Josh Bartlett — How To Build A Solid Team And Create Rabid Fans

Boom, boom, Boom.

Boom, boom, boom.

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

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, presented by evergreenprofits.com.

Good job, Matt. Thank you.

So today we've got somebody that's actually been quite a long time coming.

We only had to wrangle him, fly to New Zealand, capture him in a net, drag him back to San Diego. No, we didn't do that.

Actually, I was going to say metaphorically.

Yes, I was just going to add.

Metaphorically to the end of that, and then it would have been all true, I guess. No, this is. Today we've got Josh Bartlett on the call. He's someone that I used to be business partners with. I actually used to host a podcast with him for a short amount of time.

He was my very first client.

He was Joe's very first client. And he actually. This is actually stuff we didn't talk about on the episode, but he. He also was the person who told me I should start the WordPress classroom, which was my first ever online business that wasn't a blog. So we have a lot of history with this person, and this is the first time we've actually gotten him on a podcast to interview him.

The ongoing joke is just like, he's like our closest marketing buddy who isn't close at all. He's in New Zealand. But he's also been the most difficult to get on the show. But we laugh about it, and we finally got him, so we're a little proud of ourselves. Pat. Pat on the back.

Yeah.

But, yeah, no, in this episode, and here's the thing with Josh and us, the three of us, when he goes together, like, we talk for three plus hours, and it's like, all right, we're having a call. We're not going to schedule anything the rest of the day. But it's a good thing. It's not only fun, but it's extremely productive because Josh is brilliant. He's got a load of experience in different facets than we do. So we see him as a mentor, and he is one to us and many others. But, like, this is. This is going to be the first of many episodes, I believe. Yeah, we're just warming them up.

We're just.

We're just, you know, we're just getting them warmed up to this whole podcasting thing. He doesn't get out much.

And if you're not familiar with Josh Bartlett, Josh Bartlett was the brain behind Easy Video Player, Easy Video Suite, Adelo, and his latest product, which you've probably heard about from us a few times, ThriveCart.

Right.

So ThriveCart is one of the products that we're a big affiliate of and we cannot say enough about it. We love it. And we finally got Josh on a chat to talk about his business philosophies, his mindset, how he managed to build a team, you know, why he went into software, and, you know, it's a very wide ranging conversation about, you know, what makes Josh tick. And we had a lot of fun doing it and hopefully you have a lot of fun listening to it.

So let's do this.

What is up? Josh, thanks so much for joining us.

Hey guys, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here, dude.

It's funny because we've known you for how long now? I think like since 2009.

A thousand years, roughly. Something like that.

Something like that feels like it.

In a good way. In a good way.

And yet we've never had you on this podcast. We're like 60, 70 something episodes in and we finally got you.

I've been trying my best to avoid it. You finally caught me, found me, hunted me down, tied me down.

We really did.

And now I'm here. So I know it's one of those things that we talk about all the time and yeah, we finally got to make it happen. So it's awesome.

But yeah, so the way we tend to have conversations, this is going to end up being probably a multi part podcast. We're going to talk about some specific topics on this episode and then we'll probably do a follow up episode where we're going to focus specifically on ThriveCart and some of the tools you're building and that kind of stuff. But that'll be for a second episode on this one. We actually kind of want to talk a little bit more about your story and how you got into marketing and some of the mindset flow philosophy stuff. Because, you know, Joe and I, we both consider you sort of one of our mentors. You were one of the first people we met when we got into the marketing world back in the day. And you've definitely helped us overcome some mindset and philosophy sort of, you know, roadblocks that we've run into. So we think that'd be like a real great discussion for our audience to hear because that's something that has been one of our biggest benefits of knowing you is you've helped us get over a Lot of those roadblocks.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And absolutely, I think mindset's like the most important thing for me personally, because I think, of course, you need to have step by step actionable steps that you can take to achieve your goals. You need to know what you need to do. You need to know strategies and techniques. You need to stay up to date with the industry. But I think a lot of the time that marketers especially can overcomplicate things. One, because we kind of feel like we want to because we're kind of in that arena and we're always analyzing stuff. But then two, because especially if you're just starting out, everybody around you is trying to sell something. And so to sell something, they have to establish that need. So they're constantly saying, look, everything's changed now. This is a new way of doing it. So you need to learn this new way of doing this thing. And I'm going to teach you specifically. And you could just go round and roundabout over and over again if you're not careful. And I think the. The mindset thing is what draws you back, makes you believe you can do it, and informs everything you do and is really. If I have to look at any success that I've had or my business has had over the years, it's always down to the mindset is the key thing.

Agree. Totally.

And that's. It's kind of funny because, yeah, this call is probably going to be tough for all three of us because typically when we hop on a call, it's like three hours long.

And it's great.

It's not like it's dead time. It's like we're just like the whole time. So this one. Yeah, this is going to be interesting.

We all growl at each other playing in the background.

But no, I mean, because over the years we know so much about your background. We'll get into that in a second here. But really what carries through is mindset. That's for all of us. And, you know, I feel like that's how we, the three of us kind of started or at least the two of us will hear about, you know, your story. But that's always been kind of my thing. I love the mindset Y type stuff. I forgot about it for a little bit while we were doing tactical type things, but now, almost again, it's like the core focus of what Matt and I really put our time into. And it's changing just so many things for the better.

