Podcasts about because matt

Matt King is the CEO of Gobundance, a mastermind group designed for extraordinary men to excel in all areas of their life, not just finances. He is backed by over a decade of experience in building and scaling firms across several different industries. Outside of work, he is a husband, a father, and loves spending time on his ranch in Texas.  Matt excels at building teams. He spent the early part of his career being a student of life under some of the most successful people in his life. While in the room with these high achievers, he never said no and made sure he put himself in the best position possible to serve and learn. Through this, he learned how successful people operate, and how he needs to best position himself to be like them.  In this episode, we talk about Matt's journey as an entrepreneur. He shares the story of how he started in his early 20s learning from millionaires, and then taking those lessons to his own businesses later in life. We talk about how life is much more than just money, and how you can live a fully fulfilled life, in every area.  This episode is for all of the dreamers out there that want to achieve more, but may not know where to start. And for those that think that success is much more than a dollar sign. Because Matt shows us that is right. 

Because Matt actually invited Ryan and Jim to trivia last week, we were too overwhelmed by the moment to come up with podcast topics... So once again this week we have not "prepared" or anything planned. We just hit the record button & see what happens. Maybe we'll do some trivia. Maybe we'll play Pricetitution. Who knows?! Enjoy... Make sure you visit our website https://3countthursday.com/ Subscribe to the show on ALL podcast platforms & YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@3CountThursday) You can get your Huddle Up Podcast merch on TeePublic at https://www.teepublic.com/user/3countthursday Creative Commons Music used in this show created by Jason Shaw on https://audionautix.com/

 Discover why you don't really need a complex survey tool Understand what is the principle of “closing the loop” and how can it help you Learn how you can avoid survey fatigue and ensure you get high-quality answers at a lesser cost Resources/Links: To learn more about what you can put in your survey to create impact, click here: surveyconversations.com/MTI Summary Do you want to deliver surveys that create an impact and push your audience to say YES? To ensure that your survey creates an impact not only on your business but also on your audience, it is important to get clear of your actions and make sure your audience feels wanted through three important things. You can't just ignore or assume. Dr. Matt Champagne is a scientist, author, and serial entrepreneur. He was named Technology Visionary by SURVEY Magazine for his pioneering work merging psychology and technology to create unique customer feedback solutions. Listen to Matt's expert insights on how you can maximize the potential and impact of your surveys through the secret psychological levers that get you that YES with less stress. Check out these episode highlights: 01:33 - Matt's ideal client: An ideal client comes from many industries, but typically, it's a small business owner, or it's a head of a larger organization or department, but they have a survey. It's an important survey. 02:13 - The problem he helps solve: It's three problems. I always tell folks, I saw three problems which are the problems of surveys. One is that you haven't generated a lot of participation. 04:00 - Clients' common mistakes before consulting Matt: They'll like to try to give incentives that don't solve the problem. They'll try to go to a more complex survey tool, which just adds complexity. 05:27 - Matt's Valuable Free Action (VFA): We talked about the nine principles of feedback. But if I had to pick one of those principles that you could do quickly, and for free, it would be principle five, which is called, "closing the loop". And this rests on the psychology that people only want three things. 07:12 - Matt's Valuable Free Resource (VFR): To learn more about what you can put in your survey to create impact, click here: surveyconversations.com/MTI 07:50 - Q: How do AI and ChatGPT intersect with surveys? A: My prediction is it's going to be a huge mess to start. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “People only want three things-- they want to know their voice was heard, that they made a difference, and how they compare to others.” -Matt ChampagneClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Greetings, everyone, and a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I'm Tom Poland beaming out from the sunshine coast, very sunny indeed, here in Australia joined today by Dr. Matt Champagne. Matt, good day from Down Under, and a very warm- welcome back! You're the Boomerang that has come back to Australia because I think we've interviewed. This is maybe even the third time. Matt Champagne 00:30 It is the third time. Thanks for having me back, Tom! Tom Poland 00:33 This is the first time we've had a third-timer, and there's a reason for that, Matt, and everyone who's listening, I should say. Because Matt's the guy who is a marketer, wrapped up in science because he is actually a scientist. He's also an author and a serial entrepreneur. He was named- get this- Technology Visionary by SURVEY magazine for his pioneering work merging psychology and technology to create unique customer feedback solutions. And Matt and I have worked together. I've invited him back not because there are any affiliate commissions involved because there are not, but because his stuff is,

