Episode 114: Vulnerable Leadership with Scott Miller

This week Jon sits down with Lousia Schibli, co-founder of the Northern New England Women’s Investor network, and co-founder and CEO of Milk Money Vermont. Milk Money is a platform for Vermonters to discover local investment opportunities, get tips on how to evaluate those opportunities, and then make an investment. 

Louisa has also recently joined RuralWorks Partners as Chief Engagement Officer. RuralWorks Partners is an impact investment firm that supports growth stage and transitioning rural businesses and the communities in which they operate. RuralWorks is currently raising a $100 Million impact fund for these businesses and communities across the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

Listen in for Louisa’s lessons about raising capital in rural Vermont and being a female entrepreneur in the Green mountain state.

Check out:

Vermont Women’s Investor Network www.nnewin.org
Milk Money Investing www.milkmoneyinvesting.com
RuralWorks Partners www.ruralworkspartners.com

Learn more at https://milkmoneyvt.com/

Scott Miller Learning Life Podcast


Scott Miller is Franklin Covey’s executive vice president of thought leadership and the best-selling author of “Management Mess to Leadership Success,” which is the first book in the multi-volume series of the Mess to Success series. He’s also the co-author of another recent bestseller: Everyone Deserves a Great Manager. Scott is the host of the highest subscribed-to weekly leadership podcast show on the air right now, Franklin Covey On Leadership with Scott Miller podcast show. In this episode Scott talks with Jon about vulnerable leadership, finding your smallest viable market, and his drive to be a thought leader.

Listen to Scott’s podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/franklincovey-on-leadership-with-scott-miller/id1391164389

Read Scott’s books:
https://managementmess.com/
https://everyonedeservesagreatmanager.com/

Check out this episode!

Jon Tota (00:00):

Hey, listeners, Jon Tota here. As businesses everywhere are struggling with the new normal of hiring and training new employees virtually, do you know if your company’s on-boarding program is setting up your employees for success? It’s more important than ever right now when new people are joining your company and learning your culture while operating almost entirely from remote locations. eLearning Brothers has the answer for you in their brand new virtual onboarding handbook. Download a checklist to see how well your onboarding program stacks up. Then read the free handbook that covers the four pillars of on-boarding and includes a sample template for a fully virtual on-boarding program. Visit learninglifeshow.com/ELB to download your free checklist and handbook today. Provided by eLearning Brothers – the industry leading provider of eLearning solutions. eLearning Brothers has everything you need to launch your own virtual on-boarding program to keep your business scaling and culture growing during these challenging times. Get your free handbook today at learninglifeshow.com/ELB. Now back to our show.

Scott Miller (01:01):

As the leader, be the light, be the model. Don’t be the judge. Don’t be the critic. Set the example that you learn more from your messes than your successes, and use them as teaching points.

Intro (01:14):

Welcome to Learning Life, where top experts share their business knowledge and personal journeys each week. “And the thing that I realized from the CEO to the NFL football player, to the janitor – we’re our toughest critics, and we’re hardest on ourselves.” – James Lawrence And wanted to bring education to the market. I wake up in the morning and I am constantly learning.” “The only way to grab somebody’s attention is with a story” – Cal Fussman. Happy learning. And now your host, Jon Tota.

Jon Tota (01:42):

Welcome to another episode of Learning Life with Jon Tota. My guest today is Scott Miller. Scott is Franklin Covey’s executive vice president of thought leadership; the best-selling author of “Management Mess to Leadership Success,” which is the first book in the multi-volume series of the Mess to Success series. He’s also the coauthor of another recent bestseller: Everyone Deserves a Great Manager. Scott is the host of the hugely popular Franklin Covey On Leadership with Scott Miller podcast show, which is the highest subscribed-to weekly leadership podcast show on the air right now. I recently got connected with Scott and have become a huge fan of his work, both in the writing and on the podcast show on the show. He’s got a lineup of some of the biggest names in leadership today. Scott’s learning each week from icons in the industry like Jack Canfield and John Maxwell. So there’s just a ton we can learn from him. Let’s get into it. Scott Miller, welcome to Learning Life.

Scott Miller (02:30):

Jon, thank you for the invitation and the platform. Looking forward to it.

