Scott Oldford 0:00
If you’re a first time entrepreneur, I think taking money is the worst thing you can do. You’re so much more dumb when you have a lot of money. I cherry pick the things that didn’t go right, because it’s really the only place they’ll find lessons. Listen people being mad at Dodge shows you how fucking low people’s IQ is. Attention is, in my opinion, the ultimate currency. You can take attention, you can turn it into influence. You can turn it into audience. You can turn it into money. I made like 2530 grand when I was nine. The main reason somebody can’t go to eight figures is they enjoy the feeling of significance.
Brad Weimert 0:30
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad weimert, and as the founder of easy pay direct I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Scott oldford, it is good to see you, my man. Thank you so much for carving out some time. Absolutely Good to be here, man. So you have a bizarre, interesting story that we could go down a bunch of rabbit holes with. But sure, a couple bullet points. You made your first million at 16. You racked up a shitload of debt after that. And today, you have invested in a whole bunch of companies, and the portfolio is eclipsing 100 million a year in revenue. We cross paths because I invested in the company that you have recently, and I want to talk about that. But first and foremost, you bootstrap things, and now you’re raising money for different things. Quick question, when should an entrepreneur Bootstrap and when should they raise money?
Scott Oldford 1:55
I don’t know that was quick, but I would say, I would say, that’s a whole podcast episode. You know, like, I didn’t raise a single dollar, really, until 2022, okay, so, so I went my whole real entrepreneurial career, where the most in terms of money I took is someone partnering with me, and part of them partnering was them putting in money, but not like, Hey, give me half a million dollars and, you know, I’ll send you money back when it works, or, you know, whatever it might be. And so I would tell you that I would recommend any entrepreneur not using money from investors until they’ve got at least maybe one success, and try to scale down what you’re trying to go after. So like, if you’re a first time entrepreneur and you’re like, I want to create $100 million company, it’s like, man, maybe you should create, like, man, maybe you should create, like a $5 million company first, or like a ten million company first. And the reason is, is that, and one of my very first mentors, when I was 1818, ish years old, I went to him because I had, you know, a big million dollar idea, and it was great idea. And I went to him, and he said, Scott, he’s like, I love you. He’s like, you’re great, you’re awesome. I love mentoring you. I love being around you. You get so much energy, but until you failed, I won’t invest any money. And at the time, I was like, that’s some dumb that’s some dumb shit, right? This doesn’t make any sense. And of course, now it makes a lot of sense, because you’re so much more dumb when you have a lot of money than when you don’t have a lot of money. And so like earlier on, money makes it so that things that are problems are not evident. And of course, later on, once you have a business model, once things are good, money is obviously the amplifier. But money amplifies both sides. So like your your lack of understanding, your lack of knowledge, your lack of experience, really shows. And so this is why, when I invest in companies, I draw out the money over time, versus giving it to them all at once. And so because, you know, I’ve seen what happens when someone does an investment round, meaning I’ve been in the company advising the entrepreneur, when they do, like, a $20 million investment round, and they just go bonkers. They go from from from famine to feast, and they’re starting to spend, you know, 60 grand on T shirts and, and, and so, you know, I think, I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot of persistence, consistency, determination, that not having money gives you, that I think is needed to be able to be like a steward of someone else’s money, and it builds a level of self trust, versus just competent in competence or confident in competence. And so that’s what I’d say. And then I you know, if you’re a first time entrepreneur, I think taking money is the worst thing you could do. I think, yeah, it might work, but your next thing is probably going to be a big failure unless you were able to take a lot of money from it. And so, yeah, so I’d probably stay away from raising money. And I’d also stay away from raising money where you’re like, Yes, I’m raising money, but. But like, if I need to buy out every single one of my investors for anything I’m doing 18 months and I’m done, right? Most people are when they like that, when they take money like, they now have a boss, right? Whether or not that’s a whether or not someone adheres to that, you have a boss. And so what I like is like, I have a threshold of, like, you know what? I won’t raise anything more than this unless my net worth is this, because I basically don’t want to create a scenario where I can’t leverage myself out of the situation where, if I get an investor that ends up being a little crazy, or whatever it might be. And I never want to be in this case where anybody could ever say I gave Scott money and I didn’t get it back, or I didn’t have a good experience. Like, I never want that to be the case and and so that makes it so I can’t go and say, Oh, let me raise $100 million because that’s not where I am. So and that might be a limiting belief. I’m sure I talked to lots of people, and they do not have that. But for me, like my reputation matters more than my integrity, and reputation matters more than, Oh, let’s 100 act something. You’re right.
Brad Weimert 6:06
That was not a quick question. So the but here’s the thing, here’s here’s the thing, like you said a you said a whole bunch of different things in there that I think are relevant, and they’re also relevant at different points in the journey, right? So when you’re new, the most important thing that you can do, probably is build your own skill sets. And I think what you said is, if you have a lot of money, you can sort of mask problems without really working through them. You can throw more money at it, but never really learn the lesson. And it might just end up working because you threw money at it, but it doesn’t mean you actually solve the problem,
Scott Oldford 6:41
and the lesson will probably not always, but the lesson will probably come later, and it will be more painful than it was when it was a small problem, because it can mask a problem that festers and, you know, turns into something much, much, much larger. Having money to solve problems, obviously, that’s part of business, but earlier on, you know, sub a couple million a year. It’s very, very, very important that you, like, get good at actually solving the problem, versus just like, bypassing the problem, which is what I see most people do, and then it just comes back up, like, three late. It was three years later. Or when you go to exit, they’re like, Oh, we didn’t really solve this problem, and now your valuation is tanked. And, you know, all these different types of things
Brad Weimert 7:20
that happen. Yeah, I’m with you, and I think, you know, the other thing that’s really interesting, and you you mentioned, maybe it being a limiting belief, but I think it’s inevitable that when you, unless you’re, you know, a sociopath, when you take on money, you feel some sense of obligation to the people that gave you money, and it changes the way that you approach things, it changes your risk tolerance and it changes your behavior. You also have people often when you take money in your ear, and some people, or some investors, are more actively trying to guide you than others, and it depends on what kind of money you take, right and how you raise money. But I’m very much with you in this absolute rebellion of authority where I don’t want to listen to anybody. 100% Yeah, 100% well. And I mean, all the money I’ve raised have been either a good friend, someone I’ve mentored or or someone that I’ve worked with in business that referred some, which is obviously how we got, you know, more deeply connected outside of just being random Facebook
Scott Oldford 8:18
friends and and and to me, that’s my comfort level. And I also think there’s a comfort level where it’s like, let’s say it all goes to shit, right? The way I look at it is okay if it all goes to shit, if I, if I’m only taking, if I’m taking money from people, that number one, if it lost it, it’s not the end of the world. We’re not talking about some, you know, consumer investor, right? So, so then the second part is, can I go and help them with something that makes back that money, or even more money, if the if absolutely everything went to shit, like, if everything went down, and that, to me, is like, my litmus test for personally taking money. And that may not be necessarily the right way to go about it, but like, I think that’s just how I’m wired, like, that’s just my my my belief system. And I’ve met people that honestly do not care about who like as long as they have the money, they literally don’t care, and they don’t care about the person. And to those people, I don’t understand that. They arguably get growth faster, but they generally don’t end up being lights. They generally don’t end up being people you want to be around. And to me, it was like, I want to, I want to, like, one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed from having investors is I become closer and build friendships with people that I probably wouldn’t have most because everyone that I’m investing isn’t really giving me advice. They’re really more along, like I might ask them for advice on this or that or whatever, or an introduction, or whatever it might be. But some of my best friends over the last few years, well, five years, if you include, like, business partnerships and and partially acquiring businesses or equity like, that’s where all my friends have come from, and, and as long as you can kind of skirt the relationship and not kind of like, think. About, you know, and ensure the power dynamic is right for me. Yes, some of my best friends have started someone referring and, hey, let me toss 100 grand into this thing you’re acquiring, or whatever. So, yeah, it’s been, I didn’t expect that to be the case, but it’s been really that case. Well, so
Brad Weimert 10:18
that that that brings up the next point here, which is, there are a million ways to raise money. And, you know, there’s the full sort of like Silicon Valley approach of, you know, multiple rounds big money, smart money, getting guidance through it, big name firms doing it. And that’s, you know, equity and diluting your own shares in the company, to give it to other people. Recently, I gave you some money for something you’re doing, and it was, it was debt. And said another way for people that don’t get that is you just borrowed money from me, basically. And it was super simple, and it was a one page agreement. Tell me how you approach raising money now, and why you do it this way?
