Caitlin Pyle — This Successful Stoner Built A 6-Figure Per Month Blog

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf. Hey, hey. Joe Fear here for another episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

Damn it. We're not gonna do the back and forth.

No, we're not doing that this time. That was for Mike.

I'm Matt Wolfe, by the way, since Joe was so rude and didn't interrupt.

You have your own microphone.

Yeah, he didn't introduce me.

Hashtag pink Mike.

I don't have a pink mic.

Oh, I do. I'm trying to get the hashtag to trend. If you can help me out, that'd be amazing.

It's not going to happen.

All right, so today we have Caitlin Pyle on the show with us. And I was slapping the desk when.

I said, yes, this is a high energy, high intensity, fun podcast.

Yes, very high and all that.

Very keyword being high.

Yes. So, hint, hint, we're going to talk on a ton of things in here. And I can't even remember everything, to be very honest, because we talked on so many things.

Here's some quick bullets.

Okay, go. You're better than I am then. And he doesn't have a notepad in front of him. Go.

I do not have a notepad. So she built a blog. So she got fired from a job. Horribly fired. Horrible way where the boss was just a complete ass.

Multiple people. It was like a whole room full of people.

She started a career in freelance work and got it up to making a fairly healthy living at, you know, 45, 50,000 a year, something like that. She went and from that she built a blog that just exploded and makes six figures a month now. And we pick her brain quite honestly about how she managed to do all that stuff and how those transitions happened and how she got eyeballs on it and the very unconventional ways that she got eyeballs on it. And we also talk about weed.

What was that last word?

Weed? Marijuana. Cannabis.

Oh, not the kind you pick off your driveway.

And no.

Oh, okay. That's different. Got it.

So one of the things that actually grabbed our attention, she was introduced through a mutual friend who we'll talk about on the show. She was in. One of the topics that she suggested that she likes to talk about on shows is how cannabis literally changed her life.

It's been about a year, she said. So it's like. And dramatic shifts in the short period of time.

So that is a sort of deep dive discussion that we get into in the second half of the podcast. And so if you're into that kind of thing. And you want. You have an open mind towards it. Definitely.

I would say if you have an open mind, please have an open mind. Yeah. You don't have to even be in it at all. Like, you'll hear like, all right. It's not scary and it shouldn't be.

Yeah. We all talk about our experiences, including me, which I don't know if I've ever actually shared openly on the podcast before.

Yeah. So I didn't include my experiences, but they. They exist. Yeah, but, but, no but in all reality. It's a tool. It's great. She actually says how she's trying to claim this successful stoner title, but, like, you will be blown away. I was blown away by the, the, the effectiveness of how she works. She gets shit done.

Yep.

And. And it's pretty mind blowing. And this is where Matt and I were talking about after the fact. And whenever we're talking to someone like this, we're like, how the hell did they get there? She's been doing this for four years and she's already created a blog and business that's done well over 5 mil already. And I'm just like, damn. But obviously it's one of those things. It should be a motivator more than anything. I'm like, man, she just like fast tracked everything.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And the amount of time it took her to do it.

But use it as motivation when you're listening to her. For sure.

So, yeah, let's dive in with Caitlin and let's talk about how to build a multimillion dollar blog and weed.

Hey, Caitlin, we're live. Thanks for coming on the show with us.

Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

For sure. We saw you. We were mutually connected by our good buddy David Gonzalez, who seems to know everyone under the sun. Like we were talking. It's never a surprise. That guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It looks like, I mean, you based off of just everything we've. Cause we're kind of fresh to meet you, but you've done a lot, it seems like. And you have some really cool stories where like, okay, you gotta get on the show. This is too fun.

Yeah, it's been quite the journey, for sure. I'm pinching myself. I'm coming up in my four year work at home, online marketing, Internet marketing, whatever. Anniversary and just November this year. I can't believe it's only been four years. It's like, who is this person? What life am I living?

Yeah, well, it goes by fast, but like, yeah, we always. Because Matt and I, we've been doing this almost 12 years. Like, dear God.

Yeah, something like that. We started our business in 2007. We actually quit our day jobs, so to speak, in 2009.

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. I love meeting people who have been doing this, like, more than twice as long as I have, because I'm like, all right, they survived. I can do this.

Just. Just keep pushing. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, but saying that, like, I was going to say, like, just four years in that chunk of time, just four years ago, for us, like, it was radically different. And so, like, so much can happen in that short period of time. It's so cool.

Yeah. It's so exciting to think about.

Well, do you want to. You want to quickly give us a little bit about your backstory? Let's kind of get to know you a little bit. How did. How did you know. What were you doing four years ago before you started your own business? And why did you decide to get into business? I know. I think you've got sort of a horror story from the last job you were at, so I'm kind of curious to hear that.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll take the clock back to 2011. So just over seven years ago, it was August of 2011. I had been working at a court reporting office in downtown Orlando area since for almost two years. It would have been two years, like, the following month or something like that. And so we'll just call it two years. And that's where I learned to proofread transcripts for court reporters, which is like the tiniest niche of the tiniest niche in the world. Proofreading, or just like, the most obscure niche. I don't know if it's even that small because there's so much text in the world. I mean, proofreaders are in demand, but we're just kind of so behind the scenes that people just don't think of it as something that would ever be in demand. But it is in high demand. And so after I got fired, well, the crazy story is how I got fired.

Yeah, we want to hear the brutal.

Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurial as I am, I was kind of pushing back against the status quo. I was the most productive person in the office by far. I could get done my entire day's worth of work in three or four hours. But their policy was, hey, if you finish your work, just go do somebody else's. People would slack, and the morale was down because people knew that if they didn't do a good job, that somebody else would do their work. I just gotten a five star performance review two weeks prior. But then they had this software that could follow you around on the Internet. So they tracked my Internet activity and saw just how fast I was doing my work and how I wasn't doing other people's work with the remainder of my time. I was kind of just trying to manage my life and I just got married and.

I flew under the radar for five months. They had no idea my productivity was so high. They had no idea the way I was spending my time and how quickly and productive I was completing my work. And when they found out, they felt like I was stealing from them somehow. And so they actually fired me for theft of time. And the way they did it was they brought me into a conference room. It was a Monday afternoon in many ways. I remember it was yesterday. And they had this giant stack of paper that was printouts of my Internet history and then screenshots that were flashing eerily on the television in front of me. It was in the conference room. And they passed me this big stack of paper and then another stack of paper which turned out to be Bible verses. I was really into Christianity at the time, and the owner was Catholic and she knew that. So she had printed out all these bibles, verses about like, lying and cheating, deceit and basically saying I was a whitewashed tomb. And she like, let that venom fly in that meeting. She said, she was like, you're a sack of trash. You make me sick. You are a pig. You're going to die alone. Oh, my God, I feel sorry for your husband. Does he know, like, what few morals you have? And then the other managers, there were two other people in the room. One of them was like, I don't think you should have children. Like, you don't have any more raised children. Like, that was crazy. There was one other manager in there was, you know, quite a bit nicer. But, you know, I think she was the nicest out of all of them. But the one who said I shouldn't have children, ironically, like three years later, found her mugshot online. She had been arrested for grand theft and credit card fraud at the real estate company that she was at that point working at. She had, like, somehow taken 30 grand in petty cash. And to make matters worse, the woman who fired me extorted me. She had me, I was 24 at the time. So she had me convinced that I had committed some kind of crime. And she's like, write me a check. Because I was like, well, what do you want. She's like, write me a check. And so I was like, how much? And she's like, it's not even a drop in the bucket for how much you've stolen from me. But it ended up being $2,000 that she wanted. And I wrote her the check and that was like an entire two weeks of pay. And I didn't even get my last paycheck that it was due either. And I found out later that I could sue her for extortion, but it was like she was the woman who did all that. She was the one who taught me how to proofread. And so I went to personal training right after that and it was. I was already doing some part time proofreading, just kind of freelance side hustle y stuff. I had no idea I could even do it full time. I didn't even know what the word freelancing meant either. And so I had these two clients and it was a year after personal training school and it just wasn't panning out. It's not something I wanted to do because it wasn't location independent. So I was just like, I want to grow my proofreading thing. And so I ended up getting hooked up with another agency in Florida as a freelancer and got all this work referred to me because it was so good. I just got more and more referrals and grew my business to $40,000 income on part time work, probably 25, 30 hours a week max most weeks.

