Therapy Sessions 👥 The Stuff Entrepreneurs Are Scared To Talk About

It's crazy how effective that was. I mean, I wrote that email, I think it was a Friday, and didn't put any links. Just said, hey, reply if you're interested. And it was. There was no, like, pitch. There was nothing. Just like, hey, we're thinking about doing this. If you're interested, reply. If there's enough interest, then we'll probably do it. And then, boom. Thirty messages later, we've got a full consulting program and a bunch of people already getting results with their podcasts.

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. Wiki wiki Wiki.

The funny thing is, it almost sounds like you're hitting a bong or something.

At the end of. No, not at the end. I was slurping my yerba mate.

Your yerba mate?

You say it with such a perfect accent.

It's just like how you said perfect in an accent.

That's how I say perfect. Perfect the way I say things.

Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Joe is not hitting a bong right now. He is drinking yerba mate.

It really does sound like that. That's great. Yeah. Not same effects, but at all.

Before we actually kind of get into our discussion today, let's just quickly mention that you can actually go get notes on this discussion if you want.

Bam.

Hustleandflowchart.com comp. We take notes on every episode. So some of the stuff we're talking about today that we'll get into in a minute. You can go grab notes on it. Hustleandflowchart.com SOMP. No comp. C O M P. Are you high? No, I'm not.

Okay. Actually, that's. That's great. Yeah. So we got your notes taken care of, as always.

High on life.

High on life. Yes, you are.

And you're mate in burritos.

Yeah, it's true. Kind of have a baby burrito going on right now. Yeah. All right. So in San Diego, if you live in San Diego, you got to go to Cerritos.

Yeah.

Like, just giving a shout out.

Well, it depends on where you are in San Diego, because it's like, it's the boonies for most people.

That's fine, but it's the best burrito in town. So what are you gonna do, huh? You're gonna go to Cerritos?

How much is Cerritos paying us for this sponsorship?

Nothing at all. But funny story, I actually started with A buddy of mine, Dan Driscoll, started their fan page on Facebook.

I remember that.

Many moons ago.

I heart Cerritos.

And we traded that said page to the owner's son, who I think is one of the owners, Josh, over there. And he gave us some burritos in exchange.

So you built out a whole fan page for him and then traded it for a burrito?

It's some burritos. I don't know what that.

You know what else is?

It's not like we did work. We literally, in the day, we just. Because we claimed it before them, we did that. And then naturally, I think, like, 500 people just found it. It's not like we marketed the thing.

Dude, we did that. We did that again for that. That bar out Vegas. Michael's Pub in Vegas.

Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore.

Yeah, we were in Vegas one year. I think it was around New Year's, and the Chargers were playing, so we were looking for a place to find the Charger game, and we actually found a bar that was, like, a dedicated Charger bar in the middle of Vegas.

Ironically, it was in Spring Valley in Nevada, which is where Cerritos is located, but in California. Spring Valley, California.

It's all connected. It's all connected. But we built their fan page for them, but I don't even think we got, like, a beer for it. I think we just gave it to them.

I don't think we even did that. Like, I think we just did it. I don't know why we even made that. Maybe we did.

I definitely know we gave somebody at Michael's Pub the, like, admin access so that they can, like, delete posts and.

Stuff, and then they quickly went out of business, and it's probably our fault.

Yeah, so we've done that before. We like restaurants and bars, and we make fan pages for them, grow their fan page, and then just give them to them.

Yeah, yeah. Other than that, like, we did absolutely zero work. So. Hey, I'll take a burrito out of that. That's fine. Opening up a fan page.

Just too bad you can't still leverage that for burritos today.

No, those days are gone. Sorry, folks. That was nostalgia.

So this episode is sponsored by Cerritos, and we're gonna. We're gonna tell them to go listen to this episode, and hopefully their sponsorship payment is giving us free burritos.

Ooh. Josh, if you're listening, I'm waiting.

We need to go secretly drop off a Hustle and Flowchart sticker at Sarita's.

Oh, I got him on Facebook. I'll hit him up and tell him when this thing goes live. There you go. You got some Easter eggs in here, buddy?

Yeah, we got. You got some seritas burrito love in one of our episodes.

That's right. That's right. You are really getting some shout outs, Josh.

All right, so we had a couple little rabbit holes we wanted to go down on this therapy session today.

Therapy session.

Therapy sessions.

Yes, we do.

And this is actually going to kind of go back a little bit to our old school therapy sessions where we talk about struggles and hardships and how we got over them and all that.

Are we going to cry ourself to sleep? Just kidding. Maybe it's okay. We all struggle with things. Yeah.

But actually, before we get into that stuff, let's talk about some podcasting stuff.

Podcasting stuff is fun, and that has been hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.

I think the last therapy session we did was all about, like, the big wave of podcasting stuff that's happening, and we're really starting to feel it and see all the movement of it.

And in the barrel right now.

We're in the barrel.

We're riding it.

We're in the eye of the storm.

Yes.

Eye of the tiger.

Eye of the tiger. Yeah. It's like, since I don't know when the last therapy session was, but we've definitely made some waves. Don't even look it up, Matt. I know your tendency is so like. You're like, ah, computer, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter.

I just have to close one screen.

It doesn't matter. Yeah, we talked about that. And that was where. I think that was like, the time where we started getting a lot of folks reaching out to us, actually. And we're like, you're doing some interesting things. And we spoke at War Room with digital marketer Roland Frazier, invited us there. Appreciate that. And since then, I feel like we've just immersed ourselves even deeper in there in, like, the daily news of podcasting and how you can leverage that with your content strategy as a whole and, you know, monetize in creative ways for your brand, maybe retain your customers longer, subscribers and stuff. Yeah. So now, since then, this is like, what happened with our traffic course is people basically overwhelmingly stacked our, you know, Facebook inboxes, email inboxes, support channels, and saying, we need help. We need fricking help with this podcast marketing thing and some production, too.

Isn't it kind of funny how, like, business works so much better when you build Things that people want instead of what you think they want.

Yeah, it's all about the offer, huh?

Because I feel like most of our business up until, like, I don't know, maybe two years ago, two and a half years ago, we were kind of going, what do we have knowledge in? Oh, I know a lot about content marketing. Let's make a content marketing course. And then going and trying to shove it down people's throats and saying, hey, this is the best thing ever. You need to be doing content marketing. And then trying to like, sell them on something that they didn't know they needed until that point. And now it feels like our business is sort of shifted to this point where it's like, okay, now we're just really listening to our customers. We're really listening to people on our list. We're listening to the people who listen to our podcasts and they're saying, oh, I wanted a traffic course. Okay, we built a traffic course. Oh, we want you to come in and help us with our set up our podcast. Okay, let's offer that. And we're actually building stuff based on what people have told us they want instead of what we want to build.

Mind blowing.

Wow.

But it's true, because before we, I mean, I feel like everyone feels like they know what their customers need and they're not totally listening to what they're saying. Or maybe they're not prompting. Maybe you're not prompting your customers to actually tell you or your audience to tell you what they want. And that's actually what we did the other week is there was a dedicated email I think you sent on a Friday, and it was like, hey, so we've been hearing this a lot and it was done for you. Would this help you to get started with your podcast? Get you out of all that stuff in the middle of the maintenance of your show and production and so you could just focus on marketing and take some of our internal processes to do so. And no joke, there were like 30 emails that, that evening slash next day and it was like a Saturday. I was like, oh, God, we're backlogged. This must be the right thing. We gotta figure something out here now.