Scott Oldford 11:03
So I do it that way for a few reasons. Number one, as you said, it’s very simple. I don’t have someone. If I go to somebody and I’m like, hey, you know, let equity. As soon as I say, hey, equity, it’s going to be a three to six month conversation, right? Because they want to know what they’re getting themselves in. Because for all intents and purposes, most of the time when you buy equity in a business, you’re never going to see $1 of that until it sells. And the chances of a business selling at a good multiple is statistically pretty low. Even though I might be a maverick at scaling businesses, it might statistically pretty low. The number, the second part is it gives me a lot of flexibility, right? Like, let’s say, you know, all the businesses I’m in, some are going to be losers, some are going to be winners, some are going to be a jackpot. And so it gives me some ability to have a little bit more control. If this isn’t going good, I have the ability to it just, it’s a starting point to build trust, to be like, Hey, do you want to come in on this other business in equity, after you’ve seen kind of how I’m managing things? Do you? Do you want to put in more into this business or that business, or whatever it might be? I think there’s that. And then I do, like majority of the businesses where I’m the majority owner, I control, almost always over 90% of the actual direction of the company, the equity and, you know, these different types of things. Now, there’s obviously some downsides to that. The downside is, I’ve got to be confident enough to say, Yeah, I’m, I’m happy, you know, putting my own name on the line to be able to make it work. And that’s, of course, why most people don’t do it, right? And of course, you know, the dirty truth is, you’re kind of putting your name on the line anyways. So, like, it doesn’t really matter, you know, people get all kind of, like, up in arms about a personal guarantee. It’s like, Hey, you give me my I’m gonna give you money back, you know. I mean, like, I’m not gonna live in reality, if something goes completely wrong, it might be different than we thought it was. But, you know, that is the absolute worst case scenario and and so I like that, and I also think that it is, it’s really cheap money, because if you’re confident about a business, and I’m paying, generally speaking, 15 to 20% interest, and I’m only paying interest, and I’m not paying back the principal until three or four years into the future, which is generally how I do these deals, which is anywhere from three to five years into the future, I give back the principal. There’s probably a grace period at the beginning, and then there’s interest payments on a monthly basis. Well, I don’t have to go to a bank. I don’t have to raise money. It’s very, very simple to be able to do essentially, hard money for business growth. And and as long as I’m in a business, and I have the business is structured well enough, and I’m not going into a business where I’m like, I don’t know if it’s gonna work at all or not, but it’s something where I’m like, Yeah, you know what? I think the worst case scenario, if I sold this business, I could pay back all this money and then some, and that’s and that’s the only time, obviously, I do that. Or if I’m in a growth phase, and I’m like, oh, you know what, I’m getting four, four to one row ads, but I don’t have enough money, and, you know, like that. You know, the the Pro, one of the problems with building a portfolio, way I have it, is it’s not big enough to go to like JP Morgan and get a line of credit, right? It’s not big enough to get somebody to underwrite it, and eventually it will, but until then, it’s like my real options are, you know, either get that structured like that, or to go and get a fund to kind of, you know, overview it and so on. But what I like about this is like it allows me to have all these relationships and all these people that are basically silently rooting for me and helping me without me really having having to do anything extra besides takes of money, yeah, and that, to me, has helped me so much over the last three or four, you know, since I’ve started doing this in 2022 and so there’s that. And you know, also say, majority of the deals and majority of things that I’m in my portfolio, I don’t have them. Majority ownership. I actually stay more to under 25% ownership in something, and when I do, you know, let’s say debt on that, I’m actually helping the entrepreneur in that business raise the debt to apply that money to generally growth. So to transition the question to a portfolio majority, I’d say 25% I fully own 75% I’m an under 25% owner, and I do that because there’s only so many businesses you can you can own, and kind of think about outside of just advising.
Brad Weimert 15:35
Yeah, no, I agree with you. And I think you said something I liked, which was, you have these people that are on your side and rooting for you, and if you have investors that you know, and when things get tough, it is in their best interest to support you 100% right? So I had a recently, I did a loan to a business from somebody I know, like trust, high performer, and we had a, basically, it was a, it was a, it was hard money. It was a one month term for a good chunk of cash. And every day that he was passed, that month was a $500 penalty per day he was 30 days late, which is another 15 grand, right? But when he paid it, it didn’t really make sense for me to take $15,000 out of his cash flow, because I knew what would hurt his business to do that. It’s so to me. I was like, Look, contractually, yeah, I could, I could rake you over the coals for another 15 grand, but sure that’s not the Win. Win here, what’s what’s the point? And it’s because I have a vested interest in his outcome.
