How To Profit From Your Passions with Matt McWilliams

Hey, this episode is a fun one. It's with my buddy Matt McWilliams. This guy is the aficionado when it comes to affiliate marketing. He's done work with the biggest names in the biz in on the planet, people like Tony Robbins, Lewis Howes, Brian Tracy, Kim Walsh Phillips, Ryan Levesque, Michael Hyatt, Rich Sheffrin, who is actually how we met originally two years back at this big 24 hour live stream where Matt brought all of these people together because everyone was an affiliate there. It was like 30, 40, 50 people. I don't know, the place was packed. And what Matt has been working on the last two years because he's been on the show before two years ago. So definitely go check out the previous episode we did. It's called how anyone can recruit an army of affiliates. Well, what he's done now is actually just produced a book, just released a book called turn your passions into profits. And this thing is your action guide. I've read it. It's your action guide to figure out what is your superpower and something you can monetize and something you can actually love what you do. This show is all about doing that for yourself and finding what is that big, what's the joy that you have in life. But also in this case, Matt's figured out how to put that into a very simple system to follow. It's not simple to do it's work, as he'll say. But this book really maps out how to find what that passion is, your superpower in a step by step process on how to actually monetize that turn it into a profitable business. So it's called turn your passions into profits. Definitely go grab it. Go to passions into profits book.com hustle again, it's passions into profits book.com hustle. You're going to get a whole bunch of bonuses when you use that link. It's being sold right now in all the stores, but go there and he'll know I sent you. But without further ado, let's get into this and chat with my friend, Mr. Matt McWilliams. Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic Hustle mode kind of gu. I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

Matt, we're on, my man. We're round two on the Hustle and Fluid chat podcast. How you doing, man? It's been a couple of years.

I'm doing awesome, man. Good to be back.

Yeah, man. It's a new show. It's a different show, but, you know, the party continues and. And you're doing some different things. I mean, you've. You've always been the affiliate guy. Podcast, of course. And that's how we met originally, Rich Sheffrin's place down in Florida. And.

It was. That was right before, man. That was like weeks before it was.

I mean, it was like, it was. It was short enough before that when. I don't know about you, but we found out that like one of the people that had been there had it. And I was like, oh, crap.

I remember. Well, yeah, because nobody knew, like, at.

That point we didn't know, like, was it an eight week incubation period? A three day, you know, we was all like. I mean, I remember like, sorry, it's just so crazy to think about, like, what it was like to be afraid to pump gas, you know, and like, am I touch everything around you, gas going to kill me. But I'm kind of glad we're. We're past that phase of our, of our existence.

Yeah. There's a better understanding now. And I feel like, well, we were just talking right before we hit record. All of your hacks or your. The ways that you're staying healthy right now because you've been crushing out interviews for your new book. Turn your passions into profits. Want to give that a shout out.

When people are listening? It'll probably be about. About live. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. Like a two year process, but we're. We're almost there.

So that's what you've been doing the last two years. All right, so you just answered that question.

I've been doing the last two years.

I believe it. It's a beefy book, man. And it's. I didn't read word for word, but I sure as hell am going to, especially when I get that physical copy. When it's out, there's a lot of nuggets that are easy to digest. And think about and declarations that you can say to yourself that change some belief patterns up top for all of us. But we won't harp on that quite yet. The last two years. So affiliate marketing. So are you still doing that kind of stuff? All the affiliate management?

Yeah, I mean, you know, spoiler alert. There's 10 steps in the book and I won't list all of them, but we take you from basically, okay, we got this idea. What, what even is my passion? What is my message? What is my purpose here? You know, to be able to have a message that I spread and have an impact and influence on the world. Right. All the way through. How we build the audience, how we nurture that audience, build a community, create raving fans, start creating content. Step nine, you know, we got 10 steps. Step nine is commit to monetize. And so, you know, spoiler alert. A lot of that is about affiliate marketing because the whole premise, you know, of that section is basically that you don't need to wait to monetize. You know, you know, there's this, this, this myth. I say lie. You know, it was a little bit of strong word, but this lie that says, you know, well, if you, if you start monetizing a platform, you start making money from it, then you're not true to your original word. Like, this is not the Goo Goo Dolls going from heavy metal to, you know, all like acoustic, you know, rock, you know, that, that, you could argue that was selling out, but I wouldn't because they've done pretty well for themselves, you know, but we go from like thinking, okay, I'm no longer some benevolent content creator to just like, I'm a greedy, money hungry, you know, mogul. Right. It's simply not true. And so the line in the book that is really resonating with everybody is it does not serve your audience to not monetize. If you aren't making money, you cannot continue to offer the valuable free content, or paid content for that matter. Doesn't matter. But you cannot continue to do that if you aren't making money. Like, newsflash, it's expensive to run a platform. Like even just now. I don't know about you, Joe, I don't know your podcast setup. I can see a little bit of it there. But like, you know, there's a lot more to it. Yeah, I'm assuming it doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it's thousands of dollars. My setup to do this is right at about 1,000 to $2,000, and that's lower Budget than what I had before the flood destroyed all my stuff earlier this year, you know, but, like, it costs money and even low tech. When I started my blog, you know, I paid 20 bucks a month for hosting, and I had a premium WordPress theme that cost like $200. And I had a VA helping me with some of the logistics. I spended $500 a month on my platform making nothing that is not sustainable. I know, because I've been there. And I was ready to give up. And I was ready to give up because, yeah, I was having an impact on the world. I had people writing me every week saying, matt, you changed my life. You were doing this, you did that. This was in a different niche, by the way. I was in the leadership and personal development development niche. And they're like, you, you've impacted me and you've saved my marriage. You've made me a better leader. You've done all these things. And then, you know, I tried once to go to the mortgage company and say, hey, I'm having an impact on people's lives. I'm helping people. Can that pay for part of my mortgage? And they said, no, they take a.

