#178 Rob Hoffman – The Truth Behind a $300K/Month Content Machine

Learn how to build , learn how to sell , and if you can do both , then you'll be unstoppable . Last month we did $300,000 in MRR , so that means that we are at about a $3.6 million ARR run rate and we're growing fast , so excited for the future holds .

So you don't actually try to actually get better , you're not going to like either like break through or get better or improve or anything . So your content has been very much a way to think about it , much more strategically , versus let's just fucking post and ghost and hope for the best , right .

So my first question for you is like do you view content more as like an art or as like a science ?

And the other thing that a lot of people talk about is this kind of getting reps in , right ? Alex Hermosi is probably the number one person who talks about this right now and has influenced , you know , probably like thousands , if not like hundreds of thousands or even like millions of content creators out there . Where he goes .

The only way you're going to get good is by getting like 100 reps or getting 1000 reps . Right . That's not necessarily true , because there are tons of people out there who they have YouTube channels where they literally have 400 videos and they have 300 subscribers Right , and so , clearly , consistency is not working for them .

Clearly , just putting in the reps is not working for them . What does work is putting in the reps and the consistency paired with constant learning and applying those learnings into your content Right , and so the way that that kind of works is you learn a concept , then you're going to apply that concept into your content .

That's going to eventually become second nature . Now , that's just something that you do in your content . Then you learn the next concept , you apply that into your content and you get reps . That way it's kind of like the perfect practice Practice doesn't make perfect , perfect practice makes perfect .

And someone asked him on a podcast like that you know how do you get better with your videos , whatever and he said that everyone messages him saying I've been creating videos on YouTube for seven years and I'm not growing as fast as you .

And it's like , dude , from year one to year seven you've created the same video , the same rendition , same fucking layout , same question , same minutes and everything You're not actually actively trying to improve . So , like , what's your perspective on ? Like , how to improve ? Like , where do you look for the cracks ? And is this on the production ?

Is this on the content ? Is this on the philosophy of it ? How do you think about that ?

There is an art and a science to it , content creation , but the main thing is that you want to create a video . You're it's . Let me explain it this way right ? Do you play any sports ?

But if you want to get really good at basketball , if you're just standing there and you're shooting the ball a hundred times but you've got both hands on , like , either side of the ball and you're just doing this like grandma throw at the net , you're never going to actually improve , right .

The way that you're going to improve is , well , you're going to learn some of the basic skills , which is you want to release the ball from your middle finger , right , and so you're going to take a hundred shots just practicing releasing the ball with your middle finger .

You are going to learn that when you release the ball , you want to kind of put your hand in the cookie jar is how to , how they describe it where it's like you want to finish the shot , almost as if you are putting your fingers into the cookie jar the cookie jar being in that and you're going to take a hundred shots like that and then you're going to

learn how to keep your back straight and like release the ball , the type , the top of your jump , and you're going to take a hundred shots like that . And so it's basically the people who really succeed at content or in anything are the ones who are able to constantly learn and then quickly apply those learnings into their craft .

So , to take a step back , like looking at contact studios , like you built this , you know , in Colombia .

You've tried different variations in the past , like how was the development for you in leaving , like even like thinking about this , because you came from , like Herb , you came from a different other companies , you were a writer and you moved into this content space , like so where did that even come from ?

I want to be a journalist , and one day I kind of became disillusioned with journalism and I fell in love with entrepreneurship , and so I had to quickly learn the skills of business and apply them into the business and then try to learn how to lead a team to encourage others to do the same .

Obviously , first things first , I've got three other co-founders , so I haven't built this by myself , right ?

But we're playing the long game here and I think that there's nothing better in this world than building a company with your friends and people that you respect and admire , and it's fun to actually work with them . Most people who are entrepreneurs or enjoy the game or the sport of business , they love it because it is kind of like a game or sport to them .

Video game , yeah , it's like a video game , right , and for me , the fun is video games are the ones where you're playing with your friends , right . And so the other thing , too , is that I think it gives us a huge advantage because we have four people .

You know , if there's four co-founders , each of us have very different skill sets and we bring something very unique to the table . And so having four people , very unique skill sets , who are all driving towards the same goals a pretty powerful combination .

So , even though we have like less equity or whatever each one of us , to me it's like I don't really care .

video and you comment together , so like that works .

But then there's also like the emotional side of things , right , as in I built Vox on my own just from completely scratching my own , I had a good idea of like podcasting but like do you ride all the emotional side of things Because one you don't want to fucking let your employees and if you work with know that right , Like you need to have the strong head

on your own versus like vomiting your own concerns on the people , but when you have a co-founder is he can basically work through these issues together , because what else happens right Is like if you don't and if you're on your own , basically you're thinking I'm very , on a very long enough time , right and same with me .

Right , I'm much more geared towards like decades , even like two decades further on this , which we would want I'm doing right now , like today , and because of that you're pretty much foregoing a lot of closer opportunities sometimes are like easier money , easier opportunities because you're taking a longer time but , as a result , on the emotional side , that can reflect

badly on your relationships . It can end up you speaking to your girlfriend about fucking content for half of the day , versus actually have an engaging conversation . And I've seen I've seen an interviewed so many people that have had this struggle because they're on their own and for most of the pair , I'm also on my own for a lot of the stuff , right .

So how can you speak about that , like how it's helped you from just like a like literal , emotional perspective , psychological perspective , to have these co-founders ?

