Flori Pyke & Anna Jonak — Partnerships And 3-Day Workweeks

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

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

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to another great episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Yes.

Yes.

Today we have two gals from. Well, they're not from. But they are down in Australia, down under.

Matt. You're gonna see how he has embarrassed himself a little bit. You were so embarrassed, weren't you?

I was a little embarrassed. I actually, I. I got, like, red in the face and nobody would see. Nobody saw it except for Joe, that I. I accidentally tried to guess the accents and I guess.

Don't give it away. Don't give it away.

Well, it's.

Giving away can open a loop. Matt, come on. You're a marketer. No, yeah, there's.

There's better loops to open.

I know. So it was fun to make fun of Matt. Usually I'm the one that says stupid stuff.

I usually get to make fun of Joe.

That's true. So table's turn. But we're back with them, and they are just amazing. And actually, it's funny because they are essentially, they're, like, similar to Matt and I. They are a duo. They have kind of different personalities. They have different strengths. So we chat about what makes a great partner, how to find a partner, how to work together, how to actually work just three days a week. Because they have kids. They have kids under five. Each of them have three. Three of them. So you can only imagine what's happening. And they work from home, so just imagine that too.

Yeah. So, I mean, in this episode, we really dive in on a couple things. We really wanted to dive in on how they work three days a week while also juggling kids, you know, figuratively, not literally.

And why not? And how not. Killing their partner.

Yeah. And how to not kill your business partner, which resonated with us. Joe and I have been business partners for a long.

Time. Long time.

We have knife fights often.

We've been business partners for a while, so it's always interesting to hear other partnerships, especially ones that are so similar to ours, and how that dynamic works. So we really kind of honed in on that partnership relationship and how partners could divide and conquer and really blow up businesses if you. If you've got that right, partner. So, you know.

Sweet. Yeah, I know. It's. It's just like we just go down that rabbit hole for a while. We talk about some other stuff too, but.

Yeah, marketing and traffic and some fun stuff. There's Good times to be had by all.

But hint, a lot of it's a mental barrier to actually work a lot less but still make more money. So that's what we're gonna dig into. And also part of that parlays into what we got for you too.

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Okay, so GenM is essentially a site where you can go and hire somebody to work for you for 40 hours a month for $50 a month, right?

Correct.

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My, my wife actually is starting her own business and she just got one to be a writer. Yeah, to do a lot of the writing. We have some other friends and hint, a lot of, even our smart marketing friends, business friends, don't even know about this. So you are going to have an advantage if you actually do this now.

Well, Brad Costanza, one of the guys who's been on the show a couple times now, he actually went on GenM, found somebody who wants to learn how to run traffic, bought our traffic course and gave his GenM intern access to our traffic course. So we're essentially training other people's intern to run traffic for their business now, which is actually brilliant. If you want to do that, we'll let you. But you got to buy our course.

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Anna, you gonna love it.

Hey, Anna and Flori, how are you guys doing today? Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, good. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, we're pumped. We're pumped and ready to rock it with you guys.

Awesome.

I thought we were going to laugh at Matt. That was the joke that we were going to just start.

We're open to it. Let's do it. Yeah.

Well, we're just laughing at him because he was getting accents wrong.

Yeah. Previously to hitting record. I guessed. I tried to guess the accents and I was wrong on both.

The best bit was the confidence and the delivery of you guys at this.

This.

Wrong.

Well, saying that I know one guy is Australian, his name is James Schramko. He's amazing. He introduced us all together.

You got one right.

Yes. Joe's winning.

Yes.

This is exactly where I like Matt to be. Like, okay, success on Joe's. Joe won one, finally. All right, well, enough of that. I'm sure we'll keep making fun of Matt throughout the episode, but I'm used to it, so. How very nice to have you on the show, by the way. So it's going to be fun. I feel like you guys, we don't. Okay. And honestly, we don't know you too well, but from everything we know about you guys, it's similar to us in terms of partnership. You have a podcast, kids, and just busy with just life and then the whole three days of work that you guys do.

Yeah, literally before we were. Before we were jumping on this call, Joe was saying, yeah, they kind of sound like, kind of like us. They're two partners that work close together. They got the podcast. Like, they're very, very similar to us. So let's just kind of have that discussion around the similarities and what we've learned in business as partners and doing podcasting and all that kind of stuff.

How this all works. So.

But let's start by getting yours your guys story. So how did you get into business? How did you guys become entrepreneurs? What were you doing before this and what was that progression?

Well, we both had backgrounds in media and kind of advertising, so we both kind of had kind of those kind of corporate careers. And then we had children. And when you have children, you realize that your corporate career, especially in that kind of area, is not really going to work because it's pretty intensive. There's a lot of entertaining and going out and both. Florian. I took the opportunity really to go kind of pursue passions in other ways. I went on and retrained as a life coach and started a life coaching practice. And Flori, you.

Yeah, I started a digital marketing consultancy and then we had a mutual friend slash client introduce us to each other.

Yeah, this lady was like, you guys should meet each other because you're both really intense. And we're like, how do we take that? We will kind of take that as a compliment. But she pushed us and pushed us to meet each other and then she.

Persisted for like a good month.

