Therapy Session - How Everything Changed in 2020

I think that was where it started the thinking of like, okay, cool. We have so many connections that we all we got to do is just have a goal in mind, have a person that we can help or a project, and then figure out how to connect the two, you know, all them together. And with Jay, he was actually on the podcast when he talked about that pay what you can thing. And that's when we're like, let's talk off air about that. We have the solution for it. We'd love to help. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Alrighty, so welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Actually, Happy New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year's Eve.

And episodes coming out on December 31, 2020.

Weird. Weird to say we're wrapping up 2020 finally.

Yeah, this is the season finale. I mean, the next season starts next week, but this is the season finale.

Yeah. I mean, I would say more in the respect of the world and everything, but yeah, I guess our 2020 season is like, this is the day wraps all up too. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, hopefully 2020 wasn't serious finale.

No.

Season finale. Yeah, we don't want any finales right now.

Man, what a year, huh?

What a year.

So I don't even know where to start, but I know you do because you took feverish notes. I did. Matt's ironically the one that hates pre these types of episodes, so I'm curious.

Yeah, but this one is different because. So this is a therapy session. We don't have a guest today, if you haven't guessed that by the title of this episode.

But what we wanted to talk about is we wanted to talk about, you know, some of the accomplishments of 2020, some of our big lessons and takeaways from 2020, some of our plans for 2021. This has kind of become a tradition where every year at the very end of the year, the last episode of the year we do is kind of one of these recaps. And I probably should have listened to last year's to see how much of, like, what we expected from 2020 came true, but probably very little of it.

That would be good to know. Yeah, let's do that later, though, before this releases. Maybe we'll have to do an addendum to a podcast episode.

Probably not, but I doubt it. But this episode does have a sponsor.

It's sponsored by ahrefs and it is. I Think the last time we'll hear from them for at least this season. So Ahrefs, yeah, they've been frigging awesome. And you know that we've been loyal user of those folks for, I mean, well before them sponsoring the show and paying us money for this. But either way, Ahrefs is amazing and we still use it to this day even more so because I think it actually forces us in a way to record these intros, forces us to actually dig in there and be like, what other cool stuff do they have going on in there? Because they just have like, it's one of those tools with endless amounts of tools within a tool within a tool.

And yeah, so I was in Ahrefs just as of recording this. I was in Ahrefs today's yesterday. I was in Ahrefs yesterday messing around. And this is silly because this is something that is probably obvious to most people who use Ahrefs, but you can actually create like your own custom keyword list of keywords that you wanna go after. So I was doing like some research on keywords I wanted to go after for our own blog. And there's like a little plus next to every keyword that looks like every keyword. You could press little plus button and create a list of keywords. So I created this list of like 20 keywords that want to go after and most of them are unrelated. And now I have sort of like a checklist of like, okay, I'm going to make content on this, I'm going to make content on this. I'm going to make content on this. And I don't know why, but I just started using their little like, list tool of like, when you find keywords, start creating a list of keywords you want to target. And it was like new to me. I don't know why I never made my own lists inside of Ahrefs before.

So new to you and you've been using the tool for like, I don't know, four, five years? Actually, we were using it way back when we were a content marketing agency. Now that I think about it. Holy crap.

We've been using Ahrefs for, What was that, 2013, seven years?

Yeah, at least. Dude. Okay, I didn't know. We gave Ahrefs a lot of money.

Actually, they probably paid us a lot more. So I shouldn't be talking.

That's what I'm saying. Like, I think it's it. All the world is evened out. So thank you, Ahrefs, and yeah, we'd welcome you back. But in the meantime, we're gonna keep using you as a service for helping our SEO efforts grow. But you listening should also check out Ahrefs because that's the point of the sponsorship. I think people that way.

Yeah, they've got a $7. Seven day trial if you go to ahrefs.com so definitely go check that out. And you know, I don't know if that was the best sponsor read or not, but what are they going to do? Cancel the sponsorship? It's the last one of the year.

I'm going to send this to their, their marketing guy, Tim. Whatever.

Be honest. People have, have heard a lot about Ahrefs and I think that's a good. It's. It's always been a positive thing at the end of the day. And I know a lot of our folks like you listening are likely. You've probably heard of it and I'm sure you've tried it out by now. And if you haven't, well, try it out. $7 for seven days. So it's a buck a day for a week. You're probably not gonna get to test out every single tool because Matt's been using it for seven years and he just discovered this thing yesterday. So you're not even going to know what's even possible in seven days. But you'll sure as hell get a lot of results. Start with the audit, like the site audit. I think that's probably the best. Low hanging fruit. Do like 80, 20. Start there and figure out the stuff in your website that you can actually change right now and then poke around, check out their tutorials. They have a lot of free stuff on YouTube. Wow, my voice just did a weird thing.

YouTube.

And then I'll welcome. My voice just.

Went lower.

But yeah, check out Ahrefs. The A is silent. It's Ahrefs.com I've been wanting to say that for a while.

A H r e f s.comahrefs $7 seven day trial. Go check them out. You will love them. We love you, ahrefs. Thank you very much.

Very cool. Well, and also we're gonna take notes on this one, so flowchartgroup.com go over there. Join the Facebook group. When you join the Facebook group, one of the questions is give us your email and we will send you the notes. So make sure when you join the group, you give us your email if you want the notes for this episode. You'll also get that added benefit of being in our Facebook community where lots of good action happens as well. So go to flowchart group.com. all right, let's dive into some cool shit.

What a year. I'm going to take another breath.

Joe doesn't even know what I have in my notes. I was sort of holding back on him so that I can kind of break down some stuff. So. Pop quiz. I thought we had a pop quiz for you.

Oh. So go ahead. I'm ready.

How many? Okay. So I kind of blended podcasts and virtual summits together is kind of like, one thing, Right? So how many appearances do you think we made in 2020 on podcasts and virtual summits?

I think it's less than I actually think it is. Like, in the number in my mind, I want to say a number, but I think it's actually less than that number. I'm going to say. No, I'm going to go lower than the number I. My. I'm going to go 40.

71.

Holy moly.

That.

Okay, I was just thinking one a week.

Yeah. No, we were on 71 different podcasts and virtual summits in 2020.

No wonder I got really gray this year.

So, Joe, you were on 30 without me.

Okay.

I was on 11 without you.

And then we were on 30 together.

That's way too many that I had to talk with you again. Yeah, we talk to each other a lot. Wow. That's a lot, though. I mean, so. And our goal, I think, was once per week, right? Like, in total.

Yeah, I think we were shooting for, like, once a week. At least one a week. So combined, we did 71. You, 30, me, 11, and then we went on 30 together.

That's okay. That makes me very happy. I mean, I was happy before, but I was expecting one a week. Like, seriously. And. Because I think that was our goal for the year. And before that, it was like a quarter of that maybe, or a third. It was like 20 something. We're like, we're gonna go on 20 episodes and 20 appearances. 71.

Yeah. Well, we went heavy at the beginning of the year. Like, at the very beginning of the year, we were like. Out of the 11 shows I went on, like, nine of them were in the first half of 2020. And we did a lot of virtual summits right when the. The pandemic was kind of rolling out and people were starting to stay home a little more. Like, we hit the summit circuit pretty heavily, and we're on a bunch of summits.

We did. Yeah, we did live streams. We've done all sorts of stuff, man. And I know we just wrapped it up in December. I Think we're like, we don't want to do any more. And then we're like, oh, yeah, there's TNC traffic, and conversion is wrong. We gotta do that.

Of course, I did count one that you haven't done yet as of recording, but by the time this goes live, you will have done. You're going on Ryan Lee's podcast.

Is that next week?

That's next week, so. Well, for the listeners, that was last week.

All right, well, our job here is to confuse everyone.

By the time this is released, you will have been on 30. Wow.

All right, I'll take it. That's impressive. I mean, that's. That was. I mean, that was a big goal of ours because it's. It's probably our biggest source of, like, warm leads and warm new folks that are coming to listen to this show. You know, people that actually have kind of heard us somewhere that. I mean, we've been touting that for a while. Is this is a great strategy to spread your brand, spread your awareness in general, and just connect with people in a way that's more than just an ad shouting at a bunch of, you know, targets on Facebook or Instagram, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's. It's kind of funny, the disparity, because you went on 30 and I went on 11. So you've been on 60, right? Because 30 combined. 30, just you and then 11. Just me. So you've been on 60 podcasts this year, and I've been on 41.

I need a raise.

I mean, that's my role. Like, that's more where I lean in the biz. And, you know, you're. You're doing more of the tactical stuff and the stuff that requires not talking to as many people. I mean, like, it's. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's. It takes a lot of effort to do both, you know?

Yeah, I'm also sort of. It's weird because I think we were talking about this on a team meeting or one of our meetings recently. I don't like being interviewed. Like, I'm very awkward when being interviewed. I feel like. I feel way more at home being the one asking the questions, not being the one getting the questions asked to see.

Yeah, I've. I've always been. I actually enjoy it, to be very honest. And. And I know, like, you sent a good article. I think it's from podcast movement. Someone wrote it on their website, and. And it basically said the same thing. And all the things that you've told me you hate about being interviewed. You're like, typically, it's. Typically it's the interviews just have bad questions. You know, they can't actually go deep into a thing, you know, like a topic, because they're probably not curious enough or they're not thinking that way. And I know that was a big takeaway that I had after reading that article is like, yeah, it's. It's when the other side, the person you're chatting with at that virtual summit or a podcast, if you're being interviewed, if there's no general curiosity from that interviewer, it kind of sucks because it feels like they're just going through the motions and checking the boxes of the questions they have listed in front of them.

Well, I've been on a couple shows this year where I can tell that the host of the show didn't really know who I was before I came on the show. I got on there, and they're like, yeah, tell me about your business. And I mentioned I have a podcast. They're like, oh, you have a podcast? I'm like, you obviously did your research. That's like the main thing in our life or our business, you know, like. And so I don't know, for me, I have this tendency to be on these podcasts going, man, I. You're asking the wrong questions. Like, I wish you'd steer it here. And I. And for whatever reason, when I'm being interviewed, I'm not assertive enough to go, hey, let's steer the show in this direction instead. So I just kind of, like, roll with whatever questions they ask. But usually in my head, I'm like, this isn't a good interview.

Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely feel that often, you know, with. With shows and. But I like. I like those interviews where I just don't have any expectations, like, enough expectations to. Where I know that it's going to be released and not just, like, I'm going to waste my time and this will POD fade. You know, the podcast is just going to go down. But I don't know, like, it seems weird and. Because I think I take this a lot from you, actually, because, like, whenever, just for. For everyone to kind of understand what's in my mind, what's in Matt's mind, and what's really happening when, like, you see us on stage or something. Yeah, like, when we were doing that, like, at pod. Well, now it's not really happening so much in my mind, but I think you've trained it out of me, Matt. Like, Matt has this anxiety. Right before he goes on stage, he, like, freaks the hell out.

Like, you will shut down. You. You. I mean, I get it. It's all good because, like, I'm usually like, totally, like, let's do it. Let's do this thing. And then we go on stage, and then Matt's like, chill as hell. And he's just like, whatever. And then that's where I'm like, oh, fuck.

So it's like, almost like the roles reverse a little bit. Yeah.

That is weird about speaking is I get so much anxiety leading up to the speaking, but the second they're like, okay, you're on, go. Like, my brain just goes, all right, go time. Let's do this. And then I just shift. I, like, sink down into this, like, comfort zone of being in front of people saying that.

I feel like you and I have helped each other in both of our respects, you know, the spectrum there. We brought each other a little bit more in the middle because I. I feel a lot more relaxed on these things especially. It's. I think it's just all the practice and it's going on all these shows and. Point I was trying to make in here is that I. When I go on another podcast now, I. I just kind of don't care. Like, I know I'm gonna give the best. I'm like, I just can't stop myself from just giving as much as I can, I guess, on whatever they ask. But, yeah, I just kind of don't care.

Yeah. And it's interesting because that sort of correlation between me speaking and me going on podcasts, it's kind of there, too. I get this little, like, anxious uncomfortableness right before we hit record on somebody else's podcast, you know? But then once we're actually recording, I'm usually fine, but I'm sitting there going, this isn't really the thing that lights me up. Like, you and I, when we record podcasts, you and I do this, and we both know we do this. We're looking for that vein that lights our guest up. If we're sitting there having a conversation, and it feels like our guest is kind of just giving their sort of talking points, that this is the same thing they've talked about on every podcast they've been on. This is the same thing they talk about on stage, and they're going through these points, you and I are going in our heads. We're going, all right, let's find a new vein that we can take them down where they're going to get lit the frick up, right?

Frick. Yeah.

Lit the frick up.

Yeah. It's true. No, I mean, it's. Yeah. I think that's really comes in practice, though, you know, like, definitely weren't like that. I mean, this year, I think, is a good. I don't know. This might be on your notes, but I feel like we've really evolved as interviewers, and we've been told as such from. People have been listening for a while, and, I mean, I don't know. We. I don't analyze myself too much, but I definitely. I think. I think I, like, naturally, we've become more curious. Yeah. And we know how to locate the gold that comes out. That might not be, you know, like, a tactic that someone says that maybe they just keep going. We're like, hold on. What was that thing you just said 10 seconds ago? Yeah. And dive deeper. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's totally a practice thing. But I do feel like it's kind of like, you know, when you're working out a lot and then you're. You're looking at yourself in the mirror every day, you don't notice any changes, but then one day you go and see someone you haven't seen in two months and like, oh, damn you. You got way thinner. You bulked up or whatever. Right. I kind of feel like that same thing for the podcast. Like, I don't feel like it's too different now than it was four years ago, but the feedback other people say is like, oh, wow, like, these interviews are amazing, or they're getting better, whatever. But for me, I haven't really felt any difference, you know?

Cool.

Anyway, here's. Here's what I got in my notes here.

I.

So what I did before this call was I kind of went back through our entire calendar of 2020 and looked at, like, all the events we participated in, all of the different things that you and I have done as a business and made notes of those. And it made me realize, like, holy crap, 2020 was sort of a long year because we squeezed a lot of stuff into this year. So I kind of wanted to go through this hit list of, like, just. Should I just, like, rapid fire it? And then, like, after I do, we could kind of talk about some of the points.

Joe just lost his headphones.

Unhooked my headphones. I couldn't hear what you said.

Okay, so I've got this list of things that we did throughout 2020. Should I just go ahead and, like, rapid fire them? And then after I've like, listed them all out. We talk about them or do you want to kind of like stick on each one as I say them?

Let's do rapid fire and then maybe dive into stuff that. Yeah, something that sticks out. I don't know if we. Yeah, let's do that.

The realization was like, holy crap. We did a lot in 2020, and some of it, like, I almost forgot was 2020 because it was so long ago. All right, so we spoke at three separate podfest events. One of them was actually in person in front of a crowd. We put on our own mastermind of people who are interested in podcasting and filled a little Mastermind room in Orlando. We spoke at Rich's event or were interviewed at Rich Efrin's Mastermind event. The Coalition to Save Internet Businesses, I think is what it was called. We spoke to War room digital marketers.

War room.

We did a four hour intensive to War room.

That's right. That was a four hour. Jesus.

Yeah. We spoke at two different digital marketer events. We spoke at Traffic and Conversion 360i. And we spoke at 21 for 21. We partnered with Jay Abraham on a project. We partnered with Roland Frazier and Oliver Schmalholz on a project. We partnered with Chris Bonetti on Members Pro. We hired a.

Facebook podcast growth expert to help us grow the podcast.

Charlie Valor.

Charlie Valor. We partnered with some email growth ninjas to build some automations for our email system.

Magic boys.

Yeah, we did a huge live stream all about, like, how to thrive in uncertain times back in March where we had Rich Sheffrin, Ryan Leve, Aaron Flecker, Roland Frazier. Yeah, all these guys. We did an interview separately with Jay Abraham. Around the same time. We did another live stream all about affiliate marketing with Pat Flynn and James Schramko and Mike Long and Steven is at Kiss. And we spoke at a Perry Marshall event.

I didn't write down what we're called Definitive Traffic Summit. That was back in May. And then combined, we were on 71 podcasts and virtual summits.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

That was our 2020 in a nutshell.

I mean, it was exactly. Well, it's not exactly what we thought we would do, but, I mean, we thought there would probably be a little bit more travel involved, but probably not a lot. I mean, we weren't aiming to do a lot of movement out of the San Diego area in 2020, honestly, because we wanted to kind of simplify our business. And we. Yeah, I feel like the beginning of this pandemic because that's like when we did the two live streams, and I remember doing those, and we're like, we just came out strong.

Yeah.

Like, I remember we were. We were going hard, and. And I think it was a good thing, but I just remember it was a lot of. A lot of freaking effort. And I was like, whoa, we're doing way too many things. Like, I think we had a, like, final. Like, after the momentum, it was like this whole momentum of like, oh, we're. We're all in lockdown. We all got to capture the attention of everyone right now, do all the live streams. Everyone's doing a how to thrive in uncertain times type of thing, you know, and then we're like, we got to do a monthly or a weekly freaking, and we're like, yeah, no, we don't.

Well, I also think we both kind of thought that the. The pandemic stuff was going to be a lot shorter of an amount of time. Right? So, like, we did a live stream in March, which was right when everybody was kind of getting locked down. It was like, lockdown happened. We're like, let's get this live stream. Two weeks later, we had freaking nine people lived lined up to go back to back with us on this live stream. Then we scheduled another one, like, three weeks later in April. But in our minds, we were thinking, like, okay, everybody's gonna be kind of locked down for like, three months, and then they're gonna figure out how to sort of, like, reopen, and stuff's gonna slowly kind of get back to normal. We never thought, you know what, 10 months later, we're still in the same boat, if not worse of a boat now, you know? So.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, yeah. We're like, we gotta capture this little window of time. It's like, nah.

Yeah. I think we've learned a lot from that, and I think other people probably realized, okay, hold on. Let's, like, this is a good time to capture yard, to give in a new format, which I think a lot of people figured out this virtual format is. It's really helpful. But also, it can be a pain in the ass if you're trying to do new stuff like live streams or massive zoom things or virtual events. Yeah, it ain't easy.

Yeah, yeah. So what would you say was, like, your biggest sort of highlight of 2020?

So, I mean, one particular moment really stands out to me, but I'm kind of curious what one would be for you.

One sticks out. Oh, man. Now you got me curious about you.

I really love the collaborativeness of how this year has gone I think that's a big thing for me is finally collab, like working with people that I've always kind of looked up or and studied from and all that. So I think the fact that, like, we've been able to work closely with people that I see as some of the smartest people in our network, so people like Roland Frazier and Jay Abraham and, you know, Rich Sheffrin. I mean, he's the one that we've followed since we began.

Very beginning. I think one of the very first ebooks I downloaded was his.

Manifesto.

Yeah, it was. I mean, Perry Marshall, like, these are people we can call our friends now. And we've had on the podcast. We will definitely bring them all back in some format again probably in 2021. And. And we've been collaborating with them on separate things and some of them business partners, like you said earlier. Like. Yeah, yeah, I think that is.

It's.

It's upgraded the way that I'm thinking about business, and it's more of a biz dev shift in my brain, but also a higher level way of thinking. And I think it's going all over business and comes out in our conversations a lot, you know, naturally now.

Yeah, yeah. The one that. The thing that sticks out in my mind, it's sort of a blend between two things. But it was the podfest, right? So at podfest, we put on that mastermind that was like a whole day Mastermind. And to me, that was just kind of an amazing experience where we had, what, 20, 25 people in a room. We were in the front of the room kind of sharing things that have been working for us. But we were also kind of doing these, like, sort of live podcast interviews in front of the room. We were. We were pulling in different friends who either lived in town or were actually there for the event, pulling them up to the front of the room and interviewing them. Like, we were on a podcast with them and pulling out a bunch of gold nuggets from them for the Mastermind group. And then we opened up the Mastermind group to. To ask questions and depict their brains as well. And I thought that was a really, really amazing experience. And we got really, really pumped up. And we're like, oh, man, we can do like this maybe twice a year. And it would. And we would absolutely love doing it. Pandemic sort of had other ideas for us, but that to me was a really, really cool experience. And then the very next day we spoke at podfest. And that, to me, like, I literally just got goosebumps as I talked, as I mentioned, like speaking at PodFest. There's like a couple pictures floating around of us speaking at PODF in front of the room. And people can't even get in the door. Like, the people just flood out the door and into the hallway. And there's like 50 people standing in the hallway, like standing on their tippy toes trying to see our presentation. And then from being on stage, when we were actually in the room speaking, they ran out of chairs in the room. So people started sitting on the floor next to us. Like where we were presenting. We actually stood in front of the stage instead of on the stage. And there were people literally sitting on the stage behind us as we were.

