[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today. I am lucky enough to be joined by Scott Anderson, a serial entrepreneur. Got a bunch of stuff on his resume, mental health expert. He's the CEO of CEO freedom. So I'm curious how he's freed himself up from his own, CEO responsibilities.
Scott, thanks for coming. how are you doing, buddy?
[00:00:49] Scott: Great, Jay. Thanks. Glad to be here.
[00:00:51] Jay: So you're out in Omaha, Nebraska. We talked about stakes and Warren Buffett a little bit before the show started. where is that where you grew up?
[00:00:59] Scott: Yeah, I grew up here. I spent a lot of time actually on the East Coast. I worked for advertising agencies in Boston and New York, but I returned home, to run a family business that was, unfortunately going out of business and, thought I'd get right back to the East Coast and I've never left.
[00:01:17] Jay: Okay. so let's talk a little bit about where you grew up and, did it have an impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?
[00:01:27] Scott: Yeah, you know, I mean, the main thing about me growing up, I guess, is that I was surrounded by entrepreneurs. I was on both sides of my family. there were more on by far, more entrepreneurs than people who had jobs and some of them were farmers and ranchers and, cattle feeders and so forth. And some of them started You know, a wide variety of businesses, everything from, retail to business companies.
And, you know, a lot of it was just the environment I grew up in where it was not the exception, but more the rule. And also the, no one said this, but the implication I took was that there's no job security in a job that, or there's no security, no financial security. And, that you were actually more secure when you kind of controlled your destiny when you had the reins. So that was a big part about it. and also I was just always wanting to do this. I've, you know, I was kind of born wanting to, I started a shoeshine business when I was a door to door shoeshine business when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something. And, I've just always, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I've just always done things like this.
[00:02:40] Jay: Yeah. I was, it makes you wonder, sometimes you don't have a choice, right? if you're more rural or if you're out in the middle of now, I mean, I grew up in Virginia, kind of in the middle of nowhere. And my parents were, one of my parents is an entrepreneur. just an interesting thought that, you know, the less dense of an area you're in, the more likely maybe it is that you have to just.
Be a cattle farmer or a, you know, rancher or whatever it is, you know, these different things because there's not many options out there. So I never really kind of thought of it,
[00:03:06] Scott: I think it's that. It's
also, you know, most of my relatives were, you know, my great grandparents came from Ireland and Sweden and Germany. And they came because they were entrepreneurial. they came because they wanted a better life and, you know, they wanted to do something and they came here kind of on purpose.
And Nebraska, when they got here was mostly, Prairie and, you know, so you had to do it yourself for sure.
[00:03:32] Jay: Right. Yeah. You don't have, you don't have an option. so you mentioned your first business, I don't know that 1, you know, paid the bills, as they say shoe shining, but, what was
[00:03:41] Scott: 7 year old girls,
[00:03:43] Jay: the 7 year old bills? I'm sure that, you know, your candy, your candy and cartoon bills. I'm sure
[00:03:47] Scott: Yeah, baseball cards.
[00:03:48] Jay: Yeah, baseball cards and comic books and stuff. What was the 1st real business you started later on in life
[00:03:54] Scott: boy. Well, I started a, an advertising agency in college that, that did work for, I was selling this, I was selling this label that would go on the telephones. In dorm rooms and, the sticker would go on the receiver, the telephone receiver back in the days when we had those and, and it would list, like, the pizza delivery company and stuff like that. and so I would sell advertising on these stickers and then, had a, a contract to put the stickers on the phones and, That was one of the first things that I did. I had a small publishing business that was publishing horrible, gloomy poetry. that was a complete disaster. yeah, a lot of, scar tissue research, then and now.
[00:04:46] Jay: scar tissue research? so tell me, you know, fast forward a little bit. you're doing a lot of different things today. You're, you've got a sponsor on a lot of different things, your advisor and a bunch of stuff. what is the day to day look like for you right now?
