BIG NEWS For 2022 - We've "Hard Forked" Our Business

Hey, we're here, and we are wrapping up the year. Hey, that rhymed.

We are here, and we are wrapping up the year. And you should just be a rap artist.

I should be. Drop the beat, Matt. Oh, no, wait, that's my job. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Yo. Hey. Hi. You're here.

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Who wouldn't?

Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of traffic. Do you think we want more, or do you think everyone else would deserve or would like more for their websites as well?

Can we do it for free?

Is this a rhetorical question? Yes, it's a rhetorical question. Dang. Right?

Yeah. Well, I want to know if I can do it for free.

Well, you can now. Why is that, Mr. Matt?

Because if you go over to ahrefs.comawt, they have a new tool. Well, it's a cool tool.

Yeah.

Called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, and It's over@ahrefs.com.

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So they basically made this tool, webmaster tools ahrefs.com awt. It's gonna monitor your SEO health of your website, so you can make sure. Hey, are there any issues I should be looking at? It basically scans your site. There's, like, over 100 typical SEO issues that would flag Google and all the search engines. Well, it's gonna tell you what's wrong with your site, so you know exactly the advice on how to fix those things. That's pretty dang important. I mean, SEO still is our number one new traffic driver for our websites. Really? That's across all of our websites. That's how people discover us. So you might as well have a little read, a finger in the pulse of the health of your website. And the SEO, it also does backlink monitoring, all these other search traffic terms and things. It's free, though.

It's free.

Yeah.

Monitor your SEO health, backlinks and keywords for free over at ahrefs.com awt that rhymed.

So let's give context to what the heck we're doing here. Matt, maybe you kick it off. Yeah.

So if you haven't realized, the last few episodes that we've done on Hustle and Flowchart have either been me or Joe or the one earlier this week where it wasn't Me or Joe. We actually brought in some other guests to kind of fill in for us. And it's not that we're just kind of like giving up and throwing into towel at the end of the year.

Why would we do that?

Yeah, no, we had planned on going hard all the way through the end of the. But I think, you know, the universe had other ideas for us.

Dang. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, the last week I've definitely been quarantined to my house with. I haven't been confirmed Covid, but definitely got it. Wife, Wife did. And kid. And yeah, it's. It's definitely. I mean, this is. This is the surge. At least we're in SoCal, so it's like, it kind of is rampant everywhere. And. Yeah, so Christmas kind of sucked because didn't really get to see anybody, but it was fun. I mean, it's all good, but it's definitely a. For me, at least it's been a forced slowdown and I think that's a good thing.

Yeah.

I spent a couple nights leading up to Christmas sleeping in this office that I'm currently recording in because I had. I'd been around you and you'd been exposed to Covid, and I did get a test the day before Christmas and the test came back negative. So I did go and spend Christmas with the family. And then like, you know, two days after Christmas, I started to feel like crap and I never got tested again. But I've just been kind of laying low and staying at home and self quarantining and kind of assuming that, you know, I've got a mild case of the vid.

It's a tricky little bastard, this vid. At least it has been for me. I don't know, it's weird, but we don't need to go there now.

But it's just.

No, no, but we're very elusive.

But needless to say, we're not in our recording studio. So if the sound quality is a little different than normal, it's because I'm at home, Joe's at home. We're recording over Riverside for this one. Joe's hair and the lighting that he's in looks like he's got bleach tips.

I know, I know. I looked at him like, I have really horrible lighting in my garage. I haven't decked it out yet, but I'm like, wow, it looks like a really white hair. Or I don't know. I just. I have bedhead galore. Let's just say I've been in sweats for the last week and it. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's luxurious. But I think, like, subconsciously it screws in my head for some reason. It just makes me feel lazy when I'm wearing a lot of sweats. So I'm just like, it's kind of nice. Maybe I'll put a hoodie on for the hell of it. Ah, that looks I like with a.

Little tuft of hair popping out. Nobody can see this on video, unfortunately. And we're never going to release the.

Video of this, but a tuft of bed head and. Yes, it's about 3:00pm right now.

Oh, man.

What you deal with?

Well, anyway, so let's talk about what our plan is for this episode. So for this one, we kind of wanted to do a recap of 2021 and then look ahead at 2022 and talk about what our big plans, our big goals, our big mission for 2022 is and if to hustle and flowchart for any time now, we've our last episode of the year. Every single year has been this style of episode where we kind of reflect on the year and then we look into the next year and anybody who's listening can kind of get some insights into where we're taking the show, where we're taking our business. You know, how what we're doing is going to benefit you and then also a little bit of a reflection of like the wins and losses and good shit and bad shit that happened in the last year. So that's kind of our agenda for this episode. And hopefully we've, you know, mostly speaking to you. Hopefully we've got the energy to get through this one.

I think we can make it. We can do it. I have. I just took some caffeinated tea and have another coffee next to me, so I'm prepared. Let's do this. Nice. Nice. It's been a hell of a year. I mean, it's obviously been one of these crazier years again, where it's just a lot of external circumstances have affected a lot of us, but I think we've done the best we can. There have been a lot of changes in our business over the last year, to say the least, to say the least. It's probably been spurred on from some external stuff, but also it's stuff that we've talked about in this previous episode, but just motivations have changed and I think we've finally achieved the flowchart phase of our lives.

Me speaking for myself, there was a lot of hustle, hustle throughout the years. And now thinking of the title of this whole podcast, anyway, the name of it, let's lean into the flowchart side of things. I think that's opened up, actually some really cool things in our lives and business and partnerships and cool new things for 2022 and beyond that are super exc.

I would even say you can drop the chart.

Right.

Like, we just want to move into the flow now. Right.

Like, we just all we need. Yeah, we don't need a chart.

Yeah.

Everybody calls it hustle and flow anyway.

Everybody refers to it as hustle and flow, but I'm sure there's like a trademark there or something, so we don't.

Want to mess with that.

So we added the chart just, you know, to be different.

But, yeah, we're finding our flow. Yeah.

So we're finding our flow. I think we found our flow a bit in 2021, and we're even going to go further into the flow. And, you know, if you've been paying attention, you probably. That we see the flow is kind of in Web three. So we'll get there in a minute. But let's kind of start by recapping 2021 a little bit. And I think one of the biggest deals for us in 2021 was this was the first year that we broke out of my home office and set up an actual recording studio. That was kind of how we kicked off the year was we did a little hunt. We looked at a few different office spaces. I think, like, the second or third place we looked at, we're like, this is it. We found it. Let's go. And we built our recording studio. That was kind of a big. A big deal for us for the first Q1 of this year was getting that studio all ready and dialed in.

Yeah. Now the studio has been. It started off as like. Well, let's be honest. I think we were searching for a place for us to meet up and brainstorm and whiteboard stuff and just really go deeper on some concepts and ideas. And we just happened to say, well, let's also record there, too.

Yeah.

And deck it out for video. Make it easier to record higher production stuff, get out of your office, give you a place that you have your own home office. It's been nice. We've learned a lot through having an external studio, that's for sure. There's a lot more stuff you gotta think about.

Well, it's not just rent anymore. Now we have to pay another Internet fee. And apparently Internet, they rape you and charge you way more if you're a business than if you're a personal. What the Internet that I pay for at home and the Internet we pay for at the office because it's a business. And literally the only difference between the Internet is that's a business location and this is a home location. It's like four times the price for Internet. You know, we have our. We have electricity costs at the new place, which is not that big of a deal. We don't. We're not like, crazy with electricity, but there's a whole bunch of additional costs that we never saw happening. We have a landlord that's a pain in the ass.

Yeah, like, we have a. We have a dick of a landlord. And I hope he hears me because he doesn't respond to my texts anymore, even though I'm trying to help him out. But whatever, that's his choice. But yeah, these are. These are all factors. I mean, whatever. It just is what it is. You're dealing with people and new things. But yeah, I think the space has been cool overall because it's expanded a lot of what we're doing, and I think it's allowed us to have tough conversations with each other, but also looking at our business and with others. I mean, we've obviously, we've burned our business down in a lot of ways. Not like burned it down, but, like, you know, we've unfortunately let go a lot of the team members. I mean, you know, there's a lot has happened in this phase. I don't think that was even on our flow mat, but like, yeah, that studio space has really opened up a lot of growth, I would say. Overall, you know, and it's been good, but we'll see where it goes. You know, next year it might look different, might not be there, it might be in another spot. We might do it more virtually, but have like, a centralized. Because I think there's like, power in that, especially as partners having communication consistently. I mean, not like all the time, like every day, but these deeper conversations. There's something cool, magical about that. Yeah.

