Scratching Your Itch into a Multi-Million Dollar Enterprise with All Remote Workers with Matt Going

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Sales Evangelist. Today, we'll be breaking down how to scratch your itch into a multi-million dollar enterprise with all remote workers. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Matt going into EO Fire Studios. Matt caught the startup bug working as an executor for many early stage companies, most notably for North Point Communications, one of the first broadband providers. In today's Fire Nation, we'll talk about trusting your gut.

0:37We'll talk about growing your business privately with no outside funding. We'll talk about giving your partners the power to customize what they are selling, focusing on a niche, developing loyalty, and finding other services to help those in that niche to be successful, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Matt and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work.

1:10A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's a month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Matt, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, JLD.

1:49Thanks so much for having me on your podcast. I'm a big fan of it. Hello, Fire Nation. Happy to be talking to you guys as well. It's going to take longer and it's going to be harder than you can ever imagine to build and stabilize your business. Think of the worst case scenario of how much time and cash it will take. Not just to launch, by the way. I think stabilize is kind of the key point because you can have some early success, but to really stabilize it and have a lasting business, find that worst case scenario number, multiply it by five. Celebrate if it's less than that. The other piece to that is be prepared to do all of the hard work, especially the work you don't like to do or may not be good at because you need to understand every bit of your business to be able to grow it and launch it.

2:36I did a lot of things I didn't want to do and still do 10 years in today. And Fire Nation, it will be that much sweeter when you accomplish your goals as a result. Because we're talking about scratching your own itch into a multi-million dollar enterprise with all remote workers. And very few people these days, Matt, really, truly, and honestly trust their guts. What are your thoughts on this? I think it's trust your gut and believe in yourself. Believe in your gut. That's a little nuance there. Again, it goes back to the sort of hard work, right? In our business, we launched it, or before we launched it, we had this idea, my business partner, Marcel Buki and I, for a virtual address company for business builders, entrepreneurs, and remote workers.

3:27But we decided, before we really dive into this and quit our jobs, I'm going to cold call 50 companies in LA that could be channel partners for us for this service and see what they have to say about a go-to-market. So I had this gut feeling that it was a good service because we needed a service like that, but I needed to grind. I needed to get out there and really work hard. So I went out and cold called. I took a couple of days off of work. I didn't get a yes until cold call number 37. And that was a skeptical yes, all right? So it was just push through, persevere, until you get that yes on your gut.

4:06And you get that confirmation that's like, yeah, you know what, this is a good service. And then you can really push ahead. Matt, you were able to grow your business privately with no outside funding. And I see so many entrepreneurs, they literally spend all their time trying to get outside funding, so much so that they disregard their business, they ignore their business, and then it withers on a vine. So even if they are successful, they got nothing to actually fund. So how the heck did you accomplish growing your business privately? First thing is, both Marcel and I are good savers. So we had a year-plus runway to be able to pay all of our bills at home.

4:49Let's get zero cash in the door. and uh and then we cut you know we took little little bite-sized chunks we didn't feel like we had to boil the ocean day one you know marcel actually i'm not marcel is the cto the tech visionary the real real sharp guy um and he has to calm me down sometimes because i want to go fast i want to go fast all the time these things take a long time there's a long arc we don't have to boil the ocean immediately let's test and and and see let's see if things work and then build off of that. So we didn't hire a bunch of people for three years. We hired nobody. It helped that we had an online business.

5:29So we were able to generate traffic organically to drive customers, to sign up for our site. And I think the biggest punchline there is have money. It's going to take longer than you think. Have money in the bank. It's going to take longer than you think. And do as much work by yourself as long as possible. Fire Nation, most entrepreneurs don't run out of energy. They don't run out of good ideas. They run out of time and they run out of time because they run out of money, that runway that is so key to your success. On top of finding high quality team members and being able to embrace remote work and recruit in an international environment.

6:12All of these things are very challenging, Matt, but you managed to do all three. Tell us more. So Marcel's Swiss moved to the States about 20 years ago. And now, now he's lived in Singapore for, for many years, but about six years. And so he, he was a big advocate of hiring staff remotely. We're a global company. Our vision was to be a global company. And, and that there's resources that are available offshore. These models are in place in the Philippines, as an example, where we have built our company. And the cost is anywhere from, you know about a quarter of what it could be in the u.s for expenses we have over 100 people on staff in our company and all but five are in the u.s so we've been able to we've been able to build that and the way we started was i put an ad in after three years of doing customer support myself by the way um three years in we put an ad in craigslist manila for to hire somebody and our first hire was a woman named christy she's still with us by the way in an area called general Santos, no idea where that was in the Philippines.

