Balancing Act: Financial Success and Personal Joy in the Creator Journey | Justin Moore

00:00
I know from my own personal experience how stressful it is to try to prove to the people in your life that this non-traditional thing that you're trying to do in your career, that it's ultimately going to pay off down the line. Because I had so much adversity and doubt that was assigned to this crazy thing that my wife and I were doing on YouTube back then, that it was a lot of like...

00:26
kind of like chip on my shoulder. Like I want to prove you wrong. Like this can be a livelihood. This can be something that, you know, is stable and can provide for my family and all this stuff too. And so I want other people to experience that same level of stability, I think, now that I'm thinking about it. Man, this therapy, this is definitely therapy, Matt. Because honestly, it's like, like that can prevent so many people from continuing. Welcome to the 100th episode of the Life Shift podcast. Today's guest is Justin Moore.

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And on the daily, he is a sponsorship coach. He helps creators negotiate partnerships with brands and companies, and making sure that they're supported throughout their journey. He's been doing this full time for nearly a decade, and today we're gonna talk about his path, and it wasn't quite straightforward. He was raised in a household where education was prioritized, but he was never really pressured to do something particular.

01:21
He was exposed to entrepreneurship when he was younger because his parents ran a successful franchise, which really played a role in sparking his interests in being an entrepreneur. It wasn't always smooth sailing though. After he experienced the fallout of his parents' business and then they separated when he was 12, Justin made a choice that's been a driving force in his professional life. He decided to take control of his financial future.

01:48
so that money would never be a factor in his relationships. And we talk about how that connects to his parents' experience as well. In today's episode, we chat about his journey, his ups and his downs, and how he's been able to use these experiences to fuel his passion for helping others secure their financial future. It's definitely an episode for those with a desire for financial stability and with entrepreneurial spirit. And there's a moment in the middle where it's a lead up and it kind of feels like one of those heist movies.

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So I think you'll enjoy that. He didn't steal anything, don't worry about that. This might take a little bit, but I wanted to shout out the names of all the Patreon supporters for the LifeShift Podcast. I just hit 30 supporters, which may not seem like a lot, but it was my goal for 2023. And I just wanna say thank you to everyone because this helps me just grow the show on my own. Again, I do it all by myself. This support helps me get new software and equipment and things like that to keep these stories coming. So thank you.

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to the following people for directly supporting the show through Patreon.

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And that's it. So thank you so much. I appreciate you. If you want to directly support the show, please go to patreon.com forward slash the Life Shift podcast and you can see all the information there. I would greatly appreciate it if you have an opportunity to do so. And with that, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Justin Moore and here is our conversation. I'm Matt Gilhooly and this is the Life Shift.

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candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

03:55
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am joined here with a special guest, Justin. Hey, Justin. Hey, Matt. Glad to be here, man. You know, you're in my email box pretty much like a couple times a week, and you're a creator and you create classes, and now you're speaking all over the place and you're doing amazing things. And I appreciate that you put out a tweet, I don't know what we're calling them these days, an X of some sort, and you said you were kind of looking for other podcasts where you could share things that you don't...

04:24
always share on other shows. So I spoke up and here we are. So thank you for that. Yeah, 100%. Man, I'm really looking forward to diving into some stuff that I don't normally talk about on the, when I do the rounds or do the podcast circuit. Awesome. Well, if you can just tell us a little bit about who you are right now, just without giving away any secrets about your life shift moment. And then we'll have you kind of paint the picture of what life was like leading up to that.

04:50
All right. So who I am right now, I am 37 years old. I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I have two wonderful boys. Their name is Liam and Jacob. They're nine and six. I am married to my soulmate. Her name is April. And we've been together almost 16 years, almost 17 years, actually. So we've been together a really long time. And I am a sponsorship coach. So I teach creators how to find and negotiate their dream.

05:20
partnerships with brands and companies to help support them along their creator journey. I have a lot of my... It's been a very circuitous path to how I started educating people. I have passed lives in medical devices. I'm an engineer, like, schooled as a computer engineer. I will get into this, but I have done so many different side hustles over the years of...

05:45
that led me down this path. But yeah, I've been doing the full-time creator thing for almost a decade. That's amazing. And that's like, has the internet even been around that long? You know, Matt, I think it has. I do have some gray in my beard, but not that much gray. I will say, when we first started on YouTube, which was 2009, the partner program had just started, like just started a little bit before that.

06:13
And in fact, we got rejected. My wife's first channel got rejected from the partner program where you could like, you know, make money from AdSense, like the ads that roll before your YouTube videos. She got rejected three times before she actually got in. So like, we were not making money for a really long time, like on the internet. That wasn't like a, you know, an assumption. Oh yeah, like now everyone, oh yeah, you can make money, maybe monetize and all this stuff. But like in the early days, that was definitely not on our radar. Like when we first started. Oh, you put in the work.

06:40
Yeah, I think you've you've earned all the things that you've created for yourself. So I am forever inspired by what you do. And I'm interested to hear what you're going to talk about today, because I know, like early on, I was like, here's my story. And it was a little bit, you know, I started this podcast because it was an assignment in school. I did a second master's degree during the pandemic because I was bored, you know. And it brought me to this podcast. And growing up, my my mom died when I was eight and

07:10
I felt so alone in that experience. And even in my like 20s, even in my 30s, there were pieces of me that were like, I wonder if other people have been affected by like a moment in their life, whether good, bad, or indifferent, in my case, bad. And so creating this, the life shift, I wanted listeners out there to hear people's stories like yours and either feel inspired or feel like, oh, I'm not the only person to go through this, or look at him, he's doing XYZ now.

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I could be there. So, you know, it's been the most unexpected, fulfilling journey that I've ever been on and I'm just so excited about it. So thank you. Yeah, I hear you, absolutely. Yeah, can you paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to whatever moment we're gonna talk about today? Sure, so I'm actually gonna cheat a little bit, Matt. Go for it. You might kill me for this, but there's actually two...

08:08
significant shifts that I want to discuss. The first one, and they both have equal gravity in my life and one kind of led to the next. And it'll all make sense as to why I'm talking about this, but let me paint the picture before the first shift. Okay. I grew up in a really, really supportive household. Like both my parents were, my dad is an engineer. My mom has her master's in public health and there. So they were both like education was always like really prioritized in the house, but they never

08:37
pressured me at all to like be studious, get good grades. Like for whatever reason, it was just like both my sister and I, we were super studious and believed that like education was important, but it was never like, we didn't have helicopter parents at all. What happened was that my parents decided to open a Supercuts franchise on the side. So my dad still has engineering job, but my mom was gonna kind of run the franchise while, you know, kind of as a...