Speaking of our butts. Because people were taking pictures. Pictures for us, which is even cooler too. They're like, you guys needed photos of your presentation. How big this room was, like how packed it was. I'm like, photo of my butt. That's a weird angle where you're sitting. Dang.

But I mean, that just like thinking back to that, that like that many people cared to come and see us talk for 40 minutes or whatever. It was like to me, that was mind blowing that there was like that many people that even cared that much about our topic. To like crowd the hallways and try to get a peek and sit on the floor in front of us and sit in the like, that room was not up to fire code. If a fire marshal walked in that room, that would have gotten shut down.

Any rules down in Florida, Right.

But that was an amazing experience to me. And so I just think about like those two moments, the mastermind and that. And then speaking in front of the room and it was just like this 24 hour, 48 hour period or something that just like blew my mind. Like people are actually paying attention to what we're doing leading up to it.

It was a cool experience because Matt and I. I mean, just more behind the scenes, I guess. It's like, yeah, we were preparing. Here's the thing we do with all of our presentations. And I'll even wrap this to the TNC presentation that we actually just did a couple weeks ago. All of our preparation is usually done the night before or the day of like PodFest might have been done a little earlier. I forget. I think so because, like we had that mastermind and I didn't want to like, like kill ourselves out there doing all this. But.

Most of our best work is done in like this finite window of time where it's like the last second. I mean, it goes back to, you know, report to the teacher in like, you know, in high school or something. Everything's last minute. Like, I've always felt my best work comes out then, and I think yours does too.

I'll add to what you're saying in the fact that you're the one who typically makes the presentations, the slides, I would say 50% of the time, the first time I'm seeing the presentation is while we're giving it, you're on the.

Damn stage and you're like, okay, what is this? Okay, yeah, I got this. I'm over here. I'm like, motherfucker.

At the very least, I'm looking at the slides for the first time, like 20 minutes before we go live, like skimming through them real quick, going, okay, what are we talking about in this one? Yeah, I feel like we slowly bet that way. I feel like, because part of my anxiety about it is like almost getting in my head and over preparing and if I feel like, cool, we're just going to get up there, we riff on our podcast. That's what we do. If we didn't check ourselves, our therapy sessions would be three hours every time. Because we just like to riff, right? So like, you, you put some slides on the screen, you give me a cons, you give us a constraint of like a 30 minute window to speak. We're just going to get up there and riff and we got some slides to remember what to talk about. But we're riffing the whole time. Like, we've never given the same presentation twice ever.

And we never will because it'll make us very bored as well. And. Yeah, and it just won't come out good. So, yeah, and we actually, since that PodFest presentation, we've made that presentation in different formats and sections of it quite a bit. So that's what's kind of nice, is our last minute cram to. Well, we usually have the idea of what we're going to talk about, but we have no clue of what the content's going to be. We just know that we have a lot of stuff that we're always doing. Of course. And we get the input from the podcast guests all the time too. We're just distilling. All right, what is it that we're working? What are other things doing happening out there that people are saying are working well and that we can showcase them? Let's just mash that into a presentation. Usually works out.

Here's a little presentation hack that I feel like we do. At first it was unconsciously. Now I Think it's more of a conscious thing is that when somebody asks us to speak and they ask us, okay, what's the title of your presentation going to be? We almost think of, okay, what would be a really badass presentation to give? What's a good title for a presentation that. That, like, when we were kind of getting started in podcasting, getting started with traffic generation, getting started with any of these topics, we talk about what would be like a title of. Of a presentation, that we'd be like, holy shit. We're setting aside that time we want to be in that presentation, and we'll write a title for the presentation and send it to the. The, you know, the event coordinators or whoever. And then a week before we're actually giving the presentation, we go, all right, now we got to figure out how to make good on the promise of our title, right?

Yeah, it starts with the title, and then. And then it goes into. I mean, I'll just. I'll just be totally honest. So there's a Perry Marshall speaking engagement we're doing in January, and I sent them the title months ago, and one of the gals over there said she would circle back to get the bullet points, you know, in December. And I've already sent to him, sent them to her, but I'm like, okay. So then she pinged me for that, and I was like, cool, okay, now I gotta come with some bullet points. All right, so it's just inching me closer into actually, like, because it's been on my mind kinda like, you know, and then now it's more so in my mind, and like, we're a month out. That's all the time in the world right there. I'm good. So it'll probably be a week out. I'm like, all right, what did I say in those bullet points? Okay. Okay, cool. Matt. Hey, here's what I think we're gonna talk about. Here's kind of a flow. Give me your feedback. And typically you don't give a ton of feedback, but enough to like, maybe rearrange a little bit and add some detail in there. And yeah, you and I kind of do like one pass through beforehand. And we're like, all right, cool. I'm gonna take maybe these three or four slides and you can, like, head these ones up. We'll ping pong back and forth on the rest and we'll be good.

That's pretty much our prep right there. Well, I feel like podfest and Traffic and Conversion Summit. We got invited to speak at both of Those fairly close together. Originally they were going to happen close together, right? Pod TNC was going to be the end of March, I believe, maybe it was April, I don't remember, but it was earlier in the year and we had to come up with titles for both of those. I feel like that was the first time we're like, let's just give them like kickass titles for a presentation and then we'll figure out how to make those presentations later. So the podfest one was like how to growth hack your way, how to grow your podcast through growth hacking or something like that. But it was had to do with like how to growth hack your podcast, right?

Yeah.

And then the TNC one, this was back in like January that we had to give them a title or something. We called that one how to repurpose your content into recurring revenue. Both of those presentations, we didn't know exactly what we were going to speak on when we gave them the titles. We're just like, these would be badass presentations. Let's figure out how to like fulfill fill on this promise. And, and then both of those presentations, like a week before we were supposed to give them, we were making them and fulfilling on the promise. We're like, all right, what's the baddest.

The.

The best. I was gonna say baddest ass info, but that sounds weird. What's the best info we can give them that will result in like growth hacking a podcast and turning your existing content into recurring revenue? And then both of those presentations still to this day, I mean, the TNC one wasn't too long ago, but the podfest one, still to this day, people go, oh, that was my favorite presentation at PodFest. And I'm like, awesome.

Yeah, it was crazy. And, and talk about TNC really quick. Like we. That, you know, that just happened last week at the time of this recording and that was all digital, so no one was in person. And we, you know, we prepared those slides pretty last minute as well. Again, we knew what we were talking about more. I mean, we have, we always have the concepts. It's really just mashing the flow together is what's done at last minute and, and all for the reasons that Matt just said. But the TNC one was really cool because a. We've been going to every. Oh, Matt, I think you've been to every single one of them. I think I've missed like one, maybe two, but I think just one. And, and it's been a stage that we've always wanted to be on because we, we Know so many of the folks. And even way back when, before we knew the digital marketer folks, we knew all wasn't even called digital marketer way, way back then either. It was an idea incubator, I think.

Idea incubator.

Yeah. And. But we knew a lot of our friends that were going on stage or, you know, wherever, and we're like, man, this is cool. This is a cool crowd. These are people, you know, and, and it was just really, it was just a, an honor and feel like weird saying that, but it was like an honor, like, to actually be on that stage. And it's rad. And we could say we shared the virtual stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's kind of cool.

And Marcus Lemonis and many others.

Yeah, many others. But yeah, it was just. But the point being is there were like three or four people that actually are in our Facebook group and came back and said, yeah, that was my favorite POD or presentation at tnc. Like a few people messaged me, I think on their exit survey, a couple people said, they, they put us in there and we're like, this is crazy. Like, that's, that's like the, like the, the event that we've always gone to and we've always said, oh, that's our go to place. That's our, you know, and, and oh, that was your favorite. Cool, man, I'm rad.

Yeah. Well, this is going to probably sound a little bit petty, but there's somebody that. I'm not going to name this person's name, but there's somebody who once told us after we presented on stage, they're like, yeah, that was decent. But you know, you guys, you guys should really work on your stage presentation. You know, you can polish it up a little bit. And for whatever reason that like, stuck in my mind. And we literally never changed anything about the way we present. We still kind of were making the slides a week beforehand and we were still kind of prepping what we were going to say like, the night before the presentation. We've never changed anything about our process. And I look at, you know, our business versus this person's business, and we're asked to speak at like almost every event these days. And this other person who I'm not going to name is not really speaking at any events. So I'm like, who's got the better presentation? Anyway, I'm not hearing about it, but I get motivated by shit like that.

Please tell me after the recording who that is.

But. Because I vaguely remember that. But it didn't Stick in my head. But see, it's stuff like that that is interesting and, like, that could mentally hold you back or give some kind of barrier to, like, totally rock. I mean, you probably was like, whatever, but you remembered it, so it's still in your head.

Yeah, no, I remembered it, but it, It's. There was like a motivation element of like, of like, yeah, but people. Maybe it needs work. But people keep on saying they love the presentations we're giving. So does it need work? You know, I don't know. It was a weird way of motivating me to just go, okay, well, let's see who gets more speaking gigs by the end of the year.

Frustration is a beautiful motivator.

I'm a jerk for even bringing that up. I'm sorry.

You're fine. It's human.

But I thought you were an alien. We have aliens around us now. I heard.

Tangent. That's it. All right, what's on your list?

No, I mean, I pretty much broke down all of the events that we, that we spoke at. And so let's talk about some of the partnerships we've done. So we partnered with, with. With Jay Abraham on a project. We partnered with Roland and Oliver on Unicorn Equity. We partnered with Chris Benetti on Members Pro. Like, we've had some pretty phenomenal, like, yeah, things happen in that realm.

