Mike Long - How To Create A "Pandemic Adapted Business"

But there's a win, win, win in this, okay? And that is that with the shakeup, you know, what I'm calling the pandemic adapted economy. There's a number of kind of subtle changes and I'm going to bring that all together for you as we do this episode. I'm going to share a number of factors that have kind of coalesced into something that we think of as like a perfect storm for a particular business model that I'm going to try to describe well to you. You know, we've got whatever, it's, you know, maybe 45 minutes in an hour. So I can only do what I do. But what I did do is I prepared hard for this.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf. Joe.

Hey, yo, hey.

Welcome back, Joe. And all of you listeners.

I've been here, but yes, welcome back, y'. All. Everyone, welcome back.

Steve, Mark, Brad, Good to see you here, Brad. Dan Ryan, he was upset that we don't give him enough shout outs, so I'm glad you're listening to this one.

Lisa. Lisa Byer.

We got a shoot we should actually prepare because I'm really bad off the cuff of just a bunch of names.

Yeah, well, Brad, Spencer, good to see you. Good to see you here.

Yeah, yeah. Is he actually here?

I don't know. I'm assuming some of these people are listening, but probably aren't.

Okay, okay.

Today's episode was a fun one. I was really looking forward to this one. We met him a few months ago in Florida and spent quite a bit of time with him in Florida, became pretty good buddies with him in a short amount of time and have chatted with him quite a few times since then. But he's kind of like Internet marketing royalty. He's like a big piece of the sort of Internet marketing history.

Well, he definitely. Let's just say his damn name. I mean, it's not like we have to like mystery. Okay.

I like to leave it for a couple minutes.

Yeah. Everyone who clicked on this title and saw Mike Long's name, Mike Long is. I mean, I don't think we need to do much of an intro because a lot of this is his story, but also wrapped in with a ton of lessons. But yeah, like you said, he started offline back in the 90s, but then experienced and brought that online. Went through the dot com bubble burst and you know, that whole era where people are running away from the Internet, but he was running towards it more than ever. And Made his first millions inside of. Well, made some before then, but you'll hear him say he didn't really keep it. But that's where everything really ramped up. And through that time, there's a lot of lessons through that, going through the whole 0809 to 2012, that whole era. So many cool lessons that I loved walking through this whole thing that you can cherry pick out and apply now.

Well, Mike, you know, just going back through a little, you know, points in Mike's history. Mike was involved with the Million Dollar Day that John Reese did. Mike was involved with Jeff Walker's product launch formula. Mike was involved with the $10 million plus day of Stompernet. So, like all of these sort of milestones in Internet marketing history, he was there. He was a piece of them. He was behind the scenes there. And here we are. Now, fast forward to, you know, April 2020. This episode's coming out in May, but we're recording it in April, and we're going through this crazy COVID 19 thing and everybody's in lockdown and the economy's going to crap. And, you know, this is a sort of another milestone in digital marketing history, right? This is a milestone where people are realizing, okay, the Internet has become vital to our world now, like it is. Imagine if the Internet didn't exist right now in this current world that we're living in, like, a lot of the world would be a lot worse off than it is now. So people are starting to realize, like, ooh, digital businesses are where it's at. And this is a new sort of milestone in Internet marketing history. And so what we talk about on this episode is a. A big piece of, you know, this. This entire storyline, but also what you should be leaning into right now, what sort of things are making people lots of money right now. I'm not going to actually talk about the exact mechanisms because Mike's going to explain them better than I can. But, you know, this is really a masterclass in looking at historical evidence of what we should be focusing on right now.

Right? Yeah. So, I mean, I kind of want to just let Mike do the rest of the talking because he. I think he does it better than we can even describe. All the little points I think right now is strap in, you know, get ready for this, this kind of history of the Internet, but also of very specific ways that you can make the most of these times. But think the overlying message he has here, and he does, you know, he has an amazing service and the ways that he's made his riches is by really helping these other businesses, these business owners out there that are not aware of these vital things, these crucial things that can grow their business, save their business, save their employees from not going on unemployment, which we're see, you know, record record highs right now. And it seems like it's just going to get worse. So at the end of this, if you just have that in mind, not only is this a great opportunity for you to run towards the chaos, which Perry Marshall, a couple weeks back, when we had him on the podcast, said that that's what you should be doing right now. Don't be like the people with a finger up their butt sticking around and waiting for, you know, like, no, like, now's the time to double down on your skill sets when the opportunities that, you know, exist. And we've talked about them a lot on this podcast. Scott Oldford talked a lot. Perry. Yeah. Marshall, of course. Mike Long today, and we've had some others. These are all guys that have been in the trenches for a very long time, have gone through. We talked to Jay Abraham. I mean, he's been through five of these now. This is his fifth, like, and he's even mentioned in this episode is one of the very, you know, the ode. And we know this, but he's one of the very, you know, he's the legends that came offline, applies online. And so this is the time to really. And this is another one of those podcasts where it's on the longer end. But there's a reason why we let it go long because I think this is absolutely timely for everyone listening. I want to re. Listen, because we've had these talks with him, very similar talks, but like, you know, not exact, but, like, holy crap. Yeah. There's a whole new way of thinking from someone who's been through it many times over and has come out stronger every single time, too. And just think about the people that you're helping in the process. I think that is really the key. The byproduct is the amount of money and all the stuff that you can make off of this time. I mean, look at investors. Same thing. You know, they're making the riches during this period of time. So don't be the one that's scared and just holding up, like, do something. And this is the time.

Yeah. One of the things that we talk about in this episode is SEO. That's one of the mechanisms that we discuss and the tool that we use for SEO. It's called Ahrefs.

Ooh. That's the pivot you were. The transition you were headed towards. Where's he going? Yes, tell us about it. Because you're the one in there usually.

Yeah. So ahrefs is a tool that we use for all sorts of things. It's hard to pinpoint one sort of thing that we use it for. We've done a lot of these spots where we've talked about different ways we use Ahrefs. But, you know, basically, there's a. Let's talk about this one. The audit, right? The audit is awesome. You go in there, you plug in your URL, and it's gonna tell you all of the things that you can do to improve your SEO on your website. And it is just, like, exhaustive. An exhaustive list of.

Not exhausting.

Not exhausting. Exhaustive. And, you know, you can either go do all the SEO work yourself, or you can export that list, give it to an SEO guy and have him go do it. But.

It'S an amazing tool and they're giving away.

So think about it.

Trial for$7.

Seven bucks. Seven days at ahrefs a h r e f s dot com and no better than this episode where we're talking a lot about SEO and a lot of the opportunities that exist right now paired up with some hrefs love right there. I mean, there's a lot of. Yeah, I mean, you could probably sign up for an account now. Listen to this episode probably at the same time. And as Mike is talking about all these different industries and places that really need help right now and where these are really massive opportunities for you, I bet you could probably do some site audits, look for the gaps inside of Ahrefs and, like, in real time, be like, oh, holy crap, look at this. Like, no one's even advertising here. No one's SEO ing here. Whatever it might be. There's gaps. There's places to help and really apply this. So it could be a good little learning lesson using Ahrefs, too.

So a H R E F S.com, $7, seven days. Go get it. And also grab notes.

Get the notes. We'd say it every time, but we're going to keep saying it because people love them. For some reason, this seems like the only podcast that really does it. I still haven't seen anybody really do this kind of thing, but I think they help a lot of folks, and I know they do because we hear about it all the time. Hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p hustleandflowchart.com comp. And you will get the wisdom packed in like four pages or so. This one might be a little longer because it's a long episode.

Yeah.

Or you can text the word comp to 38470. We'll get you the notes that way too. Let's go talk to Mike.

Mike, how you doing, my man?

I'm excited. I'm pumped up. We've been. I actually had a whole buildup today. We had all the tech stuff, so I was already prepared, but then had an extra sleep on it. Had some cool news come in. So this is going to be a great show. Yeah. Yeah.

We've actually been talking for about 23 minutes before we even hit record. So I already know. I already know this is going to be a good one for people.

Yeah. And dude, it was such a. It was just like super honor and unexpected also to meet you in Florida at Rich's event, Rich Sheffern's thing. And I don't know, like, did you just pop in that last day or something? Because we just. I think we're just both getting a drink and he kind of looked at me like, who are you? I'm like, I don't know. Who are you? Then we just hit it off and it was awesome.

Yeah, Mike, Phil. Same invited me, invited me out last minute. He had told me about it before and he's like, oh, I'm out here. It's really great. So I jumped a last minute flight and had a great time. The highlight was meeting you guys. So awesome, man. But great people there reconnecting with Rich and everything is fun.

Of course. Yeah, man.

So I mean, we said that a.

Few months ago, two months ago, and the world has completely changed. I mean, everything you're focused on, everything everyone's focused on has changed priorities. And that's what we're lighting up about. What right before hitting record here is like, all right, this episode, there are some massive flaws in a lot of companies offering services out there. Just business owners with the finger up there. You know what, you know, just kind of do to do, what do I do? And it's like, well, ideally in this one, you know, from your perspective because you've been through these things with the dot com bubble, obviously, 0908, all that stuff. But like, really it's interesting because I mean, like we were talking about there's kind of like a repeat thing happening right now. And now more than ever, it seems like it's new.

It's new. There are elements, There is some repeat stuff. That we can learn from. There's also some newness to it. And. Okay, so. So one of the things I like to do is really, you know, pay attention to, you know, sticking to comparisons as much as I can, because I think that they're more valuable. It's one thing if I say something like, oh, search engine optimization is great, you know, well, you know, or even if I start saying, oh, I think it's great because of this. I think it's great because that. But it's good to kind of compare it to, like, well, maybe compare it to, say, paid advertising, you know, Facebook ads, or running, you know, radio ads or something like that. It's, like, a little bit more useful. But really where we're at right now is what David Mills and I call the pandemic adapted economy. And I. I would say that, you know, you listening to this podcast, you're in a very, like, you're kind of lucky to be hearing this. I'm lucky to be able to tell. To tell you this. I was very well set up. I was. I was roaring. My business was roaring. And apprentices who I have were. Were doing great. I mean, that was one of the reasons why Matt and Joe wanted to have me on the first place. And we were hanging out after the event, and we even later on the evening, we even met up again. You guys like, oh, it's cool what you guys are doing. And it was. It was cool, but, you know, I'm not. It wasn't like I was planning on. On having this crazy thing happen, but.

