Therapy Session - Matt Wolfe Is Back!

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

All right, in this first episode, and yes, I said the first episode that I'm doing with my not co host anymore of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, but he is now going to be a recurring guest. My fellow friend and brother from another mother, Mr. Matthew Wolf. Matt Wolf or, or E Flow, he goes by. And I'm bringing him on as the first guest episode of this new evolved version of Hustle and Flowchart to do a nice little recap to show what the heck did we actually do in 2022? And there was a nice gap in the podcast of Dead Air and there's a lot happening behind the scenes. We did this whole venture into Web3 and gaming. Matt is now doing other stuff. We have officially split as business partners and we, we're completely doing separate things. But we're bringing him back here all the time because he's up to some really cool stuff and it's kind of picking up a lot of steam. Actually, it's not kind of. It is. And we're going to dive into all the cool stuff he's been up to right now. And let's just get into it. This is going to be just kind of like a just all over the place conversation. But it does, it does follow a nice, you know, flow that's going to keep you engaged. And even if you are new to this show. Well, if you are new, this is my co host that I've had since, since the beginning of this show six years ago. And you're gonna love this guy in the way he thinks and he's gonna bring in, he's the one that's always been like my tech arm. He's always showed me what's new and how to apply things in terms of building online and then also wrapping in the marketing around it, too. So Matt Wolf is a G at that, a genius and gangsta genius. And go make sure to check out his website. You know, he has Matt Wolfe, that's M A T T W o L F E.com and also his new site, which is picking up a lot of steam that's covering a bunch of tools, a lot of AI tools and other tools. That's over at Future Tools. I. Oh, go get on there. Get on the email list and go down the rabbit hole, because that's what these episodes are going to be. This is the first episode of two, and then the second episode will be the next one to follow this one. At least that's the plan. Let's get into this conversation. You're going to love it. You. Here is the conversation with myself and Matt Wolf. We're back. We're back together. It's been a while, my friend. How have you been? How have you been?

Been good.

Yeah. I mean, this is Matt Wolfe, by the way. Just put your audio to it. Everyone should know that, right?

Maybe. I don't know. I mean, you probably have some new listeners. Since the changes have happened, things have changed.

Yeah, we had some previous episodes before you. You came back onto the show, which were doing right now, and we've been chatting about this for a while. Is there's been a gap in time. And before this, it was about two months or so of kind of dead podcast air figuring out, like, what is this thing? And a lot of stuff has been happening in that gap. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, let's be honest. It's been two months of dead air. But then, you know, probably two months prior to that of not our favorite episodes we ever put out.

There we go. And I want to talk about that. And I said that a little bit in those solo episodes. But yeah, it's this whole 2022. So last year at the time of this publishing thing here, we. It was a year of kind of figuring out what the heck are we doing, but navigating some really new waters all the way through, but making, like, huge progress. I feel like we learned so much. We tested our experience in a way, like building up our credibility, doing the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, you know, reaching for the best guess and all that stuff. And I feel like we translated that really well to the Web3 crypto gaming space. That you think? What do you think? Oh, yeah.

I mean, so I guess kind of what happened was sort of at the end of 2021, we started to get really into the Crypto stuff. Right. We had Gary Henderson on the podcast. We had Joel Calm on the podcast. We had, you know, people from, like, brands like Animoca on the podcast. And we really started to go down that rabbit hole and. And get excited about the crypto stuff. We came across our old buddy Randy Prim, who we actually knew from, like, 10 years prior. He goes by Crypto Buffalo. He's been on a few episodes, so you've heard that name probably. And he was really deep down the web. Three rabbit hole. Like, we were like, I don't know, like, just a teeny bit deep. He was like, you know, the full, really deep. Yeah, I was going to make some dirty jokes, but I won't.

I'm going with the boot reference. Like, the boot was all the way. Yeah, he's the one really educated us, like, immersed us into that world.

Yeah. And so we decided, you know what, the marketing stuff, the tactical, the digital marketing, the.

Talking to leadership coaches and all of that kind of stuff, at least in my mind, I can't speak for you, but at least in my mind, it started to feel a little Groundhog Day. Like, almost all of our conversations on the podcast with our guests were kind of the same conversations over and over again. You know, kind of started to feel like that, especially with a lot of the, like, Internet marketing type people. Nothing against any of them. I love all the people.

We're all.

We're good friends and have good relationships. It's just, you know, from the interviewer perspective, it kind of started to feel like, all right, this is just the same conversation over and over again. And so I think both of us were getting kind of antsy and like, hey, let's talk about some different stuff. Which is where we started to get to the crypto stuff. And we started talking to Randy more, and that's. That's where Hard Fork came from. It was really originally going to be a brand around crypto and blockchain, and it wasn't initially a gaming brand. But then we decided, hey, let's. Yeah, it was just media, Hard Fork media. And so we decided, let's niche down a little bit. Let's focus on, like, a specific niche in blockchain. And I still, to this day, really, really believe that blockchain gaming is going to be fricking massive. I still have all the faith in the world in blockchain gaming. It's just in this bear market right now. It's a tough space to be in.

