Jared Goetz: Alright, Scott Hilse.
Scott Hilse: Yes, sir.
Jared: Welcome to the Zendrop podcast. Guys, if you’re listening or watching, thank you for joining us. We’re excited for a great time here. Scott, do you want to remind me how we met? I think it’s been such a crazy journey.
Scott: I think I launched my course– It was March of 2018, I believe. March of 2017, something like that. Five months into it, I probably had 600 members at this point. Then I was at dinner with this one girl. I look at my phone it says [email protected] I just purchased her course. I was so excited about that because I’d seen all your ads when I started and everything. I even made a post in simplified drop shipping.
I don’t think you saw, that the Facebook group. I’m like, “Big announcement, Jared Goetz, zero to a million in 60 days, has joined the simplify drop shipping course.” Everyone was like, “Oh, yes,” because everybody knew you, and then I think we started– We emailed a couple times, and then five months later we came in contact. I was in Colorado when you messaged me. Then two months after that, we arranged me coming out to Boca and playing some golf.
Jared: I think you joined our program, didn’t you? The group coaching? I saw you show up on a call. I didn’t know you joined.
Scott: Yes. I remember that. In September is when you got the course. In October I went out with the Oberlo team in Berlin, talked to Tomas and everything. Then I asked him the advice, “What did you do with your 50 million that you sold Oberlo for?” He sent me the article about the circle of competence, never investing outside of what you know. I’m like, “I may be making a couple hundred thousand drop shipping but why would I not invest more into drop shipping?” I recognized you were the top drop shipper at the time so I’m like, “He has a mentorship program, I’m going to get his mentorship.” I got into it and then that month I did like 43,000 which was my best month to that day.
Jared: Right. Right. I remember just seeing you randomly, because we were doing group coaching calls every week and I saw you on there. I was like, “Oh, that’s Scott on there.”
Scott: You’re like, “Oh, you’re Scott.” I’m like, “Yeah. Yeah.” Then we ended up collaborating, four or five months later and it never would have happened if I– I was about to invest in stocks, real estate. I think I might have even verged off of e-commerce if it wasn’t for that one piece of advice that Tomas gave me on Facebook Messenger.
Jared: That’s a great piece of advice. I would love for you to elaborate on that advice a little bit and what you heard and what were you thinking?
Scott: A lot of people will get a little success in something, and then they’ll start spreading theirself thin across many things, but at that point what that taught me was, for example, they say that intelligent people are more humble because when they get into an area, they realize how much they don’t know, the more they start to learn, like scientists– Someone who isn’t as intelligent will get into an area, and then instantly think they know it all.
Then they’ll get in others areas and instantly think they know it all, and that’s why on the other podcast we talked about disappointment cured my stubbornness. I never had to be met with that disappointment at the time, because he relieved my stubbornness in the fact of indirectly telling me I don’t know everything, not even close. It really made me realize I had so much more to learn.
I had one Facebook ad strategy, which was so all over the place. Then the big thing that I learned from your mentorship was the horizontal scaling. I’d never even heard of that before. When I applied that I’m like, “Okay, there’s a lot of different ways to do this,” because at this point I was self-taught. I didn’t take a course, I just taught myself through trial and error, just asking some questions on Facebook group.
Jared: There’s a lot of little golden nuggets, no matter where you look. A lot of the most successful, most well-off, wealthy, awesome people that I know when I talk to them, they’re just genuinely curious. They’re genuinely interested, really good listeners. I think that advice that you got from Tomas was really good advice.
Scott: They keep investing into themselves, especially like you. How many Masterminds are you in?
Jared: I’ve been to a bunch. Actually, I just joined a new one called Board of Advisors, and it’s really cool. It’s 25 or 30K a year but it’s all really high-level business people. I’m actually going to one next week, and I’m spending four days in Sarasota. There’s a bunch of presentations, a bunch of networking, a bunch of connections, and I’m not even a big networker. I don’t really like to go and network for the sake of networking. If you have the opportunity to surround yourself with other like-minded people or people that are doing bigger and more things than you are, I think it gives you– You feed off that energy.
Scott: I feel like a lot of people would get in your position, and then they get lazy. I think laziness really comes from not even realizing that there’s so much more to learn or not willing to know that there’s so much more to learn and how you can always be better. That mutual connection we have– My mentor, when he was here, he was asking questions on questions and questions to everybody. Nobody really expected that this guy was just insanely successful, but that really showed why he was so insanely successful. When it comes to networking, I agree. How I network, I call it magnetic networking.
I think you can definitely relate to this. I never go to networking events because it seems most of the– Especially the lower tier ones, it’s just a lot of people who are trying to brag about their own achievements when magnetic networking takes all that stress off, and you display your achievements online through a personal brand, and then people come to you.
That’s how I met you. That’s how I met people like Dan and just pretty much everyone in my e-commerce space. They came for me.I don’t know if you know this, but you know how I live with Mikey Kass, Fez, and Sebas.
In February of 2019, I had my first meet up in Los Angeles and 80 people showed up in the worst storm in four years in Los Angeles. Mikey Kass was there, and Armin Nejad was there. That’s how I met Mikey, we started talking. Fast-forward six months later, I’m living with Mikey, and then Fez who I met through Mikey, Armin who’s always there, and then Sebas who I met through Mikey and Fez. If I never had that magnetic network attraction, I would have never met Mikey. Then all of our timelines would be skewed because Mikey would have never lived with me, he would be on a different path, Fez may never moved to LA. Sebas may never– It’s just really interesting how you can network efficiently, so to speak.
