Austin Sams - The 2 Hour A Day Business

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Are you still in a flow, Joe?

I think so. Okay, Hope so.

Well, let's talk about our podcast that we're doing right this moment.

That would be good. That'd be a good way to angle the flow, huh?

Yeah, I mean, I just like to randomly start talking and then I realize, like, oh, wait, we're recording something.

Oh, wait, I actually clicked the button and we're recording. But I didn't know it. I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. See?

So today's guest we actually spent quite a bit of time with when he was in San Diego last time. We did. We did.

Who was that? Yeah, it was at the New Media Summit, Steve Ulscher's event about podcasting, so.

And he's not sponsoring this episode.

He's not. But you know what, Steve? We still love you. We'll give you a shout out. So Austin Sams is our VIP today on our show. And this guy. Yeah, we actually met him prior to New Media Summit because he was a listener. Still is, actually. He's not a listener anymore. I'll get into that in a sec.

But he gave up on our show.

He gave up on our show for a very good reason. And I'll tell you in about two seconds or two minutes maybe. But yeah, he actually works with us. We consult him on his future podcast. So he joined our pod Hacker masterclass, our training, and from there we just connected with him further. Yeah. In person.

Yeah.

And he gave us. This is really awesome. Cause I just saw this for the first time today. But he actually mailed us a book for his two hour a day business Playbook. And it is literally exercises. It's not like a book that you sit down and read through and there's a whole bunch of stories and tactics. It's a literal workbook.

And it's not bs. He actually does do this two hours a day.

Yeah, there's questions in here, and you go through and you answer all the questions. And by the time you get to the end of the book, you sort of have mapped out your. Like, your life.

No, it's true.

And that's@familyentrepreneurs.com. so Austin Sams, he's got a business where it's essentially an agency business that's kind of more productized. And he helps people do print newsletters, print newsletter mailings, and a topic very close to our heart. We do Print newsletters, ourself. And he managed to build a successful agency doing it and only working two hours a day. And so what we talk about on this is how do you kind of get into the right mood, mind space to only work two hours a day? What kind of things should you be focused on? You know, we talked a little bit about podcasting on this episode as well.

Yeah, we talk a lot about. I mean, just. Yeah, business models. Did you already mention that?

Oh, business models. That was a big topic.

Massive. So we were going to name this episode basically, like, hey, this is your best business model. Or like, this is. Yeah, basically like, here's your business model. But we went with the catchier clickbaity title of it, the Two Hour a Day Business.

Yeah, I mean, he named his book the Two Hour Day Business Playbook, and it's a really, really sexy title. So how are we not going to use that for this podcast intro? Because he's teaching people how to work two hours a day.

Well, Jim, you're listening right now, so I got you here, so thank you.

Thanks, Jim.

You're. Thank you, Jim. Sue listening to you too.

All right, so why.

All right, Sam's.

I heard something blasphemous.

Oh, that.

You just told me that he stopped listening to the show.

Yes.

And I'm pissed.

Yeah, well, I was pissed for the half a second until he said, yeah, it's because I love your EGP letter. Oh, that's great. The Epic Insider. Yeah, the insider club. Basically, he loves to read the notes for this episode, all the episodes, instead of listening to, like, an hour, which I don't blame him. If you don't have an hour, you know we love you. We still want you to subscribe and hang out with us at the end of the day.

This podcast. Our goal with this podcast isn't to get as many podcast listeners as humanly possible. Our goal with this podcast is to get these conversations and these tactics and these interesting people in front of as many people as possible. So if you're listening to it on audio, we love you for it. Thank you for tuning into our podcast. If you're reading this in note form right now, you're not gonna be hearing this translates into a note. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But if you're reading it in note form right now, we appreciate you just as much because our goal is to get this content in front of you in whatever form you prefer to consume it.

That's it. Yeah. So that's all to say that Austin actually told Us that. Yeah, he stopped listening to it because the notes and because the guy only works two hours a day on business, he loves to spend time on his family or with his family and just living a great life. And part of that is consuming content. But I think he kind of wraps that into his business time. So think about it. He's literally digesting. What did he say? He said something specific. I think we're gonna splice it in this episode. But essentially he can knock. He can read what, like two or three episodes within 20 minutes of notes.

Oh, yeah.

You know, using the letter that we sent in the mail. But the notes for you could experience that, basically, if you get the notes for this episode for free.

Yeah. But let me read Austin's bio real quick so everybody knows who they're listening to, and then we'll tell them how they can get notes on this episode.

Good call. Let's do it.

All right, so Austin Sams. He helps family entrepreneurs who value time over money, but who also need to support their family by sharing exactly how to leverage expertise into consistent income. So after running several multimillion dollar businesses for someone else, he started over to prove that he could create a highly profitable business from scratch without sacrificing his wife and kids. I'm glad he didn't have to sacrifice his wife and kids.

Horrible. I'm very happy they're around.

Yes. I'm glad he didn't sacrifice them. By applying unique strategies, he built a freedom business and now enjoys running a multi six figure business, working two hours per day.

Pretty dang cool.

Pretty dang cool.

And it's legit. He's legit. Yeah. He checks out. He passes the sniff test.

Why were you sniffing him?

I wasn't. We were at a brewery and it was. No, we weren't.

We were drinking beer. It's the end of the day we record these. If you don't know by now, you're probably tuning into your first podcast episode from us, but we record these intros at the end of the day and we're usually delirious and don't know what we're talking about anymore.

It's a very day we record one podcast and that day we have an intro that sounds nothing like these because we actually sound like we're on it. But. All right, so Austin's gonna be with us in a sec, but just know that you can get the notes for this episode for absolute free dizzle Free dizzle Freezel freezel freezel free lizzle frizzle.

You lost me.

It's free. Get them for free. Where do they get them? You're better at this.

Two places to get them. You could get them by texting the word comp c o m p to the number 38470. And thank you to all of those who have already done it. It's really cool to see people opting in through their text message on phones. So you can get these notes by texting COMP to 38470. Or if you go to hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p. You can get them there by opting in. And we'll shoot you a free copy of the notes for this episode, assuming.

You'Re there quickly, because I think these.

Notes are only available for about two weeks from the time the episode goes live. After that, they're gone.

Yeah. And yeah, just think about what Austin said. He values his time very highly. So these notes, I think it'll give you a little window into what we do for every episode, too. And you might want more.

You will want more.

All right.

That's the goal of getting you on a $15 a month membership is that you're going to get it and want more.

Want to stick around till the end of time. And that's about that.

Yeah.

So, but, you know, you'll love the, you'll love our duration.

You know, we should do.

Now we should probably stop talking.

Let's go talk to Austin instead.

Austin, welcome to the show, man.

What's up, guys?

How you doing? This is kind of a long ways coming because you've been, you've listened, you, you, you know, you followed around the different random stuff we've thrown out into the interweb world. And we've actually met in person, you know, at new media summit, which is super fun, super cool. And then, you know, we're just like, dude, come on the show. You're brilliant. You're doing something that most people are not. And just fresh perspectives that I think are going to be rad to talk about here. So thanks for being here.

Yeah, my pleasure. Looking forward to the conversation.

For sure.

So I'm curious. Let's reverse engineer this. How did you end up at New media Summit?

Oh, that's a great question.

How far back do you want me to go? I ran an info business for somebody else for seven years and, you know, was highly involved in the marketing world, direct response marketing, online marketing, even before all the funnels and the tools that we have now, you know, running automated webinar funnels back in 2009.

