Special! Brad Reveals A Few Of His Most Effective Mental Models on Hustle and Flowchart Podcast

Welcome to 2019. This is the first episode of the new year. This is Brad, and I'm gonna mix it up on you today. And going forward, I've got some surprises for you. So if you're not already subscribed to the show, you want to be subscribed. But speaking of mixing it up, today, I am not going to do a typical interview like I normally do, and I'm not even going to do a solo cast. Instead, I am going to repurpose an interview that I was just on, the illustrious podcast called called Hustle and Flowchart with Matt Wolfe and Joe Fear. Matt and Joe are the founders of Evergreen Profits and they are business partners of mine in a business I acquired. We're doing some really cool stuff. They asked me to be on their podcast again and detail some of the things that I do and the ways that I think as it revolves around ideation, mental models, frameworks for thinking, and we have conversations like you're about to.

Hear quite a bit.

We just always record them. And we decided to record this one and they just published it today on their podcast and I've decided to just repurpose it here for you instead of rerecording everything once more. Now, if you want to subscribe to their show, which I highly recommend you do, go over on the web to evergreenprofits.com or search the Apple Music or Android store or whatever you guys use for Hustle and Flowchart. And right now I'm going to flip over. You're going to hear Matt Wolf starting his episode us in it. And I encourage you to reach out to me. Ask bradakenratbusiness.com if you have any insights or questions or ideas or just want a second opinion on your growth strategy. All right, let's take it over to Matt.

Let's do some bacon wrapped hustling. Let's start with an intro. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Bacon Wrapped Hustle show with Matt Wolf, Joe Fear, and Brad Costanzo.

Where's the sizzle? Give me some sizzle on top.

I did. He was sizzling.

Give me some more. Give me some more.

There it is.

The Bacon Sizzles. Love it. Thank you for hopping on the show.

For those who don't know what the hell Bacon Wrapped Hustle is, should we enlighten them?

Yeah. What is it, Brad?

Well, my podcast is called Bacon Wrapped Business and somebody's calling. How do I turn my damn phone off? My podcast is called Bacon Wrapped Business. Yours is called Hustle and Flowchart. So this is kind of a little Frankenstein marriage of sorts, right?

Yeah. And we're, you know, for those who don't know, we're business partners in a side venture. Different venture than Evergreen Profits. Brad has his own consulting business, does a lot of cool shit. He's the idea man. I don't know. I think you were trying to brand yourself under a specific term. I don't know if you moved forward.

I've been getting branded that like. It is funny because everybody.

What is it?

I had the hardest time as a consultant, as an entrepreneur, being, like, branding myself. It's very easy for me to do this with other people, but it's always been hard for me to put my finger on the pulse of what I do. And it is funny that a lot of my clients, friends, colleagues, you guys, they all kind of come to me as like, you're the idea guy. And it is one of my strengths. But also, like, ideas get a bad rap in the world of entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism. And they're like, ah, there's too many ideas out there. And it's all about execution. Execution. But really what my clients and partners and whatnot pay me a lot of money for is are these ideation sessions where, you know, we come up with breakthrough ideas using lateral thinking and different concepts and find really good levers. I've started to kind of own that ideation strategist as kind of a. And working through that.

You're working through that well, because it can be like a dark hole of just ideas all day with no action or no system to back up an idea. And I know you have a good system for that. I think we might have chatted about it before.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, we've all heard ideas without execution are worthless. But if that's true, are children worthless until they become grown, productive members of society who contribute money to the economy? Right. I don't believe they are. Children have potential, Right? Children bring joy. And I think just like that, ideas are very similar. But just like children, they need to be nurtured with structure and discipline and love and fun in order to be fully realized visions. And when you don't do that, when you don't bring ideas structure and discipline and nurturing them in a kind of a systematic way, you either have one or two things. You either have idea abortion, where you give up on what could have been a great idea had you really started to examine it, or you chase down an idea before you've really kind of figured out what are going to be the roadblocks? And this a valid idea. And I know I've done that in the past. I kind of had an idea and I just ran with it because this is what entrepreneurs do, especially quick starts like me. And I get into it six months down the road. I was like, got a lot of money and time invested in this. And I was like, oh, damn, what did I do? So, yeah, I've got a process that I go through with myself, with my clients, and it works pretty well to flesh out ideas and determine which we should do now, which we should do never, which we should do someday, maybe.

And.

That'S one of the things I feel very strongly about, that ideas are not worthless without execution, but you can get to execution a lot quicker with it.

Yeah. I also want to mention, like, if anybody's listening to this on the Hustle and Flowchart show, and you don't know Brad, and you don't know his backstory, we'll link to the past episodes because we have two episodes with him with the backstory and all that now with the ideation stuff, I think us as entrepreneurs, we get ideas all the time. I think that's one of my biggest problems as an entrepreneur is that pretty much every day I have new ideas, more ideas than I can possibly execute. And I'm sure there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening. I know, Brad, you're in the same boat. Joe's in the same boat. One of our biggest struggles is we've got so many ideas, and we have to sort of decipher which are the ideas we should pursue. Which of the ones should we put on the shelf and maybe come back to later? Which of the ones should we ditch? You know, just in this whole vein of ideation, how do we. How do we decipher which ideas we should pursue? You know, how do we know which ones we should be looking at as something that we should work on now that are, you know, things that we could miss the boat on versus things that maybe we could shelf this and circle back around. Versus. All right, that's just a shit idea. Let's throw it away, right?

You know, what I like to do is really explore those in. In a way that allows each idea to kind of have its moment to potentially to shine or to sink. And the very first podcast I ever did in Bacon Rap business was about this framework that I learned that Walt Disney had really created. They used to say, whenever Walt walked into a room, you didn't know, is it going to be the Dreamer, the realist or the critic walking in. And you guys are really familiar with this concept. But the first thing is, when you have a general idea or a goal that you want to accomplish, the first thing you do is you think about what is the dream, what's the vision? What are all the ways that this idea could come to life? And you think about it big and beautiful and what's possible. And the only thing is you don't do is you don't plan it and you don't criticize it. And then once you've kind of got the vision of what that idea could be, and first of all, if it's not exciting, then you can let it go right there. But if you start to let it just play out without letting all the noise come in of how are we going to do it? Or what could go wrong, then you might just come up with a really exciting idea, and then you take it and you're like, all right, well, given on the current resources we have right now or that we need to get, what would it take to bring this to reality? And you just kind of storyboard it out? Maybe you just say, all right, well, we need to get this and this. We need money and we need these people, et cetera. Well, at this point, that idea is either still looking great because you're like, oh, wow, we actually have what it takes to implement this, or it's not looking as great. And then you take it to the final one, which is this critics room, and you get to put on you and your team members and your partners and employees get to put on the critics hat and go, all right, what are we missing? What could go wrong? What could derail us? How does opportunity cost effect this, etc. And you kind of really filter it out there. You don't have to solve the problem when you're in this critic's mindset and role, but you can send it back if you still like it. Either the critic just shot it down completely, or you can go out and fix those issues and put your planner's hat back on. If it survives that and you get it through the dreaming, planning and the critiquing stage, and now you've kind of got something to work with. And you may have three or four of these ideas. Now you take it to the kind of the scorecard. And I know that in past episodes, Roland Frazier talked about this. And it's a scorecard that you look at the impact, the confidence, the ease. It's the ICE method impact that each of these Ideas are going to come up with. And you might find that one idea might be really easy to do and might seem a lot of fun, but it might not really impact your business or your life, or it might not really pull a growth lever in your business. And so you can table that. You can put it on the side, but every once in a while, you take it through that Disney process and you've got something you really feel good about. And then it's got to. If it works, it would have a big impact on your business. You've got a lot of confidence in your ability to pull it off, and it might be somewhat easy to do so in those. I think you take this very artistic attitude towards coming up with the idea and fleshing it out, and then a scientific attitude toward implement and then push forward. This is kind of the process I've.