No, not you.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it did, like, wind up basically getting lucky where I'm able to, you know, I've really got my finger on the pulse of things. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, successful ones and struggling ones, which is a good mix, right? Including ones that are smart and innovative, but they're still not having success because maybe they're in the wrong niche. You know, maybe they're, you know, like, right now, you know, might not be the best time to be, you know, a personal trainer or something like that. You know, you're going to have, like, a lot of, like, I don't know, you know, like that kind of business. You know, businesses that are really reliant on, you know, live gatherings, you know, if it's sports events and so forth. So there's, you know, Cassie, my girlfriend, she knows. She's met Pasquale, who owns edc. Electronic Daisy. Yeah, Carnival. And he owns, like, a bunch of those big raves. And it's There's a lot of uncertainty and it's not because he's not a good business, it's not because he's not talented, you know.

Well, it's the business model just completely got shooken up and no one saw it coming, you know. Yeah, concerts I heard in LA already just yesterday they were saying like there's probably not going to be any kind of big gatherings for the entire year at this point and that's the second.

Largest and we don't know what it's going to be. Yeah, exactly. So there's, there's a certain way where there's, where there's a lot of uncertainty, but there's, there are places and I'm going to be talking about them where there's a lot of opportunity that's going to be made. And this, I'll say this, this may be something you've heard of in the past and it might be like, you know, I don't know how, how pliable that is, but during the Great Depression there were certain businesses that really, that really thrived. General Motors was kind of second fiddle. The Ford, it was not like that big of a deal before the Great Depression. They destroyed it during the Great Depression. They, they, you know, they roared and you know there, there's some other. Actually the mafia did extremely well.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Because they became, well there's prohibition and they became like the, the loan sharks, they became the, the.

Lenders. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So anyways, there are businesses that thrive. But, but this, this is something that's very close to you. Anybody who's watching or well I guess listening. Anyone who's listening to this podcast, you're so much closer to.

Really doing something both that. Okay, so I don't want to be one of these guys who's like how to ethically make money during the, you know, I mean I get a million emails from some of saying this and it sounds tone deaf to me. I don't like that. You know, I know I'm got a high level of energy. I'm excited. I'm very sympathetic to people who are having trouble right now. Like the news number today, something crazy like 20 million out of work and.

It'S going to be, yeah, 10, 14% or something by the end of the year. Some projections I've heard out of work, unemployment.

Crazy.

Yeah. It's just a tough thing. And so, you know, but, but there's a win, win, win in this. Okay. And that is that with the shake up, you know what I'm calling the Pandemic, adapted economy. There's a number of kind of subtle changes, and I'm going to bring that all together for you as we do this episode. I'm going to share a number of factors that have kind of coalesced into something that we think of as like, a perfect storm for a particular business model that I'm going to try to describe well to you. You know, we've got whatever it's, you know, maybe 45 minutes in an hour, so I can only do what I do. But what I did do is I prepared hard for this.

I know you did, and that's what I was thinking.

Actually, before we get into it, I actually kind of want to dive into your backstory real quick. We don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but you have, like a. You have a pretty. You have a pretty interesting history in the sort of digital marketing space. I mean, of the people we've chatted with on the podcast, I think you've kind of been in the game for, you know, you're up there with some of the longest people who've been in.

The game during the 1%.

This is audio, so you can't see. I'm a pretty young guy. I'm in my.

You are.

You are, yeah.

All of a sudden these guys are implying about my age, but.

No, no, no. I think I first came across you with Bring the Fresh. I was following kind of what Kelly Felix was up to, and you guys launched Bring the Fresh together, and I bought that through it, and I think that was the first time I came across your name. But then when we got to talking, when we were at it. Oh, yeah. I mean, the SEO stuff that was in there and. Oh, yeah, it was. It was good. I mean, it's been a while, so I don't remember all the, you know, the specifics of it. I remember it was very SEO heavy and, you know, ranking, ranking websites and then promoting affiliate stuff off the back of it. But I don't remember all the specifics. I just remember it was a very beneficial course, and I learned a lot about SEO from that. And then when we got to talking over at Rich Sheffrin's event, we kind of even got a bigger piece of the picture of the backstory even leading up to Bring the Fresh, and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about real quick. There's a lot of content we want to get into, and if this episode goes a little over an hour, then whatever.

Okay, well, first of all, while I'm very successful now. I drive a Rolls Royce Dawn. I pay cash on it all with money from what I'm going to be explaining to you guys by the way, from client paychecks, not from affiliate marketing. I have made tons of money with affiliate marketing. But, but basically I want you to know to begin with, I started, I started out living in a very low income area. It was like kind of half, half whatever it is. The government. Not government, but you know, low income.

Housing, subsidized or something.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, my neighbor actually had a trailer. So it was like kind of guess somehow part trailer park and wrap it in there. Yeah, I mean like, like we, we drank powdered milk Spam, which is not a very nice meal, was very exciting to us. You know, once a month to Denny's, you know, if we could afford it. My mom would leave like a dollar tip and it was just, it was crazy. So I didn't start with like, you know, you know, big advantages in that way. And with school I really struggled. I just, it just, it was hard for me. I wasn't good with authority and stuff so. But one of the things I did have a knack for was a game called Magic the Gathering, if you've ever heard of it.

So like I used to play it in high school.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyways, I wound up meeting the guy who's like my, you know, my best friend and business partner, David Mills. We were kind of local legends in the magic scene. It's this competitive game that's, it's like a strategy game. It's a cross between like chess and poker except there's like 10,000 pieces and it's, it's, it's a very good game. And they came out with a pro circuit like right around, very shortly, like right around when I met David or shortly after it. And, and David and I, we really dominated that game. I, I actually ultimately became a three time team world champion. And again, I can't, I can't tell you how freaking crazily competitive this game was. And.

David said kind of early on he was like, you know, this isn't going to be our way like this, this game like being card pros or even something like poker. He's like, this isn't, this isn't for us, this isn't the way that we're going to make it. Instead he really encouraged me to start a game store. And the reason behind that was I lived in this very small town. When I went, I went to university, which was totally worthless at James Madison University, which is really in the sticks, it's rural Virginia. And there was this tiny game store nearby us, nearby where I lived. And one day they announced they were gonna have a magic term. And I was really excited. So I went and I played my first game and I beat my opponent on the first turn, which you're not supposed to be able to do.

First turn. Jesus.

First turn. Yeah. And the store owner came over and he was like, he pulled me aside and I thought he was gonna be angry with me. And he's like, look, you know, you shouldn't be playing against these guys. But he was a very entrepreneurial guy. He actually taught business at the university. And he's like, why don't you use my store as a platform and maybe, you know, you can turn into like a little side business and you can have kids come and you maybe teach them a little bit or whatever. So I listened to him and, and by the time I got it going, I just, you know, kind of had a knack. And one of the things, you know, I'm going to try on this podcast to distinguish, you know, I do have some, some pretty unique ish abilities that I don't expect you to learn or copy or really necessarily be able to get a lot out of. And this, what I'm about to talk about is one of those unique things, but it's also put me in a position to be around so many entrepreneurs and so many businesses and I have so many apprentices where we have between. What David and I have been able to do, mainly as publishers, is put together real subject experts, like we did with Bring the Fresh. And like we do. And our student success is really legendary. Our apprentices success. I actually sent you guys a brand new earnings report that I got last night. Yeah, dude, $8,000 a month that this guy picked up in the last two weeks.

Well, the one thing I remember about Bring the Fresh, not the one thing, but one of the main things I remember about Bring the Fresh was the sales page. You landed on the sales page and it just scrolled forever with nothing but testimonials. It was just like testimonials at a.

Time when there were none. Nobody else had them.

Yeah, it was like there was like a thousand testimonials on that sales page. It was crazy.

Yeah, let it do the same. That's, that's the way I roll. So, so anyways, this, this game store I went to, I, I every other week I would have an event for these kids. And one time David came out to visit Me and see it. And there was like, 30 kids there. And David's like, what? Like, he's like, there's not 30 kids in Harrisonburg that play magic. Like, what? How are you getting this? I said, well, you know, the parents are now busting him in from here and there. Some are coming over from Charlottesville, some are coming in from Waynesboro. And David's like, do this. He's like, like, like, I don't know where it's going to take us. Because we had read. We had both read Rich dad at that point. And one thing that Richard said, you know, there may be some good advice, maybe some bad advice for Chad, poor dad. I. I don't really know. I'm not, you know. But I'll say one thing he said that David and I both took to the bank is he said, like, start a business. Just get in the game, you know, like, you never know what's going to happen. You'll learn so much. And so David said, look, you know, start a game store and do what you're doing. So that was 1998, which is, you know, whatever, 22 years ago. And I started the store and I was like, I kind of was in a panic because I was like, oh, man, how are people going to come here? And I was in a rural town. I started the store in Charlottesville, Virginia. It had big rent, and I was like, Internet, you know, like the Internet. And I created probably one of the world's first landing pages was my game store. Because my whole philosophy about my game store was, like, when people came in the front door, I had a very clear. And this is. This could be like a side lesson for everybody. But I had a very clear distinction that, like, a scenario that would. Ran through my head. So scenario one, mom walks through the front door, says, what's this place? You know, I explained, oh, it's magic. It's this cool game, you know, she buys a couple packs of cards out of politeness. She goes home, she hands the car, you know, packs the cards to the kids. I see in my mind's eye, kid opens the packs, throws the cards everywhere, runs around the house screaming, you know, and the mom is thinking to myself, herself, ain't never going back to that place. Right?

That's true.

That was one thought I had. Scenario number two. Mom walks through the front door. What's this place? And I'm like, oh, it's like brain steroids for your kids, huh? Oh, well, you know, you know, there's this game. It's. It's All. All math and science and strategy, and it's just really, you know, when I was a little kid, I played, you know, these games, and they really helped me. This game came along, I turned out to have a knack for it, and. And so I wanted to, you know, kind of pay it forward, you know, help kids. I know that when kids play this game, they're, you know, really. Their IQ doubles and stuff like that. So I wanted to create a very safe place, a very, you know, refreshing, you know, place where, you know, you know, moms could even, you know, you know, drop their kids by and they can meet other kids and play in a safe environment and have their, you know, brain power explode.

And.

