Joel Runyon - Balancing Multiple Businesses While Doing The Impossible

I basically had engineered my life so I could do whatever I want, wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted, which sounds really cool. But then like, I didn't really have good structure in place from a work discipline standpoint. And so that meant like, I'd always sort of be half on even if I wasn't doing anything. And so I was feeling like, like I wasn't necessarily working a lot on it, but I could never like, clear my head and just like not think of it either. And so I was like in this weird in between spot where it was systemized enough to run, but it wasn't like completely off my, like, it wasn't clearing up my desk space.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and float Sharp with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey. Go time.

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. I am your host, Matt Wolfe, with Joe Fear also your host.

I am your also host. And we are today attempting the impossible.

That was my DJ voice.

I understand.

Yeah.

I just need to.

Wow. Wow.

We need to get a button or something like a little sound pad. Get that Rodecaster Pro. Actually, that's what we need. Come on. I could be DJing over here spinning that.

I keep on meaning to buy one of those.

We're going to do that later today. All right, so we're attempting the impossible.

Yes. With Joel Runyon doing an intro in under three minutes.

That too. All right, so Joel Runyon is on the podcast with us today. This is a long time coming. The reason why I said impossible is he is the founder of Impossible. It's actually a this lifestyle brand, fitness brand, but it's basically the whole thing is push your limits, do cool stuff, do stuff that just freaks the hell out of you. Yeah. And basically, you know, push yourself to a limit that you can just. The world opens up in so many ways.

Yeah. And he's running this impossible brand while also running multiple SaaS companies. He's got a meal plan company. He's got a fitness app company. He's got a productivity app company. He works with a company that sells sugar free electrolyte drinks, like sports drinks kind of things. He's running multiple companies while running this impossible lifestyle brand and doing things like running seven marathons, ultra marathons in seven.

Countries, ultra marathons for you that. Because they're like basically 100 mile runs. So that's. That's just a tiny little run. Yeah.

And he did seven of them on.

Seven different continents and he built seven schools. That's part of that Seven, seven seven thing. So, like, dude just takes everything to the limit. And it's very fascinating. A lot of. A lot of the structure and the way that we partner with folks and really collaborate and get equity, get rev share, do deals. It's stuff we chatted with Roland Frazier, Jay Abraham, Rich Sheffrin Shreyam. I mean, like, deal making. Yeah. Joel has wrapped up his. His. His. His interesting life, you know, adventure life, but with, like, deal making to support everything. So super cool. Let's get into it. Get the notes. Hustleandflowchart.com comp yep, that's hustleandflowchart.com two weeks to get. We took a bunch of notes for you.

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I'm good. Thanks for having me on, guys.

Yeah. We were saying it's a long time coming too. I think almost two years, maybe a year and a half or so.

Was that really two years ago?

It's a while ago.

It was. It was the fall. I think it was the fall before I came out here maybe, you know, I think so.

It was.

Yeah, about two years ago.

Two years.

Yep. It's got to give a shout out to Costanzo. Brad Costanzo, mutual buddy. And yeah, we had a dinner was at Capitol Grill. It was like a Perry Marshall event we were all at. And you were. I don't think you were at the event. Right? You were just kind of hanging around.

No, I just. I just crashed the. The. The steakhouse dinner.

Left an impact, man.

But there's a full, like, you know, Perry Marshall backstory and my, like, origin story. At some point we could talk about if you want to But I. Perry got me kind of kicked off on things. So do it, do it quick little throws an event.

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Because, I mean, where we usually start these podcasts is your backstory. So this is as good of a backstory as any.

Perry's become a buddy of ours now too, and he's been on the show a couple of times. So what's your Perry story, man?

Yeah, well, so, I mean, well, so the back back story is that like, you know, I started my company Impossible, basically nine months out of graduating college, I graduated college, done all the things you're supposed to do, and I graduated in the middle of the Great Recession or whatever. And so all these places, like, I did all the things you're supposed to do. Take a bunch of classes, get a great gpa, learn another language, do a semester abroad, play college sports. And I was kind of following the normal script that everybody had laid out for them. And then the next step in that script was just get a job, right? And there were no jobs to be had. And so I was basically trying and applying for like nine months to a whole bunch of jobs from like my A choices to B choices to like Starbucks, Target, anything I could get my hands on. Couldn't get a call back from Starbucks. And so ended up doing like a three to six month or three to six week stint with UPS during seasonal.

Oh, you got that seasonal pay, huh?

Yeah, around Christmas in Chicago. So it's like freezing cold, icy sidewalks, chased by dogs, the whole Chicago get laid off after that. And you know, right around Christmas and I'm sitting there nine months after school, graduated, like, I did all the things you're supposed to do. And this is where I'm at. Like, this is what I have to show for it. And you know, I want to do all these different things, but they all seemed impossible. And so, you know, I felt pretty bad for myself. Watched a bunch of.

Shows on Netflix, kind of distract myself and like watched all these people online doing really interesting things about, like, traveling the world. You know, one of my friends is going to every country in the world. The other one quit his job and moved to Thailand. And I couldn't even get a normal job. And so I felt bad for myself for a long time. And then basically I went through my list and I was like, there's reasons why I can't get a job. There's reasons why I can't start a business, there's reasons I can't travel the world. But one of the things on my list was run a triathlon. And so that was kind of my, kind of the breaking point for me was like, well, I think I can do that. And so the whole thing was I trained for this thing, I did it, and I realized, like, oh, you spent so much time telling yourself that this was impossible and you just did it. If that's true, what else could you do? And so then I was like, well, you know, I still can't get a job anywhere. I have really no skills. But I'm interested in the Internet. I think it's going to be big. And I'm interested in marketing. And so I started like playing around with a couple of those different things. And somehow I don't know how, but I found Perry Marshall talking about Internet marketing. I found this other job that I was taking like, basically.

Like internal level pay to like, I'm gonna learn Internet marketing.

Connect and learn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And so I saw Perry was doing one of his Hawaii events like 10 years ago or something like that, and he was hosting this big mastermind out in Maui. And it was like $5,000 just to attend the event. And you had to be spending like $5,000 a month in paid spend. And to me, that was like, oh my God, that's so much money. And so I think I cold tweeted him and I was like, hey. He was trying to like, you know, do his last push like the week before the event. Like, hey, you could do a last minute sign up. I'm like, harry, do not have any money. But if you're, you've got space and need help, like, I've got, I'm a college kid, like, willing to hustle, do whatever.

And he ends up like emailing me back and he's like, dude, if you can get out here. But like, I think I tweeted them like a Tuesday.

He emailed me back like a Wednesday. And he's like, if you could be out here by like Friday, you can come to the event. And so then I'm like looking at like, you know, mileage points and all this other stuff, trying to get out. How do I get to Hawaii for nothing, 48 hours. 48 hours notice, but end up going out there, meeting all these people that are like, you know, you know, I, I know a lot of them now and they're friends, but like, at the time it was just like a whole different level of people than I had really, you know, been around for. And so, you know, I did that with that event. I did that with like two more Perry events. He did one in London I helped out with and we actually had the. The founders of FanDuel.

What?

Which is like.

Oh, yeah, like Nigel. Nigel Eccles, right?

