Brian Kurtz - Using The Pandemic To Eliminate What You Don't Want

The key thing that you have to do on a regular basis is to make a list of your non negotiables. That's the first thing you must do. And that's the key to getting rid of stuff. You don't just say, I want to get rid of it for the sake of getting rid of it. And you don't say I want something just because you want it as an entrepreneur. Dan Sullivan says an entrepreneur can say I want it because I want it. That's an acceptable thing to say.

That's right.

But you want to have reasons for wanting something. And the reason to get rid of something is it might not meet one of your non negotiable.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy. My boy, Matt Wolf and Joe. Hey, welcome back.

What's up?

Not much. We're just talking to a legend again.

No kidding. We got our buddy back. Yeah. Brian Kurtz is back on the show for round two.

The Titan.

The Titan himself. Yes. He is an OG titan. The one that over delivers the most, I would say.

Oh, absolutely. He wrote the book on.

That's right. There's no one better. Yeah. So Brian Kurtz, if you have not listened to the previous episode, where have you been?

Yeah. Why go listen to it?

Wait, hey, high fiving.

Are we high fiving that?

Hold on, let's mic it up.

That happened.

Yeah. And we thank you, Brian, for that. So, yeah, Brian is back. So I don't know how to do him justice with a short intro because we tried to make these short and punchy and literally right before this we're like, there's a lot we could say here.

Yeah.

But what I do know is he has over 40 years of marketing experience. Not knowledge. Experience and knowledge, but like just, you know, he's been mentored by people like Gene Schwartz and many, many, many others.

He's actually the rights holder to Breakthrough Marketing Advertising. Breakthrough advertising, Sorry. Yep.

Yeah.

I mean and much more. So it's.

There's a lot. So let's just talk about what we're going to talk about in this episode because.

No justice. Oh. But go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Go ahead.

Yeah. So in this episode where, you know, we did talk to him a couple years ago before the pandemic and he was kind of telling us what he was working on then and his over deliver book and all that kind of stuff, but we wanted to close the gap. So on this episode we talked about what sort of pivots were made, what sort of changes were made. During COVID and how he's doing his events, because he was doing a lot of live events in person before, and now he's had to shift online. So we talked about a lot of that. We talked about, you know, focusing on what really matters in your business. We talked a lot about, you know, enjoying it and shaving off the stuff that you don't want to be doing in your business anymore. Like, a lot of really good stuff.

Yeah. A lot of principles he lives by. Like, there's very specific ones that he gives us here.

I mean, there's a list of names that he references. And it's because he has all these mentors and different stories over the years. So it's just so cool to get someone who has so much wisdom and who is open to share it. And he's just a damn cool dude.

Absolutely. And the content, the stuff he talks about, the wisdom he shares on this episode, that'll do him justice, 100%. This intro sucks at doing him justice. But the conversation, you're gonna be blown away. So stick with it.

Yeah. Strap in. So make sure. And we talk about this at the end. End of the episode. But I want to make sure everyone hears it. Definitely. Join his email list. It is one that I am on. Does he over deliver, you think? Go to Briankurtz and that's B R I A N K u r t z.net join his email list because it is worth it. But every single week, he is essentially giving you just a big bunch of wisdom. And it's a lot of it. There's excerpts from his over deliver book, from the advertising Solution, which is actually his first book. And then also, you know, breakthrough advertising. There's all these things. He has a cool boot camp as well, but you gotta be on his list to actually join it, which it sounds freaking epic. And then overdeliverbook.com is where you grab the book and get all these crazy bonuses. It's like the bonuses should be an extra few hundred thousands of dollars, whatever it is.

Yeah.

It's a lot of cool stuff.

Yeah. And we took notes on this episode, too. So if you want to go grab the notes, you can grab the action guide by going to flowchartgroup.com within the two weeks of this going, you'll be able to join our Facebook group. But you can also join our email list at the same time. When you join our email list, we'll send you the action guide to this episode. So go do that@flowchartgroup.com all right, so join.

Let's cut into it. Let's chat to Brian. All right, Brian, Round two is live. Thanks for joining us again.

Oh, I'm so happy to be here. You know, I saw on Facebook you had interviewed a friend, I guess it was Ryan Lee, I think.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, Ryan is like my brother. And so I said, I usually don't ask to be on a show, but I've been on your show. So then I said, okay, if I ask them.

If I asked them and they hated me the first time, then I'm in big trouble. But thank goodness that you asked me on again. And it's been a couple of years. A lot has happened, although the same stuff has happened, which is good, too. And I was just so pleased when you said, come on back on. And I love you guys. I mean, you guys are just have a great. A great vibe and. Yeah, I know you love baseball. I love baseball.

Oh, we just spent the last almost 20 minutes talking about that. It's been fabulous.

Right. And, you know. And, you know, you've got something good here, and I wanted to be part of it again. So thank you for inviting me again.

You're very welcome.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, that's. That's. Our community has loved you and your book over Deliver, which is still going strong, it sounds like, you know.

Yeah. And I just sold out my inventory of 10,000 books, so I have to get my publisher to agree to maybe print another 10,000. We'll see. Maybe after this podcast, I'll sell 5,000 on this podcast.

Yeah, let's do it. We'll be that for you.

Right, right.

Right.

So since we last talked, there's been a global pandemic.

So, you know, I didn't know anything about it. No, I just heard about it the other day.

Oh, yeah. Let's get you up to speed a little bit.

So I'm curious. I think this might be a good place to start, is, you know, what have you been doing since the last time we talked? Because I think the world has changed quite a bit. And I know you probably had to make some pivots of your own in your own business, and there were some health issues that popped up for you. So, you know what's kind of happened since we last chatted?

Yeah, a lot has happened. But, you know, the thing about. I mean, pivot was the word of the year. Right. And I got to tell you, I had a mastermind meet that. I have two masterminds, but one of them meets live. Although it's been virtual during the pandemic. And I remember we sent the swag box, and on the outside of the swag box, I wanted to have a quote of some kind. And the quote that I put on the last swag box, which was for the virtual event, was something like, you know, entrepreneurs don't have to pivot because they're pivoting all the time. And you know, to be an entrepreneur, you had to make the ultimate pivot, whether at the, at the initial phase of entrepreneurship or at some point in your career. And, you know, because you're always thinking ahead as an entrepreneur. You're always, you're always not, you know, I mean, some, some entrepreneurs are a little bit gloom and doom, but most are pretty upbeat. And so you have that upbeat attitude in your mind. And, and you can, you know, you're always thinking ahead. And even if you're not thinking about, oh, there's going to be a pandemic next year, the fact that you'll be so prepared because you're always thinking in terms of your life is a pivot. It's one thing, it's opportunities and choices and opportunities and prioritizing those opportunities. In fact, Dan Sullivan, who runs Strategic Coach, he's the top entre, top coach for entrepreneurs in the world. And you know, he says, you know, when we, when the pandemic hit, he said, you know, I know that the people in Strategic Coach are going to be way ahead of everybody else because it's the entrepreneurs that are going to be out ahead way much faster. And everything he said was true. I mean, just, just the idea of going from live events to virtual events and what we've seen in that, in that, in that, in that evolution. I mean, we had virtual events before, we certainly had live streams of live events. But the idea that we went to enrollment, big live enrollment type events where you sell stuff on stage to an, to. To the zoom screen, and everybody that I've talked to, if they did it right with the right, you know, with the right companies, and there are a few companies that were leading the way in this area. They all had their best year ever in the last year during COVID And, you know, you don't want to brag about that because a lot of people suffered. I mean, you know, I don't know about you, but I got a lot of closed restaurants and dry cleaners and all kinds of stuff in my, in my neighborhood. And it's depressing and it's sad and, you know, the pandemic was nothing to. I was gonna Say nothing to sneeze at, nothing to sneeze, Nothing to sneeze in your mask. But it was, it was, it was brutal. And yet the people that I've been hanging around with, including myself, you know, I had my best year yet. And I'm not bragging, I don't mean to brag to say that, but it was the ability to be in that lifelong pivot, so to speak. So as far as my business goes, I mean, I always said I predicted the pandemic because In December of 2019, I decided to launch a virtual mastermind. I didn't know anything. I didn't even know where Wuhan was.

