Step into the dynamic world of entrepreneurship and investment with Scott Clary. Discover the latest strategies for business growth, leveraging AI, and navigating the complexities of venture capital in an engaging and relatable format. Through his personal anecdotes and expert insights, Scott shares his journey from podcasting success to startup advising, offering valuable lessons for entrepreneurs of all levels.
Excited to learn his ways?
Step into the dynamic world of entrepreneurship and investment with Scott Clary. Discover the latest strategies for business growth, leveraging AI, and navigating the complexities of venture capital in an engaging and relatable format. Through his personal anecdotes and expert insights, Scott shares his journey from podcasting success to startup advising, offering valuable lessons for entrepreneurs of all levels.
Excited to learn his ways?
The beauty of entrepreneurship is the opportunity to figure it out for yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm Colter DeVries, owner of Ranch Investor Advisory and Brokerage Services. I'm an accredited land consultant with the Realtor Land Institute and proud member of ASFMRA.
Speaker 3:The Ranch Investor Podcast is the most downloaded and informative industry specific content that intrigues while entertains.
Speaker 2:Thanks for coming on the Ranch Investor Podcast. I'm going to give your introduction. Today. We have Scott Clary coming on. Scott is an entrepreneur, an investor, author and podcaster. Over your career, it sounds like you have sold and marketed to the most iconic Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 brands.
Speaker 2:Scott, I understand that your thought leadership has been featured in over 100 news sites and publications. You speak globally at industry conferences that I want to hear more about. As we get into this. You've had articles again I want to hear more about this featured in Forbes, wall Street Journal, hacker, noon, the Startup and a few others. I think this is going to be a good episode for all my broker agent listeners out there. And then lots of entrepreneurs, scott. We have people calling in who are like me. They're trying to figure out how to syndicate ranches using fractional ownership, co-ownership models, crowdfunding. There's a thousand ways to skin this cat per se. There's a lot of entrepreneurs listening in. I'm excited to have them tune in because you're also the founder and CEO of the Social Club, which is a highly vetted private members community of entrepreneurs, investors and executives. Of course, you have your own podcast, the Success Story.
Speaker 1:I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs there too.
Speaker 2:We talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. That's how we found you. It's one of the top 10 business podcasts with over 321,000 subscribers. You have an entrepreneur business newsletter with over 313,000 readers. Man, that's a lot to cover. 22 million downloads. Hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
Speaker 1:Let's get started. How did you accomplish this? Time and work is usually the answer to most problems. None of this is something that you do over a short period. It's something that you have to show up every day and similar to building a business, a personal brand, an audience, a community. Whether or not you want to be a successful investor, whether or not you want to be a successful capital allocator operator, it's all about time. I'm very bullish on the concept that if you commit 10 to 15 years to anything and you learn from your mistakes and you incorporate feedback loops into what's worked and what's not, and you iterate and you potentially pivot when things aren't going so well, but at least you consistently learn, I do believe that eventually you will end up some version of success at that thing. A podcast, a newsletter, a social audience, a great portfolio it's no different really. At the end of the day, it's consistently showing up and learning for a period of time and executing. Then eventually, like I said, 10 to 15 years later, you will have some version of it figured out.
Speaker 2:How about, in your experience, and the people you network with? How do they stay disciplined, not chasing shiny objects? Or he who chases two rabbits catches neither, because, as an entrepreneur, the wheels are always turning and you see an opportunity everywhere you go. How do you stay focused?
Speaker 1:First of all, I don't think that it's easy. I think that every entrepreneur succumbs to shiny object syndrome at some point. I think they succumb to it repeatedly. I think that you do have to obviously focus on what's urgent and important and what's going to be mission critical and moving the needle in your business or with your portfolio or with your investment. If you have a thesis like ranch investor is a highly specific investment thesis that's great. Now you aren't distracted by investing in early stage SaaS startups. You're not trying to do a private equity play for a dental office rollup or you're not putting whatever it is. You have a very specific thesis. I think that you understand what the North Star metric is that you have to achieve and that you focus on urgent and important tasks that lead you to that outcome. But I said that it's not easy because everybody succumbs to it. It's not like there's some secret recipe that over the course of your career, you'll never try something new that doesn't work out or you'll never be distracted by something that seems highly lucrative. I really do believe that you just have that North Star that you keep coming back to again and again and again. It takes a lot of I would say what's the word I'm thinking of. It takes a lot of self-discipline to focus on that thing that you know will actually yield the end result. I think that it becomes easier to have that self-discipline when you, like I said originally, you mentally commit to that thing for a long term, because then you're okay with it not working out right away and sort of, as you know, even as I'm speaking through this, I'm just thinking about what causes.
