This is what I love about a espresso I were being focused around us building in public and sharing what we're learning along the way because That is a great example of how even though we know what the right thing is we still fall into the same traps and as a result, it's like, you know, it makes you realize that you have a lot of compassion for that problem because Everyone struggles with that even the person that you look at that seems like they have it all figured out like they're They're gonna chase a shiny object for three weeks and then realize oh, I'm doing the wrong thing You know it happens and I also feel like What you just said is particularly true for creative people This is something I've really had to learn how to do especially us working together Dickey because my my default in the past has always been if there's a problem in the business or if there's if we reach a plateau or if there's a bottleneck because I am such a I Just operate from a place of creativity all the time and what I mean by that is my default framework is oh There's a bottleneck that means I need to create something new so that's like Always been my default and something that I've learned working with you is that oftentimes that is actually Less productive for the business Then if you recognize that's that's a very powerful It's like you know in Fast and the Furious and they hit the noss button and all of a sudden the car goes like crazy, right? If you if you hit it too fast You lose and if you just hold it down and you don't time it You know the car explodes and that's sort of how I'm starting to look at it Is there's you have a very powerful skill when you're a creative person where you can create things out of thin air But if that's the only thing you're doing you're constantly then creating even more things to do and more problems And then it all starts working against you whereas a lot of where we've been lately is We did create something new Amazing now put that skill away and go do the 200 boring things that allow that new thing that you created To flourish and like at learning how to push and pull that skill is really challenging

our income is directly tied to the amount of boring monotonous work we're willing to do so we came back and said here the 40 Low hanging fruit that we know we should fix on only the thing we currently sell and if we do that Chances are the business could triple straight up. We made a list of like three to four key hires 20 Hey, if we had unlimited labor and unlimited leverage What are all the things we'd go start doing just with what we currently have to offer? Let's go fix all those before we entertain anything new and that's so that's what we're gonna do and that The amount of boring work that comes with scaling something like this I think is really the bottleneck to anyone getting there. It's not the big new creative projects that hold people back and Because those are exciting to go work on it's dang. Okay now worth this new level It's gonna take three months of just absolute pure monotony doing the same thing every single day Running another split test making another cold call making all these things that don't feel like you're moving the needle in the In the moment until you start to see that results two to three months down the

road and now looking back It's so funny. I can see how many chapters where I Don't know if I knew that that was the right thing or not at the time. I just know that I avoided it and Looking back I can see if I hadn't avoided that. Oh, man I that would have been more successful that would have been more successful So I'm glad that it's starting to really click for us And I think we're learning how to be more and more mentally disciplined, but you know We it's hard sometimes and I think the moments when you're most likely the studio is a great example The moments when you're most likely to pursue a new shiny object is when you have an a big open loop And you don't really know how to close it or it's not gonna get closed like in the studio It's like we know this isn't gonna be done for another two months so you have this big open loop and it's draining your focus and you don't know how to close it or it's not gonna get closed tomorrow and Almost as a coping mechanism You go well, let me go divert my focus and chase something else like that's when we're most likely to make that mistake

Mm-hmm, and I look at look we've been together in person now for 15 months so June to September that's it. All right about half the time we've been working together And I look at June through September last year was pure Monotony mode it was we knew we needed to make these 15 upgrades to ship 30 to the marketing to all that and then October through January was all content. It was like just ramp up content ramp up end of the year all of that then February through May was build PGA where we put an absurd amount of effort into that initial cohort into building the system and then the Two months really three months last three months have kind of just been let's see where what's like? What's gonna shake out from this from this big spurt of growth? Where are we like? What's our natural run rate across the board here? and we had to gather data across paid ads starting across different percentages and student success rates and close rates and Applicate like so much of that it almost we just needed to sip on our hands for two to three months While the studio was getting built out too. So now I say we're in a monotony phase where There's really nothing new. It's how do you take what you currently have and go fix a hundred things that have You've now have enough data Based on running it for six months to say okay now I know how to fix it so it's like the lag time of improvement is longer because we haven't changed too much over the last three months now I can Clearly make decisions from all the data that we've gathered so there's an art there too of doing the same thing because You actually don't have enough information to go make a new decision on what to do next But now we clearly have all that data and literally a spreadsheet saying Fix this rate fix this rate. How do we do that? How do we do that? How do we do that? So I've never felt clear about the exact bottlenecks of the business that we're gonna go and solve and then now we're gonna be able to strike the barbell of low hanging monotonous fruit on the business side Brand new creative outlet with the studio. So that could be something that we lean into right? It's like we know what to fix on this that's boring We know what to do on or we don't know what we're gonna do with the new studio That's gonna be a lot of fun. Let's go explore art. We have like a new creative shiny object that can offset some of the meetings and split tests and You know call reviews that we're gonna have to do in the

meantime. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think it's fair to Recognize that you know We're not machines It's it is hard to put yourself through those chapters of just Slaying bores and doing what you got to do to move the business forward And so you know like give yourself a creative outlet, you know allow yourself to do some of the other things but the big lesson for me has been Not confusing the creative outlet with what needs to be done for the business I think oftentimes I saw them as the same thing and I made the business my creative outlet And then that ended up just creating more problems than it did create solutions or efficiencies. So any Maybe to rap tiki what what have been some of your biggest lessons learned building this studio

