Sharran Srivatsaa - From Dumpster Diver To $3-Billion Business

Hey, this is Sharan Srivathan. I just recorded this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with Joe and Matt. And these guys are beyond insightful. They literally found a way to pull out the stories and the ideas that I almost never talk about, but made it more relevant for you, your life and your business. We talk about business growth, we talk about scaling a business, how to get focused, and most importantly, how to solve any problem in your life.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

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

Joe Fl. Hey.

Hey. I want to tell you about something.

What's that, dude?

Ahrefs, you know, a tool we've talked about forever because we use it a lot in our business. They have a free version now.

No way. They do?

Yes. It's called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.

Wait, wait, wait. It's legit. Okay, hold on, let me. That's nice.

Fake typing.

Oh, I went to ahrefs.com awt that was. I went to ahrefs.com and you should, too. Ahrefs.com awt there's an A before. All right.

A H, R, E, F.

Yeah, so we said it about 100 times. So now it's subconsciously in your brain. So I went there and. This is blowing my mind, Matt. This is crazy. I'm looking at the page right now. It monitors the SEO health. I mean, tell me more, Matt. Why is this important? Why should I?

Well, it monitors the SEO health. It monitors all the backlinks and all the domain and page level SEO metrics and all of your search traffic and keywords and what keywords you're showing up for. And it does it for free. And we use the paid Ahrefs. But this is awesome.

You know, I was just kidding over here. I was just having fun. No, I wasn't really. Real typing, right? You don't do that. No, I don't really type.

Yeah, I can also see you.

Yeah.

Okay. In all reality, this is a freaking cool tool. We were nerding out about it when we heard that ahrefs was coming back for a sponsorship because it's a free tool, no credit card required. And yeah, you get a lot of key things that the bigger Ahrefs tool has in it that this one basically has all the key things that every person with a website should have. This. So that is you listening?

That is you listening. So, yes, improve your website's SEO performance for free. Just go to ahrefs.com awt.

All right, Charon, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. I mean this is, we've been very interested in, to hear from your words, your story and just like all these crazy. I feel like you've lived many generations just through the wildness that you've taken yourself through life so far. And it's going to be fascinating to unpack that a little bit here. So thanks for spending some time with us.

Oh, and likewise. Hey, I think a lot of people don't realize how much time this stuff takes on your end. Finding the right folks to be on your show, to share with your community, getting the time right, getting the tech right, putting it together and all the pre and post production that happens. There is a lot that goes on into delivering a 20 to 50 minute experience. And I can't thank you guys enough for showing up over and over and doing this to enrich the lives of entrepreneurs around the world. So thank you for letting me be a part of that journey.

Oh man, that's super cool. Thanks for the shout out. Yeah. Someone sees us how we wish to be seen. Yeah. So let's. Man, you've. Like I was saying, fascinating what you've done. And I think the thing that impresses me the most is just how fast you can scale ideas, you know, scale something from literally nothing. And you've done this all the way back to, well, actually India just to get over here to America, but like the college, like all these different things. And then of course in real estate, estate business without even knowing real estate. I hope I'm not letting too much out of the bag, but I just want to preface it like you've just figured out the right mechanisms, the systems, and you've created these really cool options. I'm kind of stealing your terminology here, but like, let's walk this path because we want to understand, you know, who you are a little deeper. Share ya and we'll pick out some tactics.

Well, on your website it says from dumpster diving to building a $3 billion business. And so I think that sounds like a story that we want to hear. And I have a feeling we'll be able to pick out some little nuggets of wisdom and some tactical greatness along the way.

Yeah, yeah, you got it. Well, people don't realize this, right? So a lot of times you'll hear people say things like, well, if, if, if, if Joe can do it, Sharon can do it. If Matt can do it, Sharon can do it. If Sharon can do it, I can do it. And I actually think that's a. There's A fundamental flaw in that statement, and the fundamental flaw in that statement is, Joe, you were built completely different. Your skill sets completely different, your capabilities are completely different. What you have from a risk profile perspective is completely different. Maxi, for you, it's like you're completely different. And so when people say things like, oh, if he can do it, I can do it, or she can do it, I can do it, it's significantly flawed. But there is some truth to that, and that is the truth that ties this entire story together, which is it's not about.

Walking on the path of the clues that were left over. It's. It's seeing what is Joe's support system, what is Jordan's support system, what is Tiger support system, what is Elon's support system? And can I do anything that I can to replicate that support system so that all of those capabilities become mine? And I think that what people try to do is they're like, oh, I'm just going to read Steve Jobs book and try to be an ass like Steve, right? Can I cuss on the show? I should.

Sure, you can say whatever you want.

You should beep it out, right? But the crazy part is I think the idea of, like, instead of being Joe or being Matt or being Sharon, it's like I'm so attuned to listening to, huh, where does Matt go when he's stuck? What broke down for Matt and who did he talk to? Who was he? Who was behind him supporting him that he's not telling me? And can I replicate that support system? And this, this the story on the support system. I'm super fortunate that it starts a, you know, a young kid with not a lot of talent. Well, you know, I was born into a very kind of mediocre home with not a lot of wealth in a mediocre town. Everything in my life was mediocre except one thing. And I just have insanely amazing parents. And so it'd be easy for people to say I had nothing. Like, I had the greatest gift of all, insanely amazing parents. And what my parents realized is, you know, kind of accelerate on the story. They realized pretty quickly that something was off with me. And, like, I had. I was ADD adhd, I was dyslexic. And it took a lot of therapy to be able to, like, share that personally. And I think that's a, That's a healthy thing. And I used to get, you know, beaten up at school because. And bullied, dude, I tell you the story. So I used to walk from one classroom to the other classroom and there were lockers in between.

Yeah.

And I would actually run around the entire school so that I wouldn't get like beaten in the lockers. Like, you can't even make this stuff up, right? Like, this is crazy. And I didn't hit my growth spurdental high school, whatever. And like my parents realized that who had never left India. I was born in India, by the way, never left India. And my parents are like, okay, there's got to be some other environment that can support this kid. And my dad did a bunch of research and he's like, hey, I'm just gonna get you out of the country. You'll do better somewhere else. Like for a 10, 11 year old, that's just like, wait, you're telling me that you don't want me anymore? Like, that's weird, right? And so, but, but fast forward. My parents, not very wealthy. Not not, but. But very hard working. My parents sold everything that they had. Everything. My dad sold his scooter to get me a plane ticket, man.

Wow.

Wow, right?

Was that like his means of transportation?

Correct.

Wow.

Yeah. And you know, like, like a little better than a Vespa, right? Like, and to put me on the plane and then I show up in the US.

And they hand me a check for a year's worth of everything. So they just, just pay for everything for a year and that's all they could afford. And they said, hey, here's a year's worth of everything. If you make it, great. If you don't make it, come back, we'll take care of you. Like, so I had a really great safety net and so they handed me this check and a couple hundred dollars. And I show up on campus, first day in the Midwest, and I go to financial services, I check, and they're like, great job, Sharon. Welcome. Here's your dorm room keys, by the way, since it's an international check, it'll take 10 to 14 days to clear. So once it clears, we'll activate your meal plan. I was like, wait, wait, are you, are you kidding me? Like, what? So I hit, I hit every frat party, I hit every pizza party. I hit every party that you can imagine to get food, right? And this dumpster diving story is one day I had been like 36 hours inside eating, and I saw these guys throw a couple of boxes of pizza into a dumpster. And I was just hungry. I waited for it to kind of get later at night. I was kind of embarrassed, but hungry. I jumped in this dumpster, I grabbed pizza I just put my hoodie on, and I dashed to my room. And you know what? It was okay.