Bunch of money out at low interest.

Yeah, we pay $4,000 a year for our kids soccer, and that's before we do traveling and hotel and all that stuff. The soccer club, they. They've never once accepted positive tweets about my business as a form of payment. You know, payment. They do not accept Facebook comments or people who email me and say, thank you, Matt. You've changed my life. That does not get us $200 off our annual payment of $2,000 per child. It doesn't work like that. We have to be able to make money to continue to do what we're doing. And so, yeah, I mean, to. To tie the two in together. A large chunk of Step nine is all about why affiliate marketing is the best way to get started with monetizing.

I love it. And that's where you're. I love how you're leading with the monetization. Whereas in the book, it is chapter nine or Step nine. And I had a thought about it, because there's a lot of folks that will say, you know, don't monetize until you got a lot of stuff out there that you've created this clout, this whatever. And you make a really good point that monetize early to prevent burnout. And I've been there. So let's talk about that really quick. The burnout factor.

I mean, first of all like when you're, when you're starting out, it's the perfect time to monetize because nobody's paying attention to you anyway. Like, you can suck at selling and your emails can be terrible and there's only 15 people who give a crap and they probably have the same last name as you or they even so.

They'Re probably going to give you valuable feedback and keep listening to you.

But the other problem is, and this is all mindset, this is all mindset because there's so many people out there who are like, well, you have to wait till you have X number of followers. You have to blog or podcast for Y number of years. You have to produce Z. I mean, what are we doing? Algebra. This is in algebra. Then here's the crazy thing. Some people say X is six months, and others say it's two years or one year and that you have to have 500 followers or a thousand followers or 2,000 subscribers. They can't even agree on the number. So you know what I say? When they can't agree on the number, they're all wrong. The right time to monetize is immediately on day one. It's all mindset. It's how you view making money from your passion is ultimately what determines how much you make and how much of an impact you can have. You know, so many people preach like, you gotta give, give, give. You got a content, content, content, right? Without ever asking for a financial transaction. But like, like we said, that's what sets you up for burnout. We're gonna give away in podcast hours, blog posts, we're gonna give away almost an hour a day of free content, 340 hours of content in 2022 to my audience for free webinars, videos, podcasts, blog posts, whatever. I'm not saying you have to give away that much, but like, we're gonna give away a ton of value to people who maybe can't afford what we sell. They can't afford to buy anything through us. They're literally just getting started. They're like my mom who never made more than $38,000 a year in her life. And that's just where they're at. And they can learn for free from me. But the thing is, like, I want you in the money making mindset from day one. This not when you've reached some mythical algebraic milestone, you know, of subscriber counter followers. And so you mentioned the declarations earlier. You know, there's a declaration in the book that says, I run an online business and businesses make money. When Walmart opens up down the street, they sell stuff on day one. When the furniture store opens up, they don't teach you how to care for your furniture for two weeks and then how to clean your furniture and the what to look for in furniture for three months before you walk in. No, you buy a couch on day one. And so the reason why I love affiliate marketing is because you basically have two options. Option one, create a product. Here's the problem. You don't know what product to create. You're probably going to suck at selling it. You don't even know what your audience wants. Option two, just give away content indefinitely, which again, leads to burnout. So the reason why I love affiliate marketing is that affiliate marketing bridges that gap that we have that everybody has early on in their business between having nothing to sell and selling nothing at all. So we bring in a little bit of income. It might even be 10 bucks the first month. I will tell you that this is not just a math thing. How much more is 10 than 0? It's infinite. All right, that's not just a math thing. Your first couple months. If you bring in $30 from your business, it is infinitely more than zero. In fact, from 10 to $100,000 will be less of a leap than from zero to 10.

Right.

The problem is most people don't make that leap to 10 until they're nine months in and they're ready to give up.