Oh, yeah, we pretty, like almost instantly loaded up like our consulting program. Like it just filled up.

Yeah. And that's where it's like a. So there's a little swiper for you is like, if you, if you're looking for a new offer or if you're looking for any type of offer to put out to the world, maybe you're not making money yet. Maybe you just want to reinvent your offers or just cater to a new audience, whatever it might be. Throw an email out to your list. It doesn't have to be a fancy survey. Literally just an email with no link that says reply to this email.

Yeah, it's crazy how effective that was. I mean when I wrote that email, I think it was a Friday. And I didn't put any links, just said, hey, reply if you're interested. And it was. There was no like pitch, There was nothing. Just like, hey, we're thinking about doing this. If you're interested, reply. If there's enough interest, then we'll probably do it. And then boom, 30, you know, 30 messages later, we've got a full consulting program and a bunch of people already getting results with their podcasts.

That's what's so rad about it, is that we've already filled almost the entire thing and still there's people coming to us still. And we're like, eh, but that's a good problem. And that was the intention is like if we do this. And this is. We're only saying this experience because I feel like there's a lot you can kind of take from this as well is, you know, we're not trying to cater to everyone in the world. I think we put a max of like 10 for certain things and then maybe 20 on more of the wider package, you know, of our systems processes. But it's like, to be very honest, we don't want to have a million customers, nor should we. Yeah. And you know, we like the very one on one kind of personal approach where we can personally see results and actually make sure, yeah, we want to work with action take.

I mean it feels so much better to, to see the impact you're making on a business than putting out a course, having hundreds of people buy it and then maybe getting a handful of testimonials here and there. But like, when we're working more one on one with people, we actually go in and see what the results they've gotten are and then give them some tweaks and tell them, hey, try this. And we actually see all these results in real time, which we don't really get with our course offerings, which is why we've really started to phase out a lot of the courses and really focus on the consulting. We actually have a little bit of a done for you offer. We're not offering that to many people at all, but we are actually managing a handful of people's podcast forum and then of course our. Our subscription newsletter and this sort of model has just really kind of been working out well. And you know, if there's any, if there's any big takeaways from this whole thing, I would say it's that a shooting emails to your list and just ask them to reply. You don't have to send them somewhere all the time. Just email them and ask for, are you interested in this? If I put this out, would you want it? And that's a great way to just sort of validate something real quick. And then the other would be to.

Shoot. There was another lesson that you just said here. That was a good one.

I'm so smart. Geez, so much wisdom coming in.

What was the thing that you just said like? Oh, there's a little. I'm trying to remember what it was. You just said something there. It was like a little Rewind the tape.

Well, I was saying that you should listen to your customers.

That's it.

Oh, that was it.

Yeah. Just listen. Yeah. So those were the two big takeaways is email your list and ask for the reply and see kind of what interest you get to value, validate the product. And then when you are trying to come up with a product, don't go and try to make a product that you want to make and shove it down people's throats.

Yes.

Base your products off the feedback and the interest that's come to you prior to making the product.

So, and to elongate what you were saying about the listening to your customer thing is, you know, when folks reach out to us, we don't want to work with everyone, nor is everyone a good fit. So. And that's cool. So to save everybody's time, we not only listen, but at the same time we ask them more questions before hopping on a call. Because, you know, something like this, I genuine it's me that's hopping on these calls mainly is I want to hear what's going on. Like what are the struggles or what's their vision in where they see podcasting or in your case, might be something else fitting into their business, their lives. And then from there, if you have a package in mind. Cool. You should probably have a general offer in mind. But at the same time, just realize the offer could probably change or the angle. And you're probably going to shine some lights on issues and questions that these folks have that you didn't even think about. And that's exactly what's happening now, which is really cool, is listening to these folks a Lot of folks like the common thing from us is, is we're seeing podcast is now more of a leading content strategy for a lot of brands out there. Yeah, they're seeing that as not a blog so much because it's similar. It's just more rich content that. And this is the beautiful thing is like if you think back in blog days, people were like, what's a blog? And you're like, well, it's actually pretty damn important still because guess what, Google indexes a lot of blogs.

And then now we have podcasts. And Google is indexing not only the show notes, slash the blog post page of that show or of that episode, but they're actually crawling and indexing podcasts now. That's true. So it's like. And so there's like this interesting wave right now and I think it's happening. It's like percolating now into, you know, marketing, I guess as more of a content forward strategy. That Newsflash, this is way easier than writing a blog post too.

Hey, hey. And Newsflash podcasts can easily be turned into blog posts.

Hell yeah they can. Hence why that's part of our done for you package. But yeah, no, and the point is like I'm now and I'm not. This isn't. This is me just asking questions of these folks on calls or in emails. And it's really interesting to hear that, is that that is now starting to become the thinking. And it's also a multi channel approach. So the whole repurposing play, how this can turn into something on social media and video if you want it to be, it's just, it could be spun out in all, you know, it could be a come up magazine, it could be a physical newsletter, courses, whatever. Yeah, so many things.

And I mean technology is moving to a place we actually really covered this deep on our last therapy session, which was called something to the effect of like the massive podcast wave that's coming. Actually that is the title. But you named it. I know, but we talked about some of the technology. But I actually just bought a new new truck a couple of weeks ago. And in it it's got CarPlay, right? Where you hook up your iPhone to it and it basically like mirrors your iPhone right onto the display in the truck. So, so like right on my display, on my truck I've got a button for Spotify, I've got a button for Overcast where I listen to my podcasts, I've got a button for Apple podcasts. Right. So basically listening to a Podcast in your car. Now, if you have one of the newer vehicles with Apple CarPlay is just as easy as turning on the radio.

Yeah.

And so that's one thing, but the other thing we were just talking about when we were driving over to Cerritos, another shout out when we were talking over to Cerritos is the. Is the Alexa. Right. Like every morning you said when you make your coffee, you go, hey, Alexa, what's my flash briefing? Or whatever. And you have some podcasts mixed in with some news sites mixed in with some other stuff. And you can just like be in your kitchen making coffee or whatever and listen to a podcast real easy by just asking for it.

That's it. Yeah. And that's exactly what I do.

And I feel like that's how content is going to be consumed more and more in the future. I think with attention spans the way they are, more and more people are going to be like, just read it for me.

Sure.

Right.

And why, I mean, yeah, think about attention spans. It's lacking. It's tinier than a goldfish now for humans. And it's crazy. And that's where, that's where stress goes through the roof too. Because in their studies on this, we're just talking to Travis Ketchum on his podcast.

Yeah.

How it's like now they're seeing stress is going crazy in America. And I would wager to bet that's because people are trying to keep up with so much of this stuff because you're, you're just ultra connected now in all different platforms, on and offline, you know, TV being some of them too. And people are just like, you know, that's why you binge your Netflix, because you want to stay up. Or maybe your friend told you and you're like, ah, crap, I'm a season behind. So you just spend all fricking Saturday and Sunday doing that. And you're like, sweet. Was that necessary? No. You just lost 48 hours.

