📍EEA: The Art of Getting Things Done with Richard Scott

Interview with Richard Scott

RJ Redden: I hit the video and then I hit go live. So you didn't see that beautiful thing that took me hours to prepare, but no matter, because I have a guest who's just gonna blow it out of the water today, I feel it. We are. We are dear friends. Richard and I, he has stayed up at night to complete this mission with us, and I'm so excited to hear what he has to say.

Richard, welcome to the Epic Engagement Adventure.

Richard Scott: Thank you. Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

RJ Redden: So tell the world, I know that you are a master of many things, but tell the world who you are and what you do.

Richard Scott: Okay where do I even begin? I could go all the way back to, to abra in a pond, but I won't go that far back.

Instead what I'm gonna do is say that after 30 semi boring years in the corporate world, I decided that I wanted live very much on my own terms and. We all go through different tr transition rate points. I'm not gonna bore you with mine, but certainly I very much wanted to have life on my own terms cause I felt it never really was.

And then as a result, I started getting my fingers in different little pies, not literally pies, just to make that clear at which basically meant that I was trying to help out different businesses here, start different things there and see what floated. We've all gotta do that sometimes, don't we?

RJ Redden: We do. For me I dabbled in a surprising amount of things before I landed in this chair and I learned something from every one of them. So beautiful. So you dabbled in some things for a while. Did you finally, did you land in a place? Did you, are you a multi potential light? You had landed in several places.

What

Richard Scott: happened? Absolutely. I've landed in several different places all at the same time. And what's really happened is all the little things I'm involved in are all interconnected. So to me it's almost like one big thing. But to people on the outside, they're going, but you're doing that.

And you're doing that and you're doing that and you're doing that. And I think that's probably, cuz a lot of people are so used to the old one-trick pony expression, but even a one-trick pony can use that trick in lots of different places. So there is no such thing in my humble opinion, as a one-trick pony.

There's just that sort of narrow mindedness, the blinkers on the pony to actually to make it only thinking one. That, in my opinion, needs to be avoided. As some people say, oh, you like to think outside the box. First you've got to invent a box. So very much everything that I do is determines to actually all interconnect and help one another. So for example I helped to run a social enterprise business with some lifesaving medical wearables that we've actually invented in order to well save lives. Also got a deals platform, which is designed in order to help to support community support businesses, support charities, support good causes of all shapes and forms.

There's also a. One day workshop training organization that we've set up in order to actually offer people that done with you type service rather than the we're experts, we'll do it for you, or somebody's trying to do it themselves and fallen over their own feet. It's very much ask all the right questions at the right time.

Gather the right answers and then actually take them through so they can go tick. That's actually done. And so that's one thing. Then you've also got a business incubator, pro incubate, which is very much about taking a business from nothing to where you need it to be. Make sure it's self-supportive and actually can generate a profit.

And then we've also. A pet sitting agency as a completely far out there thing a pet sitting agency, which started pretty much enhanced by lockdown. It started beforehand in order to make my own personal life simpler. Where I was enjoying living in other people's homes, getting paid to use their homes as my office.

But it was really my escape in order to actually, to avoid distraction. And I was so super productive. I thought, I love this. And ended up turning it into a bigger, and bigger business. And people say, what the heck have they got all in common? And somebody beautifully, eloquently put it the other day, they went, everything that you.

It's about peace of mind. You are trying to find the ultimate peace of mind for all of your clients, for everything. And I went, that's a really good point. And one of the funny things that also came out of that was that. The people that are working as pet sitters are gen, like pet sitters, like for the agency, have generally got time on their hands so that then they could potentially do other things, like they could help with the one day workshops to help, to facilitate them, to help, to attend, to help to gather there, to help to do lots of different other functions.

They could also become resellers for Aurora smart tags and bands. They could also get involved with various other ventures. They could also help to support some of the other businesses that are, start. And so all of the different things that I was doing, no matter how completely disparate that they, Are all beautifully connected by utilizing this little gig army of wonderful people combined with the recognition that people actually don't want to just be one trick ponies.

