Episode 113 – Dave Stewart

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Automated Transcription

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Dave Stewart 0:00
And I think that the more people with the wet fly swing that I get into fly fishing, the more people will learn about conservation. And also now with the outdoors, online podcasts, which is focused for fly fishing companies and outdoor brands, the more of those companies that I help become successful, the more they will also teach and bring more people into it. So I’m a big fan. I’m not worried about bringing more people and I’m kind of the, you know, rising tide lifts all ships, you know, and that goes with everything I do. You know, like, I want more podcasts out there. I want more fly fishing, but I’m not worried about competition, you know what I mean? So, for me, it really comes down to that overarching conservation. I don’t even talk about it that much on the podcast, which is kind of funny, but that’s where I’m coming from. I’m always thinking about that.

Richard Matthews 0:44
3-2-1.

Hello and welcome back to The Heroe Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I’m live on the line today with Dave Stewart. Dave, are you there?

Dave Stewart 1:45
Yep, yep, I’m here.

Richard Matthews 1:46
Awesome. And for those of you who’ve been following along with our story, we are still stuck in Kissimmee under our whole Coronavirus. Exciting times we’re living in Dave, where are you calling in from?

Dave Stewart 1:56
Portland, Oregon.

Richard Matthews 1:56
Awesome. And I know Portland’s been hit kind a hard. Hopefully you and your family are safe and doing well out there. So, what I want to do real quick for our listeners who haven’t heard of you before, is do go through your introduction here real quick and then we’ll get into and start talking about your story. So Dave says after having his second child, you quickly realized that you needed more income to support your family. You found online business through a guy named Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income podcast really good guy. I mean instantly fell in love with Pat style and online business. You created your first affiliate website soon thereafter, met an amazing mentor and made your first dollar online. And you found Amazon FBA and was off to the races creating two new brands in the e commerce space eventually moved away from those brands and e commerce to focus on your passion which is fly fishing and podcasting. So in 2017, you brought together the Wet Fly Swing Podcast and the rest is history. Podcast has gone on to become one of the largest fly fishing podcasts, teaching fly Fishers and brands to learn more about fly fishing in the history of the sport each week, we interview new experts in the space to understand what makes them tick and provide tips for your listeners. So with that sort of introduction, what is it that you’re known for now, I guess these tell us a little bit about your your business and what it is that you would do and serve and provide like your product and service, that kind of thing. How do you? What are you known for?

Dave Stewart 3:22
So I think it definitely the Wet Fly Swing is the longer running podcast that’s been going since 2017. And every week, like you mentioned, I have a different expert on so definitely, that’s the biggest thing I’m known for in the podcasting and fly fishing space. I’ve been able to through my networking and connecting with guests and people over the last three plus years. I’ve built a lot of affiliate relationships with companies, I have sponsors for the show, and now I have a travel company that I’m working with another person on where we’re building that out, which is kind of a double double thing where I get to do some traveling and also make some some money through that. That business as well. So that’s kind of the three tiers of what I have gone with the Wet Fly Swing. And after getting into you know that I just realized, you know, online marketing has always been kind of my other passion, right? Fly Fishing is by first — that I’ve had my whole life. And then the online marketing is that second piece, so I started the Outdoors Online Marketing Podcast is my new podcast that I started earlier this year. And in that one, it’s similarly I interview a new expert each week. So I’ve had some gurus were focused on podcasting right now. So I’ve had the first 20 episodes are all podcasting related. And it’s just been great. I’m trying to teach and serve more again, it’s for outdoor companies and fly fishing businesses teaching them how to build their brands online. So that’s, that’s where I’m at.

Richard Matthews 4:43
That’s really awesome. Yeah, we actually the the big thing that we talked about, in our company is building heroic brands. And so like working with companies like what you’re talking about, and helping them build their whole, you know, heroic brand and how they get into podcasting and actually providing services for that. So anyways, so It sounds like we had some interesting commonalities there. So I’m curious just because I am in sort of, you know, as you know, I travel full time we do a lot of adventuring. So the whole outdoor company fly fishing, that kind of stuff is a is kind of near and dear to my heart. So how did you make that sort of decision that you wanted to become a name, so to speak, in fly fishing of all things?

Dave Stewart 5:26
Yeah. That I mean, that’s, it’s been, here’s what happened was, you know, like I said, you read the bio, I was in the FBA world. And that was, you know, that was profitable and fun, but it was kind of crazy. And I just, I was listening to podcasts, business podcasts all the time. I was kind of addicted to I still say I’m still addicted to podcasting. I was listening to Pat Flynn. I was listed all these people John Lee Dumas, son, and I just said, you know, back in 2015, I said, You know what, in two years, I’m gonna have my own podcast. I had no idea what it was going to be about. But I said I made that goal. And, and you know, what, literally two years later In the end of 2017, I, you know, I was like, You know what, I’ve got this fly fishing brand going. I love fly fishing, why not try fly fishing? Let’s see if I start a podcast and that and that’s what I did. And it you know, obviously, you know, podcasting doesn’t really take off necessarily like a hockey stick, but it has been growing steadily for the last three years. And it’s my passion. And that’s the bottom line. I’m basically digging into my passion. The cool thing about fly fishing is a lot of the companies are really conservation minded and environmentally focused. So anytime I’m helping companies and people in fly fishing, I feel like I’m also helping the environment and kind of creating a better world so so that’s why I do it.

Richard Matthews 6:36
yeah, it’s got got some ripple effects as well. And fly fishing is a very, it’s a very nice thing, right? It’s not a big general it’s like, you know, people who are in fly fishing or into fly fishing. So that’s a cool thing. I wouldn’t even have imagined there was enough experts in fly fishing that you could have a new one on every week. So it’s impressive to me.

Dave Stewart 6:57
I just had last week. All right, actually, I guess I posted this one week, and women aren’t necessarily my target audience. You know, I have more a lot more men in my audience but I did an episode on the history of women in fly fishing. You know, I have two little girls and I’m really focused on helping women, you know, get into and I just love it. We’ve talked about for like, 400 years, a little bit of a history write a brief history of limited fly fishing, so I’ve covered everything but yeah, it’s no problem getting guests I’ve got, I’ve got probably 50 people that are queued up, you know, that are, you know, kind of waiting for the next episode. So, so yeah, it’s a small niche. And that’s, you know, like Pat Flynn. You’ve heard of Pat. I mean, his famous quote is the riches the riches are in the niches.

Richard Matthews 7:41
And fly fishing school. How old are your daughters? You know, my asking I got I got a whole pile of daughters myself. I got three of them.

Dave Stewart 7:46
Oh, cool.

Richard Matthews 7:46
Yeah, they’re six and eight. Yeah, so I have six three and one four daughters and I have a 10 year old boy. I haven’t gotten any of my daughters into wanting to fish yet. My son likes to fish but my daughter’s not yet. They’re more into ponies and mermaids.

Dave Stewart 7:59
Exactly. Mine too. They’re slowly getting into the fishing.

Richard Matthews 8:04
I have. I did. I did however, get my oldest daughter to go to the range with me the other day and fire handgun for the first time.

Dave Stewart 8:12
Oh wow.

Richard Matthews 8:12
That was super cool.

Dave Stewart 8:13
Holy cow. What kind of gun?

Richard Matthews 8:16
She was, I bought an M&P Shield EZ, which is designed for older people who have like hand problems like arthritis or for young children to learn how to handle a firearm. So we’ve been teaching them firearm safety and stuff like that. And I was just, I was just excited that she wanted to do something that wasn’t –

Dave Stewart 8:33
That’s so cool.

Richard Matthews 8:34
– Ponies and whatnot.