So pretty sophisticated. I don't. I'm not a programmer, but definitely a marketer. So, yeah, I put off podcasting for years and starting to see this wave that everyone's seeing with podcasting and New Media Summit. Seem like a great avenue now to. To just connect with great people. And we met there, and I'm really glad we did. You guys are. Are doing something really unique, and it was great to connect, and so that's how I got to New Media Summit.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's. We talked a lot about podcasting there. We. I mean, there's so many different cool things. I know you have one in the works sometime coming soon. What's that going to be called?

Yeah, it's Family entrepreneurs. So it's all about how to have more free time and be a successful entrepreneur, how you blend those. Not just balance and some strategies. I'm a strategy guy, and so I'm all about actionable tips to do that instead of just talking about, yeah, we need to have more time. But, like, how do you actually do that?

For sure. Yeah. And just through the dinners that we had together with the groups and all that stuff, it was like, you were that common dude that there's always, like, someone at, like, a conference that you connect with or like a couple of people that you just gravitate to. And that was pretty much us, you know, with you during New Media Summit, it was just because it was like we would learn so much, obviously related on a ton of things. There was just constant fascination, like, you with your processes and your thinking, and that's where we're like, okay, cool, let's make it official and actually record it, because we definitely should have earlier.

We went to dinner each night together of New Media Summit. Like, each of the nights, it was like the three of us, and we would grab somebody else to come with us.

That's what it was, right?

That's what I remember. Yeah, it was like, why don't we just record that conversation we just had and let other people listen? Here we are. So let's kick it off.

That's it.

Your background is interesting, so let's go there, because I think it sets the stage for your business model, your lifestyle, and how you run every, you know, your business as a whole in life. So I don't want to keep it super broad, but where'd y' all start? And, like, what kicked off this whole journey for you?

Yeah, so I did entrepreneurship as a major in college here in Arizona, which actually was a bad thing, sort of I mean, it helped me understand how to assess a business from a very analytical standpoint, but it didn't teach me any real world skills about how to get out there and sell and get customers and clients and do marketing. You know, all the marketing that I learned in college was focused on corporate advertising when you have a huge budget. So I have a degree in entrepreneurship and also in marketing, but I've had to unlearn, I tell people, unlearn a lot of the things that they taught me because it didn't apply. So I actually took a job at a corporate company right out of college and just to buy an engagement ring for my now wife. But that was never a good fit. I mean, I was like always the guy who wanted to start his own thing. And they saw that and they were like, yeah, this probably isn't a good fit. So, yeah. Then from there I said, I worked for seven years running someone else's information business, learned a ton, got to wear so many different hats and be involved in that business. And then about four or five years ago, went out on my own. And that's a story we can dive into if we have time.

We will, I hope, because I think it's fascinating. I remember that's what really triggered my fascination with how you run your business is the business you were running for seven years, like you said, for someone else. And it seems like that left the biggest impact, but also perspective shifts for you.

Well, I think there's a lot of people who listen to this show that are probably listening while commuting to their job, you know, sort of game planning the day that they're gonna leave and go out on their own. So I do think hearing the decision making process and the struggles that come along with finally taking that leap and going out on your own, I think that's really important to talk about. I mean, Joe and I have both talked about it. It was probably the scariest, some of the scariest days of our entire lives when we decided to make that leap and go, okay, I'm on my own now. So I do think it's something that we should get into.

Yeah, definitely. I think just to piggyback off that, like, a lot of people hear my journey in the last four or five years and they think I'm really brave. So I quit my job four years ago, one month before my first child was born, and lived off my savings for a year to kind of bootstrap my current company. But I also worked for way too long for the employer. I mean, I got a Lot of experience, as I said. But I had a lot of freedom to test things to a point. But then it just came to a thing where my creativity just wouldn't.

It wouldn't allow to. It wouldn't be possible to change that person's business to what I wanted it to be. Because I'm always creating and testing things and I just ran into some roadblocks. So yeah, I waited a while, but then once I knew, I knew. And so I don't know. Any advice I would give to people is like.

Don'T live another day or another week thinking it's gonna be better someday. I mean, by all means, if you have a good job and you're making money, what I tell people to do is bank as much money in your own startup fund as possible and self invest in your own business. Cause you don't want to dilute your ownership and give away part of your company. You want to be 100% is my take on it. But. So, yeah, you know, use your job for now, but as soon as you're just like, I got enough, just, just go for it anyway. We can talk more about the strategies I use to actually go for it.

Yeah, that's where I was curious is like, well, yeah, I mean, I think it's only fitting to do that now is did you have like a road, I guess a game plan, like a target in mind when you're working for seven years for that other guy's company?

Well, I thought it was going to be a part owner and that was kind of changed. And so that's. That was the nature of me leaving. So it was interesting. I said I hit some roadblocks. There is. I was trying to change different aspects of the business there. And it was like an existing business that had been around for a while and I did change parts of it. We had an information product company that we transformed into more of a software as a service company. So we were selling, you know, at one point we were shipping CDs just of information and marketing tools. And then I changed it to an online membership website with access. But we also added some other software tools and we, you know, changed that whole business model into more of the SaaS model that most of your listeners are familiar with. But there was other things I was trying to change and those were just kind of like I wasn't the owner. So I didn't get the decision making. So when I went out on my own, I said, you know, how am I going to provide for my family, number one, but how Am I going to do it in a way where I'm going to have a life once I get an income stream? I was always aware of that. And it really came down to the business model. People talk to me a lot from the strategy side and they're like, what's the most important thing? Is this traffic source? Is it this price point or is it this copywriting technique? And I'm like, at the end of the day, it's the business model. Because even from the start, you don't exactly know what business model is going to work, by the way. So you need to test and optimize. So I'm pretty clear with people on that. But you need to have some thought with it because if you end up being successful, you could be a victim of your success and make a lot of money but not have time. Or you could not make a lot of money but still be working at it. So I'm really keen on telling people to really think strategically about their business model.

Yeah. And that leads in obviously to the big topic that we wanted to chat with you about, because I think like you said, it starts with the business model and that extends to your life and family life and whatnot. But it's crazy that you had that perspective too. And I guess it's a blessing that you worked there for so long. You saw, I don't know what the culture was like there. Were you guys working a lot, like all the time?

Yeah.

I mean, I got paid the salary of three people because I did, you know, the job of at least three people. And some of that was smart automation and technology. Right. Like hustle and flowchart, baby. Yeah, man, you gotta, you know, you gotta systemize. And I would, I automated the guy's whole business. You know, we took it from, you know, offline follow up to online sequences, like I said back in 2009. So it was a journey to get there. But yeah, it was a lot of marketing systems. So that's really what I took away from that experience was you can systemize a business to fit your lifestyle better.

Yeah, yeah. It's a huge perspective.

So you were in this job for seven years and then you quit. And so you've got your business model now. Why don't, why don't we talk about what your business model now is and then maybe you could fill in some of the gaps about like here's some of the iterations that didn't work because you said that you kind of didn't, you didn't land on the perfect business model from day one, I'm assuming based on what you've already told us. So what is the business model of the day? And then what are some of the, you know, the hurdles that you had, you climbed over getting to it?