So I launched because I had two other masterminds before that. I had a high end mastermind, $25,000 small group mastermind. And then I had a middle group which was like I call the Titans Masterclass. And that was, you know, kind of like, you know, a $10,000 mastermind. Two events a year instead of three. And I'll tell you, I didn't want to do five events anymore. I had three for my mastermind, two for the masterclass. I said I don't want the masterclass anymore. And I'm in a position where I can say, you know, and I know you talk about this a lot in your podcast, you know, what to get, get what, what to get rid of is just as important as what to do. And so, but I didn't necessarily had to replace it with something, but I wanted to replace it with something that would be much more meaningful and virtual, that I wouldn't have to do live events. That was the initial thing. And so In December of 2019, I launched Titans Accelerator. And you know, from there to now, I've got now 250 members at somewhere between, depending on if you came in on the original launch or recently, somewhere between say fifteen hundred dollars a year and two thousand dollars a year.

And so that was December. So then March Covid hit. So the one of the basic benefits of the group were, you know, it included a lot of stuff, benefits. But the big one was a live call with me once a month, a live zoom call for two hours, doing hot seats and discussions and all of that. So I pivoted within the pivot, so to speak. So Covid hit and I said, well, I'm going to be home. So I went to weekly calls instead of, and this is in the spirit of over delivering too. So it fit perfectly with my brand and everything I was doing. So I went to weekly calls instead of monthly and I mean, think about how that affected my renewal rate.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

I mean, I got a 70% renewal rate on the initial launch. I wouldn't have gotten that without the weekly calls. And the weekly calls, I started bringing in all the speakers that would come to my live masterminds because they're sitting at home too. And I could get them live at my masterminds. But now getting them on Zoom was simple. So I got Jay Abraham and I got Ben Settle, and I got Ryan Lee, I got.

Perry Marshall. I mean, it was basically titans of direct response to, for a $2,000 mastermind. And it was just, it just fell into place. But again, because it wasn't, I didn't look, I lucked out. I launched it before COVID If I launched it during COVID I think I would have been as successful. So that wasn't the issue, but the fact that I was thinking ahead to a virtual mastermind, and then the circumstances enabled me to Hansen. Because of COVID Yeah. Not in, not in spite of COVID And so that was, that was very fortunate. And then, you know, I built on that. I've also, you know, you know that I own the exclusive rights to Breakthrough Advertising, which is the masterpiece written by Gene Schwartz in 1966. The book is 100% relevant today as it was in 1966, because human behavior hasn't changed. You know, people are still people. People still have the same.

Emotions and tendencies to buy that they did in. I said in the afterword of the book that I wrote that they have. It's not just 1966, it's 1066 AD, same emotions. And so I decided to do something just recently that again, because we're in a Zoom virtual environment. What else can we do that can enhance not just my. It's not to enhance my brand, it's an. It's to enhance my. My mission, which is to teach everything that I've. I've done over the last 40 years and share everything I've learned from the mentors I've had and including Gene Schwartz.

Schwartz, yeah. Yeah.

So we, I just launched this. I called it the Breakthrough Advertising Quick Start boot camp. I don't like, I don't like short term things. I'm a long term guy. I have a long view of the world. But this made sense to do a two week sprint. I didn't want to do a full blown course. I didn't want to do anything like that. But Breakthrough Advertising, you know, It's. You pay $125 for the book, which is cheap compared to what you buy it on Amazon or ebay, which is 500 or more. But if you're going to buy $125 book, it's still expensive. You want to get a lot out of it. And what I found is that people were buying it on reputation, but they weren't reading it, they weren't studying it, they weren't applying it. And it is a dense book. It's not a beginner's book in copywriting and marketing by any means. So that became an opportunity. So I did this. I'm in it right now. I'm in. We just finished the first week of two weeks and so it's a quick start. Bootcamp we have, we'll have like seven or eight calls over two weeks with assignments from the book to apply to everybody's avatar, everybody's category of what they're marketing to. And you know, I just love it. It's like, and I think the people after two weeks with me and my marketing partner Chris, I think after two weeks I just might be able to sell them into Titans accelerator. Imagine that, right?

It's a perfect way in.

Yeah, it's like ascension programs. I didn't know they existed.

Well, what's the, what's the plan with the bootcamp? Is this every two weeks kind of thing? It's a long term idea.

I also, and you'll appreciate this, I practice what I preach in terms of.

Mailing to my list. So I have, I have thousands of breakthrough advertising buyers in over 50 countries around the world. So what I did was I did an RFM select on my breakthrough advertising buyers. If those of you who are those who are listening don't know what RFM is, it's all about, it's in chapter four of my book over deliver. But it's recency, frequency, monetary value. That's the way you categorize any list, any names, any, any audience by how recently they responded, how frequently they respond and how much money they spend with you. And I can get into that as a whole nother podcast one day, but I don't think we want to spend time there. But I took the breakthrough advertising buyers. We'll say I have, I probably have maybe close to 3,000. But then I broke them up into quarterly segments. So we went back to like the most recent quarter because they'll be the most responsive but not the immediate because they have to still read the book. So I did the whole timing thing. So this first boot camp was like the last three months that we decided this, it's successful. I've got over 40 people in it. I'm going to go back to the next three months and the next three months until I don't get response. And the thing is, I will get response because as long as the email addresses, I mean, at some point I won't be able to update the email addresses and it'll get old. But I remember in my direct mail days we used to go back to expires like seven and eight years because in direct mail you could correct the address, you could do address change mailings. So we used to like segment our expires like that. The last three month expires are going to be your best customers for a new subscription. Yeah, the three to six months will be the next best. The six to 12 months will be the next best. And we did that going back six or seven years. So I'm using everything that I learned in direct mail 101 to do a virtual breakthrough advertising quick start boot camp today with the, with the, with the goal of moving them into my, my virtual mastermind. Wow. So, you know, what goes around comes around. It's like, you know, and that's why, you know, when I, when I think about, you know, and the couple of people who reviewed my book on Amazon, I had, I had five one star reviews out of like 300 or 200. And one of them said that chapter two, chapter three is how paying postage made me a better marketer. Which is, you know about just. The fundamentals of direct mail are important. Not that I'm saying do direct mail. I'm saying the fundamentals are important to apply to online. But chapter two is the importance of original source. And I repeated it over and over again in chapter two. And that's what the person who gave me the one star review had trouble with. She said, you could have done that chapter in a paragraph. She said. But the point was I was so obsessed with it. The idea of eternal truths, fundamentals, bedrock principles that you build on. I mean, I just watched Genius, Picasso. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's amazing. No, the Genius series is amazing. It's Einstein, Picasso, and now it's Aretha for Franklin.

Oh, wow.

But the Picasso one, I quote Picasso all the time. He had the quote that says, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And that is, that's the, that's the essence of what, you know, what my career is about and what a lot of careers are about. Who are you know, a little bit older, but hopefully a little bit wiser. Not staying in the past, but seeing what in the past can apply to everything that's state of the art in the future, that's brilliant. And that's been my game my whole life. And I'm not. I'm going to stick to it.