Well, I think we found, like, a good flow for our studio too, Right in the very beginning when we first got the studio, we were kind of there every day. Like Monday through Friday. We were showing up. We were both there. We both kind of, you know, rolled in around between 9 and 10 sometime and hung out till around 5. Some days even, like, till 6 when we had a lot of podcasts on one day. And we kind of, you know, almost got back into this, like, rat race nine to five sort of feel Going into the studio. And then we went like. Like, you know, we didn't create this business to, like, go into an office and work, like, the nine to five again. Like, that's not why we built this business in the first place. And so we pretty quickly started to find this new flow of, like, all right, let's just take Wednesdays off. And then it kind of became, well, you know, if we're only recording on Tuesdays and Thursdays, why are we coming in the rest of the days? So Mondays and Fridays kind of became flex days, where some days were in the studio, some days we weren't. And then it kind of just became, all right, Tuesdays and Thursdays, we're in the studio. Mondays and Fridays are kind of flex days. If we want to mastermind or game plan some stuff, on Monday or Friday, we'll go into the studio and meet there. But if we don't really have anything we need to knock out today, then we can just work from home. And then Wednesdays just kind of became, like, a midweek weekend where we were just kind of like, all right, let's just check out for this day in the middle of the week. And we kind of found this nice flow where it didn't feel like we were working this rat race nine to five every day.

We had a place where we can go and meet up and we can go and record, but there's no obligation to be there every day or at a certain time every day. And I think that flow, once we fell into it, was pretty nice because, you know, I like working from home some days, and I like being in the studio away from all the crap that's going on at my house some days.

Yeah, it's healthy to do that. But yeah, I've definitely. Cause I was leaning a lot more to, like, I need this focus space, and it needs to be perfect. Cause I don't, like. It's pretty loud in my house. So I'm in the garage right now, But I'm on this nice new desk that Dan Ryan supplied. Thank you, Dan. But yeah, like, I see myself, like, next year, I want to build out. I have a shed in my backyard that's going to become a home studio that's going to be decked out. Like, I have a plan, and it's going to be good. So, like, I'll have a nice home base that's quiet. It's going to be like a little home studio decked out with a better microphone and everything. Video. But also, you know, the question is still, like, Hey, a centralized place. Maybe we have one. Maybe it's one of our future team members. House or some other.

Look, don't open the bag yet.

I know. Hey. Well, I'm not, I'm not saying too much. Not saying too much yet, but yeah, there's, there's options. Yeah. So we'll see what 2022 looks like. Yeah.

And you know, along the same lines, we really put a lot of focus on video this year. Part of the reason we wanted to get that studio was we wanted to up our video game. So we got, you know, nice cameras. We got a Sony, a 6400 camera. We got nice new lighting. We got new microphones. We got our Rodecaster. We actually got that in I think 2020, but we got our Rodecaster.

In 2021 and we just really started to deck out the studio. We actually got towards the end of the year, we got a new PC so we can actually get better at live streaming using vmix.PC.

That was a learning curve.

Yeah, but I mean, once you get in the hang of vmix, it's just like it blows OBS and some of the other streaming platforms away. Right. Compare VMIX to streamyard. Right. It's like there's no comparison or belive or one of those tools. It's just like another level.

Definitely super techy. So, yeah, if you go down that vein, just expect to like, be very, I don't know, very technical, you know, whereas like Belive and Streamyard, it's like that's very user friendly. So that's the.

Well, vmix, the person who recommended it to us was using it for espn. I believe so.

Yeah. And Microsoft.

Microsoft, yeah. So, you know, somebody that is a high, high level producer recommending using vmix. And so it's, you know, it's pro level. It's probably what they use for, you know, TV stations and stuff.

So most people aren't gonna need it.

Let's just say that it's definitely overkill. But, you know, sometimes we have fun with the overkill. But yeah, that was a big focus this year, was really putting that focus on video. And that's gonna be another big focus going into 2022. So we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But yeah, I mean, video was a big piece this year.

Yeah. YouTube, I think it's opening up a lot of things. It opened up our minds to what is possible for being a creator or working with creators, leveraging the whole YouTube ecosystem. There's a lot of stuff we're still learning, but it's really rad because since we opened up our channel on HustleandFlowchart TV, you should go check it out. Subscribe. We're not on there this episode, but still subscribe. But it's really cool. We've had a lot of friends step up and help us. Rob from TubeBuddy, we've had him on. And Jacob, when he was on our team, he decked out a lot of stuff there. You know, Tom Breeze, we've had him on the podcast. He's starting to help us out with some ads stuff.

We recently had Darrel Eves on, who helped, like, Mr. Beast and a bunch of really, really big YouTubers. He came on the show and gave us some really good advice.

We've had a lot of YouTube ninjas on our show, like, really kind of pointing out what we should be doing. Have we followed all of the advice we've been given?

Don't need to. Don't need to. But it's good to be in the mix there. And, no, it's just really cool. So YouTube has been a cool addition, but now leading into next year, we'll start to describe how we're leveraging it, even in a bigger way. Not just us doing all the stuff, because that's where I think we're elevating ourselves and getting away from just being the creators ourselves. We'll talk about that in a minute.

We had some legends on the podcast this year. We had a whole ton of them. And this is barely scratching the surface. I mean, like, you didn't even put Derral Eves on this list, but, like, that guy's a legend for a lot of people on YouTube and influencers we cross paths with online. Pat Flynn. I'll just rattle some names out, maybe. Yeah, we got Pat Flynn, Rand Fishkin, Andre Chaperone, John Warlow, Ryan Lee, Guy Kawasaki, Bob Berg, BJ Fogg, Robert Cialdini.

Robert Fricking Cialdini.

Robert Cialdini.

Bob Cialdini.

We're on Bob.

Level with him now.

Dr. Robert Cialdini. Yes. Joel Kahm, Legend. And Brian D. And Gino Wickman. I mean, these are all people that we. It's really cool because, like, these are people that we've all looked at for guidance over the years in some respect. You know, Pat Flynn, all the way back from when we were starting blogging, you know, and now he's big into YouTube. We've been buddies with him for a long time, been in masterminds with him, met him up at TNC earlier this year, he gave us a little switchpod. One of his things like that was Rad Ran Fishkin. I mean, the guy's like a legend in the startup space. And Sparkio, not Sparky. What's that? Spark. Toro. Sparktoro.

But I mean, originally SEOmoz, right?

SEOmoz, yes. I mean, Andre Chopra. Sorry. Yeah, Andre Shoproad.

Autoresponder Madness. Email marketing legend in the email marketing world, John Warlow.

Built to sell. Yeah, Super. You know, prolific author that's been around everywhere, so. And great podcaster as well. Ryan Lee. You know, he's been in Internet marketing and E Com and all this stuff for a long time and is just a big thinker and super fun, like, and everything he does. And he's one we followed for I don't know how many years now in the marketing space.

It's just crazy. I think with the podcast, we almost kind of. It's almost like once we started having guys like Gino Wickman and Bob Cialdini and BJ Fogg and Guy Kawasaki, to me, and this is. This might come off a little arrogant, and hopefully it doesn't, but to me, it was almost like we kind of had our moon landing. It was kind of like, all right, well, we've reached the top. Where do we go from here? With some of our guests? It's like we've gotten like. Like, if you look at our Dream 100, it's completely different Dream 100 now than it was when we first started because, like, we kind of got most of the people we were going after. It was like we sort of reached that top of the mountain, the level of guests we'd always wanted to get. The type of show we imagined five years ago, we'd kind of reached it. We were there. Like, we got to the point where it felt like there was no guests that we probably couldn't get at this point.

It's true. Yeah. And I don't know if there's some psychological thing that we've. That happened where. Yeah, it was around that time we had Bob Cialdini on and Gina Wickman was really like the last marketing. Marketing mind or business type mind that we had. And I don't know, it's just like something. I think for both of us, we're just like, okay, we did that. And not saying, like, we made it or anything, but, like, I don't know. And the whole marketing side of things, like, let's be honest, marketing. Like, there's nothing new in marketing. Like, yeah, Robert Cialdini, the guy's been writing about influence for over 30 years. And you have, you know, Bob Berg's been around for a long time. I mean, there's all these names, like we're, we're all just iterating off of existing principles that have come before. And it's like, I think now you and I have seen this and you know, we're like, okay, cool. That related to something we learned over here. And it's like, all right, well these are, these are great principles, but it's like, it's almost like we've been to.

