Why Talented People Fail and Tenacious People Don't (The U2 Roadie Who Proved It)

A psychologist told Scott Scovill it would be easier for him to grab a red-hot stove and hang on than to try at anything. His fear of failure was that severe. It flunked him out of college and left him waiting tables at a roadside Howard Johnson's. Then a tour bus rolled in one day, and everything he believed about talent, fear, and what it takes to make it got dismantled. In this conversation, Kayvon pulls apart how a college dropout with a clinical fear of failure snuck into U2 shows for five weeks with a homemade laminate, lived in his car, worked for free, and landed on the biggest Rolling Stones tour in the world within three years. Scott breaks down the pattern he found when interviewing household names for his book, including Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, Peter Frampton, and Olympic champion Scott Hamilton. He also spoke to NASA astronauts, athletes, CEOs, a Navy SEAL, and many more. None of them credit talent. Every one of them credits refusing to quit. He explains why the most talented people you've never heard of gave up, why fear operates through small deflections more than big walls, and why one step forward instantly changes who you are. This episode is for founders, operators, and sales professionals who have been hiding behind preparation, credentials, or perfectionism instead of moving. If you believe talent is the reason others are winning, this conversation will take that excuse away from you. The episode covers overcoming fear of failure, building a business from nothing, the mindset behind long-term success, how top performers in music and entertainment think about risk, and why tenacity is the only success factor that is one hundred percent developable. Scott's story maps directly onto sales, leadership, and entrepreneurship, where the gap between knowing what to do and doing it decides everything. Topics covered: The clinical fear of failure that froze Scott's early life Sneaking into U2 shows for five weeks  Landing the Rolling Stones tour within three years Imposter syndrome at the top and how identity catches up Why household names credit tenacity, never talent Learning to sing in his forties and opening for Brad Paisley The Tim Ferriss conversation that changed how Scott lives Fear as deflection: the small avoidances that cost you your dream The one-step rule that turns "someday" into momentum   Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow @scottscovillcreative InstagramFacebook Spotify Apple MusicXTikTokWebsite Get your copy of 'Tenacious' by Scott Scoville Follow Kayvon: InstagramFacebookLinkedInTikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletterBook a discovery callGet your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️Hire the right salespeople  

Your customers stopped Googling. They ask ChatGPT now. And when ChatGPT answers, it recommends someone. If that someone is not you, this episode explains exactly why, and exactly what to do about it. One founder already cracked it: 10 million impressions from ChatGPT, zero dollars in ad spend, and an American Marketing Association campaign of the year award to prove it was not luck. Anya Cheng spent her career building products and marketing at Meta, eBay, Target, and McDonald's tech headquarters before founding Taelor, an AI-powered menswear rental company in Silicon Valley. She is a Northwestern lecturer, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and mentor at 500 Startups. In this conversation, she opens the playbook most agencies are still guessing at. The episode starts with the business itself: an AI stylist backed by human experts that dresses busy operators for the outcome they need. A deal to close. A courtroom to win. A first date that earns a second one. Then Kayvon does what he does on every episode and reverse engineers the real gold. The conversation turns to how Taelor actually acquires customers, and the answer is not ads. It is AI search. Anya breaks down why sentiment now outranks keywords, why Reddit threads and review platforms feed the machines, why AI can analyze your video and podcast content beyond the keywords Google Search relied on, and how a human-AI content flywheel turns proprietary data into a moat no competitor can copy. This one is for founders, operators, and marketing leaders who feel the ground shifting under their acquisition strategy. If your growth plan still assumes people find you through a search bar, you are optimizing for a behavior that is disappearing.  The conversation covers answer engine optimization, AI SEO, generative engine optimization (GEO), and the practical mechanics of getting cited by the likes of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. It digs into proprietary data as a competitive advantage, building content flywheels that combine human expertise with AI scale, customer acquisition without paid ads, subscription business models, and what it takes to become an AI-native company instead of a company that merely uses AI. Topics covered: How Taelor's AI plus human stylist model works Why fashion companies were built for the wrong customer The shift from Google search to AI recommendations Sentiment, reviews, and context: the new ranking signals The exact content system behind 10 million ChatGPT impressions Why proprietary data is the only real moat in the AI era The 40 percent problem: fashion's unsold inventory crisis Dressing for outcomes: deals, courtrooms, and second dates Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Anya Cheng: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Learn more about Taelor.style   Use code PODCAST25 for 25% off your first month with Taelor   Use code PODCASTGIFT for 10% off a Taelor gift card  Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletterBook a discovery callGet your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️Hire the right salespeople  

