Ryan Lee - Building Brands, Cultivating Communities, And '80s Movies

How can I have the most impact? How can I do things that's really gonna shake up the industry and just blow people away? And I said, you know what, by the time this goes live, it's gonna be live anyway. So I'm not letting it out of bag. I'm like, let me just give it all away for free. That and it just, the minute I said that, I felt my body like, yeah, just it felt so right.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. What is up? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. I am really, really excited for you to hear today's episode because today's guest is somebody that, well, for Joe and I goes all the way back to roughly 2010. He's someone who's been in the industry since, you know, the digital marketing, marketing industry since the late. So he's been around for a while. Joe and I sort of discovered him maybe 11 years ago and have followed his work off and on since then. And he's just someone that's really, really impressive. He's someone that kind of tells it like it is and will call out the sort of BS that's happening in the marketing industry. And that's really what we love about him. So today we're talking with the one and only Ryan Lee. He is the founder of Freedom F R E E D Y M, which is an online Netflix style community where you can pretty much learn anything about marketing and entrepreneurship. And there's just a ton of training content. Joe has contributed content to his members area. I'm contributing content to his members area and a whole bunch of other really high level entrepreneurs have contributed to this Freedom Netflix style membership. So definitely, definitely go check that out now on this episode today, we kind of go down a few different rabbit holes with Ryan. We talk about branding and how to really, really dial in, you know, things like the color scheme and the fonts and the branding to build a cohesive brand for your business. We talk about memberships, we talk about community and actually building a community and how to build a community around your brand. And we even dive deep into like, well, what if you have kind of more of a boring or a physical product where a community may not totally make sense. We even talk about how to cultivate a community around those kinds of products. We talk about email marketing.

We talk about the 80s and his obsession with the 80s and how to inject the things that you really love in your personal life, into your brand and into your business and into things like your podcast and your email marketing and wide ranging topics from one of the OGs in our space. We just loved having this conversation with him. He is a ball of energy. You know, you'll hear it. We ask like one question and he just gets real ramped up and excited and we'll talk for 15 minutes and then we'll ask another question and he'll get real ramped up and just fun energy and great ideas and we just love everything about him and what he's doing in his business. And I think you will too after listening to this episode, so. So you're gonna love this one. Make sure you grab the notes. If you go to flowchartgroup.com that's where you sign up for our Facebook group. By signing up for our Facebook group, you also have the option to get the action guide for our most recent episodes. So as long as you're going there within two weeks of this episode coming out, you'll have the ability to join the community and get the free action guide directly from this episode. You're gonna wanna do that. So go to flowchart group. Make sure you're a member of the community and we're going to hook you up. All right, that's enough for me. Let's go talk to Ryan Lee.

We're officially recording now. Thank you for, for hanging out with us, man. And I really wish I were in your man cave playing all those games behind you. I know. Yeah, it's always in these videos and I'm like, damn it, that looks so fun there.

It is pretty cool. And I wish I was there not reading all the books behind me. Make believing I'm reading the books.

I'm jealous of this fighter too. I love that game.

Right?

We do have some. We do have some good games. I got some new ones coming. I think I'm going to get the NBA Jam soon, so stay tuned.

I love it.

Who cares about marketing?

This is, this is what it's all about, man. NFL Blitz. I mean, those games. Come on, bring it back.

We're talking about why we do the marketing now. So.

Yes, it's freedom and lifestyle. So let's talk about that because that's what you embody really freaking well, man. And I mean, not. Not to do the whole story thing, but I know you came from not the entrepreneur life. I mean, your. Your father was, you know, but you were in phys ed, PE and schools and teaching kids.

Yeah.

I didn't think I'd be an entrepreneur. My first job out of college.

Believe.

It or not, a lot of people don't even know this profession. I was a certified therapeutic recreational specialist. So my college degree was in recreational therapy. So essentially like a play therapist. So I spent six years working in a children's hospital and I worked from 2 to 10 at night, from 2pm to 10. And we took over when all the therapists left and teachers and we would just do sports and activities. And I taught them wheelchair basketball. I took them and I did adapted aquatics.

And then I became a phys ed teacher after that. But on the side is when I started building my own business. So I did have a little of the entrepreneurial hustle. I was training young athletes. I learned the value of niching down back then because I was the only one who said, hey, I specialize in training young athletes. So I would train them in the mornings or during a break.

And yeah, it was, I kind of fell into this accidentally putting up. I was writing articles. This was 1998. So really early in the game there was no YouTube. You couldn't do, you couldn't. You could barely do pictures because it would take. Everyone's on dial up. So I just had a little website built that was just articles about training, about training for athletes. And I wrote because I was a college, I was a sprinter in college at track. So I wrote about speed increasing your 40 and power training and it just took off. I started getting emails from people all over the world and then I started selling training equipment like drop shipping, started doing training programs. People are like, can you design a program for me? I said sure. And actually then hired someone who. He's a pretty well known marketer now. His name's Craig Ballantyne.

Oh yeah, we've had him on the show here.

Yeah, but he was finishing up college and he's a fitness guy and I would pay him like 30 bucks and he would help design programs for people. Yeah, and that was kind of the whole start of it.

I guess he had a similar journey began, I remember. Yeah, he kind of had the physical space and got called into marketing or at least teaching his productivity. But for you, it's like all these calls, it seems like it's like, hey, tell me how to do this. I know online marketing for you is kind of that way as well, right?

Yeah, I never thought I would teach marketing. I came on talking about sports and fitness and health. That was my thing. And then I ended up, I went to night school and I have A master's in exercise physiology. A lot of people don't realize that. So I love training. So that's all I talked about for the first couple years. But then fitness professionals started coming online and saying, oh, my God. Like, I would dominate the search engines back then. Google was just getting started. So it was like Excite and Lycos and Altavista. Oh, baby, come on. That's before you guys had beards.

Yeah.

So, you know, you type in sports training or basketball training. I was number one. And they would start to ask me, well, how are you doing this? How are you making money online? And can you teach me? I'm like, sure, here. And that's where it all started to happen. Then I created a membership site just for fitness professionals, teaching them this kind of new online marketing world in addition to my other membership site for sports training. So that's where the ball started rolling. And I was. For years, I've had my toe in both waters. Health. I started a couple of supplement companies and health membership sites and the teaching of it and teaching marketing mostly to fitness pros at the beginning and now everyone. So it's kind of like the best of both worlds. And it's funny, as an entrepreneur, you just never know where this stuff's going to take you.

Right.

Like, we all have this idea, this is where I'm going to start, and this is where I'm going to go throw all that crap out the window.

Did you ever have, like, did you feel like you had it figured out, or did you just get slapped enough around where you're like, okay, I guess I just got to go with the flow and see where this takes me.

I'll tell you, I'm always Joe. I interviewed you for Freedom recently.

I still don't have it figured. We still don't know, right? You don't know what you don't know. You think you have this idea or the wisdom to do this or this product or this model, and things happen. You could do, like right now with my nutrition company, Rewind, it's doing really well, but we're spending a lot of money on ads. We're spending over $100,000 a month just on Facebook, which is great, but what if it stops working tomorrow?

Like, 14? Yeah. It's like, oh, what if that shakes?

Like, you just. You don't know. You know, what if all of a sudden there's a competitor or something happens with the product supplier, the memberships, there's so much unknown. And everyone says, well, what's the trait for an entrepreneur. What do you have to have? Is it smart? Is it this? Is that, man. It's resilience. It really is. And that's one thing that kind of annoys me about a lot of the people who, quote, unquote, teach marketing. And by the way, not you guys. I've been watching what you gu. Were doing when you came onto my radar. And I love. We follow the same philosophy, like, give me the tactics, like, show me the stuff, don't hide it. Don't give me the razzmatazz. And these two hour friggin BS webinars. Just tell me what to do. Which is why I resonate with you guys. I really like that.

Thanks, man.

But so many marketers, what they do is they. I know why they do it. Because it converts better. They want to tell you how easy it is. Here's the easy way to do this. Oh, set up a membership site. You know, oh, you're good at your. You're a children's clown. Set up a membership site, people how to juggle. You only get a thousand members at 30 bucks a month. That's 30 grand a month.

Yep. How easy is that? Right?

How easy is that? And then the poor, the poor clowns are setting up some crap site, right? They're on this. Do I use kajabi? Do I use podi? Do I use WordPress?

Where do I put my clown site?

And then they'll spend the next two years recording themselves, juggling. And then they put it up. And then they have one member, their, their cousin who's a clown. And then, and then they're fresh. And then. But the guru comes along, hey, you're doing it wrong. You got to do big ticket clown coaching.

But it's not your fault.

It's not your fault. Pay me ten grand and I'll show you how to do it.

That's right.

And then they spend another five or ten grand of Facebook ads. It doesn't work. Well, I did everything I could. I don't know why it's not working for you. Good luck. And then you get ghosted.

