[Podcast] Why We All Need to Develop Our Perfect Intro and Perfect Calendar

Previous to attending the most selective MBA program in the country where Clay Hebert was one of only 9 people to learn directly from marketing expert Seth Godin for six months, he had led teams at Accenture, the world’s largest consulting firm, solving complex problems for global Fortune 500 companies. After the program with Seth Godin he went on to help over 2000 projects raise over $100 million total on crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo. 

Clay's work has been profiled in the books Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, Entrepreneurial You by Dorie Clark and Deep Work by Cal Newport. Forbes called him “one of the next generations of business and media influencers” and he was recently named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's "50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs"...along with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

In our discussion we talk about the key threads that he sees from the companies that he works with, ranging from startups to large Fortune 500 companies. We also talk about why you need to develop your perfect intro and how developing your perfect calendar will help you zoom out to see what really makes you happy and then take the steps necessary to achieve them.

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MACHINE-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript likely contains errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.

Welcome to episode number six of the built unstoppable podcast. I'm your host Justin Levy. Today I'm joined by clay a bear. Clay worked initially at Accenture, which is the world's largest consulting firm before escaping corporate America to attend the most selective MBA program in the country. He was one of only nine people to learn directly from marketing expert Seth Godin for six months following that, he's had the opportunity to work with clients ranging from Zappos and, you know, training entrepreneurs, corporate executives and senior lip level leaders at the Pentagon, among others. He's been profiled in the books such as tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, entrepreneurial you by Dorie Clark and deep work by Cal Newport. He's helped projects in startups raise over 100 million dollars on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Forbes named him one of the next generations of business immediate influencers. And recently he was named as one of entrepreneur magazine's 50 most Darren entrepreneurs, right alongside people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. That was a breath full. So thank you. And thanks for coming on clay. I know how busy you are.

 It's so good to talk to Justin. It's been far too long. And I'm thrilled that we're able to reconnect this week.

 Absolutely. So, through everything I was just talking about, you've had the opportunity to work with brands that have ranged from early series startups, you know, part of that hundred million dollars that you've helped raise, all the way up to those largest brands in the world and I know many of the other ones. throughout those, what has been some of the common threads that you've seen if you were to pull those out and talk about those.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no matter how big the company is, every company I've ever worked with their customers are human beings. And human beings love stories. Stories are what we buy. Every almost every brand startup I've worked with, whether it's the smallest entrepreneur, creating a new kind of wallet or selling in Kickstarter, or the last speaking gig I did in the beginning of COVID was at Coca Cola in Atlanta working at Kohl's Innovation Center. And so from the smallest to the largest. They need to focus more on stories and less on the product. More on who the person is going to become when they use their product. Because what we buy nowadays more than anything, our stories if you look at you're familiar with the brand Yeti coolers, I'm sure most of the most your listeners are as well. Yeti coolers and I love the brand I love. I love the product, but I love the brand. They built a billion dollar brand billion dollar companies selling something nobody actually needed. Because Justin, if you and I went camping say 10 years ago, it's not like we would use the, the Coleman cooler, and the beer would get warm and the sandwiches would spoil and ruin our camping trip. The Coleman cooler worked fine. But what it wasn't was a cooler we could brag to our friends about it right it was baby blue, and the lid was white plastic with a hinged lid. And so Yeti came along and sure the Yeti coolers.

Let's say it's three times better quality than the Coleman. It should cost $100 because you can get the Coleman for 33. But it's costs $300. And they sell them all the time because the other $200 is the story. And so no matter the size of the company, they sell the story of my coolers tougher than yours, my coolers Grizzly proof, right. So what I always try to do with brands and companies is what's the story that you're selling, not the story of the founder, not the story of of the company. But the story of how will people change? Or what can they brag about or what I call a portable story? What will they tell their friends? Right? If I get a Yeti and you don't, and I want to appear to be higher status than you, I'm going to say, hey, Justin, is your cooler Grizzly proof, right? Or, you know, nice baby blue Coleman as opposed to my Yeti, right? So I was trying to help companies figure out the story because the story is worth more than the better quality product.