Jared: There’s a lot of people that might be listening to this that would love to network with someone like you, or someone who they look up to. I know that a lot of times when people reach out, at least for me, it’s very transactional. They’re either looking for something, or they’re just blatantly telling me like, “How can I add value?” which is really them saying, “How can I add value to you?” It’s like, “How can I add value to you so that you’ll let me into your circle?” For someone listening, what’s some good advice to be able to network with someone at the next level?
Scott: Number one, authenticity. I think a lot of people, they watch a little too many Gary V videos, and then they think that saying these little scripts– That’s where that came from, for sure, like, “How can I add value? How can I add value?” because Tai Lopez and Gary V push that heavily. Whenever someone messages me and says, “Hey, how can I add value?” You’re not getting a response.
I don’t like when people try tricks either. They’ll send me a video of themselves or a voice note. I don’t open any video or voice note because you’ve got to click accept to even see it. If what you’re actually providing is valuable, you don’t need to do any tricks, you just need to present it. If someone came to me and said, “Hey, man. I run a certain business, I need–” I don’t know. Basically, anything where the value is obvious without specifically saying, “How can I add value?’ because if you’re asking, “How can I add value?” you probably don’t have any value to give.
Jared: Right. It’s, “How can I add value?” so that you’ll let me into your life. It’s really them asking for something.
Scott: Yes, and that kid, Armin, who came to my meetup, he’s a perfect example of that. He drop ships here and there, but the reason he’s always around is because, first of all– This is a huge tip for anybody, value can be in itself just pure personality, like the energy you bring because he’s always down for everything. He’s always bringing super good energy. He always tries to take care of us in the best way as possible. He always hooks us up in so many different ways.
I’ll tell you a great story after this podcast, I’ll tell you what he did. We were talking about that in LA. It’s just like this kid’s been hanging out with us for a year and a half and we don’t really do any collaborations or anything. He’s just there because he’s always down to, say, give you a ride. He’s always down to– Not in an agenda sort of way. If you come with an agenda, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice because people who are real with themselves can see through non-real things.
Jared: It really comes down, at least for you, and for me too, it’s like if someone has good energy.
Scott: Yes.
Jared: What defines that? If people are listening they’re like, “Oh, I want to have good energy.” That’s a great start, but it starts with having a foundation, and knowing who you are and being real, being authentic to yourself and others. I think that authenticity is a really important point to strike on.
Scott: Yes, finding yourself is key because you can’t find yourself by– You can help find yourself by being with others, but if you don’t know who you are, what you want to do, people are going to see right through that, and then they’re going to say, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” If you don’t know yourself, then it’s not going to last.
Jared: You’ve been through a lot of different things, lots of changes in your life. From a financial standpoint you’ve done really well for yourself over the last couple of years and it seems to me at least from an outsider looking in or as a friend at least hearing your stories, you go with the flow of your life. You’re going from one situation to another, you’re going with the momentum. How do you keep yourself in a state of good energy? Let’s start with that, like how do you keep yourself in a state of elevated energy?
Scott: Just knowing it’s going to work. When COVID hit, that’s the only time I’ve ever had any doubt, just because my environment shifted so much and the world was in chaos. From when I was 19, when I was a sophomore in college and my friend Drew asked me, he’s like, “How do you have this mindset of just knowing it’s going to work? You don’t have a plan, you just know it’s going to work?”
I go, “Yeah, as long as I know it’s going to work, the plan will make itself,” but a lot of people focus on the plan, and then they get a little doubtful of if it will work or not. That’s the opposite of what you should be doing because the law vibration and I forget what book I read. Every thought you have changes the vibration of your body, and vibrations attract from one to another.
If you’re vibrating at a certain level where you know it’s going to work, you know these things are going to come to you– Not even know, in my head it’s already there. We talked about manifestation, how I think manifestation is bad because it sets the divider. I already know it’s going to happen so I’m vibrating at that level, and so those vibration patterns are going to naturally be attracted around me to send me to wherever I’m trying to be.
Jared: For someone who understands the concept of knowing it’s going to happen and being confident but their mind is always in the background chirping at them like, “You’re an imposter, it’s not really going to work. You’re not as good as you think you are,” do you ever have those types of thoughts? If so, how do you quiet them? How do you not allow them into your mind?
Scott: Simply say, “Devil be gone.”
Jared: Devil be gone?
Scott: The devil’s the negative thought in your head. Once I realized that, I realized the negative– The law of vibration is super important because if you do have those thoughts, your vibration goes down a little, and then the doubts of it not working, that’s going to attract the things that are going to make it not work.
Jared: You try to live in a state of this high vibration?
Scott: Constantly. Even as a kid, I just knew where– I started learning this around when I was 18– No, when I was 19. I heard the song Cut You Off by Kendrick Lamar and that changed my life. If anyone wants to know what changed my life, that’s probably top five of things that changed my life because in the second verse he goes, “I’m trying to learn something new, I’m trying to surround myself with people that inspire me or at least inquire similar desires to do what it T-A-K-E just to reach the T-O-P.”
That really opened my eyes because it’s like, “Okay, that makes a lot of sense.” For example, in e-commerce, especially when I’m in Los Angeles, even if I’m surrounded with people who aren’t in e-commerce, if they’re passionate and successfully doing what they want to do, that energy, that vibration is natural so then it rubs off me. Every time I go to LA and see those people, I always come out inspired because in St. Louis, none of my friends are doing this, not even one. Well, I mean one actually.