It was.

It was okay. Like, it was.

It was.

It was more embarrassing thinking about doing that than actually doing it.

Yeah.

But then the next day is where it all comes together. The next day I was like, could I do this again? So I walked by this dumpster, and I see these guys throw these subway sandwiches into this dumpster. I was like, man, today's a bonanza. This is fantastic. Like, I literally saw from the pizza box. I didn't know what was in there, but I saw these sandwiches go in this dumpster. So I wait for lightfall. I jump in the dumpster, I grab these subway sandwiches. I see a box of pop Tarts, and I'm like, pop. This is fantastic. This is a double bonus. Right? As soon as I grab this box of pop Tarts, I see these two beady eyes, Yellow beady eyes looking at me. There's a raccoon in the house. Like, you know, and I am not joking. It slaps, like. It slaps me on my cheek, and I start bleeding, and, you know, fight or flight kicks in, and I kick the raccoon with my. With my foot. I could not do it again if I was. It was choreographed. I grabbed this. This bag of sandwiches, and I run.

With the pop Tars, of course.

And the craziest part is I was like, should I get a tetanus shot? Like, I probably should, right?

But the deepest learning there was.

Man.

If this is what has to happen and this is how I need to survive, my capacity for risk dramatically kind of grew. I was like, okay, I'll be okay. Like, this is crazy. I'll be okay. And I think that capacity for risk allowed me to take a ton of risk in my career, which the average person would have not taken. You know, like, I reverse mortgage my house. I did ridiculous things. I lost along the way. But I think the capacity of risk from the dumpster diving story is. And it took me, I don't know, 20 plus years to be in a place where I can share that story publicly after therapy. And I think that's. It's been very cathartic now. It's. My therapist told me the day you can actually laugh and tell the story is the day you have healed.

Yeah. And you've been laughing this whole time, kind of with a smirk on your.

There you go.

We're there. We met you then. You know what? I have researched your story, and I think you left a other traumatic or almost Traumatic event that was right when you got into the US you took the incorrect bus or at least the wrong direction. Talk about just that, because that's sticking on your feet. And I would say that's a pretty stressful situation too.

Yeah. So.

This was pre days of cell phones and things like that, right? So I had some guy, some volunteer willing to pick this lonely kid up from India at the Air Chicago o'.

Hare.

And I'm so waiting at the airport. And two hours go by, four hours go by, eight hours go by. Like, nobody comes. And then the public address system goes off. And I'll tell you one thing. You do not want your name called on the public address system. Right. Like, that's just. That's. There is nothing ever good comes out of that.

Right?

And so there's like, you know, Sharon Srivatha. I don't even know how he pronounced my name. Shiran Trivati. Police report to a white courtesy phone. So I pick up the phone, and the guy's like, hey, you're that. Your ride got stuck, the car broke down. He wants you to take a bus 52 to Moline, Illinois. And I'm like, I just landed. I have no idea where anything is. And where is Moline, Illinois?

Right.

And so, of course, I grab my stuff and I jump on a bus. And four hours later, I asked the bus driver, I'm like, where are we? He's like, la Crosse, Wisconsin. And I. And for those of, you know, geography, it's like the opposite direction. And so I was like, okay, it's night. I'm at a bus depot. He's like, kid, you may want to go in and just kind of chill out for a minute. So I grab my stuff, which is just a bag of clothes, and I grab my stuff. I had a, you know, $110 ish in my pocket. And I get out of the bus and like, a mugger jumps out of nowhere and says, like, I mean, I get mugged on my first 24 hours in the U. S. In America.

Yeah.

I didn't even have anything, right. I had this check. I didn't even have a wallet. And so again, this is me laughing about this story. But it was. It was freaky, dude. It was.

It just.

It was fascinating.

Yeah.

So he said, hey, give me your money and whatever. And I kept my hundred bucks in my pocket. Finally, he was like, you cannot not have any money. And I said, well. And I didn't want to die because I was. So I said, well, I have a hundred dollars you look like a nice guy. I know you don't want to hurt me, and I would really like to just get to school. So if you don't mind, I'll give you this hundred dollars. Maybe you can give me 50 back.

And he just starts like he actually. I saw him crack a smile and I knew I had something there. And I remember this vividly. He opened his ratty wallet, he takes my hundred and he dishes me out at 20, 20 and a five. So he gives me 45 bucks back and the guy takes off and I stay alive. I'm alive to tell the story. But, you know, it's. Sometimes.

People who are hurt are the ones that hurt people. Right? So when someone is hurtful to you or me, there's. There's an underlying hurt there. And I think that's. That's a good lesson for all of us to learn. Like, yeah, yeah, I was thinking feet, whatever. That was desperation. But the big lesson I take away from that is if you are a. We all are going to deal with people, both personally and professionally, who, who feel like they're hurting us. And, And I think the first thing that should come to your. Our minds is when we feel hurt is the reason we are. They're hurting us is because they are hurting themselves. And if you can just inject some compassion to that. No normal person walks around wanting to hurt Joe and Matt. Like, that does not. That does not work that way.

Right? These guys, Matt, maybe, but like, you know the circles I run in yet.

But I think that was a big lesson for so now, even when the stakes are high, when people get mad at me, when the crazy people yell at me on phone, like, whatever you're doing, I'm re. I start to realize that, okay, if they're hurting me, they're probably hurt in some way. So let me try to soften that. And that like, that's been like my big lesson in that process.

That's huge. I mean, that's. And I know therapy, you know, I'm sure just going through that process, you. We've done a lot of therapy, tape stuff. And there's always so much learning, there's layers. And then you start understanding how humans act and how we're all very similar with our needs and wants and just becoming more empathic, I think, is what happens over time. And exactly what you said, you start to almost see the attacker or whatever perpetrator, and you're like, eh, whatever. It's 55 bucks that he dished out. But at the end of the Day. A great lesson that you can take into everything else and resilience. I'm curious because you definitely, like, in that moment you were thinking on your feet, did you have. It seems like very persuasive. Like, you know, you said you saw the smile kind of crack in his face. Like, did you just pick that up naturally?

Um, I think we all have. We all have some gifts. And, you know, I am.

I probably do one or two things well, like, and one of those is I could probably just read people a little better. Like, I can see micro emotions. And though I think those help a lot just from just human connection, I thrive a lot. I'm an extrovert. I thrive a lot on human connection. And when, when someone's, you know, when, when people, when you see ruffles in their eyebrows or when they shrug or when they sit back or when they move forward or put their hand, like, you learn that in NLP and like negotiation. But. But I don't know that I don't have a playbook for it. But I'm fortunate that I just sense it energetically. And that's probably just a gift and ignore right away. I'm like, okay, I probably said something to offend him. Let me unfold my hands. Maybe he'll mirror and match and unfold them as well, or something like that. But that's probably just an innate gift that I'm super excited about.