And so then she's like, okay, so what's the call to action? Right? Here's what it was. I had no in what I just said. I'm not trying to sell Jack or Squad, right? I'm not like, buy this. No, no, I don't want her to buy anything. What I wanted her to do. I had a legal pad. Like, I'm holding up a sheet of paper right now. So I had a. I had a legal pad and it would sit. I. I place it in front of the cash register. And I thought of it like a barrier, right? Like, you can't get to this cash register unless you give me your email address and your snail mail address. I didn't say that. But I mean, I really, like, literally, if someone was kind of impatient, they're like, oh, I just want to kind of buy something. I mean, I wouldn't be an idiot and say, okay, you can't, but I would think they're not back, right?

You're going to make it very apparent that this is part of the protocol. This is the procedure.

This is the procedure. And get on my mailing list and you're gonna get my weekly emails telling you how your kids are doing. And we have events for them, you know, on Saturdays, you know, we'll have a tournament and all this stuff. And this is how you say, the know, periodically we'll send out snail mails, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

And. And between that and there was something that David Mills was doing at the same time. So I was living in the same town as David. Charlottesville, Virginia. The campus of University of Virginia is there. And. And David had a. A course he taught on accelerated learning, speed reading, which weirdly, uniquely set him up for the Internet marketing world. It was one of the just oddest things. It's not that speed. Not that speed reading that people really Want to learn speed reading now? It's actually probably less important than ever, but. But what it was was that he. He had to, like, get kids to come to, like, an information session, like, which is kind of like a webinar, and, you know, pack a room and do it. You know, demonstration of high value, like something to wow them and then paint a big vision for them and get them to convert. You know, like, justify that. They're going to be reading three to five times as fast with as good a better comprehension. And this is a very competitive school, University of Virginia, so that, you know, the students were pretty good students and they, you know, they cared about that stuff. And then he'd have to teach that course. And really, if my dog starts freaking out, I'll have to hold her. But it's fine.

You're good.

So. So. So I watched David teach that course, and he would have to, you know, he charged like, 300 bucks for it, and he'd have to really. He really had to deliver to make that course work and to get testimonials and to keep it going. And so I made. And again, that weirdly, kind of set us up, like, when I kind of reintroduced David to the story. But I saw what David did with that, and I created my. An elementary magic league that was based on the same premise. Right. Like, instead of speed reading, I'm going to teach you magic.

Sure.

And. And I'm gonna get, you know, moms to give me, like, 200 bucks to have kids come in for like, eight weeks and. And teach this course. And I would use my mailing list to sell it. And I will tell you guys, I. There was one session at the peak of it, you know, before I kind of realized I wanted to kind of just transition online, where I had a hundred kids in a Pokemon League and 50 more kids in a magic league, all paying, I think it was like 180 bucks.

In that small town in Virginia.

That small town in Charlottesville, Virginia, it was a zoo. And it was like, you know, and it was. Yeah, just. Just sort of a funny situation, so.

Well, it's just wild that, like, so many business owners now, obviously not business owners open right now, but no one's. I mean, some are doing this, but still, like, that whole barrier of, like, hey, I need your information. Here's why. You're going to love it. You're going to benefit. There's a lot of cool shit.

They don't get special customers. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, I don't get it. It's like, it's like, it's like what? You know, do I hire somebody to like hold my girlfriend's hand and kiss her? No, you know, like, I mean, what I mean is if you're in business, like, like those customers are your lifeline. Any. Right, any one customer can be a connector. A connector is going to bring back referrals, people, you know, I mean, and, and on and on. So, so I got set up in that store and, and I got online early. I started selling game cards online. I was early in E commerce. This is before the dot com bubble really. It was 1998, so the dot coms were just starting to build up. I was mentioning you guys like when somebody first talked to me about an ssl, which is like a secure socket. Like I was a socket.

What is going like, what is. It was just hard. It was hard to start a website. I didn't know what I was doing, but I, you know, but I went through that process and one day David walked into the store and he's like, you know, I really see you're doing like a lot of this E commerce stuff. What's really making them more money at this point? Is that the store or is it the online? I was like, I don't know. So I went home and I crunched the numbers and I was like, oh my God, what am I doing? You know. And I realized online I was helping so many more people than my store and really crazily enough, they were probably more appreciative of me.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Because they didn't have a store like mine. Like, you know, the people with a story you start taking for granted, you know.

Yeah. Well, you have the relationships and your bond face to face. You know, there's a lot of deeper work happening other than just the transactions.

Yeah. But, well, but my point is I carried it over and I really realized in a lot of ways I was getting a better relationship online. And I started having the thought of like that I could teach people. Like, like I kind of saw, you know, one of the things we didn't bring the fresh and we carried over to our current business right now is over the shoulder training where you see us over our shoulder, like step by step building a website, getting it on Google, ranking it on Google. So, so it demystifies it. So it's like, you know, it's not like, oh, I already have this site, you know.

Right.

Take these steps. I mean, that's, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence. So I, I kind of Mentally, I would teach kids how to play magic. And I, I saw that if I could just film it. And this is years before there was Internet video, but I saw it in my head, like eventually I knew that there'd be video on the Internet. That was obvious to me. And I was like, if I could just record this, I could, I could reach not just this one kid who's in front of me, which is great, but I could reach hundreds and thousands. I could help so many more people. So, so I, I had a really, really good start. That's how I made my first like million dollars. Really crazily enough was with my game store and with E commerce and I was, you know, flying over to Japan and getting Pokemon cards, bringing back to America. I was selling the magic cards. It was a whole, whole thing that was going on. And right about that time, I, I closed my game store. That was about 2000 ish. 2001, 2002. And this is right around when the dot com bubble burst. And this will be, this is something that historically I'll make some distinctions. So there's some things that are going to be similar with the pandemic adapted economy to when the dot com bubble burst, but there's also some divergence. And you know, I want to give you as many, like, workable distinctions with this, with this podcast as I can. So. Okay, the dot com burst, there were a couple of things going on. Yes, there was a lot of stupidity going on. There was a lot of businesses that were like, that weren't even real businesses. It was really funny, actually a fair amount of the dot com era. So what this was, was, you know, dot com companies were getting first established, the Internet was very new and investment capital was, was, was flying in. And Charlottesville was actually one of the places where there's a lot of investment capital. A because it was pretty close to the Dulles corridor, which is where AOL was. And a lot of the talent, it was uva. They were, they were mining the University of Virginia for a lot of talent and they had like a lot of, you know, the guy who wrote, you know, Internet for Dummies, like visited my game store, came out of there. Yeah, stuff like that. There were, there was even a couple IPOs in Charlottesville. And one of them, there's this downtown mall and David Mills and I were taking a walk one day. We would talk all the time. I was obsessed with the dot com, you know, bubble and then the burst. And I to this day say quotes that, that it was a bubble because I think that that's, that's a very, very questionable thing because one of the premises was people would literally be like, Amazon is wildly overvalued. It was $60 a share at the beginning. Like the day that, that, that it started going down. It was $60 a share now today and it got all the way down to 22 bucks, you know, like, so.

Today we're saying, yeah, today it's 20 or 1200 something or other.

Yeah, let me just look it up really fast.

Just like I was looking at the croc value. Yeah, I know the other day it was the highest.

2395.

Well dude, that went up like a thousand then. No way.

Well, yesterday, I mean we're recording this on April 16th just for context, but yesterday was like the highest peak Amazon's ever hit. So today must have even blown past that.

Oh, you're right. The price is really skyrocketed on it. So it was as of, you're right, like, like early April, it was like 1900 back to March, you know, 1800. So it's, it's gone up massively, right? Yeah, there's 2400 now.

By the way. Notice that I said like without even checking the stock price, I said that you're going to notice some similarities, but there's also going to be some divergence. So what happened with, with the kind of the, the dot com bubble. First thing was people felt like, oh, the Internet wasn't that big of a deal. It was all fake news. Right. Now I've been in business for a while. I've been making money with the Internet for a while at this point, you know, and I was like, yeah, this is, people are exactly wrong. Like, like the Internet's more important than ever. And so much that happened during the dot com bubble was the kind of the infrastructure the Internet got built out. The roads of the Internet kind of got built out. Very shortly after that you'd start seeing Internet audio. I was one of the first people using it and capitalizing on it big time. When we did the Traffic secrets launch in 2004, we had video on the page. So we had video for John Reese. Yeah, video.

That's wild, man.

Which is wild. I mean that's, that's years before YouTube, right?

Yeah.

And so, so I was like, no, this is crazy. Like everyone's running away from the Internet right now and they're saying, oh great. You know, I saw all the smug business owners because I talked to them, I would talk to other business owners and they're like, oh, you're one of these weirdo Internet guys, you know, And I was like, all right. You know, like, they're like, are you own it?

Yeah, exactly. Okay, maybe I am.

Yeah, I do remember that because I started my Internet, you know, quote unquote career in 2005. And pretty much, if you told people you worked on the Internet, they either thought you were a spammer or worked in porn. It was one of those two.

Is that spam or porn or spam, which is.

Yeah, pick one.

So. So. Yeah, so. So the thing was, I was like. And I said. I said this. I said this to anybody who would listen, but the only person who did listen was David Mills. I would say we should be running towards this now. David adds something to it, which was really critical. One day, we're walking down the downtown mall in Charlottesville, and there's this giant ass building.

That they're constructing. And this, again, this is dot com money. And it's a big marble building, and I mean, gigantic building made out of all made out of black marble. And it's called boxer learning. And David says. He stops. We're like, right in front of me, he says, let me get this straight. So step one, start an Internet company. Step two, buy a giant building.

Biggest.

And most expensive one you can, hiring.

All these employees and start getting all these costs going. Because. Because he had just showed. Like, David had just decoupled me. Like, he came into my store like. Like, you know, like a sniper and being like, look, bro, you know, it's cute with the store at this point, but, like, money online. What are you doing? That's what he was saying to me. He's like, why are you tied to this thing?

And.

And every time I would turn my back, I'd go to Japan. I come back. You know, my employees would be stealing stuff from me. You know, just things would be going wrong all the time. I had all these employees, and it was just. It was a mess, you know, yeah, when the cats away, the mice will play all this stuff. And, you know, the store wouldn't open on time, all this stuff. And David was like, what are you doing? You know, in the same way. But he really got the lesson across to me in a very different way. And I want to. I want to make that. This is going to be the first big. You know, I've taught a couple, like, side lessons, some side distinctions, but this distinction right now can be really one of, if not the centerpiece of what you're going to get out of this. And I really Want you to internalize it that moment. And by the way, guys, that building was never completed. I still lived in Charlottesville in, in 2014, which, which was years after this. Right. And that building was still incomplete.