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side hustle, not side hustle, that was going to be her primary thing, but like that was, that was going to be their entrepreneurial venture, right? And so I was around seven or eight at the time when they started this process. And so over the next basically five years or so, they, this business started to grow very significantly. They went from one to three franchises, business started to become, you know, really good. There was a time period where like we were doing really well as a

09:34
like financially as a family in terms of buying things, you know, the material things like we just were like doing really well. Right. And that was deaf. Being exposed to that in my family growing up had a really profound impact on me and my kind of this kind of nascent part of my upbringing was or this formative part of my upbringing. What does I was like surrounded by entrepreneurship and like what that was like. So I started getting bitten by that bug. I started doing these like

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car washes. I don't know. I don't know why. Like my parents let me do this. But like I, we had this garage sale sign or this, sorry, this like my mom for a while was a realtor. And so she like had the a frames, you know, like a, you know, the open house thing. And so I would take it and I would put like computer paper over it and I would put car wash and we lived on this like major street and I would go out there and I would, I don't know why, but at the time I was, I was already like, okay, I need to charge differently for trucks and SUVs and vans, cause that takes more work. So I like, I was like,

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price discriminating already, like at a really early age. And so every weekend I would enlist my buddies from elementary school, literally, Matt, I was like in fourth or fifth grade when I was doing this. And I was doing car washes and I would like raid our- Those were probably great. Yeah, oh yeah. And I would raid our kitchen pantry and I would take all the snacks and we'd set up a snack shop. Like it was, I was like, had these alternate revenue streams. And so like, I don't know where I got this idea but I was like always fascinated with like-

11:00
making money, entrepreneurship, different ways, right? And so this was the start of my fascination with entrepreneurship, making money, different things, not driven by my parents at all, by the way. Like it was never like, we own a business, you should too. It was just like, just in the background here of like, I saw it, I saw all these things, right? And so it was this really weird thing where what happened was things started going not so great in the businesses after a certain...

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point. I'll spare all the gory details, but my parents ultimately had to shut the businesses down or they lost the businesses. And it's what I believe ultimately led them to separate when I was 12. And there's a lot of other reasons to, but like that, that put a lot of strain strain on, on the family. And so that colored a lot of my ultimate anxieties of the risks of entrepreneurship. But I decided that like, okay,

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I've been on this like, yes, I'm very studious and I want to go to a good college and all this stuff too. But like I decided kind of like right then and there that like I need to be in control of my financial future so that money never becomes a factor in my ultimate marriage. And it wasn't, I did not have this realization by the way, until much later in my life, but like it became a driving factor for my professional trajectory where it's like, okay, I'm going to.

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go after the professional, like solid, stable salary. But that's going, like my nine to five is just going to keep the lights on, but it's actually all the other things that I'm doing on the side that are really what I'm focused on. Like I want those to become the full-time income. And so the life shift for me, should I jump into it or should I, do you wanna, should we paint the picture more? No, I mean, it was a beautiful picture that you painted. It was like Bob Ross, really.

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But honestly, I'm wondering, I mean, it sounds like your reflection on these moments kind of attach this success money to also success in relationships or keeping love alive. And then you've kind of tied these two pieces together, whether intentionally or not, because you saw, you know, your parents doing so well, this like wonderful idyllic life with all this material stuff. And then once that goes away, so does this family life.

13:24
I can imagine how that kind of played around in your subconscious. And you said it was more like a reflection that you noticed that or? So, it wasn't like it came out much later in my own marriage with my wife actually. That that was a dysfunction that I had taken from my childhood. But at the time it colored my motivation to succeed professionally so much, but I didn't realize it.

13:51
But like that, again, it was like in retrospect. Well, yeah, and even looking back at your parents being successful individuals on their own makes sense why you and your sister, I mean, if you see a good role model or you see someone that, look, mom's working really hard and she's finding success and there's money to come and I'm getting cool, you know, he-man figures or whatever it may be or Castle Grayskull here. We're around the same age, I'm a little bit older, but.

14:19
It was it was it was RBI Baseball 94 on Sega Genesis. That's Genesis. I only had Sonic. Yeah, it was only Sonic and then Ace of Base was playing on the CD. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yes. But I get it. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if I kind of think about my own, you know, my parents divorced when I was four, five, six, I don't know, one of those ages. And I saw my dad kind of struggle with getting like he would get a side job for like Christmas presents and things like that.

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my attention to money has to be very similar to yours in a way that it's ever present, or there's a thought of it that's attached to other feelings. So I totally get that, how we run towards things without really realizing what we're doing, or the reasons why we're doing it. So thank you for painting that picture, because I think it fills in a lot of ideas for me. And it also kind of, just seeing you from the outside or seeing what you do in the world or in the space that I'm in.

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adjacent to with podcasting. I can see some of like where that drive comes from and that passion and those things. So thank you for painting that version of your of your story, too. Yeah. And, you know, I'm actually going to have a realization right now live with you on the podcast of something I've never actually thought of. But it just triggered something when you said that, which is like maybe that is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about helping others. Because I've ever thought about this, but like.

15:47
Like you can assign what I do a very quantitative value. Right? Like if I, if you hire me as your coach and I help you make more money on a sponsorship or a partnership or something like that. Like obviously that that's a quantitative win, right? For your checkbook. But like it's more, it's way more than that to me. It like, not only does it enable you to continue creating great art and be more creative and keep the lights on and all that stuff too. But maybe it is because I assigned so much trauma.

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in my own brain to lack of that, lack of the income and lack of the money. And so like, I don't want anyone to have experienced what I did. That's actually really interesting. And that actually resonates with me. I'm gonna have to journal about that. You never know. I was talking to someone the other day and I'd like for the first time in my life, and I don't know why I have, you know, I'm not, I read and stuff, but I heard about epigenetics and the idea that like,

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things that our parents and grandparents have experienced kind of overlay onto DNA and kind of transfer into us. And so I've started doing those kinds of things too, like, oh, because that happened to my grandmother, I think I absorbed some of that as well, because that story has always been part of my lineage. And so I love this little reflection here, because I see it from the outside, from someone that doesn't know you.

17:04
I see your passion for helping people. I understand it's your business. I understand it's your livelihood. I understand that's how you make your money, but I also see how much you seem to care. And if we go to your backstory, it's almost like you care enough because you want their relationships to exist. You want that love to exist in their life. And in maybe somewhere back here, that money is associated with that. So, it'd be interesting. Well, you know what, Matt? It's very interesting because...

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I know from my own personal experience how much, how stressful it is to try to prove to the people in your life that this non-traditional thing that you're trying to do in your career, that it's ultimately going to pay off down the line. Because I had so much adversity and doubt that was assigned to this crazy thing that my wife and I were doing on YouTube back then, that it was a lot of like...

18:01
kind of like chip on my shoulder. Like I want to prove you wrong. Like this, this can be a livelihood. This can be something that, you know, is stable and can provide for my family and all this stuff too. And so I want other people to experience that same level of stability. I think now that I'm thinking about it, man, this therapy, this is definitely therapy, Matt, because honestly, it's like, like that can prevent so many people from continuing. Oh, for sure. Right? Cause if you don't have the support, yeah.

