Therapy Session - We're Not Having Fun Anymore

On this trip over these 11 days, I think I spent maybe a total of 30, maybe 45 minutes, like at a computer. There was three different days where I had to get a few things done and I spent maybe 15 minutes, three different days on this trip getting stuff done, you know, and that was kind of this realization of stuff keeps on working. I'm out here having fun. I've looked at a computer a total of 45 minutes and 11 days. And getting back, I was kind of like, man, how do I keep this feeling going? How do I kind of focus on having more fun, creating more experiences, doing more cool stuff while simultaneously making sure that the business keeps on pushing forward?

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

Wow, that was very professional of you.

Yeah, it's all I know. I only know professional. I don't have a non professional side.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

Yeah. We are back and this one is another.

It's been a while since I felt like we've done a therapy session, but probably the same cadence that we've always. I just, just like doing these things.

Joe hasn't figured out a release schedule yet.

It's.

We do a therapy session as the last episode of every month, but that usually means that we're recording it in the middle of every month, so.

Correct. And that is where the we did.

Was almost a month ago. Today was when we recorded it.

And we have a lot of therapy esque sessions at the end of our episodes now. So it's like they happen all the time, which is cool, you know. So. Yeah, don't look at the text message, Matt. I know, I know where it is.

We have. There's a big baseball game tonight that we're excited about and we're talking crap with our. One of our good friends who's a fan of the other team. But we'll leave it there for now.

Yeah, I saw Matt was distracted because we both got notified because the crap talking is happening right now.

It's a group text thread. So. Yeah.

Silencing everything.

Yeah, me too. So today we are doing another therapy session. We don't have a guest on this one. Joe and I are going to give you some kind of updates behind the scenes of our own business and we're going to have a little bit of fun. We've got a few little things we want to Experiment with and talk about that, I think are going to be kind of goofy and silly. Oh, yeah. We'll see how it plays out. It could be a total cluster f.

Could be a train wreck. Yeah. Stick around with us and you'll see.

Yeah.

Yeah. Guarantee it's worth it, though.

But before we dive in, we're going to be taking notes on this one, as we always do. So go to flowchartgroup.com when you go to flowchartgroup.com, that's where you can join our Facebook group. One of the questions when you join the group is to give us your email. If you give us your email, we will send you the action guide to this episode. The email isn't required to get in the group, but it is required if you want us to email you the action guide for this episode. So go to flowchartgroup.com, get the notes, do it within two weeks of this episode going live, and we will hook you up. And now that that's out of the way, let's talk about what we're going to talk about.

Yeah. And if it's your first time around and you're like, what is this therapy session thing? Well, you know what? We all need therapy, right? We need a little outlet. So this is.

We need lots of it.

We need a ton. And you'll find out. No, but yeah, this is our time to basically riff about the cool stuff that we're doing in our business or learning or thinking about the really crappy stuff, the things that it might have failed and things were reworking, which we are reworking stuff. So it's like a little peek into our world and what's happening outside of the normal show schedule that you might see with guests. So it's a good time.

So, Joe, pick a number between one and four.

Eight. Oh, Jesus.

You're really bad at this game. Three.

Yes, I am. Three, one, and four. That's random, though.

Why? Well, because I have four pod decks, right? They're not a sponsor, but we're playing with these things. So they're basically little cars that have, like, little question prompts, and we bought them, like, months ago, and I think we used it. I'm on, like, one episode ever, and I'm like, I'm gonna bust these things out and we're gonna answer some random ass questions to get this episode started to break the ice, because you and I don't know each other well enough. We need to break the ice.

Yeah, we really need to break the ice here. Okay, Go for It.

You literally picked the one deck. Yeah, this was deck three here. And it's the one deck that I've literally never opened, so it's hard for me to open.

All right, what's the deck? Because I know they're all different categories. Right.

This one's called Interview deck, Second edition.

Oh, all right.

So this one might not be crazy questions. If the question's lame, I'll ask one of the questions from the what the heck. There's a deck called what the Heck. The what the Heck deck. All right, let's see. Let me shuffle them, like.

Oh, really? That's necessary.

What's the funniest place you've ever fallen asleep?

Oh, that's a. That's a. I would say. It's funny because I probably could have died really easily, but I hiked. It's true. In Yosemite National Park, I hiked to the top of Half Dome. And if anyone has ever done that, there is a sheer cliff if you sleep. I did end up sleeping, but on the top of that big granite rock. It's thousands of feet in the air. And, yeah, it was. My buddy and I, we took a nap on top of that rock, which is also deep. Well, and we're maybe 8ft from the edge. Luckily, we were against. You know, like, there's a little safety area. But, yeah, could have basically rolled over in our sleep or slept. Walk off the edge. But also, now that I think about it, it was in the afternoon, and that's when lightning comes through. So it could have zapped us as well. Could have died in many ways. But, yeah, that's when I come to mind you didn't.

And we're here making this therapy session.

So how about you, Matt? Save me.

It's actually a really bad question to ask me because I don't really sleep. It's not like I sleep in random places. It's like I barely fall asleep in my own bed. So when I'm, like, in random places, I typically don't sleep very well. Like, when we camp and stuff, like, I get very minimal sleep. So just kind of thinking out loud. It would probably be like falling asleep in school or something at some point.

How about this? I mean. Well, we both experienced this. This is another Yosemite story. Remember the whole bear incident?

Yes, I do. I was there.

Yeah, I know this was separate from my other Yosemite sleeping incident, but.

Wait, you slept through that, right?

Or did you?

No, you woke up. You and I both woke up.

I was the one that yelled at the Bear. I was the one that probably attracted the bear too.

Yeah, I mean, I had stuff in my tent that I was definitely not supposed to have, like bars under my pillow, like Clif bars and Chapstick.

But they actually came to eat the cornhole bags.

They did. So quick story that Matt was there and actually the guy that we're shit talking with right now was also there, his family. It was a whole family trip. But yeah, we were in Yosemite. We brought a whole bunch of stuff, but we had a whole tent, you know, all these tents set up. And we brought cornhole. And if you don't know what cornhole the game is, go look it up. But it's. The bags are literally filled with. At least the legit bags have pieces of corn, dried corn in there instead of like marbles or whatever the hell sand, you know, didn't think of that. So you're supposed to put everything in bear boxes, of course, when you go to sleep and probably anytime really, when you're at Yosemite or a place with bears around. And we forgot to. Well, we didn't even think to put those in the, in the bear box.

It didn't even register to us that those bags essentially had food in them.

They had clothed. Yeah, I remember sitting around the campfire that night and remember we heard a gunshot go off like way far in the distance and it rattled through the valley there. Oh, that's interesting. It was like 10 o' clock at night. Well, I went to sleep and I think it was around like 1 ish or something when this happened. And I remember hearing foot patters outside of the tent and it was like quiet as all hell. I was asleep and my wife is over here. And I remember just like from the dead asleep. Cause I still remember this, which is weird. I just don't know how the hell this happened. But I woke up from a dead of sleep and I was like.

Like, like.

Well, we literally thought somebody was walking through. We didn't think it was an animal. We thought a person was in our campsite.

Yeah, it sounded like we were getting jacked and basically like I just heard footsteps and it sounded right outside of my tent and I just yelled and all of a sudden I woke like. I woke up Heather, my wife, immediately, and others. And I just fell back, right back to sleep, which I'm like, I don't know how I did that, but I just like. And then all of a sudden it was like. I don't know, it wasn't that long after we heard a gunshot Remember, it was like another. Another shotgun. They wasn't shooting the bear, but it was, like, a blank to scare him out. But, yeah. Yeah.

Got re.

Awoken by a freaking gunshot. Maybe, like, I don't know, 20ft away. Like, what the.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it was a bear. So basically ravaged our campsite and was walking all around our tents.

Yep. And I woke up. You woke up, and I know. So my wife was there. My daughter was there. She was, like, maybe two at the time or something. My wife didn't wake up. My daughter didn't wake up. Our buddy Josh, who we've been texting with, didn't wake up. So somehow, like, me and Joe were the only two people that literally heard somebody fire a shotgun next to our tents.

In the house. We were in the house. Yeah. It was literally outside of the tent. Yeah. And I remember the last thing was, like, that bear, because I don't know where it went, but it. I heard these, like, little, like. Like the nails of it, like, climbing a tree directly in front of my tent. And I was like, holy shit. I got a bear literally chilling above my tent right now. And I'm like. And then I'm like, what the hell do I do?

Yeah.

Still don't know how it came down. I'm sure it did.

Yeah. We just kind of woke up. Like, we all sort of fell back to sleep. Woke up the next morning, and, you know, the bear was gone, obviously.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there was a ranger, obviously. That was the gunshot. So, you know. Yeah, they track these things, and hopefully the bear is doing all right.

But, yeah, all the bears, I think, are, like, microchipped or something, and they have a computer so they could see when bears are getting close to the camp. So they knew one was near the campsite, came over, use their shotgun. I think they put, like, bean bags in it so it doesn't harm the bears, but it scares them away. And, yeah, that was. That was a crazy night. And then literally last year, Alana and I went and camped in the exact same campsite like, spot.