They don't want to just stick in one place. They want to actually have life on their own terms, and that life on their own terms has actually become something that has actually grown even more in its own right. And I've even been encouraged to actually start up a podcast at some point in the future to do that, so I'd love to have you on that.

So everything that I do is all about trying to make a real difference and do fun things in the process because I spent a long time doing things where I'd look in the mirror at the end of a 16 or 18 hour day. I'd look in the mirror and I. Why did I do that? Yeah. Why? What was in it? Yeah, fine. Technically I was invoicing for good money, but quite literally my ex-wife was spending it quicker than I ever earned it, so I never got to appreciate it anyway.

But at the end of the day, I was looking in that mirror and thinking I'm getting older and I've got nothing more to show for it. And so when I did eventually switch to actually living that vision of having life on my own, That was a real turning point for me, and my stress levels might have gone up in one respect in terms of everything I wanted to try to do, but they went down because I was really starting to enjoy what I was doing, which is a huge difference from actually being.

In their sort of almost forced world of slavery? Oh,

RJ Redden: oh I have been there. The corporate slavery not good for people like us, Richard. I think everybody in earshot would agree. There are some of us that are just not. Not gonna be successful there. And I do wanna talk to you specifically about some of these ventures because you and I have had the pleasure of hanging out beforehand.

And can we start with the bracelets? Can

Richard Scott: you tell? We can indeed. Yeah, certainly. As I mentioned, I worked for a lot of corporates over the years and when I was working for those corporates, some of them were really absolutely lovely and I've got to say I loved working there.

Brilliant working atmospheres, absolutely fantastic. They were also an awful lot that were rather oppressive and not great. And So I was always looking for a different venture. Something else I could actually do. Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting a turn of events that Changed my life around about eight years ago.

I had four horrible things really happen in the same week in my life. Two of which was one was a, I was being actually I, the four things. I was in court trying to fight for contact with my children, who I absolutely adored. I was also having to go through a financial divorce, which was really unpleasant.

And because my ex-wife wanted to relocate the children hundreds of miles away, it meant I lost absolutely everything and had to start all over again. So put down to below zero, not even starting again. It was actually below zero, so that was obviously quite a. A negative point in the week. I was also in the hospital being screened for testicular cancer, and the fourth thing that happened was that my best friend died.

That was one heck of a week for anybody to go through, and anybody who would go through anything remotely similar to that, if they don't have some sort of, what am I doing here? Kind of moment. Yep. Yeah. Why, like, why not? And. So during that, when that happened, it was like what'd you do next?

I know that nothing could bring Tom back. It was just one of those things that you just go in, that's just nothing. Nothing can change that. But you also feel this determination to make a difference, this determination to do something else that's really successful. And One of the things historically that I've always done and I've described it the other day, was I've always tried to do things.

I'm thinking so far in the future that it's like a surfer, paddling about a mile in front of the wave, and then they're gonna go, why am I getting so tired? Because they're gonna go, the wave's coming quick stop paddling, but it's a mile behind. And so I try to learn from all of those mistakes and plenty more that I've made over the.

By thinking about how can I be slightly closer to the wave when I start paddling? And I came up with with, some great friends, some great inputs from lots of great people. There's something built into virtually every smartphone on the planet called N F C, which stands for nearfield Communication or R F I D.

If you want to go to the more sort of old. Larger variant and, but it's basically, it's a technology that's built into that, wifi or Bluetooth, which virtually every smartphone has. There's also something called ice. Yep. And I don't mean frozen water. Meaning the acronym in case of emergency.

It's a global standard known to virtually every paramedic on the planet known. Most first aiders across the world and ice in case of emergency. A lot of people go, oh, I've got that on my phone. But the problem is if you've got your phone and it goes flat and you drop it, it gets smashed. You lose it.

Nobody can do anything with it anyway. But if you are carrying on you. A medical alert bracelet. Here's one I prepared earlier. B Nice. That can be scanned by anybody else's mobile phone that's got N F C built into it. They can put it against it and up on the screen it comes a photograph of me to prove that I'm wearing my own and not some other random persons or a found it and also, Basically any other information that I wish to share.