When you head to a galaxy that is well in the past and very far away from our own - you get interesting stories.  Those stories are often at their BEST when they come from Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd. and the title of the show is "The Mandalorian" (as seen on Disney +).  Perhaps Noah thinks this is the cream-of-the-crop?  Will Matt Mungle of "The Entertainment Answer" agree?  Because Matt is Noah's guest on the A.T.C. to discuss the Season 3 Premiere of "The Mandalorian".  What can viewers expect when returning to a world with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and that adorable little green guy Grogu?  Tune in and find out...This is 'The Way'. http://www.TheEntertainmentAnswer.com http://www.MungleShow.com  E-Mail Matt Mungle --> Info@MungleShow.com   #TheEntertainmentAnswer#MungleShowPodcast#LucasfilmLtd#TheMandalorian#StarWars#PedroPascalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allen Welcome passive traders to another episode. Today, I have a big announcement. And I have a first for the podcast, which is really interesting. I'm going to tell you the first before we get into the announcement. The first is that for the first time we are having a husband and wife, team, actually, we're going to find out if they're a team or not. But they're both traders. And they're both doing well. And they've been doing it for a while. So I wanted to get their opinion on how trading works in a family how trading works in a relationship, how to not get on each other's toes. So I have today, Mr. And Mrs. Matt and Margaret Ambrosi. Welcome, guys, thank you for doing this. Matt Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Allen Now, the big announcement, we probably should have done it better and differently. But Matt is now full time as an option genius coach. So we are very happy to have Matt on board. And he's already made a big difference in several people's lives. He's getting more, more happy comments, or, you know, people coming together to have a wonderful he's doing he's getting more than I am. So I think I got the right person for the job. And if you if you see Matt, or you hear the voice, and it's kind of familiar, we did do an interview with Matt back in episode 110. So 110, and that he actually gave us a story of how he got started what he was doing. And at that point, his job, his role, or his, his goal of trading was mainly to replace his current income through trading options. So I think he's, he's come a long way since then, as a trader, and just emotionally and as a person. So, guys, welcome. And Matt, thank you again, for coming on board the team, it's been really awesome to work with you and to see you take the reins, and you know, it's only made the company stronger and better, and our customers are loving it. So they're really excited. Matt I really appreciate that Alan, you know, I couldn't be more excited. I mean, I have a real passion for this. And it's a real dream to, to do a job and and really fulfill that passion. So thank you. Allen Yep, yeah, I mean, you know, one of my mentors had told me he's like, you know, in your programs, you should have a lot more interaction with the, with the students. And I'm like, I don't have time for that. He goes, well, then you need to get a coach, we need to get some other coaches on board. And I'm like, Okay, where do I find these people? They're like, don't you have students? I'm like, yeah. You know, but they're all trying to retire. Like, they'll try to quit their jobs. He goes, No, I bet you there's some that are really good at teaching. They're really love people. And they would be happy to do this on a full time basis, or even like a part time basis, and just help other people. And I was like, huh, and I thought about that about and Matt was like almost one of the first people I thought of and I'm like, Hey, let me give him a call. And I'm sure he came out of the blue for you. And you were shocked. Matt So I mean, I really enjoy, I really enjoy helping people at the core of my being. And, you know, I just love seeing the light go off in people's minds when they see a trade and they see it work out and they see that everything's a possibility, just like it was for me. So I'm really excited to be part of it. Cool. And then Margaret a this question is for you. So he comes, he comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I've been working at Costco for I don't know, what, 1415 years or something. Yeah. And he's like, he's like, I just got this other job offer. I'm gonna What do you think? Yeah. Margaret There's a whole story. There's a whole nother story. When he got that call, because I mean, we were definitely both shocked. But I think what you just said reminded me of what a good coach Matt was before he even worked at Option Genius. Because when we we started at let's say, when we got married seven years ago, we we were both on the same page about being financially free. And what what does that look like? Matt was definitely more of a researcher in terms of he would read a book, he would, he would give it to me. And so I think we were on, we've been on board on the same page, what to do. And then when we found you, and started learning your methods, we both latched on to it. So when you caught him, I think I was just excited because I knew it was something he really wanted to do. I had already seen him in a coaching role with me and his mom and his sister of trying to like the backend stuff, right? The things that are the charts, the systems, getting your platform set up. Those are things that are challenging and takes a lot of time. And so I was like, I think I was super excited. I knew he could do it. I knew it'd be great at it. And so I just thank you for giving him the opportunity because it's really been wonderful for him to do this thing that he loves anyway. I mean, he was already before he worked for you, in the mornings before he would go to work. Its full time job was studying and learning. And so, yeah, it just was really exciting. Thank you for that. I guess we had the trust, right. The trust was already there. So. Allen Okay. Yeah, now he's doing wonderful. And, you know, he's gonna be trading at the hedge fund as well when that happened. So that's going to be exciting. So a whole new level. So awesome. Cool. All right. So let's get into you guys. All right, so the trading couple and it's not just I know for Matt, you know, he's not just a trading couple. He's got the whole trading family going on there. He told me that he and his wife and his mom and his sister all get together and have trade night. What is that? Matt So it just kind of started, you know, my, my parents live in South Carolina, we're in Georgia, and my sister is up in Massachusetts. And it was a good way. They were always interested in what I was doing. And they always wanted to learn what I was doing. So it just became natural that I would say, hey, let's just have a call. And we'll talk about it. And then I showed them how to, you know, do the platform, and you know, they had all their feelings about whether they're going to do it correctly. And all the all the fears, just like I had when I started, and I was like, Okay, well, we just started going through it. And we started meeting kind of regularly on Fridays. And it was usually Friday, like, nine 930 in the morning. And we'd meet for about an hour and we talk about it. And then it just kind of progressed and was like okay, let's do this next Friday, okay, let's do the next Friday, let's do the next Friday, next Friday, and then just became we'd call it trade top Fridays. And you know, and then started being like, if we miss one, you know, let's say my sister couldn't make it. She'd be upset, like, Oh, I gotta I gotta make it or my mother missed it, she would be upset. So we, we were there every day, you know, and then Margaret would come in here and there and it just kind of evolved. So it was really a really great experience. And then it kept us really connected. I mean, in ways that I wouldn't think you know.. Margaret And you get to learn other parts of your family members and their personalities that you didn't know before. Allen Mm hmm. I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, people's personality comes out when they're like, frustrated, or when they're Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were saying that a little bit earlier that your mom kind of surprised you, you know, going all aggressive on you. Matt She still does. I mean, there's like, I'm just like, you know, she'll tell us like, Oh, she did something. And then she'll like, say to my sister, oh, I got out of this trade. She's like you did? What? How do you get out of that trade? You didn't tell me about it? And it's like, yeah, they're like, they go back and forth. But it's all in solid, good. You know? Margaret Yeah, once she has the parameters, then she, she'll get a little bit more risky that she said, a differentiated, she told us it's like she's at a different age where she feels like she can take a little different risk than we can. Yeah. So it makes it makes a difference. Matt That's interesting. It also goes back and forth. I mean, my sister, she put on a trade, she was getting into a new trade that we're doing. And then my mother was like, kind of hesitant about getting into it. And my sister just went ahead and did it. And then my mother's like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like hours later, she she's like, I'm like, what happened? She's like, Oh, I put a trade on. Like, because my sister went ahead and did it. So they kind of play off each other. So Allen that's cool. Because normally, it's the opposite. You know, it's like, the older you get, the more conservative is like, oh, no, I don't want to lose that or lose. The younger people take more risk, but over here are flipped. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. But that I love it, how you're using something to bond, you know. And it's so rare nowadays, especially everybody's spread out across the country. It's like, oh, yeah, we get together on Thanksgiving. Yeah. Okay. Great. You guys get together every week. That's I love it. That's, that's wonderful. Yeah. I think more families need to find something in common like that. And like trading? Yeah. I mean, because the way we do it, everybody can find their own little niche, you know, yeah. Everybody can be conservative or aggressive or whatever. And yeah, I love it. Cool. So, um, how did you guys get into trading? Matt Oh, well, I mean, it was always long term for me. So I was learning about long term investing through reading and then while we actually, Margaret yeah, since you were 29, he started investing. And then we went to one seminar together. And there was a man who was sitting next to us, and he said, uh, you could self manage your portfolio. And we looked at each other and we're like, never worry, That's too scary. It's too risky. We gotta leave that to the professionals. There's reason that people get paid money to do that. And he made it seem like it was no big deal at all. And I think he was he, yeah, that was a pivotal point. And then after that, We went to a couple other seminars together. And then I think the the really the one that we learned about options was three years ago. And at that one, we I had never even heard the term option. I didn't know what an option was. We went to go find out about long term investing and how to value stocks in order to know if it's a good purchase or not. And then at that seminar, we just sat back and because they showed us how to do an option, and and then after that we met found you and he because he was looking for people who did a similar strategy. And then it after we Yeah, so that's how we got into it. Matt Right. And they, they basically started this seminar off with an option. And we're like, Oh, I thought we were coming here to long term invest. And I didn't, you know, we didn't know anything, how options work. We're trying to figure out how it did right there. And then this guy's like, Oh, I just made $7,000. And you're like, show me how you're just like, whatever you just did, like you have my attention. How did you do that? And I was like, on a, I was possessed to figure it out. I mean, Margaret, she's smarter than I am. In some ways, yes, definitely. She was like, this is a funnel, like, marketing, marketing funnel and Margaret figure it all out. And thanks for just calm down. Matt It's just she sat back, I'll relax. And I was like, I'm trying to figure it out. And but we progressed. And, you know, it really opened the whole a whole new world, really. And then, you know, we met you. Margaret And it's just a progression to back up to because that's where we started trading with our family with his mom and sister. So after we learned that strategy, and we were all trading together, that's where the, the trade top Fridays came from. So that was kind of a cool thing that came from that. Allen Okay, so from the beginning, you guys were like, Okay, we're doing this together. It's not like, you know, because Margaret, you have your own company. And if anybody wants to know, she does great videography, and photos for real estate agents, and you guys are located where? Margaret Just north of Atlanta. Allen Just north of Atlanta. So if any realtors are out there. Margaret And I'm glad you mentioned that, because honestly, the reason I want to trade is because I am getting older. I've been a creative for 20 years, and the old body isn't getting any younger. So at some point, I will not be able to schlep video gear and photography gear around, and I want to have some home, what gives me the security and knowing that I can bring in my paycheck that I'm accustomed to it on my own. But we definitely talk about our strategies together. Allen Right, exactly. So, okay, so But you said like, okay, so he's working full time you have your business, but you guys still decided, hey, we're gonna go this road together, we're gonna learn together, we're gonna go the seminars together, we're gonna talk about it. And then do you guys trade in the same account together? Or is it separate? How does that work? Matt We kind of did in the beginning. And then we realized that it was best to have separate accounts, we do everything we talk about everything together. It's just I think that's really smart. Everyone's different. But I think for us, it works that we have separate accounts, because it kind of gives you the flexibility for the trading the fit your personality, and everyone's personalitie's different, you know, even though we're married, we're different personalities. So that reflects in that account, I think. Margaret And the cool part is, we both fund each other's accounts. So when there's money that we have to put into the account to get it started, we weren't going at an equal pace, if that makes sense. Matt Right. So like, for example, I would get a bonus from Costco, I'd split that bonus, put it into our account separately, she would get a bonus, she would put that money into our accounts, and then we're trading the strategies under those two accounts. Allen Okay, so do you have any joint money like a joint account? Margaret Not for not in a brokerage account? No. I mean, we're, we're each other's beneficiaries. But yeah, right. And I think part of that, too, Alan comes from me at I was not married for 36 years, and I am very customed to taking care of myself and producing my own income, and having my own money, you know, just to be quite frank about it. I want to make sure that I can take care of myself if anything ever happened to Matt, but we definitely we know what each other's logins are. We know what the money's in there. So that part's very open. It's not like they don't share the information. But I think that's a good point about having a different trading style because I am a little more aggressive than Matt is, and we learned that we didn't know that going in, but I will jump into things a little quicker than he does and he wants to be Yeah, wants to have all the information. Matt Those are things we learned about it To think that I was not as conservative as I am. But I realized that I'm a very conservative trader. I like to know everything about everything before I jump in, and sometimes that can hinder you, Margaret, she's like, let's get to it. Let's figure it out. And she jumps in. And I'm really admire that part of her. I really do. Margaret And as long as it works out, Matt she's I say she's measured, you know, she doesn't just jump into things. She's measured about it. Allen Yeah. But like, Margaret, what you said about the, you know, having, I guess, I don't know, for for a lot of women, it's a it's a fear. But it's also about a sense of security. And a lot of our customers are, you know, are the customers that come to us, and they come in, they're like, you know, my spouse doesn't want me trading, or when my spouse would rather have me working, because that paycheck comes in regular. I remember when I first started, even, even though I was, in the beginning, I was horrible. I lost a lot of my wife's money. But after I got good at it, she still was not comfortable with the trading, because she would be like, Okay, I don't know, if you're going to make money every month, you know? Because that's just the way it is. And so she's like, Can you do something pleased to have something regular come in? And that's probably the biggest motivation behind the company option genius. Was that, hey, even if I have a little bit, you know, obviously, I'm supposed to be a small little one person company. And is like, even if I have a little bit like, like a, you know, like, five $6,000 coming in a month. Okay, cool. She'll know that, you know, because she still wanted to work. So she knows something's coming in. But that's, that's just, I think it's ingrained in a lot of spouses that are not generating an income on their own that, hey, I need some consistency. So that's been a big for a lot of people. That's a big, you know, switch. Like to go from Yeah, my wife my husband makes or my wife makes x dollars per month to Yeah, I don't know, if he's gonna make any money. Margaret Yeah, I can see how that would be difficult. Because I mean, we're still both bringing in incomes and trading at the same time. Yeah. Matt Yeah, it's a big shift, a mindset shift. But I think the thing about trading is that, you know, when you're working a static job, you have that income, like you said, it's coming in monthly, you can rely on it. But the real benefit of trading, I think, is that you don't see used to see money as you exchange your paycheck for time. And in trading. You can just, you can just make money, and you don't have to sit there for that time. No, it's, you look as money is finite, in your mind, okay? When you look at trading, you work with trading, it's like, it just opens up to you. Margaret It's more of an energy like it goes out comes and goes out. Exactly. Yeah. Matt So I'm trying to say, Allen interesting. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So then have this written down? Okay, I'm gonna ask it or I don't know if which one of you is a better trader? Margaret So how do you define better? Allen I guess, who makes the most money? Matt I will say that I wrote this in a lot of books. And I believe that to be true as a women's are much better emotionally, as traders, I believe that I really do because guys are gonna over are like our macho, we just gotta just get in there and do it. And, you know, but in general, I think women are much, much better emotional trading style. Margaret I will just say last year, Matt made more money than I did. But this year, I've made more money than Matt did. So there you go.. Matt But I'm built for the long. Nothing short term with me. We actually nickname each other Margaret's short term, and I'm on long term, Margaret Yeah, I like short term, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. So I like to see things happen in a timely fashion. I live and breathe it, you know. And so I had do struggle with the long term stuff. One day, I would be curious to see what it would like be like to do long term put that. We'll see about that, you know, I like I like the shorter term gains. Matt But yeah, I mean, that's all part of your personality. So we I think we play off each other very well, you know? Yeah. Allen Yeah. It seems like you guys have a good balance. So then, like, if there's a disagreement, then how do you guys handle that? Or is it just, you know, you do whatever you want your account? I'll do whatever I want to my account. Margaret Yeah, well, we talk about what strike prices we're going to be at, and where, you know, kind of idea of what we both want to do. And then we may be a couple points different from each other. Matt Yeah, but we stay within the rules. And I think you know, the great thing about the strategies that you teach and that we've learned is that there's some flexibility in that, okay, as you get better as a trader, it's just not the rules, right? You know, it's just not like, Oh, get out here. And that's it, there's a little bit of flexibility, I think as you get better as a trader, you get more experienced behind you, you're able to kind of fudge the lines a little bit, if you will, not in a bad way, but be like, okay, you know, I know this, I have a little more experience, I can become a better trader. So it's like, that's the whole flexibility part. Margaret Right. And I think, too, just just thinking about how sometimes Matt will stay in a trade longer than me, and I'll get out quicker. Here's a good example. So this month, in our oil trading, I have tripled up, I've gotten in and gotten out three times, and he stayed in the whole time. You know, and I know, during the classes, there's a couple of other people in our class, when we're on the queue that do the same thing. And then some people will sit and so I think it just depends, and I don't know that it would work as well. For us, if we had one account, I just love having our separate accounts, where we get to talk about what we're gonna do and then have the freedom to.. Matt I think the key is that we talk about it. Yeah, I mean, if you don't talk about things between each other, it's just not gonna work. Yeah. So you're like, Okay, you're gonna go that at least I know about it, right. And then you can see how it works out, right. And then at least you know, what, what's going on, you know, it's different, if you just have a count, and you're just doing your own thing, and you're not talking about it. Margaret The, the emotions part is very real. And I don't think you can really understand that until you start to become a trader, and you see where the trade is. And you get to know yourself better, where in the beginning, we were a lot quicker to get out of a trade if it went a certain way. And now we've learned a little bit more of the rhythms, we know each other's rhythms. And so we don't we don't freak out either way, quite as much. Matt: But you got to look at it. Like in totality. I mean, nothing's the end of the world. Right? And with trading, you may lose money, and you probably will, okay, everybody's lost money. And experience is not cheap. Right? With that happening. It's, it's okay, you know, if nothing is, you treat money as, okay, you can be lost, and it can be one. And the whole idea of trading is getting consistent as a whole thing. And it's like, as you get better and better as a trader, I really believe in my core, you try everyone's trying to build that consistency. Okay, and you have to match your personality to that consistency Margaret: Do you also mean make money? Because that's my goal. Matt: Yes, consistently, or us to make money. But you need to be consistent to do that. Allen: So yeah. Well, like I say, In the beginning, it's not about making money. In the beginning, it's just about not losing money. So knowing what you do properly. And like, even if you don't make any money, that's okay. But you don't lose it month after month after month. Okay, I know, it's annoying, but that's a good thing. And then, you know, we could just do a little tweak here and there, and then then the the profits start taking off. So I totally agree with that. And see, because a lot of people that sell options, they'll tell you, Oh, yeah, you know, I have great months, and then I have a big loss. And then I have good months and have nobody wants to be on that roller coaster. Because eventually you're like, man, what am I doing? Matt: I mean, do you want to go make money in the beginning of the year, at the end of the year, you've lost money or just break even? It's, that's frustrating, you know? So the whole goal is to, you know, especially what you said in the beginning, it's very true. Yeah. Allen: So now you guys said that communication was key. So do you have any rules around that? Do you have like, do you like get together and say, okay, besides the trade trade talk, you know, when you have that, do you actually sit down and be like, alright, half an hour debrief, what do we do this week? How are we going to improve? Or is it just, Matt: I think I know what you're gonna go to. I think, I think, for us, and this is just for us, but a big part. And a lot of people think it's a dirty word. But a budget, we always had a budget always kept us in line, you know, and it's like, whenever we've kind of rapidly spending, you know, and aren't talking about trading, we're just talking about life and your budget, it always get us back on the road, so to speak. So that was a big piece of our communication. So it's just knowing that we're kind of on the road. So I think that flows into your trading and it flows into your communication. So I think that's a really big piece. Margaret: Yeah. And I would say like specific rules about communicating around trading, we've never said anything. It's just kind of happened organically. And we will, you know, there's there certain parameters that you teach in your class and we get in at a certain time and when we do that, we will talk to each other that day, and then we check it both together, generally in the morning, and we'll just kind of go Oh, or Yeah, and commit Write together or celebrate together. And then that I think, I guess that's the organic piece. We just check in with each other in the morning. Matt: Be like, Fine, quick text during the day, you know? Yeah. Margaret: Yeah. Because Matt is watching it for his day job. And he'll text me if something, you know, hey, keep your as open. This is happening or, but yeah, so I guess that's it like we wake up in the morning. We look at it, we chat about it, and then throughout the day, he'll text me. Or maybe if I'm doing something, I'll text him and say, Hey, have you seen? And he always says yes. But yeah, that's it. Okay, Allen: Cool. So what happens when one of you wins and the other loses? Matt: That's a good question. Well, yeah, I've lost before I've lost my I lost. I lost before. And oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah Margaret: Jog my memory. Okay. So I'm going to just tell myself here in the beginning, before we found your class, and I'm not just saying this, because this is true. So it's just true. We cannot say how much of course we lost $5,000. So $5,000 is, is a lot of work for me. And I, I am the one who had funded it that month, to the account, and Matt lost it. And we we realized then, that that was really tough. That was tough on me, it was tougher on me than it was him. And actually, our trade talk Fridays, were really good, because they had also lost the money. And I had lost a little bit, but not as much. We were all just really disheartened and frustrated. And I think I think I was a little mean was a little mean, Matt: Slightly slightly. Are you sure you can do this? Well, yeah, feel the weight of that. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, your wife's out there, she's, she's busting her butt to bring in money, and then you just lose it. It's a lot of you feel the way that, you know, you gotta really dig deep and be like, okay, emotionally and you know, everything about to have the confidence to keep going, right? And you got to search and really believe in yourself that you can, you know, like I said, it's not the end of the world, but you have to get through there gonna be times like that. That happened. Margaret: It made me quit trading for a couple months. Yeah, I got really nervous. And then I said, okay, and then actually, that's is that that's about the time we found oil, wasn't it? Like we found oil sometime after that? It seemed to be a little exactly what you're talking about earlier, it wasn't as much of a roller coaster. And that has changed it for me. Allen: Okay, so was there anything else besides finding that strategy that was able to get you through it? Because like, I mean, emotionally, that's a it's a big hit. Right? And did anything change between the way you guys communicated the way you guys traded? Matt: No, I think Margaret took a little hiatus. I'm the type that I never, I never give up on thanks, I will just take it to the death, you know. I'm like, I just keep going no matter what, just get out of my way. No matter how many hits I take, I just keep going. And I leave it all on the table. So I just I knew I was going to keep going. But again, the key and I don't be, Margaret: but you. You did try it a little more conservatively? Didn't you? Matt: Sure. Yeah. I mean, you learn your lessons, you get burned out a little bit, you start to kind of, you know, you remember and you're like, Okay, I don't want to have those same feelings. But let me cautiously kind of figure it, learn from your mistakes, if you will, you know, and treat a little bit more conservative pay a little more attention. What can I learn from that experience? And I think that changes everything. Of course, you know, the strategies that we do, are a lot better, like I'm able to manage our trades so much better. I think that's important. Margaret: I think that's key. And I think that's key for me, knowing interesting that we have better management strategy now makes me feel a lot more secure, and a lot less emotional, and more. What's the word? I'm looking for sure. That Matt and I can both do the trades and not lose that $1,000 chunks anymore. Matt: More confident? Yeah. And I think I've read this before, and I really believe it is that you are your first really job is to become your risk assessor. And then you're a trader. Yeah. So it's like it's really important that you this all we do is assess risk all the time. So I think it's really important to, to focus on that. And once you get better at assessing risk and managing, just become a better trader, but you just kind of have to go through those things. I mean, when I first started trading, they're like, Okay, your first loss is your best loss. And I was like, what does that mean? They don't want to lose you. And like, they said it all the time, like, Oh, your first last year about like, Who is this person? Like, why did he say that to me? I don't want to lose. But it is true. Like, it teaches you things that you just, you think, you know, you like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get out of that trade, I know what I'm doing. And then you get burned. Everyone's got to touch the stove, apparently, at some point, you know, it's like, Oh, don't touch the stove. It's hot. But of course, we gotta go touch it. But that's just life. I mean, and it's how you react to those situations, I think. And you don't you don't tell yourself that you're not? How are you going to respond to that? Is very important. You know, in all aspects of life as a trader anything. Allen: I mean, a lot of people, you could say that, but it's not as easy when you're going through it. You know, the first time Oh, first time you do it, it's like, ah, people behave in all crazy different ways. Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you're gonna have to, I guess this, the best way is to do the best you can to bring people through that experience. All right, you can tell them that it's it probably will happen. But how you react to that situation? It's good to kind of tell your future. Margaret: We're model citizens is that? Allen: Well, I mean, they say that, you know, most divorces are caused because of money issues and problems. Yeah. You know, and a lot of people do not see eye to eye on money. And they don't talk about it before they get married. They don't talk about their goals, visions, whatever, or even how to balance it, you know, like, oh, yeah, one is a budget person. One is a non budget, I'm going to spend whatever I can, but it's like, a lot of people have these issues. And it's, it's great to see that you guys are same page, you know, same goal, same like, okay, hey, you guys talked about it ahead of time. Yeah, like, this is our vision. This is the goal. How do we get there, we'll change you know, like, we'll go on a different path. And we'll try and we'll try this. And like, you guys first started with the passive trading course. Right? It puts in the calls and, and then you say, Okay, let's graduate to something else. So then you guys added the oil program. And then you guys have been doing that. So you just added to something. Now you guys have even you know, got you got your own Airbnb now. So congratulations on that. Margaret: Thank you. Allen: So you're diversifying? So yeah, you're trying different things. And nobody says that you can't right. So you should you should work and in us every strategy available to get to whatever your your dream is. So in that sense, you guys have done a bunch of different things. How do you handle it when you disagree? Margaret: Like disagree on? Allen: On the path, disagree on maybe a tray disagree on let's say, you guys did the Airbnb? Maybe Matt would be like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. And I want to put more money into trading account. Because we already know we're doing well here. Matt: I hate to disappoint. But I don't think we disagree on too much. If we do, it's like, you know, we do. I'm not saying it's easy enough. I mean, marriage is not easy. But we have their situations, I think it's important to you just you take a pause. You kind of realize how you're dealing with it personally, how you're, what you're thinking, what you're you're feeling, and then you come back to that person and you talk about it. Margaret: I think to just thinking about our investments so far, we do things that we are confident in our knowledge base around so I've had a real estate license for five years. And I shoot real estate and I understand real estate. So when I said Hey, Matt, let's buy this, Airbnb. He was like, Okay, sounds like a good investment. You've done the numbers. I trust you. Matt: Yeah, I do. I trust that she's, I've seen it, she's she's in that field, she does the work. She's always trying to figure it out. And I, their word really is trust. I trust her that she's going to do the best she can with it. Margaret: And I think it's about Yeah, I think it's likewise to you, because I trust that he's, he's read. If you could say our library of books, it's literally every book I've ever heard of on finance and investing. And multiple copies probably down. And so I think, I think it all comes back down to we, we because we both feel like we have studied different things. You know, and now Matt learns more about real estate and I, I give him all the credit because I always was interested in retirement and investing but I didn't know where to get started. And so because he had a knowledge base, he kind of brought me up a little bit faster than if I had then what I was able to do on my own right. So that's powerful. And then because I already trusted him so much and then we got to go to all the seminars together. It just build that built that foundation and so now we really don't disagree on Matt: I think part of also is like, I never wanted to push that on Margaret. Yeah, like my interest, right? I have interest in finance. I never wanted to push that it's an interest of mine. Real estates and interests of her. She doesn't push that on me. I don't push that on her. So it was, it becomes organic when you are you, you're interested in yourself, right? You're like, okay, you know, Matt's doing something. I'm interested in that I want to see a little bit more, but it comes from her. It doesn't come from me telling her Oh, you got to check this out. You should check this out. Yeah, that's important. But ultimately, it's gonna be her decision. Right? Yeah, Margaret: You start to for me, I started doing the numbers. Whoa, you can make this on a trade in two minutes. And I make this on how many? How many hours? Does it take me? Yeah, that's a no brainer. Allen: Cool. Okay, so now, so a lot of our customers they've been through. And unfortunately, like, they've gone on a path similar to yours. But I would say that you guys, you know, if you've, if you only started trading, like three years ago, you guys have taken a shorter route than a lot of our customers. Really? Yeah. So they've been trading for multiple years, still trying to figure out like, Hey, how can I make this work? How can I become consistent, profitable, I've tried, you know, XYZ strategy, and this and this, and this, and they've bought cores, and they've been videos and seminars, and, and they still are looking for that something, to get them over the hump, to get them to be like, Oh, finally, I'm actually making some money. Finally, like you said, they're confident that they can, you know, the month is going to start, I have a strategy that works. I'm confident I'll probably make money this month. But they're still not there yet. And because of that, because of them, you know, trying and investing in course, investing in Seminar investing in another doohickey. You know, they have all the things you can buy, like, Oh, hey, you know, that you can buy this indicator, and the indicator will tell you exactly when to buy and when to sell is only $3,000. You know, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna get that, you know, they get it and then they don't doesn't work. And then the wife or the other or the husband, either way, the spouse is like, I can't believe you're wasting all this time, all this energy, all this money on this trading stuff when he doesn't frickin work. You know, you've been trying for years, and it's just not working. It's all a big scam. Right? And that's the big girl. Yeah, it's a big scam that nobody can do this. So what advice or tips or anything? Would you suggest for a trader in that position where their spouse is maybe not very receptive to them continuing to trade? Where the spouse is like, you know, can you just give this up? You know, just spend time with me? Just, you know, Matt: Yeah. I'm gonna let you go first. And I'll go after. Margaret: Okay? Because we, we were not in that specific scenario, I just keep going back to it has to be the trust. So how are you going to build trust with your partner, not when they don't know what you're going through? And then I would say you would have to have some sort of mentor, and to be honest, that is you that that is you for us. Right? So we I remember, when I got the calculator that you sent out of this is where if you this is what you need in order to make the monthly income that you want on the percentage of money, and this is how much money you need in your account. And you've done it, like you've gone before us, we know it can be possible. So we're trusting that what you say is true. And we've seen it and especially now that that works for you. So I think finding somebody that you can put that trust into and having if your partner is not going to be in that with you, at least show them who that is that you're learning from or what they've done. And if if it's if it's not Alan Sama, then make sure that they've got a good record of what they've done. So that, that your partner can have trust in that you're learning from somebody that is credible. You know, the first thing we learned from had learned down the road from somebody who had learned from Warren Buffett, and so, you know, I don't really care about names of people, that doesn't impress me, but when you actually know something that impresses me, and that gives me the assurance to bet on myself. And that's what I would say, would be my advice. Matt: Yeah, I mean, I always went into investing, especially as I, you know, started to learn about options. I was like, I don't want to hear about oh, you can make all this money. You can do all this and everything's going great. I wanted to go and be like, show me how to do it. Right. And then once you show me how to do it, I believe you. And that's just who I am. And I think most people maybe are like that they want proof and they but more importantly they want to be be able to do it themselves, some people don't. But if you're into this and you want to learn, and you have to go into mindset be like, show me how to do it. And then you get the confidence that you can do it yourself, and then you can be able to teach other people. Allen: Okay, nice. Next question I have here is that you guys have been doing this for a little bit together? Are there anything thinking back that you would do differently? So basically, the question is, like, you know, are there any tips that you would give to a couple starting out? Or lesson or something that you felt? You know what, we didn't do that? Right? Maybe we should have done it differently? Margaret: I would. I know that $10,000 was a lot for us, when we bought into your class. It was 100% worth it. And I wish that we would have done that first. Matt: Yes, I think in this world, you know, you don't want to believe it, but you really pay for what you get. You know, it's a hard truth. Lots of people want to be like, oh, I want this for, you know, low money, or I want this, but you got to really look at is it? What's the worth of it? Right? Is it going to be? Margaret: And are you willing to do the work? Matt: Are you willing to do the work? That's a lot of people like, I think the advice I give people is like the least tell yourself before you think something is not worthy, or it doesn't go up to your expectations, at least go through and do the work of what has been laid before you. Okay, so you have all these lessons, and you have all everything, but you have to can you really tell yourself that you put on all the work, when you haven't gone through the class, when you haven't gone through all the, you know, really dug deep to get everything out of it, then you can say whether you want to continue or not, whether it was a failure, whether it was not at least do that. And I think it's important for people that start out, set aside a small amount of money, right? And maybe agree that, okay, if you lose this small amount of money, it's a good idea. Fine, it didn't work out. But at least you agreed on that. And then give it a shot. Yeah. Right. And then maybe if it didn't work out, and you want to go further, we examined it at that point. That way, you know, it's not like a, I lost everything. And it's the end of the world type scenario. At least I gave it a try. You know, I followed my dreams to figure out this on my own. And if you at least put in the effort, you can tell yourself, Margaret: I would like to give your wife major kudos. Since you said you lost a lot of money in the beginning. That's a good woman to keep if she kept supporting you to go forward. Allen: Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm very blessed. I am amazingly blessed. So I just give you a short version of the story. I had just been laid off. And so the question was, and we had just been married recently. And so the idea was, Okay, do I go and get another job? Or do I try something else? And, you know, I had been dabbling with trading. But I was like, maybe I could do this full time. So she's like, Okay, if you think you can do it, go for it. And, of course, I did not have any money. She had money from that she had saved up from working for several years before we got married. So she's like, you know, I have all this in savings. You know, try it. And so then she got a second job to support us. So because I wasn't making anything, so she got the second job. And she's working. She was a nurse. So she was working like three days a week at the at the hospitals, 12 hour shifts. And then on the other day, she would be, they have this thing called home health, where the nurse actually shows up to your house. So she would be driving around town, going from place to place to place, you know, giving injections and IVs and medicines and all that stuff. So very draining, especially with all the traffic and everything. And yeah, and I proceeded to try everything like day trading and futures and forex and commodity options and everything is like nothing was working. And I was down over 40 grand. When I finally actually, I think what turned it around was that she found out because I was hiding it from her. Like I wasn't telling ya that she came on to check the mail. She checked the statement. She's like, where's all the money? Oh, like, oh, yeah, about that. So it was either Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, either go to go get a job right away. Turn this around. Or, you know, if you don't do one of those things, we're probably getting split, right. So I was planning like, I was getting my resume ordered together. And then I found selling options. Like I discovered that Hey, there, there was a trade I did that was actually it worked. And I'm like, Well, what is this? Let me follow up more and then I got into it and I showed her how to do it. She was like, Okay, you have something here. So you'd like you said I did Didn't I put like all the money aside? You know, I stopped playing with all the money. And I took a small amount. And I'm like, Okay, let me see if I could just do something with this, instead of the big amount. And that gave her pause, like, okay, fine, you know, he's not gonna lose all the money. And if I lost that money, then yeah, go get another job. And that's it, end of story. But luckily, I showed her she understood it, it started working. And then you know, then the rest is history from there. Margaret: I can imagine there's some pretty real feelings going on around that. That's Allen: Very stressful. Yeah, very, very stressful. Because she wanted to know what I was doing. But she didn't have any background in finance. You know, her family never talked about investing or anything. So she didn't really know anything about it. Slowly, slowly, I started telling her. And then the funny part is, she would come home, like, and she'd be like, Oh, hey, she got interested, right? And she would come home and she goes, Hey, I checked the news and the markets up today. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm, you know, I'm in. I'm in calls today. Oh, there she goes, Oh, no, oh, that's too bad. You know? And then two days later, she'd be like, Oh, look, I checked in the markets down today. I'm like, No. I mean, Puts today. She would like she did, she wouldn't know if I'm gonna be happy or sad. But she was nuts. But yeah, so and then after a while, then it got good. And like I said, you know, she wanted that stability. She didn't want that up and down. She's like, I need something stable income, so I can quit the second job, take okay. And then she was able to quit the first job. And then so it worked out. But yeah, it was a long, hard road. And I did not have the mentor that you mentioned, you know, so that was one of the probably the biggest things that if I could have found somebody that could have just pulled my hand be like, here, this works, just follow this plan. Margaret: You know, that's why we got to shortcut it. Yeah. Allen: But.. Matt: I think that is a hard thing. Because you're always trying to search for, you know, they're always there numerous or many mentors out in the world, it's like, is trying to find who's true, right? That's it's very difficult. And you you have a guard up, everyone's got their guard up. And they're always kind of like, is this person trying to take me or, you know, I don't feel right about this person, I maybe feel right about this person. I mean, just look at FTX. I mean, that guy that was like darling, and crypto. And then they find out he's, he's, you know, a Bernie Madoff. So it's like, it happens over and over again. So that's kind of how I got into trading. I was like, show me how to do it, and see if it worked, right. And you're not only a mentor, but you show people how to do it. And then you can build trust in yourself, rather than, you know, of course, a mentor is wonderful. And it will shortcut that process. But you can learn about this stuff. And then you, you make yourself your own mentor in a way, you know, it's like you just kind of be like, Okay, I have the confidence now. And then you can go on. Allen: Yeah, I think it all comes down to confidence too. Because like, if I look at it, you know, we have several students that in any strategy that you pick one strategy, and then there's somebody there that's been like, Oh, hey, I did you know this much percent? And I'm like, wow, that's better than me. And there's another strategy. Oh, I did this much. And I'm like that better than me. And I know that, like, what everybody's doing better than me what's going on? You know, but I think that's part of it is the confidence. There's like, and this will tell you something about me, like, you know, I came up with the rules, right? So I came up with the test and testing it and failing, and I forgot what they call it. But it's like, you know, you, you try something and then you fail, and you try and you're failing, you chaired it. So in my mind, you know, all these rules are made by me. Right? So I was like, I don't know how much I can, you know, like, really? I'm gonna trust myself. I don't know. It's scary. But then somebody else comes and goes, Oh, Allen, you know, he's the man. He knows what he's doing. I'm just gonna go 100%. And they do. They do better than me. And I'm like, I don't get it. Matt: redo my rules. Allen: I just need to, I just, like, forget it. I just give you guys my money's like here. Matt: But I mean, in all seriousness, as well, I mean, people, they come in these programs, and everyone has so much to add. I mean, that's how you get better. I mean, there's people that are just like, oh, yeah, I did this way. And you're like, Oh, I didn't think about that. And it's like, if you're open to that, and you receive that, then it makes everything better for everybody. And I've seen that over and over again, where somebody will just say, Oh, I found this way to do this easier. It's like it's constant learning. All of us are constantly learning constantly getting better constantly trying to achieve and go go better. And that's a wonderful thing. Allen: Yep. Yeah, we had an hour. Just recently, we in our passive trading group, somebody had put like, Hey, I don't know how to do this. And I'm pretty sure it's in it's in the core somewhere. But then another student was like, oh, here, let me make you a video. And he just made a video. Yeah, this is how I did it. It's like, Oh, wow. And they asked another Oh, how about this, he made another video. It's just, you know, everybody's helping each other because we all have the same goal. And it's like, Let's just all work together. And, you know, we're all on the same path. Matt: Yeah, it's like, it's always true, you surround yourself with the right people, and good things will happen. I mean, it's just just got to be able to do that, Allen: you know, it's like, amazing, we had some really cool students, helpful, you know, just to go out of the way for each other. It's really, really nice. So then, okay, so my last question for you guys. And I don't know, maybe you guys like, maybe this is a problem that we've seen people have, but I don't know if you guys are gonna be able to answer it. But how can a trader have their spouse support them in their trading? So like, you know, if, you know, one of you is the trader, or you want to do something, how can you get your spouse to have that confidence in you? That you can do it? Does that make sense? Yeah. Because like, I know, with my wife, in the beginning, she didn't have any confidence. And then later on, you know, the numbers kind of spoke for themselves. But one of the things I did was when the back testing software came out that we that we use a lot, I showed it to her. And she was like, Oh, cool. I want to learn this, too. So we would sit there, and I gave her the rules. I think we were talking about credit spreads at the time. It's like, okay, so this is kind of how we find a trade. And I didn't have like, first set out rules yet. It was just, you know, ideas. I try, sometimes they do this way, that way. And so then I had her and I told her what it was. And we would look at a chart and be like, okay, hey, what do you what's the trade? And so she would pick her trade? And then, you know, we would we would go through it. And then I had already done it my way, you know, and it would always come out where she was actually more profitable than me. Same trade, same stock, same timeframe, if we had done it her way, we would have made more money. That's the thing about the confidence. He knows, like, when you see your wife who doesn't know anything, she just numbers, you know, she doesn't matter. It's like, I don't know, maybe I'm not cut out for this. But then, but then later on, there was a time where I got into like, a, like a rut, you know, so I wasn't I wasn't following the rules, the discipline became a problem. Because our trading doesn't take a lot of time. And so when you're just, you know, stuck, you don't have anything else to do, you kind of start over trading, and you're messing around with stuff. And so I had her, and she came, she's the one that came up with this. She's like, you know what, every single trade, you're going to write it down. And you're going to tell me, and I'm going to come upstairs at one o'clock every day, I'm going to ask you questions about every single trade, you know, and I forget exactly what they were. But it's in one of our products. It's like, you know, what's the goal? What's the plan? You're going to adjust it or you're going to get out when you're going to do it? Where's it now? And why haven't you done what you're supposed to do? You know, and so because of that, because I knew she was going to come? Right? I would have everything ready before she came in. So if I had to get out of a trade because it was down or I needed to do an adjustment, it will already be done by the time she got in. And so that degree of holding me accountable. It really I mean the results just went skyrocketing higher. That's really smart. So that was.. Margaret: something that you said yesterday on our call on our oil call really has stuck with me about every day that you wake up you have a decision to stay in that trade or get out so that's the day that you're making a decision. And it's not Yeah, so that it just hit me this morning because we had the the market was down a little bit this morning. And we talked about it like what what are we going to do so I like that idea of having an accountable Matt: Well, it's important because you're you yourself are going to be emotionally different each day for whatever reason, just as you as an individual that but now you have your wife or someone who was account recording accountable is going to come in and keep you straight. I think what every what everybody needs Allen: Yep. Either either spouse or buddy or accountability partner or something like that, that you can trade with. Trading buddy, I like that. Cool. Okay. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to share with our audience? Margaret: Hmm, you can do it. You can absolutely do it. I think if I could have told myself which I had zero knowledge background in how what what was a brokerage? Let's just start with the simple step. I did not even know the difference between brokerages I did not understand what a brokerage account was. So if I could Tell Margaret, even just five years ago, what I will be doing today, I would not have believed it. And that once you start looking at your money, you know, everybody always says nobody cares about your money more than you do. I think our age group needs this knowledge. Because with the advent of you having to figure out your own retirement and not having pensions, it is extremely important for us to know that and we didn't have any knowledge that is out there. You know, we didn't we weren't 20 and Tiktok. And Instagram rails were out there where you could learn some of this stuff. You know, we're where we're younger people already know so much more than I knew when I'm in my 20s. I think there's a group of us that needs the hope that comes from knowing that you can manage your own money, and you can make money and you can help your retirement, it doesn't matter if you're in your 40s. Matt: No matter really what age you are, I mean, my mother's 80, right. And if she was, you know, I used to stay at Costco all the time. And I said this many times where they're, they're older people that give out samples or they're in the job. And there, you can see that they're in pain. They're standing all day long, and they're like 70, and 80 years old. And if they just knew if they knew how to do a simple strategy, or trade or just learn it, in which they totally can, yeah, or be shown that and, you know, they can believe in it, that would change their life. And they change their comfort, not later on and be right now. Yeah. Which is so powerful. So it's really it goes to, that's what I love about trading, it can help all age groups. Yeah. Right. And you're right. No one cares about your money more than you do. And I look at like, life's risky. Everything's at risk. So you owe it to yourself. You think trading is risky. Give it a shot. Everything's risky. Yeah. Right. So you got to overcome your fears. See how things work? Believe in yourself. And just go for it. Yeah, because we're only on here one turn, you know, Margaret: Why not? Give it a shot? Allen: Well said Well said, you guys, I really thank you for this. This has been a pleasure. And I really appreciate your time and spending some time and sharing intimate details about your lives and your relationship with us. It's it's been a blessing. Thank you so much. Margaret: Thank you for asking us. Yeah.

