The First System To Make Our Business Work 👥

Welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

With your hosts, Matt Wolfe and Joe Fear.

What is up, everybody? Welcome to the first ever episode of. What are we calling this thing?

Oh, I think we are calling this the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

The Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

Yeah, buddy.

Our totally original and unique name for this one.

It is and it's pretty awesome because it explains us perfectly.

Yes.

Which we'll get into shortly.

Yes, well, let's get into it now.

Why not? Hey, for you listening. Thank you very much. This is episode one and we're actually at the top of a mountain right now. Broadcasting or recording? Not really broadcasting, but it's. Yeah. So we're actually looking over San Diego right now. But we figured this would be an inspirational way to kick this thing off and make it awesome. Absolutely. And yeah, so on this episode, basically it's the first of many to come. It's not always just going to be Matt and I. And just a step back, my name is Joe Fear. This is who I am, Matt Wolf. So, yes, you probably have seen some pictures at least of us now. He's the guy with the big beard. I'm the guy with the wannabe beard.

Yeah. So if you used to listen to my podcast, the Authority Insider podcast, this one is kind of replacing that podcast. It's now a co hosted show. Myself, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. And the focus of the show is going to be changing a little. This is actually going to be very, very much revolving around processes and systems and automation. So the sort of game plan with this whole podcast is to find really, really successful entrepreneurs and then figure out what sort of things in their business they've systematized and process sized and automated, all that kind of stuff, and really dive into systems, figure out how you can do similar things in your business. Work less, make more, automate, optimize processes, flowcharts, all that kind of stuff. That's what this show is going to be all about. That's going to be the focus. And so with this new show comes a new name, a new co host and a whole slew of new guests that we've got lined up to come on the show.

Yeah. And this has been a very, I'd say the last year Matt and I have been working together to really make this new style of business. And that's what this episode's going to be all is us kind of re partnering for the. I don't know what, the fourth time now maybe in a business, and this one specifically has Been the absolute best one we've had. We were more profitable and we take a lot less time off. So this day is actually more of our crunch day. Whereas most times during the month are just kind of chill or. Or, you know, it's just like we have these systems, like Matt said. Now finally we built smart systems around everything we do, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So just a little insight behind the name Hustle and Flowchart, why we came up with that name. It's sort of our philosophy that businesses don't have to be all hustle, go, go, go work your ass off all the time, that you can actually build systems, you can build processes, you can automate, and you can somewhat back yourself out of your business. But to get there, we do believe it requires a little bit of hustle, a little bit of upfront work, a little bit of hard work. So that's kind of where the name Hustle and Flowchart comes from. Flowchart representing the fact that we do systems, we do processes, we do automate. But then the hustle is that little extra grind it takes to get to that systematized process.

Yeah. Excuse me. So it's kind of a good combo because if you think about it, you can't do one without the other. And that's something we really struggled with for a long time, is that it was too much hustle, too much grind. And personally. So this is kind of where we can maybe start getting into our own. This kind of episode where we talk about why we partnered and then kind of what has come from that.

Right.

With these systems and what that's now creating for you, for you, listening is, you know, we grinded a lot. And I was. I would call myself more of the Hustle side because I was always very client focused. My businesses before were like more of an agency style where it was delivering a service, be it animations or webinar production or funnels and all that stuff. Matt and I have done funnels together, but it was all very service focused and, you know, one off projects always hustling for that next client.

Right.

Whereas the Flowchart is where, you know, that's where like the systems come in. So you have the hustle to kind of put people into the systems and then you have the flowchart. So the other part, that's. I like to say that's more Matt because he's more of the system's brain. He's a lot more analytical than I am, and he's the one that really sees something that we do Repetitively and figures out a way to either automate it with technology or with someone that we, that we outsource or hire with, you know, within the company.

Yeah.

And that's where that thinking we've never had that so much is. We've always had great goals and ambitions, but we never figured out how to actually make it where we can take ourself out of the day to day grind of this thing, where we can focus more on the business rather than being right in it.

