The secret to work-life balance? It doesn’t really exist!
Clint Murphy joins the pod to break down just how he balances – or as he would say integrates – a full-time job as a CFO, being a husband & father, and managing his 140,000+ social media followers. Better known as @IAmClintMurphy on Twitter, chances are if you’ve seen a Twitter thread, Clint wrote it. Clint wears many hats – he's pursuing his goals and working nonstop towards them. And he knows that does not fall within the typical 9-5 structure. Clint is operating with very few days (even very few hours) off the clock and loads of coffee, grinding to build a successful Twitter, podcast, and social media presence. I was happy to have some one-on-one, face-to-face time to chat with Clint beyond our conversations on Spaces. On this episode of the pod, Clint and I had a great deep-dive talk about his accounting turned Real Estate background, why he is 95% invested in Real Estate, jumping into the creator space, his podcast, personal branding, prioritizing his workload and what he does daily to achieve his goals. Clint also dished on how he is building his brand now to achieve his five goals in the future, and guided me through being the face of his brand and developing the “Growth Guide” to help people grow personally, professionally, and financially.
FOLLOW ME:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WOLF_Financial
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wolf_financial?lang=en
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/wolfinancial/
Weekly Howl Newsletter: https://marketmadness-newsletter.beehiiv.com/
Clint Murphy joins the pod to break down just how he balances – or as he would say integrates – a full-time job as a CFO, being a husband & father, and managing his 140,000+ social media followers. Better known as @IAmClintMurphy on Twitter, chances are if you’ve seen a Twitter thread, Clint wrote it. Clint wears many hats – he's pursuing his goals and working nonstop towards them. And he knows that does not fall within the typical 9-5 structure. Clint is operating with very few days (even very few hours) off the clock and loads of coffee, grinding to build a successful Twitter, podcast, and social media presence. I was happy to have some one-on-one, face-to-face time to chat with Clint beyond our conversations on Spaces. On this episode of the pod, Clint and I had a great deep-dive talk about his accounting turned Real Estate background, why he is 95% invested in Real Estate, jumping into the creator space, his podcast, personal branding, prioritizing his workload and what he does daily to achieve his goals. Clint also dished on how he is building his brand now to achieve his five goals in the future, and guided me through being the face of his brand and developing the “Growth Guide” to help people grow personally, professionally, and financially.
FOLLOW ME:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WOLF_Financial
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wolf_financial?lang=en
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/wolfinancial/
Weekly Howl Newsletter: https://marketmadness-newsletter.beehiiv.com/
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NewsTranscript
00:00 You can choose who pays you.
00:02 You can choose whether anyone pays you.
00:05 And so when you're in an employee-employer relationship,
00:09 yes, you pay--
00:10 yes, they pay you.
00:13 But that's because you choose to be paid by them.
00:17 And you can always choose where you get paid, if you get paid,
00:22 or whether you pay yourself.
00:24 No one owns you.
00:26 And that's where I think the old school versus the new school,
00:31 that's a massive difference that I see.
00:33 I mean, it's not quite Web 2.0, Web 3.0,
00:35 but it's pretty close, Goff, is it's moving from ownership
00:41 to I'll rent my services.
00:43 Welcome back to the Wolf Podcast,
00:55 the World of Learning Finance.
00:56 I'm your host, as always, Gov Blacksburg,
00:58 also known as the Wolf of Twitter Spaces.
01:01 Today, I'm bringing a really cool guest on,
01:03 Clint Murphy, from Twitter.
01:05 You've been around Twitter, and you've
01:06 seen any threads on your timeline.
01:08 Chances are about 50% of them were written by Clint.
01:10 He's @iamclintmurphy on Twitter.
01:13 Clint's a husband, a father to two young boys.
01:16 By day, he's a chief financial officer, a CFO.
01:19 And in the evening, he reads, invests,
01:21 writes fantasy novel series, and he hosts the Pursuit
01:24 of Learning Podcast.
01:26 Clint, welcome to the podcast.
01:27 Thank you very much.
01:28 Great to see you in person after being in a lot of spaces
01:32 with you, Goff.
01:34 Absolutely.
01:34 Yeah, I'm excited we were able to take it to a video podcast
01:37 where we could dive a little bit further than we often
01:39 get to on spaces where we have multiple people who
01:42 we have to satiate.
01:43 But now we can just have us two.
01:44 So I mentioned there that you are a CFO, which I think
01:47 is an interesting place to start here.
01:49 I would love to hear a little bit
01:50 about your professional background
01:52 and how you even began with everything.
01:53 And then we'll transition to more of the meat
01:56 of the context today.
01:58 You bet.
01:58 So if we rewind the clock to--
02:01 let's rewind the clock to 1998, because that's going
02:05 to come into play today.
02:06 It's a good year.
02:07 I was born that year.
02:08 Oh, excellent.
02:09 That's always scary.
02:11 So I'm graduating high school--
02:14 or sorry, I'm in year two of university.
02:16 And my wife now, girlfriend at the time,
02:21 said I was a psychology and English major.
02:25 So that's going to come into play.
02:27 She said, I think you should switch to something
02:29 that'll get you a job.
02:31 And so I said, oh, sure.
02:33 And switched to accounting, because that's
02:35 what we all do is just switch because our girlfriend tells
02:39 us to.
02:39 Hindsight, don't do that.
02:41 So I became an accountant and started at KPMG
02:45 in the summer of 2000 as a summer student.
02:48 I was there on and off for 8 to 10 years.
02:51 I was there in Canada.
02:52 I worked there in Bermuda.