Yeah. And the rules, like you said, it doesn't sound like the rules really changed, even through Covid. Right. I mean, it's. The art has changed maybe slightly.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, nothing. You know, Covid. Covid was. I mean, Covid was. It sucked. I mean.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it still sucks for a lot. I mean, emotionally, business, all that.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I'm not making light of it at all. And, you know, that's why I still watch the news, just to get a sense of the suffering that has happened and to. And, you know, I've given a lot of money to various food banks and charities and things like that. It's the only thing I can really do to help. But the other thing I can do to help is that as we come out of it, you know, people who are unemployed or want. Want to, you know, enhance their careers, I can help them if they want to, you know, learn copywriting or learn direct response marketing. And so, you know, I have a role to play, as we all do. You guys do, too.

Yeah.

And so I just think that. But as far as. And the thing that I did that was that because I was home so much, I ended up catching up on a lot of other podcasts and videos and trainings, and then other people were forming zoom groups and accountability groups. And so it wasn't like it was. I wouldn't say it was overkill. It was just. It was just like there was so much available. And that's what we thought. As soon as. As soon as the. As soon as we heard about COVID and there's going to be quarantines. You know, the obvious thing was everybody said, everybody's going to be home, we're going to sell more. And that was true. If you have a digital product or you sell online exclusively and you know what you're doing, you should have had an increase in sales during COVID depending on what you're selling, of course. But I, you know, but if you're selling supplements, if you're selling exercise, even, you know, exercise videos, if you're. Whatever you're selling that could be done in the home, you have, you know, the big issues were because I had people in My mastermind group, who are dentists and lawyers and things like that. I mean, dentists. That was a tough one.

That's very tough.

You gotta be in someone's mouth.

Yeah.

And you're not gonna be in someone's mouth when they're wearing a mask and they're quarantined. Just not gonna happen.

Yeah.

So, you know, I encourage them to do some supplement stuff for, you know, or a teeth whitening, something that they could do at home or something just to keep the revenue coming in and not throw your arms up and say, I can't do this anymore. And I even, you know, consulted with a couple of restaurants, you know, to get a. To get proactive about takeout and delivery. Like, you know, hire high school students who are out of school to give out flyers in the neighborhood with menus and, you know, I want to cook dinner for you tonight kind of thing. And Frank Kern gave me a great idea when I, when I interviewed him, because I interviewed some people too. I don't have a podcast, but I interviewed some people, you know, at the beginning of COVID and there was, There was not. In the marketing community, there was not a lot of pessimism.

No. It was very much like, hey, we got this. Let's just pivot. We're going to. Yeah, right.

So like in sports, it's like, next man up, right?

Yeah. No, I do feel like in the. Especially in the digital marketing space, a lot of people were kind of like, ah, this is our time to shine. You know, we've been preparing for this. I feel like, especially like our business specifically. I feel like we were positioned for it. You know, we didn't sort of planned for it. We didn't know it was happening. But we have online courses, we have a podcast. We're online educators in the marketing space. So a lot of people were at home trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out how to make money. Where are they going to go? They're going to go online and start googling online businesses, starting a podcast, starting a YouTube channel, things like that.

You know what the difference is? The difference is that in the old school, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach says that coaching is to 2021, as management was to 1980 or. And before. And so. And the difference between.

Educating and coaching versus consulting are completely different. Consulting is more in that. In that management category.

Very much so.

Coaching is more in that entrepreneurial.

Progressive.

Proactive attitude. And so, you know, as you said, you're educators, so you're just gonna. You don't have to label yourself as consultants. You're gonna just continue to do what you're doing and put it on steroids online, because you're already online. And.

There'S just more and more that you can handle and more and more that you can do. And so.

When Dan talks about. Dan talks about coaching being the new management, everything needs coaching. I always say that in my neighborhood here I have a lot of financial planners and people who work in big corporations, and when they get let off, they become consultants, which means they're unemployed. And I don't know any coach who ever thinks they're unemployed right now. Right. So I don't want to get semantic, too semantic with it. But I really believe that that coaching is something that whatever you do, I mean, if you have a piece of do it yourself software, it's going to need coaching. If you do done for you, which I don't believe in, done for you, that's another topic altogether. But if you do done for you, it still needs. It still needs coaching.

100%.

In fact, Agora Publishing, they used to have these. These lifetime subscriptions to their newsletters, right. Online newsletters for investing. But there was. So then you say, okay, you charge them what you think you can charge them for a lifetime subscription. You get your money up front, and then you service them and they get. You just keep servicing them. But they were smart enough to have something called a maintenance fee on the lifetime subscription.

That's right.

So the maintenance fee was like yearly at $49 or 99 dol. So you're still getting revenue in and you're coaching them in. It's like, you know, you'll have other. You'll have a webinar during the year. They have a lifetime subscription, but the maintenance fee lets them get in on anything new beyond what they paid for for the lifetime. So you say it's a lifetime, they pay you, and then you're done with them.

No, not at all.

There's always going to be more. There's always more. Right. And so, and it's always. It always seems to be involved in some. Either directly or indirectly, to some kind of coaching and educating. And I know you guys do that, and I know you relate to that.

Yeah. And what I'm hearing here with the pivot that you have with the virtual mastermind and then even with the bootcamp and all this stuff. Well, actually, more, the mastermind is you have recurring now at a much more smaller level, obviously, than the big masterminds, but you're also curating A lot of this content, like with these interviews, bringing Frank Kern in there, Perry, and all that we've seen, that's been a kind of a mental shift. The last maybe couple year, year and a half for us is like, wait, hold on. Our job is curating and of course, you know, doing the research and making sure the wisdom's coming out. But that's coaching in itself as well.

I know. And you guys, you know, I'm sure you realize outside of this interview, you'll have a lot of interviews that'll be worth using again in your business. And so, you know, what happened was I. So I started my business indirectly when I did the Titans of Direct response event in 2014. Big event, you know, a celebration of the company. I was at Boardroom, Marty Edelston, the founder. That's where I had, you know, Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy and Gary Benson Vanga. It was like, you know, amazing event, right? So after I left Boardroom, I had all that content, which I've used over and over again at Boardroom. We used to do these greatest hits books, and we say, how many ways can you slice the salami? Well, you can slice it very, very thin and often, because if you have content, not everybody's gonna see the content all the time. And you guys know this. And even if you repeat stuff a year later, it's new for a big chunk of the audience. So. But then as I started doing the masterminds, the live masterminds, then all of a sudden I. So I did two and a half days of masterminds with like five or six speakers. Every one of those presentations is videotaped. And I've got Perry Marshall, and I've got Dan Kennedy, and I've got Jay Abraham, and I've got all these amazing presentations from the best of the best marketers of all time. They go in the vault, and you've got a vault. That's incredible.

We do, right?

Just because you're podcasting and also because.

You'Re in there, actually, I'm giving you credit.

You're a brown nose. So. So. So then.

And then when I started doing the Accelerator group, I give them in the accelerator group. It's. It's. It got to be, you know, weekly calls. And then it was.

I would put. And I wanted to have physical product with it, so I send them. I was going to do a newsletter, a print newsletter, once a month with. But I said, nah, I don't want to do a newsletter. I did newsletters. Been there, done that. So I wanted to Do a monthly USB which I send out once a month with all the calls, the recordings of the calls during the month. And I said, hey, wait a minute, I'll bring something from the Titans vault from the last six years from the Mastermind.

Drop a little something in there.