Dave Stewart 8:36
Well, my my daughters are a little bit you know, they’re pretty outdoor-oriented. They do love the ponies too. But my eight year old last year, I guess she said, “You know what, I want to go hunting.” I do a little bit of deer hunting. And she said, “I want to go hunting with you.” So she’s all excited. So I’m taking her up deer hunting for the first time this year. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Richard Matthews 8:53
Yeah, so so just out of curiosity in your family when you catch the fish who does the gutting of the fish?

Dave Stewart 8:59
Usually me.

Richard Matthews 9:02
The reason I asked that is because it’s in our family. It’s funny, I’m not a huge fan of getting fish. Like I don’t mind doing it, right. But my wife thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world. Like literally, she thinks it’s fantastic. So she’s like, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t care to fish. If you know, you paid her money to do it, she wouldn’t want to fish. But after you get the fish, gutting them and taking all the bits apart, she like she gives kids all around the campgrounds we go to like biology lessons on what their insides are and what they’re doing and how they work. And –

Dave Stewart 9:28
Nice.

Richard Matthews 9:29
The health status of the fish and whatnot. And I’m like, Yes, that’s crazy. You don’t like it? You know, I get out of getting fish then I just get –

Dave Stewart 9:35
Exactly. Exactly. Nice work.

Richard Matthews 9:39
Yeah, so that’s how it goes down in our house. So what I want to talk to you about next then is your origin story. Right? So just like every good comic book hero has an origin story. So the thing that made them into the hero they are today, we want to hear your story. Were you born hero were you bit by a radioactive spider that turned you on to business. Or maybe you start in a job and eventually move into becoming an entrepreneur. Just want to sort of know where came from and how you got to where you are now?

Dave Stewart 10:02
Yeah. So I mean, the story is I kind of was was bitten a little bit I didn’t know the track I was going to take and, you know, like you said, in, you know, 2014 was when I first I didn’t even know anything about online business, right. I knew nothing about it didn’t have an idea. But when my you know, my daughter, my first daughter will actually I guess it was technically it’s my second daughter I had, you know, so that was 2012 2014. But I realized, wow, okay, two kids are coming. And you probably know this just as well, right? There’s some expenses there with with kids. And it was like, Okay, I gotta find a way to make some extra income here. And I just, I can’t remember how it happened. But Pat Flynn came across Smart Passive Income, who’s probably you know, he’s probably influenced more people than anybody online. And I just started following his stuff. And not long after I started, I found another mentor who literally he walked me through. It was unbelievable. He didn’t charge me any money. It was out of the goodness of his heart. He already had niche websites up you know? These tiny little which now niche websites are kind of a weird a weird word, you know, are sort of thing but yeah, he helped me create this website, which is still making some income today. You know, it’s been hit by some of the Google updates and things like that. But um, so that just got me into the the market I realized, okay, you can make money here. And that was the first year and I got into, you know, a number of different groups, other communities and learning about it and in the Amazon, Fulfilled by Amazon, right, FBA was the next thing and I can, I think it was maybe I can try and think who it was, it wasn’t Pat Flynn, but it was somebody else where I started learning about that. And I launched a product in the outdoor space as well, because that’s kind of always been my passion. And I was doing that for two years making over six figures in selling these products on the side, online, mostly through Amazon. But it was just pretty ugly. You know, I don’t know if you know much about Amazon, but it’s pretty cutthroat. It’s, I mean, I had people take over my list.

Richard Matthews 11:59
… products and –

Dave Stewart 12:02
It’s nuts. It’s not so I kind of it was just like, oh man, it was just it was kind of cutthroat really to be honest and it wasn’t it got to a point where it wasn’t that fun and I just you know I made a pivot and I think it feels like about every two years I make a pivot you know I’m still stuck with you know my focus and I just kind of double down on the fly fishing I had started that blog in 2015 teaching you know, fly fishing but the podcast was just where it all I brought it all together. You know, I had that love I was kind of addicted to podcasting and I started up and it just, it’s way more success than I ever thought. I mean, I know Joe Rogan right I’m not gonna I’m not selling this thing for 100 million dollars but you know, the fact that I have you know, thousands of people you know, each week listening to these fly fishing these niche fly fishing episodes, right it’s just shows you the power and, and that’s why I’m into now teaching podcasting, doing some coaching and services there that’s kind of the you know, kind of this the next side thing that I’ve been doing so, so yeah, it’s been fun. It’s been –

Richard Matthews 13:04
Really awesome.

Dave Stewart 13:04
Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun.

Richard Matthews 13:06
I know, I, we’ve done the FBA thing as well. I had a supplement line.

Dave Stewart 13:10
Oh, cool.

Richard Matthews 13:11
It’s actually still they’re still selling a little bit. So I’ve been a part of the whole thing. And actually one of my clients we’ve been doing Amazon work together since 2014. And brought them $4,000 a month in sales to I think they’re doing currently about $180,000 a month in sales. So totally get the cutthroat thing there. That is a it’s hardcore. But our biggest win and this might actually be a useful piece of information for you with your podcasts is that Amazon becomes a lot less cutthroat when you own the audience. when you own the relationship. So if you come to Amazon as a sales platform with your own audience, right from people like your from your podcast, you’re like, hey, we’ve got a, you know, a custom branded product that we put together here. It changes the game a lot, because you’re not competing as much with the rest of the Amazon ecosystem, you’re just using their economies of scale to make your business more profitable.

Dave Stewart 14:06
That’s a great point. Obviously Amazon is still where everybody you know, goes to, you know, to check things out and they have Yeah, you can’t you can’t leave Amazon but that is a good good tip for sure.

Richard Matthews 14:18
Yeah. So when it when it comes to like, getting into the picking a niche, so to speak, getting into is one of the things that like I struggled with for the longest time, right? And hearing out, hey, what it is that I do and how I do it, and how I help people. And I’ve only just in the last few years really gotten solid in my own business about who I work for and what you know, like what I do, and having it not be like I do everything for everyone. Which is a terrible place to be. You want to speak on that for just a little bit and how you how you got into fly fishing, particularly out of the whole outdoor space and like sort of how that process has gone for you.

Dave Stewart 14:56
Yeah, and I will and I’ve probably, John, I don’t know if you know john Lee Dumas. But he’s the Entrepreneurs on Fire yeah so I interviewed him on my show on outdoorsonline.co Episode Four he was on and he loves me because I’ve mentioned his name so many times you know he’s been a big mentor for me as well but we talked a little bit about niching down and and I just love it because he put it so simply. And what he said was, here’s how you know you’re in the right niche if you if you niche down so far because you obviously want to niche down he said, If you niche down you look around and there’s literally nobody else in your niche. Then it’s like okay, I’m niche down far enough I know I’m you know, this is this is great. Or if you niche down far enough, and you look around you realize everybody around you in that niche, you can smoke them, right, you could smoke the competition. So that’s what he said. So he’s really focused on you know, niching down as far as you can, because you can always you know, you can always want you to do down there, you’ve got this small group and then you grow out of that. So I always like to put that up front and that’s that’s kind of what I’ve done. You know, the fly fishing I started with a focus not on all Fly Fishing but a focus on steelhead fly fishing. Right? So steelhead the very, you know, Northwest focus just in a certain part of the country and so I grew that audience and I had a lot of steel at Season One was all steelhead guests, right? And I became known as the steelhead person because I go Do you want to learn about steelhead go to go to Dave and then after that I started slowly getting out of the earth you know, still I still have lots of guests we’re still in northwest focus but I started adding other topics in the fly fishing and now I’ve interviewed you know, you name it right I’ve interviewed people to fish in Africa you know all around the world. So again, I think niching down that’s where you know, you they I’ve heard different you know, people put a different way but you know, you niche down at this level, this down three levels below where you think you should and that’s maybe a good place to start. So I’m not sure you know, if you look at you can take any niche for example if for an example to look at it, but for me, it was the right outdoors. And then it was fly fishing. And then it was steelhead fly fishing. I mean those were kind of niches and now if you look at my new company outdoors online, you know the marketing podcast, I’m serving, right I’m in the outdoors but I’m serving really focused on this fly fishing companies that are fly fishing companies and I’m helping them grow their fly fishing brands. So everything I talk about is you can listen to my guests I go on and we talk about “Okay, how do you serve a fly fishing guy you know, what do they need to know about blogging?” I just had a you know expert come out and talk about how to create your content strategy for your blog. And you know, we use a bunch of fly fishing examples so so that’s my take on it. I think I think you almost can’t go far enough in niching I feel like just go as far as you feel like you know, you want to go