02:54 I took two years off working in a non-accounting role
02:57 in Toronto running a manufacturing facility,
03:01 and then came back to KPMG as a senior manager in Vancouver.
03:07 I did that for three years, realized this is not for me.
03:10 I do not like audit in Canada.
03:13 I do not like audit in Bermuda.
03:15 I do not like audit as a staff.
03:17 I do not like audit as a senior manager.
03:19 It was my green eggs and ham.
03:20 I got to get out of here.
03:21 I tried it enough.
03:22 I wasn't like the Sam I am, the guy who didn't try it at all.
03:27 I tried it, didn't like it anywhere.
03:29 So I went into industry, and I went into real estate.
03:33 So that's one of the things you're going to ask about
03:36 is, why invest in real estate?
03:38 Well, because that's what I did.
03:39 So I've been in real estate for the last 12 years.
03:45 I started as a controller within a year in industry.
03:48 I was director of finance, changed shops.
03:51 I was a VP there.
03:53 And then I started with the company I am at now as a VP
03:58 finance.
03:59 The CFO was planning on retiring.
04:03 So I had a three-year transition plan with him
04:05 and became CFO in 2017, Gov.
04:09 OK, awesome.
04:10 So yeah, a couple pieces there that I do want to dig into.
04:13 First off, I love what you're saying about accounting.
04:16 I did a very brief stint in accounting.
04:17 Luckily, only six months.
04:19 It was one of those things where I think people often tell you,
04:22 in order to find what you want to do,
04:23 you have to first figure out what you don't want to do.
04:26 That's the value to a lot of these experiences.
04:28 And hopefully, you figure it out sooner than later before you
04:31 move into the next piece.
04:32 But carrying on, you obviously had those experiences
04:35 in the accounting world that shaped you into some
04:37 of the things you're doing in real estate.
04:39 And now, you're in this CFO role,
04:40 and together with also running a very successful social presence
04:44 and everything along those lines.
04:46 So I think the first thing that I'm curious about--
04:48 and you mentioned that there's a lot going on, right?
04:50 You've got kids and everything.
04:51 How do you balance all of this?
04:53 I think that that would be the first step for me
04:54 to understand is, where do you prioritize
04:57 different pieces of your life?
04:58 And then when it also comes to social media,
05:02 before we even dig into why you got started--
05:04 or we can start with, I guess, why you got started on Twitter.
05:07 I'm very curious how your work monitors Twitter,
05:10 what you can say on Twitter if you
05:12 feel like there's limitations to the social media world
05:15 because you're in multiple areas.
05:18 Great questions.
05:19 There's a lot to digest there.
05:22 A lot of people use that word, and they
05:24 throw it around liberally-- balance.
05:27 I'm writing a thread-- you're not surprised--
05:29 that'll come out tomorrow.
05:31 And it's career advice for people.
05:33 And number one is, forget work-life balance.
05:36 There is no balance in life.
05:38 There's integration.
05:40 What do you want to do?
05:42 And do that.
05:44 What is your goal?
05:46 What does it take to achieve that goal?
05:47 Do it.
05:49 So when I look at how I balance my life,
05:53 I have things I want to do.
05:54 I have outcomes I want to get to.
05:57 And I do what it takes to get there.
06:00 If there's anything I sacrifice, at times it's physical.
06:05 And so I've got to work on that because you can't sacrifice
06:08 your body to achieve your goals and then use your money
06:11 to fix your body because it's too late.
06:13 So I have to work on the physical more.
06:15 I know that.
06:16 And then I sacrifice the sleep, and people tell us that's bad.
06:20 So I should probably fix that a little.
06:23 But it's really coming down to, what
06:26 do I know that I have to achieve on a daily basis
06:30 to get to where I want to go?
06:31 And then I just do it.
06:33 So it may mean that while I'm watching a Netflix
06:37 movie with my kids, I've got a laptop in my lap
06:40 and I'm writing a thread.
06:42 Or I'm reading a book for the podcast
06:43 because that's one of the challenges
06:45 that we will talk about later for content generation.
06:50 But when it comes to the podcast,
06:51 I interview authors every time.
06:54 And a lot of them highlight to me
06:57 that the people that interview them don't read their books.
07:00 And so one of the things a lot of them thank me for
07:02 is, wow, you actually did a lot of research
07:06 to have this conversation.
07:07 And it's, well, I just read the book
07:10 that I invited you on my podcast to talk about.
07:13 So of course I read it.
07:14 I mean, that would be crazy.
07:16 So that means I'm probably reading 45 to 50 books
07:20 a year on nonfiction.
07:24 And so the balance is figuring out
07:26 how to get all that done while still
07:28 being a present and caring and loving partner and husband,
07:33 while still being a present, engaged, thoughtful father.
07:39 And so then it becomes prioritization.
07:42 Family first, my career second, all this other shit third.
07:49 And then within that frame set, get it all done.
07:53 So my weekends are full out.
07:57 A lot of people, 9 to 5, and then it's decompression mode.
08:02 It's Netflix, glass of wine, chill out, hang out,
08:09 go back and do it the next day.
08:12 I start at about 5:30 or 6, and I go to 11 to 12.
08:20 And I do that roughly seven days a week.
08:26 And so it's just consistency towards a long-term goal.
08:31 And not only no days off, very few hours off.
08:36 You mentioned sleep at a point there.
08:38 It sounds like you're calculating about six hours
08:41 of sleep in there.
08:41 Is that enough?
08:42 I've always operated very well on 6 and 1/2
08:46 as my magical number.
08:49 I'm hitting about 5 and 1/2 a lot lately,
08:52 and that's probably becoming problematic in that it becomes
08:57 a game of stimulants, my friend.