Yeah. So let's go ahead and actually Start off by getting a bit of your story and let's talk about before you were your own business, before you were an entrepreneur and you started your own stuff. What were you doing and how did you transition into becoming an entrepreneur? Because you, you know, you've told this story to us a few times and I always love the story of the transition and why you transitioned and all that stuff. So let's go ahead and start there.

Yeah, so it's a long time ago now, but I used to work in a bank in the uk. I live in New Zealand now. But I was obviously born in the United Kingdom. And for me, it's always been really a big part of who I am as a person is trying to be as moralistic as I can and treat people the right way. And I'm not quite sure where that comes from, but maybe just through growing up, that was sort of instilled in me, but it was something that was really important and kind of core to me. And I think for a lot of people it is.

And so I have a background in sales and a background in sort of marketing and sort of business stuff. And I was working in a bank and.

I essentially dealt with people who had loans. And we all know that nowadays, we know about what happened with the entire, you know, around the world and the banking industry and the atrocities that happened and the terrible things that happened to people where they lost their life savings and lost their homes and people were being given loans that they shouldn't have been given. This was all before that and it was still very much going on. And to begin with, I loved the job and a lot of it was selling finance and then there was the part of managing people as well. And.

I always remember that I've always wanted to work for myself and I've always wanted to have my own business and I've always wanted to do something and I didn't know what I was going to do. And so literally at that point, I was selling things on ebay and in my lunch breaks I would go around and walk around the local stores to find things to sell that I could then put on ebay and try and make a bit of profit on and then take them to the post office in my lunch break and package them up and send them out to people. And I was just making a little bit of money and finding my feet online and studying marketing.

And.

While I was doing that, the people that found out that I worked with were always very negative about it. They were always very much like, you're crazy. If you think you can make money online, it's just a crazy thing. And.

I always knew though, that it was something that I wanted to do. And my. One of the big reasons is when I was working for many different companies, you often find that the people who own the company or the people at the top of the company, they don't have their customers best interests at heart. And I always find it hard to. I can sell anything to anybody if I believe in the thing. And I always think that that's the same for anybody when they get the sales skills by researching it and studying it. But if you don't believe in it, you shouldn't be selling it. And I had that real problem. And the thing that really stopped me believing in the company I was working for, the bank that I was working for, was I started to see things that were really unethical behind the scenes. I started to see things like people wanting to cancel their loans, but that would have affected people's bonuses. So they, quote, unquote, lost the letter. I'd always questioned that. And that got me into trouble with management. It's kind of unspoken rule, don't question these things. It's a delayed thing. And, you know, I absolutely hated that. And I got to the point where I was getting really, really stressed out because I felt trapped. I needed to get out. I didn't want to be a part of it. I wanted to help the customers, not screw them over. And I realized the kind of company I was in and I didn't, you know, I had bills to pay and I wanted to leave that environment. But the day that was the pivotal turning point for me, I. We had a guy come in and he had his family sat out in the foyer at the front of the bank. And he came into my office and he was an Indian guy and they hadn't been in the UK for that long. And it was a Monday. And on the Friday, he come in and signed up finance for him and his family. And it was quite a lot of it was a big loan. And he came in and he had almost had tears in his eyes. And he said to me, I feel like I've ruined my family's future. I've read through this agreement and I've worked out when I've got home over the weekend that the APR and the interest on this loan means I'm going to be paying this off forever. And I feel like I've made a huge mistake and I need to cancel it. And so I looked through what had been given him and he had been given something that effectively was taking advantage of this person's inability to at the time, properly understand what he was being sold.

And I thought it was terrible. So I tried to help him. I went through the system to look at what we could do and I. Obviously, there's no question in my mind, right, we're just going to cancel this for you. You don't want it. It isn't the right product for you. It is way too expensive. Someone's been taking advantage of you. So I went and spoke to the higher ups, I went upstairs and left in my office and spoke to the higher ups and they told me, look, if this is cancelled, it will affect our bonuses. Whatever you do, do not cancel it. Tell him that because he signed on trade premises, he cannot cancel. He doesn't have the right to cancel. He won't know until he disputes that that that isn't technically accurate and there are ways for him to cancel, but it gives us enough time to get our bonus. That's effectively what was told to me. Not in so many words. And in not so many words, they basically told me, look, if you don't do that, then you're going to be in trouble. So I went down and. And his family was sat on the phone. I had to pass him as I went into my office and I looked over and I saw them all kind of looking worried and obviously they knew he was upset. And I went in and I went on the system and I canceled his loan and sent him on his way. And obviously after that I had a huge target on my back. And I thought, this is just ridiculous. And part of me not just walking out immediately when I saw that kind of thing happen is I was maybe naively thinking I could make it better. But I realized that there was just no way that I was going to be able to influence these people in the right way. And my boss came in screaming at me and said to me, you think you can do what you want? You know there's absolutely no way you're ever going to make money online, don't you? Because I think they thought that I knew I had other options so therefore could do what I want. So I just said, you know what? I quit. And I walked out. And I walked out, stood on the pavement outside and went, how am I going to pay my bills? And that was the first time I actually thought about what I was doing. But that was the last day that I ever worked for anybody else. And that kind of memory always stuck with me as, look, I Just want to run a business that's entirely the opposite of that. If someone doesn't want me to have their money, I don't want it. I have to earn it. We have to do everything we can to look after our customers. And it's one of those horror stories that you often hear.