Right?

It's. It.

Oh, it's all. It's a confusion. Like, everyone's figuring out what the hell, what are they doing? It's years out from adopt, like, more adoption. Think of all the trauma, the PTSD that people have in a lot of ways, and it's growing pains, man. It'll happen for sure.

Yeah. So that was kind of the path that we went down for the last year or so. I mean, pretty much 2022, like, the entire year was us focusing on blockchain gaming with Hard Fork Gaming. We eventually rebranded as Hard for Gaming with. We decided to put a little more focus on the video side and the YouTube side as opposed to the podcast side. The podcast almost became an afterthought of us just, like repurposing some of the videos that we were making for the video side. And that's sort of what happened over.

The course of the year that summed it up. Yeah. 2022 was that year in flux for a lot of stuff and a lot of things. And like I said in some solo episodes that hustle this Hustle and Flowchart podcast, I say that as like the previous thing, which I don't think it is. It's always had these evolutions. Like, over the last five years, this show has turned, like, so many different paths, and it always followed our interests. And I think that it should. You know, you're going to get a better piece of content out of something that we're truly passionate about. And yeah, it was. I would say it was ground hoggy day, especially when it was very tactical. But also at the same time, like, I think that's. There's a blessing and a curse for having a co host, you know, and 100%, like, I've just. I've thought it through. I'm like, wow, this can be so much easier in so many ways, but also a lot more difficult in some ways, too. Like, it's a yin and yang kind of thing, I guess, but. But we had. And I guess I'm going to rewind really fast. Anybody who's new here, like, Matt and I started this whole thing together five years or so ago. You probably know the dates. I haven't looked it up yet.

Six years ago, it was January of 2017.

There we go. All right. I could see.

Wow.

So, I mean, we evolve that thing so many ways over so many years. So many different business models attached to content. Us being content marketers since day one in this industry, in marketing. So, yeah, it's just interesting how I just see it as another evolution. The show and this episode. You're back. And I would say, like, you're not the host anymore, but you are going to be a recurring guest because what you're doing right now over at FutureTools IO, like everyone's gotta go to that site, bookmark it, put it on your homepage or whatever your startup welcome screen is on your browser. Because the thing is like aggregating all of the to the minute tools, these things that are released in the AI world, covering all these things from creating images, avatars, music, slide decks, words you can cheat on your college essays.

I imagine a lot of people will.

Mark Andreessen put a tweet out at the time of this recording talking about how there was a teacher all in arms on Reddit saying, like, this D student has the most phenomenal essay ever. And I ran it through, turn it in for proofreading and you know, the freaking checks, and it passed. I have no proof it's happening. Yep. Yep. So I want to like this. And we're going to do a second parter of this episode because this first episode, this is us legit catching up. And it's been a while, like Matt and I, over the last two months, three months, haven't chatted a whole ton because you've been going deep into the hard fork and the future tools and I've just been doing my thing.

So the second episode will go deep dive into AI and these tools and some of the coolest things that you're seeing. And I would say your predictions. I'm always curious about where you think things are going.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to take a breath and talk for a second.

Yeah, no, I'm excited about that. And kind of the way I picture this, and I think this is sort of the vision you have in your mind as well. You know, we're both fans of Tim Ferriss and we're both fans of Kevin Rose. Right. And Tim Ferriss has a great podcast where he's the primary host of the show and he interviews great guests and sometimes does solo episodes where it's just him talking. But then, you know, once every few months, they do the random show. Right. And what's the random show? The random show is where Kevin and Tim get together, have some drinks, talk about all the cool tools they've been seeing, the cool projects they're working on, you know, what's going on in their worlds, essentially. And I love that idea. Right. Like maybe a once a month kind of thing or once every other month or whatever cadence we figure out of. Like, all right, let's just do like a brain dump on here's all the cool shit we've been doing.

Totally. And really I want to keep tapping into this AI world with you because you've always been the guy I go to for tech insights and like not tutorials, but you've always created the tutorials. So I watch them anyway because they're brilliant. And that's what you're doing at Future Tools. Not to just spam everyone about Future Tools IO but you should follow and do all that stuff, you know. Follow what? Matt Wolf on YouTube I think is where you say you're posting, right?

Yeah, yeah. Mr. E. Flo is the channel on YouTube.

Yeah, there it is. Ignore what I said.

Although I'm sure if you search Matt Wolf you would find it too. I mean, I'm not, I'm not like trying to hide my real name or anything. I'm doxed.