[00:05:00] Scott: Well, you know, I've got I'm mainly in the executive coaching business broadly, and I've been coaching businesses now for, I guess, 15 years. I just about I sold my the largest business that I started was an advertising agency, I sold to my partners almost 10 years ago, and, while I started the coaching practice within that, it was an advertising agency, and within that advertising agency, I started the coaching business. So, you know, most of what I do today is Well, specifically what I do to your point about, identifying the customer is I work with CEOs with businesses that are doing, 2 to 10 million in revenue and are, they're typically plateaued. they've reached a point where they can't do it all themselves, but they haven't really figured out how to scale the business, how to hire a team.
And so they're working, 60 to 80 hours a week. But they're still not producing enough money to save, and now their lives have caught up with the business. So typically they have children who want to go to college, and they have, retirement they want to save for, and trips they want to take, and all the rest of it. But the collision, or the plateau that they've hit is that, they can't run the business the way that they started the business, and the only way to make it grow is by working harder and harder, but they're burning out. these folks are burning out, their home lives aren't as good as they want them to be. They're not seeing their spouses and children and so forth, friends and family as much as they want to. so that's the target. That's what I do now.
[00:06:41] Jay: And how did you kind of figure out that was who you wanted to work with?
[00:06:46] Scott: Well, that's me, first of all. I mean, I've been through that a couple of times. half the t shirt and everything else. Of growing a business to a point where sales and profit cap, and it feels like the only thing you could do is work harder, or worry more or both. And, and having been through that a number of times, And as I say, having the scars to prove it, you know, I finally arrived at some things on my own, but also, talking to clients that had really broken through that trap and, who have now come out the other side.
So today I work, you know, 20. or so hours a week. I've got a great distributed team. that is incredibly talented and empowered. they're very entrepreneurial. we're really clear on where we're going. I give them, you know, full reign to make decisions. And get things done. And and so that's why we call the company CEO Freedom.
'cause that's really what it is it's not just the freedom of time to go from 60 or to 80 hours to 20, but more than that, it's kind of the mental freedom of knowing that your business is making money, even if you're not. hovering over employees and scaring them away. so that's really the idea.
[00:08:03] Jay: give me one reason why someone should start a coaching business. if they're thinking about it and give me one reason why they shouldn't, if they're thinking about it.
[00:08:16] Scott: Well, I'll start with shouldn't when I got into this almost 20 years ago. Now, there were very few coaches. it was just becoming popular on either coast. And, there were some, people in the tech world who are using coaches and so forth. And so you could kind of be a coach. life coach was one of the more popular terms.
Today that doesn't work. and I think this kind of goes along with the theme of your show. You really have to take dead aim at a particular, problem and that a particular, a very specific audience is having. And, I suppose this was always true in a way if you're going to be successful, but it's really true today.
So the main reason not to get into the coaching business is if you don't have a very specific, problem identified and a very specific. target audience identified because you cannot succeed in coaching or I don't think any business. if you haven't identified that exact pain point, a guy named Russ Rufino, who I like calls it a bleeding neck. And if it's not a bleeding neck problem for a very specific audience and you can't describe their problem to them better than they can describe it themselves, then you're not going to succeed.
[00:09:32] Jay: Love that. Now, what about somebody who has been thinking about it because they've seen the problems or they're in a space where, I mean, I mean, look, I think it's a very, I think it's a common place for people to get to, right? Where like you run a business, you are successful. You get a lot of people asking you about, you know, how did you do that?
It seems like magic. And then, you know, what, and you can make the decision to be a coach and kind of help those people out, or you can just focus on your own business and try to keep growing that the way you are. So,
[00:10:03] Scott: I see. Yeah.
[00:10:03] Jay: so that's kind of the question I'm asking is. You know, who should, you know, why should somebody take that path towards coaching versus doing their own business growth, or should they just, you know, focus on their business?
[00:10:15] Scott: Well, I mean, if you're, if you've grown a business that does that right where you're working 20 hours a week and the business grows top line and bottom line, predictably month after quarter after year. You'd be silly to get rid of it, right? I mean, at 20 hours a week, you know, why not continue? And, but this is the thing.
I mean, this is a very elusive goal. There aren't a lot of people. you know, I've done lots and lots of research to identify, you know, some best practices, but a lot of people know what to do and still can't do it, you know, because there is something about the entrepreneur that, you know, I've heard this a million times.