I think it was the last day I worked for somebody else and it kind of inspired the way I run my business today.

I remember that story being told a few times to us, but it's good every time because there's so many things there. And I'm curious, how long was it until you actually were moving along with your next project or feeling like you had an idea of what you were going to do next?

We're talking about this mindset stuff, you know, there's nothing to get you moving forward like having a fire lit under you. And that safety net that we all operate under of I'll do that tomorrow, or that kind of internal speak that we have often sabotages ourself. And it often comes from a place of fear, of facing what we're actually doing in front of us. And so we, we find a reason, which sounds justifiable to ourselves, to sell ourselves on the fact that, hey, I'll put this off. And there's always a part of that working inside all of us. I think we all have fears, we all have concerns. And that fear of facing what we're trying to achieve can sometimes be overwhelming. But when you literally have no other choice, you have to face it. And so surprisingly enough, as I then was forced to focus on it constantly, full time, no other option.

I worked my ass off. I focused on. On facing those fears and actually ramps up really quickly. I just started off on ebay, started selling more and more product, contacted companies that I thought I could sell their product. I looked effectively at stuff I wanted, things that I thought were cool, and then I contacted people who supplied them. And I found out pretty quickly that there's a lot of stuff where people will order it. Maybe stores will order product, but they'll order too much. So they send the stock back. But the box might have been opened or the box might have had loads of labels on it or it's been ripped. So the product is perfect, but obviously the packaging isn't. And so they then sell that as or they did back then at a slight discount to people who want to then on sell it. So I was buying that stock and then reselling it on ebay and letting my customers get the discount. And I was making my Profit margins quite low so that I could offer an amazing offer that was a no brainer to my customers and that that built up. And from there the rest is history. And there's many stories along the way. But the real thing was that I knew that this was now the thing I had to do. And it was scary because daily I thought maybe I should go and try and find another job. Maybe just do that. And that internal speech happens where you go, if I get another job now, it'll be a safety net. And I'm not suggesting that the best thing to do is walk out of your job and forget about how you're going to pay your bills and just jump in the deep end. I'm not saying that works for everybody, but for me it certainly made me face the fears, all the things that were stopping me and push forward.

Yeah, because that's similar to my story is we won't go into it, but basically I quit my job at a point where I did not have enough money saved up either. So definitely that Back against the Wall made all the difference. And even quite recently in EGP Evergreen profits, when we literally just shut off our newsletter, that was tens of thousands of dollars of recurring revenue. We're like, shit, now we got to make up for that thing. Back against the wall again. And then we made big moves fast.

Yeah, I always think you instinctively know the we know the right move if we think about it enough. And you guys knew this is the model we wanted to chase and this is what we should be doing and it made sense. And so sometimes you just have to go for it.

Yeah, definitely. So you were doing the E commerce stuff.

How did you transition into software? Because I think most people listening know you as, you know, the software guy behind Easy Video Player, Easy video suite, ThriveCart, Adelo, all that stuff. How did you transition from E Commerce into software?

So really it came about for me wanting to solve my own problems and I think that's the best possible thing because we all have problems when we're running businesses. We all have our own challenges and problems and we know them better than anybody because we live with them every single day. And by solving your own problems, first of all, your problems are not unique. There are many people out there in the same situation as you that also are experiencing those problems on a daily basis. And so if you get to work out how to solve that problem, you can then go and solve it for other people too. And you have a product. And for us, we grew up, we became a big business with Office space and a warehouse and you know, all that, that stuff. And we had someone who was sat there every single day going through the system and looking at orders and downloading the information and then manually entering that information into the courier's website and one at a time, name, then address, going through every single field and then printing each label out and then repeat, repeat. And it would take about three hours a day, maybe more. And so I thought surely there's got to be a better way than this, right? Surely we should be able to download a spreadsheet of all of our orders and then upload that spreadsheet to the courier companies software and then press a button that prints everything out. That seems like something that they sort of should do really. And so I spoke to them and we talked about a way of making it work. We did a little tweak to what to their system to allow a spreadsheet. And we made a little piece of software that tied into it and it was really simple and I outsourced it. I had no idea how to code or anything else like that. We found somebody who was a coder and we wrote this little piece of software that effectively was the link between our system and their system to send that information across in the right format as a spreadsheet, as an Excel spreadsheet and a CSV file. We did that. And immediately that person's job that was taking three or four hours ended up taking a minute. You just download the thing, upload the thing, press a button, it prints everything out and I could then use that person for three hours or four hours in my business elsewhere doing other things rather than manually inputting that stuff. And I thought wow, this is awesome because this software just automated that whole thing, made it easier on my business, made it quicker for me and I'm now more efficient. And software is like a magic thing that does that. And I think the key for any software is to save people time and enable and help them to make more money. Those are like the key things that we always think about with our products. Solve problems and then do those two things. And that was the first piece of software that I made and from then I was hooked.

It is really addicting because I mean Matt and I, we haven't really made any software but we dabble with scripts like little automation things that we use just in Google for instance, to automate whatever it might be analytics in our business, pulling data in. But it's super cool because exactly what you said, it's always saving us time, either ourselves or A team member and it's definitely making us more money because we're knowing our numbers or automating something.