Speaker 1:What causes that shiny object syndrome? And I think what causes this shiny object syndrome is when the results that you want don't manifest immediately enough because you have not mentally prepared yourself for the time required to actually achieve those results. Realistic timeframe has not been set. So then you focus on something that in your mind you think could accomplish those goals a little bit quicker than the thing that you're already trying to do. And that's what distracts you. Because I think that shiny object syndrome would be less of a concern if you with 100% certainty could say, for example I'm starting a business, this is the one product I'm going to sell, this is the one market I want to sell into, and I know that it's going to achieve 10 million, 50 million, 100 million dollars in top line in 10, 15, 20 years. If that was a certainty, I think shiny object would be less of a problem. But because it's not a certainty and because expectations are not properly set, we don't set our own expectations properly in terms of what we actually have to do, the work that we have to do to get to where we want to go.
Speaker 1:I think that's when shiny object syndrome starts to manifest and it starts to like creep in and you're like I've been working for three years, it's not where I want it to be. Maybe I can try this new shiny thing that looks a little bit more exciting because it sounds like it could take way less time. But ultimately you're just starting your new cycle with something brand new that's probably going to take another 10, 15 years. So yeah, I think that it's hard. It's hard, but I think it's about being real with how difficult and how long it's going to take us to achieve what we want to achieve, which is fine, because long is very subjective.
Speaker 1:Like 10, 15 years. It sounds like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things in life, it's actually not that long. So are we actually committing to the journey that we want to sign up for Are we committing to some get rich quick version of entrepreneurship which isn't accurate and not true, and I think that's where the shiny object syndrome comes from. So I think it's maybe about setting the right expectations for what we're going to take on.
Speaker 2:It seems like a lot of people are chasing AI. Every pitch out there here now includes some form of AI and they think to raise investment you have to have some feature of AI. Does that seem accurate that now people are just using that to sell their core model, like, oh, we're not marketable unless we're doing AI?
Speaker 1:Well, this is not so different than crypto. This is not. This is the exact same thing. So this is what happens when you have, like, a trend. So it's very dangerous, right? It's because it's gonna be a lot of well-meaning entrepreneurs that can use the trend to go raise money for that particular company crypto, ai, whatever it is it could be cannabis, it could be solar, like there's all these trends, right. So it's exciting to build in a trend because there's a lot of momentum.
Speaker 1:When there's momentum, investors want to invest in these trends because they don't wanna miss out. There's FOMO, so you can. If you want to build a company in a trend, it's a little bit easier because you will find money a little bit easier than if you're building something that doesn't have FOMO around it, not to say you can't, obviously, raise money for a boring business. It's not topical, but I mean, the issue becomes now there's good actors and bad actors that take advantage of the fact that investors are excited about a trend and then, like in crypto, like with AI, you'll have people that have absolute business building a crypto or an AI company, and then people that have no business building a crypto or an AI company, so people that are genuinely building a company in the space. That is going to disrupt, it's going to change the way that we operate, live our lives, do business and it's truly revolutionary. Good for them. And if they have the cognitive abilities and the pedigree in the background and the proficiency to build, good for them.
Speaker 1:But the issue is when, like you said, somebody who has no business building an AI company puts like a dot AI or includes some AI component just to raise money. I don't think that's ethical and I don't think it's needed and I actually think it's a distraction. I think that if people were more confident raising money against their thesis and their actual business, then that's what they should do and they think that it's going to be easier to raise money because they include an AI component. They could maybe get a couple more investor meetings that way, but then ultimately you're going to be distracting yourself from building the actual product, because if your product was not good before you added an AI component, unless it's radically different, it's still going to be a shitty product with like an AI marketing spin. So that doesn't really solve for what you're actually trying to solve for and what's going to happen is you're going to have a hard time taking that product to market and you're going to have a hard time finding customers for your product because the products you stand alone, with or without AI, and then you're going to have a hard time delivering returns to your investors and it's actually going to be a very shitty experience for everyone involved.