09:00 So you're waking up, and there's more coffee than you like.
09:04 There's an occasional monster energy drink.
09:09 For the listeners, it's always the sugar-free monster energy
09:12 drink, so it's only 10 calories, calories in, calories out.
09:16 I'm paying attention.
09:18 So it's probably not enough, and that's
09:20 an area I'm focusing on.
09:21 And I'm modifying the system.
09:25 My wife is retiring, or as Serena would say,
09:30 she's evolving.
09:32 I'm learning to change my language on this one.
09:34 She's evolving in the next two months,
09:37 and so she will be helping me with a lot
09:39 of the long-term mission of where we're going.
09:42 We're a team.
09:43 I use the word "we" a lot.
09:44 People are like, well, you're the one writing on Twitter,
09:46 or you're the one talking on the podcast.
09:49 I may be the face, but I can only--
09:53 that's the other part.
09:54 To do all of this, you need a supportive partner.
09:57 I can only be writing this much, talking this much, joining you
10:02 if my partner is OK with me spending the time I need
10:05 to do it and is supporting me behind the scenes on A, B, C,
10:09 D, E, F, and G.
10:12 Our good friend Steve believes that the biggest life
10:14 hack is marrying the right person the first time.
10:18 Thoughts on that?
10:19 It's absolutely, absolutely the greatest life hack.
10:24 And I'm going to qualify that, because there's
10:27 going to be a lot of people--
10:29 there is a lot of people who hate on Steve for that.
10:32 There's a lot of people who hate on me for that.
10:35 I started dating my wife when I was 17 years old.
10:39 I fell in love with her when I was 15.
10:42 She was the smartest person I'd ever met.
10:47 She's one of the hardest workers I've ever met.
10:50 Her parents were immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong.
10:56 She was born in Vancouver.
10:58 Her parents, to provide for her and her brothers,
11:01 opened a Chinese food restaurant in the small city
11:03 we both grew up in, 20,000 people.
11:06 They worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
11:08 Start at noon, go to midnight.
11:11 So she would wake up from grade one on, make herself lunch,
11:17 make herself breakfast, go to the bus, go to school,
11:21 come home.
11:23 Once she hit a certain age, she'd work in the restaurant.
11:25 She wouldn't see her parents.
11:27 So she said to me very early in our life
11:29 together, when we have a family--
11:32 because my wife had a 10-year plan--
11:34 when we have a family, I want to be home for our kids.
11:40 So not I don't want to work.
11:43 I want to be there for them.
11:44 So I'm going to choose a career that lets me do that.
11:49 You, you work hard.
11:53 You make the money.
11:55 That's what we're doing here.
11:58 And I'll support that.
12:00 And so she didn't sacrifice.
12:05 She didn't put herself behind me.
12:08 She said, here's our plan as a team.
12:14 So marrying the right person, it doesn't have to be man
12:18 goes out, makes money, woman cooks behind the scenes
12:22 for him.
12:23 It's you are a partnership, whether that's two guys,
12:26 whether it's two women, whether it's your wife is out working
12:30 super hard and you're supporting her,
12:33 whether it's you're both working super hard
12:35 and you're hiring help to take care of things.
12:40 All that matters is you are a partnership
12:44 and you are aligned on the direction the ship is going.
12:49 And we've been aligned from day one.
12:51 And she's the best partner I ever
12:53 could have had on this journey.
12:55 So he's absolutely right that who
12:58 you choose to spend your life with is a superpower.
13:04 And people don't think about it the right way.
13:08 They think when someone says that it's
13:09 a super misogynist comment.
13:11 I do not think Steve means it that way.
13:13 I do not mean it that way.
13:16 And I think everyone should focus on making sure
13:18 that if you invite someone into your life,
13:20 you invite the right person.
13:23 Yeah, I mean, more and more I can kind of see that around me,
13:26 the way that people are interacting with their spouses
13:29 and creating those plans.
13:30 Funny question to maybe spin at you.
13:32 Does she do anything on social media too?
13:35 Like does she interact with you back and forth on Twitter
13:37 at all?
13:37 Is it something that you've maybe ever pushed her to do?
13:39 Like say like, hey, like, look, I'm building this on Twitter.
13:42 Like here's the blueprint.
13:44 Build with me.
13:45 Funny you should ask that.
13:47 So the evolution is to be part of a team.
13:52 I don't have enough capacity to keep running
13:54 at the pace I'm running at.
13:56 I have very big goals for where we're going.
14:00 She is going to become a lot more involved in that machine.
14:05 So she will stop working for other people effective two
14:11 months from now, I believe it is.
14:13 And she will become the chief operating
14:16 officer of our business.
14:20 And what that would look like, Gav,
14:23 is she'll be taking the blueprint
14:27 and she'll be running social on Instagram and TikTok.
14:32 So I'll lay out the roadmap for how she can do there
14:36 what we've done here.
14:38 And a big part of that, as you're aware,
14:42 is they're different systems.
14:45 They're different environments.
14:47 So a big part of it is I took these seven courses
14:52 on how to get good on Twitter.
14:54 I joined these three engagement groups.
14:56 You need to do that on Insta.
14:58 You need to do that on TikTok.
15:01 Let's identify together what are the right courses, what
15:04 are the right engagement groups, how do you build the foundation,
15:10 and I can provide you the content.
15:12 You tailor it for the medium.
15:15 So she'll be doing that.
15:17 And then she'll be helping with the podcast.