18:29
We absorb all that and you started out saying that your parents are very supportive of Just you, you know, like your household was supportive and whatever you want to do Did you find that going the traditional route in college was like a checkmark for you, but you that wasn't like Really what was driving you or you wanted to do? So the the the lead that I buried in my story was that I actually wanted to be a professional musician

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my whole life. That was actually, I thought I was gonna be a concert pianist. That was like, cause I'm trained in opera, piano, like music. Like I've been in bands, but I was in a metal core band in high school. So like music has always been a big part of my life. And I, one of the primary reasons I chose UCLA to go to engineering school was cause I wanted to be in the music scene in LA. That was like a major factor for me. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna graduate as quickly as possible so I can start pursuing music. And it actually kind of runs counter,

19:25
How can that actually provide a single livelihood for you? But it was like overlaid on, you know, I had all these like really complex interests as I was growing up. And so here's what happened. So my parents split when I was 12. I was very studious, did all sorts of extracurriculars. I'm an Eagle Scout. I did lots of things growing up. And then I came down to this decision of like music school or engineering school. That was like what I thought was gonna be my two paths. And I actually...

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like had a lot of friction with my dad in particular, because he's an engineer. He like wanted me to have a stable livelihood, a stable job and all this stuff too. And so we really kind of butted heads about this topic when I was applying to schools. And he basically finally came to a head and he was like, look, if you go to engineering school, if you wanted to go back and get your music degree, I will help you, I will support you. And I was just like, fine. And so like ultimately that was, that was why I ultimately decided to do that. And then what happened was,

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I still had this kind of like entrepreneurial, you know, stuff running through my veins. And while I was going through school and while I was, you know, pursuing all these other, you know, side projects, I met my now wife. And so everything like things really started to transform for me at that time when I decided like, okay, maybe the music music thing isn't.

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really my top priority right now because really my, what I actually believe now, now that I've met the woman who I ultimately wanna marry, I actually have different priorities. And that was a really seismic shift for me. It's not the life shift yet, but what ended up happening was graduated, got a job in medical devices, was pretty on a stable path, career trajectory. And I was trying all of these different side hustles, Matt. I was like, okay, I wanna...

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you know, maybe affiliate marketing is for me and I'm going to like do the website stuff or maybe I'm going to, you know, um, you're showing your age, but yeah, I'm totally, I'm totally, totally showing my age. And then, uh, one thing I got super fascinated with was I always love antiques roadshow and I always, this idea of like finding a hidden gem that is ultimately going to be worth like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that at auction or something. I don't know why I got so fixated on this idea. And so I started learning everything I possibly could about.

21:42
art, specifically California impressionism and bronzes around this time. And there was a couple auction houses in Southern California that I would follow, like in terms of like the completed listings. So what I would do is I would figure out what the range, the estimate for this piece was at auction and then what it ultimately sold for, because they had all those records. In addition to that, there was a pretty vibrant at that time resale art market on eBay.

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if you can believe it or not, where you could also do that, where you could see, okay, what are things selling for? Right, because you can look at completed listings. And so I started compiling this really robust list of like ranges of what things were selling for. And then I would hit the ground and hustle at every estate sale and yard sale and, you know, swap meet that I possibly could in SoCal and look hunt for...

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paintings and bronzes. And then I would resell them at auction or on eBay. And so, you know, this one time in particular that was like a life altering moment for me was again, I was like doing this, all this on the side, waking up at 5 a.m., dragging my girlfriend at the time, now wife, April, to go to all these things with me, bless her heart. But I had been following an artist named Erte, very popular artist in the 70s, 80s, 90s, specifically with bronzes and lithographs.

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And with his bronzes, he usually had between 100 and 500 additions of these bronzes. And they were actually selling for quite a bit of money on eBay. And I there was a local auction house that had one of his bronzes as a as the signature listing of this auction. And critically, this auction house in particular did not allow online bids. And so it was like.

23:35
Either you had to be there to bid or you could bid over the phone. And so there's a little bit of arbitrage here where it's like, if you, if you know that there's like a really valuable lot that's going to go, you know, be up for sale, then you should, you should try and capture that. So then you could resell it at some of these other more prominent locations like eBay or other auction, other more premium auction houses. And so this is what I did. I went down to this auction house and I put in, there was a reserve on this item where meaning, meaning that.

24:03
If it doesn't sell for this certain amount, it's not going to sell, right? Goes back to the seller basically. And so at this time I did not have a lot of money, Matt. Like I was, I had just graduated. All I had didn't have savings. All I had was a credit card with a, a limit of $3,000. Okay. That was, that was, I had one credit card. Okay. And I told my wife, April, I was like, I, I.

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believe that this is worth a lot of money. I believe that this bronze, if I could resell it, I believe it's going to be worth a lot of money. And she was just like, okay, I believe in you. Like, let's let's do this. And so the reserve, they never tell you what the reserve is going to be on these lots typically. But I thought that it was probably the starting bid of it was I think around $2,000. Right. And so I was like, okay.

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If I can get this thing out the door for less than the max amount on my credit card, I think I can make a good profit on this thing. So this is what I did. I was, I had my paddle. Okay. I'm in the audience and I'm the only person who bids on this thing initially. And I'm just like, okay, I'm going to win this thing. Right. I put my paddle up and they say, call me in the back. And he's like, he's got the gavel and everything. The doc, this is crazy. Right. This is total true story. And then they have the people, the phone bank people, if you've ever seen these auction houses, right, they have the people on the phones and then someone calls in with a bid. And I'm just like, no.

25:22
No, this can't be happening, right? And so it's me going back and forth in $100 increments with me and the person on the phone. And remember, it's not just how much the lot sells for it. There's also a buyer's premium, meaning that I have to pay an additional 20% to the auction house for buying it. So that's above and beyond the actual sales price. So now that I'm thinking about it, I think it may be the starting price was more like 1800, because I went back and forth about three or four times with the person on the phone. And ultimately, I'm the last person standing.

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gavel comes down and I walk out of here with this thing, $2,300 for the sales place plus buyer's premium of 20%. So I literally walked out. What is that? Like, you know, 460 extra bucks. So it was like 2800, but roughly something like that, $200 like to spare on my credit card. And so I get in the car with this thing. They're like, okay, at the end of the auction house, follow me around back and you can collect your lots.

26:16
pay and everything. And, and so I like run the credit card and I'm like hoping like, please don't get flagged for fraud or like, you know, like it's just activity or whatever, went through, loaded it into the back of my car. I said, I closed the trunk. I sit in the, in the driver's seat. I look over at my wife and I'm just like, what did we just do? Like we bought this sculpture for $2,800, whatever it is. And so the next day, Matt, I turn around, I take a bunch of really high quality photos of this piece and listed on eBay.

26:46
for 99 cents, no reserve. No reserve. Oh, wow. And so what I had noticed, it's very brave, so what I had noticed was that the auctions that ultimately performed the best based on all the research, the numbers that I had crunched on eBay, was the ones that were 99 cents, no reserve, seven day listing. Those are the ones that ultimately went for the most money because in this sculpture niche, because people thought they were gonna get a deal. They're like, oh, okay, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna really,

27:15
like, you know, like get a good deal and maybe I'm going to be the one to flip it and make some money on it. Right. And so I thought to myself, I'm going to do this. Right. So fast forward, okay, six days, there had been a couple bids on it, but it's only around $1,500. And the final day and I am crushed that I'm absolutely crushed because I can't take a $1,500, $1,300 bath. I had I did not have this money. Right. And so I was I was literally crushed and I was like, I saw my entrepreneurial dreams like flushing down the toilet.

