Business Casual

Make more money in 2020! Specifically with digital products! Matt and Andrew don't want to rely 100% on the Affiliate Marketing Gods, which means beefing up their digital product game in the new year. They talk about their "come to Jesus moments" around digital products, how Matt made over $100K in digital product sales last year and what kind of products do and don't work with their audience (lik...

Would your business fall apart without you? Matt and Andrew both had to take long breaks from their businesses a few months ago. They talk about how their businesses survived without them and how the wheels kept turning in their absence. From hiring the right people (and what that actually means) to setting up solid standard operating procedures, how do you make sure it all doesn't crumble to piec...

Cue Julie Andrews, because these are a few of our favorite things. Matt and Andrew walk through every single tool they use to run their online businesses. They cover all their must-haves: SEO research, hosting, caching, product sales, accounting, business organization, file management, email marketing, podcasting and YouTube video production. Phew! They also share brutally honest reviews of tools...

New Year, who dis? We're kicking off 2020 with our favorite kind of show: listener Q&A! Matt and Andrew answer a stack of listener questions, from dealing with a sudden drop in traffic (thanks, BERT update) to beating out a slimy competitor that's shot up the ranks in Google. And if you're worried about the next recession, Matt and Andrew discuss what they'd do to recession-proof their work. T...

It's our final episode of the year, the last one in our Greatest Hits series, and the perfect motivation for your business New Years Resolutions: how to stick with it for the long haul. (This episode originally aired in March 2019). It only took 15+ combined years for Matt and Andrew to "make it" as "entrepreneurs." And you can, too! Listen in on Matt and Andrew's beer-fueled trip down memory lane...

More goodness coming at ya from the Money Lab vault (this episode originally aired August 2019). Should you try turning a hobby you love into a money-making website? Sean Ogle, founder of BreakingEighty.com and LocationRebel.com, joins the show to talk about turning a hobby into an online business. Both Sean and Matt run websites based on hobbies they love: Sean runs a golf site and Matt runs a ho...

The greatest hits keep rolling with some ultra-practical SEO tips (this episode originally aired August 2019). Good news: SEO isn't as complicated as you think. Digital content editor and writer Michelle Lowery joins the show to share her best practices for SEO writing and editing. Matt and Michelle chat about how they approach creating content that ranks on Swim University, including clever ways...

The Money Lab Greatest Hits countdown continues with an affiliate marketing heavy-hitter (this episode originally aired April 2019). It's a battle royale between affiliate sites as Matt and Andrew debate the pros and cons of their different affiliate business models. From only using the Amazon affiliate program to managing tons of affiliate partners, how do they structure their affiliate revenue s...

We're sharing more Money Lab's greatest hits, all December long! (This episode originally aired May 2019). Spoiler: classic email marketing tactics don't work for every online business. Can complex marketing funnels, slow drip campaigns and content upgrades actually hurt sales? Matt and Andrew dive into the details of Matt's multi-month experiment trying to optimize his sales funnel at Swim Univer...

We're celebrating the holiday season by sharing the best Money Lab episodes@ And we're kicking things off with this super popular episode, which originally aired June 2019. Matt needs money! He's already trimmed his costs down to the bone in his business and now he wants to focus on efficient ways to ratchet up his revenue. So how can he increase the flow of his existing income streams on his webs...

Have you ever procrastinated creating an online course? Yeah, neither have we... Never. Nope. Matt and Andrew talk about the magic that happens when you find the perfect software for hosting and selling an online course. Matt walks through his decision-making process for choosing a new course platform (spoiler: it's Podia !) and how making the switch is already paying off (spoiler: it's upselling!...

If you're a creative, the pressure to make perfect, consistent content is real. Thomas Frank, aka Thomas the Frank Engine, aka the College Info Geek, joins the show to talk about growing his YouTube channel to 1.5 million subscribers, his moment of burnout and how he's running his business differently since bouncing back. Matt and Thomas discuss how to remove yourself as a bottleneck from your bus...