15:19 Very, very interesting, because it's very--
15:22 especially with threads, it can be really difficult
15:24 to translate them over to these short-form video content
15:27 like platforms, where you kind of expect people
15:29 to take a few minutes maybe to read a thread,
15:32 and it condense it and take that content and move it over.
15:34 I agree that someone would probably
15:36 need the right courses and different pieces like that,
15:38 but they definitely exist.
15:40 Let's just pull back for a second.
15:41 Why did you make a Twitter account?
15:43 How'd this all get started?
15:45 This is the meat and potatoes of everything.
15:48 So it's always a challenging one.
15:50 And what I'd say is five or six years ago now,
15:56 I had a conversation with my boss
15:59 about where things were going, what my ability was,
16:04 what the next step, if any, there are.
16:06 And one of the challenges is I'm topped out.
16:11 I'm probably not going to be the president of my company,
16:16 and there's reasons for that.
16:19 So I've largely reached the pinnacle of job title
16:25 in my path.
16:27 Earnings, I'm largely topped out.
16:31 Not something I'm unhappy with.
16:33 I'm very happy with where I'm at there.
16:37 And I'm a person who always wants to grow,
16:39 who always wants to be better, always wants to be more,
16:41 always wants to push myself.
16:43 There's a reason my podcast is The Pursuit of Learning.
16:47 And so my conversation with him was, OK,
16:51 I can do this for a set amount of time,
16:54 and there's a defined timeline, and then I have to be done.
16:57 And so I never intended to start any of this until 2023, 2024,
17:04 and then the unprecedented happened, COVID.
17:09 Kids' sports were canceled.
17:12 We weren't going into the office.
17:15 We're working at home.
17:17 Our social lives are gone.
17:20 You already have the sense that I tend to run 100 miles a minute.
17:27 You take away everything that I'm doing.
17:32 Idle time.
17:33 I don't like being idle.
17:35 And so I started to look at how can I fill up my time.
17:39 I thought, why don't I launch a podcast?
17:42 So I launched a podcast, April 2020.
17:45 Sorry, April 2021.
17:46 I came up with the idea probably six months before that.
17:50 Started reading books, researching,
17:53 launched the podcast.
17:55 And I thought, how do I promote this?
17:57 Well, I'll jump on Instagram.
17:59 I'll promote it on Instagram.
18:01 I was promoting it on Instagram.
18:03 All of a sudden, a bunch of colleagues were following me,
18:05 shareholders, my boss.
18:09 It felt uncomfortable.
18:12 So I stopped posting.
18:14 And I thought to myself, well, wait a second.
18:16 None of these people are on Twitter.
18:19 Why don't I go over there?
18:20 I had an old account.
18:21 Biggest mistake I made.
18:22 I resurrected an old account.
18:24 I should have started from scratch
18:26 because I really started June, July a year ago.
18:30 So my account, I probably had about 800 people
18:33 coming into August 2021.
18:37 And then I started to see that there were certain people
18:39 that were being successful.
18:41 I was doing all the classic mistakes.
18:44 I was just taking like the sound bite from my podcast
18:49 and putting it with a bunch of hashtags.
18:51 Go listen to this episode.
18:53 Here's what you learned.
18:55 Hashtag, hashtag, hashtag.
18:56 It was just gory and ugly.
18:59 And I started seeing all these people
19:00 who were growing successful.
19:03 You go down the list.
19:04 I thought to myself, what do they have that I don't?
19:06 I've achieved a lot in life.
19:07 I'm successful here, here, and here.
19:09 I'm talking to these authors.
19:11 I've got value to contribute.
19:13 How do I get that across?
19:16 I found Masterclass 24/7.
19:17 You're in there now with me.
19:19 Started learning with them.
19:21 Art of Purpose launched his product
19:24 called Create Published Profit.
19:26 I'm like, I get one-on-one time with AOP and Save Your Sons
19:33 and Get Paid Right.
19:35 And I know most of these guys now in real life,
19:38 but they're still anonymous online.
19:40 So I'll use their anonymous names.
19:43 And I thought, I get that for this price?
19:46 Yeah, for sure I'm doing that.
19:47 That's free.
19:48 Jumped into that.
19:50 Then I took Ship 30 for 30 to become a better writer.
19:53 Then I took Audience Building with Sahil Blin.
19:57 And in every one of those courses,
20:00 I had my either top one takeaway or top three or top five.
20:04 And I started combining them all.
20:06 And I've written on the platform.
20:08 It was a year ago.
20:10 I'm at my cottage right now.
20:11 It was a year ago when I was at this cottage
20:13 that I signed up for Masterclass and made the decision
20:16 that I would write every day on Twitter for the next year.
20:18 Somewhere in there, it became threads, probably Ship 30,
20:23 because I started writing one a day every day.
20:26 And I kept that going for about 60, 70 days.
20:30 And then in the last-- so in the last 125 days,
20:33 it's probably been about 100 days where it's been threads,
20:37 maybe more.
20:40 So there was that.
20:42 And along the way, a couple of funny things started happening.
20:46 I started growing reasonably quickly.
20:49 As I grew, I got more listens on the podcast.
20:52 As I grew, it was a lot easier to reach out to someone
20:55 and say, hey, do you want to be on the podcast?
20:58 I know you experienced this with spaces.
21:00 When you were at 20,000 and you said, hey,
21:04 do you want to come on my space?
21:06 I have five people in the room who will listen.
21:09 It's harder.
21:10 But when you reach out and say, hey, I've got 75,000.
21:13 My co-host has 200,000.
21:15 And we regularly have 250 people in the room.
21:20 And over the course of the show, we'll
21:21 have 2,000 people come in the door.
