From first 100 fans to market leadership

MARKETING WITH VANI

| Scott D. Clary

LinkedIn Newsletter

In an engaging episode of the Marketing With Vani podcast, Scott Clary of the? Success Story podcast dished out a wealth of knowledge about entrepreneurship and all things marketing.?

Scott, who leverages a rich background in sales and marketing, shared his invaluable insights from growing a prominent personal brand, including a newsletter that reaches 320,000 subscribers weekly and founding a private members community for high-achieving entrepreneurs.?

Read on to get some of Scott's most impactful tips on mastering the art and science of content marketing, producing and scaling content with new-gen tools, and understanding the all-important? link between a great product and its market success.

Vani Dandia: Scott, to start, tell us a little about what you do?

Scott Clary: I host a large business podcast called Success Story. I've been doing this podcast for about six years now, and it's one of the larger entrepreneur and business podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from the founder of Netflix to the founder of Reebok and other notable marketers like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. It started off as a side hustle and then turned into something a little bit more serious. That's tied into my personal brand, as a part of which I also put out a lot of content on social media, discussing various business topics, and write a newsletter once a week for about 320,000 people.

In the past, I've worked with a variety of different startups as a consultant, as an advisor, as a mentor, I've worked as an operator building companies, and I've worked in tech—telecom and IT, and software. I've had some success in those fields as an entrepreneur. Right now, I'm building a private members community, a community of later-stage and exited entrepreneurs. It's called ‘The Social Club.’ And it's focused on building a community of individuals that are playing at a very high level and are looking to learn from each other. Think about it like YPO or EO or Tiger 21.?

I've always been on the sales and marketing side of building a business. I'm not a product person.?

I've always found my sweet spot either going into early-stage companies and helping them figure out how to sell and market their product, or doing that for my own company.?

I've done the gamut of marketing activities for every single company that I've ever worked in and on. And I love it. I love figuring out ways to find a way to take a product and create a ton of demand for it because I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that.

If you don't know how to sell a product, you don't have a business. People have different feelings about the words ‘selling’ and ‘marketing,’ and some people feel like you're pushing a product on some people.

That's not the way that I see it at all. I feel like selling and marketing a product is taking something that somebody needs and making them aware of it. I feel like a lot of people have a hard time doing that. And that, in my opinion, is the difference between a good entrepreneur and somebody whose business we've never heard of.

V: In the context of marketing, like you said, if you're not visible and people don't know you exist, then they can't buy you. What is behind the hesitation and struggle with bringing that proposition alive and to the consumer in a way that it can be easily digested. Talk to us about your observations with young founders.

S: I know the solution to bringing a product to market—it's really not that complicated. When you have never had a single sale for your business, usually the first 50 or so customers are reached by you, the founder, asking them to take a chance on your product and you are going to over-serve and over-deliver.

After you close those first 50 deals, it's going to be hard work. You'll be asking someone you've worked with in the past if they know a decision-maker who might want to try this out in a large company, depending on what you're selling.

And I'm talking from a B2B lens, even a B2C or direct-to-consumer lens. If you're selling packaged goods, you can set up Facebook Ads, among other things. Even if I found a way to convert people off of Facebook Ads, I would probably be sending them a Zoom link and asking them for feedback on their first experience with my products.?

So, I would say that with the first 50 customers, be super hands-on. Now, the question as to why people don't want to do that is probably because of inexperience and nerves. There's a really good chance that even if they think their product is great, they have a really hard time telling somebody they should pay for it.

And this is also why having a great product really helps.?

Knowing we have a great product that is solving a problem that maybe we had ourselves is a great version of entrepreneurship. Product-led marketing, product-led sales, product-led growth—I'm such a fan of these concepts because when you have that good product, psychologically, it makes it easier to ask somebody for money.?

And when you can get over that hurdle, that's when you start to understand that every founder is a salesperson.?

In almost zero circumstances have I seen a founder completely remove themselves from the sales and marketing process. And in most circumstances, the founders that are successful actually end up being involved in the sales process longer than they should and they have a hard time giving up sales to a VP of Sales because they love it so much and they have such a strong relationship with their original customer base.

Those are the companies that are successful because the founder has always championed sales and always evangelized the product and always gone into meetings with customers, focused on getting feedback and building relationships.?

