Therapy Session - How To Become A PodHacker

We want to connect the pieces for you. So that's why Pod Hacker essentially exists. The idea is if you have a podcast or you want to launch one, well, we're going to show you how to do that, but we're also going to show you our business model, how to growth, hack the thing. So to actually scale that up, to grow a brand, create awareness, grow a community, and then actually monetize with all sorts of different ways that we do. And then we have a bunch of experts that we're going to bring in as well. This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Jo.

Hey, let's do this.

We are live.

Yes, we are live. And by live, I mean we're recording this now and nobody's actually listening live.

And we are alive, though.

We are alive. That is very true.

Just wanted to confirm that and tell everybody. Confirmed. Okay, cool.

Today we've got an amazing guest on the show.

I know.

Amazing. My favorite guest.

This is my favorite guest, too.

Yeah, it's actually a duo of guests.

How did we get these two in the same room? Well, virtual room in this scenario, on the same time.

I don't think we want to speak about the how publicly.

All right, we'll wait for. Maybe it's a future therapy session.

We need some therapy once people realize the how.

Good point. All right.

We'Ll see.

We'll see. So our guest today are Matt Wolf and Joe Fear from podhacker.com.

I think it's. It's pronounced Wolfay and Fear.

Wolfe and Fear.

Yeah, don't. Don't mess it up ever again. Matt Wolf.

I'm actually still blown away by how many people mispronounce your name like, like, literally. And I'm not going to name any names. I'm not going to shame anybody. But there's one person specifically that, like, I swear he's been corrected like 15 times and he still does it every time.

I think we might be thinking of the different. Of different person right now, but.

Yeah, we're not gonna.

What are the initials? What are the initials?

No, no, that's gonna be.

Might give it away to you might.

Even give that away to.

We'Re not a name and shame kind of podcast.

I'll sign language it to you.

Spider web, arrow up.

Actually, no, I don't.

I think that might have been backwards. I don't know.

It was. I know. That's what I realized. I'm like, I can't do mirrored and no, I don't Know what I'm doing here? We're moving on on this one.

The point is, nobody can pronounce fear.

People fear. You are fine. They do. I mean, I'm. You know what? I've actually seriously considered this, and I know you know about this, but Heather, my wife, she took my name Fear, when we got married. But her. Her maiden name is Hemingway because her great uncle was Ernest Hemingway. And freakishly, her dad, Heather's dad, my wife is like a striking resemblance of Ernest. He's a big man.

Your wife is a striking resemblance of Ernest.

Dad, wife's dad.

It was just a very weirdly formed sentence. So it made it sound like you were saying Heather looks like Ernest Hemingway.

No. God, no. I hope not. She gets older. No, no. Point being is like her name. I was consider. Maybe I should be Joe Hemingway. Actually, it was Kamal Ravikant. When I told him this story, he was like, you should do it. You should take her name. I'm like, maybe, Maybe. So I don't know. Let's think about that.

So one day, this show might be Matt Wolfe and Joe Hemingway.

I'm okay with that. I mean, maybe I'll mix it up a little bit here.

Although, I mean, fear is a badass last name. People say.

I like them both. That's the thing. I like them both. So I don't know.

All right, Joe Fear, let's move on.

Okay, Wolf.

Okay. Before we move on, though, we are taking notes on this episode. So if you go over to flowchartgroup.com, as always, you can join our Facebook group and get access to the notes all in one move. Just go to flowchartgroup.com. joe gave me a funny look.

One move. I like it. One swipe you'll get.

And we'll hook you up with the notes for this episode. If you do it within two weeks of going live. All right, let's get that out of the way. What are we talking about?

Wow, very dramatic transition there. We're talking about our lives. No, we're talking. Talking about some interesting stuff. Perspective changes that we've had just in the last month. This is early Feb, Mid Feb. I guess it's a short month.

Well, this episode comes out on the last day of Feb last week.

We're giving you a little BTS behind the scenes of when we're recording this. But yeah, I mean, I think this episode is going to be a good, great episode going back in time, a little bit of some of these struggles that we had back in. I'd say 2019 or coming in 2020, not so much struggles, but definitely, you know, we could optimize things. And then we got a guide that showed up just in time. If we're talking about, like, you know, the hero's journey, a guide just showed up in early January. And we've mentioned this guide before on the show, but, like, no, our perspectives have changed. And now we have a launch coming up here within, what, a couple days of this thing going live. And it's going to be a new brand. We're launching, and it's freaking us, like, basically opening the curtains to the biz. Our business, our podcast and how it's all connected and a bunch of other cool things. And Matt is now showing off the alternate logo called Pod Hacker, y'.

All.

It's a Pod Hacker. So our Pod Hacker brand is being launched in a couple days, but March 1st is the date, and we're freaking excited. Yeah, it's really cool.

And I think this episode, we thought it'd be kind of a fun idea to kind of give you a little history of how Pod Hacker came about, because there's actually quite a bit that led us to this point where we're like, okay, now is the time to release Pod Hacker. You know, all of. All of the stars align. Not stars, all the planets aligned. And we decide this is the time to do Pod Hacker based on a whole bunch of factors. So we're going to talk about kind of the genesis of Pod Hacker and, you know, some of the iterations of Pod Hacker and where Pod Hacker is now. And we're going to give you behind the scenes of how we're actually doing this launch, because we're approaching this from a completely different angle than any other promotion we've ever done in the past. And then we also really want to dive into, like, what Pod Hacker is and, like, what our motivations behind this course were and why this is the specific lessons we're going to be teaching in it and really kind of give you a look inside of what Pod Hacker is and what it's going to be.

Yeah, man. Yeah, it's going to be a trip. So let's just start it off. And actually, you know what, what I want to say is if you've been listening to podcast for a little bit, last year, around the same time of the year, we did an episode. It was around our business model then, and our business model really hasn't changed.

Do you know the name of the episode?

It's Unapologetic. Affiliate Marketers. Marketers or yeah, marketing business. Yeah, Unapologetic. And that was the Apologetic Affiliate Marketers.

I'm pretty sure is what it's called.

Look it up. If you haven't listened to it after this episode, go check it out. Because it made our top 10 of 2000s episodes. And I mean, we released two a week. So I mean, that's a lot of episodes. So it left an impact. And that was us at that time having a perspective change around our affiliate marketing business and how Josh Bartlett, actually owner of ThriveCart, gave us this perspective change back then and said, no, your business is legitimate as an affiliate marketing business. We were struggling with this whole thing of like, we don't have a sellable asset, we don't have anything we own because it's an affiliate thing. You know, that's where we get our revenue from. But that's, you know, it was just a perspective change that we wanted to or that we got. We talked about it and I think this episode is going to be very, very, very similar.

Yeah.

So let's, let's take it back for the Pod Hacker thing, the podcast related stuff. When did this all kind of start?

So you and I, before we hit record, we were kind of trying to remember, okay, how did, how did the whole Pod Hacker thing start? Because we had a consulting program, oh, this is a year and a half ago maybe, called the Pod Hack Podcast Accelerator. And that was a consulting thing where we were, we would get on calls every month and sort of work with you on your podcast strategy. And then we had a team of, of podcast editors and show note writers and stuff like that that would actually manage the podcast with you. Right. So it was sort of a combo of consulting and some done for you podcasting stuff. And that was the original podcast accelerator. Somewhere around the same time we launched that, we managed to acquire the domain name podhacker.com and I think we only paid like 500 bucks for it, if I remember correctly. Which, you know, I. If the brand turns into what I think it's going to turn into, what we're planning on turning it into, that's going to be a steal for that. But around that time we got the Pod Hacker domain name. And I think originally we were planning on just doing a pod hat podcast called Pod Hacker, the Pod Hacker Podcast. And it was going to be a podcast for podcasters about how to growth hack a podcast. And so we set up a podhacker.com. i think I recorded like a single trailer for it saying, hey, this is going to be a Podcast about growing your podcast. So tune in every week as we teach you new growth hacks. And that was the only episode we ever recorded was that one, like, trailer thing.

But didn't we just learn the other day that someone subscribed? It was someone on our show. I thought last, like, I think.

I think it was Chris Benetti. Maybe.

Maybe it was. Yeah, maybe it was Chris. He was like, I'm a subscriber of that. Someone was. And we're like, yeah, nothing ever came out.

I'm not, I'm not.

Someone just said it the other day, but.

Or maybe it was Jack Kern. I don't know. Anyway, we're going to talk about. All those names are going to come back up again in this conversation here. But so we. I set up podhacker.com, recorded one episode. I think I threw it up on, like, anchor for free. You might even be able to look on itunes right now and search Pod Hacker, and there might be a single episode.

I'm not going to do it, but someone else will look it up.

That's like a year old with me saying, we're going to do weekly episodes about podcasting.

Link it in the show, notes Sue. That would be kind of interesting. I don't know what we said about it because it's probably completely different. Maybe it's the same as what we're doing now.