The source material now, right? So we've been to the source material. So it's like it felt, it felt like almost any guest that we'd get from this point on was somebody that just, just sort of iterated and was sort of derivative of somebody else that we've already had on, right? Like anybody that's out there talking about psychology and influence right now is probably fairly derivative work of what Robert Cialdini put out. Anybody that's out there talking about, you know, productivity and like habits and stuff like that, it's probably derivative work of what BJ Fogg has put out, right? Anybody that's out there talking about creating systems for your business and like really dialing in stuff, so it's on autopilot. Probably creating fairly derivative work of what Michael Gerber put out, right? So it's kind of like, you know, making a sort of web3 crypto reference. It's kind of like we've interviewed all the layer ones now and anybody that we'd interview from this point on is kind of a layer two that's bolted on top of a layer one, right?

So it's like, yeah, and if that doesn't make sense, just stick with us for future episodes. You'll learn, it's okay. You'll learn through osmosis.

Someday I'll explain layer ones and layer.

Twos, but I think the reference is there. It's like, yeah, we've, we. I think that's what we did. We engineered this. I mean, it's not like a surprise that we made this happen. And I think that's where a lot of people. Well, if you've been listening for a while, it's no surprise that we've engineered this because we talk about the Dream 100 strategy and I don't know how many people have taken that strategy now and ran with it. And I frickin love it because people are implementing it. And if you don't know what the Dream 100 strategy is. I don't know where the best place. It's somewhere on the podcast we've talked about. I don't know if we've had a dedicated episode. Probably have.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we have. And I'm pretty sure we have a YouTube video for it. And I'm pretty sure there's something in our members area that explains it's around, go do it.

Because it works no matter what. Because that's how we landed all these folks. And now they are friends there. Or at least if they're not friends, they're people that we can either call, text or email immediately or not immediately. Yeah, pretty much. And probably get a response within a day. And it's really cool because that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities to collaborate. And we engineered it. That's the thing. We made it happen. But the fact that is like, okay, so we engineered the layer ones like this us in web3, and this is why we're pivoting so much and going that direction is because that's a whole different way of thinking. You have to totally shift your minds and almost build from the ground up. You can definitely build with the old principles and whatnot, and they still apply. Not saying they're gone at all, but there's a different way of thinking. And we want to explore that new way of thinking in the cool new approaches that people are taking.

For sure.

Sure. Yeah. It was a good year of guests, for sure.

And 2021 also saw the launch of Pod Hacker. I mean, I guess you'd kind of call it Pod Hacker 2.0, because we did launch Pod Hacker around PodFest a couple years ago where we did a live in person event and mastermind. And we created a sort of initial iteration of Pod Hacker and initial training. And when we relaunched pod hacker in 2021, we rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up. Right. It's a completely new training program. Everything was built from scra. And that was really built out of demand, Right? That was built out of people sending us messages constantly going, hey, I want to learn how you do your affiliate marketing. Hey, I want to know how you get such big guests on your show. Hey, you guys talk about how you have this big podcast, but you only record one or two days a month. How are you so systematized with it? How are you making money off of newsletters and sponsors and affiliates and all of this stuff? And all of these questions kind of came in from like different angles and different perspectives on what we do. And we went, let's build podcast. Because Pod Hacker shows the complete picture, right? Pod Hacker shows how we're getting good guests. It shows how we're monetizing, how we're recording in a systematic way so we don't feel ever too overwhelmed, you know, how we're prepping our guests, how we're prepping ourselves, the templates, the email outreach responses. Like, literally everything we're doing in our entire business, we're like, let's just lump it all into one course. That way, if anybody asks us about affiliate marketing, we send them to Pod Hacker. Anybody asks us about getting big, yes, we send them to Pod Hacker. Somebody wants to ask about getting sponsorships, send them to Pod Hacker. It's just. It was the whole thing, everything.

Yeah, yeah. It was definitely forced out of us to. But in a great way, because we know it has helped and still will help a lot more people. Now. It's going to be in a. It's a different. You know what? I'm jumping ahead. But, like, you know, like, because it's just so related, you know, Pod Hacker, we took it as far as we could take it, and we could have taken it more, to be honest, but we didn't want to.

I've reflected a lot on this, and I know you're the same or similar, Matt, but we're builders. We build. We build shit. And I was reflecting all the way back to my LEGO days when I was a kid, when I would build something. You're a kid.

What's wrong with you? I still build Legos.

I want legos. I heard LEGO sets, if you still have LEGO sets from back in the day that are discontinued, that they're worth more than gold, really. I heard some stat, I read some article, and obviously it's probably dependent on the set. I never had a set as a kid. I just had random, like, hand me down, like, random set of big bucket that you just dump everywhere. I mean, that was me. My whole childhood is building random things. And then. But what would I do? Oh, I'd be like, oh, that was fun. Blast. Like, tear it down and destroy it. Like, I didn't, like, put it on a shelf or reflect on, oh, I'm an amazing architect. Like, no, I had my fun building and then I moved on to the next thing. And I feel like that's like. I've been reflecting a lot on that. I'm like, that's exactly what we do with Pod Hacker. It's what we've done with a lot of things. And I think that's why we move so fast, because we're building.

But we were smart with Pod Hacker on this time around, found a good partner.

But yeah, we didn't just turn it off.

Right.

We've done that in the past with other projects where we just went, okay, we're done with this, turn it off. So with podhacker we're like, no, this can continue on with a life without us. Actually we're still going to be involved, but it can continue on without us being involved in the day to day running it. And that's one of the things that we did with that. I'm going to mention the EGP letter thing too because that's very, very relev. Sort of wrapped that up as well. Right. So we've been running that for five years now where we put out a new issue every month. There's a couple month gap in there where we didn't put out issues because we were kind of retooling and refiguring the model. But for the most part we put out an issue every single month for five years. And we decided in 2021, let's just go ahead and phase this thing out because we're getting into this Web3 space, we're helping build these future technologies now while still sending snail mail to people. And it just felt very inconvenient. Grew into like where we were headed. So. Yeah. And. Oh, that's what I was going to say, going back to the whole builder thing that you were saying, that was kind of me growing up as well. Except I was doing stuff digitally. Right. Like I learned how to program when I was, I don't know, 12 years old. I used QBasic and Turbo Basic and some of the programming languages that were around at that time. And I've always been sort of that digital version of a builder I built. You know, I used to build websites around my favorite games, Diablo 2 and Starcraft and Warcraft and games. Like I used to build little HTML websites on Angelfire and geocities.

I used to build websites on there. So from a very, very young age, as soon as I got my hands on a computer, I was this digital builder. And I was always trying to figure out how to build things.

That was later. What were you doing before 12? Because I know you had. Because I was doing some website stuff. You went way deeper around that age. Yeah, I had some sites around Corn the Band.

I mean I was in sixth grade when I start. When I learned to code. Sixth grade?

Sixth. Yeah. No, that's. That's pretty solid, man. That's early.

So that would have been 11 or 12.

That's early. Yeah.

Yeah. So, like, before that, I'm. I don't know. I played video games. I don't know. I don't remember.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, yeah, like, there was my life before computers, and I don't remember what I did before computers, and then my life after computers, where I was just, like, obsessed with ever since.

That's funny. Yeah. I mean, that's so. Yeah. I mean, the building thing is interesting and it's. You know, there's a lot of folks like us that just build, you know, and are more equipped in business to do the building in the startup phase of things. But it's. I think what we've learned is, you know, if it's a project that we feel like still has life or it's a thing that fits in the ecosystem. EGP litter wasn't. And that's why we wrapped it up. But it's like, it's really smart with pod hacks. You know, we're mentioned. We found a partner, Adam, Scheibly, we had a whole episode with him a couple weeks back or so. I mean, he is like, the man to run with it because he coaches people. He loves getting in there in the mix every single week with people doing community stuff and growing it that way and being fun, and it's just like, it's fun to be around someone like that, but that's just not us to do it. But I would say, like, yep, Adam's our boy. Adam's our guy. And he also, like, I just learned last night on Instagram that he used to freaking lift, like, these. He's like, he used to wear kilts back in the day and lift these massive poles and do, like, strongman contests. I'm like, what the. What? If you haven't seen it, Matt, go check it out. He's. He's posting up some random funny stuff. I never knew about him, but the guy was like.

Was it like the. What do they call it, like, the caber toss or something like that?

Something like. It was like, it looks like a telephone pole. He was basically lifting up off the ground and then throwing it. I'm like, jesus, with a kilt on. I'm like, yes.

That's why I was like, respect, bro.

That's impressive. Yeah.

I think it's called a caber toss. Yeah. Caber C A B, E, R toss.

Is it? Yeah, it's like Scottish thing or something.

Yeah. They basically, like, fling telephone poles, essentially.

