Jackson Millan - How To Take A 12-Month Vacation While Running A Business

When you're deeply ingrained in your business and all roads are leading back to you, and particularly if you're the main money maker in your business, it can be really frightening to take extended time out of it. But I've proven it time and time again with myself and our clients that when you take time away, when you come back, you will make more money. It just happens you need to take that time out of the business to test the systems and see what happens.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fe.

Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

You already hit record.

I did. I do that sometimes.

Sneak attack. God, so brutal of you. Jackson Milan. Yes. He's on the podcast. He was actually road tripping during this podcast.

He was? Yeah.

Still is. Only four days in.

Yeah. And you don't actually see it if you're listening to the audio, obviously, but he's in this like bright orange, yellow, colorful, like suv and he's at the jungle, in the jungle, just shooting in front of his truck on this video. So if you get the chance, jump over to HustleandFlowchart TV. That's our YouTube channel. And you can actually see like Jackson sitting out in the wild with his truck.

See his dog pop his head out or her head out out of that window multiple times too. It was kind of, it was funny, but I was like, hey, there's a dog. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen that on a podcast either. But yeah, he's. He's on a road trip and he's. But he breaks down what he's doing there. And in this episode, I mean, he is a wealth extraordinaire. So, like, when it comes to business owners, most of us are not thinking of the wealth side or how to, you know, have money actually work for us that comes from the business, but actually like free ourselves up from a lot of time and, you know, like create basically this lifestyle business that actually creates a ton of wealth for you. Yeah.

So one thing that we didn't say about this road trip is that it's a 12 month road trip. So a big portion of this podcast is us going, how the hell are you leaving your business for 12 months? Right. And then that is what kind of sparks off this conversation. That's what, that, that's what the rabbit holes we dive down is how he systematized and set up his business and set up his team and set up all, all of the stuff in his business so that he can literally be out on the road for the next 12 months.

Yeah. So, I mean, he is nicknamed the Wealth Mentor for a reason, because he literally. So in this episode, you will hear, I don't know how many frameworks there's like 6, 8, 10, 50. I don't know, I didn't count. But there are a select few. You'll hear it in the outro, actually, of this podcast that we're going to go look at what we're doing.

Yes. Make sure you stick around for the outro. Cause I think the outro on this episode is a really, really good one because we share all the insights that kind of flooded to us while talking to Jackson. And so it's like a whole therapy session at the end of an interview.

It was definitely. I think this is a double header for you. And we did not see it coming. But Jack definitely, he sparked something in our mind that hit us, like, square in the eyes at the right time. Right now, I feel like it's just like one of those. Oh, yeah, that's the piece. That's the next step.

Stick with this whole episode. I promise it'll be worth it for sure.

And make sure to shoot. I don't have it in front of me, but Jackson's. I know he has a podcast. I should be doing better than this. Matt, do you have the URL?

But I don't know actually how to pronounce it. It's Aurus Financial. So a u r e u s financial.com au so we'll link it up in the show notes. So make sure you just check out the show notes for this episode and all the various links and resources he mentioned on this episode will be there. So make sure you just check that out. That's the easier way to go.

Yeah. But definitely join his list. Get the frameworks because there's all sorts of stuff. And listen to his podcast, too. Jackson, let's go chat with the man who's on the road, on the trail. I don't know. He's for buying, like, throughout Australia.

Yeah. And go to flowchartgroup.com, grab the notes. If you join that Facebook group, we'll ask you for your email address. If you give us that email address, we'll email you the action guide for this episode and you get the benefit of being a part of an amazing community over in our Facebook group. So go to flowchartgroup.com and do that. And now let's go kick it over to Jackson.

Jackson, we're Live and you are in the wilderness and it's freaking awesome, man. How you doing?

I'm doing really well, man. I'm just living in the abyss, just trying to enjoy life as a traveling entrepreneurial gypsy.

So where in the world are you right now?

So I'm at a place called Stanwell Tops, which is about an hour south of Sydney in a place near Wollongong. And basically I'm on my way, heading down to see my mum before we spend a year traveling around Australia in our four wheel drive and running our business from the road. So it's very exciting. We're day four now, so we're still kind of adjusting.

I was gonna say you're early on the road and you have the beard like you've been, you've been on there for years and I love it. Exactly. Yeah, man, it's exciting. So, I mean, we got connected through Charles Bird and you know, that guy is just a, we've had him on the podcast. A lot of people are just lighting up about his JV connections and processes and then got connected with you and I mean, you're so dialed in with what you do as well. I love your approach and I mean, so you, you just, you specialize in wealth creation for business owners and I thought, you know, like we've had some folks on before and this is always kind of light bulb moment for business owners that are listening because I feel like this is the piece a lot of folks aren't thinking of, or at least maybe they can. Maybe folks don't think they can attain that right now in their level of business or their time in business. So brought you in and hopefully we can kind of dispel those myths and maybe someone wants to go on a crazy road trip for a year and still be cool, you know, financially and grow.

I'm really looking forward to diving into it, guys. Like, I think there's a lot of us are taught to kind of shrink ourselves wealthy and like the beliefs that we have around money and finance, particularly as entrepreneurs, can sometimes be skewed and aren't really conducive to creating what I refer to as a lifestyle business, a business that can actually help you as a vehicle, supercharge your path to financial freedom. So I'm all about kind of really flipping the script for business owners, helping them understand the language of money and then using their business properly to manufacture true financial freedom for themselves and their families.

Very cool. Yeah, I was telling you right before we hit record that I just got back from an 11 day road trip with my family and during that 11 days I probably got a total of about 30 minutes of work in. You know, I kind of figured out what was the bare minimum I could do on the road. Got everything front loaded, did it all ahead of time and then saved the, you know, the few little things for on the road. But other than those like 30 minutes that I spent, I didn't manage to get very much accomplished in the business. So I'm really curious to dive in and hear exactly how you're setting yourself up so that you're not stressed out about that kind of stuff.

Yeah, you got to have the right systems and we've been working on for a year to really dial this in and kind of doing test trips and kind of working out exactly what life on the road needs to look like for us to be productive. And because we've still got a business to run, like this isn't really a holiday for us. So this is just the lifestyle that we're choosing to live. So yeah, keen to kind of pull the lid back on that and share with you guys exactly how we've, how we've done it.

Oh man. Well, let's, let's make that a big piece and I'm curious about the background. So before you, you got into the position, into the lifestyle type business that you are running now, what was Jackson like beforehand? Like was there a shift, like a pivot moment for you?

Yeah, let's go back to the beginning because I guess many people who kind of look at me, they go, Jackson, you don't look like a typical finance guy. Like there's no kind of like, like three piece suits and like the polished look like you look like a mixture of like a hipster and a hobo. And that's kind of what I'm going for. I don't want to be a typical finance guy because I'm not. And I got into this space because of my parents. My parents were business owners, my mum was a hairdresser. She tried very hard to scale a successful salon and really struggled most of the way. My old man was a bit of a dreame entrepreneur at heart, but didn't really stick to any of his business pursuits long enough to really see success. And they always taught me good values as a kid and they always said, Jackson, like if you want to be successful in life, you need to work hard for it. And this is coming from people that work 16 hour days for as long as I could possibly remember. I remember realizing pretty early on that there was a disconnect between what they were telling me and the reality of their situation. Because if what they told me was true, they would have been squillionaires. But the reality was they weren't. They'd had to work very hard for every dollar they ear. And ultimately I realized that there was something missing. They were working for money as opposed to money working for them. And I realized that something needed to change. Now this particularly kind of come to a head where my old man, he's an incredibly hard worker, my original mentor taught me so many great things and he basically worked himself to death. He worked for 40 years with this hope that he could retire at 65, be able to live this amazing lifestyle and kind of reap the rewards of all of his hard work. And unfortunately, at 66, he was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer and he died shortly thereafter. And it was like a slap in the face for me because I could see myself going down that same trajectory of just working so hard, like 60, 70, 80 hour weeks and putting in the hours, like chasing that seven figure business at the time, trying to chase all the accolades, trying to fund my lifestyle of driving the sports cars and going on the expensive holidays and living this kind of like high ticket lifestyle. And I realized that there's something, there was a big disconnect. This whole idea of deferring gratification for the future indefinitely for like this greater tomorrow, like saving for the rainy day, it just never resonated with me. And I realized something had to change. So I developed the mantra, live for today and plan for tomorrow. The whole idea of actually being able to have your cake and eat it too as a business owner. Because here's the thing, we all have the ability to create a business that allows us the financial means to support whatever it is that we want. And one of the lessons my old man taught me as a kid, and I didn't really understand it when I was younger, but I definitely understand it now, is that anything that you can perceive, you can conceive and it's just a matter of thinking big enough. And most business owners are one dimensional planners. They go, okay, I want to hit that seven figures. I want to achieve this milestone, I want to achieve that milestone. But then all of a sudden they focusing on this one thing with their blinders on and then something else pops and they go, oh, I need to choose. I need to choose whether I'm going to grow my business and scale up to seven figures or beyond. I need to choose whether I'm going to hire that next staff member or go on a three month holiday and enjoy time downtime with my family without having to worry about my business. And this reason is that that shrink yourself wealthy mentality, it just doesn't work. So fast forward. We've scaled a multi seven figure business and we've got a team of 27 now. We've got about 600 clients around the world. And once again I'd fallen into this trap of creating a job for myself. My previous business that I sold about three and a half years ago, I'd got to a point that it was seven figures. I could work four days a week, 44 weeks a year. I was making fantastic profits. It was a great business, but it just didn't align with my values anymore. It was not the vehicle that was going to get me where I wanted to go. So I sold it. We started Aureus and then kind of fell into the time for money trap. And then I realized, hey, I'm not even following my own mantra anymore. And 12 months ago we put the wheels in motion to get this business back to being a lifestyle business. And when you've got a big business, it's sometimes very difficult to turn the wheels fast enough to undo a lot of those things that you've done. But luckily with this really clear North Star of us leaving, the plan was to leave on 30th of March on my birthday and we left a week late. It just all fell into place. We all work well to target. When you set that target, it's amazing what you can achieve.

