0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like My First Million. Today, we'll be sharing how a simple t-shirt created a seven figure business to drop these value bombs. I brought Clay Mosley into EOFire studios. After job hopping for 10 years, Clay started a digital marketing agency back in 2015. He grew it and sold it in 2019 and now owns Dripify. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about strategies for starting a business as an introvert, growing a business without knowing business or sales. We'll talk about that simple t-shirt idea that created a brand identity and so much more.

0 (47s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors, if you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. The remarkable people podcast hosted by Guy Kawasaki and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network helps you better understand the changing world with interviews from Thought Leaders Legends, and Iconic Class like Jenn Lim, Happiness Evangelist and author of Beyond Happiness. Listen to the remarkable people podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Clay say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 34s):
What's up Fire Nation. First of all, thanks for having me on the, the show. I, I, you know, there are so many things, so I had to narrow it down to actually two of them. If that, if you don't mind, one personal one professional, the professional side of things is that you don't have to have a big social following to be successful in business. You just don't. I'm a very living, breathing example of that. I don't have a big following. You don't have to have millions. You don't even have to have thousands. It's just all about what type of relationships you have. And we can dig into that later. If you'd like the personal side of things is you don't have to wake up at 5:00 AM every morning.

1 (2m 15s):
Cause I'm also an example of that. I sleep in every day

0 (2m 19s):
That might change. Wait a second. You have a 10 day old daughter. How are you sleeping in every day?

1 (2m 25s):
That's what I was going to say. It's changed. It's changed a bit. It has changed a bit

0 (2m 32s):
Crazy stuff. I will say sleep is really my biggest focus in life right now. I probably gone to the extreme a little bit. I literally just announced to Kate about a week ago. I'm like, you know how we used to go start like going to bed at nine o'clock like that means we would turn the TV off, like take the dog out, go upstairs. I'm like, I want to back that up to eight 30 because I know it sounds like we're really old, but you know, nine o'clock by the time we take the dog out, brush our teeth, do this, do that in bed. It's like nine 40. I'm like, and that's just too late because all of my deep sleep comes before midnight. I know that cause I track it on my ordering. So now we're starting to head upstairs around 8:30 AM. I'm a happy camper.

0 (3m 12s):
I'm in bed by 9, 9, 10 asleep, hopefully by 9 29 30 getting seven to eight, sometimes eight and a half hours of quality sleep. But go if we go down that, that, that kid routes that I think we might be going down like you that's, that's the change.

1 (3m 29s):
Are you a night owl or early bird just by nature?

0 (3m 31s):
Oh my God. I, I don't believe anybody's a night owl. I think anybody who is a night owl has like ruined their circadian rhythm and then, and then fool themselves into thinking that they're a night owl. And I always tell night owls. And this could be you, if you think you're one wake up at 5:00 AM for 30 am I saying you should wake up because I don't wake up at 5:00 AM. I wake up at six, six to 7:00 AM, but wake up at 5:00 AM every single day. And tell me if you're still a night owl and I'm telling you, your body will be so thrilled to get back into a circadian rhythm of like a nine or 10 to six to seven timeframe. That's just my opinion.

1 (4m 5s):
You sound like my wife now I saw it like that. She said, she tells me the exact same thing.

0 (4m 10s):
It'd be a whole episode on sleep. Like let's just throw the whole t-shirt idea out the window, but let's actually talk about intro verts because a lot of my listeners are self professed introvert. So can you share some strategies for starting a business as an intro vert?

1 (4m 26s):
I want to clarify what I think an introvert is because I think some people think it's one thing and some people think it's another, because I don't want to, I don't want people to get confused on introvert versus shyness or, or timid being timid. So what I think an introvert is versus an extrovert and you know, this could be debatable, but this is what I, my views on it is that an introvert gets their energy is drained by being around people. And they have to go back home, I guess you could say to, to recharge. Whereas extroverts are the opposite. They, they charge by being around people and their energy is drained by being at home and doing and being by themselves.

1 (5m 9s):
So that's, that's kind of what, that's what I think an introvert versus extrovert is. So I am 100% an introvert, but I am not shy or timid at all. So I just want to clarify that before I get into that.