Fling them, no big deal.

Yeah, yeah.

So the dude, like, he's got a crazy personality and it's just great with, you know, with growing, but also maintaining something that's like this. So pot hacker, you know, in terms of the building, we're like, oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. We can't just burn this shit down because that's doing a disservice to what we built. But also everyone that's in there and also what can become of this? Because podcasting is. There's a massive need for it. So that's why. Okay. Adam is going to take that and run it. We're going to kind of work with them on the side, advise on, you know, on the marketing side of stuff, in what we are best equipped for, but have him actually do more of the day to day stuff. But the EGP letter, after five years of basically publishing that almost nonstop, minus that little gap, it just didn't feel like it fit into the new direction. And, you know, there were a lot of things that were just kind of like, okay, increase of cost, difficult to scale. Yes. People love it. Sorry that we had to cancel it for you folks that loved receiving it. But at the end of the day it's just like, well, you know, it wasn't serving where we're going. And that's about that.

You know, used. Used paper, used, you know, valuable resources. Had to, you know, killed a lot of trees sending that newsletter.

I'm sure shipping around the world. Yeah. So it's more, I mean. Yeah. To get all the green, friendly side of the. I do have a tree hugger hat right now. So I guess it's.

Yeah, there you go. We did it for the tree trees. That's why Team trees, hashing trees. Team trees.

We love trees. But yeah, it wasn't the only reason.

Yeah, no, for sure. And I know when it came to customer support, one of the biggest things we heard in customer support around the EGP letter was like, man, I love your EGP letter, but I got a stack of seven over here that I haven't read yet. So they were kind of just piling up for people and people weren't getting through them. And we kind of got to a point where we're like, all right, the costs are getting to a point where we're basically break even on this thing. We're also hearing that people aren't able to read them as fast is like we're getting them to them. You know, there was shipping issues. Like we mentioned the story of our traffic and Conversion summit booth, where we literally had, like, a stack of like, a hundred of them that we gave away because of the returns from bad addresses that came back to us and.

Which is a little demoralizing when you see how many actually get returned. And, you know, like, we've been up on the whole, like, well, that was.

Like a year's worth. So just to put it into context, that was like a year's worth of returns.

Yeah, good point. But still, it was like, man, that is a lot that we've shipped literally around the globe. Like, some of them, I think, went to Norway and then would come back to us. I'm like, geez, this thing, like, went around the globe and then back to us and, like, for no one, like. Yeah, so, yeah, that's. And actually we should go back to traffic and conversion because we skipped that on our little list here.

I know. It just. It kind of felt out of. Out of flow with the other stuff about shutting things down.

Yeah. Well, now here's a segue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we did a whole episode on this. What this is back in September. I think that we did this, and that feels like ages ago.

I know that feels like two years ago. We were in the version, but it was really, like three months ago or something.

Yeah, I mean, like, we. We did it our way there, and we did it our way. Copyright, whatever.

I'm just kidding.

Yeah. But, yeah, we just set up shop at tnc. We had a cool booth there, and we just kind of made it our own little party.

We had a blast, man. We were sitting there, we bought little plastic shot glasses, and we were sitting there sipping on little shots of whiskey from time to time and sharing it.

With our friends that came by.

We didn't try to pitch Michael Jordan anything too. We didn't try to pitch anything. We just hung out at the booth, and friends came by and hung out with us, and most of the time, we were just sitting at our booth chatting with friends. It was like our hangout spot.

But that's. That's. I think that's. We talked about in that episode. So if you're curious of, like, our strategy and our mindset within running a booth in one of the biggest conferences of our industry or the biggest. Go check it out. That was. That was back in September, because, you know. Yeah, it's just really cool because we basically knew, okay, if we set up shop in the middle of a high traffic area and just kind of hang out, the right people are gonna find us. We don't need to Go seek out and be the types that are like, hey, hey, hey, hey, come over here. Go back. Who cares, man? Just leave some open space and the right things will fill it.

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. You can go see our pictures on Instagram of all the people that floated through our booth. And I mean, we were impressed with people that floated by our booth.

So, I mean, yeah, at least in our space, we're pumped. It's a lot of the guests that we've had, a lot of mentors and people that we become friends with over the years. So it's rad, for sure.

Yeah, we had. I do want to kind of pivot into where we're going for 2022 soon, so we can kind of these last few things kind of talk about real quick because it is a big part of our future now. We had Gary Henderson on. He opened our eyes to the concept of NFTs, gave us a little sneak peek of creator coins and that sort of thing. And then a few months later, we brought on Joel Kahm, who really deep dove with us on nft. So if you haven't listened to that episod yet, definitely go back and listen to the Joel Kahm episode because he gives a real good explanation and deep dive of why NFTs are so powerful and.

Why they're. I don't want to say the next big thing, but that just sounds so stupid and cliche.

Yeah, it does. Stop that, Matt.

But basically, throughout the course of these conversations, we kind of rediscovered our love for Web3 and crypto and some of the rabbit holes we were really going deep on back in 2017. These kind of brought them back to the surface for us and we started to get really excited about that area of. Of the online world again.

Yeah, no, it's. I mean, yeah, Joel Calm, he. I mean, that was. What month was that? That had been like four months ago, maybe three months ago, probably.

Yeah, three or four months ago. I don't know anymore. Time is so weird to me now. I have no idea.

Well, that's the thing in this whole space. But yeah, Gary Henderson and Joel Calm definitely were some catalysts, at least from our show. And we had some other catalysts outside of the show that really got us interested big time into the space because we're like, okay, hold on.

On.

Like, if we ignore this too long, you know, NFTs, for one. You know, I remember seeing Ryan Dice post something on Twitter, I think, in like, December of 2020, talking about NFTs, and I think that's when, like, people started to really talk more about it. And, yeah, I think Dice definitely knew about them probably before they were mainstream, because he was like, oh, man, everyone's talking about NFTs now. And I remember being like, maybe I should pay attention and should have, because that's, like, right before the big massive boom of all these NFTs that happen.

You know, you could be an ape right now.

I know. Seriously. So, like, I kind of. I didn't discount it. I just didn't know what the heck he was talking about. And then. Yeah, and then there was this massive boom. But then when Joel Calm was on our podcast, when we had him on whatever month that was, he was like, you know, in this whole. There's a whole graph called the diffusion of innovation. And you can Google that and kind of look at, you know, you have the innovators, you have the early adopters. You have what? The early majority, late majority, and then the laggards. It's kind of like how everything is distributed. And when we had Joel Kahm on the podcast, he said that was like, right when we were entering the early adopter phase.

Yeah.

And we're like, okay, we're still early, but we missed the whole, like, boom. That, you know, a lot of people are just buying these punks and apes and all this stuff, and no one knew what it was going to do in value. But, you know, we kind of, like. I wouldn't say we missed that, but we definitely missed the cheapness of it.

Well, the crypto kitties, I think our credit is like, the first kind of, like, art nft, right?

Yeah.

That sort of got everything going. And I actually remember hearing about CryptoKitties back when CryptoKitties was happening, but didn't really dig in. I had no clue what it was. I'm like, I think it's a game or something. I don't know. I just kind of ignored it back then. But I wish I paid attention to Cryptokitties, because that was sort of a catalyst for a whole hell of a lot of other craziness that happened afterwards. But just to close the loop here, Joel was on in September. He was episode four. 414 in September.

That's good to know. Yeah, I guess each of us could have looked that up. We are at our computer. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, that's. It just shows you a little reference. And I like that whole. I've been watching Nick Peterson's. He has Nick Smith. He's wrapped up today. But we've had Nick Peterson on the podcast. Brilliant, dude. I think we're gonna have him back. I haven't asked him yet, but I will. I was trying to get him over. You need to wrap this thing up first. But, yeah, because he's doing crypto stuff too, so it's relevant. But he's one of the smartest guys, and he talked about this whole diffusion of innovation thing, and it. Click. I was like, oh, shit, okay. You know, because it fits along lines of anything new ideas that are distributed out into the world. But it's, like, so relevant with what Joel Kahm brought up on the episode and how you communicate ideas. And we even caught ourself with our podcast kind of going a little further out with what we were describing. Went too deep, probably too quickly. So, you know, just for the sake of all y' all listening, you know, we kind of. All right, bring it on back a little bit more. And, like. And know that we're talking to a lot of early, early adopters. I feel like most of the people listening to us who stuck with our show for a long time, you are an early adopter in most things. Tech, marketing and, you know, just cool shit that you want to explore. But, you know, like, so we shouldn't be talking, like, you know, as like, to the innovators, because, you know, that's almost talking backwards with a lot of detail, you know, and obviously not to the. To the late adopters either. So, I don't know. All this stuff is like, put in perspective in what Joel calm said with NFTs, it's like, oh, if we're in the early adopter pH. And that means that there is a lot of life for NFTs, and they're going to develop in ways that we never could have imagined how they're developing. And, you know, we've had some charts that showed, like, how these things have developed from, like, profile picture NFTs, like buying JPEGs. And now, you know, music is becoming a bigger thing. You know, there's all these utilities that you could put behind. You know, Gary Henderson talked about, you know, creator coins and how that can pair up with NFTs and what he's doing there to grow a fricking massive community that has value behind it, too, in so many ways, and people earning off of that too. So it's like, it's just crazy time. And then you have Metaverse stuff coming up in games and blah, blah, blah, and you see it in mainstream now. But that was not the case even when we had Joel Kahm on so that just shows you how fast it.