Been using because it gets tricky, because that process works amazing. I know the three of us have used that for the business that we own together and just hashing out random ideas individually, too. I know there's a struggle, though, because some people are more idea people. There's more people that are more critic people. Or, you know, like, Matt and I have that. I mean, we all know our Colby, so we more or less know, like, what we're innately going to lean towards.

Yeah. I mean, well, so.

Well, my question was, like, how do you silo that? Or how do you harness and, like, choose which room and stick together as a team?

Yeah. I mean, all three of us are idea guys. We all have a lot of ideas. We all throw out a ton of ideas. But I tend to default to more of the critical eye of, like, okay, even the ideas I come up with, I'm sitting here going, here's an idea I have, but here's why it won't work. Where Joe's kind of the optimistic. I would say both of you are kind of more the optimistic, Seeing all the, you know, all the potential of an idea, where I'm looking at all the potential downfalls of an idea.

Right, right.

And that's good, though. I mean, because you need that and it's important. I think the thing is to give yourself that full permission to criticize the hell out of it, but then get to get it out and then give yourself the permission to be optimistic and to. And, you know, the critic kind of wants to make sure that he's heard. And the critic's job is not to spoil the party. The critics job is to watch out for the cops.

That's a good Point. That's a very good point.

Look, he's your, he's the, he is a good guy. He's here to protect you. So you're like, hey, thank you, thank that critic. Thank you self for blowing this shit up. And now let me just take a moment and step into this other role. Even if it's not natural to just be super optimistic and go, listen, if, if all this stuff was taken care of, what would this look like and how would we do it? And that just giving yourself that permission to think in that realm can be really productive because you come up with these ideas that, and connections that you never would have probably put together because you're like, okay, well I know this could be a problem, but let's just imagine that that problem was solved or that it didn't exist. How would I connect these dots over here? And I think when you relieve that tension or the pressure of having to solve the critics problems, it just opens up a lot more neural connections. I know it does. For me. I just recently had a client who contacted me with an idea for an opportunity. He's like, yeah, I don't know, here's something. And he told me about it. I was like, yeah, I don't know if I have anything here. I don't know if I can do anything. And there's a million reasons why it wouldn't work. But I did this process and I kind of came up with all the reasons it wouldn't work. And I put them aside and then I thought, well, what are the ways that it could work? And I relieved myself, the tension of having to think about like me actually doing it. And I just kind of played with it and I came up with a really brilliant idea. And I just got off the phone with him before we got on here, it was Jesse. And I was like, here's how it would work. Here's a person that we can connect with. Here's how it can be made to happen. And you want it to work. And he's like, that's brilliant. And it wasn't really brilliant. It just, I allowed myself to critique it and then I allowed myself to play with it.

It sounds like you gave yourself permission to like. Yeah, you almost like elevated your way yourself away from the situation so you're not attached to it. You don't really give a shit about the outcome. If you look, you want a positive outcome, but it's like you don't feel like you're personally going to lose something out of this way of thinking. If you can Separate yourself a bit and then. Yeah, and then look at it with that lens and then see what the potential is. Maybe. Yeah, you're just like, fuck, this is totally against everything I would personally ever do. But if I were in his shoes or someone else's, how would this look like, exactly?

You know, the other really powerful thing is to have a strict set of criteria up front. So. And I'll circle back to criteria. But, you know, a lot of people talk about Brad, you think out of the box. Or that's the. Or. Or they think that that's the key. Like, oh, we need to think out of the box. And I don't think that thinking outside of the box is the answer. I think that's a faulty way to go about brainstorming or coming up with ideas. I think you need to get a new box, because what makes it work, what makes ideation work are the constraints. So if I just said, hey, guys, think of a business idea, like, that's. It's like going to the Cheesecake Factory.

Don't tell me. Think of an idea. Come on.

Right, but. But if I said, guys, I want you to think of a business idea, but here's what it has to do. You have to go back into your childhood and take an. Take an activity that you really enjoyed as a child. It could be absolutely anything, and think about how to create a business around it today. But it should. It should be very related to childhood activities. I'm not going to really ask you to do that. But does anything come off the top of your head? Like, what's one activity you guys used to like as a child?

Like, I was thinking just riding a bicycle. A bike? Back in the day.

Yeah. I mean, I used to play basketball as a kid, so I was thinking something around basketball.

All right, maybe we create, you know, maybe a business would be a basketball camp for grownups where you hire a. Maybe a retired celebrity, like NBA player to come and coach these. By the way, this is not necessarily new. These probably all exist already, but that's one. Like, now I just really quickly created something where you're like, all right, the constraint is it has to be something I did as a child. But now it opens up. How can I create a business around it today? Maybe you like to play tag as a kid, and maybe you like to play, like, cowboys and Indians and shoot pretend guns. Remember when we shoot each other and like, boom, I got you. Like, no, you didn't. You missed. Well, these days, laser tag exists. If you look at a lot of the Things that we do today, it's like it was childhood activities we thought was really cool. Like, I just went and did that K1 go kart racing in San Diego recently. That's childhood activities as adults. Haagen Dazs is a perfect example. Haagen Dazs is like really expensive ass ice cream. And, well, what did we like as a kid? We all liked ice cream, but nobody really thought about ice cream before. Super gourmet. But somebody did. Like, somebody will pay a lot of money for high quality ice cream.

I like those constraints, you said, because it forces our brains collectively, in this case, to confine ourselves to childhood, something that we did. So we're kind of passionate about. We have some knowledge and then think.

And find a new box.

Yeah, you create connections, right?

And it's those constraints that allow you to channel the thoughts in a certain way. And it's like, we've only got. We've only got these things. How do we create X given Y constraint? So, for instance, with what we're doing, how do we. And we're creating this app and this whole tech platform. One of the examples that we're thinking about ways to bring this to market. But how can we do this? One example would be, how could we grow this app if we didn't buy a single ad or didn't use a single one of our, you know, our existing assets? Not that we have to, but, like, if we didn't have those, how would we grow it? And we're going to a whole bunch of ideas of joint ventures.