Absolutely. And I and I think we see that with a lot of brands right? You have brands like Lululemon, there's a lot of stretch pants, right? A lot of exercise pants out there and, and, you know, but they sell cancer and and certainly exercise gear for $90 Plus, you know, it's but people flocked to their stores and they have wines outside their doors when, you know, they opened a new store. So I think that that's really Key thread and certainly Yeti, I've had to buy them for family before and they are expensive. But you know, I was just back home on vacation. And my father in law has his 20 year old or 30 year old Coleman cooler. And we took that everywhere we went to the beach and on the water and things like that, because he believes that, you know, he filled it up with a bag of ice and off we went. So there is a lot between that and you can still go to any sporting goods store and buy something like a Coleman cooler or off brand.

So yeah, and it's and the only feature that the Coleman leaves out is the story and some people don't care about the story or their story is you're crazy for paying $300 for Yeti right? And so that it's a different story. And the reality is, you know, Coleman, I believe to this day is still a bigger company than anybody By far, right, there's lots of car companies that do more revenue than Tesla. But when someone buys Tesla, right, when a VC buys the Tesla, they don't buy the Tesla because the Mercedes didn't get them to the meeting on time and the Lexus before that. They buy it so that they can have a conversation about Ilan and electricity and saving the planet, and ludicrous mode and everything else, you're buying the ability to have that conversation, when you're paying for a Tesla. And you're not it's not just, you know, the electric car piece of it. Because if it was truly just the electric car piece of it, you could you could do a Toyota Prius, which is obviously a totally different story. So yeah, I mean, what when I start with companies, it's not Facebook ads, it's not an Instagram. It's not. It's not even content, strategy, all that has to feed from what's the story you're telling to whom and who they like, what do they want to feel? What are the stories they're telling themselves primarily about themselves, what's their identity? And that's, that's where I start

Sure. And one of the main things that you're known for, as people that know you is this thing that you've developed called the perfect intro. And I think it ties to what you were just talking about. So can you dive into that a bit more?

Absolutely. Yeah, it does. It does tie in perfectly intro came about because I completely embarrass myself in front of one of my heroes. It was 2013. I was living in New York City at the time. And a friend of mine told me about this conference in San Diego and I love San Diego. I live here now. So didn't enough to twist my arm too hard to get to San Diego. So I didn't even really look. They just said you're gonna love the speaker. amazing speakers. Amazing attendee. So I wasn't speaking, I just went. And after the first speaker who was amazing, they said, Why don't you turn around and meet the person behind you? Right? Pretty standard conference activity. So I turn around, he said, so what's her name? What do you do? That question so what do you do? And for whatever reason that they maybe I hadn't had my coffee or whatever I've rambled on and on, I said, Oh, my name is Clay. I grew up in Wisconsin. I work for Accenture.

Just on and on covered every city I've ever lived in my favorite flavors of ice cream. It was terrible. It was boring and rambling. And so to stop myself, I said, so what's your name? What do you do? And he was just as cool as Fonzie. He's like, Well, my name is Matt and I run a little software company. I'm still rambling. I'm like, that's cool. I'm in the software to start us. What's it called? Maybe I've heard of it. And again, just as cool as far as these like, it's called automatic. And in that moment, I knew that I was sitting there talking to one of my internet heroes, Matt Mullenweg, the founder of automatic, which is the parent company of WordPress, the open source software that powers 28% of the internet. And so, here I am talking to someone who I respected and knew but I didn't recognize in that moment again, maybe I hadn't had my coffee, but I knew who Matt Mullenweg was. And so myself jaw dropped and hidden in that exact moment, the event photographer, just one of those lucky things snap this perfect picture of me meeting Matt Mullenweg.

So I walked away from that interaction thinking like, how do I never do that again? How did I blow my instructions so completely? And why do we never get taught how to introduce ourselves and then I sort of Peel the layers of the onion and looked at startups and how they explain what they do. And it's so important right to pitch VCs and to do that, and the only way we get taught is this stupid thing called the elevator pitch. Right? And you've been taught the elevator pitch. I've been taught the elevator pitch, even though there's no one way to teach it. And the elevator pitch is a joke. It's it doesn't really happen. I promise you you're never going to get on the elevator with Steve Jobs and have to pitch your business by the time you get to the 16th floor or whatever the the origin story of the elevator, elevator pitches joke. And you know, there are certain things that are bought and sold in elevators and you're not in that business. So I try to help people discard this concept of the elevator pitch. Instead, create what I what I now call the perfect intro, which is a way to more confidently and clearly explain what you do but in a way instead of trying to be complete, accurate, you try to be confident and interesting and leave them more and of course what that does is opens up the ability for you to tell tell the story because like I said, all brands are about stories.