How about the Clown mastermind for 25k though, you know clownstermind.

Come on, baby.

Love it. Branding 101byom.

Bring your own makeup.

You're good.

So it's, it is kind of like a little bit of shell game. So I just tell people the truth and I, I know some people don't like that, but I'm like. And I'll even say if they want to do a membership site, I say, okay, Great. However, do you have a tribe? Do you have a list? Do you have a way to market them? What's your strategy? How are you going to differentiate from the other clown membership sites? Do you have a. But do you have money to market? Because it's going to cost money. Like all that stuff. I say, you know what you're better off doing? Why don't you just take all this information you're going to do and let's put it into, into a one time course. Let's sell it for 20 bucks. Go to your friends and say, hey, I put this all together. It's the ultimate clown party business plan. It's 20 bucks, do you want it? And let's see if you could sell 20, 30, 50, 100 of them. Get a pulse, start building a list, start building relationships. Now all of a sudden you're getting some traction. Now maybe I could open a membership on the back end, but I think that's, yes, it's a longer play and no, you don't get the recurring revenue immediately, but it's a really good way to test the market and just to see if there's an input, if there's a thing. Because your friends are going to tell you it's the greatest idea. Your friends who have no clue about marketing. Oh, you want to do a clown membership? It's the greatest thing. I join. No, you wouldn't. You're a clown and you wouldn't join.

Well, you can even take a step even further back and say, you know, take some of this content and put it on a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel completely for free. Because if you can't get anybody to watch that stuff for free, who's going to even pay you 20 bucks?

Yeah, no, it's a good point. I mean you could definitely do that. You could do both. You could put it for free and try to sell it. Like.

I like to try to go for the sale quickly too, just to see if anyone will take out their credit card. But you're right, but you can go the longer route too and just get yourself out there. I know, that's so like cliched. Get yourself out there and no, you don't have to be everywhere. I think.

That'S another piece of advice I don't love is, you know, you have to be on every platform. Oh, you're not on TikTok, you're not doing stupid dances. Oh, you're not on Clubhouse. You're missing. And they put all this pressure on entrepreneurs. Like we have to be Everywhere. And then you start freaking out. So I say one or two, preferably two platforms you're good at and just play there because if one falls apart, at least you have the other. So I like to reduce risk but still have an actual life. You know, I have four kids. I don't want to be online all day, you know, taking selfies and stupid ass shit. What's time for that?

It's true, man. And that's why I was telling Matt. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna. I'm loving this episode or know I'm going to love it because we jam on the. We talk the same language. Family first. I mean, that's the same thing we talk about often. And we're actively now, you know, getting ourselves out of the doing of most of the stuff in our biz. It's really just content like this, which is rad. So now we finally created this business that definitely supports the lifestyle we want. So I'm like, you're pure lifestyle through and through. And even have that. You know, you mentioned freedom. F, R, E, E, D, Y, M.

That's the way you spell. That's the way you spell freedom.

Damn it. When's that launching? I know. It's a relaunch, right? The website's already up and on.

Yeah. So freedom is. We were the original Netflix for entrepreneurs was like six years ago. I started then two guys who I'm friends with. I've known Russell Brunson for a decade and Ryan Deiss as well. And then they started coming out with, oh, we're Netflix for entrepreneur. I'm like, screw you guys. The original. So it was a paid membership site and it depends when this is going live.

I sold this when?

Month. Ish.

Maybe I sold this site to guys who were members. Without getting into too many details. I own the site again, so it's now mine. And I was trying to think of what to do with it. I redid all of the. I took all the old content down. There were about a thousand hours.

Wow.

Because some of it, you know, if it's. If it's very tactical, you know, sometimes the tactics aren't necessary if you're giving a specific thing about how to do a Facebook thing. And it's. That's not available anymore. Some things feel a little outdated. So I wanted to redo it with my energy, my fun. Joe, you were on. You know, I grill. I grill you guys. And I was going to relaunch and I was like, you know what? I'm going to blow people away. Maybe I'll make it like 20 bucks or maybe 10 bucks a month. I was, I swear to God, I was one day away from launching. It was already sales. Letter click did test things. And this is when you asked. It's funny coming full circle. You asked me at the beginning, do you ever feel like you kind of know the path? And this is why I say no, because I was going to do it. I've been online over 20 years. I should know my stuff by now. And I had this little feeling in my gut, like it doesn't feel right for whatever reason. I don't know why. I knew the value was there. And I know people would freak out because they were paying 50 bucks a month before. And I said, how can I? And I asked myself this framing question. And I'm at a different point than a lot of people are. I built other health companies. Rewind is going great. This isn't about the money for me. So I know I have more flexibility, but I said, how can I have the most impact? How can I do things that's really going to shake up the industry and just blow people away? And I said, you know what? Okay. It's gonna be like by the time this goes live, it's gonna be live anyway. So I'm not letting it out of the bag. I'm like, let me just give it all away for free.

Oh, wow.

That. And it just. The minute I said that, I felt my body like, yeah, yeah. Just. It felt so right.

Again, when you do a membership site, a content based, there's really not a lot of costs involved. There's just not. Especially if you're doing a lot of zoom stuff or your own recordings. I mean, unless you're hiring Spielberg to direct with cranes, it's not a huge cost. So I'm like, it's not a big cost. I can do it. I know I'm going to impact lives. And that was the idea. I'm just going to give it. It's going to be Netflix. We're going to update it almost every single day. I love doing these interviews. I love doing trainings and meeting new entrepreneurs. And it's free. How am I going to make money from it? I have a couple of ideas down the road. I'm not worried about it now. I'm under no pressure, so I'm going to take my time. I would love to build it to a million people. I think I can. So that's it. And that felt better to me. And sometimes we have to listen to our gut and if we can ask ourselves that crazy question. Because I'm sure a lot of people watching this are more content or experts, right? They want to sell content, they want to sell courses, membership sites, coaching, ip. So I ask everyone watching this, what happens? Like if you flip it and say, what if I have to give this all away? Everything, every single thing.

And what if I'm not allowed to make any money for the next six weeks? How does that change my business? And what happens is all of a sudden you're like, you feel open, you're like, oh my God. And your feeling goes from. Instead of saying, well, I'm not gonna say this because I wanna sell this. And this is on the back end to here. I am, I'm here to help, I'm here to serve. And you will be shocked by how it attracts people. So it's just. And I'm not saying that obviously you wanna make money, right?

Somehow on the back end, though, I mean, it's a longer game.

But if you look at like if I say to you who are some of the biggest names in teaching marketing? And I'm not even talking like quote unquote, Internet marketers like Russell or even Dice, you'd probably say people the most well known, that they're not household names, but the closest thing to in our world, maybe it's Gary Vaynerchuk or maybe Tim Ferriss.

Possibly even Grant Cardone.

Everybody has their own flavor. It's all good, right? Right? Not.

Not mine. But hey, I don't judge. But I know, I know Gary personally and I know and I know Tim personally, but they pretty much give their stuff away. Like it'd be really against brand if all of a sudden Vaynerchuk does a. Oh, I have a course on how to get your insta following up. It's 997. You'd be like, what?

Who's this?

Or Tim, Tim, same thing. It wouldn't feel right. So I'm not saying that's the only way to market. And I'm not saying again, you have to be like Gary and never sleep. But what I'm saying is they have a different model of just give, give, give, give, give, give it all out there. And they have other ways to monetize. So there's no one right way, there's no one right model. There's every model can and does work. And that's the other thing. God, I'm talking a lot. You guys asked me one question.

This is amazing.

It's like you wound me up, you know, I Feel comfortable with you guys.

We have this way with people. I don't. Yes, but no, I mean through all of this, because what you're just saying right here is literally why we started this podcast. We, this is no joke. But we shut down all of our training programs, all the info products that Matt was doing for a long time. I was doing a lot more service based stuff. So people to people. And we just decided, you know what, affiliate marketing was covering pretty much all the revenue we needed at the time. So we're like, let's just give everything away for free and see what happens. And we wanted to grow a bigger brand, get a bigger community around us, grow the email list. So because we were confident, like you said, something's gonna develop later, but give it space, give it time. And opening that the floodgates, really, it felt like we just kind of gave ourself this release of, oh, we gotta scale these. We gotta like, do we? Nah, we don't. Let's. So we cut all those ties and then this podcast, four years later, we're like, holy crap, it's the best thing we've ever done. And then things obviously have been built from the back of the podcast, but took time.

But you came, you flipped from a place of.