I'm a founder CEO but most CEOs that you talk to they feel like they're on an island and this very lonely or most founders rather and so it really helps , like you said to , one of my favorite things is just calling up my other co-founders and talking shit and like just kind of scheming together .

You know , that's the fun of business is , yeah , being able to call up your business partner and talk through strategy and make these grand plans . And if you're a lone founder , sure you might have like 100% equity of your business , but you're not going to . I think it's going to be a lot more of a lonely path .

But I think that's an interesting observation , how like you think about this way . I know we haven't gone on an adventure route , but if you were to go down a VC back , like Y Combinator or whatever , they don't give people money that have a single founder . It's at least two . I think in most cases it's three they look at .

Now building tech is completely different , right , you need a CTO , probably need a COO as well , and then you're the CEO . But I think it's an interesting observation like that . Those guys have obviously cracked it to some degree . Right , there's a reason why they don't give money .

So they really want a CTO who's committed , who's like a partner , versus someone that you hire because you could just like bring into a chop shop and then they can do a shit job of building , versus the CEO visionary , whose job is not to have any involvement with build traditionally . This is just like traditionally how this area works .

I wasted many years doing this , making it all up as a lot as I go , so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it .

So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess where your podcast , check out the links down below the podcast university and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast .

, you're proficient , but then you can also build out this content business and be able to focus on those different variables . So I think that's a good lever for people to understand .

Is that traditionally , his reference there was tech based , but actually we can apply this different multitudes of life , right 100% , because this is why most artists fail because most artists have no idea how to sell their art .

It was an unconventional lifestyle magazine and we grew the thing to 2 million monthly readers and we had no idea how to monetize it , and so it didn't work out in the end , and if we had just learned the second part , which was how to sell , could have been a pretty successful business .

I know we're going off in different tangents here , but for a fraction of that , like you could be making , like we did , 100,000 in sponsorship revenue and I'd say the total reach on that was probably half a million , a million people and that was in a month .

At this point right and back in those days , like I don't think anyone really knew how to monetize traffic like they do today .

He's very like he's a solopanore , he's doing it all himself . There's lots of pros , lots of cons . It is what it is . It's like how come you went down that content as a service part and how has that panned out for you to this point ?

They're a little bit more upmarket enterprise level , but I think that their branding and the way they present themselves is probably one of the best productized design services Out there . There's design pickle , et cetera . Right , and there's a reason why people are productizing their service .

One of them really just comes down to convenience , which is that if you are building a business , you kind of have to choose what you're going to compete on . You can be competing on price , or a better way of thinking about this is you might be competing on luxury , so you're presenting the most luxury , expensive product in the market .

You might be going the opposite direction , where you are competing on price but presenting the lowest cost option in the market , and then there's kind of the in between , which is convenience and ease of use , and for a lot of businesses that's actually what they really want . Because if you're kind of going after like a mid market business .

What they're looking for is they're looking for a solution that they can plug into their business , where they're able to get all of the services that come with a fully stacked team without having to increase headcount and without having to take on that risk and take on those costs .

And so a productized service is great because of that , because , for example , if somebody plugs into contact studios or company and they're paying us , let's say , $10,000 a month for this productized service and they're getting you know , a director of SEO , a senior SEO , a junior SEO , they have a team of writers , there is a team of editors , there are , like

designers , and you get all of these people for $10,000 a month and you're able to again access all of that talent without having to hire them internally , which again just takes an incredible amount of time and resources and risks . So I think that's probably why productized services are so appealing .

And if you were to increase the output or decreased output of podcasts , it doesn't change the amount of content we'd put out , because we're still doing like , let's say , short form or writing or newsletters . So , regardless , it was a retainer , so we just had like a flat like retainer and it was like a higher version and lower version .

And then I just came to realize that like that effectively is productized .

Now it isn't as wrapped up as like design joy is and I only spoke with Brett recently but I just thought it was interesting how like effectively it is that just without the wrapper on top , and it's a really good guy called Daniel Priestly , big like guest as a podcast recently too , and he was really pushing this model too , and a lot of the service businesses

or businesses in general that he owns , they're all built around his philosophy . So , like you have like a core brochure and then it has a just an overview of your product and has a name on it . Now it's now a productized service .

He makes it very , very simple , right , and like he's a lot smarter and a lot richer than I am , and he just broke it down very simply and I was like , oh , effectively , that's what we have to some degree , right .

We just more or less have to change our branding and how our website is structured , and I was trying to find something actually really quick while we were talking , because I think there's another reason why productized services have become really popular these days , and it has to do with something called the five stages of market sophistication .

Have you heard about that ? No , so there's this really wonderful concept by Eugene Schwartz in a book called Breakthrough Advertising , and he talks about the five stages of market sophistication and basically what the five stages of market sophistication are .

Are the when a new product is introduced to a market , it is kind of a level of awareness or sophistication that the market has about that product . And I'll give you an example .

Let's pretend that you are the first hot dog vendor in New York City and this we're going back like I don't know how many years , let's say like 100 years ago , where there is like no hot dogs in New York City . Nowadays it's like a street staple food . Well , imagine you're like the very first hot dog vendor in New York City .

That market is completely unaware of that product , so nobody even knows that hot dogs is a desirable food , and so that's kind of level one in which you have zero competition , and so that's pretty easy .