Scott Oldford 16:45
And I think that, I think that that’s the thing about structuring like this. Because obviously, I’ve been on both sides. I’ve both taken money, and I’ve also, you know, given money in this way. And the way I structure giving money is a little bit different than the way that I generally take it, but because of the fact I’m generally advising and mentoring someone that I’m getting money to versus when I’m taking money, that’s generally not the case, but it is a very much a relationship basis. And the way I go about this is like, is this person going to be with around for the next 2030, years my life? And so, so I had something really difficult happen in 20 around this happened in 2023, so I put in about $8 million of my own money into the company to invest in the choir, and I raised about another 8 million and then I had another $15 million that two people signed all for both of those people I’ve worked with, um, great friends, and I built the whole structure of what I was doing based upon having essentially an extra $15 million in cash and and obviously it was my mistake to, like, you know, until money hits a bank account, It’s not real. But that’s number two. Number one, it does not matter if there’s a contract sign, okay? It only matters if the contract signed and then the money sent, but before the money said it doesn’t exist. And anyways, so that was my fault, but both people called me the same. It was, or sorry, July of 2023, and one her his wife serving the divorce papers, and the other one got, I think, third stage cancer. Thankfully, cancer is all fine. Unfortunately, they ended up fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, they divorced now. So both of them were like, we can’t do this. And at that time, you know, if you’re building a portfolio very quickly, you’re gonna go in the red as you’re building it to be able to build the infrastructure. So I was burning like, 300 G’s a month. Three, 400 G’s a month in the red on this particular business. And I like, you know, I remember getting both phone calls. It was a Wednesday and a Thursday, back to back. And, you know, Wednesday, I was like, ah, you know what? It’s no problem. I got this, you know, figure it out. And then it was like, back to back, and I’m like, Well, what do I do? Uh huh, and, and so I had two choices, which was, I had somebody that was willing at somebody that was willing to give $20 million but they were an institutional investor, and I felt like I was going to sell my soul, or I had to basically fire a bunch of people and take about 25 to 35% of where I was putting money and just shut it up. So that’s what I did, and that decision probably lost me three to maybe three and a half million dollars to do that, because we’re kind of, you know, changing directions and and, you know, looking back, I’m like, Yeah, you know what. Everything’s meant to be. It’s fine, you know, so on and so forth. But it was a, it was a very difficult time of and it also taught me. Don’t take, at least, in my current case, don’t take more than a million and a half per person, because a million and a half you can replace, right? You pick up the phone. Be like, Alright, let me get 15 million, at least for me and my current life. Was not a, Hey, this is going to be easy to replace, right, right? It was like, this is, this is not going to be easy to replace, and also the mindset element of like that was very difficult, of just like, no, like, all, all engines going this way, and then it was just a swoop and to add into this. And I think I’ve shared this with you in a normal way, it would have been fine. But I was also pouring about 300 to $4,000 a month into building our compound here in the Midwest. So I was like, all in on the business, all in the house, and I was also took time away, and I probably scaled down my mentorship business from six or 7 million a year to about three to three and a half to spend time on the portfolio. And it was like, just like everything all at once. And and obviously that taught me to just, you know, probably little bit better planning, and also just a little bit more on the risk tolerance side. But you know, I, in those two years, I learned enough to write in my next book. So, you know, it’s a silver lining my whole life is just me screwing things up and getting out of it, and then telling other people how not to do it. And then I get, I make all my money back post, a lot more with that alone. So it’s not the, not the end of the world, but, yeah, it’s, it’s, and then I would also say to, you know, if you’re going to do this, like, dip your toe on a singular deal, and, you know, and the worst case scenario is not the, you know, the deal that we did, like I took on a quarter of the deal size in, you know, kind of small checks, anywhere from 25 to 100 grand. It for the deal. And it’s like, okay, well, you know, the asset itself is worth far more than 25% of this deal. So, like, worst case scenario, we pay some extra interest, and we exit, and, you know, it’s the end, you know, the end of that. And in the best case scenario, it turns into, you know, 5x this current size, and I pay you back and the other people that invest in it, and you’re happy you got interest, and I’m happy because I retain the entire equity. Yeah, that’s
Brad Weimert 22:17
a fun story. When things go sideways,
Scott Oldford 22:23
dude, it went, it went, it went, it went sideways. And I had to say, I never got sued by a single person. I never even even, not even close. It was the first time my life where I was like, man, people really got my fucking back. And I never felt like because I was always like, yeah, you know what? Everyone’s got your back when you’re fucking you got money. Everyone’s got your back when you got fucking ten million in the bank, and you’re making a ton of money and you’re fucking, like, killing it, everyone got your back. Everyone’s like, yes, God’s fucking great. And there’s only a few people that I’m like, Yeah, you know what, they didn’t have my back, and that’s fine. Nothing against them. They didn’t have to. But, you know, coming out of that, I was just like, Man, I feel more confident than ever that I have the right people around me. Well,
Brad Weimert 23:06
I think there are a bunch of lessons there. One is contingency planning is important, right? And, well, let me actually, I think that that’s a good lesson. In general, when things go wrong, it’s very common for more than one thing to go wrong at the same time. Good fucking.
Scott Oldford 23:21
A dozen things went wrong all at the same time, right? Usually, yeah, if there was like, only three would have been fine. But it was like, everything that could go the way we didn’t want it to go went the way we didn’t want to go. Yep,
Brad Weimert 23:34
yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the that’s like, I think I probably say this a lot when I’m recording, but people routinely ask me, just like, you know, random people in my life, like, Oh, hey, how’s it going? And I’m like, Yeah, fuck off. About the 17 different things I have going on, and the five that are terrible right now, and the 12 that are good, you know, like, I don’t have the time to go through all the time. Yeah,
Scott Oldford 24:01
yeah. It really is when people are like that. I’m like, Well, you know, which part of life, which sub segment of life, do you want to talk about, well and
Brad Weimert 24:09
like, do I really want to go that deep on any of these topics with you right now in the seven minutes I have available? But anyway, I digress. So the other thing that I want to know here is how much like when you look at I mean, certainly the way the integrity that you have in business has a lot to do with who sticks around and how they show up when things go bad. How much does your personal brand online play into your ability to raise money when you need it? Everything I
Scott Oldford 24:41
wouldn’t be able to raise the money I raised at the rates I raised at the deals, the deal type I like, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this. Because the only real way I’d be able to do this is, like, go to someone that I already had, like, a really good relationship with, that I already worked with for years. And I mean. You know, at the end of the day, it’s just like it, it both allowed me to raise the money, but it also allowed me to be have a lot of flexibility when things didn’t go the way I wanted it to, to go back and restructure a deal, or restructure whatever, because there was, like, this underlying trust of, like, you know, what? Scott’s not going anywhere and, and he’s never gone anywhere, and I don’t think he’s going to try to screw me. And, and obviously, you know, part of this too, is like, take money from people that, like, if you can’t pay him back right away, it’s not the end of the world. Yeah, right. So, like, you should never take money from anybody where it’s like, they’re counting on that money the day it, it happens because you don’t know what’s going to mess up. You don’t know what’s going to mess up. And, and you, you, that’s a different level of pressure, right? There’s a different level of pressure. And, and, you know? And so when I’ve had, when, at that time, I had to go back and I had to restructure some deals, which was the fucking one of the hardest times in my life, honestly, because it’s just embarrassing, you know, I’m like, oh, like, I thought we were going this way, and I need to do this. And I remember there’s one particular person and that I remember very, very deeply. And I was like, hey, I need to kind of share with you what’s kind of and they were very like, they’re good. They still are very good friend of mine and and in this particular case, they invested about $3 million into what I was doing. And I was like, Hey, we’re gonna need to, like, restructure this. And I was like, why don’t you fly out so I can show you what I think is gonna happen. So we flew out. We were both in California, so not a big deal. Went for a drive, laid it kind of all out for him. And he’s like, don’t worry about it, man. Like, what do you mean? Don’t worry about don’t I don’t need interest whatever. Can you get it back to me by 2030 shit, just don’t worry about it. He’s like, I I’m betting on you. I know this is a fucking little blip in the fucking whole thing. Don’t worry about it. 10% a year. Pay it back to me if you can do 2030, awesome. If you need a bit more time, let me know. And, I mean, you know, to be clear, like I was like, going in the conversation being like, Man, this is gonna, this is gonna this could suck. You know what? I mean, this is gonna suck. And, and, and, you know, I wasn’t like, that wasn’t the outcome I was looking for by any stretch imagination. You know, I was really funny, because after that, I don’t know, three or four months later, I connected with someone, and they went in on this kind of whole crypto project and made like, $12 million together or something, and, and so I was like, okay, you know, it all kind of works itself out. And it was, I don’t think without my personal brand, that would have been as easily
Brad Weimert 27:46
accessible. And I also think
Scott Oldford 27:48
that, like, I’m a character, you know what I mean? Like, I have a big vision. I have, like, you know when, when people around me, they’re like, You know what? This guy’s probably like, I’m 33 now, I’ve done a lot for being 33 I would bet on me, right? Right? And I think, I think that that also comes in the equation when you’re kind of doing these different types of things. And obviously I’m cherry picking the things that, you know, there’s lots of things have gone great and right. I just generally, I cherry pick the things that didn’t go right, because it’s really the only place they’ll find lessons. Well,
Brad Weimert 28:18
I think, yeah, and I want to, I want to jump to a time when you didn’t have the social network in the background and hit on hit on the beginning here for a second, but you have bet on yourself many times. And I think this goes back to the first comment, which is, don’t take money in the beginning. Figure out how to solve problems in the beginning. Bootstrap and don’t just chug vodka publicly on videos,
Scott Oldford 28:43
product placement for house nine, the best water in the world, but it does look like vodka.