For people to really get stressed out about missing TV shows.

Dude, I know. There's a lot of, like, there's a lot of people that are like, oh, man, I gotta see that movie. Actually, that's a random experience. Example.

But it is a random example podcast.

Too, or one of them. I mean, like blog posts. Go ahead.

Well, I mean, that's the reason we have our newsletter. Right. Is because a lot of people don't. They struggle to keep up with the rate that we release podcasts. I mean, we release two hours a week of content.

Exactly.

And a lot of people don't have the time to listen to two hours a week. And I feel you. I have a hard time, too. That's why we put out our newsletter. We want to simplify things for people. We want to make it quick and easy to consume all of this content we're putting out, and you can sit down and get the entire batch of a month's worth of podcasts in 30 days. Not trying to sell you my newsletter, but I really am. Go to EGpletter.com and. Yeah, I mean, I agree, but going back to the point about, like, actually stressing out about TV shows, I've never really stressed out about missing shows, but when the Chargers were in San Diego, I never missed a game. And, like, I would literally schedule my life around football games. Thank God. I'm, like, not that big into sports these days.

But. But think about the rest of the folks that are. Yeah. And that's okay as long as you're getting enjoyment out of it. But there's probably a lot of. And maybe the stress isn't the best word for that, but maybe it's anxiousness, anxiety. Like, definitely just keeping up with just the news and all the fricking headlines. Now, like, think about back in the day, you had, like, a newspaper and maybe, like, your. Your. Your TV with a handful of channels.

Yeah.

Like, now what do you have? Like, you have all these fricking medias, all these social media, and freaking Hulu now. Like, that you could stream almost everything in the world.

Yeah.

It's like. No. We're, like, inundated, man.

Dude, I'm not even that old, but I remember when I was growing up, when I was a kid, I only had 13 channels. That's how many channels I had on TV.

So think about how fast that's, like, changed.

And I think two of them were in Spanish.

Yeah. In San Diego, probably more. Yeah, But. And let's go back to a conversation we had, and also, I chatted with Brad Costanzo about.

Yeah, yeah, Brad. Shout out to B B Costanzo. I need a good nickname for him. Shout out to Bacon Boy.

Bacon Boy. Bacon wrap business podcast. Check it out. Bacon Boy. So I was talking to Bacon Boy, and he has a weird bo. It smells like bacon.

That's amazing bo. Everybody just love being around him.

He never has to wear deodorant. I hope he hears this. So Bacon Boy. Him and I were talking, and, you know, we were talking about, like, it's crazy how so many people think reality is the Internet.

Mm.

Like, that is where everything happens. And it's like, no. Like, I don't know if you remember, if you rewound like, you know, 15, 20 years ago, like, how reliant were you on the Internet at all? Maybe a little bit. Maybe you're playing a little bit of games or something just to get the.

Adult content that took five minutes to load.

Thought you were gonna say five minutes.

It's like, oh, I almost see the top of a boop.

That's good.

So pixelated.

I just remember there's a Simpsons episode where like the comic book nerd dude was trying to watch. He's like, oh, almost, almost. It was just like loading super slow and you couldn't actually see anything.

That's awesome. Yeah. So like that was reality back then. Maybe for some people. But yeah, like think about, like, if you rewound far enough. Not even that far. It's like, yeah, you probably used to talk to more people, read a lot less news, digest a lot less content. Probably go outside more.

Yeah.

And. And think clearer and not feel like your to do list is a million miles long.

Yeah.

Like that's where luckily, circling back to podcasts, like, podcast is cool because the frickin engagement rates like 75 to 80% or more for like an hour long episode. That's ridiculous.

Yeah.

And we're seeing that and our clients are seeing that, which is rad because it's true.

Well, it's such a passive way of consuming content. Right. Like, I can consume content while I'm out for my drive. I can multitask with it. Right. I listen to podcasts when I walk my dog every day. That's actually how I gauge my walks now, is I'll listen to an hour podcast. I listen at 1.5 speed, so it's a little bit sped up. So it usually takes about 45 minutes to get through an hour, typically hour episode. But that's how I know when to kind of wrap up my walks, is I'll look at my phone and go, oh, I got about five minutes left. Let's start heading home. And so I just walk until my podcast is over. I can multitask.

There you go.

And you can't do that with a blog. I can't go. I can't be out walking my dog, looking down at my phone, reading a blog post. I can't be out walking my dog. And you know, watching a video on YouTube very easily at least.

Yeah, yeah, you probably get hit by a car. You don't want to do that. So I don't know. That's I forgot what got us on this tangent. I guess the power podcast. But I mean, it's just interesting because we're now we're. We're more immersed than before. Before, I guess we were just immersed in our own thing, but now we're immersed with advising clients of our own, which is cool because they pretty much started listening to this podcast, which is the power of the podcast.

And then now we're starting to have partnerships and other folks that, you know, that have their own audiences, slash, they have their own podcast and they see the value of this as a content machine, but a content machine that can be directed into high ticket offers for some people.

Or continu offers or newsletters or sponsorships, or like, there's so many monetization models, there's direct correlation.

Whereas I don't think people realize that not that long ago. I'd like to say it's part of us just keep harping on it. But no, like, words getting around like.

Well, it's great because we've kind of become the source now too. When people go, hey, what's going on in the podcasting world? We've kind of become one of those sources that people come to about, hey, what's going on? Like, we keep our fingers on the pulse. Like, we know everything that's going on in the podcasting world because we're subscribed to all the podcasting newsletters, all the podcasting podcasts, we're connected with a lot of big name podcasters, and it's just like we've managed to kind of become that source for podcasting information, which then transfers quite nicely over to, hey, can I hire you to help me with my podcast?

Yeah, I mean, if we don't, we're not working with too many people.

Sure.

Okay, so saying that, I guess if you're really interested, just reach out to us.

As of recording this, I think we're full, but we do have slots open up from time to time. So definitely reach out if, if you're interested in some help with the podcast, because, I mean, it's amazing time to be doing it. In fact, we were looking at Libsyn Stats just last week. Right. We actually just learned that Libsyn was a publicly traded company. We didn't know that.

Their ticker.

Yeah, so we're looking at their stock ticker. And it's just a gradual rise. And most of that rise has happened in the last two years. Most of it's this year, but.

This year? Yeah, but yeah, definitely two years.

Yeah. I mean, the value of that stock, it's a penny stock, but it's valued at 3 bucks a share or something like that.

Shows demand, though.

But, you know, the thing was, it was. You look at it like three years ago, and it was like under a dollar a share. And it's just growing and growing and growing. And if you don't know what Libsyn is, Libsyn is like the largest hosting company for podcasts. And it's just wrap. It's just growing every single year, year over year. And you can look at that, and it pretty much correlates with the growth of podcasting as well.

Yeah, no, it's super cool. And by the way, if you want to reach out to us, and if you're actually interested, just email infovergreenprofits.com.

Yeah, that actually goes to Joe, so he will see those emails.

Yes, I'm air typing with my one hand.

Oh, you're air typing. I thought you're trying to tickle air. Tickle me.

Weird.