Yep.

Yeah, he's been on the show once.

Yeah, yeah. So he was in Perry's world or whatever and he's like, so we're doing this betting thing in the uk, we're thinking about doing football and like onto something. Yeah, it's tiny, but so, so, so, like I said, long story short, ended up doing a couple different events. Going to Perry's events and you know, especially early on, Perry was one of those people that was like, very, very helpful and kind of jump starting, accelerating my whole interest in the Internet space and also realizing like, not just like, you don't have to, you know, work for someone else your whole life, but also like getting around people who are just, you know, I was completely out of my league for the first couple years and that's just, you know, that's how I learned. Everything that I learned was, you know, just being a. Yeah. You know, basically taking everything in through a fire hose and. No, that's cool. So that's my Perry story.

He's been super helpful. So anytime he has an event, I'm like, okay, let me see if I can make it.

You linger around.

Well, I mean, there's a great lesson there too. Like that's kind of a way to work your way into some of those types of events is how can I add value if I can't pay to.

Get in the event? And also took it as like, you're finding these catalyst events like that triathlon to get you traveling. And then the Perry thing, you reached out to Perry and he put your ass on the line. He said, you got two days, boy. Get out here to Hawaii. And it's like that kicks off this adventure for you. Does that show up in other places too? Kind of like that.

Well, I think Perry gave me a piece of advice. He said something like.

You know, he's like, the best way to like, you know, start making your first money on this is like, you know, figure out someone's problem.

Put your balls on the line and figure it out. Like. And so he basically kind of accepted this idea that he's like, start accepting challenges that like, you don't think you can do or you don't even know. Like, I didn't, I didn't really think about it. Think through it like that at the time. But it's basically just been like, if someone had a job to do, I'D just be like, yes, I'll do it. And I had no clue how to do it, but I was like, I really going to hope I figure this out or my balls are aligned.

Right.

So, and so that was, I think, you know, that that first thing with Perry was really just like, you know, I've always been a little bit like, you know, I'm open to spontaneity and just going out and doing stuff, but like, I think, you know, being willing to put your neck out there are all, all the things where there's a, A, a significant probability that I'll fail are typically the things that take me the next level up. And so, you know, showing up as like a, you know, like a 20, 22 year old college kid at like this like Mastermind event in Hawaii that I did not belong at. And like, you know, I was like, I stayed in like a hostel, like everybody else is at like these five star hotels, this like dirty hostel in my, I like, you know, took a taxi to like the place or whatever. It's like I did not belong there. But I just sat around people and listened and then tried to ask a question that wasn't too stupid.

All those situations where I've just taken that leap or I've put my neck out or I've said, I actually don't know if I can do this, but I set out to do it anyways I can. Those are the ones where I find I have the most growth.

So how did the Impossible brand come to be? Because it sounds like, like an obvious sort of evolution from what you just said and that branding.

Yeah, so, so it started like, like what I just said, you know, like it feels like everything felt impossible and like it was the statement that like, you can't do this, this stuff is for other people, but you're, you're gonna, like, you know, maybe get this job at UPS and like sling packages and that's what you're gonna do. And.

What it really turned into was, you know, I did this all, I did this triathlon and I realized like, you spent, you know, this is literally the words that came to me at the end of the race. Like, you spent so long telling yourself this is impossible and you just did it. If that's true, like, what else could you do? And so that changed things for me. It changed impossible from being this like statement into, you know, I say, you know, impossible is not a statement, it's a challenge. And so a lot of people think, you know, like, oh, I can't do that. That's the end of the road. But now it's like, oh, that seems impossible. That's the thing you probably should be doing. And if it's, you know, like, and people say like, you know, growth begins at the edge of your comfort zone or whatever. But like, like.

I think to another level, even with Impossible, it's like the stuff that like actually scares you to the point where you're like, gotta piss your pants. Like, that's the stuff. It's not like, oh, you know, like, you know, like a 5K. Really pushing yourself beyond what you can even conceive is, is.

Is, is kind of where you should be aiming yourself. And you know, if I would have told myself 10 years ago or whatever that like I'd have done all these ultra marathons and we've raised this money and we've started these businesses, I'd be like, that's ridiculous. But like, I started out with like the most immediate thing that seemed ridiculous to me and that was an indoor triathlon and you know, the west suburbs of Chicago. And it started there and then it snowballed. And so that's where Impossible started. And it's kind of grown into like you said, you know, it started off as a personal blog to document my life and like try to be a challenge to do something more interesting with my life. And then it's kind of, you know, grown into a community and a brand and you know, we have apparel and we're going to be launching some products later this year. But it's kind of snowballed beyond just Joel's personal challenge to get out of his parents basement.

Yeah, indeed. I know Matt and I recognize. So before we even knew who Joel is, we saw the Impossible brand. So definitely the brand appears to be bigger than you, at least in the online sphere. I'm sure that's kind of somewhat engineered. But I know you do a lot of other stuff as well outside of Impossible. It's kind of brought you all these different opportunities and probably putting yourself out in this different scenari.

Without getting super deep on all these different tangents. Because I know we were talking, it can take all day. Is there like a quick hit list you can just give us of the craziest stuff you've done and then we can kind of talk about the business that's happening that supports this and keeps you pushing?

Yeah, I mean we can do the quickest of adventure stuff right now. So probably the thing that people are most recognizable with is the 777 project where I ran seven ultramarathons on seven continents. And we built seven schools with pencils of promise and raised $193,000. We did the seventh school with.

With Jesse Itzler, if, you know, Jesse and I actually just got the plaque from the other, like, the seventh school. Like, we did this, you know, this is a couple years ago. We finished it, but there's a delay on the school builds and everything and vacations and with Corona and all this stuff. Like, so I just got the plaque from, like, the last school build the other day. So that was a big, big project. At the time, I think I was the youngest person to run an ultramarathon in every continent. I think there's someone challenging that right now. I don't know if they've done it, but, like, good for them.

Yeah, that's fine.

So, I mean, that would be the biggest thing, you know, scaling from, you know, I never run a 5k before. I did that indoor triathlon and basically scaled up from indoor triathlon, sprint, Olympic.

Half ironman, marathons, ultramarathons. At this point, we've raised, you know, a quarter million dollars, I think, for different charitable causes. We have a Kiva lending team.

And then we've done other things. Like, I had an event this summer where we hosted, like, the Longest Day race, and it was on the longest day of the year. You run up from sun, sun up to sundown, and you. We had like, 25 people from around the world basically run around a track until you count your laps, you know, for however long the sun is up in whatever part of the world you're in. And so in Austin, it was like, some 14 hours or so. And so.

So I've done stuff like that. We've taken people like, you know, we talk about actually pushing yourself, doing stuff that scares you. We've taken, you know, 50 people skydiving, you know, for different events. We've taken like, you know, some 60 people, like bungee jumping. You know, people talk about, like, you know, take the leap, or, like, no, actually take the leap.

Let's do it together.

And, you know, that's kind of the goal of impossible is like, a lot of times people talk about these things, and they're ethereal or they're, like, emotionally difficult, but really, like, challenging people to do physically difficult things because it gives you reference points for what your body feels versus what it's capable of. And it reminds you that you can do, like, manual overrides in your mind.