0 (5m 21s):
Well, that's important because I will say that more people than not identify as introverts, I will tell you that with a hundred percent certainty, it is so rare that I meet people, even in a S sometimes I even think, especially in the entrepreneurial space who identify as an extrovert. I mean, I do, but I really feel like I'm not even just in the minority, like I'm in the vast minority people that truly identify as an extrovert. And honestly, I think as I get a little bit older, I'm kind of starting to go a little bit more towards that introvert line anyways. So maybe I was like in the 90 percentile younger, I might be like a 60, 70 now I don't even know, but let's talk about the whole introvert thing.

0 (6m 2s):
And you know, just the overall ability to grow a business, being an introvert without knowing business, without knowing sales. I mean, it seems like you have three strikes to get you already, but you say no, no, no. Tell us more.

1 (6m 16s):
So back in 2015, I, I definitely had all the strikes. So I, I don't know if I mentioned this in my bio, but I worked for 10 years after graduating college and I basically job hopped. I was not a good employee at all. And I worked a variety of different jobs. And then I got, I got fired. I got fired for most of them. And then I got fired from the last job in 2015. And so I had decided, I said, okay, well, I think I'm basically unemployable at this point, at least on paper. And I couldn't get, I couldn't even get an interview anywhere because like, it was just, I had a terrible resume. And so I had that strike against me. I also, you know, I'm an introvert.

1 (6m 57s):
And then also I did not know anything about business. I didn't know anything about sales or marketing. And I said, I think I'm going to start my own business. I don't know what I was thinking, but I said, I'm, I think I'm going to try to do this thing. It sounds really, really awesome because I see all these people they're successful doing their own thing, being their own boss. And I said, I think I could do that. And so I decided to be a freelance web developer and because I was kind of doing it on the side, I, I taught myself how to code. And I was like, I think I could do this. And so I don't know, like I was kind of between a rock and a hard place where like, I really had no choice, but to make it because I couldn't get a job.

1 (7m 40s):
And, and that was it. Like I just, I had to make money. And so I, I kinda had, I was kind of forced to do it, but like what helped me get through that as far as like the, the introvertedness is I had a plan of expectations. So I think like anything in this world, whenever, whenever anyone is disappointed or something, doesn't go their way. It's all about because their expectations didn't go, right? Like they didn't have the right expectations in their mind. And so I made sure that I had the expectations of, okay, how is this going to go? Because going to like a local networking meeting to try to get business was absolutely terrifying to me.

1 (8m 26s):
Plus I suffer from I a little bit of social anxiety. And so I, the, the plan that I had was like, okay, I'm going to go into this thing. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go and just try to meet like five people, that's it. And so when I, once I meet five people, then I'm out. And so that was my expectation. That was my plan. And that's what I did. I, I, every single time I went to a new event, I increased it a little bit more. Maybe instead of five, I saw seven, maybe instead of seven, I sold 10. And so I just kind of added a little bit on each time by having a plan and setting those expectations.

0 (9m 4s):
Now, Fire Nation, setting expectations, by the way, that's one key thing that a lot of entrepreneurs do incorrectly. They had these grandiose expectations for what's going to happen after a week, a month, a year. And I loved the Tony Robins quote. I say it a few times, you know, at least a month on this show, which is people overestimate, what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in a decade. I mean, a decade, you can literally change the world. Like that's the exaggeration, but a year man a year can go by quick. And if you're going to be disappointed because you not accomplishing everything, you had these grandiose expectations four in a year, then, Hey, like you might want to quit. So don't have these outsized expectations for a year, but Hey, shoot for the moon for that decade because man, the sky is truly the limit.

0 (9m 48s):
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0 (10m 36s):
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0 (11m 18s):
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0 (11m 60s):
So Clay, we teased this at the top of the show actually, before you were on, I was talking about it a little bit. It was the story of a simple t-shirt idea that created a brand identity. Tell us that story.