Yeah, I doubt it, because the original concept was a podcast. But then I think we realized that that brand name, that POD Hacker brand name was, like, too valuable to just be a podcast. And so that whole POD podcast accelerator program that we were launching at the time, we said, let's just rebrand this as the POD Hacker Program. So we rebranded that. We made. We made a big training course back then that was like a Podcasting 101 training course on how to, like, what equipment to get, how to edit your audio, how to host the audio, how to create your show notes, all that sort of stuff. Plus all of our monetization strategies. We broke down how we're making money off affiliate products, how we're making money selling notes, how we're making products off equity deals, how we make money off of sponsorships. From time to time, we broke all that down. And then we broke down a whole bunch of our favorite growth hacks, using Facebook ads, Twitter ads, using podcast apps to purchase the, you know, to sort of pay for the growth of your podcast. And we broke down all these sort of strategies that nobody else really talks about in podcast growth. And anybody who bought our Pod Hacker consulting program got access to this training as well. And then it sort of evolved. When in. Was it February or March? March, right. Podfest.

Podfest was the beginning of March. Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

But it evolved before then. It was like more December, I remember, of 2019. It was like right around that time, it was December when Chris from PodFest at Chris Komitsos reached out to us and basically said, hey, do you guys want to go in on a room, like a little side room at the podfest conference and hold your own Mastermind there or some mini event? And we're like, we got to figure something out because this is a really cool opportunity. And you know, Chris was hooking it up to. Thank you, Chris, you rock. Because a ton of people got a ton of value and got introduced to PodFest as well for the very first time, which I know Chris is loving and wants. So that's the point and it's great. So we held that Mastermind. So that's where that forced us to create our first mastermind, basically in person. Mastermind.

Yeah. So like the first time we ever actually promoted the Pod Hacker brand. By buying Pod Hacker, you got access to this in depth podcasting training that we created. You got access to a live, full, full day in person mastermind where we brought in different guest experts and talked about podcasting. And you got a ticket to PodFest 2020 back in, in March. And so we sold that as a large bundle bundle under the Pod Hacker thing. And about. I don't know what we have there. I think we had maybe 35 people buy pod hacker and maybe 25 of them showed up to the event.

About 20, 25 at the event. Yeah. And then we had all of our buddies cycling through. So I don't know how many people at the end of the day.

Yeah, yeah. So that was. That was the initial Pod Hacker story. It was. We found a cool domain name that we wanted, we grabbed it, we started to make a podcast. It didn't really work out. So then we rebranded some of our consulting and training and then our Mastermind. And then that's kind of where the Pod Hacker story ended until about December of 2020. So, you know, fast forward nine months. We didn't do anything else with that brand in that nine month window.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. And then January came up and I don't know what. So now I'm gonna skip over. So back to my weird analogy about like the guide that showed up in January. Well, same guy, it's Josh Bartlett. So just like that unapologetic affiliate marketer episode. It was Josh that gave us this kind of reframe, you know, of like, yeah, we're legitimate as marketers and entrepreneurs, business owners, even if we're just selling other people's stuff. Well, Josh, this time we had a chat with him. It's been a while since we all caught up and we, you know, we always like to check in a lot, but it's been a while. So we were checking in and he was, he, he was just like, you know what? It's the beginning of the year, and why not try to make the bulk of your income, like asap, in the beginning of your year and think about the freedom and the pressure that kind of gets lifted off of you for the rest of the year. The rest of, like, let's call it a quarter. So you do the bulk of your income in quarter one, which we're in right now, and then the rest of the quarters can essentially, you know, you can use to supplement your core foundational income. And we started thinking about, yeah, we have a lot of layers of recurring income, both subscriptions that we control, like the Evergreen Profits membership, and then we have all these other things that we're affiliates of. So ranging from click funnels from a long time ago to even drop funnels now. They're all paying some continuity subscription to us as affiliates. And that's radio, but we don't control it. But it's cool because that foundation layer will continue even if we chose to stack another offer or something that we control on top of that. So essentially we should be able to compound our income because we can, and you'll see why with stacking another membership on top of that is what. We kind of jump into that. But basically, Josh challenged us to start thinking of how to get that done in Q1 rather than spread it out for the rest of the year.

Yeah. And sort of the thinking, the idea behind it was if we can make as much money as we need to make for the whole year in Q1, then in Q2, Q3, Q4, we get to purely focus on providing value and doing what's right by our customers and making sure everybody that has sort of bought into us, we can just focus on creating the value there. We're not worried in Q2 or Q3, where's my money coming from this month? Because all I'm doing is creating content this month. How am I going to get paid for this? We don't have to worry about that. We made our income in a lump sum in Q1. And then in the rest of the year, now we get to just focus on making amazing podcast episodes. We get to focus on creating the best content and the best value for the people that do buy our courses. We get to focus on the networking and connecting and speaking at events and doing all the stuff that helps our personal brand and our sort of combined brand, but may not necessarily be an exact clear path to revenue immediately. We don't have to worry about how we're making the money on that stuff, because the money was made, the money is there, we built the foundation for the year, and now we get to just focus on the value side.

Yeah, you're so funny because I now sound like the jerk and the pure capitalist because I went with the money approach. It's like, here's how we're going to make all. And then you're like, yeah, this is. Is because we can serve people better. Makes me sound like the money grabber.

Money grubbing ho.

You a gold digger, Joe?

Swimming in my gold coins, McDuck. You know, reference. But no, the whole. You're totally right because. And another thing neither of us mentioned is that we have an interesting business model because if you control, like, we have a membership and Pod Hacker is going to be another membership, and that's kind of jumping a little bit ahead, but not really. Whatever. Let's just like it's. We're going to have a couple memberships here within our control. So, like, that's really cool to have because those are like ponds of, you know, those are customer ponds or communities that we're building there.

Are you calling our customers ponds?

No, no. They swim in the similar. I don't know, man. I'm just talking about, like, they gather in the same area. They're interested in the same thing. Point being is like, you can control the attention there.

Oh, you said pond. I thought you meant like pawn, like on a chessboard.

No.

Are you calling people pawns? Who's the pawn here?

You.

I just misunderstood. I thought you said P A W, N, but you're saying pawned. Okay, now the analogy is making more sense to me.

Bad analogy or pronunciation in said analogy. You get it. We have new communities and another membership. Even if it's a free membership. We have affiliate offers and rev share equity deals on the back end that if we free up three quarters of the year, we can actually put attention into those things a little bit more and enhance those.

We do multiple streams. We have quite a few projects where the path. We know the path to revenue, but the Destination of revenue is still quite a ways down the path.

Right.

So like things like unicorn equity and our partnership with Members Pro and some of this other stuff that we've been working on behind the scenes, like we're working hard on it and we see where it's going and we know this stuff's going to be big and we're going to have some big moves with it. But it also feels like some of this stuff, we're not going to see revenue into our pockets for it, from it for months, possibly even next year on some of it. Right.

Said much better than I. Yes.

So since we're not going to see some of this revenue for quite a while, we're thinking, all right, let's focus on making all of our revenue early and then focusing on the creating value for customers and focusing on some of these long term things that we know the payoff isn't coming until a little bit further down the road. For sure.

Yeah. And it's just nice because, yeah, we have the, there's no pressure now to have to make a certain amount or you know, you have like this financial freedom. If you think about it in that year for your business, you know, it almost allows you to kind of just like, cool. Now.

You can get more creative with optimizing your startups. Like the unicorn equity that we're in, it's like, yeah, that's a long term play. Well, now we can get super creative and come up with some really cool marketing strategy because we were allowed to focus on that thing.

Yeah, well, coming back around to the sort of whole storyline here. So in January, I don't know if it was end of December, beginning of January, somewhere in there, we both got on Clubhouse. We've done past episodes about Clubhouse, we're not going to talk about it on this episode, but we got on Clubhouse and around the same time Josh got on Clubhouse and us getting on Clubhouse and Josh getting on Clubhouse was something that sort of reconnected us. We kind of fallen out of touch for, you know, three months or so and getting all of us getting on Clubhouse, we started chatting fairly frequently again. And so we were doing a session one day with, with Josh Bartlett and we were having similar sort of concerns, similar sort of uncertainty as back when we did the affiliate thing and we were going, ah, this doesn't feel legitimate. Josh is like, bullshit. This is, you guys are creating a huge service for people, tons of value. He kind of did the same thing again when we said, you know, we've had this sort of hard stance of we don't really want to sell courses. We like the info to be free. We want to, you know, like, it's not really our path to be out there selling a bunch of courses. We sort of said we didn't want to do that again back in like 2017 or something. And we really haven't pushed courses since. And Josh sort of helped reframe that for us as well. He was like, you know, there's, there's one thing about, you know, putting out a lot of free content, but another thing is you, you know, when people are trying to start a podcast, for instance, they can go find free content. There's YouTube videos, there's podcasts, there's blog posts, there's tons free content. The problem is, which content do you follow? Which path do you follow? Which model is the most effective model? Because you can go and consume content from 50 different people and have 50 different paths to potentially follow.

Right. Where do I go? I don't know.

So people aren't necessarily paying for the information. They're paying for the guidance. They're paying for the proper path. They're paying for, you know, the personal help that they're going to get from us and that sort of thing with it. It's not just, hey, you know, here's $100, here's a members area where you can just go, you're on your own now. Go get all this training. Right? Like, if you do that, yeah, there might not be a ton of value to the customers and it may not be the most helpful thing you can make, but if you go and create something where they get access to you, they can ask you their questions, you're showing them the right path. You're helping them get these aha moments that maybe took you years to get. You're helping them get those aha moments in a 15 minute video right now. You're providing a real service for people. You're sort of helping them jump over a whole bunch of hurdles that you had to jump over manually first.

