[00:00:00] Speaker A: I have been a serial entrepreneur with mostly failed businesses for the past 15 years. But over the past five years, I finally found success. I began to realize that a lot of people were getting into investing and investing in the stock market. I happened to have worked for Merrill lynch and Morgan Stanley for a while. So I knew a little bit about investing and decided to create a YouTube channel teaching people what I knew. And within a week I'd already gained a thousand subscribers. First month didn't make anything but month made $5,000. Month three made $8,000. Month four made $12,000. Now eventually getting the business to over $250,000 a year, more than that sometimes. And it all started because I didn't give up. I had a failure, overcame it, failure overcame it and just kept on going.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another episode of Unscripted with me, Zanetta Chuniquen Power. I am so excited to talk today, Scott Curry. We are about to get into all things money related creative entrepreneurship. I am so excited to have this conversation. Hey, how you doing?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I am doing wonderful. I.
I've had a lot of setbacks but man, life is good. How are you doing?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: You know, it wouldn't be a good story if it wasn't for a few plot twists. So with that in mind, I'm doing great as well. Thank you for asking.
Tell us a little bit about yourself today, Scott.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I have been a serial entrepreneur with mostly failed businesses for the past 15 years. But over the past five years I finally found success and it has really made all of the failures and all the struggles over the past 15 years worth it.
About five years ago when Covid hit, I had to do a bit of a pivot to online education since during COVID everything was shut down and that has made all the difference and finally found success. Was able to apply everything that I had learned and tried over the previous 10 years to YouTube and it just took off in three short months and I ended up replacing the income from my six figure job and was able to quit that and turn that little side hustle into a full time business which I've now been doing for the past five years.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Amazing. And that's the type of story that I see on TikTok all the time. They're like, hey, stop scrolling. You wanna make some money? And I'm like, yeah, of course.
And it sounds like you have certainly put some effort into pivoting at a time where things are uncertain. Can you take us a little bit more through that journey?
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So prior to Covid I was doing motivational speaking, and it was a lot of live event speaking. I was working, trying to work my way up to become a keynote speaker. And at the time, somebody said something to me which was very impactful, but I didn't understand it at that time. And they said, you were paid based upon the value that you provide.
And at the time, I thought that meant I have to provide a lot of value to one individual person.
Now what I was trying to do, and my goal is I had heard about this guy, actually spoken to a guy who worked one day per month.
And what he did is he charged $10,000 for one day, unlimited access to him at his house. And he had 10 people that he would invite every month to go do this. So 10 people, $10,000. It's a hundred thousand dollars a month he was making, and he only worked one day per month. And I thought, wow, I want to get to the point where I'm able to charge 10,000, 20, $50,000 to speak to a group of people.
Well, that didn't quite happen, but I was definitely on my way. When Covid hit, though, everything got shut down.
Now, luckily, I was still working at a job at the time, but all that side income was gone and I had to pivot. And I said, what can I do to continue this without actually speaking in front of people? And so I tried a YouTube channel, tried doing some motivational things with a YouTube channel, and it did not get any traction at all. I mean, I was getting like a hundred views per video. It's terrible.
And it was not working.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: So I still saw that as an opportunity. Just wasn't really sure how to make it happen.
I mean, it was just feeling with the motivational speaking feeler with the YouTube, but not giving up. And I think that was key.
Finally, I began to realize that a lot of people were getting into investing and investing in the stock market around that time, late 2020 and early 2021. I happen to have worked for Merrill lynch and Morgan Stanley for a while. So I knew a little bit about investing and decided to create a YouTube channel, teaching people what I knew. And it took off. The timing just happened to be perfect.
And within a week, I'd already gained a thousand subscribers. Three weeks after I started the channel, I was already monetized.
First month didn't make anything, but month two made $5,000, month three made $8,000, month four made $12,000. And at that point, I was making more than I was at my job. Quit my job and just ran YouTube full time from there on out, eventually getting the business to over $250,000 a year, more than that sometimes.
And it all started because I didn't give up. I had a failure, overcame it, failure over came it and just kept on going. But I want to be very clear that success did not come easily. In order to get that YouTube channel started in January of 2021, I would go into my full time job, work the whole day at my full time job, talking eight hours plus an hour for lunch, plus commute time, 10 hours a day at the job, then putting in anywhere from five to eight hours per day on the YouTube channel, literally getting three to four hours of sleep every single night for three straight months in order to find that success.