It already got my brain going. And that's cool because you can apply that in different facets.

No, I love looking at things through that lens of, like, put these constraints on it. And now that you have these constraints, now how are you going to, you know, having this new perspective on a problem is, you know, you'll start to come up with all sorts of ideas. And one thing I want to circle back around to too, is you mentioned, like, yeah, that basketball camp thing already probably exists, but there's always ways to put your own spin on it, to figure out how to make it unique, to make it something that's your own. I mean, yes, a basketball camp for adults may exist, but maybe none of them are taught by Magic Johnson, you know, or, you know, maybe none of them are tailored specifically towards baby boomers that are in corporate jobs that need some sort of, like, escape on weekends or something. Right. You can think of all sorts of ways, even within your constraints, to think of new business ideas. But Then also figure out a usp something. Something that makes it unique to just what you're doing.

Yeah, exactly. And it's. This kind of ties in. This is interesting. I was reading an article recently from this professor at Darden University, or Darden, I forget which university is, but it's like Darden School of Management. She's like a professor and she's got this scientific paper about what makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial. That's kind of the way they think. And what was really interesting, she talks about, like causal thinking and effectual thinking. And not to get too nerdy and academic here, but causal thinking is basically like, what is the goal we want to achieve? And then you think of all the means you have to achieve it and you're all working towards this goal. I don't love the naming causal and effectual, but it's very managerial thinking. Like if you're a MBA or you're working at corporate, like, oh, we have these goals we're trying to achieve. This is how we're going to go achieve it. Let's maximize profit, blah, blah, blah, entrepreneurs. And she studied hundreds of them very scientifically and gave them tests. She found out that a majority of them and a majority of the time think about these things differently. So one of the first things they do is they start with their constraints, like who I am, what I know, and who I know. And with that, they don't set a singular goal, but they set a fuzzier goal. And they go, well, what all can we create given these constraints and given the fact that we can partner with people, we can get a minimally viable product. We can get it out, validate it and test it. And they realize that it doesn't have to turn into one thing because chances are it'll turn into multiple things. And what she said is she put an analogy. It's almost like a chef, a cook versus a chef. A cook is going to use a recipe and they're going to follow the directions in order to create a specific dish that people expect. They have idea. A chef is going to go into the kitchen and saying, what ingredients do I have? What kind of magic can I create? And it's the entrepreneurs, she realized, operate much more as chefs. But it all starts with that. Here's the constraints, here's who I am, here's what I know, here's who I know. And they realize surprises are going to come up and they're going to be adaptable and flexible. One of my favorite things that she said is like, causal thinking or managerial Thinking is, to the extent that we can control the future, we can predict it. And they're very focused on predicting the future. Entrepreneurs go, to the extent we can control the future, we don't need to predict it, we can control it if we're adaptable, if we're resourceful, if we're flexible, if we can partner with others and figure this stuff out given the constraints we have. And I don't know, I bring this up just because it was very recent that I read it, but I liked it because it ties into ideation, says, given these constraints, what are all the things that could come of this? And given that it kind of reduces the risk, it's almost like insurance knowing, okay, if this doesn't work, we can pivot.

Right.

The three of us did this recently when we decided to make this investment in this tech platform because we go, well, worst case scenario, even if it only does this, look at all the ways we can pivot, salvage, and adapt given this. So I think we followed this kind of effectual thinking and ideation and whatnot to kind of COVID our bases.

Yeah. One thing you and I were talking about last week, and this. This kind of along the same vein, but you talked about this concept of pretty much like any problem on Earth could be solved. It comes down to two things, physics and knowledge.

Right.

And can you kind of explain A, where you kind of heard that concept and then B, kind of what. What it means?

Yeah, I think I originally heard it. I think I read an article discussing. I think that was Michael Simmons and then. But I think it really goes back to this physicist over in Oxford named David Deutsch. And I'm reading one of his books right now called the Beginning of Infinity. But he talks about, really, it's. Everything is. If it's not outside the laws of physics, then like going faster than the speed of light. Right. That's outside the laws of physics. But if it's not outside that, then the only thing standing in the way of accomplishing it is knowledge of how to do it. Now, we may not have. We may need to find the knowledge, or we may need to create the knowledge through experimentation and trial and error, the scientific method, et cetera. But in the terms for entrepreneurs, one of the things we're doing, and I'll just go back to this exact example, we are building a tech platform, an app. None of us have an app before. We are all operating outside of our, you know, our experience level. And there's going to be. We're going to be raising capital and we're going to be scaling up and we're going to be dealing with big data and we're going to be trying to sell this down the road to, you know, potentially people we're dealing with valuations, hell, we're doing right there. But we've seen that other people have done this exact same thing. It's not outside the laws of physics. So now it's just a matter of knowledge. So what knowledge do we need? What knowledge can we get or what knowledge can we borrow or access? And that's the other thing, like knowledge can be borrowed. You don't have to know everything if you know the people who do and if you can access that. So we can access people who've kind of gone before us, we can access podcasts and I guarantee all three of us going to be doing it. When it comes down to and valuing app based companies or whatever, let's start calling people who've done this before and position the scenario and ask for their help.

I mean, this goes back to even us joining you in this company that you acquired. You brought us upon into the company because we have specific knowledge, skill sets, experience in different ways, Matt and I as well, and then compared to you. And it's kind of cool because even with this tech build out, we're all working together, but more or less like, okay, that's more of your ball game to at least spearhead we're all working together. And now it's kind of like almost forming where us, Matt and I, our big skill sets are really making the website solid, filling all the holes, advertising, traffic, awareness, all that stuff, it all goes hand in hand. But we kind of, we're leveraging each other in different ways using all these constraints that we kind of already have in ourselves.

And we're working with a company who knows all the ins and outs of app development so we don't have to learn the tech of app development.

Exactly.

Yeah. Bingo. And you know, it's funny, the scientific paper that I was reading about what makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial and they talked about multiple principles on there, the three biggest principles, but one is just the affordable loss principle, which is how. The other one is that it's about strategic partnerships. And I just pulled it up and she says here entrepreneurs focus on building partnerships right from the start. In fact, the ideal beginning for a successful startup seemed to be the induction of customers into strategic partners. And how the. I'm just reading one more part that I highlighted. The expanding network of strategic partnerships determines to a great extent which market or markets the company will eventually end up in. So that was like, I thought immediately, how can we strategically partner together? And you guys saw the opportunity and you thought the same thing. But it just kind of goes back to, I mean, I guess it's good, you know, this is how entrepreneurs think and this is exactly how we naturally thought. So I guess it's validation that yes, we are entrepreneurs, but go us. It's that kind of, you know, it's. I gave a speech recently at our friend Nick Unsworth's Life on Fire summit and I talked a lot about this, like these mental models for thinking and mindset that solve a lot of problems. And I mentioned in the speech, I was like, you know, whenever I hear talk, people talk about it's mindset, it really matters. I get so bored because it's played out. But really it is the absolute key to it because all the other tactics are just the details. If you have the right mindset, if you have the right knowledge or you can get it, that's just details. But I think keeps us, everybody else from scaling up and being successful is blockages of either I can't do it or it can't be done, or I don't want to do it, or it's too hard or I'm not worthy. And all three of us deal with this crap.