Amazing content every month. Sometimes I even throw two things in from the vault. So I over deliver. And then I also have a swipe, you know, I have all these, I have swipe files up the wazoo. I can give them a swipe of, you know, basically a mailing piece or a letter or a video of some product promotion that I can put that on the usb. And then, and then we started doing like on the weekly calls. Then we started doing a breakthrough advertising study group because people in the group really like breakthrough advertising. This is before the bootcamp. And so we'd record those and those would go on the usb. So I just sent out the April usb and.

I mean I had to get a higher storage USB to put everything on whatever. Higher storage usb. I don't know what I'm talking about tech wise, but. And I just love the idea of, you know, curating. Curating was the right word. That's the right word. Curating content for the, for the, with the ability to fit with your mission. Because the content was, was originally curated within what you were already doing.

That's right. Yeah.

So everything becomes related and you know, it becomes this cornucopia of just great stuff.

It really is fun. Once. Yeah, yeah. Once we, once we harness, we're like, oh, we're curators. It's our job to bring the right people and then deliver their message. But also it's our job to formulate this message however it best fits the mediums. And I mean, we're doing a lot more of that in the future with video too. That's going to be a whole nother evolution of curation, but we'll curb that for now.

I'm curious what I think as far as the pivot off the pivot people say what's going to happen to live events now that we're coming out of it? And I believe that first of all, I don't believe, I mean, I've learned this from people who have done it, but I'm not a big believer in the hybrid event. People have done it. So a hybrid event would be, you know, live and virtual at the same time.

Right.

It's doable. I think it's, it's a pain for both the audience and the, the, the people who are doing the event because you have to serve two masters because it's not a live stream of, it's not a live stream of a live event. That's not, that's not a hybrid.

No.

Would be that you're paying attention to both audiences equally and, and totally. And you can't do that, I don't think. Yeah, well, you can't do it well. So what I think is going to happen is, you know my mastermind, the high end one, I mean that one was geared for live events. So I don't think I even want to do a virtual event once we're going live again. But I will do some videos, I, I could do some zoom calls, whatever in between the meetings. But I want to go to three live events a year and I want to keep it that way. But I think that a lot of masterminds and, and three time a year type events will go to maybe one life, two virtual. And so they'll, they'll mix it up that way. On my accelerator group, which was all. It's all virtual. It started all virtual, right. That one. I'd like to maybe do one live event for the accelerators, you know, charge them what, what it costs me basically to feed them and, and, and, and for the, the hotel.

So like a one time fee on top of the, the subscription.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and just have them come and, and I'll have the mastermind people there and I'll merge them and all that. And that's, that's for 2022 though. I, I can't, I can't think about that now. But it'll be interesting to see because basically there's a concept that Dan Sullivan has in Strategic Coach and he calls it the four Cs. And the four Cs are. Hopefully I can get them right. So I always forget them. But what you do is if you have a project, something you want to work on, you make a commitment to it, right? And you make a commitment you're going to do it and then you go through the second C is courage. You have to have courage in that second phase because you're working it out.

You are figuring it all out. And basically he says courage is a shitty place. I don't know if I'm allowed to.

Curse on you can just say whatever you want.

I just did.

So basically courage is a crappy place, but you have to get through it because once you get through it then you have a new capability. Like anybody who went through the first virtual events from the live events, there was A lot of courage in there. A lot of mistakes, a lot of stuff once they got through it. New capability. Once you have a new capability, then you have. That's the third C. The fourth C is confidence to do another commitment. And the commitment is going to involve something new with more courage. So it's a great. I like it because it's a great construction to look at issues and projects and whatever. If it's a. If it's a pivot, you know, a pivot can be a new. A new pivot is a commitment.

It is.

But if you look at it in that context, you also don't get. You don't get depressed when you're in the courage phase.

Right, Right.

Because that, that could really work against you.

Yeah.

But I love, I love Dan's. I love the way he has that. Because I look. I look at everything that I do through the four Cs, because I don't. I don't get too down or too up. Because you're going to get really up when you make a commitment to something you're excited about.

That's very good point.

High as a kite. Then you're going to be in the courage phase and you're going to be down in the dumps.

Yeah.

Then you're going to have this new capability and saying, you know, I'm Superman. And then you're going to make another commitment. High as a kite.

Yeah.

But the key is to regulate those ups and downs.

Right. And as entrepreneurs, we need that. That's for dang sure.

You need that. And that's why teacher coach is such a valuable program.

It is.

Because it keeps you in check.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so I know we've talked a lot about the stuff that you've changed and done differently during COVID I'm curious, what sort of things have you sort of shaved off your plate? Because before we hit record, one of the things we were talking about is actually figuring out how to do less and stop doing the things you don't like in your business. So what are some of the things that you've shaved off? And let's talk about how you've managed to shave them out of the business.

Yeah, I mean, I think that interestingly, you know, one of my favorite books on. On this topic is. Is essentialism by McCune. And. And one of the things I actually, I love the book. I love everything about it. My favorite chapter was the one on sleep. Since I read that book, I've never gotten less than seven hours.

I gotta reread that Section.

I see it on your. Actually see it on your bookshelf right there.

I do, too.

Oh, you can?

Yeah, it's on the bottom port.

Oh, yeah. Look at that.

I'm surprised you can see with my bookshelf being so messy. So. Yeah, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Check this out.

Holy moly.

Wow.

Look at that. You have a library.

You definitely have a library.

It's basically either very impressive or a ridiculous mess.

Yeah, I mean, my bookshelf is equally as messy, but not nearly as big.

You have about quadruple as well.

Yeah, it's big and you can't find anything. But anyway, so in essentialism, McCune says everything has to be a hell yes or a no. So it's either a 10 or a 0 on a scale of 1 to 10. And I wrote a blog post recently about, you know, I just can't live like that. I like to have some sevens and eights. Now, if you have all sevens and eights, that's not good. And if some of those sevens or eights are really fours, that's not good either. So you have to be judicious in how you rate things and decide what is worth doing and what's not worth doing. I mean, the thing I shaved off pre Covid was the Titans Masterclass. I think the last one I did was November of 2019, as a matter of fact.

Oh, wow.

And I knew I wasn't going to do another one. It was great event, fantastic event.

But I just, you know, I don't. I didn't want to. I didn't want it anymore. And so that's. That's that. And I think to get there, one of the key things, and I learned this from Barry Baumgartner. Barry Baumgartner and Blue Melnick are. They run a company called Sage Productions. And they're one of those companies that enabled small companies and big companies make the pivot from live to virtual events. I mean, they do Russell Brunson's event, they do Stu McLaren's event, they do Jeff Walker's events. I mean, they're the shit. I mean, they're awesome. And they did Tony Robbins. They did Tony Robbins virtual with 23,000.

People, and he is crushing it.

In fact, Blue Melanie, this is interesting. Blue Melnick developed stuff on Zoom that the president of Zoom wanted to meet with him on. And they. They called it. I think he called it Zoomzilla. And it was something that. That Blue developed with the. The people at Zoom. So that's how State of the art. Blue is.

Wow.

And. And so when. When. When he was.

I lost my train of thought because I went on two tangents.

Well, we were talking about the rating and. Yeah. And the. Oh, man. Yeah. Was it rating? Because I know it was like rating.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So everything's got to be a 10 or it doesn't have to be. Some things can be sevens and eights.

Right.

I think that when.