Yeah. And. And that. That is my biggest takeaway of the year still, because I'm just kind of looking at some notes. I have here a couple other things that I'd like to bring up in a bit. But yeah, the, the partnerships. I think it's just what we quickly realized, and I think it was actually something that either Roland or Jay said. I think it was Jay talking about just collaborating, like right now in these times of, Of. Of hardship for so many business owners out there, so many business owners are open to. To partnering with an expert in a field that they're just not savvy in, or they have some need and they don't have the funds or the connections or whatever to get done. And that's where it kind of is like a light bulb moment. At least in my mind. When I heard, I was like, okay, wait, hold on. We know a lot of people on this podcast, and I think we do a pretty good job at staying in touch with them. Them and told that. So, like, okay, cool, well, maybe we could do something here. You know, like, we have an audience, we have connections, we have a podcast. We have all these assets that we're sitting on. And this is kind of that thinking from Roland now it's like, okay, here's our. Our bucket of assets. How can we, like, our toolbox of assets. How can I, like, scour around? And. All right, so we have this person over here. So J. Abraham, for instance, you know, like, all right, cool. How can we help J. Abraham and our, like, toolbox, you know, like, me fumbling around my toolbox. And it's just like, that has led to, like, J. Abraham working with them on. Well, we did that promo with them in Agora, actually, which is cool. Yeah, Rich Sheffrin. So it was like a crazy trifecta that we pulled up.

Well, I mean, it's interesting because the way that came about was we had a chat with Jay Abraham, and somehow the topic of, like, pay what you can or pay what you want want pricing came up. And he's like, yeah, I'd love to run a promotion like that again. I just don't know what technology to use. And we went, well, we do. Like, we've built those kinds of promotions in the past. And he's like, do you guys want to partner up on it? I'll, you know, I'll provide the. The content and the thing that we're selling. If you guys could go and build out the pay what you want offer for me. And we're like, I mean, do we really want to work with Jay Abraham? I don't know. No. It was pretty much an instant yes. We're like, we'll figure it out. Let's do it. And. And worked with. Prior to that happening, we had been working with Rich Sheffrin and Agora because they were doing this coalition to save Internet businesses. And Rich was trying to get on more podcasts. So we worked with Rich to help him get on a whole bunch of shows. And then as sort of a thank you for working with Rich, he said, you know, Agora will send a mailing to their list for us.

Right?

So we went and connected the dots. We're like, we've got Jay over here who wants help with this promotion. We've got Agora and Rich over here who have a list, and they're looking for something to promote. Promote. Let's help him build. Let's help him build this pay what you want offer over here with his masters of passive income course. And let's go to Agora and use the mailing that they said they would send to their list for us and promote this thing that we're doing with Jay. And let's just tie all of these pieces together that's another thing that's not even on my list is that we worked really, really closely with Rich and Agora to help grow that coalition event. Good point.

Yeah. That was like the end of last year and this year.

Yeah, well, the event happened this year, but I think most of the planning and, and ramp up to where it was last year. Yeah.

Like around this time in like December. It was like a rush. I remember that. But it was, it was super cool because. Yeah, I think that was where it started the thinking of like, okay, cool, we have so many connections that we all we gotta do is just have a goal in mind, have a person that we can help or a project and then figure out how to connect the two, you know, all them together. And that's. Yeah. And with Jay, he was actually on the podcast when he talked about that pay what you can thing. And that's when we're like, let's talk off air about that. We have this solution for it. We'd love to help. And I gotta give props to them because they are a team that have. Has done so much this year. And everyone should check out. Abraham.com I believe is the. The new site where they're sending everyone to now. Actually, let me actually. Hold on. Don't quote me on that. No, sorry. Jabraham.com Jabraham.com Abraham.com I think is the older version. So Jabraham.com but yeah, we're working with those folks to their team to essentially bring other folks that can help spread the word of Jay, you know, so the fact that we know a lot of folks that have audiences, I. E. People that have been on our podcast and people in our network outside of the podcast, those can all be potential affiliates to promote the lines of online products that Jay is putting out there. And they're putting out a lot. They're all really good. So that's why I recommend them. We've seen of them and so we're partnering with them to essentially make that happen. Like open our Rolodex and our connections and thinking to the right products to support what they got going on. And that's a partnership arrangement there. And it's just, it's like this other version of affiliate marketing, I guess, you know, you can call it or dub it or biz dev, I don't know. But it's just really cool that we made that happen.

And it's just finding, finding opportunities and connections. That's really what it is. It's like we're connected with these people. We know about these tools we've got. You know, we're acquainted with these people, people over here. How we're just like, I think that's the way our brains operate. And the way the reason our brains operate so much like this these days is because of working with Roland, working with Jay, working with Rich Efren, working with these guys. Like, all of their brains work in this way of like, we've got this resource and this resource. How do we combine these resources and, you know, get a little win win in the middle.

Right.

And. And I really feel like that's where we shifted our brains really, really shifted in 2020 is like, like, let's stop figuring out how to grind all the time to build pages, drive traffic, optimize SEO. Like, stop trying to grind all the time. Look for people that have already built assets, built assets in the form of audiences, built assets in the form of software, built assets in the form of, you know, amazing trainings that are already available. You find these people that already have the assets and just try to tie assets together and be the middlemen of these sort of like asset connections.

Yeah. And you just. I have not read this book yet, but I read some notes and Costanzo, Brad Costanzo, shout out to that sizzling podcaster bacon wrap business. He said the book by Dan Sullivan called who not how is is amazing. And it's exactly what we're. I think it's the biggest shift this year for us is that we don't have to figure it all out ourself. We don't have to be the, the, the perfect strategist or the technician or whatever you operators, you know, integrators for all. Like, we can totally just collab with someone over here to do this thing. Someone over here. But like asking ourselves, yeah, not how can we do all this? Do we have to learn and be the expert? No, just like who. Who can be that expert? I want to be knowledgeable about like the, the core concepts and fundamentals and know what I need to do. But yeah, you can start asking, kind of reframing your brain to that is a good practice. That's actually a book that I have purchased and I am going to read right after this next week.

Right after this next week.

Yeah. Well, I was just thinking of Chris.

I'm read it immediately. Next year.

Yeah, maybe sometime. No, but it just reminded me that I'm like, that is actually what we've been doing.

What was that CEO of? No article. We need to make sure we link that in the notes too because that was like a big source of shift as well.

Andrew Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, I think. Yeah. So he, he kind of has that same philosophy of, like, he's just this, like, conduit in the middle. He finds opportunities, he finds people, he makes the connections. And he's not really the guy doing any of it. He's just the connector in the middle. And that. That article was a really, really good article that, that I think you and I both loved and shared and got our wheels spinning as well.

So, yeah. Tiny Wilkinson.

Yeah, his name is Andrew Wilkinson. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think we're going to try to line him up for next year. I think we have a couple people who are connected, so hopefully that's one we could lock down.

He's the CEO of no, so we'll see how effective we are.

Yeah. So if we get a yes out of him, that's a pretty big win.

So, yeah, Unicorn.

Members Pro.

Yeah, let's talk about Unicorn. I think that's an exciting one. Well, they're all exciting in their own way, but Unicorn is like, it's now shaping up to be this thing where we're like, whoa, this thing's getting fun. And there's so many ways we can introduce this to the world. I don't even know how. Would you describe Unicorn as an overarching company now? And then we can break down some of these things that we're building out. Out.

Yeah. Well, so the core USP I don't think has really changed, but the acquisition sort of model and tools have evolved. So the general concept is that if you are a software developer, right now we're focusing only on SaaS companies. But if you're a SaaS company and you need promotion, you can actually incentivize affiliates to promote through giving them equity as well as commissions. So if somebody wanted to promote. So let's just use Members Pro as an example. So because if we're going to keep on mentioning a software over and over again, let's mention one that we're involved in. So let's say that you wanted to promote Members Pro and Members Pro was on Unicorn equity. Well, you can go into unicorn equity and say, okay, when I promote this, I want my commissions to come 50% in equity in the company and 50% in commissions. So let's say it's a $200 product, you're getting 50% commissions. Well, you can say, I want, I want $50 of those commissions to be invested in the company as equity, and I want $50 in those commissions to go to my PayPal. So I have some cash flow. So you can kind of get this, this dual benefit of building long term equity in businesses that you like to promote as well as the short term cash flow. And if you're really just invested in the equity, you could slide that slider all the way to 100% equity. And every time you make a sale, you're just building equity in the company. Or you can slide it all the way to the other direction and say, I need cash flow right now. Slide it over so that a hundred percent of come in pure PayPal commissions. Right? And that's sort of the grand overview of the concept of it. But the way that we're bringing on software creators, the way that we're bringing on affiliates, that's the part that's really evolved and gotten really exciting. And there's also some data play behind the scenes where we're kind of going to be building up intel about which products are working right now and which products aren't working right now. And there's this whole data play that I don't really want to get into on this episode, but some of the other stuff we could probably start to talk about. I'm not sure how much they want us to unveil yet, but it's kind.

Of crazy because we started with this concept which you just described, which is, okay, hey, let's help SaaS founders actually promote their tools, their software tools, mainly in the marketing space, but we can divert from that a little bit. But SaaS is the thing like recurring products, but a lot of them have an issue with investing money or they don't know where to, where to promote or, you know, affiliates to, to bring and recruit them. It's just like a whole nother thing they got to worry about. So that's. And then introducing the equity component, I think is the coolest thing. And so many founders, even of companies that are doing really well already are hearing this concept. They're like, that's very interesting. Okay, chat with me once that thing's actually live, which it should be live pretty dang soon in 2021. At least components of it, like you were saying, we have all these like second separate components now, but which one of them I think we can kind of talk about because it's, I think we're getting really close and, and maybe we just don't go super deep. I want to talk about it. Okay. Okay. So this one is the affiliate dashboard. And this is, it's. So yeah, Matt is, he's happy because he's about to get 20 hours per month back in his life, maybe more. So in a nutshell is this dashboard is a. It's one of these acquisition models that we've kind of just stumbled on now. I think Matt, you brought up this pain point that you have in our business which is checking like the friggin low. I don't know how many affiliate accounts we have, but they're all. Even if it's like in infusionsoft there's a single account for every single product or not product, but like product owner that you have to log into to check your stats and all these different things just to get a pulse on how the hell the business, how well it's and how well not it's doing like depending on what's going on, but there might be like 50 accounts at any one time that you would like to be kind of up to, up to snuff and see what's happening. So that's where the dashboard that we're building essentially has all these integrations to the biggest affiliate platforms like Click Funnels and ThriveCart and a whole bunch of other ones that are in there and then also new ones we're putting in there. It's wild because it's essentially condensing all that data, consolidating it into a single dashboard that's going to show all of your real time stats along with all the metrics and graphs and things that you really need to know.