Stay with the E Flow, man. I love it. I love it. But yeah, so I guess going back all the way to. I think, yeah, recurring guests, random show. You got to watch random shows or listen to them. But that's where this will be. Yeah, a catch up session with all the cool shit that we've been doing, cool tools, the latest updates, things that you should follow along with news, yada, yada, yada, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So we're recording this currently, you know, right before Christmas. I'm not going to say any dates or anything, but just so you know, because I wanted to get Matt as the very first guest episode going into this bad boy. I am going to have solo episodes. So kind of like a la Tim Ferriss a little bit. You're right. It's like that. And I want to bring on other guests and friends like James Schramko and you know, folks like Brad Costanza. We were chatting the other day and told him about it and there's a list of other folks that are coming on as well. But I think that like that theme is always cool when you have some familiarity and then you just talk about the cool shit and kind of like a really unique, not raw way, but less of a presenter way. I feel like that's what we always did well with guests.

Yeah, yeah. It's like going back to the therapy session episodes that we used to call them. Right.

Where we kind of forgot about those.

Whatever comes out comes out. We never really went in with a game plan on those ones.

Maybe we.

Those were almost a lot of people's favorite episodes, you know, I'm sticking with the name.

It's gonna be called therapy. I didn't even think about it. But that's whenever you're back, not with anyone else. I don't know who's the therapist here?

What if you get an actual therapist and want to interview him on your podcast?

Maybe. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know.

That'll get across that bridge when you come to it.

I will. I will. So, yeah, let's. I guess let's talk about, like, what are you working on now? Well, how about this? Let's talk about Hard Fork, that evolution still. So we talked about it on the podcast side, why there, why everyone or some of y' all might have listened to, you know, why are we talking to game developers over here? And, hey, we had Justin Kahn on. He was the founder of Twitch. That's rad. And Justin, awesome. Like, really awesome. He's doing fractal is so on the salon network, a whole marketplace. And check it out, if you're into that, like, definitely follow along because that guy's building huge things. But, like, we bounced around from guests and, you know, a lot of folks have no clue or maybe no interest in a lot of it, but a lot of people did as well.

Yeah.

And I feel like it kind of did mirror what Hard Fork was doing all year long. And so, you know, I bailed on a. Bailed on you guys about. I don't know, I forget even the months. I don't count these kind of things. Probably around October and early October. What has gone down, man? Because that's about when the podcast stops. So, like, fill us in and then we'll pick up, like, what you're working on now.

Well, do we want to be real on this podcast, or do we want to pretend like everything's always great all the time?

Well, me as your therapist, I would just say, stop hiding your shit, Matt. Take off that mask.

We basically went an entire year running a business that made almost no money whatsoever, is what happened.

We made some, and it was with, I would say, the top of the top inside the industry. And then there was no more money. And, yeah, you're right, there was not any money in it.

Yeah. So, you know, it started with us wanting to make live streams, Right. There was a really cool show that. That Randy Buffalo was. Was putting out called NFT Live. He stepped away from NFT Live because he wanted to kind of pursue a different path there. We partnered with him at Hard Fork to kind of recreate what he was doing at NFT Live, but then specifically focus In. On. On gaming, right? NFT Live was the broader NFT crypto market. We were going to niche down and create kind of the same thing, but in the gaming space. And we created LFG Live, right? And so we started doing live streams with LFG Live. And then, you know, it was a struggle because we would do these live streams and in the early days we might have 30, 40 people show up to them, but then the next one we'd have 20 people show up, and then the next one we'd have 10 people show up. And then, you know, next thing you know, we're live streaming to like, nobody. And we're like, all right, this, this is obviously not sustainable and going in the wrong direction. Let's pivot a little bit. And then we pivoted to, let's make all of our stuff prerecorded, let's stop trying to do it live. Then we can edit stuff, we can polish it up, we can SEO it, and we can really put out this content in a really kind of polished way and model guys like Colin and Samir and some of the bigger gaming YouTubers that are out there. And, oh, yeah, he's got his Colin and Samir shirt on right now. And we were kind of going down that path for a little while. And then when you stepped away, we went, okay, maybe let's try the live thing again. Let's go back and start doing live streams. And, you know, Buff's idea was let's, let's start live streaming every single day. Let's just start going live, you know, Monday through Friday, five days a week, and see what, what happens. Well, we did that for about three days and weren't getting a lot of people to show up on these live streams still. And I don't know if it was, you know, the content people weren't finding valuable or if it was just an overall symptom of the market, right? We decided to go down this path and literally a couple months into going down this path of blockchain gaming, crypto had its worst year it's basically ever had, right? You had.

It was ftx, right? And all these other crazy things going down.