I'm sure you have too. you know, it's faster and easier for me to just do it than delegated or train people or whatever. And even though we know that as entrepreneurs, we know that is a dead end. there aren't very many, even though they know it's a dead end. Who can't stop who can stop doing it? so the reason that I love coaching is because, probably I have a short attention span and I like the variety of working with lots of different, you know, they're all similar in the sense that they do. They have about the same top line and bottom line. They've hit exactly the same plateau. The owner founder is burning out.
I mean, all of those are the same, but the industries are different. The individuals are different. And for me, the juice is really in the relationships with these folks, because they're kind of my people. I get them, they get me. And, It's really satisfying to, to help people who really are willing to break out.
[00:11:51] Jay: Love that. if you had to start CEO freedom over again, tomorrow, you know, square one with the stuff, you know, what would be your first step to start this business over again?
[00:12:02] Scott: Well, you know, this is a fairly young business. it's only a year old
and so I'm pretty proud of it. You know, maybe a better example and, you know, every single one, hopefully you get smarter and smarter. When I was in the advertising business originally, my background was on the creative side making television commercials and outdoor billboards and things like that. And so our agency, what distinguished it was creative, kind of a wild and crazy creative product. And, and that was okay for a while, but it was, I realized, fairly quickly that we'll never outgrow being a boutique. because it's very hard. There is no bleeding neck. Problem there. I mean, people can say our advertising is boring or advertising isn't working, but that's about as precise of a problem as we could identify. And one of the things that we decided to do, actually, when we realized we couldn't grow the business above a certain threshold. We began to look at the business completely differently and look for micro niche markets where it was possible to own the market, but also to bring competitive advantages that went right to the pain points and so that we were, we kind of transcended being an advertising agency and became more of a trusted business partner.
Everybody says that, of course, and their websites and their mission, vision and values. But in this case,with this advertising agency, we were really able to do it. And my partners who, my former partners who continue to run the business, that agency today are, that's exactly what they're doing. they have a very precise, pain point for in a very specific niche. in a B to B industry, and they are by far the most experienced and the most, the more, the most, resourceful, you know, and it would transcend advertising agency. They're basically the experts in that industry, and so it transcends clever headlines or any of that. It's really, you know, when you get to a point where you can demonstrably, and quantitatively. Ad points of market share. You know, we used to say if you can get the CFO's attention as an advertising agency, you finally accomplish something. And that's really what it comes down to the check signer and the CFO or the board of directors, you know, that if you had an audience at the board of directors level, the CFO or CEO level, then you were finally breaking through and you were finally adding value. But,our go to market. M. O. Prior to that was kind of all things to all people, and we could not break through this plateau that way. It was never gonna happen. and it's, you know, it's counterintuitive. You would think that the bigger the net you have, the more official you'll catch. And there is, you know, I can sort of see that, which is why so few entrepreneurs ever do focus. but if you've hit your head against the wall. the plateau or the ceiling hard enough or long enough, you know, you begin to get open minded and that's what, you know, that's what we did. I've just seen this in case after case that the more we call it taking dead aim, there is a, there's a great golf coach. I'll come up with his name. He wrote a book called The Little Red Book of Golf. I'll come up with his name. Anyway, his whole teaching methodology was that when you're on the tee and you're teeing, teeing off on the first tee, instead of looking for kind of a place in the fairway, you want your tee shot to go to pick a blade of grass that you're aiming for. And that in doing that, he was kind of a layman's psychologist. He said that it. That it would kind of catalyze mind, body and spirit. to hit a blade of grass that there was real power in taking dead aim and we take the same approach or I advocate the same approach with the businesses that I coach.
If you can't, you know, again, the most powerful thing I think any of us can do is to be able to articulate the problems. Our clients are having better than they can. there's a great coach actually named Taki Moore, who says that anybody who can articulate the problem better than your client is the client will assume that you are an expert. And you are really, if you can talk about the psychological pain as well as the business pain that your clients are having
[00:16:28] Jay: Yeah, I think,dead on with all that. and it brought to mind, I just had a guest on recently. There was, he started this, podcast, I think it was at the Rochester Business Connections or something. There was some sort of very specific, you know, and Rochester's not a small town by any means, but he wanted to be the marketing guy of Rochester and then kind of go out from there and it kind of re.