Yeah, you don't venture out much, do you? Why'd you pick that one?

Or I'm surprised it was the one that was available. Like, when it comes to crazy Yosemite, the way Yosemite works is you got to book it, like, six months before you want to camp. Right. And Alana went to go book it, and the one spot that was available was literally the exact same spot we got last time.

That's pretty crazy. Yeah.

Yep. No bears.

I just remember. Yeah. No bears. Yeah. No fun. No, it was a thrill, man, because I remember, like, we even walked around at night because, like, I think Heather had to go to the bathroom. And I was like, realize there's a freaking bear right above. I'm like, you want to go right now? She's like, I got to go. Like, ah, crap. But, yeah, cornhole bags are typically filled with corn. Don't take them to places where bears hang out without locking them up.

All right, all right. One more question.

There you go.

This one. This one. This one's from the what the heck deck. Since I mentioned the what the heck deck, might as well ask this one. Kind of. Kind of along the same vein. What is the scariest sound you could hear in the middle of the night?

Wow. Yeah, that kind of answered it for me. That was a big one.

A bear.

I mean, yeah, I think.

I think somebody whispering in my ear. That is not somebody in my family would be frickin creepier than a bear. Like, if I was just lying asleep at night and somebody just walked up and was like, wake up. And I turned around and I turned over and, like, my wife was still asleep next to me. Oh, I'd be like this. And I'd probably just start swinging. I was gonna say my natural reaction.

Would be like, swing, like, what the.

Which is kind of what I did with the bear. I guess I just started yelling really loud.

Yeah.

I do keep a baseball bat next to my nightstand, so I probably would have, like, slowly, like, reached my arm down to it and started clutching that.

Jesus, I love it. I like the baseball idea. Baseball, bad idea. Smart. Never know.

There's a Nick Bargazzi stand up. That is, like, hilarious. He talks about how, like, he. When he was a kid, his parents watched Unsolved Mysteries, and one night he caught an episode where this guy would come into people's houses at night while they were asleep and sit on the edge of their bed and rub their feet.

Ooh.

And he said that, like, ever since he saw that Unsolved Mysteries, he's never for the rest of his life been able to sleep with his feet outside the blanket.

They can't tickle me this way. They can't really?

And I'm like, that's actually kind of terrifying.

Oh, yeah. I mean, any of that is like. It could be, like, the nicest thing in the world they're doing for you, like a foot massage or whatever. But it's like, who and why and how did you get in here and why? So many questions and so creepy. Anyway, Unsolved myself with the crazy randomness. Yeah.

Unsolved Mysteries is like, what's the. What's the best show to terrify kids? Like, show them. Show them all the crazy murders and scary stuff that they haven't figured out who's doing them yet.

Right before.

That's a good idea.

Yeah. It was always like at 8 o' clock or 7 o'. Clock. Yeah. And my mom, which he's out there watching my baby right now. Definitely used to love that show. I'm like, why? No, that and aliens. Any talk of aliens and all that stuff? I mean, that's pretty creepy too, at night.

But yeah. Yeah. Aliens really, really freak out my wife. So I have fun with that sometimes still. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Really? Oh, good. I know her sweet spot or soft spot.

Just start talking to her about the movie, like Signs or something, and she'd be like, no, Nope.

I was going to say the sound at first. For some reason, Chupacabras came up in my mind. So it's kind of like Signs. That creepy monster alien guy that was walking around.

Yeah.

All right, well, we've totally gone off a tangent. I know how long, but.

We'Re 13 minutes in and we've got two pod deck questions. And we're gonna do something similar, not with the pod decks at the end of the show where we let some AI write some copy for us and then we're gonna read the stories that it generates because it generates some pretty funny stuff.

And when you say copy, I don't think you're doing it justice because it can literally be like, just. I mean, I'm looking at. One is ridiculous marketing ideas, which is probably what we'll end up doing because they're pretty crazy. Some of these could be X rated or G rated, but still, they're pretty damn funny.

Yeah, there's some. Where I generated some and I was like, holy crap. I was just not expecting that. So, yeah, stick around because we're going to do that at the end of this episode.

Yeah, we will. All right, well, I got that pulled up for when we are ready. But we do have a little agenda here, and I think this agenda. Well, I know it does because it always does. It stems from the stuff that's happening in our lives right now, in our business, and maybe some of our friends and topics that we've talked about in some previous episodes, too. So, Matt, this was a conversation we had last yesterday, actually, because we were recording a bunch of podcasts. We were at lunch and we were talking about. We were kind of going down memory lane a little bit, I guess. Let's get preface. You came back from a trip, what, two weeks ago or so now? Two and a half weeks. Ish. And you did a whole. Yeah, you did a whole road trip from San Diego to Texas and back and all these cool things in between. And you came back with the kind of a fresh perspective. Seems like, you know, you had a different. You're away from the computer, away from the normal stuff. You know, you weren't in your little bubble because, you know, you love your bubble. I do. But, yeah, talk about that because, like, I think you shifted a little bit there in priorities.

And.

And then I'll talk about how. How I've showed up in some ways lately that is counter to my natural, you know, like, who I really am. And it's interesting because we're kind of, like, doing this, like, bring it back to why we started in business in the first place and how we're building this thing to be, you know, a lot more fun, I guess, overall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we did this road trip. We drove from San Diego basically all the way to Houston, Texas, so basically eastern te. And then drove all the way back. And, you know, we stopped in, like, a whole bunch of towns along the way. On our way out there, we went to Tucson and then Roswell, New Mexico, and then we went to San Antonio, where my cousin lives, and then we went to Houston, where the, you know, the sort of reason we were on the road trip in the first place was we had some family members who got married during, you know, quarantine. And so we went out to sort of celebrate with them. And then we drove through Austin, which, you know, a bunch of our business contacts are out there. So got to hang out with Joe Kearns and Mike Alvarez, who run our emails. Got to spend some time with Kurt Molly, who, if you've listened to or if you're a member of Pod Hacker, recently did a presentation inside of Pod Hacker. And then after Austin, we drove to Carlsbad, New Mexico, then to Tombstone, Arizona, and then back home. So we were gone for a total of 11 days. And on this trip, over these 11 days, I think I spent maybe a total of 30, maybe 45 minutes, like, at a computer. There was three different days where I had to get a few things done, and I spent maybe 15 minutes, three different days on this trip getting stuff done. And I kind of had this realization that, like, man, this, like, the stuff that I'm doing on the trip is kind of like the Bare minimum that I need to get done. And I could get it done with like two days a week, spending 15 minutes twice a week on it, you know, and that was kind of this realization of stuff keeps on working. I'm out here having fun. I've looked at a computer, total of 45 minutes and 11 days. And getting back, I was kind of like, man, how do I keep this feeling going? How do I feel like I'm always, you know, how do I kind of focus on having more fun, creating more experiences, doing more cool stuff, while simultaneously making sure that the business keeps on pushing forward. Right. And so I came back from this trip with that frame of reference of like, this was awesome. Like, like I spent all this time and didn't have to focus on the business, but the business kept going. Let's like, methodically make this more of a. More of the case for both of us, right? And that, that was kind of the perspective shift that I had. And I think ever since I've been back, I've been, you know, beating you over the head with that philosophy as well, of like, let's just, let's just stop doing shit. Like, let's stop doing so much shit.

And we have, you know, and this was a. I feel like it's perfect timing for me personally to hear, but also, you know, just us as a business and because we were doing too much and since you've been back, we've actually, we have changed our.

Some of our.

The obligations that we've had, some of the partnerships, we've changed into more of a, like an affiliate partnership rather than a more of a partnership.

Partnership simplification. Yeah.

Simplifying. Yeah. And that's the big thing is, yeah, we, we were talking on a podmax, actually. You know, Josh and Eric, they run this really cool event called PodMax. And. And we're on there guesting this morning and we're talking about just being a creator and entreprene. You want to do so much. You have. You're curious. We're curious. You know, especially being a podcaster, you know, we have all these strategies and things, but we want to do so much where it's very easy to expand, expand, expand, and then all of a sudden you get like, holy shit. Oh. Oh, my God. You know, like, I have all these open loops, right? I don't have a great system around this. So that means that it's going to like, ping pong in our minds all the time. And I know that was. It kind of led me to feeling much differently about our business and took, I feel like, the priorities away from what you just said, which was more the lifestyle of, like, our business and why we're even doing this in the first place.