Perfect and I can understand and see why that exercise would be important for an individual and a company right? Because I too agree with you. were asked what are elevator pitches or within companies you know, I've worked for companies and you know, certainly walk worker with software, you know, product managers and marketers who want you to describe the product in x way You know, here's the, the, you know, two sentences about the product that we want to talk about in the elevator. That never happens. No, no, that ever asked you about the product in that way or, you know, what have you, but they feel that they have to have that to second, you know, whatever, you know, five floor like you said, question answered when I think you know, even, you know, something that you and I have talked about in the past or I think one way that you can boil it down some in one way is how would you describe yourself in a tweet? or How can a brand describe himself and I reiterated that, you know, within companies that I've worked in, you know, when we'd go to talk about a product launch or a crises or something like that, and they would want this died, try try on it and say no, no, no, that Back up. And this was when Twitter had 140 characters like we only have 130 some odd because we have to put in the link and we have to do all this other stuff. So you have to get that crises. You know that statement into the short sentence. And I think that that can be kind of extrapolated into what is your perfect intro, whether that's individual or as a company?

Yeah, we, everyone listening to this right now you think you're just listening to this podcast, maybe you're driving, maybe you're walking around your neighborhood and listening to it in your headphones. But you're introducing yourself right now while you're listening to me and Justin, because somebody is opening an email that you sent last week somebody on your LinkedIn profile somebody on the homepage of your website, you're introducing yourself 100 times today, physically and digitally, and mostly digitally. And so where are all those touch points and what's the impression that you're making that you're personal brand is, you know what people are reading when they're trying to find out more about you. They're on the about page of your website, you know.

So there's lots of ways to do this. And the way that I teach people is to make it short and sweet and interesting and confident not trying to be so complete because like those product managers that you've worked for before, where they're trying to like, eke out every feature of the product and then yet still make it sound interesting, which is literally impossible and also just the wrong strategy in the first place. If you look at great copywriting on websites, we'll say slack because you and I both use slack you know, the copywriting on that non slacks website. They employ some of the best copywriters in tech and they explain what they do, but they do not drain and talk about it in a technical way. You know, we successfully orchestrate cross inner messaging technology, but no, they say, you know, we help teams stay on the same page, they say short human language and that's we all struggle with that and that's what the perfect intro is all about us.

Whatever level of context now I the way I teach it is, if you're on an airplane or you're in a cocktail conversation and someone says to what do you do, you actually want to be a little bit less complete. And leave room for them to say, Oh, that's interesting. What does that mean? Like you mentioned the, the crowdfunding stuff in the intro, I used to do a lot with Kickstarter and Indiegogo. So my perfect intro back then was I help entrepreneurs fund their dreams. And that is interesting, and I knew it well enough to say it confidently. But you don't know what kind of entrepreneur people would ask me what kind of entrepreneurs what kind of dreams? Are you an angel investor? Are you a VC? And then here's the real magic. You don't then say, you know, they they do this following question. And you don't then drain the bullet points that you left out of the first one, because that would just be delaying a bad intro for five seconds. What you do is you tell the story of someone that you helped. 