Did that for about two and a half years. And then in 2014, coming up on four years in November, I started a blog called proofreadanywhere.com under my husband's prodding because he was kind of getting involved in entrepreneurs podcasts and listening to stuff and like his world was opening and mine was still very much closed because I was like, I guess I'll just be a proofreader till I'm 80. That's just the kind of mindset I had. And so I finally said, all right, fine, I'll like right? Because people are always asking Ben, how does your wife get to stay at home and work? And he would say, all she needs is Internet and iPad and she makes more money than I do and she gets to work on her pajamas and people are so interested. She was like, you should write a book. And I'm like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to start a blog. I don't do all that stuff. So I use that as a reason not to ever start but finally I was like, you know what, Whatever. I felt inspired. I'm just gonna write the book. I wrote it in a weekend and it was 30 pages. It was terrible. And I still talk about it all the time because it's literally the worst product you've ever laid eyes on. Like, you get it. And if I got something like that, I'd be like, I paid $65 for this. That's how much I sold it for. Actually, it was like 68. Don't ask me where I got the number because I don't know.

That's interesting.

Yeah, $68. And I was selling it with a one on one training program for a little bit more. So it was like 120, 140 bucks. And it was terrible. I think 16 people bought it. But using their feedback, I created an online course that I launched in February 2015. And less than 90 days later, I think it was 86 days later, we hit $100,000 in revenue. And as of now, revenue again, less than four years later is over $5 million total. And so we're just growing like a weed, man. I love it. We have two online courses now and we do a lot of affiliate marketing. And. And just earlier this year we launched something called Work at Home School. So that's our next really, really, like, astronomically much bigger project than anything we've ever done. And so even though it's not generating the same revenue as proofread anywhere, it has the capacity to grow much faster and far beyond the revenues very quickly. So that's just in a nutshell.

Oh, man, I love it. That's an awesome story.

Last seven years.

I mean, not an awesome story in like the events that transpired, but just a great story of like, holy, holy shit. That's a crazy sort of way to lose your last job.

I know, right? It's unreal. I still have nightmares about it from time to time.

Oh, yeah, sure, it's fresh.

I mean, it sounds like you turned the shit into sugar, though, as DMX would say.

Quoting dmx, I know that the woman is not exactly happy for me, but I'm happy for her. And more than great, I'm just so grateful for her too, that she was in my life. And I know I broke her rules and I own up to that. So I've never been the one to say that just because I got fired. It was all their fault. It was totally my fault. I knew what the rules were and I was breaking them and happily doing it. And so I deserved to get fired. Because they broke the rules. Were the rules stupid? Yeah, real stupid. In my team now, I've got more than 20 people working with us in some capacity. And my role is, like, I don't pay people hourly if I don't have to. Like, I like to do retainers. And this is the value that you're gonna bring, and this is what I expect from you. And you can do it in your time. Like, I'm not gonna make you track your hours or anything, but so the rewarder for their productivity, which I never was, all about, like, my time and it didn't matter. Like, I could have stretched out those three hours but of work into the whole day and done even less work and they wouldn't have fired me because I was still producing. It's just so dumb.

That's actually pretty cool. It sounds like you built out because it sounded like you're a freaking workhorse in your previous job. You just got your shit done really fast and you had all this other time to, quote, unquote, steal.

But now you built this business. It sounds like that actually caters to that mindset or that the way that you can use your time is like, okay, well, you got a retainer. You don't work hourly, so you're rewarding them. Obviously, you're probably attracting people who think like you or act like you more or less for that role.

Oh, yeah, Yeah. A lot of people can relate to my story, and I share it freely because, like, it was just such an instrumental part of my life to go through all this crap that I did not want to deal with. And now it's part of my. The pain has become part of my passion, my purpose, and that, you know, you don't have to live your life that way. There are other opt. So my mission now is to just wake people up to what possibilities there are. Because seven years ago, I was asleep to those possibilities. And I never want to go back there. And so I can never forget what that felt like. And so that's why I spend so much time sharing my story and not being embarrassed by it. I mean, at the beginning, I was embarrassed by it. I thought, oh, if I tell people I got fired, they're not going to trust me. So I was afraid because there were some haters who were coming out and saying.

Don'T be so honest about your passed, because, you know, how am I going to trust somebody who got fired for stealing company time or something like that? And they just, like, looked for the reason why they couldn't trust me. It was really their self sabotage. And I know that in retrospect, but being new, I was like, oh my gosh, what if this is my time? Like I should just give up while I'm ahead and you know, just go quietly into the night. And it was so imposter syndrome. It was crazy. And I still deal with that monster, but not like before.

So when you did finally transition from doing the freelance proofreading to actually blogging and deciding you're going to teach other people about this proofreading business, how did that transition look? What made you decide? Okay, a blog is the answer for this thing that I'm going to do.

Well, I don't think I ever knew. In fact, when I bought the domain, I was like, this is probably not going to work. I had a track record of trying stuff and it not panning out just the way that it had happened with personal training and stuff. And I was like, yeah, if I get this website up and in six months, I'm going to give it six months. And I thought that was a really long time. And I was like, if it's not working out, then I can just quit. I just gave myself, I still do that to this day, to get myself to try new things. I'll just say if I don't like it, if it sucks and I give an adequate amount of time and I try and I don't like it, I can quit. I give myself permission. So I did that then. But by six months we'd already hit our 100k when we launched the course. That's when we really started seeing revenue. That was February. And then less than three months later, we hit the 100k and so the six months test was passed. And then I actually quit personal training and teaching fitness classes. I did like spinning and water aerobics and all kinds of stuff. I went on a trip to New York in April 2014. I got to be on the Dr. Oz show thanks to Haro. If you guys know what HARO is, help a reporter out. I just responded to something on Haro and I got to be on the Dr. Oz show when I was in New York and I told my clients for proofreading, I was like, hey, well I said I'm quitting personal training because I'm making enough money with proofreading in the blog that I don't need to do this anymore. And so I quit the day before I went to New York and then I told my clients I was going on vacation and the business was really ramping up. I think around that time, it was about 30k in revenue total. And we hit 30k while I was there. And I think it ended up being that we made 18 sales or $11,000 or something like that. It was something significant number while I was gallivanting in New York for a week and being on the Dr. Oz Show. So instead of telling my clients that I was back on vacation, ready to take their work again, I actually said I was retiring. When it got to the point that I didn't look forward to doing my proofreading work anymore, that there was so much taking up my time that it just wasn't. I wasn't getting out what I was putting in. I knew it was time to quit proofreading. And so I gave all my clients to my students and so they were happy. So it was a win. And I trained them and so they knew they could have good chance of having great work.

Very cool. Now when you started that blog, how did you initially get attention on it? How did you get people to even find your blog?

Oh, so embarrassing. I knew nothing about marketing. Just like four years ago I knew nothing. And so I did some shady stuff like I posted on Craigslist and I got some real hate mail from that because I made it kind of look like a job opportunity and I just didn't know what to do. And then I went on Fiverr and I think I found some people that way though. And then I went to Fiverr.