Right, right. Yeah. And, you know, this is, I think, a pretty good segue to where we wanted to go with this episode. We didn't want this episode to just be us sort of introducing this podcast. We wanted to actually talk about the very first system, the very first process that we had to put in place to make this business even work. So the new business model, the direction that Joe and I have taken, it has been much more educational based and much more affiliate marketing based. So the majority of our income these days, the full transparency about this is mostly from affiliate marketing income. We promote a lot of other people's products, a lot of evergreen products, and we've got some systems in place that really, really make, make our affiliate promotions work. And we're going to get into all those processes in future episodes. But that's kind of our main business model. That and our evergreen profits letter, which is a monthly subscription letter that we mail to your house that, you know, that kind of teaches all the processes and step by step tutorials and that sort of thing. But to be able to build this business, we had a little bit of a transition. We were doing a lot of client work together. We were building funnels for people, we were doing a lot of content marketing for people and helping people drive traffic and just doing a lot of services, you know, for the highest bidder.

We pretty much do one off, one off stuff.

Right, right. And in order to transfer over to this, we had to make sure that we continued to make money and sort of ease off of the client stuff. But we also wanted to start ramping up the affiliate marketing and the info business and the newsletter. So that's what we wanted to talk about is that process of making this transition from service to more of an info, affiliate based business.

Yeah. And this is where personally, well, both of us, we both struggled with this because Matt's always been, you know, his forte has always been more of the information. Very much a teacher. He's done a lot of podcasting. I feel like we're both very good teachers, but he Kind of niched himself more into the wider teaching realm, you know, like paid courses, info products, stuff like that. Whereas I've always niched myself into providing value and teaching more one on one with clients or maybe a small group with coaching. That's kind of been my forte. And so we, but we've always worked together really well and we saw an opportunity with a big group of clients that, that basically wanted something, but they, you know, we didn't know how to really make it a continuity or something where we can always be bringing in a consistent amount of revenue. You know, something that we wanted to basically bridge the gap between both of us, our strengths, and we work really well together. And I feel like a lot of people have this opportunity, you might have that opportunity in your business right now with a potential, you know, someone business partner. But there's a way that you can bring a grinding, hustling business into a continuity style business that's automated. And that's the key. If you can find that middle, that bridge, whatever that is, you're off to the races.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know that the reason we partnered, and this is actually a question we get quite frequently, is why did you guys decide to partner? You know, Joe had a pretty successful business on his own, I had a pretty successful business on my own, so. So why'd you guys decide to partner? And really that partnership is that first system, that first process that we put in place to make this all work. That partnership was what created what we're doing now. Now we're at a point where our subscription income and our affiliate income pays our bills. It's enough money that we are able to phase out the client stuff. But that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't partnered up. So. So the way this partnership sort of worked was Joe was able to continue to manage a lot of the client work, a lot of the, you know, the service type stuff that we were doing. Where I was, while he was doing that, I was able to start to build the info side of the business. I was able to start to create the, you know, the frameworks and the outlines for our newsletter and set up some of the affiliate promotions that we're doing so that, you know, while I was building that, we weren't making any money off of it, but the service business was still running. And now Joe's finally getting to a point where he can phase himself out of the service business and focus full time on the info and affiliate stuff with me. And that's why the partnership worked. And that's why that was kind of that first process that we had to put in place to make this business a viable business model for us.

And so a way of thinking. And this is where, yeah, the combo of what Matt and I did there, that's what has allowed us now to completely take a lot of workload off and profit a lot more. The big thing that we did is that we saw clients and this is something that you can maybe think in your own business or not, whatever you think fits. But we used client money. So the projects, the one off projects and the continuity that we were getting from clients. So we had a lot of monthly retainers, for instance, some high level five to ten grand kind of monthly retainers from clients and, and then one off projects. In addition to that. We use that as our seed money to basically create these systems and create the time that it really takes to build all these things. So these different affiliate blogs that we created, Google traffic, Facebook traffic, whatever other kind of paid ads that are coming out there, that all takes an investment. A lot of people think that there's not a lot of money that goes into an online business. Well, that's BS because there's a bunch, you know, a lot of people feel like that's all. It's going straight to our bank accounts. But no, like we hired a PM for a long time to manage our client projects. But the whole thing is like, if you think of like a startup company, they have investors.