Oh my God.

Vacant. And it was. I mean, it's crazy, you know, Crazy.

Ten plus years later. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah.

And to this day, you know, I don't know, maybe this is not in a dilapidated area. Like the downtown mall of Charlottesville is a vital commerce area that does well. So it's a real, like, it's just a disaster. And so, so David really helped me internally start internalizing that lesson and more and more because what you're going to be seeing right now, again during a boom time, and I'm all like, look, I don't have a dog in the hunt with this stuff. The things I'm bringing to you right now.

I'm gonna be a millionaire one way or the other. And I don't. I had to work hard for that and, and get lucky where I got it. And I'm gonna thrive, whatever, you know, the economy is. If we get down to trading coconuts, I'll do fine with it. It's not sure. So, but for someone watching this, like, I want you to know that I have data right now that. So, like, I mean, again, I was like texting with. With Matt and Joe like, like late last night. Look at this. Check this out. New stuff is coming in. So this is really hot off the presses. And so it's always been great to keep fixed costs low. This is going to be like a lesson. This I'm pretending for you, like, portent, like a portent of things to come. We're. But these were the first couple times I started learning, like, oh, like, because, you know, I said I made my first million dollars with that game store, but guess what I also did. Yeah, that million dollars.

Did you keep it?

Yeah, Penny of it. And really, like, when I closed it up, I mean, I was basically. I was like, what did I just do? I just spent five years with this game store and I, I, you know, my bank balance is basically zero, you know, like.

Yeah.

And. And so I started learning this lesson because so much of what happens. And let me teach you because I suffered from this myself and I'm a person just like everybody else. There's some skills I have that are heightened some ways. I'm way lamer than a lot of people. I'm a big technophobe.

That's probably a good thing.

Yeah.

For some people.

It's crazy. Well, but if I can do it, you know, like you guys to know. So.

You'Ll hear a lot of people say, well, I want a business that's like this. I want a business that I can schedule. I want a business when I know where leads are coming in. I want a business where. And it's like, bro, folks in hell want ice water. Like, what are you talking about you want? Like, business is not about what you want.

That's right.

Business is about what they want and what they will pull out their wallets and pay for and give you a referral. And if they won't do that, if someone is going to pull out your money, pull out their wallet, pay you, and then give you a big old grin when they've consumed your product and even refer a friend that you're on the wrong track, you know, you're, you know, that's, that's it, that's it wrong with that. I want, like, you will go through some of that. You will, you will go through businesses and try things where the value is not there and you'll see it and you can remember this and say, oh, yeah, I remember. You know, Joe and Matt had that crazy magic dude on his show and he said, right. So, you know, kind of, kind of keep that in mind. So I had that kind of profound moment. We're standing in front of that building and David's like, this is the wrong way. And that's when I started the first time, when I started getting much more lean and mean. And because there's stuff out there, even like with E Commerce right now, people say, well, it's a big opportunity. Well, yeah, but it's a big pain in the butt right now too, you.

Know, and it could get a lot worse.

Yeah, the playing field is shifting with Amazon super fast. They're, you know, they're cutting their, they say they're cutting their affiliate program down big time.

China Supply, obviously, that could be issues huge.

And when products start selling, well, Amazon just knocks them off and starts selling.

Oh yeah. They've always been a predatory company, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Like in, in that sense. And I'm not like, I'm not here to be anti Amazon. Like I said, I don't have a, I don't have a dog in the hunt on this. If I did, it's that you would come back to me. And like, you know, I mean, to me, you know, that someone like Matt would be like, oh, I bought your product and I loved it. I mean, do you think that makes Me feel good. It makes me feel freaking fantastic. Yeah, of course it matters. Like, I'll tell you a lesson in life. This is a side lesson, but it's a big one. There's two ways to go in life with business. Because when you're in business, you're putting yourself out there for good or for bad, and it's going to be both. There's going to be some good, there's going to be some bad, but you will hit times where you fall down. No matter who you are, no matter how good you've got it going, there will be a day when you stumble and you fall and people around you are going to have one of two instinctual reactions. Reaction number one is to kick dirt on your face. Because that, oh, I remember. I remember when, when, when, when you were lording it over me. When you were like, oh, prancing around, bragging when you wouldn't do this for me. When you, you know, like. Or they're gonna pick you up and dust you off. It's one of those two things. That's, that's how it is in life.

Yeah, I remember you telling us this exact thing not far, maybe an hour after meeting you. And that. And that stuck with me as well.

Yeah.

Some context, but yeah, it's an obsession.

Of mine because, because again, like, you're. The purpose of you doing business is always going to be quality of life. Like, that's why you're doing it. Because there's plenty to be said for having a job. Even now, there's still plenty to be said for having a job. Somebody else figures out the problems. You know, you get to turn it off at night. You know, like, it at least feels steady whether it is or not. And so, so there's, there's plenty to be said for it. Like that, you know, other people will connect the dots that you don't want to connect. When you have a job, you connect the dots that you want to connect. And then if your boss is satisfied with you, you keep your job. That's it, pretty much. And I'm not saying that's wrong, but if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you either connect all the dots or you're going to, you're going to keep breaking relationships. You're going to keep, you know, having these, you know, false starts and stuff like that. And so, so again, when you have these high, high fixed costs or when you're relying on, overly relying on advertising, especially if you're. Advertising doesn't have a real competitive advantage if you're going to be paying for ads, you know, even if you're paying for call setters, anything like that, if you don't have. But, like, first of all, even if I like, like we just put out an ad for call centers today because I'm very, very big into. Into where we're heading with things. I mean, I'm really changing my agency app and I'm going to talk about that in part today. But, but the thing is that even then, I'm not looking to have us be dependent on call setters, like, long term. I'm. I'll be looking to, like, more transition to affiliates and, and, and to webinars, actually.

But the phone's hot right now from everything I'm hearing. It's like people are taking.

It's really hot, you know, it really is. And it's a great deal. And you can do your own cold calling. I'm gonna explain more about that. I'm not saying, like. And again, if somebody's watching this, well, I don't like that kind of business. Okay, bro, you know, like, I hear you, you know, but like, I'm talking about where money's being made right now, big time. If that appeals to you, maybe it's better. So, yeah, so I.

Had gone online. It was about 2003. I was now exclusively online. I was running an E commerce business and an information business. And that was going good. Really more of an E commerce business and just selling magic cards basically and ebay in Japan and so forth. And what happened was my dad.

Invited me to an event, an Internet marketing event in Cleveland. And you mentioned John Reese. John Reese was speaking there. I didn't know who John Reese was. I didn't know anything about this stuff. My dad invited me and I told David about it. And David's like, oh, yeah, go take that seriously. He was like, this could be a good one. And so I was like, okay, cool. So I went there and I was very confused, like, what was going on? They were talking about pay per click advertising. I literally thought they were talking about, like, clicking paper.

Yeah.

Why are they clicking paper? I don't get it. They're talking about copywriting. I was like, what's the obsession with legal property? You know, like.

Right. So in a sense, I was a total, you know, wet behind the ears newbie. But in a sense, I knew I knew all kinds of stuff that these guys didn't know. And the main thing I didn't know that I knew was that they all thought that the Internet is just the Next thing down the line, because these are almost all the people in the Internet marketing world at this point were just direct response people who are used to ads and newspapers, magazines. Right. Television, radio and newsletters.

Yeah, yeah.

The only gurus was like Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, Jay Abraham. Like those are the only guys that had lists, were people that have been teaching copywriting, basically. And, and so they all were treating, they had like a lot of experience. It was very good. They were very good at capturing attention. There were a lot of their skills really did transfer over the Internet. But there was one main thing that they were all missing, which is they all were treating the Internet like a broadcast media and they didn't want to talk to their customers. And I was like, that's wrong. That's.

That wasn't a two way communication.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a big time mistake with the Internet. That's a big time mistake because what you're gonna do, if you're trying to keep customers away from you, which is essentially what they're trying to do. They're trying to like get the money and get away.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

Thanks for the cash, bro.

Yeah, yeah. And I was like, no, no, no, no. You want, you want, want, you know, this engine, you want these referrals, you want, like that's where it's gonna really, really roll. My, My game store was all referrals. It was like, like one mom and one kid filled up my entire store, literally.

That's all. That's. That could be all the marketing you need.

Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, sure. So. So basically, and I mean, look at it now, you know, I'm on this podcast, you know, with Matt. If I'd done a lousy job of bringing the fresh, he wouldn't like, oh, let me bring Mike on so he can stick up.

That's true.

Where do I stand?

So, so the thing was that, that I'm at this event and I, like, it dawns on me, on the one hand, they've got all this specialized information about stuff I have no idea about that event that they were first talking about. It was either that one or the next one. I went to where Internet Audio hit and I know Rick Raddatz who used to work for Microsoft, and he put together Internet Audio. He did it with Alex Mendozian and Armin Moran.

And Audio Generator. That's what it was. Audio Generator. I made so much money with Audio Generator. And again, this is all post.com like, like part of the distinction of this. You said well, that was then, this is now. No, I'm telling you, like, right now, like, Zoom just went from being worth jack and squat to like. Like, let's check the Zoom stuff.

Yeah, that's another one to check, like.

Yeah, what was it? It was a. Wasn't it like a penny stock, like, a few months ago?

Yeah, I looked this up the other day too.

Yeah, Let me let 1. The one year on it in November. This is so crazy, guys. November, December, okay? As of January.

1St, you're looking at 68 bucks a share. January 1st, January 2nd. Right now, it's worth $150 a share. So it's more than. More than doubled in value now. $40 billion company. And this is during a massive stock market crash. Like, that's not. That's not a small asterisk, right? No, they, like the Amazon and Zoom, they're surging. And. And that's because what we're going to kind of get into here, which is this adaptive economy. And what matters is, you know, what's adapted. So when the dot com. But. And when the dot com bust happened, it was tough. There was massive unemployment. People were scared. I remember.

Oh, yeah.

Freaking out, scared to death. And.

That'S. That's when I really went all in. That's when I closed my store. You know, like, when everyone else is like, okay, back to basics. Like, that was like a big lesson in the dot com. Like, oh, ha ha ha, you silly Internet people. How foolish and stupid were you? Back to the Yellow Pages. Come back on.