Brad Weimert 28:48
Well, let me, let me still, let me ask you this. How did you make a million dollars when you were 16?
Scott Oldford 28:53
Sure. So when I was not eight or nine, I taught myself PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML, all those things. And I was always entrepreneurial, like I had my dad came home when, I think it was seven, with like, a dozen chickens, and then I was like, wow, let’s get more. And then, you know, a couple years later, we end up with a couple 100 chickens selling eggs to all the senior homes. And I don’t know, I made like, 2530 grand when I was nine, doing that. And so I was just like, I was just like, not a kid like I didn’t really have friends. I lived in the middle of nowhere. The closest, like my school was 20 minutes drive away from me, and so I just got super into Palm Pilots and like the old PDA, like before the phone, yeah, and and so I ended up building the largest, or one of the largest, online communities of Palm Pilot owners in the world, okay, which, obviously there’s not a lot of competition and and so that taught me programming. That taught me community building. It taught me marketing. We had, you know, 30, 40,000 active users a day,
Brad Weimert 29:53
just talking about Palm Pilots. Damn. What platform did you build this on? How did you build envision.
Scott Oldford 29:59
Power board, envision power board. And so, yeah, so we’re back in the vision power board. Really funny, actually, last, I don’t know, last year, the owner reached out to me and it was like, I remember you. And that was really cool. So we so what ended up happening is I started modifying the software, and then other people wanted the software modified, but there was no one to modify the software. Like there really weren’t any programmers. And so basically, I had this arbitrage between, you know, kind of, like all these teenagers and like college students that were into programming, that didn’t know any business skills, and me talking to these people that were trying to run these, you know, communities as a business. And so, you know, I’d be paying, like a program or 30 bucks an hour, and, like, billing it out at 300 and and so it was like this massive arbitrage. And so, and then we built, I built the largest, the largest with some with a couple of other people that were not friends, they were just in their 40s, like business owners that were in the golf so we built the largest golf community in the world. We built the largest aquatic fish community in the world, one of the largest poker communities in the world. And through all these things, it did incredibly well. And so and then I went downhill, because the problem is, is that when you if you’re first time entrepreneur, and it really hits, there’s two types of entrepreneurs at the beginning, one, everything hits, and it’s just like magic, and the other where it’s like, you’re spending 10 years eating shit, and then maybe it works. And the only difference is right time, right place, and that’s really the only difference. And so for me, it was just like, right time, right place, and I was just obsessed about and I’d stay up until, you know, two o’clock in the morning in my like, bedroom, like, just figuring shit out. And I was just, like, I was amazed by it, a little bit ADHD, maybe a little slightly on the spectrum, a little bit on, like, obsessive, like, Oh my God, let me figure this out. And, and, yeah, and this that, that that was 16, that was 17, that was 18. And then, you know, how I got a million dollars in debt was I had this great idea to, you know, there’s all these cars around. I’m like, how many people would, you know, if they got paid two, 300 bucks a month, put advertising on their car? So we built this thing called ads on the move. And so it was this app that you download. So this is in 2010 2011 2012 around there. And this is the app. And you’d scan your car, take pictures of your car, and then it would match you to other brands that were, you know, aligned to your political values and your own values and this type of thing. And then, you know, you’d go and get ads installed, and then you’d get, basically PayPal each month from these companies. So we had, I don’t know, 40,000 cars sign up. We had, we had all this momentum. We had all this momentum. We had, you know, the largest pizza company in Canada. We had, via a lottery Corporation. We have lots of we had both sides. Like, you know, I spent a lot of time on this. I put in a lot of my money, like well over a million dollars. And I did have a business partner, and that business partner, his main business, his partner, was trying to buy him out, and it was his family’s business, and he had to raise $16 million in 60 days to do a reverse purchase. And it was the same time I was raising money from actual investors. And it’s just the whole everything another time everything that went wrong could go wrong. That’s not what screwed me, though. At that point, I wasn’t in debt. It was I took the team and I tried to bring it to my aid, my marketing and programming agency, and I blood myself dry, trying to, like, not wear from that were building ads on the move. So it was like, hey, this ads on the move. Things not going to gonna work. I’m locked with, you know, this, this is not working, because at the same time, I still had the programming company and the marketing agency and that type of thing that I essentially built, and that’s where my cash flow was coming. And it was this scenario where it’s like, I couldn’t let go of the thing that didn’t work, and I didn’t want to let go of the people, because I sold them a vision that they bought into. And, you know, through, through being selfless, I was incredibly selfish. And, you know, I had to fire everyone then. And then I was in a case where I was, you know, well, over a million dollars in debt and in a really tough place, and I had to sell the agency for $1 to another marketing agency and and avoid bankruptcy for pretty much how it went. So, yeah, that was, that was a painful experience. That was, that was, that was when this was actual vodka instead of water. It was a real, it was a real tough time. And, you know, I’m glad I went through it, and I’m glad I went through it the time I did, because I had over time I did, because I had no responsibility. And, you know, it’s a great story, and I learned to look at a lot of lessons, but it was, it was, it was tough. It’s a lot easier to look back and be like, yeah, that was great. But, you know, at the time, like it was working, like 19 hours a day,
Brad Weimert 34:55
try to get out of that. What’s the, what’s the biggest lesson you got from that? Yeah. As soon as you
Scott Oldford 35:01
know in your heart that something’s not going to work, cut it, because your mind is going to your ego is going to try to overpower you the truth that you know is true.
