the show notes, in the YouTube description, link in bio is always email capture. And then you deliver value through the newsletter. And then you promote the shit out of the newsletter.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Twice a week. Twice a week. Twice a week. So, so hear me out. So I have one newsletter, then I have one like summary wrap up. So the newsletter is a newsletter and it talks about, and I'll, and the summaries are AI generated summaries of, no, you're writing it. No, no, no. It's not a, it's not a summary that way. It's a summary as in, these are the podcasts that came out this week. Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Links to the podcasts.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I have one more thought on this. So the newsletter, the subject. So I have sort of two content flows. So my first content flow is podcast. And then we take the long form podcast and we clip it out into shorts and reels. And like I said, I put out a summary on the weekend about the podcast that dropped that week and turns out the tweets and everything like that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But the second content flow is what leads to my midweek newsletter. So the topic that I choose to discuss in my midweek newsletter is the result of my second content flow. So the first one is podcast derivative pieces. The second content flow, which I think is a really smart strategy, which works very well for me, is I test a whole bunch of ideas on Twitter or threads, doesn't matter.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
like I'll put out 10 different, I'll tweet like 10 times a day. I'll at the end of the day, I'll write out some ideas. I'll tweet them out. I'll see which one gets the most engagement. And the one that gets the most engagement, I'll turn it into, if you look on my Instagram, there's a little graphics with these tweets.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
I'll turn it into, I'll take that thought and I'll turn it into a solo episode on the podcast. I'll take that thought and I'll turn it into a newsletter as well because I know that if I test 10, 10 ideas on Twitter a day, that's 50 tweets a week or plus minus. And I take out of all those ideas, one gets the most engagement. I know that that idea, for whatever reason, resonates with people.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It's going to have the most value. And then that's a super easy testing ground for all of your content. And then you take that and turn it into long-form written content, and it does very well. So, I mean, you also have to have... I think that there's a couple ideas there. First, yes, have a newsletter, write a newsletter, but also...
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
how do you think through every week, the content that there's going to be some certainty you can't predict a hundred percent, but some certainty that that content is going to resonate. I have a testing ground for your content too. And that's what I use Twitter for.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So, so, I'm only pausing because I'm in the middle of transitioning the newsletter. So I was on Substack for a long time. Right now I'm moving my main newsletter to Kit, ConvertKit. I know Nathan Berry, he's a really cool guy. He built a great platform. And then now I'm actually hiring somebody to write a second newsletter on the creator economy, which I have not started yet.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And that's going to be hosted on a platform called Stan. And Stan is like, um, this is, this is not my products or anything. These are big, large companies that I use. So convert kit is a great newsletter system. Um, I think like James clear is on there who wrote atomic habits. I think so. He'll bloom. If you're a newsletter follower, he writes on there. And then Stan is, um,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
They also have newsletter sequencing, but they also have all these other tools for creators. They have like a, it's like a link in bio service where you can host your products and you can build community. So it accomplishes a lot of different things for creators as well. So anyway, so yeah, ConvertKit is one, Stan is the other if you're looking for some creator tools, but yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Easy. All the social is at Scott D. Clary. And then you can go to successstorypodcast.com to do a lot of the same stuff.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But they got to find a way to capitalize on it because, or else what's going to happen is you're going to get a lot of buzz and people aren't going to convert.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
not that would be smart it would be super smart and when it happens and when it happens i don't know this is happening maybe they're just idiots but you know what you got to do by the way what's that when you do a podcast and you talk about like the future you have to be like super you have to you have to just have these like super prolific ideas and thoughts and you say them with 100 certainty and then it comes and then you can clip it in a year from now yeah but then all the that you say that doesn't work you just
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Right now, everyone hates them. Fuck, it was stupid. And Porsche is, they just put out an ad, not... calling out Jaguar, but saying like, if we were, I think it was, I can't do a Lippa. It was the one big celebrity, but basically you're saying like, if I was going to direct a Porsche commercial, this is what I would do.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And it's, that's the commercial is her just basically reinforcing all the Porsche values. Like that's what they're doing in the commercial and basically taking like a subtle stab at like, don't fuck with a good thing. Don't fuck with the classic. If they do that, what you're talking about to be smart though.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
It'll be forgotten soon, I think. But, I mean, it's more impressions and it's more eyeballs than they've gotten, again, like you mentioned, in the past 10 years.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
The early me grew up in a family of comfort and predictability. My dad worked for the government in Canada. I worked for CSIS. So he was doing counterterrorism and intelligence, which is a very cool job. But I mean, it was still a nine to five government job. So entrepreneurship, working with, I mean, tech startup, that wasn't really where I came from.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But I think that so your podcast is called Escaping the Drift. I think that you're obviously very entrepreneurial, but there's a lot of people that were, you know, parents and grandparents that found a lot of comfort in a nine to five W2. And I think that, I think that our generation is realizing very quickly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And as, as, as did I, that W2s are not going to be the way that we're going to really secure our freedom. And we're not going to be able to retire. We're not gonna be able to live like the life that we really want to live. And this, this sounds a little bit, like a talk track that you hear quite a bit.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But if you actually think about what our parents and grandparents went through and the pensions that they were receiving and the comfort and the security that they had from their jobs, I don't think many people can get that kind of comfort and security anymore. It doesn't exist.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
No, exactly.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
So early age, I was like, shit, how much money do I have to have in a bucket? And now my views of retirement have changed. But early stage was like, how much money do I have to have in a bucket if I want to retire at 65? Because I'm not going to be getting a pension from wherever I'm working. And it was a lot of money.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
You start to do the math and you're like, well, if I'm only making X amount of dollars working at 95 in this company, that's really not going to get that bucket of money that I really want to live a good life until I die at 100, 120. God willing, right? So it was really a very logical decision to move away from traditional nine to five as quickly as possible. I started working in tech.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
One of the companies I was working at was acquired. That sort of opened my eyes to acquisition and private equity because it was a good exit. The guy made a lot of money. The founder made a lot of money. And then it was a light bulb moment. I just need to find a way to get a piece of a company or to build something that can eventually be acquired.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And that was sort of the rabbit hole that I went down. And then since then, I've worked in a variety of different startups. One was acquired five years ago. It was a broadcast software startup. It was acquired by Grass Valley. I've done the fractional CRO stuff. I've worked full time as co-founder CRO. So I just stuck around the startup universe.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And that sort of led me into what my content is right now, which is speaking to entrepreneurs, talking to entrepreneurs.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
anything anything that anything that is about entrepreneurship building from zero that stuff really interests me because i think that is i think that is people's path to freedom it's finding a way to build something from scratch build something that you own and i think that that's something that everybody should at least
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
If it's not something they jump into head first, which I don't think is smart, they should at least start to understand that to future proof themselves from being laid off, from not having a pension, from understanding that companies don't really give a shit about you at the end of the day. So I sort of just champion entrepreneurship as much as possible.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
What's going on?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
Yeah, Vegas is a fun city to live in because then you get everybody coming through for events. That's smart. Easy city to live in. That's why I moved to Miami.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
But none of that shit is entrepreneurship in my mind. I mean, there's bullshit entrepreneurship. It's gambling. Yeah, it's gambling. But then there's real like, okay, so you went to college, you went to university, you got your degree. Yeah. Smart. Now you've grown up a little bit. Mm-hmm.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Mastering Content Creation and Entrepreneurship: Insights with Scott D. Clary
And now you go into the, because keep in mind, we can't assume that everybody just jumps into building their own thing or jumps into startup land right away because it's not what the majority of people do. The majority of people go out after college and get a job. Yeah.