Because, yeah, I went on Fiverr and I started sending people messages saying, hey, you can make more money proofreading by specializing in this niche. If you want to join my newsletter, I'll tell you all about it or whatever. And so I got a few people that way and they ended up becoming my first testimonials, believe it or not, which just blows my mind. And then I started networking with other bloggers. That was like the initial thing. We fooled around with Facebook ads as well after we stopped selling ebook because once we got like our 15 customers, I think I posted, I was going to Ecuador. We're going to spend a year traveling South America in 2015. And so I joined this Ecuador expats Facebook group or whatever and somebody asked about how people make money online and I said, I do this. Here's my website. And I got some people. Like my very first customer was somebody from that group. I totally forgot about that.

That was significant. So from that Facebook group I also had taught somebody for and she became my first testimonial. And so that video I still use my marketing to this day, it was the most awkward video. My hair is so short, I'm wearing glasses. It's bad. But I still use that video because people see like, hey, that's who Caitlin was in 2014, and look where she is now. And so even that piece of my marketing, and I call attention to it, I'm like, yeah, go watch it. You know, because this could be you in four years. You know, like, you just don't know until you take that leap. And it all started for me with just one skill. So that's my mission now with work at homeschool especially, and of course, the proofreading. What would happen if you learned one skill and marketed it to solve somebody's problem? What could you do with that? Where could it snowball? What kind of ripple effect could you create with just that one skill? Because all it takes is one. One skill.

Actually, I'm always intrigued by those kinds of startup strategies. I mean, nowadays they have a term for it, right? They just call that growth hacking.

Right, right.

Going and using tools that the original sort of reason that tool was created. You're not using it for its intended purposes, but you're growing your business.

We grew one of the startups that we had. It was old photography, like Uber of photography. We used Craigslist pretty extensively to get people on both ends of that model, and it worked great. And yeah, that was like growth hack. And yeah, people don't normally think that would be an effective means, but shit, yeah, you just got to open your mind.

And I mean, my philosophy on that kind of stuff is like, I mean, I love outside the box ways of figuring out how to drive traffic and drive attention. And my philosophy on it has always been, I'm going to just test stuff and experiment until somebody tells me, no.

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. And I find that I had less fear then in those circumstances than I do now. Sometimes it's like, why am I afraid to try new things now? That was the best time. I have a lot more cushion. And eventually I got smarter. I joined HARO and started responding to queries about marketing that way and got some traffic from some blogs. And my husband said, oh, hey, the work at home woman is looking to interview women who work at home. And so I got interviewed and I got some traffic. She has quite a good following now. She's one of my affiliates and I love her work with friends. And it's just so cool how that's evolved because appearing on her website got me my first kind of affiliated traffic. And Then I started my own affiliate program and started looking around for people blogging about working at home. And initially when I did that, I'm like, oh, man, I looked at all these people that are my competitors now. They're all my teammates. And so I've totally shifted my mindset away from seeing other bloggers, other people in my niche as competition, and now they're all my teammates. I believe so much in collaboration over competition. And that's actually like all what work at Home school is about. Like, that's a collaborative project. There's 48 people who put content in it, and it's all a huge win, win. That's just what I'm all about, 100%.

I mean, I think just in the sort of educational space where you're educating on anything, there really is no such thing as competition. Like the example that I always use, if somebody is, like, really, really excited about learning golf and they just got a new set of clubs and they're like, I really, really want to learn golf. They're not going to go to the bookstore, buy a single book on golf and be like, this is my book on golf. I am ignoring everybody else's book on golf. They're going to try to consume as much as possible around that and get different perspectives and learn from different people and, you know, try to try to merge it into their own way of thinking about it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they just. It's kind of like cafeteria style where they just kind of take something from someone and then another thing for another person, then just make their own. And that's art. I mean, our lives are art and we go through and something might work for us and another thing might not. I mean, I'm definitely not going to go be a rocket scientist, so that's not going to work for me. But I can find something that will.

Yeah. So how does affiliate marketing, and this is kind of something because we do a ton of affiliate marketing ourselves. How does that look like in your business? So we know, like, you have some strategies for winning contests. For instance. Can we go into how you actually promote these products and how it's part of your business?

Yeah, absolutely. And my very first thing that I. I'll start with one example from when I first started doing affiliate marketing and then when I was really at the top of my game. I mean, this year is with my own launch and how we work with affiliates. That was very top of the game. But it couldn't have happened without these other smaller wins. So the first thing I ever promoted was a course on how to become a bookkeeper. And the way I angled it, I was so scared because I'm like, how can I promote something that has nothing to do with proofreading? I'm like, wait a second. It totally has something to do with proofreading because there's tons of people that are not good at proofreading. They're great with numbers. So I created this fact post, this frequently asked questions post, and I said, what? And it wasn't even really that frequently asked, but it was great content. It was and was like, what if I'm no good at proofreading words, but I'm great with numbers, what can I do? And so I created this interview with the teacher who had actually contacted me to see if I'd be interested. Being an affiliate, I almost didn't do it. But to this day, I still making like two grand a month promoting his course. And I'm about to ask him for a raise, actually, because I'm probably one of his top affiliates. And ironically, he didn't really want to participate in work at home school, But I'm going to taste him for that too, because he's kind of crazy to not be in front of a work at home audience because there's so many people interested in it. So we'll revisit that. But that was the first thing that I promoted, and that's how I promoted it. Just very simply, blog posts. And I mean, still sending a lot of traffic to that blog post. I think that's what's the main driver of the revenue I earn from it each month. But the most recent thing I did was have you guys heard of Jeff Goins? Tribewriters. He's awesome. He's so cool.

I've heard his name before. I'm not super familiar with his work.

Yeah. So he's a very generous contributor to work in all school. He's contributed his entire book, intentional blog course, to the content. And so he's a shining example of generosity. And Solomon's, that's my number one affiliate strategy now is generosity. And so that's like what we tell all of our partners and stuff. Like give something away in addition to this. Make it a sweet, sweet deal on their end because they love you too. That way you're not just giving them to me. Right. Make it a good deal for them on your side too, and doing that with bonuses. So in Jeff Goyn's launch, I didn't know anybody else was participating and they didn't know me.

But I wanted to get to know the affiliate manager because I was having a launch up soon and I wanted to be in touch with all these affiliates that were. So what better way to do that than to win first place in a launch that he's working with just to show what I made up and show him what my list can do and stuff like that and just gain that credibility. Man, that's crazy. How much has come out of that? But I ended up angling it to hey, so Jeff Goins teaches a course called tribewriters and it's all about writing and making money with your writing. It's an excellent course, very high quality. And one might ask, if you're teaching proofreading, then how can you sell them writing? And the idea wasn't just, hey, you can go make money writing too. It's hey, writers are your potential clients. So Jeff Goins has this big paid community of your potential clients, right? 3,000 of them. What better way to meet potential clients than go be in a paid community of them and make friends with them and learn what their problems are so you can learn how to better solve them beyond proofreading, perhaps. What could you get out of that? People on my list. I offered some alternatives for people to already purchase my course. I actually gave away my entire the first, the basic version. It's not the advanced with all the add ons and stuff, but the basic version of my general proofreading course. So how to become a proofreader for writers, which is a $400 value. I said, if you purchase, or I shouldn't say purchase, I love to use the word enroll in terms of education. If you enroll in tribewriters, complete it and show me the results that you got out of the program. You will get my proofreading course for free. And I won first place by a landslide. And doing that. And I didn't overwhelm my list. I just tagged people who would click the first one or two emails I'd sent out about his pre launch content and stuff.