Is starting to diffuse the circles that we've been running in lately. That kind of talk about crypto and stuff. I mean, it's a running joke that, like, two weeks ago is the equivalent. Equivalent of like two months ago in this space, or like a month ago is the equivalent of like a year ago.

You know, it feels that way.

It's kind of a running joke because everything just moves so fast. Like, what's popular today and what's making news in this world today is going to be completely different than what's making news one week from today. It's just going to feel like a different world a week from now. It's like stuff is moving that fast in this world. And I think that's what makes it so exciting and appealing. But I also think that's why so many people are scared of it, too.

Well, yeah, the conversation with what some family recently at Christmas. And yeah, you were kind of getting. It's really cool to get perspective from people outside of our space, you know, the out. Because, yeah, it is scary to a lot of folks. And, you know, that's why there is that whole diffusion of innovation, too, because people have different risk tolerances, ages, different things that they have going on in life. But, yeah, it's. It's definitely the wild west right now, where, you know, I've talked about getting scared, scammed a couple times over the years in crypto. It's going to continue to happen in a lot of ways. Just not to me, knock on wood. But, yeah, it's wild. So in our discord, I'm going to shout out our discord because we haven't yet, but go join our discord@hustleandfluichart.com Discord and that'll get you in the know with the people that are there to help shore up your knowledge as well. Not just us, but a whole bunch of knowledgeable people in there. And if you're listening, there's a bunch of y' all that have been super supportive in there for everybody. Thank you. Keep doing it and invite your friends. Tell everybody about it, because we got some plans in 2022, you guys.

Yeah. And we are going to be doing some tokenization of our community and stuff like that, and early adopters of our community are going to get rewarded. So let's just leave it at that. The people that are kind of in there and active, they're going to reap some benefits in the future. And I think the ones that are active are aware that, that it'll come back around for him for sure.

Yeah. We're not forgetting about you at all. But it's a process. But yeah, all this to say is that things are moving so fast. It is the Wild West. It's rampant with scams and things. And if you read the headlines, like I see on cnn, like, oh, so many billions of dollars have been taken from crypto people. It's like, don't. I mean, yeah, it's gonna scare off some people, but that just means educate yourself, you know, and that's what we've done in the last four months, five months or whatever is like, went down the rabbit hole. And thanks to people like Gary and Joel, that's why we have rediscovered our love for crypto and realized what's possible with this thing, Web3, and what that kind of means, and dove in all these different YouTube videos, learned about economics and stuff outside of just Web3, but actually like, oh, wait, hold on. Why is this such a big thing? To decentralize and get away from fiat currencies and leverage technology to kind of equalize everything. Like, it's. I don't know, like, you start going down a rabbit hole and you're just like, wow, this makes so much sense and it's really tough to ignore. Yeah.

I mean, for the first time in my life, I actually gave a shit about what the Federal Reserve did with interest rates. Right, Exactly. Like, paid attention to that kind of stuff in my life.

It's true. Like when it happened the other week when, you know, it might have changed. It did not change, but, you know, next year probably will. Multiple. Well, it will. Yeah. We're like, refreshing. We're like, okay, it's 11 o'. Clock. They're supposed to announce this house.

What's the Federal Reserve talking about today?

You know, like, I would have never done that ever in my. And then politics too. I mean, like, not like left or right, but just like policy and like, hey, what's good for society? I mean, that's why there's populism right now, is because a lot of people are trying to figure this shit out and like. Cause they don't really. That's why I think it's like an interesting. Everything is coming to a head right now in terms of society, but with, you know, politics and money and obviously you have stuff like Covid going around. So that's like shaking stuff up for people professionally and personally. So it's. It's just a very to. It's a crazy time.

Yeah.

But I think that's why it feels like time is just going like.

Yeah, well, in the last, you know, couple months of 2021, obviously we made some huge pivots. We, you know, we did that whole episode about burning the ships. Definitely go listen to that if you haven't, because it kind of talks a lot about the pivots that we made. But we got connected with a YouTube channel called Lad City, who's already established in the sort of crypto space. They had over 10,000 subscribers and we partnered up with them and put some of our hustle and flowchart content on their channel. And Most likely in 2022, we'll still be collaborating with them and putting more content on their channel and working closely with them. But what really came out of that was some rekindling some old relationships. That almost sounds a little weird, but we rekindled some old. Rediscovered some old relationships. You know, one of our old buddies who goes by the name of Crypto Buffalo, but we actually go way back with him, we were kind of following along to his online journey. I don't know, eight, nine years ago, something like that.

Are you going to dox him?

No, I didn't. I will.

I know, but are you going to? Yeah, don't do it.

That's not my place. I will dox Jason Moffat, though, because.

He doesn't hide behind any.

He's pre doxed.

But we got to. We reconnected with Jason Moffat who kind of has gone deeper into the crypto world as well. Also keeping one foot in the affiliate world, which is kind of the two worlds that we're keeping both our feet in is Affiliate World Crypto World.

His partner, Dave Fun uncle, who's also another content creator on Lad City. We kind of came together and created this core six to basically fricking roll into 2022 and hit it hard. So that's kind of where we're at right now, pivoting into 2022. And I think we should kind of shift into talking about what's to come now.

Let's do it. So, yeah, 2022, I mean, I think, yeah, 2021 was like a re engineering and reimagining of what's possible for us. And I think, you know, it started off with the office space and doing these long conversations and, you know, using a volcano and all these other things.

What.

What are we talking about? But let's just say our minds were open to new ways and new people stepped up to kind of guide us to new things that, you know, that we weren't aware of. And yeah, some of these guys, these guys that you're talking about, or a lot of them that are doing that have done that. And we decided, okay, so how about in 2022 we actually frickin team up. Because the web3 space is so conducive and very collaborative in a way that, where business is collaborative, but at the same time it's like collaborative in the sense of like, hey, can you promote my stuff for me or. Or like, oh, buy my mentorship and I'll coach you or whatever. It's like, yeah, well, this one, Web3 we're like, okay, how do we collaborate with our connections, with our knowledge, with our alpha and the due diligence. We're doing what we're seeing and how can you help me get this? And let's invest. It's just like a lot of really cool. I don't know, it's just interesting. So we're like, why don't we make this kind of a thing that works together and we can help others in this space with our marketing skills, with our business background, as the guys you mentioned are basically marketers, but also tapped into crypto. So we're like, all right, let's create a collective of marketers of like, media professionals and producers and, and investors as well and create something called Hard Fork Media.

Hard Fork Media.

It's going to be forking awesome. Yeah.

I mean, the, the, the fork puns that come out of Hard Fork Media are like reason alone to build this company because it's just going to be fork and epic and we're going to have a lot of fork and fun and, and we're gonna own the Forkin world with this new Forkin company.

Yeah. So this Forkin thing is. So that's really our thing. So we're like, we've chatted with a lot of folks and shout out to some folks who have been listening to our podcast as well and reached out to us and said, yo, I followed you for a long time and would love to help you out and serve you through connections or resources, whatever. It's kind of blind to us because it is a new space for us. But like, man, marketing is the issue. Everyone's saying like, hey, marketing help is needed in this space. And we're like, okay, well, we have like at least six of us, of course, six of us, and then a lot of others around us that are also seeing this and have different skill sets. So we're like, why don't we all team up, make Hard Fork Media and help out a lot of these projects that are coming up in the web3 space and also help creators and you know, these influencers that are already in the connection in this like web of connections that we have collectively. And let's help all of these sides and investors, you know, because there's a lot of invest like VCs that there's just a lot of money out there that doesn't know this crypto space because they're not in it as deep as us. They don't have the connections that are not getting past all the interesting, you know, first news alpha, you know, like any, any basically the stuff that is not mainstream that's kind of getting passed through us multiple times a day kind of it is, it's like endless. There's a stream and we're like, crap, okay, we need to package this up in days of a couple actually help all parties, not only us, but help creators, help investors and help these people launching projects to really do it right for them.