I think it is because I've been told I have that same thing. So I'm noticing it in you. I'm like, ah, okay, I see. This is interesting. I wanted to highlight that because that is a superpower and that's something like I didn't notice for a long time, but we have different, obviously ways of going about it. But it's cool to just notice that and see how you've been able to carry that throughout. Going into businesses where you don't even know the business or the industry and you're able to basically figure out a way in because, you know, the whole growth hacking, kind of skipping ahead there a little bit.

And actually kind of lost. Got a little excited on that side there. But I wanted to go back to kind of thinking about, well, like the business side of stuff. So part of your journey, I know, fell into what you went over to San Francisco, I believe, and got into tech in that whole kind of space. Right. So how did that kind of develop there? You kind of found your way out of college. I know through college you had some interesting stories of kind of making money that were not the normal way of going about.

Yeah, well, it's super accelerated on that. I had one year's worth of tuition. I had one year's worth of, I just had to make money. That's so necessity is the mother of everything, right? So you just, you figure it out. But more importantly, I, I, I was just gravitated to it, towards the computer stuff. I feel, felt like it came naturally. And it was a chance for me. The us was a, was a chance for me to do everything.

That I wanted as opposed to what was told of me. And like, you know, I had friends that were.

What do they call, art history majors, by the way. Like, if you told my dad that I was going to become an art history man, you'd be like, what is art history? Like, how, how can you do that? The cool part is if you can do art history, you can do anything, right? Like, and I think that was a, that was a, that was a kind of a permission slip for me to say, just do whatever comes naturally. And so I got a computer science and math degree and I was pitching at this programming contest. Computer science programming contest is at Berkeley. And there were three judges who were judging this contest. And one, I share my white paper on what I wrote, like, you know, half drunk in my dorm room. And he comes up to me after and he's like, hey, Sharon, great presentation. You're not going to win. I was like, okay. But there are three guys that I just, I was an angel investor in that. I think your idea could help them. You should talk to them. I would go. I said, okay. Like, I have no job. I don't have any. I was like, sure, sounds good. So I joined those guys in their startup. So I was not a founder, but I was kind of early third or fourth employee. So I had founding stock. We, we spent a lot. We were building stuff in the telecommunications space. So we spent a lot of time raising money, and I'd never raised any money before, so we raised, we raised, you know, tens of millions of dollars during the dot com kind of era. And then we were fortunate to get a really, a great exit where my partners or the founders did really well and I did fine. And that was a right place, right time, right again, right support system. And so that angel investor who introduced me to that company 22 years later.

Is my business partner.

Wow.

So he literally was. Wow. Yeah, he was a coach and a guy that stood up for you back then and, and kind of basically all the way through now. That's amazing. What, what role does he play in your business here?

So super simple for the last 20 years and all the stuff that we've built. He's chairman. I'm CEO. Like, super easy. He's a. He's a little older than I'm. He's, you know, he's.

He's.

He's like. I call him. He's Easy Yoda. So he's 67. And he. He, like, he helps me think better, and I do the rest. And it works really well because I always know that I have. Again, goes back to our support system conversation. I know that I can do more because I have him to help my capacity for risk, and I have a support system. Like, I take on more risk because I have a much better support system. Most people don't take on that risk, and people think the support system is a cushion of money. I think the support system is just people that can get you out of jams. Right.

And so.

So there's so many. And he's an attorney, so there's so many legal jams. He's like, oh, yeah, don't worry about that. I'll review the contract. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. But the average entrepreneur won't have that. Right. And so I've gotten myself out of a lot of jams just because of just having good support systems.

Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense. And I want to talk a little bit about how you approach business and growth, because I know that's a super impressive thing. So you have the story, but also the way that you just get growth just from an idea and a concept, and you have some principles, I believe, you know, some growth kind of levers. So I'd love to hear your thoughts around how you step into a company. You don't know the industry, but you know the vision. You have a goal, and you just go right through it. Through it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the interesting part is, the simpler you make it, the easier it is to execute on. Right. Otherwise, you know, there's. My coach right now, says, you know, you can only ride one horse. And so that's the first principle, which is singularity of focus. If we can't organize all our thinking into, hey, I, Sharon, wake up in the morning and I focus on one thing. And it sounds simple, but we may spend 12, 18, 24 months trying to figure out what that one thing is. And honestly, it bothers people that they're not making progress in those 24 months. But for me, I'm just like, I can't sleep because I'm so enamored by trying to figure out that one thing, because I know that as soon as I get that, it's jamming up all the way through the businesses that we have. By the way, full disclosure. I've, like, we have crashed and burned and failed much of time. And I will tell you, all of them, Matt and Joe, all of them were because I couldn't find the singularity of focus fast enough.

Wow. Okay. Yeah.

And so singularity focus, number one. So if we can figure out what that thing, that number one thing is, it allows us to organize all our thoughts and reasons under that, because then you can say, okay, is this trip to Hawaii, does that benefit the singularity of focus? No, don't do it. Oh, is this meeting, even though it feels expensive, benefit that singularity focus. Yes, go do it. So it almost like it encapsulates purpose in a lot of ways, which I think is super helpful. So that's number one. Number two. And you can apply this across any business. Any business as well. So number two is the cadence of accountability, people. Just the most important word there is the cadence. A lot of times people are like, oh, I'll check in with my mentor. Mentor once a month. I'm like, no, bro, today. Every day. Yeah, like, every day. And I'll give you a great story on the cadence of accountability. I was trying to wake up at early in the morning, and I was like, okay, well, how do I wake up early in the morning? And, you know, it's a couple of health reasons, whatever. And I said, well, it'd be great if I woke up at 5am for 30 days in a row. And you and I both know if we put 5am on the gym on our calendar, we're not like, maybe you guys are, but, like, I'm not.

Yeah.

You know, I'm not gonna do it consistently. So I. I texted three of my friends, and I said, hey, guys, do you mind for just the next seven days, you jump on, like, this conference call at 5:00am and I'm gonna jump on. It'll just force me to get up because I know that I won't let you down. And they were like, you were weird, dude. So they agreed to do that. And they were on the East Coast. I was on Pacific time, so it was 8am for them. So it was actually not bad. Right, right. So they all dial. Three of. Just three of us. All of us dial into this conference call number, and I dial in the first day, and it goes ding, ding, ding. So I hear the three people come on and then they're all there because they're muted, they're lying. And so I said, well, I should probably say something. So I tell a joke the first day and they're like, oh, that's pretty funny. And the next day, 5am Happens, I hear ding, ding, ding, ding. I go, that's weird. Like a fourth person's on today. That's strange. So I give like a, you know, inspirational message or something like that. And two to three minutes the third day, I hear ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I'm like, wait, why are they 10 people on this call?

That's cool.