Yeah, let me do it in reverse order because I think it actually be more clear. So let me talk to you about a couple of the failures because it was important. I wasn't in a position to fail at the other company because the previous owner didn't allow me the flexibility to just try something. He didn't want the company to go under. But I wouldn't try anything that risky. So when I went out on my own, I needed to provide for my family. But I said let me give myself a year to just test different things. And I sold things online. I did the whole E commerce thing, both Amazon Fulfillment, you know, and off of Amazon. And it was, it was okay. And I learned some things and I did other, you know, consulting projects. But what I landed on was to bring money in quickly. I just did consulting. I did marketing consulting for a different industry that was somewhat related.

I think a service is a lot easier to sell. So if you want a quick win, if you want a quick business model strategy, you know, sell consulting, figure out what, you know, write it down, write out the wins you've had in your career, whether it's 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, and see who that experience and expertise who could be valuable to and just go contact them. You know, you don't even need to run any advertising campaigns. I just started contacting people in my local area, like all the way from mostly email and direct mail, but I would make some personal visits and you know, and just say hi. And I was just trying to make it work. So consulting was the first business model that really got an income.

So were you going and essentially offering advice and telling them what to do or were you actually getting into their business and helping them build stuff?

So I did a multi step process, right, Direct response marketing. So I sold the discovery meeting first, you know, so I said here's who I am, I think I can help you. If you're doing marketing, I can help you understand if it's working or not working and what you could do to test better. So that was the offer right there in a nutshell. That's a good swipe for anyone. And then.

I did like the discovery meeting. I think the first few I did free, but then I started to charge even like 500 bucks for a two hour meeting and that was great. Because then you get a deep dive on someone's business and you can say, what have you done? What have you tested? And then you can see where there are gaps. And from a marketing perspective, there's always gaps. And then you can offer that advice and then see what makes sense from a time perspective to test new things. And anyway, the story goes that there was a dental specialist in my city, where I live here in Tucson, who hired me. And I didn't know what his particular specialty practice was, but he basically paid me to learn and track what his other marketing people that he had hired did. And we found one thing that worked really well. And I said, hey, why don't we spin this off into a separate service and instead of me being consultant for you, let me be a service provider. Because what I didn't love about consulting as a business model is some of my consulting clients weren't where I live, they would require me to travel. The schedule was always their schedule, when they wanted to meet, when they didn't have obligations. And oftentimes that was in inconvenient times for my family. So even though I needed an income, I was always like, I'm going to do this around my schedule. And I set that boundary early. And part of that was when the one thing we tested worked really well and we spun it off into a service. Then I was like, I'm going to make this what I want it to be. And I was very intentional about that. And I've got some things I'm teaching people now of what I've done, but it's a customized service. But you can't customize everything with the marketing that I produce for people. And I think that's a big mistake for anyone selling marketing services or just services in general. You know, like the scope of what people offer from a consulting or service provider basis is often way too broad. And it ends up where people hate their life because they're, like I said, they're working too much or not making enough money and the business model doesn't serve them. I don't know if that answers the question fully, so go ahead and shoot me some follow up questions.

Well, I think that's good because you set the bar well. For one, you provided a really cool swipe that will be in the notes that we publish for sure. But I think it's also smart to know to not maybe disqualify as many people as possible, but focus on what those offerings are. What is it that you're an expert in that you're going to do and then like it sounds like you had an upsell to some type of service or maybe you're referring to others to execute some of this stuff.

Well, I mean sort of. It was kind of fuzzy in the beginning when I was doing consulting. I was just trying to figure out this person's industry. I had a lot of skills in marketing, but not in their industry. And so that's not always the case. You know, if anyone's listening, this is a marketing consultant. You know, they, they could probably target people in their same industry. I just wanted to try something different than I had done before and so that, that was that.

Yeah. So I do think one of the big key takeaways from what you've just been saying though is really the, the simplicity of the, the outreach that you did. I mean I think so many entrepreneurs, so many consultants, so many info product sellers get hung up on tactics and automations and I've got to have this, you know, seven day follow up sequence and I got to drive them into it with a Facebook ad and, and then I need exit pops and blah blah, blah blah blah. You're just like, no, screw that. Find your ideal audience and just email them and see if what you have resonates with them.

Yeah, I call it the go to them strategy. I like that trademark.

Yeah.

It's funny how and I have all this experience on doing automated funnels and I'm like no, let's keep this simple. I actually think that's the biggest thing I see now is there are so many tools and it's so easy that everyone's enamored with this sort of like 30 step multi sequence follow up funnel. And it's like no, like my current business and the one I've bootstrapped the last three years.

It runs off of like a two, maybe three step funnel. Like I have a single landing page that people go and they watch a video before they even opt in. And then I didn't have this at first by the way, but like once I started selling this as a service to other people in different states, I just send them cold emails, direct mail letters to direct them to a one page landing page. I have a 30 to 45 minute video explaining who I am and what I do and then I've got a link to schedule a call and then I get on the call and I pre qualify them. It's a, is this a good fit call? I explain my fees and they either want to do it or not. It's pretty clear. So that's my Funnel. And this is coming from a guy who can build the 30 step sequence funnels with automated webinars. And I'm like, yeah, you don't need it.

Well, it's so smart too, because if it works at that basic level that, like, let's just reach out and see if people want it, then the likelihood that it's going to work by adding in automation, automation just makes your life easier. But you gotta prove the concept first. You gotta prove that people actually want what you're offering. And I do think a lot of people get caught up in this trap of, here's what I'm fascinated with right now. So I'm gonna go out and sell this and I'm gonna try to sell them on why they need this, as opposed to looking at what other people's problems are and saying, I've got a solution for them. I'm gonna reach out and put that solution in front of them. I think people handle marketing backwards in that sense.

You get what I'm saying? We all know what I'm saying. But people will go out and they will create a product and then try to force people to buy that product by saying, here's why you want this, and trying to sell them on why they should want this. Where you're just going out and saying, okay, I've got this skill set. I know how to fix these things. Let me go find people that have these problems and offer to fix them for them. Yep, that's it.

And that's what's really cool. Yeah, you're meeting them where they're at and showing them what's possible. And you're giving a lot of value, it seems like, with this video. So I'm sure you're not just pumping your chest, here's what I'm going to do for you. But here are some. Maybe you're educating throughout that entire video. It's very similar to how we're doing it with chatting about podcast consulting. And you get the best people. I feel like you disqualify the folks that you don't want to work with because they're taking the time with you and committing to a call and whatnot. Then on the back end, it sounds like. And we kind of know. But you have this amazing systemized process that appears to be like a service, but it's actually a product. Would it be a good time to go into that or.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think most of the people listening will be familiar with the SaaS business model. You know, software as a service and that Business model is largely where they take a product software tool and they sell it as a monthly, you know, payment and they try to bundle in other things to justify that, like whether it's support at different levels or the big thing is now they make it web based and they have ongoing updates, right? Instead of. It used to be where you buy the software in an actual box at a store and you put in a cd, but then they made, now they have digital downloads and web based, like we just said. And it was great for the software companies because they were able to create a recurring revenue stream, which I'm all about.