You're going to have like a line of people waiting to eat this hot dog that goes a mile long , right , and let's say , your hot dog stand is in Brooklyn and you probably have people taking the subway from Manhattan just to eat this hot dog because it's that wonderful of a product .

Well , in that stage you have to educate people on what your product is , how it works like , what problem it solves , and that's the kind of level of marketing you're going to do . And so you're going to position your product in a very simple way , which is we sell hot dogs , come by and try one , right ? It's very simple .

But then eventually , more and more people are going to learn about this product and you move on to the second stage of market sophistication , which is problem aware . So now , all of a sudden , you have more market awareness about this product and you have more competitors entering the marketplace .

And when that happens , you have to change how you market your product in order to successfully convince people to come and try your hot dog compared to these new competitors who have kind of cropped up Right . And so in that stage you have to introduce a kind of unique feature or benefit or outcome that separates your product or service from the competition .

And so an example of that is you're no longer saying we sell hot dogs , come and try one . You're going we sell authentic German brought worst hot dogs , come and try one , right .

And so now you have this more unique kind of benefit or feature that you are integrating into your marketing to convince people why this should come to you rather than your competitors .

And I'm not going to go through all of the stages because it's going to get really long and drawn out , but the point is is that eventually , the more than a market becomes saturated and there's more market sophistication around a product , the more that you have to innovate and come up with these kind of unique mechanisms , kind of unique positionings for marketing

your product . And so you're presenting a hot dog . It's still a hot dog , right ? Yeah , it's still just the fuck , but like , the way that you're presenting it to the market is different , and that is going to make all the difference . What's an example of this ? What's the water company that every marketer loves talking about these days ?

They're marketing water in a way that nobody else is doing it , because it's obviously one of the most saturated the level of market sophistication for water is probably the highest out of any product in the world and so the point that I'm making here , and how this ties into productized services , is that what we are doing in terms of the service that we're

providing SEO as something that you pay for on a monthly recurring basis that's not necessarily anything new .

What is new is how it's presented to the market , and how it's presented to the market is in this kind of productized , saas-like interface , and so what you're doing is you're taking this product that everybody knows and loves and uses and you're just creating , you're adding this little bit of uniqueness to it , to present it in a different way that is now new and

exciting to people , and that's kind of how marketing works , right

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Thank you , I love that example , man . I think it's very interesting because it's more sophisticated , but at the end of the day , it's the same fucking product , right ? That's where you're going to do it anyway , right ? That's a funny thing .

Now , last question on this , before we move on is when you bring this to them like product I is like SEO or product I is like video . Do people get it ? Do prospects understand this ? That's my only concern or not ?

I think that's why people like it , because it just has this kind of extremely easy to use interface and , at the end of the day , the point of a product I service is to take something inherently confusing like SEO as an example . Seo the name is an acronym , right Like it's the most confusing surface out there .

Most people have no idea what it means and they hear people talking about meta descriptions and just all these technical jargony terms that people have no idea what that stuff means . You're taking a service that is inherently confusing and you're packaging it in a way that is recognizable and that people can understand and that feels approachable .

They've seen the Shopify work that you've worked with . I've seen , for Sahel Bloom , the content you've done . Mmm , that's the… strategy there in terms of like how you create content from a production perspective , but also from a storytelling perspective .

And as much as people say like , don't judge a book by its cover and we all know that , the reality is that people do make judgments based on the first impression , which is why , if you want to , if you're trying to convince people that you have quality product or quality service , then you have to present it in a quality way which means it doesn't look like

you're recording a video in your mother's basement , right , even though you know I know Alex Hermosi kind of famously did that , but again , he had the social proof of him building an $100 million business , and so I think that people kind of forget about that fact . That's a whole other story .

But the storytelling side of it , I think this is where a lot of people go wrong , and the way that we approach our content .

There's a few different things I can talk about here , and I want to make it really actionable for the audience and kind of give some frameworks that people can use to tell better stories and to present their content in a way that's actually engaging , right , because these days people are they're almost like I don't know how to describe it it's like they're looking

for the lowest hanging fruit where they go . Okay , I know that I need to put content out there . I understand that . I know I need to put video content out there as an example . Okay , what's the easiest way that I can achieve scale immediately , right out of the gate ? And you should not be trying to achieve scale right out of the gate .

You should first try to find a . You should first be trying to create content that an audience likes , and then from there you can scale it up .

And so the mistake that people make is they go okay , right out of the gate , I am just going to create , I'm going to hop on the call with my buddy , I'm going to film a podcast , and then I'm going to use some AI editor to make a million shitty cut downs and just blast that out all over social media .

And then they're surprised when they only get , like you know , 50 views on one of their short form videos . And the problem there is that , again , they're trying to achieve scale before they've actually found something that works with their audience . And so how do you find something that works with your audience ?

Well , first you have to learn some of the storytelling , just the basic storytelling frameworks . That allows you to present whatever information you're trying to convey to the audience in a way that's actually interesting .

And the way that we like to think about this is you want to make broccoli taste like candy , right , it's like people want their vegetables to taste like a dessert , almost like a . What is it like ? Like a vegetable , oh God , why am I forgetting the name ? You know , when you go to like a sushi restaurant .

They have like the deep fried vegetables , tempura veggie tempura .

We're cutting down these podcasts is the fact that unless , as you said beforehand , it's carefully curated , you're going to end up with a lot of trash like bad hooks , bad stories , no endings , no distinction .