Scarcity, my information, my content, to here you go, have at it. And then you're coming up with unique ways to just repackage and repurpose that. Like, hey, we'll give you a version of it for free. You can have the podcast for free, but if you want the reports or the specific breakdowns and all that kind of stuff, then there's a fee. You know what, not everyone's going to do it, but a percentage. Well, I mean, it's really, it's the content version of the freemium model pretty much, right? Software where you come in, where there's. There's different ways to do freemium software, but one would be everyone gets the basic free software, right? Like maybe there's TurboTax or something. And you could file federal, but if you want to file state, there's a little extra fee. And depending on numbers, depending on revenues and pricing, you might make a lot of money having 5% of the people take that or 10%, but by opening everything up, instead of attracting a thousand people, you could attract hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

So how are you doing this for rewind then? Because you can't really do a total freemium model with an E Commerce brand to grow that brand. I'm kind of curious how you get Your story out there, you grow that community.

Well, just to clarify, before you do, can you tell us what Rewind is just for anybody listening? Because I don't think we brought it up yet.

Here you go.

I don't know if people could see. So this is my health company. I started it about three and a half years. Three years ago. I was a fitness guy. I'll just tell the. I hate talking about myself, but I'll tell this little quick story just to give you context. I became a business guru, right? I was traveling, eating too much. We just had our fourth kid. This was over 10 years ago. Then my mom passed away from cancer at 63. And something happened with our supplement company. All of a sudden we went to millions of dollars in debt. Everything fell apart, essentially stress eating. I gained about 40 pounds. I started having pain in my joints where I couldn't walk. And I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called psoriatic arthritis. And it took a few years to really get it dialed in. But I didn't want to go on drugs. They wanted to put me on chemo. I said, hell no. And I just focused on simplicity. And I got back into the health world and Rewind was my way to start a company that had products that were anti inflammatory but most nutrition. So the reason, I think there's a few reasons I think Rewind is working. Number one, we have the best tasting greens on the prop in the world. So whatever you sell, whether it's. Whether it's e commerce stuff or it's information, be really, really good, right? Don't just slap together transcripts and say it's $47. That's lazy.

The product better be rock solid.

Yeah, yeah, be good. Be good. Instead of saying, what's the least amount of work I can do for a 97amonth membership? Ask how can I give so much? So they're paying 97. They are not only happy, they're gonna tell everyone they know about it. That's the shift. So the product's gotta be good. And then I said, okay, well, I want to start this nutrition company because I couldn't find anything good to eat or drink. So I'm like, well, started thinking about my personality and what makes me different. And I'm like, I want to have fun. Because every other company, especially greens companies, man, they are so serious. Here are the nine greens you must take. And you know, I live in a hyperbolic chamber and I get IV drips.

I have this perfect kitchen with all of my veggies spread Out. Really? No, you don't.

You want to puke? I was listening to one guy. I'm not gonna say his name. I was listening to a podcast interview. I want to see what he did with his company. And he's. And he's, of course, a single guy. He spends $4,000 a day in a. In a hyperbolic chamber and gets IV drips and has a personal chef mailing stuff and massage every day. I'm like, dude, I got 4K. I don't have time for that crap.

Yeah, let's look at the audience. Like, what's reality in the spectrum of.

That's not real. That's. That's not real. So I want to just have a real company. I couldn't out organic them or I couldn't out science them. Broccoli in a green drink is broccoli. It's broccoli.

So if you ask yourself, how can you be different? How could you tap into what makes you unique and special? And mine was fun and my insane knowledge of 80s pop culture, because I grew up. I was born in 72, so I was a teen through the 80s. And all I did was watch movies. Like, movies, TV shows, music, my record collection. I've always loved it. And I'm like, well. And I came up with the name Rewind because it was about rewinding the years because I lost all that weight.

I reversed my autoimmune. I don't have any pain anymore, and I'm back to the same weight and pants size I was in high school. So I'm like, well, it's like rewinding the years. But Rewind also has that double meaning of rewinding a VHS tape or, you know, a boombox, if you guys remember those.

Of course, man.

And then I just. I just kind of played into that. It's my buddy Michael Fishman says for me, like, it's. It's almost like the wallpaper. It's not the only thing. Like, we don't overdo it, but we want to have this sense of fun and play. And you can eat and you could work out, and you could still have fun doing it. So I think that's what makes us different and unique and special on a. On a business tactical thing, because I know you guys love tactics. How does this. How does this play into what you guys do? So now I'm gonna put you guys on the hot seat.

Please do.

Ready, Joe?

Matt.

Okay, each of you, let's start with you. Matt, give me something you like, some kind of hobby or Is there a band? Something that doesn't. And don't say reading books and marketing. What do you like to do? And it's a hobby. Maybe no one even knows about this. Or it's a band you're a fan of or like something. Give me something you like.

I do jigsaw puzzles.

See, Joe, did you know that about him?

I did, but he doesn't speak about it much. First time publicly, right here.

Does everyone on your list know about that?

Unlikely. No.

No. Okay, Joe, you had time to think about this. Give me something that you like.

I like getting outside. So riding my bike, running around, doing stuff like that. Yeah.

So I challenge everyone. Can you think of things that are not directly related to your product or company, but still make you human and fun and different and unique and something you're passionate about? So, Matt, jigsaw puzzle, perfect example. Like, you can talk about jigsaw puzzles. You should have a picture. You know, you should be able to work some of that theme into your emails, which, by the way, talk about a layup, a jigsaw puzzle, and putting together a business, and say, hey, you know. And Matt, because we never met before. Do you have any kids?

I do. I have two. Yep.

And how old are they?

Eight and six.

Okay, so they could start. They could do jigsaw puzzles. Maybe little bigger pieces. You know, they're not doing the 10,000 piece, but you could talk about, oh, the other night we were playing jigsaw puzzles with my kids. Like, now. You could start to bring it in. And, Joe, same thing with you with the bike. Hey, I just got off the bike today, and, oh, I saw this bike ride. You don't have to make your business about that, but you could work it in to make you more human. And what you'll find is that people might not be passionate about biking or passionate about jigsaw puzzles, because who the hell's passionate about jigsaw puzzles? But people are attracted to people who have a passion. So people might be like, you know what, Ryan? Maybe I'm not, like, a big 80s fan, or maybe they're more millennials and they were born in, like, 89. They don't remember Michael Jackson moonwalking on, you know, on the Motown special. Sorry, they don't even know who Wham. Is. I mean, come on.

But.

They know how passionate I am, and they get excited when I get excited. But what it does on a psychological level, and Jonah Berger calls these triggers, if you do this enough subtly, people start to associate these unrelated things to your business. So Joe and Matt, if you talk about jigsaw puzzles, not every day, not all the time, but enough. When people see a jigsaw puzzle or they see it online or they see it, they'll automatically think of you and think of your business. When people. I get tagged every single day with 80s stuff every day. Oh my God, I saw this new song by, you know, Billy Idol or did you see, you know, Stranger Things? Every day, all day I'm getting tagged, which is cool. Which means they're thinking to me, they're thinking of rewind. I did the same thing when I originally started Freedom. Every day I'd start off the email, hey, it's Ryan. And I'm sitting here at Starbucks writing. Because that's what I would do. I'd work from a coffee shop and write my emails to the point where I would get tagged and they'd say, hey, I'm at Starbucks. The freedom lifestyle.

You were giving him the lifestyle. And they're basically like, yeah, that must be it right there. Starbucks.

Right. But to the point where they would. Every time they. And I get that and they say, man, I was at Starbucks and you were the first person I thought of. So it doesn't mean they're going to go to Starbucks and then get out of my way and run to the computer and like join up for freedom right away. But it's just a way to keep you in the in mind and it could be for anything. Let's say there are some musicians that have really big followings. There are people that are Iron Maiden fanatics, Springsteen fans. Right. So if you're passionate about that or motorcycles, whatever, find ways to bring it. It also makes you more human. And it's incredible how few people do this. They only talk about the topic. You know, I'm a fitness person and every email is the seven best ab exercises, the three best foods to eat. And I like to get away from that and I like just to be a real person. And I think it reflects. Cause our community is about that and they know us like us and trust us and we're completely transparent and it's.

Fun, it's a window into your life and it's a new angle that they're not used to probably.

Well, I was just gonna say, going back to your point, at the very beginning of every one of these episodes, the intro to these shows is beatboxing. I don't know if you've heard it. Joe beatboxes. And I just kind of talk silly over Joe beatboxing. And that's Literally the intro to the show. It's like a little 15 second thing that we do. But when, when we go to like conferences and, or we jump on zoom calls and things like that, now people will come on and go wiki wiki. Or like they reference the beatboxing to.

Us all the time.

Like we are now like, no, we actually removed the beatbox from the intro for what, two episodes? And our Facebook community flipped out and said, what the heck happened to the beatbox?

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah. I mean, you guys could do, you know, hey, beatbox contest. Film a video of yourself doing a beatbox. Whoever wins is gonna get, you know, a gift card or something.