You know, like, for some reason, we laid all these roads of the interwebs, and we kind of liked it, but for some reason, it just didn't. You know, it's got infl. Or big time. We're just gonna go back in time now.

Yeah, now. And it's like, again, like, whenever you hear, like, when are we gonna get back to just stop? You know? Like, it's not like. And I. I'm not saying that because I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm saying it to be strategic. Like, it's like, that's what I did in that era when everybody else was. Was running one way, I was running the other way. Okay.

Yeah.

And I got David Mills to run with me, and I. I called David from that event. I said, this is how we're gonna do it. Because I learned about. The biggest thing I learned about at that event was information marketing and. And affiliates, including, like, services, you know, that you could do a service for a business. Right? And they could pay you. Let them, you know, let them be a plumber, let them be an H Vac guy, let them be a dentist. Great. You know, all do your Internet stuff. You're never going to get there. Like, you're, you're a dentist, you're.

You.

Like, like how many dentists can do SEO?

Very few.

There's probably some, right? But even what they can do is going to be very, very limited. So, so that kind of dawned on me, the idea of, of being able to really differently reach people, you know, learned about more about copywriting and so forth. And I called David from that event. I was like, this is how we're going to do it. This is how, this is how we're going to kick into high gear. And so, so I started kind of two things. I started my first information business with David, which was about teaching people how to play magic, the gathering of all things. And that's where we really proved ourselves. And to this day, that same business, we've just replicated it again and again and again and again.

You know, where it's essentially you're providing a service that people really want online. And in this case, we are teaching them how to play magic. Weirdly enough, it's not all that different than doing, let's say, search engine optimization for somebody where you're going to make connection, they're going to have to do some things to accommodate. You're going to have to teach them a few things. There's a few things that you're going to handle for them, right? The research and development, you're going to handle that for them because they can't do it. They can't figure out what they need to do for what magic deck to build. They have their job, whatever, you build that for them, you know, and then you teach them how to use it. Same thing with SEO. You're going to figure out the SEO for them and then show them how to implement. That's the teaching part. You're going to be like, okay, let me show you. You're going to have to do this. I'm gonna make it real simple for you, but you're gonna have to do these three steps, otherwise you can't be my client. Right?

Same, same kind of idea. And that dawned on me. And so we started this magic, the gathering business. And the second we started it, people started coming to me and asking me and David, how are you doing this? Like, how, how are you doing this E commerce stuff? How are you doing? And that's when we started taking on Clients. That's what I mean. It's not a stretch at all to say when client consulting emerged, me, I was like, oh my gosh, like all of a sudden, like all these people like, like John Reese was one of our first clients, you know. Yeah, you know, what did he get out of it? A million dollar day launch. Like by 2004, we did the first Internet marketing launch. He had a terrific grasp of how pay per click worked, of Google, pay per click and, and a good chunk on search engine optimization that he could teach. And we, we, you know, he created a product called Traffic Secrets. I managed the launch. That was my part was just to manage it. And John had all these skills that I didn't have that he was able, that he was able to take care of. And, and yet I was able to do the strategic elements and there were things that I knew about conversion. So for that, you know, so I did my part, he did his part, David advised me and we did a million dollar day launch. And it was shockwave in the Internet marketing world. Oh yeah, shock wave. I mean people were like, because this is, there's this, there's no advertising cost behind this whatsoever. This is all driven by affiliates. And even John, when I first put the idea to him of doing a million dollar day, he, he literally said, are you smoking crack? You know, and, and, and I was like, no, you know, I mean we, we can do this. And eventually, you know, he, he came to believe it. He actually even registered milliondollarday.com a day or two before the launch, which I, you know, I was honored that he did that, that. So once that happened, a lot more people started coming to me. Jeff Walker came to me and asked me like basically product launch formula originally was kind of a product about how we had done that launch. And so we did that. And then you know, in 2005, a year later, I, you know, because consulting, you can kind of get to the point where you're very leveraged and you know, there is a partnership path open for you is one way of doing things. And so I actually partnered on something called Stompernet, which was, I actually registered in. It was like summer of 2006, I registered 10 million dollar day.com and by October, October 3rd we did $14 million in sales affiliate wise. And this was a search engine optimization product. So now at this point I was kind of fully in to, to SEO. I mean I had done, I dabbled with SEO when I had my game store and I did get some rankings. I didn't really know how I was doing it. So. So really. And that's how you know, I made my kind of like my next million dollars, you know, and, and so that was 2006, you know, like October 3rd, 4th, 2006. And, and that's when we started leading in like, like we started getting this sense like that things were changing in the Internet marketing world. It was like especially 2007 and so forth. There was like, like David and I felt like something coming. We didn't know what it was, but we just knew something was coming. Which weirdly enough, we had the same thought.

This time last year. Crazy.

Oh wow.

David's very intuitive. That, that's. I don't know. I can't explain that part of things.

Yeah.

But I can tell you what the portents are like, what he comes up with. So we were like, we actually got out of the Internet marketing world at that point. We got away. We didn't, we didn't do another launch. Like we did a couple launches after Stompernet, but like only one or two in the Internet marketing space. We actually went to the relationship advice category. We built a seven figure business there.

Same, same basic premise. We got a subject expert and he, he would, you know, teach you know, lonely guys how to say hi to girls, you know, never been kissed. Like, and we did the same thing. We got a thousand testimonials, all these referrals, same, same method. And then 2008 and it was, you know, you had the housing collapse and that led into. It was a really difficult time for many small business owners between 2008 and I don't know when the Supreme Court decision came down on Obamacare. Let me look that up. The supreme court decision, Obama.

June 2012. That's what I thought it was. Okay.

Okay.

So basically from whenever it was at the housing collapse that happened, I think that was, it must have been during the election in 2007. And I'm like, none of this stuff is to bring up politics. I'm what you think of as like a libertarian where I'm far left on social issues and far right on, on like taxes basically.

Sure.

And so.

When that phase hit like that, that business died overnight. And like literally overnight, like we went from like you know, thousand dollars a day at least to just zero. Like zero.

It wasn't a need anymore.

And that was when I first learned, see in the dot com era, like there was nothing. It wasn't the same kind of thing. There was the crash and all, but there was, there was a different kind of feel with, with a combination of the, the, the, you know, 2008 collapse and then Obamacare hit and people were very nervous about it. Some people were excited, but a lot of people were nervous about it, especially business owners. And there was a lot of changes for business owners, you know, a lot of new regulations, who they could hire, who they couldn't hire, you know, what they had to do if they did hire somebody. It became much more expensive to hire women, for example, just by the numbers. Because, you know, just the. Again, this is not to say political, but I think it's a fairly documented fact at this point that the cost of health care went up when in theory it was supposed to go down. And it went up a lot. Like my. Anecdotally, for me, you know, I've lost my health insurance every single year since Obamacare fully kicked in. And the numbers have gone up and up and up and up. You know, for me, more than. More than doubled for me and everyone who I know. So. But here's what's interesting. So you could have something collapse, right? And you could have a whole industry. And this is the first time I started wrapping my head around.

Vital industries versus non vital industries.

And that's really big right now. And this is gonna be a really big tip for you because I'm telling you, for, for broken plumbing, there's the same number of customers today as there was a year ago today, maybe even.

More now that everyone's at home.

Right?

Literally. Yeah, literally, Right? Yeah.

For H Vac, it's the same numbers or more energy.

Right? Like, yeah, like food type. Yeah.

Doctors, you know, same number or more are getting sick, you know, like. So. Yeah, but are people going to pay for personal trainers in 2020? I wouldn't bet on it. You know, I just wouldn't. I'm telling you.

Yeah. Let's shift in a little bit to what you guys are doing now with, with the, you know, the offer that you've got out there and the webinar that you're running. Like, what kind of stuff are you guys talking about and what sort of advice are you giving people right now to lean into what's going on in the world?

Yeah, no, perfect question, perfect question. So we. Where I was at, like, like I said about a year ago.

My most recent thing that I'm very well known for, I was at Funnel Hacking Live, and I accepted the award for a $50 million profit funnel that David Mills and I built called OMG that you may have heard of. And again, radical customer success. All this stuff. But there was something about it where OMG was really about a very generalist approach to SEO. Yes, we understood SEO up, down, left and right in terms of our conversion. It was just during a boom market where you didn't have to like, once you knew SEO, making money from it just wasn't that hard, you know, it just because again, even personal trainers could pay you tons of money. Any like, the businesses would pay tons and tons of money. And I just got the sense, you know, from David that, that, you know, something you could change. There's something. So I started, at David's recommendation, I started a Mastermind. And we actually had it in Amsterdam. And it was a mastermind. I pulled together the most skilled digital marketing agents in the world. But these are mostly people you've never heard of. Okay. And pull them together in a small mastermind. And we each of us had a few apprentices that, you know, that had kind of, you know, followed us around over the years. Some hard luck stories, people that we really wanted to see him do well. And we went off to Amsterdam. And these were different subject experts in different spaces. So one guy is an SEO guy. One guy, the systems guy. One guy is a YouTube guy. One guy is the, you know, the, the, the closer guy, the guy who.

Really had all the pieces.

Yeah. One guy's a marketing guy who really knows how to get call set, you know, with business owners. And the whole reason I did it was I wanted to blow up my agency. And I did. I mean, I, like in December, by, By December of 2012, I paid cash on. Oh, sweet, sweet pea. Do you have my, my keys? Oh, I can't, I can show the guys. I can't show anybody at home, but I paid, I paid cash on, on a Rolls Royce Dawn.

There it is.

All with money from my SEO clients.

Wow.

And so it was awesome. And we're just, you know, burning it up. Right.

And it happened quick.

Oh, it happened really, really fast. I mean, like, like that the, like we were the Mastermind was already kind of happening before we met in Amsterdam. So we were, we. It was about nine months, about a nine month run up. Right. But because I think we started the Mastermind around March or something like that. And then it actually met in Amsterdam in, at the end of July. But, but you know, yeah, by the end of the year, I mean, I was cooking and two of the members of the Mastermind, one of them had never started a business, never been a business or interestingly enough, he was, he was a guy who was really Good at closing deals. He had closed 400 deals for what we call the dirty dinosaurs, which are the. These big bloated agencies, which I think are on their way out right now. Big, bloated General's agency. Most of them are retreads from the. From the Yellow Pages era. And they. They can't spell SEO. They have no research and development. What they really know how to do is. Is just get on the phone and make. Make promises that they can't keep. And.

