Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable With Clay Hebert

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Clay Hebert is a crowdfunding genius, a marketing strategist and the creator of the Six-Word Intro. As one of the world’s leading crowd funding experts, Clay has helped over 150 entrepreneurs, and raised over $50 million dollars on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Clay has trained senior leaders at fortune 500 companies, with clients like Accenture, Pfizer, Zappos and some of the top universities & nonprofits in the world. He advises corporations and startups on strategy, marketing, innovation and culture.

We’ll be discussing how Clay was able to transition to entrepreneurship after nine years of management consulting in the corporate world. He’ll be sharing how to make important life decisions based on your future calendar, not your best idea. And how to get comfortable with getting uncomfortable and lastly, why failure is just an opportunity.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Selling candy bars in the cold: Clay’s first marketing scam.
• Why success and failure are both imposters.
• The media’s role in building you up to tear you down.
• Why Clay grew up playing it safe in the job market.
• Joining Seth Godin’s MBA Programme.
• Clay’s 10 magic marketing questions.
• Hear more about Clay’s failed startups.
• Clay’s advice for taking the leap and quitting your job.
• Working backwards from our calendar.
• Why there is no perfect idea.
• Envisioning your first 10 customers.
• Getting comfortable with getting uncomfortable.
• Good crowd funding is good marketing.
• Creating the win-win: Help them help you.
• Documenting your failures.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“Failures are sort of like the bricks; you have to stand on them to reach success.” — @clayhebert

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“The media loves to build you up so that they can tear you down.” — @clayhebert

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[0:09:08].1]

“If you don’t have a rock solid fundamental good marketing strategy, Facebook ads are not going to save you.” — @clayhebert

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[0:16:57].1]

“You’ve got to learn what you don’t know.” — @clayhebert

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[0:19:59].1]

“Don’t quit your day job until you’ve completely validated your side hustle.” — @clayhebert

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[0:24:30].1]

“Good crowdfunding is just good marketing.” — @clayhebert

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[0:43:12].1]

“I think fear should be a signal that the project is worth doing.” — @clayhebert

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[0:56:10].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Fail On Website – http://failon.com/

Fail On Podcast – http://failon.com/episodes/

UnboundMerino – https://unboundmerino.com/ (Promo Code: FAIL ON)

Clay Hebert on Twitter – https://twitter.com/clayhebert

Clay Hebert on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayhebert/

Crowdfunding Hacks – http://crowdfundinghacks.com/

The Perfect Intro by Clay Hebert – https://vimeo.com/170572720

Purple Cow by Seth Godin – https://www.amazon.com/Purple-Cow-New-Transform-Remarkable/dp/1591843170

Yeti Coolers – http://intl.yeti.com/

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Winning-Creative-Battle/dp/1501260626

Chris Sacca — https://twitter.com/sacca

Seth Godin’s Alt MBA Course – https://altmba.com/

Kitty-O – http://kittyo.com/

Indiegogo – https://www.indiegogo.com/

Kickstarter — https://www.kickstarter.com/

U-2-Me — https://u-2-me.com/splash

Creative Live — https://www.creativelive.com/

Transcript Below

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 027

“CH: As you know, most startups never get to 10 customers. That’s where it all went. In this idea phase and this testing and whatever. You can remove a lot of the difficulty and concern and risk because everyone’s closing their eyes, thinking they’re going to build the next big thing. Just trick yourself and say you’re trying to build a 10 customer company, you’re trying to get 10 customers. You can envision your 10 customers having thanksgiving dinner with you.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:29.3] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:55.5] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that believes failing in a hyper focused way is the only way to achieve your dreams. in a world that only likes to share successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs and this is a platform for their stories.

Today’s story is of Clay Hebert. Clay is a crowd funding genius, a marketing strategist and the creator of the Six-Word Intro. As one of the world’s leading crowd funding experts, Clay has helped over 150 entrepreneurs, raised over 50 million dollars on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Clay’s trained senior leaders at fortune 500 companies and his speaking clients have included Accenture, Pfizer, Zap Post and just some of the top universities to non profits in the world. He advices corporations and startups on strategy, marketing, innovation and culture.

He’s just a really smart guy and really well liked by pretty much everyone. We’ll be discussing how Clay was able to transition to entrepreneurship after nine years of management consulting in the corporate world. He’ll be sharing how to make important life decisions based on your future calendar and not your best idea. And a simple focus strategy based on factors of 10 to build your customer base and business, and how Clay would start a brand-new business today with limited funds and resources.

But first, I have a lot of travel coming up and luckily, all I need to travel with is a backpack for one reason only, it’s a shirt from a beautiful Toronto company called Unbound Marino. They have clothes and apparel made out of marino wool and get this, you can wear it for months without ever needing to have it washed. You probably should have it washed, but you could do it.