1 (12m 15s):
This is a funny story. It happened by accident. I think I did not like going to these networking meetings and I got tired. I got tired of like, just pitching myself over and over and over again. Just say, Hey, I'm Clay Mosley. I'm a web developer. And I did that. You know, I don't know, a couple dozen times at least. And so I thought to myself, which is funny because I thought this out of laziness, I thought to myself, I'm just going to have a shirt printed up screen printed that just said web designer on the, on the front. That's all it said. And so I didn't have any branding. I didn't have my logo on it. It was literally just a black t-shirt that I bought.

1 (12m 58s):
And it had in white letters, web designer, literally, that was it. And so I thought every single networking. Networking event, I go to, everyone's going to instantly know what I do without me even saying a word. And so that's kind of how this was born. This idea of this t-shirt

0 (13m 18s):
And know what the whole story behind the t-shirt was, how it built the brand identity, like really break down that entire process.

1 (13m 27s):
It actually became my identity and I, every single day that I went to work, I, where I knew I was going to see somebody, a client, a prospect, a coffee meeting, whatever I wore that shirt. And so I just got, kinda got in the habit of doing that. And then when I hired my first employee, this was a year later. So I started this, the, my biz, my marketing agency in February of 2015, I hired my first person in April of 2016. And she was like, I want one of those shirts. And I said, sure, like it it's not branded or anything, but I, you know, let's get you a shirt printed.

1 (14m 9s):
So she did, she got a, I don't remember what it said. I think like marketing geek or something. And then the rest of that year, by the end of 2016, we hired two more people. And we were at four people and they were both those two new people were like, oh, I want, I want a shirt. And so we came up with these like titles, like web geek, marketing geek, social media geek. And, and by the end of 2017, we had 11 people, 2018. We had 20 over 20 people and everybody wanted a shirt and so everywhere around town. And it became our brand where it's like, Hey, anytime you're out in town and, and you are going to any kind of vent, you know, you're going to meet a prospect or a client.

1 (14m 55s):
You have to wear the shirt. And we did it across all our social media. Like you have to wear the shirt. And what's funny is the shirt and all the shirts. We never N w we never branded them. None of them had our logo on it. It was just, it was just the title. And it, it, it got to the point where people would see us out in public and they go, oh, you work for this company. Or like, oh yeah, yeah, we do. Cause they're like, I recognize that shirt. That's, that's kinda where it got to, to like how it became a kind of our brand identity is like this silly little t-shirt because I decided I was too lazy to pitch myself at networking events.

1 (15m 35s):
That's what it became. And so it was like, kind of crazy.

0 (15m 38s):
What do you really want our listeners to walk away with with that story? I mean, you know, you learned a lot, I really feel like there's some lessons in here that we can really make sure our audience gets about what it means to, you know, do something, say, you know what, there's a little traction here. There's a little momentum here. How do I double down on this? Because it just feels right.

1 (16m 3s):
Because the thing that I, I would take away from this is, is brand how important brand is and, and how consistency is, is how important consistency is. Because even though this t-shirt did not have our logo on it, it represented our brand because we were very consistent. We did it all the way across the board for every person on our team, across all our social media. We even kind of, the style got reflected on our website. And so brand is it doesn't have to be about how S how fancy a logo is or something like that.

1 (16m 43s):
Like, as long as you are consistent, then you will be like, people will remember you. And so, cause I see some of the ugliest logos out there, like big companies that I'm like, how is that a logo? But people remember it. Like, there's, I don't know if I can say it, but there's like a moving company that has like these little hand drawn letter, like stick figure letters. They're a big, they're a pretty decent size moving company. Like they're, they're at least regional if not national, but that's, they're consistent. Like Nope, no graphic designer would ever design something like that. You know what I mean? But they're very consistent with their brand and not, and that's how people remember them.

0 (17m 25s):
We all hear about the importance of goal setting. I mean, I'm not going to lie back in 2016. I launched one of my most successful products, ever. The freedom journal, which is about accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days. But you have a different angle. You have a different take on things. Talk about growing a business without arbitrary goals

1 (17m 48s):
In business, hear in all kinds of coaches say this and everything, and I'm not saying they're wrong. It just wasn't my cup of tea, but they always say, you got to set numbers, you got to set goals. And then you got to try to hit those goals, right? Like as far as like numbers. And so that's what I did, you know, everybody says to do that. And so I set these, these goal numbers and, and I tried, I would try to hit it. My problem was, and I'm sure a lot of people listening they fall into this category was that I set a number, a realistic number, which would be a very good number to hit, but I, I, I would fall just short of it, which in reality, the growth that I, I made that year was very, very good, but I, I fell short of my goal.