And then in the third day, there were 10. And then I was like, well, I got to come up with a good message. So I deliver a good message. And the fourth day, it was just a lot of dings, right? And I go, this is a lot of dings. And so people were sharing the call number with other people. And so this 5am Club, this real 5am Club, was born at 5am Pacific time. And I started doing it five days a week. And I did a 30 day challenge. And then everybody. So I did this 30 day challenge. I didn't tell anybody. On the 31st day, I came back on the call and I still heard everybody back on the call. I was like, well, I guess I've given myself a little cadence of accountability here. I got a bunch of people on the skull. So it started off with 3, 30, 300, 3,000. Today we have close to 7,000 people a part of this community. And we have thousands of people on the call every morning. And even today, if you jump on and I just. You are, you'll hear the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding of people coming on, which is awesomely magical. And it's totally free. But I will tell you, no one can. Like, it's one of those things that you can never beat me at because I have a 2,000 day lead, right? Like, so even if you started today, I'm still winning, which is pretty cool. So the second thing is cadence of accountability. The third thing is, you know, good process drives good results. And a lot of times we think that, oh, we'll just hack it. Hey, just, just hack the. Hack the website, hack the funnel, hack the ad, just get the result, hack the email system, just hack everything. And that's fine to a point, but you're gonna just get you hack, you know, hacky stuff is gonna get you hacky results. And so I always tell our teams, hey, let's front load the Process like front load all the effort. You may have to spend a little extra time just designing this workflow. Workflow better do it. It's fine. Right? Because the good process will drive good results. So most scale problems happen because you have to bring in a new COO and rebuild a process. But if you built the process first in the first place, you won't have. You don't need a problem, you don't need, need that. So I always hammer when I go into a business is singular to focus. That takes the longest time to find. Cadence of accountability. That's the easiest to put in place. And then good process drive good results is like you look at systems and say, hmm, can this be a better process and can that deliver more efficiency? Because that helps you scale faster.

Yeah.

Do you have any advice on finding that singularity of focus? If that's the hardest thing for somebody to do and it could take 24 months, are there. I don't want to say shortcuts because hacks get you hacky results, but what advice would you give to help find that?

Yeah, super easy, actually. It's the first principles. Thinking of what Elon talks about a lot, you just asked. Ask. Let's say you come up with. I always try to like come up with one thing that I think is the answer. And my job is to constantly disprove that. Because if you try to figure the answer out, you'll say, well, it's not that. I always say, well, I think it's our legion. Okay, great. And then I say, well, let's prove it. If I only focus on my legion, will everything work in the business?

Well, this will work. Oh, no. Okay, well, it's not Legion. Then what is it? So I always pick one. And then I asked them, well, does this hold? Does this what? Does this hold true? And then they get the next one. Does this hold true? Get the next one. Does this hold true? Get the next one. So that process of iterating and trying to figure out what that it's way easier to start with something as an assumption, as a hypothesis, and then say, does it work? And I'll give you guys in our real estate business, I had no idea. We jumped in the real estate business and people were like, hey, we're not, we're not extremely profitable. So. So I was like, oh, if we just fix our profitability, we'll be fine. So I worked for nine months fixing ops, fixing back end profitability, hiring a new cfo, fixing our books, and then still nine months later, I was like, that didn't do anything. I go, well, clearly I had this wrong. And then I realized that, okay, the big driver for us was recruiting and getting salespeople in to sell more stuff. And then I asked the question, well, if I got more salespeople in to sell more stuff, can other people do X job, y job, z job job? And that was an iterative process. As soon as we hit that, man, I focused everything on me being the number one kind of recruiter of talent in the firm. And I called it the ten butt Rule. Anytime there were ten butts in a room, I would show up because I knew that I could pluck somebody out of there and kind of recruit them to be a part of the. So the 10. But Rule literally built our $3.4 billion company.

So you're just spotting talent based off of what you know is going to work. And you need to scale this thing, and you need people to drive that. That scale. You're gonna. You're gonna pluck one of those tin butts in whatever room showing up in. Yeah.

It also gave me the focus that, hey, if there's not 10 bucks, I'm not showing up.

Right?

So upon over, over time, the 10 butt rule became the 25 butt, rule became the 50. But rule, but I told my assistant, you, you have a conference with 1010 butts in a room where Sharon can present. I'm in. And so, hey, Joe and Matt have a podcast at least 10 people listen to. You guys have millions of people that listen to it.

I'm in.

So it's really, really powerful because it also gives you a filter to say the singularity of focus is nothing than a mother filter. Right. That's all this is.

Right.

And once you have that mother filter, that's when powerful things start to happen.

Well, you know the questions to ask. You have a better idea of where you're going and where you think you're gonna or how you think you're gonna get there. But you can ask for feedback or advice along the way and keep pointing you in the right space. There's something that maybe helped you with this. You said something where in a previous one of these things we research is that you listed your company for sale or you did that kind of practice every single year, and then you got feedback from people who are prospective buyers and told you what to do. So, like, I don't know if that lands true or that fits in the singularity of focus, but I feel like it allowed you to get some really good results. How are you Feedback.

Yeah, that fits into the third bucket, which is a good process. So a lot of, like, what I do now is, you know, the. The. My friends call me the deal whisperer, which sounds very, like, weird, but it's. I love. That's my jam, right? I love. I've done hundreds of deals. I love structuring deals. It gets me super excited. And when someone tells me that they want to sell their business, and I'm like, great, let's do it right now. They're like, what do you mean? I'm like, you have no idea who your buyer is, what it's worth? Like, we don't have. We don't know anything. I said, let's put together a one pager, and let's go start to see if someone's interested. Let's. The faster we can get some. It's no different than, you know, us putting up a landing page or running a random ad, right? It's just, let's get it up, up and running. And people will tell us, especially when they want to put their money to buy an asset, they'll say, well, I'll pay you ax, because ABC is missing. I'm like, oh, thank you very much.

Right.

Every year, we would take our company to market, and I would just kind of privately shop at it, and I'd gotten really connected with the people that were potentially going to buy us. And they'll say, hey, we'll pay you X. And I said, well, why? And they'll say, well, because these 12 things are missing. And I go, great. I took those 12 things handed to my COO, and I'm like, this is our business plan for next year. Like, you know, looking back, it sounds like genius, but while I'm in it, it was deeply desperate. Right?

And so I think that anything that we do, anytime, you know, you guys come to me and say, hey, I want to. I want to do blank. I'd be like, let's go do it right now. In the most rudimentary way, because it allows us to go through the paces to figure out if there is a right fit there. So whether you're starting a Facebook group, launching a podcast, whatever. I think getting in action, even in the most rudimentary way, allows you to get feedback so you can fix it much faster.

That makes sense. Yeah. It starts shining a light on the path, and you can then figure out what to do with it at that point and see where to go. So, yeah, that's interesting. You know, what I want to bring up is actually what we talked About Pre chat, which was your podcast, and let's say the two things you wish you would have done earlier, let's discuss those because I feel like it's very relevant to where we're at right here.

I think you guys will really appreciate this can be tactical that everybody can use. So what happened was.

We on the Sharon personal brand. We have experimented with how to monetize it and being super open and honest about it. So it's like, hey, do you sell products? Do you sell courses? Do you sell, like, you know, swag? Do I sell coaching? What is it? And we're kind of playing with it, and we have a little bit of all of it just as an experiment. And it's been a fun experiment over the last three years. One of my growth hacking teammates said, hey, Sharon, this is what we're gonna do. I want to do a cohort test. And we did two cohorts and we brought them into two separate kind of landing pages. So literally we split the funnel into two, right? And so we got. We got a. It was like 120 people in each cohort. And we watched, we gave.