Or it's basically like that's what a lot of people are doing , where they're just putting whipped cream on dog shit and going here , you go , enjoy your delicious treat and it's like you put whipped cream on it .

It's still dog shit , right , and so so , again , to kind of make this actionable , A lot of mistakes that people make is , again , they're over relying on creating these like crappy AI cut downs and they're trying to kind of they're trying to distribute before they've even found something that their audience likes .

And another thing that they do is they try to systemize too early , and there's a lot of brilliant people who have found ways to systemize their content and distribution .

And Dan Co , Justin Wells , you take these kind of hub and spoke models approaches to their content , where they write like a long form blog post or a long form newsletter , and then they take little snapshots of that and distribute it across Twitter , LinkedIn and that can work , but it doesn't work unless your original piece of content is good , and the other thing

is it doesn't work across all channels , and what I mean by that is you can't take a newsletter or a blog post and just go . Okay , I'm going to just essentially read this blog post out to a camera and there we go . I've got video content . It's like that's going to be the most boring , least engaging video content on earth , and so it makes sense .

If you're trying to get into video content , you have to learn what is actually what makes for interesting content in this distinct medium which is video , and it's a lot different than what works for a platform like Twitter .

So how I approach this , or how I've done this in the past , is that when I'm using video content on LinkedIn , it's much more positioning me as the authority , so it's just like something to do with content or podcasting , versus versus , Whereas on Instagram it's not so much lifestyle , but it's more like personal , like personal experiences that are , like you know ,

from like A to B , for instance . And then on YouTube it's different . Again , right Now , it's not vastly different from Instagram , but there is that distinction . So how do you even approach that Like ? Where would you , where do you draw the lines between platforms in terms of content , structure and the yeah , the topics ? I guess to some degree .

The other thing that I think is increasingly important , especially with the AI becoming such a part of our day to day lives , is that people are concerned that content is going to become commoditized , and to a certain extent it will . The crappy content will become commoditized , and what . What makes for good content in a post AI world .

It all comes down to the idea . It's the most important thing , like I would say .

You should be spending at least like 30 to 40% of your time just trying to actually come up with the ideas that are interesting to people , because a great idea has so much reach , and I don't think that AI is at least yet capable of coming up with a really kind of unique idea that is .

Let me explain it to you this way Okay , you've watched the show Survivor .

This was like this wasn't even that long ago and I rocked up there and it was like super traditional tradition , like not built up at all . And everyone asked me I swear on my mother's life , this is true . People were like , oh , are you on the show ? And I was in Eden , this restaurant .

It was like the only like half decent restaurant that I would get like a massive , like breast chicken and this is so off topic , right . But people in the restaurant would ask me like am I on like Survivor ? And I knew my girlfriend watched it with her mom . They're just like love , like fucking these shows , right .

So that's when I started putting two and two together . So basically , the answer question . I've never watched it , but I ended up being on the island and actually I was there when they shot the entire set , like during that period , which was like I don't know what it was like six months ago and I saw all the crew and stuff but I've never seen the show .

But I get it .

So like that company , that production , pretty much saved this island during lockdowns , so like they were still able to record there because it's like I don't know why , but like if it wasn't for this production , like like they would not have been able to like eat or generate any bit of revenue or money when in the island at all .

So they they brought in like I think it's you know , some of these crews bring in like thousands of people because it's all freelancers that they're bringing , so that just filled up , like not the hotels , but like hostels and guest houses and food and all this kind of stuff . And honestly , the place is like it's like .

You know , people always say like , oh , I wish I was in Bali 20 years ago , it's like that . But 50 years ago , like very , very old and I loved it , I love the place and yeah , massive , massive

segue that was .

A few years back , I had the opportunity to consult with the founder of a $300 million media company , and he told me that the secret to creating great content is creating franchise content with the fence IP , and I had no idea what that meant .

I had to actually Google what IP means and I learned that it meant intellectual property , right , and what I learned from that conversation changed the way that I thought about content forever .

And when he talks about creating franchises with defensible IP , what that means is you're creating content series that are based on specific characters or a unique world that characters can form an attachment to . So an example of a series with a unique world , with unique IP would be survivor Right .

So in this series there is the IP , which is the idea , and the idea is that it's a deserted island where contestants are forced to survive and compete for a million dollar prize . That is a unique idea .

That is intellectual property that survivor owns , and it's such a great idea that survivor has literally been on the air for 23 years and there's been over , I think , 600 episodes of survivor , and the characters for every episode of survivor change . So you're not actually getting attached to the characters of the show , because they're different every season .

What you're attached to is this amazing idea , this unique IP that survivor owns , which again is competing on a deserted island for an a million dollar prize . And so why I'm talking about this is because , if you want to create great content in today's world , especially in the post AI world , you want to focus on finding your unique IP .

What is that idea that people can attach themselves to and invest into ? What is that world and unique set of rules that they can get lost in , or those characters that they can form an attachment to ? And if you're able to figure that out , then the rest becomes quite easy .

So if you were taking an example because this is very , very actionable , because this is like the shit that people don't talk about If I was to look at kickoff sessions and the reason why I can't matter what a slant is , because there's every online business entrepreneurship podcast but the whole idea was to help younger people live a richer , more filling life ,

because richer , more fulfilling is like nuance . It's not necessarily money , it's like lifestyle , it's a combination of everything . It's just fulfillment , purpose , interest , and that came from me like hating my fucking life in finance . So is that the unique idea ? Because for me , that's how I can sit down with Justin Welsh and talk about his lifestyle design .