V: In the early stages, brands have not landed funding yet for creating large ads and putting them on social media or for TV and press. As a content expert, what would be a few tools that you can suggest to early-stage founders to create content without investing a lot of money?

S: Creating content doesn't have to be expensive; I think that's a misconception. Hiring ineffective agencies can cost even more because they often don't add much value to your business.

For instance, I figured out how to spin up a website using a drag-and-drop website builder. You could use WordPress, Elementor, ClickFunnels, or Squarespace. For graphic design, there's Canva, and for text generation, you can use tools like Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT. Then, I could use Opus Pro, an AI tool that finds the perfect little clip in a 60-minute conversation and clips those into about 20 different short-form reels that I can further edit. This tech stack—between WordPress, Canva, Opus Pro, and a text generator—will cost maybe a hundred bucks a month, max.

Start by figuring out your content buckets, that is, what types of content you want to put out? Is it entertaining? Is it educational? Is it asking people to convert? It's probably all of the above. Then you build a system that allows you to produce that content.

To edit a video, you can use a tool like Timebolt, which takes a video and automatically adds all the jump cuts to your video. And then, with another tool like Veme.ly or Submagic, you can overlay captions in an Alex Hormozi style caption format. Again, these tools cost between 10 and 20 bucks a month.

And I've basically just built you a five-person marketing team. For writing copy, take the transcript from the video, put it into Gemini—I like Gemini the best out of all the generative text tools as it writes the most organically—and ask it to write an Instagram caption for this video and specify the tone, style, and the call to action. Now you have a video, edited and with captions, plus a caption for Instagram done in maybe 15 minutes, all ready to upload.?

So, there's really no reason for anybody to worry about costs or expenses, especially when you're starting your company. Find a way always to be entertaining or educational or even a little bit provocative online. You can have an opinion or you can do something that is a little bit chaotic in your content because it just drives engagement and shares. People want to engage with brands that feel like they're not robots, are fun, and ride trends.

And if you have a more standard product, like an enterprise B2B product, you should still focus on content. You could start a podcast, for example, interviewing stakeholders who might potentially buy your product or service. Or, you could write detailed blogs that establish you as a thought leader in the industry. This approach doesn’t just build your brand; it also puts you directly in conversation with decision-makers and potential clients.

At its core, content marketing is about storytelling and engaging with your audience. Whether through viral videos or deep-dive podcasts, using the right tools and a creative approach can massively expand your reach without a huge budget.?

V: You made a big statement that AI doesn't replace creativity right now. There's this huge debate going on the world over. Talk to us a little about that.

S: Creativity, to me, is actually about understanding the context in which this particular piece of content supports a sales rep, drives somebody to conversion, is funny and is going to be saved and shared to two million people.?

AI cannot understand the full context of the output. It gives output based on a specific set of prompts and it doesn't understand how this piece plays an important role.?

So, it's up to the human to understand how this particular thing plays an important role in achieving a desired business result or outcome. And that's where the magic lies.?

Take the example of graphic design. First of all, even before AI, if a graphic designer was just creating graphics without understanding how these would support the company's goals, I would have replaced that person with someone cheaper who could perform the same tasks. Graphic designers should have been upskilling themselves. So when I, as the marketer, set a goal, they would understand all the nuances involved in achieving that result and create content to support that objective. AI doesn't do that.?

Graphic design differs from traditional artistry, such as painting on canvas. Artists will likely be fine because people buy art not just for its aesthetic appeal but for the value they perceive in it, which often isn't just about visual appeal.

For a pure graphic designer, you need more utility than just producing a drawing or using a tool like Canva, which I could use to replace some very low-tier graphic designers. So AI hasn't really threatened this; it's more about those who haven't upskilled or added value beyond basic command and response. If that's all they did, it’s inadequate—you must find ways to provide more value to an organization.

I ask the designers I work with for their feedback. I don't just instruct them; I explain the results I'm aiming for and ask how they can help achieve them. This involves storytelling, design, copy, and more—areas where deep understanding enhances the output. AI isn't at a point where it can handle these complex, nuanced tasks yet. I'm not sure if it will ever fully replace such depth of human experience.

For more of Scott Clary’s expert advice on how entrepreneurs can sustain their content marketing cadence and stand out in today's crowds, listen to the full episode here.

And for tailored brand-building strategies that will always hit the mark, you can leverage my marketing consultancy. Reach out to me @[email protected]