But yeah, you just took it and actually created a business out of it. And now, I mean how many pieces of software or different businesses have you created from these software products?

Literally, we probably lost count. But I mean obviously the big ones in the kind of marketing sort of industry and what I mean by that is products that we have made for people who are entrepreneurs, small business owners, marketers, info product sellers and that kind of, that kind of person.

We'Ve made the key ones would be Easy Video Player and we've made the follow ups to that and Easy Video Suite. And like Matt, you said earlier on Ordello, thrivecart and they're really all products that were born from problems that we have had in the business. Again, I think a big problem is to try and think of a product that's going to make you money. And so many people do that. They think I've got to come up with this idea that will make me money. And it's just the wrong way to think. It's the wrong mindset to approach it with because you're focusing on money first. What you need to be looking at is how can I solve a problem? How can I add value and improve my situation? And I'm a big believer in doing it first with you because.

I'm very good at solving problems in the areas that I'm experienced in because I'm experienced in them. But I'm not very good at solving problems in areas I'm not experienced in. It sounds obvious but so many people go, oh, you know, this area is hot right now or this niche is a great niche getting lots of traction. I'm going to jump in and focus on that. Well, if it's not something that you've lived and breathed, then you're probably not going to do a great job at it. And so in my business, for example, the reason ThriveCart came about is we used to use a different platform called clickbank and put everything that we did or most of what we did through there. Back in the day, ClickBank had a terrible name, but they had a bunch of people that came in that really tried to clean it up that were saying the right stuff. I was in contact with, we were talking about doing webinars and me going, speaking for them in New York and really kind of trying to raise the brand, do things right, get rid of fraud, get rid of scams and just clean it up. And of Course, we used it to process sales and run our affiliate campaign and all of that kind of thing. And it got to the point where it got sold, new people came in, and I have no idea what it's like now, by the way, but at the time where it was a problem for us, we had huge amounts of fraud. And they really weren't, as far as I was aware, doing the right things with security on their carts. When I was speaking to our account managers, they didn't seem to care. Nothing was really happening quickly enough. And we realized we had something like $60,000 worth of fraud. And these transactions are all going to charge back, they're all going to refund. And obviously it costs money. Then you've got to chase up quick bank to try and get the charges that they charge you for that back. And it was setting our business back hugely. And so I said, you know, wouldn't it be great if we had a system where we could do it ourselves? We have a CART platform that we can customize how we want, that it's designed to convert, so it converts well, because the clickbank cart didn't convert very well for us either, that we had an affiliate platform that we could use that, you know, we could set everything up exactly how we wanted and set up specific commission structures and set rules up so when someone has a certain refund rate, automatically the way we pay them changes. You know, if they have a huge refund rate, maybe we stop them from the product. All those kind of things that they're all little problems we had in our business. So we went and effectively have created that product that does all of that and solves all those problems for us, and that's how we kind of make product.

Yeah. And we've been fortunate enough, Matt and I, to be kind of behind the scenes while this stuff is getting developed, so we can see kind of how your thinking goes into it. And it's really cool because, I mean, you've just done this so many times now, and you're doing it with a pretty lean team, which is really cool, which is probably easy to manage and probably easier for your mindset too, when you're like, okay, well, it's not too many moving parts here, but of course, I mean, I would just imagine building software is complicated as hell. I mean, how do you. Going back to kind of mindset y stuff, how do you keep focus on the right stuff and not focus on the wrong stuff? You know, that could drag you down a bit.

Yeah. Well, the first thing about the team is I mean, if you've been in business for a long time, if you've been in business long enough, then you're going to experience problems. And in my early days I learned a huge amount of things by the mistakes that I was making. Because obviously you're going to make mistakes. And.

During those, the times where I made a lot of mistakes, we went through some challenges and I learned a very key lesson about don't grow out too quickly. A lot of people think that success is how many people you have in your team, how big is your office, what do you have in your office? Like all of these things? Like yeah, they've got a big office downtown with 20 people in it. Wow, that's successful company. Well, it's only successful really if their products a great thing that impacts everybody who use it positively and is helping people and they're profitable and making a great amount of money. Those are really the key things. And you get a lot of people that grow outward that aren't doing either of those things very well because really their focus is on managing the office and the 50,000 employees they've got rather than focusing on making the product better and on making their profits higher, which then also solidifies and secures the future of the company. So one of the key focuses is on making sure we are lean. You know, you've got to kind of, it's a bit like measure twice, cut once. We have to demonstrate the need for something in the business multiple times before we then go and fill that need and put someone in that spot or add a service or solution into the business. So we grow slowly and we're very careful about it and we maximize the efficiency of the people in the team. Because the other thing is if you grow quickly and you haven't done that, then your problems magnify. So you might think, well, it would be better if we had three more people. Well, the problems you've got right now with efficiency are going to magnify into those three other people and then everything magnifies, not just potentially how much money you can make. So refine it, make it a well oiled machine and then grow it slowly. So keep things small and simple. Try not to overcomplicate things. I don't focus on what competitors are doing. I don't focus on what marketing trends are. Trends are not important to me because trends come and go and sure, sometimes this new thing is hot, but for us I find that that loses our focus. I don't want to make a product based on a trend and I don't want to make a business decision based on a trend. Ultimately, I want to build something secure and a foundation that's going to last the test of time. So I focus on what's working, what's going to work over a long period of time. True. Tried and tested basic, simple principles that we can scale. That's the key thing for me and that helps me focus. I also don't make too many things at once. We really are notoriously slow. We make a product for years and then we release that product and we stand by it for years. We're not one of these people that kind of launch a new product every month. And I think that level of focus and commitment is part of what helps us.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, when it comes to the team, do you have any advice on finding good team members? Because when we look at your organization, you know, the people that you're working with have been there for years and years and years and years. You have like basically no turnover and your team members are loyal to you and your mission. Do you have any advice on building that team and once you have that team, sort of getting them all aligned with your mission, your vision for the company?