Jared: There’s something to be said about going to LA and getting that inspiration but then being able to come back home and get your shit done. Do you value having time to yourself to get things done too?
Scott: Yeah. In St. Louis, a lot of people watching certain small towns like that– St. Louis is where I gained my confidence, and then LA is where I get humbled. I always say it’s like people in St. Louis make a quarter million a year and they act cocky. I don’t think you can act cocky, you don’t have the right to act cocky till you’re making a million a day because you go to Los Angeles and you’re making a quarter million a year, you might get a decent apartment, but you couldn’t even rent certain houses with your yearly salary and that’s if your salary was tax-free.
That’s a good balance to have, getting humbled, and then gaining confidence, getting humble and getting confidence, and then staying in that mindset the whole time which really comes down to the people you surround yourself with. It’s hard when you don’t have people around you to be surrounded with in your local area, but we got the internet now, you can be surrounded by these people online by just listening to their content. What you put in your ears is super important. Gary V, I know I hated on him a little bit at the beginning but it’s just because of what people have taken his agenda towards but if you listen to people like that, positive advice from successful people, it’s similar to what you could possibly find in a place like Los Angeles anywhere.
Jared: On the same accord, a lot of the people that you may be following online that are portraying this life of success and wealth, I think most people actually portray a much better version of their life. If you’re consistently feeding on that content, you start to compare yourself to other people and you could push yourself to the far end of the lower confidence because you’re comparing yourself to these fake lives. What’s your advice for people who are on social media and they’re active and they’re following all these people, and they don’t know if they’re really successful or not. Do you have any advice on that?
Scott: Be careful with who you listen to and be careful what advice you take in because there’s certain people that we both know where it seems they’re doing really well online but they’re not. At the end of the day, as long as you keep it real with yourself, you’re going to know realness attracts realness, real recognize real. When you see someone who doesn’t– You can definitely know if there’s certain things about this person that’s off, then just don’t listen to him. Only listen to the people who are verifiably successful, and there’s very few that I can think of off the top of my head.
Jared: That doesn’t mean that they have a blue check necessarily?
Scott: No, definitely. I know scammers with blue checks. It’s very easy. I always say I’m very open, it’s like pretty much any e-commerce person that you know, not all of them but more than likely 90% of the articles they paid for. I paid for all my articles. Not the Oberlo one and the medium one. Some, they reach out to you. Forbes reach out to you, I believe, right?
Jared: I’ve had some that I’ve paid for, and I had a full-time publicist that was pitching things. It cost money to have publicity, in general.
Scott: That’s why whenever someone sees something like that, just because they have a news article about them, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re legit. I know so many people who just pay thousands of dollars to get this article and then they’re like, “Oh my God, look, I’m featured. Go check this out.” When it comes to the blue check– For the people listening, that’s how you get a blue check, publication, and like having a Google panel which you can buy, buy, buy. If these people are making their money scamming people with their personal brand, then they can elevate that when they get that blue check. Be careful with the blue check. Everyone has a sense of authenticity and it’s just like intuition. The stronger you listen to it, the stronger it gets. It’s very important that you yourself are authentic to recognize that.
Jared: I think that that’s just a big problem in general today. I think it’ll weed itself out over time, but I still think that there’s many years of this problem in place. It’s something that people should be aware of and I’m glad we brought that topic up.
Scott: It’s definitely peaked, I think for sure. I would say it peaked two years ago, and then people started heavily scamming. I know some people where they would log into their friend’s Shopify store and they had a personal brand on a drop shipping course. They’re like, “Look, I did a quarter-million dollars today, swipe up to get my course.” Then eventually shout out bowler busters– I know you’re not too big a fan because, the vibe they put off, I totally understand that.
I’m not going to mention his name but, when a certain person got busted, that’s when they got on the New York Times, and they didn’t pay for any of that. That really started exposing a lot of people and set a domino effect where people are now realizing that, “Okay, if I just try to scam people now, I can’t just pack up and go. That’s my face.” That kid specifically, the rest of his life is going to be attached to that scam that he did.
Jared: Yes. On the same note, it’s like if you’re looking at things like that, those types of videos, those types of exposing accounts and you’re watching them all the time, you have to be careful not to make yourself into some kind of victim where you think the whole world’s a scam and you think that nothing’s real, and validating why– “I’m not successful because it’s not really possible, everyone’s fake.” You got to be careful not to get in that mindset also.
Scott: Yes. I’d say at the end of the day, just be careful where you get your inspiration from. At the beginning, I was inspired by diamonds, cool cars, designer clothing. Now I get inspired by advice that really touches me to the heart, and when I apply it, it works extremely well. I know the more wealthier people I meet, the less they want to be known, the less show-offy they are. When someone’s a little too show-offy, that usually sends a red flag to me because it’s either insecurity or they have an agenda.
Jared: That actually brings me to a good point. You’re talking about what inspires you. I always say that it’s really important to have a crystal-clear vision of what you want your life to look like. For me, a big turning point in my life was I went to Tony Robbins’ UPW event. We did an exercise where we actually pretended we were someone like a loved relative that cares a lot about us. We’re this relative walking up to our dream house and looking at the car in the driveway and walking in and seeing a picture of the family, they’re just really proud of you.