7:20And we brought her on board at about a quarter of the cost it would have taken to hire somebody in the U.S. And she turned out to be a fantastic employee and hardworking employee. And over the years, we've built and built and built on top of that and now have just a fantastic team. We do not have an office anywhere. We're all over the Philippines. Everyone works out of their house and it's a great environment for the company. We provide great support, not only customer support, but other services. Marketing team, we have a big marketing presence in the Philippines. We have software developers in the Philippines and other resources as well.

7:59There's a lot of reasons for your success. What's one of the key reasons that you believe you've succeeded? We move quickly when we make mistakes or the market changes. I think that's probably our biggest. If we hear from customers of something that's not working, this is particularly in the early days of our service, we don't take months to put together the business case internally and hem and haw about it and think about it. We just go, we test and go. And if it doesn't work, we fix it on the fly. We don't have a long process for deploying new products and services. I would say at this point, 10 years in, we are growing up a little bit and trying to grow up a little bit with our process.

8:47But it served us very well, because we can move on a dime. We can move on a dime from a software development perspective. And we have a lot of business experience. So we trust our gut and we just go for it and watch it closely and make changes as needed. Fire Nation, value bombs are going to keep on coming your way when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Are you ready to start your year off with increased revenue, faster growth, and record-breaking performance? Well, a powerful sales platform can make it all happen. And for that, there's the all-new Sales Hub from HubSpot. Sales Hub is an all-on-one platform thoughtfully built with the tools and insights you need to communicate on a personal level with every lead, prospect, and customer.

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10:04With Sales Hub, closing deals is no big deal. Head to hubspot.com slash sales to try it for free. Have you ever considered hosting on Airbnb? Kate and I, Airbnb, one of our places here in Puerto Rico, and we love it. It not only allows us to share this magical island and our community with those visiting, it's also a great way to earn some extra income. We've had a number of guests rave about how special their vacation was as a result of staying in a place that is so beautiful and that felt like home. This is a big reason why we originally got into hosting. We know what it's like to travel and want to have a place to call home.

10:41So we figured, why not create that feeling for others? Next month, we'll be traveling to meet up with friends on the West Coast. And knowing how easy it is to host on Airbnb, we're considering putting our own home up on Airbnb while we're away to earn some additional income. Maybe you have an upcoming trip planned as well. While you're away, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Is this your year to grow your business? What if you could learn the proven systems and processes that have been used to grow thousands of multi-million dollar success stories?

11:13At thrivetimeshow.com, see testimonials of how Clay Clark's proven business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 clients to increase profitability dramatically. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Sound too good to be true? Go to thrivetimeshow.com to see 2 ,000 plus documented client success stories because Clay only takes on 160 clients. He personally designs your business plan for you. Then Clay's team of talented designers, videographers, web developers, workflow mappers, and accounting coaches will help you to implement that proven plan.

11:48See over 2 ,000 verified success stories and schedule your free one-on-one 13-point assessment with Mr. Clay Clark himself today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Knowledge will not attract money unless it is organized and directed through practical plans of action. Become the next success story. Schedule your free 13-point assessment today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Matt, one thing that I found very interesting that you've been able to do successfully is giving your partners the power to customize what they are selling. Give us specifics on what this means and how it worked out. So for our model for Anytime Mailbox business, it's a virtual address service that business starters and entrepreneurs, like most of your listenership, can use.

12:38When they have an idea and they want to start a business, they need a bunch of things to do that. One of them is an address, and they need it to be an address that's not their home address for privacy purposes. and also the benefit of using our service is that when you receive a piece of mail, you get an alert on our app. You can see the front of the envelope. It says, hey, John, you've got a piece of mail, and you can see what it is. It's a credit card offer. Shred it. Letter from our federal agency. Open and scan it. I want to see what's there. So you get privacy, and you never miss mail. Our channel partners are the locations, the addresses that you would purchase from us where the services are located.

13:14And so those are mail center operators, like a typical pack and ship location, as well as co-work companies. So we needed to get the co-work companies on board working with us because it was going to be some extra work for them. They weren't sort of a highly digitized industry. It's real sort of brick and mortar. And so we had to convince them. That was that 50 cold calls I referred to earlier. But we knew that they wanted to have control over pricing in the marketplace. They didn't want someone like us who frankly didn't know a lot about their business. We just knew there was a need for entrepreneurs.

13:50So we said to them, we're going to give you full control over pricing. You can charge as much as you want or as little as you want, and we're going to let the market decide. And it was super well received because we're asking them to be our backups, to do work for us and to believe in us. And it really created this sort of partnership environment for them. We were like, yeah, we trust you too. We want to learn from you. You can learn from us and together we can build this multi-million dollar business on both sides to grow revenue. Matt, you believe in focusing on a niche, developing loyalty within that niche, finding other services to help those people that are in that niche to be successful at a deeper and further level.