So for example, it could be saying that I'm diabetic or dyslexic, or whatever it might be that I think is relevant to a First data or a paramedic actually giving me treatment. So on mine, I've got my blood group, I've got who to contact. I've got my travel insurance details. I've got in what information that I think is important, and also when it's scan, when it, when somebody actually does make contact with it, it also sends an alert to a carer or loved one or someone else special to say, Hey, Richard's been scanned at this time, at this location.

Which is then obviously a great way to then go, you all right, everything fine. Oh, yet you're just playing around with it. Okay, that's wonderful. So you've got that ability to actually, to engage with the world, which is a great thing for people with dementia. It's a great thing for people who are vulnerable.

It's a great thing for people who are extremely sporty and who might get knocked down while cycling. It doesn't matter whether someone's got a medical condition or not. The people that kind of go, it can never happen to me, unfortunately. These things do, and so if, as I said, nothing can bring Tom back, but it's very much designed in order to make a real difference.

And we've got lots and lots of different applications that we've actually moved it into because we've turned away investment from external organizations because we didn't want somebody to come in and go right from, how can we make the most money out of this and lead it dry instead, we actually wanted to actually to have it so it would actually grow and continually grow and.

As a social enterprise, it's determined to make that difference and actually grow more organically with basically the good word of people who find out about it being spread. So people who then get to know about it, followers on social media, spread the word and recognize that genuinely it is there to provide benefits, and there are lots of other ways we're not saying ours is the only way people should just make sure they're carrying important information at all.

I've even come across people who've actually had tattoos up their arm, saying that they're diabetic and all the rest of it. So you know, like everyone each to their own, each to their own different way of doing it. But certainly having that information to hand is one of the easiest ways for a paramedic to basically go.

There's that information, I won't necessarily trust it or I will trust it. That's up to them based on how accurate they know it's gonna be, but at least it can help steer them in the right direction. Yeah. Steering someone in the right direction will hopefully lead to the better quality of care and treatment sooner rather than potentially too late.

RJ Redden: Yeah, I think I told you this story last time, but my dad he has, he's got some mental stuff and. Dementia at one point was verging on and just, we moved him into group housing a while ago which has been great for him. But before, right before that he was out wandering around and we've got snow in these parts.

And he was. He was found in the snow unconscious. He had nothing on him. For as for identification. He had, it was a problem with his medications and stuff, and they rushed him to the hospital. Nobody knows who he is, what to do with him. Luckily there was a guy there that had biked with my dad.

There was one of the ER guys, and so he finally identified him. That's, it's a horrible, it's a non predictable situation. Yes. It's never gonna happen to me. Oh, it's gonna happen to you next. Watch out, man. So I know how important it is to, cause we had no idea we.

He didn't live with any of us at the time, so we had no idea what happened to him. And finally we were able to get him the proper help and get him his papers and but it was quite a process.

Richard Scott: Absolutely. What you think about it that you can obviously store any information on that, what the medication is, the medication routines change, quantities change times change, and so it's a great way to keep that very much up to date.

And easily accessible. I always talk about the actual charity, the rubber bands, the sort of silicon bands, the ones that are great pollute in the ocean. They're, they're great as a very low cost marketing. I'm gonna say gimmick for a charity or for anything else. But if she sees somebody and they've got a rubber band that says diabetes, do they have diabetes or are they wearing it cause it belonged to somebody else?

Or is it cuz it matches their outfit? Or is it because they actually got collared by somebody on a street corner and bought it from them? You don't know why they're wearing it, but something like that, if you do have some medical issues, people know about it. If you don't have medical issues, at least it's gonna say who to contact as well.

And because obviously you know, your dad obviously got the help from that paramedic that was there because he had come into contact with him, but then who do the so he might have gone, oh, I know his medical details, but then who do they contact? Yeah. And then, he can be all alone for days potentially n not knowing who to contact and what's going on, if he's in that sort of state of confusion.

And there's lots of ways that people can end up being in that state. And so slowly but surely we are trying to make a difference via actually getting more and more people to have these, or we've got them in key fobs or they've got them hanging. Off my watch strap. There's a whole load of ways that we've actually got them cards for wallets, you name it.