And we. We kind of stole the quarterback from the other team. Like, this guy, he was like the Patrick Mahomes, you know?

Yeah.

Like, if. If the 49ers had stolen Patrick Mahomes from the chief before the. The night before the super bowl, they stuck in the locker room would have been done.

Out the back door. And then convince him, you know, convince him to play. Play for them, then I think that probably the 49ers.

Yeah, we got this guy, but he was not a business person. He never. He had never once picked up the phone for himself. Okay. And finally in October, in September, we did, like another meetup we did with Ryan Dice in New York City at Times Square with some of our apprentices and walk through some of our findings. And it was right then when I was like, bro, why don't you start an agency of your own? Like, you're still. He was consulting for some people and explaining how he was doing. But. But, you know, he was very nervous, and it's understandable, you know, nervous. But anyways, he started an agency with. With another member of the Mastermind, Michael. And from October to February, they got up from 0 to $25,000 a month in clients. 75 profit.

As an agency owner, that's wild. Yeah.

But then. But then, of course, I'm sure everyone's saying to themselves, well, okay, but what about lockdown? You know, that's all. Well, good, right? Since lockdown started, it shot up to $40,000.

Dude.

And that's. And that's why we're here today. Like, the biggest reason we're here. Like, you know, I was gonna do this, but this is why you're so lucky.

Because. Okay, so there's been such a sculpting in this lockdown environment, and things have radically changed. And there's some pieces from the past. Some things are just brand new, right? There's some. Some things of this are like World War II, you know, literally, you know.

Yeah, it is. No, there's a lot of people saying, ray Dalio, Phil Town. You know, we had A call with him recently and everyone's. They're kind of saying it's the 19, 4 or 30s to like 45. If you study that era, it's kind of, it's very similar to what we're going.

There are some things, there are really some things to learn. But again, we want to start from scratch. Like, this is such a different situation. So we want to do. Want to turn the page. I really want you to have. And hopefully that opens you up hearing about this agency. And I'm telling you, it's like the earnings reports. Like, we have clients that have been. Not clients, I mean, apprentices who have been applying our system since October. And we have many with similar results. I mean, again, I just got an earnings report last night, last night from Chris, and Chris has added $8,000 in business, brand new business, 75 profit in the last two weeks. So right in the middle of it, this is blowing. I got person after person after person. I had to start a whole new Instagram just to host all the earnings reports that we've gotten from people applying this system.

And so essentially are. They are. They're basically going to these like plumbers and these, these sort of essential businesses and saying, hey, in our local market, we can get you ranked. We can get attention to you right now, even in this lockdown.

We're the plumbers for the plumbers. We're like the plumbers for. We're the H Vac guys for the H Vac guys. We're the ones making sure that their pipelines are working, that their, you know, that their business is workable. Right. We're the one.

Well, that's, that's the key thing is pipelines have dried up, like you said, in the traditional ways that they're used to getting leads. A lot of that's not working now. So that's why you're equipping folks who, you know, who see this, this benefit, this big opportunity right now. And it's been proven over the years to be that, yeah, the plumber to the plumber, you know, not this big general agency, but really focus in and solve these needs for them.

And it's, and it's a big distinction, I'm telling you. Like, instead of saying, I'll take any kind of client, I would say I always stay away from lawyers. No matter what, stay away from lawyers. They're terrible clients and they can just harm you and they don't mind. They think it's fine. So. But any vital services, right. Vital services are crushing right now. And are going to keep crushing right now. Anything where you just logically say there is the same number of customers, like there's not a problem with food, there's a problem with, I mean a certain type of restaurant is going to really struggle now. But meal prep is on steroids right now.

Like, oh, like food delivery services prep. Yeah.

To be like that, that was just kitschy stuff, right? That would be like, oh, it's on, on, on Shark Tank. What a novel idea. Isn't that cute? Okay, hun, let's go to the restaurant. You know, like now, now it's like these services, food trucks are killing it in my area. I'm telling you. Like we, like, we had this food truck app and we're just going to like a different truck and we see all these other people are showing up like, hey, what's going on?

Yeah, yeah, you know, whatever.

So.

Well, there's so many brick and mortar companies too, who right now are figuring out like, I've got to figure out how to be digital. And guys like us, girl, you know, people like us get to be the saviors that come in right now and be like, you may not have figured out this whole Internet thing, but we have. So let's, let's work together.

That's exactly what it is. You know, people like, you know, this is somewhere, you know, as I'm speaking to you, the listener. People like me, Matt and Joe, we've been kind of accidentally prepping for this for like the last 10, 20 years. And because we've always known and learned more and more and had it reinforced more and more and more the power of the Internet. See, here's, here's what's happened. Okay? So in the, this is a different. Let me show you a difference now between the, the dot com bust and now. The difference is that there wasn't, there wasn't a demonstration and there wasn't an urgency after the dot com bust to use the Internet. It was just something that was out there. Like it was, it was something that was now available and there was really a very slow uptick with it. Okay, right. And if anything, it was depressed. Right. Because there was a stigma now like, oh, you know, what are you one of those dot com guys that busted? Are you a porn guy? Are you a span?

It was like a lack of understanding. Yeah, it's new. Yeah, it's depressed because there's that stigma. So it's like it just wasn't read.

People were still scared to use credit cards online. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. No, no, that. I'm glad. That's a great distinction. Right? Today, boom, opposite.

Now everybody's just got it freaking on file. Like, you could go to Amazon. I could press one button in my. My shipments here the next day. Yeah, you forget. There's even credit cards on file at hundreds of companies right now.

These food trucks that we go to can't process payments any other way, but through this. This app. What is this app called? Sweet Pea. What's the app called? What is it? Street Food Finder. Street Food Finder.

Street Food.

I never heard of that. Check it out.

I mean, I don't know if it's in your mind.

Yeah.

First watch. They won't take orders on the phone anymore. They'll only take it online. You're gonna see this. Like. Like. And remember, it was always wasteful to not be using apps. Like, here's what people are gonna find out. All these things that appear as conveniences right now, they're. They've always been the better way of doing it. It's always been better to have your. Your credit card, like, so long as, you know, not getting stolen from you. I mean, of course, you know, there's that issue, but there's always been that issue. Right. All the things that are going on right now. You know, distance learning has always been more effective than getting people in person. I told you. Yeah, I figured that out in 2000 or 1999 probably.

Yeah.

People weren't ready for it.

Yeah. David Mills has been doing webinars since. Since before the Internet. Really? Like, I mean, you know, he was just doing them in rooms, and then, you know, like, I mean, we were doing our first, like, I mean, that magic business. It was like, basically like Zoom and webinars and stuff. We would record our games on Camtasia and we would post them on a blog the same day, and people would essentially.

Crazy.

And so all of a sudden, you know, all this stuff that we know how to do and then. And then SEO, like, everyone is just glued to Google for everything that they need, and they're re. And they're re examining all of their assumptions. You know, when you're. You know, when. When. Because think about this. You know, you hire a plumber, you go to their site, it looks like crap. Do you really think that that plumber whose site that looks like crap is gonna come into your house and have an N90, you know, an N95 mask on and. And be totally safety precaution and really thinking, oh.

Website, Right. You're gonna go to the next guy you're gonna go to the guy who, who you're gonna get to their site and it's gonna be like, let's talk about COVID You know, here's how, here's all the ways that we're dealing with it. And we're asking our customers to make sure to report back to us if you have any flare ups in the next two weeks for the, the safety and protection of our families. And like you say stuff like that right now. Right. You know, I, I have a, I have a PDF, you know, the, the payroll loans have dried up. Hopefully they'll get their act together and get them back out there. But I was to my clients, a one sheet PDF, beautiful PDF with links off to those payroll loan, you know, programs and explanations. And it's got a plumber, you know, plumber, happy plumber right there.

You know, like that's, There you go. You're doing a goodwill by the target audience right there. And no one else is really thinking that way.

No, they're not thinking that way at all. And this is where we're going. We have this, this, this, this new. It was coming. It was coming. It was coming. Was. Okay, so where we were at in 2015, okay, when, when, you know, before you really saw Facebook ads and Lamborghinis driving around on them and stuff like that, that was what I would call the reputation era. Right. Right now I think that people still think we're in the reputation era. It's long gone.

There was, there was literally the image of the rich jerk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I drove, I drove my event door back then, and I made money. Right. Like, it was distinct. What happened was by 2016, 2017, 2018, that stuff was spammed out. People just knew, like now if you see somebody in a Lambo, you pretty much figure they rented it. Right. You know, it's not real. So. So there's a way in which reputation has really gotten tainted. Because reputation is so easy to fake, right? Yep. But what is much harder to fake is a trust vibe. A vibe of trust, a vibe of good, good energy, you know, and that's much harder to fake, right?

Yep.

And so because it is hard to fake, you know, it is hard.

It takes work. It's true work. It's dedication, it's consistency, it's relationships. I mean, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of transactional people in the world that are kind of like, you know, it's the give and take kind of thing. And they're not thinking a little further than that or even what happens prior to that. And that's all the trust, right?

Exactly. And so if you can establish this vibe with people, you know, there you are, you're, you know, you're a plumber, you're number one in the maps, you're number one in organics. You click in on the site, it looks clean. Right away. First, first things first, we're going to talk to you about our Covid situation in a, you know, non threatening way, but in a, in a way that shows my seriousness, that gets that across and to say, but it goes back to that game store. You know, I'm telling you, it's the same thing. You get in the door, start talking to them, get their email address, start talking to them. And this is, and this is what I'm, this is what I'm telling our clients that are coming in the door. I'm telling them, hey, you are in the right, right freaking place, buddy. And, and again, it's not just plumbers, it's H vac, it's, it's any home service, like you know, home delivery. I, you know, you know that the peloton, yeah, he needs it. But, but I, you know, I, I got one and it's like I had to put it together myself. It was a bear, you know, so, so all, all of these services are going to continue and they're gonna, they're gonna, it's gonna get more and this is going to be a fewer number of business owners who are going to be exceptional at taking care of their clients. And that is the next coming boom. We'll build to it. I mentioned, I mentioned Obamacare. Really the hardest thing.