21:24 People are like, yeah, I want to be on that space.
21:27 And so now I reach--
21:29 I'm not even afraid now to reach out
21:31 to someone who's a bestseller.
21:33 I might not get them.
21:35 But I can say, hey, we have 140,000 on social media.
21:40 We're growing 20,000 a month.
21:42 So by the time your episode airs,
21:43 we'll be promoting it to a quarter million people.
21:48 People are like, yeah, let's talk.
21:51 That sounds like I might get 25 book sales.
21:55 Oh, yeah, by the way, a year from now,
21:57 that's going to be a million.
22:00 A year and a half.
22:01 A year and a half from now, that'll be a million.
22:03 Who am I comfortable reaching out to now, Goff, right?
22:07 And so somewhere in there, I took off the anonymity.
22:10 I think I was Coach Clint.
22:12 So it wasn't fully anonymous, but it was half anonymous.
22:16 I took that off and work did.
22:18 All of a sudden, it came to light.
22:21 It came up in a conversation with my boss.
22:24 And so now they're not necessarily
22:27 a fan of these side projects, the podcast, the social media.
22:33 And so that's all in dialogue right now.
22:35 The challenge, as you're aware, is
22:40 when we're at the spot where you're at with your spaces,
22:43 where you're at with your social media following,
22:48 you've built something.
22:50 It's not something you're willing to just say, OK,
22:54 I'll stop doing this.
22:55 And so I think I have to be respectful that I
23:00 am a CFO, which means I am a representative of a business.
23:06 So what I say, what I talk about, what I share
23:12 has to be things that I believe in
23:14 and that I'd be comfortable having a conversation with you
23:19 in the lunchroom at work.
23:21 So I make it pretty clear with friends, hey,
23:24 these are things some people write about.
23:27 I don't share them.
23:29 Here's why.
23:30 And then we'll see where that conversation goes
23:33 and what that means for my long-term future.
23:35 And then I probably wasn't clear in that conversation
23:42 where I said there's a termination or a terminal date
23:46 somewhere down the road.
23:48 It was because I plan to evolve into very specific things--
23:54 writing, podcast, coaching-- public speaking,
23:59 coaching and consulting, real estate and private equity
24:03 investing.
24:04 So when I look at that, almost every one of those things,
24:09 you want to have a brand.
24:11 And so I did the podcast first.
24:13 And then I started the Twitter to promote the podcast.
24:16 And then somewhere along the way,
24:19 I got as good or better at the Twitter than the podcast.
24:26 And so this right now is all building
24:28 the brand for the future five things that I want to do.
24:33 Is your brand always just going to be--
24:35 you see it just being your name?
24:37 Yeah, so the podcast will be rebranded as The Growth Guide.
24:44 The website that I have is The Growth Dog Guide.
24:49 And so the brand is me.
24:53 The Growth Guide is what I do.
24:55 I help people grow personally, professionally, financially.
24:58 That's what I've focused on in my life.
25:00 That's where I've been successful.
25:02 That's where I believe I can help other people be
25:04 successful.
25:05 So the podcast will be about that.
25:07 What I write, I think it's fair to say from what you've seen,
25:11 that's what I write about.
25:12 That's what I share.
25:13 That's what I talk about in spaces.
25:15 That's what you and I are talking about here today.
25:17 That's what I just got off with Steve talking about
25:21 is personal, professional, financial growth.
25:23 And then on the investment side, that's me investing.
25:27 And then saying to other people, hey, do you want to come along
25:29 and invest with me?
25:30 And that's longer term.
25:33 And I want to demonstrate my own success personally
25:36 with my own funds and create a structure
25:38 to do that down the road.
25:40 Has your work ever looked at your account
25:42 and gone like, hey, this is actually a potential asset
25:45 for us, having someone that has social capital in the world,
25:49 being in a C-suite position in our company?
25:52 No.
25:53 And that to me is a challenge.
25:59 When I had a conversation with someone--
26:01 I won't get into all the details because that wouldn't be fair.
26:06 I framed it the way you're saying.
26:08 I said, hey, look, here's the reasons
26:11 that me having my podcast and my Twitter account
26:16 are better for you.
26:18 I'm a better writer.
26:19 I'm a better speaker.
26:21 I am a better leader.
26:23 I'm a better colleague.
26:25 I'm a better employee.
26:27 I'm better at everything I do because I do this.
26:30 And here are the ways it's better for my team.
26:33 Here's the way it's better for the people that I lead.
26:36 Here's the way it's better for you as a company.
26:38 Here's how it's easier for me probably
26:40 to hire and find talent than it is for someone else who's
26:44 running another team.
26:46 Because all of a sudden, people are like, hey,
26:48 I listen to your podcast.
26:49 I read you on Twitter.
26:51 I get to be on your team.
26:54 You'll go for a walk and talk with me
26:56 and have a one-on-one about what you write about,
26:58 if that's what I want to ask you about?
27:00 Yeah, sure.
27:02 And so I like you.
27:05 And there's a person on Twitter who is releasing a book.
27:12 Ben Pitano is releasing a book, Great Founders Write.
27:17 And I'm going to have him on the cast to talk about that book.
27:20 And I think the approach you take, the approach I take,
27:23 the approach a lot of younger generation are taking
27:26 is if I'm a business founder, I will
27:30 have that social credibility.
27:33 I will be on all of these mediums.
27:36 Because if I can demonstrate how I think, my thought process,
27:42 the way I would lead my company, and people align with that,
27:47 it will be easier for me to find good talent and retain it.
27:52 So I do see what you're saying.
27:56 I think that's the future.