Speaker 1:So I think that it's very short-sighted to add AI as a component on your business when your business has no business being an AI company, similar to when people were like tokenizing everything as part of their business and their business really just had no reason to be tokenized. And I think that some entrepreneurs first time entrepreneurs could be slightly short-sighted and not understand how building a company in a space that they have no business playing in is not going to be a very positive experience, like it's already stressful enough, but add on the stress of not delivering returns to investors and having to constantly explain why you're adding on this almost like gimmicky feature into your business. It's not a business that I personally want to build. There'd be too much stress for me. I like staying grounded in like what did I actually want to build and the audience that I actually serve, and if that isn't getting traction, then that's a business problem. That's a product problem and I can fix that. But it's not by adding on some bullshit component to what I'm trying to take to market.
Speaker 2:It sounds like if I'm going to summarize some of that sounds like your minimum viable product has to be market ready and you have to have product market fit. And then you have to have a beta test, proof of concept, and you have to have this feedback rather than creating novel solutions in an ivory tower that seem marketable, why don't we just find out what works at the least cost to begin with and improve upon that? Because it seems like these guys who blitz scale and, let's say, saas products and you even see it with well, especially with marketplaces, because marketplaces are non-proprietary. So you have to cash flow, or sorry, you have to blitz scale, because cash flow isn't really an option. It's about gaining. It's about gaining or cherishing. Blitz scaling is another issue.
Speaker 1:Blitz scaling is a bigger, is a separate issue than leveraging like a trending, like a trending topic, to raise money. Blitz scaling you could be like I could be like a consumer focused B2C SaaS product and never be profitable and raise, keep raising rounds at incredible valuations, exceptionally high valuations. I mean you saw this with, like I think we work as probably the most notable blitz scaling failure where you marketed it as a software company and it's a real estate play, but the valuations kept, you know, replicating software valuations, which allowed them to raise like billions and billions and billions and billions, and then obviously, we didn't know how that story played out. So, but I don't think many companies and I don't think many VCs really enjoy blitz scaling a company anymore. I think that's a little bit of an outdated play.
Speaker 1:I think that investors excuse me they want cash flow, they want to see that you're profitable, they want to see that you have a product again, mvp or otherwise, that resonates with an ideal customer profile as certain markets, solves a viable pain point and it's a difficult balance. Like, are we trying to build a profitable company? Are we trying to build something that is highly disrupted and has never been done before? I mean, there's a lot of nuance to this conversation, but I mean, yes, done improperly, but blitz scaling is also a huge issue, because it's not for us to be.
Speaker 2:It seems like it well, and you take in all that VC money and it seems like it forces you to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks that, yes, I've been watching this with some. What are we going to call them FinTech? They start as FinTech, and then About the payment processor what was it?
Speaker 1:Bolt or what was the one there was one Bolt or, and they blitz scaled and then they went bankrupt. It was like two years ago. It was one sort of competitor to strike. I can't remember which one it was, and if it wasn't Bolt, then I'm sorry for Bolt, but it was one of. There was like two companies that scaled way too fast and it was all FinTech.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and then did they try to launch other products. Hey, we've got to do something with all this VC money. We've got to get these 30% returns.
Speaker 1:I can't remember if they expanded their product portfolio. I think they tripled down on their primary offering. They had an $11 billion valuation at their last raise and there was some like their revenues were just like. It was like a couple of hundred thousand dollars a month, like it was so out of, like that is the epitome of blitz scaling. Like somehow the story was worth $11 billion, but if you actually looked at under the hood revenues, I don't even think we're a million dollars a month, which obviously does not lead to an 11,. Let's say you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars revenue per month, great starter company, but it's not. It's not an $11 billion company. So that is the epitome of the issues with blitz scaling and I think I don't think many VCs like to do that anymore because there's been so many issues and so many people have lost so much money.