No, I think I'm with you when I start hearing. We actually Joe and I did a duet podcast episode recently with no guests where we really focused on mindset type stuff. And I think I even mentioned on the podcast, like, I hate it when people bring up like, mindset is the key to running a business. We know it's true, but it is one of those things when people bring up like, oh, you gotta get your mind right. My eyes tend to glaze over and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this a million times. What I do get excited by is tactics on how do I shift my mindset once I under. Like, I know that my mindset is one of the things that holds me back. What do I do about it? And when I, when people start getting tactical with me on the mental sort of things, that's when I start to light up and get excited about the mindset concepts.

Exactly. And like mindset just gets so. What do you call it? It's just such a. It's just so overused.

Some people see like a woo woo element to it too. They're like, oh, yeah, that's just kind of woo woo, like intangible. You know, there are, there Are elements to it where you can go too far in the wrong direction. And, you know, one of. One of the examples that comes to mind is, you know, when the Secret came out, everybody was kind of thinking, well, if I just believe I'm going to have this, then I'm going to have it. Why the fuck haven't I won the lottery yet? I totally secreted the hell out of that lottery ticket number.

Secreted all day long. Well, there's a. I mean, a practical example is we just. Today, we just recorded with Danielle Towne, Phil Town's daughter, and she was talking about mindset and investing as being a big thing, but for her, it was very tangible. For one, she worked with her dad, who's experienced and supportive, but also carved out a whole year of just learning and said it's a practice, kind of like meditation or yoga is. Every day you're going to try a little bit of it, and you're probably going to suck a lot of it a lot of the time, but you're going to learn a little bit more. And then that mindset, that confidence in you gets a little better. You get a little bit more used to things, and you start quiet, questioning things differently and coming up with different ideas. And then you have that confidence kind of built over time as a habitual thing.

Yeah, it's tangible, that concept. Is it Robert Plank? Do you guys know Robert?

Mm. Mm.

No, I think that's his name, Marketer from a while back. But I just remember he had a. He used to wear a shirt that said suck less. And then the concept was you're going to. Anything you're doing in the beginning, you're going to suck at it. And your whole goal should not be necessarily mastery because you're gonna get really, you know, discouraged, but your whole goal should be to suck less and less and less every time. So pretty soon or after a while, you'll be suck less. The goal is to suck less until you are suckless.

Nice.

I thought that was kind of smart. And it goes, you know, all three of us play guitar or try to attempt guitar.

All three of us have guitars. We all own guitars.

They all sit in their office.

And I just remember not too long ago, I was trying to learn a song. I think it was a. I forget which song it was, but it was a really difficult song. And I started to play it. I pulled up the guitar tab and I just started chunking through it, and I hated it. I was like, oh, my God, I hate this. Why don't I just go Back to playing something I know how to play so that I can jam. But I really wanted to figure it out. And I just kind of noticed every day as I practiced for like 10 minutes on it, I would get a little bit better, a connection would be made, and I was starting to have fun just with those little connections. And I. In fact, I had more fun sucking at it and learning it every time, like one little piece of muscle memory would catch. I had more fun with that than I did once I was able to figure it out and play it. So putting that mindset of just enjoying the journey of trying to suck less at something can be very powerful. And by the way, when you mentioned mindset as a topic is kind of boring. But when you get down to the tactics. So you, you know, when we're recording this, right now we're on screen and we're viewing it. Other people won't see this, but I'm just going to hold it up. So in my little journal here, I've got a full page called my Mental Models. And I started to write out mental models, which I do like. That concept of things that I can go to time and again. They're almost like principles to remember and rely on that support what I want to do. And I'll just read a few of them without going into detail. But the 8020 is a mental model. If you understand that 20% of your inputs are responsible for 80% of your outputs. Right? Model, go back to it time and again. What's my 20%? I mentioned this earlier. I don't have to know everything if I know those who do. I've got a framework I call the WWW framework, which is who else has what I need? Who else needs what I have? What if and why not? And these are just questions I ask. It's like a brainstorming question that unlock potential partnerships. Price versus terms. If you're negotiating to buy something, a house, a business, it doesn't matter. Look, you can have your price. You can have price or terms. Choose one. If you get your price, I'm get my terms. I'll buy your business. I'll buy evergreen profits for $100 million. But I'm gonna do it over a hundred years. And there's gonna be. I'm gonna give you guys $100 for 99 years. And then in year 99, I'm gonna give you a thousand.

There we go.

Price or terms? So I just keep that in the back of my mind, right? It's a model that you can count on it's almost a rule of thumb. Leapfrog theory, access and influence. How to create a big idea. Start with no theory of constraints, feedback loops, reverse planning, minimally viable product, logical levels, simplification, validate it, pre sell it. Inversion. I've got like, I don't know, like 30 of these that I'm rattling off. These would probably all be great episodes of each one of them.

So you just figured out our next 30 like bacon wrapped hustle episodes right there.

I know exactly what's your, what's like the one, I guess before digging into any one of those. Is it like do you gravitate towards one because of your personality?

Yeah, you do the one I said that. The who else? What if? Why not? That's useful for me just because I'm the type of person who I do gravitate towards, towards other people first. Instead of like I'm going to create this, I go, how can I make this really easy? Like Tim Ferriss has a great question which is what would this look like if it were easy?

Yeah, yeah.

So I start to think, all right, who else has what I need and who else needs what I have? And I get really specific. I write it out on two piece a piece of paper. What do I have as it relates to what I'm trying to accomplish? Well, I have, do I have money, do I have contacts, do I have customers, do I have sales, product distribution channel, blah blah, blah, blah blah. I just list out all the things I have and I go really broad on this and then I list out all the things I need and then I try to, if I can make a direct connection, like I have this, I need this. It's like, okay, well for instance, I have this business that I just bought, but I have no expertise in it. Matt and Joe have expertise in it, but they don't have the business. And that was a very easy connection. I go, what if I got them to partner up with me? And then why not? There was no reason why not. So that was a very good example of solving a problem with a strategic partnership.

For sure.

We'll find out if it was a good choice in the near future. But it was a good example.

Exactly.

That was our choice of going to the app world as well. We saw like, hey, well we know where we kind of want to take this business and we saw that as a mechanism to get there much quicker.

