Therapy Sessions 👥 Here Is Why Networking Is Important

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What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, the official podcast of Evergreen Profits dot com. My name is Matt Wolfe, and my CO host is Mr. Joe Fear. And this episode's a little bit different. This is gonna be an interesting one, kind of a fun one. Joe and I were actually heading to prep for our overtime event, which we put on in San Diego about once per quarter. And on the drive over to Mission Brewery, where we're holding our next overtime event, we decided to have a conversation about the merits of networking and connecting and how who we know has essentially been more important than what we know over the course of our business. So it's a very interesting conversation. It is in the moment. We are in the car. You'll hear us in the car. So the audio quality is going to be slightly different than what you're used to. Not bad audio quality, but just different. It's gonna. You're gonna hear some background noise and things like that while we're driving in the car. But it's a really, really good discussion on networking and the merits of networking and why it's important to grow your network as big as possible. I think you're really gonna enjoy it. We had fun with this one. And if you like this, let us know. Go to the private Facebook community, the Evergreen profits community, and let us know, Hey, I love that car episode that you guys did. I want to hear more of that kind of thing. We want that feedback. Feedback from you. All right. We really appreciate it. Let's go ahead and dive into this really fun conversation that we had. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Hustle at Flowchart podcast. Today we're doing something a little different. The audio might sound a little different than normal, but I'm about to hop in the car with Joe, and we're gonna record a little bit of a call on the drive. So I'm hopping in his car right now. What is up? Oh, hey. He's filming me while I'm doing it too. What's up, dude?

Didn't see that coming. How you doing?

I'm doing good. Doing good.

All right, so where are we going?

We're heading over to Mission Brewery. We're gonna be doing some beer brewing for our overtime event coming up. Yeah, well, by the time this episode's out, the overtime event might have happened already, probably.

So it's Only in a couple weeks from now. But, yeah, little side note, Matt doesn't own his own car because he doesn't really drive a lot, so I'm his Uber for the day. Yeah.

Well, what? I need to go somewhere. Either I use Alana's car or I take a Lyft. Not Uber. A Lyft?

Oh. Why Lyft? I'm curious.

My Uber account actually got hacked by somebody in Kazakhstan.

Oh.

And I contacted Uber about it, and their response was to close down my account, so they actually just shut down my account. Next time I tried to get into Uber later, it just said, you don't have an account. And then when I tried to add a create a brand new account, I kept on getting an error message saying.

That you're a hacker, you're a hacker.

Like this phone number and this card details have already been used.

Oh, lovely. So come on, Uber. Well, that was an issue for a while. Maybe it still is.

I don't know.

Yeah. But yeah. So we're headed down to Mission Brewery in downtown San Diego and we are going to cask a beer today. Yep. Which, I don't know if you already said this, but. Did you already say this? I don't know. I didn't know. But yeah, we're casking a beer, and if you don't know what casking is, it's like basically taking a beer. And this is definitely not technical terms, but it's like putting beer that's already been brewed into a cask, but it's basically like a little mini keg that looks a little different. And we're gonna shove a bunch of fruit in there. Ironically, I see a bunch of oranges on the side of the road. We'll probably put a lot of oranges in there. Last time we put oranges or like tangerines.

What the heck was it?

Pineapple and extra hops.

And hops. Yeah. So it's like it. Basically we took an ipa, an Imperial, not Imperial Indian Pale Ale. Super hoppy already. It was super alcoholic. It was like 8%.

Yeah, it was a double IPA.

That's right.

So you had the Imperial, Right. It was Imperial India Pale Ale.

It's a double iva. Yeah. Basically we shoved a bunch of fruit in that one. Actually mellowed it out a lot, but I think it actually increased the ABV a little bit, the alcohol level because of the sugar, and added more hops. So it turned out to be like, I don't know, it was like 11 or 12%.

On the night of our Actual event. I was only able to drink one of them.

Well, there are a bunch of people from Traffic and Conversion from last year because we did at the same event time. And yeah, I think it tasted really mellow and easy drinking. Like even people who don't like IPAs actually liked it. Cuz it was a little fruity but not so hoppy. But people were hammered and it was pretty funny. And I mean there's some. I'm not going to name names, but there were some pretty big marketers that a lot of us have heard of.

Well, some of them have even been on our podcast.