Speaker 2:Well, just to be forthright and candid with you, scott, I am bootstrapping ranch investor for many, many reasons, but I believe it's up to me to prove the right product, product market fit, have it beta tested, have a good case that cash flows, and if it doesn't cash flow, that's on me. That's all coming out of my pocket.
Speaker 1:And you become a better entrepreneur by building a cash flowing, even profitable, business Like it's not as easy, but you figure out all the shit you have to figure out at a very early stage. And this is why I love bootstrapping, because then you don't take on the pressure. You don't take on the pressure to blitz scale or to hyperscale. You build it at your own pace. You know what's working and what's not and you continuously optimize and you focus on profitability versus just customer acquisition, which I actually think is a really sound business concept to focus on. I mean, after my last company was acquired, I dabbled in private equity and by that I really just mean I was doing some small. I was spinning up SPVs, doing small acquisitions like majority stake in smaller, like Ecom and CPG and like online businesses. But I mean in the private equity world like it's all cash flow, it's all based on cash flow. You look at the historicals, you look at the profitability, you look at basically the last five, 10 years of business and then some, and that's how you make your decision.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking about as somebody with a tiny bit of money do I wanna start to angel invest or do I want to contribute to like a venture capital fund, or do I want to raise a VC fund or raise a private equity fund or dabbling private equity, whatever it is?
Speaker 1:But for me it just made a lot more sense to hedge my bets on companies that had cash flow, that had profitability, and I think that VC has been, vc has been made to seem a lot sexier than it is, and I think that that's. I think that people are starting to come to terms with maybe throwing money into things that have no product, market fit or no viability is probably not the best thing, except if I understand that industry. If I came from that industry and I understand that industry, maybe I can figure out if it's a right team, right product and there's a good chance and I can offer some, maybe some, guidance and mentorship if they're fumbling a little bit. But I think to come and people throw money into VC without really knowing the industry or the product or the risk factor involved, which is why I love bootstrapping Cause.
Speaker 2:I think it's smart and it's healthy and it will stress off you Well, and I feel a strong sense of duty to the LPs, the investors, passive investors, and if I am going to be VC backed, then I would owe the VCs priority on their returns over the LPs. And you can't serve two gods. That's also true, and I've watched this with other online syndication platforms and it seems like they took all this VC money. The actual product were the LPs that they were getting to their online syndication platform. So those LPs were the product, it wasn't the real estate.
Speaker 2:And then you take in all this money and you find out, well, we can't really scale this to the returns the VCs need. So we're going to shift from prop tech to FinTech and from FinTech to real estate tech and from real estate tech to map tech, and it's just it seems like again chasing shiny objects or throwing something against the wall. See if it sticks. It's to me. I want to stick to my core beliefs and values and it's got to work for the longterm and it's got to work for me personally.
Speaker 1:And another fact that we didn't even consider or speak about is when you do take on vested interests, vcs, who are committed to these hyper aggressive growth goals, the other person that loses is the customers. So, as the customers would be the tenants, the customers would be your if you're in real estate, if customers could be actual customers. If you have a product company or service company, customers lose, customer experience suffers. A lot of venture capital firms grow at all costs and that could also be employees suffer, like there's like a lot of people. A lot of people end up suffering right when it's growth at all costs, absolutely, and you can still make, and not having growth at all costs does not mean you don't make money.
Speaker 1:You can make a lot of money in private equity. You can make a lot of money with LPs over VCs, but it's just about. I think that Silicon Valley ruined a lot of it, because before that I don't think there was leveraged growth, which is a different issue in traditional private equity world, but it wasn't like growth at all costs. So there's always listen. Whenever there's money invested, there's always good actors, bad actors. You just got to make sure you're with the right people. That's all that matters.
Speaker 2:And it seems like we are trending away from those, those mega valuations and capital raising for for series A and seed rounds and angel rounds and even series B, cs, that those are getting more and more difficult. So now you took in all this money over the last four years and you got to do a series C and it's it's harder to accomplish or you're going to, or you're going to fold.