Yeah, I feel like we kind of teased out where we're going in a recent episode when I gave people the call to action to if you have marketing skills, kind of pay attention to Web3. Because a lot of the people in Web3 and crypto, they've got dev talent, they've got artist talent, they've even got capital, but they don't have marketing. Marketing is still one of the gaps in the web3world. So that was us kind of hinting like this is what we're seeing and this is probably where we're going to go. And I actually kind of wrote up a sort of quick outline that I think fairly accurately describes what we're doing with Hard Fork Media. So I'm going to kind of read it and then we can riff off it a little bit because I don't know, I feel good about the explanation. So Hard Fork Media will be representing creators as agents to help them lock down sponsorship deals and long term partners partnerships with projects in the Web3 crypto space. @ Hard Fork Media we're going to be working with YouTubers and podcasters who are specifically operating in the Web3 space. Companies that are doing crypto stuff, NFTs DeFi metaverse play to earn gaming, those types of things that fall under that Web3 umbrella. As we mentioned in that previous episode, the biggest struggle with Web3 right now is marketing. They've got everything they need. They don't have the marketing. Hard Fork Media is designed to fill that gap, developing major projects in this space. They're going to be able to partner with us and we'll help them market their projects. We'll turn around and leverage our network of content creators to help spread the word. So that's kind of like the grand idea of what Hard Fork media is. We're kind of. We have a quiver. Is that the right word? A quiver full of content.

Creators. Yeah, yeah, we do. We like.

That. We have a nice quiver full of content creators. And then we know a lot of these people that are building, building in Web three. We're just going to go, hey, you should know, you. And then as a thanks for us making sure, you know, you can we get a little piece of the action at the end of the day, that's what it.

Is. We're the connectors. I mean this is the whole thing like we've always been. And we're just like, we kind of. Yeah, I think we're big brain. We joke about this like, man, we're big brain in this thing. Big brain in. Because that's. I mean, this is another result of us volcanoing in the office is you and I going down the rabbit hole and thinking like mapping out what would be the most ideal position to play in this web3 space. This is pre us learning that marketing was the real issue or is the issue right now. And it will continue to be for a bit, I would imagine, because there's a lot more people entering this space and not really knowing how to navigate it or knowing the influencers to leverage for shout outs or, or which companies are gonna dish out sponsorships for those creators. I mean, it's very interesting. But yeah, we mapped out this whole thing and then all of a sudden we're like, oh. And then the right people fell into place. It was like literally like the next day after we did this huge whiteboard map out of like insane. Oh, we wanna be the hub. We just wanna be kind of in between all the action. And there's a lot of ways to monetize from that. And it's all done in a win, win, win, win, win. I mean, win exponential, I would say, because it's like, it's. And this is where it's just so interesting in this crypto space because it's like, I wouldn't call it play money, but it's definitely money. That's not like, I don't know, it's just different. People treat it differently than like, say, dollars, like you don't. I don't know, it's a lot more collaborative currency. It's so weird. To say, because it's.

Like. It's hard to describe, but magical Internet.

Money. Yeah, but no, it's. I mean, it's tough to. Yeah, it's just. It's just interesting, so positioning ourselves. And I think this is where it's interesting for anyone marketing who is interested in working in this space is like, think about how to play with this magic Internet money. Like, I saw Sharon Shivasa on our podcast. You know, he emailed and talked about how he's starting to get sponsorships in eth. In all this other currency.

In blockchain or cryptocurrency. And he's like, wow, this is insane. Because people. People are. You know, they're paying more and they're. It's less of a sell because people are literally sitting on profits. They're sitting. They're sitting, and they're. They're able to earn a lot quicker with this. So we're like, okay, so why don't we help people earn more through the projects and also get a piece? And it's very easy to position ourselves as value and then monetize in a ton of ways. I mean, there's. We'll go down the rabbit hole on that probably in a later.

Episode. But, yeah, no, it was just interesting. You know, you mentioned, like, a single day where kind of pieces fell into place. I remember that day because you and I had just been whiteboarding. You looked at your phone, and you're like, did you see this email from Moffat? He. He mailed his whole list about this, you know, crypto project that he's getting into or something. I don't remember the exact context or. Or, like, what the email was about. Oh, yeah, he was promoting Lad City. That's what it.

Was.

And. And you were like, did you read this email? And I was like, yeah, I think I saw that. I didn't pay too much attention to it. And he's. And you were like, I'm gonna go ping Jason. You ping Jason. And Jason's like, do you have time today? Let's jump on a.

Call.

Yeah. And, like, literally that day, we had a call with Jason. Jason started talking about Lad City. He started talking about Buffalo. And we're like, this. This is really exciting. He's like, yeah, you guys should talk to Buffalo, maybe get involved with Lad City. We're like, yeah, that's a good idea. So that same day, I reached out to Buffalo, Buffalo responded the same day and said, yeah, let's chat tomorrow. That next day, we were on a call with Jason Moffat in Buffalo. Right. Like, and then that day we were talking to him and he's like, yeah, I know Hustle and Flowchart. I've listened to some of your episodes and, you know, I remember you guys from back in the day when we used to, you know, chat Internet marketing 10 years ago, why don't you guys come be part of Lad City? And that happened within like a 48 hour window. All of.

That. That's the beauty of creating space, man. You know, like, what we did prior to that is decide, you know, pod hacker is not for us in the long term. I think in that same conversation, that's when we decided EGP letters got to go. And like, because there's just too much happening, like, we were just spitting out too much energy. And I thank you, Matt, for helping me see a lot, lot of that.

Because I think I was resistant because I was like, man, I want to keep. Because it's helping a lot of people and I want to help more. And I know how much people love this stuff, but at the same time, it's just like, damn it, man. It's not what's genuinely lighting us up. And that's not the exponential growth that we can give to everyone around us in.

Value. Yeah. And if it's not lighting us up the way we want it to, it's probably going to show through in the content. So let's work with somebody who is going to be. Be more lit up about it than we are, which is, you know, where Adam came into the.

Mix.

Yeah. So I just think, you know, I think it's the right moves. Time will obviously tell whether it's the right moves or not, but like we said, there's a lot of ships that are kind of burned now that some of the options, you know, some of the paths we took, there's kind of no going back on now. And I love.

It. So that's the way it should be, man. Because that's forcing us, not forcing them, it's allowing new things to show up. And that's the beautiful thing is I feel like throughout all 2021 has been that, like, oh, shut that down. Oh, boom, a better opportunity or something just filled that space. So that's all we're doing. I feel like we're doing that even more now.

Too. And then, so speaking of Hustle and Flowchart, this show that you're listening to right now, there's going to be some changes. Right.

The goal of the show is less going to be about bringing on the world's best digital Marketers and authors and entrepreneurs. And now we're going to start bringing on experts and authorities and influencers and visionaries in the Web3Crypto NFT space. That's what we're really lit up about. That's what we're trying to get other people lit up about. Because we see the matrix now, we see the future, we see where things are going. And we're like, if you're not paying attention to this, you're going to miss the boat. So start paying attention to this. It's kind of our goal now to turn Hustle and Flowchart into a show that onboards people, that becomes this on ramp into getting into Web3 and getting a better understanding and getting, getting more comfortable with it so that you can see what we're seeing and you can, you know, you could come in and dip your toes in the water and then jump fully in eventually like we did. That's kind of our goal with the show now is to, is to take it in that direction. You know, we may back it off to one episode a week for a little bit starting in February. We haven't really decided whether we're going to keep our two a week or one a week release schedule, but we are going to keep going with Hustle and Flowchart and Hustle lid Flowchart is going to now live on Hard Fork Media. So there's going to be a little bit of a change with the YouTube channel. The YouTube channel is actually going to get rebranded as the Hard Fork Media channel. And Hustle and Flowchart is going to be one of the shows that lives on Hard Fork Media along with a handful of other shows. Now there's also going to be other shows underneath Hard Fork Media that live on their own channels. And then there's going to be some shows that live on the, you know, the main Hard Fork Media channel. But Hard Fork Media is becoming a larger media brand with more shows underneath the network. And Hustle and Flowchart is just going to be one of the shows on the network. We're essentially trying to build the barstool sports of the Web3 space. That's what we're trying to build.