27:45
And so we get to six hours left. Okay. We're at 1800 now. I said, okay. All right. We get to three hours left and I'm about 2000 now. Okay. 800 bucks. Like that's okay. I think I can, you know, handle that. Right. We get to an hour left and we're at about $2,500, 30 minutes left. We're now at $2,800. Okay. I'm going to break even. I'm going to break even on this thing. And in the back of my mind, I always knew that it might be possible.

28:12
that there might be some people waiting to the last minute to try to make some bids because they have this, these software programs back in the day, it was called like sniping software, E-Snipe and some of these tools where you could basically put in a number, your max bid and then it would go in and bid in like the last 10 seconds. Right. And I remember this because my dad used to do this. He was like a big on eBay. And so I was like, okay, maybe that's possible across my fingers, maybe. Right. And so still 2,800 it's getting down to the last minute.

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last 30 seconds and I refresh the browser like one final time. And it's just like hanging there, like a loading, loading, loading. And I refresh the page. Seventy eight hundred dollars. Oh, my God. Ended up selling for and I screamed at the top of my lungs. I clicked into the bid history. And there were like three people who were using this sniping software that were bidding all against each other algorithmically at the last minute. And the person who ultimately won the bid was seventy hundred dollars.

29:08
I, my wife leapt into my arms and we just couldn't believe it. Turned out that the person who bought it was in OC in orange County. So not that far away. So I actually arranged to meet them in person to hand off the thing instead of shipping it to them. And it was so shady. Like we met in this like strip mall and it was a collector like it turned out to be a collector and he gave me $7,800 in cash. I'll never forget this, Matt.

29:30
And I went home and I fanned, I saw this picture. I wish I could find it, but I fanned out all the money. Like this, I feel like every entrepreneur has this moment where they, it's like their first win, right? And I fanned it all out. I have a picture of me like with the money, right? And this was my big life shift. My very first life shift map where I knew from that moment I could never have a, like a traditional job again. Like that feeling of...

29:56
identifying something like a gap in the market or something where it was like, I, I did all this work and I discovered something that other people didn't know. And I then ultimately was able to turn that into something that other someone else valued. And I was able to kind of profit from that knowledge arbitrage, I guess, I can't even describe to you. And that then changed my whole life because I transformed from looking at my professional career as like the way in which I'm going to have stability to like, no, that's the side hustle now.

30:26
and all these other things I'm gonna be trying, I'm gonna try to turn those into my full-time living. Yeah, I can imagine that experience. I mean, that experience brings me back to the days of like you really wanted a video game on eBay and you're like waiting to the last second to try to win that one for cheap. Never worked. Yeah. Because of your example right there. But I can see how something like that could probably give you, I don't know if you didn't have this before, but did it give you more trust in yourself? Like you could believe

30:56
like that you put in the work, so therefore you should trust yourself. You're not going to win every time. But, you know, does it give you any more confidence? So I was actually quite confident in myself in general to like even put something like that on the credit card, because I knew I was like, I knew I knew I knew. But you were doubting yourself. I was doubting myself. But what the thing that it actually taught me, which was actually part of the primary life shift, was that.

31:23
I could have outcomes beyond my wildest expectations. Like I knew that I was my thought my expectation was like I'll make 500 bucks on this or a thousand bucks on this. But to make $5,000 on this never in my it was never even in my mind that that could even be possible. And so that was why I was like, wow, there's actually things you can do in life and in business where you can actually make five times ten times the amount of money that you

31:52
think of that was mind blowing to dream bigger. Yeah. That, that stretched my mind of like what was, could potentially be possible. Cause the date I was having W2 income every two weeks I'd get my check. It would, I would, I was crunching pennies and like I had a spreadsheet where we were tracking all of our expenses and we were young. We were, I was like 21 or 22, uh, my first, you know, 23 probably around that time. And so it was like, that was the big thing. It was like, wow, I didn't actually realize that was even possible in life. You know? Yeah.

32:20
And I think a lot of us don't. Do you think that some part of your initial confidence, and I mean, having an engineering mind probably helped you a lot in figuring out which pieces and analyzing the market and all those pieces. But do you think a piece of seeing your parents as successful business folk or doing their thing, do you think that instilled some of your confidence? Do you think you gained some of that because you saw their abilities being rewarded in some capacity?

32:50
And the reason I ask that is because in my case, I never felt like I dreamt big. Like I felt like I never could, like I just had to do what was next in the list. There was never like this extra dream. There still really isn't. And I think a lot of it is from what I've seen in my own family. So I'm wondering if that resonates with you at all. I think it was a mindset that in particular, my dad taught me growing up. So this was, so there's one story in particular that I think will make this

33:20
point is when I was a freshman in high school, so 15, 14, 15, we had an assignment where our teacher, we had to interview someone who was in the career that we wanted to have. So we had to end do it like a research paper about it, right. And so I thought, remember, I wanted to be a musician. And so I found someone who was living in San Francisco, or working in San Francisco, and they were a music producer. And I was like, oh, like, I want to, you know, I basically reached out to them,

33:49
told them about the project, like, can I interview you for this, like, you know, high school paper? I want to be you. I want to be you, basically. Yeah. And so they agreed. And I went to my dad and I said, Dad, I can I have permission to go take BART, which is like our like subway type type system in the San Francisco Bay Area into the city? Because we lived in a suburb and go interview this person. And instead of saying absolutely not, because I was like, I don't I don't know if there's any way my.

34:17
going to say, yes, this is crazy, right? And he basically said to me, I will only allow you to do this if you can put together a comprehensive plan of exactly how you're going to get there. I want the times of the of the trains that you're going to be getting on. I want you to show me the exact map of once you exit the station, how you're going to get to this person's office. I want to know more about this person. You know, I basically come to me with like a plan.

34:44
of like, how are you going to do this? You're 14, 15 years old, whatever, give me a plan. And so I was, at the time, I remember being like so annoyed. I was just like, oh, dad, like, come on, this is so annoying, just say yes, right? No, I had to go down. I made, I had to do like an extra report, basically, like to like make, let him, me be able to do this. But I did it. At that time, I was MapQuest, if you remember. Like I had to, there was no Google Maps, right? So I had to go, I printed out the turn by turn directions and I drew it on the map and like how I get out of the station.

35:12
And then I go and I like present him with this report. He looks at it. He said, okay, you can go. And so I just remember feeling so empowered by that exercise that like, and I remember the whole time I was on this trip, just this tremendous feeling of pride that I was like allowed to do this thing. And that really, I remember that moment in particular as like, if I put in the work to be prepared and put in the work like to...

35:41
game all possible outcomes. You know, like what if this happens or what if that happens or what if this happens? I think, you know, to your point, like, like that has, I can draw the parallel to that in so many things, like the story around buying this piece of art. It was like, I feel as though I had, I had kind of prepared. I had done the data. I had seen, I knew that it wasn't like I was just buying it for no reason. I have seen pieces like this cell.