Yeah, come on. So we met and then it was like pretty magical. We kind of met and we're both like, maybe we could do something together. Because we kind of. We were both working in an area. I mean, I was working with mums and really kind of saw a gap in the market for them needing business training because a lot of them, like us, have stepped out of corporate and wanted something more for ourselves. I had a set of skills in my background and with the coaching and Flori had all the digital marketing. And so together we had this amazing kind of combination to deliver kind of mindset business marketing to our clients. Yeah.

And then we went off and we. Well, we. It all happened really quickly. Within a matter of a month from meeting, we had sold like, I think it was six students on this program that we had yet to write.

It's the best way to do it.

Exactly.

It was fast and furious. Pretty much fast forward three years and the business has grown like exponentially again and again and again. And we haven't quite stopped yet. And Flori should. I just. Has literally just had her third baby. He's like 10 days old or something.

Oh, wow.

Congratulations.

I'm surprised you're here.

Thank you.

Yeah, he's asleep in the other room. So I'm just crossing my fingers that that trend continues.

I'll cross him over here. That's totally fine. So how. I'm curious, how was that transition from corporate life to where you're at now, the entrepreneur life? Hmm.

Well, I. Loaded question.

I know with.

I mean, I think for myself and I know Anna from speaking. We talk about it a lot, actually. One of the best things I think for us is the flexibility that we have now, being able to work for ourselves, especially with kids. So we each have three kids now, and it just enables us to be flexible around our family's needs and their demands and still to be there, drop them off, pick them up from kindy et Cetera, whereas with corporate, I mean, it's. Forget it. Right. So that's been wonderful thing from. From my standpoint, I know you share something similar.

Yeah. Well, definitely the flexibility. But also, I guess we're doing something we're really kind of inspired about. Like, we love what we do. We love the women we get to connect with. We're helping them create like, you know, big changes in their life to enable them to do exactly the same thing, to be able to have a different kind of life with their kids and have that outlet and financial income coming in, aside from being in corporate. So, I mean, it's totally different. You know, when you're hustling in a job for someone else, when you kind of. You get stressed and over it. Whereas when you're doing it for your. You know that you've got this much bigger picture vision in view, which just keeps you going. When you see it growing and you see the people that you get to touch is just like another level.

Yeah.

Now. So I know your primary market is like stay at home moms.

Right.

You're trying to help them get into business. You guys say moms, we say moms.

Thank you for clarifying.

Yes.

Just for anybody who doesn't know the language barrier here. Barrier.

Digging himself a hole in this one.

I tend to do that. Don't. What kind of things are you teaching? What's the business model that you guys run? What do you teach? What do you sell? What's the business?

So we help moms. Moms.

To start and grow basically a successful small business from home. And so we have a flagship program called Small Business Pro, and it basically takes them through everything that they need in order to.

Yeah.

Start a successful business. And one of our unique selling points is.

We do a lot around mindset. So in addition to getting the fundamental business skills and marketing skills that they need, Anna, this is kind of her weapon is she is a personal coach. So she really empowers them to believe in themselves, to back themselves. Because often a mom will. She'll be out of the workforce for five years or 10 years or what have you, and she'll want to start something necessarily believe in herself or that she can do this. So that's one of our unique selling propositions within our program.

Yeah, I think that you see a lot of people confidence get shaken when they've been out of corporate for a little while. So that's definitely something unique that we bring. Is that kind of looking at the person holistically and delivering them skills to kind of Trust and back themselves and really go for it. But alongside that, it really, I mean, at the core, what we teach is the business fundamentals. So a lot of stuff that people miss when starting out, like doing surveys and strategy and competitor analysis and really going through the job of understanding who's in the marketplace, how they can create a point of difference for themselves. So it's really kind of the fundamentals that a lot of people miss because that's where a lot of businesses fail.

Yeah, 100%. And just to elaborate on what you just said, Anna, like, we can't tell you enough how many students who jump into our program.

Start their businesses just by focusing on marketing. So, you know, they're on all the social platforms, they put up their website, and then they're like, okay, the sales, where are they? Because they've missed those essential business foundations. A lot of people get, you know, caught up in that shiny, glossy word marketing without really understanding the fundamentals of their business and who they're talking to and appealing to pain points and all those essentials that you need in order to be successful in business.

Yeah. So it sounds like you guys are the perfect combo of mindset and also very tactical with the strategy and the research, customer analysis, all that stuff. Why do you think people kind of skip over that stuff and just go straight to the marketing or just the shiny object type thing?

I reckon a lot of people don't realize how complex it is. And I mean, God, we've been doing. We've been in business five years each and we're still unraveling it. So like an onion that just keeps going, isn't it? Like, you're like, oh, my God, God, we could do this. And there's so much to learn and things change and evolve. But essentially, I think a lot of people really don't understand. It's that kind of whole attitude of how hard can this be? Or they, you know, ask a few friends, they poll a few friends and say, hey, what do you think? My idea? And, you know, they get the thumbs up. So that's it. That's all they need to start their business. And when they get into it is the realization that, yes, sales aren't suddenly going to come because you put up a website page or you've got a Facebook page. Like, there's so much more to it.