From a business model standpoint, there's nothing better than recurring revenue. But how you, you know, what you provide for that recurring revenue can be different flavors. And so I looked at the SaaS industry and like I said, taken a publishing company that I worked for before and kind of transitioned it more into a SaaS company and I looked at this marketing service that I had a market for now and I said, oh crap, I want to provide this because it's highly valuable. But again, I have these parameters on how I want to live my life that I'm not going to break, like how many hours I want to work. I mean, even things like I'm not going to travel, I will not like travel to sell people, I will not take on a client I don't want. I will charge exactly what I think it's worth, regardless of whatever the market, you know, the market norm is for this type of service. And so I had all of these rules that were very intentional. I said, how do I do this? And I came up with this idea of, well, what if I take what's traditionally a marketing service business model and think about it from a product perspective. So if a product business, let's take publishing for example, if someone sells you a book, there's hardly any ongoing service, right? Maybe you don't like the book and you can call someone and return it. But you buy a product and you bought the product. If you don't return it, it's yours. So I was intentional about how do I make a service as much a product business as possible and charge a monthly recurring.

You know, not a retainer, but a monthly recurring fee for the service I was providing. That was important to me. I wanted consistent income. I've got now got two kids, but I just had, you know, the one baby at that point and my wife quit her job too. So I needed, needed some consistent income. But I didn't want this service business to run My life. So to catch people up to speed with my thought process, didn't like consulting. Move to marketing services. Marketing services has its limitations because if you sell custom marketing services, you can charge a lot. But people want to change everything. And every project is brand new. And so I said, forget that. I'm going to define, here's the exact marketing template I'm going to sell. And everyone gets the same template. And about 30% of it they can change. But I dictate what they can change, how they can change it. And part of that is great positioning because if you are selling a marketing service, you're the expert, right? You're not going to them and saying like, well, what do you want to do? You're like, no, I've tested this. This works. Plug your business into, you know, plug your name and photo into what I have found work. So that was my product. And then the way I say it's product as a service model, I sell it as an ongoing service. And this is really key. I want to slow down here for a second. I don't do like a custom website one off. I don't do a custom marketing campaign, whether it's direct mail or an email campaign. I am only interested if someone is willing to sign up for a specific frequency of. Let's send out direct mail letters eight times a year to this group of people, like, forever until you tell me to stop. And that's really key. I talk to a lot of people who are like, man, I'm constantly making these customizations and every project is different. And I'm like, yeah, because you didn't design it intentionally in the beginning. Sure, you're gonna lose people that could be clients, but you're gonna gain your life. And that's ultimately what you guys are hearing. I'm all about, like, it's not really about how much money you want to net. It's how you want to net a great life.

So these templates and these things that you're providing for your clients, I don't know if I totally caught it, but what sort of templates are they? Are they like webpage templates, email templates? Like, what sort of things are you providing?

Yeah, I wanted to make this something that people wouldn't just take my specific business and think doesn't apply to them. So I'll share exactly what I do. But.

If you're thinking this doesn't apply to you like it does, you just gotta be creative, right? So I sell a newsletter service and it's very basic, you know, Way to say it. And so believe it or not, it's a direct mail newsletter. Who comes up these days, old school.

From a dental specialist to another dentist to get a professional medical referral. So it's super niche, super highly specific. But the idea is that.

Hold on, where am I going with that?

So I was asking about what sort of templates that you provide and that's.

Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right, the templates. So it's a newsletter service. Okay, that's what I wanted to say. So another thing that I did that was very intentional. If you sell marketing services or even services in general, let's broaden this out. You never want to be the category that people want to put you in. So I'm selling a newsletter service. I don't call it a newsletter. I don't sell a newsletter service to my prospective clients and my actual clients. I sell a marketing system to provide a result that they want.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It just so happens that the vehicle to provide that result is a newsletter. And that is a huge mistake from positioning and charging what you're worth that a lot of people make. I'll give you one example. So there was a guy I was talking to who he's a photographer and videographer and he does, you know, high end websites and visuals for independent resort owners. And he wanted to do an Instagram service. And I was like, dude, don't call it an Instagram service. You know, call it like the more bookings service, because that's what an independent resort wants. It doesn't matter that the way you get the More bookings is Instagram. Yeah, you can go into that later. So, yeah, to answer your question, I sell a newsletter template that it has the appearance that it's 100% customized. I mean, my clients, and I'm not like pulling one over on them, I tell them, you know, like, you get the same template, but again, it's because I've tested it, I take that positioning on why I do it.

Well, this is perfect. It's a new mechanism that you're showing them that they can't really find anywhere else. They can't really identify it even they can't put a definition on it until they're talking to you deeper down into learning about the specific deliverables and what you offer. And then it separates you from any pricing. Like you were saying earlier, you're not nowhere near others. They can't compare it.

Yeah.

There'S some good angling there. I almost think that the fact that you are sort of rigid with the templates of, like, you can only change these elements, but don't touch these. That sort of rigidity to it can actually become a selling point. You can go to them and say, we've tested this stuff. This is what works. This is the most effective method. You screw with anything other than the 30% that I tell you to screw with, you're going to make it less than effective. So just follow the process. I'm making it easier for you. Don't make it any harder.

Right.

And that actually becomes a selling point, that it is rigid. Yep.

Yeah. That's why people buy, because I've tested it and also because I make it easy for them. Right. Because it is a service. They really like that aspect, that it's done for them. Or the done for you is what usually people call it the done for you services.

Done for you services are really easier to sell. Right. People just want things done for them versus them learning about how they can do it. And we can go into that more. That's a whole other conversation about business models. I really think you should have both to maximize what you're doing, maximize your revenue, but there's limitations with that, how you want to operate your business model, your personalities and how you do that. So I don't know if you want to go down that tangent.

No, that's totally exactly where we should go right now.

This is. You're so tapped into what we're doing, like, literally so by the week almost, it feels like.

Well, well, I was gonna say what you were just saying just like a moment ago, where you were talking about how you're not selling a newsletter service, you're selling a new system to add additional revenue to your business or to generate new leads into your business. You're selling them a new system. And that's a realization around podcasting that we really only had maybe a month ago. Like, quite honestly, we've been trying to tell people you need a podcast. Here's why we're the guys to talk to for podcasting. Hammer, Hammer, Hammer this podcasting stuff in their face. And lately, the last, like, month or so, the angle's completely shifted to, like, we've got a mechanism where we work one day a month. We're making thousands of dollars a month off of this thing that we only put one day a month into. Do you want this for your business as well? And we stopped selling the. The podcast element of it, and we started selling the. This is a system that you work one day a month. That can generate X amount of dollars for you, you know, based on your efforts. But do you want access to this system? And that new angle of how we've sold it has just sort of skyrocketed the sales and also the interest in what we're offering.

Yeah. And to you were saying, Austin, about our personalities, this is where it gets interesting because we're doing that new mechanism, new angle that is a lot more of a tangible result with a new way of going about it. But with personalities, we have pretty much kind of split the business a little bit where we are offering more of the service side of things. But it's a service very influenced from you and the fact that we have our own pieces that we can arrange that we know work well. And there are things that we've done in the infospace and all we're doing is arranging pieces, but customizing it within that 20 to 30% like you said. But even all the way down to initial roadmaps or like, here's your strategy before maybe any other services can come. And it's exactly your model. It's what you're saying right here.

Well, I mean, even one of the nights when we were at dinner, you probably saw me and Joe, even like we didn't like argue or fight or anything, but you saw a moment where him and I weren't seeing eye to eye on stuff. Right. Because I've always been very sort of info product system based. Let's just teach, let's just drive traffic to what we're teaching and we can make as much money as we want doing that. And you know, Joe's really always liked the agency, the consulting, the more hands on personalization with people. And that's always something that I've sort of shied away with. And that's a, it's been a little bit of a point of a contention in our business where we've butted heads a little bit.

Right.