And that's the thing, that's massive value in so many ways. So, yeah, Josh helped us, I guess, legitimize that in our brain again too, because, yeah, it was a big struggle for us to feel like we were basically not keeping our word to ourselves and to you. Our listener is, you know, oh, here we are, we're gonna package up another thing and sell another course. It's like, but, you know, like, we're motivated by the fact that what we said before is like, we can make the Bulk of the revenue in Q1 and then the rest of the year is really we could spend on, on growing our community, doing really cool extra things that, to just get creative that we. A million ideas and then ramp up.

The value for people.

Everything across the board. Yeah. So we were sold by that and then. But we didn't decide anything specifically. We're like, okay, cool, we get it. That's really locked in our minds. That already was a perspective change and I think that that time with Josh there is the most powerful piece of this whole story. Or that that is the mind shift. I mean I feel like every journey you need that mind shift or that perspective change. Well, that was freaking it.

Yeah, it was, it was really two things.

Right.

It was get the, you know, get as much revenue as you can in Q1. That way you can shift your focus for the next three quarters on value and some of these longer term projects. And the other thing was selling courses. Selling content is not evil. Right. Like we almost sort of demonize selling content. And we're not going to go and start just creating a whole huge course business now or nothing like that. Right. Like, but this membership, I think there is real, real value in it, in the access we're giving. I mean we're going to get into what it is in a few minutes here. But with the access we're giving to us, with the access we're giving to our Rolodex, with the sort of clear path to follow, no question marks for people, I really, really think that that is something of huge value. It's almost like the content that is inside of the membership is almost secondary to the other things. The, like the sort of primary thing is us kind of holding your hand and walking you through. Okay, this is the path to follow. Ignore the other paths, follow this path. And then also here's the people that you're going to need to know, that you're going to want to know to get ahead in this game. By the way, we're connecting you with those people. That's where the real value adds. It's almost like that content, the actual information that we're putting in there is almost secondary to those other two factors.

Totally. Yeah. Yep. Given the path, the community, the support, the engagement with us, with others, the experts. And that's the big thing actually. And this was.

All right, so you know how Matt, we have that shift kind of in our minds separately. We had at the same time, it happened after this other event or maybe like right around, remember we had the mastermind, we Have a kind of like a every couple month Mastermind with Bob Sterling, Roland Frazier Bragastanzo, Travis Houston, Steve Olsher, and Henry Evans. I think that's a dropper.

Such a name dropper.

I just had to. I can't just name one person. Then the whole crew. The Bobs are gonna be left out. So, I mean.

Well, you forgot.

I forgot someone.

I know you did forget.

Don't tell him.

The sad thing is I'm drawing a blank on his name because he never actually comes to the Mastermind.

Well. Well, that's the problem.

Shoot. Now you got me thinking.

Who? Success magazine, dude.

Oh, Hardy.

Yeah, Darren Hardy. That's right, Darren Hardy. My brain farted on his name.

Okay. Yeah. He doesn't live here most of the year that I saw or around. I don't know. But you're right. So point being that Mastermind, we presented the group with this challenge, you know, the whole thing that Josh gave us, that perspective shift around. So it was really cool because we didn't have any specific model in mind. We wanted to just hear them out and their approach. And it was really cool because that was another perspective change. And it was one in being. Basically, what they said is like, well, what's the quickest path to making it to your goal? To sell probably to the least amount of people. So figure out how to create an offer around that and basically put that out there. And it's an absolutely amazing approach. And, you know, we thought about it a little bit. We did some things to test it out. It actually ended up being that. I'll just say it like we. We sent a. What, one email out to the list, and it ended up being just kind of me getting on a lot of calls with our community listeners. And it was one of the coolest things we've done, I feel like, because I've learned so much and connected with a ton of folks that I've met or, you know, haven't met before and gave a lot of value. It kind of is like this learning phase, but also, you know, on both sides of the zoom chat. So that was cool, but it didn't feel like I, you know, neither of us wanted to really do something like that in that manner or doing sales conversations. I mean, totally comfortable with it, but I just didn't feel like that's the thing to get us to our goal.

Yeah.

And then. And then separately, we had this little epiphany. But you explained that one.

Yeah, well, I was gonna say we. You know, there was an email that came out From Andre Chaperone. Around the same time, we were sort of thinking this all through and Andre was talking about how people were telling him he should go and sell high ticket, that there's a bunch of people on your list that are probably gonna, you know, be willing to pay upwards of $25,000 to get direct access to you. And, you know, you should, you should go sell that. And he was talking about how that didn't really feel super congruent to him. He didn't, he was never really a huge fan of selling really high ticket stuff he was uncomfortable doing. It wasn't really his sort of zone of genius. He, he wasn't a fan of it. And so he started asking a different question. I don't remember the exact question, but it was something to the effect of what can we do to essentially show people what we're doing in our business in a way that it provides value for them. It was literally like a question about like, how do we just open the kimono to our business and get paid for doing so?

Right.

And I really, really liked that sort of reframing on things. So you and I, I remember.

I called you up one day after we had talked to Josh and we were planning on doing a launch of a course around affiliate marketing. We were going to make an affiliate marketing course. We hadn't titled it yet, but we kind of knew, all right, we're just going to sort of brain dump all of our favorite affiliate strategies on people and go like really deep into it. And that was kind of our initial concept. And it was going to be just like a one time course, you know, sell it for. I think we're going to try to sell it for a thousand bucks or something like that.

Yep.

And that was the kind of the game plan. And you and I sort of marinated on it over a weekend. And then on Monday I kind of gave you, I gave you a phone call and I was sort of like stressing out about talking to you because I was like, man, I don't really want to do this. Like, I don't, I don't really want to create a course on affiliate marketing and sell it as a one off fee and then close it down and do the whole like big launch thing and then just close it. And now it's not available again until like maybe next year or whatever. Like, I just didn't feel that comfortable with it. I didn't, you know, I felt like we were going to have some struggles around like advertising to a course like that because it has like, biz op implications to it. I didn't really like the curriculum that we were talking about mapping out. I was starting to get stressed out about creating all of the content for the curriculum that we're. That we were mapping out for it. And I'm like, fuck, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make all this. And I started to stress out a little bit about, like, the technical stuff. Like, hey, if I show them how to do Facebook ads and I make a video on Facebook ads, that video is gonna be irrelevant in two months when Facebook ads look different again. Right. So I started. I was just kind of like, all these thoughts were sitting in my head of like, I don't want to do this. Like, I want to do something that generates a big spike of income in the beginning of the year so we can focus on just creating the value for the rest of the year. I just don't think that putting this course out is it. And I was sort of stressing, like, when I was calling you to sort of share my thoughts on it, because I was like, man, I don't want Joe to think I'm blowing this thing up. Like, we're already on this path, and now all of a sudden I'm having second thoughts and I'm blowing it up.

But, you know, I brought it up to you, and you were like, dude, I feel the same way about it. Like, I don't think we found the thing yet. We just need to figure out the thing, right? And so that same day, I believe it was that same day, I was like, dude, why don't you come over to my house tonight? We'll go in the Jacuzzi, and let's just. Let's just hammer this shit out. Let's. Let's leave with a solution, right?

That was the goal.

Yeah. And it was that night we got in the spa and we were hanging out for a couple hours in the. In the spa in my backyard. And that's where we sort of fleshed out what Pod Hacker is now for sure.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. And what happened in the spa is you gave me this insight you had, I think from another time. You were sitting in the spa by yourself. See, it's like this weird think tank.

It's my literal think tank, actually.

I know. Yeah. I wish I had one. But this should be required for us to do that, at least monthly or bi weekly or something. Like, literally. It's dumb not to. But.

The point being is your insight, your download, when you were Sitting in that hot tub, you came up with a business model that you then shared with me when we were together in the same hot tub. Not to be confused, but I had that same download that you had basically, like, a couple days before all this happened, too. So, like, completely separately, Matt and I were like, you know what? I think the thing is a membership model that is similar to the Evergreen Profits membership model. Different, though, and focused on podcasters.

Well, I'll tell you the catalyst of where the sort of thought came from. Oh, yeah, you and I were doing a session with Perry Marshall's new Renaissance Club membership. Right.

And before that, though, way before that. That's. That's the insight. I think we both had that insight or that realization separately, like, before Perry. So. And. But the. The Perry thing solidified, like the model. So I guess, you know, just to go back really fast. Curation. Remember that was the thing when we were in the hot tub.

Oh, yeah. We were talking about how, like, the thing that we're the most skilled at in the world is curation. Curating good people, curating, good content, curating, good tools, curating.

And that's it.

That's where our focus should lie, is be the best curators in the world for the marketing world.

