The Grind Mastermind: Episode 9

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh: There it is. Okay. Boom. I think we’re live. We are live. The Grind Mastermind Episode nine, man. We’re we’re flying along for May on fire. 26th. 2023. Chris, how in the heck are you.

[00:00:18] Chris: I’m great, man. I’ve just been busy with a lot of client work and trying to manage my own content stuff on the side, especially the YouTube stuff.

So yeah, I’ve been dipping my toes more into that. We can talk about it more into ai, so lots of cool things happening. Oh yeah. Lots of learning. What about you?

[00:00:41] Josh: And I think we, we had an extra week off because I was in Mexico for a destination wedding, family member, destination wedding last weekend.

So we have an extra week to catch up on. What

[00:00:54] Chris: is a destination wedding? Is it a fancy term to call, like a party? You know where something,

[00:00:59] Josh: well, it’s like a wedding, like where you have to go travel, you know. Oh. So like we all live in Canada, but they had a, a destination wedding in Mexico. Oh, interesting. So nice.

Yeah. A lot of fun, a lot of food. A lot of liquid, but now we’re back to the grind. So it was five days. Like it wasn’t a crazy amount of time, but it was kind of nice cuz it’d been like four or five months since the last vacation. I think the sweet spot I, I don’t know what you think about this. I think the sweet spot is every like five to six months if you take like.

More than a weekend off, you know, like I think every, for me at least, it’s probably a little bit different for everybody, but I think for me, if I take like a four to eight day or like even like a four to 10 day vacation, twice a year, I think that’s a really good sweet spot of like getting enough rest, getting enough grind, you know what I mean?

[00:01:54] Chris: What do you think? Yeah, I agree. Especially like if you, if that time off, it’s time completely off. Makes total sense. Mm-hmm. But I also like, like, for example, to take a couple of like in between, I don’t know, maybe it’s, it’s 10 days every two months or every month or every three months or whatever when you may, maybe you travel and you do some like location kind of thing where you like, use maybe some time to explore new places, travel, and then you, you are still doing work, but maybe, maybe a bit less.

[00:02:31] Josh: But yeah, it, its probably become a lot more popular too, right? Number one, just like the ability to work remote with the internet, and number two, more solopreneurs, right? I think in the last like five, 10 years and for the next probably 50, a hundred years is gonna be a lot more solo entrepreneurship, right?

Because of how easy it is to go out on your own. And, we’ll, we’ll expand on that when we talk about AI in, in a little bit. But okay, cool. Let’s, let’s jump in. So I’m looking back on Chris’s goals from our last episode. You had record first new YouTube video format, which I’ve been eager to hear about.

Create editing instructions for VA and fix Facebook ads and get the pixel set up. So how’s the last few weeks been on that end? It’s

[00:03:15] Chris: been pretty productive. So I think probably the day after that we had our, our call. I just went on fiber and found someone that for, I dunno, like 20 bucks, basically fixed it in 15 minutes.

Fixed what? Pixel fixed. The pixel problem that I had my, it was, it was mostly like an account, Facebook account, like mess up that I made. So for something that it would like, I was like debating. I’ve been debating for like two weeks almost. It, I just needed to like, make a decision and find someone who actually knows their stuff and jump on we, and it was actually pretty cool because the guy, he basically gave me we, we basically jumped on a Zoom call, right.

And he took with Zoom, the other person can take control of your computer. Really? So he basically did everything himself. Yeah. I

[00:04:14] Josh: didn’t know that. You

[00:04:15] Chris: can, that’s creepy. You can allow it to take

[00:04:18] Josh: control over your, so you do a share screen and then they can control the mouse?

[00:04:23] Chris: Oh no. There’s actually a function that’s called Wow.

Like allow, and they, they started, I think then you get the, basically the notification asking you, Hey, do you want to share control? And yeah, they can basically move your mouse and do whatever on your computer. And yeah. So in 15 minutes basically solved it and it was just, Basically I I canceled one of my ad manager accounts.

I didn’t need to cancel that, just need to rename it basically with the name that I wanted, and it was fine. And, and now, yeah, and I, I also messed up the fact that I was running ads through my personal Facebook account and, and the guy was like, no, it’s actually better if you run it through your business page business account, so that in case they.

Ban you for some reason, your fa, your personal account is still safe, right? And that’s what happened.