Brad Weimert 35:12
How do you reconcile that with something being difficult and pushing through until it works? I
Scott Oldford 35:18
think you got to be like, All right. You got to set something. You got to set like a number that you’re like, Okay, I’m going to wait until this until this time. So, like, in 2015 I started another marketing agency that did really well. So I went to this marketing agency, sold it for $1 I was supposed to stay there for three years. I stayed there for nine months because I’m not good getting told what to do. It’s only time that anyone has ever been able to tell me what to do in my entire entrepreneurial career. And fucking sucked. And so I went, and I broke that contract, which is also very stressful. And so I went, and this is another marketing agency. And then someday, one day, in 2015 someone’s like, Hey, can you teach me this online marketing stuff? And I’m like, teach you this stuff. Like, who am I teach you. And they’re like, No, seriously. I was like, Okay. And at the same time, I had this little podcast that I had run in a little Facebook group with like 1000 people, and I posted a Facebook group, Hey, anybody interested in doing this? And I had 22 people pay me $1,100 US, which I was in Canada at the time, so it was like 1500 bucks per person. And I was like, You mean, I don’t have to do anything, I just gotta show up and teach, talk to people. I was like, Yeah, I’m used to, you know, these big proposals and all this work and, you know, this type of stuff. And I was like, Man, this could be, this could be it. This could be, like, the next thing. And then I was like, Okay, if I sell thing. It was, like, 200 of these thing. It was April. This was April 2020, or 2015, so 10 years ago, if I think it was 150 people by by the end of the year, like I could get by with my limited lifestyle, and I could get rid of having this agency thing, which anyone that runs an agency knows, you may make a lot of money, but it’s most stressful business there might be. And and so I did that, and 60 days later I got 150 and, and I was like, Alright, sweet. And then I went into this thing, and then, obviously, that was the start of my personal brand. Like, that was the that was the starting point. That was the moment where I was like, I didn’t even know I had, I didn’t even know I was trying to build a personal brand. Like, you know, it was just like, Okay, well, hey, I’m the one selling this. It’s just, you know, people, people like my story, and people like the experience I had. And, you know, just so happens I was doing a lot of online marketing and running ads for pretty decent sized companies
Brad Weimert 37:32
the well, the other, the other major lesson that I think is worth taking away there is, you said I was doing something that I thought was selfless, but it ended up being really selfish. And I think it’s super important for people to remember specifically early on, but through all journeys of entrepreneurship, if you don’t take care of the company, the company cannot take care of the staff, and it cannot take care of you. And so truly, the company has to come first, and you have to have the difficult conversations, you have to make the tough choices, or the company won’t be healthy enough to do the other things, which ironically, is the crux of people being all fucking up in arms about Doge right now. They’re like, good people are getting fired, you know, like they’re doing their job well and they didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s like, yeah, motherfucker, but the business will go bankrupt and they won’t it. Won’t be able to support
Scott Oldford 38:23
anybody, someone, someone’s just, I mean, listen, you people being people being mad at Dodge shows you how fucking low people’s IQ is because, because, like, you just, you’re just a fucking idiot if you don’t think that, I don’t care, like, I don’t care if it’s Trump or Elon, I don’t like, doesn’t matter who forget that part. Like that part, like, whatever, whoever, like, whoever does it doesn’t that part doesn’t matter. But it’s like, if you don’t think, yeah, I mean, if you don’t think the government is overstaffed and absolutely doing nothing, there’s not, I mean, you’re just, you’re living in a delusional life. You know, delusional world, just like most businesses are completely overstaffed. And most businesses, you know, I mean, you know, like one of the businesses I’m really working on right now is online business owner.com, and most of our, most of our clients are now, most people I’m used to working with, mentoring people, you know, doing less than 10 million a year. Most of our, like larger client dollar, is over eight figures currently, because we’re really still at the startup stage of that business. I’m the one doing pretty much all the business development and so on. And I’ll see these. You know, it’s been it’s been fascinating, because the last time I’ve done this was really 2014 2015 that’s the last time I worked with eight, nine figure companies and even billion dollar companies. And, you know, you’ll get a text thread and there’ll be, like, nine people on it, and I’m like, man, yeah, this company’s profit margin sucks, right? Like, instantaneously. I’m like, like, if there needs to be this many people on a text thread, there’s way too many people in this company, and they don’t know how to communicate. Mm. Me and and you can tell the company that, like is, is a real tight ship with probably pretty good, not profit margins, versus the business that it probably is mostly doing well because they’ve got a moat around their industry. And they’re probably, they probably have, you know, 30, 50% more team than they actually need. And, you know? And I think that, I think they’re gonna see with AI, I think you’re gonna see so many jobs transitioned, because it’s like, What the fuck are you around? What are you doing? What have you been doing recently? Yeah, right, yeah, you know. And I think that’s a good thing, because if people don’t have some purpose and something that they actually feel good about, you know, they’re going to be depressed. Easiest way to depress. Don’t wake up and not know what to do today.
Brad Weimert 40:47
Yeah, right, and, or don’t, don’t produce something and produce value for you’re supposed to be producing value for Exactly,
Scott Oldford 40:53
exactly, you know, I’m all for dodge. And, you know, outside of the fact, I also own a little bit of cryptocurrency on that one, but the actual dodge cryptocurrency, and, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s efficiency. And I love the fact that we’re living into a world where we’re starting to really value optimization and efficiency, and that inevitable. And
Brad Weimert 41:16
I think AI is really the catalyst there. And the irony of the whole political side of this is in, you know, I’m not gonna, I won’t go deep into the politics of it. But, you know, Clinton and Gore were pushing the exact same message decades ago, decades ago. And you know, you can go, you can go Google videos of Elon back to back with Clinton and Gore, and the messages are almost indistinguishable,
Scott Oldford 41:39
identical. That’s hilarious. Well, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like, you can’t keep you at some point you can’t just keep the money printer going. Burr, you know what? I mean? Well, there will be ramifications you. There’s ramifications you just, you can’t, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. Well, one
Brad Weimert 41:59
of the things that I like in in life and in business, are frameworks. And I think that, I think that it’s less important that you have a perfect framework than it is that you have a framework and you have a couple that I think are are useful and helpful. I want to talk about specifically you’ve got a six pillar framework, which is marketing, sales, operations, finance mindset in delivery for entrepreneurs that are multi, seven figure or beyond, yep, what do you see people neglecting the most? And why do you think that is well
Scott Oldford 42:34