Long story short, they walk through the house and they see all this stuff about your life. Then they walk into the bathroom and they look in the mirror and they’re you. It’s like a way to turn yourself into someone who’s actually proud of yourself and get a vision on your life and after I went through that process, I think that was the first time I ever defined a vision. To anyone listening, you’re not just going to sit there and think your vision, you have to get yourself in a high energy state first or else you’re going to think of some weird vision. If you get a great vision– It’s really important to have that because you need something to have the discipline to work toward each day and make sure all of your little actions are going towards it. With that said, the vision’s very important. Do you have a vision for what you want your life to look like?
Scott: Yes. Before I get into that, one thing I want to note– Shout out, Jordan Peterson once again. He always says take care of yourself as you would a loved one that you need to take care of. That’s his perception on the best way to take care of yourself. Now, my overall vision and goal is pure freedom, talked about this with Umar, but when I was working as a busser, I thought freedom was working for myself, and then I started Uber driving.
I’m like, “I still am like a slave to the money. I’m trading my time for money.” This isn’t real freedom. Freedom, I still got to be in this location. I want real freedom where I make money wherever I go. Then drop shipping started working out and I’m like, “Perfect, I’m moving to LA.” I remember I moved to LA, I lived there for a month, went to the beach 23 days in a row, probably 25 in total, and I thought that was freedom. “I made 30,000 this month, I’ve been going to the beach every day, but I honestly–“
First of all, I wasn’t happy because that’s not fulfilling at all, you need to be working for something more than just money or direction in your life, but another thing I noticed is this isn’t real freedom. If I wanted to go to Bali right now, I couldn’t just rent a jet to go there. If I want to get a house here– I think my goal in life is true freedom where it is, “Okay, let me get a house in Colorado. Let me get a house in California.” Those are the two places I want to live, but I want to go spend three months in Cape Town.
Let me hop on the jet, private, skeleton key. I feel like once I get a private jet then I know the real taste of real freedom going wherever I want on a moment’s notice. Freedom to help out my family as much as– Unlimited amounts. Basically freedom to help the unfortunate and freedom to just make the world a better place. That’s real freedom and that’s what I’m about, and that’s what encompasses everything into my goals.
Jared: That’s awesome and I think that that vision’s really– It’s a great vision to have, and I think for everyone listening, having a vision is a key takeaway here. You need to have a really clear vision. Another thing is that’s really important with the vision is that you actually regularly think about it because sometimes people have the vision, they’ll think of it one time.
Then they’ll have a stressful week, and then they’ll go down, something will happen, and then they don’t even think about their vision for months at a time. It’s hard to keep them on track. I think it brings up the point of a routine, how do you get yourself into a good mindset each day? For you, what does your day look like? What are your first thoughts you have when you get up out of bed? You wake up– How do you get your mind in the right place each day?
Scott: First of all, in terms of a vision I live life as if my vision’s already true, like I’m going to Colorado after this. In my head, I’m already in the feeling of, “This is my house that I own out here.” When I was driving my ’98 Accord to Napoli to the bus, I pictured it being a supercar or a hypercar or whatever, and then a couple of years later I got it because again, it goes back to the law of vibration.
In terms of mindset especially now on my new apartment– Going from my old apartment to my new apartment, every day I wake up, I’m grateful as hell. I am super grateful.
I’m not thinking about what I don’t have. That’s why I definitely try stay off my phone for the first good portion of the morning because I don’t want to be focused on what I don’t have or anything like that because I catch myself some days stressing over, “I need to make more money, I need to make more money,” when I’ve never been more financially set in my entire life than I am right now, but I’m still thinking in that like the mindset of like okay, which it’s a good thing.
Then I also got to reel it back and be like, “Right now, if I had this three years ago, I would have permanent goosebumps. I’ll look like a lizard for like days at a time because of how insane this is.” A lot of times this life, I’ll become so normal. I rented just a three series BMW. I never drove anything like that until 2018. Then I get in it now and I’m like, “Yeah, this is a cool car, I guess.” I’m used to my Tesla or I was using the M4 in LA so it’s just–
Like Dan Bilzerian said, the issue with how– Money can’t buy happiness, it can ruin it because when you start to go up– Say, I graduated high school and my dream was a badass Mustang. I got that Mustang and I’m at a 10 out of 10. If I got a Mustang now– For my example, Trans Am was my dream car. If I got a Trans Am, 10 out of 10 for sure take the T-tops off. If I hop into Trans Am right now, it’d be like maybe a 6 out of 10. It’s a good and a bad thing because you start being less grateful for what you actually have because you normalize the life you’re living. Then you got to compare to the life you were living compared to now and realize that you have to be grateful for everything. Even if you don’t have much right now, you’re still way better off than a large portion of this world.
Jared: I think that brings up a couple really good points. Number one, no matter what– I’ve gone through the same thing. If I peered into my life now when I was 18-years old, I’d have been like, “Oh, that’s it. I made it. I’m good. I’m set.” Every day, I find myself like, “What’s next? What’s better? What’s more?” It never stops. Once you get the car, you want the house.
Once you get the house, you want the yacht. Once you get the yacht, you want the plane. Once you get the plane, you want to live on Mars. Once you live on Mars, you want to own the universe. It never stops and that’s okay. It’s human nature. It’s good to have drive but at the same time, most of us focus more of our attention on what we don’t have than what we do have.