Richard Matthews 17:40
That’s a really good point and it’s a it’s probably one of the reasons why because like our show started around the same time yours did. But the you guys have a larger audience we have for our show probably that’s a lot of that’s probably because of how niche down it is. And that makes a lot of sense for what you were building it for. Right so like a this podcast. The reason we’re doing is because we have a very particular message we’re trying to share. So I didn’t want to niche down any further than we are right as of the message that we’re sharing. But if you’re trying to build revenue and build an audience, then I think what you’re doing is incredibly smart. And it’s super helpful to to sort of see how that works in the real world for people who are like hey, I want to get into podcasting or blogging or even starting a product business right you’ve been in the product business and making a lot of stuff same that kind of thing niche down really far. You know, and same kind of experience we started a supplement company and supplement company same kind of thing right you can you release all these general supplements and it’s very difficult when we started niching down to like, Hey, we were serving. We were serving essentially the the stay at home mom, who’s like a conservative and is looking to like do like we have very specific like, Hey, this is the person that we’re trying to help. And, you know it helped grow the business a lot and it also helped inform our marketing a lot too, because we could actually talk to that particular person instead of anyone you know, because the supplements would work for anyone. Right? So yeah, that’s not the point. So it’s all it’s about the story you tell and who you’re telling it to.

Dave Stewart 19:11
Exactly.

And you knew your avatar, right. That was that was the person if you had to describe that exact person. I mean, that’s another good tip that I think, you know, if you have customers and things, things like that, you know, you can talk to them, right? I mean, you’ve got people out there. But I always I think it’s important to go out there and just talk to people, you know, you if you’ve got a podcast, who are your listeners, you know, who’s the target audience and focus on them and ask them what they need. And I’ve been doing that with this fire fishing. I’ve been doing coaching calls each week, interviewing some of these companies and asking them, you know, what’s your biggest struggle? And then I’m guiding some of the topics that I’m covering in the podcast and eventually, you know, this will be the product line down the line. You know, what is what does this fly fishing company need to learn online marketing, what’s the number one thing and I can tell you like a lot of people right it’s they’re struggling with their websites, SEO You know, all that basic stuff that a lot of people struggle with, you know, that’s what they need help us. So there’s there potentially is a product there where I could be like, okay, Dave is the guy to teach you this. So yeah, that’s how I always kind of frame.

Richard Matthews 20:12
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So my next question for you then is about your superpowers, right? So if we say every, every iconic hero has their superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius, intellect, or the ability to call down Thunder From the Sky, in the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, so to speak, it’s a skill or a set of skills that either you were born with, or you developed over time, that really energize all of your other skills, everything that you do. So this superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to help people slay their villains, so to speak, and come out on top in their own journeys. You have a superpower with that framing, what do you think it is?

Dave Stewart 20:47
Yeah. Well, I think it’s, you know, I’m not sure if it’s coming through, but I feel like it’s what we’re doing right here. I feel like my superpower is the ability to just kind of the networking, you know, however you want to put it. It’s the fact that I really enjoy. I mean, podcasting just makes sense that I’ve kind of excelled in it right because I love podcasting. I love talking like right now we’re having this conversation this is some people are gonna learn some things from it. But I mean, I bottom line I enjoy it and and i think that interpersonal thing you know, I’ve never found a person to be honest with you that I didn’t enjoy talking with, you know, talking about talking to and you know, we all have our politics, you know, I mean, we all have our politics we have all that stuff. And I typically we joke about it on this on the fly fishing show. It’s like, okay, there’s two things. If you’re a guide, if you’re a fly fishing guide, you have these people on your ship, never talk about religion, they don’t talk about politics, right? Those are the two things because, you know, it’s like you they create this thing but so i but i don’t care, right. I mean, I try to stay away from that stuff. But bottom line is I enjoy talking to everybody. I just love and I think that is my superpower that when people connect with me, they see my passion. And they see that I just love kind of having conversations and teaching people and that goes a long way and I think anybody that’s in business, you know, if you’re not doing if you’re not going to events, if you’re not networking, you know, if you’re not doing all these things, and you’re missing out big time, you know, you can’t be even an online, right online business, you have to connect with people. You can’t just sit in your little silo and think that you’re going to create a business there. So like today, for example, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of BMI. It’s a group. Yeah, you know, so I just, you know, I’ve never really, yeah, exactly. They’re there. I mean, I just learned a little bit more about them and talk to another person, I think, recently on a podcast, and they noted that it was one of the biggest ways that it grew their business. And I thought, Well, God, that makes sense. And so now after this, I’m gonna be talking to them, you know about potential opportunities, right? So that’s kind of how I do and I say, that’s definitely my super if I had to pick one thing, it’s that networking piece.

Richard Matthews 22:49
Yeah, it’s one of those things too that I have noticed and like I just before I got on this, this episode today, one of my Facebook, friends and business partners in a few different areas, had asked a question, it was like, hey, if you could go back to your 20 year old self and, and give them advice, what would you give them? Right? What would you say? And I was like, you know, the first thing that I said was your network is your most important thing. Right? And networking is not some, like marketing term that you use. It’s just a business term for building real relationships. Right. And, or building relationships in the business world. And that’s, it’s one of those things that, you know, you have to actually care about the person on the other line, you have to actually care enough to listen to their story. And, you know, to ask them cool questions and then care enough to actually listen to their answers, right, that kind of stuff. Yeah, that’s, there’s no, there’s no secret to that. Right. That’s, that’s just that’s how it’s how business has always been built. So it’s always gonna be built. And it’s, I don’t know, it’s such a core aspect of who we are as human beings, right. I tell people all the time on this show that we’re a storyboard people, right? And we judge the depth of our relationships by how much of the other person Story, you know, or have been a part of actly.

Dave Stewart 24:04
Exactly. Yeah. And in your, I mean, this is a good example, right? We’re talking here you have an interest in fly fishing. I just happened to have a second podcast. It’s all about fly fishing. You know, now we’ve got this a secondary thing right where we’re connecting so I totally agree.

Richard Matthews 24:19
Yeah, yeah. And and I’m, I’m with you on the whole the whole thing that the I break all the rules and whole politics and religions thing on our show you occasionally because we bring cool people on we will discuss politics or religion if they come up in conversation. And I’m not exactly, you know, hiding the fact that I like our country.

Oh, yeah.

Dave Stewart 24:37
Well, we all we all said.

I just watched the I’ve watched the Ken Burns the Civil War documentary just last week. You know what I mean? It’s like our country has been through a lot of ups and downs. You know what I mean? And I think the thing that ties our country together is that I think most of us love our country, right? We love what it’s about. And I think if you don’t if you don’t at least love that then, you know, you’re probably in the wrong place.

Richard Matthews 25:03
We’re seeking, we’re seeking to become more just and more free and more equal opportunity for everyone who comes here. And I think that’s a it’s a great mission. And you know, we fail and we stumbled, but we’re working to make that better. And I think that’s a cool, it’s a cool thing. It’s a cool experiment to be a part of, I don’t want to see that experiment die. So –

Dave Stewart 25:21
No, exactly.