Oh yeah. That were like pretty much obliterated and they didn't see it coming and they were just like, dear God, what do you do to me? I'm like, sorry. No, not sorry.

Our overtime events are always awesome. And here's a little marketing tip trick. In fact, the term truth serum from Jason Moffat always comes to mind when we go to networking events. Because the trick is if you get marketers drunk, they pretty much tell you anything. They'll tell you all their secrets. What's working.

Yeah.

Well, especially works in the marketing world where people tend to be secretive with what's working. Get a few drinks in them and they start to open up about what's really working.

Well, that's. Well, yeah. Ironically, like Jason Moffat, before we actually knew who he was, we knew him as a marketer online, you know, well connected. San Diego. We weren't buddies with him, but that was, I think the first thing I read from him. He had like a little PDF thing that was called Truth Serum.

It was all about getting marketers drunk.

Yeah. For the most part. And then like basically extracting. Yeah. All the best stuff. And we literally did that. So when we were starting our business, I remember that we went to all sorts of networking events and we didn't pay for the event. Like stuff like underground summit in D.C. and I mean there's a whole bunch.

Well, we didn't, we didn't go into the event. Just to clarify. We didn't pay for the event, but we hung out in the halls and in the bar.

We went there specifically to leverage the event. So we stayed at the hotel, but we just hung out. Yeah. At the bars and we just made sure that's pretty much what we're doing at TNC this year too.

Yeah, this is actually the first year we're going to TNC and we didn't buy a ticket. We're going with the sole purpose of, of networking, masterminding, going to the networking events and that sort of thing. And we're not even gonna spend a single moment in the room because there's people out there that, you know, take notes and sell their notes online. So we're just gonna buy the notes this year.

As my phone rings, this shows you how unprepared I was for a podcast in the car.

Yeah, well, we planned this yesterday.

Yeah. But we actually decided that we weren't gonna do it this way too. We did background noise. You were very concerned. Well, but Matt said, screw it, let's do it.

Screw it, let's do it.

That's the mentality we like. But yeah, so we definitely.

I don't think the value. I mean, I guess at this point and even back then, there's a lot of value in the room, don't get me wrong. But like, at this point in our business, and I feel like in most businesses you don't. It's not really beneficial to just pound a bunch of knowledge in your head and then like, keep, keep. I mean, it's obviously keep learning, but don't const be chasing the new hottest thing that's out there. Shiny objects, all that stuff. Unless it's gonna really move the needle for your business.

Yeah.

Fits in with what your goals are.

Yeah. I think at this point, going in and sitting in events like traffic and.

Conversion, it's probably more harmful to our.

Business and our productivity than helpful. For the sole reason that we are on a path. We've got a roadmap. We know exactly what we're doing. We know exactly where we're going.

We.

We already have all the plans on how we're going to get there. We pretty much know what we're doing with our business.

Right.

So sitting in a room and having people say, well, you should test this technique or this tactic or this strategy is actually more of a distraction that's going to probably throw us off our current roadmap now. Going to events and networking with people, making new connections, building up potential future JV partners and things like that, that is really, really valuable to us.

Right.

Those are people that could potentially be on our podcast. Those are people that we might do joint venture deals and buy businesses with or buy their business in the future, or they might buy our business in the future, or they may contribute to our blog or help drive traffic to our blog. I mean, there's so much power to the network, but for us in the current state that we're in, it's very difficult for us to sit in a room and learn New tactics. Because the problem is we do get excited about the tactics. We do sit there and go, holy shit, that's a really great idea. We should try that in our business. And it distracts us from the stuff that we're already doing in our business.

Don't you think that like even people starting out or even people with like a business that's not at our level or being in the business for, you know, for us, it's over 10 years now. I think it still is beneficial for people to not really go to a bunch of conferences because I know that a lot of people are conference junkies.

Yeah.

They'll just want to digest, you know, pay thousands of dollars and travel everywhere for the sole purpose. Not even to network. It's to just sit in a frickin room and take notes. It's like.

Yeah. So my thoughts on that are there are benefits if you're strategic about it.

Right.

Like, so last year we went to TNC and we were really, really hot on the concept of chatbots. Right. We really wanted to study chatbot before that we knew the concept, but we didn't really know how to implement them or build them out or the strategies behind them. So we were really interest the chatbot stuff. So what we did was we said we're gonna go to tnc. There's four or five sessions during TNC where they're specifically talking about messenger bot chatbot technology. Let's go sit in on just those because those are the ones that we're really interested in learning about right now. So we were very, very, very specific which, which with which sessions we sat in on because we only wanted to sit in on the ones that we felt were gonna be like super beneficial to our business.