Everybody went to virtual from live, they had to jump in feet first. And so that was an easy one to say yes to. But I know what, I got it now. So. Barry Baumgartner also, what she says in terms of just with an entrepreneurial mindset, the key thing that you have to do on a regular basis is to make a list of your non negotiables. That's the first thing you must do. So a non negotiable would be something like. The one that comes to mind is when she was doing it with Jeff Walker. So Jeff Walker is, you know, does PLF live. He does launch club. He has his mastermind book on launches. But he had some non negotiables. One non negotiable is that between certain months of the year, he's an avid skier, lives in Colorado, and he said, these days are powder days. I'm going skiing nice no matter what. Yep, that's a good example that popped into my head. But we all have things like that. But if you don't treat them as non negotiables, then stuff creeps in on them. So that's the key. So I'm not as good at it as probably someone like Jeff, but I'm getting better at it over the years. And that's the key to getting rid of stuff. You don't just say, I want to get rid of it for the sake of getting rid of it. And you don't say, I want something just because you want it as an entrepreneur. Dan Sullivan says, an entrepreneur can say, I want it because I want it. That's an acceptable thing to say.

That's right.

But you want to have reasons for wanting something. And the reason to get rid of something is it might not meet one of your non negotiables. A non negotiable for me is if I'm immersed in any technology with a project, it's gone. Now if I can find the right technologist to do it for me, I'm in.

Right.

But I'm not in it. If I have to do it, I'm not in. I'm not. I'm not if I'm involved in.

There are a lot of things like that because I'm. I'm a on Colby. I'm a nine quick start and a three follow through.

That is identical to what I got. Yeah.

And so I've got people around me who are sevens and follow through.

Yeah.

Because if I didn't have that, then I wouldn't do anything.

So that's like an integrator type person for you.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah. As a matter of fact, you have it right there.

Rocket fuel.

There you go.

And I only have it here because Mark Winters is speaking at my mastermind next week.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Oh, cool.

Plug for rocket fuel. Great book.

Great book. Yeah. So it's almost like you have the non negotiables. You got to identify them, but also next step is kind of carve out space for those non negotiables time wise, maybe time blocking or shaving off from the business.

Right. And then if it's a non negotiable, that's. That's critical to doing something that you really want to do. You got to buy it on the outside. I mean, Dick Benson, who was my direct mail consultant in the 1980s and early 90s, you know, he said to me, one of the first things he said to me when I started working with him, one of his rules of thumb is, you know, and everybody says this, but he was the first one that said it to me. Do what you do best and buy everything else around the corner. He was talking about direct mail and letter shopping and printing and copywriting and list buying. And so you do what you do best and you buy all those other things around the corner. And he taught me how to buy a la carte because I never would go to an agency, because the best copywriters aren't at agencies, they're freelancers because they can make more money and they're making more money because they're better. That was just a natural progression. So he taught me how to buy a la carte for marketing services, and he also taught me to buy on the outside, do what you do best on the inside. And it ties into Dan Sullivan's concept of unique ability you have. Everybody has a unique ability. If you can be 80 or 90% of that unique ability all the time, your life's going to be. Going to be golden. But it's not that easy. It's easier said than done. I understand that. And if you're just starting out or you're on, on the rise in your Business, you don't have the luxury of. You don't have the budget to buy everything on the outside.

That's true.

So you end up doing stuff that might be stuff that you don't do well. I mean, I tell people now, I mean, I'm looking back, so I had all these issues in my career, but now looking back, I tell people I'm retired. But it's a, it's a different definition of retirement. I've retired from things I don't like to do, I've retired from things I don't do well, and I retire from people I don't want to hang out with anymore. But based on that criteria, I'm basically 80% retired. I still get involved in things that I don't do well and I'm doing it. That's a big one. That's another thing. Not just the non negotiables, but think about what you don't do well and.

The time and energy it's sucking up in the process.

It's an energy suck. Absolutely.

I mean, I don't think any of this stuff is. Mind is like an epiphany to anybody.

Listening, but it's a great reminder. I think it's stuff that people need to hear over and over and over again because it's so easy to understand these concepts. Sort of make steps to do it and then fall back into your own habits pretty quickly.

Yeah, well, right.

And I think from my perspective, maybe my perspective will help them because I've been in business for 40 years, I don't have to do anything and I choose so I can choose what I want to do. But I've been through the 40 years, I've been at every step, I've been at every step in terms of, you know, being bombarded with things that were on my non negotiable list and I was doing them. So I negotiated it. I negotiated into my life. And so, you know, I'm speaking, I guess, from experience, so. And you can't beat yourself up either. No, you know, you can't beat yourself. It's going to happen, especially if you're an entrepreneur. And so, you know, I'm not. I'm not. So this is not a lecture. This is more like an overview of a lifetime of doing it and maybe some advice as to, you know, how to stay out of it as much as you can. And, you know, that's why you have to have lists. You got to write stuff down. You got to keep on renegotiating your non negotiables. You know, nothing is set in stone. Although if it's a real non negotiable, it might be set in stone, but it might not be set in stone forever. Nothing is forever.

Nothing is. Yeah, you're right. And it's a lot shorter than we believe as well. You know, life is long, but also goes by very fast.

Yeah, I have that in chapter 10 of Over Deliver. I start with a quote. Life is long. I remember that.

Yeah.

And you know, the only reason I say that is, I mean, life is short. We know that. If you say life is long, it's the concept of it's the only one you got. So if you look at it as long, then it's in the context of where you are, where you're going, what you want to do every day.

So I think it's more productive to think of life as long as opposed to life as short.

I like that. And Brian, through your experience in coaching so many people throughout the years as well, and you said there's probably like what, 4ish times in your life where the stages and phases. But are there certain ones that seem to pop up in a lot of entrepreneurs that you've seen when you look back at your life that you can maybe give a couple tips and be like, okay, maybe that was a stage that we could have progressed a little quicker or maybe bypassed A good question.

I guess I've coached a lot of people on hot seats, which is where you learn a lot about how the struggling entrepreneur is dealing with stuff today. I know how I dealt with it, but I always knew that. I guess one of the big concepts that I got early on is the difference between commodity and specialty. And the more that you're mired in a commoditized product, a commoditized way of thinking, a me too attitude, or a me too business, it's just not the way. It's just not going to be as fulfilling, as productive. And so whenever someone is on a hot seat and I'm coaching them, I try to get them to just go deeper and deeper and deeper. You know, there's a lot of exercises to do this in terms of finding your audience and finding your avatar and all of that, where you know, okay, my avatar is X. And if you find them, then what else, what are the characteristics might they have? And so if they have that, what else would they have? You know, it's like, it's like, you got that, give me more, you got that, give me more. You got that, give me more. So that's that's just, that's not coaching. That's just like getting them to keep, not give up.

Yeah.

And not stop. And that's a, that's a characteristic of great marketers and great copywriters, which is insatiable curiosity and never being satisfied with the first, second, or tenth answer. And so my friend, I have a friend, Michael Fishman, who does coaching for the. In the health industry. And he has a concept that says if you can explore what say you're looking, you're looking at your audience and you're looking for a hook for the audience. You're looking for a way to specialize your product to them, a way to differentiate yourself to them. You have to take a look at three phases of your audience. It's what they will tell you, what they won't tell you, and what they can't tell you. So what they will tell you is. And the example Michael gives is like his, his, you have a flooded basement, your basement floods. And so what they will tell you about and say you're selling the most amazing water pump of all time. I'm just using a loose example here. And so what they will tell you is that my basement gets flooded, my house has water in it, it smells and mold happens. They might tell. They will, they will probably tell you that. What they won't tell you is that I'm embarrassed to have people come over to my house because, you know, and all of that. And what they can tell you, they don't even know. And that might be that this is like, it might be. It come down to like, shelter. This is my, this is, this is my shelter. The, the basic, one of the basic.