You know, jiggered me a little bit. You know, I do software quality assurance right now. I live in Philadelphia, and it would make a lot of sense for me to aim to be, the QA guy of Philly, right? To be the guy. And then you can, you know, once you've established yourself as the expert there now, so, I mean, how do you Think about that in terms of niche, like location versus vertical versus whatever.
I mean, can you pick just a location and just drive in and be the expert in a physical, you know, if you live somewhere, should you start there? You know what I mean? is there some sort of, method to that madness in your opinion? you know, doing location based.
[00:17:28] Scott: location based is generally more, more potent if it's a retail. So, for example, if you're the Rochester person and you're speaking on a B2B level, or you're offering services at B2B level, and you're the most connected B2B agency in Rochester, and you can provide the most connections, and you have the more experience, the most experiences with businesses serving other businesses in Rochester, then it begins to make some sense. you know, generally, I think that vertical is better than horizontal or is more, potent. So to give you an idea, we in our advertising agency, we went from being the clever boutique agency that would, that was, You know, happy to help anybody. the vertical niche that we shifted to is really a radical departure.
But what we did was look at all of the clients we'd ever had in this agency and looked at the ones where we moved the needle the farthest and where we were the most appreciated, beyond creative, but at a CFO level, at a board of directors level, where did we, where could we say with,with quantitative proof that we had added value indisputably that moved the business in terms of market share price, pricing, et cetera. And where we ended up, of all places was in the food ingredients business, which is sort of a big deal in the Midwest. But basically what that means is, so it's B to B food ingredients and of all the narrow niches in the world. but this means selling to and from companies like. Archer Daniel Midland, Conagra, General Foods, Kraft, et cetera.
Selling, you know, selling train car loads of salt or flour or specialized ingredients. And, you know, you would think, oh my God, that's so narrow. It's, you know, how can you make any money? but the fact is that, you know, for our small agency, and at the time it was like a 5 million revenue agency, you know, we could, the potential to blow up our agency was huge. The other part of it was the opportunity to sell a business like that. Is much if you want to is much, much better. It's a much more you don't have to sell the business, but it may be comforting to know you could, whether you sell it to your own employees, your business partners, or to another business. But again, when you can demonstrate that you're the number 1 in this case, this agency is the number 1 food ingredients agency in the world and has international clients in an international. because they focused on a ultra narrow, you know, they could speak a language that a lay agency or a general agency wouldn't even understand.
[00:20:12] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:20:13] Scott: And, you know, when you can talk about the business that way and intelligently and add and be adding value. it's a completely different conversation. Competition is so much more fun then, because you crush other, you crush your competitors, who can't do that. You know, because at the end of the day, cute, creative is fine, but if you can talk about market share or container loads of product, you know, that, and in that industry, it really is market share to gain a half a point of market shares, billions of dollars potentially.
So if you can talk that way, then you're going to get an audience and you're going to compete and win, you know, more than your fair share. So that was the, that vertical identification is, I think. to really be the expert in that industry.
[00:21:02] Jay: Love it. how, before I forget. Who was your first customer at your advertising agency? Do you remember?
[00:21:09] Scott: Yes, I do. It was a, it was a grocery store chain. And, I had been working for an agency that was going out of business. And I was in charge of new business development. And, I got a call from this, I had been courting this supermarket chain for a long time. And, they called up and they said they're finally ready to do something.
As we were all being laid off. I said, I'm gonna call you back in five minutes. Hold on. Went out to my car and started my advertising agency.
[00:21:38] Jay: first customer for, CEO freedom.