What that does, as you’re saying with vibrations, it attracts more of not having things into your life. If you’re sitting here listening and you’re driving a ’98 Accord and you’re like, “Man, I wish I had this other car,” you consistently live in that state of, “Man, I wish I had this,” you’re going to keep attracting not having it. If you can get yourself in the state of gratitude, “I live in America. I have internet. I have a computer. I have family that loves me. I have great friends. I might not have everything,” but if you focus more on what you do have than what you don’t have, it attracts getting more.
Scott: Yes. I know in my DMs I see, “Scott, I don’t have anything grateful–” Well, first of all you do. Knock that out of the park right away, find out what you’re grateful for. Just start writing it down but if you have convinced yourself that you don’t have much to be grateful for. Morgan Freeman has said, “Be grateful for the blessings that you haven’t received yet.” Even in that way, you can be grateful because you should know you’re on a path. Not like, “I hope it works. I hope it works.” It should already be happening in your head and you should be grateful for that.
Jared: When I went through a really hard time– Some of the people listening may know my story, some people– I’m not going to tell the whole thing right now. When I crashed and burned at 23 and my concert promotion business went under, I was living in my mom’s apartment. I had just went through a really bad breakup. I was in a bad state of mind and I was trying to hold on to things to be grateful for.
One of the things I could come up with was, I was in pretty good shape. I’d go to the gym and I would just focus on being grateful that my body was operating at a great level. It would take my mind off of what I don’t have and shift me into an energy of what I do have. You just got to find something, whatever it is, to hold on to and focus on it that you do have.
Scott: If you can get out of the bed and stand up, you have no idea how big of a blessing that is, compared to some people.
Jared: I live here in Boca Raton in a country club. Obviously I’m the youngest homeowner in the neighborhood. I play golf with people that are 50, 60, 70 years old very often. I hear this all the time. I’m like, “How are you doing today?” They’re like, “I got out of bed today, it’s a great day.” Many people have said that but sometimes when we’re young and we’re not quite there yet, we’re naïve. We don’t focus on what we have. I think that was really good.
Scott: When I went to Colorado, I was on a big hike. I think that trip in Colorado really made me understand how grateful I should be, simply for just something as simple as I can hike this mountain fine. I don’t have anything like breathing issues. I’m completely able-bodied to do this. Even if you’re not, there’s still so many things to be grateful for on top of that, the gratefulness never ends.
You got to be grateful for the blessings that you just haven’t received yet, because if you’re in that mindset, they’re going to come. It goes back to my point of the anti-manifestation point, where your thoughts are reality. If you’re grateful for the blessings that you haven’t received yet, in your head that would mean that they’re already there. That’s going to naturally attract them.
Jared: For anyone interested in learning the scientific reasoning behind this stuff, which it is scientific. Joe Dispenza. Dr. Joe Dispenza. His book Becoming Supernatural talks a lot about how we’re a particle, and wave, and we’re just energy, and we could live in the vision of our future as opposed to live in the memory of our pas. Living in that vision of our future actually manifests it, and it’s very scientific stuff.
Scott: What do you think the best advice that you’ve heard from Joe Dispenza is?
Jared: I think that right there, that simple piece of advice that you need to live in the vision of your future rather than living in the memories of your past. A lot of people’s upbringings or situations or their past may be not that good, and if that’s how you define yourself– That’s the word. You have to define yourself as the vision of your future rather than a memory of your past.
Scott: I can’t remember his quote, he posted the other day. He’s like, “Every action you take is a step towards the person you’ll be in the future.” Every action you take must align with the person you want to be in the future or you’re going to become someone you don’t want to be in the future. It’s really important, treating everybody with respect, every single person with respect all. Especially in restaurants specifically, since I worked there for six years, I am so grateful and extra respectful to every server, anything like that. I’ll even clean up after myself, I’ll stack the plates just because I know how big of that small little detail can make, and at the end of the day you’re not better than anybody else.
Jared: Well, that mindset makes you magnetic. Just being genuine– I’ll have days where I feel down and I’ll be lit, I’ll be in my car and the music’s just not as entertaining, and I talk to people, and I’m just like, “All right, I’m done with this conversation.” Then, I’ll have the days where I’m just pumped about life and I’ll go to the gym and just be friendly to the person behind the desk, I’ll buy something, make someone laugh and smile, and those are the days that I’ll get those phone calls that a great deal is closing or– It’s like it all works together. If you could focus on being a good person, more compassionate, more energetic, that’s what you should be focusing on if you don’t know where to go.
Scott: Yes. If you don’t know where to go read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Have you read that one?
Jared: That’s a classic, yes.
Scott: He talks about how he’s given compliments as simple as– When you meet someone, you want to find something about them that you admire. It’s as simple as like, “Oh, I really wish I had your head of hair.” I think he said in the book the guy started crying because he’s like, “Nobody has ever admired me before for anything.” It’s says, “You have no idea the effect that can have on other people and in an unselfish way, you have no idea what the effect of doing that is going to have on yourself.”
Jared: Yes, I love that one. I want to move to the next topic that I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about. With all of the opportunities online these days, affiliate marketing, being an influencer, e-commerce, freelance work, softwares, I’m going to ask you two questions. Number one, for a beginner trying to gain some more freedom in their life where do you think a good starting point is? Then, number two, where do you see the biggest opportunity for people over the next two to five years being?
Scott: That’s a good one. Well, first of all, in terms of all the things you listed, I’m just going to blatantly say this out now, don’t listen to your parents’ advice. They don’t know about this world, they don’t know anything about this world. Unless your dad is in software development or something like that, then it’s a little different but so many– It’s a very consistent thing, so many parents think it’s a scam and if you start making money, they think you’re doing something illegally. Tune all of that out, tune to the people who are actually doing it. Great starting point. Do you want a specific advice or just general?