That's true. And we actually split up efforts too to sit in different sessions.

Yeah, we did. We did. Because yeah, at one point you went to sit in an Instagram one and I went and sat in on a content marketing one because those are also things we were experimenting with at the time. We sort of phased out using Instagram. Instagram as a marketing tool because it's really hard to see results from Instagram with what we do at least.

But ironically we get a lot of traffic that way without even trying, which is weird. Yeah, I still don't know how the hell that's working.

I don't know why we get traffic from Instagram. It's not high quality traffic. Yeah, it's always like kind of high bounce traffic. But I. Yeah, Instagram still confuses me because you can't put a link in your posts. And I think it's just much better suited for very visual businesses. Health, fitness, foodie type stuff. Like I think it works really well for that kind of stuff.

But I guess something that I want to talk about and this has been on our minds for a while now. We actually. I don't know if this will probably come out after we talk to John Cochran. Yes, it will. Yep. So if you listen to that one, you know he's like a big networker. He puts on events and he is big into being kind of strategic but you know, and landing new job or positions or whatever, trying to move around, you know, in business. But a big thing is his network and expanding that but doing it in a kind of strategic way. But we basically on there like we were talking about and I think it started conversations between Matt and I of like just going to networking things. Like inherently in San Diego there's a just a shit ton of marketing events. But that's the case with everywhere. Like there's still entrepreneur meetups and all that stuff for everyone. You might think like what's the purpose to go to these things if I can't see a clear result from them? And I know we didn't like chat prior to this talking about this, but it was, it's literally something Matt and I have been talking about, almost debating a little bit. But we also reminded ourselves of the purpose and like where we've seen networking really totally change our lives and our business.

Yeah.

And I guess the big thing. And explain like how you were. Remember we were talking about like going to a meet up last Saturday. It actually ended up getting canceled so it's a non issue. But yeah. Yeah, you were kind of in the mindset of like what's the point?

Yeah, I'm constantly back and forth with what's the value of networking. You know, like I'm constantly, I don't know, it's sort of a tough thing for me because I'm very, very introverted. I'm not someone who is very energized by being around a lot of people. I'm more energized by just kind of being by myself, head down, getting stuff done. When I'm in environments where there's a lot of people around and there's a lot of conversation and I got to do small talk and I don't know, it's definitely a struggle for me. I don't, I don't think I'm awkward or it's difficult for me. It's just. It's very draining on me. I just. I'm always very drained and not always super comfortable doing it. So I constantly fight with myself of, is this valuable? Is this not valuable? And I make excuses for myself and basically tell myself, this isn't valuable to me. I don't need to go do this. But then when I look back at our business over the last, you know, 10, 12 years that we've been doing this stuff, I always realize that our business is where it is because of our network. Right. So in the beginning, we hired a coach. We started working with this coach because of that coach. We got networked with multiple other people because of that network. We built, you know, iterations of the business we had at the time. And then we got networked with more people, which led us into different sort of divergences on the business. And when I look back over the last 10 years, I could pretty much pinpoint every major shift in my business to somebody in my network.

Yeah. You know, or going to a specific event.

Or going to a specific event. Yeah. It's always based around going to an event or meeting someone very specific to sort of change the trajectory of my business. And every time I remind myself of.

That, it's, oh, it's salute. Oh.

I just looked over and Joe was, like, randomly saluting no one. But no, we're.

No, I still needed someone. Okay. Anyway, granddad man, secretary, going on, carrying on.

Actually have grandparents there as well.

See, I saluted them, too, for you.

So, yeah. So, I mean, I just. Looking back at that trajectory, I could always pinpoint little networking moments that have changed the path of the business. And so I flat out told Joe, anytime I start giving you crap about going to networking events, just tell me to shut up and remind me of that.