Yeah, I think the thing that stood out for me there is the whole one dimensional target or goal, you know, focus. What was like the most difficult part or like was there kind of a flipping moment for you in business, like where you started to kind of expand and maybe some struggles you went through.

Definitely. I find the hardest business to scale yourself out of is a business where you are the expert technician. Like if you understand the craft, you are the master of the craft. You're the hero to the story. It's like the Jackson show, it's the Joe show, it's the Matt show. It's so hard for you to get yourself out of that. And we call it the technician trap. Because you're like most of us as entrepreneurs, particularly when you're running your own business and you're the technician, you're often a 10 out of 10. Like you're the best that there is and there's this big J curve that the longer you remain in that technician role, the bigger The J curve is when you exit out of that to try and replace yourself, clients get the shits, systems break. It's so reliant on your IP and your skill set that you really have to simplify the way that you do things in order to deliver even close to the same value. And it's really, really difficult. And I myself struggle with that more than anything. So it was about understanding, well, okay, what do we need to do to turn this from being a service that's built around Jackson as being an advisor and a wealth coach for 14 years now, which is, it's a unicorn, it's almost impossible to replace, to productizing the business and then creating the right systems, the right frameworks that are conducive to our team delivering the same, if not better value than if I was to do it myself. That was the hardest thing.

I could see that it's like turning this ship, you know, this, this big ship you've created. And it's like you almost have to balance the old with the new in this transition period. I mean, was it, was it kind of like a smooth transition like that? Or was it just kind of like burn the old ways, go, go full steam?

We tried to make it smooth because we didn't want to burn any clients in the process. Like, we've got less than a 2% attrition rate in our client base. Our clients love us, our clients have been working with us for many years. And the reason why we've been so successful is because we are a client success oriented business. We guarantee all of the work that we do and essentially like with money back guarantees. And if we don't get our clients a 4x ROI from working with us, we give them all their money back. And to date, we've never had to honor that arrangement because we invest so heavily in our client's success that we always get them results. And the clients that do leave are typically ones that have gone the journey and they've actually made us redundant because that's our plan. We want them to be able to make us redundant. So we wanted to make sure that we could replicate that. And the most important thing was about creating a system that allowed us to focus on the outcomes for each specific client and then turn it from being the Jackson show to having a full team of advisors that could help get those clients those outcomes. And hey, it wasn't without its challenges. Like there were the things that didn't go to plan and there were frustrations even still today. But I think the most important thing and one of my good friends taught me this, is that scaling a business is about getting prepared to have thousands of ego deaths.

Yeah.

That's the truth.

There are so many opportunities, so many opportunities where you want to roll up your sleeves and you want to dive back in and you want to save the day. You want to be the superhero again. You can't. You just need to allow things to break because systems are made to be broken. When you make a system and you break it, you can see the point of weakness and then you can improve it and take it to the next level. And that has to happen.

Yeah. Do you have any advice for people getting over that sort of mental barrier that exists? Because I know what you're saying resonates with both of us heavily. Right. Like, there's a lot of things in our business right now where we've said over the last, what, 13 years now since we've been in business, we've said, all right, we're going to back ourselves out of this thing. We're going to get somebody else to start doing it. We get somebody else to start doing it. And two months in, we're like, you know what? It was working a lot better when I was doing it. Let me just go back to doing this again.

And I feel like habits, too, on top of that.

And I feel like that cycle has sort of repeated itself so many times over the years of us finally going, yes, I got myself out of that. And then a few months go by and then we slowly start creeping ourselves back into it. So what sort of advice do you give people to get over those sort of mental barriers?

The most important thing is that we need to reposition the business as a vehicle as opposed to the destination itself. Because the reality is, for most entrepreneurs, the business is actually the destination. It is the be all and end all of their existence. Their measurement of success, fulfillment, achievement is all measured by the results that they get in their business, which is great. Like, of course, we should all be passionate about our business. We love our business. It's something that we've created. We've put all the blood, sweat and tears into it. However, it is not the destination. It is our vehicle and we need to treat it as such. So, like, look at publicly listed companies. The majority owners of those companies are not actively involved in those businesses. So we've got to put our hat on and ask ourselves the question of, is this, if I was the CEO of a publicly listed company, would I do this? Or in another seat, if I was a shareholder of a public listed company, would I do this? And the answer to most of those things is no. Shareholders don't do anything. So this is the shift of frame. Now the problem is that as human beings, we make the best decision that we have available on life's menu and business menu as well. We typically always make the decision to step back into a role because we believe it's for the better good of the business. Now the only way that we can do that is we need to reframe the value of that decision. We need to put better options on the menu. So the analogy I like to use is, let's say, for example, you went into a restaurant and you open up the menu and you hate brussels sprouts. Like you're never going to order two serves of brussels sprouts. Right? Like, give me two of those suckers. Yeah, please. I'm looking forward to being miserable tonight while I'm eating dinner with my partner.

Right.

You never do that. You order something and it's only in hindsight that you realize that it's a bad decision. So this is not about removing bad decisions from the menu. This is about increasing the quality of the decision. So how do we create different frames of reference, different ways of looking at things and validating, validating our decisions that ensures that it is actually for the greater good of the business. Because ultimately you've only got so much time and your time is more valuable, likely spent in other parts of your business than stepping back into technician roles or kind of doing the doing as such.

Yeah, and I mean, you mentioned time. I mean, you mentioned your dad as well and that whole process. Because I've known too many people who have died far too young. And it's the time element. I don't think a lot of us are grounding ourselves and realizing, okay, yeah, we have the ability to take on everything. And being in the roles that we are as CEOs or leaders of our companies, we are the ones that are basically introduced to all these opportunities and new problems that we know we can solve. That's a quick trap to kind of get your hands involved and start doing stuff. Unless you have these filters like you just said.

Exactly. And this is the reason why I created the F4 framework, which is basically our north stars that we set for ourselves, but we also set for all of our clients. Because if we can have a better measure of success of what is the actual goal that we're chasing, and then we can ask ourselves the question, like, does this decision or what we're looking to do make the boat go faster, then it makes it a whole lot easier to make those quality decisions. So we aim for our clients to help them create a business that produces $400,000 a year in profit, allows them to work four days a week and 44 weeks a year, and then fast tracks their way to $4 million in net worth. So ultimately, any decision that we make is, does it improve my profit? Does it help me win back my time? And it takes extended periods of time out of my business, and does it allow me to turn my business profit into personal wealth? And if the answer is no, then why are you doing it?

Let's go deeper on that, if you don't mind. Can we break that down and maybe some, please? Yeah. I mean, this is fascinating. So, I don't know. I don't know the best place to start for that, But, I mean, the typical business owner, I don't think, is thinking in all these layers, maybe there's a. A monetary yearly goal.