Way more often than you think you can. And so if you can do those. And you can point to those physical challenges. Like, hey, I was at mile 50 in Antarctica and I wanted to give up and go home. I can remind myself that, like, yeah, I was in a lot of pain and I wanted to quit.

But I was in Antarctica. Like, I'm not going home. Like, it's not. I didn't come all this way to go home. And so, like, when you have other things come up in business or work or whatever, like, you have those mental reference points that you can point back to be like, yeah, like, is this as bad as that was? And you're like, no. And you're like, oh, I survived. That I finished. That I finished. You know, I followed through. And so then it makes, it gives you context, gives you perspective for all these other things in your life, and it makes it easier to do, you know? You know, like, you're dealing with, you know, specific things in business. It makes it easier to get through those things when you realize, like, oh, I'm stronger than I. I. You know, my mind wants me to think I am sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of us probably need that shake, especially since we're just, like, living in our offices or at home right now. It's like, what physical thing? Even, like, in your neighborhood, just go freaking wind sprint some hills or something. Go on a bike ride up a crazy hill that you didn't think possible. Whatever.

We, we. We had that for the longest day race. Like, you're supposed to go out and find a track. And we had some people that just be like, I'm just, I don't have a track, but I'm just going to run around my neighborhood for the entire day. And our neighbors are just like, what is wrong with these people?

There goes Matt again. He looks like he hurts a lot.

I do hurt a lot.

So on the back of all that stuff, and this is what fascinated Matt and I, like, when we first met you, you're like, wait, hold on. You have a bunch of businesses happening outside of Impossible, outside of all the crazy adventures you're on as well, doing. Yeah.

I feel like when we were talking to you over dinner, the thing that I was so fascinated by was you have all of these companies, but then when we started kind of talking about your lifestyle, it didn't sound like you were working too hard on any of them. I mean, that might just be my perception, but, you know, it feels like, in a good way, right? Like, they're very, well systematized. You've got good people running them. Like, it Kind of felt like you've figured out a good way to have this lifestyle while all these other businesses are still successful.

Well, I could, I could give you an update a couple of years after that. I would say it's accurate. Like I wasn't working that hard when I saw you guys on those businesses. Businesses. And there's good and bad parts to that. Like I had kind of, I had basically engineered my life to do that. And there's pluses and minuses. Pluses are like a lot of adventure, a lot of fun, a lot of travel. I think I went to like some 48 countries or something like that. Had a really, really good time. The downsides was like I basically had engineered my life so I could do whatever I want, wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted, which sounds really cool. But then like I didn't really have good structure in place from a work discipline standpoint. And so that meant like I'd always sort of be half on even if I wasn't doing anything. And so I was feeling like I wasn't necessarily working a lot on it, but I was always like, there's always like a decent amount of. I could never like clear my head and just like not think of it either. And so I was like in this weird in between spot where it was systemized enough to run but it wasn't like completely off my, it wasn't clearing up my desk space. And so one of the things I think actually right after I saw you guys was I ended up like making a big change for me, which is I was like pseudo nomadic for a couple years and I was like, you know what, I'm going to plant myself in Austin and I'm going to be in Austin for a minute. And what that's allowed me to do is actually improve some of the systems in the business. So it's been a little bit like I would say like I actually wrote about this. I sacrificed a little bit of like adventure and excitement to really, really, really nailed the systems now where I can actually not think about stuff and I can actually like pull focus onto other things or the companies I advise or the new stuff we're rolling out. Impossible versus being like, okay, yeah, I have like this low grade level of stress in the background that like I'm kind of blocking out. But like it's, it's bubbling up everyone's. And so that's, that's one of the things that like, you know, I figured out the travel and running like keeping a business, the momentum of a business going. But I Would say it's, it was, it was hard for me to grow a business while I was doing that. Like there's only so much like, you know, there's like the good.

Good, cheap, fast venn diagram or it's like you to pick two.

Yeah.

Like I feel like there's something like that with like travel, running a business and like growing the business like and like, and you. It was hard for me to do all three at once. Like I could, I could put on cruise control and keep going and have a really good time but it was hard for me to like actively like accelerate growth. And so I had to kind of pull back a little bit on that in order to push on the growth of the companies. But it's been a good decision and then it actually allows me to. I just spent a month in Colorado and.

Do these mini adventures in a little bit more focused way where I'm not always all consumed by work all the time. Even when I'm on a podcast show. This should be fun. Thinking about sales figures in the back of my head I'm like, well just.

Think everyone has that kind of low grade stress but some people it's way higher. But I could see if it like a perpetual low grade stress. But you're like trying to be in the moment in wherever you're at. You're just like, ah, can't shake this thing. I can see where, yeah like it's actually impress. It's super impressive that you keep the momentum. But the scaling, I could see that being a huge issue, especially the now the role you're in. You know, you're an advisor, multiple companies and you're, it sounds like you're like the growth guy for a lot of those. Right? Like you kind of strategize a lot of that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I found it interesting a few years back I did the scaling for.

Spahero, which is a parking reservation company.

Their tech office was based out of San Diego for a little bit but I think they reconsolidated to Chicago. But I did their scaling from a seed round to series baby, and like scale them out to like six cities. And then you know, recently I've gotten a lot more opportunities with different, you know, early stage startups which basically are looking, you know, for traction and initial growth. I always tell companies, I'm like, I'm not like the guy that's going to be around when you have like hundreds of employees just because I just don't like those types of environments as much. But like when I Can, you know, you know, put my thumb on the scale and have a specific impact. I've done that with, you know, a couple CPG companies, you know, a productivity company.

And, and those opportunities seem to keep coming in. So it's been something that is, is fun to be able to have high leverage impacts on, on larger boats because a lot of my stuff, all of my stuff has been bootstrapped and so I take a bootstrap mentality with a venture backed budget and you can do some damage. And it feels like you're playing a little bit of a different game than some of these other types of growth people.

Yeah.

So when you do come into some of these companies and you are advising for them, what kind of things are you doing for them? What sort of levers are you pulling for growth?

So everyone is different. So I try to. The way I look at a lot of things that I do is this is actually something Perry taught me, was like, we'll do a lot of it depends on the scale. Right. So like one company, so element I had like a small investment in and then I knew the founding team and they just wanted to like, you know, like scale up from an influencer and our connection standpoint. And so I'm doing some like, you know, pretty high leverage connecting with, you know, different people I know in the health fitness space, which is pretty easy. But like, again.