36:05
A lot of, you know, multiple times. So it was like, I've kind of gamed it all out. And I think that, yeah, you're right. Like that allowed me, gave me the confidence to make a judgment call like that. Do you find yourself in all the side hustles since, or the things that you and your wife have put together, or what you're doing now? Do you put in a lot of that like report ahead of time? Like, how am I gonna get there? 100%, man. I mean, when people always ask me like, oh,

36:33
You know, how did you go full time as a creator? Like, just happened one day. Yeah, yeah. Like, like, you know, 2004, because my wife went full time 2012. I was 2014, six weeks after my first son was born. That was the other thing. Our friends and family were like, are you nuts? Are you high? People don't get it. Like, are you, are you, yeah, are you gonna give up a six figure medical, yeah, six figure medical device job to be a YouTuber? Like, what is wrong with you? Right? And, and again, I had to remind people like,

36:59
This was three years in the making. Like once my wife quit and I kept my job, you know, for the medical benefits and all that stuff too, like that was the moment where I was like, okay, let's put the plan in place. Like I have to be making at least $10,000 a month in incremental income above my nine to five salary in extra income, right? So if let's say I was making, I think I was making around 100K at that time, like I need to be making 10K above that. So like almost like 200K.

37:28
to know that if I do ultimately quit and the nine to five salary goes away, we have a little bit of buffer. If, cause we, you know, at that time again, we had a kid that we weren't gonna go back to living on ramen, like that wasn't an option. And so, yeah, like we put the plan in place. And I think people just don't realize, like I never ever make decisions, you know, without like putting the plan in place first. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people do, especially in the creator space. I'm sure you work with people that are like,

37:58
They woke up one day and they decided they were going to start XYZ, you know, YouTube channel, or they were going to do a podcast or they were going to do whatever it may be. And I think, you know, like having a parent like that that forced you to do something that was probably so annoying as a 14 year old to have to like put together, you know, on your dot matrix printer. I know we're past that, but you know, like on map quests and figure that out. I mean, the lesson that that that little throw away a little story

38:27
can tell, can teach someone that led to this, you know? Like it's so interesting to me because I feel like this creator space and probably the people that were the naysayers in your life, it feels or it looks like it could be something that someone jumped into. But all the successful people are people like you that like took a long time to get here and did the legwork and did the report ahead of time. And then weren't just jumping into it. They had a plan.

38:56
there was a plan of action. Even your, I mean that story about the auction, all the legwork that you did, like watching other things sell and how they sold and how you were gonna do it on eBay. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work with possibly never a reward. Right. Right? You know, like how do you determine, is there a point in which you do like a lot of legwork for something and then there's a breaking point in which you determine, I continue going or?

39:26
Throw it away. Do you have any of those? Matt, I don't know if you knew this, but that's a perfect seg to my second life shift. I mean, I was, I didn't set it up. You are the podcast host. We're scripted, right? We're running the teleprompter. Yeah. So, it's so funny you asked that because to date, you know, up to this point in the conversation, I've, you know, I've talked a lot about entrepreneurship and making money and all this stuff too. And so the next real, like the,

39:52
You know, I was on this path of like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna be an art broker. That was like what I thought I was gonna do. But ultimately, what I decided was like, this is so much work trying to hunt and find and wake up at 5 a.m. and do all this stuff. And so all in, I think over about a year of doing this, 18 months of doing this, I think I made profit about 40 or 50 K doing this. So it wasn't nothing like it was pretty good money on top of my my full time income. But the juice, the juice, the juice did just not seem worth the squeeze, you know. And so.

40:21
That's when I kind of shelved that idea and I was like, okay, and by the way, this is around the time that my wife started her YouTube channel. And so it was very much like in the background, it wasn't making money at first, but it was like it grew, it grew, it grew, it grew. And then as we started making more money working with brands and collaborating with them, the next kind of big entrepreneurial thing that I did was I started an agency where I was like, okay, you know, we're pretty experienced doing brand partnerships because we've done it a bunch as creators. What if I help

40:49
get deals for other creators. I'm not gonna manage them, but I will go to the brands that we worked with personally and be like, hey, we loved working with you. Did you know that I also have friends who are also good creators and you can work with them and I'll manage it for you. I'll manage the campaign. Cause it was a great experience working with us, right? Right? And so it was like, this was what I, I was a product, product manager, project manager in my full-time job. And so I was like, I'm pretty good at this deadlines, timelines, keeping things on track and all this stuff. And so I was like, this was my next idea is like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the liaison.

41:19
right, to kind of manage these campaigns. And man, it took off, Matt. I bet. So this was around 2015, so still pretty early in terms of influencer marketing and brands trying to understand how to collaborate with creators and all this stuff too. And so for the next five years, basically, that company grew significantly. We were landing huge six-figure deals. We were doing campaigns across lots of creators. I had multiple full-time employees.

41:48
my payroll at its peak was like 50K a month. So I was like doing the thing. I was like growing the agency and like, the whole point of it though, was again to diversify our family's income. That was, I was always thinking ahead. I was like, okay, things are growing well with my wife and I personally as creators, but like gotta end at some point. So like, well, let me figure out another revenue stream that doesn't rely on like April and Justin, being on social media.

42:15
And so the agency was going super well. I loved the people I worked with. And then the pandemic happened and all this, these huge contracts that we had in the pipeline got eviscerated and tried every Hail Mary you can think of to save the company applying for a PPP loan, didn't get, didn't, you know, wasn't selected for that, you know, try to discount our services to try to, you know, get, get something going. But if you remember the early days of the pandemic, it was like,

42:43
You didn't know when things were going to open back up again, advertising. You know, a lot of our clients were like travel and hospitality retail, you know, like a lot of the major sectors that were hit by the pandemic early in the days. And so I came to this crossroads where it was like, either I can run the business into the ground, like go to the, you know, until we have $0 in the bank account, basically, it was actually even worse than that because I was at hundred K in debt because I had taken out a big line of credit.

43:12
hired a fancy VP of sales, done all the invested in software dashboards for the agency, done all these things, thinking, and we have this huge pipeline, all these contracts, like it's going to be fine. I'll pay it back once the money hits the bank account, like basically. And in your plan, it was there. It would have done it. And the plan, it was there. Yeah. And it was like this Black Swan event, basically, where it was like, I decided I either can run the business to the ground, or I can give my employees severance and try to set them up for at least.

43:40
as much time as I can to try to find the next opportunity. And that's what I ultimately chose to do. And so I spent five years of my life working so hard, Matt, like nights and weekends, burning the candle at both ends. And I just kept telling my wife, it's gonna be worth it. It's gonna be worth it. I'm gonna turn the corner with the agency. It's gonna happen. And then for that to not only spectacularly fail, for me to have to lay off all of my employees, for me to feel as though the last five years of my life that I've spent was for

44:10
nothing basically and I'm in debt. It was worse that right. And and I was so I was literally this was the lowest point. This was literally the lowest point of my life that I was so crushed. I was emotionally defeated. I was psychologically defeated. I had no idea what I was going to do next. Luckily, luckily, things were still going okay, with my wife and I is kind of personal business and channels because we kept doing that the whole time.