But the thing that we realize lately is, well, if Joe's personality enjoys that and my personality enjoys this, why don't we just do them both? And Joe focuses on that and I focus on that. So.

And they're fused together because they're all the same thing. They're just different modalities with different intentions too. And they all. Everything blends like a hybrid. So it's cool that you pointed that out. And I know Austin, you know, you're just nodding, you're like, yep, I saw that. Yeah, I saw that.

So we wanted to set that up a little bit since we're going to start talking about personality traits and the ideal business model based on personality traits and things like that. So we kind of set you up with our personality traits and what we do and don't enjoy.

That's right.

But let's go ahead and, and dive in and let's get your thoughts on it.

Yeah, I mean, just in terms of personality traits, like the going down to the basic thing. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? You know, do you get energy from talking to people or does it, is it fun? But it may be drains you, you know, indicating you're an introvert. If you have a service based business, you're going to have to talk to more people. Maybe it can be minimal. And if you do the model I've talked about, you know, product as a service, you don't have to talk to your clients very much because there's not a lot to talk to them about. So there are ways to transform any traditional business model into what you want. But yeah, you need to be aware that certain business models have limitations. And if you are an introvert or an extrovert, you need to be aware of those. Yeah, maybe if you're a super introvert and you just want to hole away in your office and just create content. Matt, you know, give yourself some credit.

No, you're right.

Maybe, you know, building an information business is about building authority. And if you're going to build it as a real business, it takes time. You know, it takes content, it takes frequency, it takes time. And so it's not the same thing as just offering a service to someone and just going and talking to them and say, hey, I got this result for someone else. Do you want me to get this result for you? And you need a little bit of credibility, but not necessarily the long term authority that you need. And so yeah, that just lends itself to different personalities in terms of talking to people, also in terms of how willing you are to stay the course in the long run and do the same thing. You know, certain personalities are okay doing the same thing every day, every week and other people want to be very creative. And actually this is good that I brought this up at this point because a lot of people hear my product as a service model and they're like, oh, but I want to do the custom work. You know, like I'm a marketing person and that's my personality, you know, to just do the custom work. And I'm like that's fine, but you're not going to have a life and if, if you want to spend more time with your family, which I'm all about, like your clients are going to drive your business and you're going to go crazy instead of, and maybe you like crazy, that's fine. But I like to be creative in other ways. Right. So like I like to be, write different things and, you know, do my own podcast. But from a money making standpoint, I'm like, no, I'm going to just decide what I want that will fit my personality. So like I said, I, I don't travel, I don't talk to people more than, you know, minimally, mostly through email. And yeah, set it up around your personality.

It's great. Yeah. And it just seems like that's just, that's just a good formula to a sustainable business because like you were saying, you have to stay the course. And if you're, if you're almost too one sided, it has to be a balance over time. Staying the course can be really tough if you're just like, hey, I'm going to try to grow an authority online through blogging. If you have no prior experience or authority, it's like, you better have a good game plan for a while to build that up.

I also think monotony is the destroyer of passion. I think if there's anything in your business that you just find you're doing every single day, day in and day out, and it starts to become monotonous, then that's something that you need to figure out. How to automate, how to outsource, how to delegate. That's, that's where I think a lot of the lone wolf type people really miss the boat is they think that they should be doing all this stuff, including the monotonous stuff that literally could be done by anybody. And I think if you find yourself doing the same stuff over and over and over again, you're going to lose your excitement for the business really, really fast. So I think, I think not only is delegating and automating and outsourcing, all that kind of stuff, like freeing up your time, but I also think it's mandatory for your own mental headspace. I think for you to continue to enjoy your business, it's a mandatory step. I don't think you can run a business forever just doing everything yourself.

Yeah. And I will say, you know, for lifestyle, for your life, you know, not only for your business to do well, but for your life to do well, for people around you, like your family to do well, you need to be happy. And I would even go so far as saying, if you have customers or clients, your business needs to make you as the business owner, happy because they're gonna feel that, you know, you're not gonna provide the best service or put out the best product if you're unhappy. Right. Like that has a trickle down effect. And we're talking about personalities, but really where my mind goes is it's really about defining what you want in life before you define, you know, what that looks like from a business standpoint. A lot of people, yeah, a lot of people come at this from a personal development, you know, standpoint. Like, and they will say things like, well, what do you want? Right. You probably have heard that before. And, and that's, you know, goal setting programs and personal development programs, all that is essential. But getting back to like the business model that will serve the life you want is what I see is more like the foundation. It's almost like a house. I've been thinking about this analogy where if the foundation is under house, you know, it's the cement slab. And then the personal development that's essential for the life you want to live is the frame. You know, the business that you have supports that frame. It's like the cement slab under the frame of a house. Because, you know, like, you could, you could do all the personal development things. You could wake up at 5am Every day, you could drink water, you could exercise, you could do your gratitude journaling, you could do your meditation. But then if you're beating your brain out because your business model's wrong, because you're not making enough money or you're working too much, it's not going to support any of the personal development things. And you're just going to have to keep, you know, running the traditional analogy of a rat race. So that's why I come down to what do you define what you want in your life and then see what business model would fit that. But then be creative about the business model. Be a little unreasonable that even if you see examples about what other people are doing, you don't have to do exactly what they're doing or just what a coach tells you or a guru makes you think you should do. You can run a service business like a product business, you can run a product business like a service business, like there's a way to do anything that will serve your life and just to circle back, if it serves your life, it ends up serving your customers and clients better as well. So it's not just about putting yourself before them.

I think that's great. And building that foundation like you did when you quit your job, you had that already in your mind. That intention probably wasn't perfect, but at least you had a general framework to work around. You're like, cool. No, no, no to these things, which are the most important. Yes to a few.

Like you said, I think people just approach things a lot, just backwards in general, and they're thinking offers, offers, offers. But it's really model, model, model, with your values and belief systems and all that wrapped under that.

Yeah.

And speaking into what you were just saying about being more creative with the business models and not trying to do what you're seeing everybody else doing. Joe and I were actually having that discussion literally yesterday on the phone about how the business models that we're doing for our business right now are working out pretty well for us. Where we've really struggled, where we've had the biggest issues with our business, is when we've tried to, you know, funnel, hack others. There was, like, a phase where we were trying to sell our EGP letter, like, three years ago, and we saw Frank Kern had a newsletter coming out at the same time, and we saw the way he was marketing his newsletter through this, like, webinar process where you were going through these, like, handful of webinars, and by the end of it, you were sold on his newsletter. And we're like, that's the way to do it. Let's model that. We tried to model him, and it just completely bombed on us. It just did not work at all.

It actually even put it wasn't us. I think it kind of. It just rubbed people differently than what we normally like. It was just a totally diversion from the way we sell and communicate. And because we were modeling someone so damn close.

And that's just one example.

That's just one of many. Yeah.

There's been so many times throughout our career where we're like, look what Russell Brunson's doing. He's crushing it with this campaign or whatever. Right. Let's try to model that in our business. And anytime we've tried to model other people is when we've had the least amount of success. It's always been the times where we're like, what way are other people not even thinking about doing this? Let's turn a podcast into a physical newsletter somehow. How can we do that? Nobody else is doing that. It's like when we start thinking of random things that other people haven't really been doing or we haven't seen other people do, that's when we Start to see our successes.