Building blocks of life to live with a roof over my head. Right. And, and so if you, and so if you get to those three levels, you can come up with ways to reach them. That might not be the obvious and might not be. I mean, some people say. One guy was asking me a question. I had a call with Agora today with their copywriters, and he said, you know, I don't want stuff that's just clickbaity and hypey and all that. Well, you gotta research to find out stuff that's not click baity and hypey. You gotta go deep, multiple levels. And the beauty is we have tools. Facebook is a Facebook forums and groups that you can sit in on and listen in and look at the language people are using.

Quora.com is Amazon. Amazon, Reddit too.

Yeah.

Spend a lot of time on Reddit.

Star and five star reviews. Of the books that people need in your group. So this. And look, believe me, Gene Schwartz was doing this in 1966, and he did not have any of these tools.

Right.

So you can't be lazy. You can't be lazy. You really have to go deep. And so I didn't have those tools, and I was probably a little lazy. So now I can admit that, and I can say that there's no reason to be lazy, because it's a click of a mouse to get to places.

Yeah. It's great advice. Well, is there anything else? I think.

I think we covered all the stuff we said we wanted to cover. This has been amazing.

Yeah. Well, Brian, how can folks find the boot camp for Breakthrough?

Yeah. So, I mean, finding the bootcamp, the best way is to be on my list, which is not a list. It's an online family. I like that. I hate using the word list, and I'm a list guy.

Well, so dehumanizing. Right? It is.

But a list is the most important asset you have. So I have to use the word once in a while, but every time, I blog weekly, and it's always about my online family. And so being a part of my online family, you'll hear about the next bootcamp. You'll also hear about Breakthrough Advertising. If you want to buy a copy. Oh, you have to go to. I just bought the URL. Breakthrough advertising dot com.

Oh, good.

The guy who came to me with that was great. He.

I own breakthrough advertising book.com, i own breakthrough-advertising.com, but I didn't own breakthrough advertising.com, just straightbreakadiser.com and he offered it to me, and he said. And it was such a beautiful email he sent me. He said, I know what you're doing with the book, and there's no one else that should have this URL except you.

Wow.

Now, I did offer him a certain amount for it that he didn't accept, and I had to pay him a lot more. So money. Money talk.

I was gonna say he was like, well, you could just have it because.

Of the good deal, which was fine. I think he gave me a very reasonable price for it.

Very good.

So Breakthrough Advertising.com is a place where you can buy the book, but getting on my list, just go to Brian Kurtz.net you opt in. There's another long interview there with Perry Marshall. So if you like this interview, by any chance, you're going to. And there's a lot of content on the site. I have. I have all my blogs going Back seven years. I've got a lot of copywriters toolkit. I've got a lot of stuff in free content.

Yeah.

And then if you want to get my book over deliver and also get on into my online family, just go to overdeliverbook.com, amazing bonuses there. Thousands of dollars worth of bonuses. Some of them priceless.

They are.

They're not available anywhere else. And so you'd have to buy the book for $27 or less.

It's worth it. Get it.

But so either briankurtz.net or overdeliverbook.com and then you'll be part of my online family. You'll read my blog posts. If you want to hear about the breakthrough advertising bootcamp, you'll hear about Titan's accelerator on, on Brian Kurtz.net there are products, there are, you know, my blog, there are.

Ways to work with me which are my masterminds. So yeah, I mean Brian Kurtz.net is a free one stop place to go and you opt in and.

You never have to buy anything from me and you're still part of my family.

So that's, I mean, well, and your list is amazing because I think it's every Friday, right? You send this.

I send it on. Well, I send it on. This is a good tip. I don't know if you do this, but I learned it from somebody I didn't make, I didn't invent it. But every Sunday I send my blog post and I send it at the same time, which is important. You want consistency. I mean, there are some people like Ben Settle who send seven emails a week. So I don't know what times he sends them, but I do one blog post email a week and it goes out at 6:00am Eastern Time on Sunday morning every Sunday. Then what I do is the following Friday I send the same email blog post to everybody who didn't open on the previous Sunday with a different subject line. So, and that, that, that, that yields me about usually between a 40 and 45% open rate total.

Wow.

And you know, and, and open rates are overrated, by the way. I have a blog post about that, but you have to get them open to get started with engagement. Engagement is the key. Yeah. So yeah, my posts are usually really long and I think sometimes there's some good lessons in them. They're fun to write. I write them on Fridays. And yeah, I mean it's. But I think the lesson there for me was getting consistent with it. And I think that's why you know, I never get writer's block because I have to write it every Friday and I'm always. And the other part of not getting writer's block is to always just be mindful of your surroundings all the time. And of course, in Covid, you couldn't get out much, but you know, you can, you can. I always say dance. Dan Kennedy has a line that says, you know, market marketing by walking around. You know, I say marketing by walking around is not, it's not a, it's not a choice. It's a, it's a, it's a requirement.

So taking in your surroundings, looking and then what? Analyzing. Figuring out the story connections.

Even if going into a store that are, have, have a clientele that people that are in your audience. Yeah, that's marketing by walking around. Going on Facebook into a forum, going to, you know, finding a webinar, that's, that's to your audience and sitting in on it and seeing what the chat says and all of that. So yeah, marketing by walking around is just being totally mindful all the time and just being mindful all the time. So you don't get writer's block because there's always something to write about.

Always. Even in just mundane home life, there's stuff you could pick. I've been watching Moana about 50 times every week.

Right, right, right.

But I'm picking up subtleties. I'm like, okay, I could see the little connection. You can make a story.

It's like Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld made that stuff, stuff famous. But, you know, there's always stuff in the world that you can comment on. That's where the standup comics, you know, that's why the best stand up comics don't get writer's block.

No, I mean, they do the work, right? They just keep doing the work.

Materials all around them all the time.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I love it. Brian, thank you for the extra time with us too and doing this for round two.

I think we'll bring it back again.

If you're open to it.

It made my day when you said you'd have me back.

Well, so over deliverbook.com, briankurtz. Breakthrough advertising.com we'll link all that stuff up in the show notes so people can. Easy access. But yeah, thanks for hanging out with us today. Have a great.

This is great. And go Padres.

Go Padres. My boy. Thanks, Brian. Have a good one.

So that was Brian Kurtz.

That was Mr. Brian Kurtz. Round two, second time, huh?

I think he was even better the second time.

He is. Yeah, he was.

I.

We had no clue. I mean, we kind of had an idea of where we're gonna go. You know, we were pre chatting.

Yeah. We weren't lying when we said we were literally talking about baseball for 20 minutes before hitting record.

Because that did happen and somehow it did not really pop up much. I think maybe towards the end, at.

The very end, he said, go Padres.

Right.

And that's how we ended the episode.

Perfect.

Even though he's probably a New York baseball fan, I don't know if he's a Mets or Yankees.

He said he's doing fantasy. So the fantasy baseball. So. Yeah. And he has the Padres support, who.

Was a paddock on his team, which is probably like the most impressive pitcher.

We have at the moment. Yeah. Hopefully it changes, but yes, that's. I love, I love the. Well, I love the fact how Brian. How open he is. And I think like he was saying this phase in his life and I mean, you know, with over deliver his book, which we talked way more about last time, I mean. Yeah, we talked a lot about the same principles or similar principles. It's a book of principles that you gotta get. So go to overdeliverbook.com. we both have it. And like when Brian was saying, yeah, you'll get some really good bonuses. You'll get insane bonuses.

Fix your microphone.

I'm falling over. But you'll get in. They don't hear that.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

Geez.

Yeah, but we give the bts, right?

No, that's great.

Joe's microphone keeps falling over.

It's all good now. That's under wraps. But yeah, that book is. I mean, if you're talking about like a synopsis of the principles of marketing throughout his journey in his career, that's the book.

Yeah.