1 (18m 38s):
And so mentally I kinda, it was kind of disappointing to me. And so I remember, I remember, I think in our third, like second year, I think we wanted to be a, a million dollar marketing agency, like a million dollars in a year. And I think we made 900 and like $66,000 and which the previous year we did 500,000. So like that, that's like a really good growth. But I remember thinking to myself, man, I wish we had gotten that extra 40,000, like to meet our goal. And so I kinda like had this feeling of disappointment in myself and I'm like, and then finally I read this book, the guys over at base camp, I can't remember the names, but they wrote a book called re rework.

1 (19m 27s):
And they talk about how you shouldn't have like, just these arbitrary goals. Like as long as you're growing the company, as long as you have growth, then you should be happy. And so, and so like, that's what I changed my mindset to that. I was like, okay, well, as long as I'm growing, I'm happy. As long as I'm not losing money and I'm growing, I'm happy because like the thing, the thing about these like setting goals in these numbers, it's like, okay, why did I choose a million dollars in my head? Why, why did I say a million dollars? Like where did that number come from? I don't know. I just kind of pull it out of the air. Like that's exactly where that number came from. And so like the next year could be like 3 million to, okay, where did that number come from?

1 (20m 10s):
I don't know. It sounded like a really good number. And so like, there's no meaning behind it for me, at least me personally. And so I changed my mindset to like, okay, as long as I'm growing, I'm happy. So that's, that's kinda why, like I don't, I don't set arbitrary goals.

0 (20m 28s):
Well, Clay, we talked about a lot of stuff today. We talked about being an introvert. We've talked about growing a business without knowing business or sales about your t-shirt brand identity that you've created about growing a business without arbitrary goals. And without focusing on just these random numbers or these random goals, what's the one takeaway you want to make sure that we get from everything that we talked about here today, and any call to action you have for our listeners, any directions, anything you want us to check out, and then we'll say goodbye

1 (21m 3s):
Patients, right? You can achieve a lot of great things or at least a couple of great things in a, you know, a long period of time, but like in a year that it may not happen. You know, you could grow towards that, but over, you know, 10 year span or seven year span. In my, in my case, you can achieve a lot of things, a lot of great things. So like patience is the key for entrepreneurship because I think people, when they don't have patients, they get bored and they, they switch their mind or their, or their efforts or, or their focus to something else. And then they never achieve growth because they keep having to start over.

1 (21m 44s):
And so I would say, patience, consistency, keep at it. And things will happen. I promise call to action. You had mentioned a call to action. So like, what I do now is I am I act as like a fractional CMO chief marketing officer. So I did, I give all these like really great marketing hacks that are really unconventional. So I would encourage you guys, if you want to learn more from, from me is to go to get drip, defy.com/fire. And that will get you invited into my community. And the very first thing you'll see is a, is a tactic that will get you 1 million plus ROI on, on if you do the tactics.

1 (22m 25s):
So boom,

0 (22m 26s):
Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with cm and JLD today. So keep up the heat, head over to EOFire.com. Just type Clay in the search bar has shown us page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. And one more time, Clay give us that URL call to action.

1 (22m 46s):
getdripify.com/FIRE. G E T D R I P I F Y.com/fire

0 (22m 53s):
Yes. Boom Clay. Thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. Today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side

1 (23m 6s):
Much. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

0 (23m 8s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bound content was brought to you by Clay and Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days, step by step, visit the freedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. If you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. The remarkable people podcast hosted by Guy Kawasaki and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network helps you better understand the changing world with interviews from Thought Leaders Legends, and Iconic Class like Jenn Lim, Happiness Evangelist and author of Beyond Happiness.

0 (23m 58s):
Listen to the remarkable people podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.