I love it, man. I mean, that's. And I've heard you say this before, it's your vibe, right? You're just putting your vibe on everything possible. So it's like when I was checking out Rewind the website, you got the boombox and the chick holding it. But at the. What caught my eye was the social media though. All that, the feed that you have and it's what you, what you said, it's all these people saying like, check out this 80s stuff or, you know, the Rewind product. But they're going to you, it seems like, because they have that story that you've kind of planted in their mind.

Yeah.

And like, look, and it. What. Because obviously like 80s and pop culture movies is going to attract a wider net than, you know, Jigsaw puzzle. Right. So we're automatically. And that was the original idea. When I was going to start this company, I was like, I'm just going Gen X. That's my tribe. That's who I know. We speak the same language. I could say 867-530-9. And they know exactly what that means.

Right.

If you know what that means, you're in my crew. But what I started seeing was again, that idea of you don't know what you don't know. Right. I thought, I'm just gonna be Gen X. And that's it. We started running Facebook ads and all of a sudden like people 55 and 60, like, they're becoming big fans and it's starting to skew a little bit older. And then we've got some younger demo that don't know any of this and I'm like, cool. So we kind of broaden it out a little bit. But you don't know until you put it out there. But I think it's fun. I just, I love doing it. And if you find something that you're really excited about and can and find a way to bring it in a little bit into your business and into your marketing. It makes you more human. People are going to resonate with it. And again, they are, they're going to be passionate about you being passionate. I can't stress that enough. But don't pick something just because it's like popular.

Right.

Like if you're not into, I don't know, some of my kids like that. Some of the new, the newer rappers and I love rap and hip hop, but the old, the newer stuff where it's like the sleepy rap and oh.

Hi, I can't stand. I can't hear it.

Awful.

So if you don't like that, don't do it. Because it's popular for younger kids. Right. Because they're going to sniff a phony in a second.

And that's the thing. It seems like you pick a niche or you pick an audience that is. And then I've heard you say also, you kind of build this, I guess the niche around it, or at least what you create in that space. So it allows you to be kind of this unique, you know, product or brand in maybe a sea of other bars or greens out there. You know, it helps you kind of stand out immediately. Of like, okay, yeah, you are in my tribe, so you're probably gonna just attract more of my tribe. For me, it's like this word of mouth snowball effect kind of happens. Yeah.

Well, you know what's crazy is that most people, when they build a business.

The first thing they do is they look at their competitors, right? They start. So let's say I was building, let's say I was building a bar business. Again, the first thing they would do is look at every other bar company and start to see the similarities and you get blinded. And all of a sudden your company looks just like theirs. Same thing. In the information marketing space. When was the last time you saw a product in the quote unquote Internet marketing world that didn't end in a seven?

Right. It's too much.

It's insane. Or their marketing all looks the same and the same type of headlines and the same type of stuff. And again, a webinar, like, you know what it's going to be? Here's this and here's we're going to learn and here's the story, you know, and here's what. And then all of a sudden it leads to this and here comes the pitch. You could see it a mile away. And I like to what I Recommend people do. And what I do, I look outside of my industry. I didn't look at bar companies. Like, when I was looking. When we were doing a redesign of our labels because our brand was evolving. The first thing I did was look at. I went to a site. It's great. It's called Beehive. It's amazing. For. For graphic inspiration, I started looking up. Oh, you guys are going to write that down? You're going to put that.

It's the one note I wrote. No, I'm just kidding.

Oh, actually, you know what? It's not Beehive. It's Behance.

Oh, come on. Behance. All right, let's see.

I want to screw you guys up.

It's.

I think it's like behance.net okay. And I would type in things like craft beer labeling, coffee companies, and all of a sudden, you see things completely different. You're like, oh, my God. And this takes you on a different journey. So I've always done that with my businesses and marketing. I don't look at what everyone else is doing in my industry. I look at other industries. I was looking at mattress companies, like purple and seeing what their copy looked like and what their layouts were and what their colors were and their graphics. And I don't think people put enough thought into graphically how they're gonna separate. They're so obsessed with the copy. And yes, copy is so important. It's so important. A crappy headline and they're gone. However, how much effort do you put into standing out graphically? Is there a brand? Is there follow through? Does your font from the logo match the font of the other things and the color scheme? And I know it's a small thing, but if you want to build an actual company with legs where people are going to trust you as the go to source for that particular type of information, there's something to be said about a consistency of brand and messaging and vibe all the way through, as opposed to, hey, I'm Johnny Guru. Here's how to juggle for 20 minutes. Here's how to make a million dollars with an ice cream machine. And there's like, these unrelated products. And now you've got 10 URLs, and you're trying to build a Facebook page around each one of them, and you're doing a separate Facebook group because you're doing a launch, and now you've got a million properties, and you feel overwhelmed and you cry into your pillow. Don't cry into your pillow.

It's not Worth it.

No, no. Pick one brand and like, what's your umbrella brand? And then you could build products underneath that.

Bingo. It's like asset gathering. Yeah. You have your umbrella and you have all these different little arms that happened. That's pretty much what we're gonna do with this launch that we talked about. And probably by the time it's live, it's out, or this episode's live, it's gonna be called Pod Hacker. And it's exactly what you just said. We're investing, really, for the first time into our branding colors. We have great copywriters and all these folks that are helping us do this, because that's the stuff that Matt and I aren't looking at, naturally. Are these like, oh, is that a shade? Or is that the hex? A little different on that red to this one, which literally happened yesterday. You can't see that. I'm like, no, but I know it matters and it does. It's going to touch everything.

Yeah, well, you know what? You don't realize how much it matters until you see a company that has it together and you look at their site and everything matches and everything feels like it's related and it's all part of the same family. And there's a feeling of comfort in that, especially if they buy something from you and you deliver a good experience.

Right?

You deliver a good experience. Now they like you and trust you, and now there's gonna be a much greater chance they're gonna buy more stuff from you as opposed to just every time feels completely different and unique and there's nothing. There's no flow through. So it's good you guys are looking like there are color palettes that match with each other. Right. As opposed to.

Running to fiverr and getting the cheapest book cover or worse, doing it yourself. Oh, my God. They'll spend. Someone will spend eight months writing a book and they won't spend like 200 bucks, get a cover done or 500 bucks, they'll do it themselves in Microsoft Word. And it's like some clip art from 1985. Stupid looking dog.

Yeah, yeah.

And like the lime green font in, like, cartoon font.

Yeah, the cartoon font I was just thinking of.

You're like, please stop. You know how to build your own million dollar business. Come on, man.

From somebody who won't spend $200 on a book cover, right?

Yeah. Oh, God, don't get me started.

No, it's true, man. I mean, I'm happy you brought this up. We just had Dan Norris on the podcast recently, and he was talking about how he's using a lot of branding to, you know, he built WP Curve and launched that and, you know, sold it all based off of a lot of what you're saying in the brand. He's doing that in the craft beer space too. I'm like, so this stuff translates all over the place. You're doing the same thing here online. Of course, now you have e comm stuff as well. That's been cooking for a while. I mean, it's. It's just so cool when you start to think of there's other stuff. As us marketers, we're not really thinking about a lot of times we might be all obsessed with copy on, you know, copywriting or Facebook ads slapping together creatives that we think are going to catch attention. But maybe we're not thinking of the full brand and what the umbrella, you know, feel is when someone enters our ecosystem.

Yeah, no, you're right. And most don't. We think very short term. We think immediate return. We think, what was our roas on that Facebook ad? And they're not thinking longer term. I'm not saying that stuff isn't important. We look at our numbers every day. Absolutely. But what we also look at, especially with the e commerce company, is the customers. How many are return customers. Whereas I'm guessing most companies would be 95% new, 5% returning. Get it to 50, 50. Like all the profits in the back end, it's with returning customers. And we don't put enough thought into it. I'm not saying that has to be the only thing, because there is, it's funny. There's the extremes, right. There are some that are like Madison Avenue branding. And that's all it is. It's so fluffy. There's no bite. And then there's the opposite, where it's all old school, you know, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy.

The uglier the better the better. Right?

Where I think you thread the middle, you combine the branding and the vibe with the direct marketing sensibility and you bring it together, then it's like unbeatable. Even though we focus a lot on our brand. Rewind. I think our copy, I write all the copy, but I think it's maybe because I wrote it, I think it's pretty good. And we convert really high. Not hypey. Right? And that's the other thing. Like Facebook, Google, they don't want to hype. They don't want you to make people feel bad. They want their customers to have a good user experience. So they want companies that are going to lift people up. So stop trying to twist the knife so much and maybe start pulling the knife out.

Let's remove the weapon, huh? We don't need a knife at all.

Yeah. Stop. And one thing drives me crazy that they. And again, I've known Ryan for a long time. I know Perry Belcher, too. He's a funny guy. They came up with their term years ago called Tripwire. And from the minute I heard that, I hated.