June is Pride month and this episode is ALL ABOUT PRIDE, baby! Because Matt is gay and Leslie is thinking about it. Dolly Parton, Cher, Harvey Milk. Also, Matt and his husband Chris crash a wedding. More things Leslie hates. Matt talks about his irrational fear that someone is gonna kill him...and FINALLY writes a theme song for all their talk on death. Let's Connect: https://linktr.ee/fireawaypodcast Leslie's Fact Check: Netflix Heartstopper, The Kentucky Castle, Keeneland

Peaches, Lump, Back Porch... The freaking Presidents of the United States of America, today we bring your our interview with Singer, songwriter Chris Ballew! Because Matt said we would add it, here is the amazing website where you can find Chris's Stuff https://chrisballew.org/home Here is the website you can find our stuff www.TheMixTapepod.com Go grab some merch! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and head over to The Tapeworms Fans of the Mix Tape Podcast on Facebook Call the voicemail 513-He Rad 77 or email at yourmixtape@gmail.com Stay Awesome! #Celebrity #Chris Ballew #Presidents of the United States of America #90s #80s #TheMixTape #Retro #Music #Nostalgia #Comedy#Band #Ballew --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mixtapepod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mixtapepod/support

Hell Bent For Metal returns to one of their favourite topics this week, as Rammstein are up for discussion again. (And not just Tom's appreciation of Richard Kruspe's arms… although that does come up…) This time, the hosts explore the band's varying relationship with homoeroticism – which hasn't always been as deliberate as you might expect.This week's Camp Classic is 'Silver Tongue' by Light Bearer. And if you're wondering how a 20-minute post-metal epic by a defunct underground band that was part of a planned concept tetralogy of albums speaks to either hosts' queer side, then you're in good company. Because Matt is too.Plus the Hate Crew Gaybar is open for business once more, with the mournful pairing of The Withering by In Loving Memory, and Flames Of Perdition by Dawn Of Solace going into the jukebox.

chose to not do Patreon.   I need time. This is a lot.I landed in hell too. A lot! I'm a They! Unconditional love lesson. Byron Katie that shit. You'll hate the work, but it soaks in and it's good for u.Father's Discipline Goals- He Did 3 seasons of discipline for you. Season 1 INTUITION (of Self) Stewardess: Lisa  (of Self) FIRESeason 2 LOVE  ( of Self) A. Steward: Jesus Christ ( Love and compassion as spoken through the energy of                                                                           Matthew) AIR B.  Steward: PRESENCE Buddha (Awareness/Timing and Time ) WATERC. Steward: Natives ( help! This one gets tricky) Earth (Deeds/caretakers of the environment) EARTH Season 5 FAITH ( of Self) Steward: Muhammad  ( We have Faith in His Forgiveness. Forgiveness) ETHERS  Yeah, I guess I'm an angel named Translucence,  (Light essence across spectrum, (Leas) I'm yours to borrow not own… leas, a Lu the honey boo) I prefer to be called Lisa, my friend Dana calls me LuLu and I ignore this fact in my real life because small minds go to mental illness and people are already jealous and spiteful. Its terribly complicated and very simple. I'm a child of the Cosmos. I'm really lucky to have had my Dad.  I love him so much, so so so much. I'm not sure you can truly understand how overwhelming some of these emotions can be. The only emotion is no emotion. None belong to me, They all belong to Dad.   And if He touched you, + -you blessed.  He loves you. Let it flow. I had to patiently await my healing and heal myself through love of self and  mindful self love. It took forever until it didn't. Because Matt was there and he is the most compassionate man. He feels me. He carries a lot, a lot of pain. Do you C?  A ghost of an intention? It's a trinity. We can actualize Maslow's hierarchy of need. Who woke this ghost? Was that the intention at conception?I'm a nobody which makes me an everybody. I see your core wounding (gift of the earth) because it's mine too... And also your highest potential (gift of Heaven) Because it's mine too….We are starting from ground zero Solutions. you guys…WE is so fucking powerful when it's well-intentioned , nonviolent and we have a+b=c then we  we begin to take off ( drone energy, is that built like a helicopter? My Dad did something with helicopters…Is my Dad going to fly in to save me ..  I don't get it. Wait if we mirror the triangle and flip it, we have 2 right triangles and he gives us 2 more that's four.  Hmm.If we put them in all four quadrants, we have our wings.helicopter wings.  Dads just raising me up, He took away my ankles and He is giving me my angle wings. Thank you so very much, I'm happy I got my angle wings back, I think God heard my prayer.. I always wanted to be a Fly Girl, but Dad didn't want me to go to school for dance. And I have no game plan…  except what They show me, when They show. - Nobodys angel( come be a LEAPER (leper)with me)Light/love energy across people (leap)    Saw a bald eagle and a pileated woodpecker today. Shape up and he will come back in our lifetime.I get to make the call and it's my last lifetime. You have all the control. For the sake of transparency, its a hard no from me right now. Rubric anyone? 3/12/6. You don't have to believe. God and I know.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hgqCge7Bpv45akZjxByuQqoyYCVnBsHfVbni9kfBFUA/edit?usp=sharing 

     Today in Smartsville Matt, Jesse, Clayton, Bobby, and our new friend Mike all sit down at the table and get to gabbing. Matt and Clayton talk about their trip to see Bert and Steve-o perform. The story includes hotels, hot tubs, security guards, nerd bars, strip clubs, and a car accident. Boss Nassy joins the rest of Matt's personalities. Because Matt introduces the group to the new persona, and runs through his many future enterprises. We get a quick call into Lostly Coyote. We of course can't help but fall off topic and make some jokes, so there's lots of that going on. It's a wonderful winter filled "meet em up" so... Welcome to Smartsville! -We are on most major podcast apps -Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Spotify -Contact us : -Website: smartsville.podbean.com -Mattman's Insta: molehill_matt

This week is our first annual friendsgiving  episode. Its Ray, Mike, and Billy. Because Matt is lost in the woods. We talk about various topics like bachelor parties how we all became friends, we also discuss our vulgar text thread. Our thoughts on billy seeing a UFO and more.Extended Streaming version on our Yotube Page!

It's week three of our Spooktacular Journey on the Spooktacular Express and this week we're pulling in to ComicTown, USA. This weeks Halloween-centric episode has us morphing famous comic arcs into survival horror games. Do any of the debaters know enough about comics to turn them into games? If they do, have they ever played a survival horror game? Only time will tell. How do you feel about bugs? Because Matt is talking about bugs. Meanwhile, Kyle is only here to remake the second Avengers movie. Todd breaks glass in case of emergency and completes our proverbial Green Lantern EGOT.   Don't forget that we're running a Patreon special this month! Join our Patreon (patreon.com/debatethiscast) or level-up your tier before the end of the month and score a limited edition Halloween DT! Sticker! Check out the tiers below: Tier 1, Buttthwomp Nation, $5 -Discord access -Debate This! Premium feed including The Office Drones and this years Halloween 1 Shot -Live recordings of The Ploose is Loose Tier 2, Filibuster Sword, $10 -All perks of previous tier -New Debate This! Directors Commentary for all DT! Episodes -Access to our show notes for all recordings Tier 3, Master Debater, $25 -All perks of previous tiers -Movie Night watchalongs with the Debaters -Ability to commission a Flavor Text after 3 months of membership Spooktacular Bonus! -All Patrons will receive a DT! Logo and Buttthwomp Nation sticker at the end of October -Anyone who joins or bumps up a tier will also receive a limited edition, Halloween version of the DT! Logo sticker   Properties we talked about this week: X-Men, The Brood, Age of Ultron, Blackest Night   Have you seen our Twitter? twitter.com/debatethiscast Have you seen our Instagram? instagram.com/debatethiscast   Music for Debate This! is provided by composer Ozzed under a creative commons license. Check out more of their 8-bit bops at ozzed.net!

On this episode, we get all adult and talk about homeownership. Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica.Loki & Ragnarok… two completely different shows! Coupling, give it a try!!! I love Pink Floyd and the return to concerts. Do you like the song Rocketman? Because Matt is the “Rocketman.”Become a Patron at jayandjack.comWrite us an email at RCADCast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram at RCADCastLeave us an iTunes review for a free drawing from Matt

On this episode, we get all adult and talk about homeownership. Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica.Loki & Ragnarok… two completely different shows! Coupling, give it a try!!! I love Pink Floyd and the return to concerts. Do you like the song Rocketman? Because Matt is the “Rocketman.”Become a Patron at jayandjack.comWrite us an email at RCADCast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram at RCADCastLeave us an iTunes review for a free drawing from Matt

On this episode, we get all adult and talk about homeownership. Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica. Loki & Ragnarok… two completely different shows! Coupling, give it a try!!! I love Pink Floyd and the return to concerts. Do you like the song Rocketman? Because Matt is the “Rocketman.” Become a Patron at jayandjack.com Write us an […] The post Ramblecast After Dark Ep. 129: “Homegrown” appeared first on Jay and Jack.