It'S a high leverage thing where I've got 10 years of these relationships and connections and work that I've been doing myself. And it's easier to deploy it than is for them to scale up someone full time on it. So that's like what I'm doing for them. For someone like Woven, basically I was a user of their app, Woven as a calendar, woven.com. it's a calendar and scheduling app. And this is actually the app I use to get structure in my life because I came back from traveling all over the place and I was like, my life's a mess. I feel like I'm working all the time, but I'm not getting anything done. And so Woven was the app that I was like, okay, I'm gonna start like time blocking that week. I'm gonna plan out what I'm doing. I'm gonna get like, you know, see if I'm actually staying close to, you know, what I'm getting done. If I'm doing the things I say I want to do. And started using this thing, I was like, this is a pretty powerful app. You guys have built a ton of functionality into it. And you have like no users. And so like I, again, a lot of my stuff is just like cold pitches. So I cold pitch the, you know, the founder and Tim is the ex CIO of Facebook, as it turns out, which I didn't realize, but I was like, hey guys. You guys seem like you need help. And so I, you know, I do a discovery process with a few different startups or whatever, but it's like, I'll come out for a couple days and then I'll supervise your growth strategy for the next 90. And then that's continued to kind of grow and evolve and that's a little bit more hands on now. But again, it's architecting their growth strategy and a lot of them is taking these, bootstrap these.

How I would scale my companies basically to these guys with.

Raising 5, 10, $20 million, whatever. You have a lot bigger budgets to play with and start directing things. And so it's fun to.

Have impact at that level of scale and then also build out an advisory portfolio, build out an investment portfolio that way.

Yeah.

Versus just being like, I hope I, you know, gonna pick the next Uber. You know, like, it's nice to pick stuff that like you're like, I can. I know this is gonna be successful. Cause I'm gonna make it.

Yeah.

Now are these companies, are they actually like spitting off revenue back to you or is it stuff where it's kind of still early and you're advising but you're gonna. The, you know, the, the, the big paydays down the road.

The. Depends on the type of company typically, but it's usually some sort of cat. Like there's enough cash that it covers my time, whatever that looks like. And then, But I try to take as much as I can in equity just because I think it's more. Yeah, it's more of an interesting play. Like.

Right.

One of the phrases, I don't know if it's Taylor Pearson, but he's always says like play long term games with long term people. And that's what I'm interested in. And so, you know, if you can get an outsized, especially you know.

With the companies that we've worked with.

You can put a pin in the graph on when we started the engagement. And there's almost always a massive spike afterwards. And so if I could take an equity valuation at that pre spike number and then I can make the spike happen.

It makes way more sense for me.

Yeah, no, it's the long. And that's what we were kind of chatting before the call Here too is deal flow is so magical. If you could set yourself up for deal flow or if you just reach out to the right people and just put your balls on the line, it's like that's also another way. It's, it's magical that like the collaborations, I feel like there's the growth or the scalability of an operation can just be much better. And then like you said, if you have a hand in it from day one, why not get the equity, get the long term payout.

It's, it's also interesting when you, when you look at like.

How.

A lot of my network here in Austin are. I have several friends that have raised money or whatever, but a huge number of them are either bootstrapped or they're like, they kick start off a Kickstarter or something like that. But they've been cash flow positive companies from day one. And it's really interesting to see how companies try to grow if they're trying to do that versus if they're trying to just. If they're playing the raise money to raise money to raise money to raise money game, which is like a viable game, but like, it's a very different strategy. And so it's just interesting to see the types of impact that like I've, I've talked with a couple friends before. It's like I feel like I'm like a feral animal sometimes and like really nice. Like, you know, just like being a bootstrapped entrepreneur, you just have to like claw tooth and nail to like survive. And it just like, you know, like you got like snaggle tooth and like, you know, patchwork, whatever, random stuff, fur is all messed up, whatever, like you're, it's, it's, it's not a pretty picture but like you're, you're gonna survive and you're gonna be like, you know, you're gonna be good. And then you like, you know, you go into some of these companies or whatever and they're like very like buttoned down and they're very like, they remind me of my old, you know, an old job I used to have back in the day or whatever. And it's just like, it's a different environment and it's fine. But it's interesting to see how the difference is.

I'm kind of curious because you mentioned something about when you have a discovery call or meeting or whatever about the growth and you want to go down this lane. I'm thinking if you could walk us through your thought pattern of how do you identify as A startup or it could be someone listening that's bootstrapping themselves. Like, are there certain things you look at, you identify as opportunities where you build a plan from there. Can you walk us through your thought pattern? Yeah.

So I try to avoid bootstrappers because they don't have money.

Well, just to relate it to folks who are listening. Or bootstrapping.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're trying to identify opportunities is what you're trying to say.

Yeah. And you're in your process for basically scaling these companies you're working with.

Yeah. So actually I would still say the same thing. I avoid bootstrappers because they don't have any money. So it depends on what you want. Right. If you want an equity stake and you're going after an early stage company and they're bootstrapped about it, if you're an entrepreneur, it may make sense just to start your own thing.

If you're going to do something for someone else, but you're only going to get 50% equity and they're not going to pay. A bunch of. You might be better off doing your own thing.

If you're looking for cash or you're looking for cash plus an equity play, which is not a bad way to do it, especially if you can do it on performance.

I basically look at all the apps that I use. I'm pretty early adopter on a bunch of stuff. I try a whole bunch of different things.

I feel like my friends find out about stuff way sooner than I do. But then I just realized my friends are like uber early adopters. And so I'm like, still in the early adoption cohort. So like I started to identify that, like, I actually find stuff when.

Like after my friends have kind of like played around with it and made sure it's not broken. I'm late enough to the game that like some of the vetting has already happened. But like, there's still a decision point on whether this thing is going to be successful or not.

You're like crowdsourcing kind of your dd, your due diligence on the thing.

And so then I'm able to come in and you know, like a lot of these rounds are like, you know, relatively public. So you know, if a company has raised a seed round or an A round or you know, where they're standing there and then you can come in, you could say, like.

The due diligence and discovery thing is actually something I took from Perry. Again was we used to go out and we tried to sell all these people all the time on like, hey, will you work with us? Here's our plan, here's. And we'd give them it all for free and they wouldn't care at all.

And in fact they just like they want an RFP and then they're gonna compare it to other RFPs and they want the cheapest RFP and you're doing all this work to even do the rfp. And then if it like a lot of them wouldn't even come out good because you didn't have enough time because you have to do 20 of them because you might get five of them or something like that. So.

So flipped it and we do a discovery process. So I don't know if your listeners are familiar with that. It's basically like, hey, I'll do a bunch of research for you. I'm familiar with your company. I know what you guys are doing. Here's a bunch of really things. Here's a bunch of. I basically do a cold read and be like, here's all the things you're doing wrong. And some people don't like it. Some people get really mad at me. I've gotten a few people come back at me hard. But a lot of people are like, oh my, you know me better than, you know all the things that my investors are saying or you know, you know, like these are all the things that like they knew were wrong with their company but they didn't want to verbalize.

Oh yeah.

And so like I come in and I'm, I'm relatively aggressive. I'm like, hey, here's all the things you're doing wrong. If you want to do a discovery process, I can go into more details on all the things you're doing wrong and how we're going to fix them and you're going to walk out with a plan to execute with your current team and like a supervisory, like how we're going to, how we're going to like get this boat, you know, back on the right track. And so like I'll typically do that. I could play around with the timing and different companies want different things. So I'm relatively flexible. But I tried to propose it in a way that's like a discovery process is a two day thing and then it's a 90 day contract after that and there's a renewal process after that. But that's the way I set mine up. Just because it's repeatable, people understand it.