There'S a number of instances. I'm going to give you two examples of this because this is go time. This is a perfect storm right now. There's so many things these dirty dinosaur agencies are laying people off. Business owners are getting literally way less calls right now than before at a time when they need help more than ever.

Oh yeah, should be flip flop opposite world.

Right now everything is opposite and that's the time to step in for a win, win, win. These business owners need help and you can be the ones helping them. So, so into you from 2008, from the, from the housing collapse, I guess end of 2007-2012 when people realize that Obamacare were stuck with it, you know, at least for a while, right? By then, you know, like, okay, probably stuck with it. That's when business owners finally said, okay, I'm gonna Get to work. And they started doing their business and getting out there. And you really started seeing business building up after 2012. And that's when a lot of people made a lot of. That's why. That's why I literally made $50 million profit, you know, with OMG between me and my partners in that exact track.

Of time now, in that span where everyone else is kind of just.

Right.

I don't know what they're doing. Yeah, right.

And so here's the kind of. The kind of finishing lesson that I'll have on this in terms of distinctions that you can take to the bank, and it's something that you'll be able to apply in the future, but it's incredibly applicable right now. So both.

In 2008, 18, I guess two years ago, at the very beginning in January of 2018, Tai Lopez asked me to give a speech at a conference that he had. It was a kind of a combination Internet marketing and crypto event that he had in Santa Monica. There was 6, 700 people in the seats. And. And I gave a speech that David Mills and I created called. We called it It's Morning. And at the time I said this right from stage, I was like, what are the headlines right now? Recession, recession coming, recession coming, recession coming. It's exactly what it was. And I said, okay, I gave this example. I said, in roulette, it's a psychological thing that you should know. Now, there's a. I'll give you a couple other examples. I'm just going to use the roulette one for now. In roulette, if someone wins a spin, then psychologically speaking, they are likely to spin again. And if they lose, they are psychologically likely to spin again, which is how Vegas works.

Oh, yeah, it works with me. I know.

Now, I want you put yourself a mental picture. Imagine that you just spun the. It's spinning. It's, you know, the. The little marbles going around the table. And the dealer asks, do you want to spin again after this, it turns out that people, psychologically speaking, are dramatically more likely to say no. Now, that's illogical. It's a lot. Because whether you win or lose, you're going to spin again. You are going to win or lose, you know?

Yeah.

So it shouldn't make a difference. Clearly, there's. There's something. And you see this in basketball, like. Like, coaches have to train players not to stare at the ball while it's in the air. Right? Oh, like, don't stare at where it's going right now. Go to where, you know, get back on D or get ready to rebound. But don't just stand there picking your nose, watching the ball. Right, Right. But there's a reason they have to say this, right? Because we as human beings, like, when there's uncertainty, we freeze up. And this is. And what I said in that speech, and I'm on the record, right? And this is a big deal, like beginning at a Tai Lopez conference where people are giving investment advice. I'm standing there saying, look, if you're on the fence, if you're thinking about starting a business right now, do it. If you're, you know, double down, like, go. The. The way that, that blackjack works, the card counters. We used to beat the. The card counters, like redheaded stepchilds.

Imagine. I would bet that you're pretty good at that.

But anyways, with card counting, what it works is you're counting cards until a scenario develops where there's a whole bunch of face cards in the deck compared to other cards. So a bunch of twos and sevens and nines and threes are out of the way, and there's a bunch of tens and jacks and aces and stuff like that. And at that point, what you want to do is bet big and make aggressive moves. Split aces, double down, do all that stuff. Stuff. But as the conditions are conducive. Okay, so. So both in, in 2018 and, and after that stretch, you know, the stretch between the housing crisis and leading up to the Obamacare, especially with the, you know, the Supreme Court, and definitely after Obama was reelected, obviously he was not going to reveal repeal Obamacare himself. Then business owners got back to work. But what have they been doing in the meantime? They've been.

Yeah, yeah, they've been holding their breath, and now they're running in. So I said, like, look, you know, in 2018, I was on the record at this big conference saying, go, go, go. I said, you know, whatever unemployment is right now, it's going to get to zero. I literally predicted that we would get to zero unemployment, which is where we were at.

Yeah, you're good. I'm just like, is that me or. Don't worry, it's all good.

Like, yeah, like a horn. So right now is one of those times people have been holding their breath and they're going to continue. There's going to be like a swath of time here for at least months, if not a year or more where people are going to be holding their breath. And you go, like, like. And know that that is your advantage. That you're.

And it's interesting.

Go ahead.

Yeah. Because I was listening to Ray Dalio. He has this. He's been doing a bunch of talks and you know, he's a macro economic basically investor and trend spotter and all that. And he was saying very similar to what you're saying right now. And he's predicting about it's like a two to three year stretch where shit's kind of just gonna be weird, it's gonna be interesting, it's a reset. A lot of folks will be doing what you're saying. So it might even be a bigger period of time of opportunity for a lot of folks right now. Kind of like the Obama, you know, that whole era right there that you.

Were talking about, because that's what happened in 2018. So the distinction with 2018 is what happened was Trump, Trump got elected at the end of whatever it was. 2015. Right. 2016, he gets inaugurated. Tax cuts were either coming or not coming.

Right, Right, right. Yeah.

Simple.

Yeah. Yeah.

For that whole year long stretch, taxes were either between the beginning of, of 2017 and the end of 2017, taxes were either coming or not coming the entire time. Time. And what was happening was business owners were holding their breath. They're like, you know, like. But they were going to invest. You're going to invest as a business owner. You're going to market whether there's tax cuts or not, right?

Yes.

But again, because of this indecision principle, and right now you're at such advantage, anything you do, like, like all car, like, like I said in blackjack, where the deck is stacked, everything's better, you know, even a lousy hand is still going to play out better, you know, than it would otherwise. Like, that's yours. You've got that advantage right now, is that type of advantage. So I've shown you on this podcast a number of things, you know, that are going on in the market. People are holding their breath. Go, there's, there are service businesses. And we've been narrowing in on this more and more and more. There's just all these categories of businesses, they are not getting marketed too well. I'll tell you something, I wanted to kind of say this for the end of the podcast. I want to say it the beginning because, you know, I only want the smarties to hear this. I registered plumberseo.org like three days ago.

You're giving it away, man.

You're giving it away for $10.

Wow.

Now I'm going to teach you the quick SEO lesson. If you have A keyword that you want to rank for as the name of your website. That's called an exact match domain. Or you can have a partial match domain, but exact match domains. Very, very good. Very. Google likes brands. Right. So if your brand is. Is plumber SEO. Right. And I, you know, go and get. I'm not saying this because you want to. I'm talking about competition right now.

Yeah.

But, but this is, again, it's a lesson from data that I have unique. You know, like one of the things that Joe and Matt have unearthed for you with this interview. And they worked so hard preparing me for this, and we spent hours really getting.

Bro, you were driving and this is amazing. All the respects on you, man. Yeah, thank you.

Oh, I mean, I appreciate you guys. You guys bring in so much energy. And I'm in the Facebook group and so I know how much.

Yeah.

Put into things. I'm very active there in your hustle and Flowchart Facebook group, which if you guys, anyone who's listening, who's not a part of that, like, there's no reason.

Thank you, man.

It's@flowchart group.com. might as well throw out the URL.

And I've been in that group for, for, for weeks and I love it. So anyways, so this, this thing that's going on right now, you know, there's these kind of salt of the earth business owners, actually great people to work with. They are so underserved. Okay. If you, if you search for plumber SEO, you're. What you're going to see is, is these big brand sites with a slash plumber SEO in that. So what are they? They're generalists trying to front and trying to act like. Right, they're front.

Yeah, it's generalist agency.com, plumber SEO or something like that.

Expert on plumbing. Like, why, like, how dare you rank. By the way, how dare you rank number one for. Like, you're wasting someone's time. Matt made a. A great point earlier. Who said the, the example that you said he was looking for fiber optic, you know, Internet in San Diego. And every time he. He'd get halfway through the ordering process and they'd be like, oh, you know, like a site that ranks number one for that keyword in Google. And then Matt takes his valuable time, starts filling out forms and stuff, and they're like, whoops, this is not available in your area. And you're like, screw you, buddy. You just.

Yeah.

In time.

Yeah.

What are you. Like, how dare you. You know, like, you're like, you're not even. You're not even privateering. You're just wasting people's time. Like, how do you rank for that keyword?

Well, it's not even that smart on their. Like, from their point of view. I mean, you're spending time and effort to SEO for keywords that you can't even fulfill on the offer. Like, what's the point?

Yeah, it's totally crazy. It makes absolutely no sense. So. So my lesson to you with this, and there's so many niches like this, anything that happens inside of the home is fair game, you know?

Yep.

All of it. Anything that happens that's vital to business, anything that's vital to health, you know, just walk through the basics. Luxury stuff never paid that good anyways. And they're not that good of clients anyways. I mean, I'm looking back, you know, I wish I had done this earlier. I'm glad I did. I'm glad I started getting more and more and more focused.

But. But I'm glad to share this with you because this is such a win, win, win. You will improve your community. You will. You. You know what Spider man said, you know, with it, when he realizes, oh, man, you know, I could have stopped that guy who. Who wound up killing my uncle. Right, Right. You could be. You can be the one who's out there helping, you know, those best H Vac guys that are in your area, the best auto mechanics in your area. Right? Cars are still going to matter. Right? And all this stuff is going to matter more than ever. You know, you can be helping the computer repair guy that in your town. You can be. You can be that champion for those people. And it's such a cascade of effects because you are now serving all of their clients, all of their customers. Right? You're. Now you're out there helping.

It's a ripple effect all the way.

Through a more efficient business. You're helping them cut down on waste. You're helping them be more clear, like, you know, in every way. You know, we. Like, one of the first things we say to people is like, get that Covid notice up on that website. I'll show you how to do it for free. I mean, I'll do it.

That's cool. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

It's like, like think about the goodwill immediately. You have an open door. You're like, hey, I want to help you out. At least, like, do this little thing.

And then if you were driving, if you're Dr. A wrecker, you know, Like a, A wrecker, whatever they call it.

What the hell is it called? Yeah.

What the hell is that? Is that a big truck or is that like a.

It's the one with a crane.

Tow truck.

Tow truck.

Oh, tow truck. Okay.

Yeah.

You're driving a tow truck, right?

Yeah.

Past somebody, they've got a flat tire.

Yeah.