Yeah. So what are some of, like, if you were to give us maybe one or two important things that they should be planning for when someone's just starting out and this is anyone. I mean, guys, I'M sure can swipe a lot of this as well. So if you're not a woman listening, definitely, I'm assuming at least. But what are some things you would suggest in that planning phase? Maybe it is someone in business, but they're going into a new niche or a new space. What would you recommend there?

Surveying. We always start with surveys. So really understanding what you know, whether there's a demand. So ascertaining demand for what you're offering to start with and getting really decent feedback and enough volume of responses to see this trend. And from keyword researching to Googling to actually physically sending out surveys and focus groups, that kind of stuff can be really potent in understanding your audience's wants and needs and even the language that you can then use to, you know, articulate your copy and sell your products. So that's one of the first places we start. And then you take them into competitor analysis and.

Yeah, competitor analysis and figuring out their point of difference. And, you know, you said it, the niche, niche word as well.

So another language.

I knew I was going to get called out.

But enabling them to exactly, like, discover a niche for themselves because, you know, no matter what they're doing, every marketplace is getting more and more crowded. So it's so important to be able to have something that enables you to stand out and that makes you different from all your other competitors in the same space.

Love it. So with the survey, going back to the survey real quick, I'm curious, who would you survey to start with if you're just starting a fresh business and you don't maybe have a list of leads or anything like that?

Well, I mean, it's amazing what you can do using Facebook in terms of getting into communities of interest. So I guess you have to think, think about the product that you have initially and who you're looking at targeting. So if you've launched something, who might be a likely consumer and then going into those spaces and asking for feedback, you can also do some excellent keyword research just in Facebook groups alone, just by looking at the themes that are coming up in those communities to see whether you're seeing a repetition in keywords and questions being asked. All of this stuff kind of compounds to give you an insight into what's going on. Like community groups, the number of searches that come up on Google. You can even use Answer the Public as a tool to actually ascertain how many people are searching for certain questions around certain topics. And all of this stuff will really start to give you a picture of what people are looking for and whether what you're looking at is valid or not.

I love that. Yeah. And I know a lot of folks, the Google groups thing you just said there is probably one of the easiest ways just join some groups. You can maybe even ask a question on there.

You mean Facebook groups? Facebook groups.

What did I say? Google groups.

Yeah, it's a Google groups. Just want to make sure I clarify that.

I was wondering, like Google group.

Sorry, I was thinking a little bit about that. Yeah, I'm like, is that the new thing again?

Yes. So you go on Google and then.

That'S like dead now, right?

No, Google, they're shutting down.

Yeah. But no, the group group idea is amazing. We've done that before for, you know, trying to go after a new affiliate product and figure out what the objections are and how we should create, you know, FAQ or should ask question type videos and content. So that's solid.

So on the other side of the business, you know, what are some of the mindset hurdles that you seem to run into most frequently? What are the things that are barriers to people getting going or, you know, that hold them back from making the progress they should? What do you see most commonly?

A lot of fear, a lot of overwhelm. I mean, a lot of people are fearing putting themselves out there. There's a lot of fear of failure, you know, which is completely understandable because there's a lot of investment, emotional time, money, all of these things into it. And to be honest with you, a lot of people need to go on a bit of a discovery to see what their blocks are. And we also see a lot around money like investment in their business and actually backing themselves. So we have to do a lot of belief work around the kind of the beliefs they're walking into in their business. Because ultimately if you don't believe you can and your focus is on fear, then that's where you're going to end up. And you have to realize that what you focus on expands. So it really comes back to you thinking about who you need to be, who you want to be, the kind of beliefs that are going to serve you. And so we do a lot of kind of digging into those things and values to help people kind of really feel their best and understand what's potentially been holding them back so that they can reframe it or rework it.

Nice. Okay, well, I want to. I'm curious, and this is a selfish question because. Okay, so it's a little change of topic here, but similar vein because I think it Goes into kind of what you're talking about now. But Matt and I, selfishly, but probably for the better, for everyone is to work about three days per week, office time, three days a week and other time, family, friends, networking, learning, whatever, what have you. How do you guys do that? Because you're only, what you said, five years in. In business.

Three years in.

Three years together, right?

Yeah, Three years business school for months.

Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing the fact that you're already at three days a week. I'm curious on how like, what is, what does your week look like and how did you get to that point?

It's so pretty.

No doubt. It's messy probably.

And yeah, yeah, the three days a week are essentially where our kids are in daycare. So all of our children at the moment currently are under five. So I've got a five or three and a two year old and you've got a five year old, a three.

Year old newborn and a newborn. Yeah.

So at the moment that's the days that we have specifically free where we work on the business. Florian I are kind of like opposites. I'm an early morning, I'm up at like sort of half, four or five and I do two hours before I get my kids up, get them out the door and then I'm normally off about 7.

I usually do the night, although at the moment I'm a bit sleep deprived. So my late night owling has waned. Yeah, waned a little bit.

It's so interesting. The parallels are interesting because Joe and I are the same way. Joe's more the early bird. Get up early, work before anybody else is up, up when it's quiet. I'm the night owl. Once everybody goes to bed, that's when my brain is ready to go.

Yeah, yeah, that's been interesting and we've actually been talking about that, that we need to set some boundaries because sometimes I find that like I'm up really early and messaging her really early and then she wakes up to it and vice versa, I've like switched off and then I'll get messages and I'm like, oh my God, I'm done for the day, man. There is that boundary.