27:58 A lot of companies aren't wired, or people
28:02 aren't wired to think that way yet.
28:05 I think it's thinking that's starting
28:07 and is probably 10 to 20 years away from leading.
28:12 10 to 20 years from now, most owners, presidents, leaders
28:20 will be on social and will have a very, very high profile.
28:27 Yeah, absolutely.
28:28 I think there's two things about it that I see.
28:30 The first is for sure it's a younger mindset,
28:33 just because there's a lot of people
28:35 who didn't grow up on social media
28:36 and they see it as a waste of time.
28:38 And so they see you doing social media
28:40 and they assume you're not doing work.
28:42 You're on social media instead doing that.
28:44 And then the other piece of it is you're already
28:46 at the company.
28:48 The company already has you.
28:50 You're working there.
28:51 It's not like they need necessarily an additional push
28:53 just to have a reason why they should have you.
28:56 They clearly want you for the position,
28:58 versus I don't work for anyone else right now.
29:01 I work for Wolf, which is my company.
29:04 And I've actually been reached out
29:06 to by multiple companies that have offered me jobs.
29:09 They want me to come on
29:09 and usually they want me to do client relations
29:11 or building their socials or stuff like that,
29:13 because they see it's an asset.
29:16 If I come on and I still own this,
29:17 it's now their asset.
29:19 They're associated with it by proxy.
29:21 So they kind of understand that it's valuable for them.
29:23 But I think it's different for your company
29:25 where they already have been working with you
29:26 for quite some time.
29:27 The job's been done well.
29:29 They maybe don't fully understand social media.
29:31 So it's like a new piece to integrate.
29:33 I wanna turn to a different topic for maybe the last 10.
29:38 - Can we explore that one for one second?
29:40 'Cause one of the things you said was very important.
29:44 Because I think a lot of people do think this way in life.
29:47 And this is where you start to run into the challenge.
29:50 They already own you.
29:55 Well, no one owns me.
29:58 I work there.
30:01 And when someone has a mentality that they own you,
30:04 that they pay you so you have to do what they say,
30:09 that's a dangerous, that becomes a dangerous way to live.
30:13 Or a dangerous way to run a shop.
30:15 Because at the end of the day, you can choose who pays you.
30:19 You can choose whether anyone pays you.
30:21 And so when you're in an employee-employer relationship,
30:26 yes, you pay, yes, yes, they pay you.
30:29 But that's because you choose to be paid by them.
30:34 And you can always choose where you get paid,
30:38 if you get paid, or whether you pay yourself.
30:41 No one owns you.
30:42 And that's where I think the old school
30:46 versus the new school,
30:48 that's a massive difference that I see.
30:50 I mean, it's not quite web 2.0, web 3.0,
30:52 but it's pretty close, Gauth.
30:55 Is it's moving from ownership to I'll rent my services.
31:02 - Okay, I definitely agree with that.
31:05 I guess I wasn't thinking about it necessarily as own,
31:07 but just as like, there's so much that goes on to onboarding
31:11 and getting the right person into the right position.
31:13 And from them, from their perspective,
31:15 obviously they believe you're the right person
31:17 for that position, and you're already in that position.
31:19 So they might not want things to change, right?
31:21 Like we start getting leeway to this, things change, right?
31:24 Not necessarily, yeah.
31:25 So that's kind of the way I was going about it.
31:27 I have two other topics that you wanna touch on.
31:29 - Fire away.
31:31 - One of the topics is going to be investing.
31:33 The other one is growth.
31:35 And first, I would just be very curious
31:37 if you're open to sharing how you allocate your portfolio.
31:40 Right, you're clearly in a position
31:41 where capital's incoming.
31:43 You have spoken to real estate investments.
31:45 I'm sure you have stock market investments.
31:47 How do you choose how to diversify your investments?
31:50 - Yeah, if I had to math it out,
31:53 I would say 95% of my assets are in real estate.
31:58 And so if you look at what Warren Buffett says,
32:02 is if you think you have an informational advantage
32:05 over the average person, you should go all in on it.
32:08 If you don't believe that, you should be in index funds.
32:12 I work in real estate.
32:15 It's what I do all day, every day.
32:17 I've seen how people I've worked for
32:20 across several companies have built large amounts of wealth,
32:24 and I understand how I can use those theories
32:27 and the ideas and the concepts and build my own wealth.
32:31 And so most of my money goes into owning homes.
32:36 At this point, we have purchased,
32:40 we have eight properties,
32:42 and we have a ninth one that we have a purchase contract on
32:47 that will be built over the next three years.
32:50 So it's what some listeners may know as a pre-sale contract.
32:54 You buy it, the developer builds it,
32:57 you take ownership of it,
32:58 and you put down a deposit, et cetera.
33:00 So that's where 95% of our money is.
33:03 The other 5% is largely in Bitcoin.
33:08 So it's a substantial amount in Bitcoin
33:12 and an even more substantial amount in miners.
33:16 And so as Bitcoin kind of bottomed out
33:19 over the last few months,
33:21 I transitioned a fair amount of my,
33:24 and this is in my registered account.
33:26 So my, in the US, your Roths and your IRAs,
33:31 this is in my Canadian version of that.
33:34 And as it bottomed out when it was about 20,000,
33:38 I shifted a fair amount of the Bitcoin ETF into miners,
33:43 recognizing that if I truly believe
33:46 that Bitcoin will return to where it was and even more,
33:50 that the miners will have larger returns
33:53 than the Bitcoin itself will.
33:54 So that's the other 5%.
33:57 - Miners are already up 100% in the last month.
33:59 So- - Yeah, it's been a good month.