Has such a negative connotation. Like, the first experience you're going to have is you're trying to kill someone and maim them and blow them up. Now, I know that's an exaggeration, but that's what it. Oh, it's a tripwire. It explodes. And Kevin Rogers, one of my buddies, we were talking years ago, we said, let's come up with a new name. And he right away, he said, let's call it a welcome mat.

Ooh.

Yes.

Oh.

So we were saying. We've been saying that for years. And when I was coaching someone, I'll never forget this years ago, this holistic md, like, great practice, successful, doing all this great stuff. He's like, yes, Ryan. And what I'd like to do is set up the tripwire.

I basically screamed at him. I said, doc, you say it again, I'm hanging up on you. I will not work with you. You're a doctor. You heal people. You help them.

You help them live.

You're talking about tripwires. He's like, oh, I never thought of it like that. So no tripwires. Welcome mats, my friend.

I like that. Welcome mats. How about when it comes, huh?

Language matters.

It does.

Absolutely.

Well, that was actually. It's funny enough you said that, because with communities and when you're building a community or a tribe, are there things that you pay attention to? I know we've talked about naming a community before, being super powerful because it puts you part of the tribe. But when it comes to language and maybe specifics, I guess I was actually going to ask about naming your community and maybe some of the things that you do in the community to harness engagement and really keep people around you. Right?

Well, that's the first thing is coming up with a name for your community.

Just like, I look at it as like, you're building like, you're a band. I love music, so I love using music analogies. But think about bands, right? What do bands do? A popular band has a name for their fans. Kiss. The Kiss Army.

Right?

You can go pop Justin Bieber, the Beliebers.

Deadheads.

You want to go? Which one?

Deadheads. What did you say? Something about Gaga.

Gaga. What? She is Little Monsters, I think.

Little Monsters, right?

Yeah. So look, you want to go American Idol? We'll go Claymates. Clay Aiken.

That's right.

I know. Joe, you were a huge Clay Aiken fan.

Big time, bro.

You went to his concert A few times. Little meet and greet.

Okay, cool. I don't judge everybody, man. You're creeping on Facebook too hard.

I actually.

I like all music, but that's the first thing, is to try to think of the name. So for Rewind, I call them, and they're starting to call themselves the Rewinders.

Right.

And you said your new brand's gonna be pod hacking. Yeah, I mean, right there, that's what they are. Hey, Pod hackers.

Yeah.

It's in the name instead of high customers. So that's the first thing is making them feel like they're part of a tribe and then in your tribe. So if we're talking, let's say, specifically a Facebook group.

What I've learned about leadership over the years for a long time, and I was captain of my high school and college track team and won the leadership award in college for my department. I'm not saying that to brag, but I've always been. I kind of step up as a leader in the roles I take. And I think the number one reason why people will follow.

It comes down to one word, and it's integrity. They have to know they can trust you. And as marketers, sometimes we don't always do the best job of that. We're so concerned with making a sale and using hyperbole and trying to exaggerate things that people don't really believe you and trust you. So. So it's about leading with integrity and knowing on the email list in the Facebook group, they have to know you have their back. They've got to know that. So if you guys. I know you guys are a heavy affiliate model, heavy affiliate driven. You have to know that they're good programs. Right? And knowing you guys, you wouldn't promote something if it's a crappy product, even if it's the best commission in the world, they could say, we'll give you 95% commission. If it's a crap product, you wouldn't promote it, which is why they're gonna stick around.

But not everyone does that. They only care about the commissions. What's my EPC and how much money am I gonna make? And they don't care. And then they're the ones who always have the churn and burn issue. Like, dude, I don't understand. I'm losing all my subscribers. And I launched a membership site no one bought. It's because they don't trust you, so they have to know you have their back. And people, when they come into our Facebook group, they know I have their back and they know I'm gonna protect them. So we say, and we have rules, like, no spam, none of that crap. Our whole philosophy is be cool, like the Fonz. Hopefully they get the Fonzie reference.

He was the greatest. Arthur Fonzarelli. But we just try to keep it cool and no negative stuff. That's it. Like, if we see people negative, complaining, political stuff, delete. And we explain why we decline hate. We appreciate you being a part of community, but we're not going down that path. And we're not going to say this and that's it. And even today, I posted this morning in my group just, I posted a picture of hands of all different colors and races all together. And I said together. I said, thank you for being here. Thank you for putting your trust in us. And we're here together in this crazy thing called life. So let's just continue to support each other, have fun. And so many comments. Oh, my God, we love this community. Thanks for a safe space. Thanks for positivity and enthusiasm.

But we don't do that enough. And showing being humble, being a humble leader, a humble servant. Right? Showing humility, not just about you in front of your fancy cars and house. And that's cool if you got it, but if it's only about doing that and you're making people feel bad and there's no takeaway for them, then they start to almost resent you. So just be there and serve and be thankful. Little things, too. Like showing appreciation for your team in the group. Yeah, I do that all the time. In a couple weeks, I'll show, hey, this is our team. This is our fulfillment team. This is Ingrid and Osmanda. And thank. And I'll tag them. And thank you so much. You guys are the best. I couldn't do this without you. You know, people say, oh, Ryan, thank you for doing this. I'm like, it's not me, it's my team. So when they see you doing that, when they see you as a leader, thanking other people and being grateful and just being a kind human being, they're going to gravitate towards you instead of always making it either about the Specific content or only about trying to sell them something. You could have your content stuff. We still have nutrition stuff. We still have recipes, we have some workout stuff. Yes. We'll do promos and stuff in there. But a lot of it is just other conversation and it's fun stuff. It's on brand with us. Hey, we're making an 80s mixtape. Add in one of your favorite songs below. Little things like that have nothing to do with greens, but it's fun.

Yeah. So I have a question about community. How do you go about cultivating a community for a non educational brand? Right. You've got your E Commerce, your Rewind brand. What sort of benefits do people get about being a part of a community or maybe a Facebook group around maybe a physical product that they bought or nutrition products?

So give me a cultivate that community because Rewind is a physical product.

Is that what you mean? Like how did I do it?

So let's say you were creating a Facebook group for customers of Rewind.

Right.

Which is what it is. Yeah.

So you've got the Facebook group and Rewind is the physical product. Yeah. So what benefit do people get by being in a community around like a physical product?

We have a content brand where we're putting out a lot of content. So people join the community because they want to constantly get fed the content that we teach. So in like if somebody's already kind of sold on your product and they're getting your product and using your product, where does the community element sort of fit into that mix?

Well, there's still, there still would be, in most cases there still would be content around.

The product. So for example, our product are greens. The natural educational content would be nutrition.

Right.

And health. Because they're taking the product because they want to get healthy. If it was a product that was something about, I don't know, some type of like maybe your product was E Commerce for motorcycle parts, what would you do? Now it could be about the motorcycle community, right? Hey, it's all about being on the bike. You're not going to have a whole group around a Phillips head screwdriver.

But if it's around the motorcycle and the lifestyle then, hey, show me a picture of you on your bike. Oh, we're going on a ride today. Oh, did you see that new path that opened up? Oh, what do you think of the helmet laws? Oh, did you see this cool motorcycle jacket? Who's seen Easy Rider? There's so much stuff you can talk about with pretty much anything. If you e commerce company that does microphones and podcasting kits. You could do it about publishing and podcasting. There's very few I don't think you could do it about. Would it be trickier to do it around a furniture company? Probably. Unless it's more about, like, family. Right.

The way I'm kind of thinking about it, because it's an interesting question. It's kind of weird to think about it. It's like, okay, who wants to be in a community of a product specifically? But when it's the stories and it's this education you can wrap around the thing, you know, it's like the thing is just the mechanism, like, rewind the bars. It's just a tool to allow you to get healthier. But you build these recipes, the experiences, the community and things around it that people are like, oh, shit, okay, cool, I could do that. Or I can buy this other one because it's gonna help me do this. So it's that bond that keeps them around, hovering around.

Yeah.

And I think most e commerce companies.

Don'T add that dimension to the product. They make it just about the product. It's how big is it? How many does it serve? Where is it manufactured? How fast is a ship? And there's no humanity. There's no story. There's nothing. There's no bigger thing around. There's no movement behind the scenes even.

You know, it's like, people love that stuff. Well, I think.

I think I'm just sort of jaded because I'll see like, you know, Facebook communities or Facebook pages around specific products. And then the group or the page, they're constantly just like, hey, 20% off today only, you know, and it's like.

Which is not the way to do it.

They're posting and nobody pays attention.

No, no. Ours is the absolute opposite.

Our members post a lot more than I do. And they're posting, look at the recipe I made, or look at this. Or every day I'll ask a question that's more of a conversation starter that has nothing to do with rewind. So, for example, I said that 80s mixtape the other day, because we talk about nutrition and stuff, and I'm not preachy.

Our philosophy is all about moderation. Like, I'm not saying you should never have a cookie for the rest of your life or a slice of pizza who live like that. So we're all about moderation. So I said the other day, brownies edge or middle? That was it. There's like hundreds of comments.