No, we run into that as well.

Nice. Yeah, we also, fortunately, I've got to say that alongside the hours that we do, I mean, so aside from those set days, we do kind of dip into the business on, on the other days it's kind of like more around, you know, you sit down again in the morning or maybe at lunchtime and the kids have a bit of downtime, but we also have a team of people that work with us as well that we've got to support on various things as well.

Yeah, well, it's interesting because, you know, I think Joe sort of transitioned to this question because I think for us, it is more of a mindset thing than a practical thing. Like, I think. I think from a practical standpoint, we could get away with three days a week. I think it's more of a mental barrier of there's almost this feeling of guilt when we're not working five days a week. And I do think it's more of a mindset issue for us than a practical of we've got to get this much work done and we only have five days to do it. So let's fill it throughout the five days. No, I think realistically, we probably have about three days of work to do on our business each week. We just haven't managed to pull ourselves out of working five days a week.

I think there's a mixture of habits that we kind of get used to doing things and expectations and also maybe a bit of guilt that how is it that we can just do three days and we really should be doing five because everyone else is, and if we're not doing five, then maybe we're not doing as much as we should on our business. Kind of like make your mindset can take you in twists and turns all over.

Yeah, I think you nailed it on the head right there, because I know Matt and I were just a million ideas, and. And we're guilty because, you know, we're talking to great people like you on the podcast, so we're just flooding more ideas to us, but. So we have to kind of filter that and just, you know, hold ourselves back. But it is this thing of like, oh, my God, there's so many things that we want to do, or, I know I could do this. It's only going to take a couple hours, you know, if we just. But then you go down this rabbit hole and it's, you know, a day or two.

Yeah, we were just, you know, we were just talking about that rabbit holes. And I was saying to Anna, I feel like right now, because I have a newborn and I have two other kids, I've had to really, like, kind of reassess where and how I allocate my time, because obviously at the moment, I'm spending half my day with a baby on me at feeding, basically. And it's really interesting. Like, I was saying to Anna, it really Made me reassess like value add activities in the business. Like, am I adding value? Is this going to make profit for the business and. And taking a step back as opposed to being like, oh, it might just be an hour here, an hour there. I don't have that luxury at the moment. And so it's really interesting. I feel like it's made me objectively really take a step back and ensure that I'm spending my time really wisely on value adding activities and also directing the team to say, you know what, I'm empowering you now.

I want you to take ownership and tell me when to step in as opposed to the other way around right now and me kind of controlling everything and telling you when to step in. Because again, it's just, you know, having that time and they're great and they're in a point now where they do have ownership of their roles and they're very capable of doing that. So that's been really great. But I totally appreciate what you're saying and I.

We've been off, we've been off tangents a few times. We've wasted time and money.

Yeah.

What would you say a value add or a handful of value add activities are for you guys?

Well, I think personally, when we started recording with you guys just now, we talked about our skill sets and stuff. And for myself personally, because I'm a digital marketer, the value adding activities that are of most importance that I provide for the business is the marketing. Running the Facebook ad campaigns and ensuring that our landers are optimized and.

Running email marketing campaigns, things that generate revenue for the business, basically, and leads, essentially. Yeah.

And at the moment I'm doing, I'm like running the numbers and the forecasts and going, right, this is where we need to like pull up our socks. So what are we going to do on this front? Let's strategize and turn that into the marketing side of things.

Got it. It's a perfect combo. And that's. I think that's the key distinction is okay, not try to do everything but the value add.

That's right.

In the team. You mentioned a team. So what does your team look like? Like how many people and kind of what are the roles of the team?

So we've got six people that work. They kind of contract in. They're not. Some of them are full time, others kind of like part time. So we've got a graphic designer who comes in and really helps. We're really keen on branding like you, if you've Checked out our site, you'll see that we're pretty schmick with how things look.

I told Matt that, actually, I was like, their branding's on point. I love. I literally said that. Good.

High five to India designer. She's a legend. She basically helps us really bring to life what it is that we want people to see. And the vision that we have, it's just, like, huge for our business. We've got a student liaison, Jo. She basically. I mean, We've got about 500 students behind the doors to our program, and it's fast and it's furious. There's lots of questions, and she makes sure that they kind of get looked after. We've got tech support. You know, you've got to make sure that all your systems are working and at the program access and it. Everything is as schmick as it should be. And when all the marketing systems should be talking in your email marketing and things. And. Yeah, who else am I forgetting?

Well, then we have Rose. So she helps us with our podcast and editing the podcast. And then she drives, for instance. You know, I was saying, like, getting the team to drive things. So she's now driving our content plan for socials, and I just write the copy for it. So, you know, I'm getting her to direct me. So go analyze the analytics, have a look at what's working best. Go brief into your graphic designer on posts that are similar to what's been performing, and then tell me what kind of content you want me to write as opposed to me doing all that backend work.

We've got support coaches to help us because we have a forum where we personally coach our students and give them feedback on what they're doing. So she's kind of like an absolute legend.

She's a superstar.