Cool. Yeah. So we can riff on podcasts all day, but I think we'll spare you. If you're really interested, just give us a shout and maybe we'll chat.

Yeah, we actually. We have. We actually have a private newsletter, too. I don't know if I'm supposed to be saying this or not.

A private news.

A private newsletter where if you want to keep in the loop of what's going on the podcast.

Keep it in your pants, Matt.

Yeah, you can actually kind of. We. We share details and tips of cool stuff that. But it's. It's not even. We don't even use an autoresponder for it. We just literally like, email the people that want to know.

Old school manual emails just keep people.

In the loop on podcasting. And, you know, we might let some of you in. Some of you like to.

Ooh, the bar.

Be the first two.

Be quick. All right, so you want to shift focus now? We could do that. Yeah.

So like you mentioned earlier, we're actually just talking with Travis Ketchum on his podcast, and this is a topic that came up pretty extensively when we had Sam Karamian from Big Block Realty on.

The show San Diego. Brook Ridge. Yeah. Yeah.

And we were talking about just kind of depression and anxiety among entrepreneurs. I don't really want to bring down the energy level of this podcast, but.

Sad already.

We were talking about. We were talking about that topic and, you know, we shared some stats on that last episode, but it was something like 5% of the population suffers from depression. But something like 30% of entrepreneurs suffer from depression. Right. And suicide rates among entrepreneurs is really high and compared to others.

Yeah, yeah.

And what was, what did he call it like?

Oh, Travis had a word for it where it was like deaths by things like suicide, overdose. Like.

Well, no, he's gonna say. He said heart attacks.

Heart attacks.

He said basically those two were the leading.

Yeah.

Maybe overdose if you're freaking. If people are medicating, which is totally possible if you're not doing that in smart ways like yerba mate.

Yerbemate.

Yeah. But you know, we were having that conversation with him and it kind of led into talking about some of our daily rituals and some of the ways that we keep that at bay. So we thought that'd be kind of a cool topic to share with this audience.

Yeah, yeah. And just something that Travis said too is so in his podcast, really cool. I didn't actually realize this, but at the end of each of his episodes he has this little section, he's talking about this stuff which we've started to ask that of some folks that are on the podcast. You probably heard. And it's really cool because if there's this whole layer that a lot of folks aren't chatting about and that's the layer that's not the Bentleys and the frickin Teslas and the whatever's houses on mega mansions. No, I know. And we know a lot of those folks who have gone through phases of I got it all.

But then on the inside there's like crickets.

I'm dead inside.

Yes. And it sucks because there's probably a lot more out there than you would ever know because guess what? Marketers are really good at and entrepreneurs masking themselves and. Yeah, well, really like building themselves up to be the best.

Especially the ones that are front facing the ones like, you know, we have a podcast, we've kind of put ourselves out there, we sort of backed out of, you know, we haven't tried to put ourselves in the spotlight. But having a podcast kind of casts a spotlight on us a little bit. And you know, really a lot of this sort of sparked. I mean it didn't spark this, but I made a Facebook post maybe like I don't know how long it was that like nine months ago or something where I talked about how I was at a networking event and Joe was there and Amish was there and you know, a handful of our buddies were there.

Dana.

Yeah, Dana and Nate. And you know, other people have been on the podcast in the past. They Were all there, but I got super, super overwhelmed and I got super anxious, and I actually collapsed. I fainted in the middle of a party. There was, like, 75 people there, and I just collapsed in the middle of it.

Dunk. Yeah.

Just fell on the floor and trying.

To do sound effects for you, but, yeah, I didn't have a good, like, donk sound other than that. Yeah. Luckily, I don't think you actually dunked, though. You actually fell gracefully, I think.

Yeah. And I think I was holding, like, a glass or something, too, and I managed to, like, as I felt, like, hold it up and not, like, break it.

Seems like you've had a lot of practice in college, good sir. Never spill the beer.

But anyway, I wrote this blog post about this experience of, like, man, I'm burning the candle from both ends. I'm working too hard. I'm stressing out over money too much. You know, I've got the family and kids and just, like, all of this stuff kind of compounding who is just building up the anxiety and building up this anxiety. And I made this big post, and a lot of people said, oh, wow, it's so brave of you to post this and all this kind of stuff. But the interesting thing to me was I probably got 30 private messages. Like, people didn't want to go on that thread and say, hey, I'm experiencing the same thing. I've been going through that, too. Being an entrepreneur is really, really rough and depressing. A lot of that didn't come out in the comments. Everybody private messaged me, which just kind of went to show, like, everybody seems to be going, not everybody, but a lot of people are going through this, but nobody wants to share it publicly.

That's the interesting thing is, like, you were brave enough to do that and be transparent, and you got the praises because other people are feeling the same.

Yeah, but I was just blown away that so many people, like, in public, sort of praised me for mentioning it, but then in private said, I'm going through the same thing. And it's. And it was very interesting that they didn't want to publicly say that they were going through the same thing. And I think that sort of thing, that. That sort of, you know, posting that and seeing all the private messages made us want to go, fuck that. Let's start exposing this shit. Let's start talking about how it isn't always easy, it isn't always fun. It isn't all laptops on the beaches and driving McLarens.

Why the hell would you punch your. And put your Laptop on the beach. Anyway.

Yeah, like, has a quote that he, Like, I see a pop on, like, Instagram every once in a while that said, true success is going to the beach without your laptop.

The stock images always make me want. I just want to punch those images. But then I would punch my laptop.

If I'm at the beach, I don't want to be on my fucking laptop. I'm at the beach because I want to get away from work.

I don't want any technology with me on the beach, let alone outside, period. Yeah. Except for maybe podcast walks. But, yeah, no, it's true. And that's where, like, I feel like we've never held back. But there are certain things that probably we second guess. But then it's like, if you post those things, then more often than not, you know, all the comments are typically going to be supportive and they're going to be like, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Even though if they might be in PMs, it just shows you that we're all dealing with the same shit. We're all in our heads and don't take things so seriously. And we all got each other to support each other as well. You're not alone.

Yeah. And then honestly, after I made that post and got all those messages, I can't say I immediately made changes to my lifestyle and my working habits and things like that. It didn't happen immediately. I would say there was probably another couple months after that where I just kind of continued to put my head down and grind it out and work hard and work late and just, you know, continue to butts my ass. I. I backed off on the networking stuff a little bit. I kind of backed off on putting myself in environments where I'm around a lot of people and I was getting socially anxious, but other than that, I didn't really change many lifestyle elements. It wasn't only until, you know, maybe a month ago that I really, really made some changes. And, you know, for the most part, I hate to say I cured myself of anxiety, but I would say pretty close to it. Like, I do not feel anxiety much anymore at all.

So what. I mean, I already know this, but for the folks listening, and I think we should both exchange, like, of what we're going, what we're doing. But let's start with you. What are the big changes that you've done?

So, I mean, really, it's just kind of daily routine stuff. Before, I had a nightly routine. I've kind of talked about it on the podcast a lot Where I would go and walk my dog and I'd go for a couple miles and listen to a podcast. Podcast. And then come home and relax before going to bed. Right.

So that hasn't changed.

That hasn't changed. My nightly routine is still pretty much the same, but I added a morning routine which I never really had before other than making a coffee.