PHP Internals News: Episode 81: noreturn type London, UK Thursday, April 15th 2021, 09:09 BST In this episode of "PHP Internals News" I chat with Matthew Brown (Twitter) and Ondřej Mirtes (Twitter) about the "noreturn type" RFC. The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news Transcript Derick Rethans 0:15 Hi I'm Derick. Welcome to PHP internals news, a podcast dedicated to explaining the latest developments in the PHP language. This is episode 81. Today I'm talking with Matt Brown, the author of Psalm and Ondřej Mirtes, the author of PHPStan, about an RFC that I propose to alter the noreturn type. Matt, would you please introduce yourself? Matthew Brown 0:37 Hi, I'm Matthew Brown, Matt, I live in New York, I'm from the UK. I work at a company called Vimeo, and I've been working with for the past six years on a static analysis tool called Psalm, which is my primary entry into the PHP world, and I, along with Ondřej authored this noreturn RFC. Derick Rethans 1:01 Alright Ondřej, would you please introduce yourself too? Ondřej Mirtes 1:04 Okay, I'm Ondřej Mirtes, and I'm from the Czech Republic, and I currently live in Prague or on the suburbs of Prague, and I've been developing software in PHP for about 15 years now. I've also been speaking at international conferences for the past five years before the world was still alright. In 2016, I released PHPStan, open source static analyser focused on finding bugs in PHP code basis. And somehow, I found a way to make a living doing that so now I'm full time open source developer, and also father to two little boys. Derick Rethans 1:35 Glad to have you both here. We're talking about something that clearly is going to play together with static analysers. Hence, I found this quite interesting to see to have two competitive projects, or are the competitive, or are the cooperative. Matthew Brown 1:56 I think half and half. Derick Rethans 1:57 Half and half. Okay. Ondřej Mirtes 1:59 Competition is a weird concept in open source where everything is released for free here that Derick Rethans 2:04 That's certainly true, but you said you're making your living out of it now so maybe there was something going on that I'm not aware of. In any case, we should probably chat about the RFC itself. What's the reason why you're wanting to add to the noreturn type? Ondřej Mirtes 2:18 I'm going to start with a little bit of a detour, because in recent PHP development, it has been a trend to add the abilities to express various types natively, in in the language syntax. These types, always originally appeared in PHP docs for documentation reasons, IDE auto completion, and later were also used, and were being related with static analysis tools. This trend of moving PHP doc types tonight this type started probably with PHP seven that added scalar type hint. PHP 7.1 added void, and nullable type hints, 7.2 added object type, 7.4 added typed properties. And finally, PHP, 8.0 added union types. Right now to PHP community, most likely waits for someone to implement the generics and intersection types, which are also widely adopted in PHP docs, but there's also a noreturn, a little bit more subtle concept, that would also benefit from being in the language. It marks functions and methods that always throw an exception, or always exit, or enter an infinite loop. Calling such function or method guarantees that nothing will be executed after it. This is useful for static analysis, because we can use it for type inference. I have an example, when you're accepting nullable object as a function parameter, you probably want to eliminate the null value before you can safely call a method on it. So, you will write if $object, three equal signs null, somehow handle this situation, and at the end of the if statement, you will return, or throw an exception. But instead of return, or throw, you might choose to call framework specific or a library specific function, that also always throws or exits the process. This will also tell the user, the IDE, and the static analyser, that below the if statement, the variable can no longer be null. For example, if you ever called mark test skipped in PHP unit, or if you call the abort function in Laravel, you've already used the function that would benefit from being marked with noreturn keyword. Derick Rethans 4:24 You mentioned that currently people use the docblock no it @noreturn for that. Why would it be better to have it in the language? Matthew Brown 4:31 Jumping off, Ondřej's point. PHP has this has this thing, right, you know things where the doc block, but PHP also, it's a language where developers are used to the language telling them if they did something wrong. So whereas other languages, you might need, like for example, JavaScript, they can be a bit more permissive. Developers when they write PHP code, they're used to getting errors instantly. They call a function with an object instead of a string, and expects a string, and it's marked in the signature as expecting a string, when they run that they get an error. And so that's just a kind of way that most PHP developers write cod. With a noreturn type, we sort of thought that there's a benefit to developer, having written a noreturn type, instantly getting an error if they actually do something that returns. So it follows that pattern that PHP has adopted, of, if I do something that violates a type that I've annotate, that I've explicitly added to the function, PHP should error. There's also a useful sort of side effect here, which is that when you add noreturn to a function, it's guaranteed that it will never return the context. If you call it, it will never not return because it will either whenever not throw an exception or exit, because if the noreturn is invalid, if it does actually do something where it's returning somehow, PHP will then throw a Type error. Cause it's supported by the language. If it wasn't supported by the language, you'd be able to use a function that called noreturn, and it wouldn't actually return. I mean obviously Ondřej and I are big fans of static analysis. The language itself isn't just to pat ourselves on the back and think, you know, we had the right idea when we were doing static analysis, it's because it can help PHP developers write code. Derick Rethans 6:16 The void return type can only being used in specific locations, I mean you can't type a property for examples void. Are the similar restrictions on where noreturn can be used? Ondřej Mirtes 6:27 Yeah, right now it can be used just as a return type. There might be some other possible usages, but they are not part of this RFC. For example the noreturn bottom type could be used as a parameter type to denote a function that shouldn't be called. So, this might be some relevant use case, but I've already had a feature request for PHP Stan, to actually support this type as a parameter type for callbacks that should never be called, but I don't remember why that person wanted this. Once we have generics, or at least the possibility to type what's in an array, we could also use the no return type for that. For example, array that contains noreturn, or never, would mean that the array is empty. And also during static analysis, the type inference engine also produces this type internally, basically to mark dead code. So for example if you ask better variable that can only ever contain an integer, if that variable can be a string, you're creating a condition that cannot be executed, that will be always false, and the resulting type of the variable inside that condition is the same type as noreturn or never. Derick Rethans 7:41 You mentioned never there we haven't spoken about yet, but we'll get back to that in a moment I'm sure. Is there any prior art for this? Matthew Brown 7:47 Yes, a number of languages have a noreturn type. Hack has specifically a noreturn type, Hack, if anyone listening doesn't know, hack is a language created as a sort of offshoot of PHP. Engineers at Facebook, when they were running into issues with PHP from about the moment they started using it in 2007/2008 as the site started growing, and performance really became an issue. And so eventually they created their own version, basically. And one of the benefits of working at Facebook is, you have lots and lots of smart engineers, and they added a lot of different typing functionality to this new language. And so one of the things I added was a noreturn type, as well as adding generics and many, many other things. Another language with prior art is type script. TypeScript has a never type, which is essentially the same. It's a bottom type as Ondřej was talking about. And a bottom type is the subtype of all subtypes. You have a class structure, you have exception, and then you have a child class of logic exception, and noreturn, is the subclass of subclasses of the child class, the thing right at the bottom of the type hierarchy, and so it can always be returned when you would expect some other thing. But basically, this is the understanding of what a bottom type is. I talked about interpreted languages to interpreted languages, but also many compiled languages, most recently Rust, that have the notion of a bottom type. It's a type, where you're guaranteed that program execution ends, in some way shape or form. Derick Rethans 9:23 You mentioned that noreturn is the bottom type, how does that play with variance that PHP implements? Matthew Brown 9:32 The concept of variance for return types is essentially, if a parent method returns something like a, an exception class, the child classes can either return an exception class, or they can return children for that same method of the exception. So let's say I have a method getException, that is described as returning an exception, the child methods in our child class, so child::getException can either return an exception, or they can also say they return a child class, so they can say, I actually return a logical exception, and this is valid according to Liskov substitution principle, which is to say: you're allowed to return a child type of whatever the overridden method was. So where this comes into play with noreturn is, noreturn is defined as is the bottom type is at the very bottom of all those class structures, you can always return a bottom type, basically And this makes sense if we just think about it, you're not breaking a contract, if your function always returns or exits; the variance rule to kind of follow that. Derick Rethans 10:43 How would that compare with void? Because void has some interesting variance rules as well right? Ondřej Mirtes 10:49 Actually, no or little similarities between void, and noreturn. Because when you are calling a void function or method, you expect it to do something, and then actually continue in the execution flow. Not expect to read the return value, but with noreturn, you call a method, and you don't expect it, the execution flow to continue. These are completely different, and I actually don't know how people can mistake one for the other. Derick Rethans 11:22 Yes, seems very, very different to me as well. The RFC talks about alternative ways of introducing noreturn. And one of the things that had mentioned, is using the attribute. Attributes, being introduced in PHP 8.0. Why did you decide not to implement it as an attribute or suggested as an attribute instead? Matthew Brown 11:43 Attributes I think are really cool. I think attributes have a place in the language, obviously they have a place as the RFC described, in place a docblocks, they can be reflected very quickly at runtime. And I also I'm interested in ideas like a deprecated attributes. And also I've just been kind of toying around in my head, the idea of a pure attribute, which could guarantee at runtime that a function with that attribute, was pure. It would never, for example, use a property, or it would never use like a static variable. We could guarantee purity of functions which would interest the pure functional programming people Derick Rethans 12:26 Could you explain what a pure function is? Matthew Brown 12:28 A pure function is a function that doesn't use any other data but the data you provide it. If I have a multiply function that takes two parameters, x and y, and it returns the multiplication of those things, you would call that function pure. There are many ways the function can become impure. One of the ways is it can have output, you can have IO output for example so if the body of the function you then echo the value of x, before returning, that function becomes impure because it's changed the environment that it operated in slightly. Additionally, if you metal memorize the value of x. So let's say you have x and y as inputs, and then in the first line, you take the value of a property elsewhere, and you add x to that value, and then you multiply that result, then that function is also impure, you're using data from outside the function to return this value. So the idea of a pure function is one which essentially can be modelled mathematically, and that's why some kind of purists, like the this idea because it allows things to be modelled mathematically, but more importantly, then it allows those functions to be tested very effectively. Some implements purity, so that you can add a docblock annotation to function and it will tell you that, whether or not the function is pure. This has extra benefits when writing really complex code. So the most complex code that Psalm has, which performs some boring computation, I've added these pure annotations everywhere. And what it does, it forces me to write the code in a way that avoid side effects. The hope is from my end that writing this very complicated code in a pure fashion, makes it easier to debug at some later date. Derick Rethans 14:20 Thanks for that. Matthew Brown 14:21 I think attributes are great and have these uses. I don't believe that attributes are useful to encode types, because PHP has a place where you can already represent types, you know, we've introduced into the language itself, the notion of typing, you know obviously many years ago. I think there is a benefit to where possible, keeping the types as types. There was a suggestion that noreturn could be an attribute instead, because it in some way it's it's really about behaviour. But it's still a type, and in the wider programming community, there is prior art for it to be considered a type. So there's basically no benefit to my mind so making it an attribute. And as well, the implementation as a type is very small, you know, it's less than, well under 100 lines of actual written PHP to implement this feature because it uses the existing checks that we already use. We also use for other return types, and to make an attribute we kind of take it out and very much expand the implementation. There are two good reasons there to not want to use an attribute. Ondřej Mirtes 15:31 There are not very useful combinations. If noreturn was an attribute, then what would you write as a return type. There are not many useful combinations of what it could be. Derick Rethans 15:44 And it also can't be used with any kind of variance rules any more. Matthew Brown 15:48 Or at least if it were to be used for variance rules then we would have to write that logic. You'd be like why are we writing this logic in this particular way, it wouldn't make sense. Derick Rethans 15:57 Because noreturn is a type, and not a behavioural thing. Makes perfect sense. Matthew Brown 16:03 But it's both a type and a behaviour. In the same way that when you actually say, this function returns a thing, PHP then does a behavioural or check to make sure that that function always returns. You could argue that every type is essentially a behaviour, because you're saying the behaviour of this function has to return a value. Derick Rethans 16:21 Earlier, one of you mentioned instead of noreturn, the never keyword. Is that the only alternative that that was discussed are the further ones? Ondřej Mirtes 16:32 Well there's noreturn and never and the RFC is now going through the voting process, so the secondary vote is about the name, and some languages also use nothing. It feels more natural to say that that function never returns, or using the noreturn keyword, then, saying that it returns nothing which blends closer to the void, void keyword Derick Rethans 16:58 Earlier you were mentioning that for future scope you wanted to use this new keyword that you're suggested to introduce also in all the locations where perhaps noreturn does not make sense. Ondřej Mirtes 17:08 Yes. Also. What no return has going for it is that it's unlikely to be used as a class name somewhere so making it, whereas if key word isn't an issue, but just as you said, it looks like a key word for a single purpose being written in a return type thing that it's quite obvious which one of us two like which keyword, because I like never more. And one reason is that it's a single word and it reads more naturally in the source code, and it's also looks more like a full fledged type and TypeScript, uses the same keyword. Derick Rethans 17:42 Why did you put noreturn in the RFC? Ondřej Mirtes 17:44 Because Matt likes it more. Matthew Brown 17:47 Yeah, I wrote the first draft of the RFC, I got first dibs, but this is a big point of contention with Ondřej and I, and we're almost at the point of not speaking to each other, because I'm on one side and he's on the other. And it looks at the moment like never will succeed. I think the TypeScript thing is a good point. When I wrote the RFC originally, I wasn't thinking that so many PHP developers write TypeScript. I hadn't really factored into my head. And I think, given that it does make more sense that never is used. Derick Rethans 18:21 Looking at how recurrent voting is going, never has 32 votes going for it, and no return has 14 votes going for it. Ondřej Mirtes 18:29 Just kidding. I can't wait to have a beer with him again, once the world is, is fine again. Derick Rethans 18:35 Me as well. Matthew Brown 18:36 He can't start inventing new words; like yeah ironically naming is hard right. Derick Rethans 18:41 Definitely the case. At the moment it's very clearly looks like that, the new keyword is going to be never, with 40 votes for introducing a keyword to begin with and 10 against, so that looks like a done deal. Would either of you have anything else to add? Ondřej Mirtes 18:57 Yeah, Derick, last time I refresh the wiki, I noticed that you haven't voted yet so what is going to be your vote? Derick Rethans 19:04 I intend not to vote until I've spoken to the people on the podcast. Matthew Brown 19:09 Great, great. Derick Rethans 19:10 I will make sure to vote. Having said that, thank you very much for taking the time today to talk to me about this RFC. Matthew Brown 19:17 Thank you. It was a pleasure. Ondřej Mirtes 19:19 Yeah, I've been following this podcast closer since the beginning, so I'm happy I was able to finally join, and have something to talk about here. Thank you. Derick Rethans 19:26 Thank you for listening to this instalment of PHP internals news, a podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. I maintain a Patreon account for supporters of this podcast as well as the Xdebug debugging tool. You can sign up for Patreon at https://drck.me/patreon. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to email them to derick@phpinternals.news. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next time. Show Notes RFC: noreturn keyword Credits Music: Chipper Doodle v2 — Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Hitchhiking dogs, banned emus, and diving deep into a decade of Matt's top accomplishments. Because Matt's turning 30, B*TCH! After that, comedian Sasheer Zamata joins us on the pod to talk about pole dancing, ice cream, and her podcast Best Friends, which she cohosts with her IRL best friend Nicole Byer. For this week's Do Better White People, we're sending postcards to Colorado officials through Culture Greetings to demand justice for Elijah McClain. It’s been a year since Elijah was killed during a police encounter, and the Instagram account @justiceforelijahmcclain is doing a big campaign to advocate for justice from Aug 1 - 23rd. You can find more info on their IG. Bari's watching Ramy on Hulu, and Matt is watching classic love stories like Casablanca! Follow everyone on social media: Bari @finkelbaripie, Matt @MattBellassai, and Unhappy Hour @UnhappyHourPod (on Twitter only). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Look, we aren't experts on anything really, so why should you listen to us?  Because Jon finally snagged a ringfit adventure?  Because Matt bought a Nintendo Switch?  Or that we watched episodes 15-20 of Avatar, the Last Airbender?  We are no experts, but, here are our unsolicited opinions on these topics.

Episode #: 299   Title: Hunting’s Role In Conservation   Show Notes: At the Mule Deer Convention in Utah, I caught up with Matt Howell, the current president of Four Corners SCI, and we talked about his hunting this year and current issues his chapter is facing.  Matt’s approach to hunting is based in conservation, so he talks about how that shapes his hunting strategies and his club’s work.    He talks about the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado, and some of the problems with reintroduction specific to Colorado. They’re currently looking at bringing in twice the number of wolves in just 3 years, which is far more than was brought into Yellowstone.    They’re bringing in a Canadian greywolf, which is a new species, and of course that has implications that the state isn’t prepared for yet. It’s on the ballot right now, so if it’s passed, it’ll be the first species reintroduced via ballot box. Matt says it’s like managing wildlife based off of emotions and not facts. Matt shares a resource for organizing against this ballot measure.   Hunters have a vital role in conservation, and both Matt and I feel like that role is sometimes overlooked. Matt shares some hunting stories, and his approach to deer hunting. Sometimes finding the biggest deer or the biggest rack ends up being all a hunter can think about. Because Matt is focused on conservation, he shares how that impacts which kind of animal he tends to go after.   We finish up by talking about the state of hunting and some of the challenges facing Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, and Utah.      What’s Inside: We discuss some of the implications of reintroducing Canadian grey wolves into Colorado. The tricky issue of managing wildlife with a new, untested species. The key role of hunters in managing deer, elk, and moose.  What hunting as conservation looks like for Matt Howell. Mentioned in this Episode: FourCornersSCI.com Coloradans Protecting Wildlife   Short Description: I visit with the president of the Four Corners chapter of Safari Club International, Matt Howell, about some of his current work in Colorado. We cover the potential reintroduction of a non-native wolf species to wildlife in Colorado, and talk about using hunting as a tool for conservation.    Tags: reintroduction of wolves, wolves in Yellowstone, wolves in Colorado, wildlife management, mule deer convention, mule deer hunt, hunting tags, elk hunt, wildlife conservation

Because Matt loves all you guys, and loves all the patreons at wrestlingfriend.com, and because he wants to do ANOTHER bonus show for the patreons this weekend, and because of this momentous show.. YOU get a bonus Saturday show! The NXT invasion smackdown review!

Because Matt loves all you guys, and loves all the patreons at wrestlingfriend.com, and because he wants to do ANOTHER bonus show for the patreons this weekend, and because of this momentous show.. YOU get a bonus Saturday show! The NXT invasion smackdown review!

It’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of a middle finger. Disruption is more than a tech bro buzzword. It’s a destructive force that we’ll be paying the price of for generations to come. Produced by Jeff Sandhu for BFM89.9Show Links:https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38901702-lab-ratshttps://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/future Episode TranscriptThese shows are dictated to and transcribed by machines, and hurriedly edited by a human. Apologies for the typos and grammar flaws.I’ve been away from MSP for the past few weeks. Because Matt decided that I needed some attitude adjustment. However, while I was away our Inbox was flooded with complaints that the show was starting to sound like the BBC Shipping Forecast. So, who’s attitude do you think needed adjusting?Of course, we wouldn’t want Matt to adjust his attitude or change anything up, which is why, on this week’s show, we’re talking about Disruption.Are we looking at the effects of Disruption on our future?•I actually wanted to call today’s show the search for a noun.•But I knew that was essentially suicide in terms of SEO, unless we compensated by filling the introduction full of spam terms like size, money, crypto, wealthy, enrichment and pharmaceuticals.You mean, you’d have had to do exactly what you just did?•There, you see, I’m already being Disruptive.•Mostly to the norms of taste and decency.You sound as though you’re saying Disruptive with a capital D…•Your ability to aurally process grammar, is extremely impressive. •that’s aural with an au not an or, by the way.•I’ve successfully wasted 103, no 105, no 107 words since you asked your first question. •I’m Disrupting the show again.•[pause]•Have you noticed that Disruption always has a capital D?•If you see it in a presentation, even in the middle of a sentence, it always seems to be capitalised.Jeff Replies•There’s this element of shoutiness about the word Disruption. •It’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of a middle finger.And you think that’s what Disruption – with a capital D – has become?•Absolutely. On the one hand it’s a very arrogant response. •On the other. It’s like a panic reaction•it has this ‘rabbit in the headlights’ quality about. •Somewhat lacking in specificity…A bit like this show…•Oi. •Someone asks you what your company does or what’s unique about your product.•And the only thing you can think to say about what you do is that it’s disruptive.