Yeah. There's lots of different roles that people are stepping into. Oh, and accounts. Obviously you need accounts. Yeah. Don't want to be doing all the numbers. It's one thing to forecast, but another thing to actually be driving off the P and L and kind of reconciling everything every month.

That is true. Yeah. Now I just love to see the landscape of what you have. It's very similar to who we have as well. And I like how you have folks taking control. Like you said, they're kind of giving you orders, and that's kind of like what we're starting to do as well. We have an ops manager who kind of steers us in the directions and also slaps our hands if we're doing things that Aren't value add activities to our business? Like, oh yeah, that's right.

I love it.

My favorite thing in the world is when our operations manager comes to us and says, why are you guys doing that? You shouldn't be doing that. And we go, oh, well, thank you. That's like the best thing in the world is to have somebody tell us to stop working so much.

Right?

I know, right? So Jo does that to me all the time. She's like, stop being a hashtag control freak. And I'm like, ouch, man. Okay, fine, whatever.

Well, Shannon, our ops manager is probably listening to this, so she'll start using that hashtag definitely with us when it happens. I'll know where it came from. Yeah, that's awesome. So I know the three. So you know you have a plan, strategize and execute. That's kind of like a three parter that you told us that you kind of worked through.

How do you plan your, I guess your week? Because you're doing a lot, I'm sure every week. Do you guys have meetings in the beginning and set up maybe the framework of what you're going to accomplish that week or set some milestones that way? How do you kind of structure things for each of your week?

I think probably to begin with we have a content plan for the year.

So about once every quarter Anna and I sit down and we figure out what different activations are going to take place over the quarter.

And then we figure out when the ads will commence from and the emails and whatnot. And that's very high level. And then from there on a week to week, you might want to talk.

About beyond Brave, we have a mastermind. So with a certain number of calls that we're doing each week, coaching calls, so we've got a mastermind that we do calls with the certain responsibilities that we know we have. But ultimately each week there's definitely a plan of what needs to happen. And there's a real sense of one thing we do well as execute is that we make things happen and we kind of impose deadlines for ourselves. So whether it's to do with an activation or whether it's revamping the website, we don't just sit and wait for it really to need to be done. We're always kind of forward looking at what we can be doing to improve what we're doing. So it's really about imposing deadlines and having a key, one or two, maybe three max things that need to be done across the week and make sure that they Happen, like no matter what.

I love it. What do you use to stay accountable? Do you have systems and tools and things like that? Obviously yourselves.

Well, the content plan.

Is. I mean, that probably doesn't. Well, it helps us to keep track of budgets and all this stuff. That's simply a Google Doc. And then in terms of. From an accountability standpoint, to be honest, we've tried quite a few different systems. So we tried Slack. We tried. There was another one that we tried, but we found that because we're not always sitting in front of our computers and we're on our phones a lot due to the kids and just like mom life, basically, we honestly have found that just Facebook messenger is for Anna and I like our go to. It's how we started the business and it's literally how we communicate with each other every single day. And we have tried other tools, but we just find that because we're on our phones all the time, it's just the quickest, it's the easiest for us and we'll honestly. Yeah, we'll just ping each other. Have you done this? You know.

Yeah, yeah.

Because we're pretty much all in on Slack and Facebook messenger was one of the few tools we actually got rid of for a while and neither of us touched it for like months at a time.

We were like opposite, basically.

Yeah, we were like the opposite.

But we.

I was gonna say when we met, I was in a different state to Flori, so we were literally thousands of miles apart and basically we literally did everything by Facebook messenger to start with and phone calls here and there, in and around stuff. So I think it's just become part of our communication style now.

Well, we've essentially had to force ourselves to start using messenger because it's so prolific now. Everybody uses messenger as a pretty standard way of communication and so we've had to reinstall it on our phones and put it, you know, put it back on our computers so that we can pay attention to it because there's. We were missing so much stuff from people reaching out that wanted to be on the show or that had opportunities or whatever because they were reaching out on Facebook messenger and we were just ignoring Messenger. So we had to. We basically were forced to start getting back in the groove of using Messenger.

Yeah, it is a balance though. Like the whole checking in stuff on your phone. Like I've started to put the, you know, the iPhone apps limit, like time limit on my phone now. So at 7 o' clock I literally have to like ignore the time limit, which Is like if I really want to go into something, but definitely trying to put some boundaries on getting off those platforms.

Yeah. And I remember I used to have like the ping, you know, the little sound every time Anna messaged me, which eventually drove me into insanity because it was like, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. I was like.

So I removed that and also removed the notifications because I go in there enough that it's like, I don't need to be staring or like listening.

I need the red, the red, angry red message. You have a message.

Yeah, and that's helped a lot.

That's good. Because I think I would go, I would lose my mind. Because I know I've done that with our slack, you know, because it hits our phone too. So most of the time it's just on silent. I'm like, okay, nothing's an emergency unless, you know, maybe text or call me. Okay, fine.

Yeah, exactly.

No, I'm just, I'm laughing a little bit. Just based on like all the similarities. Like, I see so many parallels.

I mean, I even have a five year old and a three year old myself, so I, like, the similarities are like insane.

Oh, wow. There you go.

So, you know, the juggle is real. Especially when there's like lack of sleep and you just got to keep on keeping on. It does not matter.