And this is where the beliefs. I feel like you could start shattering these beliefs or at least reframing the beliefs. And it's not just through declarations alone. It's through actually making money. Cold hard cash or digital cash, whatever the heck it is now. You know, get that motivation, the momentum in your mind. It's a big belief system. And. And this goes to. You make a really good point earlier in the book. You know, when you're kind of looking for your passions and figuring out which is the best to pursue in business, which I'd love to dig into, but there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear wrapped up. And I'm not just saying this because my last name's Fear. I've had to reframe myself. And I'm not lying, man. I'm like, all right, Fear is like this control. It's usually we walk away from it, hide from it, whatever. We tense up. It's like, no, you got to go through that. You got to actually recognize the fear. And I think it's Steven Pressfield that you reference Which I love the guy.

I do.

Yeah. And he essentially paraphrasing here, fear is an indicator of your calling from the war of art. And yeah, it's like the muse that's calling you and the resistance is. Is freaking infinite feeling. And I had that relaunching this podcast, I'll be totally honest. Is there was that fear, even though I know what I'm doing, it was just like, you know, it's like, how is. I'm going. So it's new, you know, and so, yeah, let's talk about. I want to talk about that and how you approach fear and kind of just reframing these beliefs that we all have.

Yeah, I mean, the fear is, you know, there's so many authors that have written about this. Seth Godin, you know, Steven Pressfield, you know, one of my favorite things about fears is the idea of like, you know, not to fly too high. And I talk about that from the book the Icarus Deception by Seth Godin. He talks about, like, the myth we've been told is that we were told that, you know, not to fly too high or Icarus's wings will melt from the sun. What we didn't, what most of us weren't told is his dad or whoever also said, don't fly too low. Cause if you're too close to the sea, they'll melt from the salt. Or something like that. Right. So we were told not to fly too high. So what do we do? We default to flying too low. You know, and that in that, that fear, like, I mean, you know, the fear holds us back from so much. Like fear tells us that your voice doesn't matter. Like, fear says you don't have time. Fear says, you know, stay in the comfort zone. Right? Getting in the car, driving 30 minutes, staying in a cube for nine hours a day, getting in the car, driving 30 minutes back, whatever it is, whatever your comfort zone is, like, whatever ordinary is for you, whatever playing it safe is for you, fear says, don't do that. Because the alternative could be worse. It could be, you know, you know what, I'll put it this way. Like, entrepreneurship isn't all it's necessarily cracked up to be sometimes. You know, I remember very vividly four or five years ago, so 2017, you know, I had a four person team at the time. You know, I think we just hired something like our 17th, 18th person. I don't have to do this anymore. I'm at that point, thank goodness, where I might. The extent of us releasing a video is me saying, hey, Jim, please make a video that has this content. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But there was a time when I was doing the video editing for one of our big launches. We only had four people on our team and I was the video guy. I had that seat on the bus. Now we have a video guy. And so for me, I did all. I was doing this video and I went to save the video file that I'd spent about 40 hours editing. It was 4 in the morning the night before. No, I'm sorry. Two days before this video was due for our launch. And it told me that all the raw files were missing. And I remember right here I was right where I am right now. I remember I dropped to the floor and I cried. Four in the morning. I gotta be up in three and a half hours to go to church with the family. And I remember I just sat there. I didn't even scream. I wasn't even angry. I just sat there and cried. Like nobody tells you about that. That is. That's a true thing. That is one part of my entrepreneurial journey. But then. But so fear says that that's like the thing. It's all like that, you know, fear says that, you know, that it's all the stories we've heard of businesses busting. Fear says that it's all about the fact that the 401k goes away and you don't have health insurance and, you know, you're end up living in a van down by the river, you know, with Tommy. Yeah, Fear, it's straight up, is a liar. The safety is a liar. The comfort zone's a liar. I mean, I hate to break this to you guys, but like, those who you trusted the most, you know, your teachers, your family, your parents, they probably lied to you as well. Like, they probably lied to you because they want what's best for you. No mom wants to be the mom of the son who's still living with them when he's 38 years old because he has a dream. And we all know somebody like that. I have a cousin like that that's almost 50 and he still lives with his mom. He's chasing the dream. That's not because he became an entrepreneur. It's not because he's, you know, what, whatever you might say, right, because he chased his dream, it's actually because he's just an idiot, you know, and he just needs to learn how to run a business. That's like. He needs to read the book.

Yeah, he does.

But in all seriousness, it's because he's doing stupid stuff, you know, but we see that and go, that's what entrepreneurship can do to you, you know. But no, I want to point out all the, the highlights, all the beauty that can come from it. And it is a process. Like, no, I'm not suggesting. This is not a book. You go grab and go, you know what? I work in a cubicle today and I make $0 for my side hustle. And in three months I'm leaving this crappy job. Have we had people like that? Yes. Are they less than 1/10 of 1% of the people we've worked with? Yes, most people. It takes a year, it takes six months. It takes a year and a half sometime, depending upon your niche to get to the point where you can make enough money to go full time. But here's the cool thing. When something takes you that long and you but you've experienced the success along the way, then it means more and you're probably going to be successful for the long term. This is going to be something like me. I'm 17 years into my journey and somebody posted on our friend Dana Derricks posted on Facebook, what do you think you're going to be doing when you retire? And I said, probably about the same thing I'm doing today. You know, that's where I want all the readers of this to be.