Yeah, I think it's a two sided thing. I think first of all you got to think about, well, how do I get these guys? And then you got to think about, well, how do I keep these guys and get them in the right place and mindset and stuff. The first thing when you're looking for people is you're going to go through lots of people. First thing is if you can't just go onto a freelancer site, pick a dude, hopefully they'll do okay. I mean, at the end of the day you might get lucky, but what you really want is I don't look for skills like, okay, they can code in PHP as the primary thing. There's a lot of people out there that can code. There's not a lot of people out there who are passionate about making good products. There's a lot of people that just want to get paid. I don't hire them. I hire people who are passionate about the same things as me. So we have to have our kind of viewpoints aligned in that way. So if I'm going out and looking at hiring somebody, that's what I'm looking at first and foremost. Of course they got to have the basic level of skill required. But I would hire somebody who maybe has slightly less skill in an area, but has a much bigger desire to focus on improving that skill and Believes in exactly the same things as we do as a company in our mindset of making great product and looking after the customer first and all of those things, which are buzzwords for a lot of people, but for us, we literally live and breathe that stuff. That's the most important thing. If we could do something to our product that's going to cost us more money, take us more time, but make it better for our customers as much as we can, we're going to do that. That might effectively make us slightly less money because it costs us more, but in the long run, it makes us more because people know us as that company that really look after them and really make their products, quality products. And then that's why we get longevity and end up getting great results. And also why when we make a new product and we tell people that have bought our old products, they all go buy it, and we have great results from that. So first of all, find people that have that rather than just the standard skill set. Then when you've got them, look after them. Like, I treat my team as a family, so we really look after them. I always say that the company's success is also their success. Like, recently, you know, we've. We've given pay rises to people because they deserve it. You know, it's one of those things where I don't want to be the rock star. I'm not the guy, and the guy's making all the money. And then I got these guys that work for me, and I just tell them what to do, and then that's it. The end of the day, we're a team. Nothing gets done without all of us. And, you know, they're just as responsible for the success of our products as I am. Sure, I've got to wear all the hats and be the owner of the business and steer the ship and everything, but these guys are important to the company. So we respect them, we listen to them, and we treat them as real assets and really look after them. And I think creating that kind of family environment is really important. And it kind of goes against. Sometimes you hear, like, don't mix family and business, all that kind of thing. But at the end of the day.

I think if you create this environment where you're a small, very close team that all have the same belief, the same mindset, it's us. We're all out there trying to get this done, and we believe in it and we're passionate about it. That's where you get your staff calling you up at nighttime, going, hey, I just had this thought about this thing and, you know, they're not waiting to clock out, they're waiting to get back. So that's what we try and foster in the company.

I like that. And that's. It brought up the. It actually jogged my memory of when we were first chatting about what we're going to. About Talk. Talk about here. I think last week on the last call, we were talking about the number of emails you send to your email list per year. I don't know if you don't mind, if you, if. I mean, it'd be cool to like, say, but basically the whole. You, you literally have this rabid following. So not only in your own team and obviously, you know, we've been friends for a long time. Even though you're like half a world away, the freaking customers, man. Like, they like, whenever you post something on Facebook, amazing engagement. Whenever you email, amazing sales.

My favorite thing is when in your private Facebook group around ThriveCart, somebody posts something negative about ThriveCart, because you know what happens? 400 people respond about how good ThriveCart is and how that person doesn't know what they're talking about, essentially, you know. Yeah, it's just like the customers are so rabid that when somebody posts something negative, you've got this whole team of people that stand up to defend your product.

Yeah, it does. That doesn't happen very often, but we find that when that happens, it's usually one of two things. It's usually either they've just had a bad day, they've had a bad experience, something wasn't working quite right. Not necessarily because of the software. It's just they, you know, it wasn't quite gelling together that day and they're taking their frustration out and that they're human and it's understandable. And usually they find support in the community that helps them get to where they need to be, or they have a misunderstanding, or sometimes you just get people who, you know, it's not a good fit or, you know, they expect it's something else or, you know, it just didn't work for them. And then, you know, we do have very loyal users of our product. And I think that's because that family thing extends out to, you know, kind of the tribe of people that use the product. We treat them like a family, too. You know, if my favorite story to say with this is, and please, please don't send messages to our support asking for this, because we're not going to do it anymore. But, you know, we had this, this lady who contacted a member of my, my support team and say that with one of our video platforms that it wasn't working properly, recording through the webcam, which is one of the things that one of the platforms used to do. And so they spent a long time and they, you know, trying to work out what the problem was and they went and did screen sharing. And it turns out that the webcam itself had some kind of incompatibility. So I didn't get involved in this. My team member went out, bought a webcam for her and shipped it to her. Just solved the problem. Here you go. That solves it. Now that webcam didn't cost that much. I mean the product costs more than the webcam. So she had made us more money than we had spent on that webcam as a business. But look at the kind of loyalty that that fosters and creates because she thinks, wow, these people who just sent me something in the post, they've sent me a new webcam and they're not charging me for it, they're just trying to help me and solve a problem. And that comes back tenfold. And they tell 10 people and so on. And so you create that environment of real loyalty amongst customers and then they get really involved and they support you and spread the word as well. And that really helps.