That's definitely true. Yeah. My wife is, she is, you know, she's a stay at home mom herself. So during the day I don't, you know, I'm not quite as involved during the, you know, the work days as she is. But so I don't have the exact same struggles that you have right now. But I've definitely experienced them, especially in the newborn phase, you know, Newborn phase. I basically took the first month off, but yeah. So I'm curious, do you have something else on this topic? Because I was about to change topics a little bit. So I'm curious about your podcast. And this is obviously kind of coming from a selfish place because we have a podcast, but anybody who we bring on the show who has podcasts themselves, I always love to like discuss it a little bit. What was the motive behind you guys deciding to do a podcast?

Do you want to go?

Yeah.

The motive behind the podcast was to really give people an opportunity to, I guess, experience us, to educate, to deliver value, to deliver content. It was really just something to give back to people and an opportunity to learn and come on a journey with us. And it's been something that we have used to teach, used to interview. I do Live coaching sessions as well. So I actually do hot seats with our students and we kind of help give value that way. But again, obviously more people learn from it as we go. So it's just become a fantastic tool for so many things.

Yeah, podcasting. And you said networking as well. So are you mainly an interview podcast?

No, we do a lot of teaching, so we kind of mix it up. We don't really have a specific format, so kind of things move. Like we'll share. For example, one of the last episodes we ran was about the fact that we owned a big mistake that we'd made in the business. And we talked a lot about that and kind of like, you know, how we dealt with that. So it's kind of an opportunity to be real and raw about our journey and the stuff that we've tried, as well as teaching stuff. And then we'll kind of mix in stuff, educational things with people that we think can add value and interview for our listeners as well.

Yeah, no, it's podcast for us. I mean, we say it all the time, but it's like our favorite part of the business. But it's also the easiest way to create content and then, you know, you can transform that content in a whole variety of ways from that point. So it's always cool to hear like your application of it is similar, slightly different style podcasts, but, you know, same outcome. At the end of the day, it sounds like, oh, we video.

We actually video ours as well. So we use like short form content from it and like YouTube channel.

It's all over socials as well. Yeah, it's funny you say that, you know, because. Because we were just chatting before we got on the podcast with you guys today around what was one of the favorite things that we do in our business. And we were reflecting on it to each other and yeah, we both agreed when we come together to record a podcast or be interviewed for the podcast, it's probably one of the things we enjoy the most. It's so fun.

It's an energy changer. You go from whatever you're doing to do and then all of a sudden you're connecting and it's.

We love it for sure.

No, we're. We're in that same boat. In fact, we've. We've had conversations if, about if we can cut out everything in our business and only focus on our podcast, we would do it.

But you know, the business out around it. So it's fine.

Yeah, we are trying to build a business around it, but that, that's our Goal is to. Is to pretty much only focus on the podcast because it is. It is legitimately our favorite thing. Just getting to have fun conversations like this and meet new people and. And get new ideas for the business. It's just the best.

Oh, definitely.

So I'm kind of curious. I want to go back. Flora, was that your baby going off in the background?

Yeah, yeah. She's kind of been in and out patting him and soothing him.

That's a first for the podcast.

Yes.

I love it.

It's real life. It's not always pretty.

Yeah, no, it's great. Now that you're back, I wanted to ask about the partnership and. And so you guys. So Matt and I, for instance, we've been together, working together in different projects for about 12 years now, and it was just recently. This year, actually. We had a guy, Tim Francis, on the show a while back. We did our Colby score and all these different personality tests, and we never really did that prior to. We just kind of hacked it up and we would have our. We kind of just found our natural tendencies, but we ended up overlapping a lot on different things, just trying to grow the business together. But we were sometimes, you know, button heads because it wasn't quite made for me, you know, the task or one was for Matt. Have you guys found anything or have you used tools like that, like the Colby or the disc or other things to figure out, okay, these are my lanes. I'm gonna get out of her way. You know, that's her ballpark. You know, how do you kind of divide that?

We do. We do have a disc. We have done disc, and we're actually both quite similar. Like, we're both high D and I energies, so we're both kind of like quite people. You know, we like people, and we also both doers. But I think that we've naturally found our rhythm. I mean, to be honest, we're so lucky. I mean, in three years, we've literally never once had an argument. And, you know, occasionally if we get slightly frustrated at things, it's just over in. Over in no time.

Yeah.

Yeah. We just seem to have a really good. I think coaching. My side of. Coaching side of things helps as well, because you kind of come in from an angle where we're always trying to. To find an answer. But it also helps for us that we weren't friends first. So the business always comes first. We never kind of. We didn't have a friendship and then have the business overlap. It's like the business came first and the friendship has Kind of developed as a result, you know, and we really enjoy each other's company and like, you know, enjoy each other's kids. But we always have the focus of the vision of what we're looking to achieve. And I think that that enables us to always make the right decisions and kind of leave the emotion at the door.

Yeah, definitely. It's always about exactly how can we benefit the business. And the emotion gets put to the side.

It's tough to do sometimes.

You know what?