Let's start with the 400,000 a year in profit. Where does the 400,000 number come from? Is it an arbitrary number, or is it a very specific number for a reason?

It's quite specific when people ask me, jack, did you have a love affair with the number four? And again, actually, my lucky number's seven. So I could have stick it on the sevens, but the science wouldn't work. So the whole idea of $400,000 a year in profit is that with $400,000 a year in profit, we should have the ability to live a phenomenal lifestyle and have enough surplus left over that would allow us to get out by ourselves on track for that $4 million in that wealth. Now, we've worked with thousands of clients over the years, and we've been able to work out that there is a point of diminishing returns in terms of personal income. Like, you get to a point where you go from drinking, like, a $20 bottle of wine to drinking a $100 bottle of wine. You go from drinking driving a Lexus to driving a Porsche, right? You go from flying in coach to flying at the pointy end of the plane. Like, does your quality of life actually get any better? Probably not. So it's a pretty good benchmark in terms of a really great personal income that will afford you and your family the opportunity to live an amazing life and have a solid surplus. Now, the timepiece for most people when it comes to time, Most entrepreneurs, if they're in the right business and they love their business and they're no longer doing the shit jobs, the jobs that really frustrate them, that they're not best use of their time, that are outside of their zone of genius. Most people don't want to retire. Most people want to retire because they get burnt out, because they're too reliant on in the business. All roads lead back to them. They're burning the candle at both ends. But if they're doing the things that light them up, that fill their cup, Most people don't want to retire. So what they would like to do is buy their time back. So have a three day weekend every single week, go play some golf, spend more time with the family, take up your hobbies again, get fit, get healthy, whatever it is that you want to do. And then have the ability to take at least two weeks every quarter to allow you to take some downtime, reflect, revise and have a bit of a lens when you come back into your business. Because I don't know about you guys. Matt, for yourself with that trip that you took, like how much more clarity did you have coming back from that time away about what you wanted to do in your business?

Yeah, a ton. I mean, you could even see Joe's laughing over here because I came back and I'm like, dude, I have so many insights about our business after this trip.

Exactly. There is a direct correlation between time out of the business and the success when you work on your business coming back into it. Because we need that, that we need proximity to get things done in our business, but we need distance in order to get the frame of reference and think big picture that will allow us to push our business forward. So it needs to be at a bare minimum, two weeks every quarter. And $4 million in net wealth is that if we assume that we get a 5% income and forgive the, the birds in the forest, you guys. So if, if we get 400,000, $4 million in wealth and let's assume that we get a 5% income on that wealth, we should be able to produce $200,000 a year in passive income. So if you've got your 400,000 of active income, 200,000 of passive income, imagine the things that you could do. Yep.

And then you can reinvest that into higher, higher earning vehicles if you wish. You know, depending on the scenario.

But exactly.

Oh man, this is, it's, there's three.

Stages to this, guys. Yeah, like we go through trading time for money, so then we could trade money for time. So then we can then money for money. And that's the aim of the game, that's how people get wealthy and create generational wealth.

Yep. Oh man, there's, there's so many different things here, but I think the clarity thing. So going back to the whole time and time away from your business, because I've been thinking a lot about this and I know every time I go on a trip this last year has been very wonky for many of us. So I think that's probably stress levels and attention on a business might be heightened more than maybe a new business so people are even more close to things. But yeah, taking that step back or even if it's a long three day weekend and not being around a computer or phone and just thinking going into nature is a great way, you know, and just start like it's almost like a whole macro picture, you know, it's like you start like you came back with massive insights, you know, like, nope, don't like to do that anymore. I'm not even pumped up on this.

Well, I mean, speaking specifically into my road trip, what happened was I spent 11 days not focusing on the business and realized how much I enjoy not having to focus on the business. And then I came back and went, we need to systematize the shit out of all this stuff that we're doing because it's so much better to not have to do it.

I agree 100%. And look, that can only happen when you have that distance from your business. And it's really scary to start off with when you're deeply ingrained in your business and all roads are leading back to you. And particularly if you're the main money maker in your business, it can be really frightening to take extended time out of it. But I've proven it time and time again with myself and our clients that when you take time away, when you come back, you will make more money. It just happens and you need to take that time out of the business to test the systems and see what happens. So I started. This all started for me when I read the four Hour Workweek. I was on a plane, I was flying to Brisbane, Brazil and I was reading the Four Hour Workweek and I just had this like this penny drop and I go, wow. I don't think I can get my business to four hours a week because it's a service business. I think it's a little bit far fetched for many businesses. But I think I can definitely get myself to four days and I can drastically reduce my hours and I can really test the pace. So what I started doing Is I started taking a couple of days out of my business. So I take two days off and I come back and I see what broke, what didn't work. I'd fix it and then I'd go for three days and then I'd go and do it again. I'd keep increasing days because ultimately problems are going to arise, obviously at different times when you leave, but also for different durations of time. And I think it really tests the value and the credibility of your systems, the longer the amount of time you can take out of your business.

That's interesting. I like that. It's almost like split testing or seeing the limits. And now you're starting a road trip for 12 months. Is this going to be the longest time that you've ever been? Well, not totally away, but kind of definitely.

And I guess the whole idea of it was about really using it as an opportunity to really hand over a lot of these responsibilities and only focus on the stuff that's really going to push the needle forwards for me as a CEO of the organization and really empower the team to kind of pick up on everything else and start being the heroes themselves.

Yeah. I'm curious, what sort of things did you have to do in advance of leaving on this trip to make sure that you felt real confident that things were going to keep cranking along while you're gone?

When we built the business, my business partner Sam and I, and we did our original business plan, we realized that we always wanted to be top heavy on client success to make sure that we could always deliver amazing results. So for that reason we built our back end delivery teams much faster than what we built our front end marketing and sales team. So the vast majority of the marketing and the sales activity was done by Sam and I. And for that reason I realized that, hey, look, if I'm going to be out in the bush and like not out of Internet access and like not, not in contact with civilization and I'm the money maker, that's not going to work. So the first thing we did is we built a quadrant system. So basically any decision that we make in the business, we consider the F4 framework. And then the next thing we consider is the needs of the business. So we break it into four quadrants. There's marketing, the sales, there's delivery, and there's growth. And what we do is we consider that cascading from basically left to right. So we go marketing, sales, delivery, growth, and we assess, okay, is our marketing capacity at the moment. Do we have enough leads to Achieve our goals, yes or no. And if the answer is no, then we need to focus on that first. Next we look at sales. Do we have a good system to have our pipeline of prospects and leads turn into paying clients? Then delivery? Do we have the ability to deliver exceptional outcomes to our clients, to turn them from clients into raving fans, to get them to refer like crazy? And do we have good utilization of our delivery day? And then growth? Do we have enough margin and cash flow to allow us to either take chips off the table or to reinvest back in, to allow us to compound these four quadrants. Now the areas that lacked the most for us were marketing and sales. So we built a sales team, we hired some salespeople, we trained them in our way. I simplified the sales process because it was very much built on my ip. And we got somebody who'd never had a day of finance experience in his life and trained him to do our sales.

Wow.

So we proved the system worked. And then marketing still to an extent, I do a lot of the marketing. But the marketing effort changed. It became leveraged as opposed to one to one marketing. It's now one to many marketing platforms like this, speaking engagements, writing books, doing pr. All of these things are what now fuels our marketing machine because we deliver a ton of value. And then people just say, hey, I really like what this guy has to say. I want to put my hand up and have a conversation.

Super smart. So would this be a similar format? You would, you would, you know, kind of guide your clients through to sprint to the 400k profit 100%.

And what we found in our experience, guys, is that the vast majority of businesses don't scale because their marketing and sales machine isn't supportive of scaling. Most business owners have this knee jerk reaction to hire more technicians and then ultimately they end up always remaining as the moneymaker and they end up spreading themselves too thin. Between being a technician, being a manager and being a leader of the business, you can always find technicians to do the job. That's typically the easiest part as long as you've got a systemized and productized service offering. Now if your service offering is too complicated, simplify it and allow just the average person, the median person, when it comes to, it comes to scaling your business to be able to do it. Because if you're trying to build a service offering around you being the unicorn, it's never going to work. You're never going to find that person.

Yeah.