Oh, yeah. But I mean, even before ftx, right, we, you know, we were into, you know, you and I were both into a lot of the Defi platforms, and almost every Defi platform we were invested in went to nothing, right? It just like they all sort of died. We were in one called Wonderland. Lost a crap ton of money in Wonderland. And then, you know, and then what happened with the Terra Luna. Right, you're forgetting about that one. That was the biggest thing that's ever happened until frickin FTX happened.

I did forget about. And I know a lot of listeners, unfortunately were involved in Terra. I mean, tons of people were. So yeah, it was huge.

Yeah, so it was just like one domino after the other, just taking the crypto market one by one. And we were trying to build a business in the crypto market as all of this was happening.

And.

And again, like, I still think crypto, I still think gaming is like the best use case of crypto at the moment. Gaming and defi are probably the two areas where I could see it really taking off. It's just, I don't really feel like anybody's figured it out yet. And we're out there screaming from the rooftops to nobody wanting to listen. Right. And so that is really the story of Hard Fork over the over 2022. And you know, the two months after you were gone, it didn't really change. That was really what continued to happen was it was just getting less and less viewers, it was getting harder and harder to get, you know, people searching for these topics and it just got rougher and rougher. And while I believe in this market and I really believe that the blockchain gaming is going to be big, I got to make a living like you and I went a year without taking fricking paychecks basically. Right. Like we got to make. We got to make a living. So that's when I started really getting into a lot of the AI stuff and I really started to pivot into AI. And even on Hard Fork, we were running out of stuff to talk about in the gaming space because there was no games launching. There was nothing for us to play, there was nothing for us to really talk about. And so even our Hard Fork Gaming live streams eventually just started talking about AI for 90% of the live streams, because that's what I was passionate about and getting excited about. And that's really like Hard Fork in a nutshell right there.

I think it summed it up. And even before getting into the media, we explored and we talked about it on the podcast. Remember the whole guild concept where there was owning basically us as a, as a business would own a bunch of assets, digital assets that would be lended to groups of people to then play games with. And then there's a whole financial component to that, of course. So like we would have been in the middle of a lot of things going down and likely would have Raised capital. Like there was a lot of different things that would have been made it way more complicated.

Oh yeah. I think it would have been in worse shape for sure. Yeah.

So it's. And this is man, over the last whatever gap in time. I'm not going to say any numbers anymore. It's like over two months. I, I have reflected on that so much and like thought about damn, what pushed me so hard in 2022 to want to pursue this. And I think it is because we were able to dive in so deep. At least this is how like I'm kind of thinking about it now. And I've like journaled so much and all that, but it's like we've used our skills and like some of the, you know, the people we know in the industry. That's always helpful to like point you to the direction of the industry or like where we should probably cover in terms of where we want to take a business model. And we all saw it like we, our belief and we still believe but the industry like there's a lot of market conditions and things that just were freaking shitting on everyone's party. Wasn't just us but the fact that we, we never took on capital from any investors. But we were still so fricking die hard heads down into we're going to make something happen this industry. Whereas like, I mean for me the reason why I did bail is it was, it was just ramping up all of my stress and like all this. But like the vision was so strong. It's crazy how like I don't know, I just reflect on that. I'm like, it's fascinating how long we did go and how many variations of the model we chose.

I honestly look back at 2022 and go, I still don't totally know how I survived that year financially.

Because I mean I was draining bank accounts, draining savings, tapping into retirement accounts just to like get by. We sold a fricking car like it was a crazy year, man. Yeah, cool car.

Yeah. Just cause I got the same one. But we won't need to go deeper. But yeah, the whole thing is, you're right because we were doing similar things, I mean different scenarios and what's going down. But at the same time like we sacrificed so much and we were working our asses off and the fact that doing like streams in general were a lot of work, learned a lot in the production. That's where like Randy is.

He's a genius at that stuff.

So fucking awesome, man. And I take away so much actually didn't do it with this episode kind of. But like, I had a rundown. I've. I've rundowns now for. And. And I work through them. It's nice. It's a process. And he's really helped me learn a lot about how things can connect into a production that's super pro looking, but also is not that complicated to set up. And like, once you get moving and it's repeatable, scalable, and that's. It sucks because we had tried to apply every one of those kind of models that he would know or we know and like try to morph this stuff together. And the market just kind of. I don't know, there was a lot of stuff working against us. Yeah, it's a good lesson though. Like we picked a market, but like, we're way too fucking early. It felt like, and it's probably true.