I think it's just super special to have someone like him on for a second time, even to dive into that wisdom.

Yeah.

Share it here.

No, and I really love the stuff that we shifted into this time as well. You know, we talked a lot about obviously, the shifts, the pivots that people had to make during COVID and going from live events to doing more streaming stuff.

And then beyond that, shaving off things from your business, which is something you and I have been super hardcore about lately. It's almost like one of the biggest focuses in our business lately is what can we get rid of, what can we shave off, what can we stop doing?

Yeah. I feel like that's not talked about much by folks. I don't know. It's not like. Because that is kind of my stock answer. Like, hey, how are things going? How's business and all that? Business is great, but we keep cutting stuff.

Yeah.

Because we just don't want to do stuff.

Yeah.

You know, if it's not fun or if it's not fulfilling. It's, it's, it's that whole non negotiables thing that he was talking about, which that was. I think that was like the big point that was towards the end. But like, yeah, I'm feeling that. I'm really feeling that.

And I think we're getting a lot better about having our own sort of non negotiables. The things that we don't want to do in our business. Figuring out who can do them for us or eliminating them altogether.

Dude, there's a list of things running through my head right now that we have individually and collectively been saying no to. And I'm just thinking of it. I won't name this person, but very popular author that's written some very popular books, can only do a podcast at a certain period of time. It would actually fall around 1:00am our time.

Yeah.

And I told him, I was like, sorry, that's not really gonna work for us and our families right now, is it? Stephen King, maybe, but I can't say. Or I'm not going to say Tom Clancy.

Oh, wait, I don't think he's alive anymore.

Too soon. Rip yes. But loved his games. Never read his books.

I've never read it. Actually, I think I might have read one of his books.

I heard they're good. But point being is like, that's where I would have been pulled to be like, okay, we gotta make this work. Yeah, we gotta make this thing work. Or let's make this project work. Or this opportunity or this thing. It's like, nah, man. What's our negotiables? It's like, I mean, maybe that could change if we want to do an all night or one night. Well, it better be fun. And it better not be stepping on our, like, you know, toes with the family and whatever.

I mean, if we were to do this interview that you're Speaking of At 1am we would break it into a mini party for ourselves and enjoy ourselves.

But we'd have to and probably take the day, like leading up to it off a little bit or hang with the fam or whatever. Maybe the day after, who knows?

Yeah.

Set up some cots in the office.

Stay up at that point, have a good time.

That's true. That's true.

Point being is like the negotiables thing, not negotiables.

And I mean, we're literally installing non negotiables in our business right now. This has been a very, very active topic of conversation, like much before today. You know, we're trying to shave our work week down to three days a week. Really? Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

Oh, yeah, Tuesday. Thursday. What happened to Monday?

I guess.

No, Monday.

Well, Monday, we were saying, would be a flex day.

Oh, flex. I'm like, we're not working Monday either.

Okay, well, yeah, should we take Friday work? You know the details. I don't know.

Two day workday. Come on.

Well, we do have a standing call every Monday.

That's. Yeah, good point. So that's all right. We can take that call from anywhere, Matt.

That is true. We can. So, but, but the idea, the point being, like, we. Wednesday, like, we're taking off Wednesdays pretty much from here on out.

Yeah.

Right. So we've got like one last mastermind call we're doing with Pod hackers on a Wednesday. And then like after that, Wednesday, it's like, we're done working on Wednesdays. So we're for the most part, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, and then Monday we're kind of considering a flex day. Some days will work, some days we won't.

It just might not be like, hey, let's go to the new office. Yeah, Studio.

Those will be like work from home, from the laptop days or whatever.

Yeah.

So anyway, figure it out.

Yeah.

And you know, another person who's been really, really great about the non negotiables is James Schramko, who's been on the show several times. He, you know, I think getting in some surfing every day is a non negotiable. We've tried to schedule calls with him and he's like, oh, sorry, I can't, guys. That's my surf day. You know, like, he's non negotiable about that stuff and he lives by it, you know?

Yeah. I mean, Marx Acosta Rubio is another one where it's scheduling, you know, time for yourself first, you know, and then having the business fall around it and making sure you're clear on what you really want to get.

Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, it's like really a mashup of all these folks and the fact that Brian was talking about how that's just a big thing now for him. And it sounds like that was, you know, that's been through his evolution too, and it's so easy for us entrepreneurs, but especially if you're a really quick start. Like he was talking about when he's doing hot seats with folks is like, go deeper. What's a layer deeper? And I feel like we can all go deeper on every thing that we feel like we could be doing in our business. It's like, well, let's go a little deeper. Does that check all the boxes of your non negotiables?

Yeah. And I mean, one of the non negotiables, just another one that we've talked about, this one's a little bit more theoretical, but one of the non negotiables is we don't want to do it if it doesn't sound fun.

Dude, that's a. That's the biggest one. Yeah, I had a chat with, I was telling you, with Amish Shah. You know, he's been on the podcast. He's an old buddy of mine. I had a mastermind. We talked about that. Yeah, he's like, dude, that's like the biggest thing.

Yeah.

Like, it's gotta be fun.

Life is long, but life is too short to do shit that's not fun. Damn right.

Well, spend that long life having fun.

Yeah.

You know, it's kind of crazy because we bring that up a lot and I feel like, I don't know, I just feel like that's not it.

It's totally like the overarching theme of.

This show these days and it will become more so. But it's interesting talking to people about that. I feel like, I don't know, like very. And obviously you can work a shit ton and be very driven and have a lot of fun and that's ideal.

Yeah.

You know, but if you want to work a shit ton and do the hustle thing, but like, yeah, we're a lot more flow charting these days.

Yeah.

And I don't know, I just feel like that's not the common thing. That said, I guess I'm running this through my head because like at a mastermind, I was at an in person mastermind with like, you know, it was a lot of high level people and I felt like that was the thing I kept saying. And that's the thing that most people I don't think lead with, but like underlying that's either what they are doing or they want to do. Yeah. There's like, yeah, that's. That's a really good idea.

Yeah. Well, a lot of people glorify the sort of financial side of it. Like, oh man, your business is crushing it. Look how much money you rolled in? And it's like us, we've stopped glorifying the money and started glorifying the lifestyle. Right. We started looking like, man, you just look like you're having a blast all the time. Or, man, it looks like you're not working that hard. You're traveling and having fun and doing stuff with your family all the time. That's what we glorify. We're not looking at it from the how do you make more money? More money, more money. No, we look at it as how do we make a better machine to support the lifestyle we're creating.

Yeah. And actually you say glorify the money. How about even glorifying marketing tactics? Yeah, think about that. Because that was.

We share a lot of marketing tactics. And I'll go on a lot of podcasts and I'll talk about marketing tactics, and almost every time I do, at some point in the conversation, I'll shift it and go, we can keep talking about marketing tactics, but here's like, what really drives me, you know, And I feel like that's.

That's another thing. It's like, unless you go there and, you know, Brian's. Brian went there and we talked about that in, like, pre show. Pre recording is like, yeah, we love to talk about that part of it. Like happiness and health and mindset and all that, because that is the glue to everything. And I feel like through more of these layers of life and business stages, you start to realize that even more so you're like, damn, I gotta get that in check. And it's not just drive, drive, drive, drive and tactics, tactics, all that.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think we've actually announced this on the podcast or talked about it on the podcast, but this is the last day recording in my home office.

Yes. We technically have another episode to record.

We do have one more episode to record. But this is the last day we'll be recording in this. We actually just signed a lease on a podcast recording studio.

That's really cool. Yeah, we're gonna be moving in. Well, technically, the end of this week. We get the keys.