[00:05:20] Josh: I, I think, I think ads are one of those things where you can do it yourself, but if you spend like an extra few bucks and just pay a professional to set them up, then it’ll probably be like a, you know, a, a really good long run benefit, right?

You pay a little bit up front, get everything set up well. Get a little bit of, you know, advice and then you can kind of take over from there or just work with the person onwards if you like them, but, okay. So that’s, that’s good. So that’s all fixed. So ads and pixel are all ready to go. Yeah. Did you run more ads since then?

[00:05:57] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve been testing more for the e-book. The e-book idea is set aside because I haven’t seen. A lot of interest and probably it’s a bit harder in terms of like targeting, so I still need to think about that if I want to do that some more. But so I, what I’ve done was directing the, the Facebook ads towards the newsletter.

So now I’m basically running ads to the newsletter landing page. Mm-hmm. And it’s been going pretty well. I’ve, I’ve been testing 20 pounds, so like $23, $24 a day, and then half that, so like 10 pounds a day. And I’ve been getting like one or two subscribers a day for the past two, three weeks. So, It, it is been going pretty well.

I’ve worked, so that’s what beans

[00:06:49] Josh: right at 10, 10 bucks a sub. What? What do you mean, 10 or 10 or 20 pounds a day? Or you’re like going back and forth

[00:06:58] Chris: 20 pounds a day. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:00] Josh: Okay. So you’re paying like 20 bucks, a 20 pounds per sub. Yeah. I, yeah.

[00:07:07] Chris: Or I, I, I’ve actually, so actually now that I reduced it to 10 because when I was doing the 20, I was also testing.

A lot of different variants, so for copywriters and business owners, and I was also testing two separate landing pages or like the middle variants. I was a testing. So I think that that kind of was too much and it wasn’t super targeted, so it wasn’t super optimized. Mm-hmm. Then I cut everything to the simplest things and it got better.

So for now I’m basically getting the same results for half the budget now for like 10 pounds.

[00:07:39] Josh: Right. Yeah. That’s what you want to keep doing. I, I, I think for free email subs, you want to get to like sub five bucks a subscriber, so just like keep testing different. Visuals and stuff. And then what’s, so there’s

[00:07:53] Chris: a, there’s a secret that I have to tell

[00:07:55] Josh: you about.

Oh boy. What’s, what’s the what are you pitching them for? The free sign up. You also get the Fable Alchemist Journal collection. Okay. Like, why don’t you here? I think if people go back to previous episodes, this was my advice. Why don’t you just take like the first quarter of your ebook and make that your.

Newsletter giveaway, right? Like basically take a whole, but you could take a whole bunch of the copy from that landing page and that could be part of your pitch to join the email list, right? You already have get the Fable Alchemist journal. Mm-hmm. So, I don’t know, maybe you like combine them or something like that.

Or maybe you split test. The Alchemist Journal versus like, get the first 20% of my ebook for free for signing up. You know what I mean?

[00:08:46] Chris: You mean basically including like scarcity. So letting them, like letting them think that what you’re giving them. Like part of the book only.

[00:08:57] Josh: Well, that, I just see that a lot for, for signing up for free newsletters, right?

Mm-hmm. It’s like, get the first chapter of my ebook or get the first 30 pages of, you know what I mean? And you could just, I don’t know, I just seen it done a lot. Right? You already have the content. It could be interesting to split test that against what you already have right now and see which one converts better

[00:09:19] Chris: and maybe add the, the, the full book on something like Gum Road.

Yeah, like look at, like there’s a paid

[00:09:27] Josh: version. What, what I, what I would do if I were you is I would split test that first, see what performs better, and then you upsell the full ebook to your list. Right. You see it with all these newsletters now, right. All these content creators, the Justin Welchers of the world, like all of their content is out there, their ads are out there to get you on the email list, right?

They want your email. I, I think, and Ben Settle would agree, right before you even try to sell them anything, get them on your email list, then you can sell them whatever the hell you want. Right? And you, you have them in your, in your grasp, quote unquote. Right? Not to sound too creepy, but what I would do if I were you is Split test your current offer against like mm-hmm.

Hey, get the first three chapters of my e-book, whatever the name is, and mention, you know, paragraph or two of what the e-book is. Then when they sign up, add an upsell to the full e-book at like the bottom right. Hey, welcome to Chris’s list. You’re gonna get A, B, and C. By the way, if you want to grab my full ebook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, click here, link to Gum Road.

Mm-hmm. And then at the bottom of all your emails, you upsell the ebook. Right. It can be at the footer or whatever.