And then offered that bonus towards the end. And I was actually attending fincon, the Financial Bloggers Media convention in Dallas when it happened. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to win this contest. And I did it. Now, my message to everybody that promotes my products and everything that I do when I launch with people, really seriously, anyway, not just, just doing basic mailing is to be generous because so much came out of me winning that contest. Not only did I win $10,000 first prize, I got all the commission that came out of winning first place, I got 200 introductions to affiliates, many of which came on as either contributors or affiliates for work at home, school. My launch coming in four months from when I won and I got introduced to a publisher and I just turned in my manuscript to that publisher about a month ago. So I got a book deal out of it and just introduced to so, so many people that my life has changed forever because I chose to be generous. And so many people come up and they're like, how do you give away your only course? Like, how do you do that? I'm like, because I'm playing a long game, I'm not just trying to save my money and like, keep as much of it I can. I'm trying to give as much as I can because it's always going to come back to me.

I love it.

Number one strategy as an affiliate is like, how much can you give instead of how much can you get for how little?

That's literally pretty much identical to how we shifted to our whole business. We had all sorts of products, physical newsletters, we're doing some event type stuff here and there, but decided to totally just shut off all the paid stuff temporarily. We had affiliate promotions, cooking, so that was our income, but to give everything away for free. So not only the podcast here, but all the other content and all cool. Just we just want to throw our best stuff out there and attract folks that way. And it has definitely made us way more money by doing that shift. We still added in another product into the mix, but it wasn't until people literally were demanding that product, we're like, okay, fine, it's obvious now what we should focus on.

Yeah, that's a really good feeling.

Yeah. So definitely leading with your best stuff and giving it away is amazing.

So.

With the blog that you were running and the systems you had set up, you must have had some pretty decent systems and processes designed because.

You mentioned that you basically went on vacation and traveled the world while this blog was just kind of doing its thing for a year. Yeah. So what sort of systems, what sort of things did you have to think about and put in place to make sure that this thing didn't miss a beat? And were you still involved while you were traveling or did you kind of check out of it?

Oh, yeah, I was definitely still involved. Not initially. I went to New York for a week and I was checking email, responding to stuff, especially on the weekends, because the person I was working with, I was actually paying her to respond per email, so it wasn't a retainer. It wasn't per hour, it was like per email. She got 40 cents and she worked with me, excuse me, for.

About a year. And then I gave her severance. I just gave her a bonus just because I know this sucks, whatever, but I just needed a better assistant.

That was only person I had for a while. And then I had somebody who was doing some admin stuff, scheduling on social media. None of it was very good at all. It had the most rudimentary, what I called a sales funnel.

Seven day email course. And I swear I was one of the first people to do a seven day email course because after mine, everybody has one now, so I don't know, I still use it to this day. It's been tweaked very little since I rolled it out. So the content is largely the same. It's all in ConvertKit now. So it looks pretty plain in comparison to the HTML stuff I used in mailchimp, which is what I started with.

It was very rudimentary at the time.

I did all my own website design, which that looked terrible. And then when I was in Ecuador, it was always Ben. Ben always convinced me to make these big leaps, especially when it came to investing money into the business because I didn't want to spend money on a website. If I was making money with the website I had, it didn't make sense to me that it's not broke, so why do I gotta fix it? I finally bit the bullet and found an affordable web designer that I was like, all right, well, let's just do this. It was a long, painstaking process. Probably took two months to get it, which is probably not that long at all in the grand scheme of things, but still using most of that website today, and it did take my business to the next level. That was the first big shift. There's definitely not been a straight shot. We've been working with so many different people and trying to build a team. And Ben finally came on board in a management capacity. Before, he was just kind of a consultant and didn't really have much to do with the business that I was running at all. But he finally came on and that's been extremely helpful because he's really good at data and numbers and ads and analytics and all this stuff. And I just, I don't want to mess with any of that because I didn't record hardly anything so now. But it wasn't really in a lot until the last eight to 12 months that we really started measuring and looking at our data at traffic and conversion in February, we Signed on with wicked reports. And that's been a long journey in itself, but we're finally starting to measure stuff.

That's been a significant shift. But I would say probably switching over to using clickfunnels and setting up a second funnel.

For a completely different proofreading course. All built on clickfunnels was we upgraded our entire sales funnel process. It was held together by duct tape. It was so bad until about December 2016 where we had. I don't know if you guys know who Julie Soyen is. She was just a speaker at Internet Marketing Party in Austin in July. So Ben and I went out there to be in her think tank, which is an event they put on for the speaker before the speaker is the guest at the Internet Marketing party. Oh yeah, yeah. So Julie Stoian used to have a company that she built funnels and she's like really big in the click funnel space now. She's like works with Russell very closely. But before that she was building funnels. I was one of her last paying clients and to this day, I'm still her biggest success story because she remade my funnel and my income doubled. And then we made a brand new funnel with a brand new course all in click funnels and income doubled again. I went from making 85 max revenue a month to making up to $240,000 a month. Right now we're between. Between, I don't know, like 140 and 200 depending, something like that. But it's always low in the summer, so it'll hopefully go back to over 200 later this year when people get back to it.

Well, I'm curious. So since you've made so many changes in a short period of time and you started this whole thing off talking about working in your company or in your business, sorry, it was the company you worked for at the time, but you got your stuff done so fast. But then switching over to working for yourself. I'm kind of curious about the money kind of thinking. So obviously you're making loads of more cash than you did back in your job. How do you frame money now? Because I know one of the things you talk about is limitless resource and how that's how you look at money now.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I've made a complete 180. I went from telling Ben that I didn't think I'd ever make more than than $40,000 a year to the person I am now, where I do describe money as a limitless resource and time is the commodity that we should all be worried about.

Slipping away from us and we should be more tight fisted with the time than we are with our money. But so many of us will waste time.

In an effort to try to make more money or whatever. But I would say that the biggest shift has been away from the scarcity mindset to this idea that money is a limitless resource and it's just everywhere and the skills. I have this mantra in my community. It's called mo money, mo skills, mo money. It's basically learn more skills, solve more problems, make more money. Problem and opportunity are synonyms. They mean the same thing. As long as there are problems in the world, you can learn how to solve those problems and you can make money. But we over complicate it. And so we just think that if we make more money and other people make less money, we just think that money comes from a place other than us solving problems and it's just not like that. Taking people back to the basics is a big part of my mission now because of the journey I've taken and changing my own money mindset, realizing that with bigger skills, more important in demand skills. It's like having a larger net. And so you might start out with this tiny little butterfly net you bought at the dollar store that has holes in it at first because you don't have a lot of skills and you're green to generating income for yourself like many of us are because nobody really teaches how to do that in school. We're all taught to race to the finish line and you'll be handed a job and it just doesn't happen like that anymore. It used to. A bachelor's degree used to mean something too. And master's degrees are really headed that way as well. It's like everybody has one, they don't mean anything anymore. And so the work environment is changing and just the possibilities to earn money are limitless. So why isn't money itself limitless? It is.

It is. Yeah. And there's that good book. I'm sure it sounds like you're speaking it, but the trick to money is having some by Stuart Wild. And that's exactly like what you're talking about here. That was a big shift for both Matt and I, you know, reading that book. And it's something that we go back to all the time because it's exactly that. Like if you just think of it just in digital currency, you have money technically floating around you at all times. So I'm abundant. Money's everywhere.

Yeah. Just learn how to catch it. Like get it to flow in your direction for sure.

That's super cool, Matt. What do you got?

So on our notes here, there's a reference to ducks, buses, and staircases.