We gave different interactions very tactically to each cohort. And it's pretty cool. So, like, each cohort was on a separate email blast. They were in separate Facebook groups. They were getting separate things. And it was a pure test. And I didn't know anything about it. Like, good on them for doing this. So they did this process for like, yeah, it was like fourth quarter of last year or something like that. And I had our team meeting and the guy comes to me, he's like, dude, you should look at these results. And I said, okay. And he goes, cohort A is interesting, but cohort B, there's something that happens at the 47th minute mark. I'm like, what 47th minute mark are you talking about? And they said, well, we send them an email, we send them text messages. We send them to like, you know, podcast interviews or videos that you've watched. We tell them the snippets of stuff. And he said, I gave each one a score. I gave an email a one minute score. I gave a text message a 30 second score. And then every like, audio or video segment, I knew what the score was like, amount of time. And he goes, roughly around the 47th minute, they buy something.

I was like, wait, what do they buy? They're like, it doesn't matter that 40, like, but at the 47th minute, they become a really engaged subscriber. So they either start writing in some more they start commenting on posts, they actually buy some. The engagement level flips from below the line to above the line. And so we dug into the data, and I'm calling this the idea of time on brand. So we realized that for me personally, if I can get people into a certain way and I can, they can spend 47 minutes with me, they flip to a completely engaged, different type of person in my community. But before all of this, all I was doing, I just like. I like writing email. I'm not super fancy Internet marketers. Like, you guys are like, you guys are all over the place.

Wherever.

Like, you guys are all over the place.

Awesome.

But I was like, okay, I write email, and my Facebook posts are about my kids. Like, literally, that's all I got going on. I have nothing else. So I was thinking how if each email is one minute, I need 47 emails, which means I write three emails a week. That's a lot of weeks to get them time on brand. So my idea was. Was like, well, I need to do either short video clips or short audio clips. And I was like, well, I don't want to do video clips because it takes forever to, like, produce it. I get all weird. That's not. My team's like, that's not professional, and it's not raw. And I'm like, okay. So I just literally picked up my headset. I would just record audio, like, short ones, and they would put it up on a. On a landing page and say, shron recorded this audio, and it would be four to seven minutes long. And that was the launch of, like, this mini podcast idea. We didn't publish any the of of it. They literally would send people to a landing page of 47 minutes of me just talking on an audio. And now I got four to seven minutes of extra time on brand. So now I was like, okay, this is amazing. Like, what if someone actually could plug me in their ears for 47, like, 30 to 40 minutes in two podcast episodes? I would get my. I would completely compress my time on brand, and that became the launch of the podcast. So we. I launched my podcast during the pandemic because I realized this time on Brand idea. And. And I'll give you the second thing that. So after we did that, I was like, okay, there's gotta be a better way.

Yeah.

So we started doing the podcast. And then one day I was like, you know what would be amazing is I went back to all the live keynotes that I had done, and I took. I asked the organizers for the keynotes And I said, hey, listen, do you mind if I like, I won't sell these. I won't do any of these. I'll reference it was you. I'll tag you all of that. But can I just use these keynotes in just broad based based, non paid promotion. And you know, a bunch of them said, yeah. So I took these full like 60 to 90, 60 minute keynotes and we ran 60 minute keynotes as straight up ads on Facebook.

That's so cool. I've heard of this happening by the very few people. But that's brilliant because I was like.

I just need more time on brand.

Yeah.

And so we just started running lookalike audiences of my email list.

Mm.

And we just literally it was like, show them. No call to action. Like it was nothing. It was no call to action, nothing. It was like, hey, join Sharon's four week MBA four weekMBA or something. Like it's totally free. Nothing. No hard sell. But I just wanted people to just get more of me time on brand. And I was like, if they don't like me, they're just not gonna hang out with me. That's totally fine. Those two things just getting even. Even now we run straight every day, every time I do a keynote. And we would just like, if you guys were to give me a recording of this podcast episode, my team would just run this, the whole thing as an ad.

You'll see an email tomorrow.

And they were just optimized for video views. And I'll tell you exactly like this is the tactical part. All we did was we ran it as an ad. We had optimized for video views only. So people get video views and anybody that's watched over X minutes or X percent of time, we would just retarget them with an awesome. That's it.

Perfect.

It's Frank Ernst, intent based branding or whatever he calls it. But I didn't know any of that. I heard that later. But we just run. So I wish I'd started doing that way sooner. And I wish I started doing the podcast sooner because now the comments that come back for us are like, I'll get an Instagram comment that's like three paragraphs long.

And blah, blah, blah. I'm like, whoa, this is crazy, right? Like, and so someone's actually like gone through this entire content, which is amazing. So if I could go back and do anything over, I would have started my podcast way sooner and I would have started running straight up branded ads of just my, of just all my keynotes as a, as a brand. As an ad. If I just started doing those two things, the trajectory of just time on brand would have been a whole new thing in my world.

Oh, that's so cool. Are you on YouTube with your podcast at all? No, not video. Yeah, we're just noticing the growth from our side of things. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, you know, just for the organic side of stuff too, but let alone, you know, the whole ad platform. Yeah.

A lot easier on YouTube for people to just kind of stumble across your stuff where in the podcast world they kind of got to be driven to your stuff, you know.

Spot on. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. Right.

There was something that. Because throughout your work and what you present, you talk about options and having enough options or good options for yourself. I think putting your business on the market helps a lot with those. But also we were talking very briefly. Podcasts do that really well too because you're constantly depending on the style of podcast. You have different guests that come on, you have an opportunity to open that door, start a conversation that goes deeper, eventually later follow ups and all that stuff. That's where we found around it being this kind of hub for things for us to give us all sorts of options.

Well, systematized networking is really what we built the podcast around, is it? System to get networked with people like you, you know.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm curious about. I want to go back to the 5am club thing again because I know, Joe, you did it this morning and I've always been this night owl, right. I find the quiet time at like after the kids are in bed and my wife goes to bed, like 11 o' clock to like 1 o' clock is when I seem to. To get real focused. So I'm curious, what sort of benefits and results have you seen from the 5am thing? Because it seems to be a pretty common trend among highly successful people is that they wake up really, really early. And for whatever reason, I've convinced myself that my brain can't do that as well. But so I'm curious about the benefits you've seen from it.

Yeah, let's actually.

Let'S kind of break that belief pattern for a second. First, right? There is you can do whatever you want, right? Like first know that you can do whatever you want and you may. I'm a night owl, so I'm a night owl. There are times where I can still, like, I just, I can grind and go through the night, etc. But what I found is Matt, on the. What the 5am Club has done for Me is that I only have one alarm on my phone. So I wake up at 4:45 every single day and I just know that regardless of what happens, that alarm goes up at the same time every day. And it's just regulated bio rhythms for me. And over time now I used to go to bed 11:30 midnight, it slowly started to become 10, started to become 9, started to become 8. I mean now with the kids, you know it but, but as soon as I put my kids to bed, I get in bed like it's, it's pretty, it's pretty wild. But that morning time has allowed me to just have some personal reflection time. And I think that it's not about, I get some time to do some thinking about my thinking. It's like why am I thinking about this this way? Why do I feel the fear this way? And a lot of I think in the evening I get, I can't tell the difference between a frustration and being tired.

Makes sense.