44:36
And so we were still, we still had kind of a livelihood, which was, which was so thankful, but inside my, my personal professional pursuits were obliterated. Right. And so I was, it was literally in the ashes of this. I was in the most depressed state that I had could ever remember being in my life where I started thinking, okay, I'm sick of wallowing. I've been wallowing for a long time here. I just want to feel useful again.

45:05
I want to feel as though I'm helping people again, because I just need to like, need to get out of this. Right. And so this is when I started to think about this really unique perspective that I had at this point now, which was that again, I'd been a creator for many years doing all these deals, but I also had ran this, run this agency now where it was like, I had been kind of behind the scenes of all these big brands and these big agencies. And they were saying like, we want to move forward with this creator and not that creator for the following reason.

45:34
And this is not something they talk about publicly. You know, they're, oh, we don't want to work with that creator because they had a, they're saying crazy things on their Twitter or they had a controversy two years ago and we don't want to work with them. And so like, these are the types of things. And so I was like, this is actually kind of interesting. Maybe, maybe I should make some content, like some YouTube videos or something about like how brands decide like who to, who that they're going to partner with, right? How to negotiate, how to communicate with the brand, this type of thing. And so I'll pause here, but like this was the early

46:03
It's kind of like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. It was like, this was the early kernels of hope of this life shift of, now maybe this could be the next chapter for me. Yeah, definitely a next chapter. When your company, when you decided to fold, well not fold, but to close the doors, metaphorical doors of your company, how much of your feelings, your emotions were attached to when your parents' business went out?

46:32
How much of that was like, were you someone like I would be, catastrophizing, like, there goes my relationship, I'm about to get, you know, like, did you start getting in that head space because of your- 100%, dude, 100%. I mean, it's only natural. I mean, my wife and I have been pretty, you know, vulnerable talking about this, but like, that was a really hard moment for us because, again, she, like, if you can, you know, like, a lot of this was on my wife for a long time because she was kind of like,

47:01
the face and the name behind a lot of the brands and the partners who would want to work with her came into where I want to work with April. Right. And I was kind of behind the scenes and I'm in the content sometimes, but a lot of the time it was like we want to work with April. Right. And so she very much was like, you know, shouldering a lot of the, you know, the responsibility of a lot of the brand partnerships that we were doing that we're kind of continuing to kind of fund our, my ability to pursue these other things that I just kept saying, just trust me. You know,

47:29
Trust me, like it's going to pay off like all this, all this stuff. And at that same time, remember we had like small kids. So it was like there's a lot of, you know, guilt associated with like being a weight, like, you know, we're having to do all this work. And yet we're, you know, having to, you know, put our kids in preschool and like all this, it's this balance that you as a parent, it's like you want to be there for your kids, but also you have to have, you know, provide for them and like all this stuff, too. And it was like a lot of complex emotions with that. And so when it ended, when it failed, that was so

47:58
humiliating to me personally. And you're right, it was like I let my wife down. That was the motion that I felt is like I let my wife, I let my family down, I let my wife down. Like, you know, and it was like. But it was 100% out of your control really. At the end of the day, you couldn't have predicted a global pandemic. I mean, if we're. Yes, but. Yeah, I get it. Yes, but. Yeah, like yes, but it's like.

48:24
Not that I'm like going down the extreme ownership route necessarily, but like there were there were decisions that I made that were. I did not I did not do the 14 year old Justin plan to the fullest because everything was going so great. Well, we get wrapped up in that. I mean, that's a human response. Yeah, I'm like being pulled by these like the tsunami of interest of the agency.

48:49
And so it was like, oh, yeah, spending dropping 50K on a software developer to like make this dashboard when we're pulling down these like huge six figure deals. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Hiring like a, you know, high value VP of sales who's going to bring in these much larger deals. That makes sense. Right. All these like decisions. But it's like in retrospect, like what if that doesn't happen? Like what if something happens where that doesn't make sense? I didn't do adequate planning there. You know? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like.

49:16
It's hard. I think as humans, we naturally take these things and we absorb a lot of that. Or we're the opposite, which I'm not. But you're just dismissing completely. That wasn't my fault. It was someone else's fault. And in this case, I can see how your upbringing of seeing money tied to love in a way, not really. But as a kid, you don't fill in all the gaps when you're that age. And then having something that didn't quite work out the way that you promised it would.

49:46
It's actually even more complex than that, Matt, because one of the biggest challenges of this whole thing was. My wife and I always discussed, always talked about, like from when we first started dating, like I very much wanted to be the provider, like both of us. Like I think we have somewhat of a traditional relationship in that regard is that my wife has always wanted to be a mom. Like she's always wanted to like, you know, care for our children and like, you know, that that.

50:15
you know, dynamic in our relationship was always something that we both really wanted. And so it was very surprising and unexpected that her career took off so rapidly. And there was like, she was started making so much money, way more than ever, like even I was making in my like, professional, like, you know, corporate job. And so it was like this very weird thing where it was like, she liked it, obviously, she loved it. But it was like, it was flip flop.

50:45
It was like she was the breadwinner. She I was obviously supporting behind the scenes, but like it wasn't me. I wasn't the I wasn't the thing. And so that that was a really challenging dynamic for a long time because it was like, well, this is the way that our family's driving income. Like we just got to keep going and do this thing. But I was all part of the me trying to do all these other like things to diversify. The income was an attempt to read, to write the balance of like the dynamic in our relationship that we both really wanted. And so

51:15
That was why also the agency crumbling was so humiliating to me, because it was like this attempt that I'm trying to like be the provider and be the breadwinner. The thing that we've been trying to like do in our relationship for the last 15 years that, you know, or 10 years at that time is like, that's it's over. That's done with. And so it was like it was there was all these like layers of like complexity to to why it was so challenging.

51:39
When you were in those ashes, was there ever a part of you that was like, screw it, I'm going back to the nine to five, screw this entrepreneurial route? Yeah, I mean, it was it was conversations that my wife and I had, like, you know, very regularly. It was like, OK, well, there may be a point at which I need to go back and like go back and get a nine to five and all this stuff, too. But not giving up, not in a sense of giving up, but rather just to like fill a gap of some sort. The tough. So. I would say that the saving grace.

52:10
had this not happened. So like we're so fortunate in that the year of the pandemic was actually one of our best years, surprisingly, as a for our personal stuff. Because what happened was that marketers, the Olympics got canceled. There was all this money is advertising money that had to be rerouted. It had to be.

52:36
I don't know if you remember this, but all the marketing campaigns around that time were the new normal. The new normal. It's like, we're all at home and all this stuff. And so, man, the partnerships that we've secured during 2020 and 2021 was insane. And so financially, we were actually, we were okay. We were fine. Even though we lost the income from the agency, it was bolstered by the partnerships that we were doing personally. And so...