Yes. And that's where that was. Where my initial, like, insight came from is like, you know, what we've been talking about, like, how we have a really cool responsibility, and it's kind of like a weed hunter or, you know, it's like, not a weight, but it's like, got this thing where, hey, we're curating the guests that come on this podcast, and we know the listeners do stuff with these insights. Like, we hear it all the time. And all these calls I was on the last few weeks, so many people are like, I listen to every single episode, and, you know, I only follow you guys. Or the people that come to your podcast are the only people I actually follow because you guys brought them on your podcast. And that happens, like, daily. We hear that in the Facebook group on these calls and emails. And then it was that, for me, where I was like, hold on. So we're curating a bunch of people. Why don't we, like, have a higher ticket or a higher end part of, like, that goes deeper with these people or people like these, because we're already curating the best of the best for the Hustle and Flowchart show podcast. Why not, like, go deeper with them in some model? You know, that's like, higher touch, higher engagement. But it was a Curation thing. And then that's pretty much what you said too, as the model you wanted.

Yeah, yeah. It was the curation thing that we came to.

My timelines are a little messed up because I feel like the curation conversation was one of our drive in chat days, which is the other way that we kind of form ideas together.

It's all blend. Yeah, it's all right around there.

And then the night we were the spy, I remember it was like the day after we did the Perry Marshall session. It was New Renaissance Club. And I was looking at his model and I was like, I really like his model. You know, he's in there teaching, but he also brings in guests to like deep dive and do training presentations to his members. And that's where the sort of concept of what we were going to do inside of this membership came about. Was sort of looking at Perry and going, man, I really like how he brings in guest experts into the New Renaissance Renaissance Club to talk to, you know, that membership every single month. And that was where some of the models kind of got more fleshed out. Was kind of looking at that.

Yeah, I don't remember the timeline of like the thinking, but it was over. Like, this was like a week long period of like, aha, aha, aha, aha. It all came together, you know.

Well, just think about it. I mean, like we, we put a challenge out there for ourselves and like we, we kind of set a deadline for. We did set a deadline. Q1, you know, that's what Josh, in that perspective, change was like, hey, get, get all this done. Like, formulate the structure and the content and all this. And we decided pod hacker is the freaking thing. Like, we, we have the con. This is the most, most sought after. Like on all the things that. All the calls, I was on the messages, like, the common things are all around. Like, how are you doing this with your podcast? And there's a list of things. And then how are you growing it and how are you making money on the back of this thing? Like, how's your business model look? And all these every time we present it. And this is Perry Marshall's event again. When we were presenting to his crew, it had Perry talking about it again. And he was like, oh, my God. We had this whole spiderweb. And then we spoke at TNC360, I remember, in December, same thing. And it was one of the most top rated sessions there. We were told it had over 500 people watch it, which I guess is a really big thing. And I didn't know that, but I was told that the other day. I was like, sweet. And it's like those were all, like, connecting the dots for us. We're like, shoot, we need to teach this thing. But how.

This is it. This is how it all came around.

Yeah, I mean, that's really the story of how it all came about. Maybe now we should shift into what.

The hell it actually is. What the hell this is was a long story. We figured it would. But yeah, Pod Hacker, basically, this is exactly now, you know, the model, the story, and the why. Like, essentially, we have a ton of information and connections and all that. Our business model, we have all these. We want to connect the pieces for you. So that's why Pod Hacker essentially exists. It's for a podcaster, typically, ideally someone who has a podcast already. But if you've launched a show or if you've tried to do some, you know, stuff yourself, well, you're cool too, you know, and the idea is everyone's cool here. But that is, if you have a podcast or you want to launch one, well, we're going to show you how to do that, but we're also going to show you our business model, how to growth hack the thing. So to actually scale that up, to grow a brand, create awareness, grow a community, and then actually monetize with all sorts of different ways that we do. And then we have a bunch of experts that we're going to bring in as well on a monthly kind of session, you know, an interactive basis?

Yeah, well, it all kind of comes back down to that question from Andre. And, you know, we already sort of formed the Pod Hack Hacker sort of concept before we. We saw this email from Andre, but this really helped solidify what we're doing a little bit. Was that that question where he said, like, how do we give people sort of a peek into our world and.

You know, that's it.

Make money while doing it. Right. Like, have it be a business around it. And so that's really what we want to do with podhacker. And when we look inside of, like, our. Our Facebook group, when we were. When we started getting on a lot of these clubhouse sessions, when we started seeing email replies from. From people on our list and things like that, like, we kept on hearing the same stuff over and over and over again in the form of, you guys do things differently than everybody else. I've never seen anybody treat a podcast the way you guys treat a podcast. I've never seen other people talk about the growth strategies for a podcast that you talk about, like, we've been on Clubhouse in podcast sessions multiple times, and every single time, people are blown away by the stuff that we're talking about in the ways that we monetize our podcast and grow a podcast. Like, we're giving people strategies on growing a podcast that they've literally gone. I've purchased tons of courses, been through a bunch of YouTube videos, read a bunch of blog posts. Literally none of them have ever talked about those strategies right there. And, and you know, it's just like, like we do things differently than everybody else in, in the podcasting world.

Yeah.

You know, like guys like Marlon Sanders and David Frey who are in our group, they've made comments inside of our group going, why aren't you guys teaching this stuff? You guys are doing it better and differently than everybody else, and I can't believe you're not teaching it yet. I imagine you guys would make a killing if you sold a course on this, right? So we keep on getting this feedback, these comments of like, we just want to see behind the curtain of your business. We just want to understand how you're growing the podcast, how you're making the money, how you're getting the equity deals, you know, how you're connecting with these big influencers you're getting on the show. Like, we just want you to peel back the curtains and just show us how are you doing this stuff.

Right?

And that feedback has come over and over and over again. And we went, okay, cool, we can do that. We can make that content. In fact, we've already made a lot of that content. We can, we can do that. So that was kind of the initial genesis. And then we realized, you know, what we really like, what Perry's doing, where he's bringing in the best of the best guest experts he can bring in every month. Right. He's bringing in like a list marketers and entrepreneurs and getting them to present to their group high level content that they really would. You know, it's not free stuff that they're out there giving away on podcasts. It's not the stuff that they're, they're, they're speaking up on stage at conferences and stuff. This is like, like he's getting them to really, really dive in and give the goods, give the real shit. Right. And I was inspired by, you know, we were inspired by what Perry was doing there. And so we came up with the idea of, all right, why don't we show behind this the, the curtains of our business model? And when somebody signs up for pod Hacker. That's what they're getting access to to start with, right? They're getting access to. This is the peeling back the curtains. This is our roadmap. If you want to follow in our footsteps and recreate what we've created in our business, this is the roadmap to do that. That's what you get when you sign up. That's the content that's available there. So how do we make this valuable to continue with us? How do we make it valuable to stay a part of this community? Well, there's a community element, right? People can interact with us, people can interact with other podcasters. People can swap being guests on each other's shows, swap promotions, things like that. There's that community element. But then, you know, coming back to that curation thing, we've been told we're really good at curating amazing people. That's what the podcast is, is us finding amazing people and curating those people, us finding amazing tools that we like and curating those tools as well as the people behind the tools.

Right?

That's what we're doing with the podcast. So with Pod Hacker, how do we take that to an even more deeper level? How do we curate at an even higher level where it's going to be in extreme value to our customers? And that's where we came to the idea of let's bring in the best experts, not our. Not necessarily just our friends, the best experts we can find on any given topic and have them speak about their topic in relation to podcasting. So, for instance, go and find the absolute best, best master at Google Ads right now. In my opinion, that's Mike Rhodes. Go bring Mike Rhodes into one of our monthly sessions and do a deep dive live session with customers on the live Zoom call so they can ask questions as well and just deep dive into, okay, you are the biggest Google Ads expert on the planet at the moment. If you were advising a podcaster, how would. What would you be telling them to do right now? Walk me through it. I will open up my Google Ads account and I will click around and do what you tell me to do. Show me what to do. And all the time you're on a zoom call, watching Mike Rhodes show me what I should do as a podcaster to grow my podcast with Google Ads. And you have the opportunity to ask questions during the session and get involved and interact. Right? That's how we're opening up our Rolodex to Pod Hacker customers on a monthly basis.

And. Hey, Mike, I know you're listening so shoot us a message and let us know if this idea sounds good to you.

We've already been chatting with him on Facebook messaging, so I don't think it'll be a total blindside, but I know he's listening, so.

Hey, hey, hey.

We talked to Rand Fishkin, right? Rand is somebody who's made. He did SEOmoz and now he's got SparkToro, which is just a phenomenal research tool for figuring out what podcast to go on, who to get on as guests for your show, what blogs to guest post on, what social media channels and what people on social media to.

Follow, how to outreach to them as well, how to outreach all of them.

So SparkToro is a tool that does that. And we've talked Rand Fishkin into coming and creating podcast pod hacker content for our members.

Twisted his arm, talked him into it.

So, you know, that's where we're going on the monthly basis of this is we are going to bring in the biggest guest experts in their field and we are going to get them to deep dive on. Specifically, what advice would you give to a podcaster? Right. That's one of our live sessions we're going to do every month. The other live session is our open office hours that we're going to do, where Joe and I are going to be in Zoom basically one day a month, and you can just jump on Zoom during that day and we're going to be hanging out, answering questions, discussing what's working now in our business, having a good old time, just chatting up what we're doing. Kind of like these therapy, like a live version of these therapy sessions, which are members only.