Next thing you need to do is you need to get create a really simple sales system. And that comes down to making sure that you're actually selling profitably. One of the first things we do for all of our clients, when we analyze their financial trajectory, we help them build their personal financial roadmap. We reverse engineer that into an income target. We tell them how much profit and revenue that they need to produce. And then normally they go, oh, shit, that's a lot of sales. That's a lot of clients I've got to work with. And then we ask them, okay, when was the last time you increased your price? Never. Or a year ago or five years ago. And we actually show them instead of just chasing more leads. More leads, more leads. What happens if we increase your price by 10% or 15% or 20% and then the penny drops? Because ultimately it costs you nothing to increase your price. If you can articulate your value, then what's stopping it?

That's true.

And then the last thing we do is we help them work out what are their numbers they need to hit so we can connect the leads that they need in their business to the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. Personal. So if I can say, hey guys, you need 100 leads a month in order to hit your 400k a year in profit. And that's going to allow you to buy the beautiful house you want, drive the car you want, send your kids to the school that you want, you're going to be a lot more invested to go chase that hundred leads, right?

Definitely. That's really cool. I mean, it simplifies the whole framework and it's something you can keep building on top of, which is nice, I mean, because I would assume that's when, you know, that's when the time focus comes into play. It's like, okay, now let's start shaving off some work time of your work weeks and getting yourself in a much higher end position, at least in your role in the company.

Exactly. And this is about putting a dollar value on that time as well. Because the reason why most people do, like what we call the $20 tasks is because they don't actually have a value on their time. And time is the rarest commodity that we actually have. So the simple way that we do this is we work out, okay, based on where your business is at right now in terms of annual revenue, work out how many hours you're doing a week on average, times it by the average number of weeks per year, and then divide your annual revenue by that weeks per year. So let's do a quick example here. Guys, I'm just going to pull out my trusty calculator. Let's assume that you're doing 60 hours a week and you're doing that 48 weeks a year. So that's 2,880 hours. And let's assume that you're doing a million dollars a year in revenue. That means that your hourly rate is $347 an hour. And of course, if you can reduce the number of hours you're working, it means your hourly rate is higher. Right. So what tasks do you do that you couldn't outsource for less than $347 an hour? Not many, right?

Yeah, it's a quick thing. You're like, oh, nope, can't do that. Nope, nope, nope.

Well, I'm curious because there is a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing there too. So let's speak specifically to maybe smaller businesses that are kind of early on in their growth phase. And I think there's some struggles with feeling comfortable going and hiring. So that that's when they sort of develop all these skills, right? They develop the skills in the early day where they feel like they're the expert and then they never feel comfortable going and paying to outsource it. But also by that point they feel like they're the expert because they've done it so well in their business. There's like this chicken or the egg thing where it makes it difficult to bring in new people. So. So maybe the people that are struggling right now that feel like, okay, I can't afford to hand this off to somebody else, what would you tell them?

You can't afford not to because ultimately the chicken or the egg is ultimately about that. You only have so many hours. And by freeing up your hours and investing it into the right place, you will inevitably make more money. And ultimately what we need to work out is there are really low cost solutions that we have available of using VAs and executive assistants overseas that'll cost you about $10 an hour and can get you out of all of the low value tasks. So what I talk about in my second book is what we call the low value task matrix. So we create another quadrant that we've got high value and low value tasks and we've got love and loathe. And what we want to do is we want to go into a time audit of the last two weeks and dump all of your tasks that you've done into each of those four quadrants. High value love, high value loath, low value love. Low value love work out on average per week. How many hours are you spending in anything outside of that zone of genius? The high value love tasks. Now the first thing we want to do is get rid of the low value love. The things that aren't pushing the needle forwards that just need to be done. But. And you hate doing like checking your emails. Like a couple of years ago I did this analysis for myself when I was writing my second book and I worked out that I was spending about 720 hours a year checking my email.

Now it was mind blowing to me and I did the calculation on it and I go, okay, well my effective hourly rates, about $1,000 an hour. I need to work out 720 hours. You do the maths. It's nearly a million dollars a year in opportunity cost.

Yeah.

So I try, I said, okay, I'm going to commit and teach my executive assistant how to run my inbox. And I want to reduce my time spent in my emails to 30 minutes a day. And I said, okay, I'm going to give her a month to learn it. And she mastered it in three days.

You're like, what was I waiting for?

Exactly. So this is what we do with our clients. There's low value tasks that are wasting your time, that are stopping you from going out and getting more leads, closing more deals and delivering more for your clients. Like just delivering value. So if you to get out of that technician phase, we need cash flow because we need cash flow to hire. And the easiest way to do it is to get an executive assistant or a va, train them in those low value tasks, get yourself back into focusing on winning those clients, increasing your pricing, bringing in the deals, building up the cash flow and then hire. Bring in the right people that are going to allow you to get out of that technician phase and might as.

Well start with those tasks that are lowest value. It's not a lot of risk either, but it's kind of training, I would assume, really training your mind to let go of some of these, these things and then you can keep snowballing that upward.

Well, I'd also imagine if you start finding a bunch of low value loathe tasks you could find, you probably just don't even need them at all. Like you don't even need anybody to be doing them.

Exactly. And that's where we can systemize them out. Because what we typically go through is a framework that we call delete, delegate and dominate we want to go through. Once we outsource the tasks initially, we then task that Individual with making themselves redundant from those tasks as well. Because we're trying to upskill that individual over time as well. Because if they're learning what you do and helping you become really efficient, then we want to make sure that they're being efficient with their time too. Because their productivity is directly tied to your productivity. So if there's things that aren't best use, they should be focusing on improving the system, using automations or different tools to be able to streamline those tasks, win back of their time so that they can add more value to you.

Yeah, see it's a big snowball effect going across the board. I love the frameworks. I mean this is the stuff. I mean this is wealth education kind of in a nutshell. But these are the mechanisms to kind of get to that point. What's the biggest like so if someone says yeah, this is all great and all, but really, eh, I don't know, just do it. I mean are there common sticking points or I guess excuses that you hear that stop people?

Yeah, there are the biggest lapse in people doing these things because it's all common sense stuff. This is not rocket science guys. But ultimately the problem is that most people don't have a game plan when it comes to what they're actually trying to achieve outside of their business. And we believe that focusing on repositioning your business as a vehicle comes down to having the right game plan outside of your business. And what we focus on doing is we basically help our clients go through what we call a 20 year roadmap. And the 20 year roadmap basically goes through all of their lifestyle and financial goals over the course of 20 years. We then reverse engineer all of those goals into an action plan and income target, then into a profit target, then into a revenue target, then into their KPIs and their activity. And by doing this, this now allows us to align the activity with the outcomes that they really want. And this is the catalyst for reframe. Now many people, when I talk about 20 years, 20 years goals, like they go, oh gosh, I don't even know what I want in a year, let alone 20 years. And this is on purpose. This is about creating a shock to the system to get you thinking bigger picture about the consequences of inaction and the benefits of doing what you should be doing with your business and using it as that vehicle to manufacture financial freedom. Because I think the definition of financial freedom is being able to do what you want when you want. And the vast majority of businesses and business owners have Just created a job for themselves. So all we need to do is do the opposite of that. If we can create a business that isn't a job, that we can do the things that we enjoy when we want to do it and have the freedom and flexibility to live life on our own terms, whether that be living in a truck and traveling around like an entrepreneurial gypsy or whatever you define that success to be, then business is fun again.

And that's that. This is a mantra, actually, since Matt, you've been back, remember we've been talking and saying this a lot is like, you know, we want everything to be fun, simple and consistent. You know, so have that momentum.

But, and fun is first with our business. We've, we've made it a focus that if we're not having fun with things in our business, that thing needs to go. We want everything we did focused on to be fun. And I think, I think this is, I mean, this might be a sort of shift in topic, but I feel like this is something we've talked about a lot on this podcast. It's about enjoying the journey. Like when you're, as an entrepreneur, you should be more focused on enjoying what you're doing on a day to day basis and not focused on, okay, I need to get here and then I'll do X, and then once I get here, then I'll do X.

The journey should be where you're enjoying it, not getting to that destination. And I think that's, that's sort of an overarching theme of our podcast that we've been trying to harp on. And I feel like you embody that with what you're doing and with what you're teaching.