Oh, totally edge, by the way.

Oh, yeah?

Are you edge?

Totally. Yes. Crunchy, man.

I'm middle.

I go right for the middle. But it's funny, like the kind of back and forth. But you see, it doesn't have to do with my greens. But it's still fun. It's different. It's like if we went to a pod hacker event, right? Let's say a year from now, there's a big event, right? You guys have a thousand people there. Dudes with beards. We're looking good. Sharp pooties, right?

Beards, beards.

During the session. Great. It's going to be about the training and the tactics, but in the hallways, it's not always going to be about that. There's going to be other stuff. Oh, man. Did you see that show on Netflix? Oh, what are you doing? Oh, do you have any kids? Do you have any pets? Like, there's other conversation.

We're still.

We're still fleshed out human beings. So I say get away from just being about a product or even about a piece of content and make it more about the human being as well. So I like doing that. And just as long as it doesn't feel forced and it feels natural.

Yeah. So I think that's the perfect way to wrap it.

We're just getting started. This is part one.

All right, bro, let's go.

All right, let's move on to point two. What do you got for it?

I think. I think you asked me one question, and I spoke for an hour.

It's a chat, man.

Yeah.

No, I think it's. At the end of the day, though, it's be a human. And I think a lot of us do forget about that because we're so close to the thing, the product or offer that we're launching. The thing that we think is the most valuable, which it might be, but there's life happening around the edges, and we're no different. We're freaking human. So it's like, let's not forget that we have this tribe. I think that the analogy of a conference, our pod hacker conference, is a perfect one, because in the hallways, you're chilling in the hallways with people that just seem like you. That's the community you're building online. It's just reflected in that way.

Yeah. And I'll just say one more thing. I know you guys want to wrap this up, because I know you like your takeaways, too. To put.

You've been creeping on us too much.

Here's my thing. Here's the one thing. So.

The way I bring this all together, too, I have this thing, it's about heart and smarts. The heart is coming from serving and truly, truly having empathy and feeling, not just looking at the people as a marker. Oh, I sold them for ten grand. Looking at them and how can I help them and how can I make their life better with products or services, whatever you have. So that's the heart, the emotion that I want to really help people. And then there's the smart, which is what's the best email subject line to get opens? Is there some scarcity play? What's the best pricing strategy? Is there an upsell or a downsell?

What does the funnel look like if you fall on either side of those two? If you're only about heart and you have no marketing tactics at all, no strategy, you're gonna feel good, but you're not gonna get any customers. You get people like that all the time. I help the world with crystals and there's like, no. There's no hook, there's no headline, there's nothing. Heart, all heart.

It's all good.

It's not a business. And then you get the other side. There's no emotion. And I think a lot of. They're all sociopaths. They're just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And they're lunatics, and all they do is sell, sell, sell. I don't care what I'm selling as long as I'm going to make money. Bring it in the middle. Have the heart come with that. Come have that anchor and that centeredness, and then add in the good marketing and then you do that. That's when people like, oh, my God, I love your company. I love your feel. And they still buy as well. So it's the heart and the smart.

You need both heart and the smart. Man, this is.

There you go.

This is amazing. All right, what game are you going to go play? Or do you even touch those games behind you anymore? You know, I'm just curious. Been watching Street Fighter half the time.

Yeah, well, if. When my kids come, that's the one I like to play the most because I, you know, try to fight them sometimes. A little Pac Man. But it's funny, I actually don't play that much. I do. I have a big. You guys can't see it here. I have a big tv. I have hundreds of records and cassette tapes. So I'll usually have, like, old school MTV videos playing all day. I got a table there. I sit and work. But I love it because we are right in our town of New Canaan, Connecticut, and we're On Main Street. So my kids all the time, they come here with their friends, like, after school. This is like their unofficial hangout. So that was my dream, to have a place like that. So they played the stuff more.

That's fun.

You're motivating me, too.

So I just wish everyone could build a business around their design. Yeah. And you guys could have people over and read books.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say you're giving me the desire to sort of redesign the background of these videos because yours is probably the most interesting, engaging background I've seen. There's just so much going on that's cool to look at.

And do you recognize some of the movies behind me?

I do. I recognize all of them.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, going on the Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller's Day off, and then the other ones are too small for me to. Oh, I see the Huey Lewis in the news over there.

Yes, there it is.

Nice.

And above it, Janet Jackson.

Nice.

Yeah, I love it.

I love all music. So good. You guys win.

That's all Mad man.

You win a membership to Pod Hacker.

Perfect.

Email us a Pod Hacker jigsaw puzzle. I'm in.

Perfect.

Maybe a sticker mule or someone can make that for us. I don't know.

Actually, you know what would be cool? If you had like six months of podcasts or something and had all the COVID art and actually made that a jigsaw puzzle.

Oh, that is really cool.

That would be cool. And maybe you do like a limited edition and give those away for some kind of prize or something.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Like that. That's where you can have fun and get creative and be so unique and different that people would remember that.

Yeah, that is really cool. All right.

Yeah, this is good stuff. I think we should creep on your. On your Rewind group, by the way, too, and see how a real community is done.

Come on in, everyone. Check it out. Go to on Facebook. Just type in Rewind Breakfast Club.

Perfect.

Rewind Breakfast Club. So after listening to this, what else do you want people to go check out? You've got your freedom. F R E D E E D Y M. That's it.

Go to freedom. F R E E D Y M. It's all free. I'm just there to give and to serve. It's not meant to replace other marketing and memberships. So everyone here join Pod Hack or join what you guys are obviously doing. So I'm not trying to put other people out of business. I want to Support.

Yeah.

If they're looking for more voices and more stuff, come check us out@freedom.com. and we. We already had Joe on. I know. We're going to get Matt on.

Only if you pass the sniff test on here. It's up to you.

Well, right now.

Yeah.

50.

50.

Matt, you had me at puzzle.

Perfect.

You had me at puzzle.

Oh, man. Go check it out. Because it is straight up tactics. What? Like 20 minute. Just fast hits of marketing.

20 minutes?

Yeah.

No story, no fluff. 100% tactics. Me leading the way. And we're just having fun. And we. I call them like jam sessions. We just go. So check it out. Freedom, 100% free. There's no. No credit card, no upsell, no downsell, no cross sell. Just me giving sales. I know. I should actually. Right.

Yeah.

One day monetization.

TBD on that one.

I like that spoon with Ryan.

15 grand.

Hey, you got to have some personalized offer there.

I'm just having fun, and I really appreciate you guys having me on. This is great.

Thank you. Yes. We had a great time. All right, man. Take care.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Oh, you're too kind. You're too kind.

Everybody just stop.

Oh, thank you. Peaceful. Yeah, it's nice.

It was getting. I mean, I don't know why we invited that crowd in here.

I don't know. This is a really tiny room, too.

It sounded like they had a stutter on the laughing.

Yeah, they didn't know if they should laugh at that or not.

All right, everybody. Everybody quiet.

Quiet. Yeah. Okay. They really quiet. They listen well.

Yeah.

Okay, well, let's just keep them in the corner. And you be quiet. You. Jim. Jim. Jim. Yeah. Okay. Jim. Jim's a funny guy. All right, moving on.

Yeah. So a little behind the scenes. If that's on your bingo card, check it off. Behind the scenes. We just got a new Rodecaster Pro mixing board, and that's why we're playing with these stupid sound effects.

I think they are going to increase our downloads and revenue and. No, they're just fun, y'.

All. Yeah.

It looks like a bunch of Christmas lights on our desk now over here.

It does. It does look very Christmassy. It's lots of greens and reds.

So Festivus.

But this is our first episode ever using this Rodecaster Pro, and we kind of needed it because it was a pretty ghetto rig that we were using before where I can hear myself in one ear and Joe was able to hear himself in the opposite ear. And then, true. There was a mono mix of our Whoever our guest was in our ears. And we didn't have mute buttons on our microphone, so we couldn't, like, mute if we had to cough or something. And we didn't have.

Sorry, sorry, Jacob. You have to cut out all.

Yeah, but now I can do things like this. Hey, Joe, tell a joke.

Hey. Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Your mom.

Your mom who?

Your mom.

Shoot.

I don't have a joke. Your mom. Yeah, I haven't told a your mom joke, but I really should think of your mom jokes.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

You're up.

You're a poo.

No, you're a poo.

Ah, see? You have kids that you could do these jokes with and play with. I'm not at that stage yet.

I have a lot of the dad jokes going on.

Give me another one.

Well, it's hard when you're on the spot.

Knock knock, Tuesday. Oh, wait, no, wait, hold on. You're supposed to say it.

Oh, I mean, you've. I don't have any off the top of my head. I'm not good on this spot. Knock knock.

Good. You have one. You found one.

Well, it was a dumb one that everybody's heard. Oh, interrupting cow.