Jared: A specific advice would probably be useful for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, this is you need money to start off. First of all, everything’s going to cost money and you will lose money. Anything you go into for the most part, you’re going to lose money at the start. One thing, change your mindset to that because you’re going to lose money. 90% of traders quit but it’s just because anybody can trade so it’s a little skewed.
Make money. You can do so by, say, learning Facebook Ads on YouTube for free, and then doing social media marketing. One thing I’ve always recommended is going to Craigslist’s Free. Craigslist has a free tab, all of that you can sell for $0. You’re not putting any money upfront, you find desks, flip that on the Facebook marketplace because all the people putting on Craigslist Free are older people who are still using Craigslist.
I call it drop posting. Take the photos from the Craigslist Free ad, and then just put it on Facebook, and whenever someone wants to buy it on Facebook, you go contact that guy and it’s a fluid motion. That can be a little issue-y because it might sell or something like that so at the end of the day, you could just get like a storage unit or just put it in your backyard but you got to find some way to make money, you got to find some way to make money– [crosstalk]’
Jared: How about a job? To get the money to start?
Scott: Yeah, exactly.
Jared: I think a job is a good option. So many people are– They feel too good for a job. You worked in a restaurant for six years. I worked at Baskin-Robbins for five years.
Scott: Oh, really?
Jared: I worked in restaurants as well. I’ve done some of the shittiest job there. It’s nothing wrong with getting a job to build up $5,000 or $10,000 to start what you want to do.
Scott: 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I didn’t think of the obvious answer right there, the job. Yeah, get the job, and then that’s going to teach you the discipline and then you got to have the discipline to work outside of that job. A lot of people say it’s a 9:00 to 5:00. Once 5:00 hits, they’re at the bar. You can do that, but you’re going to end up like everyone there at the bar at 5:00 PM.
When I was drop shipping I would be working sometimes– There was days where I would work like 9:00 AM till 10 PM, and then get home and start working on Facebook Ads till 1:00 AM, or drop shipping or anything like that. That’s great because then you’re going to have the consistent cash flow and if you do lose money, you know that the check is coming next week if you’re working for it. So a job is the best way to do it and then from there, find a little success doing something. At that point when you’re in the job, I would say you want the time. Time freedom should be your goal.
Start working on things that are going to give you that money in which that you have the freedom to expand on it, like drop shipping, social media marketing. I mean, stocks if you want to get a little more risky but anything that’s going to bring you money on your own terms, even Uber driving, that is going to set you to another level of free which is going to give you so much more time and so much more mental concentration to do whatever you want to do.
Jared: Awesome, another point real quick before we dive into the next point is, the skills you learn along the way are really invaluable. After my concert promotion company crashed and burned, it led me to joining an amazing company called Yik Yak, running the marketing their which paid me a salary. I got shares in the company. I made an exit. Even if you’re honing in on these skills, you’re drop shipping, you’re running ads, you’re doing whatever you’re doing, having these skills when another opportunity shows itself, it starts to actually build what I like to call an opportunistic mindset.
All the shit you do and learn, now if you go somewhere and you see something that you would have just glanced over, now you see it as an opportunity. When I went to China for the Canton Fair after having sold so much online, now I was in a playground. I was like, “I could sell this online. I could sell that online. I can do this online.” Had I just been there without the skills, I would have been like, “Yeah, that’s a toothbrush. Yeah, that’s a toilet bowl.” I was like, “This is a Sonicare quality toothbrush for $2 a pop. I can probably sell this for 80 bucks each.” Then I saw a smart toilet. I was like, “We could probably sell these for $2,000 each.” My point is that the more shit you do, the more you develop that opportunistic viewpoint.
Scott: Yeah, be grateful for the blessings you haven’t received yet and prepare for the opportunities that haven’t been presented. That is perfect because I compare it to the drop shipping eye, that’s what I say. People always say, “How do you know if a product is going to work or not?” You just got to keep testing and keep learning, and then you develop that drop shipping eye where you switch from consumer to seller mentally because a lot of people will say, “Well, I will never use this product.”
“I’m not going to sell this.” “I’ll never use this.” I’ve sold plenty of things I would never use. I would say I’ve only used one of my products that I’ve ever sold because I had no interest. I’ve seen people sell– Especially if you’re a male selling a female item, that’s going to really teach you the drop shipping eye because even though you wouldn’t use it, you recognize that there’s a demand for it.
I mean that one guy, I think he made 400,000 last year selling Eric. I would never buy an $80 bottle of Eric, but he’s selling $400,000 worth of Eric and it just proves, at the end of the day it’s not really your preference of– Well, that’s a bad way to put it. At the end of the day, you got to think in terms of making money. You got to think in terms of the people who are paying the money, not selfish and from your standpoint, if that makes sense.
Jared: I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of magnetic eyelashes. I have sold push-up bras. I sold little stuffed animal talking hamsters that would repeat what you said. I sold 40,000 of those.
Scott: Oh, I remember that.
Jared: I would never buy that product, but it was the data of the market. I mean, the market teaches you. You can’t decide but once you start to get a feel for it, then you develop that eye.