before it’s 3 million generally, the biggest driver of your growth is going to be marketing and sales, and and generally, the biggest issues with marketing and sales is that the company is going to rely on one or two traffic sources only, and, and they don’t spend enough time and resource so, so it’s like, let’s say Facebook Ads work when you’re at a million, okay, so, and let’s say we just say, hey, let’s just keep scaling Facebook ads. And so you go from 1 million to 3 million, to 3 million, okay, and so, so then let’s say your Facebook ad account gets banned the next day, you know, and you’re at 3 million Well, well, or your ad stop working, or, yeah, suffering, whatever it might be. Well, the problem is, is that you chose fast growth instead of stable growth. And so you had a lot of people at scale. I’m one of those people. This is why I learned this first thing, I’m back in 2017 so you chose fast growth, because I went from half a million to 3 million to 7 million in the span of the end of 2015 to 2017 until, you know, I made $7 million between January 2017 to When did I blow up the business? September? Okay, so nine months and and so I went very quick, very, very, very quick upward. And then my ad account got shut down, and then I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do that. And I was like, Yeah, you know what? Maybe, maybe I just, you know, I’ve got some let me go travel the world and figure out what I actually want to do. So, so, so, from that lesson from obviously, seeing lots of businesses is like at the time, where, let’s say you’re spending 500 bucks a day on Facebook ads, all right. So instead of going to say, Hey, let’s go to 1000 it’s like, All right, let’s go get 200 bucks and start using YouTube and see if that works. All right, let’s get this work. And that’s going to slow your growth, because you’re diversifying your traffic. However, if you fast forward in three years, you versus the other company is going to be much more stable, ways easier to exit. Because, I mean that, you know, when you go to exit and you’re like, I have one traffic source, it’s like, well, your business is, is, is in a dumpster fire. You just don’t know it yet, and the valuation is going to reflect that. So, so up to that point, that’s, that’s the that’s the piece around marketing, sales, but the entire framework, and I talked about this in the nuclear effect, which is my book from 2020 and you can get it for free or get it on Amazon, the nuclear effect. And it’s simply this, which is, I’ll bring the 300 pages down to one minute, if you just simply, on a weekly and monthly basis, write out marketing, sales options. Operations, team, delivery, finance and mindset seven, but I’m adding the pieces in between here, and you just list every single one of your problems and then decide which ones you’re actually going to solve, and then have your main leadership team also doing this and also bringing you the problems that you don’t even know about. Your ability to actually grow and be a better business is going to be so much easier, because all businesses are solving problems, but the problem is the awareness of the problem, and so if you don’t have the awareness, or you’re not paying attention to the problem, or you’re putting off it, or you’re too greedy for growth, and because you know you want, you want a business that has times of high growth and stability. High Growth and Stability versus this kind of, like, fully upward curve. And so after a time of scale, you want a time of stability where you’re probably not going to grow, but that’s the time when you put cash in the bank. That’s the time when you actually get things stable, when you build more culture and these types of things. And so most businesses are just like in this reactive state. They’re never then. And the most is thinking about it is quarterly. Most businesses yearly, and so all their problems are right in front of them. They are either not paying attention to them, or the your team isn’t telling you what the actual problems are. So the easiest exercise is each month, you know, whoever is kind of leading the company, hey, all the problems that we have, all the problems that you’re, you know, put them in a spreadsheet, send them to me, and then you got a master spreadsheet, and you go through it as a team. All right, what problems do we actually need to solve right now? What are we going to do the next 90 days? What ones are we going to worry about later? Easiest exercise you could ever do, and it solves almost every problem, because once you have awareness, you can pay attention, and once you pay attention, you’re able to transfer your energy, money, time resources, into actually solving a problem. And pretty much all businesses, you’re solving someone else’s problem, which means this creates problems, and you’re getting paid for being able to solve or solve problems. That’s really all it comes down to, I like it.
Brad Weimert 47:06
One of the things that I see, I mean myself, do all the time and tons and tons and tons of other people is, first off, the self awareness part of problems is super important. The other though, is you can identify that you have a big problem and consistently distract yourself with little less important problems on a daily basis. And this is sort of the, you know, allowing yourself to be reactive and live in a place of urgent and important as opposed to staying out of the urgent quadrant altogether, right? Yep, and that’s like, that’s probably the most common thing that I see with, let’s call it multi million, or even it’s usually like up to eight figures or around I see people living in that space all the time. And you know that stability phase, these in between. Stability phases often come with over staff, over staffing, where you’ve got, hey, let me add some people so that I can get some things off my plate, buy myself some time, stabilize. And you mentioned that you could be that you don’t do that and you just take money off the table, or it’s that you staff up and you figure out how to retool things. And
Scott Oldford 48:14
I think, I think another part to add into this is, I think the the mindset, like a lot of people hire a lot of CEOs, especially under eight figures. They hire people to solve problems, right? Which partially you do, but a lot of people, they hire people to try to get over the feeling of overwhelm, okay, and and, and overwhelm, to me, is not trusting that I’m in the right time, in the right place and not and overwhelm generally comes from making decisions that you know are not the right ones. And then overwhelm comes from me having to deal with things that you should have said no to, or you should have said yes to. And so a lot of times, people don’t need to hire more people. They need to deal with the emotional tax and or reframing the mindset of what overwhelm is so that, or simply saying, You know what, we’re not going to grow from three to 5 million right now, because I got this other shit going on in my life. And so a lot of times overwhelm comes from somebody being too over caffeinated, too in their ego, too on stimulants, and saying yes to a bunch of shit you shouldn’t have said yes to just for growing, for the sake of growing, when you can very much grow a little bit slower, have way more profit margin and have a way less stress, and also, like, I just feel like most people’s stress tolerance is so fucking low and and I think part of that is like, I’ve been doing this for fucking a long time, and I use so much, I’ve had so much shit that has happened to me that I’m like, I just expect I just wake up. I think most people have a heart attack by the time that the 8am if they lived by. Life, and I’m just like, ah, that’s just another day. And, and, and, and, you know? And there’s been times where it’s like, been too much, and I’m like, Okay, well, that I said yes to that I shouldn’t have whatever. And, and so it’s, I think it’s this perspective thing of, like, you know, am I really gonna care about this three years from now? No, well, maybe I shouldn’t be overwhelmed with it, and so I see so many people try to buy their way out of overwhelm. And the crazy thing is, you can’t buy your way out of it, because it’s a feeling that’s in the body, and it’s anxiety that’s in the body that if you don’t actually figure out what to do with it’s just going to transfer. Now you have team. Well, now you’re going to go and create chaos over in your relationship. Oh, now you’re going to create chaos over here. Like most entrepreneurs are, just like, addicted to cortisol, and cortisol is what we feel as overwhelmed, and unless you realize that you’re just going to go around and you’re going to chase the Dragon for the rest of your life trying to, like, not be overwhelmed when in reality, is just a perspective of a feeling.
Brad Weimert 51:03
Yeah, it is, I think, and that’s the that’s the notion of busyness is a choice, absolutely and so if you’re electing to take on on a bunch of shit, it’s really important to be self aware enough to realize you are electing to take on a lot of shit. I
Scott Oldford 51:18
understand you’re you are absolutely in control your reality, you know, like, you like, once you’re past survival, you are you don’t have to go from 1 million to 2 million. You do not have to do you know, you do not have to do this. You don’t have to do this. And so many people are like, like, it amazes me too, because it’s like, you don’t think that people that run multi million dollar businesses, or eight figure million, eight figure businesses are victims. But like the victim mentality that happens sometimes is fascinating to me, where it’s like, Well, I gotta do this, or I gotta do that, or you gotta, you know, I gotta be on this, and especially with people’s addiction to their phone, you know, people come sometimes. I’m not addicted to my phone at all. And you know, my, my, my belief is, if someone really needs me, they’ll show up my door. And if they show up my door, it’s really important. But besides that, nothing really, honestly, in my life, like matters that much unless you show up my door and and so, but there’s people that come here and there’s just, like, you know, they’re just, they’re just, and I’m like, I’m like, What are you doing? It’s like, oh, well, this person needs that. I’m like, Man, you fucking you. You suck at being an entrepreneur, man, you suck at leadership. You gotta, you gotta get your shit together. You can’t, you can’t be doing this. Like, the reason you got rich is so you don’t have to do that shit.
Brad Weimert 52:32
Yeah, well, I think it’s, it’s very easy to conflate what got you here with what will get you there. Yeah, right, in the pattern of being hyper responsive, to not be the bottleneck and to turn things out quickly is contrary to effective delegation and management.