Right. The other one that I've been going to a lot is the concept of access and influence and it's very similar, which is, I don't need to own it if I can access it. I don't need to have capital if I can raise it or if I can pre sell something. For instance, this app, like, hey, we're going to go raise money, but we can also. We have a big list. We can also kickstart it, and we can stuff like, how can I access money? How can I access information on this? Well, we've got people we're hiring to do this and other people that are already doing it, like Sean, who we talked to. And how can we access their experience? We don't have to have the experience if we can access it. Right? Like, that's a. That's a mental model that I go, I don't have to own it if I can access it. But then this. The other side of that is influence. So how can I. Because I can have access to everything in the world. If I can't influence other people to partner with me or buy from me or help me out, then I'm kind of screwed. So how can I influence them either interpersonally or in a mass level? Like, that's why I have my podcast, so I can one on one, but that I can also influence the masses with the sound of my buttery voice.

Sizzling voice, sizzling voice. No, it's so true, man. And the reason I asked about gravitating towards mental models, because you rattled out, like 30 of them. You said, yeah, it's like, do you think it's cool to gravitate to something you would naturally go towards? It's probably the easiest way in. But, like, would you challenge yourself to, I don't know, maybe tackle one that might not seem like you, but it opens up potentially some amazing things.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm always looking for new ones that I can kind of test once more. It's like you kind of go to them where my goal is to create a more exhaustive list. And then whenever I have a problem, I can pull this out and I can start to look through these and go, which one of these would apply most to this challenge or goal or whatever? And I go, oh, yeah, well, what if I. If I just did this, If I installed a feedback loop or if I. If I pre sold this, that would get me. That would get me there. It's once more. It's those print. It's like. Like Ray Dalio's principles, mental models and principles. And this circles way back to where we're talking about ideas. So this is. This comes back to, what are your criteria? So Your criteria for an idea is different than the constraints the constraints work with. But the criteria is what do I want and what does it look like? So it has to make. I may have to be very engaged. I may have to enjoy what I'm doing. So I don't want to do anything that I just hate. Right. Like, I don't believe in, or it's going to bore me or I'm going to get bored after a month. I've got to enjoy it. It's got to be potentially very lucrative. Maybe it has to make, like, maybe it has to make an impact on the world in a positive way. Maybe it doesn't. Like, not all ideas have to. Some of them are just like, oh, this will make money and won't hurt anybody. But maybe if you're going to spend your time on stuff, you're at that point in your life where, like, I'm not going to do anything unless it really adds a positive impact to the community.

It could be your motivation. Like, if you're not totally stoked on maybe the business itself, but if you know it's going to leave this kind of impact, that could be enough right there. Yeah.

And maybe it. Maybe the other criteria is I have to take myself completely out of it. Like, I don't mind working on it for the first month or two or whatever, or six months where I'm organizing all the pieces, but it has to be an opportunity that runs completely without me once I get it going. And that might be one of the criteria.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I love that front load, the work. But after that, it's got to be able to be taken over.

Yeah. And by the way, not everything has to be like that. And you can have criteria, like, let's say, just say you have five or ten pieces of criteria that are ideal. Like, these are the absolute most ideal. And then I think of them as almost like an equalizer on a stereo. So some of them are going to be cranked up to 10, some of them are going to be cranked down to. By the way, this is almost like that ice, how much confidence and ease. Right. So those are. Those are criteria, but you may have other criteria. And on a scale from 1 to 10, where does this fit? So there may be something that you cannot remove yourself from, but that's okay because all of the other criteria match at such a high level. You're like, screw it. If, if I'm highly engaged, I'm making a ton of money working with amazing people, and it's making an Impact on those around me. But it's going to require me to work 60 hours a week. Screw it. I will love those 60 hours a week. I'm willing to do it because it matches all my other criteria.

That's cool.

So I think knowing, like, spelling out what those criteria are is critically important. Same thing in dating. Like, you know, we're all married. So what are the criteria in, you know, dating? Well, ideally, we're dating a supermodel who would be a great mother, who's super rich, who's super smart, who fun to.

Be with, great and bad.

Yeah, no drama. Like, that's the ideal. But nobody's gonna match. Nobody's gonna be up to 10 on all of the equal, equalizer things. So you kind of pick and choose. Like, okay, she's all great. She's not a supermodel, but she's attractive. So, you know, where does it equal out? And is it good enough? Does it meet enough criteria? It's like, okay, I'm gonna put a ring on it.

I think your wife's listening to you behind you right now. No, I'm just kidding.

She meets all 10.

Damn right. That's a good answer.

Sort of shift in topic, unless you have something else on this. So one of the things that you and I were having a discussion about that was kind of lighten me up the other day was the sort of polymath concept, right? So one of the things that you and I sort of talk about that we've kind of beat ourselves up over over the years is how we've kind of like jumped from idea to idea to business model to business model to interest to interest.

Right?

Like, I. I love entrepreneurship and I love business, but I also really love, like, studying finance, and I really, really love studying, like, futurism stuff. And I really love studying, and there's like 15 different topics that I feel like I'm, like, not an expert on, but I'm like, you know, top interested in top 25% in the world. Like, interested and have knowledge on this topic. And that was something I actually used to beat myself up over is like, why can't I just stay focused on a singular topic? And I think you mentioned a book called Refuse to choose, which sort of helped me kind of mentally be okay with this sort of jumping around with interests all the time.

Have you started the book yet?

I haven't yet.

Okay. I'm about three quarters of the way through. Yeah, it's really good, dude. The polymath thing, which is just means really, like, many Interests or many learned doesn't have anything to do with mathematics. Like, it's like Da Vinci was a. Is the most famous polymath.

Yeah.

Not just slightly. You know, there's a degree. People who are kind of interested in a lot of stuff, like super shallow. But then there's people like us, I think, which are. We're interested in a lot of stuff, but we're kind of deeply interested in it. Like, we want to go down that rabbit hole. We want to be excellent at finance and excellent at this, this, this and this. And then we get very. Because we're naturally curious. We love jumping in with both feet to something. And that can be crippling because it keeps us from focusing in too much on one thing. But when you look at the most successful people out there, the most successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders and Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, they're all polymaths. They're all. People have deep interests. But I think the key there is to understand how to channel it and which ones to go down the rabbit hole on and which ones to go. You know, we don't have to make a living with every one of our interests.

Yeah.

Right.

You may be interested in, you know, 19th century literature, and that's a huge interest, but you don't have to make a living with it. You can make a living as a, you know, as an accountant.

Yeah.

Then be very interested in this as a hobby. Right. That's where hobbies can come in. But I also think that where the money is really made, or not the money, but the success, because they're not synonymous, is when you can combine the two of them and go, okay, I'm going to combine these two interests and create something, a connection that the world hasn't really seen. And now I might be the top 25 or 50% in skill set of this and then maybe this other one. But when I combine the two, I'm the top 1%.

Yeah. Yeah. And great example.