Jon Tota (02:34):

Like I said, in the intro, I love your show. I’ve been listening to it, you know, in preparation, I got turned on to it. You sent me your book and I’ve been looking at your writing and I love it. Tell us a little bit about your journey obviously to this role of the executive VP of thought leadership at Franklin Covey. I think that that term thought leader and thought leadership gets thrown out there a lot. What does it mean? And what does it mean to you and how did you get into that type of a career role?

Scott Miller (03:03):

So, Jon, I’ve been privileged to be an associate of the Franklin Covey company for 25 years. Started back in 1996, here in Utah, I’m originally from Florida. I worked for the Disney company in Orlando. They invited me to leave. There is a whole story there. You know, where does a 26 year old Catholic boy move to? Of course, Provo, Utah, where the priest and I were the only Catholics in the entire entire state. So I started with Franklin Covey 25 years ago, worked my way up in the organization from a frontline sales person- you know, carrying a quota every day, to becoming a sales leader, moved to London. I came back as the Chicago general manager, spent the first decade in sales; spent the last seven years as the company’s chief marketing officer and the executive vice president of business development. Then two years ago, I transitioned out of the CMO role and became the EVP of thought leadership as a named executive officer in the firm.

Scott Miller (03:56):

And I’ll tell you, I get that question a lot. This idea of thought leadership, it’s kind of overused. But let me tell you, I think, Jon, thought leadership is the new public relations. Gone are the days where big companies have PR staffs and they, you know, try to hunt down journalists or newsroom for press. There aren’t any newsrooms anymore to speak of. There aren’t any journalists; they’re all freelance now and they’re very specific on stories. So this idea of trying to get people to cover you is really kind of an uphill battle. So I think organizations like ours have taken a different approach. We’ve decided to become a little more expert on our own thought leadership, which is a nice way of saying, what is our expertise? What is our particular point of view on a topic and who should care about that?

Scott Miller (04:44):

So we very deliberately make sure that our expertise is in front of all of those people who should care about it. Chief learning officers, executive vice-presidents of human resources, chief human resource officers, business unit leaders that are responsible for the professional development and growth of their people. And so for us thought leadership covers columns and magazines, books, audios- We sold, you know, close to 50 million books over the course of our 25 titles- our podcast, our interviews, our webinars, all of that really creates the sound of our thought leadership. And so I lead that team for the company and I am according to some, one of those thought leaders, you kind of can’t call yourself a thought leader because then you’re not right. But if somebody else calls you a thought leader, then you’re okay. So I moved kind of from being the producer/ director behind the scenes the first 23 years of my career now to kind of moving from producer to actor, kind of more out front in terms of authoring, writing and speaking, and I’ve been hosting podcasts like you.

Jon Tota (05:47):

That’s so interesting because you know, I work with professional speakers all the time. And one of the things we’re always trying to work with them on is this topic of saying, okay, take yourself out of the starring role and try and be behind the scenes and produce the thought leadership without being the face of it. And you kind of did the opposite where you were the chief marketing officer, you were creating all the campaigns and the thought leadership strategies, and then kind of made this other move into kind of pivoting into the front role. How has that transition been? Has that been awkward for you? Has it been something that was totally natural? Like you’ve been wanting to be kind of the face of the thought leadership to some extent, or has that been something that’s been a challenge?

Scott Miller (06:29):

Jon, it’s a very insightful question because you can imagine the politics inside of any organization will be, you know, thick, right. So I had spent 23 years, like you just said, as the chief marketing officer building the brand and building the brands of a lot of people in our organization. You’d recognize an odd lot of these names. They become, you know, big influential consultants and bestselling authors. You know, I think there was a group of people in the company that was probably suspect of my motives. And I think there was a whole other group of champions, including the chief executive officer, the CEO and, and, and, um, chairman that saw my talent. You know, I, as the chief marketing officer, I had always been out speaking and giving keynotes, but not really as the face of the company. So I think there were a lot of naysayers, you know, I’ve got a group of people that are my detractors. I’m self-aware and I don’t try to manage them or win them over.