[00:10:41] Chris: My only block maybe for putting the, the e-book, like for putting a price on the e-book, it’s probably just that, it’s mostly just a collection of past emails. So I don’t know, like, I don’t see like the value like in people buying something that basically was just free emails collected together.

[00:11:01] Josh: What do you, what do you mean the e-book? You’re trying, you were just trying to sell? No,

[00:11:05] Chris: Yeah, but that’s, that’s. First, that’s a whole different thing, and the ebook is not even live yet, so I don’t have it. I thought

[00:11:12] Josh: you sent it. I wouldn’t created, I thought you sent it to him. What did, didn’t you send me like a 200 page ebook?

[00:11:17] Chris: Yeah, that, that’s basically what I’m giving away when you sign up now.

[00:11:21] Josh: Oh, that’s the Alchemist Journal. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:24] Chris: I mean, which is a collection of emails.

[00:11:28] Josh: Dude, that’s a frigging long ass e-book. Like who cares? Charge nine bucks for it. Who cares? Doesn’t have to be a lot of money. Charge 4 99 charge it. It, it’s, it’s not even like, you’re not going to, the goal isn’t to get rich off that e-book, right?

It’s, it’s like a trip wire, right? It’s like, you know, get them spending a few bucks reading more of your content building trust and then it’s more likely you can upsell them on like your paid, you know, your higher paid services. That’s how I would think about it.

[00:11:56] Chris: Yeah, it’s a good, could be a good experiment.

Yeah. Now I’m still have to like, to understand how to control ads. It’s nice though that like, I see it as a kind of like like a faucet you can turn on and off. I like, I’m literally seeing that when they, when ads are on, I’m getting like one, two subscribers a day. When I, when it’s off almost nothing.

Mm-hmm. Nothing except for some people maybe find me on Twitter, LinkedIn. But yeah, the, the other thing that I was mentioning that actually keeps me wanting to run Facebook ads, even though it’s not super, like the, the, the cost per subscriber is still quite high. It’s because I’m using that platform called Spark Loop.

And I dunno if you notice, like when, whenever you sign up for my email list, you basically get a popup. Recommending other newsletters. Mm-hmm. And, and people can subscribe to those newsletters for each newsletter. I basically, or like validated subscribers, which means a subscriber needs to stay subscribed to their newsletter for a certain amount of days.

And other things, for each one, I basically get like a small

[00:13:06] Josh: payment. It’s like a couple bucks,

[00:13:08] Chris: right? Yeah. And I looked into my dashboard and last. In those previous, like one or two weeks, I made like 60 bucks. So I’m basically breaking even with the ads. Oh. So that’s why I’m basically continuing like keeping on because I know that I’m, as long as I basically kind of break

[00:13:28] Josh: even.

Dude, if you’re breaking even, you should, you should be spending more. I was actually reading about, I’ve, I’ve heard about Spark, Luke. I spark Loop. I just added it to the show notes as well. If, if you’re listening or watching Yeah, like that’s how, so I was reading about like, you know, creating creator flywheel effects and stuff like that, right?

If, if you can break even, you should be spending 10 time, maybe not 10 times, but you should be spending way more money. Yeah, I’m still, because why not still? I’m still going,

[00:13:56] Chris: I’m still going slow because the way spark loop works is you have to wait until, like, they validate all the subscribers. So I’m still not entirely sure.

So it gives you like a projection, like a expected amount, but it might be less. So I want to see like how the next, make sure it

[00:14:15] Josh: actually comes through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s cool though. That’s cool. I, I was just reading about that, how that’s, that’s how some people, you know, they spend money on ads and or content creation.

They drive people to sub, they get some of that money back from Spark loop or like referral programs. Mm-hmm. And that further fuels. More growth and the circle continues, and then as you get more subs, you can also start getting sponsors for the email list. So, Which gives you more money, which you can then spend on more ads if you want.

So anyways. Yeah. Cool. What about the

[00:14:52] Chris: YouTube video? The YouTube video, the first video basically kind of relaunching the channel because before that I was just doing tear downs, website, tear downs. Mm-hmm. I’m, I basically just recorded the video, like introducing the channel. Saying what the channel is about, who is for, and I’m gonna make it mostly about like copywriting, but for like copywriters or freelance copywriters or people who want to become copywriters.