Being equal freaking help them. Right. Like, you know, or, you know, or maybe their car is stalled out and they need a jump start. You got. I'll do it. I'll do it all day. I'll do it for my Rolls Royce.

Why not? Yeah.

Well, and that's the thing right now, especially business owners. A plumber, let's just say that. Or even any of these companies, most likely high percentage. They have no clue of what the Internet is doing, what the trends are even looking like economically. They're probably wrapped up. I heard some stats like 85% of eyeballs right now are glued to media, whatever media means for them. It could be Fox, cnn, it doesn't matter. It's media and they're probably not getting it does. Yes, yes. But it's probably not. I don't know. It's not going to be something they can actually use in their business right now. It's people like us who are in the trenches in what we know works and have been through some previous things and we're not focused on the overhead or the employees that they are considering of letting go or maybe they already did, you know, all these things already in their head that the last thing they're thinking about is like, okay, I need to get leads on Google or wherever and now's the time. It's like I got all this other stuff I got to worry about.

Search is so unique. Remember one of our core things that we said is keeping cost low, free traffic from Google. I mean there may be some setup costs to get it going, but it's so incredible and minimal compared to paid traffic and paid traffic. It's just tough, you know, Like, I mean people. Paid traffic is based on interrupt. Okay. And people aren't getting interrupted as much right now. Like they're really fixated. They're not like an interrupt based economy. That's going to be when you know the pie is big. Like that's going to be during a boom time. Yeah. And. And so you're just not going to sell cat socks as well right now. Sorry.

Yeah. I mean paid traffic right now is working great if you're focused on being a brand. If you're focus focused on, you know, Product awareness, but it's not as good at the moment for the direct response ad. Click to a sale is what we're seeing, right?

That's exactly right. So for these mission, for these mission critical businesses, like they're like, oh, I need a, you know, I need a plumber right now. Like, you know, there's a spout, right? You know, what are you going to do? You're going to pick up your freaking phone, you're going to go to Google, you're going to go to the GMB and you're going to go to the organic listing things and, and the first person who looks credible, you're going to be on the phone with them and if they sound credible, they're going to be walking through your front door. Right? And so, and so, you know, keep that win, win, win in mind. Keep the idea of keeping your caught your fixed costs low. All the stuff, you know, Michael and Eric who started at 0 to 25,000 and then during lockdown to $40,000 a month. Agency, they have no employees. You know, it's, or I think they have one, two call centers. They have two.

They're keeping it lean.

You keep it, keep it mean. I have no employees. You know, I'm hiring a call center right now. But that's again, that, that's, that that has to do with our growth. And even then that's fine. I'll be looking but, but I'm monitoring those costs very low and I'm looking for affiliates right now. So I mean it's, it's a time when you can really, really have such, and you can do such good for people. Right now there's so, you know, people are walking around right now. They want good news. They want, you know, to feel the caring of another person and they're going to be more appreciative of it now than ever. So it's, you know, while, while it's a challenging time to be alive and it is, it's also exciting time to be alive and it is time when many people are going to look back and say that's when I change my stars. And so that, you know, that's a message of hope that I have for, you know, for people that listen, listen to Hustle and Flowchart. I've been, you know, honored to be on here. I don't know if I feel like we turned over most of the stones, Danny, that we left out any final.

Matt, what were you gonna say there?

No, I mean I was just gonna make a comment. I was gonna say like when all the sort of COVID stuff started to hit, you know, it's horrible what's going on in the world. I feel for a lot of the people that are, you know, everyone that's being affected by it and everything, but there was also a piece of me that in my mind was thinking, this is our time to shine, right? This is, this is the time that, like, people will start to realize, like, what we're doing has value. The podcasts like this, the videos we're putting out online, cultivating communities, building platforms, and giving other people opportunities to come and leverage the platform we created, people are going to really start to see the value of what we've been trying to create. It just wasn't as clear of what that value was until right now. People are starting to go, okay, I get it now.

What you said is really powerful. Let me build on that as a final thing. Thing.

And it really, that dovetails perfectly, obviously is the reason why you guys have such a great podcast. But, okay, do it now. Go now. I'm telling you, don't wait. Like, because as this economy is opening up more and more and more, you don't want to be just starting then. You want to be getting your background work in now, now, because when you're in front of these business owners, you want, the key is going to be competence. The key is going to be, you know, I say you want to be pitch perfect right now. Well, I'll tell you how you do pitch perfect. You practice. Okay. I, I, I prepared for hours for this podcast. I, I talked to.

Joe and Matt about it at length when we met in, we met in Florida over two different sessions that we met. I talked at length with them on the phone after that. Then we had another meeting on Facebook, going back and forth. Okay, let's, let's, you know, we've been brainstorming. Let's, let's boil this down to the topic. And then I hit you guys again at the beginning, at the top of this week, another planning session. Got back on the phone yesterday and, you know, hopefully, you know, it comes across like, you know, I'm like, I'm prepared.

Oh, my God.

I want you to, to transfer that, you know, because, because sales is still gonna be a transfer of certainty. And the best way to transfer certainty is to, you know, be competent, you know, to have your stuff together. So now is the time you get in right now, you're preparing. You're, you're, you're building up your skills. You know, I think the best one is Is search engine optimization, you know, is, you know, one of the very top ones or the top ones. I love searching search because you're keeping your costs low. These businesses so badly need you that it's out there. And you. You get out there, you're going to make such a difference for people. You will get referrals. People will always remember how you treated them in this era right now. They will always remember that, like, for years down the road, people will look back and they'll say, I remember. I remember Matt. I remember Joe. Right. I remember Susan. I remember Sally. You know, like, like, yeah, I remember Cassie. They'll be like, I remember you were there for me when, you know, when. When the chips were down. You know, when the chips start coming up, they're gonna remember you. And. And it feels good. I mean, it feels good. That's why I focus right now. You know, you can almost tattoo win, win, win on the back of your hand or like, right down the pen. Remember that? Win, win, win. See that circuit? If you. If you're hearing about, you know, if you're paying attention to this, you probably pay attention to the other Internet marketers and stuff like that. If their model doesn't make sense to you, don't do it. You know, if. If there's a lot of people out there with failed models right now in the Internet marketing, it's not even necessarily their fault. You know, if you're a live event company, it's tough. I mean, I. I know that are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month right now, and that's. But it's. Because their costs were high. You know, our costs were never high. I mean, we're having. I mean, I did, guys, I did like 300k last week. I mean, it's. I don't know, tell you.

Wow.

It's.

I mean, that's the thing. Like, you're positioned perfectly. You've thought you've been through this, so you've prepared for this, and you're on top of it. Yeah, I'm sure there's a big part of that, too, of course, but that comes through preparation, you know, and being in the mix of everything and not running away.

I could have gotten lucky as just, you know, anything, and I would have gotten nothing out of it, so.

Exactly. Yeah.

The time. And. And, you know, I also want to give you guys a sense of, you know, when you're listening to. To Matt and Joe, like, these guys really vet and they really, you know, they're hot right now, and they. They've Been working so hard on this, and, you know, so this is a great place to be. You know, I. I'd be checking into their. Their Facebook group. I. I check in on the daily. So just.

Thanks, brother. I appreciate it. I know you're in there.

Comes from the heart. And feel. Feel free to excerpt this and. And put my endorsement anywhere you guys want.

Sure, we will. Yeah.

And we're. We're doing. We're actually doing it. A live stream. By the time this episode comes out, the live stream have already happened, but we'll link to where you can find it in the show notes.

That's gonna be a good idea.

Yeah.

And that one.

We're gonna specifically dive into affiliate marketing strategies because you're, you know, you're loading up webinars and having people promote what you're doing as affiliates, and you've done a lot of affiliate marketing.

I built a $1.5 million funnel since the start of 2020 money.

So that's freaking awesome.

So that would be amazing.

Yeah. And I want to give folks a next step, you know, if they're really interested in the SEO, specifically the stuff that we've been chatting about the whole time, is there a way that they can do that?

Yeah.

From this.

You guys. You guys have been talking to me about doing a webinar.

Yeah.

And I mean, at this point, obviously someone, you know, would be so qualified to be, you know, to be on that webinar and to hear more from class. So we can just kind of make up a link location.

We can make a link up now.

Yeah.

Cool. It'll be like cooked up in Amsterdam.com hustle. How about that?

There you go. Cooked up in answer to Amsterdam.

In Amsterdam. Well, that's where our mastermind happened.

I know.

I love it in time, and I will for the rest of my life, I'll be grateful for that. So cooked up.com hustle. And we're gonna have a live webinar. We only do them live with the guys. I'll get Eric and Michael, those guys with that breakthrough success, we'll get them on. We'll teach. We'll teach them heavy duty, you know, stuff that you'll be able to start working on SEO and gmb. Stuff that you'll. You'll blow your mind about sales. So we'll. We'll really get in there, and we'll give you an opportunity to find out about our. About our program Fusion, which I highly recommend.

Perfect.

Love it. Awesome, man. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thanks so much for Your dog. That's it, man.

Yeah, yeah, my prayers go out. You know, I've been praying to Jesus for, for, for, you know, people to have wisdom and health. And I said, somebody on this, I, you know, you're doing a lot for yourself here, so I, you know, an extra pair for those that are on here now. Yep.

Thanks for listening all the way through this. Yes. I appreciate you, man. Thanks, Mike.

All right, guys.

Appreciate it, man.

God bless.

Do you want to learn the hard skills necessary to support your favorite shows?

Well, cool.

Our friends Gina, Haley and Mel created something called Podcast Production School. Now, it's an online course designed to help you master the skills and strategies needed to launch, manage, and grow podcasts, including things like audio editing, show notes, creation, and promotions. So download their free podcast production or their launch Checklist today@podcastproductionschool.com Go Flowchart. Again, that's podcastproductionschool.com Go flowchart.

Thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you dug it. I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Now, because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do live webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's Easy Webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zieman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform, and we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody can register and then it, you know, they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it, yet, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing tool. And Casey is actually hooking you up. He said for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, he's giving 25 off of the membership to use easy webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has. But he's hooking you up with 25 off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle. That's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easywebinar.com hustole. It's a awesome tool. You're going to dig it, so just go grab it. Check it out. Easywebinar.com hustle. See ya. No, not see ya. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know. I don't know how to close these things. Go get Easy Webinar. Talk to you later.

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

Thanks for listening.

Go get it.

Wiki Wiki.

We love you.