Scott Miller (07:21):

I focus more on the people, quite frankly, who matter to me- the board of directors, the executive team, the CEO, our investors, our clients, and so I kind of go where the love is. As anybody builds their brand, you’re going to have a lot of people that are jealous of you and that are intimidated by you. So I don’t spend a lot of my time playing to my detractors. I tend to play much more to my supporters, but I also have a group of confidants that can speak to me brutally about, you know, my speaking, my writing, my interviewing skills, how to approve him. So haters gonna hate. And so there are still people in the company that, you know, think I’m self-serving and you know what? I’m not going to convince them otherwise. So like I said, several times, I am confident in my skills. I’m not embarrassed for my hard earned talents. And as long as my mindset is about building value for others, giving back to others and adding value, I feel, I feel my conscious is clean and I sleep well at night.

Jon Tota (08:18):

It makes me think of, I was just listening to your show. And John Maxwell had in a recent episode- I think it was like last week’s episode- had a comment that what should matter the most is the people who are closest to you, that they love you and respect you and all the rest is not important.

Scott Miller (08:35):

That’s kind of, you know, it’s kind of genius. There’s a fine line between being cavalier and being a sycophant. But if you had to ask me at Franklin Covey, whose opinion I care most about, it’s the CEO. I mean, he and I are good friends, you know, kind of father-son. I clearly report to him. I serve at his pleasure, but he and the board are my chief constituency. And then second is the executive team- my group of peers. And so as long as I’m keeping them happy because they have the broadest view of the company strategy globally, I have to let go of those others that might be more suspect of my motive or talents.

Jon Tota (09:13):

Let’s talk about the book. I love the title “Management Mess to Leadership Success.” I think it’s just a cool concept and what you were sharing with me before we got on the air here is that now you’ve got a whole series of Mess to Success books coming. This is the first in that line. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the Management Mess brand, essentially, now that you’re building. Where are you going with it and why are you so excited about it?

Scott Miller (09:39):

Yeah, thanks. This is the first book I published with Mango Publishing. It’s the fastest growing independent publisher in the nation out of Coral Gables, Florida. It became a number one Amazon bestseller for six solid weeks. I’ve gone on to sell 30,000+ copies in the first year. By some degree, you know, it isn’t large, but you know, a successful book for a publisher sells 5,000 books the first year. So I was quite pleased with the progress. I think the reason it did well, Jon is because it is different than a lot of leadership books. A lot of them are either too academic written by professors who in many cases may or may not have ever actually, you know, managed a PNL or met a payroll, not all of them, but some of them. And a lot of them are from the C-suite and a fortune 50. Bob Uyghurs book, it’s a masterful book, you know, I’m not going to be the CEO of Disney, even though I’m in the “C-suite” at this company. I wanted to write a different kind of leadership book.

Scott Miller (10:32):

One that was raw, real relatable. One that made it safe to talk about the underbelly of leadership. Cause you know, leadership is tough. It’s unrelenting. It can be unrewarding. I’ve heard some companies call it babysitting. Leadership is not for everyone. Not everyone should be a leader of people. And too often organizations promote the top individual producer. They become the leader and they, like me, flame out or they worse have a reign of terror. So I wanted to write a book that empirically said from Franklin Covey’s 40 years in business, here are 30 challenges that every leader is going to face. The book is called “Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow.” So I organize these 30 challenges across 30 days. I share this leadership principle. And then in most cases I share a fairly horrifying blush worthy example of how I failed at it.

Scott Miller (11:28):

What was my mess? And I share some learnings on how to avoid that. Don’t say this, say that. Don’t think this way, perhaps think that way. I mean, again, I’m an officer in the world’s most reputable leadership development company. That doesn’t mean I say everything right, clearly, or do everything right. Leadership is a journey. So the book did well, I think because it was relatable and it wasn’t all cleaned up and sterile. In fact to your question, it did so well the publisher signed me to a multi-volume series, you know, kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul… Although not really because those books have sold 500 billion copies. I know that because I interviewed Jack Canfield, one of the coauthors. The next book is coming out in May of 2021, it’s called Marketing Mess to Brand Success: 30 Challenges to Build Your Organization’s and Your Own Brand.