And yes I can jug, I can chug, you know I can chug an espresso. But now I have a stimulant based like result which I don't know what the truth is. So in the mornings I'm fairly clear, I don't have any clutter. I don't check my email like I don't need to for two hours in the morning. And what I've realized is a lot of people will just, they'll say you know, I'm gonna wake up at 5am and they put a lot of pressure on themselves of what they wake up and do. I wake up and only do joyful things. So I'll tell you what I do and this is gonna, you're gonna laugh at this. I wake up in the morning at 4:45. I check Chug water that's right beside my bed because someone told me that was good to do. So I just do that, right? Anything someone smart tells me something like that's a good thing and if it's not hard and doesn't cost money like that's fantastic, right? And then at 5am I do the call. It takes three to five minutes. And then I play Words with Friends with my dad at 5:05.

That's awesome.

I don't do like Tai Chi and 500 push ups. No, I play. I sit in front of the fire and play Words with Friends with my dad for like 20, 30 minutes. My dad lives in India, like it's the greatest time for him and me to hang out. And then if I feel good I Might go for a walk. If I feel like energetic, I might work out. If I feel like I don't want to go outside and it's cold, I might ride the peloton. Like I have zero pressure. And so sometimes I'll just. I can't believe I'm telling you this. I fell asleep, I kicked the seat back in my Tesla and I fell asleep in my car in the garage.

Right?

Meaning you do whatever, like it's your time. And I think that that's been like, I don't work or anything at that time. What it's allowed me to do is just given me a little bit of space to figure out, hey, what do I do during this time? And that's, that's given me time to just think and, and I think that I believe and I know that if there's anything profound that I can say is when you're in the how and do part of our lives, the world is very linear. Hey, how do I do this? I have to go do this. It's very like trade time for activity. But when you're in the what and why part of your life, everything is exponential. Hey, why am I thinking about this? Why am I scared about this? What should I do with this? You know, what can I, you know, what, how, you know, why should I partner with Joe and Matt? Like, that allows me to think so much bigger about stuff and not because we spend a lot of our day very to do list and calendar driven. It's like, you know, it's. You're trading. I hate to call the trading time for money, but there's an effort to time, right? And that space, dude, I will tell you, those two hours I need better dad, because I get to wake up my kids in the morning and they're just like, they love it because every single time when I wake them up, I'm so positive. I'm so energetic. I've. I've cleaned out all the dark stuff out of my head and most people don't have a time to clean out that. So that dark stuff. And that may be, that's why a lot of people like to work out or run or whatever. But for me, that's just the time that I've utilized and my no. 1, everybody in my house thinks I'm crazy, right? Everyone leave. No one wakes up till 7am but there are some days where I'm just tired and I will, you know, I'll text one of my co hosts on the 5:00am I'm like, hey, can you cover today? And they'll cover on a Saturday and I'll sleep in. So I think, you know, giving what again, Talk about options, Joe. I just give myself like this whole rigidity of being David Goggins. It's just not my dream. Like, you know, like, I, I don't want to run a hundred, 100 miles tomorrow. I just.

Come on, you're not trying hard enough.

I just wanna, you know, I think even you give yourself the gift of, you know, doing what you want without judgment. I think it just like, you have a much happier life. You're much, you're better around a lot of people. And my, like, I can tell with my kids, they're like, oh, when I get to hang out with dad, it's cheap, chill, and it's cool. And so I try to spend a lot of my time just saying, hey, what do I feel like doing? Oh, and a lot of times I feel like working, like, I want to hang out, I want to talk to you guys. I'm super grateful to be on the show. And after this, if I, you know, I'm like, ah, do I do 30 minutes of email or do I just go for a walk? I go for a walk, like, whatever, you know. And so I think giving yourself the options are good because. But you need, you need time and space to reconcile that.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. That's, that's super helpful.

It's true too, because today was only day one, but something driven. I mean, obviously the fact that we're about to chat today. But also it's just. I literally saved it as a favorite, the number which. How can folks go find it?

Yeah, super easy. It's 100% free. It's 5am Club.net so 5am Club.Net is just. You just. It's not even a sign up. You just get the call a number. I made it so easy that there's not even a pin. So it's just like you save it as a favorite. You click it takes you right into the call. I even leave the call open for a minute so you can hear everybody in the background. And that seems to drive humanity around it because they're all real. People always say, they're like, hey, this is Mike. You know, Mike from Albany, New York. And I'm like, that's so cool that I know all these people from around the world.

Yeah, well, you were the first one to wish me good morning today. Because, you know, with every ding, you're like, good morning, good morning. I was like, this is really cool. So. But for me mentally, like, what I did this morning, it was way darker than normal. I meditate, I did a breathing thing. But the first thing that popped in my mind was like, this is my time. This is my time. And you kind of even said it here, I think is like, you could just created space for yourself. And it's as simple as just saying, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna hop on with a whole bunch of people, but you're gonna say some really smart stuff that's gonna probably buzz my mind a little bit. I'm not gonna go back to sleep at this point. So, yeah, I mean, it just sets the day into this kind of. Of calm, happy, energized space. And. And you're right around the kids too. Like, I felt great about the family this morning. I was like, wow, I'm, like, motivated to go get, you know, it's gonna be a long day of, you know, all the podcast stuff. I was like, you know what? This is great.

You brought up something. I'll give you. I'll give you exactly. So I don't have a lot of. I don't. I don't do a lot of coaching, mentoring, and all of that. I have very. I have a small handful of CEOs that I work with. Some are publicly traded company CEOs, and all of them came to me through a personal connection. And it's great. It's awesome. I always tell them this is what I help them work on. And most of them have been with me 5, 10, 15 years. So, like, I have one of them that I don't even talk to. We only do Voxer, and he's a client for life, which is way cool, right? But there's only. If anybody wants to diagnose their lives. And there's only three things that I work on with them all the time. It is how do you fix your calendar, which is how do you fix your time? Right? That's number one, how do you fix your spreadsheet? Which is how do you fix your money? And number three, how do you fix your journal? Which is how do you fix your thinking? And almost any problem is either a calendar problem, a spreadsheet problem, or a journal problem? Almost always.

Right? And so if you think about it, you're like, hey, man, I'm really stressed out. My first go to is, Joe, pull up your calendar. Like on Zoom. I can just. I'm like, well, of course you're back to back, and you've had no time to think about anything. You're just stressed because you've gone, you're switching costs from back to back, or that let's just create a half a day not off, but no meetings. You literally decompress because you got some time freedom back. Because we're not. We were not built to be like that. For most people, they don't have spreadsheet clarity. They're like, I'm working really hard, hard, but I'm not making the money. That's just because they don't have the spreadsheet math done, right? When I say spreadsheet, I just mean their math is off, right? In some way. So they don't realize that the activities that they perform is not delivering the results that they want. And that's okay, but I have to shine a spotlight on it. And that's a spreadsheet problem. And if I can't figure out if it's either of those, I know there's something in their thinking. Now, I'm not like, trying to be a mindset guru, but I'm like, well, you don't have space to think. So, like, match, like you said, you're waking up in the morning. I'm like, well, I don't want to. I don't write in my journal. I'm like, well, okay, if you were to write, what would you write? And I'm like, tell me right now, right? And then he'll say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you're editing. I can see you editing. You're gonna tell me because you're not being. I'm like, you're worried about your wife, you're worried about your kids. You're worried about, you know, you wanting that Ferrari or you not being able to afford it. Like, I want to know that, right? Because that's the journal problem. Because then you have a complete identity issue. Because that's why the other two things don't work. And so literally, I can. Most times when someone gets on a call with me and they're like, hey, I want to do, I'm like, there's a good chance that in 45 minutes I can fix whatever you're working on, because it's one of those three. And now can I give you a longevity based solution? No. But whatever the instant pressure that you have, I can release that pretty quickly because I've seen so many calendar problems, so many journal problems, so many spreadsheet problems, and I've heard every excuse of, well, I'm too busy. I can't move that one on One, you know, this is a client call. I've heard every excuse in the book, right? And I'm like, well, can I give you a script that you can send to your client right now? Oh, that'll be great. Like whatever, right? Like there's a way to do that. But.