Richard Matthews 25:23
That’s where I’m at on that. So, the flip side, then of your superpower, is your fatal flaw. Right? So you know, every Superman has his kryptonite, everyone, Wonder Woman, you know, if they can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, something that you’ve struggled with maybe it’s perfectionism, it’s something I struggled with that keeps you from shipping, or a lack of self care means you let your clients walk all over you. Or maybe it’s something like being a visionary, but lacking the discipline to implement, which are all things that I’ve struggled with. But more important than the flaw is its rectification right? How did you fix it? How did you work? To overcome that flaw so you can continue to grow in your business and hopefully, someone in our audience might be able to learn from your experience in that.

Dave Stewart 26:06
Yeah, it’s for sure. I mean, there’s a lot I’ll everything you just said. I will say, yeah, it did. Oh, you know, but it’s doing too much. You know, it’s not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s doing too much. It’s not being focused. That’s the biggest struggle that I’ve had, you know, because I get excited, you know, when I see the new shiny object, and, you know, you’ve got this new, you know, whatever it is, right. I’ve got a course just sitting there that I purchased, that I literally haven’t even taken yet. You know what I mean? These things were, you know, I just get excited. I love online marketing. I love kind of the space. I mean, I love fly fishing, and I try to do too much. So what I’ve done recently is tried to focus and I think again, I’ll get back to John Lee Dumas son, he has a really cool planner. He calls it the Freedom Journal. It doesn’t matter what it is, but I think it’s, it’s really important to focus down so I’ve been using that to focus on, you know, in Israel is in the hundred day, right you have 100 day goal, you set that goal, and then you kind of work through and every day you’re working through it. And the journal just helps you make sure you stay focused, right. So like, each day you come up and you know what you’re going to do. And there’s a good tip right there, you know, the night before, plan, plan your day know exactly what you’re going to get, get accomplished. And do that first thing before in the morning, right? don’t check your emails, don’t do anything else do that thing. So that is what I’m doing to solve that problem. And I think journaling goal setting obviously, you know, you have to do that. But the journaling is the newest thing that really I’ve been trying to do. And it’s helpful because it gets you to think also about, you know, what you appreciate, you know, your family and kind of those daily affirmations and things like that. So, so that’s where I’m at. It’s, it’s definitely doing too much. And I think I’m trying to focus is the secret.

Richard Matthews 27:52
Yeah, I have. I have a couple of thoughts on that. But I’ve really helped me with the same thing over the last, you know, 10 or 12 years that I’ve been doing this whole online business. The first one that has really helped me the longest probably was a specific, having a specific goal that I wanted in my life. That was like, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a monetary goal. It wasn’t a lifestyle goal. It was just, it was something that I promised my wife when we had kids, and I was like, hey, I want to be at home every day. Like, it’s like, that was just one thing I wanted to be able to do, right? Because most dads get to have breakfast and or dinner with their kids, but very few get to have lunch with their kids. Yeah. And I wanted that. And so whenever I was looking at things that I couldn’t do, or add or change my business, the question I always ask myself is, does this equal more lunch time with my kids or less?

Dave Stewart 28:39
That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews 28:40
And that really, it really helped, you know, cut out a lot of things in my life and even change entire business models where I’d get going building something and realizing that hey, this is gonna keep going this way. I’m going to lose lunchtime with my kids. Right? So I had to change and shift because that was the that was sort of my Canon against, you know that I was measuring everything against it. Whether I get to be at home and have lunch with my kids, and you know now, for the last three years, I’ve been traveling full time with my wife and kids, and we’ve had lunch before to cool places. So that’s a it’s been an important thing. But sort of second to that, that sort of follows in the same line of thinking is this idea that, but something we talked about on the show all the time is giving yourself permission to play. And what I mean by that is that your work does not get better, the more that you do, right. And we have this sort of mistake in thinking and I think in a lot of entrepreneurship and even in you know, the the employee community all over our country that more work equals more success. And that’s just not true. And I got myself to the point where I was working 12, 15, 16 hours a day, several years ago, and realizing that I wasn’t doing anything but spinning my wheels, I wasn’t getting anywhere. And you realize really quickly that creativity thrives when you give it restrictions. And so you know, when I was working at home and working 15 hours a day, and I was like, I have this thing to do, and I have all the time in the world to do it, because all I’m going to do is work from morning till night, forever and ever until it’s done. You can fill up all that time with doing things. And so I started being really systematic a few years ago about reducing the amount of hours I was willing to work. So the first thing I did was like, “Hey, I will only work eight hours a day, that dramatically increased my productivity during those hours. And then the next thing I did was, Hey, I’m going to take Friday off. And so I’m only going to work eight hours a day from Monday through Thursday. And you know, I need to work a couple of extra hours to keep it in there. I’ll do that. But Fridays are mine. I’m going to spend those with my wife and kids and going exploring and that kind of stuff. And eventually, you know, maybe you know, now I’m working Monday through Thursday, and instead of eight hours a day, seven hours a day and then six hours a day. And like currently in the lifestyle we live my business. I operate Monday through Thursday, four hours a day, the rest of my time I spend with my kids at entry. Stuff like that. My business is grown at least four times since I started lifting those things in terms of revenue and the size of our team and everything else that we’re doing. So anyways, I those are just some of the same. That’s amazing.

Dave Stewart 31:14
Yeah, yeah, you’re no, that’s it. That is a perfect answer. I mean, that definitely resonates for sure. Because I’m kind of in that mode, you know, where it’s, you know, you know, still doing too much. I’m starting to, you know, I’ve got a, you know, a new virtual assistant, I’m training right now trying to get things you know, because it is it is a struggle, right. You’ve got these things you love doing the like editing podcasts, right? I mean, that’s something that I actually enjoy doing. But I’ve got a you know, start passing some of this stuff off and get a lot more help. So I yeah, that resonates with that. Thank you.

Richard Matthews 31:46
Yeah, so that’s a it’s one of those things that like I struggled with for years as the whole working too much and being distracted by everything. I really just had to get sort of militant with myself about it. And what’s interesting about all of that was it it helped grow my business a lot. Exactly. And I, I think part of it has to do with just the human reaction to boundaries. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that study that they did with kids on the playground where they put them out on, you know, they had the concrete pad and they had the grass pad and there’s straight out beyond that, and they had no fences up. And when they let all the kids out with no fences, they stopped the concrete path. Right. And they wouldn’t go out onto the grass. Because it was the clear boundary that they had. And as soon as they put fences up around the grass area, the kids would use the entire area because we thrive with boundaries.

Dave Stewart 32:35
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 32:36
And if you sort of take that principle and apply it to other areas, right, so you know, I’m talking about, you know, how does, I think creativity does the same thing. It thrives when you give it boundaries, right. So everything from like, hey, you’ve got you know, I do photography, and one of the biggest boundary in photography is that little four by three box that you’re looking through, and you have to cut out the world to show to some Pacific thing and you know, everything from the work that I give to employees to the, you know, things that, you know we do with our kids, it’s always about like, hey, how can we, how can we improve the output of this by by putting, you know, boundaries in place? Right? You know, can we do the same thing and half the time, right? Can we do the same work accomplished and half the time or whatever it so you give yourself little boundaries here and there and improves the, the, either the systems of processes or whatever it is you’re working on.

Dave Stewart 33:24
Very cool. Well played.

Richard Matthews 33:26
Thank you. So, yeah. Next question for you then is your common enemy, right? So every superhero has their arch nemesis, right? It’s a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world, right? In the world of business. It takes many forms, but generally speaking, we put it in the context of your clients, right? The people that you actually serve, it’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to fight against with the people that hire you or bring you on or I guess, in your case might even just be out fishing, right? That they have to overcome so they can get better, cheaper, faster or higher degree of results. Right. What What is that thing that you’re constantly having to fight against? In your business?