Oh, my gosh, I love analogies. Those are all analogies that I've come up with over the years to help people realize that, hey, you're overthinking this thing. So ducks and buses. So we'll start with buses. So everybody's like, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready to do this. I feel like I have to wait for this to be. And all their ducks. So maybe we should start with ducks. But they're all interchangeable, and I will link them together, especially the ducks and the buses. So I say, quit waiting for the ready bus. Right? That's where the analogy really gets to its peak, is like, the ready bus is this thing we're all waiting for, right? To be ready to do. To start our business, Ready to have kids ready to do this. You're never going to be ready. Everybody says that about having kids. But I don't have kids, and I'm never going to be ready, and I don't want to be ready. So whatever. But the ready bus doesn't exist. So quit waiting for it. Just get on any bus that's moving and just see where it takes you. And if you don't like it, just get off to the next stop and then change directions. You have that choice. You can choose to get on or off the bus whenever you want. And if you pick one that's going in the wrong direction and you got to go back, it's not the end of the world. It's never too late to change your direction or pivot. And that stupid thing you did, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40 years ago is not defining who you are now. So that's the bus, and then the ducks are. It all started with, how many ducks does it take to start a business? We're all waiting for the ready bus, and in the meantime, we're trying to get all of our ducks in a row. Trying to get all our ducks in a row. And it's like, we're not going to go until all the ducks are in a row. Well, hey, I say just pick up a duck and run. Maybe get on the bus with the duck and just go. And the other ones will follow. That's just what ducks do. And so how many ducks does it take to start a business? Just one. You don't have to get all your ducks in a row. Just grab one, run and Watch the other ducks fall in line behind it. And then the staircase is a very similar analogy I just used. I really described the exact same thing in so many different ways, but the staircase is very similar. You're waiting at the bottom of where the staircase is supposed to be waiting for it to appear. You got to see the entire thing before you going to take the first step. But that is ridiculous because when you are building your own business, you have to build the staircase. Step 58 isn't going to make any sense unless you've built steps one to 57. Anyway, start with building step one. And oftentimes, entrepreneurs like us, we've got step one pre built. You just got to customize it. You step on step one, you start building step two, and then gradually you build that staircase. And to tie into that more the staircase analogy, people are thinking that there's an end to the staircase. The staircase really is never ending. And we have. We shouldn't go into it. The goal of, oh, my gosh, I gotta get to the top so I can put all this stuff down and then get to know myself and figure out how to live my life. No, the staircase is your life. The staircase is your life. And so you're building it one step at a time with the choices that you make. And so that's how kind of all those tie together. And, you know, sometimes the ducks poop on the stairs. That's how you connect other ones.

I have a chicken and I can verify that. She shits everywhere.

Yeah, the same concept, right?

She's pretty much a duck.

No, that's an awesome analogy. And actually, maybe that's the headline for the show or the title of the show. Ducks, Buses and Staircases.

I love it. I love it.

Very abstract. So I'm curious what in your business, out of this entire journey that you've been on, was there like any specific factor or moment where you felt like this was the most pivotal moment that kind of took you from, you know, $45,000 a year to, you know, six figures a month? Like, was there one pivotal. Is there one or two pivotal moments that you can think back and go, that was game changing right there?

Well, I would say making the choice to invest heavily in my business back In December of 2016, when I was working with Julie and remodeling my very rudimentary funnel. I had the new website, but I needed to actually remodel the funnel and make it look good.

So just switching to clickfunnels and working with Julie and then adding. So we talked about generosity. And so my second proofreading course wouldn't exist if I didn't give the people on my team a skin in the game. I had assigned them to kind of start fleshing out the content of the course, and they were kind of slowly plodding along. Slowly plodding along. And I went to the Landmark advanced course, if you guys are familiar with Landmark at all. The PD world. Yeah. And I found myself very challenged by this concept of generosity. So it's interesting to see how it has continued to follow me around. But it kind of really started back then. I was like, what if, you know, instead of, like, I wanted them to build the course, but instead of just paying them to do it, I'm like, what if I gave them skin in the game? And so I said, hey, you guys are building this course. What if I want it was my content manager and my operations manager, and they're both contractors, and they both were graduates of one of my programs, my first program. And I said, hey, if you guys build this, manage it, maintain it, and you guys basically own this, you're each going to get 5% of the revenue for the life that you're with. Me and my company bought their loyalty, basically, and they loved it as soon as that happened. And it would start with the first hundred thousand. So it wasn't just like, they're immediately going to be drawn from this. They were. We didn't know how long it was going to take. It ended up taking, like, four weeks to get to our first. It was only one week. We got our first 100,000 in one week, and it was eight months to a million with that funnel. And I have yet to ever see the content of that course because I didn't create any of it. They pulled from my resources and stuff and the other course, but I've never even logged in. I don't know what it looks like.

They're incredible, and they are loyal, and. And they have me in whatever capacity they need me. And so the course is getting such great results for our students. And it's just like, I've created some clones in a way. They're amazing people, and I wouldn't be where I am at all without them. And so I know that we're all going to be together forever, probably. But that was the result of that challenge that I gave myself. It's like, okay, instead of trying to get more for less and by hiring new people who don't know what they're doing and you have to hold their hand or whatever, these were new people. They had never worked for an entrepreneur like me before. And so I was like, okay, well let's see if I can get them to rise to the occasion and kind of dangle this care a little bit. And they absolutely rose to the occasion. And we launched it in April 2017. That was a huge game changing moment. And then just in the last eight years, since the idea of work at home, school came about, we did the launch and I got the book deal and went to fincon and won Jeff Goyn's lunch, like all that stuff. And then I discovered cannabis. And in September of last year. So I'm coming up on a year anniversary. I was afraid to try it until. Until.

30. I was 30 years old. Yeah, it was my one year anniversary of trying cannabis. I was traveling to Pacific Northwest last fall of September at the time of recording, September of 2017. So a year ago.

And I was afraid to try it. I was 30 years old and I was like, I'm just gonna try it. It's legal here. You don't have to worry about anything. And I've since learned that almost nobody is concerned with cannabis possession anymore. It's not even a thing.

Because it's just so more. It's much more widespread at the benefits of it. But I was so afraid. I've had migraines since I was 16. I've had anxiety for at least since I've been in online business, Probably a lot heavier since I was in online business. And my anxiety presents itself in social situations. If I'm overwhelmed, bored, nervous, usually if it's anxious, I'll pick in my cuticles. I bit my nails for 17 years. That's actually why I was on the Dr. Oz show, because I quit biting my nails. And he wanted to talk to people who had figured that out. But I did that. So I have self destructive behaviors physically. I'll pull off my mascara, pull off my eyelash extensions, things like that pick at my face and pick at my arms. I got scars on my arms where I just picked at these little bumps on my arms that probably aren't even there, but I think they are just really weird anxiety like symptoms. And I didn't even know that it was anxiety until a few years ago. And so I'd been looking into ways to rectify that situation because I had been drinking a lot and not to the point where I would call myself an alcoholic, but it was a habit. And I was noticing I was using alcohol as a band aid to like mask my anxiety and to feel, make More make people more entertaining. So I wouldn't feel. So make myself more entertaining. Like it was just. That's what I would use. And I was like, this is kind of a problem. And so I was curious to see migraines since I was, I remember getting my first one. I was trying to take a German exam. Like have you ever tried to read German out of half an eyeball? Like it's not easy.

Yeah.