Great example how I started my first online business. So I had read the Four Hour Workweek. I was like, this is super cool online information marketing. I want to be a great marketer. So I started studying everything about marketing. And then I was also really good at doing bar tricks, like little bar magic, not cards, but bar magic, like making a dollar bill disappear or a napkin torn restored. And I was flirting with girls when it was happening. So I was a good flirt. I was good at bar tricks to win drinks and to just make girls laugh. And I was starting to get good at marketing and I read a Book called the Game by Neil Strauss about pickup artists. And he mentioned people using magic tricks to pick up girls, but he never talked about how or which tricks. And now I combined the three of these interests. Marketing, picking up girls, and magic. And I created my very first information product about how to use bar tricks to pick up girls without looking like a cheap magician who's using magic to pick up girls. I was like, I'm magic and pickup. I was not a pickup artist. I was dating my current wife back then. But I was good at flirting. And I just like, okay, I'm going to combine these three interests. And I created a product that did not exist. And I think my best year, it did like, half a million dollars in sales. And I was really excited. But it's using those various interests to combine them into something that the world's never seen.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Joe and I, we were having. We did a duet episode a few episodes prior to this one being released.

And.

And one of the things that we kind of talked about on that episode is if you look at the highest paid people on earth, the highest paid people on earth, the people that probably, like, have the biggest bank accounts, really, they're one of two things that I've picked up on. They're either polymaths, they know a lot about a lot, or they're entertainers. And it's really those two. Like, how many sort of technicians that have gone deep on a single subject, can you think of that are ultra wealthy?

Yeah, no, you're right. There's that. That whole. There's a whole concept of like, oh, specialization is better than specialists. Is being better than being a generalist because specialists will get paid more. And I think that's true only to a degree, but I think it switches at the top of the ladder. So in the medical profession, a heart surgeon makes more than a general practitioner. However, the owner of the hospital, maybe a doctor or whatever, who understands that, you know, who understands how to find that we need heart surgeons and we need gps and we need trauma nurses, and we need to see the way the entire thing ever more than everybody else. They're the ones who see the entire landscape. You know, for instance, and I don't. This doesn't even go to money. But the general who runs the whole battlefield and knows that everybody from the infantrymen, snipers, he's more important, more honored and more powerful than the Navy seal, sniper or whoever, because they have a good view of the entire battlefield work together. And I use this concept of. Because I've Been given the advice before, like, be a laser, not a floodlight. Because a laser, like, cut through steel and it's super powerful, but in a floodlight is just like, it's diffused light. But when you're lost, when you're in the woods, it's. You're at night, you're alone. If you're in business and you're plateaued, sales are stuck, the market's changing all around you. Competitors are starting to eat your lunch. Facebook algorithms are changing and everything else. You're kind of in this place where, like, it feels dark. Would you rather have a laser or a floodlight? You want to lay a floodlight to light up the path. And I know with my clients and in my. My life, that's my strength, is being a floodlight that can help path.

Yeah.

But then we all have the ability to focus that floodlight into a laser specifically. Like, I'm really good at, like, copy and messaging and positioning. I'm not as great at traffic, etc. Like, but I know how to find lasers and I know how to hire lasers.

Yep.

Matt, this goes to. Matt and I have talked about growth periods of a business and then profitability times of a business, and it's kind of these waves. And to relate to what you just said there, Brad, floodlight are maybe those points when you're testing new things. Yeah. You're trying to find a new marketing system. Something just broke or like you said, something you got rejected from Facebook or some shit. But so you had this floodlight time. You dial it up, you know, spread the light around. But then you maybe you find a couple levers that work really well from your testing, and you're like, all right, laser focus those two things out of, like the 10 you just tried.

Well, it's kind of interesting because, you know, we obviously we've got this podcast, and this podcast is sort of a, I guess you can call it like a floodlight podcast. We don't focus on specifically, just traffic specifically, just branding specifically, just copywriting, you know, mindset, any of those topics. We don't focus on any one of them specifically. So we're kind of casting a wide net to see what people are interested in. The things that we've noticed that people are most interested in have been traffic strategies. So what course did we go and release? We went laser focused on that training course, but we're constantly casting this wide net to find out where we should point our lasers.

Yeah, exactly. And you can always, now that you have a great understanding of all the Various traffic strategies, you can do them yourself, but you don't have to because you can be the owner of the hospital, you can hire the heart surgeon, you can hire, go run all the traffic and do it to your specifications or your criteria. And then yeah, it makes you more powerful. But you know, the flip side is as a consultant, as a service provider, it makes it harder to sell yourself as a floodlight because lasers are more fun. They're more, they're like, oh, I want a laser. It's like more powerful. That might not be what you need.

Well, a good way to solve that issue for you. If being an idea guy is looking at a distressed asset instead of maybe consulting, it's acquiring that distressed asset. Kind of like what you ended up doing with the beer business.

No, precisely.

Own the hospital.

And like you said, though, you don't have to be a laser and everything because you can hire the lasers. Well, that just tells me that if you're going to go the consulting route, you're probably better off being kind of more of a laser down in that specific route. Just because people are looking to hire lasers, they're not looking to hire floodlights.

Right. And that is the, that the other strategy there is to have that kind of like what is the tip of the spear? What is the thing that cuts through the noise and gets in there? It's very similar to in marketing, like a tripwire. What's that low dollar product that people just want? It's almost an impulse buy. It's so irresistible. Sell them at and you get it. You think of that as a laser and then you've built their trust and then you're able to have your back end and your other services, they don't have to be as sharp. They can just be good. I think they talk. Michael Masterson talks about this in Ready Fire, Aim. Did you guys ever read the book?

Yeah, a while back. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great book. A lot of entrepreneurs and info marketers have read it, but it's. And if they're not, they should. But he talks about how that tip of the spear has to be the sharpest thing. Everything else can be kind of dull. You can get somebody in like on a $50 or $5 product, but you should put so much effort into making that so fantastic that it blows them away. Like it may be your cheapest product, but it is your best because now you've got their trust and you can give them the back end. Can be relatively basic by comparison because you're not competing with everybody. Else who's trying to get their attention.

That's true. One example actually is our PAG course, the traffic course. It's very specialized and lasered on traffic or really it's audience growth. But when people get in, they don't only get that, they're getting this whole community where we're chatting about the latest and greatest and just business, a lot of traffic and audience stuff. But there's a ton of mindset and how to leverage and scale. And it's kind of like you attract folks into the thing that you know is most needed and then you can shine this floodlight. And for our case, we recommend a lot of tools, you know, like software tools to automate. So that becomes part of that floodlight approach there.

Travis Sago calls it chocolate covered broccoli. Right. You sell them the chocolate, but then you give them the broccoli that they actually need.

Right, right.

Tell them what they want, Give them what they need. No, absolutely. And it's a. Yeah, I mean that's a proven strategy.

Oh, and it's not like a. You're not like gimmick or you're not like pulling one over on another. You know, you're being strategic with that laser, but then you're also giving them the supporting things. In your case, if you're finding like a distressed asset. Yeah. Maybe you come in as a laser consultant on one little thing that you know is just like a no brainer. And then from there it's like the world's your oyster and you can just kind of take over the ideas in the business.