I'm tied in. Like it's not just I'm coming in giving a talk and then bouncing like I'm tied in for the 90 days. And you can typically start to see some sort of improvement in 90 days. Like if you don't see anything, like probably didn't, you know, probably wasn't worth it. But like, everyone we've seen at 90 days has been like.

How do we do more? Like, this is the best investment we've made so far. How do we keep doing this? And so that's how I structure it. But I've seen really, really good results on that. I think most people, especially early stage startups.

They want the feedback that they're getting and.

They want harsher feedback.

Than they get sometimes. And the only people that will give it to them are investors. And investors aren't always that helpful. Like investors, depending on where you get your money from, investors could be really helpful, but they could just be like, just go faster, just grow it, grow it. Just weeks. We own you now. Do the thing that we told you to and they're not actually helping you out. So there's a, you know, it's, it's kind of a harsh but compassionate thing. It's like, hey, you don't realize it right now, but you're drowning. And I'm the guy with the life, you know, life rafter, whatever you want.

To call it, I'm trying to save you. Don't be. Yeah, like this is hard shit right here. But you know, take it for what it's worth.

Yeah, don't fight the lifeguard. Right. Like, exactly. You know, let me help you out. So, so that's worked out pretty well. And it's one of those things like the first couple ones the hardest. And then after that people see that you did something with this company or this company or they want your time here or there and it becomes a little bit easier to snowball and you.

Initiate those discovery calls. So you'll reach out to them, say let's get on a call and then you'll basically tell them all the stuff they're doing wrong or how do you initially make contact.

So I've done, yeah, I've done a bunch of cold stuff. Like I do a lot. I think cold emails and cold phone calls, like, I mean I called like a cold tweeted Perry Marshall and that like how my, you know, career got started. I cold emailed Woven when I started doing stuff with them, element stuff was a little different because they knew I'd been doing other things with other companies and I had a pre existing relationship and they had a clear idea of exactly.

The help they needed. And then I find other stuff again. Starts to.

The. If I don't have any previous relationships, I just cold email. If I, if I, if I have existing relationships or they've seen my work in other spots, it tends to be just like informal discussions that evolve out of the relationship after, you know, meeting and connecting and podcasting and, you know, sharing my story with people over like the last 10 years. So, you know, there's a, you know, we talked about, you know, some of the non explicit value that you get out of publishing, podcasting, blogging. And that's one of the things is like, I've had people ask me, you know, for help in their business just because they think I'm interesting and like, yeah, that's like, it's, it's, it's such a better position to be in than like, like they want you specifically versus, like, okay, well, you know, you say you could do this for XYZ and they can do it for, you know, 10% less. You're like, I don't, it's the comparison. Yeah, I don't ever want to be in the competition of like, price matching someone. It's like, this is what my time is worth. This is what value I'm bringing to the table. And if you want that, that's cool. You can get the, you can get the bargain version of that if you want, but that's not really the game I'm playing. So.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's something we actually weren't recording yet when we were talking about that. But this concept of like, a lot of people look at our business, our hustle and flowchart, and don't really know how we're making money. Yes, we have like a sponsor on our show at the front and the back of the show, but that's not like really big money or anything. That's just like, I mean, covers the expenses, basically. It covers the expenses to run a podcast, basically. But so most people look at our business and kind of go, yeah, I don't really know what they do, but what they're not seeing is the bigger picture. The platform we've built with our podcast has led to sort of equity deals and, and all sorts of stuff that we're doing behind the scenes, which is where most of our money comes from. And it seems like your business is a very, very similar concept where, you know, a lot of people see you on social media and you've got like the impossible brand. But beyond that, they may not totally know like, what the business model is beyond that. And I don't think we were recording when we were talking about that yet, so I just wanted to, like, clarify that. But speaking of that, like, you've built a really good brand in the impossible brand. How. How did you ramp up that brand? How did you, like, get your initial traction and get people to start paying attention to that?

Yeah. So literally just writing forever, which is, like, not a great, you know, so when I. When I first started out, like, I literally just writing about, like, going to this indoor triathlon, and it was like kind of a race diary, if nothing else.

And I started realizing, like, people kind of care about you, but they also more. More importantly don't actually care about they. They care about themselves. Of course, I was always talking about stuff like, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm doing. And it's somewhat useful, but if I was like, hey, here's how you could do it.

That always got way more attention. And so what I slowly shifted was like this, you know, this mix of what Joel is doing to, like, how this is relevant to you and how this can help. And, you know, this is like, so, like 2010 or something like that. So, like, blogs are really, really popular, I think. I feel like a lot of people have shit to podcast, but, like, you know, you can take a lot of same principles, but I would just go on other people's blogs and be like, can I write something for you guys? Can I comment on this? Can I, like, get back and forth with you? Super, super manual stuff. Like, there's no, like, secret. But I had probably 20 blogs that I was like, really, you know, falling on my RSS feeder. You know, we used to have those. And, you know, I just sort of. I was around enough that they started to notice me, you know, and it wasn't, like, nefarious or, like, underhanded, but I was just like, hey, I actually really like this blog. I hope someday I could write a blog as cool as, you know, 1/10 as cool as this. I just did that with a whole bunch of different people and then did that over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And eventually just, like, you know, got to a capacity. I think I actually see this with startups a lot where people are like, okay, well, yeah, like, let's plan, you know, November, our growth chart, we're just going to go, like, exponential. We're just going to put it in a plan. We're going to go Exponential.

What you want to build is like, consistent compound growth that builds on each other, and you want to increase your luck, surface area. And especially with funded startups or whatever, you might have a point where you do go exponential, but you don't really get to control when that is. And similarly, if you're doing your own bootstraps thing or your podcast or.

Your blog, what you can do, what you can control is consistency and good, solid compound growth that's increasing your luck, service error. And every once in a while, you're going to have something hit off. And I've had that happen a few times. I had a TedX talk on cold shower therapy. It's the worst shot TedX talk of all time. I mean, it's got like one point. It looks like it's shot on a potato. It's terrible.

I didn't know you had it. I gotta check it out.

Yeah, yeah. And it was like before, like this whole WIM HOF thing in our episode. So now people are, like, watching it and they're like, oh, this is a WIM hof. I'm like, it's kind of before he was the thing.

Yeah.

But it's got like 1.3 million views on it or something like that. And I've had, you know, a couple different blog posts, both on, you know, you know, specific physical challenges that I've done, but also, like, I had one blog post where I ran into a guy in a coffee shop in Portland and had this conversation with him. And I just wrote about it because I thought it was super impactful. And it, like, blew up. It got like a couple million hits in like, a couple days. Was featured on, like, Oprah and like, a bunch. Like, it was. It was this crazy thing. But, like, I could have put that. I couldn't plot that into a growth chart somewhere, you know? Like, it's just like, I published that blog post because it was a Thursday, and I had Thursday as a published schedule. And I was like, I've got this story. It's not really that good. I guess I'll put it out there. Put it out there? Yeah. And it blew up. And so.

From a strategic standpoint, that's what kind of how I view a lot of this stuff. It's like, like you can engineer.

Compound growth at a pretty impressive rate. And if you actually look at that over the long term.

It'S combine growth, you know, Incredible. Yeah, but you, you're. You're basically what you're trying to do is increase your luck service area. So when Those moments hit or, you know, you get opportunities for them, they kind of take you to a next level, and then you continue the compound growth at that next level. And so.