So it wasn't lucky, it wasn't anything unexpected. It was a lot of very hard work that paid off.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Relations to you, that is an amazing story of perseverance within your pivot. And one of the things that really stands out about that experience is that when you started the channel you were like with that. But we're interested to figure out how can I use what I know best into content that people will be willing to consume and again find value in what I have to say. That is so key in deciding where you land as a content creator because there's so many different interests, there's, there's an audience for almost anything. How did you.
How now everyone wants to make money, Everyone has to make money like there's no choice. And even myself as I look at financial conversations on YouTube. How do you differentiate, differentiate yourself between all the other voices there?
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. There's really two key differentiators. One is the fact that I have actual investment banking experience.
I've worked for Mary Lynch, I've worked for Morgan Stanley. I know what I'm talking about.
I think the biggest thing though is I've actually done it.
So I've had success from time to time and certain times tremendous success.
Back in March of this year, I turned a thousand dollars into $32,000 in one month.
And that kind of success people gravitate towards. You know, there's an old saying that those who can do and those who can't teach.
And it is exceptionally rare to find somebody who can and teaches.
And when you find people like that, go subscribe to every single social media platform they're on TikTok, YouTube, X Instagram, everything. Because you will learn far more from people that have actually done it than people have read a book.
And the key there is people have actually done it we know what parts of the books are real and legit and what part of those books are complete bullshit.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
So would you say that YouTube has been the greatest driver of growing your audience and for monetization? Are there any other platforms that you feel is relevant to your business?
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Lately, YouTube has by far been the largest driver. I have far more followers on YouTube than I have on any other platform.
That said, there have been other things as well, such as my newsletter that I was able to create.
That has been a tremendous help. Teaming up and partnering with other content creators was also a tremendous boost to my YouTube channel. But I do want to be clear about one thing that I think a lot of people mistake about making money on YouTube is a lot of people are focused on getting monetized because they think that getting monetized is how you make money.
My second month on YouTube, when I was monetized, I made $5,000. Only 500 of those dollars came from YouTube ad revenue. The other 4,500 came from other things.
And I have other channels that I'm making money on that are not monetized.
And that's the key. You have to think think about the YouTube channel as a business and how can I make money in a multitude of different ways. For me, it was a lot of affiliate links and promoting people to the affiliate links. That's how I made my money.
Eventually, as my business grew and got a little bit more founded, I discovered that, you know, people can only sign up for so many brokerages, people can only do so many things and those one time affiliate links are only good one time. Eventually people have used them, there's nothing else to promote and income starts to go down. And that was my next setback in the business. I had to figure out how to turn that around and get the income back up. That required another pivot into some courses and discord communities that are monthly memberships instead of one time memberships. And when I made that switch to monthly, that's when the income skyrocketed. I spent an entire year pulling in about 7 to 8,000 per month. When I started the monthly memberships, I charged $20 a month and very quickly grew to a thousand people paying that $20 a month. You can do the math. I was pulling in 25,000amonth within a very short period of time by making that pivot.
And that's what it's been for me is constantly failing and trying something new and failing and trying something new. And it's the old Jeff Bezos.
Philosophy to fail small, to constantly be trying new things, constantly be failing. Because if you're 100 failures away from success, you might as well get those hundred failures out quickly so that you can go find that success.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yep, I believe in that. And I know I should be interviewing you, but I just love listening to the things that you have to say. So look for one new subscriber to your channel. I cannot wait to take a deep dive through more of your content.
And so speaking about being a creator in the creator economy, which is something that I actually just spoke about on LinkedIn, you know, for example, you have carved your path on YouTube. And Tubi, for example, is starting the Tubi Award, or, excuse me, the TikTok awards. And they will be streaming it on Tubi. And so there's always this, you know, all the respect to boomers, but the phrase, you know, boomer thoughts around, ah, it's just YouTube or it's just the Internet. And so the creator economy is actually a very powerful messaging source for, you know, getting new information to people, sharing trends, and also educating others. And so I'm very proud of what you've built on that platform, especially when there's so much agitation around. Does it really work? Is it really worth it? And you continuously have proven that it is worth it and it is working.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: It is. But, you know, a lot of that agitation comes from a very simple fact that YouTube is inherently more difficult than a lot of other ways to make money.