Yeah, well, I feel like we've. We go through these A lot of phases of expansion and contraction and expansion and contraction. And what ends up happening for us is we'll. We'll typically simplify the business and go cool. We're down to, like, the bare minimum. We're down to the 80, 20 that generates most of our revenue with, you know, 20% of our time. Let's just focus on this stuff. Then what, what ends up happening is a few weeks will go by and we'll realize I have a lot more free time. And there's like this guilt attached. Like, I feel like I should be doing more stuff. I feel like I should be getting more work done. So we start to, like, this, like, guilt almost creeps in around, like, I don't feel like I'm putting in the hours I should be putting in right now. And so what we do, we start adding more shit to our plate. We start taking more calls, hearing more opportunities. More people ask us to partner or, you know, do, like, promote them as affiliates or whatever, and we start taking more on and we start agreeing to do more stuff. Next thing we know, we're crazy overwhelmed, going, frick. Now I can't find any time to do any extracurricular stuff outside of work. Now I'm overwhelmed. Now I'm putting in too many hours. And then start the process of contraction again. And we start shaving things off and going, okay, we probably shouldn't do this. We probably shouldn't do this. Let's end this deal with these guys over here, not focus on that anymore. And then we contract, and then the cycle repeats itself. We start going, well, we don't have a lot on our plates. We could afford to add this in. We got the time. And it's just like this never ending, repeating cycle. And I feel like we've finally got to a point 12 years into this specific business where we're like, all right, let's break the chain now. Let's break the cycle now. I'm done with that cycle. Like, work is not what life's about anymore.

And that's pretty much it right there because. And that's where, excuse me, the lunch we had yesterday when we were, you know, we took a break on our lunch or on our podcast day, went to lunch and we were talking a little bit about this and how, you know, I've. There's. Because of some of this stuff and our curiosity is it can lead to our behaviors to change and our motivations to change. And you know, for me, I noticed I was getting a lot more rigid when it comes to a lot of parts in life, to be honest. Relationships, you, you know, like working in the business, it was like very. There's a lot of stuff going on and you know, and when we do things, I want to make sure we're serving the best possible, you know, and doing what we just. Doing the best work we can because it's what we want to do. But yeah, I mean, there's a family that we, we both have families, we both have all these other things and activities we want to do and freedoms and that doesn't come from doing more, you know, so. But like you said, there was, I think for me there has been this like layer of guilt, especially with the partnerships and things that we want to lean into more so or maybe some of these strategies we want to test. But it's like, but you don't need to do that. And for us wanting to do more, it's easy to just kind of start something without really thinking, what are the consequences here. So at that lunch yesterday, you asked me a great question. It was like, so why do you start in business? What was your motivation in the first place? And that was interesting because I don't think we chatted about that in a long, long, long time.

Yeah.

And we both had our own.

I think it's a really good thing to revisit it every once in a while. Like, you know, I think a lot of people will run their business for a while and then forget the original motivations and then start to realize like they're working 15 hour days and you know, pretty much their life becomes sleep, work, maybe eating if there's time, you know, like, and that's just kind of, that's what their life becomes, you know. And I think at that point people forget the original motivation for starting. Right? Like, they forget that you created your own business because you wanted time freedom, because you wanted financial freedom, because you wanted all these various freedoms yet you've created. You've turned yourself into a slave of the machine that was originally supposed to free you in the first place, you know?

Yeah, it's true. I mean, so maybe I knew. I think we've told the stories. But yeah, like one of, I'll just say, like my motivation for starting business. And this really got me to think things a little clearer just yesterday when you're asking this. And it was. You know, I didn't. I was doing a corporate thing. I was. I was working in a corporate construction company, but, like, in the marketing department. I just remember walking down the halls there and looking at the people who have been there for, you know, maybe 20 years or whatever, or at least have been in the industry for that long doing that kind of work, and they just looked kind of dead inside. They just were going through the motions. They never really wanted to interact with other people around them. So if, like, you asked someone a question, I just remember going to specific. I forget his name was Doug or something, but, like, he was just this grumpy guy, you know, I think it's just the work. He probably was a fine guy, you know, like, totally cool to hang out with, probably talk sports with. But in the. In the mode of work mode, it was just like, oh, fuck, I can't go in there because I'm gonna get barked at or I'm gonna get a glare. You know, I'm just like, ugh. You know, that's not what I want to do. When I'm in. I remember having to walk really fast, always look busy, you know, it's like, fuck, man. This isn't free. This isn't me. You know, like, have fun and be free. And my big motivation is I just don't want to turn up like that guy, you know, 20 years from now. I don't want to be a walking zombie that's just going through the motion without purpose and not wanting to interact with people that I'm working with. It should be a good time. So that was my motivation. Just be free.

Yeah. And then when you look at. So we. We just did the math. So we've been doing what we do for 12 years now. I quit my job 12 years ago. You quit your job 12 years ago? Not on the exact same day. That'd be a cool story if it was the same day, but pretty cool. Separate. Separate days. Separate reasons for quitting the job. But we both kind of quit our jobs in the same year. So. Looking back over the last decade, plus two last 12 years. Looking back at the last 12 years, how has that worked out for you? Do you feel like you're fulfilling that sort of initial vision that you had for yourself when you left over the overall?

Yes. Yeah, I think I've done really well. But, you know, this the last. I would say probably. I mean, you might know it better than I. You know, Like, I feel like there's circumstances definitely, you know, that have gone through. Goodbye, Mom.

So there have been things that have happened, obviously. Global pandemic is one of them.

Yeah, that happens.

Yeah, I heard that's kind of big. Yeah. We will not name the C word here, but, I mean, there's other things. I've had deaths in the family. I've had births in the family. All the, you know, foster kid go away that I thought we were going to, like. There's all these other things I can name, but I don't know. I feel like the last. Like, while I've kind of have lost touch in some of the freedoms and the things that it's been a little bit more of, like. Oh, I just feel like I gotta get this. Like, this is something. It's weird. I got a little jaded a little bit from the fun freedom thing, and I went more into a rigid mode, which is not my style.

Well, the reason I brought it up, too, was because you were mentioning the dude, Doug, or whatever his name was at your company, how you just saw him every day, and you can tell he was just kind of going through the motions. He just wasn't feeling it anymore. He just knew. Okay, this is what I do. I show up every day. I do this handful of tasks when my day's over, I turn it off when I go home. Right. And so I was asking that because, you know, it almost sounds like you kind of got to a point where you sort of felt like you were just kind of going through the motions. These are my list of tasks I got to do every day. And I'm the same way. I'm not, like, freaking calling you out or anything, because I have the same shit on my plate. We're just. We're talking about you first.

Okay, that's fine. It's a therapy session. This is open. It's all good.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, I was basically. I think I unconsciously was falling into that mode a little bit, and I was getting too rigid around you. I'm sure that. I mean, it would be better to tell me, but you did tell me yesterday. You're like. It just doesn't feel like you're having as much fun or as much fun in general. And, I mean, the same thing has been said. My wife Heather told me that. That's what I told you. I'm like, I literally have heard this from her as well, so it's obviously true. And it's not like I lost the desire to. It's almost like this weird subconscious thing has not taken over. But like, it definitely can take over if it's unchecked. And that can, like, it just doesn't feel good. And it honestly brings a lot of stress and it can bring anxiety, and it has. And depression even. Like, it's. It's. And I know this is something a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, face and people that are maybe high achievers or just want to serve at a. Like, go, go, go. But you can go, go, go in other ways, which is kind of where we're realigning things right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll speak for myself, but I know. I'm fairly certain that you have similarities here. I think a lot of that kind of stems from. From, like, a guilt, right? Like, I know for me, specifically, if we're. If I feel like we're having too much fun in the business, I almost feel guilty that, you know, the wife is at home taking care of the K, out having fun, or, you know, if we're out doing something that we perceive as being, like, really enjoyable and really fun, a lot of times I'd be like, man, there's. There's stuff that I should be doing at my computer, right? There's. I should be writing that email. I should be setting up that Facebook ad. I should be building that landing page. I should be writing that copy, right? Like, there's a billion things that I could be doing in the business. So whenever I'm, you know, let's call it like, let's say I'm at a beach on a Wednesday at 10am or something, right? How in my mind, I'm kind of thinking I really should be back at my computer because I have so many things I could be doing, right? And so there's that. That guilt there coming from two different angles. One is guilt of, like, not pushing the business forward while I'm here having fun. But then also the guilt of how is my fun impacting others, right? My guilt is impacting my wife because she's at home with the kids right now. My guilt might be. Or my me up having fun. Could be. I could feel guilty because maybe Joe's back at his office getting shit done today, right? So there's guilt that stems from going out and having fun because I feel like there's other responsibilities that should sort of take precedent over that. Having fun right now.

Mm. Dude. Guilt is. I 100% know, because I've. I've identified this just in the last, like, month, let's say. Like, I realized that was the thing that was holding me back from a lot of things and was spinning up my mind. And with that unchecked. And guilt, I know can pop up in so many ways. You just named a couple things. I mean, FOMO is another one, you know, like the fact that, like, oh, there's a party going on and I'm not there, or I got invited to some. No, I know. Well, I'm the social creature that's caged up. Like you said, I'm in a. But, like, it's true, because I think a lot of the circumstances around the pandemic has limited social interactions. And for me, that is what was part of my, you know, the motivation to really get out of a corporate type thing is because I want to go hang out and do things with people that I enjoy. And that's how I've grown my business. That's why. That's part of podcasting, too. Collaborating, even with you. I mean, we were even being safe for. I mean, for the whole time. But now, I mean, like, we're. We've been so freaking bubbled up and doing all this stuff, you know, like, there was a while where we didn't really interact as much. Like, at least in person, I feel like that's where. I don't know. I've always really enjoyed that, and I think that was probably a big piece that was dropping the. The fun factor. You know, it was just. It was almost like getting too locked into, like, okay, well, if I can't do that, I guess this is my outlet now, and it's got to be through my work and doing all this stuff. But then it quickly realized, like, it turned into, like, holy crap. I just, like, stirred up so much stuff where I'm like, I can't even handle this and nor do I want to, you know. How about for you, though? I mean, like, I know your motivations because, like, you were talking about.