I love it because you're reframing fear right here. And it shows up in so many ways in the path of entrepreneurship. It never goes away. And Steven Pressfield talks all about that, too. You just got to keep pressing into it. And if it's calling you, there is. It's probably a sign, your superpower or that thing that you probably should figure out, maybe you monetize that superpower, maybe you don't. And we could talk about how we decipher between the two. But that superpower, I feel like, is pretty obscure to most of us. And there's exciting times when we pursue these passions and these superpowers and if we realize them in a monetizing way or a business way. But then, like, there's the boring times where you kind of keep dredging through, you know, the boring times in business where a lot of people might find a shiny object to say, oh, that's my new passion. I've been guilty of that, by the way. So I'm sure we all have in some way. So, yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. The superpower kind of honing in on what is the thing to focus on. Because a lot of us don't really embrace it because we can't see see it, but others do.

Yeah. So in the book, we walk you through three questions like, how do we actually get clear on, on this, on like, what is our passion? Right. What is this message that we want to get out in the world? And so I started off in the leadership and personal development space. I mentioned that earlier. Like, for me, I thought my, my objective was to be kind of like the next Tony Robbins, you know, the next, you know, whoever. John Maxwell, like helping leaders, helping people with personal growth, all those things. And yeah, I was having an impact on people, but I wasn't very good at it. You know, I realized over time through these three questions that my passion, like the thing that I am uniquely qualified to do is help people start and grow an online business. That's what people were coming to me and asking me for help with. And there was a big mindset shift around this time. So I have a podcast called the Affiliate Guy. It's named that way not because I'm some sort of a genius and thought that, you know, seven years later people would send emails introducing me to potential clients saying, you gotta talk to Matt, he's the affiliate guy. Like, hey, Rich Sheffrin, you got to talk. Like, Matt's the guy to run your affiliate program. Hey, Tony Robbins, you got a Matt's the guy to train your affiliate team. You know, Jeff Walker. Like, like that wasn't my thought when I named it the Affiliate Guy. I actually named it because I had spent years of people, I mean, I'm talking almost a decade people saying, Matt, you got to teach this stuff. You're the best in the world. This you got to teach. And I'm like, I don't want to be the affiliate guy. I don't want to be the affiliate guy. I want to be Tony Robbins. I want to change the world. Because I can't change the world. Teaching affiliate stuff, online marketing, how do you grow an email list? What would he frickin do? Like, that's not how you change the world. And then one night I was walking down the stairs and I had this epiphany because about three, four weeks before, my friend Dana Abraham, she and I were on the phone talking about just business stuff. And she's in the parenting niche. She helps parents who've got chaotic situations. She has a course called Calm the Chaos. And I was like, dana, sounds like you need help with your affiliate program. Like there's not much time, but go, could I help you? And she Said, oh, please, would you? And I said, sure. I've got a little bit of a break here with our clients. I can step in, I can spend a couple of hours a day and just help your affiliate program out, right? That's all I did. I spent two hours a day for three weeks. Like, I didn't even spend a lot. I spent less than one full time week helping her out with her affiliate program. I coached her affiliates. I did some training, I did some strategy calls with her affiliates. I answered a few emails, coached her on some stuff to help, you know, do this, that and the other. No big deal to me. Easy peasy. Like I could have done it in my sleep, quite frankly. Into the launch, she went from $125,000 launch the time before, thinking that it was going to be about the same this time to doing over $300,000. I helped one of her affiliates, who had a goal of five sales, do over 40. I helped another, had a really previous Launch, had done zero sales to help her make 17. I helped their top affiliate go from 30 to over 60 sales. I helped another affiliate who had previously their Most was like 8do over 50, grew from 125 to $300,000. Helped a bunch of affiliates make more money. And of course, as an entrepreneur, I'm going, these are entrepreneurs. These are my people. Who did I help? Entrepreneurs. What did I do? I helped them make more money. That's my thing. I love doing that. And then I'm walking down the stairs one night, Joe, we had this amazing bedtime. I know you've got kids and you know that like sometimes, especially when you have two, bedtime is a 50, 50 proposition. One night the kids are fighting and they're hitting each other and then they're yelling. And it takes 18 minutes for them to brush their teeth. Why do you not have jammies on? What? I told you to put on jammies 20 minutes ago. What have you been doing? Reading? No, we're not reading. We're putting on jammies. You know, boom. This night, not like that. They were so nice to each other. They cuddled on his bed together. They listened when you're reading to them. It was peaceful. They brushed their teeth in exactly two and a half minutes. They had jammies on before I was even done brushing mine. Unbelievable. Bedtime. And I was walking down the stairs and this thought hit me. I went, oh, my gosh, there are other families tonight having this exact same experience because I helped a bunch of people with affiliate marketing.

Bam.