Here's what people don't really realize is usually the problem that they think they have, that they think they need solved with the laser is usually not the exact problem that they have. So for example, with traffic, a lot of people think their problem is traffic. I need more traffic to the offer. Well, are you getting some traffic now? Yes. Well, then you probably have more of a conversion problem than a traffic problem. Yes, traffic will help you. But let's work on the conversion element as well because that is a factor as well if you're already getting traffic.

Right, Exactly. Yeah. If you've got a high converting offer, traffic is easy to find. And it's like just building on what you said there, people, this kind of goes to theory of constraints where it's the problem you have isn't usually your problem. It's usually a symptom of a deeper problem. Right. So you think the problem is traffic. Well, that's really a symptom of crappy conversion. Because if your conversion was high, you would have affiliates sending you money. Everybody be talking about it. You send less targeted traffic and it still make money.

Yeah. Even with paid traffic like you could rent. If your offer converts really well, it's a lot easier to scale with paid traffic. If your offer is converting really well, affiliates are going to be jumping on board all day to be mailing about it. You know, if your offer really converts, you're, you know, you should be able to leverage your own mailing list, your own internal audiences right now to drive sales. You're right. I mean, not having a lot of traffic is typically a symptom of an offer. That's not kind of converting the way it should because otherwise traffic's really, really easy to figure out.

Exactly.

So from your perspective, being in this idea consultant kind of role for a long time here and specialized in, how do you. Let me just think about, like, if you're close to your own business and maybe you don't have access to someone like you, a Brad Constanto idea man. How do you separate yourself and think from an outside perspective about something wrong in your business that you feel like you're just like, shit, I can't figure it out. Can't get your. You're almost too attached. Are there any strategies of detaching yourself from your ideas?

Yeah, I mean, reaching out to, first of all, reaching out to other people. That's where getting mentors and coaches and advisors who can give you a secondary look. Because like, that's my biggest problem with my business is I can help other people with theirs a lot. And I'm so stuck in on mine. You know, I'm seeing the weeds. I'm not. What is it? I'm seeing the trees. I'm not seeing the forest.

Yeah.

And you know what? I think it's a lot like, first of all, that's why these external perspectives and second opinions to somebody like, I'll tell you what I see, you know, looking in and it's probably very obvious, but not to you. And I think of it, it's, it's similar to when we look in the mirror. Like we see ourselves in the mirror and other people see us on a daily basis. So when, when, when I look at you, Joe, for instance, what I see, I see in general, what you look like, I see, okay, good looking guy, got a little salt and pepper in this gray hair, got a beard, got a pink mic, got a pink microphone. When I'm looking at, I'm just talking about your face, number one I just realized it's Joe Fear. I know you. Yeah, salt and pepper hair. I can recognize you. Good looking guy and you got a beard. That's really what my brain is doing. However, when you look in the mirror, you're saying, oh, I've got a wrinkle that I didn't have before. I got more gray hair. Where did this pimple come from? And this hair is out of place, right? Because you're looking at a microscopic level at all your details. You look at yourself every single day and it's hard for you to see. You're not seeing the same Joe Fear as I see when I look at you. Because I'm looking at it with, I guess, softer gaze. But I might be able to see some stuff you're not seeing. Positive and negative. And it's the same thing in our business. I'm looking at all the little microscopic details of what's going on and I may be missing some really low hanging fruit to capitalize on. I might be missing some easy problems to solve. Some profit centers I could add with, you know, no effort because I'm thinking of payroll and accounting and conversion and how much traffic I'm getting. So that's why getting these external opinions is so important. That's why I love offering services as an advisor to individuals and companies who need this.

You're damn good at it too. If you can afford Mr. Brad, go get them.

Unfortunately, we do have time constraints. We'll definitely be doing another Bacon Wrapped Hustle. But. But before we wrap up, I do want to ask a couple kind of things that we did last time. We did a Bacon Wrapped Hustle, which was kind of fun. Talking about kind of cool stuff that we're working with now as far as like cool software tools, cool gadgets. We've got good books that we're reading. Maybe just kind of each of us could go around and hammer off some cool things we're excited about right now.

Let's do it under five minutes to keep it snappy.

Done.

So let's start with Brad.

So books I'm reading that are somewhat business oriented. I'm just opening up my Kindle right now. I am reading amazing book by Seth Godin. It's brand new. This is Marketing and Refuse to choose by Barbara Scher for all the Polymaths and the Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, which is really about creating those really special experiential moments that kind of blow people away. That's. So that's books I'm reading, but also Regarding Mental models, Michael Simmons, I discovered on Medium has a great course called Mental Model of the Month Club. It's pretty cool or something. If people are interested. I've been really diving into that and getting a lot out of it.

Yeah, no, I'm actually. Right now it's not a book, but I am reading the Polymath Mental Model. I've been working my way through that. What was the guy's name?

Michael Simmons.

Michael Simmons, Yeah.

I wanted to get more than. I'm gonna reach out and have him on my show.

Yeah, I mean, each one of those Mental models is like a book in itself. So I've been working through the Polymath Mental Model and then I know Joe and I are both working on this book called Get a Grip by Gino Wickman.

Yeah, yeah, that's really good.

That was referred by Carl Allen. So, you know, you're well aware of him.

Well, we told that, we talked to Carl Allen and we basically said one of our biggest problems is we like to go out and acquire businesses and add new stuff into the mix. The problem is we always just end up adding more to our plate. So every business we add, we see that as. Okay, we just stacked more shit on our plate and now we've got more that we have to deal with. And he told us, you gotta go read Get a Grip. That's gonna help you get past that. So that's what we're working through, right?

Yeah, Get a Grip. And that's a man, really, how to manage it from a high level. But then the other part of that goes back to those criteria. Remember, like you could set or we could set the criteria. Like, I only want to buy something that it either has a manager already in place that can do an earn out or there's a number two COO who we can promote to CEO and we don't have to manage it all. Another piece of criteria is it's got to have a certain amount of revenue every month that will pay to make sure that somebody is getting hired and it's paying for payroll. The business that we acquired violated that, those criteria.

Right.

Unfortunately. But so it hamstrung us a little bit more. So I think that's where those constraints set up. Constraints and criteria go, all right, well, I'm not going to buy another company if. If I'm going to have to run it or I'm going to have to go into my own pocket to pay for people.

So, yeah. And yeah, Get A Grip has been huge for me personally. I, Joe Rogan's, podcast is like, something that Matt and I just constantly refer to. And. And the episode that him and I nerded out with over the yesterday was the one with Duncan Trussell, the newest one. I love that one. He's still a few months old, and he talks about this whole polymath concept. In his scenario, he was going deep on learning just music in general and keyboard synthesizer type stuff. And he was more like, hey, if you go down that rabbit hole, he finds himself just reading all these other things because he's just curious.

And then you find things that essentially relate. So you might learn something about music where you're like, oh, I can tie this into my comedy somehow.