Yeah. Let me underscore this and hopefully this doesn't get too philosophical, but I want to underscore this by saying the most important thing, the most important decision for any entrepreneur, in my opinion, is multi layered. So it's deciding what you want as an entrepreneur from your life first. But the next layer is like, what we're talking about here. Deciding that you are the only person that matters for the way you want to operate your business. Not some coach telling you how to do it, not some guru that you saw who was successful, not some business partner.

I'm right here.

Yeah. So that decision, like, do you believe that you could operate a different business model than anyone else and be successful? Like, that's a decision about belief and a belief in yourself, you know, because, you know, Joe, you were saying, like, everyone's funnel, funnel, funnel, and they should be model, model, model. You know, I don't beat people up. It's not their fault. Like, I think everyone today is like, told, well, this is the way you do it. You just follow this plan. And I think you need to believe in yourself enough and have that decision to believe in yourself that you will figure it out. And then that leads to the business model deciding what business model you want. But that sort of belief in yourself is, I think is really the most important decision that any of us entrepreneurs can make.

Yeah. And unfortunately, and I'm definitely guilty of this, is skipping past that a lot of times and thinking, yeah, attaching maybe to one certain thing you might be, or that I might be going after in that moment, one goal. But then without the, oh, here's what I actually want at a core foundational level. That's the core thing that should be extending everywhere we put our energy.

Do you want to talk a little bit about.

Yeah.

We have on the video the two.

Hour a day business playbook, because it.

Kind of relates to this foundation, it seems like, because this is the core. This is why we really resonated with you, I think, is because you have this belief system so damn strong that doesn't waver. It's literally in every piece of what you do. You've sent us your gratitude journals, which are amazing and I appreciate that. And this, your podcast, your business is your model. Everything starts with this thing I'm holding that no one can see unless it's.

Well, I think, speaking of that, I think one of the things that we resonate with you and you just said a minute ago, I hope I don't get too philosophical with this, but I think that is why we resonate with you is because we love depth. Yes. On this podcast we talk a lot of tactics and we get a lot of people to share their tactics. That's a piece of the thing. But if our podcast was nothing but talking about tactics, we would, we would get. Yeah, we'd fall asleep and we'd get bored with it and we don't like it. What we really enjoy talking about is the depth. We love the philosophy behind it. We love the thinking behind it. We love the, the, you know, the deeper psychological meanings and implications of things. Right. And so I think that's why we resonated with you is the exact conversations we've had to this point on this show is what we crave for our podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. So great. So then, like the belief thing, right, is just fear. The reason you copy that model from that guru is because you're afraid that you can't figure it out yourself really plainly. And the other thing related to what Joe and Matt have in their hand that no one can see listen to this is I sent you guys the two hour a day business playbook. And so the other thing besides fear is ambiguity. So ambiguity, like not being clear on what you want. And so what I did is people kept asking me, like, how are you able to work two hours a day in your business and make a multi six figure income? And I'm like, well, here's what I did. You know, I sat down and instead of writing a book, I outlined 10 exercises or 10 steps that like, literally you can just fill in the blanks. And I thought that would be more actionable than giving them information. It's a playbook. It's something that you can write down on. And it starts right away with the same conversation we're having, defining what do you want, Obviously believing that you can do that, but define it like writing it down. How many hours do you want to work? How many hours do you want to spend with your family? How many hours you want to sleep? People hear this, but I don't think it's been brought together in a full spectrum way. And so what's cool about this playbook is I start there, I say, you know, define what you want, but then I say, define what you want from your business so that you could understand, well, what sort of business model could I use or create to live that life that I define? So anyway, did you guys have any other questions on it or thoughts?

Not specific questions, but I'd love to. I know. Well, for one, you're giving this, this thing away here so others can grab it. Right?

Yeah. Family entrepreneurs dot com. So awesome.

Yeah. I think what we should do is maybe, I mean you've got, let's see, what is it, 10 exercises in here that you could go through. Why don't we just pick one or two of them and just talk about them? Like pick one or two of the exercises that you think might be some of the most impactful that people could go through to kind of get more clarity and let's just kind of dissect them a little bit.

That'd be fun.

Yeah. So let's go to step two. So step, step one is, what we're talking about is defining what, what you want from a very specific standpoint, like I just mentioned, how many hours you want to work, how many vacations you want to take. But step two is then translating that into a perfect day. And you want to visualize your perfect day. And this would be the day that you would be happy doing the rest of your life. You know, you happy get up doing the work activities, the family activities. And I mean I have it very clear, like when do you want to wake up? What do you want to do in the morning? You know, what do you want to eat for breakfast? What do you want to do, you know, after breakfast? You know, make it clear. Also describe like your settings. People talk about dream boards and different things, but I think it's very helpful to just like not again not pick what someone else has from Pinterest or Instagram thing, but just to write it out. Just stare off into space and be like, what would my perfect house look like? What my perfect bedroom, my perfect office and describe it and what's crazy. And I'm not into the woo woo law of attraction thing so much is our mind is a targeting mechanism. And so what's crazy is you end up but attracting opportunities that will help you live out this perfect day over time. So that's the power of it. So people seem it's a concrete step.

Yeah, it seems because we've done some exercises very similar to this very recently. Actually extremely recently. It's very, I want to say identical, but extremely close. And yeah, not only are you, you're creating this vision, but you're creating senses for yourself. You can the more senses smells, sight, sounds, all that stuff. You're just creating these nice visualizations. And at least for us, it seems like with that clarity, not only has our lives, I feel like we have more of a structure that fits us personally. But then with the business because we've recently just the opportunities have been abundant and I think a lot of it extends from this podcast or stems from it. But it wasn't until we really focused on what we truly want in our perfect day and even extend that to the business in a sense, we did some exercises around that. That's when the clarity came and it was very simple to say, no, the right opportunities came our way. Like you said, our minds were tuned to maybe listen a little deeper to this person over here.

Well, essentially what you're building with at least this exercise, and I'm sure most of these exercises is you're kind of building a filter for yourself. You're building a filter for opportunities. When stuff comes your way, you go, well, does it pass my ideal day test? Does it pass my ideal business test? Does it pass like, does it fit into the boundaries that I've set within myself? You're basically creating an operating system and a set of filters for you to pass decision making through.

Right, right. So there's 10 steps and the first four walk you through that from a lifestyle standpoint point. But then about step five of 10, I go into more of a business planning process. But instead of like I have a degree in writing business plans, I can write like a 50 page business plans. But you know what, you don't need that. You need like five pieces of paper. And so I give you those steps and I'm just like, okay, well on step five, start somewhere. You know, pick, pick projects in your past that you've done well and don't just think about the literal project, but think about what you liked about them or what made them successful because you have a unique attribute or skill that you brought to them. And so if you're starting a new business or optimizing your current business, see if you can, you know, work that into what you've done before and then start with that and test it. And then, yeah, the following steps I go into more of the business plan. How do you attract an audience and you know, marketing attraction. Right. And begin relationship with them.

And then once you actually have customers, like how do you serve them and how do you systemize the business? Like the reason I'm able to work two hours a day and make a multi six figure income, be around my family is I systemize the crap out of my business and it's never ending in a good way. I am always thinking about, you know, what do I not like doing, what should I not be doing, what could be different or better. And I'm always, you know, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, both from an income but also a time optimization standpoint. And I think a lot of people give outsourcing advice without an intentionality. They say, oh, just go hire someone in the Philippines or just go hire an executive assistant. And you really need to think through like what you need outsourced and when it needs to happen. And so I've got just a short template there and the last step is all about that. I think if we want to go deeper on anyone, this would apply to you guys. How do you regularly check in to make sure you're optimizing your business and your life? And I've got some questions there. I can actually read these and people can get the full guide. But.