I mean, I really felt like, you know, it was testing my marketing skills. And throughout the year of 2022, I really started to feel like I suck at what I do, man. Like, this is not like I've been like. I started doing digital marketing. You and I both did back in 2007 when we started How I How I Will Be Rich. I think that was our first site that we created together, right? We started digital marketing back in 2007. We quit our day jobs in 2009 to pursue it full time. Right from 2009 all the way through to like the end of 2021, we were doing fairly decently for ourselves with our various affiliate promotions and courses and agencies. And, you know, we dabbled in all of this stuff and had always kind of done pretty well and I was feeling pretty confident. I know what I'm doing when it comes to marketing, right? Like, I know my shit when it comes to SEO, paid ads, and, you know, getting attention on things. And the last year just really, really slapped my confidence in the face and went, man, if you can't make this work, then you must suck at marketing. Right? And that's really how I felt. Like over, like, you know, maybe six months in. I still kind of had faith about six months in. And then, you know, maybe the last six months or so, I started going, all right, is this going to be the path? Is this the thing that's going to work out? And when you start questioning that stuff and you start like continuing to try to build something but have all these questions going on in the back of your mind of is this going to be the thing? It's hard to really push forward on something and dedicate everything you've got to that knowing in the back of your head this might not work out. Right? Like, it's kind of like if you're dating somebody and, you know, all right, you're not going to be in this for the long run. It's not, you know, there's not a future with this person. You're not going to go and, like, propose to that person. Right. Like, go deeper. Yeah, yeah. And just go deeper. Right. And. And I think, you know, you ripped the band aid off sooner than I did. Right. But, like, I beat you to the race. But, like, that, like, it was really, really starting to crush my confidence. And then when I started Future Tools, and, like, we're talking, like, at the time of this recording, like, two weeks ago, right? Like, I started Future Tools, I went and shared it on Twitter. It's the most popular tweet I've ever had in my life. I went and put it on Facebook. And, like, right now it's blowing up with all sorts of, like, people chatting about it and DMing me and saying, hey, how can I get involved? And. And I'm just like, I'm back, baby. Like. Like, maybe I don't suck at marketing. Maybe there's just nothing in the crypto space right now for me to do marketing on, dude.

Or they don't love the marketers too, you know?

Yeah, that's also a factor there, too.

It definitely is. We learned that. And you're right, man. And that's where I didn't know you posted it on Facebook. I gotta get back on Facebook more often still. I'm like, it's this habit, dirty habit. I gotta, like, it's weird.

Dirty habit of not checking into Facebook.

I know.

I don't know if most people describe it that way, honestly.

I know. I know. It's like, what, you got problems? Yes. Big problem. I gotta market my stuff, too.

Jeez.

But no, I figured, Ben, like, there's such a community there. It's like this podcast. Like, I've said it before. I feel like I've neglected and we neglected a lot of folks and listeners on this show, but also I've done the same so much on Facebook. And, you know, I'm on Twitter, but I don't even post that much on Twitter. Twitter's interesting. Obviously, there's all sorts of changes in Elon, and I don't even know the state of Elon at the time of the publishing thing of this point is, like, I just. I consume more time there and not Facebook, but. And Facebook, like you said, there's. That's our roots, man, too.

Like, yeah, I posted on Facebook, literally. I mean, this will actually give away the day we're recording, if I say this, but I posted on Facebook the day that I. That we're recording this. Man, I've really missed Facebook. I posted, like, and I talked about, like, why I left Facebook and also why I'm loving it again. Right? I left Facebook because at the time I stopped using Facebook, you know, it was in the middle of COVID Everybody debated about whether you should be vaccinated, you shouldn't be vaccinated. People were debating whether Trump was still the real president or not. You know, back in the good old.

Days, it was just a lot of.

Like, toxicity and debating and arguing and fighting, and I just felt like, this is toxic. I just want to put my head down, and I just want to build. Right? And then yesterday, I went and posted about future tools on Facebook and just got an overwhelming amount of support and an overwhelming amount of love from people that I haven't even been in communication with for over a year now. And all of these people are just like, nothing ever happened. They're just like, matt, we support. Support you. You're awesome. I love what you're building. If you ever need help, come talk to me. And I'm just like, all right, I like Facebook again.

It's. That's the thing. And. And, man, it's. It's not the platform. Like, it's the people who are the people plugged into that platform, and Facebook's got them. And. Yeah. Yeah. And something you said is actually so true to my experience as well. It's something. It's funny because we have always kind of mirrored each other's experiences in a way, because. Always been around the same level in terms of what we're doing, who we're. We're networked with, working together, maybe, but, like, the support is always there. I got. I had the same kind of responses when. Whenever I reach out and post. I was doing a lot more individually and going that route instead of the Facebook, but, like, I know the same thing would be there. And it's so cool to know, like, yeah, there's a full year where we basically close the doors to the marketing side of things, our lives. And. Yeah, and the support's there even when it's something new like this AI. You can take that. That clout or whatever, experience, audience, in terms of our email list, like, being real there. That's how we split it in Half, like there's a likeness, there's two of us and everyone's like, yeah, I get emails from both of you guys anyway, so.