That you share a lot of this, and I feel like you're bringing me back to the fun thing, you know? Whereas, like, you. You are very in your ways and systematic and all that, so you can forget about what's on the outside of your office sometimes, you know, so talk about, like, you know, why do you start in business? I know. I think you've told the story, but just quickly again. And then how you're thinking differently.

Yeah, I mean, my circumstances around leaving my job were slightly different in the sense that we had this family company, right? It was the artisan, the shutter company that you and I both worked at for a while. The job that you're talking about where everybody was walking around looking like zombies. And it was a corporate gig. That was actually a job you had after you worked at the shutter company. So I just want to clarify that.

That was not with Matt. That's true.

Yeah. That was a different company. You had left the shutter company by that point. So, you know, some of our timelines in the past, we might make it sound like we both worked at the shutter company, we both quit on the same day, and we started this business. That's not reality. We Joe like the shutter company. After Joe left, he went and worked for this corporate gig with the construction company. The company sold, and I basically worked at the same company, but under a new boss, so it was no longer the family business. I was working for somebody else.

The shutter company? Yeah.

At the shutter company. Yeah. So when this new boss came in, this new owner came in. Him and I butted heads a little bit. We didn't really get along. Up until that point. I had been kind of the one running things around the shutter company. I ran the factory. I kind of. I handled all the finances. I did a lot of the hiring and firing. Like, for the most part, I was kind of CEOing the company, so to speak. And so this new guy came in and decided that he wanted to shift things around, change things up. He was a, like, a rule with an iron fist kind of guy, right. He was the type of guy that, like, if he saw you shooting somebody a text message while on the clock, he would probably cuss you out and threaten to dock your pay if he saw you do it again, right? If. If you had to go to the bathroom and you were in the bathroom for, like, more than five minutes, he'd be knocking on the door, you know, telling you, get back to work, you asshole. Like, and he swore a lot, too. So if. If you catch me swearing in reference to him, that's probably reality. Like, he was the type of guy that would call his own employees assholes crazy. So him and I didn't get along for obvious reasons. A, he wanted to change the company. B, he was like, a vulgar. In today's sort of like, MeToo world, where people are, like, calling out people who are assholes. This guy would be in prison, guarantee. But he's dead now, so non issue. Karma took it in other ways.

He's not terrorizing anybody else right now.

He's not terrorizing anybody else now. He ended up. He had a heart attack.

Well, that's probably a lesson in itself right there, you know?

Yeah, I'm not going to make light of his death, but he's not making anybody's lives miserable anymore. But anyway, I. Sort of. The sort of catalyst for me leaving that job was over a Subway sandwich. So when. When he came into the. When he came into the company, that one of the first things he did was fired my mom, right? He was like, okay, we need to cut back on expenses. You know, the overhead is too high. I need to get rid of people. So we went out into our factory, cut a bunch of key employees. You know, first mistake, fucked up all of our processes and systems by getting rid of employees that ran the processes.

And systems and morale. I mean, family business. And you just fired the mom.

And then you also fired my mom, because my mom was an owner and was taking a pretty hefty draw from the company, right? So he let her go. And so one day I was just kind of sitting at my desk, and my. My mom popped in and brought me and my dad lunch. My dad still worked there at the time under this new boss as well. And so she came in and brought me and my dad lunch, a Subway sandwich. And I, you know, I said thanks and sat at my desk and started eating the sandwich. Lee walks into the office while my mom is still standing there next to me talking to me and starts cussing me out. He's like, what the fuck are you doing? You're sitting here on my time in my office that I pay for, and you're eating a fucking sandwich when you should be getting your work done. Lunch hours are from this hour to this hour, and it's not to be done on the premises. You never eat on the premises. You go off premises for your lunch, you fucking piece of shit. And just cussing me out like. Like, literally. My mom was standing in the room just, like, in shock, like, what the fuck is totally. Right now?

I didn't know your mom was right there. That's even crazy.

She was still standing in the room as he was yelling at me for eating a sandwich at my desk. And I was just kind of like, dude, I'm. I'm getting work done. I'm sitting here, like, eating while I'm working because I still have shit to get done today. So I'm trying to finish this while I'm eating. My mom happened to bring me a sandwich. I didn't know you wanted me to leave the premises to go eat the sandwich that somebody just brought me. That makes no sense, but I will next time. And, like. And I don't remember the exact interaction beyond that, but he started you know, cussing at me some more. And I just went, dude, I'm out. I quit. Fuck you.

And I left, like, on the spot.

On the spot? Yeah. That was it. That was my last day at the company.

Right? That's so cool.

Yelled at me over Subway sandwich, and I went, fuck you, and I left.

Jesus Christ. And didn't he. I mean, he gave you. He gave you death threats and also, what other people at the company and all that?

I mean, just like, oh, yeah, he made death threats. You know, I actually went and applied for unemployment right after I left that job, and originally I was declined because I quit. And then I actually fought it. I appealed it, and so I actually went and stood in front of a judge. They said, you know, you got to come plead your case if you're going to appeal it. So I went in, sat in front of a judge, explained to him some of the conversations I overheard, some of the things that he said to me. My dad actually started bringing in a little pocket recorder and recording conversations with this guy because, like, he wanted, you know, proof later on.

And so I actually got some of the recordings that my. My dad recorded of this guy talking to people. And I played that for the judge, and. And the judge, like, on the spot, was like, yeah, this is. This is messed up. And they awarded me my unemployment. But.

Wow.

Yeah, so even a judge agreed with me there. But, yeah, that was what caused me to leave was just like, a very, very toxic work environment with toxic people that was just driving me insane. Like, I couldn't live like that anymore. I couldn't deal with people like that, So I had to pull myself out of that situation.

And that's what I did. I basically just got, like. The day he was yelling at me, I just bubbled up. I just got, like, so filled with rage that, like, I literally wanted to stand up and slug the guy, but, like, I held back. I was just so filled with rage that I just walked out, and I was just like, I'm gone. I'm out. I quit, so. And then he actually.

Good on you, man.

He actually called me the next day and begged me to come back. He's like, you're the only one in our company who knows how to do what you do. And I'm like, yeah, you fucked that up, didn't you? Damn right he did, because he wanted me. He was like. He's like, you could quit. I'm not going to, like, force you to stay, but I want you to come back and, like, train one of our employees on what you used to do. And I went, that's your fuck up. That's not my problem.

Yeah, it's like, too bad loom didn't exist at the time. Like, maybe I'll shoot you, loom, but it's gonna cost you a lot of money.

My loom video would have been like, all right, I'll send you a video. Go watch it. Okay.

And then I would just flip off the camera for a minute straight.

Yeah, that was a big middle finger Matt just gave me. And you listening or watching?

I'm sorry. Yeah. Those were the circumstances around me leaving. I was scared crapless. Of course. I say the F word every other word, and then I use the word crap when I. Yeah, I was. I was scared out of my mind when I quit because I didn't know how I was going to make our money. I was doing a little bit of freelance work, like building websites for clients.

Yeah.

And then you and I had some blogs running at that point, but the blogs were making, what, a hundred bucks.

A month maybe, if even. And I think might have been. Yeah, I mean, we didn't know what the hell we were doing there. Yeah, we were just experimenting. Wasn't. It wasn't any kind of money to barely even pay a car. You know, both of us split that money. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think both of us kind of had this philosophy of, like, all right, we. We tasted it, right.

We had.

We had a little bit of success. We've seen some money come in. We know it's possible to make money online because we're making 100 bucks here, and I've got some clients that are, you know, making some money over here. So we knew that making money online was possible. So in my mind, I was like, all right, I've proven the concept. Now all they've got to do is put all of my time into this and we can scale it. So I kind of went into it going, well, you know, all I got to do is what I've been doing in the evenings for like an hour a night. If I was doing that for like eight hours a day, maybe this could turn into a full time income for me. So I just, just. I went all in on the stuff that I was doing.

Yeah. I mean, so that was your motivation is obviously freedom and not to be in a toxic environment. I mean.

Mm. It's.

It's. That was very extreme, you know, but, like, good on you for freaking pulling the plug immediately getting out of there. I mean, I would say I obviously didn't have that Kind of experience. But, you know, I just saw that you're. People could become maybe toxic internally, you know, if you just kind of go with the motions of someone else's agenda or fit into someone else's mold, you know, in a corporate type thing. Like, that was never my thing. Like, I had to tuck in my shirt. What the hell? Wear a polo, like in a belt with, like, khaki type. Like, nah, man. Like, yeah, I guess that's like most people be like, what? You didn't even have to wear a tie. It's like, fuck, it was an upside down noose. I didn't want to wear that shit either.