Yeah, I mean out of everything that we're working on, it's probably the one I'm the most pumped on at the moment because it's like so fricking close to being ready to open the doors on. But like, so when it came to like affiliate tracking, I have a Google sheet right now and I would log into ThriveCart and then I would log into each individual product inside of ThriveCart and find our commissions for each day and I'd add them to the spreadsheet. We promote a handful of products that are through Click Funnels. I would have to log into each of these separate Click Funnels logins, grab our commissions, add them to the spreadsheet. Infusionsoft, we had five infusionsoft logins. I'd log into each one, grab the number, add it to the spreadsheet. I was spending hours a week just look logging into the various affiliate dashboards, pulling the sales numbers and then putting them in this spreadsheet so I can get a full picture of what sort of commissions we're earning in our Business. Well, Unicorn Affiliate, this new platform, you sync all these tools up, up, and it just pulls it in for you on a daily basis and says, here's, here's a look at all of your affiliate commissions for the day across all of the platforms you're involved in. And it's really, really, really close. I've been, you know, I'm the sort of main product tester right now on it, and it's, it's getting there. There's some bugs. It's not ready, it's not. The MVP is not ready to put out to the public yet. But I would say, man, like within weeks we're going to start making demo videos of it and start showing it off to the world. And I'm pumped on that.

Yeah, no, that's exciting. And, and we don't, you know, no more details than that, but if you are interested in it, definitely ping us or go to Unicorn Equity IO and join the email list, at least on there to get notified. But you'll hear, you'll hear it from us once it's, once it's live, we won't be able to shut up about it. And, and I think it's just if you're, if you're promoting really more than just even two products, I feel, you know, like two separate accounts like that you have to log into to check your stats. Just imagine like now you can just into one and you'll actually have the peace of mind knowing like, oh, I haven't gotten paid out on this thing over here. Maybe I should go find my money. You know, because think about all the affiliate accounts that you probably have out there that you probably made some money and you're just like, I mean, it might not be a lot or it might be a lot. You're like, oh, Mo, I didn't put in my PayPal email address. Whoops, that's five grand. Or I don't know, you know.

So, I mean, we stumble upon that kind of stuff in our business all the time where we're like, oh, we, we got commissions from a year ago that we've never got paid out on. What that happened with SEM Rush actually recently, where we had like $400 in commissions from SEM Rush and somehow like we logged into an Semrush account and went, wait, there's commissions sitting in here. And I pressed a button to like, or I added our PayPal account or whatever and they got unreleased like a week later.

Or it might be a W9 that you gotta put up and you know, like for tax purposes. So it's like, hey, you might wanna to keep tabs of your, your earnings since you're probably doing a lot of work to make that money.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then so the, the last thing we got involved in, not the last thing we got involved in as far as a chronological order, but the, the last thing we want to talk about that we got involved in was Members Pro with Chris Bonetti. And that one's really exciting too. That one. It's a membership platform. It's like a hosted membership platform where you can go and build a, a protected members area for your content. And there's some really, really badass features that we're really excited about that I think we've kind of helped steer the roadmap a little bit on like we're doing this like vault style membership where you know, if you're used to like a teachable or a thinkific, you log in and the course is in like a sequential order. So it's like here's module one, module two, module three. You kind of got to watch it in order. Well, a lot of membership sites like our Evergreen Profits Membership, it's not a sequential course. It's a whole bunch of bonus training given to us by guests and training that you and I made over the years and things like that, that there's really no sequential order that you work through it. You kind of look for what you need help with right now. So if you're working on Facebook ads, you can get in there, watch a handful of videos on Facebook ads, you're trying to build a podcast, log in and read the con or go through the content in there about podcasting. It's sort of this vault of amazing content for people. And there's literally no other membership platform out there, no other hosted membership platform that allows you to create this like vault style membership. But we're going to do the, you know, the whole fasted navigation thing where you can check a box on the left for like Facebook ads and it'll narrow down the content that just about Facebook ads or you can click two boxes and it'll narrow down the content to just the overlap between the two boxes you checked. And I think it's going to be a really, really sort of innovative way to build out a membership platform. And there's also a feature that he's working on which hopefully Chris, you don't get mad at me for talking about this, but I think you've already kind of shared some screenshots of it. But he's he's designing a, a style inside the members area that looks like Netflix. So when you log in it it's very, very, very familiar and it feels like you're scrolling through your Netflix on like your Roku or Apple TV or whatever.

Yeah, it's bringing that familiarity to. Yeah. Your courses. I feel like it's going to up level all training. I mean the whole mo really behind or I guess like the big USP with Members Pro is to get content consumption numbers up. So the work that you know that you're putting into your courses aren to fall in deaf ears. Like they're actually going to be able to give people a nice sequence, like a journey through your content and give nice reminders and subtle bumps if like, hey, remember that module that you didn't complete? You know, like things like that. It's just going to help you as a content creator and also just going to help your customers, of course. And it's going to help you sell further courses and trainings and that's where it gets super exciting because you can kind of like build these journeys. It's very tied in with tags and whatnot. So. So for sure. Yeah, I think it's, it's fun. And Members Pro that's gonna, it's got a badass dev team behind it as well and they're. I know they're working their asses off all the time to get stuff out. So if you want to, you know, if, if you have this membership, if you have a membership already that's just like too complicated, maybe like stringing a bunch of plugins together and all that stuff, then take a peek at that Members Pro because I think it'll simplify your life a lot. Lot. It probably will save some money for you as well. And just know that you're, you're back in a horse that's moving pretty quick right now and there's a lot on the roadmap and we're behind it too. So.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you go to Members Pro, I think there's a coupon code hustle. So if you want to use that coupon code, I think it gives you a percentage off. I don't remember the exact percentage off but yeah, you can go there and listeners can get a discount there. Now you said that you had a few points on your notes that you want to touch on. Have we touched on them or are they still linked?

Lingering couple. It's my CCR that I told you about.

Clear Water Revival.

Yeah, I've been blasting those Guys all day. So my. My ccr, I. So when I was thinking about this, it was really three things came to mind. Is like collaborate, which we've already talked about. It's my first C, Collab, connect, and then refine. So Collab, connect, refine. I feel like that really, like, synced up what we did really well. What I meant by so we already talked about collaboration. Collab.

I almost feel like the order should be rearranged to connect, Collab, refine. Because you collab after connecting, right?

Well, it's not the connection you're thinking, so the connect.

Yeah, fine.

Forgot what I even talked to you about yesterday.

No, I just wasn't paying attention, obviously.

So connecting, I'm saying more like connecting the assets in our business and connecting to the partnerships that we now have. Have. So essentially taking all of the different things that are floating around in our control, meaning like our podcast, our Facebook group, our email list, or retargeting ads or cold ads, or all these different things that we. That we are kind of, you know, like the different people that we have in our network, the. The affiliate products that we have, the different. Just all sorts of things. I feel like what we've done really well is we know now that our biggest starting point, or the way that we typically start the journey of if it's on. So there's two sides I see is like the customer journey for the listener. It's like that's the obvious one that people talk about. You have the like, discoverability part is typically our podcast, or maybe it's an ad, but it leads to the content on the podcast somehow. So. And then that goes to email list, membership, site. You know, if you join that, then you're basically one of the VIP kind of folks that we essentially give you a ton of other deep dive trainings and leads to all this other stuff. Um, and then there's the other side of like, if we're gonna, you know, we're chatting with all these people on the podcast again. Now you have the guest side. You can then connect with them further with any opportunities. Maybe you. And then what we do is like, we now take that content, apply it to the membership, and that usually becomes, you know, that connection becomes like an affiliate partner for us. Maybe we're just sending people their way, maybe we're introducing them to other podcasters, but there's usually like some. The flow is kind of in line now. I feel like it's like the podcast we know, okay, well, we can take. We can get other content and then Share it. That's going to help all sides, you know, from the. From the guests, we can get their content. And then there's these promotional layers. I feel like that happen on both sides as well. Everything's just connected in a smarter way where I feel like it's not disjointed, where we have to reset our energy or our thinking. Thinking. It's all kind of, like, flowing together now.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.

Made sense.

Yeah. Yeah, it did.

I mean, I think that the last thing that I kind of wanted to touch on in this episode was sort of, how do we see 2021? And so I think what you're saying right there is kind of like, all right, that's kind of our clarity into what our plans are for 2021 is to continue to sort of connect the dots between businesses. How do we get members pro and unicorn equity to somehow help each other out? How do we get our podcast to help grow this affiliate partner product that we're working with? How do we. How do we get this person, you know, connected with this tool and just finding these connections that, like we talked about earlier, that was 2020 was a big. That was a big piece for us, was finding those connections, making those connections. So really doing more of that and doing it even higher level in 2021. Collaborating with more people, you know, maybe partnering on. On equity deals and affiliate deals and things like that with more companies. Companies. And then refining, which, you know, simplifying our own damn lives.

Right.

Like, there's a lot of simplification that can still happen. A lot of things that can be taken off our plate.

Yeah. And that's a. And that's a good way of refining. I wasn't even thinking of that for refining, but that's because I was thinking, like, the podcast, we kind of shaved off some of the. The. The fat. I guess we'll say we kind of were going a little wide with the topics. So, yeah, find our focus here. But, yeah, like you said, we also are refining just the stuff we do day to day. There's so much stuff that, like, at the beginning of the pandemic, when we're doing the live streams and stuff, it's like, okay, do we really need to add another recurring thing? Do we really need to add another meeting with this person every week or every other, like, so it's like really getting some magnifying glasses and looking at the extra stuff. Because, yeah, like, when people ask me, like, okay, so what are your big plans for 2021? Like, I've had like a lot of people, people ask that recently. I'm like, I just want to make my life simpler. I don't know, I just wanted less, plan for less.

My plan is to plan for less.

I want to do less. And it's funny because some of my non businessy friends are ones that are learning. They're like wait, hold on. So what do you mean by that? I'm like, I want to make more money and do less.

It's kind of the dream. But yeah, well for.

Yeah, no that, that makes sense. We're both on the, the same page here.

Here.