And I also want to make it kind of like a mix of a vlog kind of thing. So it’s gonna be cool kind of experiment to see, yeah, first, if I like it first, if people enjoy it. And also to like share a bit more of. My work behind the scenes kind of lifestyle,

[00:15:39] Josh: I think. I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s a great idea.

I mean, Gary V is a big proponent of like, documenting and also I, I think it’s really cool cuz there’s probably so many people out there who, maybe they’re not building a copywriting business, but they, they’re building some sort of solopreneur service type or technical based. Business that would be interested in following along.

Right. I mean, the cool thing about sharing business journeys is you don’t have to be building the same business. Right? Yeah. You could be, it could be a similar or a totally unrelated business and you can still learn from it or just be interested in following along. Yeah. Right.

[00:16:16] Chris: So, yeah, I, I, that’s cool. I also want to, I also wanna talk about like freelancing in general, how.

What works, how to kind of make it work for you? Remote work

[00:16:25] Josh: and stuff. Making the, making the switch, right? Like going from employee to freelancer. Yeah. To solopreneur. That’s probably a hot topic. I mean, vidIQ will just tell you what, what the good topics are. Right. I don’t know if it’s a good time to talk about that.

Like do you wanna mention some of the tools or strategies you’ve been using?

[00:16:46] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I don’t know, I’ve just been dipping my toes into that. But this tool called BID iq, it’s basically purpose built for YouTube and it’s kind of a mix of a keyword analytics tool. Search analytics gives you daily ideas for v for YouTube videos, analyzes the competition.

So it’s quite comprehensive. I signed up for the basic. Like the first paid tier, which is like $10 a month. Right. And yeah, I, I started working on my second video today, so I’ve been working on the script. It’s pretty cool. It’s even got like its own AI kind of writer generator thing. Mm-hmm. Even though that’s kind of limited with the plan that I have.

So but in any case, I, I prefer using charge PT just because it’s more. Free it’s com it’s more like, yeah, comprehensive, flexible as well. And if you have the page t like I have with the plugins now you can basically do everything. Like you can browse the web, you can use integrations, so it’s fucking amazing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s creating, using most, mostly for that.

[00:18:03] Josh: Cool. So what about for the next two weeks? What are what are the key

[00:18:08] Chris: goals Past two weeks? Yeah, probably post the second video, post second

[00:18:14] Josh: YouTube video,

[00:18:17] Chris: which if you want to anticipate is going to be about what is copywriting. So super basic, but I want to give you good way to start.

Okay. Yeah, I’ve been doing some research and that’s one of the most popular topics and the competition. Strangely, it’s not even that high, so really, I

[00:18:36] Josh: wouldn’t have guessed that, but make sure to put with a twist in brackets at the end of the title. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:42] Chris: I have it in my script. I actually such a bit added it.

[00:18:46] Josh: It’s cra, it’s frigging cra. We’ll spend a few minutes at the end talking about some tools. Okay. Post-second YouTube video. Anything else?

[00:18:54] Chris: Yeah. For the ads, for the newsletter yeah. I mean, I can say evaluate another two weeks of ads and decide what to do with that.

[00:19:07] Josh: Evaluate two more weeks of Facebook ads and decide next steps.

All right. We got that added. Anything else?

[00:19:20] Chris: I’m kind of thinking because I had a couple of other things. Yeah. For next weeks. Hmm. Actually no, let’s keep it at that, cuz this week I also have my brother coming, so it’s gonna be pretty packed with client work

[00:19:36] Josh: as well. All right. Sounds good. On my end we have my goals were 30 plus cold calls per day.

Finish new demo script and 10 letter growth outreach. So the first one, with the exception of my holiday, obviously I’ve been keeping up with, and it’s been, we, we had a good, actually two or three weeks, so we’re up to, I don’t remember. We’re, we’re, we’re getting close to like 10 B2B paid clients. And a couple K and Mr.

R, which is good. Nice. So I just, man sales kind of sucks. Like it’s just so many nos, right? And so many like no answers. It’s actually not the, when people say, sorry, I’m not interested, here’s why. I’m like, totally cool. I get that, but I don’t, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with this, but like in sales, so many just nohow and no answers, you know?

And from what I’ve heard, that’s just par for the course, right? That’s just. Part of the sales game when you’re doing so much outreach, but just so many people just won’t respond af potentially after you’ve talked to them or sign them up for a free trial and then nothing. 2, 3, 4, 5 follow ups, nothing. I’m just like, why don’t you just tell me?