Having a great old time over here.

Yeah, we're just going to be sitting.

Around drinking and playing country songs on our guitars, answering questions around music.

But yeah, we're going to have open office hours where people are going to be able to pop in anytime during the open office hours, ask us questions, interact, learn what we're up to. And if our guest from the earlier live session in the month is available, we'll pull them in as well so that you can. They'll be able to answer questions as well. And that's kind of the game plan. On the monthly basis, you're going to get the community, you're going to get access to our Rolodex, you're going to get these live trainings where we deep dive with the biggest experts on the planet on their field, you're going to get these open office hours with us, you're going to get our tools stack. And as we, as we experiment with new tools, we're going to talk about, like, what tools we're using. And, you know, if we ever do, like, switch to different tools, we're going to keep you in the loop and you're just going to. You're going to have full access to our business model and what changes we're making and who we're talking to and who we're learning from.

That's basically what we wanted to do, is like, extend the curation model to a topic and serving an audience that we feel like is not served at all right now, which we've. From all of our conversations and from chatting with, you know, a bunch of people at these events. I mean, I'm looking at a, you know, a Pod Fest badge here from last year. I was going to do a little social media post. That's why it's hanging out here. But, you know, like, I should have a TNC badge too, and it'd be like a perfect blend because, like, we've spoken at both of the, like, the biggest conferences, the best communities, and in podcasting and also in digital marketing and each of those stages, we're kind of talking about the same thing, but each audience is like, holy crap, that's really smart. Holy crap, that's really smart. And we find ourselves kind of in the middle of both of them. Like a crazy blend, because we've been doing both of it for almost the same amount of time.

But it's a perspective shift that I think each side sees or wants.

Just doesn't know how to connect all the dots. And that's really our goal here. Our mission with podhacker is to not only show the behind the scenes of how we're doing it, but other frameworks. You're going to understand what other people's podcasts and businesses are doing with an asset like a podcast. And there's tons of shows out there that do make money in other ways that we don't do. There's guest centric models where people actually make the bulk of their income from charging their guests and getting them as a sponsor. And cool, that works.

There's narrative podcasts where people are actually telling stories without guests. You know, we'd love to have people come on and talk about how they're monetizing and growing, that kind of stuff for people that are interested in that as well.

Yeah, so many monetization is just like. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I don't know, I feel like both of us get lit up about it because we've seen it. Clubhouse is a perfect. We're doing some research, I feel like on Clubhouse with all these times we've been talking in the podcast growth and monetization rooms, like if you're on that app, it's like inevitable. One of those rooms are always going on there around podcasting. That's all they're talking about. They're not talking about how to ask better questions or to how to get maybe how to get guests too is another one. But it's like those are really the top three is like how to grow your podcast, how to make money, how to get cool guests. That's it. And this is solving that at crazy high level from all these perspectives, not just ours. And it's bringing in a blend of both, like digital marketing and podcasting. And I mean, I think it's just gonna be so damn fun and different.

Yeah, I mean, you bring up a good point too. Like when I feel like our brand, we have this interesting overlap where not a lot of other businesses do, where we speak at the Internet marketing related conferences about podcasting. Like all the digital marketer type people invite us to speak on podcasting specifically. And then we go to all these podcasting conferences and they're all asking us to spe about what we know from the digital marketing world. Right. So it's like you had a Venn diagram. We're kind of in that podcaster, digital marketer. And if you go to these two events, right, you and I, we've been to a lot of podcasting events, a lot of digital marketing events, they couldn't be different types of people, like more different. Right.

Like, well, perfect example is like when, when we first went to PodFest, we're like, oh, let's make the most badass copy in our title, like of our session. And because we have the ability to put exactly what we want agenda, so we used our copy skills because we're like, I bet we're gonna stand out. And we looked at the pamphlet and this is not anything against Chris or the team at PodFest, but it's like, you know, like a lot of folks, because I know it's podcasters in that sense that were doing the titling of their sessions. Yeah, they're not that persuasive or I mean, some were, but you could tell you could stand out just with great copy or good, decent copy.

Yeah, you'd see sessions that were things like multi channel distribution networks for narrative podcasts.

Right.

And then like you'd be scrolling through the book. And then our session would be like, how to growth hack the hell out of your podcast.

And.

It'S not like we're. I don't know, it worked. You know, like, we always had a shit ton of people at our session last year at podfest, at this one, that this name badge, I'm Holden is like, it was busting out of the room. There's. There's photos to prove it. And like, it's been talked about by Chris when he's talking to his PodFest speakers now. He uses that slide of our session, overflowing. And because it was just literally like the title was. Yeah, growth hack your podcast. Or like it was like 25 growth hacks for your podcast. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Yeah, that was it. And it freaking worked. And then we saw on the freaking agenda, remember in the app showed how many people were RSVP'd and we knew the capacity of the room and it was like 3x that. We're like, this is gonna be interesting.

3X that the capacity of the room was like 80 people and we had 800 registered.

I know, I have a screenshot. Actually, we should find that screenshot just like for memory's sake. But you're right. Yeah, we're like, this is gonna be interesting. Let's see what happens. And I don't think 800 people were actually there, but it was a shit ton.

It was more than 80.

Way more than 80. Yes. But it was hilarious. It was amazing. And I remember we were on stage and we were looking at. We're like, wow, this is insane. Like, no, I mean madness.

This is how insane it was. There was a stage in the room, right? We stood in front of the stage because there was so many people in the room that people were sitting on the stage. So we had people looking at us from like at the back of our heads while we were presenting. They had people sitting in the aisle. There's people literally sitting cross legged in the aisle. Like, no way. That room was up to fire code. But no, it looks awesome in photos.

Well, other than some of the ones that were literally the behinds of both of us. I think because people were so cool, they wanted to share these photos because they all realized like, whoa, this is kind of crazy. And that was actually a cool way we've connected with a lot of people. They're like, hey, I had these photos I want to send you. And then actually it turned into, hey, now I'm doing podcasts with those, dude.

Total side topic Side tangent. But that is a ninja tactic. If you want to connect with people. Go to the conferences, take pictures of them up on stage, and then DM them on Instagram or whatever and say, hey, I took pictures of your session. Do you want them?

Boom.

Instant connection to anybody that was a speaker at that event, and they'll love you for it. Little fun working hack there.

You can probably do that virtually if you thought about it, too, but in person. Who. What speaker wouldn't want to see themselves, you know, because they're like the ones without.

Who are they? Come on, man.

The ones that have done a lot of ayahuasca, Joe. The ones that have done a lot of ayahuasca.

Well, you're not going to find them on stage, bro, sitting around a campfire. You got to go track them down somewhere. It's true. We're only one ayahuasca session away, by the way.

Probably.

Thank you, Travis.

I like all the random references here.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, we missed a big piece of this whole thing. Well, all right. Yes. Because we jumped into Pod Hacker, which is. I don't know if we fully explained it, but I think we did a pretty decent job. But I want to make sure we circle back, actually, a couple thoughts around Pod Hacker still. I'm going to circle back and say about the team, talk about the team and structure and how the hell we're actually doing this.

Yeah, that is a big piece that we want to talk about.

One second, though. Podhacker, if you do want to join and I. Well, if you do. If you do, when you join, you should do it right now. It's probably not open right now. Maybe it is by the time you're listening. But go to podhacker.com. it's a cool domain because there's no subdomain right now. Just go to pothacker.com and maybe there's a waiting list, or maybe if it's.

Not open yet, there'll be a waiting list that you can get on. And, you know, all the early bird people are going to get a bit better deal than the later bird people.

Late birds sleeping in. That's fine.

So at the very least, go to podhacker.com and if it's open, sign up. If it's not open, then hook us up with your email and we'll let you know when it is.

Damn right. Either way, you gonna get hooked up. Yeah, so.

But there's a nice little mid. Mid roll call to action there, so let's do that often.

Let's Push it on. I don't even know how long we're going. It feels like We've gone for two hours, but I love it.

We're at 55 minutes right now.

Damn. We've covered a lot of ground. I think we'll wrap it up after.

We talk about the team. I have a couple wrap up questions that I'll ask you that I'll also answer for myself, like we tend to do on therapy. We can wrap up after talking about, like, all right, how did we assemble our A team? Like, I literally calling these people the dream team.

They are. I mean, there's no doubt they're crushing it. And so rewind. Who is the first per. Actually, no, I know it's Joe Kearns and Mike Alvarez, I believe are the. Well, obviously. Okay. No, we got to credit our current. Our core team, Jacob and Sue. I mean, they are the glue to everything we. We do. Like that I should continue.

Jacob's sue, the glue to what we do.

They like that.

But it's true, man.

Don't know what we do without you.

You're my boy Blue.

Okay, okay. Another line.

Oh, oh, sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to, like.

Rap talk over that.

Oh, you're not now. Okay. I was giving you a beat. All right. Mid beat.

Blew the moment already.

Sor.

Yes, you did. You only got one shot and you don't take it.

What's the M song?

Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I don't know the words.