Most leaders think the problem is that they are not doing enough, but that's usually not it. The people you are trying to reach, your kids, your team, your clients, do not need more from you. They need you to actually be present, and almost nobody is. This episode is about the gap between performing leadership and being present in it, and why closing that gap changes everything downstream. Renée Marino, actress, author and speaker joins the show to break down what presence actually looks like in practice, not as a feeling but as a discipline. She talks about catching herself in the trap of constant doing, the cost of treating attention as something you can fake, and a 10 year old video that reminded her what people actually remember. Renée walks through the morning practice she uses to lead from a grounded place: phone out of the room, pen to paper, one question asked and answered before the day starts pulling at you. The argument is simple. You connect with the most important person first, yourself, and every other connection that day runs cleaner because of it. This one is for founders and operators who have built the business but feel scattered inside it. For leaders who are present on paper and absent in the room. For anyone who has confused activity with attention and is starting to feel the difference. The conversation moves through authentic communication, the discipline of slowing down internal noise, and why presence is a leadership skill rather than a soft one. It connects personal alignment to how you show up with a team, how you build trust without performing, and why the founders who scale sustainably tend to be the ones who learned to be before they learned to do more. Topics covered: Why doing more is often a substitute for being present The real cost of distracted, performative attention The 10 minute morning practice for clarity and alignment Why writing by hand changes how you start the day How personal presence shapes the way you lead a team Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Renée Marino InstagramFacebook LinkedInTikTok Website Follow Kayvon: InstagramFacebookLinkedInTikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletterBook a discovery callGet your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️Hire the right salespeople  

Most people think their problem is strategy. It isn't. You can change your offer, your funnel, your team, and your calendar, and still land in the exact same place six months later. The reason is sitting underneath all of it, and almost nobody names it out loud.This episode names it. Daniel Linares, Founder & CEO of DLE Event Group joins Kayvon to break down why your identity is the ceiling on your results, and why no amount of tactics will move you past a self-image that says you don't belong at the next level. The conversation moves fast and stays concrete. Kayvon lays out the line that reframes the whole thing: you cannot outpace, outsell, or outgrow your own identity. Daniel shows how the people who keep leveling up are doing one thing differently, and it has nothing to do with talent. They get into how Kobe built the Black Mamba and how Beyonce built Sasha Fierce, not as nicknames but as a new set of operating rules they stepped into before the results arrived. They unpack the reversal most people get backwards, the belief that you have to acquire the thing before you can become the person, when it works the other way. They walk through the self-imposed rules that quietly cap a founder's growth, the difference between waiting in line and finding the third door, and David Cook's SFT framework for resetting back to baseline under pressure the way the one percent do. This is for founders, operators, and high-agency builders who have already done the obvious work and are still hitting the same wall. If you are looking for motivation, this is the wrong room. If you want to understand the actual mechanism behind why your results have plateaued, stay. The discussion connects identity, mindset, and self-belief to the hard mechanics of business growth: how high performers think under pressure, how to take radical responsibility for outcomes, how to become resourceful instead of stuck, and how to ship before you feel ready instead of waiting for a readiness that never comes. It is a conversation about the inner game that drives every outer result, and the leadership decisions that compound over time. Topics covered: Why identity sets the ceiling on results, income, and growth The Black Mamba and Sasha Fierce as built identities, not nicknames The Be, Do, Have reversal most founders get backwards The self-imposed rules quietly capping your growth Third door thinking and how to stop waiting in line David Cook's SFT framework for resetting under pressure Why shipping at 70 percent beats waiting until you feel ready The role of trust and faith when the outcome is uncertain Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Daniel Linares @DanielLinaresTV Youtube Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok Website Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletterBook a discovery callGet your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️Hire the right salespeople  