Speaker 1:You're right, you're on a present right. I think. I think that if if you're just taking money from LPs and you're scaling and you're scaling that way, I think it's a healthier way. I mean, this is literally why I moved away from angels slash VC and and moved towards private equity. It's, I think, we think, very similarly. So I also took money LP money on some of the deals, but it wasn't like growth at all costs, it was. These are the expectations. This is a projected P and L. This is what we're going to stick to. This is a return we're going to aim for, but we're not trying to build this $10 million company into a billion dollar company. We'll get good returns, but it's not going to be a billion dollar company.
Speaker 2:So and in my world, rural America, salt of the earth, cowboys, ranchers, farmers, lieover state Americans. I come in and if I pitch syndication of ranches, or some some might call it fractional ownership, it's really just a direct participation program, not unlike any other DPP, real estate DPP. But to them what they hear is Wall Street. You're going to come in with the suits and you're going to monetize what we have and you're going to export, you're going to squeeze out all these profits and export it to Wall Street. So that's a huge pushback to where there are.
Speaker 2:You mentioned stakeholders and one of one of the community meetings I was at in central Montana, stakeholders got brought up and they said well, what's your plan for wildlife management and how are you going to manage biological risk? Cause what you're doing, you might incentivize more elk. It could be in your best interest that the elk population triples around your ranch, because that's more hunts you get to sell, more placements, more LPs you're going to bring in. On the other hand, someone said but it also might be scorched earth you might bring in a bunch of Texans and Floridans who just kill everything that moves and it drastically eliminates the elk population in that local area. So these stakeholders of different sides of the argument are asking me what's my plan? And I'm saying this is my plan. Talk to the guys and listen.
Speaker 1:And it's not, by the way, it's not exclusive, it's exclusive to your niche. So I have a good friend who does dental office rollups and that's very popular, by the way. You'll buy 10 dental offices at a million, two million dollars each and then roll them all up. You sell them at a multiple. It's a good traditional rollup, but DSOs our dental office rollups, dental services rollups are very, very popular. I'm not actually sure why they became so popular, probably because there was a huge opportunity there and it's owner operated. There's a play that can be repeated, but I do know that a big concern now is private equity firms doing these DSOs or other similar types of rollups and basically ruining the culture of the company, laying off all the team, like cutting massive amounts of costs, like basically deconstructing the business. So now, after a while of bad behavior in a market, you'll have owner operator like Dentist. They no longer want to even entertain or speak with somebody who's doing this, even if that person is a good business owner, a good leader, an ethical private equity or fund manager. That actually would be a huge value add to the patients, to the employees, and improve things versus just cut costs, fire here, fire there, basically destroy the patient experience, whatever it is that put in theory, like make the business more profitable. So there's good actors, bad actors and, similar to you, you have a different set of problems and pain points that the investor's thinking or the seller is thinking about, and I think you just have to address those and understand that. Like if you're going to be somebody who is buying these groupings of businesses, as opposed to just thinking about it through your lens as an investor, what is the pain point that the seller or the current operator owner actually cares about, and then not just thinking about it in terms of, oh, I'm going to include it as part of the sales strategy, like, how do I make a profitable business or holding company or strategy that actually fulfills the needs and requirements and worries and pain points of the potential seller, so it's not just lip service, like you're actually thinking, okay, so this is not part of my playbook I don't know much about, I don't know much about ranches, but all those problems make a lot of sense. So how do I actually address them so that I don't make people have sellers regret when they actually sell to me? Because sellers regret ends up being my reputation as an investor and I can maybe do one deal and maybe lie my way through that deal, but I can guarantee you won't do a second one or a third one and you'll have a horrible reputation.
Speaker 1:So reputation means a lot in this game as well, especially because you're doing like a again. Like a. It's a real estate play, but it also sounds a lot like a private equity play to a degree. So I think reputation means a lot. So you can't just go in there like Wall Street, because that's what they're worried that you're gonna do. So you lead with.