I do think an element of it too is also while you're developing out these products, you get the customers literally involved in the development. You created a system where people can basically vote on the next features they want to see in the platform. And I think people feeling like they have a voice in the direction of your products helps build that sort of family like atmosphere as well.

Right? Well, we actually interestingly mentioned that. That's a good point, is we actually turn that off recently, the voting thing. The reason we did that is we just found as a team, it was very hard for us to facilitate it, manage it and control it and make sure it was, you know, all up to date and everything. It's just taking time away from us making the product better effectively. And also here's a really big takeaway. People don't necessarily know what they need. They know what they want. Right. And what they want is not necessarily what they need. Sometimes you don't. No. And it's like that Henry Ford quote of like, if I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse and car. Right. He was building the automobile. So we focus on that quite a lot. And you also do not want to design software by committee. You don't want 10,000 people making decisions and all adding their own little features in that they would like for their business. Because you end up with every time you add a feature in, maybe that solves it for that 1% of people, but the 99% of people have to step over that feature to get where they're going with the software and it slows them down. And that happens of course with everything you add in and eventually the primary focus of that product, solve the problem quickly, simply save you time, make you more money, is removed and lost because you're trying to add all these little things in.

We walk a tightrope of trying to make sure that we do add in the features that our customers want, but not sacrifice that in our software. Now we have a feature request email which is manned, which I look at personally and I can go through it personally and it makes it a bit more intimate. So seeing as you mentioned that just to update, that's how we do that now. But we do love getting people, of course we listen to the community and we encourage it inside the group.

And whilst we're certainly not looking for things to do in the roadmap, like we have our roadmap planned out for over a year and we kind of. I think my job, one of my key jobs is because I've got perspective. I've been in business for well over a decade. We've done huge launches, we've been in many different niches. We've done E commerce, we've done marketing, we've done software, we've done info product, we've been a super affiliate. Because I've got that experience, I can look at a lot of my customers and go, okay, I know what you guys need and I pay attention to what's going on in a way that maybe they don't even have time to because they're running their business. So I can add the features in that I know are really going to help them that they need. And I make that almost a full time job for myself so that they might not have realized it, but they need it to work this way. And so what they'll ask for is maybe this. But when they see what we've done, they go, oh yeah, wow, that was, that was actually what we needed. And that's just putting that effort in to try and really make it, make it solve their problem at the end of the day rather than just quote unquote, please them by adding a thing and they asked for, which is maybe a simplified, more shortsighted way of helping your customers.

Yeah. Now, there was one thing I want to go back to, because Joe was about to talk about the emailing of the list and stuff, and I think we sort of jumped over it. But one thing that's always fascinated us is that when you mail your list.

The just the engagement from your list is insane to us. And how often do you mail your list?

I definitely. One thing. Here's the thing. I love this as well, right. If everybody's doing something, sometimes doing the opposite is what works really well. Right. And I remember this takes me back to when I was selling on ebay. They brought out the feature to allow you to bold and highlight your listings. So, of course, wow, that's going to make it stand out. So everybody did it. And I noticed this, and I would look at listings, I would do a search and all the listings would come up and every single thing was highlighted in bold. So I thought, cool, I'm not going to do that. And suddenly my listing stood out because mine was the one that looked different. And I'm not paying for bold and list and highlight, but it's different. And so I think that you're going to hear a lot of people tell you, and I'm not saying what the best way is for you. It really depends on a huge amount of factors. But you hear a lot of people say, look, to have engagement, you need to mail your list every single day, or you need to email them every weekday, or you need to mail them at least four times a week or whatever it is. Rather than listen to all of that, what I do is I think, look, I'm just going to mail them when I'm excited and I really, really want to share something with them. If I don't, I'm not mailing them. It's as simple as that. So I can't tell you how often I mail my list because literally we've had years before where I've emailed my list nine times in one year. But when I mail them, they do listen because I don't mail.

That. I'm also excited about. I don't mail them unless I think I absolutely should be emailing them and telling them about this thing. And I think they then learn that they stay engaged in other ways. I'm not saying you should hide from your audience. That's not the best way to run a business. And this doesn't work for everybody. But the people that know me and the customers or fans that we have know if I send you an email, something cool is happening. So I'm paying attention and I am not comparing myself to this person at all. But I like to think of it like this. If Christopher Nolan's bringing a movie out, I'm going to go see it. Because I love Christopher Nolan as a director and I love most of his movies. So I'm gonna go see it. So I kind of, you know, I don't want to be the dude that's always bringing stuff out all of the time and always telling everybody that, hey, watch this, give me a pay me attention look. There's all this stuff. I just want to be the dude that brings stuff out that's really cool. We try to make it as good as we can, and then I'm going to genuinely be excited to tell you about it. And I think that comes through and then people share in that genuine excitement.