53:05
I was never at a point where I was like, I got to go get a job because things were still OK. But then you were able to. I mean, it kind of sounds like that that year gave you the space to kind of find your your new your new zone. Like it was almost like exactly maybe you had to burn it down to to start up this new thing. Do you see it in that way at all? Like this? I 100 percent do. And like my wife is so amazing because she has always been. Yeah, things were hard, like just as any relationship, as any marriage, you know, things are

53:34
challenging. You have little kids, you have professional aspirations, you know, finding yourself as an individual after being a parent, you know, it's like, there's all these complex phases that you go through after becoming a parent. But like my wife has always been my number one supporter and number one believer in me. I'm so fortunate in that. And, you know, she has always like, you know, if I say like, I think this is going to work, even though all these other crazy things didn't work in the past, she's always like,

54:02
Okay, I believe in you. Like I'm gonna give you the space and the support to try to make that happen. And so it was a slog. Like, you know, for the first year, I wasn't making any money. Like I, you couldn't pay me, literally. I didn't have a course, I didn't have coaching, I didn't have anything. But I was like, I wanna lay the foundation. I'm gonna like illustrate to people how I can serve them with this education around sponsorships. And so, yeah, it was like a good year before I monetized it at all. And so it was like, again, like a lot of that was

54:32
just due to my wife being always in my corner. Well, and it just kind of goes to true to form for you. It sounds that you had to put in the legwork. You had to do the report so that you could launch and do it right, because it sounds like you want to do things right. You don't want to do things ad hoc or... Well, you know, it's so funny because I remember there distinctly, there was this time in my life where I would just try to think of ideas.

54:58
like ideas where I could start a business or ideas where I could. There was a time in your life or not, like every day. Not no, like I don't I'm not. I don't do that anymore. No, because I because I found my life's mission. I found my life's purpose. I really wanted the guy or whatever. Right. But there was a time when I was younger that that was all I thought about. And the funniest part about it was that like the thing that ultimately became my life's purpose.

55:24
was a series of failures, right? It was a series of like this very circuitous path of like, I never would have been able to have the perspective of, you know, what it's like on the other side, had I not run the agency. I never would have had the experience had we not grown the YouTube channel. I never would have had the experience of like, how to have the confidence to do this.

55:46
had I not quit my nine to five job and dealt with all the blowback from our family and friends and support network of that decision. And so it was like a lot of my confidence to start this business came from this kind of litany of false starts throughout my life. And I think that sometimes is how it is. It's like life happens when you're making plans. Yeah. No, I think we hear it a lot and it sucks, but I think we learn a lot from.

56:14
mistakes and from failures or, or tragedy, right? I feel like I'm this version of me because my mom was killed in an accident. Like I would not be me had that not happened to me. And, and the 20 years of terrible grief journey that I sucked at, you know, like, had I not done all that, I wouldn't be this version of me. And so I kind of look back at that, look back at that with some level of like gratefulness in a weird.

56:41
way hard to say that out loud. And I can understand how you probably now look back at some of those things that you did and go, okay, well, that that served a lesson for me. Or because I did it that way, and it didn't quite work out. Maybe I won't do it again that way. Maybe I can do it this way. And this is the way that it's going to work out. So, I mean, I think that's a perfect lesson for for so many of us to realize that, you know, the journey is long. And it might not be the same journey the entire time. In your case, it's always been this like,

57:11
I know I gotta do this side hustle. I know I gotta do something that fuels your passion. But I love that you've kind of uncovered this also, like helping others is kind of serving some of the childhood thoughts that you had back then too. So, you know, super inspired by your journey and understanding that it's gonna be bumpy. It's not all perfect. Yeah. And I mean, I think one of the other parts of this is that like...

57:37
I'm very self aware now of what it is that lights me up because before I very much was intoxicated by the end of the rainbow. I was like, oh, the sale of the agency or the check money that I, yeah, the check mark of when I get there. And what I ultimately realized when I think back.

58:00
nostalgically around kind of the good years of running the agency and or even the good years of starting up our YouTube channels and all that stuff. The things that I literally immediately think of are the moments where we were squarely in the messy middle. It was like the, I remember there's this funny anecdote where it's like, the reason that I wear an eye mask to bed now is because there was a time where I still had my job and my wife had quit to focus on.

58:29
YouTube where she would stay up till two, three o'clock in the morning every night, hustling, commenting every single comment on the videos, direct messaging people like, Hey, let's, you know, let's collaborate like all this stuff too. And she had the light on and I had to go to work in the morning. And so I kept, I started wearing an eye mask. I'm like, those are the memories that I think about like grow growing this thing. And so it's like, I've been so present of mind while I've been building creator wizard, because it's like, I know that

58:58
exactly where I'm at right now in this moment talking to you and doing the things that I'm doing right now. This is what I'm going to remember in 10 years or 15 years or whatever. I'm not going to remember whether there's, you know, oh, if there's some sort of like, you know, flag or milestone or acquisition, some big financial outcome. I'm not going to completely forget about that. I'm going to remember the people, the creator that's in my DM right now saying they just got their very first brand partnership. That's what I'm going to remember.

59:25
You know, and it's like, I think remembering for anyone listening or watching, it's like, what is that moment for you? Is there, is there a moment where you're like, can you be self-aware of the things that light you up in this moment rather than always thinking about the next step or like, you know, I had this problem for a long time where I was hard for me to be present of mind with around my family or my kids, because I was always thinking about, oh, the work I got to do with the person I got to get back to or whatever. And it was very hard for me to be present in the moment. But like, if you're able to just like, like be

59:55
be completely still and present of mind in that moment, regardless of what it is, a personal, something in your personal life or in your business life or whatever, and realize like, this is the thing that I'm gonna remember, this moment right now, this is the most important thing and I need to focus on it. Yeah, no, it, being present is really hard. Yeah. But once you figure out the value of it, I think there's no stopping it, right? If you could go back to Justin sitting in front of that eBay thing, like,

01:00:23
20 seconds before it ended or maybe an hour before it ended when you were kind of like, oh gosh, what's going to happen? Is this actually going to work or all my plans actually going to come through? Is there anything that this version of you would want to say to that anxious young man? What a fantastic question, first of all. Um.

01:00:48
I think at that time in my life, every major decision that carried risk felt like life or death. It was like, if this doesn't work, I don't know what I'm gonna do next. Like that, it felt so, I think because the stakes felt so much higher back then, because I still felt as though I needed to prove myself to my, number one, to myself, and number two, to everyone in my life, like friends, family, et cetera, peers.

01:01:17
And I think probably what I would, I would reach back through time and put my hand on the shoulder of Justin from 30 seconds before the auction listed, it was, it would be that if you look at the entire trajectory of the next 20 years of your life, this is going to be a super, super minor blip of your life generally. But at the time it was impossible to have that perspective that like this is going to be, regardless of what happens, it could have, the auction could have ended and it was

01:01:46
At $2,800, I don't make any money. In fact, I probably lose a little bit of money. That would have felt like the end of the world to me at that time. Obviously, it didn't happen like that. But there were a lot of moments where that did happen. We could equally sit here and talk about other listings that I did where I tried to flip it and I lost money. So there definitely were stories like that where I felt really humiliated and bummed and all this stuff. I remember buying a piece of art that turned out to be fraudulent.