So I might tell the story of Lee Miller, who invented this cat product and love this cat. wanted to play this cat when he wasn't home, but he didn't know how to do landing page. So we work together and we collected all these emails, blah, blah, blah. And at the end you make your customer the hero I say, you know, when we launched on Kickstarter, he was fully funded in 36 minutes 200% funded on the first day and raised $287,000. And then now you can buy Best Buy Now you can buy kitty Oh, and his invention, the Best Buy and pet value. So that's what I do. That's the way to end your perfect intros. Tell the story of the person you help or the person your software helps or your product or service. basically take them on a story because, you know, as our mutual friend Christopher pen says, no kid ever said, Mommy, please read me a press release. You know, we we want to be told stories stories are what we pay for Netflix The story is Game of Thrones stories. And yet when someone says to what do you do, they don't even know it, but they're begging for you to tell them a story. You know, take them on a story. And we don't take them on a story we answer with essentially press release type bullet points explaining what we do 

You know, it's funny. that you mentioned that quote, because I think he said that to me eight to 10 years ago, sure at a conference or something like that, and I've always remembered it. I love the quote. And he laughs when I bring it up still to this day. No, you hit it right on the head. Like, there is no other way you can describe that to a brand is the boil that all down. And for those that are listening, you know, while it wasn't around, perfect intro, you know, even before starting this podcast, Clay was looking at something for me, and, you know, giving me advice on something and it was about boiling it down to specifics and getting it even clearer. So it's a true specialty of his. I think it's something excellent that he does and I certainly turned to him for help. Even though we've been friends for 10 plus years,

it's really hard to do for yourself. It's kind of like, you know, the best tattoo artists in the world doesn't give themself a back tattoo and the best surgeon in the world doesn't take out their own appendix. You can't do it for yourself. You have to enlist the help of other people. So yeah, find a person. And, you know, we're all pretty good at whittling away buzzwords for other people, but it's really hard to do for yourself. So anyone who's trying to do this, you know, find somebody explain what you do. And pretend you're, you know, having a beer having a glass of wine and just explaining it to a friend from high school, right? You wouldn't say we successfully implement top tier CRM methodologies. A friend from high school said hey, you know, what do you been up to? Just talk like a human and then positive from there?

Yeah, absolutely. So you hit on this a little bit throughout the conversation so far, but you are professional speaker, you run in person workshops and kind of one on one discussions with people So, as we have this conversation right now, in August of 2020, we're in the middle of a pandemic. And we don't know when that's going to end what the new normal will look like as America in as the world kind of restarts itself. And a key part of being built unstoppable is focused on resiliency. So how have you done that? And what do you see for your future? And and what advice can you give for others, no matter what their industry is?

Well, first and foremost, read Justin's book when it comes out because he's gonna give you the blueprint and the playbook on how to how to be built unstoppable, so that'll be a few months from now. But, yeah, I mean, this, this pandemic, and what we're going through has some people exposed their black really resiliency? It's been hard. It's been hard for everybody. I don't think anyone's think 2020 is anyone's best year.

But it's also shown a lot of people how tough they are and how resilient they are because they were forced to figure out different solutions and things like that. Yeah, I do a lot of a lot of public speaking and I'm on the road a lot. My last speaking gig as we were heading into this, I remember I was at Coca Cola in Atlanta at their innovation center, teaching one of the top brands in the world, you know, talking about branding and innovation and we were doing the elbow bump handshakes before we really knew what was going on with COVID. And then, you know, that was early March, and that was that was kind of the last, the last in person gig before everything shut down. And yet, everything evaporated, you know, overnight, there were no more speeches, there were no more in person workshops.

So we've had to, we've had to pivot and do a lot more online. But what's interesting is kind of like how we started, you know, I was saying that regardless of the size of the company, your customers are still humans and humans believe in stories and so I kind of like to break it down to the fundamentals. And you know, I love being onstage I love talking to audiences of different sizes, but in reality, it's, it's teaching other humans and talking to them so pivoted to to a few different things, one of them is and then trying to think of ways that digital can be better, right? We're all working from home you know, zoom, and, you know, things like anchor and things like that to allow us to connect and talk like this and work from home. I've tried to look at and say, Okay, if we can all be in the same room, if we can't be breathing the same air and in a physical space, what can we do that's better. So one of the things I do is these these two day workshops and if we do it in person, right, if people fly to San Diego or if I fly to a City, we have to go back to back because because it's a live event.