Well, you talk in my language because my first book is actually entitled enjoy the journey, creating wealth and living the life that you desire. So this is definitely my mantra. And I fall into the trap myself, guys, that I've always been quite goals oriented and there's always that next goal and like, you're so focused on achieving that thing and when you actually achieve it, you go, oh, that's nice, what's next? And like, you don't even stop to like reflect on the value of your accomplishments and it just, it's not sustainable because that little voice in your head is always going to say, I want more, I want more, I want more. And it's never good enough. It becomes an addiction. And then that's where many people end themselves in a position where they're down, I guess, a dark and stormy road because they've Been so focused on doing the work that they're actually not on the path for what they actually intended to create in the first place. And it's so hard to unwind. You speak to many successful entrepreneurs, whether it be Jack Ma from Alibaba, you speak to Elon Musk and all of these individuals was they see all of the kind of the glitz and the glamour, the kind of the billion dollar lifestyles and the kind of the playboy appeal. Right. But when you really boil it down, it's like Elon Musk, whenever he speaks and people say, don't envy me, like I'm running multiple companies, I've got all of these kids, I work 1618 hour days, seven days a week. There's nothing to envy. And that's not the lifestyle that I want. And that's not the lifestyle that the vast majority of business owners that I work with want either. They want to have a business that fuels their dream lifestyle and allows them to live life on purpose.

Yeah. Why? I mean, like I know Elon's sleeping at his factory a lot of times and he's, he will say that. It's like, do you really want to do that with your business? Maybe, yeah. He's probably not the North Star for all of us to embody for someone like Elon.

Like, his life's mission is also the goal of his company. Right. Like the goals of his companies are to colonize Mars and to, to provide more sustainable energy and to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Right. Like his mission in life is also his businesses. I think for most of us and most of the people listening, our mission in life isn't also the goal of our business. Our mission in life is to enjoy time with family, travel more, you know, experience the finer things in life. And the business needs to be that machine that makes that possible for the mission outside of the machine.

Yeah, I thought about this a lot and ultimately my business is a vehicle for me to live life on purpose. Because my whole mantra has been, how do I empower as many business owners as possible to manufacture that financial freedom and realize that exact outcome that you've just mentioned, Matt. And this is about getting your business sorted so you can work smarter, not harder. Creating wealth so you can live life the way that you want now as opposed to waiting until you're old and gray. And then the third part to this is creating generational wealth so you can provide future generations with the opportunity to do things that fill them with purpose, not have to work because they have to. And this is this is my life's work and what I'm committing myself to and just educating people around, achieving those milestones because I feel that if more people can create generational wealth, can allow their future generations to pursue the things that they're truly passionate about because they don't have to worry about money anymore, I think the world's going to be.

A better place and it might even be a bit of break in the cycle. Like if we go back to, you know, our parents, a lot of them have. Have had to work a lot of hours and then before that, you know, like there is, you know, the Great Depression type era and there are all these, like, there are a lot of war, like there's a lot of this, like, you gotta work really hard kind of thing. And as entrepreneurs, you're right. I mean, we're. It's kind of like the warriors of old time. Like, we're always on the hunt. We're always after the next big game or the big thing, you know, and. And it's hard to just appreciate the moment sometimes for us to slow down and focus on what's truly important or where we were originally after. It's not just, let's go hunt and kill everything. It's like, no, no, no, hold on. Eat what you got or maybe enjoy. And I don't know where this analogy is going, but the whole point is like, yeah, it's hard to turn off that mind when you're so after it as an entrepreneur.

It definitely is, mate. And I think it comes from one of two places. It comes from either social conditioning that we're in the rat race, it's what everyone else is doing. And so it's what we think we should, should be doing. And we just haven't taken the time to stop and actually ask ourselves if that's what we really want, or it's an indicator that there's something deeper missing. You're compensating for not truly being happy or fulfilled in your life. And it's a harsh reality for many. And I know that I fell into that trap for a very long time. It was actually prior to my father's passing. I was that individual. I was constantly trying to keep up appearances to appear to be this hugely successful people person, like wearing all the brand names, driving the sports car. Like, I kind of. Look at me. And it was a compensation for lacking happiness and fulfillment. And it was only when my father passed away that I truly understood that something was missing and I wasn't living life properly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I Actually really, you know, obviously I'm going to qualify this with the coronavirus. And the pandemic was a horrible thing and all that, but there is some good to come out of it. And I think one of the things that is sort of a positive to come out of it is the way businesses are kind of trending and the way the sort of workforce is trending right now. I think it's been a big eye opener for a lot of companies that, hey, we don't need people to come into the office every day. But it's also been a big eye opener for the employees realizing there's actually a better way. And maybe this whole like nine to five, five days a week sort of thing isn't all it's cracked up to be, maybe. And I do really think that the coronavirus pandemic sort of shifted the way a lot of people think about work and lifestyle and how they blend together. And I really do think we're sort of in a time right now where people realize like, you can kind of blend the two together and there can be fluidity between your personal life and your business and you can travel and still work for somebody else and that sort of thing. And I think that's one of the really good things to come out of the pandemic. And I feel like people like us, we might have figured out a little bit earlier than that, but I do feel like there's this kind of cool global trend that's happening in that direction right now.

I agree with that completely. It was famously said by Winston Churchill, if we fail to learn from history, we're bound to repeat it. And if we go back like 150 years, the vast majority of people were self employed. Employment didn't exist. Employment is a construct of the last hundred years of the Industrial Revolution because they needed employees to fuel the machine. But I think now it's coming full circle and people are coming back to really wanting that freedom and flexibility. And I think far more people are going to become self employed as part of the process.

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely agree. Yeah. So I don't know. This is. I want to see more people doing road trips like you around wherever they live or elsewhere. And just to kind of. I want to get your vision on what you're doing because I want to get a little glimpse of like what you do. I've seen your dog pop its head out a couple times.

Yeah.

I'm also curious about like sort of what, you know, along the same lines of what Joe's asking. I'm Curious about, like, what sort of equipment you're using and how are you actually making this work on the road?

Yeah, 100%. Look, hopefully the listeners can appreciate the authentic experience of all of the noise in the background and everything that's going on. But I guess that that's life on the road. So basically we, when we realized we wanted to do this 12 months ago, and we decided that we wanted an overlanding vehicle because we wanted to be able to go places where other people without this type of setup could never go. Now we wanted to be able to go to the very pointy end of Australia, to the Cape, be able to go deep into the outback where there's absolutely no one there. You're days away from civilization. Because we wanted to be able to place ourselves in environments that could allow us to expedite our growth trajectory. Because as we've already spoken about, that growth comes from being out of your business, being in different environments and taking that to the complete extreme is my objective for the next 12 months. Because we're so used to being able to wake up in the morning going and sitting in our office, turning on our computer, sitting there in comfort, going to the fridge, having food there. All these constants that we have that allow us to be in the moment and thinking exactly around. What we're going to be doing in our business and in our life is super. It's something that we all take for granted. However, in this environment, there are no constants. Like, I've got my dog here that's running around, there's this stuff that's happening around and we're moving every single day. And there are absolutely no constants. Anything can happen. And my mission is to work out how can I thrive in an environment that is constantly changing. Because if I can do this in this environment, I can do it in any environment. And I think that's a really powerful lesson. So basically, to give you guys a bit of a rundown, we've got a Toyota troop carrier. It's got a pop top roof. So if you look up there, that's our bedroom. And inside the back of the truck is our kind of office area when the weather's not too great. We've basically got our setup in there with a couple of desks. And basically we've got solar on the roof, We've got a lithium system. I'm basically powering that from an inverter that's run by the solar at the moment. And we've got basically everything that we need to have a house on wheels. It's just a very, very small house that we've got to learn to live with. So obviously, as we said, we're only about four days still getting used to what that life looks like, but I'm enjoying it so far. It's that excitement of the unknown that I've always tried to chase. And I think more people have to have the courage to throw themselves into the unknown and see what happens, because that's where growth happens.

Yeah, man. Well, you literally have business as a vehicle because your business is printed on the side of your vehicle behind you, which is really, it's awesome.

And it also makes sense. A great colorful backdrop for videos.

It does.

So anybody listening to this, you want to know what he's. The visuals he's showing. You could go over to the YouTube channel and see the video version.

I'm impressed, man. I'm just like, I'm happy we connected and thank you for sharing all these frameworks because you went deep with us. And I know you have a podcast as well. So talk a little bit about how folks can go find you, listen to your show, maybe work with you as well.