So in terms of what is working.

Ask things like how can I maximize this? Because everyone has things in their business, in their life, but particularly their business that are working and not working. And really you shouldn't try to make everything equal. You should try to just maximize what's working that's going to lead you to a two hour a day business versus trying to make everything mediocre and working the normal 60 plus hours that most entrepreneurs work. And then how can I spend more time on this? Even though you do want to save time, you need to spend time to maximize it. Who else needs to know about this? Oftentimes the way to maximize it isn't about creating a new thing. It's oftentimes just letting more people know.

About it, talking to the right people, finding more of those folks kind of.

Like he did, or even a similar market for, for whatever product or service you sell. So then on the not working side, like I mentioned, if it's not working, how can I eliminate this? You know, there's things in my business that have not worked out as intentional as I am, not everything works out. And I, I just kind of step back and instead of being like it is the way it is, I'm like, no, like this is not serving me and sometimes not serving my clients. How can I eliminate this or reduce it to where it's almost eliminated? Then the next question is really key. How can I make this simple? I would even say, how simple could this be? And that is a great question. We were talking about funnels. You can get way complicated, but how simple could you make it? You can always make a funnel more complicated.

Oh yeah.

Start simple and if it works, it works. Then throw more traffic at it. And then like I said, with outsourcing, who else could do this for me, if something is not working in terms of like it's just sucking up your time.

So anyway, yeah, this check in phase, well, let's just stick on this for a sec because it does apply. I think it applies to everyone because there's. We live in a world, especially if you're listening to podcasts and in personal development we're always trying to improve ourself. But I think the consistency, if you don't stay with it or you don't check in on a schedule, then high likelihood you're going to jump to the next system and then restart from the start and probably not accomplish what you really intended to do. What's your process for checking in? Do you have a morning routine? I'm sure this is probably part of your perfect day. I know we were talking to a gal, Sue Rice just now with Sari Blakely when she was her upbringing, her dad was like what'd you fail at today? What was your mistakes? And that was a daily thing. That's a check in more or less for her there. So what's your process around this?

So you asking about what my morning routine is or my check in frequency?

What's the check in routine more or less like, how do you go about this consistently?

It's a more complicated answer. I would suggest that people on a monthly or quarterly basis put a recurring reminder in their phone. I would say at least every quarter I take a hard look at my business and see is it serving my life. That's the broad question. But from hearing me talk and us getting to know each other, I'm intentional about this stuff every single day to the point where I'm not suggesting that people fill out a check in sheet every single day, but I think you should use a sheet like this every month or every quarter to alert your mind to look in your day to day business in life for you know, what's working and what's not working. And I will just see patterns, you know, and be like, I don't really like this pattern of this type of client that I took on. Note to self or I'll actually write it down. Like if this person has this characteristics, I'm not going to take them on as a client because they're a time suck. Yep, that would be an example of how I would do that. I wish I had a more structured.

Morning routine. I always experiment with different morning routines.

I just know. Yeah some folks, some processes will be like okay, check in and reflect on maybe something you did yesterday or list all. So there's routines for everything. There's a million things, but choose what works best. Obviously, and that's what I love about everything you've approached, is you keep it simple. It's not some long, drawn out process. I think with simplicity and consistency, you can achieve some really great things.

So are you working two hours a day every day consistently, or is two hours a day? I could work two hours a day if I want, but I actually enjoy what I do. So I put more into it.

Yeah, no, I'm literally working that. Let me tell you how that looks. So it's been a process to get there. I don't want anyone to think this is not like you're going to immediately start a business. There's a lot of products and books out there that will teach you or tell you that that can happen. That that obviously is, is not true. Like, you need to, you need to hustle and you need to flowchart. And I often say, you know, you need to really grind on what can make the business get off the ground. And then you need to systemize. Right. Like that's my language of saying it. But yeah, I've systemized it down. I have one executive assistant who works 10 hours a week and I work 10 hours a week. There are certain weeks where it might be more or less, but from like a monthly standpoint, averaging, you know, two hours a day. And from a, from like an advice standpoint, if someone's listening to this who is not a marketer, I think they could listen to the last hour and be like, well, that's great if you have a marketing business, but if you're any type of service provider or, gosh, any, even any type of entrepreneur, if you want to define how many hours you want to work in a given day, that is a great question to ask yourself. Like, how could I work two hours a day? So that's the intention behind this is I'm not saying that every business can work this immediately or maybe even in, you know, in general. Like there's certain businesses like medical professionals where you have to see people. You might work more than two hours a day. But this is, you know, big. But if you wanted to, could you be a medical provider and say, I just, I work two hours a day or how can you get creative about it? Could you say, I want to work 10 hours a week? Right. The equivalent of two hours a day over like a five day work week, five business days, and just say, I'm going to work two five hour days?

Sure.

That is done. That is possible. So I think a lot of times people have this belief limitation on what's possible. And so I'm trying to wake people up and say, like, if you want to live a great life, if you want to be around your family, you need to be intentional. And here's some strategies that I've done it for myself.

Yeah. And I love it. And I don't know if necessarily everybody only wants to work two hours a day. Like, I think if, if you enjoy what you. For me, I think if I only work two hours a day, I'd probably bore myself to death in the rest of the hours of my day. So I think, you know, there's an element where, like, if I put in a good six hours, I'm happy with my day. But I think, I think unless I'm like traveling or very intentional with what I'm going to do with the non two hours a day that I'm working, it doesn't necessarily make sense for me to try to limit it to only two hours a day. You know, I've got young kids too, but my kids are both in school, so I have the house to myself during the day. You know, like, what am I going to do with myself if I only work two hours a day? So I think, you know, I think it's nice to figure out a framework where you could only work two hours a day if you want, But I also think it's not necessarily something that you. That you have to shoot for if you enjoy what you're doing on a daily basis.

Well, a couple things.

Right.

Work always expands to fill available time. Yeah, on some level. Yeah, on some level you need to introduce a constraint. So maybe your constraint is six hours. That's fine. At least you're being intentional versus ambiguous about it.

Right.

And you're saying this is my intention. How can I then that sets your mind, activates your mind to start thinking about how that could be done, how you could get everything done in six hours that you want to accomplish from a financial standpoint, from a life standpoint.

So the other thing is.

Just thinking about your question about, like, what else do you want to do with the extra time? Right. So I spend a lot of time with my family. My kids are really young. They're not in school yet. I want to do other creative endeavors. Right. Because I've systemized my business so much. There's not a lot of creative outlet, and that was by design. So it wouldn't run my life. So it would fund my life.

And I could serve my clients. But that gives me free time to help my wife with something. To watch the kids unannounced or unplanned, to just be totally flexible. I also am doing my own podcasts. I want to give back and teach people and so I've got time to do those other creative endeavors. So my two hours a day is on my core business. Just. Just so people are clear.

Yeah. I was going to ask about the Family Entrepreneurs. How is this going to shake up into it, but I know it's a passion play. This is an extension of you as you are as your core. Anyway, let's chat about that really quick. Since familyentrepreneurs.com that's where to get this playbook.

And by the way, this book here, I've paid a lot of money for much less.

Oh my God. Yeah, no doubt in my mind. But talk about what's going to be developing out of that brand since this is a passion of yours.