See the mindset shift Was, I didn't just help some entrepreneurs make more money. I helped them reach more people. I helped her sell 350 more courses that help those families do these things. Oh, my gosh. That's the impact that all I did was something really, on the surface of things, really kind of boring and not consequential. Certainly not. I didn't discover a cure for a disease. I didn't help tens of thousands of people lose tens of millions of pounds. I didn't help anybody live longer. Directly. Directly. A bunch of entrepreneurs do affiliate marketing. How is that a thing that can change the world? I went, oh, my gosh. I am the affiliate guy. And I named it that as a reminder every single day, don't ever discredit what you do again. And so there's three questions we walk them through in the book to kind of get that kind of clarity so you don't have to go through what I did of, you know, 10 years of being an idiot. The first question is, what is it that people are always asking you for help with? So it goes back to me. Hey, Matt, how do I start an affiliate program? Hey, Matt, how do I do affiliate marketing? How do I monetize my list? How do I create a list? How do I get, you know, how do I do all the things that you teach in this book? You know, like, online business? Right. So that's number one. What is the people are always asking you for help with. The second question is, what is it that people say is really interesting about you? One of my favorite podcasts, notwithstanding Hustle and Flowchart, it's hardcore history with Dan Carlin.

I'm an awesome one, dude.

I mean, I listened to. If you look at my audiobook, it's. It's like, about 5% parenting, 5%, like, relationship with my wife, about 30% business and personal growth, and then 60% history. You know, I know more presidential facts than 99.9% of the population. That serves no purpose. I'm just fascinated by it. So Dan Carlin has this amazing history podcast. It's number one on all of itunes for days at a time. When the Apple podcast. Sorry, you know, you can tell how long I've been listening to podcasts. And so it's number one on every platform for, like, multiple days out of the year when he releases a new episode. He's not a historian and even says ten times an episode. I'm not a historian, but here's what I think. How does he end up with a number one podcast in the history Niche, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of downloads a day. How does that happen?

For years and years and years.

Yes, here's how it happens, because when he was at Thanksgiving dinner and something would come up, he'd tell a story about some obscure soldier at the Battle of the Bulge, and then he would tie that into this, and they would start talking about the Russian Revolution. And people were like, Dan, that's really interesting about you. That's fascinating. Maybe you should do something with that. So he started a podcast. So that's the first two questions. 95% of people, they're clear at this point. If you're not, the third question is, what did you used to struggle with but now you are successful at? And probably the longest example of anybody is the longest story. I'm looking it up here in the book. It's pretty early. When I, when I talk about this, I talk about my friend Alan Thomas. Alan. So starting on page 15 through midway through 19. So I mean, it's about three and a half pages of the book, I talk about him. It's my favorite story in the book. I talk about Alan. Alan was 55, 56 years old. Woke up one day and realized, I'm still obese after 35 years. Got on the scale, weighed 304 pounds. Nine months later, he weighed 175. Now, these are his words, not mine, but he would say, matt, I always been the husky. I was a husky kid. I was the fat teenager. I was fat when I was in my 20s. I was obese when I was in my 30s. I was more obese when I was in my 40s. And when my 50s, in my 50s, I finally gave up and just started wearing stretchy everything, you know, that was Alan. He'd always been 45, 50 years of being that way. And suddenly he found a way that worked for him to finally lose the weight because he realized that he was in insurance, he was in life insurance. He realized he'd never met an obese 70 year old. He realized, oh, my gosh, if I keep this up, I'm going to be Angie's first husband. Oh, man, somebody else is going to walk my daughter down the aisle. So when he talks with people now today, they go, Alan, you get me? He has a guy, a guy named Sean. Oh, my gosh, this is an unbelievable story. This guy came to, weighed over 450 pounds. He's down to like 280. I mean, it's, it's unreal. He's still got a ways to go, but it is unbelievable. What is happening in this man's life? Not just the weight loss. He's been. He works for a hospitality company that has over 50,000 employees. He was named employee of the year for the entire company recently. This guy's life is transforming. It's unreal what is happening to them. And the reason why he said, alan, you're my guy, is because every other person he'd ever tried to. To lose weight with was somebody that had been fit for their whole life. They'd been fit since they were a teenager. They played high school football, and they stayed fit in college, and they stayed fit after College. And they're 37 years old, and they still are fit, and they still wear bike shorts everywhere they go in a tank top, and they. You can't relate to them. So what is that thing that you struggled with, but now you're successful? And it could be the simplest thing that you struggled for years to do this or that, and now today you're successful at it. Go share that with people. That might just be what your passion and your calling and your purpose is here.