So what I've done is I've taken these two day workshops and I break them up. And I do one on Monday. And then I do one on Friday, or I do one on Friday. And then day two can be two Fridays later, two weeks with, you know, homework and things like that. So I think it's about challenging yourself and saying, What if this was an opportunity, instead of a problem, right? What, what can be done a little bit differently, because there's lots of these workshops that were in person, I said, Man, it would be nice if we had a week in between day one or day two. But when you're all flying in, and you stay at the Hilton, you got to do day two the next day. And so now that it's we assume I scheduled them with, you know, week or two in between, and it's better for everybody. And then instead of everyone taking notes in their own moleskin, I have a no moleskin rule for these workshops. And I say we have to take notes in a Google Doc because there's seven of us from Raleigh in seven different cities. And we can't see each other's moleskin from seven different cities. But if we watch each other type in Google Docs, Simple free tool, essentially with a transcript of the thing. So I think it's about part of its mindset, instead of saying, Woe is me, and I don't get to speak anymore, and I'm just gonna kick dirt. I say how can I, you know, deliver value to my clients and in a digital way, and then going one step further, how can digital be better than in person?

Absolutely. And I, I think that what we've started to see B, sides, individuals or companies what you know, if they were an events based company, or what have you look for new ways to innovate is you're actually seeing the on the vendor side, how they can innovate. So say if that is an event vendor, how can they innovate, to serve their clients more to then allow a client to use their product in a different way, right? So, zoom went from something like three or 10 million monthly zoom meetings, I think the number was to 300 million. So they scaled overnight. Obviously, there was a lot of systems that had to be put in place and, you know, some craziness on the back end. But some questions that could be asked is okay, what can we now put into place? What can we offer our customers, what tiers things of that nature, especially because now you're seeing things all the way up at levels of government and, and things of that nature that are being used, you know, zoom meetings aren't just being used for one on one or one on many company calls. They're being used by President Obama to run commencements Each for examples. So, you know, I, I think that the vendors also have this unique opportunity to help all of us on the business side provide for our customers and our prospects in a new way.

Absolutely, yeah. My girlfriend Angie runs big events for female entrepreneurs and she had an event that was scheduled, literally, I think it might have been for this date Saturday, August 8 2020. In Chicago, and she was expecting 3000 women you know, sort of a smaller size of like a Tony Robbins style event at a huge Stadium in Chicago and obviously with COVID that's not going on but shout out to Carrie at effekter the events production company that he works with Carrie was you know, jumped into action was doing everything she could to help Angie make this work. You know, try to back when we Didn't know the exact dates and things like that. But But yeah, I've seen what Kerry's done with her team. As far as instantly not not just slight pivoting, but literally inventing and polishing and creating these digital experiences that bring everyone in. And here's the thing like, nobody won. Like everything. There is no right answer, right everyone. nuance is a superpower. And we're all looking for the right answer. And there is no right answer.

There's just shades and spectrums and things that work better than others. So don't look for the one right answer. Just try to, you know, get better and figure out what works for you in this moment in this context. But yeah, Carrie jumped into action. And she's been producing really cool digital events, you know, for her clients, whether they come to her studio in Southern California or it's all done via zoom or whatever, and you're seeing, like you said, these technology vendors as well and you see, I think, which is an interesting name, new tool from Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote You know, allowing people to present sort of like if he had a good positioning way. Speaking of perfect intro, he had a great way to explain it. He said, it's instant daily show for everybody. So the way that Jon Stewart you know, would talk to the camera and then have the news clip, you know, floating TV, it's basically that you know, via via zoom, and so that's a new tool rolling out yeah, it's been cool to see the innovation in the space technology.

Absolutely. And I will kick you virtually for slipstream and a shout out to my book which you're helping me work on and isn't, doesn't have a word of it tight yet but clay is helping to get that tightened up and honed. And he's just committed me via podcast to getting it done now. So yeah, something he's really good at too. If you had to provide someone, and I'm sure that this will kind of filter into some of what you do, but if you had to provide someone with one practical tip that they could use immediately upon ending this podcast, what would that be?

Yeah, it's changed a little bit over time. But what I would do is, I wouldn't tell that person forget money, forget profit revenue clients customers, because most of the decisions we make about what to do or what to do next, we tend to look at it through the frame of paycheck, profit, revenue, customers, whatever. And I think it's the wrong frame. The more I work with this, I would say, pretend that part will take care of itself. If that part would, what would you do? Because nobody listening to this, you know, maybe you'd want to go drink margaritas on the beach for a week but after the, you know, few days gets old. What would you do? If no matter what you did, the money would take care of itself. And that's a hard, even assumption or hurdle for a lot of people to mentally get over partially because of our culture and society. And we drill home, you know how important that is the American dream and all the this seven figure eight figure stuff in the entrepreneur space. But I would say just trust me, or another thought exercise.