Yeah.

And they're taking other people's money. Well, we've never taken a cent from investors. We use that client money as our seed money to grow the business.

Right. And traffic, I mean, we're not, we're not really free traffic guys. We're paid traffic guys. We love, love, love paid traffic. And we, we'll probably get into that quite a bit in future episodes. But we're big into Google AdWords and Facebook ads and we're just now starting to dive a little bit into things like Twitter ads and YouTube ads. But we love paid traffic that we are completely in control of. And the beauty of having all these clients in our business and having this retainer money coming in was that we were able to use that as the startup fund to drive traffic to what we're now doing. So we use that client work as the, you know, the seed money to build this info business. And now we're finally at a point where we can, you know, transfer all of our energy, all of our time, all of our focus over to the info side and the affiliate marketing. Side and phase out the clients, which is not, you know, not necessarily our favorite thing. We have, we have clients that we like. We're not gonna badmouth like client work. We have clients that we like. But, you know, being in complete control of when the money comes in and, and all that kind of stuff is definitely a lot nicer of a scenario to be in.

Well, here's the. There's two things we want it. Cash flow can kill a business or it can make it thrive. Depends on how well your cash flow is with clients. Inherently, it's going to be kind of inconsistent and out of your control because let's be honest, you're kind of at the whim of when they pay you, whereas when you. It goes with everything, but at the same time, you want to diversify enough to where you are more in control of that cash flow, where you can expect a certain amount to at least cover your monthly nut, whatever that is. And then more. So we, so we wanted to take ourselves more into control of our business. And now we see clients as, you know, if you're going to be a client with us, we're going to really like you. For one. You're going to have to pay us enough for us to divert our attention away from our own internal projects that are making a lot of money to something that, you know, obviously if we divert our attention, we're going to lose time that can make us more money. So now you have to fit that bill, whatever that is. You know, you have to. So the whole idea is we don't want to have clients to rely on clients for income. That's. That's not where we're at anymore. But there's a, you know, we definitely leveraged clients in that to grow to where we're at now. And I feel like any company can do that. If you're an agency that feels like they're like, you know, you're struggling with overhead or you have too big of a team, that feels too bloated, or you're just not paying yourself what you want to do. There's a way for you to systemize your internal business. And it's not even saying get away from clients, but there's a way to systemize it to a point where you don't have to always be chasing up the clients.

Right.

You can build a continuity system into that agency or any business. Yeah, life changing.

And one of the things that was, that was great about doing the client stuff was the client stuff lent credibility to our info stuff. You know, we were able to work with these clients, build out amazing systems for them, amazing websites for them, amazing processes that are really, really working for them. And now, because we did that client work, we actually have the case studies and the proof that what we do works. So I think we're kind of hitting about that 15 minute mark right now, and I think we need to wrap this one up. But the sort of conclusion, the overall thing that we wanted to touch on today in this episode was that partnering and actually focusing on client work as the way to start a business is a really, actually a great way to go. Joe and I partnered up so that I can focus on building an info business that wasn't making money yet while he focused on the client work, which was the seed money for this business. So that was how we started this business. That was the philosophy behind partnering up. And now we're at a point where the info business, the affiliate marketing business, is ramped up enough and making enough sales that Joe is able to take his focus away from the client work and join me on the info side of things. So it was just a system, a process that we put in place to make that happen with while we were still able to pay our bills and feed our families and that sort of thing.

Yep. And to wrap it up, I just want to basically ask you and kind of leave you with a thought of how can you systemize one thing in your business that you feel like is the biggest time suck, or maybe it's the biggest suck of your income, your revenue. Figure out how to systemize that. If it is partnering up or hiring someone or automating with technology, write that down and really meditate. Think about that. Because that thing could really change your complete trajectory with business and how you spend your time.

Absolutely.

That's what it's all about.

That note. We'll see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for joining us for the first ever episode.

Thank you. Thank you. See you then. Later.