Yeah, I quit my job on May 21, 2009. I know the exact date because I got married two days later. It was literally two days before my wedding. I was like, in my head, I was. I was kind of. But after that, I was kind of like, this is cool. I get like a fresh start. We had recently just bought a house, which was fucking scary in the first place, right, because I just quit my job after buying a house. But we had just bought in a house. I was getting married in two days, and I just left the job that I'd been in for like a decade. So, like, everything was a complete fresh start. So I went, all right, I'm gonna get married on Saturday. We're gonna go on our honeymoon for a week. I'm not gonna think about work, what I'm gonna do next. I literally don't have to think about anything work related. I didn't have a job and I didn't have a new business yet. I had nothing. So I went on my honeymoon with, like, a complete blank slate on my brain, not knowing what I was going to do coming back from the honeymoon.

I think you definitely were part of my catalyst to pull the plug and go for it. I know it was because I was seeing the possibility just like you were. And I remember, well, you obviously had a company with your parents and you basically were running that thing. So you saw what the inside of a successful company looks like. One that was generating really good revenue, had all these operations systems and yada, yada, yada. And I did get a glimpse of that because, you know, like, we were chatting about yesterday. We would have fun. We would have, like, chats in the morning, and on Fridays we'd have beers. And your dad be there, who was the owner. You know, your mom as well would sometimes join us. But, like, we had a great time, you know, and that's what I saw. What was Possible to run a business is like, that's fun, that's cool. Yeah. We might be doing this manufacturing thing that looks boring, but it's like, we can at least have fun doing whatever the mechanism is.

We figure out how to have fun all the time. Like, we had barbecues in the afternoons. We had, you know, beers on Fridays. We, you know, threw office parties all the time. And like, yeah, we did all sorts. We all go to lunch together. Yeah, like, we had a good time there until this new owner came in and went, you guys created company culture. Fuck that. And then just erased all the company culture, like literally within 24 hours.

And I think, yeah. And that's like a huge lesson there because, like, that it got more corporate. I mean, well, so back to you being the catalyst for me, like, I already had the idea of like not wanting, like, this isn't my thing. This isn't my long term thing. So I was going to school at the same time too. I remember this. Like I was getting a marketing degree in, you know, San Diego. School here, university, and I was like driving all around the county. I remember that. But yeah, you quitting your job and going on that honeymoon, I was like, damn, that sounds freaking awesome for one. You have no job, so you don't have to think about that. Also, I don't know, you were gonna start something fresh and new and have a clean, blank slate and it was building off of something you and I already were doing a little bit on the side. Damn it. I wanna do that too, because I ended up getting married in November and 28th. But it was, I. I think it was like right before that I graduated college as well. So right after I graduated college, I think is when I quit my job and before I got married. So it was like this weird and so similar to you. Like it was all this stuff was happening. It was like, oh, right as I'm graduating college and I'm about to get married is when I quit my job.

Yeah. It's like all these major life changes, all stacked.

Yeah. And people are like, wait, what? Hold on. You're supposed to keep your or get a job when you complete college, not drop your job. That actually was pretty sweet gig, but actually that company ended up going under. So it was probably a good thing I bounced before that, but whatever.

Hey, that's similar to my story after I left. The company went under after I left. I guess it did for you too, right? So, yeah, I think that just proves that we were the linchpins of those companies.

Obviously. Obviously.

But Yeah. I mean, all of this to say is, I think the whole moral of the thing here is it's easy to lose track of some of the freedoms or the catalysts, why you start something in the first place.

Yeah. If you reflect on why you did it, you can start to see like, all right, where did I get away from my original mission with all this? Where did I get away from my original intention? And for us, that's what we've been reflecting on. And it's really like we were doing it for the time freedom. We were doing it because we didn't want a boss. We didn't want somebody who told us where to be, when to be there. Like, I've told this before, but the beard that I have now, I grew as an act of defiance for that boss, right? So when this new owner came into the company, he went and had a new employee handbook made up, right? And the employee handbook had like a dress code. So he made everybody wear, you know, you couldn't wear jeans, you had to wear slacks, you had to tuck in your shirt, you had to wear a belt. It had to be a button up shirt with a collar. So he made like a dress code. And one of the rules as part of the dress code was you're not allowed to have facial hair, right? No facial hair. And as an act of defiance, when I read that I grew my beard, I went, fuck this, I'm growing the beard. I'm gonna see how long I could grow it until he calls me on it. And he actually started calling me on it, like a little ways into the job. He started going, you know you're not supposed to have that beard, right? I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll shave it tomorrow. And then the next day I'd come in, he's like, that beard's still there. And I was like, oh, shit, I totally forgot about that. Sorry about that. Yeah, sorry. And I never shaved my beard. I've just. I've had it ever since, like the be weird came as an act of defiance.

I don't think I knew that either. Like, there's like little bits of this story that I've heard this story a ton of times.

But yeah, I've always had facial hair. When I was in high school, I had a goatee. And like when I played in bands.

And stuff, I was brush for a little bit.

I did have a mustache. Watch the Fu Manchu. I had that for a little while.

It was like one time at a wedding.

Yeah, I've done it a few times now. But yeah, the wedding is the one where we have a bunch of a picture of it because it was at a wedding, but.

But yeah, I've pretty much always had facial hair. But the. The full beard came as that act of defiance when he passed out these new employee handbooks. I'm like, this is my first fuck you to this guy.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, that's. Yeah. Crazy times. But I guess let's bring it back to, like, what we're doing now, you know?

Good idea.

Because we can go down this whole memory lane for. I mean, it's interesting. I love it. But yeah, I mean, it's like it's 12 years since that time for both of us, and we're looking at our business for the millionth time of this expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. And through contraction, it's like we find our biggest growth. It seems like every single time, both monetarily, through the revenue that we're bringing, you would think, like, oh, you'd probably lose money. Well, maybe for a little bit, but actually, it just focuses all of our attention on the core things that are driving revenue, but also that allows us to, you know, whatever freedoms we are going after. But also with the contraction, I feel like we're just so happier, you know, like, there's always this sense of clarity where we're like, oh, yeah.

And we keep doing it, too. It's a cycle, right? We keep doing it where we will contract and we'll shave a whole bunch of projects off and take a whole things off of our plate. And then we start talking about how much happier we are, how much more free time we have, how much more fun stuff we're doing outside of the business. And then the next thing we know, like, opportunities to make more money get put in front of us. And we're like, ooh, money. I was just watching the Hobbit last night, right, where they were all. They were all obsessed over the gold inside the mountain, right? Like, we start to get that kind of thing where we're like, ooh, we have an opportunity to make a lot more money here. We should probably pursue this. And next thing you know, we're out of control again with just too many things on our plate. And we're stressed out, we're not happy, we're not having as much fun anymore. And I think that's a lesson that we've learned enough times now. Hopefully we'll find out, but I'm pretty sure we've learned it enough times now.

I think so. I think it's good to have A partner that checks ya sometimes. And obviously another partner in a relationship. You know, our wives help us. I know mine has. And if I'm getting off the rails a little bit, she'll call me. And I know you hesitantly called me yesterday on that, but I was like.

Tell me I'm not good at giving feedback to people. It's like.

But it was exactly what I needed to hear. And it's just. Yeah. If you're so wrapped up in your own stuff, you sometimes lose track of who you even are. Who I. You know, And I think everyone can relate to that in some way, I hope.

Yeah.

So it's just checking yourself and like, realigning back to your motivations. Why are you doing this?

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think, you know, moving forward with this episode, I think what would be kind of cool is to talk about, here's some of the stuff we're doing now to like, live that, to like, this is almost like an accountability episode for us. We're putting this out into the world, and you listening can hold us accountable if you see us going against what we're saying. Right. So, like, like, you know, a lot of people, when they start working out and doing fitness routines, they'll post on social media as like the, hey, everybody, hold me accountable if you see me eating that donut. You know, give me shit about it. We're doing that. Right. If you see us not having fun in our business anymore, call us on it.

You guys are being too serious. This is.

But let's talk about some of the stuff that we're leaning into, some of the cool stuff that we've got in the works to sort of live what we're saying.

We are going to. We're getting an office. And I think this is. This is something. Well, I know this is something we've been chatting about for a long time, and we've. We'd have. We've had offices in the past, but the big thing we want to do there is make it our own place. Make it a unique place for us to have fun, but also create more and create more for ourselves, for you, for whatever the hell is going to happen in that office. But also, like, just the. I think it's just the concept of having this place of our own. I mean, there's a lot of other things. Like this is gonna allow you and I to collaborate more in person. And we just know that that always works out way better than just hopping on a random call here and there or having a little. Let's Just do an hour call or an hour check in on or. Yeah, I don't know. It just feels like the best of stuff comes out when we're hanging out in an environment that's our own, that's kind of just like. I don't know, it's just. We want a fantasy factory, and I think that's what it's gonna become.