No, like, just respond to the email. No n o two letters or no, thanks. Anyways, that’s my, that’s my rant for the day.

[00:21:00] Chris: I’m actually guilty of that, of like no reply. Like if I see an email that I’m not interested in, that’s unsolicited, but it’s different

[00:21:07] Josh: if it’s, if it’s unsolicited, totally fine. Here, here’s my, here’s my thesis.

Mm-hmm. If it’s unsolicited, you don’t owe them a response. Right. Especially, especially with all the cold email garbage that goes out now, cold email, LinkedIn, whatever. I’m talking about people where we’ll do a demo and they express interest. Ah, okay. Or we’ll do a demo, then sign them up for a free trial and they’re excited and then you just never hear from them again.

Right. Yeah. That’s gonna ruin again, I don’t need a novel. I don’t even need an explanation. Just like you said, 2, 3, 4, 5 follow ups. Hey, are you still, Hey, how can I help? A nothing. Zilch. It just, I don’t know, I guess people are different in my, for me, if I have a demo with a potential, you know, service that I want to use, or product I want to use, I’ll just tell them, sorry, I’m not interested.

Or like, you try the trial. Yeah. And then they’re like, Hey, did you like it? I’ll be like, sorry, I’m not in, I didn’t like it or whatever. Sorry, I’m not interested. Anyways.

[00:22:08] Chris: Yeah, my, such as life, I actually, I actually have two points. So one is, First, if you want to stop receiving those emails, there’s no better way than just replying and let them know.

Right. So you, you don’t keep getting those follow ups. And second, I wouldn’t burn any bridges, like with anyone. Like if I started a conversation, I always try to, to keep it like, To end it if I have to end it in a, like in a positive node. Because, just because you never know what can happen with the person.

Maybe exactly 10 years. In 10 years you connect again and it can be your business partner or you have some other opportunities. That’s

[00:22:47] Josh: the thing I like, I don’t burn any bridges. Right. And I’m not, I’m not being rude and you know, the last one or two emails I’ll say, Hey, this is the last time I’ll, I’m just assuming you’re not interested, which is totally fine, but I also then, You know, it’s a small world, right?

Mm-hmm. And like, again, you don’t, we don’t really owe much to each other, but if you do have a call or two a demo or to a trial or two, like I now don’t really want to do business with that person, right? Because they’re kind of indicating to you, Hey, there’s the potential that I just go rogue any day, right?

Yeah. So it’s not somebody, for example, I would want to partner with. It’s not somebody I would want to send business to. Right. Anyways, that’s Josh’s rant for the week. So I’m gonna keep pumping out the cold calls. We also have a big event that we’re going to next week with, with an exhibitor booth, so I’m excited to see how that goes.

It could be really good for, for getting new clients finished new demo scripts. So I finished that. We’ve made a lot of tweaks to our kind of like sales process and funnel, which I think is really helping. So I’m pretty happy with that. And I haven’t done 10 letter growth outreach. I’ve probably done five.

I’m gonna do, I’m gonna put in five more, but I’ve, but I’ve actually had a few reach out to me. I don’t know if you’ve had this happen. Mm-hmm. I had like two or three people reach out to me. Ironically, I reached out to like five or six and I think one person answered, but then I had like two or three people reach out to me.

So I guess that’s a good, good sign. But I need to update. So since our last. Episode, I actually went to weekly emails. Maybe we can talk about that for a second. So I’m gonna actually say update letter growth profile and reach out to five more, especially because. Now that it’s weekly, I can’t promo.

I like to just promote one per email. I don’t wanna like flood people with promos. So I’m just gonna do outreach to five more, and then I’m also gonna put like, Update content creation schedule. So yeah, so 30 cold calls a day, update content creation schedule, update letter, growth profile, and reach out to five more.

Basically what happened on my end was and you and I both are big proponents of daily email, but in my case, like. SG is kind of my passion project, right? We create these, cont this content, we kind of share our journeys. But I’m just spending all my time working, you know, building Vista, my, my main hustle and pumping out an email five times a week.

It honestly wasn’t too hard. I got into a pretty good groove, but just making the time for it every day I found was kind of cramping my style, for lack of a better word. So I, I, I shifted back to weekly. I think it’s better for the time being. Mm-hmm. And we’ll, we’ll adjust down the road accordingly.

[00:25:49] Chris: Yeah. I, I read your first weekly today, was it? Or, or yesterday.