Dave Stewart 34:04
Yeah, in my business? I mean, that is, that’s a good question, I guess, you know, and I have the two I do have the fly fishing. You know, at the Wet Fly Swing Podcast where I’m teaching fly fishing. And as you know, right, you you’re trying to learn fly fishing, I mean, a big struggle. I asked the same questions to those people, you know, what is your biggest struggle and on my Facebook group, you know, I have three questions that I asked when they come into the group and one of them is what’s your biggest struggle with fly fishing? What’s your biggest struggle with flight tying? And I get I’ve got a huge list of all these answers and you know, you know, casting, you know, you fly casting, right, the whole cast is a that’s a big exactly, it’s a big struggle. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of confusion there on and we do spey casting too like with a two handed rod so we also teach that so people you know, struggle with that with fly tying.

There’s very common things people struggle with, you know, tying dry flies, tying small flies. I mean, myself, I’m you know, I wear glasses. Well now because tying a little tiny, you know insect is not as easy as it used to be. So I mean, that’s the people I always think of it my struggle is the struggle of of my customer, right? What is there I think of it like the analogy of the Luke Skywalker. This is kind of a good super hero analogy. The, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi, or I guess the Yoda and the Luke Skywalker thing, right. Luke Skywalker. You know, I’m not Luke Skywalker, and this comes from this comes from chase Reeves, who’s kind of the he’s at the Fizzle dot com used to be over there teaching online marketing, but he talked about the you know, the Luke Skywalker analogy, so I’m not Luke Skywalker, right? I’m not the hero, you know that you have. This is The Hero Show. I’m not the hero of it. The hero is my customer. I’m, you know, I’m basically Yoda, right or Obi Wan, I’m helping that person get past that struggle. And that’s how I always think of it. So with the fly fishing thing, you know, the struggle is that people are struggling with casting all these things, and I’m helping them answering those questions through they listen to these experts that diagnose casting and things like that with the Outdoors Online with the marketing podcast, these companies, you know, they have struggles in, like we said, SEO, you know, how do you start a podcast, I created a 30 day start a podcast challenge, right? A real basic kind of, uh, you know, you add your email, and then each day you get a step on starting your podcast, right? And podcasting is not like rocket science. It’s, you know, anybody can do it. But so that’s one of those struggles, and I’ve been coaching some people on I’ve got a guy who has a TV show, the fly fishing show, and he wanted to start a podcast and didn’t know you know, where to start and all these questions. So, you know, he’s, he’s the Luke Skywalker, right? And I’m trying to walk him through, make it very simple. So he has a show that grows because with podcasting, it’s very easy to have a show that doesn’t grow. You know, you can’t just put your podcast on on Apple podcasts be like, Okay, I’m here. You know, let’s do my weekly show, and I’m going to be famous. You know, it doesn’t work like that. It’s hard, no matter who you are. You know, so and I will give a shout out because I’ve had a couple of really big guests on that podcast, Eric Nuzum, who wrote a book called Make Noise. It’s one of my one of my favorite podcasting books. And he’s the guy that create the was big part of the NPR podcast back in O-five when podcasting was getting going. So he knows and he teaches podcasting for like New York Times and making some big companies. You know, he talked about a lot of these things that that we’re saying here is that, you know, podcasting kind of comes down to a straightforward answer, you know, with podcasting. Are you curious about your topic? are you passionate about it? Right, you hear the passion a lot, but I think that’s the bottom line. If you’re not curious and passionate about your topic, and podcasting, then you’re probably not, you probably don’t have the right topic. So those are some of the things I try to throw out there, you know, to my people, and I’m not sure if that exactly answered the question, you know, on tap, but that’s kind of where I focus it.

Richard Matthews 37:55
Yeah, actually, I have two thoughts on that. First one. On the actually struggling with things like casting with with your your clients, I think it’s really smart one that you ask, find out what your audience struggles are and then you answer them. That’s a really smart thing. Personally, I struggle with casting as well. I’m still in that process where I’m learning how to do the whole, you know, the whole back and forth thing and actually get the flight out, like land on top of the water. Exactly. And now, I’m, I’m only getting it to land on top of the water about half the time.

Dave Stewart 38:27
Yep, yep. Well, here’s a quick tip for you just for the fly fishing. Not that we’re gonna dig into fly fishing. But for casting, you can think of the analogy, a good analogy to think about and I’ve had a bunch of people talk about casting, but you know, think of it you have a paintbrush in your hand with wet paint on it. And what you need to do is take that paint on it and you’re going to flick it up the wall without dripping any. So think about that. How do you do that? Swift, right. That’s the motion you want with your cast. Okay. So you got to have with casting if you don’t have a heart A lot of people screw up is they don’t stop. They kind of do this. You know, there’s no stop. You got to really think Be forceful, you got a boom, boom, stop, boom, stop in the back, stopping forward, you know, I mean, that’s how you get the line speed. I mean, these rods we have are super powerful. And so you can’t be afraid to really set you know, you got set that up. So just remember that if you don’t remember anything else, remember that little that analogy of the paintbrush?

Richard Matthews 39:16
It’s actually a really good analogy for that.

Dave Stewart 39:18
It is, well, you know, who created who came up with that is Lefty Kreh, who’s probably the, you know, he’s passed away now, but he’s one of the biggest people in fly fishing, you know, in the history of fly fishing. And he that’s his quote, or his analogy.

Richard Matthews 39:30
That’s really cool. And then on the the second part, which is, you know, helping the businesses and learning how to, you know, getting them started on on the things that they’re struggling with. That’s actually I think it’s really important for especially for people that are that are serving the community like that Is it just I just wanted to draw that connection that what you’re doing in both spaces is you’re finding out, hey, what’s the problem that you have? And then how can I solve it? Right? How can you come up with ways to solve that whether that’s putting together a 30 day Guide to bringing experts on to help them teach those kinds of things, is I think a lot of businesses make the mistake of like, Hey, I’m going to create a product. And then I’m going to go and try to find an audience know, for that thing. And what you’re talking about as the opposite was like, Hey, here’s a problem that our audience is already having. And how can we bring a solution to that? Right, a creative solution, that’s that. It’s a really important point that I don’t want anyone who’s listening to miss.

Dave Stewart 40:25
Exactly. That is the key. That’s that is the key point.

Richard Matthews 40:30
Yeah. So the flip side, then your common enemy is your driving force. Right? So just like Spider Man fights to save New Yorker, Batman fights save Gotham, or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your business, your mission, so to speak?

Dave Stewart 40:45
That’s awesome. I love that as a great question, because I think about this occasionally. And for me, it’s you know, I think it’d be great if I was just about teaching people about fly fishing and things like that, but really, for me, and I mentioned it earlier as the conservation piece, right. I mean, obviously, we We all need clean water.

We all need, you know, we want healthy environments to raise our kids. And the cool thing about fly fishing, there’s a ton of groups that are, you know, fly fishing you, right? You have fish, you’ve got to have clean water for these fish to survive, right? We have the Endangered Species Act, all this stuff that helps to protect the environment. And so that’s part of my big driving forces that I know that the more people I get into fly fishing, the more of those people will probably become conservation, conservation-minded just because the most of the people that are in this industry, most of the companies that are involved in a great company is Patagonia. Right Patagonia is they have pretty expensive products, but the founder

Richard Matthews 41:38
Wearing a Arc’teryx on there.

Dave Stewart 41:39
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, so that’s it. So I mean, Patagonia is an amazing company, because you know, Yvon Chouinard, you know, Chouinard came out and he’s been a champion of conservation.