34:03 - Okay, perfect.
34:03 Yeah, that was just one topic
34:05 that I thought would be interesting.
34:06 And the other one that I was curious about,
34:08 you mentioned engagement groups,
34:10 you mentioned the masterclasses.
34:13 What other tools do you use
34:14 to increase your growth and engagement?
34:17 - Those are the main ones.
34:18 And then it's networking, right?
34:20 So it's finding people like you and I
34:24 and saying, "Hey, I resonate with your material,
34:26 "you resonate with mine.
34:28 "Why don't you let me know when you drop something
34:30 "and if it aligns with my audience, I'll share it.
34:32 "If mine aligns with yours, you'll share it."
34:35 And building those circles bigger and bigger
34:37 and getting the right people in the right circles.
34:41 And then working as a team, right?
34:44 And a lot of people may say,
34:46 "Well, hey, you're not supposed to do that."
34:48 Well, all it is is identifying people
34:51 whose content you align with
34:53 and who your content aligns with their audience
34:58 and then saying, "Hey, if it resonates,
35:00 "feel free to share it."
35:02 So that's the main one.
35:04 And then reading, reading as much as I can,
35:08 creating lists within Twitter.
35:10 So these are all features that Twitter itself has.
35:12 So using the list function
35:15 to identify accounts that you resonate with
35:20 and they're reading their content daily,
35:23 still doing the age old,
35:24 "Oh, Dickie Bush dropped a thread.
35:27 "I'm going to go comment on it really early
35:30 "so that people see my content and resonate with it
35:35 "and go see what I do."
35:36 And so to do that, you have to comment early
35:39 and the comment has to be thoughtful and value added.
35:42 You're not trying to hijack what they wrote.
35:45 You're trying to corroborate it,
35:47 add to it, add value to it.
35:51 So those would be the big ones.
35:53 - And like TweetHunter, TweetMax, are you using any of these?
35:56 - Yes, I use all of the above.
35:59 Superpowers for Twitter, TweetMax, TweetDeleter, TweetHunter.
36:04 I think I was using TypeShare,
36:07 but I've narrowed it down to those four.
36:10 And really the ones I focused on are TweetHunter
36:14 is where I write everything.
36:15 And TweetMax I use because what I'll do often
36:20 is I'll look at your account
36:24 and TweetMax automatically highlights
36:26 all of your heavy hitters recently.
36:28 And I'll look at those and say,
36:29 "Well, what fired and why did it fire?
36:32 "And how does that inform what I write?"
36:34 And so I'll do that with 20 to 30 accounts regularly
36:38 is see what's firing for them
36:39 anytime I'm going to write a hook.
36:41 - I notice a lot of your threads,
36:45 not just the thread hook,
36:47 but also the individual tweets in the thread
36:50 get retweeted on the timeline every certain amount of hours.
36:53 Are you doing that through TweetHunter?
36:56 Do you have kind of like a specific time period
36:58 you're usually trying to like hit?
37:00 - A combination of manually or TweetHunter.
37:05 So if it's one of the early tweets in a thread,
37:10 tweet it three times, three hours each time.
37:16 And if you do that with 10 of the tweets in a thread,
37:20 then you're retweeting every hour,
37:24 but you're only retweeting each one
37:26 three times every three hours.
37:28 So when you do it that way,
37:30 your content's kind of coming back front and center
37:33 to your timeline.
37:34 And if people wonder why you might do that,
37:36 why I might do that and others might do that is,
37:38 Instagram, your content has sort of a 24-hour shelf life
37:42 with your stories.
37:44 On Twitter, your timeline is 15 minutes
37:48 because a lot of people have their settings
37:51 set to most recent tweet.
37:53 And so there's a lot of stuff being thrown at them.
37:58 So your stuff's only front and center
37:59 for about 15 minutes, 20 minutes.
38:02 So a lot of people feel like,
38:03 well, I might be spamming if I do that.
38:05 But for your readers, they're not seeing it that often.
38:11 Also, they're only on Twitter
38:13 for a very short windows in the day.
38:14 We all have lives.
38:16 So they come on, you want them to see what you wrote.
38:18 Yeah, well, you're special.
38:20 You're on Twitter 24/7.
38:23 But for the average person, you're not on all that much.
38:25 So you're not really spamming your audience.
38:29 The other thing people don't really think about
38:31 is people are afraid to reuse their content.
38:33 So I have a few things to share for them on that.
38:37 One, it's your content.
38:39 You wrote it the first time.
38:41 You're only stealing for yourself.
38:43 I think you're not technically supposed to retweet,
38:46 like rewrite old content as new content.
38:50 Technically, I think there's a rule on that.
38:52 You take that old content, you make it better,
38:56 and you repurpose it.
38:57 It's your content.
38:59 And if you're growing at the rate you're growing
39:01 or I'm growing, if I wrote something four months ago,
39:05 I only had 40,000 followers.
39:09 Now it's 130,000.
39:10 That's 90,000 people that never saw it.
39:13 So I'm going to rewrite it for them.
39:17 So maybe every three to four months,
39:19 look at what you wrote.
39:21 That did well, rewrite it.
39:24 I'll probably leave Jeff Bezos out for another,
39:26 maybe I'll wait six months before I talk about him again.
39:29 I think people may think I talk about Jeff too much,
39:32 but hey, Jeff resonates for a few thousand followers
39:36 every time you talk about him.
39:37 So bring him out every four months, right?
39:40 Excel, I'll talk about Excel once a month.
39:42 Now, can I clarify slightly why I will talk
39:45 about Excel once a month?