Yeah, I mean, if everything you mail about is important, then eventually nothing is important. You know, it's like if you're mailing every day, this is the biggest thing. This is the, this is a game changer, which we know. So many people that use their email list for that reason mail every day with some sort of game changing technology. At some point it kind of becomes, yeah, you said that yesterday about whatever it was you were selling yesterday, you know.

Right, exactly, exactly that. And if it's like the new tool that's going to change everything in your business every week. Well, if you're changing your business every week, you're doing something wrong. Yeah, that's not a good thing. Right. And people just, they just blank that out at the end of the day. And I always think if, for example, selling a product that isn't mine, you know, recommending or endorsing something that's not mine. And obviously a lot of the time we're an affiliate when we do that. The reason why we can be a super affiliate and we can sell, you know, in one promotion, we could maybe do $100,000 in sales for a product or something like that and really help that other company maybe get their brand, you know, released, or put their name on the map, or, you know, even establish a business as they're just starting out or obviously just make a lot of money. The reason we can do that is again, I'm not sharing it if I don't love it. So I'm going to look at it. I'm going to decide whether or not I love it. And the way that I look at it is, would I mail this to someone in my family and recommend it to them? If I wasn't getting paid for it, if the answer is no, I shouldn't do it just because I can make some money. And I talked about this actually earlier on today with in our group. But at the end of the day, if someone comes to me and they're talking about their product, I don't say, and you hear this a lot and you guys will relate to this. You hear a lot of people who are affiliates, which is not my primary role. But, you know, we do sometimes become affiliates for products we love.

You'll hear the first thing be, how much am I going to make from it? What's the affiliate commission.

And what are the epc? So earnings per click? You know, that's the stuff that you hear. And my questions are, what's the product? Like what, what are your customers saying about it? What does it do? Like, I don't even think about the commissions. I don't even think about what any of that is. Like, I just thinking about the thing and I love finding cool stuff and then when I do, I get excited and I love sharing it. So I'm just doing what I would naturally do, but I'm sharing it with a big audience.

Yeah, no, I love that. I mean, we often mail about tools and products and services all the time that we literally don't get commissions on just because we get excited. I mean, we have a very similar philosophy. We obviously promote a lot of affiliate products, but anybody who pays attention to our list and how we do things, it's literally like the same three products over and over and over again that we just keep on telling people, if you haven't bought this yet, you got to buy it. We're not onto a new product all the time, you know, so we have a very, very similar philosophy in that way.

Right. And like they say, you know, like, raising a baby takes a village and like running a business takes a whole heap of tools and services and solutions. The key is, if you're running one, just make sure you're not suffering from the shiny object syndrome and getting things you don't need because you really run and lean. Be careful, you know, but at the end of the day, there are a lot of things out there that can help people's business. So if your role and your job, a bit like you guys, is to tell people, hey, this is the stuff we think you should use, then I mean, you could be doing that very regularly and being genuine about everything that you, you, you find. I don't necessarily think emailing rarely is the answer. It's just what I do and how we do things partly through time and focus and, you know, what we do. But even if you are mailing to your audience every day, just make sure it's a mail that you'd want to receive.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, coming back to the topic of mindset real quick. I don't want to put you on the spot with this question, but it might put you on the spot.

I don't know.

Were there any mental barriers, sort of mindset things that you like, issues that you had in the past that once you sort of got past these mindset issues, sort of opened the floodgates for you or made all the difference in your business?

There's so many throughout the years. I mean, I think probably one of the biggest ones is there's two. I think fear. Fear is a big thing for everybody, and I think a lot of people don't want to talk about it or admit it, but we all get scared. And even if you're successful, you know, you go through a product launch. I've been through a lot of product launches. We've had a lot of pretty successful product launches. So people that know about those launches would probably say, why would you be worried about when you launch a product? Every time you do, it's amazing, but, you know, it does really well. But every time before product launch, I get scared. I think the key thing is, look, you got to. This is a common saying, it's a bit cliche, but feel the fear and do it anyway.

There is periods of time, I think, where we are holding ourselves back through fear. Whether we admit it to ourselves or notice it or believe it, we are in every aspect of our lives. Whether it be the I'll work out tomorrow, you know, tomorrow never comes, or whether it be, I'll just roll this out, I won't do the launch. I'll do the launch later. That. Is that because it makes sense from a strategic business point of view or. Or is it because it's easier for you because then you're not going to fail if you don't do it right? So there's all of these things that we play these games with ourselves, and it's teaching yourself to see that and then decide without emotion, well, what's the right path to take anyway? I don't care if I'm petrified, if it's the right path, it's where I'm going. And I think that's one of the key things. And then the other one is ego. I think a lot of the Time. People do things through ego, and especially when you start getting successful in your business. You know, I don't go on every podcast. I don't do everything. And there was a period of time where I was in front of the, you know, in the limelight a lot more, and I started to ask myself questions like, is this making me happy? Is this what I want to do? Is this helping me achieve the goal I want to achieve with my products, my business, and for my life and for the people around me that I care about? And a lot of the time, the answer ended up being, well, no, not really. Speaking on stage, doing that thing was really great. And of course, you look like.