Interrupting cow, though.

Okay, let's talk about Ride Leak. That was an amazing discussion that we just had, and we're just sitting here playing it. We're playing with our stupid soundboard.

Okay, Sorry, Ryan. I know. Jesus. Sound Jim, I told you to quiet up over there.

Yeah, I know. These guys just. They just won't shut up.

My God. I think this cheers, actually. Oh, no, that's laughter. Huh?

That's laughter.

Ryan, are they laughing at you?

They're laughing with us.

With us. Yes, they are. Okay, that's very nice. Okay, they quieted up. All right, let's actually talk about this episode because.

Yes, sorry to everybody who had to listen to the last three minutes of that.

I mean, we have skip buttons for a reason, but we ask you politely not to use them in most cases.

But now you could retroactively use it. Like what?

I mean, maybe that's just a rewind 15 seconds and you can hear it all over again. Just a few. All right, Ryan Lee, this. I was extremely excited to bring him on the show. I did have a chance to record with him on his freedom, his membership site, or what's going to be housed in the site, which should be live right about now, it sounds like. With the timing of our podcast release.

I'm not sure if he actually set a date that it was going live. Did He. I think he just kind of said by the time this comes out, it should be live.

So. But go check it out, because, I mean, it is extremely tactical. I've seen the types of folks that he's bringing in there. I mean, Ryan's been around the game a long time, so he knows everyone, so he's getting the best people in there for you.

I was actually thinking it through while you're on the episode of, like, the first time I came across Ryan Lee's name, and I actually remember at the Underground seminar, Dave Sinek was. I think he introduced us to Ryan Lee, like, very, very briefly at the Underground seminar. This is probably 2010, 2011, somewhere around there.

And Ryan was at that seminar, and we just met our good buddy, now good buddy David Sinek. And I'm pretty sure he introduced us very briefly to Ryan just, like, in passing.

I wouldn't doubt it because Ryan's out in Connecticut. I mean, it sounded like that was the kind of event and that was in D.C. and. Yeah, it was a while ago, man. So that was probably in Ryan's, you know, really, really hitting it hard in the Internet marketing days.

Yeah.

But I just had a good time whenever someone like, that just clicks with, like, the way that we talk and the way that we see branding, community and all that. It's just really fascinating. Yeah, there's all these nuanced things. I'm like, I didn't think of it that way.

Well, so here's the thing that, you know, you and I kind of talk about not quite on air as much as off air, but we like to find the veins. We call them, like, finding the vein. Right.

You like to poke people with.

Yeah, we like to find the vein. Poke them with a needle. And I don't inject them. I steal their blood.

Oh, that's gross. No, no, don't do that.

No, but we always call it finding the vein. Right. Where we're talking to somebody and some. Some of the conversations, they start off a little bit slow, and we're trying to find that topic that's going to really light the guest up. So they really open up and just, like, get really excited. I feel like with Ryan, from, like, moment one, before you even hit record, we're just like, all right, cool. Like, this guy's, like, on already.

He.

We've, like, we've. We found the vein before hitting record, which is rare.

That's true. No, that's a sign of a great show and a great person and just fun. There's probably going to Be a lot more fun episodes or things we'll. We'll be collaborating on in the future, ideally. Yeah. So, yeah. And I mean, there was so much to unpack here. I want to preface and say get the notes because, you know, we did kind of jump around all over the place. We just had a great conversation. So make sure you get the action guides. Just this episode over@flowchart group.com that's going to get you in the Facebook group, but more importantly, it's getting you those notes and make sure you're fast. Yeah. You're actually doing this within two weeks of this episode going live. Go to flowchart group.com and plug in your email address. Make sure to do that because that's how you get the notes.

Yes.

And you'll get community and notes. But yeah, it'll be very, you know, we're. Our mission on these notes is to always make sure they're in an order that's very easy for you. You to consume the most tactical nuggets of wisdom that were dropped on this episode.

Yeah.

Because sometimes they're scattered a boot. But we make sure we save your time there. So flowchartgroup.com and I just wanted to say that first.

Matt, you wanted to say it first.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I want to know what some of your big sort of takeaways were from Ryan.

So I really like the fact that I like how he. It was actually at the very end of it, the community, you know, and your question was interesting. Actually, at the very end, I had.

A hard time figuring out how to word it properly.

Well, I understand that because with you doing that, I think it. It forced both Orion and me because I didn't know what you were asking to. I think. Well, to be honest, I thought you were asking a question that he kind of already answered. So I was like, okay, hold on. But no, there was actually a deeper question there.

Well, I was trying to figure out why people would just follow a brand versus following, like a personality. Right. Like, it makes sense to me to go be in a community for Digital Marketer or click Funnels or Pod Hacker or the Hustle and Flowchart community. Because we're all sharing a lot of training and a lot of content and a lot of stuff like that. But the thing is, like, you have companies like Random Example, but like kfc, Right. Kentucky Fried Chicken, they have communities and they have, like, Twitter accounts and they have social media. Like, why do people follow those? Like, why would somebody follow a brand knowing full well that if you Follow a brand, you're probably going to see more advertising for that brand or more promotions from that brand. And that's where I think I was trying to like find some clarity is like why would somebody follow a brand versus following like a personality or follow an idea?

Right.

Like I almost feel like if you follow the hustle and flowchart community, you're kind of following an idea. You're being about part of like a group of like minded people. Right. We're all, we're all entrepreneurs that sort of have an online element to our entrepreneurship. We're all trying to focus on growing our audiences. We're trying to find new ways to monetize our audiences. Right. Like we all sort of collectively have this, this common goal in our lives and businesses. And so it make these communities make a lot of sense to me. But then to have a community of like, you know, I don't want to use his, his rewind because I think he made a really good explanation of it. But like think of like a, you know, any other like physical product brand.

Let's say I talk about kfc.

I mean it's like, why would somebody follow that like brand?

Yeah. And that's probably like the biggest or the widest or the furthest away example you could probably make from Rewind. Very inflammatory fried foods as compared to Ryan's. Not inflammatory, but yeah, I mean we.

Should get KFC for lunch today.

How about not? I feel like not having a heart attack today.

It does sound amazing though. Bucket of chicken. Jesus. Colonel.

Sweet.

Deal with that whole thing, how they worked out that whole arrangement. The Colonel's family is still getting paid on royalty for chicken. Look it up. It's interesting. But that side tangent, but just the fact that yeah, Ryan I think explained it really well and it actually I feel like we all ping ponged on that idea, that question you put out there. But I think that exposed the root of what he really does well. Ryan and also in a community and brand is you're creating this human bond. Like we actually joked this was off air, but he's like, I just want to make a dang course that's just connecting humans and be better humans together online. And it's like, yeah, like I want to be on that thing here. Hit me up. There's a way that we can contribute to that because I think at the heart of it, that's all he's doing and that's all a good brand. If they want to cultivate a community, they have a really good product. Obviously you gotta Have a great product that has a meaning and purpose and beliefs behind it. And then all you're doing is kind of. It seems like you're just. You're creating like a shell or this, like this. This barrier, this ecosystem around the product, really, and you're just telling stories and you don't have to talk about the product. Like, he was like, he's like, sending polls out, like 80s movies, music. I mean, you can, for us, jigsaw puzzles, bikes. I mean, we could think a little harder on that.

Yeah, but no, I mean, but he did make a good point about the jigsaw puzzles. It's like a puzzle is actually a perfect analogy to a business. Like, hey, don't you hate it when you finish the entire puzzle and you think, I finally nailed it? And you look and there's a gap, there's a hole in the puzzle that's still there? That's like, man, you spend all this work to get here, and there's still one missing piece that just doesn't let you finish the job. How many analogies can you flip that into for business? I mean.

Yeah, anyway, do you string it out in emails and it's like, oh, I'll give you another puzzle piece tomorrow on this whole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The picture is going to come together by the end, I promise.

There you go.

But, you know, going back to your original point is, I think, so many people, and this has sort of been a common theme of our podcast over the last four years now, is so many people forget the humanity in the numbers that they're looking at. You look in Google Analytics and you're just looking at numbers. You're looking at.

How many visits did I get? How many unique visits did I get? How long was the time on site? What was the bounce rate? You're looking at all of these data and numbers. You log into your email list, your activecampaign, and you look at how many subscribers you have. You look on Libsyn or whoever you're hosting your podcast with, and you see how many downloads you get. And we always forget that these numbers represent human beings on the other end of every one, just one. So you might have a list of 100,000 people. Every single one of those people on the list is somebody that has fears, that have struggles, that get excited about their business, that there's something in their business that's just not working right right now. There's, you know, they've got family drama that they're trying to balance with their work drama. They've got Vacations. Like, these are all real life human beings that are just out there coming to places like us for help, for the next step, for that, like, little piece that's gonna. Like that final puzzle piece that's missing on the puzzle.