01:02:11
I wasn't the artist that I thought it was, and I lost a bunch of money and all this stuff. So there were definitely moments like that. And they felt super, super embarrassing at that time. But like, you know, if I could know what I know now that like, okay, this is just part of your formative years of becoming mature and responsible and a business person and entrepreneur, just strap in. It feels like you have somewhat shifted also in the way that you tell your story. So much of your early life was really chasing that dollar.

01:02:40
And now it's like chasing these connections, these like relationships, the money will come and if you're doing what's serving your heart right and like the why and connecting, all the rest of it's gonna come because you've already done that plan. So now it's like, Justin, pay attention to the heart of people, pay attention to their lives and not what you can get from them because you'll have enough money to do what you wanna do and have a successful life according to younger.

01:03:09
Justin. So, you know, I see that at least. I don't know if that's true for you inside, but I can see that you seemingly care a lot about those connections and those relationships. I mean, it's everything. It's all I care about, but I want to give one caveat to that, which is that it's very easy. Yeah. No, no. It's see, I think I can predict what people listening or watching are thinking right now. They're like, okay, Justin, it's easy.

01:03:37
for you to be so service minded when you've had an awesome career and made a ton of money. It's easy to be like, it's like the founder of a startup who cashes out for a billion dollars or $500 million. And now they're a philanthropist. Now they have this mission to want to save the world and all this stuff too. So it's like the skeptic could say, why did you have to have this big financial outcome to now be service minded and all this stuff too? And

01:04:05
My answer to that is like, I 100% agree with that. Like that is an accurate thing because it's a luxury right now to be able to have this mindset where it's like, I'm going to serve people. I don't really care about the money. And it's like this weird thing because it's like, you're right. Like that very people have told me that's one of the reasons why I wanted to hire you. Because it never felt like a hard sales pitch. It was always like, I was always like, in fact, like I actually just did a live webinar two hours ago.

01:04:35
for my program, someone was like, how quickly can I get results? Like I think I can do this. I know I'm going to put in the work and all this stuff too, but I'm going to have to borrow from my rent money to actually join. And I said, do not join. I said, if you're in this position, I don't want, like, I want you to be in a solid financial position where your baseline mean, you know, like you, this is not the right time to like join this. And they were like, thank you so much. That's super honest. And I appreciate that. Like, and so it's like, I can say that it like

01:05:03
with a hundred percent of my chest because like, that's how I feel. Like I don't want, I'm never going to like pressure people into doing this. And so like it is strangely like through a roundabout way, I've had so much success because I haven't needed it, right? I haven't needed the money. And I approach it from like, I'm just going to give away everything for free basically. And if you need more detailed support, sure, you can hire me like join my courses, coaching, whatever. And so, but, but I, I, I totally acknowledge that that

01:05:31
skepticism that like, okay, it's easy for me to think that now. Now that I'm at this point in my life, it really is, I do feel very blessed that I can have that mindset. Yeah, I mean, I see how some people might think that but you also need I think there's a level for all of us as humans, we have to hit something where we can feel successful enough in our own space or whatever our goals were, so that we can give back. I don't think you know, I

01:05:57
You have to be self-serving at some point in your life to get to a place where you can help others. Because if you're not helping yourself, you're not gonna be fully equipped to help the other people. So if you hadn't found these successes, if you hadn't failed a couple times and found something else, you probably wouldn't wanna help these people as much because you didn't learn as much, you know? And so I think that's just part of the journey. And I hope that people listening aren't like, well, you know, he was a jerk before, but now he's nice. And you know, like what all these, it's not really about that, but.

01:06:25
I appreciate what you said. I understand that. And I think there are some people that feel that. But I am inspired by you, your journey, what you do. I love seeing things come across my feet and go, maybe someday. But I just thank you for taking the time to share your story, to have a little uncovering of something maybe you hadn't thought of before. Thank you for being part of this. Of course. If I could bookend this conversation with a

01:06:52
something that resonated with me. This happened just yesterday. I was listening to Amy Porterfield's podcast. One of my people, I really am inspired. She's kind of one of the OGs of kind of the online marketing space. And she was telling a story of something, you know, really challenging that happened to her recently. And she gave this analogy and she said like, you guys know that like, when I share stories of things that didn't go so well in my life or my business,

01:07:21
I prefer to share the scars, not the scabs. Because the scabs are still raw. They're still kind of oozy, and I'm still kind of going through it. And I prefer to share the scars because that means that it's fully healed emotionally. And I feel as though I'm in a place now where I can share, and I have lessons now, to share for you. And that really resonated with me because it was like,

01:07:50
Sometimes I think in life, it's hard for us to, when we're in the middle of something and it's still very raw and so very emotional, it's really hard for us to talk about it and really hard for us to articulate what we're really going through. And it's like, you can't even envision like, I can't help anyone right now because I can need to help myself, you know? And, and so I think just like giving that permission that it's like, at some point, you know, hopefully they'll come a time in your life where you feel as though you'll feel comfortable to share.

01:08:18
a potentially a painful lesson or something that happened to you in your life. And so that whole description of this, I think that that like really resonated with me because it was like I'm at now at a point in my life, there was a point where I could not talk about the, the agency thing. Like I was so demoralized, crushed, I was embarrassed, like, I just couldn't do it. And so it's like, the moment the moment for me was when I hit publish on a YouTube video talking about the failure.

01:08:46
The thumbnail was literally, it says like negative 100K. I remember, and I'm just looking like this on the thumbnail and I told the story, I told it all. And that was the emotional release for me. And that really marked an inflection point of me being comfortable talking about this big failure in public. And so my sincere hope is for everyone watching or listening that whatever that moment is in your life, whatever the life shift is for you, that there will be a time that you'll feel at peace discussing it. Talking about it is so valuable.

01:09:15
I never knew that I would be talking about my dead mother every single week on the show, but there's so much healing in it. And so I love that. I love the scar analogy, even though I have a broken finger right now and it kind of makes me a little bit nauseous with that. But thank you for that. If people wanna like learn more about what you offer and how to get in your orbit, what's the best place for them to like find you and follow you and where do you recommend?

01:09:40
Yeah, so I have a completely free newsletter. It's creatorwizard.com slash join. Every week I send out articles and videos and stuff like this. If potentially you are a creator or you're interested in being a creator, I talk about a lot of the mindset pieces. I even send you paid sponsorship opportunities if you actually already have an audience and you're trying to monetize it. So yeah, creatorwizard.com slash join. Yeah, we'll definitely keep that link there. You can and probably has.

01:10:07
I think that has links to your socials and stuff like that to follow you. So join his email newsletter. I'm on there. Sometimes I delete them because I'm like, that doesn't relate to me and it makes me sad, but sometimes it's really good. Sometimes I respond when you have a question in there. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for taking this time today. And I know you're very, very busy. So I'm sorry we went over a little on time, but thank you. No, this is great. Thanks again, Matt. Yeah. And if you're listening and

01:10:34
like watching this or you're, I always say listening because I'm podcast first, but then there's the video. So if you're doing one of those things and you found something that Justin said really interesting, please share this with a friend or someone that you think might resonate with his story and be so grateful as an indie podcaster over here. So thanks again and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

01:11:04
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com