Almost all problems in the world can be solved with just thinking about whether it's a calendar problem, a spreadsheet problem or a journal problem.

That's brilliant.

That is amazing. We will probably forever use that from here on out. That is such a good tool to get.

We're gonna talk about it in our outro after we say goodbye for the evening. So. So you just left us with some wisdom that we're gonna definitely go deep on.

Yeah, I know you gotta jump on another call here in a minute. Do you wanna tell us quickly about the four week MBA and tell our listeners how they can go check that out?

Yeah, totally. Well, thank you. So during the pandemic, what happened was a lot of my clients in mastermind groups and all of them, they were like, hey, what do we do right now? So I was like, well, I don't know. And so I went to this singularity of focus. I was like, hey, how do I bring everybody together? And then I said, well, what's the cadence of accountability around this? Well, let me do a call every day. So I did a call every day for four weeks. So it's four Monday through Friday for four weeks and I did a 10 minute call and it was distilling one business lesson that I learned in the last 20 years. So I have 20 business lessons in 10 minute calls and I call and it's done over four weeks. So it's called a four week MBA. It's totally free. It's just to give people a chance to saying, hey, download 20 years of pain and wisdom in 10 minutes each and hopefully that's up. It's totally free. It's for the number4WeekMBA.com, so jump on it if you like and you'll see everything there.

I love it. You give so much away. And I appreciate your time investment into all this too because like with the 5am Club, you're hooked now. You can't go anywhere. But it's a great thing. It's obviously growing. So thank you very much, Sharon. Appreciate your time.

Yeah, man, thank you.

Charon left us with a big nugget of wisdom. Oh yeah, right at the end.

Yeah, right at the very end of the episode, right before we had to end it, he broke down his Whole thing about the calendar versus spreadsheet versus journal. Right. And it was this philosophy of, like, any problem can be solved by looking at your calendar. Either trying to squeeze too much in, and that's why you're stressed out. A spreadsheet problem. Oh, money issues or whatever. Well, there's some sort of math going on here that you need to figure out. Or a journaling problem. Okay. It's a mindset thing. There's something going on up here then holding you back right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

I thought that was brilliant. It's like you could really sum up almost any problem that you encounter with one of those three things. I mean, maybe. Maybe I would add a fourth. Like a communication problem.

Yeah, yeah. Communicating. Wants, needs, emotions, whatever. Like, you know, your thoughts in general. Maybe that's a mindset thing, though.

Yeah, that could be under journaling.

Yeah. Because that's. That allows you to kind of communicate clear. Yeah, Something. A quote that I heard him say on a different podcast was, fear has no place on paper. And I bet it relates to his journaling thing, too. It's like, once you put it on paper, well, it allows you so much freedom in whatever you want to do. Whatever's hanging you up, I'm sure. Just writing it down. It's like you work through it just by doing that.

You didn't say that on our podcast.

I don't think so, but I know I wrote this down from another podcast, but anyway, it relates to what he said here. Yeah.

Now you can see people listening, watching. You can see how we get our wires crossed because we do research by listening to a bunch of podcasts and then we interview him and then we lose track of what he said on our podcast versus the ones we did the research around.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, that's true. That happens. Yeah, that was some. Some big wisdom there. And that's. I mean, it's. It's. It's crazy when he was like, hey, spend 45 days or minutes with me and I could probably solve some of the big, you know, the issues, the roadblocks, whatever's hanging you up. Yeah, yeah. And that's just. I mean, it's infinitely important because once you learn that and see like, oh, crap, Crap, like, yeah, like waking up early in the morning, that just kind of created a whole new schedule. And my. I'm sticking with it at least 30 days. Like you said, 30 day challenge, you know, But I'm wait, because one of.

These days I'm going to see you on slack at like 1:00am I'll be like, are you looking at NFTs at 1:00am Again?

Joe, go to sleep. Tron's going to wake you up.

You got to be up in four hours.

Exactly. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Not with that, actually. I want to sleep. But definitely today. Maybe it was a bad day to start at 5am today on a long podcast day, but it's all good. Had to start at any time, so I chose today. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing that I really liked, what he said was, you know, just something to the effect. I don't remember the exact wording, but something to the effect of spend more time in the what and why. You know, basically, what and whys are kind of exponential. The thinking can go anywhere. Right. But then there's the. The when and how.

How.

Right.

The when and how is the sort of action things. You only have so many windows of when things can take place. You only have so much time and so much availability and so much resources for the how of things.

Right.

But when you stay, like, living in the what and the why, you get to have that exponential thinking. You can kind of grow your thoughts and. Yes. And each other. Right. Like, yes. And we can do this and. And then this. And then we can also add this. And the reason the customers are low, this is because it provides them with this. And then you start to get into this. This exponential thinking of. Of like. Yes. And we can also do this and grow it this way. And then. And then like, living in that space is what we absolutely love. And, you know, you're going to be hearing us a lot on our podcast, talking about how we're paring things down and cutting out a lot more from our business and, you know, shifting focuses a little bit. And it really is that. It's because we enjoy so much spending the time in the what and the why in the dreamers room.

That's where we shine. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

So there's like the dreamer's room and the critics room and then the doer's room. Right. We like hanging out in the dreamer's room and maybe spending a little time in the critics room. But the doer's room is the room that we're always kind of like.

It's not our room.

Maybe tomorrow, you know. Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely like, when it comes down, like, we'll execute on the things that. I mean, we execute on the important stuff. But let's be honest, we're not the one. We would never be asheron driving a company to scale and do all these things. I mean, we would, but we wouldn't be the one doing the driving like that. Yeah, we wouldn't do the when and the hows. Because, yeah, inherently you have. I guess you have limitations. Yeah, you have a time limitation with the win. And then the how is like, maybe a skill limitation, a people limitation. Can't quite do it all. So you gotta hire people or resources, all that stuff. Software, tools, maybe a money thing too. But yeah, the why and the what, it's smart because that's like mental models. It's business models. Yeah. It's thinking of trends and SWOT analysis. Another exercise. He, like, he talked about how every list that are, every new project he launches or whatever. This, again, was not on the podcast. I know of this because I drew a little doodle down here. But basically, in these scenarios, it sounds like he would probably do, like, you know, he'd get, like, a piece of paper, put a line down the middle, and each column, like, the left column would say, why I think this is going to work. Work. Then the right column is why I don't think this thing is gonna.