Yeah, so I've got a podcast called Enjoy the Journey Podcast, aptly named. So our main platform is Spotify. Feel free to find us there. And I've also developed a 40 point business performance scorecard because what I find is that most people just don't know the options that they have on the menu and what they need to improve. So it's super important to understand exactly how you're tracking in pursuit of using your business as a vehicle to create financial freedom and understanding what you need to be focusing on. Now, out of the 40 points, the average score is about 18 out of 40, which, and we've run this with thousands of businesses, so it actually means that the vast majority of businesses are below average. But the good news is that typically when people do the scorecard, they can improve their score by about 10 in 30 days or less. So I'll give you guys the, the link to that to add to the show notes. And we've also, yeah, we work with service based business owners to help them increase their cash flow, improve their profits and build personal wealth. So if you are a service business anywhere in the world, you're looking to up your money, your finance, your profit and your wealth gain and you'd love to have a conversation. I'll also include a link for you guys to book a time with my team, have a conversation around how we can help you, help you map Out a game and. And see how we can support you in pursuit of financial freedom.

Right on, my man. Well, cool. Well, yeah, we'll link it in the show notes. So, you know, to get that, everyone throw them in all the notes that we offer you. So. Awesome. Anything else, Matt?

Oh, no, we cover a lot of ground. I feel like. I feel like this conversation, the timing of this conversation for where we are in our business right now was just like insanely spot on. So I really, really appreciate you spending the time because, I mean, it was really valuable and I think it hit home with both of us pretty, pretty heavy. So appreciate you, man.

Thank you, my man. Appreciate you. Have a great trip.

I'm glad for that. Guys, it's been a pleasure and looking forward to catching up soon. Of course.

See you, my man.

Bye.

So what'd you think of that one?

Oh, I hate it. Travel the outback. Why would I hate it?

No, I don't know.

It's freaking awesome, man, because I like.

To say the opposite of what I think your response is going to be.

Yeah, that's true. That is pretty accurate. Yeah, you do that often. Jackson's amazing, man. I love how there is a method to the madness and to the fun too. Profitable madness.

I mean, I was. Well, what did you think? Because I had some chats with Jackson prior to. But this, I mean, I felt like, like you said, it's very timely. This landed right at home at the right time.

Well, I mean, some of the stories we were telling on this episode, I mean, they're legitimate. We don't lie very often.

No, just kidding.

No, but like, I went on this road trip and I came back from it and like my insights on this trip were. Or.

A. I was gone for 11 days and the business didn't totally break or get destroyed. I mean, Joe didn't manage to burn it to the ground. I mean, that's hard to do to a digital business, but Joe managed to.

It would just be me or our team and systems as well. Yeah. Is it all hinging on me, mister?

It was all hinging on you because you're CEO, right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Big bad CEO over here.

You're the big bad.

You're the MF CEO.

Yeah, my CEO.

But yes, it did not break.

But I came back from that trip and I had this realization, like, man, all of this sort of day to day little nuanced things that I try to keep up with, there's gotta be a better way. Because the business didn't break, but I was gone for 11 days. And all the stuff that I should have been doing while I was on the trip, let's figure out how to systematize that stuff as well. And so it was just this kind of realization that I really, really enjoy, like being out on the road, having new experiences, being with the family, having fun, going out to dinner with friends and just enjoying life. Right. Go figure. We come back and it's sort of skewed because there's this coronavirus and we've been stuck in our offices. So this was sort of like this great release of like, hey, I get to be out in the world again for a little bit. But I got back to my office and I kind of went, man, I just want to be doing more of that stuff. How do we set up our business so that, that we can both be doing more of that kind of stuff?

Yeah, man, well. And we can. Yeah. And.

It'S funny because, yeah, you did come back with a whole different perspective. And I know that feeling. I mean, I haven't taken a trip in a while, partially because of corona, but also having a baby too, so it's limiting some things. But going to Hawaii soon in May, and actually Heather did challenge me. She's like, I challenge you not to bring your computer on that trip and to not have that pull. She's like, I want you with us, like mentally at least and physically.

I guess I would leave your cell phone at home too.

That's a little difficult. So I will be a little bit connected. I will be connected. But I think it's. But I don't get a poll for it because I think it is a mental thing. Like you said, you didn't work more than what you said. I think you said 30 minutes or.

Yeah, I mean, I had some things I had to do, but they took me like 15 minutes each in three different days.

You did not. I mean, I know you, you stayed true to that. And I respect. I think it's freaking amazing, man, because there is that. It's this poll. I mean, I was thinking about this actually this last night. I'm like thinking as you almost like in your shoes, it's. Yeah, you have this, you have this pulled back effect, you know, you're not just staring at a screen or looking at a chat or so close. It's like you're having that, that open space and you're talking about different things and you're just letting your mind wander a little bit.

Yeah, well, I mean, on that trip we visited four different national parks, saw every sort of climate. We were in a 90 degree weather at 1 point in Texas and we were driving through the snow at one point while we were in New Mexico, right? Like we literally saw like every climate. We went through four national parks. I saw family members on my side of the family that I hadn't seen in probably five years. We saw family members on Alana's side of the family that we hadn't seen in, you know, maybe three years. We saw, I saw, you know, Joe Kearns and Mike Alvarez, who are people who are literally like kind of partners in our business now and we've never met him in person. I went and had barbecue with them while we were in Texas, you know, and so like just the experiential element is what I feel like has really been missed, especially during the coronavirus stuff. But like, even before coronavirus, when I'm just kind of in front of my computer doing the day to day, every single day, day in and day out. And then Saturdays and Sundays I try to go and create some good experiences with the family. And then Monday rolls around and I've told you this for years, where it's still weird, it's still baked into my brain where I'm like, ah, fuck, it's Monday.

It's a Monday.

I know.

No, it's like that would become a habit maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Like it would happen a lot. And I will say it happened a little bit more on your front. But I think it hit us both probably. I mean, we still had the same mindset, very similar mindset. And yeah, it's like we talked about what caused that in the episode just now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, I was legitimate in my statement at the end that this came at the perfect time for us in our business and where we're at. You had your own journey. You could talk about that when and however you want.

We'll talk about that a little bit.

But you and I both sort of had similar sort of, of moments where we realized like, okay, we need to figure out how to stop being the operators of this business even. We've done a pretty damn good job over the last couple years of backing ourselves out of being the operations guys. But what ended up happening was we just figured out what different roles we can plug ourselves into instead.

Totally. Well.

So exactly what you were saying. There are a couple things that stand out to me. One of them is what you just said. I loved Jackson's processes. Like he said, the whole marketing, then it's sales and then delivery and Then growth. And I didn't bring it up there, but I was thinking about this during the course of the interview. It was like, okay, well we call ourselves marketers. Well, that's only one piece of the puzzle of a successful business. But even to release our grasp of the business.

Yeah, that means that we're gonna be stuck there. You ain't gonna hit the 4K, you know, like all these different, like, you know, the 4 or F4 framework that he was going through. Like, so it's almost like you have to elevate yourself from that. It's like great. You could be a marketing mind and start marketing, but that doesn't mean you can't. You need to stay there.

Well, if you're looking at his four sort of boxes. Right. Marketing, sales, delivery, growth. I actually feel like the one that we've figured out how to systematize now is the marketing. Right. Like we've got Joe and Mike. Mike helping us with marketing through emails. We're working with David Schloss again to help us with Facebook advertising. Driving traffic in there, like a lot of the marketing elements that drive the initial traffic and awareness, I feel like, is where we've got it dialed in, I think where, you know, and I guess in our business the marketing and the sales kind of overlap.

Because emails are right there too.

Yeah. Because we're driving through to like online sales pages. We don't have sales conversations over the phone so much. Occasionally, but not very often.

Yeah, here and there.

Where I feel like we are still stuck into it is a lot of the delivery elements. Right. Like we still get into all of the Facebook groups and interact with people. I still the action guides for these episodes. I still take those action guides every month and load them into the members area and then update the updates page of what's been added in there. When it comes to like our courses like Pod Hacker and. And the various content that we put out, we're still the ones creating a lot of that content that goes inside of those members areas. So things like that are the things that we haven't backed ourselves out of. And I feel like that's sort of the next evolution of our business is okay, we're figuring out how to systematize and automate and back ourselves out of the marketing. Now how do we systematize and back ourselves out of the actual delivery fulfillment of what we're selling? That's been the struggle, I think, for us. And that's not to say I want to stop doing these podcasts. That's not to say, I want to stop making content and being sort of the face of the brand, but the deliverables of what people buy off of us, I think needs to phase us out.