There's lots and lots of ways, and the whole point is that having the information accessible can be not only the difference between life and death, but it can also be the difference between the care and the follow up and the amount of money that is also wasted. Trying to find that information within the actual medical services cuz they're going we can't just leave him there because we cope.

We dunno who he is or what he's got. They've gotta spend more time treating him. They've gotta spend more time and you wonder why costs spiral. So there's some great things that can be done to help everyone, including the actual relevant. Individual, whether it's me with my own or whoever it might be with theirs.

So it's something that I think is a great product. Obviously we all think our products are great, don't we? But it's the thing that's something that I think is a great product in order to make a genuine difference. And it's something that I can actually put my hand and heart and kind of go, I'm really proud of what we are doing.

So there you go. And at the

RJ Redden: end of the day, isn't that what we want? Yeah, absolutely. You do contribute directly to peace of mind in many ways. And for those of you listening, there's, there's a story about every one of his businesses and how all of that contributes to peace of mind.

So I do, I do urge you to get a hold of Richard and talk with him about some of this stuff. Richard, I wanna ask the question that I always ask on this podcast cuz I got coaches who listen and who wanna know, how do you engage your audience?

Richard Scott: That's a really great question.

One of the things I will say is, When you start a business, you don't always know all of the answers. Yep. You think, oh, I'm just gonna do, create this products and the world's gonna come to me, they're suddenly gonna become aware of me. And then you get all these people that say, what's your marketing budget?

One of my most hated questions in the whole world. Yeah. What's your marketing budget? To me that's like saying, how much of my money are you planning on gambling with? Yeah. It doesn't necessarily say what I'm gonna get for. It's like walking into a supermarket, going, got a hundred dollars. What are you gonna give me?

You don't, you go to get what you want, you go to the checkout and you say, how much is it gonna cost? Yep. And so as a business owner, you are there. You're going I've got this product. What do I do with it next? And I need to get people to know it exists. Oh, I'll set up a social media account that'll do it.

And you've got all of these illusions and delusions that you've gotta get past. And so over the years, I've learned the hard way and learned through seeing lots of other people making mistakes and learned through lots of other people's doing the right things and getting some great advice that it's important to actually identify your target market and who's gonna basically be interested in what you're doing and everything else, which is wonderful.

One of the things I haven't ever done is I haven't ever created a list. It's one of those historic things that people said you should create a list. And I've and then what? What do I do? I've got this list of people. Do I just keep like sending lots of emails going, hi, how are you having a nice day?

Is everything good? I don't really know what to say next. Yep. And that's what happens. You actually end up those with basically then having this list of people and going what do you do then? Or it's been three months as I spoke to that person, should I really email them or feel a bit sort?

Dodgy email in them. And you don't wanna spam people, you don't wanna be seen as that guy. Yep. So what do you do with those lists? So historically, never really got into any of the lists, but in the very, very recent past, because I've actually got the pet agency and the citizen association to set the standards, and we've got Aurora Smart tags and we've got smart inspiration one day workshops and pro incubate.

Like business incubator, all of them are their own little ventures and you need to keep them separate. And when you are already juggling lots and lots of balls, trying to keep them all separate, it's a bit of a difficulty. So I've actually just onboarded a CRM system, which allows me to do each one individually, and it's what it's helped me to identify is that I've got a little audience, albeit tiny audiences from the.

Associated with each one. And let's say the pet agency, we've got hundreds of potential people that have actually made inquiries and or become customers and you're going, right? So you've got big lists that are automatically being created without necessarily deliberately going out my way to create a list.

And that gives me an audience that I could reach out and say, Hey, we've been looking after your pets as an example here, we've been looking after your pets in 2021. Would you like a calendar in 2022 or would you like a mug of this? Do you want us to come back? And so suddenly you actually then go from year to year, you can actually offer more products, more services.

You can grow and utilize that list. Only because you actually have that list through natural, organic purposes rather than, what I've seen some people doing is they go around networking groups and they literally scrape everybody, shove them into a list, and the next thing you know, you've got 60,000 emails coming into your inbox and you're going.