Scott Oldford 52:52
It is. It is very much you. And of course, people like to feel important. Yeah. I mean, like, the reason why people don’t delegate and the reason why people don’t get themselves out of is because, yeah, we we get a lot of significance from being the center of our world. And that’s, of course, the the main reason somebody can’t go to eight figures from multiple seven figures is they enjoy the feeling of significance too much to let go of the feeling of significance to be able to actually build it. It’s almost like they go from multiple, seven figures, eight figures. You got to detach your energy, in a way, from the business, which means that that business isn’t going to be to you on a day to day basis. You’re not going to feel the same level of significance. And considering the fact that most entrepreneurs become an entrepreneur because of significance. It’s a very difficult thing to do. Most people become an entrepreneur and a very successful entrepreneur because of some wound patterning early on in life, myself included, that made them so they wanted to be significant, and that’s also the thing that stops you from building the business you want, because you gotta let go of that if you want a real business.
Brad Weimert 54:03
I know I’m very important
Scott Oldford 54:06
Exactly, exactly. I’m very, I’m very, I’m a VIP,
Brad Weimert 54:11
alright, so to that end, at some point, you took a six month sabbatical and cite this as a catalyst for kind of a mindset, a mindset shift and a new chapter of life. Why did you take the sabbatical and what did you learn from it?
Scott Oldford 54:30
So there was no point in my life, up until that sabbatical, that I consciously chose what reality I was in. Meaning, there’s no time where I was like, oh, I want to be, for all intents and purposes, an internet marketer. And even though I don’t really consider myself that way, but I’m sure lots of other people do, and yeah, I want it to be like, You know what? Whatever I do next. Part of it was, okay, you know what? I got enough money to live off for a very long time if. Keep my lifestyle the same way, I could really invest it, not necessarily, really need to work again. So it’s like, 2020 going into 2021, and and so I was like, I’m also, I’ve never not made money, right? So I very intentionally, was like, for six months I’m not going to I’m going to intentionally not make money because I want to feel what it feels like to just not be productive. I want to feel like what it feels like to not be needed and not to try to prove and not try to all these things that I built from a place of trying to become so valuable that someone wouldn’t abandon me, okay, which is where the childhood like, why I was such an amazing entrepreneur, because it’s like, performance means love, money means love. So let me perform and make a lot of money so I can get so I can obtain love, which, by the way, is a real feedback loop too. So kind of one of those shitty wounds that actually works the way that it does, even if it’s not good for you. So I was like, Okay, let me, like, figure that out. And it was not, it was not an easy six months, by any stretch of imagination to do that, because it wasn’t just like, hey, let me it was very much like a spiritual journey of like, okay, let me, like, look at these things that made who Scott is. And then, you know, at the end of it, I was like, You know what, I actually kind of, you know, and I was also like, what else do I want to do? And I looked into this thing and that thing, I was like, You know what, I don’t really want to start over. I’m kind of like, I don’t want to, like, go and just dedicate my time to AI, or dedicate my, you know, the get into tech. I was living in the Bay area at the time. I could have gotten attack, could have done this. And I was like, I could do anything. I’m kind of enjoying my life. I’m kind of like, let me just, let me just, like, do what I do, but let me do it more intentional. Let me go and invest more. Let me become, let me not, not be the the coach to multiple seven figure entrepreneurs. Let me go and do this on, you know, a level that I think is even better. And then at the same time, I was like, and, you know, being a mentor to online businesses isn’t going to be here forever, because AI eventually will do what I do better than I can do. So, you know, it has a it has a lifespan, which, you know, now we’re really getting to see that. And, and, yeah. So it was, it was like, this difficult. It was this difficult, but amazing time. I was the most at peace that I probably ever was, but at the same time, I was the most restless that I ever was, because it was like, you wake up and you’re like, oh my god, like the wound is directly looking me in the face right now, the the desire to self soothe with money, right? Self soothing by making money is what I think a lot of entrepreneurs do, and it’s almost like, you know, the Nu for bit for babies and toddlers, right? It’s that self soothing, all right? Well, if I make money today, I’ll feel better about myself. If I make money today, I’ll feel valuable if I make money today, I feel important. And that sabbatical almost like marked this, like letting go of a lot of this that happened in my childhood that made that to be not that I had a bad childhood, but that’s just who I was. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 58:20
I could see that, were you in a position to, I want to just double click on that a little bit, because I feel like you have to be in a certain situation to disconnect for six months, or you just have to accept the consequences. Where were you relative to, you know, like I could, I could leave my business right now for six months, no problem. But we won’t grow at the pace that I want to grow at if I do that now, my company will keep keep going, and it will grow if I’m not here, just not at the pace that I want it to. Where were you at the time that allowed you to unplug for six months, or did you just abandon something and let it
Scott Oldford 58:56
collapse? So I didn’t abandon it and let it collapse, per se, but I was in a place where, so in 2019 I built an eight figure business. Did quite well, and I hated it. And the reason I hate it wasn’t because it was an eight figure business, is because I wanted an eight figure business. To say I wanted an eight figure that I made it created an eight figure business. So it wasn’t like I want to do this thing. It just happens I have an eight figure business, and part of this was, like, I was in LA and, you know, go to parties and celebrities and people make all this I’m like, Man, I gotta fucking fit in. Not a good reason to build a business, okay, like, this fucking worst, worst reason you possibly can think of business. So, so I sold part of that company. I let the other part go, and then I was like, You know what? It’s just gonna be me a couple people. And in 2020 I made the most profit that I’ve ever made in my mentorship business in my whole life. Like it was an incredible year. Now, part of that was the amount of SBA loans and the amount of people that needed help and had very easily accessible cash. To be able to do it. And it was just the, there was events with perfect storm to do that. So, like, I went from, okay, you know, I have good money to like, wow. Like, I don’t really need to, like, work right now, and I have no overhead expenses. Like, my overhead expenses were like, 14 grand a month for my business. So I was like, you know, what, fuck it. I’m just gonna, like, I kept paying everybody for six months. I’m just gonna, like, not do any promotions, and the only calls I’m going to do are these, like, five people that, you know, paid me a quarter million dollars a year for the calls that they do. That’s it. And so, you know, and of course, that was a really easy scenario to do that in, and it was probably the only scenario that I’ll get to do that in for probably another four years, like in my current trajectory. Um, and, and, because obviously, when it’s stable, you do that. Um, yeah. But besides that, I mean, you know, I’ve taken away a month here or there and completely disconnect. But a month versus six months, six months is a very long, very long time. It is,
Brad Weimert 1:01:03
feels like, anyway, no,
Scott Oldford 1:01:05
it would, no, it really, actually is a long time and, and it’s really fun, because I didn’t give a timeline for the sabbatical. I was just like, I’m just gonna let this go. And I don’t know, five months or my wife was like, Are you gonna, like, are you gonna, ever gonna work again? I was like, Man, I don’t know, like, I’m gonna wait. I’m not. I’m gonna wait until I wake up and I’m like, I’m ready to go now. And so that kind of that happened now I think that, I think if I look back and I’m only realizing this right now, the reason I have gone so hard from the end of 2021, until now, and like, invest probably was because it was like so much pent up energy where I was like, ah, let’s so was a six month sabbatical. Good, maybe. But it also, like, created all this, like, tension of, like, Oh my God, I want to, like, build and build and build it. Build. Yeah, so that, maybe, that, maybe there’s a downside there that I didn’t know about, yeah, I think that’s
Brad Weimert 1:01:54
interesting, man. Well, where I mean, I’ve got, I want to, I actually want to dig into OBO and newsletters and some other shit you’ve got going on. But we’re also at time here, so why don’t where do we? Where do we want to send people for Scott old for learn more about you or what you have going on now?