That'S great advice, man. Yeah. Because that's exactly what we say about podcasting. I mean, just like we've had podcasts in the past, they all failed because of lack of consistency in systems, but it's like this one, it's like four years old, never missed a beat. And we know that's the promise to ourselves and our listeners, that we're going to keep that thing up. And you're right. You never know when that byproduct, someone just catches wind of that guest or that topic, whatever you got. And then, yeah, Oprah picks it up. That's the extreme. But you never know. You just got to put it out there.

I think what you said there, the promise to yourself, I think this is actually. It's consistency for your own stuff. But this is the reason why we talk about physical challenges or doing hard stuff, is most people don't actually do the things they say they want to do because they can't trust themselves. They don't have the ability. They've broken their own promises to themselves so many times that they said, oh, I'm going to do this. And then they're like, you know, I'm going to work out three times this week. And they go out, you know, one time and they're like, you know, it's okay. I tried really hard. It's like you're breaking down, you know, breaking down trust with yourself that, like, the things that you. That you can do, the things that you say you're going to do. And so I think, you know, what you just said right there of, like.

You made a system, but more importantly, you just said, like, we're going to do this no matter what. Right. And there's probably a bunch of. I don't know what your published date is, but, like, there's probably a. You know, that day of the week comes around, and you're like, I don't know if we really want to do this one or not. And just, like, do this.

We got a muscle now.

We're going to do it.

Yeah, no, you're right, man. That's exactly how it is.

I mean, we've literally had days, I think, with this podcast where we're like, we need an episode for tomorrow. Let's record it.

Let's go.

And I'm sure one of you guys, like, I don't know if we should. And the other one's like, like, get your butt in here. We're doing it at this point both ways each time.

Four years in now, it's just automatic. But, yeah, you're right before it. It's systems, man. Systems are the lifeblood to keep our consistency up. And, you know, you have your own systems now and probably too late in the episode to really dig into all that stuff, but, dude, anything that you.

Well, there was one topic that we were talking about before we hit record that I know you wanted to chat about, which was like, sort of managing energy.

Oh, I saw a post of something you. You put on Facebook, I think, a while back, but it was about, just take a look at what you're doing and like, if there are three to five things you're doing that just feels like they're just sopping, taking all your energy, making you feel stressed or whatever, just figure out how to identify those and lean into the things that might be hard work, but give you that energy. It's just kind of. You post this, it's in reference to impossible in your brand and similar to what you're talking about, but maybe if you could speak into that and how you approach life like that.

Yeah, I feel like the energy thing is, like, there's a.

Everybody's scared of, like, hard stuff because they think it's really hard and they're like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to be able to, like, get myself, like, to get up and like, go after it. Right. But the bigger issue is not necessarily. I was actually talking to one of the guys that runs my meal planning business, and I was talking to him about this and I'm like.

I.

If you look at, like, momentum and energy and how this plays out, like, I want him to be. I don't want him to have easy stuff, but I want him to have stuff on his plate that's like, if it's accomplished, it's meaningful. Because if he has a really big challenge and it's a pain in the ass and it's like it's pulling his hair out and he's going crazy. He's doing this right now with, like, email deliverability. It's driving him crazy. But, like, if he nails that, like, it's like he just absorbed all the energy of that challenge and it's like going to empower him to go do the next thing. Like, if he finishes that thing and he. He nails it and I think he's gonna.

He's gone. Like, it was a big, you know, Energy drain. Yeah, but like the amount of refueling that he's going to get from that accomplishment is like off the charts. And I feel like a lot of people, they don't actually go after meaningful, difficult things and so they settle for like these easy, simple stuff. Like, you know, a classic example is like, oh, I got the inbox zero today. That was really cool. I did all my emails. But like, does it even matter? And then you feel like, you know, I felt like this a lot. Like I'm busy all the time, I'm doing all these things. But like, I'm not actually.

I'm not actually feeling energized about any of it. So.

I should go back and take a look at the post. But what I think you're talking about is basically this concept of like.

One, if you have energy draining activities, get rid of them. I noticed this. For me, I hate phone calls before noon. I will be terrible on these phone calls. And so I was always trying to just make it work and suck it up and be what? And then I just said like, I guess I'm just taking phone calls afternoon. Like that's the deal. And then I started doing that. And like, I'm better on the phone calls. I show up to every single one. Like I would just miss other phone calls sometimes because it's like, I don't have to. It's a terrible attitude.

No, but it's subconsciously something eating at you and that's how it shows up. Normal.

Yeah. And so, and so I would just not do these things. And so I just got rid of those types of things. And like a lot of meetings, a lot of meetings you don't have to have. And I would just get like, I'd find I'd be in these things, I'd be mad about them, I'd be annoyed, and I'd be like, bummed come out. And I just like, you just don't have to do that. And there's a, you know, a lot of back and forth on, you know, how much people can get away with that. But like, you probably don't have to do all the things that like are physically draining you all the time. And so that's the first piece. And the second piece is like, instead of just doing like all these medium to small activities all the time, like pick out big things that you would actually care about. And if you care about those and they're interesting to you and they matter.

They'Re gonna, they're gonna refuel you with way more energy than just like, hey, I did Another day. I got Knock Zero and Groundhog Day. Yeah, it's like, it's there. There's. There's. There's way more energy to be had in other things. And so. So that's. Honestly, that's a lot of what I've been doing the last two years is restructuring things so I'm not just busy all the time. Not just doing a whole bunch of stuff, which I'm really good at. I'm good at doing a bunch of stuff, but I'm doing the stuff that I need to be doing. I'm doing the stuff that is honestly not always really, really fun, but I'm always, always very happy to have done it. And so looking at it from kind of that reverse perspective of like, you know, if you finish this task, are you going to be happy about it? Email? Probably. Probably you won't even notice, but, like, if I launch a new product by the end of the quarter, that's like a different trajectory for the business. So, like, yeah, I care about that a lot.

So that's maybe the angle that you're talking about 100%.

And it sounds like the stuff that drains you is the exact same stuff that drains me. Like, I tell Joe all the time, like, I don't want to do calls before noon.

Sure, yeah. I mean, we're all operating differently, so might as well identify what you feel in that, you know, before, during, after. And like, really, like you said, the Inbox zero thing is a perfect example. It's like, these are all people emailing you with their agendas. Typically, it's like, wait, let's prioritize these. Let's not just go down from top to bottom or bottom to top, whatever the hell you want to attack it and do it right for you.

Well, with the email or with the. With the calls before noon thing, it's like, I was so mad about this. Cause it was like taking over my life. And every single time it came up, I was like, oh, do I want to do it now? Now? Like, I kind of. You know, at first I made like, a hard rule, and now it just is like, it just doesn't happen anymore. But I made the hard rule, like, I don't take calls before noon. And now I'm able to do availability stuff with woven, which is one of the reasons I like the app. But basically able to make this so I could send custom availabilities to people. But, like, never. Like, no one's ever getting on my schedule before noon. Unless it's like my grandma like, you know, she's like, that's the only way people are getting on it. And then once I made that rule, that whole stress, like, I never like, if someone's like, hey, can you do 8am tomorrow? Like, nope, no, like, the decision's already been made. I have a system for it. It's already operating. And then like, you know, it's just kind of like a janitorial system for my stress. It's like, that's one.