[00:21:40] Scott: boy, that's a tougher one, but I'm thinking of, a, a business in, outside of Philadelphia. a guy in the insurance business. Who, had, it was in exactly the scenario that I'm talking about, where he had a really good business, but he could not grow it. He felt without working 60 to 80 hours a week, without working six and a half days a week, wasn't seeing his significant other, wasn't seeing his children, wasn't enjoying his life and saw no light at the end of the tunnel. And, you know, we were able relatively quickly. to help him identify the things that only he could do exceptionally well. That's kind of the key to the process is to understand that no matter how talented a CEO is. There are usually a big chunk of the things that they do, especially if they're working 60 to 80 hours, that other people can do better, faster, and cheaper. And so we identified the, what we call his genius zone, which is, you know, two or three things that nobody could do as well. And there are also things that would move the needle. What typically happens is there's sort of an upside down Pareto principle where you're spending 80 percent of your time getting 20 percent of your results. Or for a lot of our clients, 90 percent of their time getting 10 percent of their results. But they're spending almost no time on the very thing that'll break through the plateau that's so frustrating. So it's really about flip flopping that Pareto principle so that they're spending 80 percent of their time, I'm sorry, 20 percent of their time achieving 80 percent of the outcome. and so we go through an inventory, an actual audit of every minute they're spending every week. And identify the time that other people could do the task better, faster and cheaper, and refocus the founders time, like I say, 20 or 30 hours a week on things that will break through the, the plateau and then create a, a kind of what we call it a hands free management system so that, They're able to manage these people and also select people who are inherently entrepreneurial and proactive, just like my team so that you can, you spend time making a difference instead of, micromanaging or babysitting or handholding, employees, or putting out fires and solving petty disputes.
You spend most of your time. where it makes a difference. And in the case of this gentleman and most of my clients, where they, the 20 hours a week that tends to be their genius zone, is in, relationships with current and prospective new clients operating at a very high strategic level. those kinds of things are the kind of things that most of our clients, when we first work with them, say, yeah, if I could just spend five minutes a week on that, I could really make a difference, but I'm swamped. With, what they call adult daycare, you know, trying to try to keep the employees from killing each other.
[00:24:34] Jay: what, how did you get that first client? How did you get that guy outside of Philly?
[00:24:41] Scott: Great question. So the, and I think this also goes to the focus of your show, Jay, is that, the answer is Facebook advertising, that went to a, that led, prospective clients to a video, a webinar and, and which leads people ultimately to schedule a call with me and, You know, as you're probably aware, Facebook in particular is, doesn't, because of iOS 14 and other changes in technology, we can't target the way that we used to within Facebook advertising,metrics, but so what's really key is for the message to be right on the button to really be able to say that secret fear That your prospect is not even reporting to his wife or her husband, but that, that secret fear that at 3 a.
m.,if you can spit that out, then you really can target, but target by messaging versus by moving the dials on Facebook.
[00:25:43] Jay: Love it. All right. I have one more question for you. non business related. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:25:55] Scott: Oh, love it. Well, it would be moved to Italy. I spent January and February living in Florence and, Generally northern Italy and, and I'm gonna do that. you know, more and more. but that's there are a whole bunch of things I'd love to do, but that's one of the main ones is to, have a, permanent or semi permanent residents in Italy.
How about you? What would you do?
[00:26:19] Jay: Oh, that's my, everybody asked me this,I'm a huge astrophotography nerd. So I think going to space and, you know, not being afraid that I would blow up, you know, on my way out. so I couldn't fail, you know, I would go to space. well, Scott, you're awesome, dude. I love the story.
very genuine guy. So you seem dialed in, if people want to reach you, what's the best way to do it?
[00:26:41] Scott: the best way is my sort of mothership is called Double Dare. And, so they could email me at scott at double dare you, which is just the way it sounds. Double dare, Y O U, double dare you dot U S. And, or they can check out our website and it contains CEO freedom. And, we have a burnout recovery and prevention program. And a lot of other things. But yeah, doubledareyou. us.
[00:27:09] Jay: What was the guy's name? Mark Summers from Double Dare from the, remember that there was a show in the nineties, I think.
[00:27:14] Scott: That's it.
[00:27:15] Jay: Mark Summers. All right, man. Well, Scott is great. Enjoy the rest of your week, brother. It was great talking to you and we'll catch up again soon. All right.
[00:27:20] Scott: Thanks Jay.
[00:27:21] Jay: Thanks Scott. See ya.