Right.

And I think that's kind of the big point that Ryan's trying to get across here is like, just remember the humanity in what you're doing. Remember that these analytics are all actually people on the other end.

I think that's huge. Yeah. And I know we've talked about it a lot lately too, you know, and I think it just rings truer now than ever when we're all, you know, a lot of us are zooming all day and doing all this stuff by digital. You know, we're not going to offices mainly, so. And this is why it's been so cool with me hopping on calls with a ton of our. Our listeners and customers. You know, we sent an email a couple of weeks ago at the time of this recording, and I think I booked something like 20 calls or whatever. Like, it was like 15 minute jam sessions actually. You know, Ryan was saying he calls his freedom sessions jam sessions. It's kind of what I felt like. But it was so cool to connect with a lot of the folks listening to us right now, you know, and hearing their stories, the businesses, how long. Countless people. I guess I can count them because I only had like about 20 calls. But that was a lot of calls. But like, almost every single one of those people listen to every one of our episodes. A couple of them actually started from the very beginning, episode one, and it was Jonathan Jon Bannister. I will call you out because you're freaking awesome. He. I had a chat with him and he's like on episode, I think 200 or something, I was like, dude, holy moly. You. You win. But it's like, it's that. And then I started realizing the impact of what we have. You know, how we're impacting people's mindsets, but also business, their lifestyle, and this whole, you know, this trickle effect, or not trickle. It's a freaking snowball effect, you know, because we're literally shaping lives through influence. And you know what we're just saying here and the people we're bringing on. I know we chatted a little bit about this, but it's the human side of things. You can't lose in you listening right now. I mean, think of your brand. We all have a brand new. Because you are a unique person with unique interests. So people get attracted to that all you got to do is create. But, like, be cool and remember the people and create a little community and you can have a rock star business if you want. One takes time. Of course, it's not easy because we talked about that, but it's not rocket science either.

Yeah, No, I couldn't agree more. And then I also really loved the branding discussion too. Like, it's something that I think over the years, being in the digital marketing space for as long as we have now, we've almost seen this, like, evolution of, like, in the beginning, everybody was saying, you want long form sales letters. VSLs don't work, make it ugly. Don't worry about the design. And I just remember seeing all of these pages that had like a gray background, but then like a white box in the center. And then just like long form sales copy with like, maybe one image. And the image was like a fake Polaroid of, like, the person who is writing the letter. Right.

Like, from, like 10 years ago. And they're like, not gray and losing their hair or something. Yeah, yeah.

And it's. Yeah, it's always a picture that looks nothing like what they look like now.

That's just a. Yeah. I mean, that's just being lazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Here's my high school varsity photo of me on the football team. I'm now 38, but that was me.

When I was jacked and skinny.

Yeah. Before I had gray hair to beard.

Chest hair popping up over your neck.

But yeah, like, I remember there was like that. That sort of concept of like, just make it ugly.

Right.

But I remember being, like, gravitating towards the nice designs. I remember wanting to read the sales letters that I'm like, ooh, this looks, like, really, like, graphically pleasing.

I remember it doesn't. Look at Apple and like, they're the biggest freaking brand. Like, there's a reason why they've. There's books written. You have a book in your. It's right here. It's called Apple Design. Like, there's a whole fricking book that Josh Bartlett actually gifted to us years ago. And there's power in design. I feel like we have ignored a lot of that or we've just drank the Internet marketing Kool Aid or copywriter Kool Aid maybe, which I would think that copywriters actually believe. Yeah. Designs definitely supports the narrative.

I would think so.

Yeah. Obviously not discounting copy at all.

Well, I think. And this was brought up on the conversation, but there's gotta be that balance. Right? Like, I don't think you need to get the most polished website in the world. Like, I don't like to disparage companies, but this is a company we're both customers of, so screw it. They're getting our money like Superhuman. Right? Like, I think they went too far in the. Like, let's try to make this like a unique experience for our. Instead of just having a fricking buy button on their site to sign up for Superhuman, they make you jump through all these hoops and like, their sites are just very minimalist, very sort of basic. And I'm like, I think they're thinking of like branding and like being different, but they're just making the customer experience kind of a pain in the ass maybe.

I don't know. Yeah, it's an. It just depends with the intention, I guess. You know, the model. Not every model is the same, but actually I've never been on their website, so I can't speak into it. I just use the product. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, it's a.

$30 product and they make you get an onboarding call to even be able to use it. It's kind of ridiculous.

You haven't gone through the onboarding call yet, Matt, but it's very helpful. I actually really liked it. It's a unique model, though. It's different. It's definitely not the norm. So I could see it. But maybe they're just brilliant for doing it. Who knows? I don't know how the business model is doing it. Seems like their shit pretty figured out though.

Yeah, they just hate volume. They hate getting a lot of customers all at once.

I mean, I kind of respect for $30. Anyway, I don't know their model.

Basically. The point is you can go to too far in one direction. I think you could go too far on like being hyper focused on design and making and going, oh, it's not quite right. I mean, we know people like that who, you know, they put out products, but they take years and years and years and years because they're fine tuning stuff that nobody cares about that much. Right. But then we also know the people that will slap out copy, use like the automated copywriting script tools. Use it right out of the box, throw it up there and slap together junk and push it out to their list as well. So like, there's the extremes on both ends. You got to find that balance. And I do think that balance exists somewhere where you actually do get like a professional logo and a professional like brand style guide where you know your colors and your fonts and all the kinds of stuff that we're doing now with our branding that we've never thought about in the past, I think is that like, kind of perfect middle ground. I don't think you need sort of perfect, pixel perfect design on all your sales pages, but I think you need to have like a consistent brand that's recognizable.

I totally agree, man. Yeah. And well, let's speak into what we're doing because we, I know Ryan mentioned Pod Hacker more than we did. Yeah, we should probably talk about it because it's kind of a big thing we're working on and I don't know when this goes out, but I think it's right around the time when we're starting to share Pod Hacker with our folks. So, yeah, I mean, we're literally creating this new brand. I mean, it's obviously we've, we've had. Not obvious to all, but we've had Pod Hacker as an offer before. But now we're actually growing a brand as the solution that we've been called upon by so many times is how do you do the podcast thing, content thing, grow it, grow an email list, community and make money with it all? Like, how do you do that? So this is finally us presenting that in this foundational course. But in addition to that, there's going to be this monthly ongoing, these chats with us. So these open office hours where we're hanging out with you for hours every month. But also we're bringing in the top tier guests that are our experts in these topics that we just talked about. Amplify community and monetization, but mainly for podcasters and creators or businesses that are aspiring to do that kind of thing and wrap it into their business. And that's where it's this blend of digital marketing and podcasting and creating, you know, like, and when I say creators, I mean like some, you know, okay, written blog and YouTubers can benefit, but we're leaning into the podcast side of things because that's kind of our world too. So. But yeah, podcast, I mean, our Pod Hacker, that is. We're adopting these principles that we chatted about. Yeah, like the most ever.

Well, it most likely is live by the time this episode came out. I'm not 100% sure, but if it's not, then there's a place where you can get on the early bird list and it would be open fairly soon after this episode comes out. So you can go to podhacker.com and either way, either get on the notification list or go get more details and sign up. We're super pumped on it, but we gotta wrap this one up here due to time constraints. But make sure you also check out Easy Webinar.

Yes, our folks are our good buddies over at Easy Webinar, hooking you up with a fat discount. You've probably heard us speak about it before, but webinars are definitely hot when you use them in the right way. And I would think of what Ryan was talking about and the human element and whatnot to not be your templatized webinar flow.

How do you do it different? Do it different people?

Yes. Think different, Flip it. So Easy Webinar, though, use the tool that actually works is they basically given you every option on how to run a webinar live automated ever. Whatever. I mean, whatever term you want to use or feature, they got it in there. So go check out easywebinar.com.

That'S easywebinar.com hustle and you are going to have a raving crowd around you when you go to that website and be greeted with a fat discount. And you should join it, especially if you are already doing webinars. You need this tool because it's probably going to make your life easier. You're going to know your numbers and it's going to be just happier if you're not. Go get it anyway. Easywebinar.com hustle and you will hear roaring applause when you go over there. No.

When they go to the website. Okay, we're done.

Okay.

All right.

Well, everybody, thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, which I know you did, you should tell some friends about it. Maybe leave us a review, say you liked it.

What kind of friends?

The only. The good ones.

All of the friends.

All of the friends.

Actually me some specifics.

Tell your enemies as well.

No, don't tell your enemies. I mean, you can, but you're just helping your enemies out.

The enemies of my friends are my friend. No, that's not how the saying goes. Yeah, just, you know, share it around.

Share it with the folks who really need it the most. You think? Who will appreciate and use it. We thank you for your time. Please rate and review if you found this helpful as well. And we love you. Thank you.

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

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