It's just one less thing, man. Let the systems handle it. You don't need to keep that low level stress. Love it. We killed the interview, man. There's a lot of good stuff. I was pumped up on this.

There's so many plays, I don't even know what you want to shout out. But obviously Impossible, your brand. How can people find you, follow you and check out all your stuff?

Yeah, so you can check out me@imossiblehq or impossiblehq.com Impossible HQ on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I'm Oel Runyon on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. We're doing a lot of stuff on YouTube lately, so pushing there. And if you want to check out the other, you know, I can give you, you know, just a list of links of the other businesses and companies I advise. But my meal planning business is called ultimatemealplans.com. i have a mobility app called movewellapp.com.

Brad, I forgot about that one. Yeah, I used that for a little while.

So we got a bunch of stuff. Woven.com is the calendar and then drink element, which I'll send you guys a bunch. But it's a really good hydration drink mix and you check that out and.

We'Ll link all up. Yep.

Touche or jinx. Can't talk for the rest of this podcast. All right, Joe. Thank you, brother. Happy we made this work.

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it.

That episode was impossible.

Impossible. Well, we did the impossible. We did it. Actually.

It wasn't impossible. It was normal day to day operations for us.

But we make it look like it should be impossible. Actually, no, that it should be possible, but it's impossible for many.

I don't know. I don't know.

A lot of folks struggle with getting their podcast out there, man. It's true. You can't take for granted what we just pulled off. We pulled off the impossible in the eyes of many.

Well, when you consider it, folks, we.

Could help you out with that if needed.

When you consider that our very first podcast, the online Income podcast, back in 2010, made it three episodes.

Is that all it was?

We made it three episodes.

Yep. I mean, so we had four. Well, you had one more. Two others than that I did not have.

Yeah, well, so you and I, we collectively, we had the Online Income podcast, but we also had the Evergreen Wisdom podcast. That one, I think, made it about 13 episodes.

Yeah, that was like a mindset Y type thing. And. Yeah.

And then in between those two podcasts, I did the Business and Blogs. Podcast Business and Blogs, which is me interviewing people. That one, I think, made it to maybe four 15ish episodes.

And then you had beyond the Hype.

I had beyond the Hype with Josh. That one made it 13 or 14 episodes.

I see a trend.

And then I had Authority Insider, where Authority Insider made it about 60 episodes. And then there wasn't really a break. You and I just started doing Hustle and Flowchart instead.

Yeah, we were like, hey, this sounds more fun if there's two of us.

That's why if you ever go to the evergreen profits.com site where the Hustle and Flowchart podcast lives, if you scroll down far enough, all the old Authority Insider interviews are there as well.

Because that's scrolling a while.

This is kind of like the continuation of that podcast, just with two hosts instead of one.

Ironically, I would say it's kind of similar themes. I mean, it's probably become more similar themes lately. Yeah. To the original show. But you know what, Joel? So this guy. Yeah, you heard the story. Yeah, we knew. He's just fascinating. He's always been like. We haven't honestly chatted with him much in the last, like, year and a half to whatever it's been.

To be totally honest, I don't actually remember how the connection happened. I remember we were out at Perry Marshall's event out in Nature, Naperville, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago, essentially. And we went to. We met some guys at the event we were at. We're like, hey, let's all go to dinner.

Costanza was there.

Brad. Brad Costanza was there.

He's the ultimate connector. Who knew Joel before?

So Brad already knew Joel.

Okay.

Because Joel met us at dinner, but he wasn't at Perry's event. So we.

But a lot of people knew Joel, and we're like. And everybody was like, who's this? And we're like, who the hell is this Joel guy? Everyone's like, keeps pointing to Joel like, you know, they're walking by table and stuff. Yeah.

There was people eating dinner at this restaurant going, I know this guy. I Know, like, people were coming up and shaking his hand. We're like, this guy must be, like, famous or something.

We're just having a steak, and we're like, what's up? Yeah.

And so, like. But we sat. We ended up at a table. Like, remember, there was, like. At this steakhouse, there was one room that had, like, 30 people in it, but the room was full.

We were supposed to sit in.

We were supposed to be sitting in that room. That room was full. So then me, you, Brad, and Joel. And there was one other guy that. I can't remember his name. And unfortunately, there was five of us at this table because we. There wasn't enough room in that bigger room for us to go into. And so we ended up sitting around at this table for, like, two hours. I think it was the Capital Grill.

And shut down the place. We were the last. They had to kick us out.

Yeah.

They basically had to kiss out. And. And, like, Joel just, like, owned the table. Like, we were all just so fascinated with his business and the things that he had done and the seven ultra marathons and the, like, the. All this crazy stuff that he's done with his life. And we were like. Like, we were just picking his brain for hours and hours and hours, and he just, like. We just loved the conversation. When he was still in San Diego, we tried to get him on the show in San Diego. There was a bunch of scheduling conflicts. We never actually managed to get him on the show. And here we are two years later, finally interviewing him on the show.

Meant to be. Yeah. And, like, honestly, we didn't skip a beat. He's exactly how I remember him. And. And it's interesting because about. Whatever that time was when we met with him, he was in the thick of his lifestyle adventure with business and all that, but now he's gotten more structured, which is cool. And I love to hear both sides of that. I think that's super fascinating, because that's.

What I think I was most intrigued by when we were sitting around at dinner with him that night was he was talking about all of his travels, and he was like, yeah, I'm kind of in a different city all the time, and I do these ultramarathons, and I skydive, and I do this and I do that, and I run impossible. And I. I'm just kind of, like, all over the place all the time, constantly traveling. He was very, like, nomadic life, and we're like, well, how are you making the money to do this? And he's like, I got this business it's running itself. And I got this business, and it's kind of over here doing its thing, and I just put good people in place, and all this stuff just kind of runs itself, and I just collect the money and live my lifestyle. And we were just like, this guy's got it figured out.

Yeah. I mean, it's his priorities, right? Yeah. Like, those were his priorities at the time. He caused or not caused, but he grew. You know, he gave back in big ways, like, he said. Built seven schools on the back of these. Seven.

What were they?

They were ultramarathons.

Seven. Seven ultras on seven continents. He's ran an ultramarathon on Antarctica.

Yep. With the penguins. Yeah, the penguins were yelling at him, like, don't quit, or else we're gonna get.

They were trying to hand him water, but they were just giving him cups of ice.

This does not help. Yeah, but, like, that stuff. But Andy think now, like, he's. And I love his perspective of do hard stuff, but the stuff that's gonna make you feel like if it's fulfilling and solving a big thing, like, there's just so much you're gonna consume in that process. And it is a fulfilling thing. Like, be it physical or mental, like it's an accomplishment, like launching something or doing a marathon. Like, I remember when I did my first half and then a full freaking trail marathon. I didn't think I'd do it. And then I did. I was like, shit, I can keep running.

Yeah.

Like, okay. And then. Yeah, you can translate that to other pieces. It's true.