Yeah. And that's, I think our. And this is why it also is good timing for this conversation is Pod Hacker is the fact we released that and we launched that and created the whole thing with this going in mind or like with this in mind. Mind is like, we don't want to have to be everything here. We want to be the creators and the visionaries and connect the pieces and assemble a badass A plus team, a team that does all the execution of this thing, or at least of all that stuff that really we should not be in the middle of. And it worked. And obviously it's an evolution, but it's still us. Our hands are definitely in things that we want. Want to separate from, because we know if our hands are in things, it's just going to slow down the whole process too. And everyone benefits if we just take a little step back. And I know this is something that we were even talking about just yesterday and a whole different kind of thing is getting a lot clearer on some of just like the systems and the key things to move things forward. But also that would separate us from having to be in a lot of those parts of our business.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think the place to be is to be the visionaries of the brand. Like, hey, here's some cool ideas of where we can take it. But then the actual marketing, sales, delivery, growth, all of those elements are handed off to team members. And I think we're getting there. And another big drive for me lately, and I kind of feel like you might have some of the same drive as well. But for me, lately, I've been really sort of driven and motivated by like, creative pursuits. Right. And a lot of the business and the marketing stuff we do is very sort of tactical, methodical, like sometimes monotonous. Doing the same stuff day in, day out. Right. And for me, where my brain constantly goes is I just want to get this shit over with so I can do the creative stuff that's exciting me 100%. And so for me right now, that's things like playing guitar. That's things like I've been obsessed with how to edit videos and create content that is telling a good story that flows well. And it's like editing video. People might go, that's not crazy. It's fucking insanely creative.

I was gonna say, you are building a story. That's what you're doing. And you said story. If you didn't say it, I was gonna say, well, really, all that shit is just building a really cool story.

And editing is totally an art form. If you've never done it, it's totally art. Like when you watch big movies, like, the editing can kill or make the movie, right. Same exact actors, same exact shot, same exact story, script, everything. If the editing sucks, the movie's gonna suck, dude.

I mean, okay, so we're both creatives at heart, obviously, because when we started off, we were both making videos in your garage with sitting in your Suzuki Samurai are on it with cutoff T shirts with Corona beard.

Yeah. Not coronavirus.

Coronavirus. Yeah. This is way pre corona.

This is probably circa 2000. No, I bought the house in 2008. So it would have been around 2008.

Yeah. So, I mean, this was like, before we did anything in marketing. We were just listening to others like Frank Kern and whatever gurus out there. Tony Robbins. I remember those two. Yeah. And we would just make videos about what we learned and all the weird wacky shit that we're doing in the process to implement this stuff. And like, we did all this creative stuff that. And this was before we did put it on YouTube, but it was before we knew what the the hell to do on YouTube. But no, our hearts. And I know my heart definitely is. And I know yours is. It's rooted in creativity. There's a reason why both of our houses have a shit ton of guitars in them and why from a very early age, I've always wanted a music room in my house, which I pretty much achieved. And it's more just scattered throughout my house now.

You're not a music house.

Not a music room. Yeah. It's nice, but it doesn't mean I always had the time to play it, though. And how many times have you and I really, legitimately not me. Bring my guitar over on a podcast day, and we have 20 minutes to quickly jam to some shitty things.

That's happened a few times, but that's about the extent of when we play.

Music together literally throughout our friendship. That's crazy.

This is all to just say that we are absolutely creatives. We happen to learn market.

Yeah.

Because it supports her creativity. That's how I see myself. And that's why just to round out and just end on your video editing thing. That was my first business and I fucking enjoyed it.

Yeah.

Did I work my ass off? Yes. Did I know systems and how to outsource stuff? No. Yeah. And the Thing is, I loved it.

You don't. You typically don't mind working your ass off on the stuff that you're passionate about, right? Like I can just lose myself for hours in like editing software. I could lose myself for hours just sitting there with my guitar messing around. When I'm in those creative modes, that's where I hit my flow states right when I'm trying to do like actions in the business these days, it's like the opposite of a flow state. It feels like a grind. It feels like, oh, I got to do this next and then I got to do this and I just need to get this shit over with so I could get to doing what I. And like I even, I mean, nerd alert here. But I've even gotten really into playing Minecraft lately because it's so damn creative. It is a frickin creative platform. You build whatever you can imagine.

Well, it's like I've never played Minecraft, but I've seen you play it a little bit. You have a really cool house. For a while you didn't have a roof on it. I found that very weird.

It's got a roof now.

Especially when there's monsters and shit running around. I don't even know what I'm talking about here. No, you don't, but it's like SimCity or like, you know, building Legos even. It's like, like, dude, that's all I used to do as a kid, man.

And I think marketing, we found a sort of creative flow with it. If you've followed along to us for a while and especially me back even to my WordPress classroom and learn to blog days and stuff like that. I sort of always pursued the creative elements of marketing. I loved tactics, but I loved experimenting and finding tactics that nobody else was doing. And to me that was a creative pursuit. So even when I am doing the marketing, I'm always looking for what is this sort of creative artsy thing that nobody else is doing that I could put my own spin on this?

So that's actually, I mean that is. You've empowered me to think that way. And I think the creative part of. So I've reflected a lot on this too, is there's a lot of stuff I'll be caught in the middle on that have to do stuff. And I know we talked about it a lot. Caught in the middle.

Jupiter Bound.

Oh, that's good. I totally forgot about that song. No one else is probably gonna know what that is, but that is our.

Yeah, we could probably get the Rights to use that song, actually.

But maybe we should get back. Loretta, you should check them out. They're an amazing band with a bunch of our friends from San Diego that should have made it massively big because they're that good. Yeah, just go.

Speaking of creative. Holy shit. Okay, anyway, side tangent.

I'm gonna shout them out. Get back, Loretta.

But I get stuck. Like, I have sticking points in my days, and I think it comes through things like just. I mean, email and messaging are like. It's what I love. I love to chat with people, but there is a massive bottleneck for me. And like, you know, he even talked about that Jackson did. But like saying. And that's kind of like the delivery portion, I would say, for me and a little bit of marketing. But what I really enjoy, going back to your point about the whole creative tactics and all that shit, is my brain loves to connect pieces from someone like Jackson that we just had on. Cool. Okay. Now I want to connect him with a couple of other or a handful of folks, the right people for him to go work with or. I don't know. I just like. I like to connect all these weird pieces. And it doesn't mean that we need to be involved in all that stuff, but I like to support others and also, like, just turn on that creative brain and like, okay, how do we arrange these pieces? And it comes in the form of a lot of marketing strategy for us as well. So it's like when I. I know when I free my brain, I can. Like, even Steve Ulcer brought this up to us. He's like, you guys are freaking the best at this marketing stuff and, like, piecing together all this stuff. I mean, he didn't say that word for word, but that was basically the synopsis it seemed like. And it's exactly true. It's like when you and I are backed away from the minutiae, the stuff that the have to do things, things our brains light up with all these different things that are possible. And then we love to just give that to our friends or maybe that's a future partnership or something. Or it could be a new affiliate promotion or some crazy marketing strategy that our team hasn't thought about. And we're like, holy crap. Yeah, we should do that. I'm like, great. We can't be in the middle of this because that's not us. But we'll feed it, we'll build it or help build it it. And I think that's where we have not allowed our brains to be in, like, collectively do that. But going through, you know, that matrix or I forget what it was like the. Another quadrant.

Yeah, yeah. So it was high value, low value, love and loathe.

Yeah, yeah. Like that's a. That's something we should do.

Yeah.

Go through that.

Well, it's funny because just yesterday we're like, all right, we need to have a day where we get together, we spend the whole day in front of a whiteboard and just sort of figure everything out. Figure out, like what stuff we're taking off our plates. Who do we need to hire? What things should we get rid of? What things can we automate and systematize and just map it all out so we're on the same page?

Right.

And I feel like on this episode, Jackson literally gave us the framework for that day.

Yeah. Multiple maybe, but. Yeah, that would be probably the first framework we start with. Yeah. Is probably that one. That four quadrant. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Dan, am. Yeah, I was thinking. I'm happy. Yes, brother.

This was a good therapy session. Outro here.

Yeah, I know. I don't even know how long it's gone because of screen savers of. Well, we're 18 minutes.

We're recording to the mixing board.