I mean this is sort of more granular but here's kind of some notes I wrote down for like what I feel like we're going to be focused on for 2021. Double down on the podcast which is our top of funnel. Right. So just really get hardcore about new growth strategies, getting real focused on our guests and, and what type of topics we want to talk about. This is going to like I want this to be the biggest year of growth we've ever had for our podcast. I want to, I want to CR downloads a month by the end of 2021. You know, like that's, that's kind of what I want to see in 2021. More automated affiliate systems. So through working with, with Joe Kearns and Mike Alvarez over at Magic to, to really dial, dial in our email automation systems, working with Charlie Valor and you know, some Facebook ads experts to really dial in our podcast growth ads. Building out more of these retargeting ads where if you listen to a specific episode, you're going to get retargeted with an offer that's relevant to the episodes. You just listened to more of that automation and just like, you know, once you enter our ecosystem, the selling happens without us being too involved on a daily basis.

Blow up our partners products. So Members Pro and Unicorn Equity specifically, I think 2021, there's going to be a lot of focus on those two products. We've got some big plans for them and so I'm really excited to grow those. And then the last thing I have is further simplify and outsource more of the skilled labor.

Yeah. And that's what I'm talking about like doing less and making more. It's not just like want to wrap it up and not do anything. It's, it's exactly what you just said is really refining where we've realized our biggest skill sets are. You know, it's, it's kind of stay in our lane and don't step on the toes of all the other things in our business that are functioning well and even better without us getting in the middle of it all. I mean, that's like, I want to give props to our team as well. Like, first and foremost. So sue and Jacob on the team. I mean, there are others on the team, like, like Kate Lindbergh who helps with some, some older notes of ours. And, and we have other folks that just work kind of piecemeal work.

If it wasn't for Alana edits all the notes.

Yeah, See, like, this is the stuff. Like, I don't even. I forget that she's involved because it's just like, it just happens, you know, like, we have elements in our business that are just kind of systemized too. And our team is just rock stars. And I think we've finally figured out this flow where we've, we've simplified processes in our teams. We've. We've empowered our team to basically champion this task or this process in our business. And like, and we distrust, you know, so we're just like, okay, cool. Like, that is one. Like, you will now run this and you can, you know, it's. I just feel like everything's growing because we're, we're, we're letting others really lead, whereas we're, we're more the vision and kind of connecting those pieces. But everything just seems to be running a lot smoother. 2021. Even better.

Yeah. And it's hard as hell for me to like, back myself out and be like, all right, you just take control of this. Like, I want to get my hands on everything. So that's a lesson in self control that I'm having to figure out.

All right. Some quick rapid fire questions and we can wrap this thing up.

So I'll ask the question of you and then I'll also answer the question too.

So.

Favorite book from 2020.

2020, I would say. Ooh, there were some good ones actually.

If you want to know more than one, I don't care.

The Courage to be disliked.

Yeah, that was a good one.

A very impactful one, actually. That's another one I want to reread. There's just so many good books actually that, like, this year I feel like, I mean, Kamal Ravikant's book I read last year and basically it's, it's love yourself like your life depends on it. And talked about my dad and his suicide last year, last October. I read it actually right before that happened. But then I reread it afterwards because it just made way more sense and it was a lot more applicable, you know, to me. And I've gone through a lot of emotional this year. I feel like, you know, like, the ups and downs. So it's been kind of like this rebuilding year, and I feel like that's been a big foundation, is having that in mind. A lot of the practices that Kamal talked about in that book are like, anyone can implement. And he was on the podcast talking about it too, so that's a for sure.

Check out my hands down. My favorite book that I read in 2020 was Kamal's brother's book. Well, it wasn't written by Naval. There's a book called the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, which is phenomenal, and Naval is Kemal's brother. But basically, Naval is kind of known for a couple things, right? He's known for just being, like, really sort of happy, always sort of positive, optimistic dude. But he's also a billionaire, right? He's also ultra wealthy. And so this entire book is somebody who collected quotes from interviews. He collected tweets.

He just rounded up all of this stuff that Kamal's talked about and put out into the world over the years and combined it into a cohesive book on how to grow your wealth, how to be more happy, how to be more in control of your life. And it is just a freaking phenomenal book. Like, it's probably the most highlighted book I own now. So highly, highly recommend that book. It's a great book.

Yeah, check it out. I mean, it's actually. I mean, we'll link it up, but I think they're like, if you just wanted to jump and read it for free, like, it's even free online. Like, it's not as easy as the book, but if you like the free version, I mean, yeah, I'm actually. I gotta buy the book. I just wrote it down because I. Every morning, actually, one of the things I do is plop open the book and. And just like, as I'm in bed, I'm like, okay, what's like, one quick passage? Because, like, it takes no longer than, I don't know, like a few minutes to read one of them. And it's just like this nugget of wisdom. You're like, huh, all right, cool. And then it just. It's just a little seed you can plant for the day.

Well, funny little note. It's kind of become our little bible on podcast day, our last couple podcast days. I open it up and I go, a book, a Reading from the Book of Naval. And I flip to a random page and I'll just like, read a quote, quote, and then I'll be like. And almost every time it's like, super hyper relevant. We're like, that was freaking awesome. And then I'll close the book and we'll get into the podcast.

Dude, go grab your book and just read one right now.

Okay, one sec. Talk to the audience while I'm getting it.

I'm good at that. Yeah, no, Naval. If you're not following him on places like Twitter, I think it's just at Naval. N A V A. L definitely do that because that's where a lot of this content came from. That in some podcast interviews he did. He did one on Rogan, Joe Rogan, and also Tim Ferriss, I think two of them. He does not go on a lot of podcasts, so. But I highly recommend you checking if you checked out the one on Rogan. That's actually my favorites. Favorites.

Yeah.

1. I feel like that was like a condensed version of his podcast, which is actually called Naval the Podcast or whatever, and which is unique because it's not a podcast like this. It's just like, quick thoughts with some, you know, like. Like, you just have to check it out. It's super unique. And the guy is brilliant. He's like a. He's a philosopher of our time, but happens to be a billionaire, which actually is interesting because some of the stoics that, you know, you've heard talked about before.

Shoot, I'm. I'm blanking on the name, but, like, was it Socrates? He was, like, super rich and, like, he was essentially like a billionaire of that time.

Are you thinking of Marcus Aurelius?

I mean, him. He might be, but there's another one that's quoted all the time, and I'm just, just. I'm bad with the names.

I could have sworn Marcus Aurelius of his time was, like, the wealthiest person, like, in history at the time, but was the emperor.

Right?

Yeah. So this book, I don't know if you could see. Anybody who's watching the video can see all the little, like, sticky notes I have on it. Like, I have a ton. So let me open to a random page here. This one works.

Okay. So this is just, like. It's short. I was hoping for a longer one. Happiness. This is the state with when nothing is missing. Oh, that was one that I highlighted here. I'll grab another one. Let's see. Let's see. If you want to get rich over your life in A deterministically predictable way. Stay on the bleeding edge of trends and study technology, design and art. Become really good at something. So little easy quotables that are just almost everything in here could be a tweet. And a lot of them actually started as tweets, which is why they're like real short, nice little quotables. But it's just really, really good stuff.

Yeah, it's a good book. And I forget the guy who put it all together, but he basically took a tweet and then expanded on it, but with Naval's work or words from other tweets, comments and then podcasts and interviews and stuff and basically did all this work to put it into a book that actually makes sense.

Yeah, it was written by Eric Jorgensen.

Cool.

All right, so One tool from 2020 that you've used or kind of stumbled upon in 2020, that was Ninja for you. Ninja. There's a bingo word there.

You're such a ninja. I. I mean, so I find myself recommending. I'm going to say two again. Trip mode has been very helpful especially. And I know I've mentioned it before, but I feel like it's just nice because if you have crappy Internet or if you're doing a lot of video calls, it can really help help out. And it's super cheap. So trip mode T R I P M O D E And that basically will. Yeah, just the long and short is like it cuts down a lot of this bandwidth pulling apps. If you just want to say focus on Zoom, for instance, you say just send bandwidth to Zoom and nothing else. Not your Chrome, because that's probably pulling like a gig from you or whatever bandwidth. You know, all the YouTube tabs you have open, well, that's sucking your freaking your Zoom Zoom bandwidth.

So trip mode's great. And then also like my morning routine, actually. I haven't even like shared everything with you, Matt, but I've been like super into breath work and it always XPT app from Laird Hamilton. And there's two that I do every single morning, which is like a five minute morning wake up and then there's like a pre exercise thing that they're both like just breathing workouts and like there's no other way that I can fire up and freaking jump into the day and be actually like pumped up. Especially when I get like five in the morning or four in the morning depending on this baby. But yeah, I would say if you're just trying to get your head straight and just get pumped up for maybe a speaking presentation that app's killer xpt.

Sweet. Yeah. For me, Roam research, hands down, biggest game changer in my life this year. Like, Rome is like, if you took a task management software, workflowy, like note taking software, and like this sort of obscure knowledge management system called a Zettelkasten, and you combine them all into like one app, that's what Rome is. So, like, I actually keep my, my daily task list in Rome. Whenever I'm listening to a podcast or watching YouTube videos or reading articles, I keep my notes in Rome. When I highlight stuff in books, I take my highlights and I move them all over into Rome. Basically. I like live in Rome now. Like when we're, we're in meetings, I take all of our notes on all of our meetings in Rome. And all of notes over time become like interconnected. They look for sort of keywords that are in different notes and they help you sort of blend them and interconnect them together. And it's just, it's been an amazing tool that I don't even know how I ever lived without it now because I'm literally in it all day, every day to keep my, my head straight.

Yeah, Roam is a freaking game changer, especially for you because I know you. I don't know, you dial in your notes, you're always like fricking solid on your note taking. And I feel like you just like upgraded your brain tremendously using Rome. Yeah, it's an amazing tool and I definitely know you've dialed that sucker in compared to if you look at mine. But even if you use it like me, I loved it because it's like a brain dump. It's just a great way to keep logs of everything and quickly search.

What you're noting or what you think is important. So task list and all that. Yeah, I'm using that every day for keeping my stuff straight too.

Sweet.

What's another one? Yeah.

Oh, another tool. You want two from me?

No question.

Oh, another question. Okay, so this was the last one I had on here, but a resource like a YouTube channel or a podcast. And don't say the one that I'm going to say.

Okay.