Scott: An eye is super important in anything. In anything you’re going afterwards. A real estate eye, I don’t have a real estate eye. I couldn’t look at a house and be like, “Oh, I can make money on this,” but I can guarantee you [crosstalk] could know–
Jared: The next point was, what do you see as the biggest opportunity in the internet entrepreneurs space over the next two to five years?
Scott: That’s a good one. Besides e-commerce?
Jared: If you think e-commerce is the biggest opportunity then–
Scott: In terms of e-commerce there’s never been an easier time to build a brand and to test a brand before you even build it. That’s why I do branded one product drop shipping because you can take a product, you can give the illusion that it’s a brand. I just learned the other day that you can add the TM mark to your name without having the trademark. Completely legal.
You can make the illusion of a brand and if it actually works then you’re like, “Okay, I didn’t just spend $70,000 in stock and product development and branding all these products. I spent $3,000 on these ads and I made back 10,000. Let me scale this up, see what happens.” Now with this money I’ve made I’m going to apply this into the brand, reinvest, brand the products, get the stock.
All of a sudden, you have a brand that would normally take possibly tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, to build. You made it in a funnel sort of way. You started on the small part of the funnel as in small investment and as you started making more money, you started putting more money into the brand and expanded like that. That’s a big opportunity. Trading cards are huge right now. I don’t know if you follow that at all.
Jared: I’ve had multiple people reach out to me asking if I was interested in buying or getting involved with them. I’m not into sports so I had no interest.
Scott: It’s nuts. Garrain Jones, he spent he spent 35,000 on trading cards specifically basketball. Right now, he just got them appraised the other day at 900,000.
Jared: No way.
Scott: It is ridiculous, especially the past year they’ve taken– That’s why Gary V was talking about it a year and a half ago.
Jared: He turned 30-something thousand to 900,000.
Scott: He also that guy comes in with such crazy positive energy to every single situation. He goes, “When I was buying these cards, I only bought these cards because my mom threw away all my cards. I had signed LeBron rookies. I just enjoyed these cards and she threw them away. When I started making money, I just started buying them out the pure joy of my heart and by doing that someone reached out to me and goes, ‘Hey, that card you just posted, it’s worth $3,000.’ I had no idea, and then I started looking at all these. ‘Okay, that’s 900. Okay, that’s 700.’ I just wanted to look at them.” He goes now, he’s had people– Now he’s in the trading community. He says people have literally offered him $2,000 to fly out to where they are and buy packs of cards because his luck is just out of this world and it all goes back to his mindset. Change your mindset, change your life.
Jared: That’s incredible.
Scott: Yeah.
Jared: We got building brands, cards– Building brands is– There’s companies that we work with that that you can spend $1,000 or $2,000 and they’ll hire a bunch of models or people off Craigslist to come create user-generated content unboxing, looking– You can literally fabricate a brand for a few thousand dollars, test it, validate it, then go– Then you can go raise money. You can say, “Hey, we built this brand. We did this test run, these are the results. Do you want to invest as a 20% partner?” Everyone wants to get in. If somebody came to me with results like that, I would invest in it.
Scott: 100%. I would say for the people who are listening, they don’t know, “How do I start building a brand?” you can think outside. The most simple brand to build is the personal brand, even if you don’t know anything about e-commerce or you don’t want to or anything. At the end of the day, having a personal brand is going to be so beneficial and it’s only going to get more and more beneficial.
I’ll tell you something that happened in St. Louis. I run localized Facebook Ads in my area, in Clayton and I have that trick where I can isolate down to just downtown. I ran ads for this two years ago and I restarted them on the go-kart recently. First of all, everyone in the fucking town knows me now. People are yelling my name when they see me and all this, which is cool but I just wanted to see what this would do this time around with a more strategic approach.
The restaurant in my building saw me, they all know me because they all saw my ads and the head manager came up and said, “Hey, we’d like to actually sponsor you. We’ll give you free meals for life if you start talking about our restaurant in your videos. Just before you go go-karting be like, ‘Hey, I need to stop by Peel Pizza.'” Shout out Peel Pizza. Simultaneously enough, my apartment building reached out to me and he goes, “Hey, we’re actually going to contact with the owners because we want to give you some sort of sponsorship deal where we’ll give you a discount on your rent every month just to promote us on your personal brand.”
With TikTok it’s never been easier. Something really important about that is, you got to– I just watched my first YouTube video the other day and I was like, “I just want to make one thing clear for everyone, I am going to be 100%.” This is still when I was an Uber driver so this is a YouTube video [unintelligible 00:45:09] posted. He’s like, “I’ve made like $350 in drop shipping, this product is going to– I think it’s going to take off.” This is the product I did $200,000 on.
It’s so weird to watch those but I just said, “I’m going to make one thing clear from the very start, I’m going to be completely myself. I’m going to be completely authentic,” because I noticed a lot of people online aren’t. When you go in the personal brand route, and you start pretending to be someone you’re not, you’re going to fall into a hole and lose yourself in the process completely.
You don’t know what people want. Say, you will start vlogging and people start liking your vlogs, you wouldn’t think like, “Oh, someone wants to watch me play golf. Someone wants to watch me do this,” you’d be very surprised what people want to watch. As long as you remain yourself, you’re never going to lose yourself, and you’re never going to dig yourself into a hole where you don’t even recognize the person on the screen anymore.
Jared: Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. As I got into the e-commerce info space and was selling courses, I started building a persona around making money with drop shipping and e-commerce. It wasn’t really who I was at my core. Who I am is, I’m passionate about inspiration, about mindset, about meditation, about bettering myself but–
Scott: And others.