Here. And this is something that we've been scheming on like a network concept for years now. We had this conversation probably two, three years ago with some mentors of ours and won't name names and all that, but you know, like we throw it around podcast, network, media network. We've talked about YouTube Creator Network and doing pooled sponsorships and stuff like that, which was actually very similar because we actually mapped out this whole approach in the non web 3world originally before.

Talking to all the team members that are on hard fork with.

Us. That's the crazy thing. I felt like that was pretty big brain stuff back then. But we still felt we're like, it's still not lighting us up enough and not exponentially valuable enough to everyone to go all in on it. And then that's when Web3 showed up and then a cool crew to collaborate with. And then we're like, hold up. We have this model that we were seeing scheming up. What do you think of this? And everybody's like, holy shit. So yeah, exactly what you just said. We want to be more of the barstool sports kind of web or media empire essentially media network in the web3 crypto space where we are bringing in the best content influencers on YouTube, on TikTok, on podcasts, any channel that is listening to web3 type topics and more or less be their agents and be their partners and give them opportunities and allow them to work in the lane that they work best. Being a creator. Whereas the deals can flow through us, we could do the due diligence, we have the investors, we have sponsorship connections, we have resources, we have all these things that influencers, creators might need. So we're going to pass on right details, but also project owners. The idea is to also be in the know or at least in the flow of new projects that want some help and disrupt distribution. So we're going to be there as their agents as well and kind of just help this whole collective grow and, and do it at a level where it's, it's high production quality, you know, almost like ESPN style is kind of like what we're.

Thinking. That's Buffalo specialty. That's right. That's what why he got involved in LADS in the first place was he had that high production quality like that I want to build like the sports center of crypto. And he was doing that for lads and now he's, he's ready to help do that with, with Hard Fork media as well. So like the video quality that you're seeing on YouTube right now that we thought we were like really up leveling like that this is like, this is our new foundation baseline. Like you haven't seen up leveling.

Yet. So this content network, it's going to develop and we probably don't even know all of what it will become yet. But the beautiful thing is that we have a Pretty cool outline and framework that doesn't seem to be really done right now in this crypto space. I mean, shit, it's not really even done in the. In the creator space that it is done, of course, but, you know, but you see, like podcast networks, very valuable, very helpful for a lot of folks that don't know how to monetize, get guests or whatever. The thing is that networks provide. Well, we're just doing that in the web3 space. So, you know, the idea is to be the trusted resources for all these parties and the audience listening, of course, because that's what will, you know, keep the influencers making their stuff, but, you know, and then be that core content network with that focus to grow all the technology and what3.

Space. Yeah. It also allows us to do really sweet pool deals too. Right. We can go after a sponsor in the Web3 space, and a sponsor doesn't really care about us. On YouTube, when we say, hey, look, hustle at flowchart has 1200 subscribers. Do you want to sponsor us? They're like, come back to us when you're 10 times the size.

But now what we get to do is we've got a network, and I'm not going to name any channels yet. They'll come out later. But we've already partnered with some content creators on YouTube and we've got like over 100,000 subscribers combined across all of these shows now. So now we can go to sponsors and say, hey, do you want to sponsor our network? We will get you across these hundred thousand subscribers across these five channels. And so we can go do those pool deals and we can do partnerships. We can go to companies and say, hey, let's do an equity deal where we get a percentage and allocation of tokens from your company that you're creating. We get an allocation of these tokens, and we'll spread these tokens across all these content creators. And now all these content creators have skin in the game. They have some allocation, and they have. They have a reason to go out there and really kind of promote this product because now they're a holder of it. They're technically an investor in this project now. So it allows us to put together some really, really sweet pooled deals where all ships rise together. And I do want to actually say that if there's anybody listening that has a content outlet, a YouTube channel, a TikTok channel, a Twitter following that's in the web3 space, reach out to us. We want to talk to you because we are going to be partnering with A lot more brands in the future and bringing them some sweet deals like what we're talking about here.

Right? Yeah. I mean all the part you'll see it develop on the show as we get into the new year here. So I want to go back really fast as you're talking about hard fork here to January. Yeah. I want to go back to what's going to happen with Hustle and flowchart going into 2020. So this is the last episode of the year, right.

Matt? This is the last.

Episode. This would be it.

Yeah.

Okay. I guess there's not that many days left in the year. Yeah. So starting in the beginning of the year, you're going to hear about a month's worth of the greatest hits of Hustle and Flowchart. And this was actually a really cool suggestion.

From Greg Merrily's Greg Merrily's Studio One.

Design. And I just want to say we do want to finish our website. Sorry for dragging our feet. The design is basically done, but he's still waiting on a few bits of copy from us. And I know Greg listens to the show and we really, really appreciate you and thanks for being patient with us. The site looks fricking phenomenal. As you know, we're just kind of in this transition and trying to figure things out. But we do love you and we do love the website that you built and we will get back on track soon. So thanks.

Greg. Thank you, Greg. I can't wait to share this website with everyone because it looks amazing. It's not developed yet, but we'll get there quickly because we have some people, people waiting to basically develop it for.

Us. Studio One Design, if you're looking for a new website design, go talk to Greg. He will take care of.

You. Yeah. And I want to have that thing in his portfolio, our website, because I think it's going to stand out. So yeah, go check him out. But yeah, Greg basically suggests hey instead of. Because we're basically going to say hey in January. We really want to take some time to think about the business and collaborate with the folks that we're working with, the core Hard Fork team. But also figure out just all the different pieces that are playing with this and do it right and not rush it and. But hit it hard. Right. And kind of like, hey, let's release the content a little bit. The requirement from us to keep creating new episodes on this schedule. And Greg was like, why don't you release the best of and kind of revisit some of these heavy hitting episodes and People that we brought on and have another listen through them because like he was saying, and it's totally true because we've done it too, is like you listen to a. It's just like reading a book. It's like if you read the book multiple times and especially in different phases of your life as you've experienced or learn new things, you hear different things or you read new things and have different perspectives from the same content. So that's what's going to happen. I know I'm going to re listen to these episodes throughout the month of January. So that's what's going to happen. We're not going to name names on this episode, but you'll see them and I think you'll love.

Them. What I do want to say about the episodes so we've already pre selected which episodes are going to come out. Fairly certain they're going to be the one. I might swap one or two of them. But for the most part these are episodes that I think gave us the biggest perspective shifts over the last few years. These aren't necessarily, necessarily the like here's what's working in Facebook ads or here's what you should do in SEO episodes. These are the ones that we had our life before this interview and our mentality and our thinking after this interview. These are the ones that fundamentally changed our perspectives on things. Right. Like these are the ones that pointed us in the direction of where we are now. Right. So episodes about how we approach money and how we think about money. Episodes about what where things are going in the future. Future episodes about how to connect with some of the greatest minds on the planet and how to build amazing networks. These are the episodes that massive perspective shifts. Just like.

We didn't see things different, we saw things differently after recording these episodes with these guests. So these are going to be some really, really, really impactful episodes.

And I think after listening to this series of eight episodes that we're going to re release.

You'Ll actually kind of get a feel for like, okay, cool. I actually see the progression of the thinking of these guys in real time.

Here. Yeah, yeah. You can see where things are going and maybe it even relates to something that you've done. If you've subscribed and followed along for so long. If you're not subscribed by now, come on, come on, you've hung out with this episode. Just hit that button. Wherever you're at, hit that button. You know how to hit it.

But you're gonna probably relate to some of this stuff in your own journey. I know a lot of folks in our discord have followed along with what we're doing and they've evolved in different ways. And I'm sure this is going to be interesting to go revisit and be like, oh yeah, I missed that. Or like, oh man, that was the thing that really set this off. And then maybe it opens up a whole new paradigm shift. That's the idea. And I know there were so many in these. So it's a hard hitting month in the beginning of the year, January 2022 and in February, once that wraps up, we're going to get back in into some brand new content from us and some, some friends of ours are bringing on and like you were saying, it's either gonna be weekly or twice twice a week. But we're gonna dig into more of the, the Web three and the fundamentals, but also like interviewing just amazing people to highlight their own perspectives of this space, what's coming. Maybe some cool projects you should be aware about.

Tools. And there will be other creators on the channel as well. So again, the channel is going to rebrand over time as the hard Fork Media YouTube channel. And how Hustle and Flowchart will be a show on Hard Fork Media. And there will be a couple new shows also on the Hard Fork Media channel as well as Hard Fork Media, sort of sister channels, I guess you could call them, I don't.

Know. Brother and sister.

Channels. Yeah, partner channels. I don't.