[00:25:55] Josh: Yeah. Cuz I was away Thursday to Tuesday and then I didn’t get to writing the email. We got back Tuesday night, so I wrote the email Wednesday, but from now on it’ll be Monday morning.

[00:26:06] Chris: I enjoyed the, the weekly one, the, like this first weekly one was good.

[00:26:10] Josh: Cool. It’s good to hear. So yeah,

[00:26:14] Chris: I, I also try to incorporate or keep into consideration your recommendation or keeping mine shorter. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do as well lately.

[00:26:26] Josh: Yeah. I mean, pretty good. Yeah. It’s, it’s like twofold in a sense. Did I read yours today? I think I did read yours today.

Today

[00:26:35] Chris: was quite long just because I changed examples of charge G P T, but that’s like, it didn’t really take me much time, so I thought like, why not? I mean, it can be

[00:26:43] Josh: useful, but the way I would think about it is, and, and this is just feedback from one person, I mostly just skim and then I read your quote of the day.

That’s my favorite part is the quote of the day. But like, When you have a daily email, unless it’s a news email. So for example, I read Morning Brew Every Morning just cause I like, like a daily hit of the news. I don’t wanna read too much, right? Like I want a quick hit, right? Like the, the only daily emails now that I’m subscribed to are you and Ben Settle.

But when Ben has like a sale or whatever and he sends like, you know, I get like three, four emails over two, three days. I don’t wanna read all of them. Right. Mm-hmm. I’ll skim most of them, and that’s it. Right. And mostly what I’m, why I’m on those lists is to get one interesting thought or piece of advice.

Yeah. And that’s it. Right. Because we’re all busy. We don’t have time to freaking read a novel every morning. Right. And it also serves the benefit of saving you time. Right. So I, yeah, I, I would cut them down, like in half, keep the quote, keep the, you know, keep the, the CTAs at the bottom are good. Mm-hmm. But I think for you daily makes sense.

Right? Cause it’s in line with your main, with your main business right now, so, yeah, yeah,

[00:27:57] Chris: yeah. I, I know sometimes it’s like for how weird it might sound, it’s harder to keep it shorter because you have to have like a super clear idea of the one point that you want to make and sometimes, yeah, you start telling, telling a story.

So there’s a famous I.

[00:28:16] Josh: What’s the quote? There’s a quote from like Hemingway. I think that’s like, I would’ve wrote you a shorter LE letter, but I didn’t have enough time, which is a great quote. Mm-hmm. But man, just think about it like, I don’t know. Let me pull up your last email here. Well, maybe the last one’s a bad example.

Let me pull up your second last one. You know nothing, Josh, which is a great headline, by the way. That made me chuckle. I’m working on the news. How do you approach copy? You can turn your assumption. The guideline that one, that was actually pretty short. Your second last one was actually pretty good. I like that.

I would keep it to that length, potentially even

[00:28:52] Chris: shorter. That’s what I, I’ve been trying to do like after, especially after you kind of pointed out. And I got in feedback for mother subscribers too, so it makes sense. Oh yeah. What did they say? Yeah, some guy, because I sent out a feedback survey to people automatically after 10 days, they, they subscribed and this guy was like I really I really enjoyed like the emails, but.

I’m about, basically, I’m about to unsubscribe because there are two things.

[00:29:24] Josh: Yeah, they were great content. Like you’re, you’re sharing great information, but nobody wants to read what was effectively like half a chapter of half a chapter of a textbook every morning, right? Mm-hmm. So I would think like just one key idea, one key lesson, even like three to four paragraphs max and We’ll see what people think.

I know what I’ll think. So anyways b b but cool. Anything else? Any last, oh, let’s quickly touch on like books and tools before we head out on

[00:29:58] Chris: I’ve been, I’ve been on a reading spree wire. I think I’ve finished three books in the last three weeks actually. I, I, wow. With my reading list, looking at it now, I’m at 19 books read so far in.

Five months. So basically I book a week. Damn. And the last ones have been, so I finished a really good one if you are into or want to get into networking, never eat alone. Heard, makes networking not suck. I think for other people can be really helpful, especially for people like me.

[00:30:36] Josh: Cool. I’m adding these to the show notes as well, so if you’re, Listening or watching after the fact, they’ll be in the description.

And

[00:30:43] Chris: then Yep. Then I finish Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. So if you know the War of Art, pretty popular book, this is basically the follow up to that and it’s kind of like a bit philosophical. It talks about Yeah, how, what, what it means to become like a professional, like going from amateur to professional.