39:46 - Because a lot of your followers came from there.
39:49 - No, no, it's, I write about personal
39:52 and professional financial growth, right?
39:54 I'm on Excel every day for roughly the last 20 years.
40:00 I have five Excel workbooks, sorry,
40:03 three Excel workbooks open right now
40:05 while we're having this conversation.
40:08 I track all my Twitter analytics in Excel.
40:11 I realized I'd screwed something up earlier this week,
40:13 made a switch, massive result change
40:17 because I track my results in Excel
40:19 and I knew where I went wrong
40:22 based on the spreadsheet I created for myself.
40:26 I have my goals in Excel.
40:28 I have my life plan in Excel.
40:31 I have my cashflow, my net worth statement.
40:34 Everything I do is in Excel.
40:37 I think it's one of the greatest tools out there.
40:39 I use it every day.
40:40 So we talk about pursuing value over virality
40:45 and yes, Excel gives a certain amount of that virality
40:51 and as an individual, I use it almost every day of my life.
40:56 So I always wanna share with my audience,
40:59 I'm not just talking about Excel
41:01 because I get a lot of followers every time I do.
41:05 It's something that I use every day in my life
41:08 and I think more people will benefit from using it.
41:13 There's tons of way we could use it for the Wolf Spaces
41:16 and for your Twitter growth and I'll share,
41:18 well, check out the audience building room in masterclass
41:22 and you'll see my Twitter spreadsheet
41:24 and you'll understand why I use it for Twitter.
41:27 - Lots to think on here, lots to think on.
41:30 I'm excited to dive in.
41:31 I'm actually very grateful
41:32 I don't have to use Excel so much anymore.
41:35 I've been breaking away 'cause trust me,
41:38 I had to use it for years.
41:39 For sure, at a lot of jobs, everything was Excel.
41:43 Okay, this was awesome.
41:45 I really made it through so many topics.
41:46 Of course, there's so much more I could ask them
41:48 but I wanna be respectful of both of our time
41:50 and I noted down also a couple of times
41:53 where stuff came up that I thought was really, really good
41:55 and I'm gonna clip those too and get them out to everybody
41:58 but I'll leave it at this.
42:00 I always like to ask guests,
42:01 if you had to have a call to action at this point,
42:03 there's a lot going on in your life.
42:05 There's Twitter, there's the podcast.
42:07 What's your call to action?
42:08 Where can people find more about you?
42:10 Where can people learn most about you?
42:12 Where do you want them to go?
42:13 - Yeah, the best spot probably is Twitter.
42:17 I am Clint Murphy.
42:19 If they come to Twitter, every podcast episode
42:22 and I love that I shared this with you
42:26 on the last Space we did
42:28 and I've noticed a dramatic escalation
42:33 in your thread writing sense
42:35 and you converting spaces to threads
42:38 and your growth, if I'm not mistaken,
42:40 has, you were already growing fast
42:43 but it's going exponential.
42:45 So you're seeing the results
42:47 and you're a man who learns from conversation
42:50 so I love that brother.
42:51 The, hit me there, every podcast becomes a thread.
42:55 Every book becomes a thread.
42:57 It's, I gain knowledge, I share it with the audience.
43:01 So they'll do two things.
43:03 They'll get what I'm writing
43:05 and then please click on the podcast,
43:09 subscribe, rate, review it.
43:10 That helps get it in front of more people.
43:13 What you may not realize as listeners,
43:16 the more you do that, the more we grow,
43:19 the more the two of us grow.
43:21 The more the two of us grow, the more guests we get,
43:25 the more we can reach out to great guests,
43:27 the more we can share their knowledge with you.
43:29 So hit us both up, hit the subscribe buttons.
43:33 We both appreciate it.
43:34 - Love it, yeah.
43:36 I'll echo that sentiment.
43:37 I always say this at the end of my podcast.
43:38 If anybody made it this far, drop me a DM on Twitter.
43:41 Tell me you made it this far.
43:42 Tell me a favorite part.
43:43 I'm happy to respond back to you.
43:45 Have a little bit of interaction.
43:46 You'll have open access to me in the DMs.
43:48 I also definitely agree.
43:49 We did our space 15 days ago, I believe.
43:53 It was a Wednesday.
43:53 Since then, I'm up around 18,000 followers.
43:56 So you must've dropped some good knowledge in that space.
43:59 A lot taken away from it.
44:02 It's definitely been a nice little run.
44:03 Looking for 100K this weekend.
44:05 We'll see what happens.
44:06 - You're gonna love it.
44:07 - But yeah, I love it.
44:08 That's gonna be everything for today.
44:10 Clint, thank you for coming on here,
44:11 dropping a ton of knowledge,
44:13 a lot of real interesting truths as well.
44:15 I really hope specifically that people who are struggling
44:18 with balancing their work and their social media
44:21 or having problems with their work,
44:23 not liking what they're doing on social media
44:24 can listen to this and maybe feel some resonation
44:27 with what you're going through
44:29 and maybe have some takeaways
44:30 or adjust their strategy, right?
44:32 To perhaps what they're tweeting, what they're retweeting,
44:34 all those kinds of things and find a middle ground.
44:36 I think that was one of my biggest takeaways from this.
44:38 And then of course, I'm not there yet,
44:39 but anybody who's also in a marriage maybe
44:41 or looking to get married
44:42 will take away some good stuff from this too.
44:45 I think there are a lot of really fun points.
44:46 Thank you, sir, for coming on
44:47 and can't wait to talk again soon.
44:49 - Thank you for having me.
44:50 (gentle music)
44:53 (gentle music)
44:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]