Like, so what do you like? Literally those that like wake up. I know you don't even like, you never shower. So it was. I don't shower anymore.

I actually do quite a bit of things before I shower now though.

There you go. Okay, well, let's talk about the now. We don't need to get into those weird details.

Yeah, you don't want to know about the shower part. Actually you're going to talk about your shower.

I mean, to be very honest, I love my showers and I think they're the most meditative time ever.

I know, I was gonna say when we, when we flop rolls, flip rolls and you start talking.

Yeah.

The shower is a bigger part for you. But you know, for me my, my morning routine is. I actually this is gonna, this is gonna be the woo woo in me. I don't really talk about woo woo stuff very often, bro.

It's real.

But you know, we say woo lovingly.

Yes, yes, yes.

So for me, I actually wake up and the first thing I do is if I had a dream last night, I write down in my journal what that dream was. And lately I've been pretty clear headed. I've backed off on the drinking a lot, I've backed off on the marijuana a lot. I've backed off on the. Yeah, yerba mate is my new vice actually, to be quite honest.

Yeah. No more bong slurping. It's this now.

Yeah, yerba mate is one of my. It's like I replaced like weed and alcohol with yerba mate. But cool.

As a result, I've actually had much more like vivid dreams. I've been really having like dream like I can't remember the last time I had a dream. And in the last two weeks I can't remember the last time I didn't have a dream. It's just like every single night I have these really vivid dreams. So every morning I wake up and I just write down everything I can remember from the dreams. That's the very first thing I do because I don't want to lose it.

I was partying with Elton John in the desert last night.

Were you?

Dust storm was coming and then. Yeah, like that's the Thing. Same thing with me, like, for some reason, because I backed off on. On the.

On the Marana.

Yeah. Got idea. Sound effects. But yeah, no, like. And now the dreams are popping.

Yeah. Last night I went and saw a movie with Alana, my wife, and Tig Notaro, who is a stand up comedian.

Oh, see, there you go. Yeah. Cool. All right, carry on.

Yeah. Anyway, so it's in my dream journal. So I wake up every morning and I. And I journal first thing. I go and I make my yerba mate.

The accent's getting better and better. Yes.

I go and make myself some yerba mate. And then, you know, it's usually pretty hot when I make it. So I let it sit for a few minutes, and in the time that it's sitting, I usually do a meditation. I actually meditate for between 20 and 30 minutes every single morning. I've been using the brain wave app lately. Great app. We mentioned that app back on probably like episode one or two, actually.

Yeah. Oh, I've been using that sucker freaking all the time.

Yeah.

Gotten old at all.

Basically, it pumps theta waves. Is it theta?

It's all sorts of waves.

I think the meditation one is specifically theta waves. I think.

Yeah. I don't know. The thing explains it. They're just binaural beats. Yeah.

So binaural beats. And there's like. There's like a thing in there that kind of sounds like a. In the background. And it's like you could change the.

Background sounds and you can even layer in your own music and then layer it with brain waves if you want.

So I do a meditation every morning. I usually do about 20 to 30 minutes. It feels more like five or 10. It's kind of gotten to the point where they're pretty quick now. And then after the meditation's over, I grab my journal again. And anything that popped up for me during the meditation or immediately after the meditation, I journal on and I just write my journal for five or ten minutes. I actually, usually after my meditation. I don't even think I told you this. I usually do some yoga stretches immediately after doing yoga. Open up my back and loosen up my neck and stuff.

That's literally why I just grabbed this band right here.

This is what made me think of it. I've actually started doing some yoga stretches immediately after.

I open my back up all the time whenever I feel locked up.

And then. So after doing that, I start sipping on yerba mate and I go and take my shower and brush my teeth and actually get on with my day. But I Actually don't do any of the normal morning routine stuff. I mean, I'm probably pretty disgusting for the first, like, 45 minutes of the morning because I. I don't shower or brush my teeth or do literally anything until I've journaled, meditated, and journaled again.

Is that how you get your better thoughts and your better meditation? Is all the flim and grime all over you?

I don't know. I just. I. Any. Anything that's coming up for me that morning, I don't want to lose it before I journal it.

Yeah, I know. I get it. Your inner hippie is coming out. Yeah.

And so. And then after, you know, after I do all that stuff, I just kind of get on with my day and start working through my checklist.

Nice. Yeah.

Now let's flip the script. Joe.

Wait, hold on. Go to. See, your workout is just walking, Right? But you.

Not for right now, but, yeah, I've been working on clearing out a spot in my garage. I've got gym equipment. It's just tucked away in my shed right now. So I'm actually clearing out a spot in my garage to get more into actual resistance training.

You're more than welcome to my garage gym.

Yeah, you've said that. But I want my garage. I don't want to have to travel during your.

During your move. You have an open garage gym for you.

All right.

Yeah. So me, it's interesting. Yeah. For me, I feel like I've been dealing more with anxiety, with a lot of things happening, my life business being one of them. My wife is also starting her own business, so I'm like. It's like a balance of. Of time. And, you know, I find myself and her working later than we normally would, but partially because it's like a mini sprint because we have a baby coming in November, so kind of makes sense. Or maybe that's how I justify it. Either way, I just know, like, we're prepping a lot prior to that time, and hopefully she does not come too early. Knock on wood. But, yeah. So that's where I feel like a lot of my anxiety has come from. And what's interesting with me, when I know I'm anxious, it happens right in my chest and a little bit to the left, which kind of scares the out of me a little bit. Oh, is that my heart or is it just, like, a tightness? Is it. I don't know, but whatever it is, I.

It's a Cerritos burrito lodged down there.

No, I feel great right now. That's that's definitely in my belly. Yeah. Serritis. Jeez, that's another burrito right there. Josh, come on.

Rack up that gift card. So, yeah, but if I know that I'm doing too much, that comes out with too much is happening. Oh, I don't feel like I have the. Maybe I just don't have the money that I feel like I should at that specific time or you know, to maybe, I don't know, invest in this thing here or to.

Whatever it might be. There's a million fricking things. But. But.

Personally, I will take that on my body and feel like my chest tightens up a little bit. And that's kind of an indication, it is an indication to me that slow it down. I'm okay and I gotta breathe. So that's where I go big into my belly breath and not chest breathing. Because.

If I can slow my breathing down and focus on more my belly breathing, then I can calm my entire nervous system down. And.

Within about maybe five to ten rounds or so of just normal soft belly breathing, focused on my belly, low breathing, not chest, then I usually can clear it out and get a lot more level headed. But I'll notice if I'm just going too fast. It's not even like I used to think. It's like, oh, if I have too much of my plate, that's my anxiety. It's not because I have a shit ton on my plate right now. I'm not anxious. It's perspective. I feel like what I've done lately with changes to being more deliberate with breathing, sleeping enough is a big one. And meditation. Yes. But I kind of combine my meditation with my breathing and it's like one and the same for me. And with that I've noticed I'm just a lot more deliberate. My personality is that I'm more of a spontaneous guy, which that's not going to change. But at least I can be a lot more deliberate. Deliberate with my actions, even if they're still seemingly a little quicker than the rest, you know, so. Because I would notice if I just reacted without taking a second to breathe and think a little bit further through, well, guess what? My to do list gets bigger. Or I feel like I'm stacking more on myself, creating more obligations. And like Dave Asprey actually said, it's not a time thing, it's an energy thing. Yeah. So I literally felt the energy being sucked out of me. Yeah. And I wouldn't even call it a balance thing. It's honestly, Michael Woodward was on here Months and months ago and he brought up the whole concept of micro experiments. And that has embedded so much in my brain where I'm constantly just. And I'll mention it to you too. It's like, okay, so what's the little mini action that we can do to keep furthering. You know, we have our foundation set in the business or whatever life stuff. But like what's a little micro experiment we can do to just further a little more of a long term thing? And it could just be touching base with a potential partner that we're working with or testing something, sending an email, whatever it is. So I'm releasing this anxiety through ways of. And I'll talk about the shower thing in a sec. But breathing is a huge thing.