So it is, Kind of like on the inspiring side a bit more. And then I finished winning by Tim Grover, which is was the guy that who wrote Relentless, the basically the personal trainer for Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan. And this book is all about like what winning means. Again, kind of more of motivational, inspirational, but I like those like when, whenever, listen to them.

The gym kind of puts everything into a bit more perspective and it’s, this one is good because it gives you some stories from his time coaching Kobe and Michael Jordan’s, some stuff that you never read online. That was good. Which was the best of the three? Probably never eat alone. The most useful one.

I’m actually, I wanted to. I wanted to quote another one that I started now, which seems pretty interesting. It’s called The Four Thoughts That Fuck You Up. And this is basically, this is basically about kind of a branch of cognitive cognitive behavioral therapy, which is called I can’t remember now, but a good.

It’s basically like what are the kind of thoughts that we have that mess up with our minds? And one is the dogmatic demands, which is basically all the kind of demands that you pose on yourself, like. I always have to be on time or I need to finish my to-do list today because blah, blah, blah. Right? In actual, you don’t have to do that.

And a day that like that he poses. That is whenever you have one demands always look for, like, always look for the demand that you’re making on yourself and ask, what is that I am demanding of myself? That kind of keeps you present and makes you reflect on why are you actually. Pretending to do something, but maybe you don’t.

[00:33:01] Josh: Yeah, no, it, it’s a good thought. Probably a good exercise, like an ongoing exercise or like approach to life. Cool. So maybe next episode you’ll give us kind of the full, yeah, the full rundown. I haven’t been reading as much as you Jesus Christ. But I finished, so I read Driven by Robert. I’m gonna, I’m gonna butcher his last name, like Robert, her Herjavec or something.

Mm-hmm. I don’t something like European. Do I have a behind? Oh no, it’s still on my desk. He’s the guy from Shark Tank in Dragons Den. Mm-hmm. Made a whole bunch of money and like, I think security. It something technology driven by Robert. I’ll have to look it up after so I don’t butcher the last name.

It was okay. Honestly, I, I, those are my favorite kind of books is like the autobiographies by entrepreneurs, but I don’t know, he didn’t really tell much of his story. I found it was more just like key lessons and he shared some stories, but like he didn’t really talk about his journey, right? So I love.

The, you know, the shoe dogs of the world because you get a ton of insights, but mainly it’s, they tell their story and then they kind of highlight the key lessons along the way. This was just him reciting lessons and like once in a while he’d like recite a story. So I don’t, it was okay, like I learned, I certainly learned from reading it.

It wasn’t a bad book. But it, it felt more like reading like a textbook than a, than a book book. Yeah. In my opinion.

[00:34:34] Chris: Yeah. I guess it’s also depend on like how you like to learn. Like I know that you, for example, you’re a lot into like biography, so you probably like to learn indirectly, like looking at other people’s experiences.

You take you take your own lessons. Some people need those like instructions a bit more. I think I’m kind of in between. Sometimes I like stories. Sometimes I like. Yeah. Makes sense.

[00:34:59] Josh: But part of it too was it wasn’t, I think part of it too was my expectation, right? So when I see a book like that and they got, he’s got the, like, the picture of him on the front cover, I’m like, okay, cool.

I’m gonna get to learn about this person, how they started their business. Mm-hmm. The ups, the downs. And like, he alluded to a little of that, but like, I compare it to one of his one of his co. Whatever co recorders on the show, Kevin O’Leary, who has a great book, it’s Behind me, called cold Hard Truth, where he basically goes through the story of how he started his career, how he started his business, like it was a great book and Driven was, was not a great book.

I thought it was a good book. I didn’t think it was a great book. So anyways. Mm-hmm. And what I’m reading now, I’m almost done, is when I go on vacation, I like to read like fantasy and fiction. So my fiance picked up a book called me, a book for me called The City of Brass, which has nothing to do with business.

So if you’re purely a non-fictional reader, Don’t even look into this book, but if you do like Fiction, Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter stuff it’s actually a really good book. Like I I, that, that’s kind of like my not guilty pleasure, but I grew up reading fiction and like fantasy and stuff like that and it’s really good.

I’m almost done. I probably have about like 70 pages left. It’s a long book. It’s like a 500 page book. But did a lot of reading on the beach in Mexico. And it’s really good, really good read. So if you’re into like fiction, fantasy type stuff, check it out. It gave me very much, again, this is more for the fantasy nerds out there.