I mean, he kind of touched on that. He didn't. He didn't give the exercise of drawing the line down the paper and saying what, like why and why not. But when we asked him about, like, the. The singularity of focus, he started talking about, like, you know, putting out ideas, and then why wouldn't this work? Or was that during the singularity of focus or. I mean, that was one of the other big, like, takeaways that I had was when you're thinking about pursuing a project, like, you know, look at reasons why it wouldn't work and try to, like, try to break it apart. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, if you can kind of brain dump that from day one or second one, and you're living in the. In the why and the what. Probably more of the what. Like, okay, so, you know, what are the different things that could happen or go wrong for. Or go right. And you might as well just like, brain dump all that stuff. It sounds like that's his first step, you know, once he's figured out probably, probably, you know, singularity of focus, Some of this other stuff all fits into place. Yeah.

Either way, great, amazing conversation. We'll probably do a round two, because he lives about 50 minutes from us, an hour from us. And, you know, we got on the recording, and before we hit record, he's like, why didn't we just do this one in person? We're like we didn't realize we were this close.

Dang it.

Next time, you know, he already offered to do a round two with us and next time it'll be in person. So, you know, we were actually reflecting after the call that he actually reminded me us a little bit of Naval Ravikant just in like his philosophies and the way he thinks and the way he puts out little sound bites for free. You know, Naval is in a place in his life where he's not doing anything for the money anymore.

Right.

He's got plenty of money. So he's not doing it for the money anymore. So now he's just kind of sharing his wisdom. He's sharing what he's learned along the way. And I, and I truly believe that's kind of like why he does what he does, why he's putting out content is he's got this wisdom and he just wants to share it. I get that same feeling with Sharon here.

Yeah, no, I agree. And that's where you know, his4weekmba.com definitely go pick that up and go join the 5am Club.net I believe it is. I don't know if there was a the before that. I think it's just 5am club.net but like both of these things, like that is a time thing. He's doing that every single day. And he's basically giving little nuggets of wisdom, you know, in like five minutes or less or so every single day. And then this4WeekMBA.com, you gotta think he's like packaging up so much wisdom in a course of what, a handful of weeks. He said four weeks. It's four weeks.

Four week MBA.

Not even a hit.

A little bit more four week MBA. It only takes you 12 weeks to complete.

You never know bonuses. But like think about like you're not going to get that from someone who's done all this stuff. And you know, the fact he's putting it out there is because he wants to help a lot of people. So fourweeknba.com I think would be very nice to go to and meet me at 5am Pacific time though. So if you're in east coast, it's not that hard.

You don't talk. Right. You just hear.

Yeah, you just listen.

Okay.

I was literally in bed when I called in with like one earbud in.

So everybody comes in on mute then and everybody just kind of stays on mute. Or can you unmute yourself?

I think it's unmuted. But then he mutes it after, like, he said, he, like, kind of lets a little humanity come in to the call. So you do hear, like, clinking around, like, people doing, like. Yeah, yeah, you know, stuff like that. And then he's. He's wishing or saying, good morning. Good morning. Every ding that pops on 6,000 times, I didn't hear it. I mean, maybe they overlapped a lot. There were a lot of dings. I know that he said good morning a lot lot. Which I was like, that's cool. So he wished me good morning this morning. That's cool. Yeah.

So if it is open, everybody should get on and be like, I hope Joe Fear's here.

Yeah, I guess he could have you have the opportunity to shout out. Right, Right when you jump on there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, check it out. I'll see you on there, huh?

Maybe. Probably not tomorrow. Cause I'm exhausted.

Yeah, I know. Me too. All right, well, let's wrap this puppy up. Let's talk about our new channel. Like, the place, our hangout, our island.

Yeah. Hustle and Flowchart Island.

We created an island. We did in the meta. I don't think it's really the metaverse digital world.

It's centralized.

It's. Damn it, Web two. All right, so we created a Discord channel. It's. We're calling it Hustle and Flowchart Island. And this is basically replacing the Facebook group, more or less. It's basically our new community. We're going to put all sorts of fun stuff in there, different channels for different topics. We're going to bring a bunch of our friends in there, probably a bunch of the people that have been on the podcast.

It's just so much easier to, like, communicate in real time with people in there. It's so much easier to sort of break up sections of content. So in our Facebook group, you can kind of scroll forever and maybe find something interesting to you. But who's going to ever do that in the Discord? You could go in with a purpose. You can go into the Discord and be like, okay, I want to learn about what they're talking about with this NFT stuff right now. Well, there's a section in there where we're talking about NFTs or, oh, I want to learn about, like, what they're doing to grow their podcast right now where there's a section in there about podcasts, Right. So there's. There's these segmented sections where you can go in and join the communication and the conversation on just those topics that interest you. Right? So I really love the. The Discord. And you could do cool things like voice broadcasts. Whoever's hanging out in the Discord, Joe or myself could turn on a voice broadcast and talk to everybody.

Listen or play some music. We heard Discord today. They had.

They're doing a party.

Yeah, it was like a party. There was a. There was a disc jockey and everything, like, Spot. And I was like, right, so you're listening to the boat. Like, what is this? This is cool.

Yeah.

So we might have a party over there. All that to say, go join us on Discord. And if it's new, if you ever, never have used Discord before, just try it out. We'll be your guinea pigs. The island will be the place that you test the Discord Water Hustle and Flowchart island. Hustleandflowchart.com Discord is how you get there. Yeah.

You know what? I thought this was clever. I'm calling our moderators lifeguard lifeguards.

All right. I dig. You're my lifeguard.

Yeah. Their lifeguard. Because it's all in theme.

Yeah, I dig it. We'll come up with, like, cool artwork or something for their bat. I don't know. You can do funky stuff with Discord.

Yeah, there's a lot.

There's a lot.

We're doing a lot of fun stuff with Discord. There's going to be some. I'm not even.

Craziness. Yeah, craziness. You're going to want to be hanging.

Out in the Discord because that's where you're going to hear about it. Either there or on the podcast. Podcast is where we're broadcasting stuff. But yeah. Hustleandflowchart.com Discord. You're going to want to be in there. We're doing some ninja tactical. We're doing crazy.

What?

I don't know. We're gonna be doing some cool stuff in there.

Do you ever say ninja outside of the podcast?

I don't think I say ninja very often. I don't think somebody called me out on it. And now I. Now I'm conscious of that word.

Someone call him out in the YouTubes. I'll make sure that it's a samurai with this stuff. Samurai. Ooh, that's taken aback. That's another day. All right, so easy. Webinar. I want to shout out our friends over there. They're hooking you up with a fatty discount for anything webinar based. They're your folks. They have created basically a centralized program that is everything. Webinars. So if you want to host your webinars on there, your pages that are all associated with it, registration pages, it helps you with the tech, it reports your data. All the metrics of this stuff, they do it all. So easywebinar.com hustle will give you that nice disc discount.

Go get it.

Go get it.

Yeah.

All right. And go share this around. Leave us a little comment, something below. If you're watching us on YouTube or if you listen to us, tell us.

A little takeaway or come into the Discord and say, hey, I love that episode. And we'll be like, what did you love about that episode? You'll be like, I love it. When Sharon said, this will be like, that's amazing. And then we'll actually have a real conversation.

We could have conversations now. Yes. About time. I have been missing that. Yeah. Because the Facebook group, it wasn't doing it. No, it'd be like a post it and ghost sometimes from us because, like, Facebook, come on. But like, yeah, there was no real conversation. So Discord's where it's at. Hustleandfluidchart.com Discord.

Yeah.

You'll enjoy it. All right, we're done.

That's it.

That's a day.

Sam.