It's disgusting.

It's horrible.

It's disgusting.

Get ready for it. Strap yourself in. And then, and then the micro experiments really relieve my brain to. Because I feel like if there's a lot of actions I know I can take, but it's more of a timing and a focus thing and just an energy thing. Then I feel like my brain just like gets squirrely and that's where my chest tightens up and I get a little. That anxiousness.

Yeah, no, I mean I totally.

Experiments help with that.

Oh yeah, I could see that.

That's the closing.

The micro experiments thing has been pretty big. I mean I, that that concept runs through my mind like constantly. But I can definitely relate to the sense that when.

When, when I'm feeling like when I was feeling anxious a lot, it, I used to think it was because I had too much stuff stacked on my plate.

Right.

That was sort of my first thought is like I'm anxious because there's too many things. But just sort of the, through the process of meditation and relaxing my mind and stuff, I actually realized that it's not too many things on my plate. I can actually handle a pretty large workload. But what, what I get anxiety around is when I don't know the next step. If, like if I have a lot of things on my plate and I'm like, well on this project I don't know what I've done step one, but I don't know what step two is. That's what gave me anxiety.

I got you.

And so I can really relate to that.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And that's where we all have our own perspective to it. And I feel like, yeah, I just got too much on my plate. You're kind of not seeing the full picture. Yeah, that's like the tip of the iceberg. And like there's so much more happening beneath you or under that. And it's a personality thing mixed in with how you're approaching with your energy, like how you're using your energy and directing your time and energy or focus and. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah. Because I think like we, we might approach it differently, but it's the same thing. It's. That's a cause of anxiety.

Yeah. Well, I mean, too much stuff on our plate now, I think we've gotten really good at saying, well, there's too much on my plate. Who can I. Who's. Who other. What other plate can I put it on? Right. And we either find team members that can do it, we go and find agencies that can handle things, we cut things out completely. You know, I feel like having a lot on our plate is no longer really an issue because we know how to handle a lot of stuff on our plate now. It's just when there's something on our plate that we don't know what to do next. I think it's sort of, I mean, at least for me, that sort of stresses me out.

Well, it's a perfect. The, you know, Aaron Fletcher's K D method, the three step process. Yeah, go check out. It's like episode four or something of this show. It's freaking timeless. And I saw he just shared that, this, that or that episode with us on our show just recently to his community. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, this thing freaking works. So. Yeah, exactly. What you just said is what Aaron talks about. So for sure.

So let's talk about your morning showers.

The morning.

Yeah, I mean I feel like that's just, that's my. So I have like a bench in the shower so I can actually sit down.

Yeah, that like 70 year olds do who break their hip.

Well, that's probably. That's kind of who made my house, built the house. Well, it wasn't 70 at the time. It was built in the 70s though. But yeah, it's, it's just a unique. It's an interesting shower, but either way it's. It's just got a bench, whatever. That's that's all that matters. And the fact that I just freaking crank up the heat on that bad boy. And that's just my meditation time. And then what I do is the breathing work. Breath work. And you know, I start with my belly breathing. But then what I try to do is deliberately work my way up through like four breathing sequences where it goes through all My chakras. But like, you know, it really focuses on like my heart first. On the first breath.

Can you say chakra again?

Chakra.

Oh, thank you.

How you're supposed to say it. And so it's like heart and then the throat and. Or. No, no, sorry. Not the heart. Third eye. Just somewhere in my brain basically because I feel like, you know, I get a lot of tension in my chest. Cool. Focus there. Then I got my head and then there's this is like the crown chakras on the top and then it's kind of just everything above. And we got that from some of our. From our butt. Woo Woo buddies, I guess if we want to do air quotes on that. I've kind of just been applying that breathing sequence and sitting in the shower and doing that. And it's a kind of like a shortened version of Wim Hof breathing, which. But without the aggressive. Like.

If you're not knowing what Wim Hof is, check it out. Matt's about to make some sounds. Put it away. You can piss after we're done talking.

Gross. Gross.

No, that was me pouring more yerba monte.

Oh, you're spilling all over yourself.

You pissed yourself. All right. Yeah. So distraction. So Matt just pisses on himself while I meditate in the shower.

Yeah. Accurate. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's a derivative of that. So after I do that breathing sequence, I do it a few times and I will have like my body will be vibrating with energy. It's crazy. Like, I'll have my. I'll feel my fingers and hands kind of vibrating my face. Feet. And I know you said you're. You're not a fan of that feeling.

No, I'm not at all.

I love it, man. Like, it's crazy because, like, if you do Wim Hof, you feel this exponentially. Yeah, it's a lot more aggressive there. But.

It'S, it's. I don't know what it is exactly. I know it's like energy. It's your. Your blood, whatever it might be oxygen going through your veins. Whatever it is, I feel like it's a release of a lot of energy for myself, so I always focus on that.

So when you're in the shower whimming hoff, you have a nice release.

Yes, but I'm not whimming hoff. Oh. But yeah, good. Yeah. So I mean, that's kind of my thing with that and I don't know, I've just been approaching that daily and I feel like I get all my best thoughts from There. So I will journey general thoughts out after the fact. Shower thoughts. And there's actually a Reddit I follow. It's like, shower thoughts.

Nice.

And it's cool. It's random stuff. It's not like business. But guarantee other people are feeling the same. And that's where I feel like I can just release a lot of that stuff. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff I've been doing, like, working out more consistently, eating better, same thing. No alcohol or very lack of alcohol and marijuana. Very deliberate. Like all that stuff. I feel like I'm just trying to slow my actions down and my. And not just blindly doing things. Yeah, that's where I felt like I was beforehand.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, slightly different things, but we've kind of both come to the same conclusions. You know, for me, when it came to, like, alcohol, I'm not cutting it off for good, but, you know, I just. I don't like the way it makes me feel anymore. Like, when I do sip on alcohol these days, I kind of almost end up regretting it later, just feeling like, man, I just. Just don't like the way I feel.

Yeah.

When it comes to marijuana, it's like I'm. Like you said, very, very deliberate. I now see it as a medicine and not as a good time. Right. Like, I mean, it can be a good time, but I see it as. I see it as a medicine. Like, when I get a headache, I might still go and, you know, take. You know, I actually take it in pill form now. I might go take a pill, and that helps with migraines. Amazingly, you know, I've had times where I've had insomnia and I couldn't fall asleep. I'd take one of my pills and it would. Would knock me out. So, I mean, I feel like there's use for it, but I'm seeing it more as a medicine as opposed to a escapism tactic, escape tactic.