anything in particular? Biggest lessons besides that it costs twice as much and takes twice as long. I Think it's been the first time I've walked into a place and you feel the true Connection between online and offline. It's like whoa this place was created to Enhance what we're doing online and you do that by building things offline And I think that was really cool. I got to show Greg and Brandon and Diogo the place and Seeing other people see it I think clicks there too because for the most part we've only operated on the internet so the realization you put it in the notes here that Other people want to come hang out there It's gonna be a lot of fun because to be honest most people don't build up a space like this where their creative friends can come So I already know that's gonna pay huge dividends It already has me thinking about a bigger space right because if you can entertain that many people like we don't need to entertain that one I think now that I see this done. I say There's nothing stopping us other than the upfront investment from doing another one from Building the gym next to it if we decide to or in the future having all of these in one place I'm like, okay, this was a good trial run. Let's go build the massive studio now with everything so I'd say those are ones and then you touched on a couple other here on the open loop side But I'll let you

go. Yeah, I mean obviously the same I think bringing having the digital world create your analog world is really cool Very underrated benefit. I also am really glad that You know, it's my personality. It's like anytime. I want to do something. I immediately want to do it at level 100 But I'm glad that we're starting with a very modest version of the studio because There's just so many things that I didn't even know up to this point You know and seeing how it comes together seeing how the project goes Understanding how much things cost Understanding some of the limitations of the space, you know I think it's really great to do that in a small environment and then yeah, we can grow into bigger environments later and I also am just I think That this was our Rational for wanting to do it was having an in-person studio We know is going to amplify the quality of the content we create But I'm very aware that I don't think that we really know how that's gonna go And I mean that in the most positive sense like I think even though we have that idea We might be underestimating the impact of that and so if you think about just you know different bottlenecks of the business if Us building the studio increases the quality of our content and just even the perception of the quality of our content which ends up then causing our distribution to 2x or 3x or 5x like that's another very powerful lever on everything that we're doing and I I am very excited To see the outcome of that in the most optimistic way possible me

too I can't wait because we have a long list of low-hanging fruit videos that if we went and scripted and made a high-quality version It'd be the best internet digital writing education there is by far in video form So so much potential there to educate on that. I think We can probably wrap with this, but I was I want to go re-listen to I think it was my second episode Or maybe I can't remember if it was Lewis and Kyle It was a podcast episode from like late or early 2021 and in it I said like the long-term vision is to have a place that's like a co-working Studio slash jam and this was like two and a half years ago And I used to tell people like this was the goal This was the goal was to build some kind of in-person awesome place to hang out to do all this And as I was sitting there while they were building it I Like got hit with a wave of emotion like damn this is this is actually happening. I'm glad I filmed the whole thing I'm excited to film the mini documentary of us building it because I've talked about some of my influence But like fitness youtubers were some of the biggest influences on me I've been watching some of those guys for 10 years and I remember Seeing the beginning of their journey and then them signing their first gym and moving it in it was always like this small little Warehouse that they documented the whole thing of building it out and like putting the stuff in there And I went back and started to watch some of those videos And it's like the second they did that It was like a year like six months to a year where they just blew up and then it was like we're moving to a bigger space We're launching this we're launching that and there was something about Back to the very beginning of this is rising to that new level of investment that you make in yourself So when they signed the gym they said okay now I can make better content in here I can have collaborations like I'm watching that and then seeing what we're about to start doing and that gives me chills to think about Because I know that there's so much down the pipeline that we're excited to build so I'm glad we're documenting this one This might be the last one from outside the shipyard. I'm hoping we did one inside there was very echoey and If two weeks from now if we don't do one next week, we'll be in there ready to rock which is epic to say

I'm so excited and you're right. I mean we We manifested it. We worked towards it. We're making it happen. It's It is a testament to Everything we've built and it's also a testament to just all the People who have been part of the journey to and who have supported it who have gone through ship 30 who have Learned and benefited from it people who even like this podcast is a great example We sort of started this on a whim and then ended up getting all this positive signal from people saying hey This is really helpful, you know, so in many ways the studio is also doubling down on What other people have been asking for and going okay? Cool if that's helpful for you Then we want to keep investing in that so I'm very very excited to see where

everything goes me too. So Hopefully the last one next one. We're gonna be coming to you live from our new setup Can't wait wait till people see it man. This container in the back. It's perfect. It's gonna be so much fun. So that's all we got for today Thanks everyone for listening. We're gonna put together some kind of in-person shipyard unveiling in the future So if we keep your eye out on your inbox for us putting something together like that because I think it'd be a lot of fun If you're listening on YouTube As always hit like hit subscribe leave a comment with your three biggest takeaways We have two weeks until the next October ship 30 for 30 cohort if you're interested in joining Let us know go to start writing online calm and you can learn more about ship 30 leave a comment because one lucky winner is going to get a free Spot onboard our next ship 30 cohort. Whoever leaves a comment with their three takeaways if you're on Spotify iTunes number one thing you could do is leave us a five-star review and forward it to a friend Instagram and listening to this take a screenshot tag us will repost it to our story as well LinkedIn Twitter X all those different places. Let us know that you're listening enjoying this Lot more to come on the espresso our side lots of things in the works Thanks everyone for being a part of what got us to hear a lot more down the in the pipeline That's all I got cool. I miss

anything. That's it. No, thanks everyone and can't wait to see you in the shipyard There we go. All right,

y'all. Have a good one out