Most founders think they have a product problem. Colin Hodge will tell you, on the record, that they don't. What separates the startups that go viral from the ones that don't is not the feature set, the funding, or the founder's hustle. It is psychology. The kind that gets engineered on purpose, measured against a number, and run as a system. Colin has spent twenty years building, selling, and buying back companies to prove it, and his book even hit the USA Today national bestseller list the morning of recording this episode. This is the conversation that explains why your growth is stuck, and it has nothing to do with working harder. Colin Hodge, author of Outrageous Startup Growth, breaks down the exact framework behind the startups everyone studies and nobody can replicate. He pulls apart how Clubhouse manufactured a citywide case of FOMO out of two invites, why Facebook's entire growth engine came down to one number most founders never bother to find, and how over 65 cognitive biases quietly decide whether a buyer says yes. Kayvon presses him on the line between influence and manipulation, and Colin draws it clearly: build for the customer's progress, or build a business that eventually collapses under its own tricks. Then it gets uncomfortable. They get into the data behind why negative, judgment-driven content outperforms anything positive, what that reveals about the people watching, and why the founders who understand this are the only ones who get to use it responsibly. This episode is for founders, operators, and product leaders who are done guessing. The ones who want growth they can repeat, not growth they got lucky with once. If you are looking for motivation, this is the wrong room. If you want the mechanics, sit down. Inside the conversation, Kayvon and Colin work through buyer psychology and behavioral science as the real engine of startup growth: how to create urgency without gimmicks, how to engineer customer decisions toward better outcomes, how to find the single magic moment that drives retention, and how to align an entire team behind one North Star metric. It is a working manual for anyone trying to scale a startup, sharpen their marketing, or sell with clarity in a market where attention is the only currency that matters. Topics covered: Why most startups stall and what actually unlocks scale The three-pillar growth framework: FOMO, decision engineering, magic moments The four ingredients of engineered FOMO, broken down with the Clubhouse playbook How to find your product's magic moment, the way Facebook found theirs Decision engineering and the cognitive biases that drive buyer behaviour The ethics line: customer success versus extraction Why negativity goes viral and what it says about all of us The North Star metric and how to align a team around it The wine list trick that exposes how pricing manipulates you every day Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Colin Hodge  Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Website Buy Colin's Book: Outrageous Startup Growth Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople  

Most people optimizing their health are spending the most and changing the least. They have the drawers full of nootropics, the cold plunge, the red light panel, the vagus nerve device that stopped working two weeks in. They have the data. They have the gadgets. And they still wake up feeling like garbage. This episode explains why. Kayvon sits down with John Goldman, founder and CEO of Rebel Health Alliance, who spent decades as an athlete and entrepreneur and still woke up at 46 prediabetic, with high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, and inflammation through the roof. He had no idea. The diagnostics put it in black and white, and what he did next became the basis for a company built on a single uncomfortable idea: the entire health optimization industry is selling people the wrong 5 percent. John breaks down where health optimization actually came from, why the traditional healthcare system was never built to make you healthy, and how a 1930s policy decision quietly split the treatment of disease from the generation of health. He explains why high agency operators keep buying more tests, more wearables, and more supplements while missing the boring fundamentals that drive 95 percent of the result. Then he names the one role almost nobody in your health actually plays: the fiduciary who has no product to sell you. This is also a conversation about money. The hundreds of billions spent treating preventable disease. The insurance math that has quietly changed underneath everyone. And why the new class of metabolic drugs is about to become the most widely used pharmaceutical in American history. This episode is for founders, operators, and executives who already know their business is only as optimized as they are. If you run hard, carry the weight, and have started to feel the ceiling in your own body, this is the diagnostic you have been avoiding. If you are looking for another supplement stack to buy, this is not for you. The conversation moves through what health optimization really means for people running businesses under pressure, why cardio respiratory fitness outranks nearly every other intervention for long term performance, how resistance training and sleep quietly outperform the expensive trends, and what it actually takes to build a system around your health instead of a shelf full of abandoned devices. It is a clear look at energy, longevity, and the link between physical condition and the capacity to lead, scale, and make sharp decisions. Topics covered: Why your business is only as optimized as you are The diagnostics most doctors never order, and why The Flexner Report and the system that splits health from treatment The "health fiduciary" and why no one in your current setup plays that role The boring fundamentals that drive 95 percent of results Where red light, cold plunge, peptides, and nootropics actually fit VO2 max, fat free mass index, and the metrics that predict longevity The metabolic drug wave and what it means for the economy and the country Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow John Goldman:  Instagram LinkedIn X Learn more about Rebel Health Alliance Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople

Most business owners think risk is the enemy. The man who decoded Jeff Bezos found the opposite. The instinct to wait, to protect what you have, to move only when the path is certain feels responsible. It is the exact behavior that kills companies slowly enough that no one notices until it is too late. This episode names the thing nobody wants to say out loud: caution is not safety. It is a slow-motion decline you mistake for stability. Steve Anderson, author of The Bezos Letters, spent his career in one of the most risk-averse industries on earth: insurance. Then he read every shareholder letter Jeff Bezos ever wrote, start to finish, as a single narrative. What he found became a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller translated into 21 languages, and a set of 14 growth principles that explain how Amazon went from burning millions to dominating the planet. Kayvon pushes past the surface. They get into what Bezos was actually saying to a board watching the company lose money for over a decade, and what he was not saying. The conversation moves through the principle of unwarranted risk aversion, the discipline of obsessing over customers until friction disappears, and why Amazon wins by making complexity simple while competitors assume that complexity protects them. Then it sharpens. Bezos ended every letter the same way: it is always Day One. When an employee asked him what Day Two looked like, his answer was stasis, then irrelevance, then painful decline, then death. That single idea reframes how a founder should think about success itself, because the companies most at risk are usually the ones that already won. This is for founders, operators, and executives who are growing but feel stuck below their ceiling. For the people building something real who suspect their own caution is the thing holding it back. If you want motivation, this is the wrong room. If you want the operating logic behind one of the most valuable companies in history, stay. The conversation also covers what most business owners get wrong about experimentation, why failure is the price of invention rather than the absence of it, how customer obsession can quietly turn into pressure that costs you elsewhere, and where AI fits into the same pattern Bezos identified years before it became obvious. Eager adoption of external trends was on his short list for surviving Day Two long before machine learning was a headline. Topics Covered: Why unwarranted risk aversion is the real threat to a growing business How reading every Bezos letter revealed 14 repeatable growth principles The test, build, accelerate, scale framework and where most founders stall Customer obsession as a system for removing friction, not a slogan The hidden cost of customer obsession on the people doing the work Making complexity simple as a competitive weapon The Day One mindset and why Day Two means decline Where AI sits inside Bezos's logic of adopting external trends early Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Steve Anderson:  Instagram Facebook LinkedIn X Buy The Bezos Letters on Amazon  Learn More Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople

Most people are not investors. They are spenders with investment accounts. They make decent money, move some of it around, and wonder why the number never compounds into anything real. The diagnosis is not the portfolio. It is the decision that came before it. This conversation breaks that down. Wes Rowlands from Atikan Wealth Partners grew up poor, moved to California with nothing, slept on a floor for years, and built his way to managing nearly $600 million in assets. He did not get there by finding the right tip or timing the market. He built a system. A framework for how wealth actually gets constructed, layer by layer, decision by decision, over decades. What separates this conversation from the standard finance content you have already heard is that Wes does not talk about tactics. He talks about the order of operations. Most people jump to investing before they have solved for earning. Most savers think they are being disciplined when they are actually falling behind inflation. Most owners have no idea whether their assets are productive or just speculative. These are not small distinctions. They are the difference between building generational wealth and running in place. Wes introduces a decision tree that every financial leader needs to run before a single dollar moves: Owner, Lender, Spender, or Saver. Then he breaks down the difference between speculative assets and productive assets, why one is a hard game almost nobody wins, and why the other is how serious wealth has always been built. He also covers financial escape velocity, the moat money concept, and why the biggest wealth problem most people have is not what they think it is. Kayvon and Wes also get into what it actually costs to build something real. The years. The floor sleeping. The 24-cent meals. The patience required to stay in the game long enough for the compounding to matter. This episode is for founders, operators, and business owners who are already generating income and want to understand how to make it compound. It is not for people looking for shortcuts or stock tips. If you are serious about personal finance as a leadership discipline, not a hobby, this is the conversation. Topics Covered The wealth building order of operations: make it, save it, grow it Owner vs Lender vs Spender vs Saver: the first decision every financial leader must make Speculative assets vs productive assets and why the distinction determines your outcome Financial escape velocity: what the number is and how to calculate it for your life Moat money: the short and medium term capital buffer that protects long-term assets Why saving alone will not build wealth and how inflation quietly destroys purchasing power Generational wealth: how it gets built, how it survives, and how it gets destroyed The 2% principle: why most of your success comes from factors outside your control and what you owe that fact What going all in actually looks like when there is no safety net Why most people misdiagnose their wealth problem as an investment problem       Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Wes Rowlands: Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Learn more on Wes' Website Learn more about Atikan Wealth Partners  Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople

Most deals don't die because the price was wrong. They die because someone walked into the room unprepared, assumed they understood what the other side wanted, and spent the entire negotiation reacting instead of leading. That is not a price problem. That is a systems problem. Walker Thrash, from Vertikal Collaborative, has structured public-private real estate deals across multiple states, navigated city councils, state agencies, and private capital partners simultaneously, and built a firm that puts its own money on the line in nearly every project it touches. He does not negotiate from theory. He negotiates from skin in the game. In this conversation, Walker breaks down exactly how the most sophisticated real estate operators approach high-stakes negotiation from the first meeting to close. The framework is not complicated. It is just rarely executed. Preparation unlocks authority. Authority unlocks questions. Questions surface the real deal. And the real deal is almost never about price. They talk through the mechanics of how preparation shifts power in any room, why the person asking the most questions holds the most leverage, how to identify the true authority at the table and speak directly to it, and why making your math objective eliminates the tension that kills deals before they start. They also get into the counterintuitive move that separates good negotiators from great ones: asking the other side to help you solve the problem. When the opposing party becomes a thought partner, the deal moves faster and closes tighter. This episode is for founders, operators, developers, and executives who negotiate at a level where the stakes are real and the margin for error is not. If you are still treating negotiation as a conversation about price, you are starting from the wrong place. Real estate deal-making, public-private development, commercial negotiation strategy, and high-stakes business leadership all depend on the same foundation: knowing what the other side actually needs before you say a word about what you want. That principle applies whether the deal is a $5M land acquisition or a $500M mixed-use development. Topics covered: Why preparation is the most undervalued skill in real estate negotiation How asking questions outperforms presenting solutions Identifying and speaking from authority in any negotiation room Why price is rarely the real issue in a failed deal Making math objective to remove tension and accelerate close The "thought partner" move that gets deals off the ground faster What kills deals before they ever reach the table Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Walker:   LinkedIn Website Buy Walker's book Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople

Most founders are building the wrong thing. Not because they lack skill. Not because the market isn't there. Because they skipped the one conversation that tells you whether any of it is worth building in the first place. By the time most SaaS founders realize they've been validating their idea instead of the market's problem, they've already burned 18 months and a team's worth of goodwill. Collin Stewart lived that. He built anyway. Nobody bought. And what came out the other side became one of the most repeatable zero-to-revenue frameworks operating in SaaS today. This episode is that framework, unfiltered. Collin went from 18 months of zero traction on a CRM nobody asked for, to tripling monthly revenue in a single month, fully manual, before a single line of new code was written. He didn't pivot because of a blog post or a course. He pivoted because a mentor told him the truth, and he finally stopped arguing with his customers long enough to hear it. What changed wasn't the product. It was the sequence. Talk first. Build second. Sell before you ship. This conversation is for founders who are early, moving fast, and quietly unsure whether they're building toward something real or just building. It is also for operators who've hit a ceiling and suspect the problem starts at the top of the funnel, before the pitch, before the demo, before any of it. Collin breaks down how to identify the right customer, how to conduct a development conversation that actually surfaces pain instead of validating your assumptions, and how to move a prospect from "can I pick your brain" to paying customer across a structured sequence of meetings. He also covers why referral asks at the end of every conversation function as a self-healing list, why most cold outreach fails at the signal level, not the copy level, and what it actually looks like to run a pilot before committing engineering resources. This is the go-to-market strategy conversation most startup accelerators skip. Customer discovery, early revenue generation, SaaS sales without a product, zero to one frameworks, and founder-led sales systems are all covered in direct, practical terms, drawn from a decade of hands-on zero-to-revenue work. Topics covered: Why showing customers what you built is not customer validation The customer development funnel and how to move prospects through it How to run a manual pilot before building anything The Wizard of Oz method for generating real revenue signals Why referral asks function as a list-building system Relationship-first prospecting vs. cold outreach that dies on delivery What AI has changed about the speed of the zero-to-one window Looking to dive deeper into these conversations and connect with our host and guest? Follow Collin Stewart:  LinkedIn The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers book Predictable Revenue website Founders Edition newsletter Collin's Slidedeck  Follow Kayvon: Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok     Want to go deeper with Kayvon? Subscribe to the newsletter Book a discovery call Get your Revenue Engine Scorecard™️ Hire the right salespeople