In today's episode, we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. Shane Sams: Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, I am so excited about today's guest, because it is just gonna bring back so much nostalgia and my childhood and teenage years and college years back into my brain when we talk about this subject today. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member Matt Davids. Matt, welcome to the show, brother. Matt Davids: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Matt, when I saw you in the community, I knew that you had to come onto our show. Because Matt works in the RPG game industry, which is ... Okay, I guess it's just RPG, role playing games. Shane Sams: Dungeons & Dragons, all these cool things. We're gonna get into this, and I'm gonna be really pumped up about it. It's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so before I met Shane I had no idea what a role playing game was. After I met him, I still don't really know what it is, but he is really, really excited about them and has been playing them for a very, very long time. Longer than some of our listeners have probably been alive. Shane Sams: I think the first time I ever played a role playing game, I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was like ... Gosh, like 12 or 13 years old. I've always been into creative stuff and reading, you know, like science fiction, fantasy novels, Game of Thrones kind of stuff. The game is all pencil and paper and dice, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: I remember the first time I ever played we didn't have any dice because we couldn't afford to go buy the dice. We're just a bunch of kids. Matt Davids: Yeah, I've been there. Shane Sams: So we took hats and we like ... There was a 20 sided dice, so we wrote the numbers 1-20 on paper and we threw them in a hat. Then we had a six sided hat and a 10 sided hat, and that's how I cut my teeth on role playing games. Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it sounds very similar to me, too. I was nine when I first played Dungeons and Dragons, and yeah. I came home from that and I had to make dice, so I just wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a hat. Shane Sams: Oh, love it. I love it. See, I knew there was gonna be some kind of connection in this episode. I just knew it was gonna happen. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I saw Matt in our community and I saw what he was doing, and I thought, "You know what? This is a really cool business first of all, and I know Shane's gonna be really excited about talking to him." So I knew that we had to have you on the show, so thank you so much for being here today. Matt Davids: No problem. Shane Sams: Also, too, we always say that our community is extremely unique, because a lot of other communities it's like sales and life go just until the end of the Earth, right? We have so many different people doing so many different niches and so many different business ideas that it's really cool to see like, "Man. You can actually make money doing this." And Matt is actually making four to five thousand dollars a month off of his RPG business. So without going any farther, without spoiling anything else, tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background, and about what you're doing online right now. Matt Davids: Yeah. Well, I went to college in Kentucky. I went to Asbury, which is in the little town of Wilmore. Shane Sams: When he says little, he ain't jokin. Wilmore is a little bitty place. Matt Davids: Yeah. When the college, and there's a seminary there, when they're in session, the town like ... I think it increases, like triples or something the population of the town I think. So I went there. I kind of had my hopes set on becoming a screenwriter, and I did the starving artist thing for awhile. That really didn't work out too well, so I ... At another point in my life I became a missionary and I went to Haiti. I came back from there and then I've been working in search engine optimization ever since. Shane Sams: Wow. That's amazing. That's another part that's very fascinating about your story, and I feel like the world is changing around all sorts of things, like how we used to view things. You know, like back in the '80s, I'm gonna date myself here a little bit, so anybody that wasn't born in the '80s that's listening, I'm sorry. Jocelyn Sams: Turn this off. Shane Sams: Yeah, turn this off. Jocelyn Sams: I'm just kidding. Shane Sams: Back in the '70s and '80s, Dungeons and Dragons was this taboo thing and they thought all these kids were devil worshiping and all this stuff. I am a Christian, and you were a missionary, and low and behold we played role playing games and nothing got us messed up or off the beaten path, right? Matt Davids: Yes. Yeah. Shane Sams: Now it's just such a part of pop culture. You know, you have Stranger Things where the kids are literally on the show playing Dungeons & Dragons, and then I was just reading the other day that there was this massive surge in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's up so high in sales it's overtaking other board games and things like that, like how it's surging in popularity because we're all online and we all see that this stuff is good, harmless fun, right? Matt Davids: Yeah, oh yeah absolutely and yeah to be clear, you do not have to worship Satan to play Dungeon & Dragons. You do not have to. Jocelyn Sams: There are probably people out there who do but you know... Matt Davids: There probably are. But, you don't have to. Shane Sams: There's a way to get into it that way. I think that's the first time that we've ever had to clarify that someone wasn't worshiping Satan, in their niche. Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: So this is good for all you guys- Matt Davids: Yes, I have never worshiped Satan. I have never had the desire to worship Satan. Shane Sams: Okay back to the missionary stuff, let's refocus. Jocelyn Sams: Thanks for clearing that up. Shane Sams: Alright, so when were you a missionary in Haiti? Matt Davids: I was a missionary in Haiti through 2009 and 2010 and I was there during the earthquake, when the earthquake actually happened. Shane Sams: Wow, like were you in Port de Prince? Matt Davids: Yes I was in Port de Prince. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness. Like what was that like? Matt Davids: Well you know I thought I was gonna die. It was January 12, 2010, about 4:50 pm in the afternoon and there was just a kind of a quiet beautiful day. Haiti in January is beautiful because it's like 75 or something, degrees, and it's beautiful. You know I was working in an orphanage and I was sitting on the second floor of this little building that I lived in across from the orphanage and I just started noticing this little tremor and I heard some of the kids down in the courtyard just kind of getting scared about it and I walked out onto the little veranda and I remember myself saying, I was like, "Don't worry, it's just an earthquake." Well at that point the little tremor became something else. The ground just started shaking, like going just up and down, maybe like a foot and bouncing around, then the whole ground just like moved three feet to the left and I'm watching the orphanage building that's in front of me. It's a very big building, just swaying back and forth. Matt Davids: The wall of the compound, because everybody's in a compound there. The wall of the compound just breaks and collapses. The water tank on my roof of the little apartment that I was in breaks and I get hit with water. And the sound of the earth just going, you just can't imagine, you just can't even hear anything, it was just so loud. And then like, things started calming down just a little bit and I noticed the youngest girl who's in the orphanage, she was three years old and she was sitting down in front of the orphanage building and I'm just watching concrete blocks and things falling around her and I kind of got my wits about me. I said, "Okay, well I guess I'm not gonna die," and so I ran down there and grabbed her and all the other girls had run out into the streets, so I ran out into the street, got them together and I said, "Okay, we're gonna start praying," and I got a big Amen that day. Shane Sams: Wow. That is unbelievable. Like absolutely. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah like I'm kinda speechless on that one. I mean I've obviously never experienced anything like that but wow. Shane Sams: And like I guess the next few days were just like packed with rescues and helping people and all that because it destroyed like 80% of the buildings. Matt Davids: I think it was even more, I think it was 90%. Yeah like, the official death toll was like 350,000 people, so if you can even imagine that. Shane Sams: Gee, man. Wow. Matt Davids: I still can't really even imagine that. Shane Sams: Have you been back since? Or how much longer did you stay after that? Matt Davids: I stayed a few days and then we'd kind of were all, wanted to, the head of the orphanage and stuff wanted to evacuate us and stuff so, I was evacuated at that point and came back to the states but then after a few months I went back and I stayed there for a few months, tried to wrap up some of my work and that. I actually wrote a movie and shot a movie there that kinda went, I did some film festivals with and stuff but- Shane Sams: Wow. Crazy, dude. Matt Davids: But yeah it was something else, it was something else. Shane Sams: I mean, when you've faced something like that, the other challenges in life kind of get smaller, right? I mean when you really see, like true devastation like that, like gosh, you know, and once you put the pieces back together for yourself, because I'm sure that was like post traumatic stress stuff going on there. How did that kind of get you thinking about your future and what you wanted to do with your life, like did things change for you after that? Matt Davids: Yeah definitely. It just kind of really, yeah it kinda made me step back and think about a lot of things and made me take things more seriously and to be more intentional about the things I'm doing, yeah absolutely. Shane Sams: Do you have a family right now? Matt Davids: I do now, I do now. Shane Sams: Yep, yep. So do you have kids? Matt Davids: I do. I'm married, I have three boys. Shane Sams: Okay so were you married then or single? Matt Davids: No I was single. Shane Sams: Awesome, awesome. Well I'm glad you made it back, brother. I'm glad you made it through that and I'm a big believer that God puts people right where they're supposed to be at all times and hey man, if you weren't there, that little 3-year-old girl might not have got picked up and those people might not have anybody to pray with and I just appreciate you for doing that, that's awesome. Matt Davids: Thank you. Jocelyn Sams: And I love how, you said, "Oh yeah we have three boys," but what you didn't mention were how old they are. Tell us how old they are because I can relate to you on this one. Matt Davids: Okay so yeah I have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and then an 8-month-old. Shane Sams: Oh my goodness gracious, you are outnumbered and they are little. Jocelyn Sams: So we also started our business when our kids were super little, so I totally understand what you're going through right now. It is not easy, it's not easy to be a parent of young children anyway, but it's really not easy to try to start a business while working full time and having little bitty children. Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: What does your wife think about the roleplay? Matt Davids: Well she likes roleplaying, she actually has played with us a number of times and she enjoys it. Shane Sams: See, look at this model wife. Jocelyn Sams: Matt, gimme a break, you know. Matt Davids: The business, however, she wasn't really on board for the business. Shane Sams: Why was that? I'm looking at your sheet that says you started like 2015ish, really starting to put these resources together, getting them on Amazon. So are these like, are these roleplaying modules, are these adventures that the players go on, like what are these resources that you are selling or that you started selling on Amazon? Matt Davids: Yeah these are resources that help the game master run their sessions. So I don't really do adventures or things like that. I do some setting kind of material but basically these are, there's a lot of random tables, or different things that help the game master not have to prepare a lot before the session that they run. Shane Sams: Interesting. Matt Davids: So in roleplaying games, just to explain a little bit, if somebody out there is not familiar, there's a group of players, they create characters that they assume the role of and then there's one player called the game master, dungeon master, and they run the session. And so they present the players with obstacles and different things like that throughout the world and so running a game can be a challenging thing so I make resources for the game masters so they don't have to spend 20 hours prepping a session just to hang out with their buddies. Shane Sams: And I always equate when people are like, "What is that?" When they're talking to me about it, I always say it's like, "Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books? Well that's kind of what roleplaying games are. Like the players are all the characters in the book, the game master is kinda like the book. You're the narrator, you're like, okay what do you want to do? Go left? Or go right? Right? So it's like that, that's their job, is to weave the story and then the characters' jobs, the players' job is to live the story and actually change the flow of the story. You're not like forcing them down a path, you're giving them as many paths and choices as possible and I can tell you, I used to plan a game when I was in college and we played like every Sunday night and man, it was a lot of work. Like you had to like, really think about things and be prepared because you never knew what the players were gonna do. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like, you didn't know what to do, left or right or up or down or sometimes they just go backwards. Right? Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: So your resources are not full adventures then, they're not like the story, it's like maps or dungeons or whatever. Matt Davids: Yeah I have dungeon maps, so the game master can just grab a map and kind of fill it and then I have random tables that help cut down the prep of, because you have rooms or you have places and your players always want to explore those rooms and places if you don't want to spend five hours deciding what is all on that one place, you can just use my resources to roll dice and you'd figure out what's in that room. Shane Sams: So this is almost like filler. Like because the big companies, like Hasbro, who owns Dungeons & Dragons, like, betcha didn't know that, folks at home. The same people making the Uno cards are making the other stuff too. They sell the big adventure but you're like the side adventures that randomly pop up, kinda deal. Matt Davids: Yes. Kind of. And just also to fill in extra, just extra flavor or if... I also find a lot of game masters don't even like to run some of the big published adventures. They kinda want to do their own thing but they don't want to spend four evenings planning for two hours with their buddies, so they wanna, they just wanna be able to come in and you can just grab my books and just roll that and just roll dice on those tables and that and you know exactly what your, get items and things right there. Shane Sams: That's amazing, yeah. Jocelyn Sams: Okay so tell us a little bit about what you're selling right now. So know that you're selling the books and the resources, but how are you selling those? Shane Sams: All on Amazon? Every bit of it? Matt Davids: No, I'm selling some on Amazon and then there's a third party marketplace for roleplaying games, it's called DriveThruRPG and then of course I have my own website which is, DiceGeeks.com. And it's just the word "Dice" and the word "Geeks" just kinda squished together. Shane Sams: Which is the greatest domain name I have ever said out loud on this broadcast actually. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah we were discussing that earlier. But like that is an amazing domain. Shane Sams: So is the bulk of your income from Amazon? Matt Davids: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. It is just interesting. I want to break this down for a lot of people, because we just went into game speak, we went into the table, y'all. That's where we went right there. But like this is really fascinating how these templates can be applied to all businesses. Like because you're selling, we'll say Amazon is your primary place you're selling. But you have a website and you're kinda selling it in multiple third party market... that's what Amazon really is, right? You're selling it, people are searching for stuff, you're selling stuff there, you're selling stuff on this third party market, you've got your website, that's your thing and you've done this consistently over time and it's built this... A lot of people would love to make $4- to 5,000 doing something they love, you know? Shane Sams: And it works that way in almost every business, like we see, like we have our education websites. We have our website where we clearly sell lesson plans for teachers, we have third party markets, we have this one called TeachersPayTeachers, where we actually sell lesson plans on and you just kind of find all these places. Really, all you've done is you've created a resource that saves people time, which is one of the best things you can do in any niche... if you can save people time, or get people somewhere faster, you are going to make money, okay? So and then you found third party markets and you've built your own site and if everybody would just do that, consistently, they'd eventually make a little money and that feels pretty good at the end of the day to wake up and see that somebody bought your books overnight, right? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely. Jocelyn Sams: So tell us a little bit about, what are the challenges that you're facing right now? So I know that you're making some money on third party sites. What are you doing on your own website right now? Matt Davids: Well yeah, not too much actually. On my own website, you can see the products which lead you to the marketplaces and of course I collect email addresses and I am also, I blog about game master tips, so tips and things like that to improve your games and cut down your prep time. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: And that, the sales there like what would you say is the percentage of traffic in sales that your website is actually delivering right now? Matt Davids: Oh gosh. Shane Sams: Just ballpark it, doesn't have to be perfect. Matt Davids: Yeah probably like 5% or less. Shane Sams: Interesting. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: So what's your greatest fear right now that you're just relying too much on Amazon and these third party markets? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely. Shane Sams: Yeah because if they change the algorithm you could be bottom of the list or. Matt Davids: Yeah I know. Shane Sams: Have you seen spikes like that in your revenue? From a month-to-month basis? Matt Davids: Yes, yeah I definitely see sometimes and then also just like, listening to some self-publishing podcast or whatever hearing people talk about what's going on with Amazon or something like that. I can definitely track when they're changing things, absolutely. Shane Sams: Do you find that, are your sales very seasonal? Like you average maybe four or five thousand, but like, you find like, is Christmas time really big and other times very slow or anything like that? Matt Davids: Not yet and the reason for that is that, I've really just, in the last six months or so, really started getting consistent income. And like I mentioned before, I said my wife wasn't into it too much as a business at the beginning, because at the beginning when I started in 2015 really trying to do something like this, I was going to my day job, coming home, working on this until late into the evening and stuff. And I would make like $5 a month or something like that. Shane Sams: Hard to generate the belief when you're bringing home- Matt Davids: Exactly, exactly, so... Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's a bit of hard sell when you have a new baby, because at this time I assume that you had a pretty brand new baby. Matt Davids: Oh yes, yeah our first son was just a few months old at the time. Shane Sams: You're like, "Check this out baby, I got $5, that's at least three diapers." Matt Davids: Yeah and it only took me a month to make $5. Jocelyn Sams: Yes, listen I totally understand what your wife was thinking at that time. Shane Sams: Yes. Jocelyn Sams: She's like, this is ridiculous but the cool thing about it is that you keep going and you keep making sales, which is really good. Shane Sams: Because you had some consistency. I'm looking at your sheet again, it says that you got 10 books for sale on Amazon, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: And you've got four... Matt Davids: Eleven. I just launched one a couple weeks ago. Shane Sams: Oh, prolific. We're getting prolific around here. You've got 49 resources available for free on the marketplace, now is that just to generate leads? Matt Davids: Yeah most, not all 49 are free, but probably, yeah probably 40 some are free and there's a few paid ones that I have on the marketplace. Shane Sams: Right so generally what you've done is you're finding your traffic from these marketplaces and then trying to, and they buy your books and then hopefully they buy more. How big is your email list right now? Matt Davids: My personal email list is getting close to 4,000. Shane Sams: Oh wow that's amazing, yeah. Now is that coming from your website? Matt Davids: That comes from my website, yeah. I've done some Facebook ads just to drive some traffic to a lead magnet. Shane Sams: Perfect. But you've not really sold a lot to them or do you just sell them to the Amazon links? Matt Davids: Yeah I sell them to the Amazon and to the DriveThruRPG links. Shane Sams: Okay gotcha, okay interesting. So your blog is generating leads and you're driving traffic to these third party marketplaces and a lot of your sales are also coming from just people searching for this stuff, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Okay, so what do you think is next then, like what would make you happier, make you feel more diversified, make you feel safer about your income or even growing or maybe like what's holding you back from doing something like a membership or a recurring revenue type thing? Matt Davids: I think the only thing that's holding me back from doing kind of recurring revenue or membership is that, I can't, I don't really understand the model, like I don't understand what exactly I would offer in a membership and I just, I have a hard time understanding like, community building and stuff. I mean it's just, I don't know, I try to look at it and I try to understand it but it's just hard for me to get my head around some of that. So that's kind of a big thing but you know I did create, I created a PDF on self-publishing, with like a strategy that people could use on the third party marketplace DriveThruRPG and I've tried selling that, I just don't really know exactly how to market that very well, but I mean another thing though is, it's just like, I love creating the books, I love creating the books, so like creating something about, self-publishing or business strategy just doesn't do it for me and so I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well the good news is that if you don't love doing something, you don't have to do it, so that's something really exciting. One thing that I wanted to kind of pull out of this questionnaire, we have everyone fill out a little questionnaire and one thing that you didn't mention is you say that, "I don't know if there's a need for a recurring model in the area of roleplaying games", I found that kind of interesting. Shane Sams: Oh, Matt. Jocelyn Sams: And I think that's a big assumption that a lot of people have that is not necessarily true, it's a story that we tell ourselves. Shane Sams: That's right. And also too like, of course there's hobbies and things like that, but man, D&D is like golf. If you're into golf, you're buying golf stuff. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn Sams: And not everyone is going to be into it. Shane Sams: That's right, but if you're into collectibles, you're collecting everything. That's what that game really is, like people buy the miniatures, they buy every book they can get their hands on and it just becomes this passion, right? And that's usually some of the best, like you don't need a new putter, but you gonna buy one when Nike releases a new one, right? Like that's what golfers do. And it's the same thing with gaming stuff, there really is probably a need for this and actually it's very interesting because the game master's job is often the hardest in the game and two, they're the ones who are usually the most obsessed with roleplaying games, they're the ones paying the most attention, spending the most time on it and that's usually the person that you really need to give something recurring, something because they need their fix, you know what I'm saying? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Which is, I would be willing to bet that a lot of people that buy your books buy a lot of the other books, like you have repeat buyers in that Amazon system somehow because they're like "Whoa, this book was cool, I'm gonna go buy five more of Matt's books." Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: That's all recurring revenue model is, is how you bought the one thing, it was so good you're gonna give me money the next month and I'll send you the next thing. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So let's talk about that a little bit, let's talk about how we can, one, maybe up some of the sales on your own site, but two, create a membership or recurring revenue out of this, okay? Because wouldn't it be nice to know you're making $4- to $5,000 a month instead of, "I made $4- to $5,000 last month." Like that's why we shift to the recurring revenue model, like if I know that I have enough members to give me $5,000 a month, and I know my average member stays for six months, let's just guess, okay? Now that your whole equation changes to the future instead of the past, not, "well the last couple months I've made $5,000 a month." It's "wait a minute, I can predict now that I will make $5,000 a month for the next six months, which lets me buy ads to grow that and get it to $10,000 before I get there." Shane Sams: Does that make sense? Matt Davids: No, absolutely. Shane Sams: And like that's what you really want, is that's why we're so, a lot of people get mad at us sometimes, like some of the only criticism we really get for the podcast is, "man y'all talk about memberships every time." Well like yeah, because that's how you're free and that's how you have predictable, stable income for your family and that's how you know that you can invest into ads and hire people and grow to whatever you wanna become because you've got money that you know is coming in and you don't have to worry about paying your lights. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. Shane Sams: So one, you touched on this a little bit, about the community aspect. Which really surprises me that you went down that path because dude you're a game master, that's all you do is create community every Friday night when your buddies come over, right? So it's like, you're just trying to create that for DMs, like I can imagine like a space of those dungeon masters in a colloquial terms, alright. But you're just, your community would be something where, I would guess that you would come on and talk to these people about being a game master, like these tips you send out or these emails that you're like, "Hey here's a tip or here's a blog post about the tip." You really would just go on live and discuss that with people, right? And share that with people. It doesn't even have to be a big forum, it can be just a Facebook group where you go live every other week or something like that. Shane Sams: But I was talking to Jocelyn in the car on the way back from an appointment we had earlier and we were talking about you and your business and I'm like, this has to almost be like a physical thing if you were gonna do a recurring membership, like because that's one thing in roleplaying games people love is to flip through books, right? Love the paper, love the pencil, love to flip through books, like, I'm almost even thinking like some kind of monthly printed newsletter, where you send them a resource or you send them ideas and you send them maybe even a little worksheet that they get to pencil in some stats or something, right? Shane Sams: And I can see people paying for that, man. If I was a game master and I was really fired up and I was like, "Man, twice a month, I get to go hang out and geek out with other dungeon masters, right? I get to be led by this guy who's wrote 11 books, you know? And then I get that Christmas present in my mailbox once a month, not my email inbox, like a physical printed thing that I get every month. I think you could charge anywhere from $50 to $100 for something like that a month. And it would only take a hundred of those game masters in the world and there's a lot more than a hundred of them, so all of a sudden we're double your income. And be consistent with it. Have you ever thought about doing anything like that? Matt Davids: Yes, absolutely. I've definitely thought about it and that was actually kind of what I had been thinking about, was something that was recurring and that was physical that they could have. Yeah I'm just kind of struggling with the idea of just then producing... cause I can launch a book now on my own schedule, if I had to do something every month, I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things. Let's like, how do I create processes to get that out every month? How do I create engaging content and then how do I find those people that are willing to pay, if you're saying $50 or $100 or something like that a month, where do I find those people because in a lot of the forums and stuff that I hang around in, people are complaining that they have to pay $4.99 for D&D Beyond, which is just launching and just things like that that. Matt Davids: So I just keep kind of struggling with how to make it work, but I mean I think the idea is sound, it's just like I don't know how exactly I can make it work. Shane Sams: Well for one thing, the only people that post in those forums complaining are the people who are cheap, that are freeloaders. Jocelyn Sams: Who are freeloaders. Shane Sams: And that's why they're in the forum, freeloading and complaining. Jocelyn Sams: And you know what? That's fine, like there are always going to be those types of people in the world, it's not a big deal. There are always people who think they should get something for nothing. Matt Davids: Yeah. Jocelyn Sams: But thankfully, there are a lot of other people who believe in paying, trading money for value. Shane Sams: Yeah you only need 50 people to pay you $50 a month to make $2,500 a month right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: I would be willing to guess that somewhere in the world, as big as this thing is... Jocelyn Sams: Probably on your email list. Shane Sams: Right, exactly, you got 4,000 people who have opted in, who have said, "I want more game materials." Now, maybe 3,500 of those people are cheap and they are gonna complain about it, right? But maybe there's 50 to 500 of them that aren't and they just love the game so much and they're older, they've got good jobs and they just do this as their hobby for fun and they love it, like it's the same thing as the golfer analogy. They're gonna go pay for it, right? And a lot of the people, like, what's that famous show now that's on, it's a huge podcast and they just did a KickStarter to raise money, they actually have a podcast where they play D&D every week and it's like... Matt Davids: Critical Roll. Shane Sams: Critical Roll, that's what it is and they bring in famous actors, these, some of them play, some of them... like these are like, world-class A-list actors that come in and play these games. Matt Davids: Yeah they're voice actors. Shane Sams: They're voice actors, right, exactly. And some of them are learning D&D, some of them are playing D&D, but they do it every single week and that podcast has millions of listeners and they did a KickStarter. They raised enough money to make an animated movie about their game. Listen, there's people throwing money at them just to go make a cartoon. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: There's gonna be somebody that's gonna be willing to pay for this, so you gotta get past that block immediately. Matt Davids: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so as of right now, you have 4,000 people on your list, if 200 of them, that's 5% of your list, bought something from you right now, which is a totally doable number, I mean that's a lot of money. Shane Sams: That's like 200 times, let's say that you charge something like $29 a month, what's 200 times 29, Jocelyn? Let's do 200 times 30. That's $6,000, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So it's like... Jocelyn Sams: So that's on top of the money you're already making for your books. Shane Sams: Yeah this is not a mountain that we have to climb, it's really just like a hill we kind of have to pop over. Matt Davids: Okay, yeah. Shane Sams: Okay? Now as for the logistics, like the logistics is probably as easy as... are you in St. Louis? Isn't that where you work? Matt Davids: Yeah, St. Louis. Shane Sams: Alright you're in a big town, man. There's a print shop somewhere that will do this for you, all you have to do is upload a customer list once a month and the file. Usually it's just go to the local print shop and say... a lot of times, these print shops will actually handle the mailing for you, like there's online places too but... Matt Davids: Yeah there's online places that do it. Yeah I've looked into it, so yeah. Shane Sams: For sure. So I mean just check around, I actually recommend going a little local even if it costs you a little more per unit because it's just nice to be able to walk in, have somebody to talk to, you know? But online's fine, whatever you wanna do. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Basically it's as easy as create PDF upload, create Excel customer list, upload and you do that once a month. And then if you, then it's just about showing up, maybe once or twice a month, maybe once a month, right, just to talk to GMs, give them some tips, let them ask you some questions, right? Be their leader. So it's not like you're, this is not a huge ask in hours. The only hard part is the content, but luckily you have 11 books and 49 other resources online right now that 90% of your list has probably never seen, right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So you can just repackage and re-shift around things, maybe it's five resources a month, so that's 60 resources a year. You already have 49 and 10 books, like you could pull things from other things you've already done and put together a nice 10-page newsletter type thing which is more than enough content for a GM to flip through, get a few great ideas, go have a blast over the next four weeks with their friends and then look forward to the next one. Or they're not even gonna be able to use all those ideas in one month, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: So like they've got this library, like I subscribe to this email newsletter that's like, it's all about subject lines and copy and all this amazing stuff and I've got this, what do you call the little things that sit on your desk where you put folders in... just like a file holder or something and I have the last two years of them and I can just go flip through them. I love that file folder. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's like a, how many pages would you say it is? Shane Sams: It's an 11-page, stapled thing on paper and I paid $99 a month for it and it's worth every penny. Like when I get it, it's the happiest moment of the mail of the month, you know? And like that, that's what you're trying to create here, is Christmas every month for these GMs and a nice place they can go talk to somebody that gets them and they don't have to talk to their players and they can just geek out about being a dungeon master for an hour and a half. Jocelyn Sams: And you don't need everyone, you just need a few. To make a really good living. Okay. Everyone's not gonna like it and that's okay. We've talked about that over and over on the show, you know. Shane Sams: And if you're worried about the hours you're gonna put into it, it's really not gonna take that much time every month. Because if you show up for an hour and a half member call, you spend about an hour and a half getting the newsletter ready and you're pulling from resources you created, maybe you create one new thing a month, just to kind of add something, you know there's always something new in that thing, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: And then the rest of it is fleshed out with stuff you've made in the past that's spread out through different books, like, man that's really probably about five, six hours of work a month, to set this thing up. Matt Davids: Okay. I mean it's... Jocelyn Sams: Matt, you don't sound very convinced. Matt Davids: Well I'm just, I'm thinking pretty hard over here. Cause I have thought about it but yeah I'm just trying to go through it in my head again, just trying to see how I could make it work and... Shane Sams: What scares you the most about it? Because something's holding you back, I can feel it. Matt Davids: Yeah, yeah something is. Pretty much for all of 2018, I released a lot of free content on my blog, I put out dungeon maps, city map and a free random table and I was just dumping content and I did a like a Patreon launch for it. If you're familiar with Patreon, and I thought producing that much content, I could get some Patreon followers and I got like a couple. Shane Sams: How much were your tiers? Matt Davids: It was like, $2, $5, $10, $20, and like $50 ones or something. Shane Sams: Right. But see like, look at the difference though. You got all this content and you're asking people to support you and that's fine but man there's a big difference than what's behind the platinum wall. There's a reason people drive by the country club and they want in, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: It's because it's premium and it's exclusive and it's like, you could call it Elite Game Masters and make people feel really - or something - and make people feel really good about themselves and like... Jocelyn Sams: Dice Geeks Elite. Shane Sams: Dice Geeks Elite. Jocelyn Sams: That's pretty good. Shane Sams: Only the best. You could make people apply, like alright you have to fill out an application to even get in, right? And then you can look through them and send them a sales pitch, but it's like, they got to tell you how many hours a week are you playing? How much time do you really put in your game? Right? You know like whatever, you could come up with something fun to make it cool but there's a big difference in saying, "Hey, I'm already gonna make this stuff, if you'd like to come support me, come support me." Then, "I'm making amazing stuff and you can't get it unless you pay at the front door" right? And that's what pushes people, it's why people line up around the block to get the new iPhone that costs $1,200, which really only has two new apps than their last iPhone. It's like they want anything they can get that other people are not getting right then. Right? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Like that's kinda what you're trying to create, is some kind of exclusive. This is the elite thing, this is what real, if you're a real G, if you're toying with this, buy my book, but if you're in it for real, come on down. Right. And you could do things for them too like you could tell them, like every month I'll send you a PDF copy of my paperback books. Right. That in of itself... how much do you sell the books for? Matt Davids: Right now they're, the smaller books are $7.99, although I'm gonna raise those prices here and then a bigger book is like 15, $14.99. Shane Sams: So man you could say like, "When you join, every month I'm gonna send you the PDF of this book, right? Cause now it's $29 to email them the PDF and you're gonna get the printed newsletter, right? And that printed newsletter is gonna cost you $5 to ship, so you're gonna be making like $25 a member, every month. So like you've got all this stuff, you're not really putting the extra work in, but you're making it feel good, like a club, like a belonging, like a community, I'm elite and that's why they will give you money for it, right. Shane Sams: Now are we really gonna have to work on this launch? Forums and you need to go through some of the trainings on like, cause this is gonna take a email campaign, this is gonna take a launch campaign, it's gonna take probably some kind of live webinar to sell this thing and get these people in there. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: But once you've seeded, it's gonna stay full and you've got an endless supply of customers. Jocelyn Sams: Okay so let's pump the breaks just a little bit, because I feel like we're getting a little bit overwhelmed, so let me tell you what I would do if I were in your situation right now. Matt Davids: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: So what I would do is I would start emailing my list. Do you email them very regularly now? Matt Davids: Yeah once a week. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So what I would do, is I would sort of put some feelers out there and I would say, "Hey guys, look I'm really excited about something that I'm getting ready to start. I'm going to be starting my Dice Geeks Elite, TM." I'ma trademark that. Sorry about that, Matt. Matt Davids: Oh, no. Jocelyn Sams: I'll send you my marketing bill, okay? Matt Davids: Oh that's great. Jocelyn Sams: Anyway, I would just say, "I'm planning on starting this, this is what I had in mind. What else would you like to see? What are you interested in?" See who's opening that, see who's clicking it, see who's responding. Those are the people that you really want to start targeting with future messages toward that. There are gonna be some people who write you back and say, "This is stupid and I'll never pay for anything." Remove them from your list because... Shane Sams: Bye. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And that's the beauty of being a list owner, okay? But most people are gonna write you back and be like, "This is amazing, I cannot wait, this is what I would like to see you do." Okay? And that's not scary, right? You're just telling people you have an idea and you're asking them what would you like to see? Shane Sams: And then you start dripping out after the fact. Let them tell you, you'll have people write you back, you'll have people complain, blah blah blah. Jocelyn Sams: You could do a survey, you can do a Google forum. Shane Sams: Like get them involved, they can feel like they're... what do dungeon masters love to do? Create things. Help me create this. Then you start sending them back a thing that says, "What if you could get a weekly, or monthly thing? What if you could get all of my books? What if you could get this, that and the other? People are gonna be like, yes yes yes. Whatever it is, right. Once in a while send them a D20. Doesn't matter. Just like, all this stuff's going on and then when you launch, you've got all this hype built up and you'll find those couple hundred people that are hiding in the weeds you know. Matt Davids: Okay. Shane Sams: I just did some math, okay? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Alright. I'm actually looking this up right now with actual public data from a publicly traded company. Alright, so it is estimated that 20 million people in America today have played Dungeons & Dragons. Okay. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: It is estimated that 6 million people in the world play it regularly. I think regularly is once a month on this. Okay. Alright. If the average play group is four people, that means there are 1.5 million people out there running games. You need 200 of them to make $6,000 a month. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: That make sense? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: So like don't be afraid. 99.9% of these people can hate paying money for anything. That's true for all people. It's 80/20, right. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: We just have to find the ones that are willing to do it, right. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yeah. Shane Sams: I think you could do it. You got such a great following, you got such a huge product library. And man if you just say, "I've written 11 books about this," that's giving you so much more street cred than anybody else could ever have. You're perfectly qualified, you're perfectly positioned and we just have to put it together and make it happen. Doesn't have to look exactly like me and Jocelyn just laid out, it's just how we would do it. Jocelyn Sams: And you don't have to do all this stuff tomorrow, okay? Sometimes I think people feel like, "Oh if I'm gonna start, I have to go all-in." Basically right now, all you need to do is just gather some information and figure out what people want. That step alone is going to help you immensely. Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Shane Sams: Yeah and we're recording this podcast in March and you told us off air some exciting news though, you're gonna go all-in on this in April, right? Matt Davids: Yes I am. Shane Sams: You're leaving the day job and you're like, flipped lifestyle, here I come. Now let's grow this thing and ready to go, right? Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, yeah. I am ready to do this. I want to work for myself, I want to do what I love and it's just amazing that this time in this place in the world that I have this opportunity, it's just amazing. Shane Sams: Yeah, Matt, to be able to take something that you've grown up with, that lets you be creative, that you're passionate about and actually put food on the table with it. Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: That is the opportunity that everybody listening to this podcast right now has, you just have to go out and make it happen. It might take time, remember, Matt's been doing this for what, since 2015? Matt Davids: Yeah. Shane Sams: Right but and you've gotten to the point now though where in a few days you're gonna have total control of your life and your family's future. That is absolutely amazing. Let's just take it to the next level and we'll help you do it. Okay? Matt Davids: Okay. Shane Sams: Alright man, what a great conversation. I am so glad that I literally got to geek out, not only about online business today and I actually got to geek out about geek stuff and talk about Dungeons & Dragons on this podcast, so I appreciate you for giving me that opportunity. Matt Davids: No problem, that's why I'm here, Shane. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah thanks for putting that in his head too, I'm sure he'll start that up again soon. Shane Sams: And I'm just saying, I'm looking for a play group. I'm just saying. Matt Davids: Oh well there you go. Shane Sams: Have a go. I mean I may be jumping into the game here man. Honestly man, thank you so much, just for coming on the show, being transparent. Our podcast is so bizarre, because a lot of podcasts, the guests are used to being podcast guests, but our people, everybody that comes on this show is just a real member of the community, a real person out there with their own idea, their own niche, making it happen, and it's hard to open up, tell everybody, like "oh this is going on and I might be quitting my job next week and I wanna grow," and it's hard to talk about that but I really do appreciate you and all our other guests because without you guys being that transparent, all the people that listen to our podcast can't be inspired, can't learn, can't grow too, so thank you for doing that, man, I really appreciate you for being on the show. Matt Davids: Yeah no problem. Thank you for having me on. Shane Sams: Alright and then we got one more thing. Since you were a missionary, and we always ask all of our guests, would you like to share a Bible verse? And I would guess that a former missionary would probably have a Bible verse that brings them a little inspiration that they might just share with the world, so you have a Bible verse for us today? Matt Davids: I do, I do. It might sound a little negative at first but I can explain it just a little bit. But there's proverbs 18:9, and it says, "One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys." And like I said, you might seem a little negative but just thinking about that and just kind of thinking about where I was when our first son was born and I was working a day job that my wife left her job and because that's what we wanted to do. And just realizing that I wasn't making enough money and kinda just looking at my life and realizing that I was coming home from my day job saying that I was spending time with my family but I was spending an hour on Facebook or an hour here on YouTube or something like that and just the idea that it was just, that I was slack in my work, that I was no better than somebody who destroys something and so, just some things with the earthquake and some different things that happened in my life, it's just I realized that it was time I needed to get to work and really put some food on the table for my family. Shane Sams: Ah dude, that inspired me. When I hang up, I'm gonna go work. I told Jocelyn before I got here, like I think I'm gonna take the rest of the afternoon off but now you said that, I'm like, nah man I'm gonna go write five emails. Because I don't want to be slack in my work. Thank you so much for sharing that verse. That is an awesome and powerful message. Matt Davids: No problem. Shane Sams: Alright guys, that wraps up another amazing episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Take everything that you learned today to heart especially that last thing about being slack in your work. You've gotta put the work in and you've gotta get started and you've gotta keep taking those baby steps forward if you're ever going to get to a successful place. Like when Jocelyn and I started out, it took us 13 months to even be in a position to even think about quitting our job. Matt started back in 2015 and he's just now quitting his job and ready to grow in scale this amazing, passion-based business and you could be in the same place a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. If you get started. If you put in the work. We never sugarcoat anything here on the podcast, guys. It takes effort, it takes commitment, it takes dedication to change your family's future, just like we did and just like Matt did. We know you can do it too. Shane Sams: That's why we make this podcast and that's why we have the Flip Your Life community. If you need help coming up with your business idea, if you need helping taking your next steps in your online business journey, we would love to help you inside of the Flip Your Life community. To learn more about the Flip Your Life community, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's all one word. Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have plans starting as low as $19 a month to give you all the training, all the community, all the support you need to start your online business, become and stay self-employed and flip your life. That's all the time we've got for this week. Tune in next week, we're gonna have another great guest from the Flip Your Life community. Til then, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes. Flip your life. Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