Another way to approach it is, if you did what you absolutely loved to do, someone would give you, you know, $100,000 a month to do that. What would that be? And what would you do? once a year, once a quarter, once a week, once a day? It's an exercise I call the perfect calendar. And the more I work with entrepreneurs, and the more I do this, the more aligned they are with this, because when you sit down with someone, I love the work of Simon Sinek and all the stuff he's done with start with why and things like that, but why is it Big question. What's your WHY? Right? There's a reason why. You know, when that when that book came out and the speech and everything else, there's a reason why people didn't watch the TED talk and then immediately run over and scribble down their wines. Oh, I got it. I nailed it. But what is easier to do is to get out a calendar and say, What do I want my calendar to look like? What do I want to do once a week I want to, or you know, three times a week I want to go to the gym and workout or, which is the garage gym gym nowadays, right? or once a year, I want to go on a two week vacation to Europe. Write that down and say what kind of meetings like you up what kind of what was your best day of work last year? What was your worst day work last year? What was your best day outside of work last year, take the time to write those things down. Because if you didn't, I call it designing your life. If you design the life that you want, and the meetings that let you up and the types of things you want to do, because we're all different, if you design that, I guarantee guarantee the money and everything else will take care of itself because you You will be aligned, and you will be operating in your particular zone of genius. So that's a lot of the work that I do now with entrepreneurs is just making sure that they're building the right thing that gives them the calendar. And the calendar is really just an innocuous way to say the life that you want.

And this comes from someone who was at the largest consulting firm in the world and decided to say screw it and go, you know, jump off of a cliff. So you can take that advice for sure. And, you know, in a couple weeks, there'll be another person on the podcast, a mutual friend of ours that did the same thing. So you know, you'll get to hear all about his story when he tells it, but, you know, when I met him, he was homeless, with his wife because of a decision he made, and now he's living his best life, doing what he loves to do. So cheers. So the second the last question is, what does being built unstoppable means to you?

Yeah, I mean, I love that phrase so much. And I remember, you know, you and your journey and what you're going through. And so it's hard to hear that and not immediately just think of you and your face and your story and your journey. But when I think of everybody else in being built, unstoppable, it's not about your deadlift. And it's not about even even the past. challenges that you've overcome to me. I mean, I think that that's incredible. You've obviously got an incredible story. But to me, I think about being built unstoppable, is it's almost as much a mindset as everything I've studied a lot more I think you have as well, you know, Ryan Holiday sort of brought stoicism from you know, hundreds and thousands of years ago to being more popular in the last few years. And I think having that calmness, that stoicism that ready for anything built unstoppable starts in the mind before it starts in the bank account or this, the muscles in the shoulders. It starts in your mind knowing that no matter what happens, that you'll figure it out. Right Marie Forleo wrote a great book called everything is figured out. And whether you approach it from Marie Forleo or stoicism or whatever, I think it starts with a mindset and to me built unstoppable. is about this this magical, magical place in mindset of no matter what happens and 2020 has been thrown a curveball at everybody. No matter what happens that you will do what it takes to figure it out. I think I think unstoppable starts in the in the mind for sure.

That's awesome. And last but not least, where can people find you on the web?

Yeah, they can come to Clay bear.com or just google me clay last name doesn't sound anything like it looks like it's H e. b. e RT looks like Hiebert but a Google clay. Hey, Bear, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I'm pretty easy to find online, shoot me an email or find me a clay bear calm.

Very good. Well, Clay, thank you for coming on. It was kind of hard to make our schedules align over the past couple weeks. But I appreciate you and hope that everyone else will enjoy this podcast because you have a lot to give people and Oh, just a lot of smart.

Thanks, Justin. It's so great to reconnect and I can't wait for your book. I'll be the first one.

Awesome. Well, thank you and thank you, everyone.