And so a podcaster, for example. Podcasters mildly complicated. I mean, you have to learn how to record, how to edit, how to upload. When you get to YouTube, it's all of those things.
Plus you have to learn video editing, you have to learn camera settings, you have to figure out how to set up a studio, how to do lighting, you have to figure out how to do thumbnails. You have to figure out how to create a good title. It's going to get people to click, but not be so clickbaity that YouTube bans it. And so YouTube is very complicated. And some of that animosity comes from people that either see it as too complicated, so they never got started or they tried. It didn't take the time and effort to figure out how to actually be successful on YouTube. And they just found failure. And unfortunately, YouTube's a lot like working out in that your first 10 videos, you're not going to have any viewers at all. You just have to get through them because YouTube will not start promoting your channel until you get 10 videos. YouTube needs those first 10 videos figure out who your audience is.
And so you're literally spending 10 videos with no results whatsoever. And then your next 10, you start getting a little bit of traction, but then it balloons and it goes more and more and more and more.
And it's a lot like working out. You first start working out, you aren't seeing any results at all. You just feel bad, you're tired, you're exhausted. It sucks.
But after about two weeks, you start to notice you're lifting more weights, but you still don't look any better.
And a lot of people quit at that point.
And that's why so many gyms have all these memberships and all these things that happen in January for New Year's resolutions. And people join, they never make it past the month of January because they don't want to get past that hard work. But for those who stick with it, their body starts looking better and they get more physique, they got more energy, they got more strength. But you have to get through that first month of pure suck before you actually see those results. And YouTube is the same way. It sucks at first, but you've got to get through that before you can start seeing some results.
And a lot of people aren't willing to get through the suck. They quit.
And those who do, those who persevere, are the ones that find results.
And I've always believed the harder something is to do in life, the more successful you can be cause the less competition you have.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's okay to fail small, but also failing forward. Taking those insights from any perceived losses and transform them into something that you can learn from and set you up better for your next opportunity.
So before we started chatting today we I learned about something new that you are launching a Faith Roar. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yes. So faith
[email protected] is an extension of what I've been doing for the past five years. So my company's been we profit day and night and I've been teaching people how to invest in the stock market, how to make money trading stocks and options.
What I discovered was this major mind shift that happened last month.
So last month my mom got really sick and ended up passing away.
And my sister, my brother, they had full time jobs. They weren't able to visit my mom in the hospital, but because I had the financial freedom to work when I wanted to and and still get residual income if I wasn't working, I was able to go in the hospital and spend every last Day of those last three weeks I had with her, with my mom in hospital.
And that financial freedom was the biggest blessing I could have ever asked for, to be able to spend time with her before she passed.
And the day she passed, my dad told me something I had never known.
My dad told me that my mom only had one regret in life.
She he explained to me that when I was born and when my sister was born, that my mom was still working, trying to build up enough income and enough retirement to be able to retire and raise us kids, so she had to keep working.
So from the time we were infants, my mom put us into daycare so that she could work her job.
And when my brother was born, my youngest brother, my mom finally had enough income to be able to stay home with him. And she quit her job and stayed home and raised my brother. And about a year after raising him, my mom told my dad, and he had never told any of us this until the day she passed away.
My mom told my dad that she regretted not staying home and raising me and my sister.
She wished that she had quit her job and stayed home and raised us.
And, you know, I've met a lot of people on their deathbeds.
I've never met anybody who said they regretted not working more.
I've met a lot of people who regretted not spending more time with their family.
And when I heard that, it hit me to the core.
And I made that decision that day that I was going to do everything possible to help as many people as I possibly could to become financially free so that they would never have to make a decision between staying home with their family or going to work at a job.
And that is when I decided to start Faith Roar. And it's all about having the faith, the financial freedom is possible for you, and then letting that faith roar through action and making it happen.
And that's the new company that I started. That's why I started it. And my goal is to help a million people become financially free. Of course, that's only going to be possible online through YouTube.
And that's the method that I'm going after to try to help people.
And this kind of gets back to what I had talked about in the beginning of this podcast, that you're paid based upon the value that you provide. There's one time in my life I thought that meant I had to provide a lot of value to very few people. And it turns out that's almost impossible to do. What I discovered through starting my YouTube channel is that if I can Provide a little bit of value to a lot of people. I can make a lot more money. What's easier, getting $10,000 from one person or getting $1 from 10,000 people? Turns out it's a whole lot easier to get $1 from 10,000 people.