It is actually in my workout mix, so I should know the words.

But you haven't been working out then, huh?

Actually, this week I've been pretty bad, but go ahead.

Called you out now you got to do it this weekend. You're screwed. You're just working out all weekend. All right, so no, the whole thing is Joe Kearns and Mike Alvarez. They reached out to us because they were listeners, but still are, of the podcast, and they hit us up literally in support, and we're like, dudes. I mean, they were just, like, super cool. It wasn't like a one of those, like, copy and paste emails where you could tell they're doing this to every podcaster they know or not really know, and they like, name one episode and then they're like, you know, that happens to way too much. No, Joe and Mike reached out and they're like, we want to work with you guys. Somehow, some way. I don't know what it looked like, but essentially we ended up joining forces, and now they are the email gurus. That literally took you, Matt, out of the ActiveCampaign inbox or, you know, interface every single day. And I know that was like, one of your struggles, but telling people that.

Because those emails still come from Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Well, you don't have to be in. That is what I'm saying.

You don't know if I want people to know that the emails that say they're from Matt Wolf are coming are being written by somebody other than Matt Wolf.

Well, I didn't say that part. But you just did.

Cut it if you wish.

Nah, we don't cut. We don't cut.

No, but the point being is, is that these guys have been watching what we're doing, listening to what we're doing for a long time, and creepy. I'm. Yeah, I mean, very. But at least they said, hey, we've been creeping on you, might as well work together there. I know. I saw you were going for that little delayed, like, where's my sound? Where's my drum? No, these guys showed up, raised their hand and like, they're badasses at what they do. They're great copywriters, great architects and all this stuff. Activecampaign. Boom. Those guys are joining. They're working with us. And you are definitely in part of those emails. You're talking to them like daily.

Yeah, no, I mean, it really is like our messages, they're just sort of.

Taking what we're saying and translating them into emails that people actually would want to read versus ramblings.

They're taking content of what we're putting out in all sorts of places. This podcast, products, ebooks, whatever, you know, and creating a journey. It's a path that we are now taking people, because it's like a customized journey that you're probably noticing if you're on the email list. If you're not, you definitely should be@flowchart group.com another action that. Just to see this in action. Those guys are architecting and all of it. And they're also obviously working with us on Pod Hackers. So it's like that's. That's a whole piece of the business we don't have to think about right now because they have done.

They're doing it.

Yeah. So Dream team started that way, or that was the addition. On top of our core team was those guys. Yep. And then, you know, we been. Chris Benetti is another massive addition. We'll start and we'll go with him because he's been on the show, he has members pro, and we're partners there. Chris is a freaking badass. That brings all the funnel skills together, the page building, the graphic designing team, the perspective of how to actually launch a frickin really cool offer and a membership on the back that does all this cool, tricky stuff. And then he's like doing it. I mean we're paying him to do it, but he's also. There's a cool overlap of cool. Well, it's probably going to benefit Members Pro. It makes us look great, makes him look great. It's a great win for everybody. And it's a journey too. That's kind of like our email journey.

The way that we're with Chris. We have like a weekly Members Pro check in call right where we kind of see all right, how's development going? Are some, what are our next moves with the marketing strategies. And we kind of wrap with him on like, you know, what are, what we should do next. One of the meetings we brought up the concept of, of Pod Hacker to him and we said, hey, can you refer us to somebody who, who can do a lot of the, the tech setup, right? Like somebody who can build the, you know, he, he used to do a lot of click funnels, work for people. He has Members Pro. That's his software that he runs, right? So we knew he would know some tech people. So we went to him and said, hey, we need somebody who can build the sales page for us, who can build out the members area for us, who can make sure, you know, build out the Thrive cart checkouts, make sure that the integrations between ActiveCampaign and ThriveCart and Members Pro and our landing page builder, everything's talking to each other and just dial in the tech piece of it. Can you recommend somebody? And he's like, dude, that's what I do. That's outside of Members Pro. That's like my thing. And so yeah, so we brought him on board because we're like, well, we know what he does is great stuff, right? So he was kind of the next one into the fold. And then I, on that same call, we said, you know, we also need a good graphics person, we need a good Pod Hacker logo. We're gonna need somebody to help with the design of the sales page. And Chris is like, dude, I've got the best designer. His name's Ed. I actually don't know his last name. But.

Don'T tell everybody.

Yeah, so, but so Chris has a go to graphic designer. We went and talked to him. He developed a killer logo for Pod Hacker and we're like, awesome. Well, we got our graphic designer, so now we've got the guys who are writing the emails for our business. We've got the person who's building out all the tech landing pages, members area, all that stuff. We've got a graphic designer making the logos and sales page elements and banner ads and all that kind of stuff for us. And so now we see this sort of dream team kind of forming.

Next step was.

I might have posted something on Facebook or, yeah, I posted something on Facebook saying, who's the sort of top tier copywriter right now? Like, who should we talk to as far as writing sales copy for a sales page? And George Bryant, he reached out and, you know, if you've been following along to the podcast. George Bryant, when we did our top 10 podcast episodes, he landed in two spots. Like, two of his episodes were in the top 10. So George is somebody that we love talking to. We love his advice. Mike and Joe, who write our emails, they follow his philosophies. They're students of his. So, like George Bryant, we value what he does and says very, very, very highly. And so when he recommended a copywriter, we chatted with his copywriter. We interviewed two or three other copywriters as well, and then came back to this guy, Al Alex, and went, this is our guy. He's gonna do the sales page and often page and all the copy across the board for pod hacker outside of email, which is already kind of being handled. So now we've got this dream team of email writers, page builders, graphics guy, and now a copywriter.

Yeah, I mean, this is, it's. It's kind of crazy how we've assembled all the people well. And then the challenge to ourselves, so after we realized, oh, we can have a, we have a dream team team on our hands is we now can get out of the doing of things. Like, our goal is like, okay, our jobs here is to architect this thing for us. But then the other goal is to lead our team and lead everybody around us, but get people excited for the launch, get some joint venture partners, affiliates in here, get testimonials from folks, all the, all these different things that are more of our superpowers. Create content, of course, you know, grow the brand. And we couldn't do a lot of that stuff if we're obviously in the mix of everything. And that's where this amazing team basically showed up from our podcast. You know, like, it's, it's kind of crazy because we trust everyone on our team, because everyone listens to this show. I feel like we're all kind of in meetings, I guess, together in this, in the form of this podcast, because you can, you know, we talk about our vision a lot, our language comes out this way, you know, just all. There's not a lot of direction we have to do because we just trust everyone that's working with us. And that's why we got the frickin dream team, man. And I mean, I'm sure, I know there's probably more people we're leaving out. Charlie Valor has also, you know, he's on the dream team. We're assembling more people as well.

Like Schloss.

Schloss, yeah.

Been on the podcast a couple times. We just brought him on board to take over Facebook ads for pod hackers specifically.

That's right. There's probably more that we just have amazing people. I mean, we even have a slight channel for all this and we're all like in there riffing around ideas.

So yeah, I think we've pretty much covered the core team and we've already seen this play out where.

This stuff is just kind of running. It's kind of gotten to a point now where it really exciting for us because we've been trying to get here for like 13, 14 years now. But we finally got it to a point where we're doing the podcast interviews. We're sort of the content creators on this podcast. But then besides that, we're the big picture game planners now, right? We game plan, here's what needs to happen and we've got this dream team. We tell the dream team, we get them all to sort of agree on like, here's the roadmap, let's go. And then they all work together to make sure the roadmap plays out. And this for us, you know, a lot of seasoned entrepreneurs are just like, yeah, that's what you do as an entrepreneur. But for us is such a big deal because we've gone like 13, 14 years now where we're it, right? We are the copywriters, we are the tech guys, we are the email guys, we are the ad buyers, we are the content creators. Like the list goes on and on like we were doing it all. And right now is kind of the first time in our, our 13, 14 year business where we're literally just podcasting and game planning and networking. We're talking to people.

Oh yeah. I mean, that's like. Yeah, it's, that's the number one thing. I mean, we do that through our podcast, you know, too. So you're Right. I mean, we can probably look back and be like, what the hell, man? We should have done this 10 years ago. Like, you. You came from an entrepreneur business, Matt. You know, your dad's run that thing. What most time you've been alive and even were in there managing people. It's like, you obviously knew that you don't have to do everything in your business.

Yeah, well, no regrets here because we learned all of this stuff, right?

Totally.

I don't think we could have done what we're doing now had we not struggled through it prior. Right. Like, had I not got in and taught myself Facebook ads, ads. Had we not both collectively studied the shit out of copywriting over the years, had we not. Had I not learned how to, like, build stuff on WordPress and do API integrations and do all that kind of stuff, all of these things that we finally got around to hiring. Had I not learned that stuff first, I wouldn't have known if it was a good hire. I wouldn't have known if these people are taking the right path. I wouldn't have known if the copy they're writing sounds solid to me or if there's holes that might give the wrong idea. All of these skills that we've learned by being in the trenches ourselves is super valuable when it comes to finally delegating those things.

Skills, right? Yeah. No, I wouldn't trade it at all.