14:32Give us some examples of this process in action. It just happened yesterday, actually. I got a call for a very interesting opportunity that's related to our business. And my first reaction is, yeah, man, this looks awesome. Pencil it out. This looks great. I mean, we just a month ago finished a strategic plan for the next three years. Guess what? That call yesterday is not on that strategic plan. And at the end of the call, I just had to say, you know, guys, this sounds awesome. It's just not on our radar right now. Let's touch base again in six months and see if anything's changed. Let me know how you're progressing with that.

15:11And they said they appreciated that. And you know what? Things could change. Things could change with our strategic plan. We need to be nimble on our feet, and maybe that's a great opportunity in six months. But we as a company can't take on every good idea, even these great ideas, which approach us all the time now. We've got a service that we know is providing a lot of value. We see it in the growth. We're signing up thousands of customers a month. We just need to keep doing what we're doing well and continue to add value to our existing customer base. And I think things are going to be okay.

15:44I love that attitude, Fire Nation, because a lot of times people are always just looking for that next new customer and they're forgetting about people who have already signed up and given their trust, their know, their like within that company and said, you know what, I'm in. Instead of continuing to nurture those clients that are already trusting you and saying, hey, how can I serve you further? How can I serve you deeper? How can I make your life better, easier? And you believe, Matt, that we need to be brutally honest when it comes to our company's opportunities for improvements. What has that looked like for you specifically?

16:19We've built a culture internally that we are very candid with each other. It's, you know, family is kind of an overused term, but I could say Marcel and I, we're like two brothers. We can go at it. We can argue. We can fight. We can disagree. but we clean it up super fast. And I do that with my other team members and I allow them as my being the boss, right? CEO and co-founder. I give anybody at any level the ability to push back on me. You don't get it as much as you would like because people can be intimidated by the title. But what I make sure I do is I admit when I'm wrong. I, and I, you know, and I do it all the time.

17:03It could be little things like, I don't know, being uh being on mute on a zoom call and rambling on for five minutes or or or a bigger or a bigger issue of some some mistake that we've made some pretty big mistakes with this with our company in in in ideas that we had that we had to pivot very quickly to change and i just talked to the the whole team i do a monthly call with the entire team and i just review hey this is this is you know sort of our credits and debits for last month these are my credits and debits for last month this is what what we did well as a company and these are some of the areas where i know i need to work on and improve on.

17:37And I think it just makes people less scared to raise their hand, to come up with suggestions, but also to fail as well. They know that they're not going to get canned if they make a mistake. Fire Nation, so many lessons to learn from those who have come before us. We always talk about standing upon the shoulders of giants. People and entrepreneurs on fire, they are giants. They've made mistakes, had failures, had successes. emulate those successes, avoid those failures. Matt, of everything we talked about here today, what is one thing you want to make sure our listeners really get from our conversation?

18:15Stick with it. You came up with that idea initially, and it's because you saw a niche in the market, you saw an opportunity. Prepare for it, I'd say is prepare and stick with it. So prepare means you don't necessarily have to launch the business in two weeks. You might not be ready to go with that from a financial perspective, from a business planning perspective, et cetera. It's prepare, launch when you're ready to go and be prepared to stick longer than you can imagine because it's going to take more time and more cash to loop back to that point. But I can tell you 10 years in, Marcelo and I just, you know, we're winding down the year.

18:51We're just like, wow, look at like, look at our numbers. Look at how many customers we have. Look at what we're going to be doing next year. I mean, we're forecasting next year and we're like, We're pinching ourselves. And I'm working, you know, right now I'm at my house. You know, I'm in sweats and a baseball hat. And I'm doing my job and my kids are downstairs and my wife. And it's, you know, the grind has been worth it. And 10 years in, the future is bright. So just stay with it. Don't quit. But be prepared for the long haul. Stick with it, Fire Nation. There's a reason why Seth Godin wrote the book, The Dip.

19:28The dip will always come. There's always going to be a valley between some peaks. So just stay with it. If you still truly believe that you are creating an amazing solution to a real problem. Matt, how can Fire Nation connect with you, with your business? Give us a call to action. I'd say go to our website, AnytimeMailbox.com. So we have a great bit of content on there. If you need to and want to reach out to me directly, send me a note. matt, M-A-T-T, at anytimemailbox.com. I love talking to entrepreneurs. Believe it or not, I will answer you and answer you quickly. Those are the two ways. Fire Nation, you're the average.

20:09Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with MG and JLD today, so keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Matt in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Matt, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks for having me, JLD. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Matt for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment?

20:45My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work.

21:23A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit Thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's a month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at Thrivetimeshow.com.