I love that, man. And that's where. Yeah, the before and after is one example that way. And what I keep thinking about, and I know this is a different part of the book, and it's also just part of leadership, is someone wants a guide. Like, that's just like the hero's journey. You want to have a guide, a hero, and you can be that. We can all be that in whatever way we want if we actually display our superpowers, but also guide others to find their own superpowers and for them to be their own hero. I mean, this was a reframe I did for this podcast maybe about a year or two ago, is. Yeah. The type of people I want to bring on this show are going to also be the coheroes on this show. Ideally, I'm going to be the guide, and you're the hero right now, Matt. And you are. You know, this is a ripple effect of every single person listening. They might not be paying for this podcast. It is absolutely. There's affiliate marketing and other things happening, of course, and. But there's a ripple effect, and there's a bigger purpose behind what I'm doing and what everyone can do once they figure out that superpower and then realize that people are looking at us to be the leaders, for them to then figure out their own path so they can essentially adopt that as well for themselves and become that. So the whole leadership factor, I'm fascinated on maybe some Quick thoughts on your side of becoming a leader? Because not everyone feels like a leader. And I'm curious if there's a way. I know there's a process to it. We don't need to dig into that, but just some thoughts about leadership and how important.

Let me flip to the very beginning of that chapter. Actually, there's a quote that I want to make sure. It's three words, but I want to make sure I nail it. Leadership is influence, John Maxwell. That's all it is. It's influence. There's a lot of misconceptions around it. You know, there's a lot of misconceptions. And, you know, people are like, it's hard. It's scary. It's overwhelming. I'm not qualified. Like, these are all the things that people say. But the reality is that while those responses are understandable, you know, like, those feelings are understandable, they're normal. It's. It's. Yeah, it's hard. I don't feel qualified every day. Like, right now, I don't feel qualified to be talking about this.

I never feel about it.

I don't feel qualified to talk about this. I don't feel qualified to be a leader. But here's a problem with that. That's focused on me, not you, the listener. When you say I'm not qualified, it's too hard for me. You're focused on you, not your avatar. So when we reframe that and go, okay, yeah, it's hard, it's difficult. I don't feel qualified, but somebody needs me. This is the thing. Any relationship, whether it be leadership, marriage, parenting, all it requires is you wake up every day and choose to commit to being a leader. Like, that's it. Leadership is a choice. So remember, your followers need you. They need you. Somebody out there right now is like, they need you to be their leader. There are potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of people out there who need you to be their leader. The only question is, are you going to reach out and be their leader? Are you actually willing to do it? And that's it. And I know you sort of touched that on it, kind of the reaching out, like, grabbing their hand type thing. Right? And that's probably my second favorite thing in the book. It's become kind of a humorous little thing in there. I inserted some of my patented sarcasm in there. But I write about. Think about leadership as this. The example that I give is, imagine you're on a hike. And every time I tell this story, there's a particular, particular hike. That I picture in Tennessee, East Tennessee. That's really kind. It's a dangerous hike. It's about a, about two miles up. And then you go along this ledge for about two miles and you go two miles down. And that two miles up on this ledge is really dangerous. Like you're one step away from death, right? One false step. Here's what most people think leadership is. I gotta be two miles ahead of my audience. But I want you to picture for a minute I'm on that, that hike and I've got the super fit friend, the kind I just talked about, right? He wears the bike shorts to a cookout. You know, he's always jogging in place for no reason. You don't have to ask him if he's, if he does CrossFit, because he's already told you six times today, smells like soup mix all the time. You know, like this guy, right, he's super fit. He's the antithesis of Alan Thomas. He's been fit for 25 years and he just like, he's that guy, you know, we've all got that friend and we're on the hike with him. And you know, I'm in really good shape for my age, but I am not in such good shape that I can go on that hike and do more than about 14 minute miles. It's an intense hike, especially when I get up on the ledge and I'm going really slow. I'm probably going 30 minutes a mile. Yeah. I'm taking baby steps. He's two miles up ahead yelling at me and he's like, dude, hurry up. And watch out for, watch out for the. What? What am I watch. That's not leadership. Imagine that same friend. He's still qualified, he's still super fit. He could go two miles ahead of me. Still smells like soup mix. And he stays one step ahead of me and he reaches back and he grabs my hand. He's like, dude, watch out. This step up here, you miss it, you're going to fall. That's leadership. That's all it is. And here's the cool thing. We think I'm not qualified. I'm not. I don't have the letters behind my name. I don't know I have all these degrees or qualifications. The thing is you don't need them if you just stay one step ahead of your audience. They don't even need to know that you can't be two miles ahead of them because you're not ready to be two miles ahead of them. So you stay one step Ahead, you reach back, and you grab their hand and you lead them from there. That's all it is.

I love it. That's a great story. I've never heard of leadership described that way, but, yeah, it's one step ahead. It's being.

I never had.

Not a mile ahead.

What I said, I got stuff about being two miles. I thought that's where I had to be. So that's why I shut it away, because I was like, yeah, you know, sure, I've worked with some amazing people, but I. I'm not. I don't know everything there is to know about starting an online business. I don't know every. How do you run. How do you do this? How do you run ads for this? I don't know any of that stuff. So I was like, I can't do this. I can't be that guy, right? And I was like, I don't have to be.