Talk about a traveler’s absolute dream. You would never check a bag again, it just really cuts down on everything you need to take when you go on travel, vacation or holidays. Check in at the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t get anywhere else. And, if you’d like to stay up to date on all the Fail On podcast interviews and key takeaway’s from each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:59.2] RN: Hey there and welcome to the Fail On podcast. Today, I am sitting down with Clay Hebert. Clay helps people fund their dreams, he’s helped over 150 entrepreneurs and creatives, raised over $50 million dollars on platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

Clay, welcome to the Fail On podcast.

[0:03:16.0] CH: Dude, thanks so much for having me, I’m stoked to be here.

[0:03:19.0] RN: Just for a little context, we are in San Diego right now in a co-working space called Downtown Works. They’ve actually got a little studio room, we’re just holed up in here, having a conversation.

[0:03:29.7] CH: Love it.

[0:03:32.0] RN: Obviously I want to go into crowd funding hacks and everything you’re doing in that realm and obviously some of your current projects. But I’d love for you to take us back to really the first time that somebody actually gave you money in exchange for a product or service that you created?

[0:03:45.1] CH: Yeah, absolutely. I remember it well, I was freezing my butt off, maybe this doesn’t count because I didn’t create the candy bars but this was in elementary school when they gave you the candy bars to go sell. I was determined to win that alarm clock you know?

Looking back, it was probably $10 or $15 alarm clock, so I could have just gotten there a lot easier but I sold like seven boxes of candy bars. So I’d go to the local grocery store, middle of winter in Wisconsin, we go there at night, after school, after practice, it’s dark, it’s cold, bundled up. Asking, you know, costing every person who comes in the door in the grocery store if they want to buy a candy bar and it was really my first marketing lesson.

I didn’t know all the words and hadn’t read all the books at the time about permission and human spam and all that stuff. But what I did figure out is, they weren’t buying the candy bar. They were not the kind of person who supports a little kid who is freezing his ass off who’s selling the candy bar. I went from my first marketing lesson to my first marketing tactic/scam/whatever.

I brought a duffle bag of my brother’s clothes and I would wait, I would sell, I would sell candy bars for two hours or until frostbite set in. I realized that on any given night, after a certain number of people who were the kind of people who bought a candy bar, like I said, none of them were interested in the actual chocolate, overpriced candy bar. There were just like, here’s this kid.

When about four or five of them would go in, in the span of you know, before they came out. I would run around the corner, change clothes, change into my brother’s clothes, go stand at the other exit door and wait for those people to leave the grocery store and hit them up again. They would buy on the way out, again, not because they wanted the candy bar. But because here’s this sad little kid selling candy bars for school. That was the first marketing lesson and first marketing sort of tactic.

[0:05:35.0] RN: Just for context, where was that? Because you said frostbite.

[0:05:37.6] CH: Yeah, small town, Eau Claire Wisconsin, I grew up in a town, not tiny town but 60,000 people, west central Wisconsin called Eau Claire. It was Kermes grocery store in Eau Claire Wisconsin, I was probably about seven years old.

[0:05:49.4] RN: That’s amazing. Just in terms of obviously this is the Fail On podcast and you learned your lessons early on selling candy bars. It’s actually funny because I totally forgot, I did the same stuff, right? The same – I don’t know what it is, I think it’s mainly for sports teams, not for school. But that was typically what it was and you’d sell yeah, like you said this oversized candy bars that were like $5 apiece.

Like go in the grocery store and get it for like 50 cents.

[0:06:13.8] CH: Exactly. Yeah, not the best place to obviously, you know, they’re overpriced, they’re about to walk in to a place like you said, go to a place. I saw a story last year that I thought was hilarious, maybe it was a couple of years ago, this girl scout, you know, girl scout cookies were just sold in their annual drive. This girl scout just blew all the records, all the sales records or whatever because she sat up outside of a legal dispensary.

[0:06:37.7] RN: Amazing.

[0:06:38.2] CH: People going in, buying their marijuana, they walk outside and there’s this cute girl with a cart table and of course, she just blew out the sales records. So another marketing lesson, you know? Context and place matters.

[0:06:48.0] RN: Maybe we should be studying from kids?

[0:06:49.8] CH: I know, right?

[0:06:50.4] RN: They know how to pull the heart strings.

[0:06:51.9] CH: That’s’ right.

[0:06:53.8] RN: How do you actually view success and failure?

[0:06:56.0] CH: Interestingly, so I see them as inextricably linked. You cannot have success without many failures. Failure’s are sort of like the bricks, you have to stand on them to reach success. There’s a poem I love, I’m not a huge poetry...