Yeah. No, I mean, he's a fascinating guy, and I'm so glad we got to finally get him on the show and chat with him about all this stuff.

Stuff.

Like, the other thing I wanted to talk about on the episode, but I don't even know, like, how. Like, what line of questioning to start. But, like, I kind of wanted to get in with it, into it with him. About, like, how does someone go and, like, run an ultra marathon? Like, knowing this is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done, and it's going to suck, and I'm going to hate it the entire time. Like, how do I convince myself to just go do that? I don't even know what line of questioning to go down for that. But it's like, what he's done, this impossible stuff. Like, how do you sort of transform your. Transform your brain into going like, okay, that's going to be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Fuck it. Let's go. Like, how do you. I don't even know how to start, like asking questions or how, like how do you get to that mindset? It's got to be like sort of a stepping stone approach where you're doing something that you didn't think was possible. You did that, you're like, oh, what's something a little bit harder than that? But I don't know, like a couple.

I have a couple thoughts. And yeah, we don't know. But remember when Steven Kotler was talking about when you're pushing yourself, it's like, push yourself just far enough to grow, but not too far, where you're going to have to recreate your life and your thinking. So it's like. So maybe. Yeah, there's probably an element of that. And then when he was describing reaching out to Perry and going to Hawaii, he had a two day thing, I don't know much money. It didn't sound like he had a lot of money at the time either. So he probably. That was a challenge. But at the same time, that was the domino. So if we think about Jeff woods and the one thing that we had on he found the domino that would basically knock all the future dominoes down. So he just reached out to Perry. He didn't have anything to lose there. Probably didn't even think he would get a reply in time. And then here's Perry saying, okay, cool, yeah, if you could be here on Friday, you're in and you're in around all these people. Which, yeah, it's probably scary as hell, but it's like, you know what? All you got to do is just hop on that plane. You already sent the message and the dude said, yes.

Just hop on the plane and see what happens. I mean, really, that's the domino, if you think about it. In that scenario, it was good. And then it was good.

A big portion of this conversation that you and I both really enjoyed was talking about how he gets involved in these sort of rev share equity deals, how he gets these deals flowing to us. I even sort of mentioned on the call that that's kind of what our business is now. We're building a platform in the form of this podcast and our YouTube channel, HustleandFlowchart TV. Between our podcast, our YouTube channel, we're trying to build this platform and then this platform lends itself to less sort of tangible, like potential monetization strategies. Right. It lends itself murky, but it, yeah, it's very systematic. Like everything we're doing there was a Clear vision four years ago. And we've actually seen the vision through. Like, Joe and I, we have conversations all the time about like, holy crap. Looking back four years ago, this is what we mapped out, and this is actually what we did.

Shoot even further, man. I remember when we lived just north of San Diego, a place called Marietta, Temecula and Murrieta. You and I shared an office and, you know, we said we wanted to buy the San Diego Chargers at the time. Get out of here. Dead to me. And now they're rooting for the Dodgers. Now you're more dead to me.

Sorry, Dodgers fans, but we're Padre fans.

I'm not sorry as we're both in Padre hats.

I'm sorry if you have to stop listening. As a result, I just hope the.

Padres have won past the series that's about to start today at the time of this recording. But. But the point being, oh, yeah, we were up there and we were talking about this, how we wanted to buy that team. Not because we want to run a football company. It's because we. That was just like. It's like a Gary Vaynerchuk moment. It's a Ryan Moran moment with the Indians.

Yeah, it was at North Star. It was something where, like, if we had this giant goal out in front of us that we never really thought was, like, actually attainable, but, like, it was an impossible goal to ever possibly hit, you know, but think about it. Sort of steer the direction of everything.

Preceding it and the business model. Back then we said. And we didn't know how the hell we get there or what we would do to get there, because we were messing around with crypto and stuff at the time. I remember we had the ticker of bitcoin when it was like $5. And we're like, now we're kicking ourselves. Expensive $5. Can't afford that for. It wasn't actually 5.

I think it was like 200 or something.

But, like, it's still stupid money.

Yeah.

But I just remember the business we wanted to create back then was not, I have a service. I sell service.

It wasn't courses either.

Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a direct sale. Where we are the ones creating. We're marketing and fulfilling. Like, we never wanted to do that. Even though that's something we kind of fell into. I mean, you got to think it's like, through osmosis of the community we're around. A lot of them are minded that way. But now think about how we've. I mean, we've literally have created this business that we wanted to create. Then we had, like, a murky vision. We knew, like, money would come from somewhere, from investments and things, probably small, large, short, long term, you know, and then now think of the folks we're. I mean, we mentioned so many names on here, like Roland Frazier, Joel. Joel. Joel, yeah, Joel. Actually, Joel thinks like that, you know, and I didn't know that, actually. Jay Abraham Schramko, J.M. schramko, Brad Costanza. I mean, like, that's what. It's just an upgrade in thinking, or at least a different way of thinking. Yeah.

And it's essentially like kind of an extension of the affiliate marketing stuff we do. Instead of getting, like a percentage of the sales we make, we try to now work deals where we get a percentage of the whole pie.

I just still remember this thing, like Roland said. I think it was just like a random meeting for unicorn Equity, you know, and. And he's like, the problem is with marketers is people. The marketers think like marketers. They're not thinking like a business, like a bigger business thinker and how things work in that level. And I think just combining those two superpowers and probably more that I don't know about yet, are absolutely fascinated. Exactly what he's doing.

Yep, exactly. And we wanted to mention it again. I think we've mentioned it in some past episodes and stuff, but if you've got a business, a SaaS company, like a cool idea, like, you know, he does, like, meal plans and, you know, E commerce, he's doing all sorts of stuff. We're kind of looking to have like, a portfolio ourselves of companies that we're working with. Yeah, yeah, we are. I mean, we've started building a portfolio. We've got a portfolio of companies that we work very, very closely with. We're looking to add to that portfolio. So if you've got some, like, real innovative companies that you're listening to this going, you know, leveraging Matt and Joe's platform might be a beneficial thing. You know, reach out.

Yeah, no, it's. Those are the conversations we love. And if there's something there, cool. If not, we'll point you in another direction. Exactly. So, yeah, lots of good stuff.

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How do you spell easy?

I was drinking Yerba Mate during this and a little piece of leaf snuck through. So Easy Webinar is our go to tool. But it's also a ton of folks that listen, they have written and told us, getting started with webinars. This is the tool They've used. And also just like for pros.

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It is. And, and it does webinars and you can do any type of webinar. Yeah. Easily automated.

Automated live hybrid where it looks like it's live, but it's a video recording.

I believe they. I know they. I think that they have like a. Yeah, like a built in live basically thing that is like almost Zoom, like in a way.

So you could replace Zoom with this if you wanted.

You actually could, like, maybe if you don't want to deal with Zoom's craziness these days, which we do on our podcast days often. And I hope, yeah, this might be a better solution even on that front. So we got a deal for you.

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Up to 25% off depending on the plan. Go get it. We're hooking you up. Easywebinar.com hustle and hey, you know, go share the show around with your friends, with your business peeps that you think would enjoy. Joel, we would love that and appreciate it. We love you. See you next time.

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, 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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