Speaker 1:How is this going to improve the environment, the ecosystem, the lives of the animals and the people that work for the ranch is how do you lead with that? Cause that's what people care about. Cause you're doing business with people. And I think sometimes people forget that and they think that you're doing business just with like spreadsheets and numbers, but you're doing business with like actual people. So that's always important. I mean that's what makes a good real estate investor versus a bad one. Like when they take over a building is, or they buy a six plus or a multiplex, or even like a single family home. Is the life of the individual that lives in that home better after you've come in, or is it worse? And I think the people I think I'm very bullish on the future of ethical capitalism I that's what I believe will win, because I think that that creates reputation. I think people want to do business with people that improve their lives. It's a very common sense to me, but I think that it's lost on some.
Speaker 2:So that makes me think about one of my clients, so I can say this without being too specific, but one of my clients is. Let's see how specific I want to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can. We can redact the names after see no getting in trouble.
Speaker 2:It is a religious organization that's very, very conservative and it's very unique. It's a novel religious organization. It seems to be closed off from the outside world, and they've been I guess that's what it is, but I won't say Okay, so but I have tremendously enjoyed working for them.
Speaker 2:They come in with an attitude when they enter a new area they say they've said this several times it's gotta work for everyone. Because a lot of times when they enter an area they drive up values and then the locals feel priced out and they bring in competing businesses and those other local services. Products feel undercut and undervalued because this religious sect, this group, has a very good brand premium for the products they create and the services they do. Their brand reputation is exceptional, so they are competitive in the areas that they market. But they have never once come in and said we're gonna undercut everyone. We're going to negotiate hard and get this seller down as much as we can and we're gonna steamroll the county commissioners to get what we want for zoning and regulation.
Speaker 2:They've never done it. They keep saying it's gotta work for everyone. We're here for the long term. Whether we do good or bad, there's gonna be people that don't like us just because we're here. So we have to kind of keep in mind to a high degree this reputation and I just really admire working with them because they think holistically in that regard.
Speaker 1:That's what they lead with as an investor they lead with. The self-awareness is obvious, which is great. Like they understand the environment they're gonna go into and they're not ignorant. They're like people are gonna hate us regardless but whatever, like let's just, people will always hate you. By the way, regardless of what you try and do, doesn't matter if you're investing or you're selling a product or you're building an audience, like there will always be people that don't love what you do. But if you're coming from a place of I'm doing the best I can and trying to impact the most amount of people in a positive way and you're aware of how to do that as effectively as possible, I think that's a great place to operate from as a professional, as an entrepreneur, as an investor, whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, let's take a tangent here in the last part of our episode and tell me more about some of your speaking engagements and your exclusive groups. I mean, you've been. You pitched how to sell anything in 2023, building a business from zero to 100 million.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of entrepreneurship stuff, so I like working with entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:How did you get invited to the real housewives of Miami? Listen, I think that.
Speaker 1:I mean that's through building a brand in a city and networking and putting yourself out there, and so the podcast has been a massive networking play right. The podcast lets me sit down with some of the most incredible people in the world. It is something that I think has absolutely changed my career and a lot of the things that you just mentioned. So I spoke at just more recently inbound Massive Conference put on by HubSpot. My podcast is sponsored by HubSpot. I've spoken at other events as well, but that was the most recent out of a boss. I think like 30,000 people go to that one.
Speaker 1:The invitation to the real housewives of Miami premiere. All that stuff is putting yourself out there, connecting with the right people, like speaking about the things that you know and you care about. And when you repeatedly do that and show up and speak about the stuff that you're doing, working on, care about, know about on social media for a period of time, like you do build a community around yourself. And when you build a community, that's when people are interested in learning more about you and inviting you to speak on certain subjects. And I mean I've worked in startups, I've worked for startups, I've mentored startups, advised startups, so it's a lot of like startup. That's most of the topics that I speak about how to start from scratch, how to build, how to go raise money, how to find your first figure and find your first 50 customers. What's an MVP? How to whatever All marketing sales, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:You were shitting on Bitcoin earlier, and are you not a Bitcoin billionaire in Miami? I'm not a.