But there's different interests and that's where you and I have always meshed well, going back to you being this tech guy, this guy's on the forefront and teaches so damn well. All the way back from the WordPress Classroom Days is like, I've always learned so much from you in terms of that side and being this genius marketer. So. And you and I, and like I shored up, I think in some other ways back in the day, you know, like that's how this podcast was created originally. Yeah, it's just interesting because like, I know you're going to with that future tools it's going to crush because it's so timely and you have the market.

Like, I still have no idea how I'm going to monetize it yet, but it's getting a lot of traction.

Right? Move it, move it forward.

Well, so, you know, I'll talk about the future tools just for a second. Like that started as a weekend project, right? So, you know you saw the AI toolbox, right? It was a Google sheet that I started a couple months ago where whenever I'd come across a really cool AI tool, I would just throw it on a spreadsheet. It was just URL, here's what it does. URL, here's what it does. And it was just a real simple two column spreadsheet of all of these tools that I was coming up, coming across. And that was really just for me in the beginning, like, hey, I want to remember this, I want to find it again. If I create a bookmarks folder, it'll just get cluttered. It'll never click on the links again. So that's why I built the spreadsheet. And then I started using it as like a lead magnet. Hey, maybe other people will want this thing. So I started using it as a lead magnet. And then I realized as I add more tools, it just gets really cluttered and confusing and harder to find stuff. So I started looking into these various no code tools and I came across a tool called webflow, which is really, really good at building sort of database type sites where you can sort and filter and do all that kind of stuff with it. And so I spent a weekend taking everything that was on the spreadsheet and basically creating this database website out of it. And so that's how that started. There was no intention of figuring out how to make money off of that site, other than some of the tools, are affiliate links, right? And when you have a list of hundreds of tools and like 19 of them are affiliate links, it's probably not going to be a huge money maker, right? So I just built that out of just pure love of being in that space and finding these cool tools and going, hey, I'm going to make a resource to show other people all of these cool tools that I'm coming across. And that's what FutureTools IE is. It's just like this sort of labor of love of me going, I want to learn how to use webflow. And I've got this spreadsheet, well, why don't I just learn how to use webflow by converting this spreadsheet into a database that people can search? And so that's what it is. And because it's been getting so much love, like, I shared it on Twitter and Robert Scoble, who's like this futurist who talks a lot about AI, he shared it on his Twitter. He's got 500,000 followers. He shared it and it caused it to go viral, right? Like, the next day I woke up in the morning and There was like 150 likes and, you know, 50 retweets or whatever it was, and it was just spread all over the place. And I went, holy crap. Like, this was something I built in a weekend for free, just as like a hey, check out what I could do kind of thing, right? And so when it started getting all of this love and people retweeting it and going, this is awesome. I love this thing. And then I went and shared it on Facebook and got a very similar response on Facebook from, you know, the community that I'd neglected there for so long. I got a similar experience there. And now, you know, here I am going, all right, people seem to love this. Maybe I've approached things wrong. Maybe I've always. Maybe for the last year, I've been building what I wanted to make out of trying to figure out how to make money and build a business around it instead of building something that I found valuable. So maybe other people find it valuable as well. And so I took that thing that I made that I would find valuable and just started sharing it. And now everybody else is finding it valuable. And I'm like, okay, maybe there's something here. Maybe I can make a business out of this. Maybe I can turn this into something that is actually a resource that a lot of people drive traffic to. And, I don't know, the monetization model yet. I don't know where I'm going to take it. But right now I know I made a cool resource that will help a lot of people out and the monetization will likely come in some way somehow soon.

I love it. And you're leaning into you, you know, it feels like you're really leaning into what you're the best at. Like these are the gifts that you've, you've always had. Or like, you spot awesome tech, you understand the tech, you can communicate the tech, you know, the marketing and you know how to gather audiences together and create media about it. You know, I'll an email list or a blog like you, like you post a matt wolf.com I'll just plug all your shit IO.

I really, really like a lot of the no code tools, the, you know, webflow bubble. I found one today called make, which is like, it's almost like Zap. It's make.com. it's almost like Zapier. But you can connect like ChatGPT to it and stuff like that. So you can say like, grab this YouTube video and this should probably come out in our future episode, but I'll drop a teaser in this one.

This is teasing the next episode. Episode two.

Yeah, but you can use make.com and say, all right, grab this YouTube URL and use this one tool. Transcribe the entire YouTube video. Now take that transcription, throw it into chatgpt and write me a summary of that and it'll give you. It'll spit. And then if you want to go even further, you can say, now use this text to speech generator and read it to me, right? So you plug in a YouTube video that's an hour long. And then on the other end of this like sequence of events, it's going to spit out a text to speech that's like three minutes synopsis of this hour long YouTube video, right? And like that's what make.com does is it's just a whole bunch, bunch of like Lego pieces that you stick together. And one of them's like a transcriber tool and one of them's like a ChatGPT integration and one of them's like a text to speech integration and you just, you just stack them.