And he’s built a company, a successful billion dollar company, you know, with that focus, so, you know, that’s my focus. And I think that the more people with the wet fly swing that I get into fly fishing, the more people will learn about conservation. And also now with the outdoors online podcast, which is focused for fly fishing companies and outdoor brands, the more of those companies that I help become successful, the more they will also teach and bring more people into it. So I’m a big fan. I’m not worried about bringing more people and I’m kind of the, you know, rising tide lifts all ships, you know, and that goes with everything I do. You know, like, I want more podcasts out there. I want more fly fishing, but I’m not worried about competition, you know what I mean? So, so for me, it really comes down to that overarching conservation. I don’t even talk about it that much on the podcast, which is kind of funny, but that’s where I’m coming from. I’m always thinking about that.

Richard Matthews 42:40
So one of the things that I find really interesting about that, and my wife and I were looking at it the other day, is that right now, conservation is losing more money than it’s ever lost, ever No, because of the reduction in hunting and fishing that has been happening over the last four, you know, four to 10 years or so. And it’s directly correlated, the more people you have hunting and fishing, the more money goes into conservation and the more conservation efforts get started. And and it’s interesting to me how that works. And the the whole efforts of conservation are definitely driven by the people who are out actually making use of the land and the features and stuff that we have and taking care of it and wanting to be there for the next generation.

Dave Stewart 43:27
Yep. Yeah, I think you’re right. You’re totally right. I think that is a little bit of a, you know, there’s some things we need to sort out and I think we are trying to do that. But I mean, the Endangered Species Act is a good example. Right? I mean, everybody that’s there, regardless of whether you 100 fish that’s there to protect the environment. I mean, a lot of that’s for towards water quality and things like that. But I think that we are we are going to move more towards getting away from that model where the hunters and fishermen are paying for the conservation, because I think that you know, everybody should be paying a little chunk of You know, I mean, like food Shouldn’t we all chip in to help protect fish and wildlife and natural resources? So I think, I think as we time goes on, and we’re seeing it, then I mean, species are going extinct. You know, we haven’t we haven’t stopped species from going extinct. I mean, there’s more people on the planet and in the country, you know, we still have issues. So I think that ultimately, as as those numbers, like you’re saying that the last 10 years, it’s been kind of getting out of whack as that gets worse, I think we will find ways to go to the general public and get money from them, or more money, you know what I mean? I think that’s really the only solution.

Richard Matthews 44:34
So one of the things and this is just a thought process in my on on, I have no idea if this will work or not. But one of the things that I noted when I was running my Amazon brand, was that when we attached the cause to our brand, our sales went up. Yeah, right. So we were running a program, we were selling a supplement supplements and so we were working with a nonprofit organization, that gives vitamin A to children all over the world leading cause of death in children all over the world is vitamin A deficiency. And it costs approximately a quarter to give the child enough vitamin A to fight off the diseases that kill them. So, literally, it takes a quarter to save a kid’s life for vitamin deficiency. And so we ran a program called buy a bottle, save a life. And for every bottle that we sold, we donated a quarter to this company. And, you know, that increased our sales, and I’ve seen a lot of companies and that are doing similar things. Right. And it’s interesting because it you know, it comes from a place of wanting to help, but it also actually helps grow your business. So there’s like, there’s good things. It’s a win win situation. And I had someone on my podcast couple months ago is talking about this idea of caused-based capitalism. Right. And I think that we’re going to see more and more of that, where companies like Arc’teryx, or Patagonia And other things are starting to sort of take up the mantle. Exactly, and put the money into things that are going to help their brands grow. Right? Because if, if you’re selling fly fishing gear and all the fish go away, you’re not gonna have a fly fishing business anymore.

Dave Stewart 46:14
No, exactly. No, I think that’s a great point. And I, I do have a goal to put more. In fact, I would love to see eventually, someday, when I get to a point where the Wet Fly Swing podcast is just a literally 100% or as close as I can get to 100% of it goes back into conservation and protecting of the of the profits from that, from that business. I mean, that’s my, as I sort of transition, keep doing what on the track that I’m on. I think I think that’s where I you know, I’m going to be shooting more for that, for that sort of, you know, having a big impact and, and because, yeah, like you said, I mean, there are a lot of companies and fly fishing companies that do donate 1%, you know, to the plant had 5% conservation groups. So you see that a lot and that’s great. But what what can I do that’s, that’s, you know, even greater than it maybe has a bigger impact. And then for the marketing, obviously, yeah, that doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t hurt to have something that’s unique.

Richard Matthews 47:08
Yeah, absolutely. So I want to get into the practical portion of our show. We call this the Heroes tool belt. So just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets, like batterangs, or web slingers, or laser eyes are a big magical hammer. When talking about one or two tools that you use everyday that you couldn’t live without in your business could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to your marketing tools to your product delivery to your VA, right, something that you think is absolutely essential to getting the job done that you do? One or one or two?

Dave Stewart 47:38
So I’ll say I mean, I’ve got a ton like, you know, we I think we all do, but one that’s been on my mind just talked to the founder. He’s going to be coming on Nick, that in about a month, but it’s called Hindenburg. And it’s it’s a podcast editing software. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this one. But there’s, there’s a lot of great ones out there. I mean, just you know, GarageBand and audacity are free. You know, but I found this Hindenburg. And it’s just really simple. You know, you have to, you have to buy it. But it’s, I mean, it just makes the whole experience very smooth. And it’s just so that’s one thing that I’m hot on. And I’ve been kind of promoting that and I just, they don’t even have an affiliate program at all right now. But I still, you know, obviously, I know anybody that listens that in fact, I just had somebody that was on a podcast, and I had mentioned it to him, and he reached back out to me, he’s like, Oh, my God, this thing is amazing. Well, I love Hindenburg. So I’d throw out Hindenburg you bet we talked a lot about assistance. Freeupdotnet is a place where you can find virtual assistants I’m really hot on Freeup I’ve very smooth process. They take care of all the payments to your VA so you pretty much you can set limits.

Richard Matthews 48:48
I had the founders on.

Dave Stewart 48:50
There you go. There you go. Perfect. So I missed that one. But so just love for FreeUp, definitely. That’s great. Man. What else I you know, one thing I mean, this is just an old one, but on social media Hootsuite, which I used a long time ago and I kind of quit using it, but they’ve really upgraded some things and made it really just easier. So I’ve been using Hootsuite quite a bit. So you know, those are three I could list a whole bunch of other ones. Those are the ones that hang

Richard Matthews 49:17
Question for the Hindenburg one does it only do audio podcasts? Or does it also do editing for video podcasts?

Dave Stewart 49:22
Yeah, so that’s the thing it is. Oh, it’s audio. Yep. It’s audio only online.

Richard Matthews 49:27
Yeah. So that but yeah, it would work for our podcast because we do audio and video but yeah. Let’s see my staff uses Final Cut.

Dave Stewart 49:35
The Final Cut which is great. And I think and I will talk to Nick about this I believe they might be looking at doing some some updates there. And I know they do. They work with like Zoom and Skype and things like that. So you can record the audio into you know, I mean seamlessly but they don’t actually have an audio platform, but I’ll make they’ll add that to my podcast when I when I interviewed Nick for sure.

Richard Matthews 49:59
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So just a thought for you. You mentioned free up the founders of free up they’ve since sold the company so it’s running on its on its own, oh, a new company called Outsource School that they actually have some really good programs and stuff on training your VA s and getting you know documentation and SOPs and everything down if you haven’t checked them out yet. That’s just my my Plug for you to check them out suite tips listen to them to check out Outsource School and again affiliate stuff for that year but there they got good stuff.