Yeah, I think we both have. We both have kind of separate motivations for the office, but we also have, like, some shared motivations for getting, like, an office space. Right. Like, obviously, you know, with your home situation, you've got kids and, you know, your wife and.

Just one kid.

Yeah, yeah, you've got a kid and dogs and wife, and, you know, you're looking to have, like, more of a distraction free workspace. Right. You know, for me, I've been really going down, like, a lot of the YouTube creator rabbit holes and watching a lot of, like, vloggers and YouTubers that are doing fun, cool stuff. And, like, my big motivation for wanting to get a studio is like, I want, like, what you just said, like, our fantasy factory. I want our creator studio. I want our place where we can, like, have cool lighting and cool gadgets and make fun videos and have a good time, but then document the journey, document the fun we're having behind the scenes. Build this podcast studio. Right now, we record every podcast episode here in my house, like, in my office. And there are, you know, there's reasons why we want to get out of my house for our podcasting. I have two kids here. They're not like, randomly popping in, but they're noisy. Sometimes you can hear them. Right. We've got dogs here. Every once in a while, you can hear dogs barking in the background. You know, my office isn't really set up as a studio, so Joe and I are just, like, sitting next to each other looking into my webcam as we're recording. So we don't have the best video quality, we don't have as good of audio quality as we'd like to have with our shows. We don't have the best, like, space for it. So I just kind of wanted to get our podcast studio into a dedicated studio where on podcast day, you and I show up, sit down, press record, and we're off to the races. As it stands right now, on podcast days, you know, an hour before you get here, I'm doing all this prep work. I'm getting microphones set up, I'm getting the mixing board set up, I'm getting the software set up. I'm. You know, we're doing all this stuff, so it's not like you show up and we hit record, right? But if we have a podcast studio, like, everything's set up, it's dialed in. The cameras are all set, they're in the right places. The mixing boards there, the mics are set up, everything's in the proper location. So we can just show up, sit down, press, record, and roll. And that's what really excites me about it. And I think those are kind of the sort of separate motivations that sparked it. But then the shared motivations are. I think you have that sort of overlapping motivation of this, like, fun creator space. And we also have this overlapping motivation of when you and I are together, we actually accomplish a shit ton more. Like, quarantine has been difficult because we don't see each other as much. You're at your house, I'm at my house. We do zoom calls and phone calls a lot, but it's not the same. It's not the same as when we're in front of a whiteboard going, you know what we should try next? And mapping stuff out together and then being in the dreamers room together and then getting into the critics room and going, yeah, but this isn't going to work because of this, this, and this. And, you know, just the sort of collaboration that we do when we're in the same place gets us so much further than the collaboration we're doing when we're in separate places.

It's true. And I'm just thinking back, I just had a flashback to artisan days back sitting, you know, when we were first starting with our blogs, way back when. I remember going either to your office, which was, like, in this other room, because you had your own, like, private office. And I think you had a whiteboard there or something. And, you know, you might be reading something, or maybe I read something. And then we'd go in there and we'd just talk about random ideas. Like, oh, I just read this thing. Oh, my God, you gotta try this. Or check it out. I think we might be able to do something here. Or like, oh, this is a great idea. We gotta model this thing. And it was just like you just said. It was like, I feel like we just started that way. Like, let's just mastermind interesting things. And then we'd be like, all right, that's really cool. Break. You're gonna do that. I'm gonna do this. Let's test it. Let's come back and chat about it later and then we would go and do it and I felt like it was just like. Yeah, it always kept us very. We had a good time doing it. It wasn't always like, all right, motherfucker. Like, no, it was like, yeah.

No, that was to entertain ourselves outside of the actual work we had to get done. Right. Like, that was the fun part of the day, was us masterminding and brainstorming, like business and opportunities to make money.

Yeah. And at the time, it was very money focused, for sure. You know, because we, like, we're just trying to prove this thing out. But then. But it's interesting because we always had a good time. It was always very collaborative, everything we've done. And I know some people have been like, all right, the dependents are here. Like the two guys that are always. But like, I feel like because we do have this shared brain, that just interesting thing comes out when we actually put into action. And we do that consistently. I mean, that's. I don't know. But yeah, getting this office space for me. Yeah, the distraction pre thing, I think it was like the initial thing, I was like, oh, this is gonna be cool. So let's be honest, I think a lot of that comes down to me just simplifying my life and not doing as much. So that could probably be accomplished without getting an office. But at the same time, I like the simplicity of having a place where we could just walk in, hit a button, sit down, not rearrange things, but have the confidence in knowing that everything's ready for us in our place. And the quality of everything we produce is going to be so much higher because of all of these things. And the fact that we do have a different focus. Similar focus. Always create great content and keep on this vein, but, like, do it in a way where it's gonna be way more entertaining and visual and just something that we would wanna really dive into deep too.

Well, I feel like the focus has shifted to fun. Like, let's just have a crap ton of fun and then document the journey of us having fun. And ideally that entertains people enough that they keep following along with us. Right? That's. That's where really we're going. And I feel like when we have our own place, we're gonna just start getting way more creative with, like, how do we just have fun? Like, what cool gadgets can we bring into this office to play with and make videos around and have fun with what? You know, I like the idea of bringing in more guests and having guests in studio and Doing interviews with us across the room from them. I love the idea of doing stuff like that and having our own little, like, Joe Rogan sessions and stuff like that. So I think that's really cool as well. And, you know, we have had offices in the past. This is actually what our fourth or fifth office we've had for Evergreen Profits. But they've all had different things, different circumstances. Right. Our. Our previous office before this, the one that we've talked about, that was above the brewery. Well, we had other tenants there. Right. Dan Ryan, who loves his shout outs on the show, and. And. And Jenny DeRose and Eric DeRose and.

What up? What up?

All these people, like, we shared this space with them, right. So it wasn't really like a creator studio where we can do whatever we want. It was kind of like they were our landlords and we rented a space from them and it was a good time. Oh, yeah, we loved it. We had a great time. But it wasn't really like our own space. It was. We were in their space kind of feeling. Right before that, we had an office space up in Murrieta, which is about an hour north of where we live in San Diego. And that one was more of a shared space as well. We had our own little office unit, but there was people in the office, like, directly next to us. And, like, we kind of had, like, a shared lobby, but in our office was one of the doors off the shared lobby, and other people had offices. Like, it wasn't really a place where we felt like we could screw around and have a lot of fun and do whatever we wanted, because there was, like, people right there with a shared wall with us.

Well, you did just tell me yesterday that someone was screwing around in that place.

Oh, yeah, I saw somebody filming a porn there.

You just told me this yesterday, but there were times I was like, wait, what? That happened right down the hall from our office.

Like, I mean, I'm making some assumptions. It might be a little bit of a leap, but I saw two people that looked like they probably could be in that profession walking down the hall with a camera crew following them.

They were dressing the part and going to an office with the camera crew following.

Yeah, yeah.

You put those pieces together. And.

So, yeah, people are having fun, but we weren't. Yeah, we didn't have our own place, though, through all this stuff. Like, we had. It was all, like, baby steps and. But it was always really cool because when we would get, like, when we have focus, and at those times, I felt like we were really Searching for the perfect model. We were searching for what we love to do.

We didn't know what we wanted to.

Be when we grew up yet it really is true. But we knew we wanted to have fun, and we were doing that, you know, that was always part of it, I would say.

We've had such a blast running our business throughout the entire history of our business. And I almost feel like the fun faded because of coronavirus, like us being locked into our houses and not seeing each other, not networking, not seeing as many people outside of our offices. I really feel like that's where the fun died a little bit. Right. Because we were going to so many. Like, we have a blast going to traffic conversion and podfast and putting on our overtime events and. And speaking at War Room and doing all this cool stuff. You and I were pinch ourselves constantly. If we looked at this 12 years ago, we would have never thought we would get to the place we're in now. And I feel like we always, always, always had a blast. And then just towards the beginning of 2020, when everybody was starting to stay home and we had to start doing everything over zoom, I mean, even our podcast. The first six months of quarantine, we were recording everything here on Riverside with our guests. We weren't getting together to do podcasts. So, like, we weren't even, you know, like the. The sort of seeing other people factor of it, I think sort of killed the vibe a little bit for a while.

Definitely. Yeah, I think that was a big part, man. So, I mean, fact, now that we have realized this and I feel like we checked ourself, and I guarantee you, listening right now, you probably have felt something like this, especially if you're a social creature, like I really am, you know, like, I think it's probably affected people like us, you know, the social ones, but also just in general. I mean, like, shit, we're all social creatures at the end of the day. So even if you hate people, like when I was talking to Massimo, you know, a founder of Ad Espresso. Yeah. She's like, I hate people. I know, Matt, you've kind of shared that idea sometimes with me, but at the end of the day, come on, you love people too. It's like the people that you want to hang with.

I almost feel like me saying that, like, I'm antisocial and introverted now is almost like it's part of the branding, but it's probably not actually part of the reality that much anymore.

Yeah, I would agree with that for sure. So, I mean, yeah. At the end of this day.