Scott Miller (12:21):

And those 30 lessons are from my seven years as the chief marketing officer at Franklin Covey. The next book following that is Job Mess to Career Success. After 33 years and having nine different careers at Franklin Covey and two at the Disney company, I write about 30 insights on how to build your great career. Following Job Mess to Career Success will be Sales Mess, Communication Mess, Parenting Mess. There’ll be a whole series that comes out in the next seven years. I’m excited about it and I’m hoping it builds a brand, um, that adds value to a whole generation of people in their careers. And I’ve got other books in the pipeline. I’m writing a book for Harper Collins called Master Mentors. This is where I collected 40 of the most transformational insights from the first year of the podcast; that comes out next September.

Scott Miller (13:12):

That’ll be a volume every year. And Jon, you didn’t ask, but I just signed a deal with a publisher to write 85 books on different careers. So I’m actually partnering with 85 different authors on the most progressive in-demand careers- software developers, physician’s assistants, physicians, engineers, gamers, social media managers. Every book will be coauthored with an expert in that field. And I’m creating this massive volume of career books in the hopes to help people that are early on in their career between the ages of 20 and 35 that can really understand what is it like to have a job in this career? And is that the right job for me so that I don’t get into law school for a year and a half and then decide, I don’t want to be a lawyer. So long answer, but I’m very excited about the book pipeline coming out.

Jon Tota (14:02):

I love it. You’ve got so many great arms to the brand that you’re building. And one of the questions I have for you, one, you’ve got so much writing in the pipeline. Did you always see yourself as a writer or because this was your first book, is this new for you or have you been writing all along and just kind of getting ready for the release?

Scott Miller (14:25):

Not at all. So as the chief marketing officer, you can imagine I was responsible for a lot of writing; write press releases, web copy, brochure copy, ad copy, corporate brochure copy. But I was more of a corporate writer and more of an editor. Then about three years ago, our director of social media came to me and said, ‘Scott, Franklin Covey under your stewardship is really under leveraging social media.’ He reported to me. And he asked me if I would start writing a weekly blog on LinkedIn. So I did that when I wrote my first probably 50 blogs. And then through some inspiration from one of the podcast interviews, one of the interviewees said, you know, I didn’t write a book earlier because I had nothing to say. That was actually Stephen. M.R. Covey, Dr. Covey’s son. Stephen M.R. Covey wrote the highly influential book called The Speed of Trust.

Scott Miller (15:17):

It’s sold 2 million copies and I asked him, your dad was Stephen Covey, right? The author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book sold 40 million copies. You share his name. Did you ever feel the need to write a book? And Stephen M.R. Covey said no, because I had nothing to say until I did. And then when I did, he, he said, I wrote The Speed of Trust. So I was sitting here in the studio and I thought, you know what? That makes so much sense. I’ve not had anything to say. And about three or four months passed. And I said, you know what, though? I do have something to say, I’ve had this amazing career journey, two steps forward, three steps back, total mess in most cases. But I want to share that because I really genuinely believe Jon, that vulnerability, vulnerability is a leadership competency.

Scott Miller (16:00):

People are done with these arrogant leaders, that lack humility, people are done with leaders. They can’t relate to, people want to be able to relate to their leader. So that was the inspiration for me to write this first book and share all my messes. And then a lot of people can’t believe that I shared this. I’m like, you know what? Everybody’s got a mess. By the way, everybody knows what your mess is. Whether you’re the CEO of a fortune 5,000 or you’re the CEO or president of a young upstart, everybody knows your mess. Come on, they’re talking about it. The receptionists, your funders, your fundraisers, the clients, people who work for you. They know you’re a mess. Just own it. Because as a leader, Jon, when you own your mess, you make it safe for others to own theirs. As the leader, be the light, be the model.

Scott Miller (16:55):

Don’t be the judge. Don’t be the critic. Set the example that you learn more from your messes than your successes and use them as teaching points. We have so many great stories of how our CEO, Bob Whitman, you know, fabulously, wealthy and successful, a Harvard MBA and climbed the Matterhorn, and you know, Kona’s iron man, more money than you could ever spend. The greatest lessons are not from those; it’s when he closes the door and says to me, Scott, let me tell you about this doozy. And so I hope that was a gift to the readers to say as a leader, embrace your messes and use them as teaching points. I think my leader, my writing styles improving, I don’t know that I was, you know, I don’t know that I was a Pulitzer worthy author or ever will be, but the book did win Book Pals Outstanding Work for Leadership award. In the leadership category, it beat out five great titles, including, General Mattis, you know, secretary of defense last year. So I think it’s a hit in certain segments. Not for everybody. It’s not War and Peace. It’s not Good to Great. It is what it is.