Or I could sit down with Alex Hermose , who would just talk about building businesses building businesses because that's what leads him to a richer , more filling life . So is that the idea in some degree from your perspective ?

Right , there's a million talk shows , and so a celebrity talk show host is not a unique kind of original idea . It's not intellectual property . But have you heard of Hot Ones ?

It's extremely popular , like all the mainstream celebrities Jennifer Lawrence , you know all the mainstream celebrity . I don't know who's mainstream these days , but all the mainstream celebrities go on Hot Ones . It has been going for 21 seasons and more than 300 episodes . Why is Hot Ones such a successful interview show ?

Because they have this unique IP , and the unique IP again is it's not just asking celebrities questions . It's asking them questions while they are eating hot wings that are so spicy that most guests tear up on camera and nobody else can go out and create a show about asking celebrities questions while they eat hot wings .

Because Hot Ones owns that unique IP and , in fact , hot Ones or rather complex media , who's the company who owns Hot Ones have licensed that IP out to other creators who want to recreate that show in other countries and other languages and cultures . They're able to license that IP out to streaming services .

So you have streamers who want to take Hot Ones , which is a YouTube first series and they want to put it on streamers because they know that it's a series that already has traction and all of that is . And the other thing is that Hot Ones . So there's a few genius things about Hot Ones , right ? Number one it's simple and repeatable without being cloneable .

The best ideas and the best IP are simple and repeatable without being cloneable . The other thing is that they're able to easily attach a product to the series . So they're getting all this traction with this series , where they have a ton of attention .

They have every episode getting millions of views and they released a line of hot sauces associated with the brand called I think it's just called Hot Ones . It's like a hot sauce brand , and the Hot Ones hot sauce featured in the series became the fastest selling hot sauce in history .

You're selling the concept of your video to the viewer , and now you've got their attention . But to hold their attention you have to do a few things . Number one you have to fulfill on the promise that you made to them in the hook . The other thing is you have to use these retention tactics that YouTubers are great at .

There's this channel called Film Booth , and do you know Film Booth ?

And so Film Booth is one of the channels , and I forget what the creator's name is , but he's amazing at writing scripts that can retain attention , and what he does is he will kind of introduce the video with a hook and then he will like maybe I don't know what's an example of the video .

It might be like how I started a YouTube channel from scratch and grew it to like 10,000 subs in 30 days , or something like that .

Right , well , he's going to start the video with a hook , something attention grabbing , but then , very quickly , he's going to be like you know , one of the greatest learnings that really got my channel from a thousand subs to 10,000 with something completely unexpected and I'm going to come back to that later in the video .

And so he teases something that's going to happen later in the video so that the viewer is incentivized to continue watching , and you have to do that throughout the video , and the trick here is that it can't be something that is obvious , that when the viewer reaches that point in the video , they kind of roll their eyes and they go .

Man , I waited around for five minutes just to learn that , like , the trick that he was talking about was , oh , like , use a professional camera or like something stupid like that , right , because then they're just going to hate you . They're never going to come back . You held their attention for one video but you're never going to get consistent viewership .

The key to making great YouTube videos is I'll tell you later in the video and then five minutes later , you'll learn that it's by a professional camera . It has to be well . I started making videos and I was able to hook a lot of people's attention . I was getting a lot of views , but my engagement was just dropping off of a cliff .

People would watch for five seconds and then they would just disappear . Right ?

And throughout the video you're telling a story that keeps people engaged and arrives at a unique conclusion , which might be a specific storytelling framework that he used , that he implemented in his script writing , that resulted in holding attention for a longer period of time , and that's going to be something that is actually actionable and useful for the audience .

That is not obvious and just going to piss the audience off , and it's done in a way where number one , he's building suspense from the beginning by teasing something important that the viewer wants to know later in the video . He is arriving at that later point in the video through storytelling so that it is actually engaging .

And you're also giving a reason for like , why don't you just tell me the tip , like right off the bat ? It's like , well , I'm telling it to you through a story so that you can understand the context and then when you finally get there , again it's something unique .

So , yeah , that was like a game changer when I learned about that , just about how to create suspense and then how to do a reveal and what to reveal . That is not going to lose the trust of your audience .

Does that make sense ? Is that you need to like almost write this down ? Have it like I have a checklist , basically , of like what we , how we should move conversations , and it's like a 20 pointer , and my perspective on this we give their clients is that you should leave every podcast with this overarching team being like , yes , we move conversations .

We didn't have double barrel questions , triple barrel questions . We kept things entertaining , educational , so it's almost like this is like a part of the component , right , because , again , you need to want the change to change , to get to that point which is like most alluring , right ? That's the biggest standard from this 100% .

What gave you the kind of interest towards like not like digital nomad lifestyle , but like your quote unquote , but mainly just like leaving Canada to build while traveling , while having that lifestyle element ?

Yeah yeah , toronto is especially cold , or like the middle and like Eastern parts of Canada are like particularly cold , and so I did .

It's kind of a long story , I'm not going to like bore them with all the details , but I ended up in Columbia basically because I was I was doing a backpacking trip and I did not go to Columbia , but everybody that I met was talking about it and they said this is the best place , like you have to go and visit this country .