In a way, I feel like maybe it's our ego saying, hey, we got to look important. We got to sound important to the people that are following us. And that's bullshit. And at the end of the day, what we're doing is creating a larger gap for them to try to figure out how to close, which is the most difficult thing to do for folks. And how about we just be right next to them, one step ahead? And I think it's great, man. Now I want to touch on quickly, and then we'll. And then we'll wrap this puppy up. Is potential downsides of following your passions, you know, And I'm thinking the first one that comes to mind is if you're following a passion that has no market, doesn't have the ability to really monetize, and that could be a myth, too. I want you to hear your thoughts there, or even maybe a point where you feel like you should pivot, or maybe everyone else is telling you to pivot. All the indicators are telling you, hey, this ain't going the right path, but you're maybe too pretty proud because your passion. You're like, this is who I am or what my superpower is. I want to hear some thoughts on that.

I mean, the first one, you. You got to define what I mean by. Or we got to define what I mean by passion. Like, a guy was like, well, I'm passionate about playing video games. I was like, really? You know, yeah, you can make money playing video games today. But I said, okay, so if you're really passionate about it, are you willing to put in the work? Because the people that I know that play video games, spend an unbelievable amount of time. It is a full time job. I was like, tell me how much you play video games when you have a day off. He's like, oh, like two, three hours. I'm like, then you're not passionate about that. You know, if you were passionate about it, you'd spend 10, 12, 13 hours. He's like, oh, I've never done that. That's not a passion. All right. So I was like, it's the. Passion is the thing when. It's. When you wake up in the morning, you go, oh, my gosh. If I don't get this message out to the world, if I don't help somebody do this, I've struggled with this or I know how to do this and I can help people with this. If I don't get this out, it's going to kill me. Yeah. Like, it's going to eat at me. So you're sitting there at your job and you're typing away at whatever you're doing in a job that you may or may not even like. You might like it. Okay. But you're going, no, I've got to help dads with this. I've got to help business owners with this. I've got to help people who want to be better. Soccer, you know, youth soccer coaches with this. Like, that's your passion and all of those. I have a market, you know, I've never had a single student or client. We've worked with over 300,000 people. I've never had one that was like. I had one that really almost did stump me one time. Long story short, it was government contracting type stuff. He's like. I was like, that's really your passion? That sounds like a job you just do. He's like, no, I really have a passion for this. I was like, okay, all right, man, let's talk through that. And we took us like 20 minutes to figure out exactly how to turn that into, you know, some stuff. But other than that, I've never had anybody who couldn't monetize that passion. And the second part is like, if you're, if you're really, you know, you're looking at pivoting. It's the same kind of process. When somebody comes to me and says, matt, I went through those three questions and I really do have two, and I don't know what it is. Same kind of thing. So there's an exercise that I had in the original manuscript of the book. I wrote the book over a year ago and as you know, anytime you work with a big publisher, eventually you got to cut some stuff out. And we even had to kill. This is probably the last sacred cow that I killed in the book. And I was like, oh, I don't want to take this out. But I did because I had to. It was like, you know, it only applies to about 1 or 2% of people. They're like, Matt, I've got two things that I am super passionate about. And I really. Matt, I've tried, I've tried, I've tried. I don't know what it is. Same thing. If you're pivoting from A to B and you're like, okay, should I pivot? So here's what I do. I walk them through an exercise. I said, just sit down for 20 minutes, stand for whatever. I want you to grab a piece of paper and I want you to write as quickly as possible topics that you could create content around. It doesn't have to be seven ways, two or 10. It's just like, boom, quick hitters, you know, Affiliate cookies. How long should cookies be? How do you start a film? How do you find affiliates? How do you create bonus packages? How do you plan for your promotions? How do you do, like, those type of things? Like how to. Things like that. Write down as many topics as you can come up with, then take a 20 minute break. So you do that in 20 minutes. Take a 20 minute break, go for a walk, whatever, clear your head, come back. I want you to take topic B and I want you to write as fast as you can for 20 minutes. Topics that you can, you know, you could do content on podcast episodes, whatever. Every time I've ever done it, or a student, they got five minutes into the second one and they went, oh, my gosh. I. Either they. They had more in five minutes than they had in the first one.

Yep, I can't write fast enough.

Or they were five minutes into it. Like, dude, I'm 1 20th of the way to the first. This is a struggle, okay? And that makes it so obvious because it's the thing where. When you can come up with content at the drop of a hat, when you're like, I am. And you have an. I'm looking at an asana project right here called Possible Content. We have an asana project called that. There are over a hundred items listed in there. We release two pieces a week. I've got a year's worth of content in the can. That's without ever coming back to anything or answering any questions or any of that if you can do that, that's your thing.

That's it. All right. That just answered it right there. And that should be the last chapter. Maybe a giveaway after this thing's released or something like that. Little bonus.

It's a bonus, actually. It's a bonus.

Yeah. So I'll just. I'll say, like, if you go to passionsindoprofitsbook.com hustle, if you go there, you can order the book anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target. Like, if they sell books, they sell my book even. We even got an order the other day. Some, like, tiny bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, ordered a bike, four copies for the actual store. And I was like, that's cool. I don't know why I noticed that, but it was kind of cool.