Jon Tota (17:54):

I just think your commitment to vulnerability and just that theme across everything you do. And it’s obvious in your writing. I think it’s awesome. And also, you know, I was just watching or reading an article, I think it’s Jeffrey Katzenberg with the Quibi failure. And they said we just needed to own it. And they gave him so much leadership respect for that, that they just owned it. They didn’t push it off on COVID or anything else that within six months they shut it down because you know, it’s just, it was a mobile play and no one’s mobile right now. And, and they owned it. I think the vulnerability aspect and the whole mess owning your mess and the way you’ve positioned is excellent. Tell me, because you’re a branding guy, a marketing guy at heart, and you’ve done a phenomenal job building this brand almost cause I was listening to the Jack Canfield interview, Chicken Soup for the Soul. And you kind of created your own brand in a way with the Mess to Success. Did you know that from the beginning? Was that something that just kind of evolved while you were writing? Or did you have that in your mind that you could extend this to all these different areas if it worked?

Scott Miller (18:57):

It was very deliberate. Can I take four minutes and share the story?

Jon Tota (19:01):

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Miller (19:02):

So there’s a book called “How Will You Measure Your Life?” And it’s written by two friends of mine, actually three people, but Karen Dillon, who’s the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and her colleague Clayton Christiansen. Everyone knows Clayton Christianson, right? He passed about a year ago after a long illness. You know, one of the greatest innovation minds of our time, Harvard business professor. He wrote a book called “How Will You Measure Your Life?” And in this book, which I highly recommend to your listening audience, they take proven business principles and apply them to your personal life. The book again is called, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” One are the profound insights they share in this book, a third party research study, is that there was a longitudinal study that analyzed that 93% of all successful organizations that ultimately achieved “financial success”-

Scott Miller (19:52):

And I put financial success in air quotes- 93% of organizations that achieved financial success did so with an emergent strategy, not a deliberate strategy, meaning that the leaders achieved success with a different idea, not the original idea they set out with; that they exercise the humility and the confidence to listen to other people. It might’ve been, you know, the CEO whose idea did not work, but she was humble enough to listen to perhaps less educated, perhaps more junior, perhaps younger people than her. And they pivot it. Instead of the deliberate strategy, they pivoted and achieved success with an emergent strategy 93% of the time. So I took that to heart. And after I wrote “Management Mess to Leadership Success,” I thought it would be just a one book. It did well. I was pleased, ride that wave and I would write books.

Scott Miller (20:47):

But it actually was a very junior associate, a 23 year old college intern – His name is Drew Young and he looked at me one day and said, you know what? You ought to write a whole series. And he’d throw out like eight or 10 titles in this Mess to Success series written up. The publisher never thought of it. I never thought of it. It was a 23 year old budding genius named Drew Young, who stuck with me and will continue to build my brand and business for decades to come, I hope. He himself now is Amazon bestselling author. He wrote a, uh, a book that just came out around his own faith journey. Long story short, hopefully I exercise the humility to listen to this, you know, 23 year old MacGyver. Let me combine that with a different story. A year ago, there’s a woman named Rachel Hollis. You know who she is, Jon?

Jon Tota (21:39):

Sure. Yeah.

Scott Miller (21:40):

So she’s not known by many in the business world. Rachel Hollis is a phenom. To your listeners who don’t know who she is: listen carefully. There is a nugget here. Rachel Hollis wrote two books a year ago. One called Girl, Wash Your Face and another called Girl, Stop Apologizing. These books sold more books than anybody else in America last year. Second, only to Michelle Obama. Collectively close to 10 million copies. Insane! Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing. She has one of the largest podcasts in the nation. She runs $150,000 for a speech. I mean, her brand exploded overnight, but actually it didn’t because for 15 years, Rachel started as a small caterer event planner in California; she became a fairly booked caterer. She then started a blog; blogged on kind of mother issues, house issues, cooking issues, issues that resonated with women and built this massive social following because her first six books did not sell.