Yeah. So I was just gonna say like, with all of that being said, I think sort of what we're promising to do from here on out is to focus on having a crap ton of fun first and hope and hoping that in the process of us having a lot of fun with the business that people that are paying attention to us are entertained and getting informed by the fun content we put out. So some of the things that you could expect to start seeing from us is, you know, we've already started doing a lot more on YouTube. Like we, we've been saying for years we're going to do more on YouTube and it only took us YouTube, like two years to finally actually start doing more on YouTube. But we're planning on doing a lot more like behind the scenes kind of videos, like showing you the new office and showing how we're setting up the new office and doing studio tours and finding fun games to play on our podcast and you know, like making it entertaining for ourselves and hopefully that that fun translates to the listeners as well. Hopefully you have just as much fun listening to our shows and watching our videos as we have making them because we're going to start with putting the focus on having a crap ton of fun ourselves.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I want to spread the fun, spread happiness, interesting thoughts and ideas, behind the scenes stuff, things we're thinking about, people we're hanging out with, you know, going deeper on, just in general with. On things that we talk about in the podcast structure it in a way that's just going to be a lot more, maybe attract a wider audience even. I mean, like with YouTube and you know, we're really thinking about the whole creator angle. So there's a, it's cool and I don't know if we have the time for this one, but like, you know, the creator rabbit hole is very interesting because we're seeing a whole different way to show up and market yourself and your brand and your products, all that stuff that most. Yeah, I would say digital marketers, standard or traditional marketing. It seems different with the approach and you'll see a lot more of that from us just because it's, it's fun and it's what, it's what. It's where the puck is going, you know, Matt.

Yeah, well, yeah, it is. That's, that's one of the cliches that I say when we're not recording very often. I'll say it more often on recording though.

You should.

But yeah, I mean one of the sort of Rabbit holes that we were going down yesterday, you know, in regards to the whole, like, creator thing, is the idea of having, like, passions beyond the business, right? Like, that was. That was kind of a deep topic of, like. I think one of the reasons we're not having as much fun right now is because our lives are pretty much the business and, you know, hanging out with the family, which we love hanging out with our families. But, like, that's kind of what life has become. Like, work in the business, go watch movies, or have, you know, do stuff with the family. Work in the business, go do some stuff with the family, right? And that's. It's kind of like this binary life that we've created where it's like, everything is one of those two things. And for me, the realization I've had lately is that I've got this drive to create. You know, like, I love doing music production, right? I love creating music, recording music. I love playing guitar, I love editing music. I love photography, and I love video production. I love all of these, like, creative pursuits. And I haven't really been doing any of them very much lately. And so I think this, this shift is kind of like a.

Leaning into these creative pursuits that I think we have this drive to do, but we sort of squash that drive. We're kind of like, no, shut up. Making money is more important. But I think now our brains are sort of shifting to this place of like, no, these creative pursuits, these things that create happiness, these things that drive us in our business in the first place so that we can do things outside of our business. These need to be the focus. These need to be the pursuit. Right? The pursuit needs to be the creative, fun things that we get excited about outside of work. And now work becomes the machine, the engine that provides the means to do the creative stuff outside of work.

Yeah, we had what it was Jenna Larson yesterday. Well, we recorded yesterday, but episode that's either out or will be out soon.

Not yet.

Little tease for you then is she kept saying how she's a lazy person and that's what motivates her. But the fact that she has simple systems and processes to get stuff done quickly and to the best quality out there, better than most people would if they spent all day or all week doing that same thing. And you know, like, that just that kind of sentiment has been beat over our heads and my head tremendously, I think, over the last handful of months. You know, guys like Marx Acosta, Rubio is so many calls. We've had him on the podcast of him, clubhouses with him. And it's all scheduling fun before work, you know, and it's creating this space for fun, budgeting that in your calendar and doing that and making that a priority, taking time off in advance, paying in advance, and then the rest of the time, there is some work. It doesn't mean the rest of the time, actually. It's just like, work will be there, but the whole goal is to not make that work, expand across the board and have it consume every waking second, you know, and that's. That's kind of what can quickly happen unless you check yourself or budget the fun and the passions and all this other stuff. So, for sure, yeah, it's. This is gonna be fun. And so maybe let's keep a lookout because you're gonna see a lot of new stuff from us, and hopefully this office thing will happen probably in the next few weeks.

Yeah, we're still waiting for the landlord to approve our application. Hopefully, we're gonna.

Sketchy characters.

We are pretty sketchy, I guess. But, yeah, we're just waiting to hear back whether they approve us or not. We found a good location that'll make a badass studio, a badass creator space. So we're excited and, you know, when we get it, expect some videos. We'll give you a tour of the blank slate before we do anything with it, and then give you, like, updates along the way as we build out our sort of dream studio. That's kind of the idea there. So excited about that. Couple of quick, like, pod hacker updates.

We had Kurt Molly join us on our live expert session this month, and it was killer. He broke down how to use Facebook ads to grow your audience as a podcaster, which is something that a lot of people seem to struggle with as podcasters. So that module is now available for pod hackers.

Well, you know, what was cool about this? And I just want to. Because there was a perspective shift that I saw happen with the members, like, the people that were there with us live, because we're. It's a live session. We have zoom. So, you know, there's a lot of chat going on, and Kurt was talking about kind of the layers of awareness. You know, if you. If you can kind of think of you have the completely unaware, and then you have, you know, the most aware on top. So you have this whole spectrum, and there's like five or whatever steps and stages. And, you know, he's relating this to how you can run ads to specific layers of people. And, you know, there's a whole method to the madness and. And just the way that he presents that just shows you and everyone. And this is true outside of podcasting or creating. But the fact is, like, you know, you don't have to present your message to everyone. You don't need every download or every view or every person on your email list. You want the right people. And he had a very methodical way that he showed podcasters and other creators on this POD hacker training that you don't need the most downloads in the world. But, like, if you just had the right people, you can grow the biggest business you ever want methodically and look like you have this massive brand, you know, like with advertising, but you're not having to blow a big budget to do so. And it's gonna grow all sorts of stuff. Not just your podcast, but your email list, your sales, you know. So, yeah, that was fun to see, like, kind of that mindset shift for people, for sure. It's very rare in podcasting.

Yeah. And then on the day this actually comes out yesterday, we would have just done our office hours for this month, so. And tomorrow's my birthday, actually based on the day this comes out, but confusing.

Me so much right now.

I know this is coming out on April 29th. My birthday is April 30th, so this is coming out the day before my birthday and the day after. We just did our open office hours. Most likely what we talked about yesterday was using surveys in your marketing to figure out what to talk about, probably recapping some of the stuff that Kurt went over and answering more questions around that and just, you know, generally working directly one on one with people on a live setting with helping them grow their podcast. So hopefully you're on that session. If you're not, make sure you're a POD hacker member so you get notified. For our next expert session and our next open office hours, we're going to be having an SEO session. Our May session is going to be. Is going to be with an expert all about doing SEO to grow your podcast. So that should be a fun one that most podcasters are not doing.

And just to toss it out there, because I know not every single person is interested in podcasting. And I might have mentioned this before, but at the end of the day, it's another form of content and a place that you should be showing up. So you're likely creating content somewhere consistently. You might just listen to podcasts, but you definitely should get a podcast because there's a reason why there's a lot of podcasts growing. There's a lot of attention on podcasting. The tech's getting better. The marketing and discoverability is getting better. Don't be, you know, don't think that you have to have this, you know, super unique angle and all that. It's like, just be you. And there's a lot of people that will just get hung up on, oh, I don't. You know, the podcast thing, there's not enough space for me there. It's like, well, and you don't even need to hang your hat and say you're a podcaster. I mean, you can have a podcast, but that could just be one of the ways that your content shows up to the world and attracts more people.

Yeah. And another thing I'll add to that as well is we get people constantly going. You guys do affiliate marketing so good. You do it different than anybody I've ever seen do it like, you guys are next level with affiliate marketing. And I'm not tooting my own horn. Those are actual comments that other people have told us. And here's the thing. Like, they always say you should make a course on it. Pot hackers. That course everything stems from our podcast. So if you want to know how we do affiliate marketing and you want to learn all of our affiliate marketing strategies, it's pod Hacker. Like, it's all built off the back of our content. We just happen to be doing podcast content. But if you're a blogger or a YouTuber or making content in any other way, the methodologies are the same exact stuff. We just happen to leverage a podcast. So Podhacker is also our affiliate marketing course. So just throwing that out there. It's us opening the kimono on our entire fricking business.

Let's see, it's also our traffic generation course. That's how we get our traffic. That's how we grow our brand. That's how we grow our email list. That's how we send our physical newsletters and physical mail. It's how we're repurposing our content and on all the different social channels, it's how social media.

It'S everything we do in our business. So it's like, I just. I don't know, I just feel like there's this objection of, like, I'm not a podcaster. I don't see myself being like, I'm not that interested. Well, I think you should be, because there's a reason why podcasting really allows you to kind of wrap all this stuff in your business, but in a systematic way. It doesn't Mean, you need to be doing a product, a bunch of million things. And don't worry. The stresses that we're talking about and the ways that we got away from fun don't involve the podcast. The podcast is the fun part and the systemized way to have more fun.