Also, sorry. I think this is important to say because we're in such similar situations with the kids and you know, the juggle, like, it's been really great because we really understand each other's situations. So, you know, when shit hits the fan for one of us, the other one steps up and vice versa. And that is just invaluable. And that's really. That's been a weapon for us in being able to build such a successful business. Because we always say like, you know, neither of us could have done this on our own due to the demands, you know, of a family and running a household basically at the same time. Like it's virtually. It's so hard.

Right.

And that's where we've been so lucky to have each other to basically lean on when we've needed extra time or what have you, or there's been additional family needs that we've had to attend to. The other one can step up and we understand because we're in the same game.

Yeah, you're sharing a lot of the same things. And I guess the reason I ask this is that folks ask us all the time because they realize, okay, we've known each other for a long time. We actually were friends first. But not great friends, though. That's true.

No, we were acquaintances. We had mutual friends, but we didn't really know each other before we started business together.

That's true. Yeah. We worked together at his parents company and kind of morphed into business for ourselves. But folks say all the time, like, how the heck have you not killed each other yet? It's been 12 years and you see each other almost daily. Definitely talk to each other daily.

I can't say that we haven't fought in the last three years. I can say we're lucky that we haven't fought in the last three minutes. But.

No, but just like you guys, we get over it.

No, no, fights are so like minimal. Like we're. We fight like siblings where we will argue for like four minutes and then be like, are we best friends? Again. Yep. All right, good. You know, they're just like stupid little quick things. It's not like real fights.

Yeah, that's nice.

That's nice, though. I mean, I think that we kind of have a. We. We just enjoy. I think we're just lucky. We just enjoy each other, really, and just enjoy what we've created. So. Yeah.

And it's nice to work with someone. Yeah.

It's freaking lonely. It is. Job on your own, like, you're like, can be at home and.

That's. Right. It's because we don't. We work from home.

And it's a.

You know, eventually we'd love to get an office, but right now, just given the phase and stage that we're at within our lives with our kids, it's the best. It just basically buys us the most time because we're not commuting to an office and then doing pickups and drop offs. It's just the easiest. And it does get lonely. So it's.

It's just.

It's nice to be able to connect with someone and bounce ideas off each other, as I'm sure you guys have probably similarly found being a team together.

It's funny because you mentioned the office thing. Joe and I have actually gotten an office for our business on three separate occasions now. And pretty much without fail, like six weeks in, we just start working from home again anyway. And we're paying rent at the office. It's true.

We're like, why the hell do we do that? And then we let go of the office and we're like, man, it'd be kind of cool to have an office again.

Yeah.

So, I mean, Joe and I are actually both working out of our homes again. We actually do still have access to an office space that we never, ever use. And we just work out of home almost every day. But Joe lives about, what, five minutes from me.

Yeah. So it's easy for us.

I mean, we could practically walk to each other's places. So it's like. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. There's no secret formula. And yeah, I was trying to get. I was like, man, is there some magic trick or some way they've partnered up here? But really it was just an equate. It sounds like that connected you guys and it seems like you hit it off and it's still working. So it's.

Yeah, it got really lucky. I mean, I think, like, I definitely knew for myself I wanted to eventually work with someone because I enjoy that. I, you know, two Heads are better than one. But also, like, it's just, it's nice to be able to, yeah. Be in a team together and bounce ideas off each other.

Like, and now even having a bigger team, there's more people that we can.

Exactly.

And, you know, you're starting to create this community. And within that we have, I mean, like I said, we've got tons of students. We've got a community there as well. And you see the connections both online and offline that happen as a result. Because people, you know, people naturally want to gravitate and create these communities and be together.

Definitely. So there's one kind of last topic that I want to touch on. I know you guys have some time constraints, so I'm very conscious of that. But I want to talk about some of your marketing strategies a little bit. Can you give us some insights into how you actually sell people into your membership?

Yep. One of the big things that we've been doing kind of periodically between, I don't know, three or four times a year, we've been running big challenges. So we've been kind of like tending to take an angle of like the mindset challenge. So because it's one of our points of difference, we see a lot of people, as we said, kind of coming in a bit lost in their sense of self. So we kind of get them to think about big picture vision for their business, why they're doing this, and then get them to look at how they're behaving and the person they're being and the results that they want. And then ultimately we take them through the small business success checklist that we have to help them really start to look at where the gaps are and what they need to be considering. So for us, it's very much, we find it's very much experience based. So if we give them a three day challenge like that, or we run a live class or even through the podcast, the podcast quite often brings us clients because they've obviously heard us teaching and we have cheat sheets and we also have a resource bank which is full of content that people can come and check out. So it is very much content and experience driven.

Got it. No, I love that. I love the challenge aspect of it all too. Doing those challenges. What quarterly challenges, it sounds like. I know. I've seen those do really well.

I know Flori mentioned earlier that you guys were running some Facebook ads that was kind of of her side of the role. Are you guys still doing advertising into it as well?

Yes. So we're basically now Constantly running ads. So for instance, right now we're going to be running an online live class on the 1st of November, I believe it is. So we're running ads to that. And that is. Yeah, it's not a challenge per se, but off the back of that, if someone's interested in learning more about the program, obviously we open the platform for that opportunity and start discussing the program and driving them down the funnel, basically.

Got it. Cool. All right, well, I'm going to probably transition. Just wrap this thing up in a sec here, but wanted to wrap it up with what are some. And maybe there's one book each from each of you. Is there a book that you reference often or one that's just very memorable that you just go back to or you recommend to folks pretty often?