So this is like the ultimate AI Zapier in a sense. I mentioned this earlier to you, Matt, and you didn't even reference make, remember I was like, hey, think about a sequence of things, almost like recipes that you can stack AI tool. Oh, that's what this does. Make.

That's what it does. Yeah. Hey, it takes the right triggers and prompts. Just like AI it takes right prompt to get me to this place.

You are. Are you AI. You are the AI. Okay, cool. Well, at least you're a recurring guest, so we'll always get the latest from Mr. AI or. Or thing AI. I will not gender identify you. AI.

Identify as.

Yeah, yeah. You are a computer.

I would say my big takeaway from 2022 is. Well, I have a couple takeaways. Right. Don't put all your eggs in that crypto basket, because that crypto basket could get dropped from the Empire State Building. But. But the other takeaway that I had was how to actually put, like, production value behind the content. Right. Like you saw me, I nerded out over DaVinci Resolve and Vmix and, you know, some of these tools to really try to, like, up the production value, the production quality of some of these videos. And so for me, it was all about learning how to uplevel the quality of the content that I put out. And even though we were screaming into a hole where nobody was listening back, I really feel like I learned a lot in those areas.

We did, man. And that's. Yeah, we. We amped up all the media and we've always been media guys and content marketers and dude, I'm so. I'm so fricking pumped. And because I. For everyone listening right now, I definitely have not heard of any of this, like, future plans. And I didn't know he was going so deep into future tools until literally popping on here on this chat. And Matt, like, genuinely, I'm fricking pumped that you're going to have this thing going on. I'm going with the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. It's. I'll have a newsletter, an email newsletter might be sending along with this episode. Ideally, that's the plan and 2023, like, we both have these media brands and at least my. My not feedback, but, like, thinking of how yours will shape up and how, like, you're like, I don't know how it's going to monetize. Well, keep doing what you're doing because it's obviously a weekend project and it's now developing into this something bigger database. Like, there's so many ways to just add more tools, obviously, but then start maybe partner with some of these folks. Get some preferential affiliate, you know, hookups or promotions that like, you know, give you a bigger kickback or whatever it might be or just leverage their. Almost like the tools Platform, in a way. Yeah. Yeah.

It's interesting because I think you and I, we had a. We had a phone call, I don't know, week and a half ago or something like that, right? And I was telling you how one of the paths that I want to take, because I haven't seen anybody else doing this yet, is to go and teach AI to digital marketers, right? Find that crossover. I know AI, I know digital marketing. Let's just talk about that intersection, right? And then go and create courses on that intersection. How to use ChatGPT and generative art and, you know, generative music and all of these various tools to just make life easier and systematize a lot of stuff on your business. And I get on Facebook, I start scrolling Facebook, and I see like five other people are literally building courses on AI for marketers right now. And I'm just like, I believe it. I was planning on doing that like a month ago, and I just never pulled the trigger on it. I mean, it was bound to happen. It's not like if I did it, they weren't going to do it.

But, you know, it doesn't matter anyway.

Yeah, it doesn't matter anyway. But, you know, my sort of current game plan right now is, and this is all fairly new because Future Tools, I didn't expect to get traction as quickly as it's been getting traction. But my kind of game plan right now is, you know, Future Tools is like a really move the free line kind of cool resource that I think will create discoverability to me, right? Create the Future Tools Podcast. The Future Tools podcast. Monetization through sponsorships, monetization through affiliate links, right? Same kind of model Hustle and Flowchart had. I'm going to continue to blog on matt wolf.com so when I do release podcast episodes, they'll probably just be published on mattwolf.com to keep things easy. YouTube and, you know, written blog posts, right? So kind of the core things I've been doing for the last, you know, decade plus of content, podcast, YouTube, blog posts, and then I've got the cool tool that is Future Tools. And then whatever sort of sponsorship opportunities, affiliate marketing opportunities, partnership opportunities, whatever opportunities sort of bubble up from me just doing those things I'm going to explore, right? That's kind of my game plan. And it's been crazy how many opportunities have bubbled up already. I was telling you that I sent out a blog post a couple weeks ago about how I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Still by the way, I turned 40 in four months. So, like, I don't consider myself a grownup yet, though.

You're not, dude.

But, you know, I wrote this blog post and I got like a hundred emails back of people pitching me opportunities to work with them and going, hey, here's a tool that maybe you can help support me with. Here's something that I need building. You want to maybe build it with us? Here's, you know, here's an idea. Here's an idea. And just all of these opportunities started to bubble up. Nothing that's really made me go, oh, yes, this is it. I'm going all in on this thing. But it's just showing me that if I'm putting myself out there, I'm building in public. I'm talking, I'm sharing, I'm putting out content. Stuff bubbles up, right?