And so when I got back to Canada , I got a job as a writer for a cannabis media company and it was fully remote at that time , or at least my position was remote and so I was able to move to Columbia .

I'd heard such great things and I was like I'm going to use this opportunity of this remote writing job to live in Columbia for the next six months , and I fell in love with Columbia . I fell in love with Medellin , the city , the language , the culture , the people , everything , and I made a ton of friends , like just local friends from Medellin .

And so what happened is I had to move back to Toronto because the company that I was working for , which was a startup , got this really fantastic office in the trendiest part of Toronto and they wanted everyone to come in and work in the office . And so I spent the next year completely miserable , hating my life in Toronto , because it was just cold .

I didn't like the city , I was depressed for a number of reasons , some like personal reasons , I went through a bad breakup , et cetera . The classic story right , and eventually what happened is I actually got fired from that job and there was a round of layoffs .

I was part of the round of layoffs and I got fired , and that was the best thing that ever could have happened to me , because I was like I know exactly where I'm going and I bought a one . How do you ? Why am I so ? One way yeah , that's the word I was looking for . Total brain just collapsed .

But one way to get to Medellin and I had no job , nothing lined up , and I only had my life savings , which was , I think , about $10,000 at that time , and my whole goal was I want to just learn how to make money , build a business , before my savings run out .

And so it was basically like I need to learn how to make money on the internet before my savings run out . And I got to Columbia , I wanted to live with the local friends that I had made in the city of Medellin . The problem was that my local friends were from what every well intention taxi driver advised me was a very dangerous neighborhood .

I don't believe that to be the case .

I believe that people conflate dangerous with poor , essentially , and I wanted to live with my friends , and so I went and did that , and the best part was is that rent in that neighborhood cost me $70 per month , and this was a time when I had no income and I needed to save a lot of money , and I'm trying to get this piece of stuff off the ground In

that neighborhood . It was a little bit wild . I had no hot water so I took cold showers for an entire year , not by choice . There were holes in the wall . My next door neighbors were the neighborhood gang who would steal motorcycles and sell drugs and have massive parties until 5 am in the morning , and I've got a lot of crazy stories about that .

And after eight months of trying to build up this business , I completely failed and my money had all but run out . And just at that time the company who had fired me about eight months earlier wrote me and said hey , we're rebuilding the company , we need writers . And I was the best writer .

I was the writer who had the most , I guess , page views or whatever . So they wrote me and they said hey , do you want to come and work for us again ? And I said , hell , yeah , I do , because I need money . And so I started working for that company . But at this time I didn't see myself as a writer anymore .

I saw myself as an entrepreneur and I decided that I wanted to help build this company from the ground up . So I had asked the founder , who I think you know . I'd asked the founder to let me sell , and he looked at me as just a writer . He was like what do you know about selling ?

And so he said , yeah , if you know so much about selling , why don't you bring to me a revenue plan ? And so which rightly so , by the way . So I created this deck .

It was a 30 slide deck , which is a revenue plan that detailed all of the missed revenue opportunities that I thought the company had and how I believe the company could add on an additional seven figures of revenue in the next 12 months , and I presented it to the company , and when I finished presenting , the entire company started applauding and the CEO basically

called me up after and was like okay , you can sell .

So like whatever best vaporizer 2023 , whatever it is , and then selling inventory like into that article .

So if you're able to rank that number one on Google and you get a lot of traffic organically that's high intent of people who are looking to buy a vaporizer you are very easily able to go to a vaporizer company and go , hey , would you like to be the top spot on this article ?

And it costs whatever $10,000 a month and we know that we're able to sell $20,000 worth of vaporizers . So it's a win-win situation and we're able to create value for that company .

maybe other people in the company didn't .

explore .

But it's the fact that you were able to come in with like a strategic plan and be like right , we're not just going to run fucking ads , it's like we're going to do SEO in this particular way , because I've done it in the past , like , in particular , we can have this specific area , and you were just obviously went in as you were CEO at that point .

But I thought that's interesting , right .

But initially it all started with me just proposing this revenue plan and then getting on the phones and selling myself . The first day that I started selling I closed a $13,000 deal and Matt looked at me and went it Okay , looks like you can sell . Let's kind of giddy up right .

And the funny thing was at that time I was selling and I was living in again this quote unquote very dangerous neighborhood and the biggest challenge that I had was right now you can see that I have a very procured background and I've set up my camera and microphone and background to look professional .

At that time the biggest problem that I had is there was no way to position my camera in a way that made me look legitimate . Essentially , my apartment like it was unfinished concrete walls and I just imagined people saying to me hey , you're telling me that you can make me all this money , but why are you living in a favela ?

I think the funny thing is that Colombia is a pretty popular destination actually , and nowadays when I tell people that I live here , they're like , oh that's , I love Colombia , I've been there and like I want to move there myself . Or I have a friend that went there and like won't stop talking about it , right .

But in my mind I was just like man , people are just knocking to understand why I'm trying to sell them things and I'm in Colombia and I'm in this house . That again , it just it looks totally like a favela . And so what I did was there was this crappy Superman poster on our wall .