Scott Miller (22:48):

It was their seventh and eight books that hit. So people might think that Rachel Hollis was, was a, you know, kind of a one hit wonder last year. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Rachel toiled for 15 years building her brand that very few people publicly knew. And now she’s the biggest name in book publishing. And has these events where 7,000 people pay $600 to come to you. I know because I was invited last year at one of her Rise events. Everybody- go Google, Rachel Hollis. There is no brand built in my opinion, in the last 50 years like this woman has built. A) because she built it over time and no one saw her. And secondly, she’s insanely focused on what Seth Goden, who also was a good friend of mine and endorsed my book, calls your smallest viable market, your smallest viable market.

Scott Miller (23:42):

Not what is the largest market? What is the smallest market of people that need to know who you are and buy your books, buy your services, subscribe to your podcast. And Rachel does it better than anybody I’ve ever met in my life. She calls her constituency her, h.e.r. She’ll say I’m in conversation with HER. I’m in business with HER. She knows that, Jon, you and I are not her market. And she is fiercely focused on understanding the joys, the fears, the passions, the struggles that her market is in and she’s tapped into it like no one I’ve seen. So let me, let me just wrap that up to say for all of your listeners, if you want to build a brand that is incomparable, you have to build it over time, but you will become obsessed with your smallest viable market. Seth Godin’s last book is called. This is marketing. It is a masterpiece and you have to read the chapter on smallest viable market because it’s counterintuitive. It’s frustrating and it’s limiting, but it’s genius. And Rachel really inspired me to get really clear, and I’m still working on it, on who is my market because it’s not the world. That’s a, cop-out, that’s lazy. It takes enormous discipline focus to say no everybody else and get insanely disciplined on your smallest viable market.

Jon Tota (25:05):

That probably the best advice that you could share with our audience, because I know it too, is that as you’re growing your own audience, whether it’s a podcast show, a YouTube channel, you’re writing- you can’t please everyone. I listened to that Rachel Hollis interview that you had on your show and it did, it opened my eyes to it. It was because my wife’s a follower of hers. She’s in that cohort that really follows everything she does; and Gretchen Rubin, she does a similar thing. But I hadn’t known, I was kind of thinking she was an overnight hit like that. But then in your interview with her, I was like, Oh, she’s been a writer all along. She’s been cultivating this tribe of hers that will follow her and listen to, or read whatever she puts out there. And I think it’s great advice because it’s easy to get discouraged for people who think their audience isn’t growing fast enough or their brand isn’t getting big enough or reaching enough people. But what’s your advice? You interview a ton of people that have done this well. Any other advice or lessons that you’ve learned along the way for people who are trying to just stay inspired, stay focused when their tribe may only be 50 followers or a hundred followers, and they’re still at the early stage of it.

Scott Miller (26:18):

I would. Wet me repeat. I have been privileged to become a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. I’ve hosted a radio program on iHeart radio. I now am privileged to host the world’s largest leadership podcast. It’s insane, but I’ve learned so much from Rachel Hollis. Study her journey. Let me tell ya. I’ve learned just as much from Seth Godin. Seth Godin, for 11 years, has written a daily blog. If you’re not subscribing to Seth Godin’s daily blog, it comes out on the RSS feed and it comes out in a text, it comes out in an email. You can consume it however you want to. 11 years without missing a day. Let me repeat that. Seth Godin, arguably, one of the biggest names in marketing, leadership, and business, right? He’s an iconoclast 11 years, every day, hasn’t missed a beat on a piercingly insightful blog.

Scott Miller (27:15):

So do yourself a favor and subscribe to his blog, but take lessons from these people that now are earning $150,000 for a speech. They sell a million books the first month. They’ve earned that the old fashioned way, right? They’ve not bought fake Instagram followers. They’re not subscribed to boosts for their LinkedIn. You’re not whoring yourself out. No offense intended. They’re extremely deliberate with their band brand. They recognize that iconic brands take time and deliberation. They make themselves extraordinarily accessible. I’ll email Seth Godin and have an email back from him in 10 minutes. Who am I? Some guy in Salt Lake City. Rachel Hollis will email you back in an hour because they know who brought them to the dance, right. They know where their bread is buttered, so to speak. So take your advice, take your lead from Seth Godin. Took him, you know what, 20 years. Seth Godin started to quote him as some kind of geeky Jewish boy from New York City writing a gaming magazine, like, you know, for gamers.