And grow the three days a month that we actually have to do any work on the podcast. Yeah.

Oh, God, it's so stressful.

Not at all.

Pretty rough.

You know what? We should wrap this up by telling a story.

Oh, we're doing stories. I was going to do a. I was going to throw out some ridiculous ideas. Oh, yeah.

Ridiculous marketing ideas. All right, so conversion AI is a tool we've been playing with. They don't sponsor us. We're not affiliates of it. We don't know the guys. We don't know anything about this tool other than we have a lot of fun playing with it. But basically, what this tool is, is a tool where you can kind of give it some ideas and it will write marketing copy for you. Some of the copy is actually really good. Some of it's ridiculous. Some of it makes no sense whatsoever. And we've seen it kind of fall in all of those places. So we thought it would be kind of fun to every once in a while do, like, a little segment on the show where we read some automated copy and see what it spits out for us.

Let's do it. So right now we're looking at ridiculous marketing ideas. So.

This is a joke. It says, well, you know what? Sometimes it might give you a pretty good idea you can run with. All right, all right, so what are we gonna plug in here? So we have a few. I'm just gonna voice this out. We have a company product name that we can put in. Product name. Let's put Hustle and Flowchart and Tone of Voice.

Oscillin Flowchart for the product name.

Flowchart. And what's our product description here?

A podcast for entrepreneurs who want to have more fun in life.

That's good.

More fun in life. All right. And the tone of voice.

Let's do silly or goofy or something like that.

I'm going to do funny as a tone of voice, because I feel like that will. That's given us some good stuff in the past.

All right. Start a GIF battle with our competitors on Twitter. Actually not a bad idea. I don't feel like we have competitors because I feel like podcasting is very collaborative, but I like the idea, actually.

All right, here's another one.

Matt, what do you got send in an I Love Hustle and Flowchart Tumblr post to all of the traffic blogs on the Internet. Okay, I don't know how to do that. I don't know what that means.

Host podcast calls from a shipping container and keep people waiting for a signup sheet to say what they want.

Okay, that one just is confusing.

Random.

I like the shipping container idea though.

Yeah, that's different.

Yeah, like we're getting ideas for our future content. Like we recorded a podcast in a shipping container. Here's what happened. And then it's a YouTube video that looks like a Mr. Beast video.

Yeah. All right, I'm just going to skip down over here. So we have deliver customers frozen packs of Chinese food through pizza boxes. Okay, that's going to be different. That's. You know what, let's generate. This is not the best right now. Come on, let's get more ridiculous.

I got some pretty ridiculous dirty ones before. Those are what I'm looking for.

Publish seven podcasts on the first week of a launch so listeners think we're prolific. Wait, Proliferative.

I think it means the same thing, but I've never actually heard that word before. Proliferative.

Well, it's not a bad strategy to start with that many podcasts in the first week.

Start a podcast with your significant other. Sing duets for Alexa to tell listeners about episodes. Not bad. Not bad.

It's getting better. No, that's a little bit more, you know, something you can actually do.

All right, let's do one more refresh and then let's move on. Cause it's not giving us the gold like it has in the past.

Write a fake review of another podcast and say their creator absolutely lost his voice on day two.

I like it. I like it.

Not bad. All right, Matt, what do you got?

The podcast always starts with the message, your ideas are bad and you can't do anything about it.

That's a winner so far.

That's a winner. That's a winner. I like that.

Have an episode where you bring in dogs as reviewers. Okay, that's not bad. Okay.

Create a tool that highlights sketchy sounding business ideas. Then promote.

I like it.

Isn't that what this is doing right now?

Pick all the decorative stickers off our competitors websites and stick them over so they can't advertise either.

I don't get that one.

Donate blood and give users 1 1024th of a biohack.

Wait, what's that one? We're trying to be an off the wall podcast. What if during our interview, we continually pretend like there was something in our teeth and kept interrupting them with yuck, obviously this would come right when a guest said something great or had the host wanting.

That's pretty good.

We're getting somewhere. So get a business owner to list the biggest regrets they had in their life at 6am Then call them back when it's too late for anyone else to wake up that early and let them talk about how much they regret not buying from your product by having a straight audio ad spliced into a long conversation between you and them. That is a hell of a sentence.

Wow.

Buy and sell supplements that enhance income as an affiliate. Make millions in passive cash flow.

Okay, we've done that. We've sold CD and crap.

Oh, Matt, you said. All right, here we go.

Here we go. Publish a video and submit it to porn sites for user submitted videos. Everyone naturally clicks through once they see the thumbnail.

I like it. That's the way.

Maybe that's a growth strategy for podcasts, is to just. Yeah, user submitted podcast videos on porn sites, but put the thumbnail as something else that gets the click, it says. And watch your podcast grow.

I never thought of that one before. Thank you, AI. You come through again for us. All right.

I think we can go ahead and wrap this one up.

Yeah. So Jacob, cut down some of the bad ones for us there so we could save people time.

Yeah, yeah. So this, this segment was probably actually longer for us than what you actually heard because it did generate a lot of like, really kind of boring ideas. You probably only heard the best of the best.

Yeah, yeah, it's for the better, but it's a cool tool. We'll bring it back some other time for shits and giggles.

For shits and giggles.

Good times, Matt. Let's go have fun. Let's go celebrate your birthday tomorrow. And actually, anyone listening, go find Matt on social media and blow him up in a not a bad way. But I don't know.

Yeah, I might actually see it like next week or something.

That's right. So let him hear it.

My social media plan is I get on Facebook and I check into our Facebook groups for all of our customers and, and hustling flowchart listeners and stuff. And then I get off. So I don't even like, look at my profile or pages or anything. It's like very methodical. Check the groups. Cool. I've helped everybody I can in here. Get the hell off social media.

Well, go blow up Matt's inboxes. I think that'll probably get his attention, get him out of his rut, get him out of his routine. Matt needs to hear your birthday wishes.

You can all email me at Joe.

It's pretty easy to find. Talked about it.

Yeah. People pretty accurately guess our email addresses constantly.

It's all good. I'd like to hear from you. Matt really wants to hear from you, though.

Grab the action guide for this episode over@flowchartgroup.com Again, you'll be joining our Facebook group. When you do that, when you join our Facebook group, we'll ask for your email. If you give us the email, we'll send you the action guide from this episode. The action guide will probably be pretty interesting from this one, so I'm excited to see what notes sue pulls from this one.

Thank you, Sue. Thank you for listening and watching. Yeah, Go check it out. Anything else?

Yeah. Easy Webinar.

Easy Webinar. Yes. We do have a sponsor, and that sponsor is Easy Webinar.

It is. You're correct.

I wish I had. Yeah. But we've talked about this a lot. Last time we were recording yesterday, and I know this is not older, we were talking about your kids using Easy Webinar, which was a surprise. You're like, hey, what? Hold on. I know the creator of that thing.

It's what the kids are into these days.

That's what the kids are into is easy.

Where the puck is going, where the puck is going.

But automated webinars, I mean, there's like so many different types of webinars you can do. So the fact is that your kids could have been recording a live webinar because there's full streaming capabilities, all that fun stuff. But you can also make that an automated evergreen style webinar that perpetually plays all sorts of stuff. So creating courses from there, onboarding customers, you can do all this, like, funky stuff with webinars. It doesn't have to always be the same old boring webinars you might have seen around. Make them fun, make them entertaining. Yep.

So if you're thinking about doing anything with webinar, definitely check out Easy Webinar. It's our favorite webinar platform. It's the one we use and they're hooking up listeners of Hustle and Flowchart. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, he's gonna hook you up with a fatty discount just because you're a listener. If you go to easywebinar.com you can also get it, but you're not getting hooked up. So because you heard this. Go to the Hustle page and get hooked up.

You will see Matt's face if you go to that other page, but you don't need to see his face again. You wanted the discount.

You want the discount? Easy webinar. It's more important than seeing my face. Yes. Easywebinar.com hustle and if you're not a member of Pod Hacker yet, what the hell are you waiting for? Get in podhacker.com it may be a waiting list right now, so that could be what you're waiting for. We do sort of open and close it periodically. Couldn't tell you right now as we're recording this, whether this is whether it's open or not on the day this goes live. But if you go to podhacker.com, you can either sign up today or get on the wait list. Either way, you're gonna get details about.

Pod Hacker and we will also send you cool tips and cool things to while you're on that waiting list. All these cool little interesting nuggets to get you up to speed on what Pod Hacker is and some cool stuff you do while you're waiting for real.

Including free training about podcast growth hacks that you're just gonna get even before you sign up for Pod Hacker. So just by being on the waiting list, you're gonna get some rad stuff from us around growing your podcast.

Boom. All right, well, have a good one, Mr. Matt.

You too. Talking, Mr. Fear. Did I say that right, Mr.

Fear? Yes, you did. That's perfect. It's fancy sounding. I'll take it. All right. I love it. All right, till next time, Joe Evolved.

And E Flow out.

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 Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all them of 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 and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki Wiki. We love you.