Yeah, that's the thing. It was used as a medicine before. Look at. Even alcohol, I believe, probably was, too. I mean, maybe that was like, more.

Well, actually, the original reason alcohol came to favor was because of the Black Plague. And they found out that when they drank alcohol and boiled the water, then it. Yeah.

Kept him alive.

Kept him alive, didn't kill him.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there were health benefits. There we go. So, yes, if you ever worry about.

Getting the Black Plague, start drinking more beer.

There you go. It's one option for you, but you.

Want to see a good documentary about that. How Beer Saved the World.

That's right. That's a good one. Yeah, but it's interesting. I mean like after really, I don't know, it's just like both of us kind of just. We've chatted about this and we feel like we. We've just become more deliberate and mindful of what we're doing with what we're putting in our bodies and our actions. I feel like that then reverberates into.

All these other things in life. Like, oh, I'm not really craving the ice cream I thought my nightly routine was. And then I get my sugar headache in the morning or I can't sleep at night. They all have these effects, these trickle effects.

Yeah.

That. That affect us and how we perform. And I honestly feel like I'm more freaking on now.

Yeah, no, when it comes to sugar, I used to have like every night before bed, you know, the last, like hour before bed, we'd sit around, watch TV and eat like Ben and Jerry's or we'd go get frozen yogurt or something. And it was pretty consistent. Like once or twice a week we do that. And for whatever reason, over the last like several weeks, I've had pretty much zero cravings for sugar. I've had almost no sugar in like weeks.

I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I do definitely dip into ice cream, but what I've been doing there is putting them in coffee cups that are standing up and in my kitchen and stopping myself after like three scoops.

Yeah.

And I was just a tiny spoon.

I'm not trying to restrict myself. I don't think I will ever diet again in my life. I don't think I'll ever be on a quote unquote diet. I just have not had the desire for it. It's like once you've cut it out for long enough, you just stop caring.

Yeah. And then there's like cool things like yerba mate, like this freaking. It's an appetite suppressor. Slash it tastes good. And if you wanted to throw some honey in there. Sweet. Yeah, do whatever you gotta do. But it's like, I don't know, I just, I just always have water by my side. And then you do too. Cause I mean, back in the day you had a hydration thing even.

Yeah, I was in the hospital with kidney issues because I was under hydrated.

Uh huh. And I remember that. That was years and years ago. But that got you on the water train.

Yeah, I thought I was gonna lose a kidney at the time.

Totally. And I remember Visiting you in the hospital, I was like, motherfucker, is my business partner about to die? Yeah, like, shit. I know. And you were in there for like a couple days, I think so. I saw your kidney stone and that shit scared the hell out of me.

My kidney stone?

I thought, well, you had one of those one time.

Oh, that was years and years prior to that.

Oh, maybe. Oh, yeah, different times. But still. That scared the hell out of me too. Yeah, but I think that was a hydration thing, right?

No, I don't remember. The doctor explained, like, certain things make you higher propensity to have it, but whatever.

I don't remember either way. It's interesting how these things will trigger actions. Sometimes they're delayed, sometimes they're not. For me, I really felt like my trigger to make changes was this anxiety, this thing in my chest I felt. And I'm like, fuck. I don't know what it is, but I really feel like I gotta focus on chilling myself out. And inherently all these things kind of unravel. I'm like, yeah, I don't really need that. Don't need that. I still have a fridge stock full of beer right now. It's like, really good beer. And I know you too. I haven't touched it for like over a week. I mean, definitely will crack one, but I'm always gonna be with, like, family or friends.

But that's right. Actually, it's weird. I have, like, completely lost my desire for beer, but I kind of still want, like, wine or whiskey, like a little mini glass.

I love the flavor of that stuff. I just don't want the, like, the feel of it.

But I mean, even that stuff, I haven't drank in weeks. But, like, you know, we're going to be out in Orlando. I mean, by the time this comes out, we'll be back from Orlando, but we're going to be out in Orlando doing the networking thing. And I could see myself having a glass of red wine while I'm out there, but I don't think I'm going to have more than like, one because it's not something I really strongly desire anymore.

And I'm just now seeing. I'm like, man, I really love the feeling of being on. And it's interesting because if you're in a networking environment, most people are not on.

Yeah.

Because alcohol is.

It turns you off.

Yeah. It makes kind of dumb.

Yeah.

Or it can. It's definitely the tipping point. And a lot of folks when you're in that environment, they're like, away from their Families. And they're like, yeah, that's gay. No, like, no, man. Like, yeah, we used to do that for sure. Yeah.

I think we used to use conferences as a little bit of escape from, like, our real life.

Totally.

And now, like, we were just talking about it yesterday. We were booking this trip to Orlando, and we're like, how do we get out there and get back with, like, minimal time possible in this thing? Like, for us, it's purely business now.

Yeah. And. And it's still fun, but. Yeah, I want to. I want that feeling of being on, man. And. Yeah. High on life.

It's such a. Like, cutting all that stuff out has just made me so much more clear all of the time. The anxiety hasn't come back at all for me. And so there's this, like, slight tinge of fear in me of, like, maybe all my anxiety issues were because of alcohol and if I start drinking it again, they'll come back. Or maybe all of this anxiety was because I was smoking weed to, like, escape in the evenings, and if I start doing that again, it's gonna come back. Or maybe it was because I was eating a lot of sugar and if I start doing that. So there's like, a little bit of, like, I feel so good lately. I don't wanna fuck that up.

Yeah, that's fine. You know, so. Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know. I'd be curious to hear what you guys think. Listening. Write us in if you're feeling like you're the same or if you've experienced something similar, or if you want some tips, if you want more content on this or more episodes or even guests to talk more about this kind of stuff or specific guests. Because here's the cool thing is, we are now very connected with folks in so many industries and so many. There's doctors.

We reached out to Wim Hof's team. We have a connection to him specifically. And he looked at us and their team. They didn't feel like it was the right fit. Not gonna call you out. But at the same time, it was a marketing kind of appearance, which I totally get. But at the same time, it's like, you realize there's a more to this. Like, us as marketers or us as business owners, we put this crazy expectation on ourselves that we sure as hell need these tools to chill ourselves out. And even though it might not seem like we're a personal development or I don't know what freaking label to put on this show anymore, but, like, the fact that just living A good life. And we just happen to be entrepreneurs. That's kind of what this, I feel like that should be the topic of this show.

Yeah. I mean, that's really what it is because we talk to anybody. I mean, everybody's got a story to tell. Everybody's got things that we can learn from. And I think our goal is just to, you know, find new sources of knowledge and figure out how to share it with as many people as possible. And right now, big hot topic for us is the topic of anxiety and depression and things that you and I have both gone through. And just little by little, surely we've actually managed to figure out how to, at least for the time being, resolve them. I mean, who knows if it's going to creep back in. I sure hope it doesn't. But I think if we continue our practices, if we continue our daily rituals and we just kind of stay consistent with it, I don't see any reason why the way we feel now should change.

Yeah. So be curious to hear your thoughts and. Yeah. Because I know you're not alone. We're not alone. The more that people, we bring this up, the more people are like, oh, yeah.