Dave Stewart 52:09
Why did they I’m just curious on selling and I mean, obviously they did a good job it was just a point where they felt like you know, the now’s the time to kind of do some new something.

Richard Matthews 52:19
If I understand correctly, they are they enjoy the process of starting and growing businesses until they get to a certain size. Yeah. And that’s that’s where their zone of genius is. It’s in getting it up and going and running to a point where it’s sellable. And then they start their game over.

Dave Stewart 52:37
Boy, this is this is what I love about podcasting. This is one of the things right at me we’re just chatting here but now I have another episode I can add to the queue. And you know, it’s just a cool thing right? It’s again it’s that whole thing where we’re connecting I probably will have those guys on my podcast down the line as well. If it works out

Richard Matthews 52:53
I’ll make an introduction for you. It’s a Nathan and Connor they’re really good guys.

Oh cool. For for what they do.

Dave Stewart 53:00
So, perfect.

Richard Matthews 53:01
Cool. Well, the next question for you then is about your own personal heroes. Right? So every hero has their mentors, right? Frodo had Gandalf Luke had Obi Wan we talked about earlier. He’s talking about his rich dad and spider man had his Uncle Ben. Right. Who were Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors for the speakers or authors, podcasters? You mentioned Pat Flynn. Yeah. However, they appeared maybe a couple years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

Dave Stewart 53:24
Yeah, that’s, I mean, I mentioned a couple of them. You know, at the start way back in 2014, when I was getting going, you know, that. I’m trying to think now the name of the website and again, it shows you how long it’s been since I’ve been disconnected from that whole kind of some of the affiliate kind of niche website stuff. But that person I ran into what he showed me early on was and Pat showed me this too, you know, he had his income report, right, this really transparency and that thing, so, but he showed me that the online business isn’t it’s not all this spammy stuff, right? Because I think some people think about online Marketing and when my online marketing is done incorrectly, it is spammy. It’s it’s crappy, like nobody likes to get spammed. But when you do it, right, you know, online business and marketing is a great thing, right? Because you’re serving people, and you’re helping people. And this guy just showed me that he came out of the goodness of his heart, and showed me how to create this whole thing for a year, he walked me through this whole process of creating niche websites. And so it just taught me right away, like, okay, there’s great people in this space. And then I ran into Pat, and, you know, Jaime Masters and John Lee, a lot of these people that I still kind of connect with, and I can always go back to pat just because he’s, he’s the guy, the first guy, the big guy that I really connected with and now he’s, you know, obviously created this this big, you know, these this podcasting Empire, you know, so I kind of go back to that as an example. You know, my, you know, my family, my dad, you know, I guess you can’t go You can’t go wrong there. My dad was a fly fishing guy. Right. So I grew up since I was a little kid. On the river, you know, right. So I wouldn’t even be here doing any of this. If it wasn’t for my dad teaching me about it. You know, and now with my kids, I’m doing the same thing, right? We’re on the route. We were just on the river this last week. And so I mean, obviously family is the most important thing. And you know, who else there’s probably a big people that are out there that that I could probably pay, but, you know, I didn’t I noted Yvon Chouinard. I mean, that whole thing on what he’s done is just, you know, inspirational, you know, I mean, think about that. He’s, regardless, everybody said, think about organic shirts, right? Everybody was like, when when they started doing that 20-30 years ago, they’re like, organic shirts. What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous. And he’s like, no, this is the right thing to do. I don’t care what anybody says, you know, we’re gonna do this. And now right, everybody has organic shirts, you know? So no, definitely the you know, a big person there. So, yeah, I think those are the people that really come to my mind, you know, kind of helped me. guide my thoughts.

Richard Matthews 56:00
So, just just a thought on the whole organic shirts thing, one thing that’s, if you ever heard that phrase Be the change you want to see in the world.

Dave Stewart 56:08
Yeah, for that. Yeah.

Richard Matthews 56:09
So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But I think a more effective method of that is to create the demand you want to see in the world. And because it’s a very entrepreneurial thing, and it like just as an example of that, right, so Patagonia and creating organic shirts, part of that is, once you create the awareness, you sort of create the demand and the demand goes up. One of the best stories I think of that is if you look at Chipotle, so Chipotle, when they started their business, their history is really, really cool and fascinating, right? They started I think, in Denver, and they were looking at wanting to bring the sustainable farming and the organic chicken and other things like that to the market, but there wasn’t any distribution for it. And they got buy-in from McDonald’s to use their distribution channels to well, their growth through that. And as they grew – they had a really good product, they their demand for organic produce and organic meats and you know, healthy raised meats went through the roof. And since they’ve had the demand, they created the demand they wanted to see in the world, right. And as they got more successful, the demand for what they have became bigger, and then the supply catches up with it, right? Because you’ve created the demand. And so Chipotle created this huge demand for the sustainable farming or the the healthy farming practices. And now you’re seeing that years later start to roll out into the availability of those types of products in Walmart, grocery stores, and grocery stores all over the world. Whereas 10 years ago you look for Chipotle, you couldn’t get a lot of that stuff because there was no demand for it. So they created a demand that they wanted to see.

Dave Stewart 57:49
Yep, that is a great example. Yeah, and I was just thinking as you’re talking I always use the I’m not sure if this is a good comparison as well. But you know the Steve Jobs right did with the Apple or the or even like Henry Ford with with the automobile. You know, I mean these people that had this idea that, you know, they just knew it was the thing.

I loved that I didn’t know that about Chipotle. That’s a great story.

Richard Matthews 58:10
Yeah, they’re worth looking into looking into their, their history one of these days I might be able to get their founder on the show, but who knows if anyone Exactly. I’d love to interview them on the show. My next question for you then is your guiding principles, right. So one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never killed his enemies, he always brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I’m talking about top one or two principles that you use regularly in the life maybe a principle you wish you’d known when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

Dave Stewart 58:41
Yeah. Well, and I love guiding this towards using a fly fishing analogy again, but I wrote a blog post a lot back in 2015, I think but it was about steelhead fly fishing and it was about what it takes with steelhead fly fishing because steelhead or they call it a fish of 1000 casts and you can literally sit out there for a day without touching fish. And I’ve talked to people that have done that for a whole season without touching this. So you got to have this. So the first thing what you have to have a steelhead fishing is you have to be passionate. And I’ve mentioned that before, but you got to have that passion. I mean, I’ve heard some people say, you know, maybe you don’t your business doesn’t have to have that. But I kind of feel like passion is a requirement. And the other big thing is persistence. Me with podcasting? I’ve done an episode every week since 2017. Right, I haven’t missed a single week. And and I think, especially with podcasting, but in business as well, you’ve got to show up, you know, you got to show up every day or whatever that is, right. You got to show up for your people because especially with online marketing, because you’re trying to build a relationship with people that you know, online. And they’ve got to know like and trust you, right, that whole thing so and sometimes, right? It takes seven touches before they’re actually going to buy your product. So again, I think it’s just so critical that they realize you’re there for them, right, you’re, you’re persistent. So those are kind of two things that I love to throw out there is I mean, I call it I’m trying to think of the other p for fly fishing because I call it the three P’s. Persistence, I’ll have to look, I’ll put a link to the blog post to find out what that is. But for me, for the business side of it, I think of passion. I think of free for the business side, I think of the persistence and passion. But let me just yeah, as you I’m going to pull this out, because it just curious.

Richard Matthews 1:00:21
Well, while you look that up the the persistence, one, I think is such a key element, right? And I tell people all the time, right? Never, ever, ever, ever give up my favorite quotes from I believe it’s Churchill. And, you know, it’s that idea that, you know, people give up right before they strike. And, you know, with our podcast, you know, we just hit 100 episodes with The Hero Show. This is going to be episode like, I don’t know, one or two, one or three or something like that. And it’s amazing to us how how quickly, the ease with which we are able to get guests to come on our show changes once you’re like, hey, we’ve had 100 episodes live because now people are like, Oh, they show up right? Technically, they’re like legitimate right most. Most podcasts, for instance, don’t make it past the first five or 10 episodes.