So I was like, what is this? And it was a few years before I even realized it was migraines. And so I've been dealing with those and tried these different herbs and all these different things and prescription medication didn't work. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to try cannabis. And it was a few months. I used vapor, it was a few months and just using it to sleep at night and it made my sleep just incredible. I had to stop using it during, before right when I was going to go to bed because it would. I call it indicouch, like the indica strains because I'm like, I am the furniture. Like I become the furniture. But it's great for sleep because I would take sometimes two hours to fall asleep at night because I just could not turn my brain off and could not stop being restless. And I worked out every day so it wasn't like I wasn't getting any exercise. I'm an active person. And so I mastered that. And then I started using just CBD which is legal in all 50 states. You still don't have to worry about. It's medically legal in Florida too, so there's no issue there.

But CBD is legal in all 50 states. And so I kind of discovered that. And I was a little bit, bit skeptical because I'm like, oh well, if I don't feel any kind of high then I don't know whether it's working. But what I eventually figured out was, you know, it's working when you're in stressful situations, anxiety inducing situations where you know you'd normally have a fit. Right. Or you'd be inside just like melting out of just anxiety and then it doesn't happen. And so I realized that it was working. Like I had to take my mother in law to the airport alone, which is.

Not fun. I love her to death, but she's very intense. And so I just knew that I would be anxiety easing. But when I was using the CBD oil it was just sublingually vaporizing, stuff like that. Noticed that I wasn't panicking Getting blood drawn used to freak me out. It was cool. My palms were sweaty. Flying, actually, the last time I pulled off all my eyelash extensions was on an airplane because I was so anxious. I just kept picking and picking and picking. I. I went on with hundreds of lashes and then I came off with almost none. It was terrible. It was so compulsive. And so my palms were sweating every time the thing bounced around. It was intense. And so I know that CBD works because when I use it, stuff like that doesn't happen. It's not that I'm masking the symptoms, it's just whatever's going on in my head, the tapes that are playing, the background noise, it just goes away. And so it's not the same as alcohol. Even though there's a stigma that will have you think that, oh, this is a drug, you're masking the symptoms. But it's a plant. It is a plant. Not a chemical, not a poison, not something that has been known to cause cancer since 1986 like alcohol. It might be 88, but still sometime in the late 80s. It's been known as a carcinogen. It's not a plant. It's just not the same. And so part of my mission now as a successful stoner, as I've known been known to call myself these days, is to break that stigma and show people that this amazing plant has real powerful properties that can change your game. And so I would say that's probably the most pivotal thing that's happened in the last year itself, is just figuring out this amazing, all natural tool.

That has just made me more effective. I just show up as a better person. This podcast episode wouldn't be as good if I wasn't using Canvas. I can guarantee you that's a big person. Why wouldn't I want that for myself? And that's a big reason why I've cut out a lot of alcohol consumption. It's the same thing. I did it for 30 days, cold turkey, no alcohol, and I felt so much better. Dropped five pounds, just had more energy, more focus. My productivity was up and I was like, you know what? Why wouldn't I want this for myself? It's been so much easier to turn down alcohol than, thanks in large part to the power of cannabis that I've discovered.

There you go. Well, I was going to say another stigma with cannabis overall is that you're just kind of like you said, you turn into the couch, indie couch, or your focus just goes away. So you being hyper productive, focused, sounding all that has that. So it sounds like it's enhanced that, which is totally. Obviously stigma says, oh, it should be. No, you're going to be a slug now after or whatever.

Yeah, it totally depends on the strain. I mean, falling asleep with that little bit of a high is great because you're in a really good mood. And you wake up in a really good mood because you didn't go to bed worrying about stuff. You didn't go to bed, like sweating out of anxiety or frustrated because you couldn't fall asleep for two hours or anything like that. You don't fall asleep with negative feelings. You don't wake up with as many. And so it's been easier to get out of bed before. I was always super productive, but I. I hated waking up in the morning. I was miserable in the morning and it took me forever to get out of the funk sometimes. I never got out of the funk. And so just doing anything on my to do list was just a huge chore. Once I got started, it was hard to stop me, but the waves of energy came so far less frequently than they do now. And now I just feel like it's so much simpler to get myself in a better mood in the morning. And I figured out. I just figured out what works for me and. And it feels really good. And I've just noticed how much better I feel about everything, especially my work, because I had a purpose, but it just didn't feel like I had one. I didn't feel like I bought it. You know, I was like, I'm having to fake it because I don't feel very good. I don't know why. Like, why am I just so owned? And I just found out I was just being owned by this anxiety. And so having those tapes get turned off has been very instrumental in my mood being consistently good. And. And I used to blame it on hormones. It's not all hormones. It's not.

No.

Yeah, no. I have a very similar story because for me, I don't really talk about it publicly too much, but I have started to more and more. But I'm obviously a proponent of it as well. It started for me when I actually had really bad sciatica pains. I had a pinched nerve and it made it so one of my legs was basically useless but ultra painful. And that was the only thing that worked for me. And I also had insomnia issues where I just couldn't fall asleep at night. My issue was, like, running a business. My wheels were turning at night. Like, I could not fall asleep because I was thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow, what this big idea was. The brain was just going on the business stuff all the time. And that's what helped me. I actually still use it nightly to fall asleep. And that was the big thing for me was like turning off that, like, here's what you got to do tomorrow, here's what's coming down the pipeline a week from now. Oh, that tax payment is due and it's coming. Like all that shit, it just turned off my brain from that circulating in my head at night.

That's exactly, exactly what has happened to me. That's incredible. I just love it. I fall asleep not thinking about any of that stuff. And it's amazing because that's exactly what was keeping me awake. The exact same stuff.

So during the day, I'm curious, what are you using during the day? Is it just CBD or do you have other strength?

So I use sublingual first thing in the morning. I brush my teeth, get ready for my workout and stuff. I love to start every day with movement because it just wakes my body up and that just makes my brain wake up and I just feel amazing. So I use just CBD in the morning, which is actually enhanced by. It enhances your endorphins. I actually first started noticing the effects of cbd. I would take it about an hour before I was in the middle of my workout. So maybe about 30 minutes before I started working out, I take CBDs. About halfway into my usually 40 minutes to an hour long workout, I'd start feeling really good. Then I made the connection between the hemp supplement that I was taking, just CBD oil with tiger nut and coconut oil or something like that. Made the connection between feeling better after workout and using it. And then when I wouldn't use it, I wouldn't feel as good. I just had made that connection. I just connected the dots somehow. I started researching and found some even better products and more higher potency, I should say. So. I mean, it was a good product, but it was just a low potency. So I upped the dosage just to see what better effects I could get out of it and started kind of testing it on a more regular thing because it's not something you can just take once a week and expect all your problems to go away. Especially the sublingual oil. People are like, oh, I'll just see if I take that and see if it helps me sleep. And I'm like, no, you got to take the CBD in the morning when you're dealing with all this stuff that's stressing you out at night. It doesn't stress you out during the day. It won't stress stress you out at night nearly as much, if at all. I use CBD during the day when I'm working. But then when I punch out of the clock and I do my own thing, then I might use a little sativa like chocolate or Durban poison. Those are just super good, feel good, happy. They don't really give me the munchies that I've noticed. If somebody puts food in front of me, it's going to taste amazing. But there's no for what I've found no compulsion to eat non stop with these two particular strains. And then at night is when I bust out the hinda couch right before I go to sleep because if I do, I can't move. And so I got to make sure I got my contacts out, teeth brush, face wash, all the things in pajamas, in bed. And then I do just a very tiny, tiny amount. It goes a long way. I mean, the vapors are strong. If you get the good stuff in San Diego.

That is true.

I pretty much use it all day. And I can always kind of tell like when I'm getting snippy or whatever. I'm like, I'm just gonna vape CBD during the day at my desk. And it always calms me down. I'm finding myself like uptight or tense or something, or just nippy at my husband or just not feeling great in general. It seems to just balance me out.