And so that mindset shift to go out and help as many people as possible.
I know the income, the money will come. That's not the reason that I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I want to give back. And I don't want anybody having that regret that my mom did.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Well, first of all, condolences. That is such a powerful story. And I can relate to that as a mom, as a working mom. And my daughter's graduating soon and I'm thinking, you know, it goes by so fast. I wonder what I could have been doing if, you know, enter job here. Right. And so I know a lot of our women listeners may also relate to that. A lot of women are mothering during their earning prime. So it's certainly a sacrifice when you have young children to decide where, you know, where are you gonna put your energy. So hats off to you for being inspired by that. I am certainly inspired by that. And the ability to be able to continue on with that sentiment and show and teach others is certainly a wonderful mission. And so again, I'm just so proud of you, Scott. Like you are doing all the things.
Congratulations on that motivation. Right. Like your first pivot going from, you know, your pre Covid pivot was certainly inspired by self like the intrinsic energy to take something that sits within you and share it to the world is really being able to activate on higher energy plans. And I see that you're tapped into that space and I'm really inspired by that.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate it. I think the key to being motivated to put in the hard work and the long hours and find success, it cannot be money.
You know, I have found a lot of people who went into business to make money and none of them ever did.
The people that go into business to help others are the ones that are the most successful. Go look at Elon Musk.
He didn't have a vision to make money. He already said many times he doesn't even care about money. He went into business to change the world.
And the more people you can help, the more money you'll make. But the passion, the motivation, the reason, your why for starting a business has to be to help people. It cannot be to make money.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: I am looking forward to our listeners getting more familiar with all of your work. So can you tell us your YouTube channels and all of the links? We'll also include them in the description, but tell us more about where everyone can find the awesome things that you're doing and sharing.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll keep it real simple for you. I am putting everything together into the new Faith Roar company.
So if anybody wants to know more about how I'm trying to help people, you can go to faithroar. Com. If you yourself are interested in starting a business or a YouTube channel, you want to know what that looks like, how to do it Faith Roar. Com if you want to learn how to invest in the stock market, trade stocks, how to make money, how to become financially free. Faith Roar. Com I'm putting everything into one simple website to make it as easy as possible for people. So whether you're super tech savvy Gen A Gen Z, gen millennial, Gen X, or a boomer that can't even figure out how to use the Internet, my website is simple and easy for you.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Well, before we go, I would love to know where you're reading right now. How do you stay current? Give us two or three books that are hot on your mind right now.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Well, I'll give you two books that have been influential for me personally.
The first one is a trading journal that I created called the We Profit Day and Night Trading Success Journal.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: When we talk about learning versus doing, this book sums it up. It's 230 pages.
But in these 230 pages, only 30 of those have information.
The other 200 is a journal to help you take action.
Because at the end of the day, your success in life isn't going to come from reading books. It's going to come from taking action and going out there and making it happen.
So the first one was a book I wrote to help people do that. I will be coming out with another book that's more focused on business and starting a business.
It's going to be very similar, very little information and a whole lot of action steps Second book that has helped me get through a lot of difficult times in my life, especially over the past year is the Bible. The Bible has been a huge source of inspiration and hope, especially the Psalms, Proverbs, and the Gospels.
And without God, I don't think I'd be here today.
He is the one person that has given me the strength, the hope and the perseverance to carry on through the most difficult year of my entire life.
And I would encourage everybody, Christian or not, to go read the Bible because you will be so encouraged by what you see and what you read and what you hear.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Amen. Well, that is a mic drop for us. Go read the Bible and take advantage of Scott's book. I am sure that everything today will inspire someone to learn, grow and challenge their weaknesses to figure out what will life have in store for them. So thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure speaking with you and learning more about your life and business and your perspectives.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: I really appreciate you having me on and I just want to encourage every single person that's listening, especially you right now, to go get started.
The only thing that is stopping you from achieving the life you've always wanted is action.
So just get started.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: All right, well, you heard what Scott said. Go get started. This has been another episode of Unscripted with myself, Zanetta Tunique. Empower Scott. Thank you so much for your time today and awesome. Have a good one.