"Let's just launch a SaaS company and become super successful in 6 months!" they said. "This will be soooo easy!" they said. Well, not so much. Matt and Andrew talk about the launch of their SaaS product Lasso earlier this year, their audacious goal of reaching $15,000 MRR in just half a year and why they're only 10% of the way there. But they're still pretty optimistic. They discuss why they've f...

Welcome to another listener question epsiode! Matt and Andrew respond to all the Qs from Twitter and email (keep them coming!). From negative SEO and Google penalties to what metrics to look for when you're picking a website niche. And how do you let go of total control in your business and hire out the tasks you shouldn't be doing? They cover it all, including Matt and Andrew's sordid past with b...

Come on baby, light my business fire! (The Doors. Nailed it). Matt and Andrew are joined by Brandon from MadFientist.com to talk about staying motivated in their online businesses. Brandon shares his journey of growing his own successful site (including the mental breakdown that motivated him to launch it) and chats about his newest online business, including the challenge of mixing business with...

It's all about who you know. And you should really know your audience. Mojca Zove, the founder of SuperSpicyMedia.com and TheScienceOfFacebookAds.com , joins the show to talk all about strategies for understanding your audience, especially when it comes to social media campaigns. She also dives into her transition from running a successful Facebook ads consultancy to running a product-based busine...

You can't say the wrong thing to the right person -- but saying the right thing sure helps with sales! Brennan Dunn, the founder of RightMessage.com, joins the show to chat about personalized messaging and how to create a highly tailored sales funnel for your audience. Matt and Brennan discuss the nitty gritty of how to segment website visitors and email subscribers. How do you figure out who's co...

Hot links, coming through! Matt and Andrew make most of their income through affiliate marketing, so it makes sense to give their links a little love once and awhile. They discuss how they're optimizing, testing and tracking their affiliate links. What do you do when you start to look at your click data? How do you manage your affiliate link inventory and clean up what's not working and double dow...

How do you launch, market and sell a new product without going totally crazy? Corbett Barr, the founder of Fizzle.co and Palapa.co, joins the show to chat about his new SaaS business and how he approaches sustainable and sane business growth. Matt and Corbett discuss how to find new customers, how to close sales in the software world and how to gather initial feedback while you’re still iterating...

Matt's been running an experiment to increase his YouTube ad revenue and sell more of his digital products through his videos. And guess what? It totally worked! In this episode, Matt and Andrew dive into all the techniques Matt's using to increase YouTube views, watch time and subscribers and explore why this new YouTube content strategy is paying off (literally -- Matt's made over $12K because o...

Being weird pays off. Jason Zook, the King of Weird Business Models, joins the show today to talk about all of the crazy businesses he’s started over the years and to celebrate his new book, Own Your Weird. Jason has sold his last name (twice) for a total of $100,000, created a business where he wore other people’s t-shirts for money, and sold his entire “future” to his audience. Jason and Matt ex...

The ultimate dream: spend a dollar in your business, earn ten dollars on the other side. But calculating business ROI isn't such simple math. Matt and Andrew discuss how they justify making big business purchases and figure out whether or not their large recurring expenses are worth it. How do they know if hired contract work will pay off? How do you put a price tag on things like mental health? A...

Should you try turning a hobby you love into a money-making website? Sean Ogle, founder of BreakingEighty.com and LocationRebel.com, joins the show to talk about turning a hobby into an online business. Both Sean and Matt run websites based on hobbies they love: Sean runs a golf site and Matt runs a homebrewing website, BrewCabin.com. So how do they approach monetizing their hobbies? What does it...

It's listener question time! Matt and Andrew answer everything from how to keep on top of the changes to the Google algorithm, how to treat nofollow vs. dofollow links and how site performance affects for SEO. Oh, and what happens to your website when you die? Matt and Andrew answer all your questions about optimizing your site for speed and prepping your website for the day you kick the bucket. E...

Good news: SEO isn't as complicated as you think. Digital content editor and writer Michelle Lowery joins the show to share her best practices for SEO writing and editing. Matt and Michelle chat about how they approach creating content that ranks on Swim University, including clever ways to incorporate keywords and how to optimize text for both robots and humans. Michelle also shares some of her f...