I love it. And I was almost gonna relate it to as you said, again, and this is where the stigma and some people might be thinking, and this is where my brain used to be back in the day. But it was like you found something that makes you feel amazing after a stressful workout, for instance, or a stressful day, whatever it is, and you're like, oh, well, when I'm not using it, it's not. Life doesn't feel as good. But then some people are like, oh, well, it's a crazy crutch. Yeah. But like, okay, well you know that water you drink every day that you have to hydrate your body so you don't get headaches and your body doesn't like, you don't die. That's also something that's required for your body to feel great and be optimized and live life to the fullest. And that's what's kind of cool. I'm just kind of relating the two in my Mind, I'm like, huh? I just kind of justified it there.

But either way, I agree 100%. It's a plant, and unless you're allergic to it, which I actually have a friend who is. Is allergic to cannabis, or it seems very clear that she's allergic to it. And so other than that, there is no negative side effects that are directly linked to it. And so in that way, I mean, more people have died, probably from eating oregano or coconuts or something like that.

Literally. Drinking water.

Water too.

Yeah, yeah. Drinking too much water or drowning water is dangerous. Like, stay away from that stuff. And plants all have a purpose, and the purposes that this plant has are still being discovered. It's unreal how many things it's been able to help with. I mean, epilepsy in children, my migraines, dogs with epilepsy are given cannabis, like, CBD oil. It's incredible. Well, even working out, almost angry that I didn't know about it sooner. Why were we taught for so long that, you know, it's the gateway drug? It's so political, you know, more you learn about it, the madder you get.

Oh, this is literally a rant that Joe and I have had multiple times over the years about how just absolutely ridiculous it is. I mean, I have a very libertarian stance on things like this, where I think the government should have absolutely no fucking say in what I do to my body whatsoever. So stay. You know, government, go away. But, yeah, I just. It is true. Like, all these years, as we've been growing up, we've been sort of lied to and fed essentially propaganda, which, I mean, I could go totally conspiracy theory on it, which all this propaganda was meant to, like, make the pharmaceutical companies richer and blah, blah, blah. But that's not the point. It just. You know, I'm glad that the stigma is going away.

Me too. And I hope that I live to see it become even more normalized than it is already.

No, it's a good sign. When my parents or even grandparents have asked me about it, I'm like, oh, wow. So the tables are turning here, and I love it.

Yeah, My mom was the one who got me to start using just the regular CBD oil. And my dad, I gave him one of my vaporizers with cbd and he messaged me the other day, and he's like, I haven't had a cigarette in four days. Because I told him. He. He's like, you get your anxiety from me. And I'm like, well, maybe this will work for you, especially if you Smoke because of anxiety, because you get that little high from the nicotine. What if you replaced that with cbd and he said he got some other oil or whatever. But I'm excited for him.

Yeah, everybody has the tools, especially for smokers. I don't even think about that. But it's like, just get some cbd, a nice vape so you're, you know, and whatever. Whenever you're feeling stressed, just go for that. Slap your hand if you're going for.

The six, see what happens. I mean, what do you got to lose? Except maybe some chemo treatments from cancer.

Just a heart attack or a lung.

Go through that, no big deal.

So what brand do you get of the CBD oil that you found? Really effective.

Yeah, so I am currently buying from a place in Colorado called the cbdistillery.com so it's not the CBD distillery, it's the CB distillery. Just don't put the extra D in there where you want to. I know you're going to want to because I always want to. And they have so many different tinctures. I just buy the strongest. And if you're worried at all about you don't want to get high, you're not going to get high. If you get cbd, you're not. There's no psychedelic effects at all. But just to be on the extra safe side for people who are maybe sensitive to it or something like that, this company act and I don't work for them at all. There's no affiliate program or anything. This is something I'm so passionate about. They actually have some THC free formulas and to be considered legal, it has to be below 0.3% THC content. And so everything labeled as CBD oil has to be that. They've got pet products and different stuff. But I just buy the strongest, which I think is 5,000 milligrams. So you can have a quarter of a dropper full and. And that's probably gonna be plenty for most people. For me it definitely is.

And that's the same place you go for the CBD vaporizers too.

Yeah, they have vapor. They have vapor as well. I like the granddaddy purple and I like to be able to detach and recharge the battery. I feel like for some reason it's just better than having one of the disposable ones that you just don't know how long the battery is gonna last. And are you gonna be able to get all your oil out if the battery dies? And I don't have to, like, worry about that. So just get the replaceable battery or the batteries you can recharge and replaceable cartridges.

It's too easy to use all these tools now. Damn it.

It's amazing, really. Living it's the best time to be alive. And I know that the media, like, makes it seem like it's getting worse and worse, but the reality is it's actually getting better and better. And the reason we think it's getting worse is just because of the crap we're fed.

100%. I feel like we're turning into a Joe Rogan podcast right now, and I love it.

That's what we've always decided this is eventually going to be anyway, right?

Right.

No, this is because this is a topic like Matt and I would just talk endlessly about. And yeah, we can go so many different directions, but maybe we will cap or maybe not.

Well, I mean, Joe and I, we've talked about how, like, if somebody said, like, gun to our head, you got to give up one or the other alcohol or, you know, marijuana, like, hands down, no question. I wouldn't even think twice about that question. I'd give up alcohol tomorrow if somebody forced me to make that choice. And it's. It's for all the reasons we talked about. There's so many positive benefits and very, very, very few negative effects that, that I've seen from it, other than the stigma aspect.

Right.

The stigma is literally the only, like, real negative is you got to sometimes be careful about who you talk about it around because they may, you know, have super conservative views on the topic and you, you just don't want to get into it with them or whatever. But, you know.

It'S very complex. I don't think most people realize it. I think the general public doesn't realize that there's like daytime strains, nighttime strains, cbd that doesn't even have THC with the psychedelic effects. And then under each of those, there's thousands of different strains that have different effects on your body and what they do. And I think most people impression of it is what they see in the TV and movies where it's just people lying around with like a stained wife beater on, on the couch and like a half a pizza hanging from their face. Joe Dirt or something like Joe Dirt or something.

The idea and the image of the. That I've created, I feel more and more people are going to be stepping into and saying, yep, that's me, the successful stoner. Like Stone, it being stoned is a bad thing. It doesn't have to be. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that stuff on TV really does happen from time to time, and I've eaten too many peanut butter cups as a result of cannabis before, but the effects that it's had positively in my life far outweigh the few extra pounds I gained from those peanut butter cups. And so, yeah, I 100% agree with you. I had no idea there were so many different strains that had different purposes. And. And we're still figuring out all the different things that it does. It's going to be. We're not going to see all of that result in our lifetime, I don't think. But it's just been amazing to kind of follow along and learn and figure out that, hey, if this strain doesn't do it for me or isn't solving my problem, then I can find one that will. And there's just so many possibilities. It's amazing.

And there's cool websites out there too, to kind of like, okay, what strain is for me?

Yeah, that's how I feel out my two favorite ones.

Yeah, you just look up your most ideal mood for whatever activity you want to apply that to. And again, it's a freaking tool. And I've used it for working out many times. So working off those peanut butter cups, don't worry, you just do a little bit of that right before working out. I feel so much more focused and just driven to get it.

It's such a new trend as a pre workout now for people, too.

It is a lot of big, maybe not, you know, pro athletes, but competitors are definitely using it. Yeah, it's interesting.

I know a lot of UFC fighters will use it to train and then just get clean 30 days out before the fight and stuff.

There you go.

So, yeah.

All right, tangent.