Yeah. Family Entrepreneurs is an online community. I'm trying to bring together entrepreneurs who want to put family first. And really it's a value system. Right. You're not looking to make endless money. You know that that doesn't have ultimate fulfillment, but you want to optimize your life around your family and your family time. That being said, I'm going to have guest experts on my podcast and I'm going to share my strategies more about like tactical ways to make more money. But again, how do you have a business model that allows you to make that money so that you still have free time so that, that you optimize that? So it's going to be a podcast and a blog and an online community.

So.

Familyentrepreneurs.com rad man.

Well, I can't wait to see it develop.

Yeah. Do you have any. So we're kind of getting into the wrap up. We've already used one hour of your two hours today, so you've only got an hour window of.

We could eat up his whole work day.

Is that what you guys are trying.

No, we're trying to eat the whole two hours. No. Do you have any books or, or documentaries or movies or any sort of resources that you refer back to or recommend to people often?

Yeah, I've got a couple. So the first. Let me look this up.

I don't know if anyone's ever mentioned this to you guys. What a way to make a living.

It doesn't ring a bell.

I don't think I've heard that one before.

So I'm looking Right now to see if it's even still available. It's a very old book.

What a way to live and make a living is what it's called. The Lyman P. Wood Story. And what I love about this book is very much the same conversation. This guy just kept.

Finding different ways to do his business, you know, and this is like 50, 60, maybe even 70 years ago that the guy started, and Lyman P. Wood is the guy. It's an autobiography of sorts, but I think it's written by somebody else. And I love that he just kept after it. But what's really cool. I'll tease this for people so they actually read the book. It's really cool how in his life story, different skills and things he figured out led to successes in other businesses. And we were talking about belief in yourself a minute ago, and sometimes things don't work out. But what I told myself after reading this book was, you know, it's okay, because what I can take from that will help fuel the next success. And just to see someone's life progress like that in an entrepreneurial way was just really cool. And just to know that, like, every single business or even thing you do in your business will eventually lead to the next thing. And it's like an ongoing, you know, evolution of ideas and projects. And so I love that book for that reason. The other book that's really old is.

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.

How I would. Okay, we're gonna have to.

Yeah. How I Raise Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. It's by a guy named Frank Bettger.

Okay.

I think it's actually pronounced Betcher. B, E, T, T, G, E, R. And man, that is like, you know, the Dale Carnegie book. You know, how to win friends and influence people. So Dale Carnegie influenced this guy who was an insurance salesman. And whether you are a salesperson, you know, by nature or not, probably better if you're not. It's super helpful. And how to look at selling and gets it, like, how do you actually position things where people want to buy them? I find that books that are older, like 50 plus years ago, are often more.

Foundational and more just better information than what's out today. So those are my two suggestions.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think I see what you're saying, because now it's a lot. I would say a lot more fragmented knowledge and tactical for channels or modalities where it's. Back then, it's like you kind of just had some basics. It was basically see people hop on the phone.

Yeah. Well, the psychology behind what works in marketing hasn't changed. Just the mechanisms to get that message out there has changed dramatically. And like you said, Joe, I think, you know, the books now are very fragmented. You can buy books on. You can buy entire 400 page books on just how to be a marketer on Twitter if you wanted, you know, so. But at the end of the day, the psychological elements, the principles, the things that work have stayed consistent forever.

Mm. Awesome, man. Well, those are, I think, two books you. You just were showing off. Those are two books that have not been recommended yet on here. So thank you. We'll be grabbing them. Hopefully they're in print still.

Austin. All right, man. So familyentrepreneurs.com, go there and hopefully they can. They'll hear about the podcast when that goes live, because I think that's going to be really cool. And we'll be on there soon, too.

Are you inviting yourself onto his podcast?

No, we're going to.

I've already invited Joe. I don't know if it's yet, but yeah. I want you guys to both have a unique perspective, like we're talking about, from a personality standpoint, different business models. I want to talk a lot about business models, as you can tell on that, so it can serve your family and. And recurring revenue. Right. Like, I'm an expert as well, in membership. Not just membership websites, but membership programs, but membership business models. How do you make recurring revenue? And you guys have great insights because you're. You're good at doing that. How do you monetize a podcast to make recurring revenue?

Well, when we do a round two with you on this podcast, eventually maybe we stick on that topic of recurring revenue, because that's a topic that we love talking about as well. And, you know, on the podcast thing, one of the things Joe and I have actually started doing is we used to go on everybody's podcast together. So you would be interviewing both of us, and we'd both kind of take turns answering questions. And what we've realized is, like, we actually approach almost everything in business and in life from completely different perspectives. So, like, my opinion on one thing oftentimes is different than his opinion on something. So it actually didn't feel right, both being on podcast together because of that. It was like, I would say something based on my belief system, which may not totally resonate with Joe, but Joe would just kind of nod because he didn't want to, like, you know, he didn't want to interject with his Belief system and, you know, derail the conversation. So now we actually don't go on podcasts together. We separate it out.

Thank you. Thank God.

Now I don't have to deal with talking over this guy.

No, it's all working out. But, yeah, hey, it's iterations, right? It's an evolution of what we've been doing.

Hey, it's what you're talking about. You figure this stuff out as you go along. You don't know this stuff from day one. You'll learn this stuff only from years of trial and error.

Yeah, I think that would be a good way to wrap up, because.

Let's do that.

People hearing this are going to say, like, well, Austin's saying to be really intentional and not ambiguous, you know, really specific on how you want to set up your life and how you want to set up your business. But listen, like, the reality is you. You refine it over time. So you. What I'm just encouraging people to do is have some definition of what an ideal life looks like in an ideal business so that when you actually get successful, you know, like what it looks like, you know, you've arrived. Because what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs is they just keep grinding. They keep grinding, their family suffers. They just keep making more money. They never defined up front what was enough money for them, what was the lifestyle they wanted to live. But yeah, it's an evolution of iterating in that process. And yeah, I think, like, as a parting thought, I would just tell people that every business model has its pluses and minuses. And so you just need to kind of say, okay, I'll try this, but then check in. You know, that tenth step in my playbook, like, continue to check in. That's. That's really critical and important.

And yeah, go get the playbook, because you really need to define. It all starts with what you want in life. And so, yeah, just go get that. I'm not going to charge for it, but you have to say yet just.

So people think they got to get it now.

Scarcity. Come on.

Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I might not have it available.

Even better forever.

And for people who, you know, are early on, I might make a limited number of appointments to talk to people. So part of my lifestyle and business roles is I don't do consulting. Right. But this is a passion project, and I want to get some feedback. And so if you're, you know, hearing this and you want to go get it, you may see a calendar link that I have 10 or 15 minute, you know, focus consulting sessions. I'd love to get your feedback on it. Cool.

Brad, man, I love it. It's a great offer. So familyentrepreneurs.com go there quickly, get some of those calls if you can get them. If you're lucky. Austin, it's been awesome, dude. And there will be around too sometime soon.

Yeah.

All right, buddy. Take care, man. Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. And I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time. And Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of EZ Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars as well. And right now, Easy Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, that's H U s T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can go grab a free trial. And Easy Webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing with webinars, I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics. What's working, what's not. During your webinar, based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't, Basically, you're gonna make more money and you're gonna work less with this thing and you're gonna create better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle that's easywebinar.com hustole alrighty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did if you lasted this long. And go check out Easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time.

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