Speaker 1:Bitcoin billionaire in Miami? I'm not of it. I don't shit on Bitcoin. I shit on people that have no business. I'm bullish on entrepreneurs that are building products that actually solve problems, and there's a lot of Bitcoin crypto people that do solve problems, but there's a lot that don't as well. So I think that I'm bullish on people that actually understand the problem that they're solving and build solutions around that problem and work on that for five to 10 years, not somebody that leverages hype and FOMO to build an unsustainable company. So no, I'm not a Miami. I'm not a Miami Bitcoin billionaire. If I was, maybe I wouldn't be bad silly pop. I think that's a lie.
Speaker 2:I like doing it too much, but Well, and we were talking about your the success story podcast and the involvement you have with the entrepreneurial community of advising, consulting, investing. You're deeply in with them. Why didn't you just go the route of being a McKenzie consultant? Why not McKenzie you want?
Speaker 1:me to. You want me to shit on Bitcoin and McKinsey in one podcast.
Speaker 2:No it is very common for the entrepreneur community to shit on McKinsey. But let's hear your, let's hear your side.
Speaker 1:They serve a purpose. Right, they serve a purpose. I think that the beauty of entrepreneurship is is the opportunity to figure it out for yourself, and when you figure it out for yourself, you become a different level of of effective and dangerous in the game of business, and I think that outs. So my career success has been based on me figuring it out first and then hiring people based on the things that I've already figured out. I think that when you, I think that agencies, firms, larger ones, especially even smaller ones in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, sometimes there's a little bit of a predatory aspect because the rates that they charge and the promises that they commit to can completely destroy startups again and again.
Speaker 1:And not not McKinsey. I've actually I've never worked with McKinsey. I've worked with I mean there's only four, so I worked with other ones. But I mean I've seen startups pay $50,000 per month retainers pre revenue with consulting firms. I've seen $50,000 to $75,000 for a pitch deck proving a market viability for a product that has no market viability or not that it has no market viability.
Speaker 1:But they'll tell you whatever you want to hear is the best way and that's not useful as somebody starting, that's not useful at any level in business, but it hurts more when you're just starting in the business, because the difference between a fortune 100 using a top four and getting bad advice or even good advice but most sometimes bad advice is that it won't bankrupt a fortune 100, but it could stop an entrepreneur from figuring out or even being able financially to take a product to market. So I am bullish on figuring shit out yourself, on not outsourcing your thinking, on not raising too much money, on trying to find your first 50 customers, on, if you're not a technical person, finding a technical co-founder that can help build you your product. So there's a lot of ways to do it and I don't find that agencies or consulting groups are a good way to start, because I've had more bad experiences with them than good. They do good work but not all the time and it can be really, really detrimental.
Speaker 2:Well now, now it makes perfect sense to me why McKenzie consultants become CEOs of fortune 500 companies and politicians. They tell you what you want to hear and then they bankrupt you.
Speaker 1:Well, it takes a certain kind of fortune 500 CEO and politician. Very few of them not all, but very few of them will have what it takes to build a company from scratch and keep, make it profitable and keep it in business for 10 years. That is a very certain skill set and, by the way, a startup CEO founder is not always the person to run a fortune 500 company. So I think that sometimes there's a disconnect. There's a disconnect in and people look.
Speaker 1:When you're, when you're building something from scratch, especially the first time, you look for anybody who, in theory, could make it easier. But sometimes you latch onto the wrong people or the wrong support or the wrong services and it actually just stresses you financially or it gives you bad advice based on where you are in the market. And I don't think that, as a startup founder, you should look anywhere else other than you figuring it out yourself. To a degree, you have. You have you have your mentors and you have your advisors and you have your co-founders, whatever. But I think a large portion of people that started did a lot of figuring the stuff out themselves before they started spending $50,000 on a pitch deck.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I hope the board, the board of Disney, is listening to this and I recommend they go find Travis Kalanick and see if he can replace Bob Iger you know, it's actually really interesting when you see somebody who is a hardcore operator going to a corporate.