And it's wild because now we could do that, but not need to get so deep into it. It's like, cool. You're already dangerous. You know, the foundation, the concepts. Now just kind of stay up with the. Keep your finger on the pulse of where it matters the most.

And then also get the best freaking people that you possibly can on your dream team. Because. Because if it ain't the dream team, then I don't know, I just feel like, why the hell do you have a team? You know? Like, you gotta have the right people. And I think. I don't know, this is just like. It's like a really cool time where I feel like we have. We just had the most support that we've ever had. And I think our mindset, which, like, I was chatting with our buddy Mark's Acosta Rubio earlier today, mindset's the thing. And that's what Roland Frazier even was telling us the other in that mastermind we were talking about. So. So, I mean, shout outs to those guys, too, for helping us kind of do this little perspective change in this all in a month, basically. So it's kind of wild. Sweet.

Well, I think we've sort of given the overview of everything we wanted to talk about for POD Hacker. So one last call to action on that. And probably not even the last call to action, there'll probably be another one. But podhacker.com, that's it. That's the whole URL. Go to podhacker.com. if it's open, you should get in now. If it's not open yet, get on the waiting list because it will be open soon and you're going to want it.

You are going to want it. And. Yeah, so Podhacker, I mean, it's. We're just get in soon because we are. I mean, what, we're going to close it. It's not going to be just perpetually open, I guess. Let's just say that really fast. So it's like, if you want in, get in there. Either way, the waiting list and that'll be, you know, if it's not open, jump on that bad boy.

Yeah, yeah, we're going to open it up and sort of like, kind of like cohorts, because we want. We want to be able to work with a group of people and not have like, new people coming in all the time and maybe sort of getting lost. And like, if, you know, if we're like three months in and new people sign up on our Q and A calls, people might be asking us about content that was actually released three months ago. They're not going to be on track with the people that were in three months ago. And, yeah, so it's not going to be something that's going to be perpetually open. We are going to have to close it down and we're going to open it in sort of.

I don't know the right word. I keep saying cohorts, but it's not really a cohort kind of thing.

It's like we have like a little blend thing going on. But it's, you know, it's sporadically throughout the year. We're not going to name any times now, but just know that that's the intention and that's why we're doing it. Because the whole POD hacker training, it's going to start off with you basically going on a journey through, you know, from launching a show. Even if you don't have a show, you can jump in there. It will give you everything you need to launch a show from nothing right now. And then it walks you through on this journey, depending on where or what you need at that time. Like our email systems do now. So it's pretty cool. I think that's the future of everything. Create journeys, man.

Podhacking. Oh, look at that. Another call to action. Oh, what you got?

A couple quick wrap up questions. Any new tools that you're digging right now?

Oh, man. I mean, I know we already mentioned SparkToro, but that is a great tool, especially since Rand sent that video, which actually is in the membership for EGP and probably will be in Pod Hacker as well, because it's that good. So if you're a member of Evergreen Profits membership, go go check out the Rand Fishkin video in there about how to get on podcasts by search using his methodology. It's freaking brilliant. It's only five minutes. And I was like, dude, this is like one of the most common questions that people, you know, ask us. And I even shared it with a couple friends today and they were both like, oh, okay. That just solved my problems. So I think SparkToro and just using it in creative ways like that has been really cool. But I want to hear something from you, and I'm sure I have another one I'll dig.

Yeah, I mean, I'm really digging Superhuman. I know I talked some shit about it in one of our outros, but my talking shit was a little bit more around their onboarding, which I can still talk shit about it now that I've been through it. They make it hard to buy a $30 a month product, but it's a really, really, really great product. I really like it. Superhuman is basically like an email system that's designed to help you just kind of like fly through emails really fast. It's like you kind of every single email, you decide, okay, do I want to keep this in my inbox or do I want to archive it? You kind of crank through them real quick, and then you can kind of go back to your inbox and look at just the ones that have something you need to do on them, and then you can kind of work through those. And it almost turns your email inbox into like a task list kind of thing. And it's been really, really effective. For the first time in, like, probably nine months, I get to inbox zero every day.

So, yeah, it's like a gamified thing. It's kind of cool because I'm happy that you, you're stoked on it because I was a little like 50. 50. I'm like, I don't know if Matt's gonna like this or not, because I've been liking it. And I think the cool thing is that you can mold it to your way of using email and it just feels kind of seamless. So. Good one, just. Another one is Streamyard. I know we've talked about it. It's not like a brand new tool, but we've been using it a lot more. And to do these live streams on Facebook and YouTube, because we're seeing on YouTube and we've heard this from Jacob, talks to Rob over at TubeBuddy and we've had him on the show. Rob on the show.

Another great tool.

Yeah, Tubebuddy was it. I know we have a URL for that. I don't know what it is, but.

It'S just tubebuddy.com EGP okay, there you go.

And it's a free thing. I mean, that's a badass tool that we use every day. And then Jacob was like, yeah, well, Rob said that YouTube lives are, you know, helping channels kind of pop off and they show that a lot more in the algorithm. So we're like, cool. Well, we have a demand for more, you know, more people wanting to get in the podcast. So let's do some lives. And we could probably repurpose that content in other places. But now that streamyard tool is just allowing us to do that, distribute it to our, you know, different locations. And then we have a file that I know you've used as even an extra podcast episode with actually. Who was it? Forget.

That was the Mario Filio one. And I actually recorded that on the Rodecaster. I didn't use the audio that they gave me, but. Yeah, well, I couldn't have.

Same. Same time we all. We did that. Yeah, but you could have. Yeah. So streamyard's a cool tool. If you're doing any kind of streaming or you want to take advantage of YouTube and favoring YouTube lives, then that's what I would recommend.

Cool.

I dig it.

Yeah, I. I don't have any other tools that really jump to mind right now other than the couple that we mentioned. I'm doing some really, really cool stuff on our website right now with Convert Box. I mean, that tool just gets better and better every time I log into it.

What's the new thing that Convert Box is doing now? I'm actually.

So now if you go to the Evergreen Profits website. Oh, yeah, you are. If you click on the start here button up in the top right. It sort of kind of gives you like. It's almost like a super signature on our website. Like, here are three ways that we can help you and based on which button you click it's going to kind of take you on a different journey into our website.

Yeah. Yeah. So evergreenprofits.com. yeah, little start button.

That's the top right.

Yeah, top right. Yeah. And I think it's on the main homepage now, too, which. Yeah, I mean, it looks promising in terms of the results so far. It seems like obviously it's new data, so who knows, but could be something we talk about later.

Yep. Cool. And then. So moving on from Tools. What is a book recommendation from you?

I haven't actually have.

Oh, okay. Go ahead. I was going to say you and I are going to have the same book this month, but it doesn't sound like we are.

I was just saying I have the Almanac of Naval Ravikant on my desk. I like to flip through it. Yeah, I don't read it cover to cover, whatever. I've been cycling. So I'll give you three books. That's one of them. I just finished Ask by Mark Victor Hansen. We just recorded with him yesterday, which.

I don't think has been out is out yet. As of this recording. I don't think that episode's out yet.

So keep a lookout for that episode with Mark Victor Hansen and his wife Crystal. They wrote a book called ask. And I don't have the subtitle in front of me, but it's essentially the whole thing is to. It shows you exactly why asking questions literally can create a different life for yourself. Oh, Matt has the notes in front of him.

It's called the bridge from your dreams to your destiny.

There you go. So it's already out so you can check it out. And I recommend getting it sooner than later because it literally like it. It shows you different questions and how to use questions to create success in your life in whatever area of your life you want. And so that was a great book. And then last one is, I've started. Super shoot.

Super better. Yeah, that was the book that's.

I was literally trying to read it on the back here. I see it on your bookshelf.

Yeah, well, because when I said we might have the same book this month, that's why that was the book that I was referring to. Yeah, it was actually a book that Tim Ferriss mentioned on his podcast maybe three years ago or something. I don't even remember. I think he was either like a random show or one without a guess. But I remember Tim talking about this book being like an excellent book, and I picked it up back then and it's been sitting on my bookshelf I don't think I ever even opened it after buying it. It was one where I bought it used for, you know, 17 cents on Amazon, but then you pay like $3 shipping or whatever. And so I bought it because I found it super cheap. And it's just been sitting on my bookshelf. And I finally cracked it open and I was like, damn, why have I been sleeping on this book? This book is freaking good. But it's basically, essentially how to a, leverage games in your life to sort of ease anxiety and depression and, you know, get. Get yourself out of funks and stuff, actually by playing games. But then it also also. It's also about how to, like, gamify everything in your life so that you get more things done, like gamifying your exercising, your dieting, your working, your family life, turning pretty, like, figuring out how to turn everything into a game and then playing the game on a daily basis to sort of make yourself super better. It's called super better, as in like, superhero kind of thing, like from a video game.

And it's. It's just a excellent book with like, real actionable, tactical. Like. Like, here's an exercise you can go do right now, you know?

Yep. Oh, well, it's, like, littered with that. I mean, that's what I like about it the most, is that you're literally taking. You're becoming super better in real time as you're going through the book. And you'd be foolish not to do that in real time. Like, I love how it's written in a way where it's like, yeah, you're literally growing through the process of reading. It's not like you read a book and now you have to go try to do the work, which is most people won't.