For me, from a life coaching perspective is always Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within.

I think it was just hugely life changing for me in my early journey. And I utilize a lot of the material and recommend it to students because, I mean, it's a big, hefty book, but it really helps you to kind of connect with your, I guess, your ability to create change and realizing that it's all on you and you can leave the story at the door and it's really about, you know, the direction you want to take life and making that your focus.

And then for myself, you know what, I'll be honest. I'm not a huge reader. I do a lot of podcast listening.

Hey, that works.

What's your favorite podcasts?

Well, perpetual traffic.

I mean, this is the thing, right? Because it's digital marketing. It's like there's no book that covers it. It changes, like, by the second.

So I'm with you. I used to read a ton, and nowadays I'm much more on the podcast train for the same reasons. I mean, I can get the most up to date, most current information on what's working now. And Perpetual Traffic is a great one. We actually have both Molly and Ralph coming on the show, so. Love them and love that show.

Yeah, not together.

I'm such a fan girl of Molly. Molly of Molly.

Yeah, we'll let her know.

That's awesome.

Yes, you can. I'm sure she's heard that now from a few sources. I feel like I've said that on every podcast.

The more you say it, the more I don't know, it'll come back somehow. Yeah, she's amazing. Yeah. Maybe we'll tweak our question. Maybe it's a little podcast or books.

Yeah, I mean, we Actually, we don't know Molly very well. She was introduced to us through somebody else. But, you know, after. After we have her on, we'll see if she wants to get past your wave. Maybe she'll be on your podcast next.

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Yeah, for sure. Well, where should folks check you out and kind of dive into your ecosystem over there?

Well, our website is www.businessschoolforms.com and it's mums, not mom. Yeah, good clarification there.

Language barrier and all.

With the language barrier. Yes.

Did you buy the other domain and redirect or not?

Do you know what?

I'm already on it. Sorry. I'm just kidding.

Do you have an affiliate program? We just bought the domain. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah.

Geez. No, but one thing we should mention, actually. We just created this awesome freebies resource bank on our website that we spent a lot of time on.

Cool. What is it?

It's like a library.

Teaching challenges.

What's that called?

What is it?

It's Business School for moms.

Resources, resources, resources. Okay, we'll make sure we link it up in the show notes, too. So. Businessschoolformums.com resources.

Yes. Yes.

Perfection. Cool. You guys are amazing. And very thankful to James Schramko for introducing us, because, I mean, he only sends quality folks our way, and I'm just like, okay. It's always gonna lead to something great.

Vice versa. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah, we've really enjoyed it.

Thank you. Thank you.

And again, sorry for botching the accents.

That's all right. No judgment, no drama.

We won't hold it against you.

It's okay.

You could.

Even though you call me an American and I'm Canadian.

That's okay. It's okay.

It's a nah, Frank.

No, it's all right. Joe will hold it against me for you guys.

That's right. You just gave me a reason. Perfect.

All right. We could do this all day.

Have a great one. And thanks again.

We'll speak to you soon. You're coming on our podcast. We'll speak to you soon.

Perfect. I know. Looking forward to it. See you.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

Bye.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in to that episode. I hope you enjoyed that one. Now we got something really cool for you, don't we?

Oh, yeah, we do.

Are you asking me if we have something cool for them?

Of course we do.

All right, so here's what you got to do. Now that you listen to that episode, go to evergreenprofits.com that's where you'll find the show notes for this most recent episode. And what we've done and we'll do for pretty much all of our episodes is we made a little cheat sheet for you. So if you're in the car, if you're out for a run and you forgot to take notes on this episode.

Don'T sweat it, actually sweat. If you're running, it's cool for making.

This into a new commercial. So if you go to the most recent, if you go to evergreenprofits.com you'll be able to find the show notes for whatever episode you just look for. It's not on the front page. Do a little search and you'll find the episode. And we make cheat sheets for all of these episodes. So if you forgot to take notes, don't worry, we took notes for you. It's a little two page cheat sheet of here's all the notes, here's all the takeaways, here's the links they mentioned. Mentioned PDF format. You can print it, you can, you know, blow it up and make it as a poster on your wall like Joe does.

Yeah, you can make it wallpaper.

Yeah, you know, turn it into wallpaper. So every day you have to look at what tasks came from this podcast episode.

Think about how cool that wall would be though, how spark you would be.

How much money you would make.

Absolutely. Oh my God, how cool you would look. You know, all the, yeah, it's. People will be impressed.

Also, we'll also throw in the transcripts for free, no extra charge.

Even more wallpaper, it's your other wall.

So yes, go to evergreenprofits.com if you. If this is a newer episode, the show notes should be towards the top of the page. If it's not, do a quick search, find this episode and you should find a cheat sheet with all of the notes that we took on this episode and all the resources and links mentioned and get them, blow them up, put them on your wall and turn them into wallpaper and make some money in the process. Make some money and there's transcripts for those of you, you who fast forwarded to the end, didn't listen to this podcast and now just want transcripts, you weirdo.

Yeah, definitely weirdo. But that's okay.

Evergreenprofits.com go to the show notes and we love you, love you.