It was one of the only things that we had hung up on the wall and I would take this Superman poster and put it behind me and sit on my bed , cross legged , and position my camera in a way where I at least had a Superman poster on a wall behind me , so that they had something to look at and it wasn't just unfinished concrete and that poster kind of

became my good luck charm because I went to sell half a million dollars worth of product that year and the next year I went on to sell a million dollars worth of product and I rose up in the rankings again from writer to editor-in-chief to head of content to COO , and I cut my teeth in that business and I learned the skills of business throughout that

experience and I applied the skills that I had learned throughout that experience to also build up our own company , Contact Studios , and eventually we started to get a ton of traction with our own company and in 2021 , I think that's when we had hit a $1 million error run rate and so at that time I was like I need to leave this other company and go full

time , go all in on my own business as CEO of Contact Studios and the rest of the system .

I just had my head down during lockdown and maybe I waited too long , but again , I was enjoying myself and learning a lot at the other company and so , yes , so you've scaled that now from $1 million to so .

We don't need to lock you into a long-term contract because we know that you're going to love working with us from day one .

And number three is that we can tell people hey , we know you're taking a risk on us , try us for a month , and if we don't seem competent to you , if after a month of working with us you're not enjoying yourselves or not seeing the momentum or progress that you would expect , feel free to stop working with us .

And so far nobody has stopped working with us after a month . In fact , most of our clients have been with us for years . I mean , the company is only four years old , but we have very low churn , thankfully , and so I don't see any need to lock people into a long-term contract .

I think that they just it's very easy when you start working with a company , you can tell normally within the first week , and certainly within the first month ? Am I working with a competent team ? Is communication on point ? Are they doing the things that they said that they would do , and am I seeing progress towards my goals ?

There's obviously just like there's just two sides to it , but it's awesome to see that you've done this side and it's worked exceptionally well for you . I think there's a lot of inspiration to take from that , which is awesome . Before we finish up , I do want to just focus more on that Columbia lifestyle , just your own personal lifestyle .

You mentioned that when you're in Toronto , you're feeling like the press and everything and , because it's a combination of environment factors , you're going

through a breakup and stuff Juxapos that to where you are right now in terms of just general lifestyle living in South America .

To me when I go to Canada I now feel like a fish out of water , which is kind of odd where I'm so accustomed to Columbia , how the system works here , even things like healthcare , just kind of like the day-to-day life sort of things I'm so used to , how Columbia functions now compared to Canada , that to me it's almost my new normal and I feel like I am

at home here . I love , love , love living here . I wake up every day thankful for the place that I live . I think it is the greatest city on earth . Personally , I love living in a place that has natural beauty . I think that's one of the top number one factors that I prioritize in a place that I want to live and again , toronto just didn't have that .

It was cold and isolated and gray and just like a concrete jungle , whereas Medellin is a literal jungle . I mean not literally , but yeah , it feels like a jungle . And so , yeah , my life is quite a bit better . I'd say I'm much happier , I'm fulfilled , I'm living where I want to live . And here's the other thing I'll say to people , For listeners out there .

People will try to tell you and I want to know if you've experienced this People will tell you you're moving away to Medellin , you're trying to run away from your problems . You're not going to be happier there than you are here . Oh , man . Go ahead .

Basically in Ireland and in the UK there's this thing that , like when you're in your early 20s , when you go to college and you buy the lie and you pay all the money on the scam right which I did that you go on your summer holidays to like Thailand , you get like pissed , you drink , like fucking these like buckets , and then you go home and that's it and

you're back to 9 to 5 . So when you go to do that , it's almost as if like yeah , you're doing it for this , like short vacation and that's it . But when I first touched Asian soil , I was a 20 years old . I came out of Bangkok Airport . The sound and the smell of Bangkok , I guess , never went back .

The second is mentally , because I always loved that environment . So every year I would go back for two months and three months and four months until I'd finished college and then , when COVID hit , I just came to Thailand permanently and then I went to Mexico for a bit and then I'm back to Bali and that's been based ever since and Singapore .

But basically what I'm trying to say is that people always have the perception that when you , when you move away , as if like Ireland is the centre of the universe , that you're running from your problems , or you're like getting away from something or whatever .

So it's like you're the one that is in the wrong , whereas in fact , like a lot of people that stay very similar to what you're doing in their life . They haven't grown in any aspect like professionally , personally , mentally , physically , doing the same shit .

So when you ring up your mate or you speak to someone not even your mate they're probably doing the same thing that they were doing when they were 18 , 19 , 20 . Whereas , like for me , I literally feel like I reinvent myself every like six months or like two a year .

Like , as I mentioned , I lived in Bali when I moved to Singapore and when I moved back to Bali , I was a completely different individual at that point , just as I was getting older . Right , because you adapted to times and the circumstances . So for me , like the nature element of being in Asia , similar to Central America , it's everything .

Right , because it's where you're to knock out super woo-woo , but like , mentally , like it's where you're meant to be . In terms of like in nature outside , like outside culture . I'm interested to see what you think of Medellin for that , in terms of like , there's no beach in Medellin . Am I correct ? Am I super wrong ?

But I agree with you and I don't think it's a woo-woo . I just think that people are supposed to have nature be a part of their daily lives . Like people just feel happier when they're exposed to nature on a regular basis . I think it's just your biological and again people tell you you're not going to fix your problems by moving across the world .

I , you know , I'm Irish , so I used to drink when I was younger , right , and like Irish people like you , go to festivals similar to , like Canadians , americans , just getting pissed or whatever , and more like a focus on the podcast than never be the business . I just stopped drinking because I just didn't see it , I just didn't really want to do it anymore .