In today's episode, we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon. Shane Sams: Welcome to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, I am so excited about today's guest, because it is just gonna bring back so much nostalgia and my childhood and teenage years and college years back into my brain when we talk about this subject today. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member Matt Davids. Matt, welcome to the show, brother. Matt Davids: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Matt, when I saw you in the community, I knew that you had to come onto our show. Because Matt works in the RPG game industry, which is ... Okay, I guess it's just RPG, role playing games. Shane Sams: Dungeons & Dragons, all these cool things. We're gonna get into this, and I'm gonna be really pumped up about it. It's awesome. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so before I met Shane I had no idea what a role playing game was. After I met him, I still don't really know what it is, but he is really, really excited about them and has been playing them for a very, very long time. Longer than some of our listeners have probably been alive. Shane Sams: I think the first time I ever played a role playing game, I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was like ... Gosh, like 12 or 13 years old. I've always been into creative stuff and reading, you know, like science fiction, fantasy novels, Game of Thrones kind of stuff. The game is all pencil and paper and dice, right? Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shane Sams: I remember the first time I ever played we didn't have any dice because we couldn't afford to go buy the dice. We're just a bunch of kids. Matt Davids: Yeah, I've been there. Shane Sams: So we took hats and we like ... There was a 20 sided dice, so we wrote the numbers 1-20 on paper and we threw them in a hat. Then we had a six sided hat and a 10 sided hat, and that's how I cut my teeth on role playing games. Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it sounds very similar to me, too. I was nine when I first played Dungeons and Dragons, and yeah. I came home from that and I had to make dice, so I just wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a hat. Shane Sams: Oh, love it. I love it. See, I knew there was gonna be some kind of connection in this episode. I just knew it was gonna happen. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I saw Matt in our community and I saw what he was doing, and I thought, "You know what? This is a really cool business first of all, and I know Shane's gonna be really excited about talking to him." So I knew that we had to have you on the show, so thank you so much for being here today. Matt Davids: No problem. Shane Sams: Also, too, we always say that our community is extremely unique, because a lot of other communities it's like sales and life go just until the end of the Earth, right? We have so many different people doing so many different niches and so many different business ideas that it's really cool to see like, "Man. You can actually make money doing this." And Matt is actually making four to five thousand dollars a month off of his RPG business. So without going any farther, without spoiling anything else, tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background, and about what you're doing online right now. Matt Davids: Yeah. Well, I went to college in Kentucky. I went to Asbury,