You know, it's a different name. Yeah.

So if you can. Or if you can get the book, or if they sell books, you can get the book there. But if you go to passions, into profitsbook.com forward slash, hustle, when you get the book through any major retailer, come back and submit your receipt. We've got almost $1,000 in special bonuses, and one of the bonuses actually is what I just shared, but in a little bit more detail for coming up. Like, okay, if you've got two passions or two niches within your audience, like, how do we narrow down which niche? I'm going to start with. We've got all that, like, some different stuff if you're pivoting and all those things. And that extra hidden chapter. We've also got another hidden chapter that my publisher made me take out, and it's all about Cult and how you can learn lessons from Cult for your marketing. The pos. Positive stuff. Just to be clear, you know, they were a little freaked out about it being in the books.

They were a little freaked out.

Just. They were like, oh, come on.

You know, that's the juicy stuff.

It's like my favorite chapter. I've spent, like, I. I had to go back to my sophomore year of college, and I took a Psych. It was like, Psych 202. And we learned about mass movements and cults. And that's why if you read the. At the end of the acknowledgments, I say something along lines. If I can find it real quick, at the end of the acknowledgments in the book, it makes no sense because I don't reference them in the book, but I did in the original manuscript. It said, and my Psych 201. Sorry, my Psych 201 professor from the University of Tennessee. Sorry. While I loved your class and still use the lessons today, I cannot remember your name.

So he gets an acknowledgment. If he's still alive, he gets acknowledged in the book. Maybe he'll read that and go, I remember that guy. He was the one that always argued with me.

He must have been smart.

A lot. Damn right, man. You ask good questions, I'm sure. Well, Matt, is there anything I left uncovered here? I know there's a whole book and I'm just going to say this book reads. I mean, you can read it straight through or you can literally just go to it and probably pick around. I mean, I did. Just skimming through. There's things that stand out. There's affirmations or I guess the more declarations. There's even these, like, things that you could write out for yourself to yourself and sign it to help, you know, re engineer your mind even more. So if words aren't doing it enough for you, write it in your own hand, you know, and. But yeah, Matt, any. Anything else there before we wrap it up?

You know, I would say this. There's. There's a. There's a saying. I write about this in the book, that when the student is willing, the teacher will appear. And I said this earlier that, you know, right now, everyone listening, like, there are thousands of people out there waiting for you to appear. They are willing, they are waiting, they are ready for you to lead them. The only question is, are you willing to. To be their leader? And so we go through and we talked a lot about the mindset side. There's a lot more mindset in the book. And there's also a lot of tactical stuff. Chapter four, step four, all about converting visitors into subscribers. My favorite chapter in the book. It has my second favorite story in the book where I talk about my dad who never got on a computer. Never got. Never owned a cell phone. He passed away in 2005. Never had anything like that. We take for granted today. And had the best lead magnet of anyone I've ever known. And I share his story. And everybody I've talked to has said, oh, my gosh, like Matt, that. That story about this, your golf instructor dad having a lead magnet, even though he never got on the computer in his life. That taught me what a lead magnet really is and how to actually attract an audience that's going to want the thing that I'm offering. And, you know, we had a guy who's like, I took all my Lead magnets threw him out the window. This guy has a list of about 50,000 people. You know, it's like, I redid. I put up this new lead magnet. That's exactly how you taught. I produced. He said, you teach. You know, you teach people. This cannot take more than three hours to put together. You have to be able to put this together in less than three hours. And quite frankly, that's on the high end because I don't think I've ever put one together in more than 30 minutes. He's like, I put one together. It took my team less than three hours. I'm still proud of it. And he's like, our opt in rate doubled. We get. We're getting twice as many leads now. And he's like, I can't believe this. Like, this is your silly story about your dad. And it had that kind of impact. And so there's so much tactical stuff in the book as well.

There is. There really is. So go to passion into profits, book.com hustle. Go get all the fun bonuses and everything else, because in the book itself, you have all these resources and templates, let alone all these resources. I want to get my hands on them. Matt, I appreciate you, my brother. I'm happy we did this and let's do it again soon. Go check out the affiliate guy podcast too, because you're always cranking out episodes everywhere. So appreciate you so much and talk to you soon, man.

Thanks for having me again, Joe. Appreciate it, buddy. All right.

I hope you enjoy that interview, that chat with my buddy Matt McWilliams. And I'm just gonna remind you again, you gotta get this book because this thing, it's for any level of entrepreneur. If you want a good reminder and if you want to just dig into some of these sections he was talking about and get some of these, not these affirmations, but declarations for yourself. If you feel like you got a little bit of those beliefs that you want to tune up in your mind, go get turn your passions into profits. It's an awesome read and just manual that you can have next to you. So go to passions into Profitsbook.com hustle. That's passions into Profitsbook.com Hustle. You're going to get all the bonuses and all the cool stuff he's giving you when you go to that link. All right, thanks again and we'll see you next time. All right. All right, that's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living a world work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share, or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.