Know. Something I wanted to say as well is we've received a lot of messages and emails from a lot of friends, mentors and people you've even had on this podcast. A lot of folks reach out questioning what we're doing, or not questioning, but just kind of questioning, just wondering, hey, so where are you guys headed with this thing and all that? And it's pretty cool because I think a lot of folks are kind of looking at what we're doing in a way to see where things are going, Puck is going. But I don't know, we just kind of dove into it. So it's almost like this big experiment. So it's kind of fun to be the voices and reporters of this space and, and yeah, because I know there's a lot of people that are interested, a lot of big marketers, business folks that we've had on that might, they just might not be equipped to do a whole pivot like we just did in our doing. So it's, I don't know, I feel very grateful to be in this Time and the ability to make this move, but also help others that are kind of paying attention here because I know a lot of folks have reached out and said, like, hey, keep me up to date because you're really helping us to kind of figure out what the, like, what to do with this new technology in terms of marketing and business. So don't feel like we're just like losing touch of all that stuff. It's definitely integrated. This is just like a new evolution of it.

Basically. Yeah, I feel like we'll always kind of keep our fingers on the marketing entrepreneurial, like, pulse of things. Right. Like, we're, we love tactics. Like, we're tactical people. We love to test tactical stuff even in the web3 space. We're messing with tactics all the time. Right.

So. And.

Strategies. And strategies, yeah. The whole, the whole gamut. It's balance, you know, and just speaking to what you're saying, like, we were, we're in a pretty high level mastermind with some just serious ballers in the marketing space. And I think when we sat down to the mastermind with them and told them our pivot for the first time, their first thoughts are like, oh, okay, you're going down that, that path. All right, well, you guys do you right. Like, I think they're a little skeptical. But throughout that same mastermind meeting, throughout the course of the conversation, by the end of the mastermind, everybody was converted. Everybody, everybody was just like, you guys should be talking about this stuff. Like, holy crap, you guys, this is your path. You need to be talking about it. I think they heard how lit up we were about it also, how much we kind of grasped it, how we kind of put the pieces together about, look, this is what it looks like now, but this is where it's going. And I think when we explained where it was going, this high level mastermind of marketers all kind of went, you guys need to go this path. This just makes the most sense for you guys. So, you know, I just want to add that I think, you know, it's been interesting to hear the response from people. And I think this response is usually starts skeptical and then quickly pivots to like, holy crap. No, this is the way after, you know, a very quick explanation of why we chose this path. And so, yeah, I'm excited about where we're going. And I do want to say one more thing before we wrap this up. I want to show some gratitude to two companies that have supported the hell out of us for the last several years. So Ahrefs and Easy Webinar. Ahrefs has, you know, they've been an amazing sponsor over the years. They're an SEO tool. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in the direction we're going for them as a sponsor because the stuff we're going to be talking about is not going to be super reference relevant to SEO anymore and that sort of thing. So, you know, they may sponsor us again. I'm not sure, but I'd say it's probably unlikely just based on the sort of directions and the divergence we're going. And then same thing with Easy Webinar. Easy Webinar has been our longest running sponsor. I think they started sponsoring us in year one and here we are, what, five years later and they're still a sponsor. And this is the last episode that they're sponsoring of ours. But they've been an amazing sponsor in amazing support for this podcast. And it's just been amazing working with those two companies over the last few years. So I want to shout them out and all the other companies that have sponsored us over the years. It's been a really, really amazing journey. We're still going to have sponsors on this show. The sponsors are just probably going to be less Internet marketing product sponsors and more Web three type product sponsors. So, yeah, I just wanted to give that shout out before we wrap up this last episode where they're involved in.

It. Good call, man. Yeah. If it wasn't for the sponsors, I mean, it would put a lot more pressure on us to figure out our transactional side of businesses, of all the stuff mainly that we wrapped up this year. Yeah. So shout out to y' all and also shout out to everyone listening if you're still here with us. It means a lot that you're listening right now, but in general, like throughout the years of listening and subscribing and all that stuff and following around our crazy antics and these fast ones that we might pull on you. I mean, sometimes it feels like we're just like, you know, it's just like, oh, we're going this way now. But like, it's so cool to.

See. Don't rug me, bro. Don't rug.

Me. We're not. We would never. So, like, I want to give a shout out to all the folks that have just stuck around. I mean, if you're here, thank you. And it just means so much because you have helped us fuel where we want to keep taking things. And it's just going to keep going. It's just going to be A more fun and fun. Fun and fun. Fun and fun. My words are diminishing at this point, but so is like my nasal. Like, everything's getting clogged right now. But just to wrap it up, I just want to give gratitude to everyone who supported us because there's a lot more fun stuff and valuable stuff and win win opportunities, scenarios across the board and couldn't. I mean, there's no words to really put it in a nice magical box. Little present for you. So I will ask, and this is my last ask is just go join us on the Discord. Go hang out. Hustleandfluechart.com Discord. That is the place. Facebook.

Meh. We're not on there. If you try to message me on Facebook, you probably won't get a response. I know that's your last ask, but I have one more ask on top of it and that's to also follow us on Twitter. Oh, yes, I'm rwolf M A T T R W O L F e Joe is oefier J O E F I E R. If you follow us on Twitter, we do curate a.

Lot, a lot, a lot of.

Stuff. Like, whenever I find really cool news articles or tips or strategies or things like that, I'm constantly sharing them and curating them. And then every once in a while, I might have like a dumb thought of my own that I share as.

Well. I have a lot of dumb thoughts. Follow my dumb thoughts. Yes, same to what you said. And yeah, Twitter is just so much more fun, I feel like. But. But even Discord, like, Discord is rad. And even someone was saying this, like there was a whole discussion in there just this week, was talking about, like, you know, it's so much different than Facebook, you know, like how, like, people are so much more collaborative, collaborative and supportive and all this stuff. And it just feels like more of a genuine community that you would wish in an online community. And I feel like that is what we're developing. That's what Discord kind of. I mean, not as a whole, but it's a lot more conducive to that. So just if you're still on the fence about, like, I don't want to join another app. Just do it. Just test it out. You're going to be confused for the first month of using it. But I promise it's worth it because the connections and the people and all the cool stuff you're going to learn there and be supported. Like, it's totally worth downloading the free app and Just hanging out a little bit here. So. Hustleflowchart.com Discord. You will not regret it. Yes, sir. That is all of the asks that we have, I believe, right, Matt? Yeah, that's a.

Lot. Follow us on Discord or join the Discord. Follow us on Twitter. That's pretty much the two places we hang out the most and we share the most. And I think in 2022, we're probably going to start doing some more Twitter spaces type stuff, maybe. Maybe even dabble with some clubhouse a little bit more, do more of the live interactive discussions and. Yeah, so if you're following us on the Discords and the Twitters, then you'll know about that stuff when it.

Happens. Dang. Right. And that's about it. So have a safe, healthy holiday, New Year celebration, whatever you end up doing. I'll probably still be in lockdown, actually. I will be quarantine here, so that'll be.

Fun. Are you doing anything for New Year's? Probably not. I don't think I have any plans for New Year's. I think we're just gonna hang around the house and. And I don't know, there's been a few New Years now where I'm in bed by 10, so we'll.

See. Yeah, I'm usually sick on New Year's and I like, rarely ever get sick, but yep, there's no exception this year, so. Yay. But maybe we'll do a fun zoom. Actually. Yeah, last year I think I watched the East Coast New Year's and I was like, cool. Did that. All right, check that.

Box. Night. Hey, we can do like a zoom New Year's countdown where we're on, like, we're live and people can watch us hang out on New Year's and be.

Boring. It's not going to be that.

Entertaining. It won't be that entertaining. We'll probably just be like. We'll probably just be like sitting there, like, watching YouTube videos and then we're like, hey, the ball's.

Dropping. Yeah. You know, I'm going to suggest other people to just live their.

Lives. Just live your.

Life. Just do your own.

Thing. But yeah, don't try to pay attention to ours because the reality is pretty.

Boring. Just going to be honest, we don't need a sugar coat. Anything.

All right, let's interview that.

Appreciate. Happy New Year, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. I don't know why I'm waving at the camera.

But. Bye, man. Love you guys. Love.

You. Thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you Dug it. I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do lots of webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's Easy Webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zieman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform. And we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody can register and then it, you know, they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it yet, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing tool. And, uh, Casey is actually hooking you up. He said for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, he's giving 25% off of the membership to use Easy Webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has. But he's hooking you up with 25% off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle. That's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easy. Easywebinar.com hustle. It's a awesome tool. You're gonna dig it. So just go grab.

It. Check it.

Out. Easywebinar.com hustle See ya. No, not see ya. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know. I don't know how to close these things. Go get easy. Webinar. Talk to you later.

Sam.