Scott Miller (28:23):

And then he went to Stanford and then he worked for, I think Yahoo. He kind of invented email marketing. And now the guy is untouchable in terms of his stature, right? But yet he still takes my phone calls and emails because he’s so abundant, so generous, but he’s deliberate. He says no to 95% of the things I pitched to him. He has no problem saying no to me because he’s fiercely deliberate on what his priorities are, where he’s adding value, where his tribe is. And after 11 years, he’s still writing the daily blog. There’s a lot to learn from him, right? It’s going to take you time. There’s a ton of competition, but you’ll find your niche. You won’t find it if you try to be all things to all people. But you will find it if your niche is upstart entrepreneurs under the age of 30 right or Latino women who are looking to build, you know, catering businesses. I mean, whatever it is, right? The brand and the market is only going to explode. Take the discipline, really passionately decide what is your smallest viable market and add value every day, every week, every month, every year, and you are destined to hit success.

Jon Tota (29:37):

It’s excellent advice. And I will note that you noted just in succession here, three of your challenges. I think the first three: demonstrate humility, think abundantly, and listen first in this interview. So for everyone, if you haven’t gotten the book already “Management Mess to Leadership Success.” Obviously just in this interview alone, you’ve referenced the first three challenges and, and ways to overcome them. And even the ways you’ve implemented them like listening to Drew. Awesome advice across the board. We could talk probably for hours about all of your experience. So we’ll, we’ll definitely have to have you back on when the next one of your books comes out. When is the next Mess to Success book scheduled to release?

Scott Miller (30:21):

Thanks for asking. So I think it’s May 11th, 2021. The book is available now for pre-order on amazon.com. It’s called “Marketing Mess to Brand Success: 30 Challenges to Build Your Organizations and Your Own Brand.” Uh, I think it’s my best book yet. The reviewers that have read it already have said it’s my best book. It shares 30 challenges from my own marketing experience. Most people think it’s a leadership book. It’s really a marketing book. But if you’re in sales or sales leadership, or you have marketing responsibility, or you have people who work for you, it really talks about how marketing and sales need to work together. And a lot of lessons some successes, but a lot of messes as well. I’m proud of the book and it’s on Amazon now for pre-order comes out May 11th.

Jon Tota (31:05):

Awesome. I’m excited to read it. And, and for everybody who’s listening, you can check out, uh, I think it’s managementmess.com, right? Is that the URL where they can find out about the book and learn more about you?

Scott Miller (31:17):

True. Or they also can go to Scott Jeffrey Miller dot com. That’s my website site, ScottJeffreyMiller.com.

Jon Tota (31:25):

Very cool. And also I think on LinkedIn, cause you seem to be putting a lot of content out in a lot of places. Is LinkedIn a good place for people to follow you?

Scott Miller (31:33):

You can follow me on any platform, but LinkedIn is probably my main platform. I’d be honored if you wanted to connect to me or perhaps even follow me on LinkedIn.

Jon Tota (31:41):

Very cool. I cannot recommend your podcast show enough – On Leadership with Scott Miller, subscribe to it wherever you’re listening right now, check it out. If you like this show, you will like Scott show even more. I’ve listened to four or five episodes just in the last week or so, and I loved everyone. So great work with that too. I think it’s a super show.

Scott Miller (32:03):

Jon, thank you for your abundance. Thank you for giving me the platform to share some of my initiatives. If I can help you out at all, please reach out to me. You’re a class act.

Jon Tota (32:10):

Awesome. Well, thank you Scott, for being here with us today, it’s been a joy having you.

Scott Miller (32:15):

Stay safe.

Jon Tota (32:16):

And to all of our listeners- Thank you for being here every week. As you know, we have a new episode that comes out every Tuesday, so wherever you’re listening, be sure to subscribe, leave us comments. We’d love to hear from all of you and until our next episode, Happy Learning!