Yeah, yeah, he said we get the keys tomorrow. The people listening have no idea what day we're recording this.

Point being is, yeah, we're gonna deck the bad boy out to be a studio. It's gonna look cool. It's gonna be a lot more video focused.

We're gonna do a lot more video stuff. That'll be fun.

Go to hustleandflowchart. Doc TV.

Yes.

And that will take you to the YouTube channel.

We're gonna be doing some awesome stuff on the YouTube channel. So if you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel, go to HustleandFlowchart TV. There's going to be some really, really, really cool stuff we're doing over there.

Yeah, we got some cool stuff planned. And it's a lot of curation as well.

Yes.

Kind of like what we were talking about with Brian. Yeah. Which, yeah, just that whole concept of curation, like that makes me so pumped up because if you can, like you were saying slicing the salami, I mean it's.

I don't know why salami is just a funny word.

I know, I figured you would laugh at it. But like he's so right though in the fact that. Yeah. And like you were even post chatting about that and kind of the vision and he was like, you guys know what you're doing with that stuff and like that's where it gets really exciting. And like, I guess I'm gonna keep going with the salami references but maybe I'll stop. I don't know where it's gonna go.

So I probably know where.

Gonna have some creative slammy slices happening soon on YouTube and elsewhere and all these other places.

Yeah, yeah.

We're also gonna show how the salami is made.

That's right, the salami.

We're gonna do a lot of behind the scenes type stuff showing how the salami is made.

Matt spends a lot of time making the salami.

Hey, this is your reference. I'm just playing along.

It's Brian's actually.

Oh, that's right.

But yeah, no, it's. This is good stuff. Anything else on? There's a lot of great Dan Sullivan references as well that Brian gave. And like, if you don't know Dan, go check his stuff out. He does a great podcast with our buddy Mike Koenigs as well. Yeah, I, I don't know the name of it, but I'm sure maybe sue can link it up or something in the show notes.

That's the Capability Amplifier one.

That actually is it. Capability Amplifier, Yeah.

And Dan Sullivan has a book called the Dan Sullivan Question and it's a real quick read. You read it in one sitting. It's like, I don't know, 30 pages or something like that.

I think he has a lot of books, right?

Yeah. But the Dan Sullivan Question was the book that first introduced me to and Mario Brown actually recommended that book and it's really, really good. But it's a quick read. Just kind of gives you some quick, quick hit of insights.

I like it. Okay, yeah, I'll have to grab that. But and also who not how is a great book by him as well. But point being. Yeah, there's a reason why he's referenced a lot, you know. And yeah, I would check out his stuff. Dan's stuff. Yeah, we'll try to get him on the podcast. He's a busy guy. Yeah. But yeah. Anything else?

Yes, we do have other things to talk about.

Do we have other things?

Yeah. So he was actually talking about how events are no longer really live.

That's true.

Taking them off or online.

Yeah, that is very true. So open up the screen, Mr. Man pointing at the screen. And Matt's not going to the screen.

There we go.

We wanted to pull up a little something because, you know, our buddies at Easy Webinar has created the perfect solution that you can use to basically harness the virtual ness and evergreen it.

But Joe, why wouldn't I just use Zoom?

Well, but Zoom is lame.

Zoom is lame. And also Zoom doesn't do a lot of the stuff that Easy Webinar does.

Basically doesn't do any of the marketing stuff that you want to do and you don't want to have to think about.

So yeah, like if you want a customizable replay page with a scarcity timer and Evergreen expiration. Can't do that shit with Zoom. Nope. If you want to immediately convert your live webinar into an automated webinar and have a whole bunch of different scheduling options. Not going to do that with Zoom.

Guess what else you can do with Easy Webinar is you can have robust and actionable insights that's literally read from the page. But the point being is you can actually have things pop up on screen and on the page, basically timed up to the webinar or the event. So imagine recording this live, doing a virtual thing like Brian was saying, and then evergreening this and then now you can either do this for sales stuff, but Brian, I know is a big thing of sending a lot of cool stuff to your customers as well and ascending them into something else or giving value. Well, you could do that with these cool little features and stuff.

I have a question though. Will Easy Webinar or does Zoom let me control the design in css? Does Zoom let me do that?

I've tried.

No, it doesn't. Easy Webinar does though.

I have not tried because I. I puke at css.

But EZ Webinar is all like browser based, so you can actually edit the look of it, Zoom's its own, like, separate app thing.

So anyway, all this is to say.

Easy Webinar is legit, and they're hooking up listeners of Hustle and Flowchart.

So if you're trying to hack job stuff with Zoom, which you likely are, because let's be honest, Zoom's everywhere right now, and it's not your fault. It never has been. So Zoom is just not your tool for. For that. Like, come on. So get Easy Webinar. Yeah, because they are hooking you up, but only listeners right here, right now, and that's you. So if you check out easywebinar.com hustle, you can see the cool hookup that they're giving you and also all the other cool features that we have not mentioned, because there's way more.

Yeah, we're literally just reading off of the Easy Webinar versus Zoom page right now, if you couldn't tell. But hey, it's legit. Easywebinar.com hustle. Go there. They're hooking you up. Go do it. And also grab the action guide for this episode. Flowchartgroup.com join the Facebook group, do it within two weeks of this episode going live, and we'll give you the action guide for this episode. So go to flowchartgroup.com, you join our Facebook group, and you get on our email list, and we'll hook you all up with all that.

Hook you all up.

Hook you all up with all that stuff.

Those hookups.

With all those hookups.

Lot of hookups.

You're gonna get hooked up with the hookups.

So go to flowchart group.com dirty this is just getting weird.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. Flowchart group.com, flowchartgroup.com flowchart group.com go there. Are you supposed to repeat it three times?

I heard it's more like 15. No, don't do it. I'm kidding, Kidding. Or you could be like Mr. Beast. And I think there was a time where he said someone's name like Logan, Paul, and all these other ones for 10,000 times, literally on recording, send that nice day video. And. And it took him 40 something hours to do.

Oh, that's fun.

So you could just.

If we were Mr. Beast, we'd just be yelling right now.

Well, yeah, well, that one, that was. I don't think he was. I think he was freaking brain dead because for 40 hours he was saying one person's name, you know, my favorite.

Thing about the MrBeast videos are, is, like, every time he says the word knowledge or you need to get smart or something, he crops in an image of Tai Lopez going, knowledge.

Does he? Yeah, I haven't seen it. It's hilarious. Enough videos.

Yeah, he does it a lot on, like, the Minecraft videos that I watch.

With the kids now. Lid.

Knowledge.

Well, Vossler, if you're listening, you would appreciate that.

Alrighty.

Well, if you enjoyed this episode, which. What?

Hey, if you're here, you're enjoying it.

Yeah. If you're still here, you probably enjoyed it, so please share it. Please tell others.

Hey, please, you know, subscribe if you haven't already. I'm sure you are, but let us know in the reviews, too. Yeah, we haven't asked for reviews in a while.

Yeah, I mean, the reviews don't really do anything for the algorithm, but we still like to read them.

Well, it's just. Yeah, I think it's. I mean, I personally actually haven't looked at it. We should probably read some. Some Maybe the next recording or later today.

Yeah, go leave a review after hearing this episode, and in future episodes, we'll.

Read those reviews live more often. So. Yeah, go spread the love. It's been like, you know, a minute. Yeah, it's just another minute. Yeah, I could keep blabbing in your ear for another minute. Or you can. We can save your minute and say, like, hey, man, can you hook us up a little bit? Help some people out?

I mean, five stars preferred, but, you know, you do, you.

You do you. Alrighty. Till next time, thank you.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it.

We love you.