So. All right, well, we've definitely kept you quite long. Anything else off top of your mind that you just want to get out? Maybe we haven't touched on? I know there's a lot we've touched on.

Oh, man. You wouldn't be able to shut me up if I.

So maybe I'll retract that question.

So a new question. Do you have any books that you find yourself recommending often or that you kind of go back to often to reference for yourself?

Yeah, actually the one I'm reading right now, and that's a personal challenge that I'm working to overcome, actually, is reading because I used to read for a living. And so I've been telling myself this story that I don't have the capacity to read anymore after I work all day, because I still do a ton of reading with the blogging world and.

Doing a lot of copywriting and stuff. And I just finished writing a book and it's just like, words everywhere. Why would I want to read? And so I decided I want to challenge myself on that and not challenge myself in that. I don't like doing challenges, but I always question myself and approach things with curiosity, especially if I say I just don't do those things. And so I got myself to do one of my most hated exercises, the plank, like 125 days, simply by asking myself what would happen if I stop saying I don't do planks and did them for 30 days. And by the end of 30 days, I was like, this is really cool and I'm getting stronger without even trying that hard. And so I kept going. And I still do planks regularly, but not necessarily every day because it felt arbitrary after a while. And that's when I knew it was time to quit. I'm like, okay, get it. I'm not afraid of planks anymore, and I feel really strong in them, and I get it. And so I proved my point. So that's when I kind of give myself permission and so to stop the experiment. It's like I got what I came for. And then the next experiment was giving up alcohol for 30 days. And we talked about that already. And so my latest one is this whole. Especially now that I've realized that CBD has allowed me to enhance my focus and be more productive for longer periods of time, mainly because my mood is better. Oftentimes my mood is just so poor, was just so poor that it was like, I'm going to work for two hours and then I just suck so much that I'm just not going to do anymore. I just had a bad mood, I think. But now that that's rectified itself, I just have more energy and again, to show up more effectively. And so I've challenged myself to start reading more and watching less tv. And I have a fitness trampoline. And so I jump on that while I watch TV. Sometimes I'm allowed to watch TV if I'm on my trampoline. I'm allowed to watch TV after 7pm If I've already read that day for at least, I would say at least 30 minutes, a fair amount. And then I'm allowed to watch TV on weekends if I want to watch a movie or something. But the same kind of rule applies. Reading should happen first. And so I want to see what happens if I started reading not just fiction, but self help. And so the book I started reading first was called the Big Leap, which has been out, I think, since 2009. It's not a new book or anything, but it's probably still on the bestseller list. And just kind of figuring out what your zone of genius is versus zone of excellence. And I recently realized that I thought that I was really good at copywriting and I should spend my time on written content. It's actually quite blown my mind because I realized that I really enjoy Facebook live videos and podcasting, and I have my own podcast. And I've realized that, hey, I hate showing up for the podcast because I don't like being someplace at a certain time, right. To record stuff. But once I get on there, the time flies and I love it and we just get in a flow. And so I've realized that I think that kind of stuff might actually be my zone of excellence, because my zone of genius versus excellence, because it's just feels easy. The time flies, the time stops, and it doesn't feel like work. I could sit and talk about this stuff for hours, but it would exhaust me to write about it. That is blow my mind because four years ago I would have been like, no, I'm not doing videos or audio. I don't want people to hear or see me. And now I'm just like, I think this is what I need to do, because it cannot be. It's the work only I can do, too. And that even makes it more valuable.

Have you ever read Simon Sinek Start with Water?

Why?

Yeah, I haven't read the book, but I saw that video that everybody passes around. But I definitely need to rewatch it because I remember just being like, I.

Didn'T really have a super big point to that question. The only reason I asked it is because we've actually interviewed four people today, and all three of the first three interviews mentioned Simon Sinek. So I had to get it into this episode.

Oh, great. Okay. Well, Simon Sinek, I said it too.

I think. I think it's a sign. The universe is telling us we need to have him on the show or read his book.

Yeah, people keep like, yeah, it's definitely a manifestation thing.

So listeners, if you know Simon Sinek at all, just point them our direction. We're gonna be on the hunt, though.

So the Big Leap. So you're currently reading the Big Leap right now?

Yeah, I'm reading it right now.

Awesome. Yeah, that's one shoot. I listen To I have a horrible memory when it comes to books. And Matt knows this. I have such a short term memory. But I did listen to that book and it was great.

Yeah, I can relate to having a memory thing. I said that. I was like, I like for example, Russell Brunson's Expert Secrets was the last nonfiction book I read. And I would tell myself a story like, I don't read books because I have a to do list a mile long of things. And so I had it in my head that books were just to get new ideas, right? But for the big leap in this case, it's a mindset shift. It's not a new tool to use. It's just know you thinking differently and inviting that new perspective into your life. And so I was telling myself the story, I don't need to read books because I have a to do list. I'm all along. And so when I need more ideas, I'll start reading again. Right? And so that was my excuse that I told myself for why I wasn't spending any time reading. And I'm like, this is at some point when I, especially when I was reading the Big Leaf, I'm like, well I was, I was telling myself a load of bullshit like that was true. And now I was like, okay, I got a whole bunch of books I want to read and some that are sitting on my shelf that I haven't touched. And I'm like, okay, new roll. Until I'm finished reading all the books on my shelf that I haven't read, I'm not buying any more. Not fiction I can buy the Cows come Home but like really enjoying it. And it's not just about getting new ideas or learning how to do something. It's just learning how to think differently.

And that's, I think that's the key thing for anything you're reading is like, okay, actually extract something you'll use. And I'm sure I think I read it probably in a time where I wasn't ready for it. So that's probably why it's not like boom, right on top of my mind right now.

Yeah, I can relate to that too. I guess. I didn't mention like with the Russell Brunson Expert Seekers book. I with the short term memory thing. I cannot finish a book that has tactics or strategies or how to in it. I can't finish it because I stop after chapters one or two and I go implement the stuff that I want to do. And then I'm like, oh, I'm getting results from that. So I follow chapters one and two, who got great results from Russell Brunson's book. Never read the rest of it and I don't know when I will because that is an idea and strategy book. And I'm like, I think I'm good for now, but in terms of the mindset and the perspective shifting and learning how to master your fear. And I think I'm hooked, man. I'm going to keep reading about that stuff because that's how I was hurting myself by not reading is because I wasn't inviting these new ways of thinking and looking at the world into my life. That was my mistake.

Love it. Love it. So we have one last question. Where should we send people after listening to this episode? Where should they go? Check you out.

Well, I have a feeling that most people listen to this podcast are like affiliate marketers. Like us, like doing what we do.

Yeah, Bloggers, affiliate marketers, entrepreneurs. Yeah.

That's the vibe I got listening for the last few weeks or so. I hadn't even heard of your show. So thanks to David for pointing me in the right direction because I'm in content consumption mode and I love it. So you guys are doing a good thing here. So I think if you are into affiliate marketing and you want to promote work at homeschool, we pay 40% commission to affiliates and there's a 10% second tier commission too. So you know your friends. I'll hook you guys up with a second tier referral link as well.

Because I create really good stuff and I know how to sell it. So working with me as an affiliate is always a good idea. So you can check that out at bcp. B as in Ben, C as in Caitlin, P as in Pyle. My last name Media inc dot com. That's where you'll find all of my stuff. Like, I do other stuff that we didn't even talk about.

But definitely we'll link up that in the show notes too. So go to the website, go to the show notes for this episode and you'll get linked right up to that.

Heck, yeah. Well, this was a fun conversation, Caitlin. We'll definitely stay in touch and report back maybe on some new strains or something we're experimenting with.

Totally.

I look forward to it.

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

You're awesome.