Shoot or podcast. Okay, so podcast is easy, actually. Alex Charfen's Momentum podcast. Absolutely amazing. That thing is like a 10, 15 minute clips or episodes every single time. I don't know, it's like weekly or twice a week. But he basically like Alex has been on the show. Definitely. Go check him out. He is a big thinker, but he's also, he's like this cool blend of biohacker meets really high level, high, you know, motivated entrepreneur. I don't know. He's like matched all these qualities that I feel like we've adopted over the years of this podcast and through our friends. And his momentum podcast essentially is like a nugget of wisdom. Kind of like naval, in a way, is like, here's a concept to really think about. And he extracts it a little bit on the podcast, but it's something I like to listen to, like when I'm working out. 15 minute, like, warmup, and then it's like in my head and I just kind of like, let it marinate and then I kind of shut everything off, actually. So the momentum podcast is perfect to. If you just want like a reset on some strategy. I mean, listen, literally even just drinking water, there's a whole, like, hydration episode. But it blew my mind with, like, the importance of water and actually how your body changes when you're following his methods for just rehydrating your body is freaking amazing. And I can't even, like, just go check it out. But the momentum podcast by Alex Charfen, hands down sweet.

Yeah, for me, it's the. And I. And I know you probably would have said it if I didn't, is the Wisecrack YouTube channel, which I've been sort of obsessed with lately.

Rabbit hole more than I am there, but it's amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. So Basically what this YouTube channel does is they look at, like, a lot of pop culture stuff, like Rick and Morty and south park. And I was watching one the other day on the show Billions, but the guys who run this channel, they're. They actually studied philosophy. They're. They're legit philosophers. And so they watch these shows and then they break down the philosophy behind them and they help you, like, really understand the points that the writers of these shows are trying to get across and, like, the philosophies behind. Behind them. And to me, it's just, like, so fascinating. You actually really start to think some of these silly shows, South Park, Rick and Morty, stuff like that, on the outside, they look kind of like dumb, just goofy shows. Right. But when you actually start to understand the philosophy that the writers are trying to get across in these shows, you actually start to realize, holy crap, these shows are really brilliant. And they actually improve the shows for me because I'm starting to understand these philosophies and. And you start to really learn some, like, life lessons from silly, stupid TV shows.

True.

Yeah.

I haven't watched as many as you have but, like, I think I've watched actually two south park ones are all. I've seen those ones you've sent. And, yeah, it's interesting how they break it down because you actually learn something. And I'm kind of curious. So what's your. Would you. Would you recommend, like, are you going to rewatch shows now or episodes now that you know, know, like, or hasn't done it for you enough where you're like, oh, okay, cool.

You know, some of the shows, I almost feel like the content that I get from Wisecrack reminds me enough of the show that I don't even need to go back and watch it because I'm getting entertained again. But I've actually gone back and started watching Rick and Morty from episode one again because I really like that show and there's not enough episodes, so I, I need my fix. So I actually started watching it over again with, like, new insights into the show. There's a couple that I really, really like. There was one that I'll point people to, and maybe we can find the link for it and put it in the show. Notes is there was an episode where they broke down the economics of south park, like, how south park sees the economy or how south park tackles discussion around money and the economy and how people value things. And I thought that was a really, really insightful episode.

That's right. Yeah. You were telling me about that yesterday. I got to check. Check that out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wisecrack is sweet. I mean, I, I, Yeah, like I told you, I was in, in the other room the other day, and I, I listen to the voice. I'm like, sounds familiar. It was my wife watching YouTube and it was the Wisecrack channel, and she was, like, going down the rabbit hole. I was like, ah, that's great. Sucked in on that, too.

Cool.

Anyway, yeah, I mean, unless you have any other things that you wanted to. To touch on. That was. That was my page of notes that I overwhelmed. Do you wish.

No, you didn't overwhelm me at all. I think it was great.

This is a loaded question, but I'll ask it anyway. What was your favorite podcast episode that we did in 2020 that we did?

I actually always like those. Well, I like the ones when we're in person. That's always cool. I like the ones when we're traveling. I think those are always kind of fun because we're on location somewhere. The one, the first one that pops to mind, which I think was a very short one, and I don't Even know we talked about was when we're in. Oh, hair.

The.

The chic. Oh, that's what it was. Okay. Yeah. We're in Chicago and we're in a layover and we found some corner. Corner of the airport. It was actually pretty empty.

Yeah.

I don't know. Kind of the beginning of COVID time. All right. No, not yet. We're coming back home from Florida is where we're. Horrible route. Go to Chicago.

Yeah.

Matt was bitching the whole time. I hate flying.

It sucks to fly when you're tall.

That's Matt's line. If you have a bingo card, that should be on it if you traveled with him.

But yeah, I just remember that episode was. I think we were just reminiscing similar to here of like, wow, we just got to spend all this time in Florida with a bunch of folks that we studied from or looked up to or thought we were mentors that we, you know, never met before. And that was like our discussion around that experience and our takeaway. So that was a fun one. I like the in person, you know, on location ones, but I'm sure there's probably more impactful than that one. But I just. It was memorable. Yeah. What do you got?

Yeah, yeah. You know, I was actually. I made a note to ask this question on the show and then I didn't even think about it myself of like, what my favorite episode was that comes to mind. Yeah.

I really, I mean, honestly, I love doing our therapy sessions. They're probably some of my favorite episodes. So one of the ones where we probably talked about affiliate marketing strategies. I'm actually going to look at my podcast list right now and cheat a little bit so I can. I can get a quick memory. I mean, there was a lot of highlights for me this year. Like, I really, really liked the Jason Fladlian episode. That one I thought was really excellent. Alex Charfen. Oh, that was a really, really good episode too.

Sessions.

These aren't therapy sessions. We did our episode 300, the ones where we. Where we broke down all of the people that helped us get to where we are today. And we sort of mapped out this spider web of like this person connected us to this person and we got connected to this person through this person. And like this we got like clarity on all of the people that connected us and got us to where we are today. I think that for me is probably my favorite one of the year.

That's a good one. Yeah.

Because it's just like. It's just like a freaking gratitude fest. Like, just, like, all the people we love in this industry.

Industry, Exactly. Yeah. I would actually replace mine. Mine was memorable in the sense that it was just a location and reminiscing. But, yeah, that one would be probably the most impactful one. And I think the one that we both really wanted to do for a long time is give thanks to all the people that really have helped us create this show, create our business. I mean, literally create the life that we have right now. It's ridiculous. It's.

It's.

It still blows my mind, like, what we've been able to accomplish and. And, yeah, and this is where it's. It's good for us. And I'm talking to myself now, too, because I'm so quick to be like, all right, what's the next thing? What's the next. We gotta keep growing. We gotta get. And it's like, you can do a lot in a short period of time. And, like, you just said, like, we did a lot in 2020. And, like, it's so easy to forget. Unless you go back and reflect on your calendar or whatever or even the last 10 years and be like, holy moly. Like, look what we're doing overall. And, like, everyone should be able to do this for themselves and, like, how far you progress, even if it's just mentally, it doesn't have to be financially or whatever. Like, holy crap. My perspective has changed so much from, like, 10 years ago when I. It's so cool.

Yeah. Yeah, I. I agree.

And.

And just the fact that I. I looked at back, I don't know what, 10, 12, 13 years ago, however long we've been doing this, the. The number kind of shifts, based on whether we're talking about when we started doing this while we worked at our day jobs or when we started doing this after we worked at our day job. So that's why the number kind of changes, because I started doing Internet stuff back in 2005.

Ish.

But we didn't quit our jobs till 2009. But anyway, I look back at, like, all of the. This whole story arc, and I look back at, like, 2009, and I look at, like, Jay Abraham and Rich Sheffern and Mike Phil Same and Perry Marshall and all of these guys that back in 2009, we were going like, these guys are gods, right? Like, these. These are, like, the top tier. Like, you know, maybe someday we'll get to be like these guys. And now we're personal friends with every single person I just mentioned.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, Hey, I think it comes to, yeah, it's the most amount of the, the, the network, I mean the network has, has, has created all these opportunities. But I guess I should give us ourselves credit is that we've done the work, we've been consistent and because there's a lot of folks that, that are consistent that don't have those kind of results. So I guess that's the, I guess that's the takeaway is like hey, you know, don't just let your network sit there and you know, kind of forget about you or die in the vine, you know. Like that's one of the things I'm working on right now and maybe next year it'll be my favorite app. But using a CRM tool I'm using close right now and that's close with the Z C L O Z E. I'm liking it so far. And it's. The whole thing is like I want to organize the network we have and really organize, you know, like all the different qualities that they have and all that. But so I can stay in touch with them more so than just like, oh, I just randomly thought of that person and reach out, you know, it's, it's like if there's a system behind that, which is everything that's always driven our business that should help our networking even further. Or all these partnerships, the biz dev, all the just helping folks connect each other. I'm pumped up for that actually for like this, the rest of this week, working week and also next like I'm actually going to take a lot of time more to deep dive in that because it's, I'm finding most people don't have a good CRM to, to stay in touch with the people that have actually helped them out or you can help them out, could be customers, just random people you meet. It's.

Yeah, I agree. I mean everything's either like way like bloated and more than you need. Right. Like you've got infusionsoft out there which is an ultra powerful tool but it's like almost too much for what you're trying to do of just organize your contacts or you've got the complete other end where you have stuff like airtable which kind of works but it doesn't have any sort of like automation or email sending or anything like that that in it. But it doesn't seem like there's any good middle ground software out there that's just designed to organize all of your contacts and then remind you to follow up with them and Then you can add some notes about like, how did I connect with this person, when's their birthday, you know, what's the name of their website, that kind of stuff.

And it pulls a lot of that information in for you. That's the coolest part because actually seems.

To do all of that stuff. It's like what we've been looking for.

Yeah. But I've also don't understand it because there's so much in there. So it's like I just got to spend the time and I choose to spend the time time because of what you just said. It's going to like literally take a load off of both of our brains, but like, probably more so mine because this is like the world I live in. And just think about like, okay, now if someone's asking like, oh, connect me with a podcast that talks about this or I can go to my clothes app and, or any other app that I might find better than that to, then, oh, here's a list of like 10 people I can connect them with and like not use my brain as hard.

If anybody's listening to this and they're a software developer and they need an idea for a software software, you should make a CRM system that's like basic and really intuitive and doesn't have all the features of like a mega built out CRM, but isn't as basic as like an airtable. And we'll probably be affiliates of it because we've been looking for something like that for years. In fact, one of the first software ideas we ever talked about possibly developing was that. But we realized pretty quickly, like, we're not going to be good software developers.