Scott Oldford 1:02:15
Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, Scott old for calm, got a couple of great books, one all about money, that just came out recently, that is truly amazing book. And then obviously online business owner.com is what I’m paying a lot of attention to. I know we’re at time, but essentially, if you’ve got a if you’re targeting online entrepreneurs, and you want to be in front of them, and you want probably the best lead generation platform that you’ve ever seen. I highly recommend checking that out, especially if you spend, you know, at least 10 grand a month on paid marketing and advertising. That type of thing basically solved my own problem, which we could talk about a different day, but those are kind of the main things, instead of the other. What feels like 1000 things that I’m into. But yeah, those are those the main things. And, you know, from scuttled for.com you can find whatever rabbit hole you wish to go to. Well, let’s,
Brad Weimert 1:03:06
let’s at least spend a couple minutes on the OBO thing, because I don’t want to leave a total cliffhanger on that. And I think it’s a, it’s a good framework in general, and super relevant for a lot of people listening or watching. Yeah, so,
Scott Oldford 1:03:17
so back in 2020 go back a little bit, and back in 2021 so all of the businesses I own are either in education, software or education, with this concentration in media or media education or software. And my concentration is in media and education. And so education is generally certification programs. So not like just online courses, but an actual certification. And this is based upon my belief where we are in the future, which is software, for the most part, is going to get eaten up by AI. So not as bullish about software, but in hyper niches, it will make a lot of sense where somebody, for example, I own a SaaS for coaches. Well, a coach doing 5k a month is probably not going to figure out how to build their own coaching platform with AI, they can do it, probably won’t do it. But for media specifically, I was like, if I in the if by 2030 if I own the entire media, the entire attention of the entrepreneurial world, that is my best moat to make it so that anything I do works, because attention is the, in my opinion, the ultimate currency, because you can take attention, you can turn it into influence, you can turn it into audience. You can turn it into money, right? Money? Money is actually one of the least effective currencies, because you it’s harder to turn it into other currencies. But if you have the attention, it really makes a whole lot of sense. So I start building these media properties and start acquiring them and partnering with people on them and and so the whole element of it is, is that you’re going out to a much wider audience. So, you know, if easy, pay direct goes out and, you know, targets, target somebody, somebody has to be in them the belief system. They have to know that there’s a problem and a consequence, and then they need to know that there’s a process and a methodology. And. There’s a case study and someone to look to, and then they got to look at this solution and look what the vision is. So there’s a whole buyer process. I call this the sidewalk slowing fast lane. And so what I’ve done with media is said, Hey, let’s open up the whole sidewalk and build these media, newsletters and podcasts and these types of things, and make it so that we’re able to capture attention earlier than someone’s buyer, that someone’s ready to buy. And so with online business owner, I said, Okay, let’s take the media, but let’s also build a direct lead generation platform. And so there’s two sides to this, which is, if, if, if Brad here with easy pay direct, wants to go in front of people. And one, let’s take Facebook ads. Well, if Brad runs Facebook ads, he knows about 95% of every lead that comes in probably is not going to be the right fit, because they need to be at x amount of revenue. They need this type of business. They got to be able to be underwritten and so on. And so he might put out this guide on merchant accounts, or this thing, or whatever it might be, and he’s going to waste majority of his money. And this came from my own life of I pretty much can only mentor somebody if they’re making 50k a month minimum, like in their online business. I genuinely my sweet spot is 50k a month of half a million dollars a month from it, like direct mentorship, advisory after that, below that is, you know, hey, here’s here’s the strategy, here’s the framework, go, go figure it out yourself. And so if I spent $2 million a year on paid advertising, I lose about 1.6 million, meaning I’m wasting 1.6 million. So essentially, we built a platform that an entrepreneur can go and when they’re at 20k a month and they have an agency and their issues are marketing, when it comes to our platform, we ask them these questions, and then we pair them with newsletters, resources, trainings, guides that make sense for where they are. So if somebody comes in and they’re like, Hey, I’m at 100k a month, and my one of my biggest issues are finance and operations, probably makes a lot of sense to put easy pay direct in front of them. But if they come through and they’re at 20k a month, and we’re like, yeah, you know what? Brad’s not interested in this just yet, right? And so we’ve basically made a cost per lead model that is based upon someone literally saying, This is who I am, and then putting up their hand and saying, Yes, I want this guide or this lead magnet, or I’m interested in this offer. So it’s the first time it’s ever been done. As long as I know in this industry, the data shows the lead quality is amazing, and it’s basically the main thing that I’m spending most of my time on, because obviously, because all my businesses are in online, if I make online business owner.com this kind of mammoth in this industry is going to benefit every single business in my portfolio. So I’ve been spending a lot of time on that and and also making it so I don’t have to spend any more money. I’ve actually stopped spending money on my personal brand now. And basically replace that ad spend on online business owner.com because, you know, now, it directs me all the leads I actually want to know and then all the other people they don’t necessarily need to know my stuff direct. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 1:07:55
so let me, let me recap that, or give a kind of a succinct example of how this might work? Sure. So I know, for example, that you have a handful of different newsletters where you’ve partnered with people that have newsletters and for a variety of different verticals. But let’s say, you know, there’s a company that just has a software that helps people that it’s a marketing software, let’s say, and they have a newsletter about marketing. When somebody registers for that newsletter, you have a pop up that asks them 12 questions. So you’ve partnered with this company that does the marketing newsletter. 12 Questions. Get asked that help segment, that person that’s going to join that newsletter, and you basically do a co reg. So you’re basically saying, Hey, we’ve got 12 things that you’ve opted into, or said you’re interested in, and then you’re showing them other options for things they can sign up for, and you’re selling the leads. But that ends up creating a very targeted lead for all of the people. Is that a fair
Scott Oldford 1:08:51
example? That’s a fair example? Absolutely. Yeah, fair example. So, you know, it makes us to that we actually know who’s coming through the door, and we actually know, and we know how to be relevant to them. Because, you know, my whole market, we talked about my six pillar methodology, but my whole marketing methodology is based on one of the core principles, is relevancy. And if we can be, if we know who somebody is, we can make it so that they feel like we’re the only ones that gets them. And most people are most emotionally moved to buy something when they feel like somebody actually gets them. And so that’s the most powerful aspect of marketing, is allow someone to say, wow, it’s almost as if you’re watching me. And so essentially, yeah, exactly, super creepy. So we’re essentially doing that at at scale.
Brad Weimert 1:09:43
I dig it. Love it. Man. Online Business owner.com Scott old for.com I will hopefully, at some point, when it gets warmer, come to Indiana and drink some of that vodka with you.
Scott Oldford 1:09:56
You’re gonna be, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be real surprised when you put it up and. It actually is vodka, not water, right? Thanks for having me on, Brad, thank you, man, until next time,
Brad Weimert 1:10:07
I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I enjoyed doing it. I need your help. There are three places you can find beyond a million. The podcast itself beyond a million.com. Which has some cool free resources, including a free course, and we finally launched the beyond a million YouTube channel. I would love it if you would go there and subscribe, and if you don’t want to, you still would probably enjoy seeing the visual content. Check it out. Youtube.com, forward slash at beyond a million.