Where are these even coming from? Who are these people? And there was one that I actually emailed back to say, I don't actually know who you are, but thanks a lot for spanning me and forcing me to have to consume brain calories to actually deal with this, which they work.

Came back and went well because we never met. I thought it was good that I actually introduced you to what I did and it.

Where do you even go with that? And it always, I always find it really interesting that all of these businesses that tend to do that, the team seem to think that everybody's got this pot of money that is just waiting. Earmark just for them. It's oh my gosh, I've never heard of anybody doing, I don't know, social media management.

Oh, quick. I better get somebody to do that. You don't, you tend to go by recommendations. You tend to go by people who've actually got the experience. You tend to go by, by actually know what sort of results you're likely to get from doing whatever it might be. But it's amazing how many people think, oh, all these, they've got pots of money and the ones that don.

They'll bin the emails, but the others, we're gonna catch all of them. And the one of the funniest things is when people say, I've worked out that the market, there's 3 million people in my target audience. If I can get 10% of them, you can go that's still 300,000. You've still got to market too.

And if you want, if you've got the budget to market to 8 billion people on the planet, you're already in a pretty damn good place. So it's that whole kind of model of where are you going, what are you trying to do? And are you trying to a alienate and harass people? So I don't create lists, but organically as my c CRM is building its own list, which I can't help cause it does it automatically.

Then I will be reaching out to those people. Not as a regular. I'm gonna spaul lot, not as a anything else, but to make sure that what I send to them is worthy of opening. Because if it's not worthy of opening, then all that's gonna happen is I'm gonna get associated with sending out emails that aren't worthy of being opened.

Add exactly one email that somebody kinda goes when he does send out an. It's worth it. That is great. And then I've also got the ability to then cross sell to this and say from that and do this and link to that. And because everything I do is so interconnected, which is great, but I'm not planning on ever like building up a list that I can just.

Spam at. Yep. So that's currently my approach and I'm sure that it's in a very immature approach to some people who have got it really nailed down to a fine art. And I'd love to know how they've made it so it can be done extremely ethically, which again, comes back down to me with a peace of mind and wanting to actually reassure the people I'm contacting that I'm not doing.

So just to waste their time and. Exactly.

RJ Redden: I've written a little bit about this in the past. Rule of engagement number, rule of epic engagement number 59. No excitement, no send. If you are completely unexcited about that email, because it's probably not gonna provide anybody any value at all don't, do not send that thing, do not send that thing.

It, people have given you. Their email addresses, they're not your email addresses. And I think that a lot of people miss that. There's one guy there's a couple of people. I read their emails every time because it's always an opportunity to think they're well done.

And it helps me sometimes with my business or sometimes it's just a giggle, but it's about connect. It is not about how, how many people can I bug today? I, I that's why I fell in love with you, Richard. As Richard, how can people get hold of you? Is there is there a way to to connect with you because I'm sure that my listeners will want to do.

Richard Scott: Yeah, they can join my mailing list. Now I'm only joking. I'm only joking. So via smart inspiration.com or via Aurora Smart Tags or via LinkedIn, there's lots and lots of ways to get in contact with me. I tend to live quite a bit on LinkedIn, although I've got to say I have been quite antisocial for the last couple of months.

I've been hiding away for the last couple of. But I'll be back on LinkedIn and back in top form very soon indeed. Oh, that's wonderful. Something about all of the emails is that one of the other great things about having so many emails coming in is I the number of relatives that I've actually discovered, I never realized I had so many living in Nigeria.

RJ Redden: Yeah. Yeah. I just have to say one little thing about that. It's the, I have started a new little series, Richard, and it's called ditch That Pitch Slap pitch Slap is what we call it. When people cold email you call the message you and give you a whole bunch of crap you didn't ask for.

That's not even useful to you anyway. And so I actually play a game online called Pitch Lap Bingo. I'm I'm, because exactly what you're talking about, we're inundated every day with a bunch of stuff that we don't need. You were even talking about your inbox earlier before we got on the air.