It gave me very much like the name of the wind vibes. If anybody has ever read Patrick Rfu, which again, if you don’t read fiction, you probably or don’t read fiction and or fantasy. You probably haven’t. But really good vibes. Very good book. I don’t know what I’m gonna read next when I’m done that I’m gonna get back into.

You know, our favorite topic. So anyways, I’ll throw it in the show notes, but nice.

[00:36:57] Chris: Yeah, yeah. I, I should get me into, into fiction a bit more. That’s one thing that I cannot make a turn into a habit. Like, I dunno, I prefer watching movies for fiction stuff rather than reading fiction. Yeah.

[00:37:12] Josh: I mean, if, if you’re interested in any of those topics, you should give it a try.

The books are always better than the movies. Right. I mean, there’s obviously really good movies out there, but for, for example, like if you liked the Lord of the Rings movie, the book’s way better. If you like the Harry Potter movies, the books are way better, like 10 times better. So yeah, that’s my thinking there.

It’s, it’s

[00:37:34] Chris: probably because reading it’s feels like more work than watching a movie and. I, I don’t know, by the end of the day, I just want to like chill and

[00:37:45] Josh: relax. Well, I think there’s more detail too, right? Like there’s only so much you can kind of show and express in a two hour movie. Yeah. But like, so for example, like the Harry Potter movies or what, like two-ish hours each, but some of the books, especially later in the series are 5, 6, 700 pages, right?

So like there’s major events and characters that don’t even show up in the movies. Same with Lord of the Rings, right? Like Tom Bombadil is like one of the more famous characters from the trilogy. Doesn’t even show up in the movies, right? So you just get way more detail and like richness and you know what I mean?

So yeah, for sure. There’s some people too, Chris, that might, that prefer learning from fiction. So like I, I don’t have people off the top of my head really, but they’re like, I don’t read business books. They’re too boring. Whatever. I read fiction and I learn lessons that I can apply to business from fiction.

Mm-hmm. And, and, and I can, I can definitely agree with that too. So,

[00:38:42] Chris: yeah. No, it’s probably, it’s probably also good for like empathizing and understanding humans because those stories are basically just based on human emotions, human like stories. So, yeah, you probably learn a lot indirectly from those stories that you can apply and turn into your own lessons.

For sure,

[00:39:03] Josh: for sure. All right, man. We’re hitting the 40 minute mark here, but this was a good kind of like catch up and get back on track episode. So this will go live I’ll do, I’ll, I’ll put this live this Sunday, but for anybody listening or watching, it’s already live. So make sure if you’re listening, make sure to subscribe if you are watching on YouTube.

Also, it would be great if you can subscribe, like the video really helps support the show and Yeah, check out if you wanna follow Chris and I on those email lists to get more kind of personal and regular updates. Definitely check us out at the links in the description. Other than that, we’ll see you in the next episode.

Chris, anything else

[00:39:44] Chris: to end on? No. Maybe, yeah, we can talk more about some of those AI tools. Next, maybe when I got the chance to try this YouTube tool as well.

[00:39:55] Josh: Yeah, I’m, I got a few on my to-do list that I’m gonna test out as well, like content creation, snippet creation,

[00:40:02] Chris: Especially. Oh, yeah. I have another one that I wanted to recommend.

If you want to make a note now and maybe list it just to try it yourself. It’s called harpa dot a ai. H a r p a. Yeah. What does that do? It’s, it’s amazing. Basically, it’s a Chrome extension that’s linked to t. And basically any text that you have on the page, you can select it. It opens up like this popup on the, on the window, the browser, and you can basically ask it anything.

You can read the page. You can ask it. Okay, read me this page, summarize it. You can. It’s got a lot of functions to like, Turn the text into, like morph it improve it, shorten it. A lot of stuff like too, probably too much stuff that I still have to explore, but it’s pretty cool. Right? Especially if you have like the paid version for chat.

[00:40:54] Josh: So you could also use it for like emails and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. I added it to the show notes. Yeah. Maybe in the next episode we’ll talk more about, just cuz we have more to catch up on this episode. And next episode we’ll talk more about these. I mean, every day there’s these new AI tools that are changing the game.

So cool. All right, well thanks everyone for tuning in and I will add these to the show notes and we will see you all in the next episode. Cool. See you. See ya.