Speaker 1:I mean, like, look at, this is what Elon is, elon's an operator. Elon builds stuff from scratch and Elon can build repeated things from scratch. He could jump into pick a pick a pick a category, pick an itch, pick an industry. He could build something in that industry. Cause after you've done it, once you can start to you can you understand what it will take to get there, and it's not so it's. It's not complicated work, it's just hard work. But I would be very interesting to see. I also think that government would be better if there was more entrepreneurs in government. I genuinely believe that.
Speaker 1:I think people that can figure shit out and aren't just great speakers but are great doers and are highly critical thinkers. I think that makes for better government too, but that's. I don't want to go into government because it's just it's more stress than you need, like who wants to do that, cause you're constantly being berated by the constituency, of course, and the entrepreneur is not used to that.
Speaker 2:The entrepreneur is kind of like some of my ranching clients who are 65, never married, no children, have been in rural America on the ranch their whole life. Bachelors, they do not know how to interact with other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they're good at what they know. It's unfortunate because some people would be better, they'd lead the country in a better direction. But I mean, if you're not comfortable taking up that mantle and doing that job, it's not easy. Your life is under scrutiny, a lot of public pressure, it's not fun. I mean, look at the trying to think of. We had Mike Bloomberg. He ran, didn't do so well. Obviously Trump's very entrepreneurial. He's very, very polarizing, but a very entrepreneurial person. But not many other entrepreneurs Vivek, vivek. Actually, I like Vivek, I like Vivek. I had him on my show a while back. I don't mind him. He's very smart. Biotech right. Yeah, he's another entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:But some of this discussion reminds me of a conversation I was having with my attorneys who were drafting the PPM and the LP agreement and the structure. So you've got the S corp right, the holding entity that rolls up from the SPV and the management LLC. You know the structure, yeah, and so we're figuring out the term sheet. And how do you monetize recreation on a ranch? How do you, how do you provide that benefit? Well, property right. When it's when it's on a ranch, it's a property right. But when it becomes part of an SPV, it's it's more of a feature to benefit. And how do you allocate that so that it's not a time share?
Speaker 2:And my attorneys were saying, geez, coulter, this is, this is some risk, this is some liability. We, we've never seen anything like this. This is pretty tough to do, are you sure? Let's just go the conventional, normal route and you, you lease out the hunting, lease out the recreation, and that's the best way to do it. Don't offer it to the LPs. If they're going to invest in your PPM, it's because the cash flows and the risk adjust to return. So don't dangle this carrot of. They can, they can access the ranch because it's just too hard. And I go well, guys, here's my story. As a kid on a ranch, grown up on a ranching family, there were never any SOPs, there was never any formal training, no onboarding and everything we did. If I, if I did it just slightly wrong, my grandpa and my dad would scream at us brothers, god damn it, just figure it out.
Speaker 1:Just figure it out. That's a quote. By the way, there's no SOPs on a ranch.
Speaker 2:And so I told the attorneys. I said I've just got this. I've got this belief that we can just figure it out, and it's in the back of my head. I'm being being screamed out. God damn it. Just figure it out, coulter.
Speaker 1:You know what and and I love it, by the way, I love, I love when you sort of break the mold on something too. It's very entrepreneurial mindset. I think it's important, but I think you figure it out. I mean, yeah, fine, some liabilities, but not not insane liabilities, not not beyond. I mean, people are people are shooting people into space. I'm sure you can figure out your liabilities for having people on a ranch Right. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure some disclaimer you can get them to sign. It's not, it's not going to not going to be the end of you. But I mean, yeah, disrupt the experience a bit. That's what creates. Create novel experiences. That's also what's fun about entrepreneurship. You create things that haven't been created before, or you give people access to a lifestyle or an experience that they normally couldn't have had or they didn't think was possible, something that was so normal for you. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the listeners are loving hearing this from you, scott, and they're going to feel inspired to learn more. Where. Where can they find you and best best see more of?
Speaker 1:your work. Um, if you want to go to the website, the website has all the social. So it's scottdclary, c L A R, ycom or I got all the same tags on social, which is pretty, pretty fun. So it's at scottdclary and they can check out the podcast, check out more content like this. Um, yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2:Well, scott Clary the success story podcast. Thanks for coming on the ranch investor podcast and sharing your experience.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, Matt. I appreciate it.
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