You'Re the man when you're doing it, and it helps you in terms of perceived authority, and you get a lot of attention. But is it really integral to my happiness and to my mission and to my goal in life? And also, is it making other people happy? You could speak all the time, be seen as, you know, the biggest authority in the world, but if you never see your loved ones, is it worth it? And sometimes in the pursuit for trying to be successful, we don't ask those questions until it's too late. And so being mindful of that is. Is a huge one, too. And I stop doing things based on ego. I just became clear and had clarity on what my mission was and what was best for me, for my life, for my loved ones, and for our product and our customers. And that's now the thing that informs what I do, rather than money, ego, or anything else.

That's an amazing way to put it, because, I mean, that's all the most important stuff. And it reminds me of a conversation we just had. We interviewed Tina Marie right before you, and it goes, yeah, she's super cool. It was a fun interview, and it relates a lot to what you were saying right here. And one thing, it was ego, but it goes back to building this massive team, having an office, all these, you know, this big business that's. That's kind of not really profitable, but it's all done for the ego. And that's. Those are the people she filters out and makes sure she does not work with anybody with, like, a team over 20 people, because, really, for the most part, it's filler. You know, it's not necessary. You could do that with 10 or five people.

But, yeah, that ego is just really hitting home there. And I think a lot of people just got to kind of check that ego as they're getting bigger and more. More successful.

But we all only have so many hours in the day and we have so many hours to spend with loved ones or to stay fit and healthy. So we live longer and experience our time on this earth for longer or with people that we care about for longer, which is what really, really matters. Or we only have so many hours to spend on our product making it better or helping our customers or helping other people or impacting other people's lives or even our own life. Because it's a lot of people out there that like, I want to just do my mission of impacting others positively, but they're not even happy. Well, you've got to start with you. You got to start impacting your own life and helping yourself be happy and fulfilled, and then you can do that for other people. So when you look at how many hours there really are and break it down, it really helps you filter out. Am I doing that for the right reasons? And.

I mean, the reason why you learn this is because you don't necessarily look at it that clearly and then in retrospect you realize it, which is what happened probably to me, when we got extremely busy, I was doing kind of everything. I just thought everything was good. Do it. Yes. Say yes. And at the end of the day, saying no could be really important sometimes too.

Well, we got to wrap it up now. It's about that 45ish minute mark.

I think this is legitimately the shortest conversation we've ever had with you.

It definitely is. And I said it was going to be a short time. It may not be, but we are.

Definitely going to do a part two. We already all agreed on it. And I think in part two, when we rejoin, we're going to talk about conversion optimization and cart optimization and really dive into some of the technical things that can be achieved with ThriveCart and maybe even get some secret insights into what's coming up with thrivecart. But that'll be in the part two that we do with you.

Sounds good. I'd love to do that. And you guys let me know and I'll try my best to be there. And also, I know we talked about it before. You guys want to talk about. We've obviously had a lot of big launches and you want to talk about that. And I think that goes hand in hand sometimes with the software stuff. There's a lot of people that have these great tools and all the stuff I'm saying makes sense to them, but they don't know how to get it in front of the audience that need it. And that's something that, you know, we, we've become kind of specialists with over the years and I'd be happy to discuss as well.

That's perfect, man. Yeah, that'll be a good discussion. What is, what's one great book that you kind of go to often? Maybe it's once a year or fricking.

Every month or that you recommend to entrepreneurs often?

Yeah.

One is tough, I know.

Well, you can give us multiple. That's fine.

Probably one of my favorite ones Just Influence the Psychology of Persuasion is the one. It's very popular. Everybody talk about it. I love that book. I think it's great. But bearing in mind what we've been talking about today, I would say Awaken the Giant within or Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins.

I was literally looking at Matt's bookshelf and staring at those two books because they're sitting right next to each other. No joke.

I actually have a book that I pulled out while we were talking called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, which I happen to.

Have on my bookshelf.

Yeah, that's great. I think it comes down to mine again. At the end of the day, you could have the best looking car with all the features, but if the engine's not running right, then you're not going to get what you need out of it. And it's the same thing. It starts there. So that's why those books were so great for me. I would say that those books absolutely probably changed my life. So I would always recommend those books to people in books like them.

Awesome. And everybody needs to go and get ThriveCart if you don't have it already. Joe and I have a pretty killer bonus package for ThriveCart, so we highly recommend it. You get through us@getthrivecart.com but. But ThriveCart is the tool. Is there anywhere else you'd want to send people after listening to this episode? Do you still have like a personal blog at. I think it was Josh bartlett.com?

I'M actually just in the process of updating that because I haven't updated it for such a long time. But I would say if you're thinking about getting ThriveCart or if you have got ThriveCart, come join us in our group. And also I know you guys run an awesome group too on Facebook because there's a huge community in both of those and it's a great way to kind of not only understand more about the product, but see the people in there talking about it how it's impacting their business. And also it's a great place with a lot of really cool people that run cool businesses that can help you out and often answer questions about business and and help each other. So definitely hang out.

And we will link to that. It's called ThriveCart Academy. We'll link to it in the show notes so everybody knows where to find it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome, man. Well, thanks so much for hanging out. Glad we finally got to do this. And we're going to do a part two real soon. Part two.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

All right, buddy. See you.

Talk to you soon.

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

You're awesome.