Why is the world in love again? Because Matt and Trevor are back for an episode of Giants Confirmed that’s more illuminating than a canary-shaped nightlight! This time, the boys sit down to talk about estranged brothers, the capitalist myth of overpopulation, and of course, They Might Be Giants’ third album and major label debut, Flood. Strap on your prosthetic forehead and come on inside!

Have you been good? Because Matt, Dean, Steve & Mads are back for our Christmas special in which the guys discuss all of the latest retro news, reminisce about Christmas presents of the past and look back at their favourite festive games!   Merry Christmas everyone & enjoy the episode!    

Because Matt and Cody are looooosers, we have to re-run one of our recent shows this week. So, we decided to re-broadcast the first episode Matt was on. New episodes should resume next week.

In this SPOILER leaden episode, the a$$holes relive the glory and mastery of the lesser-known sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Because Matt has never seen it, we take him on a circuitous journey through the plot (sort of) and foray on our own odyssey to create a Kubrick themed EU housed by the… Read more Ep. 18: 3010 A Space Nightmare

Why is this one so long? Because Matt of Trevor Comedy and I burrowed into the studio like determined ticks and just couldn't stop exploring! His perfect balance of inquisitiveness, wit, and zeal for callbacks allowed us fully understand our Harmonized Social Musk Furry Buddies. The plethora of discoveries included: vehicular crash epiphanies, the world's best one-man band, and flip flops at the urinal. Most egregious error: I think I messed up gender ratios. I said there more males than females, which can be true, but the opposite can also be true. It seems environmental factors and population densities can play a role, but we're not too sure. I think I also overemphasized non-typical mating arrangements. Those non-typical arrangements are pretty rare. Science level: It's a long one, so in absolute terms, there's a lot of science, but the proportion of science is sort of low because there's a lot of non-science as well. In my opinion, a great balance!

Why is this one so long? Because Matt of Trevor Comedy and I burrowed into the studio like determined ticks and just couldn't stop exploring! His perfect balance of inquisitiveness, wit, and zeal for callbacks allowed us fully understand our Harmonized Social Musk Furry Buddies. The plethora of discoveries included: vehicular crash epiphanies, the world's best one-man band, and flip flops at the urinal. Most egregious error: I think I messed up gender ratios. I said there more males than females, which can be true, but the opposite can also be true. It seems environmental factors and population densities can play a role, but we're not too sure. I think I also overemphasized non-typical mating arrangements. Those non-typical arrangements are pretty rare.  Science level: It's a long one, so in absolute terms, there's a lot of science, but the proportion of science is sort of low because there's a lot of non-science as well. In my opinion, a great balance!

Because Matt refuses to spend money on Deadpool, Miller went to go see the movie and is here to give a hastily written review of what could be a surging franchise. Also, they discuss all of the Super Bowl TV spots for the upcoming comic movies, the new BvS trailer, Daredevil S2 trailer, and the […]

Matt Kona (@mattkona) is one of my oldest and closest friends in Boston Comedy. I met him my first night in town and we've been buds ever since. Matt recently crushed it in a Roast Battle and has a cool Yard Sale Show coming up this weekend. Because Matt is a bit of a hoarder. As you will find out. We also discuss women, comedy, UFC, and much much more. More on Matt at www.mattkona.com More on Will on Twitter @willnoonan and at www.willnoonan.com t-shirts available at www.prowrestlingtees.com/willnoonan

You may not know this, but Matt-Man and Jayman are known as the Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash of BTR. HA! I'm kidding, actually they're the Don Draper and Roger Sterling of BTR. Okay, maybe not. They're the Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin of BTR. What? Yeah, I guess not. The truth is they're considered the Dylan Thomas and Hunter S Thompson of BTR. Or something. Point is Matt and Jay are fairly familiar with the drinking culture and know a few things about hangovers and how to deal with them. They've got stories galore about epic partying and epic hangovers. There are several different kinds of hangovers a person can suffer from depending on what they drank and how much. Matt and Jay have experienced them all and are here to help. Why are we doing this? Because Matt and Jay expect to be nursing some serious hangovers (Matt more than Jay) during the show because this is Matt-Man's birthday weekend. Not just ANY birthday though. It's his 50th birthday!! OH MY GOD HE'S AN OLD MAN! Anyway, there will be serious celebrating happening on Saturday. PLUS, it's also our Canadian Bureau Chief Jamie Mapleleaf's brithday weekend too! She'll be here to provide some much needed decency to the show.  You'll also hear from the Rev Moneymaker, Guy Ahnurdyck, Drew Peacock, Stubby Stonehenge and more of the IWS Players. PLUS YOU'RE CALLS! Call us up and wish Matt and Jamie a happy birthday. Or, call in and tell Matt just what you think of him. He's excited to hear from you. IWS Website And Like us on Facebook! Follow Matt on Twitter Follow Jay on Twitter

Because Matt spent the weekend at C2E2 and couldn't edit the show this week, he and Chris and doing a special edit-free Every Story Ever special this week! Among the comics we discuss, the best (?) Mark Millar comic, Superman Red Son, and the worst Grant Morrison comic. Which one is that? Listen and find out!