Dave Stewart 1:01:06
No.

Richard Matthews 1:01:07
And so you know, once you show you have staying power, because you’re showing up on a regular basis, and it’s such an important thing and everything that you’re doing, right, if you’re raising your kids show up every day, right? Building your business, show up every day, do something that pushes the ball forward, even if it’s small. And, you know, I’ve made it made a huge deal that in my business, it’s like, hey, if I can just push the ball forward a little bit today, and then I’m done. I don’t have any out anything else I have to do today other than push forward a little bit. And that, that continued progress. That persistence is really I think what pays off and growing your business.

Dave Stewart 1:01:41
Exactly. Yeah. And I found it so it’s the four Ps of successful fly fisherman just an old blog post I wrote, but so those we talked about, the other two were patience in practice, the very basic stuff, right, but with fly fishing, especially steel, you’ve got to be patient and I think you could probably apply that to business as well because it’s not going to happen overnight. And then Practice, obviously, practice, you could say that anyway, but I think, practice obviously doing what you do, but also, you know, learning, always learning, always testing, trying new things, you know, you can’t get stagnant in business otherwise, you know, that’s, that’s never a good thing. So, so yeah, what do you think? Do you think those four fit business as well as five again,

Richard Matthews 1:02:18
I think I think they all fit. And I like I like the idea of practice too, right. And you know, it’s one of those things that like, we, there’s certain skills that you may or may not be good at, but you have to be good at regardless. So things like we talked about networking and communication and you know, getting on and doing like interviews like this.

Dave Stewart 1:02:32
Exactly.

Richard Matthews 1:02:33
Being able to handle that in your business is such an important skill. And I remember, I remember realizing that when I was a young kid, so I was I was probably in 10th or 11th grade. I was an introvert as a kid, like, didn’t like talking to people and I didn’t want to have interactions and relationships with people. But I remember really specifically I was in a interreligious like lunch, lunch room that we got together once a week and and talk about about some things, and the guy who is in charge of that was really impacting people’s lives. He impacted my life a lot. And one of the things I noticed about him was that like, he could have a conversation with anyone. And I remember thinking to myself, the reason why he can impact all the people that he does is because he’s willing to, you know, say hi to anyone and actually have that conversation and learn how to build relationships. And I was like, that’s, that’s a skill I need to have. And I need to get over this whole. I’m an introvert thing. And I think a lot of people they put they put on that I’m an introvert hat as an excuse to not get good at skills that you need to practice, right. And I have, over the years gotten to the point where I’m really good in a social situation right? And I get to the point now where like the difference between between someone who’s an introvert and an extrovert is where you get your energy. I’m one of those people that have I go into a networking room and talk with a lot of people are doing interviews like this all day long. I’m done like I’m done. Now. It takes it saps me of energy, which is fine. I can still do it though, right? My one of my best friends and business partners is the other way around, right? He’s an extrovert all the way and he goes out and he gets energized by that kind of stuff. And if you get him into a networking room by the end of the night, he wants to go and party.

Dave Stewart 1:04:10
Totally. That’s it.

Richard Matthews 1:04:12
But yeah, I hear you practice you have to practice it getting good at it.

Dave Stewart 1:04:16
I’m the same way. So I think I am. I think I am more of the extrovert. I think I do get the energy from I think if I could do these things all day long. I think it would be good. I’d be good with it, then. Yeah, I’d probably take it into the evening as well. So it’s a it’s a good point. I love that. I love that the four P’s of successful business, I guess we could call it

Richard Matthews 1:04:38
Yeah, you sounds like you need to rewrite the blog posts for your for your new brand.

Dave Stewart 1:04:43
Exactly.

Richard Matthews 1:04:44
Exactly. That’s a good idea. So that wraps up our interview, but I finish every interview off with a simple challenge. I call it the Hero Challenge. But we do we do this basically to it’s a selfish thing, right to get us access to new stories. That was might never find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? first names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story on our show?

Dave Stewart 1:05:13
Man? Yeah, there’s a there’s so many who comes to mind first. I mean, you know, I think Well, I mean, first person comes to mind is one of my recent guests, Nick Loper. He has a side hustle show, side hustle podcast, and he’s like a serial, you know, side hustler entrepreneur. And he’s built this business, you know, I mean, he’s been positive podcasting since I think 2015 but I interviewed him and he walked through you know, we talked about you know, all the similar things we’re talking about here but you know, I think that guy just, you know, he brings it when he comes on he’s got this this piece some people call it a cult like following of his side hustlers, you know, side hustle nation and stuff. So I would recommend, I think he would be awesome for your show because the questions you asked here I would love to hear him answer some of these questions. You know what I mean? And he’s Another fun fact about him is just to show you you don’t have to be some guru, you know, with all your podcasting stuff. He actually, you know, he has a full time business with his pots basically through his podcast, and he does his show in his closet. Right? He does, because the closet is actually a good studio for sound right? And then I’ve heard other people that do it in the closet. And so anyways, just a little fun fact that Nick Loper one of the big side hustle guys online, you know, does his podcast in the in the studio closet? So yeah,

Richard Matthews 1:06:33
I shoot for him. But if you need other names of people, I’ve got a whole bunch of other words. Well, we’ll see if we can connect. Connect afterwards to get him on the show. And just as a side note for all of our audience, I used to be called as a teenager closet boy at home because my computer and Mike desk was in the closet. Oh, awesome. Work in the closet back when I was in high school.

Dave Stewart 1:06:56
That’s sweet. That is that’s a cool, fun fact.

Richard Matthews 1:07:01
Awesome. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd after the hero saves the day, who, who clap their hands and cheers for, for the person who you know who who saved the day for the hero. And so as we close, what I want to know is where people can find you if they want either your health in the future or if they want to, you know, light up the bat signal, so to speak, and listen to your podcast. Yeah. or hire you for your services. So I want to find out where that is. And then more importantly, who are the right types of people to sort of reach out and say, Hey, you know what, I would really like to either hear from Dave or maybe,

Dave Stewart 1:07:37
yeah, your podcasts. Yeah. So just go to Outdoors.Online.co slash hero, and I’ll have a page they’re all put together a page where they can have some of the links and things we talked about, and that’s outdoors with an S outdoors online.co slash hero, and I’ll have a link where they can get in touch with me. So for me, I think anybody that’s interested in you know, starting a podcasts if they need help, with editing, if they need any help to get going, I mean, obviously, you know if they have a fly fishing business outdoor company that that really hits home, but, you know, the guests I’ve had on if you look at my past guests, I’ve had everybody from Instagram experts to bloggers to, you know, somebody talking about virtual assistants and a lot of podcasting experts. A person talks about masterminds So, you know, if you’re interested in online marketing and learning from some of the best, you know, out there than I think I can help you. I think some of the guests I’ve had on can help you and so yeah, that’s, that’s where I’d send them.

Richard Matthews 1:08:32
Awesome. So thank you very much for coming on the show today. It has been a pleasure speaking with you. Do you have any final words of wisdom for you hit this

Dave Stewart 1:08:40
stop record button? Uh, not much other than, you know, like we said, show up every day and you’ll get there. It takes time, but you’ll get there.

Richard Matthews 1:08:48
Yeah, absolutely. I always tell tell tell people you vastly overestimate what you can accomplish in a year and vastly underestimate what you can accomplish in 10.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:56
Nice.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:58
Thanks, Richard. Again, thank you for coming out. Dave Alright, see ya.