Well, I did have to remind you and, like, shift you from that thought, because it was funny when I brought up this idea of going to this. It's just like a little event. It wasn't anything big. It was something local. And, yeah, we were kind of, like, going back and forth, debating about it, and it was about the whole concept of what's the point of this? You know, and it was a Saturday. I get it. It's like, we usually do family stuff anyway. Yeah. But, yeah, and then I think later that evening or maybe the next day, you're like, man, this is still in my head. I'm like, huh? I'm like, well, just remember, like, we didn't talk about, like, it's all about the freaking people, you know? Yeah. And then I told Matt, and he already knew this, but you already knew this. I don't know why I'm talking about you in third person. Whatever. But I was like, you realize, like, this is how. Well, I think you told me this is how you met your business partner. Bradley. Yeah. Started Learn to Blog. It was all from the action seminar in San Diego, which was a copywriting thing. And the way that I met Amish Shah, who was a business partner. I met Mike Koenigs, who's like, a massive client for me, who then opened up more doors, was all through going or meeting one guy, dk, who is a good friend of ours at Untuck. Ton of other people. But it's kind of crazy, because I was thinking. And I actually just now remembered how I met dk. It was at a dinner during. Somewhere downtown. I don't know whose dinner it was, but we got invited to it, and it was a chiropractor. He was like, hey, I want to talk to you. More literally, like, I can pinpoint my entire. Not my entire business, but a lot of my business and connections from that one person. Yeah. And being. And here's the crazy thing. I don't know if he's listening to this podcast. He might. But just a quick story on how I actually did that. I literally. I think we both met DK at the same night, actually, at that dinner.

I was there. Was it the one. So Amish had his event downtown before me? Oh, this was before me. So I don't.

I don't remember by this point, because.

I was at a dinner that Amish had during one of his events. Was there? Yeah. That's what you were talking about.

I was already a partner with him then. Okay. No, this one. I basically met this guy dk, who basically was like, okay, this guy's cool. He's a chiropractor. My neck happens to hurt right now. So I was like, ah, screw it. I'm gonna go check out his chiropractic office. And, you know, he's up in Bird Rock in San Diego, kind of La Jolla area. I checked it out, and then, like, immediately, it wasn't just a chiropractic session. Like, we started talking about marketing and all this stuff. I'm like, all right, this guy's cool. I think I have to take a left here or somewhere. We're downtown now, by the way, so probably got to wrap this up pretty shortly.

Yeah.

But, yeah, so we basically. I was like, okay, this guy knows a lot. Oh, shit. Going wrong way. I Thought that was a one way street.

Yeah, I just puckered that guy up and me. But yeah. So basically I'm like, dude, this guy is super networked. Like he knows a lot of people. Because he immediately started to offer, as we grew to know each other and go there more, he's like, hey, I can introduce you to this person. I think you'd be a cool fit to help this guy, blah, blah, blah. You know, based off my skillset and who I was and I attended, you know, I basically signed up as a client for his place. Cause he was a great chiropractor, but partially because he had a great network.

Yeah.

So like I almost used that chiropractic office, which I'll say, dk, you were really fucking expensive and I had to pay you off for a long time because I did not have a lot of money at the time. But luckily I had a payment plan so I took it. Definitely. Like I had to talk to my wife Heather. I'm like, this is a smart investment. I can see this panning out to big things. And then he happened to introduce me to a bunch of big people. You had Dan Ryan being one of them, who's a mutual friend and is still a great friend. We might meet up with him. 50, 50, he'll show up. And he's part of the overtime thing. Met Amiche, met Mike Koenigs, and met whole loads of other people that are actually on this podcast. And all from meeting DK and from then, it's, it's, it's kind of spun into all these different connections and business opportunities.

Yeah, no, it's interesting because one of the current business ventures that we're embarking on right now was somebody that we met at one of our actual overtime events.

That's right.

All right. So we actually put on an overtime event. And it's kind of funny that I talk about how introverted I am and how I don't like networking yet. I'm part of a group that puts on networking events every couple months. But anyway, one of the things we're embarking on is because of somebody that we met during one of these overtime events. So it's all come full circle. And to be fully honest, we had a completely different topic in mind for doing this podcast today. But because we're on our way to setting up a networking event now and, and because we're about to go to TNC in a couple weeks here, this kind of just transformed into a conversation about networking and why it's important. So hopefully you found that valuable. Joe just parked, so we're gonna get out of the car now, and hopefully this interview or this call was audible.

There's the guy today. Yeah, and there's actually the guy that you were just talking about calling and seeing where the hell we are because we're like, 15 minutes late.

Alrighty, then.

So all right, then, I'm gonna call him back now that.

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next one.

Bye. All right, thank you.

And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off.

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