No, the book literally prompts you and says, all right, set this book down now and go do this. When you come back, we're going to move on. Right. It's like you're working through the exercises as you're reading.

I mean, it's like little things like this. I mean, you're not seeing. Opening my hands, almost like I'm about to receive something. I do this all the time now. And it's just something in the book. And it's like if you walk into a room or do this for, like a minute or something, 30 seconds before, I don't know, you have a meeting or something, it just kind of like chills you out if you just bring your palms up. And I've noticed, I'm like, yeah, it actually releases Tension in my neck. And then sometimes, like, just chills, anxieties that I might have or it slows me down. I'm like, damn, that's rad. So it basically gives you a bunch of these little hacks and tools and you can just implement them whenever you need to. And it's like a gamified thing, like you said. Really cool.

Cool, sweet.

Cool.

That's all I got. I just wanted to throw those in because I usually like to talk about what sort of little tools or books or whatever. Any other things. YouTube channels, movies, documentaries, TV shows. Anything else cool you want to mention before we wrap this bad boy up?

I've started Yellowstone, finally watching Yellowstone. I love it. I'm only two episodes in, but it looks better.

I actually think the later seasons are even better.

I work slow through. I don't watch a lot of tv, but. But this is good stuff, man. Like, I love the. I don't know, I just like how deep the storyline is and all. That reminds me of, like, Sons of Anarchy, you know, it's that old.

It's similar. In fact, the guy who. The creator of it was one of the actors on Sons of Anarchy, he actually got out of acting and became, like, a showrunner instead. And, yeah, I don't know if you remember Sons of Anarchy in the, like, the early seasons, there was, like, a cop. He dies later on. Spoiler alert. But there's like a. But the guy who plays the big.

Boy, the guy with the belly. Right, the bald guy.

No, no, he's like a big jack dude, like, buff. Like cop.

Yeah, shoot. Keep talking, though. Keep talking.

Anyway, he. He. He's the guy who created it. So there's some Sons of Anarchy influence in the show. And it's also on the same network that Sons of Anarchy was on. Yeah, yeah, it's a good show. I actually haven't been watching, like, any TV at all lately. I've been more. I've been more into gaming lately.

What have you got me playing?

My kids have gotten me into Minecraft, so I'm actually, like, sort of nerding out on Minecraft. It's like, possibly the nerdiest game I could possibly say that I'm into, but it's addicting as hell.

That's so cool. I love it. You gotta show me, Ari. You should, whenever you finish your house. Because I know the last time you told me you were building a house, you didn't have a roof on it. And then I asked you. It does now.

And a basement and a tree house and A farm and.

Wow, you've been busy.

Send a screenshot that should be like, we gotta, we gotta show folks what you're building, man. Posted in the Facebook.

I'm start streaming it to Twitch. I'm gonna become a Twitch gamer playing Minecraft.

Oh, dang.

Although I'm not good at Minecraft at.

All yet, so I don't even know what it is really. I gotta have either. I want your kids to explain it to me. I want to. They will, they will, I know they will.

And they will explain it for seven hours.

Well good. They should have a Twitch channel then. And actually, you know, maybe they can make money off of that.

My kids wanted to start a Minecraft podcast with me and we actually recorded one episode of it, but it's practically unlistenable.

Well, I know how they are whenever like the microphone gets in their hands and they're just like, yeah, that's not going to be enjoyable to listen to. I get you another couple other things actually. I listen, I watched this the other night. Battle Battlestar Galactica. Remember that? Obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've watched through the whole show twice.

Yeah, you're a better man than I am because that was in my phase where I've just beaten narcoleptic and fall asleep through a lot of movies and most of my life I was that way. You know, this don't really do that anymore, but that was one where I loved. But it's like, it's like, I don't know, I just had a hard time really following along and it's a very complex show. I watched a YouTube video that basically explained the entire show in eight minutes and it was the most insane thing ever. And even Heather, my wife, she didn't remember most of the stuff that she's like, holy crap. And I'm like. And I think there was more because there were other series and like build ons. I recommend it like for you or anyone interested. And it's so damn crazy because I'm like, whoa, this is trippy, man. Like, I don't know, I was just.

Like, kind of like that wisecrack channel that I pointed to where they're like sort of analyzing shows and explaining what's really going on behind the scenes.

But this was wrapped rapid fire. It was just like this happened, this happened. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I have to watch it because I've seen the whole show so I don't really care about getting it spoiled but.

Well, exactly. Well, it even said in the beginning it's like, FYI, this is a massive spoiler alert, so. And let's go. Bye. And it was just like, I was just thinking of the writing and, like, we talked to Sean Vossler recently about copywriting and, like, creating Heroes Journeys and all these things. That story has, like, a million of them wrapped in the same storyline, and then they're intertwined, and it's just like. And then hearing that, I was like, damn, respect for that show now.

Massive, dude. My favorite storyteller has to be Dan Harmon. Dan Harmon is the guy behind Community and Rick and Morty.

I think those are really the only shows that he's really known for. But his story arc and the way he writes stories. There's YouTube videos where you can find how Dan Harmon writes stories, and I've studied how he writes stories, and. And, like, he's one of my favorite storytellers because he has, like, a different twist on the hero's journey where, like, the traditional hero's journey is, like, by the end of the journey, you're like, a changed man. And, like, you know, both physically and mentally, you've gone through a lot of changes. Well, his hero's journey arc is like a circular arc where by the end of the story, you're back to where you started, realizing that you should have never taken the journey in the first place.

Yeah. You're like, wtf? Why the hell wtf, mate? I didn't go anywhere that sucked.

It makes for, like, super hilarious storytelling, and it's why Community was such a good show and Rick and Morty is such a good show, is they follow his formula with every single show. And there's tons of people break it down on YouTube. Like, you could find all sorts of channels of people breaking down the Dan Hart story arc.

I literally looked it up. It's called the story circle technique. Just looked it up. It's his writing style. If you look it up in a. I guess he has something called the Sirens of Time Titan coming out this year.

Also, the Sean Vossler episode we're referring to, that'll be coming out soon, everybody.

It is because we're talking about episodes.

That we've already recorded but aren't released yet.

Yeah, no, yeah, it's all good. They're coming out. Just a little teaser alerts. The other thing I was going to say is.

Yesterday at the time of this recording, you told me, go check out Elon Musk on Joe Rogan. And I listened to, like, 45 minutes or something. I was like, this is insane. It's like, I texted you. I was like, this is wild because I'm like, like I've learned how gravity works and how space works and launching a rocket to Mars. Like it's just wild to like listen to Elon and like really dumb down things, Lehman's terms. But it's like some of the most complex crap that's being made. And I was like, that's just a fascinating, like to expand your mind. You're like, wow, we are literally nothing for one. But like just the logic and thinking that goes behind stuff.

Yeah, I haven't tuned in yet. I, I, I noticed that Elon was on yesterday and I pointed it out to you and I still haven't listened to it myself yet, but spoiler alert.

I don't know how Joe Rogan. No, I'm going to leave it right there. He doesn't know something about rockets and it's kind of an obvious one.

And I was reading some Reddit posts that were like, what the hell, Joe Rogan, how the hell do you know that? You've seen Elon three times on your show now. Don't look.

Well, I'll tune into that next.

I'll leave it there.

But yeah, we can go ahead and wrap this one up now at about an hour and a half in, I'm gonna give two calls to action. I'm not gonna give our normal call to action. Cause we got a better call to action this time. Go to podhacker.com, which is where you're gonna find out all about what we were just talking about today. So go there. And also, let's shout out Easy Webinar.

Heck yeah. I pulled up their website because I wanted to change this up and we probably should do this more often. So.

Call to action. I'll just call it right out because you've probably heard it before. Easy webinar. It's an easywebinar.com hustle. They're hooking you up with the fat discount, depending on what you join over there. But basically it's an all in one webinar platform tool. If you're doing webinars, this is your tool. Easy Webinar. And I was going to, I will read a testimonial on their homepage. Great investment. Oh, this is Janelle Stewart, a business coach. Great investment. With webinar or Easy Webinar, I'm able to bring a visual experience to my school courses. I offer training, coaching and sell through the Power of Webinars. It's made me over $50,000 in sales using Easy Webinar as my method of promotion.

I like how when you were reading a testimonial by a female, you made your voice deeper.

Didn't even think about that.

I did. Well, it was awesome.

But everybody, it was awesome. Easy webinar.com maybe that's her voice. I think it was.

What's her name? Julie.

Janelle.

Janelle.

Yes.

Everybody listen to Janelle. And Joe, you get Easy webinar over@easywebinar.com Hustle.

Hustle. Yes. All right, well, share this episode, please, if you've lasted. I always say this. It always feels like this has been a marathon every episode.

Why do we always feel like we're apologizing at the end of the episode? I'm sorry for talking for so long.

No, it's freaking stoked, man. I actually feel like we can continue this thing for a while, but we won't. So gonna share this around. But, you know, anyone who's interested in podcasts, I would say, and like the whole POD hacker concept, share it with them. I think it'd be kind of cool and get a little behind the scenes action, you know, pretty fun.

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

Go get it.

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