That's it, man. And that. And the support's there if you're sharing it. And that's where you've always been great at that, you know, in the written form. And that's where, like, I've always been now more in the audio, the outlet. And that's actually something after Hard Fork. It's interesting because I was searching for an outlet and I was like, what is going to be my outlet? And the audio form is going to be it primarily for me. But there's other ways that it's connected and Hustle and Flowchart. We don't need to talk about that now. But the whole thing is that there's support, like when we publish or when we. When we're learning in public, sharing our lessons and what the heck we're going through in public, which my solo episodes are going to be more like that, but with lessons and references to other things, people, whatever, mentors, it's all building in public and being honest. And that's where, I don't know, I'm always trying to get more real with myself as much as I possibly can. That was one of my takeaways from, like, this whole period in time is like, how do I get more real with me so I can then do the thing? It's kind of like what you said. You're building now something that you find valuable for yourself. It wasn't like you're pursuing a market, you're pursuing a trend that we're not actually doing a full analysis on or whatever. But you know that this is valuable to yourself. There is obviously momentum and money behind it. It's growing like crazy AI and the applications for it are just Freaking endless. And yeah, you could spin off so many different verticals and ways to be the forefront leader of this space, or like a thought leader kind of, kind of person aggregator, and then can advise or you can whatever. Like, we're marketing content as part of some of these projects that come your way. It's exciting, man.

Yeah, it is. And I'm not just limiting myself to the AI stuff too. I think the AI stuff is the, you know, the hot topic of the moment. It's the buzzword. And, you know, I didn't realize how much of a buzzword it was until I jumped on Facebook and saw that, like, literally my entire feed was people talking about ChatGPT and. And how cool their conversations with ChatGPT have been. Right? Like, that made me realize, okay, this is a little more mainstream than I'd sort of given credit when I started exploring it. I don't want to just stick with AI tools. Like, I really love a lot of the virtual reality, the augmented reality, the no code tools. Like, no code stuff is so cool. Like the AI stuff. Everybody's all hot on AI. Well, no code tools. You can literally go and build a software. Everybody's excited that they can go now, have a robot write an article for them. Right. I'm excited that I can go use a tool that builds a software platform for me. Right. Like, that's what no code tools are.

You know, make dot com. Would that connect with no code type tools?

It would, but make is more of like a. I make this for myself, right? Like, I don't know if make is something where I would create this sequence of events and then sassy. Like, I don't know if you can turn it into a sass and, like, have other people use your recipe, so to speak. Right?

Sass. AI or sassy.

Sassy Assassin.

Assassin. Look it up.

But, like, you know, like, I love the no code stuff as much as I love the AI stuff. And the no code stuff, I think, is still not on a lot of people's radars. Right. Like, you and I were talking about bubble. Is it bubble us or IO? Yeah, yeah, one of those. We were talking about bubble fricking three years ago on our podcast. Right. And still nobody's talking about these no code tools among the marketing community.

Wow. Yeah. I don't know what it is, but yeah, we're. That's the thing. I feel like going into this whole space in Web3 has allowed us to deep dive into technology a lot more than we ever did before. At least I did. I'll talk for me. But I know, like, us collectively, we would talk about different tech all the time and less about the marketing strategies behind selling stuff. You know, like, like our, our focuses kind of changed there and I feel like, yeah, like it opened us to so many different things that you can start slapping together in a way and, and simplifying our lives. But you can create something. Holy crap. Like the production levels, higher the quality of things. And it's not like we're even spending a bunch of money.

We had no money to spend, so.

We were like creating shit out of thin air, you know, in all sorts of ways. Fork.

Oh, yeah.

And yeah. Yeah.

I still don't know how. Well, I do know how we were doing it. We know, but we won't go there.

Well, yeah, And I guess to round it out, let's. Let's end this first. First episode of the two. And obviously there's going to be some more, but yeah, expect more. And we're going to deep dive into the AI tools and kind of all the different thoughts and strategies and your predictions, all that cool stuff. So, Matthew, is there anything for 2023 that we should know about before we wrap this episode up and get into the tactical stuff and all that fun stuff in episode number two?

Anything that we should know about? Well, let's talk about the stuff that we should know about in the next episode because then we'll leave a little cliffhanger. But what I can tell you, go to FutureTools IO because I'm updating that all the time with all the cool new tools that I'm coming across. And that would be awesome if you go check out the site and if you like it, share it with somebody else that might like it.

To join the email list, I'm sure we'll be sending out cool tips and new tool alerts. Matt. See, that's a good idea. Tool idea. I should do that toolbox. Sign up for that email list. Yeah, go there and follow along. Thank you all for listening and definitely catch us in episode number two coming out very soon.

I will do that.

All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living away work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.