But yeah, happy to partner with software companies.

There you go.

In our own lane. But yeah, yeah. Simplified networking and just keeping up with your network, I think would be such a powerful tool. Close. I think does it pretty well. But, but it's all, you know, it's all geared to sell people. It's all geared for salespeople, which is cool. Or real estate people, tactually is another one. But yeah, they're all like almost a little bit more than what like let's just, let's just keep the basic notes and like stay in front of these folks.

Exactly, exactly. Well, cool. I mean, I think, I think we gave a pretty good recap of 2020 and where we're going in 2021.

It's a long episode. I don't know how long, but feels.

We'Re at about an hour and a half right now. So. All right, we've had worse. Not worse, but longer.

Yeah, I'm excited for 2021. I mean 2020. As much of a crazy ass year it was in Japan general.

Actually. Should we throw some predictions out? Sure. I don't know. I don't know if we're ever gonna. If our predictions are even valid or if anyone should even listen to them, but probably not.

But what are some of your predictions right now?

I'm just thinking like a quick, just all the changes like societally in our world in 2020, you know, just working at home, but also just like all the stuff that's changed. I, I don't know, I just don't feel like that's gonna really go back to how we were. And I think it's gonna be a while until we get back to like even big event or any events that are like substantial. I mean, I know there's like even people doing masterminds now and all that stuff. I'm like risky, but whatever. I mean I just think my, my. I think a lot of the same, like what we've figured out this year is a lot of collaborating and really leaning on your network and people that really trust you and getting introductions to other people that are like, from those people. It's very easy to lose sight of the people that are actually there to support you. And I really think going forward it's a lot more of the collaborativeness is going to be the thing that propels everyone forward. If you try to style yourself and try to build everything yourself and do all that, I just think you're going to just blow all your money, I think, or a lot of money. And I think it's just going to. Stressing the. I think it's just going to be a lot harder than it really should be.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a while though until we get some really substantial momentum, I guess as a greater sense. And we just probably should lean into what we got here.

Yeah, I mean this is a term that I'd never heard until 2020, but I guess it's a known term. But being a T shaped marketer. Right. I think that's where the value's at. I think that's where people should be focused. And what that essentially means is you have a lot of skills in a lot of places, but you maybe have like one or two skills that you're like really, really in depth with. Right. And I feel like that's kind of how we've shaped our business is, you know, I know Facebook ads. I Know SEO, I know Google Ads, I know traffic landing Pages, software, tech APIs, like I know a lot of that stuff. I'm not an expert in any of it. There's a couple of things where I feel like I'm a little bit more of an expert in like maybe page traffic. And I think really that's the way to go is really, really understand all of these different areas in your business, all these different areas in marketing, not so that you can do them all in your business, but so when you go and talk to the people who can do them, you can speak intelligently on those things. And if the people you're working with ever go on vacation or leave your business or anything like that, you can jump in, fill the gaps for a little bit and then when they're back or you find a replacement placement, they can jump in and do that kind of thing. And I feel like that's what we've been building in our business is like you've got a, you've got a lot of areas on the T, I've got a lot of areas on the tee. But we're actually starting to hire people that we're, we're experts in ourselves but we're hiring those people to do those things for us now knowing that we can speak intelligently with them but we don't have to do it anymore. But if they ever step away, we can step back in and it's not going to kill our business.

Mm. You know what a. I wanna, I wanna talk about that Elon like little like thing. I read about how Elon learns Elon Musk and I think it relates to being a T shaped marketer pretty well. Is I, I watched his YouTube video and I've kind of heard bits and pieces of it before, but randomly came on and was like, here's how Elon Musk learns so fast and so deep and the big thing, he has this like analogy where he thinks of a tree or at least this is what the person said. I don't know, I don't know if Elon actually said this but essentially it's you have a trend tree and so you have a trunk area and you have these branches, you know, the big, the canopy on top. Most people learn about the, the branches or the, the leaves which are like the details of a topic. They're not quite listen or learning or interested in learning the core concept which is really the trunk of the tree that supports everything. So instead they just jump into the tactics of like, hey, I'm going to go yeah. Run a bunch of ads and all this stuff. But you're like, wait, hold on. Do you understand what you're running ads to? Or do you understand. Understand what your metrics are, you know, or like your benchmarks or whatever, you know? Yeah, you might be good at the ad platform and making some pretty pictures and like, throwing some budgets in, you know, and like, hoping for the best. But unless you understand the full thing that that thing's supporting, which is like the tree.

Really, it's. It's understanding core concepts, first principles, you know, like. Like really. Or more components, sorry, the big foundation.

Of the thing, or even understanding the why behind the actions. Right. So, like, with. With something, a good example that I know a little bit about is like Facebook ads, right. A lot of people might see, like, oh, this Facebook ad tactic works really well. Go and set it as. Optimize for conversions. Target this audience. Write your copy like this. Use this style of image, make sure these colors are in this image. And like, they can get this, like, tactical thing that they can go check, try. But maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But if it does or if it doesn't, you have no clue why.

Right?

If it works, you don't know why it's working. If it doesn't work, you don't know why it didn't work. And I think understanding the underlining philosophies of why something works is more important than understanding the tactic to make it work. And I think that might be a piece of, like, what you're getting at there as well is that you got to understand the underlying why the underlining big picture of the smaller tactics. So in that Facebook example, you know, the Facebook wants engagement. They want people to stay on their platform. They want people to, like, they want people to comment, they want people to share. They want. They want to put valuable things in front of their audience. And if what you're putting in front of them doesn't seem valuable, then they're not going to give you as much reach with it. If people aren't interacting or engaging with it, they're not going to give you as much reach with it. Now, understanding what Facebook wants now, you don't need the ad tax tactic. You understand what they want. Go figure out your own tactic to give them what they want. Ignore the other tactics that people are giving away.

It's true. Yeah. You can stay in your lane then, because you know exactly what your goal is and what you're doing. That's your lane. Yeah, yeah.

So really just understanding the underlying philosophies, the tactics are helpful, but the tactics really are not that helpful long term unless you understand the philosophies behind the tactics.

Here's another example that popped in my mind, I think I brought it up to you the other day is Matt and I both play guitar, but we don't play. Well, I will say because. Speak for yourself.

Well, I'm, I'm like.

I'm like. I'm like Ringo Starr.

Ringo Starr? Yes. You're just like a star. I'm just like.

Elton John on guitar.

No, but the point I make it is we actually. So we, you and I jumped into guitar learning songs and like learning things like that. Like listening by ear and like, oh, I want to play this cool Blink 182 song that I find fun. Oh, it's three chords. It's not that hard.

You know, and. But like we didn't learn and maybe dabbled but like theory and like notes, how to find things on the strings and really the. The principles of like, here's how to play a freaking guitar. Guitar. So if you learn this, you could play anything on the guitar. And like, now what? Like, it's been probably almost 20 years. It has been at least 20 years that I've been playing guitar. I never took the time to learn that stuff. I just journal like, hey, let's go on YouTube and like learn this song. Like, that's the details. That's learning little tactics. But I didn't know the strategy or the actual principles like fully before. That's why you and I got a course on. We're going through that right now.

I've been playing guitar for 25 years now and I'm just starting to learn like the principles and guitar theory and various chords and various. Yeah, it's crazy. Various scales and things. So, yeah, it's a good. Another good example.

T. Shay marketer.

That's really it in a nutshell. I think it is super valuable for 2021 and beyond though.

Yeah, for sure. Well, very cool. Let's go ahead and wrap this one up. But before we do, we've got to.

Give one shout out, we two shout outs actually. And yeah, you know what? It'll. It'll start with Easy Webinar and then back to something you were mentioning a minute ago. Easy webinar. Yeah. If you are thinking about webinars in your future or maybe you have webinars going now, but 2021 is your year to shine in webinars. Go give Easy Webinar a try because the Bad Boy has everything you need for webinars. It's basically that tool kit that we were talking about with Ahrefs and the Ahrefs like, think about that for webinars here. It's got everything you need for webinar and for hours. And they keep upgrading the dang thing too. So I'm sure it's either rolled out by now or it's coming extremely soon. But if you get in there, they're hooking you up with all the modalities of webinars but also making it super simple to use. And there's a fatty discount too that you can get a hold of over@easywebinar.com Hustle.

Hustle.

Easywebinar.com Hustle. Yes.

That is where you can get it.

Every time he says hustle, hustle.

Yeah, Casey's hooking it up. What was your second shout out?

The second shout out was if you want to be the best T shaped marketer, then you need to be in the EGP membership and get the notes to this episode. That'd be a good first start of your journey to becoming a T shaped market marketer. The best of the best. If you go to flowchart group.com gets you in the Facebook group. But give us your email. Your best email. Not some junk email. We don't want that because we're trying to help you. Come on. Giving you free stuff and also great stuff to help you become T shaped marketers. So throw in your email address and we will send you the notes to this episode within two weeks of it going live. And then some other cool goodies too. So go to flowchartgroup.com for that and become the best T shape marketer ever.

Yes, yes. And share the show. That really, really helps us. We're trying to hit quotas and you're going to help us hit a quota. No, I'm just kidding.

If you don't hit the quota. No.

If you hear any of our episodes and you think they're beneficial to somebody else, we'd love it if you would share it because we are trying to spread the word and grow our podcast Bigger in 2021. And the best way to grow a podcast is the people who like the show and listen to the show tell their friends. Friends to listen as well. And that's honestly, to this day, the best growth strategy for a podcast is word of mouth. So if you have somebody that would benefit from hearing any of these episodes, please share them. That would be lovely.

Cool. Matt. Well, I expect your TPS report on my desk very soon because your quotas are met. So I want to make sure that you're on your numbers.

You will get my TP soon.

It's office space, Matt. Come on. Numbers on the podcast. So you got to get everybody to hear everybody all.

Yeah, All I heard is that you want me to TP your house or something. I don't know.

Come on, put them on my desk.

All right. Yeah, you'll have them on your desk tomorrow.

All right, sir. Office space again. Something.

I got it. I got the reference. Thank you. I got the reference. The first time. I was just being a jerk.

Stop it. All right. Thank you for listening. If you're still here.

Yeah, thank you. You're probably not. Nobody's hearing this part. All right, Bye.

Bye.