Yeah, that's right. Not used to it yet. All right, let's wrap her up. I think. Well, you know what, the last thing, because this was something I want to bring up and the whole 20 year planning thing. It's funny because he's like, my clients, we plan out in 20 year increments in the future. And immediately my eyebrows are like, whoa. Yeah. And he's like, that's the reaction. I'm sure he caught that. And I started doing the math. He said his father died at 66. My dad died at 66 or 67. I think 66 as well.

I started doing the math on my own age. And I mean, there's a lot of people that die around that young or maybe they have an injury. Like my father in law right now battling some health issues. Very freaking scary. He's around that age too.

A good friend of ours just passed away at age 40. That's three weeks ago.

There you go. Yeah. I mean, so it's having that perspective, what he's allowing. You're not going to nail your 20 year vision and you're probably not going to know what the hell you want to do. I know, I don't. I know you don't. At least I don't think you do.

But like, at least if you have something you're putting out there where it's like you can almost make it tangible in your mind and then you see what you're dealing with right now with that four quadrant thing we're about to do. Then you figure out the gap and you're like, holy shit, that gaps. Kind of scary because I don't have my shit figured out and I want to make sure I'm not going to be dead before I figure out myself and actually have the most fun I can in this life and do what I want. And that literally, that was like going through my mind half of this episode. And I. I didn't have the point to bring it up or maybe, I don't know, I didn't have the words, but I was like, I started doing the math at my own age. I'm 36. You're 38. Seven.

I'm 38.

In three weeks, actually. Yeah, you're coming up very soon on that.

By the time this episode's out, I'm 38, most likely.

Dude, if that's not a wake up call. I know it is for me. When I started just thinking, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. So it's like.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I feel like, like not a year goes by where we don't get some sort of slap in the face. It's like, dude, life is short. Figure it out. Life is short. Get on it. And I feel like multiple times per year these days, we're getting sort of this slap over the face of like, I'm reminding you, it could be gone.

Tomorrow, you know, could be any time. So, yeah, I mean that as much as I thought first that 20 year thing, I was like, whoa. You know, like, I did the whole one. I did the one thing challenge, you know, when we had Jay Papas on.

Yeah.

And Jeff woods, and that was like planning. I think five years, that was the max. And I was already like, oh, my God. Yeah, that's what, in 20 years? But that context, when you start to frame it and then realize there's a gap in between, it's like it's up to us to figure out what we're gonna do in that period of time. We don't know how long that gap's gonna be, but there sure as hell a gap there. We all got one. Yeah. So figure out your gap and figure out what the hell are you gonna do with that. Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, thanks to anybody who's listened to this long into the podcast and listened to ours, because this is almost like a whole therapy session tacked onto the End of a podcast, which is why we put them at the end. So if people don't want to hear this kind of stuff, they don't have to.

But we weren't planning for it.

But I do feel like a lot of this stuff should be almost as valuable as a lot of the stuff we talk about on the podcast. But it's also just, like, we want people to see that. Who we are, the warts and all. Right. Like, we're sharing.

Yeah.

I mean, Joe's got a lot.

You got some bad ones. Places where.

But, I mean, this part of the podcast exists, so we could show you. Like, look, this is where we fuck up. Like, we don't have shit figured out either.

Yeah, man. I mean, no, this is. That legitimately scared the shit out of me, but it also empowered the empowered shit out of me.

It should empire the shit out of you, too.

Whatever that means. Means, I don't know.

Build an empire. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I will. My own version, but Empire of fun and freedom. Yeah. Empire of filth. Filth.

Isn't that a Nine Inch Nail song?

I don't know. I was going to think, like, is that Green Day or something? No, it's probably.

I mean, I think it's a Nine Inch Nails song, but then Johnny Cash covered it, I think. And then the Johnny Cash version is more famous than the Nine Inch Nails version.

Wait, Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails?

Yes.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't know it was that order. Yeah, that's cool. I have listened to that, and that's a great song.

Yep. Yep.

Okay.

Anyway, so pick up the action guide for this episode, hustleandflowchart.com. am I saying it wrong?

Yes, you are.

Flowchartgroup.com is where it's at. So if you go to flowchartgroup.com, you can join our Facebook group. One of the questions when you join the group is to enter your email address. Hook us up with the email address. We'll send you the action guide to our most recent episode. You'll get whatever episodes came out within the last two weeks. So be quick, and hopefully you get in on it within two weeks of this episode going live, and you'll get that action guide. So that's flowchartgroup.com youm were talking very fast. Yeah, that was my.

That was your warp speed.

That was my announcer speed. That was my, like, side effects may include.

You would be good for that job. Also, anyone can do it because you could just speed control that bad boy.

Up or slow it down.

Which will be my call to action to Easy Webinar. Too slow. Okay. Too slow. Sorry.

2X.

Please don't want to lose everyone. Yes. Yeah. Easy Webinar, our amazing sponsor who's been with us for a very long time and I know a lot of our folks, you possibly we've also been with.

Them for a very long time because we use Easy Webinar.

Very good point. I don't know how many years. At least 4ish. No, it goes way back. I freaking made one of the original sales videos of the this like nearly eight years ago or more.

Easy Webinar plugin. We go back to the when it had plugin in the name.

That was. Don't go there though. That's not the point. Yeah.

Easywebinar.com Hustle is where you should be going.

Yes. Point of this is saying we have a lot of history with that company and with Casey, the founder, he's absolutely amazing, but his head is been in this game for longer than anyone. That's all I know. So obviously the platform will reflect that. So go to easywebinar.com hustle that is very important to put the slash Hustle at the end of EasyWebinar.com hustle. You get a fat discount on whatever plan you choose. But you'll see a whole bunch of ways that this will make your life so much easier when it comes to sales and webinars in general. But really, you know that whole sales thing that Jackson was talking about? This could be your secret link.

Could be.

Could be easywebinar.com hustle. Go get it.

Yep. And if you want to see behind the scenes of our podcast business, how we growth, hack our podcast, how we monetize our podcast, how we get big name guests, how we engage with our community, how we do all of that stuff and get new updated training from guest experts every single month on what they would do to grow a podcast. Make sure you check out podhacker.com there might be a wait list right now. It might be open. I don't know. But go to podhacker.com and either way get on the waitlist or join. I mean, so far I have not heard a negative word spoken about it.

I will say this right now and I'm happy you brought that up. I sent 80 Bonjoro videos to the newest subscribers. There's a lot more in there as well. But I wanted to hit like just this small segment here. No one had a negative complaint, which I'm not gloating about. This because I said, please tell me something negative because I want to make this. We want to make this the best fricking membership you've ever been a part of. Because this is our baby and it's not the Joe and Matt show. Matt and Joe show.

We also have real babies. Just.

We do. We want to keep those separate. From this.

Point being, there is no negative feedback. And people are getting amazing results from just being in for like a week and a half, two weeks, and it makes me so freaking happy. And so if, like, legitimately, if you have thought about podcasting, and I know we survey our lists all the time, let's be honest, podcasting is the lowest interest.

It's true.

And Joe Kearns, he actually told us that yesterday on a team call. Thank you very much for exposing this. It's only like 17% of y', all, at least the people who've responded to the survey that actually think that podcasting is an interesting. I would challenge you on that. I really. What? The other two were affiliate marketing and traffic.

Yeah. Well, we also teach literally our affiliate marketing systems in there.

Well, let's go back and take a step back for a hot second. There's a reason why we can do those two things. It's because of a podcast.

Yes.

And it's because of creating content consistently and maybe it's partially on YouTube as well. So think about the content and the value you're putting out there right now to get the traffic or to make those affiliate sales or other sales you're making. Making guaranteed with pod hacker and podcasting and some like reaper, like a system behind that that actually puts together all the pieces that you're already doing now, most likely, but actually exponentially grows that with a healthy system that doesn't get you consumed in it. Get Pod hacker like you will. You will love podcasting. And it's. There's something for everyone in there. And it's the purpose perfect thing. Just try it out.

So go to podhacker.com and get on the wait list. If it's not open, even if you get on the wait list, we're gonna hook you up with our Podhacker playbook.

That's good point.

So, yeah.

So go get it podhacker.com and tell others about it. We'd appreciate you.

Yep.

Thank you.

Yeah. And if you enjoyed this episode, which who didn't?

I mean, obviously still with us, if.

You enjoyed this episode, tell some friends about it who will get some value. Tell the. Your friends that are running businesses but are overworked to come listen to this episode because we got the solutions for them.

Bam. And thank you very much. We love you. See you next episode.

Bye Bye.

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

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