It's legendarily bad. Yes, it's legendarily bad. And how can we connect with integrity Absolutely. So that we can all have some

Richard Scott: peace of. Absolutely. One of the things that I'm really am, as I mentioned earlier on, that I'm desperately looking for is a decent way to have rules on my, I've got a little MacBook to be able to then have it on my, like my IMAP emails, to be able to say and that one's gonna go this way.

That one's gonna go that way, that one's gonna get filed. That one I'm gonna automatically delete, but not tell the person rather than unsubscribe because I don't want to offend them, whatever it might be. I wanna be able to have those rules. And it seems that the ability to create rules has gone backwards from where it was 10 years ago.

Cause 10 years ago I would use Outlook and I'd actually use the rules in that. In fact, actually I used to use Thunderbird. So Mozilla Thunderbird, which was a lovely Thunderbird. It was great. Then it seemed to actually clog up at the time. I dunno if we've actually managed to sort that out, but use it clogged up.

Cause I had. I don't know, about 18, 20 different IMAP email accounts, all for potentially different little ventures to see what floated and what didn't float. And then I like then move across to Outlook, which seemed great. But then fairly recently I found that Outlook personally has been quite difficult.

So I then moved away from Outlook to Max's own mail. One. I keep seeing all these other ones that you're gonna start paying every single month for, and as I said, I don't wanna be paying lots and lots of money every single month just to receive more spam. I want to be able to, the tools that come with a laptop or the tools that I can actually download for a laptop doing what I actually need them to do.

And the rules piece is one of the most fundamental pieces, and it's amazing that on the comes front, and I was saying this to somebody just earlier on today, so we get contacted by messages via, let's say, LinkedIn or Facebook via Facebook pages, via Facebook groups. We get tagged. We. Have lots of different social media contacts, and obviously we've got emails, we've got our WhatsApps or signals or telegrams and all of these other tools on our mobiles to be contacted, which then ping up on the computers as well.

We've obviously got our emails. We've got all of these different ways to be contacted above and beyond mobile's, landlines, voiceover, ip, telephony, you like, telephony systems. You name it. There's Tons of ways that people can get hold of you. Wouldn't it be lovely if there was a really simple way to actually say fine.

All of these ways all coming in, and it can still say, coming in from LinkedIn, coming in from this, coming in from that. So it's not being lost in terms of how that's coming in. But you've then got the ability to to centralize that. And I think that if it can't be central, It's gonna continue to be a big problem.

Yeah. And if it would be lovely if we could say, if we can't, if it's not centralized, I'm not gonna deal with it. But we can't because our businesses may not allow us to do that. We may such say we've got people coming via LinkedIn and you can't do that LinkedIn and all the different issues there.

But if you had that ability to centralize everything, wouldn't it be absolutely wonderful, even if it just flagged up to say, Hey, click on this. To get that information, click on that. So it would be really easy just for it to do the polling. And I do think that there's all the, there's all this talk about artificial intelligence.

So whether it's your chat, G P T or whatever it is, and think, some people forget the word artificial in there. And wouldn't it be lovely if you could actually utilize some form of AI type application specially written to. From each of these different sources or to actually to a. All of these sources.

So there you go. So anybody wants to actually do that. Let me know cuz I will be a staunch supporter wave from the flags behind you.

RJ Redden: Yes. We may have to, we may have to investigate that my friend. I've looking at some products. All right, we have to wrap up. Unfortunately. But but gosh, thank you for.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for giving us, that wisdom. I just, I love talking to you and I hope the audience learned something today. I know I did you have any final pearls of wisdom for

Richard Scott: us? Oh I dunno about that. All I can say is it's been a rollercoaster journey that we all are on and when you start to get life on your own, It's amazing how the fog of life starts to clear.

And so if anybody's in a position where they feel that they are, that they don't have life on their own terms, then you know, maybe it's a step that they need to have a look at because it certainly is a far better, more stress-free, more relaxed existence by having life that way. Yeah. So

RJ Redden: absolutely. Very good.

Thank you again. Grasshoppers, we get the greatest guests here on the epic engagement adventure and we'll be back next week. Same bot time, same bot channel. And with that, I will leave you with this.