Jared: And others and focusing on bettering myself so that I could validate to myself that these things work so that I could share with other people.
Scott: Yes, great point.
Jared: I built up this whole community and following of people that want to make money with drop shipping so I had to consistently put out content like that. If anyone realized, I haven’t really put out anything on Instagram and in like a year or more, because I only want to be authentic, because it’s very tiring. It’s a lot of people out there that are trying to build something and they’re trying to build a personal brand, and they’re doing what they think they have to do because other people are doing it. That’s cool and all but once you get it, then you’re going to have a lot to hold up to and a lot to live up to, and it’s way harder to go back once you have a lot of people that are expecting you to do one thing, and it’s very tiring.
Scott: 100%. In terms of personal branding advice I always say, if you say– I hate to use the word but famous. It makes more sense for me to say famous but recognize that as just growth. I’ll just say growth.
[laughter]
Scott: You want to grow in yourself, and then you want to grow in your town, and then you want to grow in your city, and then you want to grow in your state, and you want to grow in your country, and you want to grow in the world, but you don’t want to do that backwards. You don’t want to try to take on the whole world because you’re going to relate to yourself most of anybody.
Then the people in your town are going to relate to you most because they see– Especially with the localized Facebook Ads trick, you can easily become localized famous, and then you don’t know what opportunities that’s going to bring, and then it just expands like that because then now you’re in your state– Okay, this kid’s popping in the state. If you can get famous in your state, there’s a great chance you can get famous in the nation.
If you can get famous in the nation, great chance you can get famous in the world. I get DMs all the time. I don’t respond to too many but it’s like, “Hey, come out to my house. I got a mansion and a yacht. Come down here for four days. Let’s have fun.” Or like, “Hey, I got a business opportunity over here if you want to fly out.” That magnetic networking is so important, but you have to have the exposure for people to find you.
Jared: Yep, and like what you said the most important thing is to figure out who you really are, and be famous within yourself first before going outward.
Scott: Tai Lopez says, “The greatest misfortune is becoming really successful and good at something that you don’t like to do.”
Jared: Yeah, that’s a great line right there. Okay, so we’re coming close to wrapping this up here. Do you have any general words of advice or anything that you think that would resonate well with people?
Scott: I would say my core value, and we touched on this earlier is just please, please, please do not listen to a single piece of advice on anything that someone’s giving you the advice hasn’t done. More perfectly put, never listen to anybody who’s never done whatever you’re trying to do. You’re going to end up not doing it, just like them. When I was doing drops hipping, my parents, my friends, everyone around me who have never even done a Facebook ad or don’t even know how drop shipping works was telling me it’s a scam and it didn’t work. Then when I got on YouTube, similar things.
Guess who I listen to when I was drop shipping? The successful drop shippers. Guess what I listen to now when I’m getting into stocks? Not the 90% who have failed. Not my friends’ parents who lost X amount of money, I’m listening to the people who are making the real money, I’m listening to people like Umar Ashraf, who’s made 1.5 million this year. When you listen to those people, you’re way more likely to actually get the results and it seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of people are so emotionally invested into certain people which–
Let me just cover–For the most part, your parents, your family and friends, they have your best interest in mind but the world changed big time. A lot of times, what was best for them isn’t best for you. Only you know what’s best for you. No-one else can tell you different. If you start listening to everyone else, you’re going to start to forget what’s best for you and you’re never going to ever find that.
Jared: I think just on that note, as Scott said, your family and friends may have your best interest in mind but at the same time, if they wanted to do something and they never did it and you’re doing it, there’s going to be a level of, “Oh, man. I wish I would have done that.” At some level, they don’t want to see it work because they want to prove to themselves that they made the right choice by not doing it, and by you talking about what you’re doing and sharing with people what you’re doing, you’re inviting that energy into your world. You’re better off not even really talking to your family and friends about the things you’re working on until it’s working, until you’ve already done it.
Scott: Yeah, the energy will be off. I remember I decided this thought actually when I first started drop shipping, I told my parents I’m going to make a six-figure business which, to me back then, was just so much, and obviously, I have done it. I remember they said, “Your uncle said the same thing and he didn’t do it.” It’s just like, “Okay that’s a great point,” because maybe they didn’t necessarily try but they saw someone else try and it failed and they’re just worried that I would do the same thing but I knew– It already happened in my head, I just needed my–
I think the brain lives a little bit further in the future but I trust that it lives way further in the future and I just need my body to catch up to whatever my thoughts are having. The only way to get anything is to listen to the people who have done it, it’s going to send you light years. I can’t imagine how much talent the world’s lost out on because that talent listened to people who have never done what they’re trying to do. Maybe a famous singer, maybe a great philosopher, a great writer. I can’t imagine the countless amount of people that we’ve lost and all that knowledge that never got presented because they simply listened to people who hadn’t done what they were trying to do. With that being said, it’s nobody’s fault but that person’s.
Jared: Yeah. Well, especially now that we have access to podcasts like this and amazing advice all over the place. Anyway, Scott, thanks so much for joining, man.
Scott: Absolutely.
Jared: I think this is awesome, I think people are going to love it. Great conversation. If you’re watching this on YouTube and you have any questions, leave us a comment. If you enjoyed the podcast, share it with a friend.
Scott: Hit that like button, hit that subscribe button.
Jared: Do those things. Those would be helpful things.
Scott: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Jared: Thanks, bro.