Well, and the cool thing that I don't think it was mentioned in the podcast, but Matt and I were talking about, we want to get a masterclass subscription where you're learning something. Like Tom Morello from Rage Against Machine. We're all guitarists. I'm like, fuck, yeah. I want to learn to play guitar like him, but I also want to learn from, like, whoever, like a composer or a storyteller in Masterclass.

And, yeah, like, Malcolm Gladwell teaches writing. Like, why the fuck wouldn't I want to learn how Malcolm Gladwell's process for writing works?

So we're actually. We're going to get a subscription.

Intimidates me about that. Is like, oh, man, I got to actually then go through it. I wish I could just download it in my head.

Well, that's the problem. So pick one. Yeah, so pick one.

Any sort of tools offline or online gadgets or, like, software that's like, kind of. You're kind of fancying right now.

Loving otter. AI use that voice notes. I think it's like 600. I sent this on Slack to you guys. Have you guys seen wave w-a v-v e.com no. Creating almost like Repurpose.

No. What is that?

It'll create. I'll send a link to you. It'll create cool little snips of, like, graphic equalizer stuff.

Oh, I missed that one. That sounds cool.

Yeah. For podcasts or.

I'll send a link back to you. Cool. I just got stencil, which is almost like Snapper or a canva.

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Are you liking that?

Yeah, yeah, I like it.

Okay, cool.

That's cool. And they have the. They have. Or had AppSumo did the lifetime link.

Yeah, that's.

I like that. Those are, I think, some of the main.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, for me, the tools that I'M using a lot lately. I use omnifocus. It's like I don't know how I ever lived without omnifocus. Now that I have it, it's kind of like a task management guys to.

Train me on that because I'm really bad at all.

It's a brain dumping tool. When you get a lot of ideas, it's great to just like dump your brain into this, dump all your ideas into it and then you can delete them and organize them and filter them and do all that kind of stuff later. And then there's like a task list element where you kind of set stuff for your daily tasks. And they can be recurring. So that's kind of like keeps me on track, making sure I just keep doing the monotonous shit every single day that. That I know has to get done. So that's one thing. The other one we use do and I both use a tool called day one journal. We're both big journalers. We tried doing the handwritten thing for a while and it didn't really seem to flow for either of us. So we went back to typing our journals in day one.

I do both. I do both journals like that. I literally have like three journals. So one of them is my morning pages journal and I'm writing like, like just brain dump stream of consciousness. Another one are my. A little bit more coherent thoughts.

Yeah.

And then the other one showed you. This big one is almost like a play journal. This is. It's much bigger and it's where I can maybe either sketch or just let my brain go and write big stuff out. So I've kind of got different mindsets for.

Yeah, I pretty much load all of that kind of stuff into single journal. So I'll do day one or morning pages. Sometimes I don't stick with it as much as I should, but I actually do have a handwritten journal and I'll hand write. And when I do handwrite it, I actually scan it and put it into day one so that all of my journals are sort of organized by date, no matter which format I wrote them in.

It's pretty cool. I mean, I wasn't a journaler. It took me a while to get into it. But day one just makes it easy. Or you could just upload images like you do Matt. You like, have a cool day with the kids or something. And you don't write anything, but you're like, oh, this is cool.

Yeah. And then the pictures sort of help you remember what happened on that day. So you can Add pictures. You can upload your written journals. It organizes by date. You can add tags to it. So I have tags in there of like, if I'm journaling mostly about business, I tag it with business so I can go back and see like my business journaling and personal journaling and, you know, I use tags for various other things as well.

Nice.

And then as far as, like an online software tool, I'm really still loving Wicked Reports. It kind of took me a while to understand how powerful Wicked Reports is, but now I'm like checking in on every day because that's where I'm finding out the values of our leads, the values of our customer, how effective our Facebook ads are, how effective our Google Ads are. You kind of get like the 30,000 foot picture of your business and what's working and what's not. Your cost, your value per customer and your cost per customer and your value per lead and your cost per lead. And having all that information and backing it out makes decision making for investments so much easier.

I'm glad there's nerdy guys like you to do that.

I know that's a lot of numbers.

Yeah, well, once you know your numbers, it's a lot easier to scale your business.

And I used Wicked Reports before and I like it, but it was a way to.

It took me like four months to figure out what the hell I was looking at, but I've kind of got my flow with it.

It's a great tool, but take some time. But on my side, it's weird, but I've gone back to the Colby a lot lately. My personal results, and I've said this on the podcast that we did the duet that. That has been a tool that I know the three of us have used, but I didn't really take the time to digest it. So just like you, knowing the numbers of our business, that's literally. I equate it to knowing my personal numbers and inequalities, the do's and don'ts. And it's. It's let me kind of release some pressure on myself that I was expecting myself to follow through on shit that I just personally shouldn't really be focusing on, giving myself freedom to think clear in different ways, which is really cool.

That's one of the biggest things I've done lately is just slow playing my morning dramatically and let myself think, feed, journal, think, think, think. I mean, we are ultimately paid to think and it's easy to busy work ourselves to death.

So I'm good, man.

Typically well, sweet. We got to go ahead and put the lid on this one. But everybody check that out.

Let me plug something real quick because in the.

This is our podcast. No plugging, no go for it.

Just going to do it in the near future. The date is not yet set, but I am going to be running a public version of my ideation intensives that I do with individual clients and companies. And we're going to be talking about the proper way to go through an ideation session. We're going to talk about how to apply these mental models constraint, like everything we've been talking about here. I am creating something that's going to be more publicly available. So if anybody has any interest in checking that out, do you mind if I give them the resource?

Do it. Go for it. Go for it.

So just go to baconwrappedbusiness.com BW Hustle stands for Bacon Wrapped Hustle. So I'm going to set up a page by the time we do this and if anybody is interested, I'll know that they came from this because I know you guys will be there as it is. So I just wanted to kind of get that out there.

Is this going to be the Bacon Wrapped Hustle Intensive?

No, this will be the idea intensive.

This is the idea.

You're trying to hijack his event, Joe.

He's hijacking a button bacon.

And we'll be dancing the hustle and drawing on flowcharts.

Love it. Love it.

We'll be there and it's going to be badass. So go there. We'll post that in the show notes. Was it baconrapbusiness.com BW hustle.

There you go. And we'll make sure it's in the show notes. So sweet. Sweet. We'll make sure. And also check out Brad's podcast, Bacon Wrapped Bitness Business Dot com.

And it's quite cool. It's quite nice. Good sizzling profits I think I'm going to do.

Once you guys are done editing this, I'm going to drop it on my show as well. We'll do a dual Love it.

Love it. So simulcast. So if you're listening on Bacon Wrap Business, Also check out hustleandflowchart.com True dat.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, y'. All.

Did you know that I didn't even know that was a URL. I thought it was just Evergreen profits.

You can go to either one. They'll both get you to the same place.

You'll find that this. All right, dude.

All right, guys, have a good one. And we'll Talk soon.

Sweet.

Peace.

Peace.

All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread, spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.