Yep. We're gonna open, we're gonna open it up a lot more on this show and probably talk to more people about this topic. And I, I, I do think it's something that's underserved in our market. I think there is so much. I was actually listening to a great episode. We should definitely link it below. This episode where Roland Frazier interviewed Aaron Fletcher. And one of the concepts that they were talking about is like, you know, all the gurus and the cars and the, like, we're trying to keep up with everybody. There's so much in this entrepreneurial world of like, seeing that dude's McLaren over there or like seeing this person's latest trip to some exotic location and going, man, I want that. And us trying to, like, keep up with what we're seeing on social media and, and that just fuels the fire. And.

We want to be a counteracting influence a little bit.

Yeah. And just know you actually don't need all that stuff.

Yeah. It won't make you happy.

Let's just be honest. You're good with what you got and the support. Being an entrepreneur inherently, you're going to have a network around you, which whenever my brain spins out or when we ever talk about, ah, this offer didn't work. Oh, we're not going to make the revenue goals that we shot for or whatever. It's like, great. The business can burn tomorrow or even right now. And we have the preferably. It doesn't, it won't, don't worry. It's built not to. But yeah, no, it friggin. Like, we have this network. Every single person on our podcast is someone in our network now and who's been on the show. We have all these other people around us that hold us high and we hold them up as well. And like, we all want to support each other. It's collaboration, not competition. So yeah, just knowing that there's always a fallback option and that's obviously the. That's what's crazy to even like think about that because I'm like, no, that's like never going to even be needed. But at the same time, it's just like a peaceful thing in my mind. Actually, there's a good Netflix thing. I don't know if you've even watched it. Costanza Bacon Boy.

Recommended it to me. Is Brene Brown's Netflix special. It's not a comedy special. It's not like one of those. But it's actually all about vulnerability. And a part of it is what she was saying. You would dig it.

What's it called?

I don't know. Just look at Brene Brown. It's like the only Netflix thing of hers on there.

I'm not familiar with Brene Brown.

She's a very popular author of many books. But she talks a lot about vulnerability and how a lot of folks won't kind of express themselves. But also vulnerability is not just expressing themselves freely. That's not the case. But the whole idea is the human brain is programmed to go more the negative side rather than the flip side, which it's not as easy, but it's always there. You can always flip the coin around and always know like, yeah, your brain might. Human nature just kind of defaults to that negative, worst case scenario feeling, which is where the anxiety goes from and all this stuff. But just if you take a second, be deliberate, breathe through it, and you're like, wait a minute, hold on. I got like so many freaking people that back me up. If shit doesn't work out, why am I stressing?

Yeah, I mean, that's something we were actually talking about with Travis not too long ago was, you know, everything's good. Right. Like whenever I was getting anxious or depressed or thinking like, oh man, everything's falling apart, I had to step back and look at where I am right now. Right. A lot of times we compare ourselves to others as opposed to comparing Ourselves to our past selves.

Right.

And you know, where I am right now is I live in San Diego. I've got an amazing house. I've got a wife that I love. I've got two kids that are healthy and happy. You know, I've got a great business partner. I mean, I got a pretty good business partner.

Way to screw up what you just said. It was going a good direction, you.

Know, but you know what I mean, like, everything is fine.

Don't worry. My business partners a little. Shit.

He's all right. He's all right.

But, you know, like, all the important stuff is covered. We're good.

We're good, right?

Like, one time, I wanted. At one time, I wanted a Lamborghini. Now I don't.

Don't need it. You could again if you want.

One time I wanted a bigger house than I have now. Now I'm pretty good. I. I really don't want a bigger house. Having a bigger house is more maintenance and more work for me.

More energy you gotta spend on thinking about the house and what you gotta maintain on that house. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, just like, looking at where we are now compared to where we were 15 years ago.

Sure.

Like, where were you 15 years ago?

I was in a condo. Not making money online yet, but trying to. I was exploring and wanting to make, I think probably just like two grand online.

Yeah. I remember at one time I was still working in. In the day job over at Artisan, and I remember thinking to myself, man, if I could just figure out how to make a hundred dollars a day on the Internet, that's $3,000 a month. If I can make $100 a day on the Internet, that's gonna cover everything. I could pay my rent, I can have a car payment. I'm putting food on the table. I've got money for entertainment, like, 100 bucks a day.

That's it. That's all. What else do I need? You know?

And looking at that 15 years ago, that. That was like, holy shit. That's like. That's where I need to be. I mean, I was making that at my job, but if I can make that on the Internet, I can stop doing this job, work from home and have that sort of time, freedom. And that was everything to me 15 years ago. If I could just do that, right? And so comparing the dreams of what I had then to where I am now, like, no comparison.

Right. Yeah. It's wild how. Yeah. Our brains and maybe it's society, it's us. I don't know. Know, but we all think we, you know, we need to get the bigger tv, the better car, the bigger house, the thing that go on this trip that we see everybody else doing. Like, man, check yourself, check yourself, Check.

Yourself before you wreck yourself.

I mean, I know, like, back in the day, I had the desire to want to go out all the time and hang out with friends and spend money at restaurants and bars and all that stuff. And, like, it's crazy as me, like. Cause I always thought, like, you, for instance, didn't really want to do that. I'm like, why the hell is he in homebody? So boring. But then now I'm like, man, you.

Didn'T know me in high school. Yeah, I literally got all that out of my system in high school.

I was a little later, though, but. Yeah, but we still have friends that do that now and then. They're always complaining about not having money. I'm like, well, stop going out every weekend and blowing, like, $200 a night on booze that make you feel like shit the next morning. It's like, doesn't work out.

It's funny. I think I remember seeing, like, a meme that said, like. Like, when I was younger, I used to sneak out of the house to go to parties. At my age. Now I sneak out of parties to go back to my house.

Yep.

Yep.

And, yeah, yeah, I don't know if kids are a factor there, but maybe a little bit for me with the fostering stuff for you. You had kids younger than I did, but you had that before even. Anyway, yeah, I don't know. We all have our own things, but I think you finally realize at a point you're like, wait, wait, hold on. What's truly important? How am I spending my time? Is it to make others happy and say yes to all these things to go out or to work on this project or take them on as a client, even though they're kind of a pain in the ass, whatever it is. Or is it just, like, hold the hell on? Let me think through what I'm gonna do with my time and then act on whatever that is.

Yeah, for sure. All right.

We should probably check her out.

Good discussion again, I think, you know, if you have thoughts on this, feel free to shoot us a message. If you're inside of our membership area, we do have a sect of our forum where we discuss podcast episodes. We also discuss our podcast episodes over on Reddit. We have a Hustle and Flowchart subreddit where you can go discuss episodes. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Just kind of pick your preferred platform and come chat with us. And also, again, just kind of circling back to how we started off this episode. If you're interested in, like, podcast consulting, as of this recording, we're full. But, you know, we do open up slots and we do have, you know, occasionally there's some stuff that opens up. So shoot us a message if you want help with podcasting and we'll see if there's something we can help you with in. In that realm. If not, we can definitely point you in the right direction. And yeah, thanks for supporting us and thanks for supporting our show.

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Yes.

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That rhymed.

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