So then , when you , when people move to like Bali , they're like oh , I'm coming here to like solve my problems , right , like all the issues that I had a home and come here to solve it .

But then they come here and because there's so much nightlife here , they just end up taking their problems to 10 times more levels , right , so there's like drinking more , they're partying more , they're probably doing drugs , all this kind of shit , right , so they've kind of gone down like a more of a negative spiral .

So when you can go to Medellin and live a healthy lifestyle , integrate with the locals , speak fluent Spanish which is fucking insane and learn those different aspects , it's almost like the , the header towards the , the more damaging effect , right . So just like drinking , smoking , drugs , partying like all this stuff was bad for you , regardless of city .

They just put it on steroids in a place that's sunny .

And there are people like myself who come here and like yourself who go for the right reasons the nature , the people , the culture and then there's people who they just want to do drugs and you know , probably higher prostitutes and just be total pieces of shit and honestly , that's one of the things that frustrates me most about Medellin is that there are just

there's so many foreigners who come here who are just ignorant and slimy and gross and just want to come and , quite frankly , like embarrass the rest of us who come here with good intentions . And it's what I feel embarrassed to like be a foreigner here sometimes because I'm just like . And .

The only fans like LA like fall out like wannabe actor like this comes to like reside here and like as a result , that's where that negative connotation comes from . It's like these people because come , they're very , very ignorant like locals , like they would like look down on locals a lot with very rude whatever .

So we myself , my partner , who's from America we live like literally middle of nowhere , like honest , got like a middle of nowhere and it's very local . Now it's still kind of busy , but it's , as you mentioned , it's locals . Right , you probably hear some construction going on . It's always construction going on , but it's not the , it's not English based number one .

If you walked into a supermarket , you're speaking Bahasa Indonesia and I think that's as much more of a better lifestyle because you're actually integrating with local people without . Because it's funny , I think there was like a tweet . I know we're like rambling . Well , I enjoyed it . I love this like idea behind it , because people like anything .

They can solve their problems . But unless you want to solve your problems , you can't solve your own problems . So someone put up that went like viral being like you should come to Bali . It's like being in London or being in New York . It's like if that's your approach , you just missed it .

It's like because that's what Irish people do , right , irish people will go on vacation to hang out with other Irish people , or like , for instance , like let's say , I didn't know you , right , I flew to Medellin and that's how it was Canadian .

I'm like I'm going to get on to Rob because he's Canadian and I'm Canadian and we're bored in Medellin as a result and like that's like literally how these like groups form and that's how you know you end up at these like very generic beach clubs and spending all this money on a bottle of service and on these tables and shit that you know you're with the

same people that you could have just been at home in your home country .

That I moved to because I wanted to live with my local friends and because I'm like , I didn't move to Columbia to hang out with a bunch of Canadians , and I do have a friend group here of entrepreneurs who are from , you know , the UK , the US , various parts of the world . I've got kind of like my local friends and my foreigner friends .

I suppose when I say foreigner , I mean you know they're Canadian , they're American , they're from the UK or from Ireland or wherever else , right , but again , I , you know , I didn't come here for that . And , man , there's something else that you had said that resonated with me and I'm totally blanking on it . But yeah , I think , oh , you know what it is .

It really frustrates me that people move to these places and then they expect to have the same kind of , they expect people to speak English .

Number one and they want to have all the same conveniences as home , where there are many conveniences here that we do not have in Canada , by the way , where I'm like Medellin is like years ahead of Canada in like many respects , like their metro system , even just like some of the apps .

I know in Asia you probably have some of these , like these everything apps where you can like order anything to your house and it comes like really quickly .

But people will get frustrated when they're like yeah , I went to this hotel or you know they're at the airport and they're like the people didn't even speak English and it's like no shit , it is a Spanish country , like why don't you just try to pull up Google translate , for Christ's sakes ? And like just don't complain about it .

And so that's one thing that really frustrates me .

Yeah , people who move here and they just they don't try to integrate with the culture , because I don't really want Columbia and I'm sure you don't want , like Bali or Thailand or wherever you're living to just become like a little version of Ireland , of the UK or America , because it's like that's not why you're there for it . Yeah , last . Thing .

Everything works , everything is on time , as you mentioned , trams and metro , everything's on point . Even things like like your taxes is like automated for you . So when you get paid , it's all done , like , everything's like automated . So then we move back here .

You know , bali is infamous for traffic and I remember the first day that we arrived , it took us like three hours to get from the airport to our place , which was only like it was only like five miles , I would say , but the traffic was so intense because we had a taxi , we had , like our bags , whatever .

I remember my girlfriend being like , oh , like you know , this is kind of so frustrating and I was like , yeah , but this is like the trade off , right , is that we get all the lifestyle to benefit the food , everything , the culture , and , yeah , the traffic sucks sometimes . You get over that . You get over that , right , it's like a .

Like you know , it's very noisy , like Columbia is just like a very like noisy place , compared to Canada where it's like 8pm you cannot make a peep , otherwise your neighbors are going to complain , whereas I'm sure where you're living , where I'm living very different , luckily you have this amazing podcast microphone where I have not heard anything , I've not heard any

construction , so I am .

The next session will do in person , as I mentioned to you on coming to the States in December , and we're going to do Central America for Christmas anyway . So if there's any way to link up across across Guatemala , costa Rica , mexico , always feel free to reach out .